The Richest Man in…

Yesterday, Forbes and CNN celebrated the emergence of a new richest man in the world, and announced the movement of Bill Gates to 3rd position, the first time in over 13yrs. I did a quick run through of the list of the world’s billionaire and marveled. India had managed to clinch, 4th, 5th and 6th position, putting themselves firmly in the top 10 richest men in the world. Another notable entrant into the billionaire list was Mark Zucherberg, now the youngest billionaire in the world.

The concept of riches and wealth never ceases to amaze me, it is said that questions are the answers that we seek. I have asked a variety of questions in my bid to understand the subject of wealth. Why are some people rich and some others poor? Why are some people paid so well, while some others are rewarded poorly? Why do some men sweat blood all day, only to earn peanuts in the night. Is there a hard and fast formula for predicting the wealth off an individual? Is there a prescriptive formula that all that desire enduring wealth must practice? Well, haven asked for long, sometime ago, I stumbled on the answer. This answer is original and more complete than most of the theorems I have heard.

There is a sure formula with variables that if altered, can be very indicative of the wealth the individual whose equation is being analyzed will have. If you want to know how much you should be earning today, just plug in your values in this equation. If you want to change your current routine, just plug in this equation and it will give you the impact of the change on your financial future. Do you know your worth? Do you know how much you should be earning per month? Is your employer cheating you, or are you cheating your employer? Use this wealth calculator and find out where you are headed.

Wealth = F{(Financial Worth of Value Added Services) * k(No of people value is added to)}

Defining the Parameters

Financial Worth of Value Added Services: This is the average percieved monetary value of any service/value that you are adding. This can also be seen as the amount above which the people to whom you are adding value are unwilling to pay. This worth of this value added is a function of scarcity of the skill required to perform the task. High skilled professionals will generate more value than lower skilled professionals. Scarce skills will have alarming values, while skills that are virtually general to anybody will have little or no value. It is also a function of the level of the need being served on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The lower levels are more valuable.

No of people value is added to: These are the number of people deriving the value that is being added. Some professionals work to serve only one person, some work to serve hundreds, some thousands and some millions.

K: K is the coefficient of perception. Not all the value one adds to the people one adds it is perceived correctly as value. There are some people who you add value to that are so far from you, they do not even perceive that the value comes from you. There are a variety of indices that do not allow wealth to be the direct multiplication of Worth and People, all these are summarized into K. K is less than or equal to 1. K approaches one as perception approaches reality.

In case this mathematical buhaha bores you, let me quickly educate you on what this means. Each profession has its financial worth. Any activity that adds value to another has financial worth. However you will not be wealthy by only participating in the high value professions, but by making sure that you increase the number of people your value affects.

In order to reinforce this point let us look critically at this formula. We can safely assume for example that the perceived value of a messenger’s job in Nigeria is $30, if he is performing this role for 20 people he’s going to earn more than if he was serving one person with the value. A typist is a higher skill, delivering higher value, but a typist that types for a road side company might not earn as much as a Chevron messenger. Why? Because the perceived value of the jobs differ from their actual values and the Chevron messenger is adding this value to a lot more people.

This formula plays well on the regular skills chart, where it becomes interesting is when you ask yourself why are footballers paid so much? It’s simple; the perceived value they are delivering is entertainment value and is very low on the scale of human needs. Footballers however earn so much because of the number of people they add the value directly to, and the coefficient of perception being almost 1 for them. The financial value of their service may not be more than $0.1, but they have over 10,000,000 people glued to the screens around the world per time. Same thing with musicians, actors, presenters, authors e.t.c.

World over it is being discovered that the sure way to wealth is not necessarily by increasing the value added, but by increasing the number of people to whom the value is being added. Bill Gates confidently hugged the number one position for 13yrs, and I believe his reign is not yet over. He did this by determining to add value to as many human beings in the world- His vision to get his software into every home, to take personal computing into every family. Warren Buffet has grown into the oracle of Omaha, the companies he affects, and the people who listen to his speculations easily make him well worth the position of the richest man in the world. Mark Zucherberg, is attaining billionaire status at 23, why? Because even though the value of facebook is arguable, the number of millions it commands is alarming. Dangote is well in the picture as well, for similar reasons and perhaps some others, but note, until Dangote shared his wealth and empowered others to gain from it, even though it was win-win for him, he never became known as Africa’s richest man.

Think about it, you, yes you can rise from obscurity to abundance, just by understanding this formula and applying it. What value can you add? Is it in writing, singing, programming, dancing, speaking, encouraging, counselling, teaching, helping, assisting, accounting, engineering, IT, e.t.c, just find a way to connect with a large audience, add your value on a bigger scale and your account will measure up with it. Consciously cultivate a network, be a part of one, give yourself access to more people, don’t worry if the money is not coming in yet, what you are putting in place is the structure to make it so.

The future belongs to the people with big networks. Either networks they cultivated, or simply by the good use of network TV, or by the use of internet (works). Whatever you do this year, think value, think network… and you’ll well be on your way to becoming the richest man in….