The first million.

Last Saturday I tweeted this and there were no replies, none! In my mind it meant that I was following the wrong people or nobody wants to talk about the uncool stuff on their timelines. I had then to ambush tweeps on their DMs, how one makes their first seven figures has been a question that always keeps bugging me. Not the stories about Kamlesh Pattni making his first at sixteen and Mike Sonko at seventeen, which even true I find hard to believe they were from legit businesses. I wanted to hear of someone who had a vision, dream, idea or a way of accomplishing things (making sales maybe), maybe it was a cheque from a business deal, a bonus or the returns from a wise investment opportunity taken. After 3 hours no reply, i copy pasted the question and ambushed tweeple and confirmed my latter opinion, nobody wants to fill their timelines with talk on uncool and boring stuff, the timeline is like the lounge where you relax, tell and take jokes and yaba daba doo while anything serious maybe discussed on the DM, maybe!!!

The response disabused me of the notion ‘life starts at forty’ that was wrong! Maybe if you are on the race to climb the organisational ladder, it might hold true. But if you want to be the Kenyan version of Dustin Moskovitz and Yoshikazu Tanaka you have you start early, and life for you starts the moment you get that spank on the behind as a welcome to the world and you gasp for the first breath and yell, not at forty, never!

Delayed gratification

Growing up I was led to believe that you had to start with employment, then get a pension, and finally die and that was a good life! If you wanted a million, you had to save, get a loan with you payslip or get lucky and win the lottery, and that million would be spent on liabilities and not used to beget another million. “Save for a rainy day”, I still hear her tell me, practice restraint, delayed gratification is good for you; if I give you this cake now would you rather have it now at night and go to sleep or would you rather have it the morning and spend the day with the sweetness still lingering in your taste buds? I still believe in those words, but at the same time they lead you to the race of rats, a race of many losers and few winners! That is what terrifies me, thirty years of working to get a pension? Really? All  those seminars, workshops even postgraduate classes end at retirement, just like that! That is where I want to digress, go off tangent, beat a new path!!!!

So back to the responses I got, it seems people make that million in their twenties, if you made yours earlier do tell and will change this. And no, it was not from lottery, savings, inheritance or anything illegal. They followed an untrodden path and bam! A seven figure cheque after much toil and bloodied sweat, okay maybe I exaggerate but there was sweat I believe.

Talk is cheap, I know, at times I do bump into people with these great ideas, seven digit ideas but they have an Achilles heel; they procrastinate, I will, not now, I have to get the capital right, what if it does not work out? Then there are people with these crazy ideas who tell you how some bank is refusing them credit, how they are begging for shelf space in supermarkets, how hard it is searching for investors, how some venture capitalists are crooked demanding 50% of the business before they inject some cash which is not even adequate in the first place! And these are the ones who get that seven figure cheque and do not postpone life to forty!

I hereby ask you the same question, it is uncool and boring, that I know but I will still ambush you with it! When do you plan to get your first million? If you already have, when did you get it, teenage, twenties or forties? Am not talking about saving, but a single cheque with six zeros.

 

 

Uncertainties ~ 31 questions???

Do you ever sit and think about the uncertainties of the future? Do you ever feel your stomach tighten, your neck tense and ears start to have a burning feeling? Do you ever break into a cold sweat which you keep wiping only to find that your brow is still dry? Do you ever think about the future? Do you ever ask yourself questions you do not have answers to? Questions like what next? So after doing what I am doing currently, what next? Is what I am doing defining who I am? Will what I am doing make me happy in the long run? Why am I doing what I am doing at the moment?

Does the future scare you sometimes like it does me? Do you feel anything slated for a place called future unpromising like I do? Get a good education, get good grades, get a good job, get a good car, get into a good neighbourhood, get a good wife, get good kids, but is that an end in itself? Is good really good enough? Is good a worth in itself? What will you sacrifice to get something good? No, let me rephrase what would you sacrifice to have a future? The people you call friends, will you be of the same clout in that future? Or will they be better or worse off that you will be? If either do you move on with your life or try and synchronize yours with theirs, either by scaling the walls that separate you to reach where they are or by dropping a ladder so they are able to reach you, if you are the one on top?

So you have a plan, an idea, project huh? Do you think that it will materialize? Does that not so appealing probability of failure scare you? Oh, so you have a plan B? Ever heard of the theory behind 7 up as a start up? Do you think you could bear six failures before your idea, plan or project sees the light? Do you have what it takes to push that plan, idea or project to the finish line?

With the uncertainties life and the so called future presents to us, do you believe that you will pull through no matter what? Do you have what it takes to face those uncertainties? So what are your uncertainties, if you care to indulge me?