HOW WARREN BUFFET BECAME THE RICHEST MAN IN THE WORLD

Every single human being on the face of the planet is unique. There are over 7 billion people on planet earth and no two persons have the same fingerprint! But we aren’t just unique in our fingerprint style; we are unique in our talents, temperaments, skill and perspective. Our individual uniqueness is accepted, embraced and celebrated by you and me when we were little children. Unfortunately, this uniqueness gets traded for what is popular or in vogue as you get older. You begin to lose your uniqueness as an individual when you give in to the pressure to belong as you become a young adult (starting from your early teens). As you trade off your uniqueness for what is in vogue or what is generally accepted by the public at large, you begin to struggle in all areas of your life. The unique talent and skill that God has blessed you with to make your life ‘easier’ has been cast aside in preference for that which you perceive to be in vogue or popular or what your friends are doing.

A lot of people today have university degrees, and are in a career, job—even relationship-- simply by going with what isn’t a natural fit for them but what others (the society, their friends and parents) have pressured them into doing. Whereas the truly successful people whom we all celebrate are doing the things they love and is a natural fit for them. And as a result of following and developing their own unique talents and gifts, they have all become rich beyond their wildest dreams. Warren Buffet is celebrated as perhaps the greatest investor that ever lived. But he didn’t choose that field of work because that was what all his friends were doing or because he felt that that field was the surest way for him to become rich (for every successful security analyst or stock broker like Warren Buffet, there are 10,000 others who have failed at investing for a living). Rather he went into that profession because from an early age, he had shown a natural fit and love for numbers and business.

Warren Buffet’s childhood

By the time Warren entered kindergarten, his hobbies and interests revolved around numbers. By age six, he became so fascinated by the precision of measuring time in seconds, and desperately wanted a stopwatch which his aunty eventually gave him. He liked anything that involved collecting, counting and memorizing numbers. He was a keen stamp and coin collector. He loved to count how often letters recurred in the newspaper and in the Bible. By fifth grade (around 9 years of age) he had immersed himself in the 1939 World Almanac, which quickly became his favorite book, and he memorized the population of every city in America! Also, his love for business didn’t develop when he was already an adult. When he was about 11 years old, he got himself hired to throw a paper route, delivering theWashington Post and two different routes for the Times-Herald. Listen to how he describes his experience on getting a very lucrative paper delivery route in Alice Schroeder’s The Snowball

“I started on a Sunday, and they handed me a book telling me the people and their apartment numbers. There was no training session and I didn’t have the book in advance. I got up there around 4:30am. There were these bundles and bundles of paper. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I didn’t know how the numbering system worked or anything. I sat there for hours and hours sorting and bundling the papers. I was short papers in the end, because people just took them from the bundles as they left for church. The whole thing was a disaster. I thought, ‘what the hell have I gotten into?’ It took until ten or eleven in the morning to finish up. But I stumbled my way through. And it got better and I got good very fast. It was easy”

By the time he was 16 years old, he was making more money than his teachers. Just from pitching newspapers a few hours a day, he was earning $175 a month ($2,100 a year) more money than his teachers (According to the U.S Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, the average man earned $2,473 a year in 1946. So a grown man felt well paid if he made $3,000 a year for full-time work) By the same age, he also had several businesses too. Buffet’s Golf Balls sold refurbished golf balls. Buffet’s Approval Service sold sets of collectible stamps to collectors. Buffet’s Showroom Shine was a car-pimping business he started and operated from a friend’s father’s garage.

His love for analyzing numbers and calculating odds didn’t start when he started buying insurance companies like GEICO Auto Insurance, National Indemnity and General Re [insurance companies deal on calculating odds and risks and the likelihood of an event occurring or not so they can price their premiums adequately]. As a young boy he loved to go the racetracks to watch horses race. He quickly became interested in calculating the chances of one horse winning a race over another horse. He would gather as much information on horses entering a race and tried to calculate the odds of them winning or losing a race. Listen again to how he describes this childhood hobby of his:

“…then what I would do is read all these books. I sent away to a place in Chicago on North Clark Street where you could get old racing forms, months of them, for very little. They were old, so who wanted them? I would go through them, using my handicapping techniques to handicap one day and see the next day how it worked out. I ran tests of my handicapping ability day after day, all these different systems I had in mind [the art of handicapping is based on information: the key was having more information than the other guy—then analyzing it right and using it rationally; handicapping horses combined two things he was very, very good at: collecting information and math]…I’d get the Daily Racing Form ahead of time and figure out the probability of each horse winning the race. Then I would compare those percentages to the odds. But I wouldn’t look at the odds first, to avoid prejudicing myself. Sometimes you would find a horse where the odds were way, way off from the actual probability. You figure the horse has a ten percentage chance of winning but it’s going off at fifteen to one. The less sophisticated the track, the better. You have people betting on the jockey’s colors, and you have them betting on their birthdays, you have them betting on the horses’ names. And the trick, of course, is to be in a group where practically no one is analytical and you have a lot of data. So I would study the forms like crazy when I was a kid”

Having shown this knack for numbers and business from an early age, it was only right that he set out to begin a career in a field (security analyst or stock broker) where his natural skill would be most useful. Had he decided to go to medical school and become a doctor, you and I would never have heard of him

Rediscover the real you

What is that unique skill or talent you exhibited as a child? Have you abandoned it because it wasn’t approved by your family, friends and society? The world desires conformity and people everywhere are always quick to look down on their own talents and experiences to go for the talent and skill of someone who has taken the time to polish his or her talent. Your uniqueness matters. I’m sure with the huge popularity of Gangnam style video and dance (based on Park Jae-sang’s--also known as PSY-- take on the lifestyle associated with the people living in the Gangnam District of Seoul-- an area where the rich people of Korea live, just like Lekki Phase 1 or VGC in Lagos), copycats are already cooking up ways of imitating and copying his concept and they’ll most likely give theirs a similar sounding name (e.g. Namgan style)

The path for your success in life has already been forged inside you as a child. The things you loved doing, the talents and skills that came naturally to you are the tools you need to catapult you to a life of riches and happiness that you have every right to enjoy--just like all the other rich and famous people you read about and see on the T.V have.

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Atosent Worldwide

InterSwitch, Globacom and First Bank launch GloFirst CashCard

InterSwitch in conjunction with telecommunication giants, Globacom, and Nigeria’s foremost bank, introduced an innovative card product called GloFirst CashCard. GloFirst CashCard is a pre-paid debit card which allows users who do not have bank accounts to perform electronic transactions like bank account holders and debit card users via the Glo Mobile network. This is the first time non-bank account holders will be able to use a payment card. GloFirst is available to both bank account holders and the non-banking public. You won’t need to have a bank account to own a GloFirst CashCard. The new product which boosts the country’s electronic payment system can be used for a variety of transactions, including withdrawing cash from Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) and day-to-day purchase transactions in outlets with point-of-sale terminals (POS). Through Glo M-Banking, GloFirst users can have swift and easy access to their bank accounts from their mobile phones and perform certain transactions such as checking account balances, transferring funds and ordering checkbooks. The card could be used for making purchases on the internet, in retail stores, supermarkets, fuel stations, hotels and restaurants where CashCard payments are accepted.“GloFirst can also be used to withdraw money, check card balance, print mini statement, change Personal Identification Number (PIN), and transfer money to another CashCard or bank account. According to Globacom’s Chief Operating Officer, Mohamed Jameel, the product can also be used to send and receive funds. “For example, parents can send money to their children in schools using GloFirst as long as they are on the Glo network. The CashCard can also be used to buy airtime,” he added. GloFirst is available to both existing and new subscribers to the network and affords subscribers the opportunity to do much more from their handsets. Commenting on Globacom’s collaboration with First Bank and Interswitch, Jameel stated that is to be expected as the three companies are truly innovative brands, and leaders in their fields. In his welcome address, Managing Director/Chief Executive of FirstBank, Moyo Ajekigbe, represented by the bank’s Executive Director, Retail Banking (Lagos & West), Remi Babalola, said FirstBank is proud to be part of this innovative product, which seeks to extend the frontiers of banking services to the majority of the populace.Mitchell Elegbe, the Managing Director of Interswitch, noted that apart from being convenient and trendy, the new product is safe, secure and reliable. “The user’s money is safe even if the card is lost,” he added. He noted that Interswitch, being the leader in switching technology, was pleased to partner with FirstBank, the largest and most successful bank in the country and Globacom, Africa’s fastest growing and most innovative telecommunications network. He added that, “First Bank, Globacom and Interswitch are united by a passion for excellence and for proffering solutions to our customers’ needs”.Elegbe said the card is suitable “for use by people who do not have a bank debit card (ATM card), and those who don’t wish to use their bank debit card to make purchases online and that it can be funded from any bank on the Interswitch network. Globacom’s COO also said that GloFirst can be obtained, free of charge, at any First Bank branch or Glo World outlets located in strategic locations across the country. “All a customer needs to do is to fill up a form and the GloFirst card would be handed over to him”, he said. The customer is then required to change the initial Personal Identification Number (PIN) that comes with the GloFirst before he begins to use the card. A history of the GloFirst CashCard transactions is obtainable on the internet at www.mynigeriacashcard.com after the customer has registered.

OmniPay Africa
Update:June 21, 2007 OmniPay Africa had planned to become operational, conducting both in and outexchanges by June 18th. It now appears this service will be delayed several weeks. Establishment of OmniPay Africa has been on-going, designed to facilitate a remote and sophisticated payment capability to the majority of mankind underserved or excluded from traditional banking and constituting it properly is imperative. The complexities of making OmniPay Africa fully operational in an accelerated manner have been greater than originally anticipated causing this delay. We assure you we are working diligently to bring OmniPay Africa online.Notice May 24, 2007: Effective immediately, G&SR will be leasing the OmniPay business to OmniPay Africa. All OmniPay exchanges will now involve e-gold transfers and money payments into/out of OmniPay Africa's e-gold and bank accounts respectively. G&SR has contracted to serve as the Operator of OmniPay but will not be a party to actual exchanges.In terms of immediate impacts:The OmniPay exchange service will suspend operation pending provisioning of a suitable bank account for OmniPay Africa. It is anticipated this service interruption will start May 24, 2007 with service resuming on or about June 18, 2007.With resumption, all bank wires from customers must be directed tothe new bank coordinates which will be posted on the omnipay.com website.The original plan was for OmniPay Africa to organize as a licensee of G&SR, the US company that owns OmniPay. A substantial development effort was underway to support the additional requirements for over-the-counter exchange operations such as biometric validation. However, recent actions of the US government, originating from a long-standing and misguided animus on the part of the US Secret Service, necessitate immediate action. Specifically, SEB Bank in Estonia has notified G&SR it is closing its bank account at close of business May 25, 2007 explicitly because of the Press Release from the US DOJ.We regret the temporary interruption of OmniPay services. Just as the US government's recent actions in seizing e-gold accounts of e-gold Ltd., G&SR, The Bullion Exchange, AnyGoldNow, IceGold, GitGold, The Denver Gold Exchange, GoldPouch Express and 1MDC (and forcing G&SR to liquidate the seized assets!) have severely damaged not only these exchange businesses but also their innumerable customers, their forcing this complex transition to be performed on an emergency basis is simply shameful.We do not however regret the transfer of OmniPay responsibilities to OmniPay Africa. As will become abundantly clear in coming months, the OmniPay Africa team is highly qualified to guide OmniPay to a higher level, a genuinely global service that will foster a beneficial surge in e-gold's emergence while bringing significant advantages to emerging economies.Strategic BackgroundA major strategic emphasis for e-gold is to provide sophisticated remote payments capabilities to the majority of mankind underserved by or excluded by the banking system. An important focus is international remittances - payments from migrant workers living in advanced economies sending a portion of their earnings to their home country. For many developing economies, migrant remittances constitute a significant portion of foreign exchange income and even GDP. Traditional remittance mechanisms, however, are expensive and inflexible. It is estimated that lowering the net cost of remittances by a few percentage points could measurably enhance economic development. There is also increasing awareness that non-traditional banking such as micro-credit facilities can also aid in bootstrapping lesser developed economies.OmniPay Africa, an entirely non-US company, majority owned by prominent business leaders from the Francophone countries of West Africa, was therefore organized to extend the usefulness of e-gold by providing support for over-the-counter exchange and by fostering the integration of e-gold into micro-credit lending institutions. The combination of e-gold (settling the international transfer of value with no need for a financial intermediary) and OmniPay (offering standardized, reliable, low cost exchange to/from local currency) will serve as a flexible low cost alternative to the traditional systems.

SKYE Bank Introduces SkyeBank CashCard (Magic Card)

Skye Bank Nigeria Plc recently launched three new card products into the market on the platform of CashCard, powered by InterSwitch. The products are TeensCard, CampusCard and SkyeBank CashCard which is also called the Magic Card.All three cards can be funded electronically even via the Internet on www.mynigeriacashcard.com or mobile phone and made to serve as an electronic purse to enhance the convenience of the holder. The card transactions can be done at anytime of the day with money transferred to any part of the country where an ATM machine is available. Speaking about the products, head of eChannels, Mr. Chuma Ezirim, said the CampusCard, for instance, is the end result of a comprehensive research which showed that money transfer remained one of the biggest needs of students across the country.The card which will ease the pain of trying to receive money from various destinations will be given to students free; while maximum withdrawal at ATMs is N50, 000 per day, and N1, 000, 000 at point of sales terminal, POS per day.