“Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.” — Mark Twain
The room was stuffy but thirty five of us were eager to be there. As far as I can remember, I have never heard of such thing before – Free Mathematics Lesson. As a rational Muslim, I had no interest in the Christian content that underpinned the atmosphere; I was honoring the invitation of the beautiful girl beside me. After a little delay, which gave me the opportunity to chat with the damsel, the teacher came in. I would personally describe him as a lanky guy with big bulgy eyes with a bag pack on his back but there was a force about him that I could not explain. I was immediately drawn to his words as he explained mathematics.
This lanky guy was totally cool and straight up ambitious. He talked about approaching first class division in his final year on campus and expressed keen interest in buying a SUV immediately after he got his first job. He made a quote that remained with me till today; “The difference between the rich and the poor is knowledge differential”. After the intriguing two-hour lecture, I was so intrigued that I gathered the following about him; he was the General Secretary of a Christian Campus Fellowship called Student Christian Movement (SCM) and was popularly referred to as Pastor D. This was the year 1998 and I had never heard a Pastor talk so cool. I was immediately hooked to the SCM community without initially hearing the words “Jesus Christ” mentioned once.
After this peculiar incident, I started realizing how important the “knowledge differential” quote of Pastor D was. Due to ignorance, I made some important loses in investment which included having millions trapped in stock exchange due to dilution in value hence cannot cash out since 2007; losing 8-figures in Naira from my first stint with importation of my first branded tricycles and losing thousands of dollars due to language barrier at Guangzhou Domestic Airport en route Chongqing, China. These aforementioned loses though painful cannot compare with losing 25K Naira as a Youth Corper in Uyo after investing in a High Yield Investment Program (HYIP) which precipitated my writing a remarkable article warning readers about another famous HYIP called NOSPETCO. (Article rating as of 2006: 440K views and 7k comments).
Despite the popularity of the article, I soon realize that my knowledge was shallow at best. Ecclesiastes 10:15 puts it beautifully; “The labor of the foolish wearies every one of them, because he knows not how to go to the city”. Yes, I am warning people off the HYIP but do I have a better alternative. It took the superior knowledge of a guest commentator of the NOSPETCO article to open my eyes. His reply to an interview question was instructive:
Qn: You are currently a NOSPETCO proponent, can you let high risk takers like yourself understand the best strategy to getting the best out of it.
Ans: I stumbled into Nospetco about 2 years ago and it has overtaking all my investment in Nigeria as the most successful in term for turnaround in breakeven. There is no best way in approaching Nospetco other than do your homework and invest the amount you are comfortable with. The way I have approached my Nospetco investment is a bit risky and different to a lot of people. I started out with one after a month; I increased it to two. I started getting comfortable with it and then injected capital and increased it to 20 and I slowing increased it to 25 with the returns I got back from Nospetco. After a while I decided I wanted my capital out ASAP, in other to do that I needed to invest more. I increased my holding to 50 slots and the moment I got back my Capital of 25 slots I liquidated 25 slots and returned to 25 holdings. I will not recommend this method to anyone, if things had gone wrong I would still have been ok but that will not be the same for a lot of people.
For all those who are not familiar with the NOSPETCO, it is simply an investment scheme where a fixed amount of money invested generates a fixed amount of interest every month. In this case (as of the last time before it crashed), you place Four hundred and Fifty Thousand Naira (N450,000.00) which was one slot with the company above and you get Forty Thousand Naira (N40,000) every month and your initial capital remains intact which you can withdraw at least 6 months after initial deposits.
The prodigious investor above was able to make a killing in NOSPETCO because he had the knowledge. He was aware of all the risk (threat and opportunity) and was willing to lose his money if it comes to it. In contrast, I was not even knowledgeable about the stock market when I placed my life savings in it. The value of my life savings has depreciated greatly and I receive meagre returns annually trapping me in a rat race. From what I have heard so far about MMM, there is a similarity in the business model. However, MMM seems to be more superior because one can invest whatever he likes and gets a minimum of 30%, you can also earn through the multi-level referral bonuses and bonuses that comes from declaration of payment receipt on the YouTube Platform.
I have no skin in MMM and I have never opened an account on the site but I cannot in good conscience dissuade people from a program that can increase their earnings. I have come to respect varying categories of people: Risk-averse guys and risk-prone guys. There are guys who have high propensity to invest in HYIP and cannot pass over opportunity. If POOR is acronym for “Passing Over Opportunity Repeatedly” then MMM is an opportunity that I see those that love taking high risk and do NOT want to be POOR, take advantage of with money they can afford to lose. However, I don’t know how long MMM will be here for or when their investment capacity will be full. Whether they come back on the 14th of January or not, the scheme will eventually crash one day. History will always repeats itself.
The MMM platform is like any variable in life. There is nothing wrong with ingesting sugar but when you abuse it, it has serious health implication. Abusing the platform by being greedy or being ignorant may lead to serious heart break. The platform warns you not to invest what you cannot lose just like the health warnings on a cigarette pack. Everyone has a threshold of money he or she is willing to lose and without knowing it or not, we lose money one way or the other. Another dimension of abuse I foresee, is making MMM a vehicle to eradicate unemployment or some ways to survive current recession. It is definitely not your day job or some passion you can cling to. This will be a huge mistake on those that placing their families resources and future on MMM.
On a final note, one important thing about MMM Investment is knowledge. It is important you know that MMM can make you money (that is the easiest part) but you need knowledge to sustain the money. All investment scheme with extreme uncertainty (no absolute knowledge of outcome) like the Stock Market and MMM is simply gambling. Just like any casino in Las Vegas, Macau or Monte Carlo, the casinos have worked the percentages out; “they are sure you will lose at least 80% of what you win back in the casino”. So investing in MMM and abusing it as a source of passion (without proper knowledge), is like gambling your way through life, you will eventually lose what you make, it’s a matter of time.
In the weeks coming, I will be showing you various ways of making money with great odds of certainty. Most of these methods may involve physical workshops and will require effort to accomplish but you will definitely not be gambling with your money. Till next week!
