HOW TO GET THINGS DONE WITHOUT SPENDING CASH [Part 3]

I learnt some of these principles I am about to share from my mother. Like so many people, my background and upbringing have shaped me. There are certain things we just pick up in growing up. There are certain principles we didn’t even read from books but which we are now writing into books. My mum likes to get things done without spending too much of cash. If she has to spend at all, she would prefer to pay a fair amount. She got a lot of things done so cheap! When I read her life like a book; I discovered that she knows how to make friends easily. She can make friend with a stranger in a blink! In getting her things done; she persuades people. Sometimes, it can be embarrassing because she will just apply this principle on anyone at anywhere. She just doesn’t care what you think of her.

Enough on my mother! If I ask you to take an inventory of your life right now, if you were to make a list of all your previous transactions, all the deals you’ve ever involved in. Is there anything you can find that you have bought that you could have gotten for free? What got in your way? Could it be your ego, Pride, class, or status? What were the things you bought recently? How much did you spend on each? Who could you have spoken to, that may have given you one or two of those items for free? Who in your network is able to give you things you may need next time? How will you prepare yourself, how will you package your request? Do you know how to deliver a speech delivery in order to make your request granted? Do you know what to do so that the other party will not say no to you?

The problem sometimes is in how we package our words...it is in how we ask what we ask for. Yes, I still make a mistake in this area myself. For instance, I ask hurriedly, I ask when my target is too stressed. I asked when my giver has nothing to give in some situation. I don’t wait patiently enough for the person to process my request positively. Sometimes I even want it right now! I could have asked for things that I have not earned enough trust to receive. Every now and then; I get into bumps like these and I get a no because I asked amiss. Sometimes, when we ask different things consistently from the same person, the person may feel overburdened and overwhelmed by our series of requests. That is why our approach matters. I am still learning how well to ask without getting a no from people. It may mean that I will need to become better at my negotiation skills. It may mean that I will have to stop asking desperately. It may mean that I will find a common ground. It may mean that I will need to think win-win more than ever before. It may mean that I will have to learn how my request will benefit the other party before I even make that request at all. That way, it will be a super win-win deal for us both.

Summarily, there are three vital aspects of getting things done without spending cash:
#1. Negotiation
#2. Speech delivery,
#3. Relationship

Negotiation: Here, we are concerned with details of the cost. What is the price? What is the amount required to get that thing done? What is the bargaining power involved? What is the amount on you as a potential buyer with which you want to trade? What is the flat rate? What is the industry price? Your target here is never to provoke the other party because you want to get things done for free or cheap.

Speech delivery: Here we want to know how to say what we want to say. What are the ways to package our words in such a way that it will be appealing to the listener? How can we avoid asking like a beggar? Sometimes, depending on the situation at hand; I will literarily beg the other person if I know that I have not been able to earn trust up to that time. We are concerned with the time that we must ask and the moments we don’t have to ask especially if for any reason the other person is biased, angry, et.al. When do we stop begging and start asking like we are actually making a fair offer? When do we start asking like we are trying to help the other party? It is in being flexible, sensitive enough to know the right time, the right mood, the right person, the understanding of the temperament before asking. When in transaction or negotiation, it is important to know what it means to be a great word processor, what it means to be a better speech packager. The writer of the book written to the Colossians wrote: “Let your words be seasoned with salt and grace that you might know how to answer every man accordingly.”

Relationship: Here we concerned about who we are dealing with? How long have we known the fellow? What have you done personally for the person? Were they things that count as great deposit in terms of their emotional bank account? Sometimes we think we have earned enough trust in a relationship but we are only presumptuous and full of assumptions because the other party don’t see things the same way. We need to understand what kind of person we are dealing with? We need to know what makes the person tick. We must find out what puts them on and off? Understanding how to earn trust. It will make us have access to people and with people. And that access is very important. Once it is abused. There is no remedy. And that is the thing that determines if people will do things for you for free or not. I would rather beg if I knew that I don’t fall into a person’s good book, rather than become so forceful in my request. If you don’t want to continue receiving a negative response in getting things done for free; you need to pay more attention to your relationships and how you ask. Queen Esther knew how to ask and when to ask for the lives of the Jews from the king Ahasuerus; when Hamman, a certain officer wanted to destroy them.

The relationship you create, nurture and sustain will bring everything to you for free. The bond we have with someone will determine if we will be able to get things done through them for free. So you may want to ask: what is bond or bonding? How do we create that? A bond is when the chemistry becomes one in any relationship. When your personality, ideology, perception, paradigm, perspective, principles, beliefs and sometimes behaviour; seem aligned with another person’s. Then you are able to relate better. Then we can say that there is a bonding between you both.

I am still learning how to make friends and influence people every day. I learnt from Dale Carnegie's book some principles of creating relationship. However, I have learnt over the years how important it is, to keep and sustain these relationships I create. I also discovered that in trying to keep relationships, not all relationships are worth keeping. Some like bread grow moulds and they can't be kept. In so doing, I have learnt how to sustain friendship with only people that matter to my destiny and life callings. I have learnt in a hard way how to let go of difficult people from my network. The reason is because you cannot carry everybody in the course of your life. That will sap you of energy if you are trying to carry difficult people along at all cost. Some people are opinionated; there are prejudiced people. There are biased, parochial people. There are racist. There are difficult people. These are people you will never be able to form any bonding with. They wouldn’t understand you. No matter how much you try. They won’t give you the benefits of the doubt, so why try?

How to get things done without spending cash!

This article is about how to get things done without actually spending cash.I am about to share with you one of my life’s top secrets. Being a man from a humble background; in the course of my growing up; I had to eke out with difficulty to spend money on what I wanted for myself. Most of my things were bought for me and my siblings. We never had excess cash flowing around as kids. There was nothing like pocket money. I started thinking of how else to get what I wanted in life without having to be deprived and denied. At a point I would think of doing trade, business with any thing called resources at my disposal. I can sell/market any stuff I can lay my hands on, once it is mine. I love to have cash on me. Much more i love to have assets. I remember once when we were young. I was in the elementary school then. I was eating breakfast with my younger brother. I could not finish my food but my brother had finished his meal hurriedly. I remember turning my piece of bread into a burger snack right there at the breakfast table and selling it to my junior brother for money which he was to pay back on credit. He found it so difficult to reject my offer as I marketed that left over breakfast of mine to him. He was so convinced that he was buying something different from the same piece of bread and omelet we were eating together at the table. Although, he went into perceived debt just to eat that instant “burger snack” I manufactured and sold to him at the breakfast table that morning at home. Sadly, he was unable to pay me back thereafter. And that was the first experience that should have taught me not to sell anything on credit again. My point was that since childhood, I had grown a business mindset. I had been selling things. I advanced into a student- business man when I entered high school such that I bought a certain used toy-game of soccer and rented it out to school mates when I was in high school. They will play my game and pay me some token for it. I will time them on it to make more money.

In a nutshell, my childhood experience with inadequate liquidity or flow of cash, shaped my thinking and forced me into thinking, asking questions, experimenting on how else I could successfully get things done without having to spend money directly. And I remember how I started early in life to trade in things like invisibles, values, trade by barter, exchange services. I tried maximizing my relationships, made more friends, whether they are intimate or not, it does not matter. I realized that I was going to need people to get to where I intend to go in life. I did not want to be misjudged or perceived wrongly as a user or a leach or a parasite on people. So I started thinking of how to trade value for value. I figured how to be resourceful and useful to people’s causes. I had to earn trust with people. I had to develop myself and force myself to learn to grow into someone who will have something so meaningful and edifying to say, something tangible to offer the people I come across. There were points when I had to serve people in order to be assisted, accepted and be paid. I had to volunteer at some points. I have helped some people in order to win friends, network people and thereby winning friends and gaining more influence. I’ve had to read wide in order to create great knowledge base.
I had to read the bible to reach spiritual consciousnesses. I meditated to reach a depth and develop uncommon strategies, ideas that can attract money. I stopped asking for money for whatever reason. And I started asking for a bond, a relationship and trust with people. I knew that if I asked for money; I will only have it once and that is from the transaction we may have together. But after that transaction is over, I will not be able to go to the person to get another cash to meet my needs until I have to get into another transaction again with similar or another set of people entirely. I realized that if I could just focus on building relationships and I am able to make trustworthy friendships. Things will be a little bit different. From my friendship I will build a trust. And if I could build a trust, then I would have access to people's cash at any time. So I focused on something much more important. And that is relationship.
It was with GOD and His inspiration in terms of this idea that I have been able to achieve more. Hence, I was able to network and do much of what I did without having money. For instance, I shot a movie as an undergraduate without a sponsor. I published my book in United States of America without spending my personal money directly. To list a few, I achieved small feats here and there as a young man without having abundance of cash in savings account. I got out of debt after shooting the film which I shot as an undergraduate through the same principle. I worked with an elderly lecturer-friend who recruited me based on his recognition of my potentials and on the relationship we share. The bonding we had together snowballed into being a part of his family life. I traveled out of my country of birth and tried this same principle in another country and it is working. And I am getting discounts, gifts, free tickets, gate pass, and so on without spending my personal cash. This principle of relationship formation works. I call it learning to bond with people rather than just meeting them casually. Encountering people on a deeper ground; require that we listen deeply to them. Appreciate whatever they are doing; whatever they have done in time past and what they still need to get done. Ask for how you can be a part of whatever they are doing so as to help out. Please note that I emphasized that we must think in terms of win-win for the people we are relating with. I tried to use value to achieve value. I tried to use people relational skills to achieve something of great value. This is how to achieve results without virtual money.And you can do the same thing.