Money is not an end itself; it is simply a tool that initially helps establish business to ultimately grow it further

The title for this blog is almost synonymous with entrepreneur, author and motivator Robert Kiyosaki, whose story we all know by now. It goes something like this: When Kiyosaki was nine years old, he approached his best friend’s father, Mike, to teach him to make money. Mike gave the young Kiyosaki a menial job in one of the grocery shops he owned. It was not exactly what Kiyosaki had had in mind and after three weeks of dusting cans and making just ten cents a week, Kiyosaki told his friend’s dad he wanted to quit. Kiyosaki had not learned how to make a fortune, but what he had learned was a lesson far more valuable, Mike said years later. At the age of nine, Kiyosaki was beginning to understand the futility of working a job he hated for a meager salary that would not get him anywhere in life.

“The poor and middle class work for money. The rich have money work for them,” says Kiyosaki. “The rich buy or create assets that work for them so they don’t have to.” This last statement is the true essence of what it means to be an entrepreneur – not necessarily the “rich” part but, importantly, “creating assets” that work for you so you don’t have to!

One of the worst mistakes new entrepreneurs make is to believe the purpose of setting up enterprise is solely to make money. Seasoned entrepreneurs, on the other hand, impart the valuable lesson that money is not an end itself; it is simply a tool that initially helps establish business to ultimately grow it further, finally creating financial security.

The age-old challenge many societies face is the bad habit of spending more than one has, allowing expenses to grow more than the income received. The truth is, you don’t need an MBA to know basic principles of cash flow; it is about just being determined and disciplined enough to remain in charge of your finances and make your money work for you.

Coming from very humble beginnings in rural Mpumalanga, I learned the true value of managing money from very early on in life. I would observe how my grandmother and mother managed to stretch very little income for long periods and also create ways to use the very little money available to create more money. I grew up observing my grandmother waking early in the morning to go and sell soup to nearby factories. This I later experienced as the value of investing profits back into one’s business, probably the single best investment one can make.

While still at the dawn of my journey as an entrepreneur, I appreciated from very early on one of the most important qualities of the most successful entrepreneurs is that they appreciate the true value of money and pay close attention to how they manage it. Good money management is not a minor detail; it is without question the difference between lasting success and the kind of success that quickly crumbles into failure.