Kolade’s Simple Plan

Many want to make a mark without effort, yet without effort, no marks can be made

Yoruba Proverb

Kolade is a 42-year-old Nigerian who was born and has lived in Lagos for most of his life. He is from a lower middle-class family and like every other lower-middle-class resident of the megacity he has a degree from a government owned university and tried his best to be a hard worker. The interesting thing about his story is that he is a millionaire, not in naira but in dollars. He is a self-made millionaire raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars automatically daily but Kola didn’t just get here, why did he get to be so lucky?

Continuous Learning

He realised early in life that the key to success is in going the extra mile on three factors, and he stuck to implementing these factors in his life, while the norm for people of kola’s age in Nigeria is simply a degree. He has a masters degree and an MBA in addition to several certifications and diplomas from prestigious universities around the world, this he acquired as soon as he could afford to get them. The first key that he worked on was OUTLEARN. He realised that a key factor for success is to know more than the average person and apply what you learn as soon as possible, not to fall into the trap of the forever student who learns but never applies or the broken pen who stopped active learning.

If learning and application were the keys then professors will be the most wealthy of people, so there must be other factors that seem to remove professors from the equation. Remember he got an MBA, he was learning how to become rich and apply it while professors who become successful are those who write the most cited papers and they seem too to follow the OUTLEARN formula.

World class performance

He was quick to discover and implement the second formula for success: OUTWORK. The average employee or employer of kola’s generation works 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for about 42 weeks in a year. From the age of 30 when he decided to imbibe the culture of outworking everyone, he worked 12 hours a day for 25 days a month by the time he was 40 he had worked for 36,000 hours while the average person worked for 18,000 hours. He was actually 9 years older than his peers in work years; add that to his continuous learning attitude He read at least a book a week and had gulped down some 750 books by the age of 40 in just 10 years he was 10 times more enlightened than his peers.

Networking

He always knew that socially successful people were somewhat lucky and he knew that luck always seem to favour those who tried, but that was not enough for him as he wanted to do something extra. While studying he came across it, it was NETWORKS the more people you knew who appreciated your talent, the more likely you are to get paid for it and the easiest way to meet people is to move to where they are, he had to move to where his hard work and knowledge will be most appreciated and rewarded, he had to move to where the money was.

And move did he, not as an unplanned action due to his improving affluence but by a deliberate effort to be where the money is. He moved four times in 10 years till he lived where the mega deals were, he attended their social occasions and he mingled.His success is not easy to replicate. Working 12 hours means sleeping no more than 5 hours, with the amount of literature he consumed how could he? He lost lots of friends who wanted him to be ordinary, family members disliked him and he almost lost the love of his family. Like every good thing that lasts, he began by inculcating habits that ensured that he succeeded and stuck by them.

Would you like to be like Kolade?

Article also posted on sadiqadeyanju.com