Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Our deepest fear

yhello all,

One way I have discovered to relax after each day's work of seeing inspiring movies. It helps to really relax my nerves. One great actor, director and producer that i am really thrilled by his works is Tyler Perry ( Diary of a mad black woman, Madea's family reunion, Daddy's daughters etc). You get to think deeply after any of his movies. I recently read about him in Ebony magazine (October 2008's edition). Like my last article, He is someone i can also refer to as a contrarian thinker. His method of film production as been compared to that of Hollywood and he is making a cool name for himself. For any movie that would be produced at $50 million in Holywood, He would do the same for $10 million and would still make more profit than his Hollywood counterpart.

Over the weekend, I had to see a movie that I had seen before. The title is "Akeelah and the bee". Its a lovely film starring Lawrence Fishbone. Its about a small girl called Akeelah with her great spelling skills obviously inspired by her dad. Truth is I tried spelling some words along with them but it was not really that simple.I want to share with us a quote that was shared with Akeelah in the film. It got me really thinking and I just got more motivated.
Here is the quote

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate,
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
We ask ourselves, who am i to be brilliant, georgeous, talented and fabulous.
Actually, whoare you not to be.
We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us,and as we let our own light shine, We unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.


Most of us have looked at the wealthy people in our world today and we have come to a conclusion that they are the only ones suitable to be. The question really is who are you not to be wealthy. Its also funny when we see people drive past us in posh cars and we just conclude that they dont have a clean source of wealth. we even refer to them as the wealthy ones or in Yoruba- "awon olowo" i.e the rich ones. question here is if they are the rich ones, then who are you?

I do hope we can pause here and look at the level where we are and really understand that we are responsible for that level which we find ourselves. The person stopping us from achieving greatness in life is the person we see when we look into the mirror.We can achieve greatness if only we can overcome our deepest fear which is that WE ARE POWERFUL BEYOND MEASURE.
Its a jolly ride at the top and i do hope to see you there.

Thinking on the contrary

Remember that the airplane takes off AGAINST THE WIND not with it - Henry Ford

yhello,

Been a while sort of. Not that i was tired of writing but was looking forward to creating a real big stir. I had been always in support of people who are not too rigid in their thinking.Sometimes, what it will take to get the job done is our ability to think on the contrary. We need to know the difference between been active and been productive.

Let me share this article titled "Two centuries of contrarian thinkers" written by Michal Lev-ram. This articles talks about 8 individuals.

1. Samuel Brannan (1819-1889)
Contrarian insight: the real money's is in the picks and shovels, not the gold
Legacy: the 1st publicist of the California gold rush bought every shovel in San Francisco before he ran through the street shouting "gold!gold! gold! from the American river!" Cisco Systems has become a $32 billion company using a similar strategy, selling th routers and switches that form the backbone of the internet.

2. Aaron Montgomery Ward (1844-1913)
Contrarian Insight: Cut out the middlemen.
Legacy: Ward founded the world's 1st mail order business, Montgomery Ward Co. in 1872. countless othr catalog based companies have followed in his footsteps, including infrmation-age retailers like Amazon.com

3. King Camp Gillette (1855-1932)
Contrarian insight: sell the razors cheap and the blades dear.
Legacy: Gillette's loss-leader strategy has been replicated by countless companies. Hewlett-Packard makes billions by peddling $30 ink catridges for its $100 printers and while Sony losses money on its Playstations, it cleans up on th games.

4. Henry Ford ( 1863-1947)
Contrarian insight: Create a mass market for mass produced goods.
Legacy: in 1914, Ford doubled the standard industrial wage and laid the foundation for today's consumer society, assembly-line production of goods made by workers paid just enought to afford them.

5. Coco Chanel (1883-1971)
Contrarian insight: (Men's) clothes make the woman.
Legacy: back when women wore rib-cracking corsets, Chanel appropriated menswear to dress the "second sex" for the business world. Women snapped up her boxy tweed jackets and pants, and her small Paris shop became an international powerhouse, its runaway success forever changing women's fashion.

6. Leo Burnett (1891-1971)
Contrarian insight: image is everything
Legacy: that's a truism today but when advertising pioneer Burnett got his start, most ads consisted of wordy product descriptions. Burnett created such enduring icons as Tony the Tiger and the Pillsbury Doughboy and proved that it is the picture, not the prose, that really captures the consumer's attention.

7. Juan Trippe (1899-1981)
Contrarian insight: cater to coach class
Legacy: in the 1940s, when air travel was still rservd for industrialists, movie stars, and royalty. Pan Am's troupe started selling "tourist class" tickets for his newly expanded global air routes. he paved the way for mass tourism and generations of discount airlines, from Laker Airways to Jetblue.

8. Mary Kay Ash (1918-2001)
Contrarian insight: sales team sell more than salespeople.
Legacy: the founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics put a feminine twist on th multilevel marketing model pioneered by Amway. she championed cooperation, not competition, and brought more than a million women into the workforce to compete for her annual top sales prize, a pink Cadillac

see ya all