AND THE AWARD GOES TO: The Real Gold Medal Winners

Two years before I was born, the summer Olympics  were held in Mexico City, Mexico. During the event  held in 1968, Tanzanian marathon runner John Stephen  Akhwari made history, not by winning the Marathon  but by coming last. What made him unique was that  he came in about an hour and a half after the winner.  His leg was injured and it was bloodied and bandaged.  When he was asked by film director Bud Greenspan  why he had kept on going, he is quoted as replying,  “My country did not send me 5,000 miles to start a  race. They sent me to finish it.”

Life, as this book will show you, is about starting and  accomplishing tasks. That is the only way of gaining  the wealth you deserve. Over the last few years I have  discovered the “secrets,” the tips to achieving success  and financial freedom. A quest that I have embarked  on.

However, my abilities have been shaped by those  who have motivated and encouraged me. Like the runner John Stephen Akhwari, I have made it this far because of the goals that have been set for me by my  loved ones.

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CHAPTER ONE : Show me the money

One of my favourite lines is from the movie Jerry  Maguire starring Tom Cruise. In the movie, Tom Cruise is a washed out agent named Jerry Maguire  representing American football star Rod Tidwell played  by Cuba Gooding Jr - (Cuba won an Oscar award for  his amazing role in the film). The most famous scene  in the movie is one where Tom Cruise (Maguire) is  attempting to convince Cuba (Rod Tidwell) to retain  him as an agent. The scene takes place in a bathroom  – after a football match and Tidwell is draped in a towel. This is how the conversation goes:

Rod Tidwell: I wanna make sure you’re ready, brother.  Here it is: Show me the money. Oh-ho-ho! SHOW ME  THE MONEY! A-ha-ha! Jerry, doesn’t it make you feel  good just to say that! Say it with me one more time, Jerry.

Jerry Maguire: Show you the money.

Rod Tidwell: Oh, no, no! You can do better than that,  Jerry! I want you to say it with ME, with meaning, brother! Hey, I got Bob Sugar on the other line; I bet you he can say it!

Jerry Maguire: Yeah, yeah, no, no, no! Show you the  money. Rod Tidwell: No! Not show you…show me the money!

Jerry Maguire: Show me the money!

Rod Tidwell: Yeah! Louder!

Jerry Maguire: Show me the money!

Rod Tidwell: I need to feel you, Jerry!

Jerry Maguire: Show me the money!

Rod Tidwell: Jerry, you got to yell!

Jerry Maguire: [screaming] SHOW ME THE MONEY!  SHOW ME THE MONEY!

What Cuba’s character, Rod Tidwell was saying is that “Talk is cheap” – action is what counts. And not  just an ordinary action, but action with a passion. For  my TV show How to Be Rich, I decided to use Show me  the Money as the slogan/theme because it depicts the  essence of what everyone who wants to be rich knows  – where is the money?

This book will not be talking about theories of  being wealthy or how you need to draw triangles to  re-align your money. If you are looking for a get-rich  quick scheme that offers you all the gold in the world  in a week, this is not the book for you. However, if  you are ready for honest, tried, tested and successful  skills that will teach you how to steadily and securely  become rich and successful, then you are on the right journey – read on.

Unlike other books that promise  you the impossible, I will show you that being rich is  a state of mind, pegged on opportunity and passion;  and that anyone, regardless of where you were born  or current state of being, can transform the little they  have to making money. Show me the Money is what  I call a realistic call cry… It is not about theories; it is  about the real deal. The money is out there. If others  can get it, so can you.

However, we all know, especially some of us who  like eating roasted meat, what in Kenya we call Nyama  Choma, that there is a process that takes place before  the juicy meat lands on our plates and then on our  palates. The goat has to be found, slaughtered, carved  and the meat roasted over open flames for at least 40 minutes to an hour. Then it is served. The process of making money is similar to that of cultivating, herding  or even getting that juicy steak on a plate. It is a process that some have mastered and a process that I intend  to teach you in this book. This book is about money  making, regardless of where you are in the world but  more so in the continent of Africa.

AFRICA THE NEW FRONTIER

Africa is now considered the future – an emerging  market that will become the new world. During early modernization, Europe was the place to be. A period  called the Renaissance ushered in Industrialization and development that encouraged travel, expansion and  then the desire to conquer and colonize. Great leaps in science and improvement in the quality of life were achieved due to this development in Europe. .......

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DREAMING

The Jews have a proverb that goes: “If you want your dreams to come true, you must first wake up!” John Lennon in his famous song Imagine said: “You may say  I am a dreamer, but I am not the only one”. Dreaming  has been part of my life and I am writing this book as  a result of dreaming.

In 1989, at the age of 19, I had just finished my  A-levels exams and was classified as a vagrant – (not  employed and not in school). I came from a humble  family. Even though I lived in the city of Nairobi, I was not that much better of than the poor in villages.  My family - my parents and my only sister Anne - lived in wooden shacks in the greater Kawangware  slums area, in a place called Riruta Satellite. Our  house comprised two wooden rooms, with iron sheet  roofing and no flooring. The bathroom was a leaning  structure made of wooden pieces and iron sheets, and  was about 10 metres from the house. The toilet was a  pit latrine, about 50 metres away with a leaking roof and  a door that never closed properly. I remember the path  to the toilet was always either dusty or muddy. Going  to the toilet, especially, in the middle of the night, was  always a nightmare. We had moved to Riruta when I  was nine years old, after living in a mud house in the  now famous Kibera slums.  

Regardless of this squalid housing and humble  living conditions, I lived what I would consider to be a  very happy life. My parents, the good Christians that  they were, were always happy. We spent more time  laughing - my father is a very humourous man - than  thinking of our fate. I always knew one truth: My  current situation was just temporary - my fate was not  tied to that of my current status.

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QUICK REVIEW

This introductory chapter has concentrated on the  basics required to make you rich. It does not matter  how many other tips you may love in this book. If you  do not master the main arguments of this Chapter you  will be like a vehicle with a busted engine. The car  may have beautiful upholstery, great colour, amazing wheels and the right look. But if the engine gets a seizure – you just have a shell because you are going nowhere. Remember:

1. Africa is the place to be,

2. Start dreaming and don’t even think of stopping

3. Have a desire to succeed

4. Take action now

5. Have passion that leads you towards your goal

6. Be persistent and never give up; and

7. Cultivate patience like a lion on a hunt.

Now that we have the basics out of the way, let us  get down to making money. In the next chapter, we  explore the importance of practice, yes, making money  is like playing a game, the more you practise, the better  you get.

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CHAPTER TWO: Practise till you drop

When I was about eleven years old, I used to play soccer  with my friends at Nairobi’s Riruta Satellite grounds.  One day, instead of soccer, a karate teacher came by  and started teaching us Shotokan Karate. I had always  been awkward in sports. I was not a good runner,  dexterity with football eluded me and because my body  was never meant for rugby, I never tried to play the game. However, I found out that I was naturally good  – not just good, but excellent when it came to karate. From then on, I pursued martial arts as my sport. By  the time I was fifteen, I was kicking and punching as  I learnt Tae-kwondo, then Ju Jitsu, and then back to  karate with my friend Sankara and later in my twenties,  Shaolin Kungfu.  

Today, I don’t punch or kick much but for some  reason, all the moves I used to practise always come  back to me often and I use them to choreograph fight  scenes for my police television series, Cobra Squad. At  times I stand in as an extra in fight scenes. My interest in martial arts naturally had me devouring anything made or written by the famous  master and actor Bruce Lee. One thing I learnt quickly  through understanding Bruce Lee’s life and my own  life experience is that the difference between being  good in martial arts lies in practice, practice and more  practice. No amount of knowledge beats practice. You  can read about a block or a flying kick for ever, but you  can only perfect it by blocking and kicking over and  over again.

When it comes to making money, cumulative time  of practice is usually the difference between those who  become rich and those whose dreams always seem to  elude them.  You can, therefore, imagine my glee, when in a  recording of my How to Be Rich television show, one  of our guests, Kevin Ombajo (or Big Kev to his fans),  quoted words of wisdom that, “I don’t fear a man who  practises 10,000 kicks one time. I fear a man who practices one kick 10,000 times.”

Therein lies the secret of making money and I don’t mean you start kicking everybody around you – you  should start perfecting the art.

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CHAPTER 3: Converting ideas to money

The late author Michael Crichton, who gave us Jurassic  Park, Congo and such highly addictive movies, wrote a  historical novel based on real events. The book “The  Great Train Robbery” is a captivating story of one of  the largest heists ever known. The story is about a  person who spends years planning and executing the  perfect train robbery and escaping with millions worth  of gold.

There are many ways of making money and robbing  a bank or a train is one of them, but I would not  advocate for it – stealing never gets you far, and, as  you and I know it is wrong and the risks are very high.  Therefore, if you want to make money, you have to  come up with other ideas.

 But which ideas are good and how do you convert  them to money?  Any idea is a good idea. Yes, it does not matter what idea  you might have, if you think it through and take action, you can make money from it. People wait for great ideas, but I can assure you, it is not the complexity or  the so called greatness of an idea that matters – it is  its execution that counts. There are, however, a few  basics when it comes to ideas. Questions you need to  ask yourself.

(i)                  Is the idea logical?

(ii)                Can it be executed?

(iii)               Is there a way of making money out of the idea?

Ideas are thought-processes based on our knowledge, experience and expectations. Ideas are  supposed to be different, to be able to solve a problem,  provide a solution, and change the status quo — that is why you say “I have an idea…”

Everyone has the ability to think and come up with  different ideas. What is key is being able to choose the  right one for the right moment and think through it.  Every person conjures up ideas in different ways.  For me, my best ideas and creative moments come  when I am taking a shower. I do not think it is the idea  of a wash that sparks the mind (well, you never know),  but the fact that it is a moment when everything is  mechanical. My mind does not have to think about  lathering the soup or scrubbing my body – it is on  autopilot. This then, allows me, alone and with just the  sound of water running, to get moments of revelation.

Basically all of my businesses, money making projects,  script concepts, storyline ideas and Government  operation ideas come to me while I am showering.  I am not urging you to run into the shower. The  point here is that you need to identify moments when  you are in a frame of mind that allows you to relax and  think. A conducive environment, so to speak. Come to  think of it, I also get great ideas while riding on a train,  watching the landscape pass by, or lying in bed… you  get the idea?

I have found several factors useful in generating  good ideas:

(1)    Start thinking of solutions to different  problems or situations;

(2)     

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