I am not here to teach you how to write a CV. NO! I am here to talk to you about how to
CREATE WEALTH!
People of great ability do not emerge, as a rule, from the happiest background. So far as my own observation goes, I would conclude that ability, although hereditary, is improved by an early measure of adversity and improved again by a later measure of success. (Quotable quotes)
It's not so much whether you get knocked down, it's whether you get up again that matters. You may go over, go under, go around or go through, but never give up. Courage does not always roar, sometimes it is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, "I will try again tomorrow". Adversity does not build character it reveals it.
I am sure some of us here know the golden rule: "He who has the GOLD makes the rules" One can equate the gold with money. Meaning money is one form of power; power that allows you to set rules; power that makes things happen.
So one can comfortably say money is POWER. However what is more powerful than money is FINANCIAL EDUCATION. You must master the power of money, not to be afraid of it.
Today, we are going to talk about 'money'. A subject that unfortunately isn't taught or discussed in the classrooms or lecture halls.
The only limitation in achieving your aim in life is what you place on yourself. Creativity is the seed of accomplishment. First you ask yourself where you want to go and then you aim for where you want to be. You have to be creative to achieve success in life.
The late Harry Truman, a former President of the United States of America once said: "If you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen".
I am sure all of us here can stand the heat, the heat that comes along with wanting to become an Entrepreneur.
Ladies and Gentleman: It is always an honour for me to address the youth of today. For an Entrepreneur the youth is our insurance.
The Rat Race Club
I am sure most of you sitting here are not looking forward to finishing your education, getting a comfortable job and joining what the Americans call the "rat race". You don't need to be here if you are looking to join the rat race club. If you are here then you have no other choice than to be a member of "The Entrepreneurs' Club". That's what we are going to look into today. Why and how we can own our own companies and take our destiny into our own hands using "My Life as an Entrepreneur".
Most of us can do more than we think we can, but we usually do less than we think we do. It's good to know that no one is better than you. Equally, you are no better than anyone else, until you do something with your life to prove it.
Let me clear your mind; it's not a sin to be an Entrepreneur. I wouldn't be one if it was. It's not "the love of money, which is the root of all evils" as we are made to believe. It's the lack of money, which is the root of all evils. Likewise there is nothing wrong with men possessing wealth. The wrong comes when wealth possesses men. The Bible, which helps shape our lives, talks about Entrepreneurship.
I am sure you have all read or heard the story of the Master who left home and gave his ten servants equal amounts of money to look after in his absence. The one who increased the money tenfold was the Entrepreneur. You can read the complete story in Luke 19:11-27 in your own time.
I learnt very early in life that the routine of 9am to 5pm, 5 days a week with 4 weeks vacation in a year, which makes you a member of the rat race club, was not meant for me. That wouldn't make me financially independent. That will not make me a wealthy man either. You must belong to the group of people who do things for themselves and not wait for things to be done for them. The Entrepreneurs' Club, that's what I'm talking about.
The youth of today should play an integral part in the human development of our nation. As individuals you should not be reluctant to abandon the old idea of writing a good CV to get a good job, but you must be eager for change. No doubt you may be a little afraid of the change, but be assured you are doing the right thing. All that you are doing is taking your destiny into your own hands and doing the right thing. Doing things by halves is worthless because it may be the other half that counts.
There are two ways to reach the top of an oak tree. You climb it yourself or you sit on an acorn. If you want to be wealthy, then you better be climbing that oak tree yourself. You must be an Entrepreneur.
Someone defined wealth as: "a person's ability to survive so many days forward". In other words if you stopped working today, how long could you survive?
If you have cash flow from your assets of say GHc1,000 a month and expenses of GHc2,000 a month then you have a cash flow for half a month. When you have achieved GHc2,000 a month cash flow from your assets, then you will be wealthy. So you see it's not difficult to be wealthy. You are not rich at this stage, you are just wealthy. You have income generated from your assets each month that fully covers your monthly expenses. If you wish to increase your monthly expenses then you first have to increase your cash flow from your assets to maintain this level of wealth.
Your next goal should be to have excess cash flow from your assets re-invested into your assets column. The more money that goes into your assets column, the more your assets column grows. The more your assets column grows, the more your cash flow grows. When you keep your expenses less than the cash flow from these assets, you will grow wealthier, with more and more income from sources other than from your physical labour. As this re-investment process continues, you will be well on your way to becoming RICH. There is nobody who is too rich.
Just keep this in mind: the rich and wealthy buy assets and generate cash flow, the poor only have expenses and the middle class buy liabilities that they think are assets (luxury cars, clothes etc.). So buy assets that will generate cash flow. Don't buy liabilities that may appear to be assets.
There are a few things you need to know which will guide you on your path to becoming Entrepreneurs and in turn become wealthy.
If you want to be an Entrepreneur, you must first be truthful to yourself. Most of us here believe in the Bible. The Bible says: "the truth shall set you free".
Discipline:
I believe everybody is creative, and everybody has some talent. I just don't think that everybody is disciplined. I think discipline is a rare commodity. Some people regard discipline as a routine task. Discipline is a kind of order that sets one free to fly.
Perhaps the most valuable result of all discipline is the ability to make yourself do the things you have to do when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not. Discipline is the first lesson that should be learnt and is probably the ONLY lesson a person should learn thoroughly.
Discipline is an integral factor in becoming an Entrepreneur so let's look at some factors of discipline that affect us.
• Acceptance
• Willpower
• Persistence or Perseverance
Acceptance
This means that you should be truthful to yourself and perceive reality accurately and consciously acknowledge what you perceive. If you're going to succeed in life, you should be able to identify your weaknesses. Obviously such weaknesses, if not identified, to enable you to work on them, could affect your academic performance and your aim of becoming an Entrepreneur. So rather than call them weaknesses, consider them as challenges.
So, as an Entrepreneur you don't think inside the box, you think outside the box. You don't adopt the habit of finding excuses for your failures. You adopt the habit of finding solutions to your problems. You need to resolve to succeed. The greatest discovery one can make is that nothing is impossible. Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goals.
Willpower
The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines Willpower as "energetic determination and the ability to control one's self and determine one's actions". It means the firmness of the will to face challenges.
For an Entrepreneur applying Willpower means;
1. Choosing your objective, which is principally to make money.
2. Creating a plan of attack, meaning identifying opportunities.
3. Executing the plan, which simply means implementing those opportunities.
Vincent Thomas Lombardi, a basketball player, summed it up very well when he said, "The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, and is not a lack of knowledge but a lack of Will".
Persistence or Perseverance
Is the ability to maintain action regardless of your feelings. You press on even when you feel like quitting. Sometimes you'll feel motivated; sometimes you'll not. You may even feel frustrated. But it's your persistence that will produce results.
Persistence allows you to keep taking action, even when you don't feel motivated to do so. Persistence will ultimately provide its own motivation. If you keep taking action, you'll eventually get results, and results can be very motivating. For example, if you are making money you are motivated to look out for more opportunities so you can make more money. Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence.
People with talent cannot take the place of People Persistence, because nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent.
Genius cannot take the place of Persistence. Unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not take the place of Persistence. The world is full of educated people who cannot support themselves.
Persistence and determination is limitless. That's why the slogan "Press On" has solved and will always solve the problems of the human race.
It is said that eighty percent (80%) of all businesses fail in their first five years of existence! The problem with most is not that their owners don't know enough about finance, marketing, management and operations. Those things are easy enough to know. Experience has shown that the people who are exceptionally good in business aren't so because of what they know but because they have the Discipline to focus on what they don't know
Proactive and Reactive Thinking
Ladies and Gentlemen, I want to introduce to you, two concepts of how you should think as an Entrepreneur. They are "Emotion Thinking" and "Head Thinking". I define emotion thinking as reactive thinking and head thinking, as proactive thinking. Believe me, there is a big difference in the way these concepts affect our daily lives.
Emotion thinking is a short-term solution to a long-term problem, and unfortunately most of us have only one solution in mind, which is the short-term one. The middle class who buy luxury cars and clothes and think they are buying assets think with their emotions.
We should use our emotions to think but not think with our emotions. So, looking for long-term solutions to long-term problems is the beginning of 'Head Thinking'. The rich and wealthy buy real assets and generate cash flow. That's an example of head thinking.
Emotions are what make us human and real. I am sure all of you know the word Emotion. It is defined as "energy in motion''. Emotion is the seed of our livelihood. So as an Entrepreneur you must be truthful about your emotions and use your emotions in your favour and not against you.
Financial Knowledge
The reason why reactive thinking alone doesn't work is because most people never learn how money works. We spend our lifetime working for money, instead of letting money work for us. The only reason why you want to be an Entrepreneur is to generate cash flow. In simple English you want to be financially independent. You want to be wealthy. By doing that you shouldn't care whether you do that by growing vegetables or fruits.
You know, we can be highly educated, professionally successful but financially illiterate. The reason being that most of us often work harder than we really need to work. We learn how to work harder but not how to make our money work for us.
When you start thinking that you need to find a job, most likely your emotions' are doing the thinking. You are not using your head to think, you are thinking with your emotions. The fear of not having money generates that thought. You don't make money from getting a job. You make money from investments. A job just gives you an income PERIOD! An education and a job are important, but they won't eliminate the fear of not having money.
Finding Long Term Solutions to Long Term Problems
This is best shown by examples so I will use the ownership of a house as an example. Let's say you own a house in a reasonably good location and the rentable value of that house is GHc3,000 per month.
You have a choice to either live in your own house or rent the house out and get a rented place to live in. One can always get a decent accommodation for GHc1,500 per month in any part of Ghana to live in. It might not be in the same area where your own house is but that shouldn't matter if the objective is to generate cash flow.
So it would be worth your while financially, to rent out your house for GHc2,800 instead of GHc3,000 and get a rented place for GHc1,600 to live in instead of GHc1,500. Right there you have GHc1,200 in your assets column.
You have two advantages decreasing your rent a little bit and offering to pay a bit more for the house you want to rent. Firstly, you beat the market by reducing your cash flow from your rent intake so you can get your house rented out quicker. Secondly you beat the market again by offering to pay a little over the market price for the place you want to rent to live so you can get one quicker. This is how an Entrepreneur thinks. Using your emotions to think and not thinking with your emotions. The result: You are making cash flow.
Like everything else we need an Inspiration to become Entrepreneurs, not obstacles:
Four lessons guided me in my path to becoming an Entrepreneur. Each of us may have different inspirations. What matters is putting them into good use.
A young, up and coming Entrepreneur called Michael Sarpong walked into my office one day. He saw a plaque on my wall that reads: "If you don't take care of your customer, someone else will." It inspired him so much that he now uses it as his believe number one. We live in a competitive world so the only advantage you have over your competitors is keeping close to your customers. Keeping close means understanding their business and making them comfortable with your service. So you need to know your customer totally.
Also while watching a movie Michael heard: "If you spend too much time in a sugar factory, you forget the real taste of honey" That became his belief number two. He interpreted his belief number two perfectly. If you waste time over an opportunity, someone will take it away from you. Opportunities are all over the place. You need to open your eyes to see them.
If you want to wait for opportunities to come to you, ladies and gentlemen, you will wait until hell freezes over. Opportunity is like ice cream; make use of it before it melts. We all know how quickly ice cream melts.
Now let's take a look into few terminologies associated with Entrepreneurship, understand them well and utilise them in our favour.
Assets, Liabilities & Wealth
As an aspiring Entrepreneur there are some things you need to know. You must know the difference between asset and liability and BUY ASSETS. Asset is the ONLY rule to becoming financially independent. Asset is something that puts money in your pocket and liability is something that takes money out of your pocket. You must also know the difference between being broke and being poor. Being broke is a temporary situation but being poor is an eternal one. I believe none of us here wants to be poor.
Now let's define Entrepreneurship and then take some examples from my life as an Entrepreneur in identifying opportunities.
Entrepreneurship:
Innovation – Knowledge – Opportunity – Resources – Risk - Implementation - Reward
In other words an Entrepreneur, is someone who identifies an opportunity, be it an idea or a dream, organises the needed resources to convert the opportunities into marketable products or services, assumes the risk in a competitive marketplace and realises the rewards.
Identifying Opportunities:
Petward Transport Limited
I was 32 years old, with a young family, just returned home from Germany after nearly 13 years stay, bursting with ideas, full of knowledge, and hungry for opportunities.
I gathered information that the biggest payload low-loader at the port of Tema was 20 tons. Some of the goods at the port needed 40 tons payload low loader to transport them. That information presented an opportunity.
I used a contact I had in Germany to form a Joint Venture between Masai in Ghana and Staas in Germany. That gave birth to Petward Transport Limited. We brought to Ghana a 40-ton payload low loader and started operating at the ports in Ghana and neighbouring countries.
Export of Timber Logs (Timboard)
I was talking to the Chief Executive Officer of the then Timboard on their general imports program, when I discovered that you get 4% commission from Timboard if you brought an importer to them who purchased timber products from them.
Our line of business with Timboard was their supplies. However hearing this new line of commissions on purchases of timber products presented an opportunity to me. I searched for companies in Germany that dealt in timber products. In short I became an agent of two German timber companies in Ghana and my company earned 4% commission on any timber purchases that those two companies purchased from Timboard.
Kano Agricultural Development Project
I had an English friend who left his job in Ghana to take up another job in Kano/Nigeria. He invited me to pay a visit there, which I gladly did.
First, to see a friend I hadn't seen for sometime. Secondly to look out for any opportunities that could come along the way. I went with my friend to his office one morning just to familiarize myself with the operations there. Over-hearing a conversation for a "procurement agency" I immediately recognized an opportunity.
The project he was working on was a World Bank project and one of the procedures was to appoint a procurement agent to supply the needs of the project. I asked him later how one could qualify to bid on such a project.
In short, my company was one of the three companies that were selected as procurement agents for the project. We got 75% of the total project value. Here again an opportunity was identified and executed.
SEAT Dealership (Masai Motors Ltd)
Masai Developers Ltd at one time had over 30 cars in house. These cars were of different makes. Now we needed to streamline the make of these cars. That makes it easier for spare parts purchases.
I estimated at that time that we would need more cars apart from the 30 odd cars we already had. SEAT didn't have a dealer in Ghana
A businessman will decide the make and numbers of cars required. He will then go to the dealer in the country and buy the cars and that will be the end of story.
As an Entrepreneur you are looking for opportunities all the time. Now someone should tell me why I couldn't set up a dealership for SEAT cars in Ghana. Sell the cars to other businesses and have the after-sales-service cash flow in addition? That's exactly what I did and Masai Motors Limited was born.
Entrepreneur versus Businessman
I have always maintained that there is a difference between an Entrepreneur and a businessman. I have just given you one example. I will give you few more examples. By the way, the fact that someone has 'money' doesn't make him an Entrepreneur.
Some examples of how an Entrepreneur's mind works as against a Businessman's mind:
Real Estate Development
Most businessmen in real estate, build houses, sell, make their profit and move to another location to put up more houses for sale. Some of them will sell some of the houses and rent some out and probably sell the rented ones at a later date to make a bigger profit. However, an Entrepreneur will examine all the possible lines of business he can derive from the houses. Namely: selling, renting and facility management. That's three different lines of business right there.
Benefits of Stakeholders Participation in Investments:
Another important lesson in Entrepreneurship is to encourage stakeholder participation. The best-structured deals are often those that promote "ownership" all around. Entrepreneurs keep their eyes on the horizon, not just on the bottom line. That's why they have a vision.
Accra City Sanitation
When I gathered information that the sanitation in the city of Accra needed to be looked at for a more permanent solution to the problems that it was facing, it represented an opportunity.
So I went to see the then Mayor to discuss the actual problems with sanitation in the city. During the discussions I suggested a possible solution to the problem, which was to have a value added consortium with stakeholders including AMA being part of the consortium to manage the city's sanitation.
Four companies formed the consortium, two local companies (including AMA) and two foreign companies, one being purely an investment company and the other a strategic partner. The project was successfully executed. All parties were happy looking forward to their cash flow to add to their asset columns
Now let me tell you the deal I structured for my company. The deal I structured with the two foreign partners was, first for my company to have the option of buying 10% of their shares at a future date at the initial cost for introducing them to the business. Simply because at the time the business had to take off we didn't have money to buy equity.
Besides even if we had the money for our equity it was better to use that money for something else and take the opportunity at a later date of paying for our shares. So it's not always that you need fiscal cash to implement a project. The bottom line here is that an opportunity was identified and worked at successfully.
Positive thinking is a choice, and by keeping our eyes focused coupled with an optimistic attitude we can restore faith in ourselves and stay clear of any doubts we may have.
Antidote: Ladies and Gentlemen, before I finish the first part of my presentation, let me tell you this short story about how one particular Entrepreneur who happens to be a friend thinks. He told me that he is never in a hurry to visit his friends when they are sick; because the minute he walks into a sick room he is already sensing an opportunity to generate cash flow. You know why? He is an Undertaker.
Cooperation between Entrepreneurs and Government:
Now let us examine the magnitude of opportunities Entrepreneurs could bring to the negotiating table if invited by Government to help solve our national economic problems and create jobs for the working population of the country.
This part of my presentation may border on politics, because in my view there are some similarities between Politicians and Entrepreneurs which up and coming Entrepreneurs need to note and value.
All over the world successful Entrepreneurs are vital to the health of their national economy. A deeper understanding of their characteristics will assist in the development of more creative and effective leaders.
It's a fact that Entrepreneurs have partners, associates and establishments around the globe. I mean we have international network with other Entrepreneurs around the world. Those associates, partners and establishments out there also have other connections in both business and the political world in most parts of the globe.
That's the magnitude of information database that a Government can access just by striking a good rapport with the business community without having to pay for it. The whole worldwide network is available to the Government just through interaction with local Entrepreneurs. Have you thought of why businessmen/entrepreneurs most times get some items cheaper? Yes, the Government may have some of this information that I am referring to but definitely not all of it. In my book that is an asset base which a Government can put in its asset column and start building wealth for all citizens.
This structure is what I want us to examine today. We need to pay our dues to our country Ghana. I think that the hottest part of hell is reserved for those of us who witness crises and do nothing about it. So we Entrepreneurs and up-coming Entrepreneurs should find solutions to our worsening unemployment situation so we don't find ourselves in the hottest part of hell.
Not too long ago we had in this country various businesses and industries; e.g. corned beef factory, tomato factory, pineapple factory, textile industries just to name a few. Where are all these factories now? They don't exist any longer.
Just talk to people who are in the timber industry today. The industry is virtually non-existent. If we cast our minds back we will remember how the timber industry was booming before the year 2001. I know of a timber company that was working on three shifts a day basis before the end of 2000. Since 2001, they have reduced their staff strength by two thirds. They have made two thirds of their staff redundant. As if that's not bad enough, the one third of the staff strength left, only work on a one-shift basis a day. I can go on and on giving you similar examples of loss of employment.
The question is: Who is suffering from the closing down of all these businesses? It's not the Entrepreneurs or the businessmen but the ordinary Ghanaians!
I have given some background of the problems we have in the country pertaining to job creation, which in my opinion is due to lack of co-operation between the Government and the business community of this country. Now I am going to give you some examples of how the business community and the Government can come together and find long-term solutions to our long-term problems.
Some Methods for Wealth Creation
The Stock Exchange
The Stock Exchange is a very powerful mechanism for wealth creation. Some of us have invested in stocks in other countries and have started creating wealth. We can do the same here in Ghana. The question, is why don't we Entrepreneurs invest our foreign exchange in Ghana as much as we invest it in other countries?
Most business people and government officials, be they Europeans, Canadians, Americans or Asians save their earnings and per diems in their respective countries. We Ghanaians are most likely to save such monies in foreign countries. Why? The answer is very simple: It's safer for us to save our monies in western countries than in our own country. We simply don't have confidence in our various Governments to enable us put our foreign exchange in our local banks.
It would be a step in the right direction for any Government to put into place what it takes to encourage Ghanaians as a whole to save their monies with our local banks. We save our monies in foreign countries for safety reasons and yet we expect the foreigners from those countries to have confidence in our economy and come all the way here with their monies to invest in our country's economy?
Government versus Entrepreneurs
The main force driving employment creation in any country is the Government of the country. Infrastructure is undertaken and financed by the Government of the country and supported by Entrepreneurs and not the other way round.
When the Government initiates infrastructural projects they "give birth" to various business activities. Various establishments participate in the process and thus create all kinds of employment for the working community.
That is the collaboration between government and business community that I am talking about. The more infrastructural projects the Government undertakes, the more jobs they create. Employment broadens the tax base of the country.
It is common knowledge to all of us that our economy has traditionally depended on the export earnings from our cocoa, gold, mineral resources, various wood products and some non-traditional goods. To us Ghanaians, all these are solid assets, which we can use as a base to create wealth for the people of this country.
It is also common knowledge that the earnings from these products cannot meet our current needs. So we must go beyond the traditional ways of solving our problems and find long-term solutions to meet our needs.
We need to think outside the box and be more creative. The question is what we do with all these assets? How do we use these assets to create wealth for Ghanaians? That's where the Entrepreneurs and the Government come together to explore various avenues to turn these assets into wealth for the citizens of this country. That is putting our assets into investments that would generate cash flow for the people of Ghana to have in their pockets to spend.
If the Government sat on a round table discussion with local Entrepreneurs, projects like the Presidential Palace, Presidential Planes, National Health Care etc could have been structured differently and would have been more beneficial to Ghanaians. You don't borrow money to construct a Presidential Palace or buy Presidential Planes. Those two projects don't generate any cash flow. These will rather cost the nation money to maintain. In other words they are liabilities to the nation.
As an Entrepreneur my advice would have been to use the loans for projects that would create employment and generate cash flow. Out of the cash flow we would then build the Presidential Palace and buy the Presidential Planes. That will be a real change of political and economic direction.
Let's examine a project, in a form of example that the business community, regardless of their political affiliations and the Government can undertake to create jobs and wealth for the people of Ghana. That's what I will encourage Prof. Mills to do when he is sworn in as President of the Republic of Ghana come January 2009.
Establishment of an Agricultural Authority, which would operate like Cocobod to enable us, feed ourselves.
The aim of this Authority would be to arm our commercial farmers with valuable information that they don't readily have. The functions of this Authority would be to design a map of this country showing the kind of food stuff which when grown in specific parts of the country would give us the maximum production of food.
The Authority would also provide our farmers with storage, distribution and marketing facilities to sell their produce without depending on weather conditions. This would in addition control waste and aid our commercial farmers to produce food in commercial quantities at affordable prices that with the minimum daily wage of our workers, every citizen of this country can afford balanced meals, quite apart from the employment opportunities to the people of this country especially the youth.
I am talking of the equivalent of Cocobod for our staples, such as cassava, yam, plantain, cocoyam, sweet potatoes etc. That would be termed as finding long-term solutions to our long-term problems and help get us out of our serious economic predicament.
We need a vibrant and dynamic economy owned and managed by Ghanaians. With this approach we will move our economy to one of self-sufficiency and self-dependency.
How to finance such a project: This program can be structured to be self-financing. Government can either loan money to the project or give a guarantee for its agency to raise money to implement the project, sell the information to businesses to recover cost and make some decent profit.
Now let's examine the reasons why some government entities didn't survive and how Entrepreneurs could have made them survive.
Let's take Ghana Airways for example. I am not blaming any particular Government for the collapse of Ghana Airways. What I am doing is thinking aloud as an Entrepreneur. If any Government had gotten Entrepreneurs to sit with them at a brainstorming section to find solution to rescue the company, Ghana Airways will still be in business today.
Ghana Airways at one time had routes such as: Accra-London-Accra, Accra-Düsseldorf-Hamburg-Accra, Accra-Rome-Accra, Accra-Johannesburg-Accra, Accra-New York-Accra and Accra-Baltimore-Accra and in addition flew to a number of other cities on the West Coast of Africa. They also had the best captains and pilots in the industry and good-natured Ghanaian as well as non-Ghanaian staff. With such assets Ghana Airways had no business going bust.
We don't know all the factors, which lead to the collapse of Ghana Airways. What we know is enough to work with and have such a company produce a positive balance sheet. The problem could have been mismanagement or too much Government interference in the operation or a combination of both.
Regardless of the reasons, if a number of Ghanaian Entrepreneurs had been invited by the Government to a round table discussion to sought solutions to our problems, I am positive Ghana Airways would still be flying all those routes and making a decent profit.
With the quantum of assets Ghana Airways had, the company was a dream for any Entrepreneur. A lot of us Entrepreneurs, including myself, started business with far less assets than Ghana Airways had, and we still made decent profits.
It would have been better for all Ghanaians to have a bit of the company in some form or the other than to have it off the screen of aviation completely. It's an unbelievable situation for an Entrepreneur to imagine such a profitable company going bust for any other reasons other than commercial reasons.
The solution to such a problem was not to create a Ministry for Aviation to manage just one plane. Creating structures alone doesn't necessarily solve problems. Finding long-term solutions to long-term problems would solve problems and keep such businesses in profit and in turn create wealth for the citizens of this country.
There are a whole lot of other businesses that could be established from the main core business of Ghana Airways. Examples are the catering wing of Ghana Airways and the servicing of other airlines at the airport in various forms. Ghanaians are gifted with a lot of assets. It's up to us to turn these assets into wealth for all Ghanaians.
The terrain of our lives and the strength of the foundation that we set, shape our achievements. In building the life we've imagined, we must be true to our beliefs, dare to be ethical, and strive to be honourable. For integrity, is the highest ground to which one can aspire.
An Entrepreneur should have integrity to choose right over wrong, to choose ethics over convenience, and to choose truth over popularity. These are the choices that measure your life as an Entrepreneur. We must, above all, believe in ourselves, face our goals, and then fight as if our lives depended on it. That's what Ghanaians need to do to create wealth for all of us as a nation.
To do that the President of the Nation needs to feel the need to serve the people. He needs to fight poverty by creating jobs. The government should make it easy to do business, improve business infrastructure and create a conducive climate of enterprises. Dreams and plans of a President is nothing without businesses.
The dream of the President and the business community is to restore the hope of the forgotten middle class and reclaim the future for our children. We cannot pursue our independent interest independent of the needs of other citizens. The essence of good government is to persuade an impatient nation to accept short-term pains for long-term gains.
Now let me leave you with four of my Entrepreneurial codes that I adhere to:
1. In life and in business you don't get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate for.
2. Our lives are not determined by what happens to us, but by how we react to what happens to us.
3. Our lives are not determined by what life brings us. But by the attitude we bring to life.
4. A positive approach causes a chain reaction of positive thoughts, positive events and positive outcome. It is a catalyst; a spark that creates extraordinary results. That's an Entrepreneur's power of attitude.
Now to you the youth:
Travel the path of integrity without looking back and just remember that there is never a wrong time to do the right thing.
If you stay too long in a sugar factory you will forget the taste of real honey.
Remember opportunity is like an ice cream; make use of it before it melts.
Some people make things happen; some people watch things happen while others wonder what happened. Real leaders are ordinary people with extraordinary determination.
Ladies and Gentlemen: Let's Create Wealth!
Thank you for listening and stay blessed.