True entrepreneurs have discovered that if they have a passion and communicate it to their employees and customers, money ultimately follows as an afterthought. Business people who do it purely for the money aren’t true entrepreneurs.
Earning a living is not the same as making lives through passion. And without passion and enthusiasm to deliver something new or better, life becomes uninspiring. This is why many run out of energy and flee back to former comfort zone; getting a job for salary.
You need to have a strong desire and be hungry for success. It is that hunger that will help you overcome setbacks and obstacles. It will prevent you from quitting easily. You will definitely meet challenges, but must not give up.
Your financial freedom is tied to your passion for what you do. In other words, money flows in the direction of energy. You have got to identify those things that release your passion.
Our polytechnics and universities are not helping us. They do not train students to be self-reliant, but to be employees. But how do we expect those lecturers to train our young people to be entrepreneurs? Are lecturers themselves entrepreneurs? Even though they have Ph.Ds. in entrepreneurial studies, but this is not enough to make them entrepreneurs who will then impart their practical field knowledge to their students.
How then do we expect these lecturers to give us graduates who will create values and jobs? They would rather produce graduates who are job-seekers and not job creators. Likes follow after likes. These old Latin saying is true; Nemo dat quod non habet meaning ‘you cannot give what you don’t have.’
I am of the opinion that since entrepreneurship is not about acquiring Masters Degrees and Ph.Ds., in entrepreneurial studies, our entrepreneur lecturers should be drawn from among the successful entrepreneurs in the society; not men and women that earned their living through substantial wages.
If the lecturers are successful business men and women, it’s likely that they have skills in hands-on entrepreneurship, and not mere theorists who never started any business from the ground up, not to even talk of managing stocks in a large storehouse.
My concern is that our universities are mass-producing more and more bureaucrats or officeholders with advanced degrees. If this continues, not only will the craze for certification and corruption increases, but unemployment and high rate of crime will skyrocket, and we will remain perpetual slave to the developed countries. We will remain a third world country perpetually.
It is high time we borrowed a leaf from the Chinese. China has moved from being a third world country to becoming a frontline economy through promoting creativity, productivity, innovation, entrepreneurial development and industrialization.
This is why I believe that the Ministry of Happiness and Purpose Fulfillment is essential, because we need entrepreneurs. We need people to grow up and start businesses, create value and learn how to mint their own money, and not to work for salary.
Working for somebody else limits us from having control over the amount of money we receive. Settling for the money that someone offers to pay you limits your power to honestly decide your own goals.
The scripture says, “God will bless the work of our hands.” You may agree that at your office, you are putting your hand to work, but if you are an employee, it is not your hand that God sees; He sees your employer’s hand. In other words, when the blessing comes, it will go to your boss or the pay master and he or she will give you a little fraction from it.