In many families while growing up, children are told Study get a university degree, find work, build a house, marry, have children, send them to school, and yes, die( die is silently said).
That is in general regarded as success and true that worked for a certain generation but becoming increasingly difficult for our generation.
The above doesn’t encourage thinking outside the box and even with class learned friends( i find very many educated people who say, I have these number of degrees but am still struggling to meet my basics needs)….the above is purely a selfish approach because it focuses on me or you as individuals and extends to the a close family at most…..The truth is successful people meet needs or solve problems of society not knowingly sometimes, of course this thinking doesn’t apply to the corrupt….
When people finish school or start working, a lot pursue the dream of acquiring a house or building and some will go as far as borrowing loads of money to build a house they will only sleep in and end up being so stressed because they have affected the needed cash flows and yes, start to struggle with affording basics like food, utilities etc. one saves up 200m shillings under duress then borrows another 200m shillings as a top up to build a 400m shillings and where the house is built may not be the most idea areas thy so desire to live.
When I started Great Lakes Safaris in 2001, I started understanding the importance of cash flows and it’s superiority over low productivity assets and therefore, directed my energies and savings towards growing cash flows and that meant I had to fight the urge to buy land and build a personal residence and yes, some people kept telling me to do so. Until 3 years ago, I lived in Nsamya Estates paying less than 300 dollars per month for a home. My land lady was responsible for general repairs, security in the estates was generally good that meant we didn’t need home security and trust me, I thought my land lady wasn’t really serious, owning a 300m shillings and earning 700,000 Shs. Even if I compared her to a guy that sells me mangoes, she didn’t do better than him. The guy that sells me mangoes buys each mango at Ushs 500 on the open market and sells each mango at 1500 Shs and he tells, he sells more than 500 mangoes a day which means he earns 500,000 a day and yes, from his face, you can see that his made some money. In life no one can hide poverty or wealth because even the looks can sell you out…am not saying buying property is a bad thing, I have bought quite a bit myself but this happened after growing the cash flow arm by reinvesting a lot of earned profits over the years. I only bought a house about 3 yrs ago for residential purpose and in fact, I think I made a mistake because I now have a bigger water bill, electricity bill, compound maintance bills, domestic helpers, house mantaince bills, and yet sleeping in a house whose value is over 700m which is good capital to use. I spend over 2m Shs a month on bills( in these regard, am not clever at all)
We should observe our Indian brothers, they never start by building houses. They start corner shops, min supermarkets, hardware because they understand the value of cash flows and they end up buying distressed property from us Ugandans who have not created cash flows. Of course as they run those businesses you never see them driving the latest cars, spending evenings in bars, dining in restaurants(in fact they instead run them to earn from spending Ugandans), they pack their food for lunch , ride motorcycles to work till they have excess cash to buy one, no flashy weddings.
I met a group of Ugandans discussing Sudhir mbu he owns every 4th building in the city center and their theory was that he cheated Ugandans by leading them expensive money which they failed to pay and ended up taking their property. I thought they were very shallow, Sudhir doesn’t go around asking people to borrow from him, they instead come to him and he sets conditions that they agree to and even sign documentation and a lot of people don’t stop for a minute to say this guy for many years has been created a formidable cash flows by creating hotels, banks, forex shops.
The truth is that we Ugandans can do what our Indian brothers have done in our own backyards but requires us to examine our ways and confront those bitter facts in our own lives!!
Amos Wekesa FB Post ~ April 28, 2015.
: Amos WekesaJaluum Herberts Luwizza is a Speaker,Writer, Columnist with the C.E.O Magazine and Contributor with the Nile Post.He is also a Business Consultant with YOUNG TREP East Africa’s No.1 Business Management and Consultancy firm that helps people start and grow profitable businesses.twitter:jaluwizza
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