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5 Years of Spreading Luck - Everyone Needs a Little Help

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In business the role luck plays in success and personal achievement is rarely discussed. If luck is mentioned, it is done with slight condescension, and usually dismissed as a product of hard work, not deserving significant attention. While hard work is paramount – and I have written extensively about the importance of working hard – history and my own experiences show that there is often a large element of success that hard work alone can not explain. It is simply not true that “you make your own luck.” I started my career as a salesman, a copier salesman to be specific, young, hungry, and hardworking, but the reality was that I was just one of thousands of young Nigerian graduates, all eager to succeed. How did I get from there to where I am now? Of course, hard work, resilience, a long-term vision – but also luck. A year later after earning my Master’s degree in Economics from the University of Lagos, I applied to join a new generation bank, Allstates Trust Bank...

The 5 Things That Matter More Than Making Money

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 VIDEO  PODCASTS  ARTICLES  START A BUSINESS  STORE  BOOKS WOMEN ENTREPRENEUR GREEN ENTREPRENEUR ASK AN EXPERT SHOP ENTREPRENEUR FORMS FRANCHISE PRODUCTS WEBINARS SPOTLIGHT TOPICS MAGAZINE NEWSLETTER EDITIONS OTHER SITE MAP All the money in the world won't make a difference if you don't have these five things Image credit: Michael Trujillo/EyeEm | Getty Images But some things are more important than money and ignoring them will make your money worthless. Here are the top five things that should take priority over the dollar in your day-to-day. 1.  Your faith  This isn’t religious faith, although that can be part of it. The faith I’m talking about is the faith you have in yourself, your  dream  and your business. Without this faith, it doesn’t matter how good your product or service is. I’ve seen  doubt  destroy businesses that could have chan...

5 timeless lessons for success from the early years of Warren Buffett’s annual shareholder letters

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SKIP NAVIGATION Warren Buffett, Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. Warren Buffett  took over  Berkshire Hathaway  in 1965. At the time, the company was a struggling textile mill in New Bedford, Mass. Today, the investing conglomerate has a market cap of more than $500 billion and the 88-year-old CEO and chairman is himself worth $87 billion,  according to Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index . Each year, Buffett writes a letter to his shareholders. Here are five pieces of Buffett’s best advice about to be successful in business, culled from early annual letters. Stay nimble “We could just field a basketball team with our corporate headquarters group (which utilizes only about 1500 square feet of space),”  Buffett wrote in 1979 . (Basketball is played with five people on t...