You can't be rich by following the examples of the rich

When you hear the stories of most of the people who made it big from small beginnings, there's always a point where you are kept in the dark and that is where everything changed.

How did Despite move from selling cassette into music production, building Peace FM and all these businesses? You won't ever know this. Did he save the small money earned from selling cassette to make it this big? Something happened and that was the key and that is what we'd never know.

How did Prince Kofi Amoabeng make it this big after leaving the army with very little?

All the rich people with small beginnings have beautiful and inspiring stories to tell but you realise that it is impossible to follow their footprint to where they are. This is because they flew at a point and left no footprint for you to follow.

You can sell cassette and save all the money you make from it but that won't give you Peace FM, UT, Okay FM, Special Ice, Best Point Savings and Loan, Best Insurance, You Too Iodated Salt and what have you..

You can join the army, retire as a major and start everything Prince Amoabeng started but that won't give UT Holdings. There's always a point where all the struggles and hustle breaks the door for you to enter so that you can grab all that makes your sweat worthwhile.

That is the point where you cannot learn the trick that did it for them anymore because those happenings don't follow the script. Some had to break the rules to experience this moment whereas others had the rules broken for them by an unseen hand they’d call fate.

As a Christian, at the moment when the story stops following the logical pattern and result in the radical leap in life, I see the God factor. I see the hand of God breaking the rule of ant-like progression, the barriers and silencing the giants on the promise land. I see God breaking the walls to give his chosen one entry at the point where there are no examples and footprint.

This can be meeting a good Sammeritan, winning a lottery, getting an unexpected contract, getting that business idea which required little capital and promised good returns and what have you.

Every successful person has his unique experience and opportunity. what they have in common though is that they can teach you only to a point. You can replay their lives and live it but you will get to a point where it no longer depends on you and that is the point where you get lost.

At this point, they cannot teach you the how tos any longer because truth is, they either think you shouldn't know it or what happened doesn't even make sense to them.

It starts with making the most out of your time during the small beginning.

It comes learning the lessons a tabletop business presents and getting prepared to handle a group of companies from the small beginning.

The silent moment separates the rich-from-nothing from the wannabes.

You can't learn it, you can't be a Despites or Prince Amoabeng by doing everything they did with their lives and end up like them. You need the hand of God to lift you from walking so that you can fly.

When people fly, they don't leave footprint for others to follow. Everything becomes their unique experience that cannot be shared however hard they try to .

What we can learn from these people though is to be prepared for that one opportunity that changes everything

The difference between the Kennedy Agyapong’s and people who started like him and are still nowhere like him isn’t always because he had opportunities whilst they didn’t. Some may have fluffed bigger and better opportunities than he had.

Even if you experience everything some of these people experienced, take the exact decisions they took, you may still not make it like they have.

Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard and started Microsoft: others dropped out of something with the genuine intention of starting something with more expertise, drive and resource than Bill had and still failed.

For whatever resulted in making someone successful, same has rendered countless failures.

This an extract from William Shakespeare’s legendary Romeo and Juliet

When Romeo learnt of Juliet’s death, he went to an Apothecary to by poison and die. It was a weekend and Mantua laws, where the Apothecary operated punished by death those who sell poison during the weekend. This is how Romeo broke his resolve

ROMEO

Art thou so bare and full of wretchedness,

And fear’st to die? Famine is in thy cheeks.

Need and oppression starveth in thine eyes.

Contempt and beggary hangs upon thy back.

75

The world is not thy friend nor the world’s law.

The world affords no law to make thee rich.

Then be not poor, but break it, and take this.

[Holds out money]

Weakened by these strong words, the Apothecary replied

APOTHECARY

My poverty, but not my will, consents.

Finally, Romeo gave him money, enough to change his life forever and got the poison he wanted. .

This is my point: from that night of selling the poison to Romeo, his own life’s story changed. As far as the people of Mantua were concerned, he was a hard working Apothecary who made it working all his life.

The truth though is: between his poverty and riches is a rule broken that will never be told. Even if he decides to tell it, people cannot use his example to make it.

I have read a lot of ’10 steps to riches’ and how to be a billionaire. If you have read similar books and tried to live the instructions provided, if you have listened to motivational speakers wow the audience with brilliant ideas for making it and tried following suit, you’d realise that life does not follow a pattern.

This is why in this life, our priority should be to charter our own cause and make the most of the opportunities that comes to us because they are usually unique to us. Following the examples of people will lead you nowhere because there is always going to be the point where it does not depend on you.

We all have our story and life deals with us according to our unique script that we cannot share because we do not know.

There is a point where your normal routine effort opens abnormal windows of opportunities for you. To be at the right place at the right time and in the right frame of mind, you can learn from those who have made it out of nothing. However, in terms of recognising and seizing it, everything depends on you because their strategy and examples may not work for you.

Remember this: for everything people did to succeed, countless failed doing same

Don’t try so hard to be another person or follow his path to success: you are only good at being you

By: Isaac Kyei Andoh