Of Delay Gratification and Fear Enslavement
By Tim Akano
There is a unanimity of opinion among the Forbes100 list of the world’s richest people that the hope, expectations and desire for quick wins, physical pleasure, happiness, fame, power is the number one reason why most people fail to realize their life ambition.
10/10 on the Forbes100 list believe, delay satisfaction, tactical withdrawal, ability to enslave desire for quick rewards are more relevant that the possession of a massive brainpower.
More importantly, the richest people in the world also have one thing in common: ability to enslave fear and cage doubt the way zoologists cage Lions in the Zoo.
. That is no mean skill.
Intelligence is overrated, Talent is over hyped, sound education is not absolute but he who possesses life skills in abundance with self-mastery will always have more enduring wins.
Let us use 6 Case-Studies to drive home the point.
CASE STUDY 1: RONALD WAYNE
Ronald who?- I can hear someone soliloquising?
Everyone knows Steve Jobs, Apple Co-founder. But Apple actually had 3 Co-founders in the beginning: Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne and the three owned 21%, 25% and 10% respectively of Apple stocks.
Indeed it was Ronald Wayne who drafted the Apple Agreement on the morning of April 1st 1976.
Wayne was also the one who drew Apple company first logo that was used for the first year.
But Wayne became apprehensive, unsure of the future of Apple when Steve Jobs went to take a loan of $15,000 with which they executed the first contract to supply 100 Mac computers to Byte shop.
Fear of bankruptcy gripped Wayne. He reasoned that if the customer defulted in paying Apple, Apple would be unable to repay the loan it took and automatically went bankrupt.
As the only man among the 3 who had assets of a house and others, he reasoned that he would be the greatest loser if Apple couldn’t repay its loan.
After spending just 12 days on the Board of Apple, Wayne, 40 then, had his name taken off the Apple book and sold his shares to the two Steves at .$800 and walked away.
He later sold the original Apple contract which he kept since 1976 at $500 in 1990, something that was worth millions of dollars two years later!
Apple became a mega success as the first company to hit a trillion dollars valuation.
As at today January 28th 2022,, Apple market Valuation stands at $3 Trillion, bigger than the entire Africa GDP of $2.6 Trillion.
Wayne could have ended up as one of the richest men of all time as his original 10% equity in Apple is worth over $300 Billion today, almost the size of Egypt GDP!
CASE STUDY 2: JEFF BEZO’S AMAZON
Amazon turned its first profit on the first quarter of 2001 of $0.01 (I.e.1Cent per share). How old was Amazon when it broke even? 14 years old.
The Western media crowned Jeff Bezo as the King of a loss making company. But Jeff did not allow those nasty criticisms to distract him. He went on to become the richest man on earth.
Today, he is among the world’s best 3 in the wealth club.
CASE STUDY 3: ELON MUSK, TESLA
The current title holder of the world’s richest man, the marveric Elon Musk waited for 18 solid years of hard labour before Tesla could turn in the first profit of $721 million in 2020 as against a loss of $862m in 2019.
CASE STUDY 4: Facebook
Even Facebook that was established in 2004 did not make profit until 2012. Indeed the case of Facebook was funny: it couldn’t figure out how to make profit until its 8th birthday anniversary!
CASE STUDY 5: CNN OF TED TURNER
CNN was a loss making network for the first 5 years of its establishment.
Other Media and analysts mocked them as Chicken Noodle Network (CNN)
Ted Turner later sold CNN to Time Warner in a Stock deal valued at $7.3billion. But Turner lost CNN when Time Warner’s stock collapsed in the wake of merger of 2001 with AOL.
In his autobiography, Ted Turner admitted the greatest regret he has in life is *the loss of CNN*
Ted Turner would have been the most powerful man on earth today if he didn’t sell his stake so early in CNN.
CASE STUDY 6: ZOOM BY ERIC YUAN
Eric Yuan founded Zoom in 2011 but became profitable for the first time in 2019, nine years after. Eric is one of the greatest beneficiaries of Covid-19 pandemic as Zoom, zoomed past Bill Gates” Skype, Google’s Team Meet and Cisco’s Webex to become the generic name of video conferencing technology.
Let’s Zoom: *Eric’s success didn’t just zoom in, his wealth crawled in
TAKE HOME
1 It takes an average of 13 years of deliberate activities to become an Authority in a particular field.
This is true for Tiger Woods in Golf, Messi in Football, Bill Gates in Software, Mark Zuckerberg in Social media, Barack Obama in Politics, name them.
For instance, Serena Williams’ daughter, Olympia has started playing tennis at age 4 and she has 800,000 ➕ followers on instagram.
By the time she is 15 years, all things being equal, she would have emerged as a world champion ( 2 ➕ 13 years=15). Just the same age Tiger Woods became the world’s Golf Tiger.
2 Delay satisfaction, delay desire and delay gratification will ultimately bring complete fulfilment.
3 Enslavement of fear, doubt and anxiety are the sine- qua -non for mega breakthrough.
Wayne of Apple was enslaved by fear of Apple going south, he missed a once in a generation $300 billion opportunity!
The young African leaders we are empowering and on whose shoulders lie the complete transformation of Africa should learn to enslave fear rather than fear enslaving them.
For 500 years, Africans have been enslaved not just by other races but also by fear.
The young Africans should conquer and enslave fear by joining the Teams going on space exploration and other dangerous adventures. No risk, no gains.
It is possible, costly though, but it is within reach with delay gratification and enslavement of fear
- Tim Akano is the President, One Africa Initiatives
Timakano1@gmail.com
