A Revolutionary Way to Achieve Wealth in Uganda

7/30/2019 A Revolutionary Way to Achieve Wealth in Uganda

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A

Revolutionary

Way ToAchieve

Wealth inUganda


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Contents

Chapter #1 Foundation in Financial Intelligence ................................................................. 3

Chapter #2 The Four Ages of Humanity ..............................................................................6

Chapter #3 The Really New Economy .............................................................................. 18

Chapter #4 Our Education system is Obsolete and expensive...........................................25

Chapter #5 Plan to Use Faster Words if you are to become Rich ......................................33

Chapter #6 Cash flow Explained .......................................................................................36

Chapter #7 The Network Marketing Industry ....................................................................54

Chapter #8 The Vehicle .....................................................................................................72

Chapter #9 Excuses ......................................................................................................104

Chapter #10 Recommended Reading ...............................................................................116

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Chapter #1 Foundation in FinancialIntelligence

Definition of Insanity

Naturally, most if not all of us want and crave for something better. It is all part ofus if we want a bigger car, a better house, buying good things for the family. Wekeep hoping for more but, in order to get what you dont have, you have got to dosomething you have never done before.

That simply means:

Doing the same thing over and over again YET expecting different results

Albert Einstein

As an employee, you cant stay at the same job forever and hope that a miracle

will happen and your boss will suddenly give you a raise. You will be lucky thatthere is no downsizing in your company. Switching to another company will onlyprovide a short term solution to a long term problem. Sure, you can take up asecond or even third job, but do you have enough hours and stamina in a day tosustain it?The bottom-line: Trading time for money isnt wise financial sense in the longterm. You keep on increasing the hours just to win the rat race, but at the end ofthe day, you are still a rat on the mill!

Increasing your wages only puts you in a higher tax bracket. Your salaries increase

but so does your expenses on your house and car. How will you invest in yourselfwhen all the time you spend working for a company, working for the governmentpaying taxes and working for the bank paying off your house and car? What if youfall sick and cant work tomorrow? Will the government take care of your family?

I highly doubt so.So isnt it time you take your finances a tad more seriously?

What Is Money?

You see, there are many ideas of what people think money is.

Some say it is a form of measurement.

Yes, but a measurement of what? Wealth? In the olden days, people measuredwealth by how many cows, sheep and horses they had. But do people measurewealth today by your cows and horses? How about slaves? Was there a time wheremanpower is considered a hot commodity? Are slaves worth anything today? Areyour dollar bills sitting in the bank going to protect you if a recession strikes thecountry? No, wealth can not be measured by the dollar bill.

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Some say it is a form of power.

Yes, money can give you power, but if you are stuck on a desert island foreverwith a trillion dollars, will that money mean squat to you? If someone offered youwater and a helicopter to fly out of there, you would trade all your money in a splitsecond, so money is not an accurate measurement of power it heavily depends

on how and wisely you use it (hint!).

Many believe it is the root of all evil and several others take on this belief

without much questioning.

Now, now, now money is NOT the root of all evil (otherwise, why do you thinkchurches still accept monetary donation and charity?). The love of money is theroot of all evil. Remember, money is an excellent servant but a terrible master. Ifyou are trading your life away for the dollar, money then has power over your timeand life.And unless you have proper financial intelligence, the lack of money can spawn a

lot of evil thinking and negative mindset as observed in primarily cheats, thieves,criminals, breakups, freeloaders, cheapskates, and more to name.

But what is money, really?

Money is an idea, backed by confidence.

While money has naturally been developed by merchants in the older days toreplace the questionable barter system, money today is literally invented by therich and wealthy. Entrepreneurs are willing to part with their money to buy otherpeoples time. Other peoples time i.e. employees and self-employed people

becomes their employers asset and the employers this priceless resource to go onto create more wealth for themselves.

And heres the thing: as long as you work for money, you are enslaved by it!80% - 90% of the populations today are being enslaved involuntarily. Later I willbe explaining how this involuntary slavery begun.

What we dont realize is that there is a part of our soul that cannot be bought atwhatever price. Would you chop off your little finger if your boss offered you 24months of your salary immediately? You and I know we are worth more than that.But when you hear of cases of people selling their body parts for cash in somecountries, we can have our eyeballs pop out of our eye sockets.

On the other hand, we occasionally DO sell out a part of ourselves for money likea donkey and a carrot.

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Awareness before Change

Now dont get me wrong: Im not banging on working at a job (I worked at onebefore I became an Entrepreneur).

But lets face it: our needs today are growing more than ever before in any period

of history. Prices go up, salaries dont. There are more baby boomers than everand have very little pension to show for their decades of years of work efforts.And there is no guessing to how many people really, really hate the unhealthy,hectic lifestyle of getting up early, coping with stress for most parts of the day,join traffic jams every mornings and evenings, spend more money and time intraveling, enjoy very little rest, and repeat the viscous cycle for 45 years.

Definitely doesnt paint a nice financial and lifestyle picture, huh?

The first step to change is to be aware of the problem. Awareness before change

(or ABC for short) is necessary if you are to make any changes in life to starttaking control of your financial life and then get out of the rat race.

We need the awareness to know what state we are in so we know where we aregoing. Did you know which Age you are in? Are you in the Agrarian Age orIndustrial Age or Information Age?

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Chapter #2 The Four Ages of Humanity

These have been four economic ages of humanity

1. The Hunter-Gatherer Age. During this period nature provided the wealth.Tribes followed herds or searched for food. If you knew how to hunt andgather you survived. If you did not, you died. The tribe was social security.Socioeconomically, everyone was even. The chief didnt have a higherstandard of living than the rest of the tribe. He may have eaten first and hadmore wives, but basically, fire was fire and a cave was a cave. In terms ofmoney, there was only one class of people. Everyone was poor.

2. The Agrarian Age. Once humans learned how to plant seeds anddomesticate animals, land became the wealth. Kings and queens owned theland, and everyone else worked on the land and paid a tax to the royals.That is why real estate strictly translated means royal rode horses and thepeasants walked. That is why the word peasant is a derivative of manywords broadly meaning on the land and on foot. Peasants owned nothing.Socioeconomivally, there were two groups, the rich and the peasants.

3. The Industrial Age. In 1402, Christopher Columbus and other explorerswent in search of trade routes, land, and resources. To me, thats when theIndustrial Age really begun. In the Industrial Age, resources such as oil,copper, tin, and rubber were wealth. During this era the value of real estatechanged. In the Agrarian Age, land had to be fertile and able to grow cropsor raise animals. In the Industrial Age, nonagricultural land became morevaluable. For example, Henry Ford built his auto plant in Detroit because

he could buy large tracts of rocky, unfertile, nonagricultural land for a greatprice. Today, industrial-use land has a higher value than agricultural land.Socioeconomically, a new class emerged, the middle class. There were nowthree groups of people: the rich, the middle class, and the poor.

4. The Information Age. The age officially started with the invention ofdigital computers. In the Information Age, information leveraged bytechnology is wealth, and very inexpensive and abundant resources, such assilicon, produce the wealth. In other words the price of getting rich hasgone down. For the first time in history, wealth is available, affordable, andabundant for everyone, regardless of where he or she lives.

Socioeconomically, there are now four groups of people: the poor, middleclass, rich, and super-rich. Bill Gates is the most obvious example of theInformation Age super-rich.

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Three Ages in summary

In the Agrarian Age, the rich were those who owned a castle that overlooked largetracks of fertile agricultural land. These people were known as the monarchs and

the nobles. If you were not born into this group, you were an outsider with verylittle chance of becoming an insider. The 90/10 rule (The 90/20 rule of moneymeans that 10% of the people always made 90% of the money) controlled life.Therefore, the 10% who were in power were there because of marriage, birth, orconquest; the other 90% were serfs or peasants who worked the land but ownednothing.During the Agrarian Age, if you were a good, hardworking person, you wererespected; the idea of being diligent was handed down from parent to child. It wasalso when the idle rich began to be loathed90% of the people worked to supportthe other 10%, who appeared not to be working; that idea was also handed down

from parent to child. These ideas continue to be popular and are still handed downfrom generation to generation.Then came the Industrial Age and wealth shifted from agricultural land to realestate. Improvements such as buildings, factories, warehouses, mines, andresidential homes for the workers were placed on top of the land . . .improvements. Suddenly, rich fertile agricultural land dropped in value becausethe wealth shifted to the owners of the buildings upon the land. In fact, aninteresting thing happened. Suddenly, rich fertile land became less valuable thanrocky land, where farming was difficult. Rocky land suddenly became morevaluable because it was cheaper than fertile land. It could also hold taller building

such as skyscrapers, or factories, and it often contained resources such as oil, iron,and copper that fueled the Industrial Age. When the shift in ages occurred, manyfarmers net worth went down; to maintain their standard of living, they had towork harder and farm more land than before.It was during the Industrial Age that the Go to school so you can find a job ideabecame popular. In the Agrarian Age, a formal education was not necessary sinceprofessions were handed down from parent to child; bakers taught their children tobe bakers, and so on. Near the end of this era, the idea of a job, or the idea ofone job for life, became popularized. You went to school, got that one job for life,worked your way up the corporate ladder or up the union ladder, and when youretired, the company and the government took care of your needs.In the Industrial Age, those not of noble birth could become rich and powerful.Rags-to-riches stories spurred on the ambitious. Entrepreneurs started with nothingand became billionaires. When Henry Ford decided to mass-produce theautomobile, he found some cheap rocky land that farmers did not want near asmall town known as Detroit, and an industry was born. The Ford family became,in essence, the new nobility, and anyone around them who did business with themalso became the new, rich nobility. New names became as prestigious as those of

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kings and queensnames such as Rockefeller, Stanford, and Carnegie. Peopleoften respected as well as despised them for their great wealth and power.In the Industrial Age, as during the Agrarian Age, however, only a few controlledmost of the wealth. The 90/10 rule still held true, although this time, the 10% wasnot determined by birth but by determination itself. The 90/10 rule held true

simply because it took great effort and coordination as well as a lot of money,people, land, and power to build and control the wealth. For example, to start anautomobile company or an oil or mining company is still capital intensive; it takesmassive amounts of money, lots of land, and many smart formally educated peopleto build that type of company. On top of that, you often must get through years ofbureaucratic red tapesuch as environmental studies, trade agreements, laborlaws, and so onto get such a business off the ground. In the Industrial Age, thestandard of living went up for most people, but the control of real wealthcontinued to remain in the hands of a few. The rules have changed.

The 90/10 Rule Has Changed

When the Berlin Wall came down and the World Wide Web went up, many of therules changed. One of the most important rules that changed was the 90/10 rule.Although its likely that only 10% of the population will always control 90% ofthe money, the access or the opportunity to join that 10% has changed. The WorldWide Web has changed what it costs to join the 10%. Today, it does not take beingborn into a royal family as it did in the Agrarian Age. It does not require massivesums of money, land, and people to join the 10%. The price of admission today isan idea, and ideas are free. At a later stage I will share an e-commerce idea.

In the Information Age, all it takes is information or ideas to become very, very,wealthy. It is therefore possible for individuals who are financially obscure oneyear to be on the list of the richest people in the world the next. Such people oftenfly past individuals who made their money in the ages gone by. College studentswho have never had a job become billionaires. High school students will surpasstheir college student counterparts.In the early 1990s, I remember reading a newspaper article that said, ManyRussian citizens complained that under the Communist rule their creativity wasstifled. Now that Communist rule is over, many Russians citizens are finding outthat they had no creativity. Personally, I think all of us have a brilliant creativeidea that is unique to us, an idea that could be turned into an asset. The problemfor the Russians, as it is with many citizens all over the world, is they did notunderstand the power of building a business that is purely information aged. Ithink it is very important that we teach more individuals to be entrepreneurs andhow to take their unique ideas and turn them into businesses that create wealth. Ifwe do so, our prosperity will only increase as the Information Age expands aroundthe world.

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For the very first time in world history, the 90/10 rule to wealth may no longerapply. No longer does it take money to make money. No longer does it take vasttracts of land or resources to become rich. No longer does it take friends in highplaces to become rich. No longer does it matter if your relatives came over on theMayflower; it does not matter what university you went to, or what sex, tribe, race,

or religion you are a part of. Nowadays, all it takes is an idea, and as they say,Money is an idea. For some people, however, the hardest thing to change is anold idea. There is an old truth to the saying You cant teach an old dog newtricks. I think a more accurate saying is: You cant teach someone who clings toold ideas new tricks, regardless of if they are young or old.So when I am asked, What Internet company would you invest in? I still reply,Why not invest in your own Internet Company? I am not necessarily suggestingthe askers start an Internet company; all I am doing is asking them to consider theidea, the possibility of starting their own company. In fact, many franchises and e-commerce and interactive marketing opportunities are now available on the

internet in Uganda and the world at large, though these are regarded as scams orcults yet these are revolutionary new ways to achieve wealth.When people simply consider the idea of starting to build a business, their mindsshift from hard work and physical limits to the possibility of unlimited wealth. Allit takes is the ideaand we are in the Age of Ideas. I am not suggesting that suchpeople quit their job and leap into starting a company. But I do suggest that theykeep their full-time job and consider starting a business part-time in the neweconomy.

The Challenge of Old Ideas

In the stock market today you often hear announcers say, Old economy versusnew economy. In many ways, the people being left behind are often people whocontinue to think in old economy ideas versus new economy ideas. What is rightfor you today could be wrong for you tomorrow?I have watched Amazon.com, a company without any profits or any real estate,grow faster and become more valuable in the stock market than establishedretailers such as Wal-Mart, Sears, J.C. Penny, and K-Mart. A new not-profitableWeb retailer is perceived more valuable than Industrial Age retailers with solidprofits, years of experience, massive real estate holdings, and more assets than anymonarch of old. But the new web retailer is more valuable just because it does notrequire massive amounts of real estate, money, and people in order to do business.The very things that made Industrial Age retailers valuable in the Industrial Ageare making them less valuable in the Information Age. You often hear people say,The rules have changed. I often wonder what the future holds for these olderretailers and their investors as more and more Internet companies slice into profitmargins, selling the same products for a lower price. In other words, although

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Amazon.com is not profitable today, it is cutting into the profit margins ofcompanies that are profitable today. What will that mean to job security, payraises, and benefits for employees and investor loyalty in the future? And whatwill happen to the value of real estate? Only time will tell.I believe that many of the new Internet companies will fold and investors will lose

literally billions. They will fold because ultimately, profits and positive cash floware how a business survives. But many Industrial Age companies will also foldbecause of price competition from these on-line retailers with no real estate. Irecently heard an old-school retailer saying, We will make shopping anentertaining experience. The problem with such thinking is that making shoppingan entertaining experience is expensive, and many shoppers will come to enjoy theexperience but will still buy on line for a better price.I have a dear friend who has been my travel agent for years. However, she has tocharge me a service fee to write my tickets these days because the airlines havestopped paying her a commission on ticket sales. She has had to release several of

her loyal staff and now worries that I will shift to buying my tickets for a lowerprice on line. During this same period, a person who is not a travel agent and notregulated by the rules of the travel industry started an online company calledPriceline.com. Suddenly, with the idea of auctioning off a perishable productknown as an empty airline seat, Priceline.coms founder Jay Walker joins theForbes 400 list of the richest people in the world. He does this in just a few years.So he becomes wealthy, and my dear friend lays off staff and counts on her loyalcustomers to stay with her because she will work harder and provide betterservice. I am sure she will do OK, but the business she started years ago as herretirement safety net has now become a full-time job with no assurance that it will

be of any value whatever when shes ready to retire.

Things Have Changed

Since it does not take money to make money, then why not go out and make a lotof money? Why not find investors to invest in your idea so you can all becomerich? The answer is because often, old ideas are in the way. As Merrill Lynchannounced, The World Is 10 Years Old. The good news is that it is not too lateto change your thinking and begin to catch up if you already have not started. Thebad news is that sometimes, the hardest things to change are old ideas. Some ofthe old ideas that may need to be challenged are the following ideas that have beenhanded down for generations: Good, hard-working person. The reality today isthat the people who physically work the hardest are paid the least and taxed themost. In fact hard work may get you killed. I am not saying not to work hard. All Iam saying is that we need to constantly challenge our older thoughts and mayberethink new ones. Consider working hard in a part-time business for yourself.Today, instead of being in just one quadrant(Employee or Self-employed orBusiness owner or Investor), we need to be very familiar with all four quadrants

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which generate CASHFLOW. After all, were in the Information Age and workinghard at one job for life is an old idea and can get you killed through stress.

1. The idle rich are lazy. The reality is that the less you are involvedphysically in your work, the more your chances are of becoming very rich.

Again, I am not saying to not work hard. I am suggesting that today, we allneed to learn to make money mentally, not just physically. Those whomake the most money work the least physically. They work the leastbecause they work for residual income or passive income or portfolioincome rather than earned income. And as you know by now, all a trueinvestor does is turn earned income into passive and portfolio income.In my mind, todays idle rich are therefore not lazy. It is just that theirmoney is working harder than they are

2. Go to school and get a job. In the Industrial Age, people retired at age

65 because they were often too worn out to lift tires and put engines into acar on the assembly line. Today, you are technically obsolete and ready forretirement every eighteen months, which is how fast information andtechnology are doubling. Many people say a student today is technicallyobsolete immediately upon graduation from university. You have to just de-program and re-program yourself if you are to survive in the private sectordriven economy. Now more than ever, School smarts with high academicIQ are important but so are street smarts with high financial IQ plus beingpractical, fast, and creative is even more relevant.

3. We are a self-learning society, not a society that learns from its parents(as in the Agrarian Age) or from its schools (as in the Industrial Age). Kidsare teaching their parents how to use computers, and companies are lookingfor high-tech kids more than college-degreed middle-aged executives.To stay ahead of the obsolescence curve, continual learning from school aswell as the street is vitally important. When I speak to young people, Iadvise them to think like professional athletes as well as college professors.Professional athletes know their careers will be over as soon as youngerathletes can beat them. College professors know that they will becomemore valuable the older they get if they continue to study. Both points ofview are important today.

Have you notice that you cant help but get older physically, but that does notmean you have to get older mentally. If you want to stay younger longer, justadopt younger ideas. People get old or obsolete because they cling to right answersthat are old answers.Today, I see so many of my friends falling behind financially simply because theyfail to challenge their own ideas. Their ideas are often right answers that are very

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very old answers handed down for generations, from one economic era to another.Some high school kids plan on never having jobs. Their plan is to bypass thewhole Industrial Age idea of job security and become financially free billionairesinstead in this information age. I have a business partner who graduated in aBachelors Degree in Telecommunications Engineering at Makerere University and

he crossed over directly to the e-commerce and interactive marketing industry.Though, he has had a tough time explaining the e-commerce and interactivemarketing industry business concept to his parents because the parents areIndustrial Age fellows who still believed in the right answers that are old answersfor today, get a job. But unfortunately to their surprise he had decided to dothings in a completely different way which challenged their understanding.Todays thinking process is very different, and it may challenge some very, very,old right ideas. Those old ideas often make the process of change so difficult. Iremember when I resigned from a job as a Finance Manager with aninternational NGO, my wife cried. She could not believe I could leave a safe and

secure paying job to join a revolutionary new way of making money on an e-commerce platform.

Following in Your Parents Footsteps

Tom Peters, author of In Search of Excellence has been saying over and overagain, Job security is dead. Yet, many people continue saying to their children,Go to school so you can find a secure job. Many people struggle financiallysimply because they have their parents ideas about money. Instead of creatingassets that bought assets, most of our parents worked for money and then bought

liabilities with that money, ignorantly thinking they were assets. For example aUgandan goes for a salary loan from a bank to purchase a car or build a house andthey call these their assets not knowing these are liabilities unless they generatepositive cash flow. More than not knowing the definitions of words, using thewrong definition to a word is what really causes long-term financial problems.Nothing is more destructive to a persons financial stability than to call a liabilityan asset. Is this why many people go to school? And get good academic gradesbecause that is what their parents did or advised them to do. Many strugglefinancially, or live paycheck to paycheck because that is what their parents did. Ifyou try a very important exercise with your friends to compare what they aredoing today to what their parents did or advised them to do. Many times, yourfriends realize that they are either following closely in their parents footsteps orare following their parents advice. At that point, they have the power to questionthese old ideas that have been running their lives.If a person truly wants to change, adopting a better idea is often a good idea.If you want to get richer faster, simply look for ideas that are better than the onesyou are using today. To this day, I advice you to read biographies of richentrepreneurs, listen to audio CDs of their lives, and listen to their ideas. Ideas

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need not be new; they just need to be betterand a rich person is always lookingfor better ideas. Poor people often defend their old ideas or criticize new ones.

Only the Paranoid Survive

Andy Grove, the chairman of Intel, titled his book Only the Paranoid Survive.He got that title from Dr. Joseph A. Schumpeter, a former Austrian minister ofFinance and Harvard Business School professor. Dr. Schumpeter expressed thisidea of only the paranoid surviving in his book Capitalism, Socialism, andDemocracy. (Dr Schumpeter was the father of the modern study of growth andchange in economicsdynamicsjust as Lord Keynes was the father of thestudy of static economicsstatics.) It is Dr. Schumpeters idea that capitalism iscreative destruction; a perpetual cycle of destroying the old, less-efficient productor service and replacing it with new, more-efficient ones. Dr. Schumpeter believedthat governments that allow the existence of capitalism, which tears down weaker

and less efficient businesses, will survive and thrive. Governments that put upwalls to protect the less efficient will fall behind.Today, people with old ideas are those who are falling behind the fastest, eventhough the world is only a little more than ten years old. The world we face todayreminds me of the song The Times They Are Changing. A line from that songgoes, For youd better start swimming or youll sink like a stone. Although thatsong was written approximately 40 years ago, it will reflect the next 40 years moreand more. In other words, just because youre rich or poor today does not meanyou will be in the near future.

Your Past Success Means Nothing

In the near future, those who do not risk failing will ultimately fail. The futurebelongs to the risk takers, not the security seekers. The poor look at failure as anoun, and the rich look upon failure as a verband that difference makes a bigdifference over a lifetime. In Future Edge, Joel Barker wrote, When a paradigmshifts, everyone goes back to zero. Your past success means nothing. In this fast-changing world, paradigms will be changing faster and faster, and your pastsuccesses could mean nothing. In other words, just because you work for a goodcompany today does not ensure that it will be a good company tomorrow. For thisreason, Grove chose the title of his book: Only the Paranoid Survive.Even employee benefits are changing. Not only has the Information Age changedthe rules of retirement plans, the change from Defined Benefit PensionPlans to Defined Contribution Pension Plans, the change has also affected someemployee benefits. Recently a friend who works for an airline said, It used to beeasy to get free flights on airlines, which is one of the benefits of being an airlineemployee. But today, with airlines auctioning off empty seats on line, the planesare flying full and I find it harder to use a benefit I love.

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The Rules Have Changed

Changes that were brought on once the Berlin Wall went down and the WorldWide Web went up. In his book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, New York Times

foreign affairs columnist Thomas L. Friedman describes several changes betweenthe Industrial Age and the Information Age.Some of the changes are:

Cold War Globalization1. Einsteins E=mc2 Moores Law

During the Cold War, Einsteins theory of relativity E=mc2 ruled. In 1945, whenthe United States dropped the atomic bomb on Japan, America became theeconomic power of the world and took military dominance away fromEngland. During the 1980s, everyone thought Japan was about to beat the

United States economically, and the Nikkei stock market surged. But Japansperiod of economic dominance was short lived because the United States redefineditself. The United States redefined itself because it shifted fromE=mc2 to Moores Law. Moores Law says that the power of the microchip willdouble every 18 months. Today, America is the leading world power because itleads in technology as well as weaponry.If America had remained in the weapons race only, it might have be a bankruptnation like the former Soviet Union. When the Berlin Wall came down in1989, Americas capital markets shifted quickly into the Information Age.That freedom to change quickly is the financial power provided by a free

capitalistic society. Japan as well as England cannot change that quickly becauseboth countries have too many ties to the days of the feudal systemotherwiseknown as the monarchy, an Agrarian Age institution.Unconsciously, those countries are waiting for the monarch to lead them. In otherwords, innovation is often hampered by traditions. That idea is true for individualsas well as nations. Old ideas get in the way of new ideas. I am not suggestinggetting rid of old traditions, but rather that we are in the Information Age and sowe need expanded ideas as well as old ideas.

Cold War Globalization2. Weight of missiles Speed of modems

When the Berlin Wall came down, E=mc2 changed to Moores Law. The power inthe world shifted from the weight of nuclear warheads to how fast your modem is.The good news is that a fast modem costs a lot less than big missiles; speedmatters more than weight.

Cold War Globalization3. Two world powers in charge No one in charge

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During the Cold War, there were two superpowers: the United States and theSoviet Union. Today, the web makes the idea of a borderless world and a globaleconomy a reality.Today, the electronic herd, which is the thousands of fund managers who controlgreat sums of money, have the power to affect world politics more than politicians.

If the electronic herd does not like the way a country is managing their financialaffairs, they will move their money elsewhere at the speed of light. That is whathappened in Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and Korea just a few years ago. In hisbook, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, a book I strongly recommend for anyonewanting to understand the new era of global business we are in, authorThomas L Friedman often makes reference to The Electronic Herd. The electronicherd is a group of several thousand, very often young, people who control greatsums of electronic money. They are the individuals who work for large banks,mutual funds, hedge funds, insurance companies, and the like. They have thepower with the click of their mouse to move literally trillions of dollars from one

country to another country in a split second. That power gives the electronic herdmore power than politicians. In South East Asia in 1997 when the electronic herdmoved their money out of countries like Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, andKorea, virtually sinking those countries economies over night. It was not a prettysight nor was it pleasant to be physically present in those countries. For those ofyou who invest globally, you may recall how most of the world, even Wall Streetwas singing praises to the new Asian Tiger Economies. Everyone wanted to investin these countries. Then suddenly, literally over night, their world changed. Therewere murders, suicides, riots, looting, and a general feeling of financial sicknesseverywhere. The electronic herd did not like what it saw in those countries and

moved their money out in a matter of seconds.Quoting from Thomas Friedmans book, he states:Think of the Electronic Herd as being like a herd of wildebeests grazing over awide area of Africa. When a wildebeest on the edge of the herd sees somethingmove in the tall, thick brush next to where its feeding, that wildebeest doesnt sayto the wildebeest next to it, Gosh, I wonder if thats a lion moving around there inthe brush. No way. That wildebeest just starts a stampede, and those wildebeestsdont stampede for a mere hundred yards. They stampede to the next country andcrush everything in their path.That is what happened to the Asian Tigers in 1997. The Electronic Herd did notlike what they saw going on in the area and moved out literally overnight. It wentfrom high optimism to riots and murder in a matter of days. The same thing couldhappen to any country. It is not the politicians that have the power today, as theydid in the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, it is the power of globalelectronic money that often dictates a countrys affairs.Bill Gates crossed the border from the United States to Canada. When the customsagent asked him if he had anything of value to declare, he pulled out a stack offloppy disks wrapped in rubber bands. This is worth at least $50 billion.

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The customs agent shrugged, thinking he was talking to a nut and let the richestman in the world pass through the border without paying anything in taxes. Thepoint is that the bundle of floppy disks wrapped in rubber bands was worth at least$50 billion. That bundle of floppy disks was the prototype of MicrosoftsWindows 95.

Today, super-rich individuals like Gates often have more money and moreinfluence over the world than many large nations. Such power caused the U.S.government, the strongest government in the world, to take Gates to court formonopolistic practices. When that case started, the frightening thing was thatGates could afford to hire better attorneys than the U.S. government could. That isbecause the U.S. government is an Industrial Age institution and Gates is anInformation Age individual.Following in this line of thinking, George Soros wrote in The Crisis of GlobalCapitalism that many corporations had much more money and power than manyWestern nations. That means there are corporations today that could damage the

economy of an entire nation just to benefit a few shareholders. That is how muchpower many corporations have.In the next few years, many changes, both good and bad, will occur. I believe thatcapitalism will be unleashed to its fullest extent. Old and obsolete businesses willbe wiped out. Competition as well as the need to be cooperative will increase(e.g., there will be mega-mergers such as the one of AOL with Time Warner).Notice that the younger company buys the older one. These changes are allhappening because the genie known as the internet (The Great Equalizer!) hasbeen released from the bottle, The Internet doesnt care what you look like---whether youre young or old--- whether youre white or black--- whether youre a

Ph.D. or a dropout none of those things are an issue online unless you choose tomake them an issue. Like it or like it, its here in Uganda and e-commercebusinesses that thrive on it are already rolling.

The Good News

The good news is that for the very first time, the 90/10 rule of the rich no longerneeds to apply. It is now possible for more and more people to gain access to thegreat world of infinite wealth, the wealth found in information and leveraging yourtime and relationships and information is infinite, not restricted as land andresources were in ages gone by.The bad news is that the people who cling to old ideas may be brutalized by thechanges upon us as well as by the changes yet to come.This Internet craze is much like the California Gold Rush of the 1850s. The onlydifference is that you do not need to leave your home to participate in it, so whynot participate in it? For your information during any economic bonanza, there areonly three kinds of people: those who make things happen, those who watch thingshappen, and those who say, What happened?

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Although I started with Einsteins Theory of Relativity as an obsolete idea fromthe Cold War, I also think of Einstein as a true visionary. Even then, he recognizedan idea that is even truer todayImagination is more important than knowledge.The really good news is that for the first time in history, the Internet gives moreand more people the ability to see the other side of the coin if they go there with

open eyes.The other good news is that the Internet also makes it easier for more people toaccess a world of abundance that for centuries has been available to just a few. Forthe first time the Internet makes it possible for more people to have their financialdreams come true.

Weve Only Just Begun

Karen and Richard Carpenter sung a great song titled Weve Only Just Begun.For those of you, who think you may be too old to start over again, always

remember that Colonel Sanders started all over again at 66. The advantage wehave over the Colonel is that we are all now in the Information Age, where howyoung we are mentally matters, not how old we are physically. After all, MerrillLynch reported, The world is 10 years old.

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Chapter #3 The Really New Economy

It is as easy to dismiss the new technology as superficial as it is to be seduced bywhat it seems to promise. The truth is in between. Some types of work will

continue in the information age as they have always done, but some will go, neverto return, many new ones will be invented. Town planners, architects anddesigners may use computers to turn theirs ideas into working models that theycan walk through and round on screen, but there will still be town planners,architects and designers in twenty years time even if we call them by moregrandiose names by then. I was trained as an architect, a young woman told me,but now I call myself a space therapist.More importantly, we have been given a whole new way of doing things and areonly at the beginning of the long string of possible effects which will significantlychange the way we work and do business. In that sense, the Internet may yet liveup to the hype and turn out to be one of those disruptive technologies that changethe world for ever. The only challenge in this New Economy is that everything isgoing to be invisible. So if you a pure Buganda and believe in this sayingAmaaso gomuganda gali mungalo. Sorry for you because the monies to be madein this new economy are de-materialized in form of e-cards or you can call itelectronic money. The first of those changes is already here.

The middles of the different industries are disappearing. The industry, in which Iam most closely involved, publishing, is one example. At present there is a longchain of processes and organizations between me, the author, and you, the reader.There is also, usually, the authors agent and then the publisher. The publisher in

turn, once the book is edited, employs a designer and a printer to produce afinished article. The finished book then goes to the warehouse of a distributor or awholesaler and thence on to a bookstore, where, hopefully, someone will buy itand read it.

Everything in that chain of distribution is now in doubt apart from thebeginning and the end, the author and the reader, but how the first connects withthe second is now open to a wide range of options. We could dispense with thephysical bookstore, the option focused on by Amazon.com and its imitators. Thepublisher could choose to bypass wholesalers and bookstores, virtual or physical,and publish electronically.

Or, if I was intrepid enough, as the author I could bypass the lot of them and putmy words on a website for anyone to download for a fee. Any informationbusiness is now prone to a disappearing middle.

Travel agents, the intermediaries between the traveler and the travelcompanies, are unnecessary now that you obtain all the information that they haveby clicking a few keys yourself. For example buy your e-ticket and also check inonline.

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Newspapers and news bulletins may not be needed, are already not used bymany when you can get the news, packaged as you would like, more immediately,on your own screen, even on your mobile phone. For example log on towww.monitor.co.ug or www.newvision.co.ug to get a copy of that days newspackage.

The whole television industry is about to experience or has alreadyexperienced disintermediation with the arrival of two hundred or more channels tochoose from and the PVR or Personal Video Recorder that records hundreds ofhours of your favorite programs and then reply them at a time of your choice withor without ads.

The music industry is another example. It fears that its CDs, which form themiddle between the recording studio and the listener, will no longer be boughtnow that anyone can download their favorites from the internet via Gnuttella orone of its successors for free, swapping their recordings directly with unseenfriends. The process now has a generic name P2P, or peer-to-peer. P2P is yet

another of those disruptive technologies that could rip the heart of moreindustries.

The free World Dial-Up project links private telephones across the world.You dial locally, the system routes the call via the internet to the other countrywhere someone elses private phone makes another local call to the number youwant. You will have made an international call for the price of two local ones, bothof which could, in certain countries, be free. How, then, will telecom companiesmake their money?

The disappearing middles continue. Stockbrokers arent needed any morenow that you can buy and sell your own shares directly from your computer or

your phone. Auction rooms will go the way of stock exchanges, moving on to thescreen.Maybe even doctors will become unnecessary if we find it easier to

describe our symptoms to an anonymous website and get back an authoritativediagnosis that would allow us to obtain prescribed medicines or hospitalappointments.

Politicians will find that national parliaments get squeezed out betweenmore powerful local assemblies and the growing importance of regional economicblocs. The consequences of a world that is increasingly virtual to governmentssuch as National boundaries will slowly erode, losing their importance, along withnational parliaments, in a more virtual world. For example if I downloadsomething from my computer I have no idea what country it is coming from.What, then, is the meaning of the territorial rights clause. They will squeal loudlyabout the loss of national sovereignty as it happens but disintermediation is one ofthose unintended but inevitable consequences of the way the new technologiespush everything to be more global, losing the middle in the process.

The most intriguing, and important, disappearing middle may be thebanking system. Smart cards called ATMs are already creating a form of private

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money. Many companies operate credit schemes cheaper and better than banks.Private clearing systems, some of them already in existence, would, as DavidHowell points out in his book The Edge of Now, remove the need for centralbanks to hold reserves in order to settle interback transactions. Economics out ofcontrol? Will these central banks have any function in future other than to hold a

periodical meeting to decide the level of interest rates?Thinking radically, almost everyone could be thought of as an intermediary

between the source and the ultimate customer. Almost every job could be part of adisappearing middle in the next few years. With all the information in the world atyour fingertips there is no limit to the possibilities of computer-aided Do-It-Yourself. Buy your car or computer on the web; sell your old one at one of theauction sites, no need to visit a dealer. Why then, will we need dealers at all?

The disappearing middles continue to affect the tax collecting bodies.Income tax has traditionally been the easiest tax to collect, being done with thehelp of the employing organizations who deduct it at source. As more and more

work gets contracted out to outsourced organizations via the web or to individualsworking as independent contractors this free collecting agency will cease to be asuseful. Countries like Italy have progressively moved from trying to tax invisibleincome to taxing the stuff that be seen and counted and, which, preferably doesntmove, such as a house. But property taxes have their limits, and sales taxes such asVAT are regressive. they hurt the poor more than the rich and inevitably theypush up inflation, which hurts everyone.

Politicians are getting cleverer at finding new stealth taxes in the neweconomy, the ones that no one notices at first, but they will have to get clevererstill, maybe by taxing those flows of electronic money through the banks and

exchanges. But that will require international agreements to ensure that allcountries use the same level playing field, as the jargon has it. More taxharmonization, in other words, between countries, is probably inevitable.Alternatively those politicians will have to find more ways to make paying taxesacceptable to us, possibly through hypothecation, an ugly word meaning that taxesare tied to certain uses. Income tax would be broken down into a health tax, aneducation tax, a police tax, a defence tax and so on. Governments hatehypothecation because it ties their hands and forces them to be the only way toextract money from us without an expensive and invasive use of electronicinspection of our money flows.

It is not my intention here to reinvent the taxation system. I am using itsfuture dilemmas in the information age only to illustrate how much society as wellas business will be individualized in the world that lies ahead.

Jobs have changed, too, as the organizations grapple with the consequencesof those disappearing middles. The fact that already in Britain less than half theworking population have full-time permanent jobs in organizations should alert usto the size of the changes that are occurring around us, even if they havent yet hitus personally.

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In the post-industrial societies work is hurriedly being reinvented. Employabilitymeans think like an independent and is understood as such by many of theirstaff. Flexibility means in your contract, that no one can guarantee anything forlong. The jobs, even the fewer longer-lasting ones with the big organizations, willnot guarantee the kind of retirement that our parents enjoyed. The new careers are

already shorter. In France, for instance, only 38 per cent of men between the agesof 55 and 65 are in paid employment, and the figures are coming down to thatlevel all over Europe. Proper jobs will end for most at 55, when with luck they willhave another 30 years to live. To survive for the next 30 years, you neither yourfamily cant even be sure to survive on your government safety net peanutpension most especially when it comes to the bureaucracy that you can notinfluence.

No pension scheme, state or private, is currently able to provide acomfortable living for those extra 30 years. The hard or maybe the good, truth isthat we shall have to go on working after the proper job ends, but it will be bits

and pieces of work, collections or portfolios of work rather than the continuationof any proper job. The work will help to keep us healthy, useful and off the backsof the generation behind you who will be ill able to finance our so-called healthbills and retirement, a word that itself may one day be extinct.Paradoxically, however, businesses are now worried that life outside theirorganizations is becoming so attractive to free and independent spirits that there isa real danger of losing their best and most innovative people. One time a chairmanof a big multinational said, what worries me is that I cant see why any ambitiousyoung person would want to join my company, or stay there for long if they didjoin because in the information age its ideas that are a major source of new

wealth.

How Are You Handling Change?

I have friends who hate changes in fashion, music, and technology. These friendshate rap music, do not have a web-based business, and are glad that so many dot-coms failed. These are some of the same people who continue to believe in jobsecurity, government safety nets, and Medicare all Industrial Age ideas orpromises.

While there are people who fight change, there are others who run awayfrom change. I have other friends who are actively searching for jobs that cannotbe affected or threatened by the World Wide Web. One of them took a job as ateacher, not because he likes teaching kids. He took the job because he wanted asanctuary from the changes going on in the world. He wanted a job where he couldhave job security and not be fired. The school system was his shelter from theworld of change.

Another friend bought a business that could never be affected by theInternet. She said, Im too old to learn how to do business on the Web so I want a

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business that is Web-proof. I dont have any money for retirement so my plan is towork until I am unable to work anymore.

These examples show realities or contexts that are not changing with thetimes. These people will most likely fall behind in the ever widening gap betweenthe middle class and the rich. The ship is leaving the dock for the land of greater

opportunities, riches, and wealth and many people are choosing to be left behind simply because they are not able to change their mental context. They are stuckin a time that has passed, the Industrial Age.

Are You Part of the Revolution?

Great wealth, vast fortunes, and mega-rich families were created during theIndustrial Revolution. The same is going on today during the InformationRevolution.I find it interesting that today we have self-made multi-millionaires andbillionaires who are twenty, thirty, and forty years of age; yet we still have people

forty and over having a tough time hanging on to jobs. One reason causing thisgreat disparity is the shift from the Industrial Age to the Information Age. Whenwe shifted into the Industrial Age, people like Henry Ford and ThomasEdison became billionaires. Today, shifting into the Information Age, we have BillGates, Michael Dell, and the founders of the Internet companies becoming youngmillionaires and billionaires. These twenty-somethings will soon be passing BillGateswho is old at 39in wealth. That is the power of a shift in ages, the shiftfrom the Industrial Age to the Information Age. It has been said that there isnothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come . . . and there is nothing sodetrimental than someone who is still thinking old ideas.

For you, this book may be about looking at old ideas and possibly finding newideas for wealth. It may also be about a paradigm shift in your life. It may be abouta transition as radical as the shift from the Industrial Age to the Information Age.It may be about you defining a new financial path for your life. It may be aboutthinking more like a businessperson and investor rather than an employee or a self-employed person.It took me years to go through the phases, and in fact, I am still going throughthem. After reading this book, you may consider going through the same phases oryou may decide that this developmental path is not for you. If you decide toembark upon the same path, how fast you choose to go through these phases ofdevelopment is up to you. Remember that this book is not about getting richquickly. The choice to undergo such a personal development and educationprogram begins now with mental preparation.

Are You Mentally Prepared to Be an Investor?

Money will be anything you want it to be. Money comes from our minds, ourthoughts. If a person says, Money is hard to get, it will probably be hard to get.If a person says, Oh Ill never be rich, or Its really hard to get rich, it will

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probably be true for that person. If a person says, The only way to get rich is towork hard, then that person will probably work hard. If the person says, If I hada lot of money, I would put it in the bank because I wouldnt know what to dowith it, then it will probably happen just that way. Youd be surprised how manypeople think and do just that. And if a person says, Investing is risky, then it is.

I warn you that the mental preparation needed to become a sophisticated investoris probably similar to the mental preparation it would take to climb Mt. Everest, orto prepare for the priesthood. All you have is hope and a dream of attaining greatwealth. While many people dream of it, only a few achieve it. Think hard andprepare mentally because you are about to learn to invest in a way that very fewpeople in Uganda have gotten to know. You will see the investment world fromthe inside rather than from the outside. There are far easier paths in life and easierways to invest. So think it over and be prepared if you decide this is the path foryour life.

The ChoiceWhen it comes to money and investing, people have three fundamental reasons orchoices for investing. They are:

1. To be secure,2. To be comfortable, or3. To be rich.

All three choices are important. The difference in ones life occurs when thechoices are prioritized. Most people make their money and investment choices in

that exact order. In other words, their first choice when it comes to moneydecisions is security, second is comfort, and third is to be rich. That is why mostpeople make job security their highest priority. After they have a secure job orprofession, then they focus on comfort. The last choice for most people is to berich. By the way most people dream of becoming rich, but it is not their firstchoice. For example only three out of a hundred people in America are richbecause of this priority of choices. For most people, if becoming rich disturbs theircomfort or makes them feel insecure, they will forsake becoming rich. That is whyso many people want that one hot investment tip. People who make security andcomfort their first and second choices look for ways to get rich quick that are easy,risk free, and comfortable. Editors of the UNDP, Uganda Country HumanDevelopment Report of 1998 rightly observed that, Unfortunately this population(Uganda) is characterized by a life that is seemingly void of direction andphilosophical guidance and have a comparatively low want factor that makes themsatisfied and comfortable with so little and not pursue higher levels ofachievementI often hear people say, Id rather be happy than be rich. That comment hasalways sounded very strange to me since I have been both rich and poor. And in

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both financial positions, I have been both happy and unhappy. I wonder whypeople think they have to choose between happiness and being rich.When I reflect upon this lesson, it occurs to me that what people are really sayingis that Id rather feel secure and comfortable than be rich. That is because if theyfelt insecure or uncomfortable, they were not happy. For me, I was willing to feel

insecure and uncomfortable in order to be rich. I have been rich and poor as wellas happy and unhappy. But I assure you that when I was poor and unhappy, I wasmuch unhappier than when I was rich and unhappy. I have also never understoodthe statement Money does not make you happy. While there is some truth in it, Ihave always noticed that when I have money, I feel pretty good. The other day, Ifound a 10k note in my jeans pocket.Even though it was only 10k, it felt great finding it. Receiving money has alwaysfelt better than receiving a bill for money I owe. At least that is my experiencewith money. I feel happy when it comes in and sad when it leaves me. When itcomes to money and investing, all three priorities are important. Which order you

put them in is a very personal decision that should be made before beginning toinvest. Putting to be secure as priority one or to be rich as priority one. Beforebeginning to invest, it is important to decide what your priorities are.

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Chapter #4 Our Education system isObsolete and expensive.

Our current education system is the one thing that has remained the most mired inthe past. The million dollar question is: Does school and universities preparechildren for the real world? The answer seems to lie in the width and breadth ofthe meaning of the word academic. In the Oxford Advanced Learned Dictionaryit means, not related to a real or practical situation; theoretical. It continues to saythat it involves a lot of reading and studying rather than practical or technicalskills. You must have heard at universities, statements like this academic year2009/10 we had two thousand students enrolling. What is the problem here? Theworld these students will be joining soon is a social and of practical realities andnot a theoretical world. This probably explains why highly educatedprofessionals are not the richest men in the world because it is not academic

success that counts.

The Current educational system which has sunk so low is the British universitysystem which historically has been the envy of the world. Unfortunately it teachesyou to be an employee, a worker drone for the government and the rich peoplewho want to leverage other peoples time in exchange for a paycheck everymonth. These systems were designed to fit the Industrial Age demands. During theIndustrial Age many smart formally educated people were required to work inindustries. But unfortunately the real world is no longer an Industrial Age placeits an Information Age place. In the Information Age were the computer and the

internet rule, a computer can solve all kinds of problems except the problem itinstead created, the unemployment problem. So if you are still having IndustrialAge ideas of go to school so you can find a job for life, work your way up thecorporate ladder, and when you retire, the company and the government will takecare of your needs through social security. Sorry! What is surprising is that theBritish were very first to see some of these challenges. When John Major becameBritish Prime Minister, Parliament passed the further and Higher Education Acts,which allowed polytechnics to become universities. The British were wise and hadalready seen that the academic degree classification system had gone rotten Itwas just channeling more people into job seeking and not creators.

Growing up, I was taught and conditioned to go to school and get a good job for alarge company.

Telling our children to Go to school, get good grades, and look for a safe, securejob with benefits is some of the most dangerous advice we could give them. Theformula should instead be Go to school, learn to do math, read, write and learnhow to broaden your career options

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Most people who follow that pattern of Go to school, get good grades, and lookfor a safe, secure job with benefits get into a position of dependency. In our caseas Ugandans, we cannot exist in a mode of inter-dependence; instead we continueto be dependents. According to a World Bank Report launched in September 2009at the International Monetary Fund offices in Johannesburg, South Africa, in a

ceremony that was broadcast live through video conferences in selected Africancountries, the report called the Africa Development Indicators (ADI) 2008/09,focusing on the youth and employment in Africa says, Ugandas population alsohas the highest dependency ratio in Africa registered at 1:1. A sub-humancondition that reduces us to second-class citizens of the globe, perpetual recipientsof aid. This dependency habit is engrained in us right away from childhood to theextent that we as a nation survive on handouts like destitutes at least that is whatthe structure of our budget pronounces! This same report ranks Uganda, with theworlds highest youth unemployment recorded at 83 per cent between the ages of15 24 years.

We live in a system of dependence. We are conditioned to go to school and thereafter get a job, and the banks also teach us to get into bad debt: car loans,mortgages, credit cards .

We are then locked into a lifetime commitment, locked into the system.

Most people are trapped in the Rat Race for the rest of their lives! Because of thesubconscious fear of failing that holds people back. Its this fear of failing thatteachers used to motivate people in school. I remember my teachers saying to me,

If you dont get good grades, you wont get a good job. Later in life, when the Astudents who got the high-paying jobs want to make career changes, their fearholds them prisoner. So they end up working for their employers, for thegovernment by paying taxes, and for the bank by paying off a mortgages, car loansand credit cards. Have you noticed that its A students working for the Cstudents or the illiterate owning businesses, and the B students work for thegovernment? But its for hard for a C student to work for A student reasonbeing a doctor or a lawyer need academically and professionally smart peoplearound them. A doctor does not want a clumsy nurse nor does a lawyer want anincompetent paralegal. So the C students or school dropouts end up playing therichest game in the world called business and this is where the money is and notworking for someone. However much you work hard for employment you cannever be wealth but you can manage to become rich or make a living. You justhave to come to peace with these facts. Wealth as defined by R. BuckminsterFuller, the number of days you can survive without working for money, while stillmaintaining your same standard of living.

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The wealth ratio is = Passive + Portfolio income = 1:1Total monthly expenses

When you have a ratio of 1:1 then you are wealth. Have you noticed there is noearned income in the formula?

The rich ratio is = Earned income = 1:1Total monthly expenses

When you have a ratio of 1:1 its okay in the short term but then what if somethinggoes wrong may be you are downsized or right sized or left sized or restructured orstructural adjustments done or you retire or retrenched etc. so what happens? Thatis why they say a job is a short term solution to the real long term problems e.g.when you are aged.

So basically you can only become wealth working for passive or portfolio income.An asset is something which puts money in your pocket whether you work or not.

Assets include real estate, businesses, and paper assets. By definition a job is notan asset. Even many self-employed people do not own a business. They own a job.If self-employed people stop working, their income also stops or declines. Self-employed includes all those working 8a.m. 5p.m. and they are part of thesystem. For example a doctor can drill in one mouth at a go and once he/ she goeshome. The clinic has to be closed; therefore the system also goes home to sleep.So he/ she is the system. Unless there is a system which takes care of the businesswith or without him when he goes away. The employees and self-employed focuson earned income while the business people focus on assets which produce passiveor portfolio income. A high paying job is not an asset because once you stop due

to sickness or death, your salary stops immediately.Dr. Buckminster Fuller, Harvard university genius of our time, in his book Grunchof Giants he said, I believe it will make a little clearer how the game of moneywas stolen from the people, and shielded from discovery by our educationalsystem.

We are not taught to think for ourselves, we are taught to depend on others. Mostof us dont have the time or resources to challenge this go to school and the jobmatrix, because we are locked into it! We get caught up and later we becomecomfortable thinking that this is the way it should be. Some people are so busy intheir jobs, they cant let go of it long enough to enjoy their families, take avacation, or just to smell the flowers. Have you wondered why, No one, on theirdeathbed, ever said: I wish I had spent more time at the office

I am extremely concerned by the lack of financial education people receive inschool. They have never had a course on wealth building, investing, taxes,accounting, business success, how compounding works, the perils of consumerdebt, etc.

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Getting a good education and making good grades no longer ensures success in thereal world. People are working harder and harder for a completely wrong incomecalled earned income. Only to pay more taxes and end up in bad debt. There is nolonger such a thing called job security anymore. Its completely obsolete

because we are now living in the information age and not the industrial age wereformerly educated people were needed and were selling like hot cake. You insteadneed financial security.

How many millions of people are out there in the real world strugglingfinancially? The world has changed, but our education system which is obsoleteand expensive has not changed its approach to match the trends.

The kind of education you receive determines your mindset and ultimately, yourcondition of life. Although the home still plays a big role in the education

processes, in our modern times, the school is the major agent of mentalconditioning it is the dominant shaper of your thinking. The mindset you acquirein school rules your world. To be in position to break free of this mentalconditioning or programming you need to have courage to be a Calculative rebel.

I believe that the reason why education is Missing the mark has much to do withthe approach than the content. The approach is so theoretical yet the really world ispractical and the school certificate is seen as the one-way ticket out of poverty andthe curse of manual labor. By this standard, as Paul Harrison put it, investmentin education is likened to buying an expensive lottery ticket, where predictable

chances are more inclined to the losing side than not, it discourages creativity andadaptive thinking. Shut up! Do as you are told! Dont take the initiative, wait forinstructions. Dont talk to your neighbor! Dont make any mistakes, or you arewrong, wrong, wrong!

Also a recent survey commissioned by a top business organization supports theage old conviction that education is not a key in itself to prosperity, conducted bythe Uganda National Chamber of Commerce and Industries in a period of twomonths between July and August 2009, the survey (Daily Monitor newspaper of25th September, 2009 page 2) shows that out of every 100 successful businesspeople in Uganda, at least 71 of them are school drop outs. According to Mr. JohnSsempebwa, the chief executive officer UNCCI, educated people waste too muchtime in school and lack the shrewdness that propels school dropouts to succeedin the business world Mr. Ssempebwa also attributed the success of the so calledun-educated to the fact that they are more practical compared to their moreschooled counterparts who are more theoretical and recline after gainingemployment but lack the motivation to create employment. Mr. GordonWavamuno, another successful businessman threw his weight behind results of the

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survey and said People who have succeeded in business in this world have neverbeen academics. Succeeding in business depends on someones in-bornintelligence that is why presidents from many countries are not doctors or have nospecific profession but they know how to run their countries,

Most teachers have been groomed to see themselves as pump attendants at a petrolstation whose task is to fill the empty hands (tanks) of students with academiccontent and see them off; they dont see students as human beings who come tolearn and who have an experience in life. Teachers perceive themselves asexperts hired to fill empty containers, not as people experienced in facilitatinglearners to manifest their own potentials so as to develop them. In short, we havean education system that emphasizes how many papers one accumulates ratherthan how one can develop and skillfully put to use his or her natural inherentpotentials.

How can educationists connive with parents to use intimidation in the name ofdiscipline then we hope to get products that believe in themselves and arecreative enough? No wonder they prefer being self-willed slaves in foreign landsthan being called educated refugees or hewers of wood in their ownmotherland.

As a fresh school leaver, you soon learn about the huge difference between reallife in the real world and the artificial life you lived at college. Whereas the skillsyou needed to thrive while at school were basically memory and the ability toreproduce what your academic masters expected of you, this is what they call

programmed learning or compartmentalization of knowledge right from an earlystage. In Oxford Advanced dictionary, programmed learning is a method of studyin which a subject is divided into very small parts and the student must besuccessful in one part before he or she can go to the next part. So basically schoolprograms you slowly until you get ready to be employed. E.g. a doctor will have togo through our educational system popularly known as the 7+4+2+5 inheritedfrom the British comprising of seven years of primary (The word primary meansranked as most important), six years of secondary (This is means less importantthan or subordinate to the primary), and five years of university to finally beprogrammed as a doctor at medical school. And basically what is the end productof that person? You become a doctor going to work for the government / privatehospitals. This is okay but my argument is can we apply a multidisciplinaryapproach to learning. The educational system is usually a 7+4+2+3 and have younoticed that its the first 7 years that are most important. In these 7 years itsbasically reading and writing. You have heard words like that man is illiterate (anoffensive term for people who are not able to read and write). Here in the realworld the things you need most are read, write, creativity and being practical, thatis it. So when you say, that gentleman is a school dropout. Be careful because he

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might have completed his primary school and guess what? He knows how to readand write. That is it. The most interesting thing is that majority of these schooldropouts finished their primary. They just didnt complete their former educationwhich was going to channel them to a specific career path. E.g. becoming alawyer, accountant, doctor and etc. If you have noticed the western worlds

educational philosophy takes a multidisciplinary approach and to them its theprimary stage which is so important, once done depending on the childs interestthey will be channeled to that area. E.g. Tiger woods began playing golf when hewas still very young, talk about the late Michael Jackson. But here in Africa, youget to see an early talent in your child to be a musician, instead of harness thattalent, you just cripple it because you think since you a well known doctorspecialized as a gynecologist around town, then your children should also becomethe same. How stupid of you! These formerly educated people were needed in theIndustrial Age, though we still have the post Industrial Age going on but soon weshall be fully into the Information Age and all these formerly educated people

wont have jobs. Because what the computer and the internet have done is to solveall problems except one problem they instead created, the unemployment problem.Where we used to have ten people working, now we have one person doing thework and how much is a computer any way, say $500 compared to the monthlysalary of ten people for forty years until they retire. Ideally if it were you theowner of the company what would you prefer? Ten people who even makemistakes, very expensive to maintain in form of Medicare, lunch at office, makingunnecessary telephone calls, office space in their cubicles, giving excuses all thetime, then you pay 10% Social Security for them. The computer does not requireSocial Security which is a safety net you just have to backup your information, no

lunch, no monthly pay, it does not give excuses all times because its garbage in,garbage out, it does not require a Human Resources Manager to be monitored, itwont require salary increment at the end of each year and other compoundedbenefits.

In the real world, loaded with uncertainties, there are no ready made answers andnobody can claim to be in possession of the marking scheme you invent answersto specific situations at specific moments of which each is largely unique. Theanswers you leave school will fast become obsolete as soon as you exit the gatesof your university. To fit in the real world, you have to deprogram and reprogramyourself. That is the way things work out here my friend. I continue to see manypeople seeking out more advanced degrees. Here is an excerpt from FortuneMagazines article on the 40 richest people under 40 years The MBAs dont fitinto the (Silicon) valley scene. MBAs are traditionally risk-averse. The reasonmost people go to business school is to ensure getting a six-figure job aftergraduation. Morons! I love this. People have not yet wakened up to notice that theworld has long changed from the Industrial Age to the Information Age.

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In the information age, personal capability and competencies will take over as themain sources of personal security; not contracts, appointment letters or academicqualifications. The Job Security mentality is a liability for both the organizationand the individual. Its a word that is soon becoming extinct. Lets talk about thisthing called employment. Its funny that when people reach a certain age, such as

after graduating college, they assume its time to go out and get a job. But likemany things the masses do, just because everyone does it doesnt mean its a goodidea. Somebody gives you a job. You may get lucky enough to get a couple ofpromotions, which comes with all the busy work so you become Mr or Mrs. busybeing busy to the extent that you have no time to listen to what the world has tooffer in form of business opportunities, no family time, you actually leave yourhouse at 6a.m. and return at 11p.m. And you are so comfortable because there arecompounded benefits such as vehicle, credit on your phone, air conditioned office,housing allowance and others. Since when did comfort and luxury become thechief requirements of life! You retire on a peanut Social Security/ pension (In

Oxford Advanced it means money that the government pays regularly to peoplewho are poor, unemployed, sick etc. to live on) This money is just for living onpurposes. It cant even cover your day to day normal requirements, so you embarkon soliciting support from your working sons and daughters (You actually seethem as an investment made, so its time to reap) who have again preferred thesame 45 years plan in a rat race infrastructure forgetting that they also have alife to live when still young, so you end up going to the village very frustrated andwhere life is cheap, and you die shortly afterwards with just enough cash to coverthe funeral bill. This is what we call 45 years plan dead end. Former USA Pres.Bill Clinton said Life is organized backwards. You spend the best years studying,

and then working. When you retire at 60, you are too old to enjoy it. People shouldretire between the ages 21 and 35, and then work like HELL till they die.

Not everything that can be counted counts; and not everything that counts can becounted. - Albert Einstein. Just because academic grades can be counted does notmean that they matter most. And because there are no mechanisms to measure andcount what people have learnt outside the formal curriculum does not mean that itdoes not count. In fact, it counts most in real life. The challenge is, are we going tospend our lives in school where we are only judged by what can be counted(theoretical degrees) or shall we spend it in the real world where the uncountablecounts more than the countable?

I am not advocating for the de-Schooling of society. I know that going to schoolis of such great value and indeed a human right. But I quickly caution that theschool can also be a place where human beings are slowly and unknowinglyreduced to a sub-human level. The said fact is that our educational system seemsto produce robot like and automated students who cannot think outside the box.

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You are a genius

We all know people who are academically brilliant, but who have no social skillsat all. These people do not succeed in the competitive world of business where co-operation from others is essential. In short, the world is full of geniuses whocannot even earn a living. In the real world, intelligence is a way of behaving, not

IQ (Capacity to think and memorize). If you behave intelligently, you are anintelligent person. If you behave as a fool behaves, then you are a fool even ifyou have two university degrees. If compared to our own presidents in Uganda itsinteresting!

a) You look at a man from Lango, some delicate of a man, school dropout,former sugar cane cutter. This fellow who is a school dropout, no degree,no nothing, and in 1962 he makes history, Ugandas most glorious moment,Ugandas glorious hour, finest moment in Ugandas history. He crosses thethreshold from colonialism to independence. This scraper looking fellow

from Lango, whether you like him or not he took that moment. When therewere professors, doctors and brilliant people like you. This fellow crossesand he got there.

b) Then we got a village buffoon, semi-literate, idiot, emerges from Arua andhe puts in eight years un interrupted., primary four man, straddles this won-derful country with the Harvard of Africa, with people like us, who makewonderful speeches at seminars, speaks Queens English. This village idiotsurfaces and rules this country of intelligencer for eight an interruptedyears.

c) A professor who is a chairman of African universities, the first vice chan-

cellor of the Harvard of Africa, he rules only for 68 days.d) A brilliant lawyer, the first Queens Counsel, New York lawyer, first talk-ing, Queens English, he rules for only eleven months.

e) And the other fellow surfaces again (Lango guy) and he says where did Ileave you. You better follow me. That one puts in another five years.

f) A young man, who is tired, worn out, bleeding, very young with a degree inone arm and a gun in the other. He crisscrosses from Dar la salaam throughLuwero and he puts in twenty years and he says he is still going to give youa little more for as long as it takes.

In short what does this explain to you as far as Academic IQ is concerned?

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Chapter #5 Plan to Use Faster Words if youare to become Rich

If you plan on creating a plan to retire young and financially free, you may need toupdate your vocabulary, and if you change your vocabulary, you may speed upyour ideas. For example:

Slow Words Fast Words

High-paying job Cash flow from assets(Or when someone finds you on the streets of Kampala and they ask

where you work than what business you are doing)Finding a high-paying job may seem like the fast way to get rich at the start whenyou have finished studies, but in most cases it is the slow way to become rich inthe end of your life. In fact, very few people ever become rich via a job even a

high-paying one.


Save money Make moneyFocusing on saving money takes too much of your time and there is not enoughleverage in saving money. The money most people save is after-tax money. On topof that, the interest that you earn on your savings is also very small a percentage.If I were a doctor who had to personally work to get paid, then I would be a doctorwho worked for money. If I were a doctor who invented a new medicine and soldit in the form of a pill through pharmacies, that pill would be a form of the doctor

making money rather than working for money.In summary, working for money in most cases is slow, and finding ways to makemoney can be much faster if you know what you are doing. So if your plan is towork for money and then try and save money, then you may be swinging in awrong direction.


Avoid risk Gain controlThats too risky or play it safe or why take the risk. The more you believe in theseideas, the more you loose control over your financial life. By saying that investing

is risky remember it isnt the investing that is risky, it is the investor who is risky!A final word on risk vs. control: The more a person seeks security, the more thatperson gives up control over their life. Today there are two worlds evolving. Oneis the world I call the Responsible Society. It is the group that believes in beingresponsible for their lives and the ultimate outcome of their lives. The second onecalled the Victim Society which is the group that believes that someone else, acompany, or the government is responsible for their lives. I have found that one ofthe dividing factors between both societies is their core view on the ideas of risk

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vs. control. Victims tend to want to give control over their lives to someone else inorder to avoid taking risks. Then they get angry when they feel someone abusesthe control they granted the abuser in the first place. On other words, victims areoften victims of themselves.

Slow Words Fast WordsGo to school Go to seminars

You go to school if you are expecting a promotion and want to be a betteremployee or better professional person such as a doctor, lawyer, or accountant. Ifyou dont care about degrees, promotions, or job security, then you go to seminars.Seminars are for people who want better financial results than a job promotion orincreased job security. Guess what? Making a million dollar is not academicallyoriented. Make peace with this fact right now A JOB WILL NOT MAKE YOUWEALTH. No matter how good the salary. It is not about how hard you workbecause it stops immediately after you have stopped working. Hard work may kill

you instead.

One of the big differences between those who go to school and those who attendseminars is again the difference between context and content. I have noticed thatwhen a person who attends schools asks a person who attends seminars, What didyou get from the seminars? the person who attended the seminar is often not ableto explain what he or she got. The reason is, many seminars are more context-expanding than content-increasing. A person who has just had his or her contextexpanded often cannot say specifically what he or she got. A person who is schooloriented (Professional student), a person who would rather remain an employee,

often cannot understand such vagueness. There are completely and totally differentingredients to making a million dollar but not academically

Documents

A Revolutionary Way to Achieve Wealth in Uganda