I’ve learned from mentors that when we have financial challenges in business, the best solution is to sell our way out of it.
That thought stayed with me while I was recently in Africa. Why? Because my entire being was consumed with their obvious and ever present challenge of poverty, deep deep poverty which, in South Africa, is in large part the result of the genocidal practice of apartheid. This poverty appears to be insurmountable. How does a nation that has so many poor, so many unemployed and so much resultant crime, pull itself out of this downward spiral? I kept hearing my mentor’s voice in my mind saying, “sell your way out.” How does a nation ‘sell’ when it’s population is so largely unemployed and impoverished? Then it hit me, EDUCATION! Education is the only possible solution. Educate the citizens, young and old, in ways that will make them productive in a system that creates and sells goods and services… and then sell the hell out of it.
I could hear my mentor saying about this huge challenge, “educate and TRAIN your way out of it…. and then sell, sell, sell your way out of it.”
In my next blog entry I will tell you about the work I did with an amazing, I mean AMAZING school in Africa developed by Dr. Taddy Blecher, which I believe will change the course of South Africa’s history for years to come because they are doing just that.
However, for now, I want to remind us all that with regard to any challenge that we face today that we must indeed ‘educate’ our way out of it. Learn what is causing the challenge, what contributes to it, what it affects and the implications of not taking action and get to work.
It’s the Face It, Follow It, Fix it model from Illuminate: Harnessing The Positive Power of Negative Thinking.
PS. To my dear friends who came up to me at after a speech in Pittsburgh last week, I remind you that you cannot HAVE more until you BECOME more….so keep learning, keep sharpening up your skills and I promise you that you will contribute more and have all that your heart desires.
