No. 65 Petals of Thought Street,
Blogosphere State,
Federal Republic of the Universe.
Friday 20, February 2015.
To you dear precious
friend!
How are you
my special e-friend? How’s work and family? And education too? I hope you aren’t
feeling the heat of the austerity measure yet. I count it a privilege rare as
hen’s teeth to write you again. I must confess that I’m missing you right as I
write. It’s so lonely here. Ennui is fast swallowing me up. I wonder what the
world would have been without people like you around. But thank God for this
medium that allows me the opportunity to unburden my pregnant heart. Asides, each
encounter with you is a never-to-be-forgotten one. I must confess that reliving
moments shared with you in the video-player of my mind proves a weapon to
combat boredom.
And to
further kill time, I spooled away time understudying the success story of some rich
folks with a woman at the cynosure. She had riveted me with her astounding and
unprecedented business exploits and plush opulence. I had recently stumbled on
an article that chronicled how Forbes ranked her as the richest woman in Africa
and invariably in Nigeria. Fascinated, I dug into her history and probed the
record of her fortune in an assiduous process of research.
You know
history is the wisdom book of man; the cavalcade of experience and the
storehouse of strategies. And guess what? I hatched a discovery: her secret! Believe
me you have something to learn from her secret if you allow me share it with
you.
Yay! I can
picture your go-ahead nod. But before I reveal the secret of her success, let me
introduce you to her person and world – just a glimpse of business life and the
choices she made that shotputted her into glamorous fame and fortune. I will start
the telling this way:
 |
| Folorunsho Alakija |
In the days when lizards were in twos and threes, a
girl was born into the family of Alakija. Folorunsho so she was christened on
the seventh day after seeing the turquoise canopy-like ceiling of the earth. As
she grew, her beauty shone with breathtaking allure, deeply enchanting.
In the heyday of her mesmerizing beauty, she was bright,
ingenious, energetic and enterprising. And unlike many of her contemporaries
who had undying penchant for white collar jobs, she had stoic likeness for the
blue collar ministry realizing the fast-lane to rapid excellence and pecuniary
freedom. She was not only tone-skinned but also bright with the understanding
of the fundamentals of the sell and
excel principle of unimaginary and extravagant wealth.
Folorunsho, though pursued a career in secretarial
studies in London, but she was quick to grasp the secret of oceanic prosperity,
thus she juxtaposedly enrolled at the Central School of Fashion, also in London.
This was the beginning of financial fortune! Indeed, Thomas Edison got it all
reasoned out that discontent is the first necessity of progress!
You remember our favorite saying that despise not
the days of little beginnings while in secondary school? I know you do. Folorunsho
Alakija founded a tailoring outfit when she strolled back into Nigeria and
hence her unimaginable exploits. The classical thinker, James Allen was indeed
apt that man becomes as small as his controlling desires and as great as his
dominant aspiration.
From the humble beginning of Supreme Stitches, her
premium fashion label which metamorphosed to Rose of Sharon House of Fashion -
a clothing lair for extravagantly fashionable wives of military bigwigs and
influential societal women, Alakija Folorunsho rose to the klieg light of fame
as she was ranked some moonlights ago by Forbes as the richest woman in Nigeria
with an estimated net worth of $2.5 billion. Also, the sixty-four year old business
witchcrafty of Folorunsho gallantly displaced Isabel dos Santos, the former richest
Amazon of Africa making her clinch Forbes’ current African richest woman.
Today, Alakija’s business empire is almost unrivalled
in Nigeria and Africa. She is one of the greatest female financial legends and money
divinities in the World. Her fortune is stupendous and sometimes incredulous
with its frontiers expanding daily. Of course, Rose of Sharon House of Fashion is
not the only money-spinning stream into her ocean of wealth but it is the most
sought-after and also her fruit-bearing tree seed. Indeed, Lee Iacocca was on
point that when a product is right, it does not need any marketer!
“What then is the secret of
Alakija’s fame and fortune?” I wondered and pondered. Then it dawned on me that
she had something distinguishably excellent to sell and thus she excel! She has a passion for fashion. Jay
Abraham calls this her USP: Unique Selling Proposition.
My dear e-friend,
day and night, winter and summer, daily and regularly, we both know how we try
desperately to crack the code of financial success. In the process, we have recruited
many financial best-seller books, wealth-advising magazines and constantly subscribe
to avalanche money-spinning e-zines. We squeeze out and greedily gulp the juicy
tips and information in all of these materials – sometimes hoarding them from
our friends, family members, neighbours, acquaintance or associates. Preservation
of self interest is the first law of nature we staunchly self-excuse our greedy
action.
And still trying
to crack the code of the extravagantly rich, we adopt topnotch financial geniuses
the millennium can boast of as role models. We know virtually everything about
the success stories of money oracles like Bill Gates who made a great lifelong fortune
from DOS: Data Operating Software, Disney brothers who hatched theirs from licensing
their patented Mickey Mouse concept, The Aliko Dangote intercontinental and
household fame, Mike Adenuga of Conoil and Globacom and other business
conglomerates, Balogun Subomi of First City Group, Femi Otedola of Zenon Oil, Abdulsalam
Rabiu of BUA Group, Oba Otudeko of Honeywell Group, The Ibrus, Tony Elumelu,
Jim Ovia just to mention a few stupendously wealthy Nigerians.
But despite all
these, we blindly shirk away from the glaring secret beneath their mammoth
successes. We fail to realize that an individual has the potential to excel
when he has something unique to sell
(Unique because if a product, service or information isn’t distinguishably
excellent, it will eventually become bogged in the slimy mud of competition and
ultimately sink and stink). We also fail to realize that a person excel when
s/he pull courage together and offer such exquisite idea, information, product
or service to the largest number of people; something of high frequency
consumption – because the more people who need it, the more often they need it,
the more successful we become.
Dear e-friend,
clinically studying the lives of folks like Folusho Alakija, Bill Gates, Henry Fords,
Dangote, Otedola, Adenuga and other financial magnates, I found out why they get
richer day in day out: they sell something essential to everybody everyday –
something with high frequency consumption, something unique and in popular
demand, something so domestic and almost indispensable for everybody everyday.
They are well schooled in the understanding that providing products, services
or information that is unique, essential and domestic is the fast-lane to
fortune. All they need to inflate their balloon of riches is a few bucks from
the majority, everyday.
You see, one
of the lessons I deduce from the story of Folorunsho Alakija is that to excel
is as simple as abc if only one has a distinguished idea or expertise to sell;
something essential to everybody everyday – something with high frequency
consumption. There’s no surest route to monetary abundance than to solve
people’s daily problems and swell your pocket.
Dear e-friend,
this is a challenge as well as a clarion call for me and you to conceive a
concept useful and valuable so inevitable for human survival and frequent
domestic consumption, sell it and excel. Have something to unique to sell,
brand it, market it, sell it and excel. If they can do it, you and I can also do
it. We can rule if we obey the rule. Let the thinking begin! We CAN: Conceive
Achieve and Nurture!
Thank you
for your time. I hope to read from you soon. Bye for now!
It’s me ‘Káyọ̀dé Oyèró.
© ’Kayode
Oyero 2015
