Everyone craves to be wealthy.  We secretly wish we could be like the wealthy. We look at them with a combination of admiration, envy and resentment. How come they are so wealthy while we are dirt poor?

On the other hand, we despise the poor.  We look at them with contempt. Sometimes hatred! How did they manage to squander all the opportunities they had all their live? We attribute all the evils in the world to the poor. We sometimes secretly wish the government could “do something about them.”

Yes, the super wealthy rule the world. They make up just 0.2% of the world’s population. They live in the biggest mansions and own the choicest properties. They ride the best cars and marry the most beautiful women. They have everything figured out, we surmise.

Who are the wealthy and super rich? They abound in commerce, politics, entertainment, sports,  IT, finance, oil and gas, to mention a few.  Indeed, they abound in every sphere of human endevour.

Don’t look too far and not in any particular order, the following names readily come to mind, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Gates, Ambani, Ma, Musk, Jay Z, Madonna,  and Jordan. Of course we should not forget the wealthiest of them all, Bezos.

Among the super wealthy you can count Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Muslims, unbelievers, Blacks, Whites, Browns, mixed races, men, women, and people from all continents.

What then separates the wealthy from the poor? If not some undue advantage in opportunities, skin colour, religion, intellect, industry, talent, place and time of birth, what?

The Paul Uduk Seven Immutable Laws of Wealth seeks to pinpoint the seven immutable laws you must live by if you wish to leave the ranks of the poor and pitch your tent with the wealthy.

Develop Wealth Consciousness

While the average person is not born with wealth consciousness, along the way the person destined to be wealthy acquires this critical skill. The wealthy person pays attention to nurturing and multiplying his wealth. For instance, Bill Gates attributes his wealth not so much to what he makes as Microsoft’s co-founder, but to the excellent work of his portfolio manager, Michael Larson.  Most teachers of wealth teach delayed gratification. This is a subset of wealth consciousness. Dale Carnegie was a wealth- conscious business magnet.  He taught that a person should spend the first third of his life learning, the second third making money, and the third third giving it all away. He practiced his philosophy to the letter, spending millions building libraries across America and Europe. On the other hand the poor person spends his money on whim.  He’s eats out, clubs, parties, celebrates and donates generously just to thought of as “rich.” In short, he tries to copy the “Millionaire Next Door.”  A millionaire mentor told me when the property he was occupying as a tenant came up for sale, his co-tenant who was throwing parties every weekend   was unable to come up with the cash so he paid for the two wings.  The party-man was not wealth conscious.

Use Time Well

Time is the most precious and scarcest resource because as economists say, its supply is inelastic. You can’t store or warehouse it, you can’t stop it, and you can’t increase it. Though you can pay for other people’s time (OPT), to do so can be prohibitively costly, so only the wealthy can actually afford OPT.  Effective use of time requires a mindset that abhors procrastination and perfectionism.  The super-wealthy use time well; sadly the same cannot be said of the poor. While time is an abstract, how you use it is a mindset. But do you know that the wealthy and the poor have the same amount of this most important resource?  From birth until death the wealthy and the poor have equal amount of time daily: 24 hours. You will be wealthy to the extent to how judiciously you use this limited resource.

Focus On One Thing At a Time

To be wealthy, develop FOCUS. Focus on one thing at a time. While the wealthy focus on one thing at a time, the poor generally pursue many ends thereby dissipating his energy. If you look carefully whenever the wealthy pursues an end, he burns his boat and never looks back. On the other hand the poor always hedges his bets. Take for an example, Jeff Bezos. He focused on E-Commerce, Bill Gate on computer coding, and Jay Z on entertainment. On the other hand, the average poor never pursue anything to the logical end. He may be in real estate today, network marketing tomorrow and motivational speaking next tomorrow. This approach is a recipe for poverty as these are entirely different industries. Why not set sights on real estate first, conquer it, before attempting something else?  Some thought leaders mix up FOCUS with risk taking. This is a mistake. The wealthiest avoid risk as the plague. Ask Warren Buffet and he will tell you he never invest in risky companies he knows nothing about because he is looking at his portfolio not individual companies.

Think Big

Hate him or love him, Donald J. Trump, the outgoing American president, is one of the biggest proponents of thinking big. Yet if you look closely, all the wealthy think big. Jeff Bezos is not just building an eCommerce company, but the most customer-centric company on the planet. Bill Gates did not just go out to build Microsoft, but the biggest software company in the world. Not to be outdone, Mark Zuckerberg’s empire now includes Facebook, Instagram and Messenger.  Dr. Ernest Azudialu Obiejesi who sits atop the Nestoil Empire once quipped, why run after a rat if you can pursue an elephant? Nkech Obi was at Mobil and discovered Mobil was buying and selling oil, and she said, what the heck? She pivoted and set up Techno Oil, one of the largest downstream players in the Nigerian oil and gas sector today. Tony Elumelu didn’t think small when he took over UBA, pioneered Transcorp, and birthed TEF (Tony Elumelu Foundation), now with over $1billion in funds. Paul Onwanibe  didn’t think small when he set sights to building Landmark Properties, with tentacles in the five continents. So thinking BIG is one of the hallmarks of the wealthy. Really, why think small if you can think BIG?

Rub Shoulders With The Wealthy

Rubbing shoulders with the wealthy will not only suck you into the world of the wealthy, but will reprogram your mind to see things in broader perspective. Rubbing shoulders with the wealthy is not just about networking, which sometimes hardly transcends superficial relationship, but it’s about getting close enough to be mentored by the wealthy. What can you do to enter the radar of the wealthy? Write  books, start a podcast or a YouTube Channel to mention three. To me, my books  and platforms, Experience Annex and Executive Business Roundtable (aka Legend’s Network) gave me access to business moguls and corporate titans.  You can’t be wealthy unless you reprogram your mind to think as the wealthy. The easiest way to do that is to enter into the world of the wealthy through the back door.   Don King, the boxing promoter, once told Dennis P. Kimbro, the co-author of Think and Grow Rich: A Black Choice, his plan for becoming a billionaire was “by hanging around billionaires, learning all they know.” So hatch a plan and find a way to rub shoulders with the wealthy.

Work Hard

The things associated with the wealthy are Gulf Stream Jets, Super Yachts, Golf Courses, Ocean Blue Islands, Hot Air Balloon and mansions in exclusive neighborhoods. These are what you see at the front end. But peel the curtain a little and what you’ll see at the back end is hard work. Look closely how Richard Branson lost his “virginity”, how Tony Elumelu became the poster boy for “Jankara Banking”, and Dr. Ernest Azudialu Obiejesi became “King of the Swamps” and you’ll see hard work.  Many believe hard work does not matter in today’s digital world where you can set everything up to work on autopilot. To those who have ears, beware, nothing could be further from the truth. Do you know that Jeff Bezos used to kneel to sort parcels when Amazon was starting out in 1995? Till date he extols his people” It’s Always Day 1 at Amazon.” If you’re not willing to work hard, then perish the thought of getting wealthy. In his Good to Great, author Jim Collins wrote about the concept of the flywheel. That’s what hard work is all about. Then as you become wealthy, you can start using OPT (Other People’s Talent) and leverage technology to keep scaling to multiply your wealth.

Keep Learning

Today we live in a world where learning has to be from cradle to cradle. You have to learn everyday and teach your children, grand children and great grandchildren to learn everyday so they not only conserve your hard-earned wealth, but multiply it.  Learning is not only about webinars, but getting personal coaches to make you better and performing at your peak in all dimensions of life, including how to relax because you’ve earned it. It’s at this point you also learn how to do good even better by stooping down to help the less privileged. Some super wealthy start out dirt poor but through a dint of hard work, learn to overcome the bad hand fate dealt them at birth. One well documented example is John H. Johnson of Ebony Magazine fame who in his day rose to become the 400^th richest American. In his book, Succeeding Against the Odds, he alluded to the fact that his family was not only poor, but they were the “poorest of the poor.”  John H. Johnson learnt to speak despite being a stammerer; he learnt to believe in himself, he learnt to write and sell, and as they say, the rest is history. Keep learning and wealth will be at your grasp.

There you have them, the Paul Uduk Seven Immutable Laws of Wealth. If you follow the seven immutable laws of wealth as religion and let them guide everything you do you’ll be wealthy beyond measure. Don’t forget, they include, Develop Wealth Consciousness, Use Time Well, Focus On One Thing At a Time, Think Big, Rub Shoulders With The Wealthy, Work Hard, and Keep Learning.