After reading my column last week, I know that the title would have made many of my readers to want to ask me this question: WHAT makes your job one of the most difficult in the world? I would like to take time to answer this and other such questions here.
My job is one of the most difficult because I’ve to constantly strike a delicate balance between promoting the interest of our readers, the interest of our mentees and the interest of our NGO, Success Attitude Development Centre [SADC].
First, let me define what these interests are.
1. Our readers’ interest
In order for our reason –– that is, SADC’s reason –– for being in existence to be realized and sustained, we must gain the trust of our readers and continually work hard at raising that level of trust.
By our own definition, which was made clear from day one in our mission statement, SADC was founded to “raise and nurture successful entrepreneurs whose success in business is driven by the fear of GOD, a burning desire to care for their families and an unquenchable thirst to do good in their communities.”
Our patrons are those who believe in our mission. And the only way we can gain their trust and sustain it is to consistently provide them with information and tools that will make them successful entrepreneurs.
To accomplish this task, we have to comb the whole world, as it were, in order to fish out reliable and dependable information and tools that will help our patrons achieve their dream of succeeding as entrepreneurs.
Quite often than not, we rely on third party sources for this information and tools as we are not in a position to generate all the ideas and strategies to help our patrons become whom we are encouraging them to be.
But in sourcing for these vital resources, we assume the responsibility of ensuring that what we pass on to our patrons –– our readers –– are carefully examined and critically analysed. This is an enormous responsibility as you’ll soon see. Notwithstanding that, we still discharge this duty with courage and discretion.
From time to time, we err. We err because we are humans. But we are humble enough to admit it when we make mistakes. We never pride ourselves as knowing-it-all.
In September, a few weeks from now, it will be exactly 15 years that SADC was founded. Not once have we failed to act contrary to the way I described our operation above. The record is there for all to see.
2. Our Mentees [protégés]/Third Party Collaborators’ Interest
As I narrated above, we do not have the capacity or intelligence to be the single source of all the knowledge that our patrons require to become exceptional entrepreneurs that we are encouraging them to adopt as a way of life.
So we rely on our protégés and TPC [Third Party Collaborators] to achieve the goal. Our relationship with our protégés and TPCs is straight-forward: give us what will improve the lives of our readers and we shall promote your offer to them.
It’s that simple really. But where it gets complex –– and where it makes my own job extremely difficult –– is where the interest of our protégé or TPC clashes with that of our readers and, ultimately, our own interest.
Let me explain. Our mentees or TPCs, whom I will for the purpose of explaining their relationship with us refer to as Resource Persons [RPs] hereafter, have one over-riding interest that informs their decision to collaborate with us. On the one hand are TPCs like multi-billionaire Dr. Cosmas Maduka, Executive Chairman of Coscharis Group of Companies, who came to deliver his celebrated lecture to our patrons in May 2009, with the sole desire to reach back to the community where GOD elevated him from and see if GOD would use his message to bring others up as well.
But on the other hand are mentees and TPCs like Akin Alabi, Mrs. Iyabo Oyawale, Samson Olatunde and Deaconess Favour Emenike whose objective for sharing their knowledge is both give back to the society and to generate income that would keep poverty away from their families.
In order for them to agree to share their proprietary knowledge with our patrons, we have to design a means for them to achieve their goal while we also achieve our own objective of bringing knowledge that would transform the lives of our readers through them.
Without this win-win arrangement, there is no way many of the income/business opportunities that are being taught freely across the nation today, which have without any doubt brought succour to many homes, will be made accessible.
Many still don’t believe that people can actually come out to teach other people the secrets of their business as is being done today. But GOD has used our platform to meet that invaluable need that our people have.
Now, this is where I find myself walking on a slippery slope. While on the one hand we have the responsibility of ensuring that only genuine offers are made to our readers, we also have to encourage the RPs to step forward with their proprietary ideas and specialized knowledge and share them with our patrons.
Think about it for a moment: that is a very delicate proposition. And many of our readers don’t even seem to realize it!
Let’s take for example Hafiz Lecky’s case that Glory Bimbo, a long-time reader of SuccessDigest Extra!, raised in his email that I published last week.
In order for Hafiz Lecky, whom I have known for some years back as a successful Affiliate marketer to share his proprietary knowledge with members of our community, I have to “sell” him to our readers. And that is exactly what I did, since I’m convinced that he would teach them the right thing.
Let’s be honest and admit it, the Me & Lecky series have opened the eyes of members of our community to what is possible with in-depth knowledge of online traffic generation strategies.
But it is one thing to teach somebody something. It’s another thing entirely to understand how to market what you know how to teach.
Our relationship with ALL our RPs, in most cases, usually begins and ends with the teaching aspect of their specialized knowledge. This is because we are convinced that the knowledge they share with our patrons will improve their financial status while the business of the RPs will also be enhanced.
We are, however, compelled to step in when there is a dispute between our readers and the RPs. Our position is clear: if promises made in an offer are not fulfilled, our readers MUST get a full refund of the money they paid or the RP is blacklisted from making offers to them in future.
Now, someone may want to ask, couldn’t we have forestalled a situation whereby something will not go wrong with offers being made by our RPs?
My answer to that question is an emphatic NO! It’s practically impossible. Again let’s take Hafiz Lecky’s case for an example. The complaint against him is NOT that the promise I made to our readers about what he would teach them was not fulfilled. I’ve been on the Internet since 1999 and I know for sure that his traffic generation strategies are faultless.
And that is the aspect that I was singing his praises on. But as for his offers to our readers, I have no means of knowing how well he’s doing with it unless a reader complains to us. As I said, we do no poke our noses into their business. But if and when there is a complaint, we promptly jump in.
In fairness to Lecky, he has kept a clean record with us all these years. If he’s got something wrong with his current offer, we shall invoke our sanction against him without any equivocation.
Whoa! I’ve covered all the space allotted to me in this edition and yet I’m not through with this topic. But don’t worry! I’ll round it off in the next edition. Join me as I provide my explanation for the wrong photograph that was used in the edition that Glory Bimbo also complained about.
