Business Strategy

Agwuna Samuel Sopuluchukwu:

My advice is that if you want to learn about business strategy, read about the military. Read about wars, for that's relative to life and business. 

My dear, life is a non violent warfare, with challenges we should win. Out of 6 billion people alive all sharing history in the same time and space, we are all in a constant battle, we are all competiting for relevance. To win this war, profitably, understand strategy!

Master the Arts of War by Sun Tzu, The Mafia Manager by V, The Prince by Makavelli, the 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene. Read about Von Clausewitz, The Zulu warriors, Cleopatra, the fall of the Benin Kingdom, Cortez, Julius Caesar, Moses, Napoleon Bonaparte.

I remember back then, in one of our advanced classes on strategy and strategic management, I was lucky to have been taught by a Nigerian military general. And he'd say, "business is like war. And in war, when the enemy advances, retreat. When the enemy camps, harass. When the enemy tires, attack. When the enemy retreats pursue".

Business is like war, the enemy is the competitor and the battlefield is the market. And to win over the war of your relationship, life and even business, you need to be proactive and take the risk.

Business Strategy

Agwuna Samuel Sopuluchukwu:

My advice is that if you want to learn about business strategy, read about the military. Read about wars, for that's relative to life and business. 

My dear, life is a non violent warfare, with challenges we should win. Out of 6 billion people alive all sharing history in the same time and space, we are all in a constant battle, we are all competiting for relevance. To win this war, profitably, understand strategy!

Master the Arts of War by Sun Tzu, The Mafia Manager by V, The Prince by Makavelli, the 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene. Read about Von Clausewitz, The Zulu warriors, Cleopatra, the fall of the Benin Kingdom, Cortez, Julius Caesar, Moses, Napoleon Bonaparte.

I remember back then, in one of our advanced classes on strategy and strategic management, I was lucky to have been taught by a Nigerian military general. And he'd say, "business is like war. And in war, when the enemy advances, retreat. When the enemy camps, harass. When the enemy tires, attack. When the enemy retreats pursue".

Business is like war, the enemy is the competitor and the battlefield is the market. And to win over the war of your relationship, life and even business, you need to be proactive and take the risk.

Top 10 Richest Women in Africa

10. Elisabeth Bradley, Net Worth $32 Million

Elisabeth 1961, Albert Wessels, Eslisabeth’s father, made history by being the first person to bring the Toyota brand to South Africa. Her massive wealth comes from assets and investments. She was the chairperson of Wesco Investments and is currently the vice-chairperson of Toyota South Africa.



9. Sharon Wapnick, Net Worth $43.1 Million


Following her father’s footsteps, the founder of Premium Properties and Octodec Investments, Sharon Wapnick has managed to accumulate immense wealth. She’s the largest shareholder in the two companies that her father founded and TWB Attorneys’ partner as well. The South African Millionaire has numerous investments in real estate.

8. Bridget Radebe, Net Worth $100 Million



Bridget Radebe founded the company Mmakau Mining which has been very successful with its operations that include coal, chrome, gold, uranium and platinum. Her husband, Jeff Radebe, is the Justice Minister in South Africa. She started as a mine worker.

7. Irene Charnley, Net Worth $150 Million



This South African woman has worked for numerous companies as an Executive Director including MTN and FirstRand Bank. She played a vital role in MTN’s success and expansion in the African region. She is currently the CEO of Smile Telcoms, Mauritius.

6. Wendy Ackerman, Net Worth $190.2 Million


Wendy Ackerman is a director at Pick N Pay, which is one of the largest grocery chain stores in Africa. The South African company has other outlets in Australia, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria and Zambia. The Ackerman Family is quite powerful in South Africa.

5. Wendy Appelbaum, Net Worth $259.3 Million

After the death of her billionaire father, Wendy Appelbaum inherited a fortune by becoming a director at Liberty Investors. She was able to increase her net worth by selling her shares and then diversifying investments. One of her investments is the renowned South African wine brand DeMorgenzon.

4. Ngina Kenyatta, Net Worth $500 Million

Jommo Kenyatta’s family is among the richest in Africa. Ngina Kenyatta has managed to safeguard and multiply her late husband’s investments. The Kenyatta Empire includes: Real estate, hospitality, education, manufacturing, farming and banking. She also holds majority shares in several companies like Commercial Bank of Africa, Heritage and Brookside Dairies.

3. Hajia Bola Shagaya, Net Worth $600 Million

This Nigerian businesswoman has diversified her investments across industries like real estate, banking, photography, communications and the oil sector. Her portfolio consists of several other countries apart from her birth place. She’s very powerful and has close ties with Nigeria’s political figures and military.

2. Folorunso Alakija, Net Worth $600 Million

Folorunso owns FAMFA Oil Company located in Nigeria. She is also a fashion designer and her company, Supreme Stitches, which was launched in 1985, made her a fashion icon in Nigeria. She studied in the UK. In the late 70s, she became a secretary of the International Merchant Bank of Nigeria.

1. Isabel Dos Santos, Net Worth $1 Billion

This remarkable Angolan woman has invested heavily in diamonds and oil. She is actually president Jose Eduardo dos Santos’ daughter and is among the directors of a number of high profile companies. Her investments are diversified and spread-out in Portugal and Angola. The source of her immense wealth is still unclear. She made history by becoming the first woman billionaire in Africa.


Culled from:
http://www.therichest.com

See How To Save Yourself From the Killer KIDNEY Disease by: jaychoc

 Diseased kidneys                                       Healthy kidneys

These days, it has virtually become the tradition while watching prime time TV shows to have programmes interrupted for a few minutes, not for product advertisement but for funds solicitation.

Nigerians are now familiar with gaunt figures lying critically sick on the bed and plugged to dialysis machine begging for donations from government and kind-hearted members of public.

The solicited funds usually run into millions of naira to:

Cover the cost of temporary dialysis in Nigeria and subsequent organ transplantation overseas. The latest of such is the music producer, OJB Jezreel, who says he needs about N16m to treat his kidney disease.

Physicians say when it comes to size, the kidneys are small. However, as Kidney Specialist, Dr. Mumeen Amisu opines, “The kidneys may be small, but they perform many vital functions that help maintain your overall health, including filtering waste and excess fluids from your blood.”

These organs maintain the balance of salt and minerals in the blood, and also help regulate blood pressure.

The online portal, webmd.com, warns that when the kidneys are damaged, waste products and fluid can build up in the body, causing swelling of the ankles, nausea, vomiting, weakness, poor sleep, shortness of breath, fatigue, confusion, difficulty concentrating, loss of appetite, abdominal pain, abnormally low urine levels, low blood flow to the kidneys and kidney cell death.

“If left untreated, diseased kidneys may eventually stop functioning completely. Loss of kidney function is a serious — and potentially fatal — condition,” doctors say.

Experts warn that serious kidney disease may lead to complete kidney failure and the need for dialysis treatments or a kidney transplant when about 90 per cent of the kidney function has been lost. “Once you get a transplant, though, you will have to be on medications for life,” experts aver.

Though effective treatments are available for many kidney diseases, physicians contend that kidney disease can often be prevented.

Amisu says apart from genetic or congenital causes — which are beyond the control of anybody — two avoidable leading diseases that can lead to kidney disease are hypertension and diabetes.

On how diabetes affects kidney health, family doctor, Olu George, notes that when someone has diabetes, there can be excess glucose in the blood. “When glucose levels are elevated for a long time, it can cause damage in the tiny blood vessels of the kidneys. Once this happens, the organs won’t be able to filter out toxins effectively as they should,” George explains.

Both Amisu and George say blood pressure is influenced by the kidneys and that how healthy your kidneys are can affect your blood pressure, and vice versa.

George explains in-depth, “Hypertension causes artery damage, and the kidneys are packed with arteries. Over time, uncontrolled high blood pressure can cause arteries around the kidneys to narrow, weaken or harden. When this happens, the damaged arteries will not be able to deliver enough blood to the kidney tissue.”

Experts say damaged kidney arteries will neither filter blood well, nor regulate the fluid, hormones, acids and salts in the body.

Consequently, George says, “damaged kidneys will fail to regulate blood pressure. That is why we always advise people to manage their blood pressure, because it is an important way to prolong the health of the kidneys.”

Amisu says kidney damage and uncontrolled hypertension each contribute to a negative spiral because, as more arteries become blocked and stop functioning, the kidneys eventually fail.

Those who use drugs indiscriminately should also receive instruction about the possible repercussions on kidney health. Experts warn that those who abuse drugs or alcohol are essentially going out of their way to poison their own bodies.

This concerns the overuse of some over-the-counter pain killers and using abusive drugs such as heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, etc.

“In the process, they are placing an enormous burden on the kidneys. This is because the kidneys act as filters; and, like the oil filter in a vehicle, the filter provided by the kidneys, though powerful, has limits to how much it can take in terms of impurities,” Amisu says.

Kidneys can be injured when an individual has an accident that results in blood loss, physicians say.

George explains that, in various ways, “sudden reduction of blood flow to the kidneys, damage to the organs as a result of septic shock during a severe infection, or obstruction of urine flow can all injure kidney health.”

Experts also say that acute kidney injury can result from pregnancy complications, such as seizures (eclampsia) and pre-eclampsia (characterised by high blood pressure and significant amounts of protein in the urine).

Another pregnancy complications that can lead to kidney injury is the HELLP Syndrome — a life-threatening liver disorder characterised by destruction of red blood cells (Hemolysis), Elevated Liver enzymes (indicating liver damage), and Low Platelet count. Low platelet count reduces the ability of the blood to clot whenever there’s an injury.

And if you are a marathon runner or an athlete who don’t drink enough fluids while competing in long-distance endurance events, you risk acute renal (kidney) failure that may result from a sudden breakdown of muscle tissue. “This muscle breakdown releases a chemical called myoglobin that can damage the kidneys,” George says.

And women need to hear this: Multiple urinary tract infections can also damage the kidneys! Pregnant and menopausal women are very susceptible to UTI, physicians warn. They advise that to prevent it, women should drink lots of water every day, and urinate often instead of holding it. They are also advised to urinate right after having sex.

“How do we prevent kidney disease?” you may ask. Simple: by eating well.

A study by a group of scientists, led by Dr. Alex Chang of Johns Hopkins University, USA, reveals that people with normal kidneys who eat bad quality diet high in processed and red meats, sodium (salt), and sugar-sweetened beverages, and low in fruit, nuts, legumes, whole grains, and low-fat dairy are more likely to develop kidney disease.

In the study, published in the American Journal of Kidney Disease, Chang says: “Unlike family history of kidney disease, diet, smoking, and obesity are modifiable lifestyle factors that we can all control. By eating well, quitting smoking, and maintaining a normal weight, people can protect their kidneys and prevent future damage.”

A word, they say, is enough for the wise.

Credit:  Solaade Ayo-Aderele

To Be Born Poor Doesn't Mean You'll Always Be Poor

Long after he had established himself as one of America’s leading businessmen, as well as history’s greatest steelmaker, Andrew Carnegie reflected that “We all live in the richest and freest country in the world, where no man is limited except by his own mental attitude and his own desires.”

At the time—a decade or so before the First World War—Carnegie’s attitude was nearly universal. In America, anyone could carve out a better life for himself if he worked hard. Today, Carnegie’s attitude is considered almost quaint.

Opportunity? Why, opportunity is a rare thing, and those Americans not lucky enough to be born with it should be given it at other people’s expense. Whether it’s an education, a job, a house, or a grant, opportunity is seen as something that others have to provide you with. If you don’t succeed, it’s not because you failed to capitalize on plentiful opportunities. It’s because you just weren’t one of the fortunate few.

Carnegie would have bristled. “My men began in exactly the same station in life which I occupied a few years ago,” Carnegie once observed. “They have had the same privileges for personal advancement that I had.”

It’s hard to imagine anyone beginning in a lower station. Carnegie had arrived in America, a twelve-year-old Scottish immigrant. With barely a penny to his family’s name, and with only five years of formal education behind him (“Lack of schooling is no valid excuse for failure; neither is an exhaustive schooling a guarantee of success,” he would later say), young Andrew went to work at a textile mill, twelve hours a day, for $1.20 a week.

It wasn’t much, but it was enough. The job gave Carnegie the opportunity to learn and to demonstrate his dedication to hard work. Very quickly he moved on and up: less than a year later he had secured a position at O’Reilly’s Telegraph Company, starting at more than twice what he had earned at the mill.

It was there that Carnegie’s rise began in earnest—not through some “lucky break” but through the habit Carnegie would later refer to as “going the extra mile.” Carnegie, still working incredibly long days, began going to work early in order to learn how to send and receive telegraph messages. He worked so hard at it that he could eventually take telegraph messages by ear rather than by transcribing the Morse code—a feat only two other people in America could perform.

That ability helped him gain the notice of Thomas A. Scott, a superintendent for the Pennsylvania Railroad. Scott hired the young man, still a teenager, to be his secretary and telegrapher at $35 a month—a tidy sum at the time and a far cry from $1.20 a week.

Carnegie soon became indispensable to Scott. The real turning point came not too long after he was hired. Carnegie was in the office alone one day when news came of a wreck on the Eastern Division. Rail traffic started backing up; instead of shrugging his shoulders and saying “not my job, not my problem,” Carnegie chose to take action. “Mr. Scott was not to be found,” he would later write. “Finally, I could not resist the temptation to plunge in, take the responsibility, give ‘train orders’ and set matters going.”

It was no easy decision. Although Carnegie had watched Scott deal with similar problems in the past, lives and property were at stake. “I knew it was dismissal, disgrace, perhaps criminal punishment for me if I erred. On the other hand, I could bring in the wearied freight-train men who had lain out all night. I could set everything in motion. I knew I could.” And he did, forging Scott’s signature and issuing orders until rail traffic was back to normal.

Thanks to Carnegie’s determination and hard-won abilities, Scott started opening doors for the young man and teaching him the skills he would need to succeed in business. Later, he would help Carnegie make his first investment, launching Andrew’s career as a capitalist in earnest. By 1860, at the age of 25, Carnegie was making almost $50,000—more than enough to count himself as wealthy.

“Opportunity” means a set of circumstances in which a course of successful action is possible. Opportunity is abundant. What’s scarce is the willingness to take advantage of it. To the extent a country is free, a person with no money, no education, no connections can rise as far as his ability and ambition will take him. But developing ability and ambition is a challenging, uncomfortable, even scary process. Relatively few people in any era choose to do it, and as a result, few capitalize on life’s unlimited opportunities.

In Carnegie’s words, a “man may be born in poverty, but he does not have to go through life in poverty. He may be illiterate but he does not have to remain so. But . . . no amount of opportunity will benefit the man who neglects or refuses to take possession of his own mind power and use it for his own personal advancement.”

That was what led Carnegie to success: the constant use of his mind in pursuit of a better life. Whether he was learning a new skill, taking decisive action in an emergency, or forging the most innovative and efficient steelmaking company in the world, the commitment to following the judgment of his reasoning mind was the only opportunity he needed.

That—the willingness to think—is something no one else can give you.

Culled from: http://www.forbes.com/

To Be Born Poor Doesn't Mean You'll Always Be Poor

Long after he had established himself as one of America’s leading businessmen, as well as history’s greatest steelmaker, Andrew Carnegie reflected that “We all live in the richest and freest country in the world, where no man is limited except by his own mental attitude and his own desires.”

At the time—a decade or so before the First World War—Carnegie’s attitude was nearly universal. In America, anyone could carve out a better life for himself if he worked hard. Today, Carnegie’s attitude is considered almost quaint.

Opportunity? Why, opportunity is a rare thing, and those Americans not lucky enough to be born with it should be given it at other people’s expense. Whether it’s an education, a job, a house, or a grant, opportunity is seen as something that others have to provide you with. If you don’t succeed, it’s not because you failed to capitalize on plentiful opportunities. It’s because you just weren’t one of the fortunate few.

Carnegie would have bristled. “My men began in exactly the same station in life which I occupied a few years ago,” Carnegie once observed. “They have had the same privileges for personal advancement that I had.”

It’s hard to imagine anyone beginning in a lower station. Carnegie had arrived in America, a twelve-year-old Scottish immigrant. With barely a penny to his family’s name, and with only five years of formal education behind him (“Lack of schooling is no valid excuse for failure; neither is an exhaustive schooling a guarantee of success,” he would later say), young Andrew went to work at a textile mill, twelve hours a day, for $1.20 a week.

It wasn’t much, but it was enough. The job gave Carnegie the opportunity to learn and to demonstrate his dedication to hard work. Very quickly he moved on and up: less than a year later he had secured a position at O’Reilly’s Telegraph Company, starting at more than twice what he had earned at the mill.

It was there that Carnegie’s rise began in earnest—not through some “lucky break” but through the habit Carnegie would later refer to as “going the extra mile.” Carnegie, still working incredibly long days, began going to work early in order to learn how to send and receive telegraph messages. He worked so hard at it that he could eventually take telegraph messages by ear rather than by transcribing the Morse code—a feat only two other people in America could perform.

That ability helped him gain the notice of Thomas A. Scott, a superintendent for the Pennsylvania Railroad. Scott hired the young man, still a teenager, to be his secretary and telegrapher at $35 a month—a tidy sum at the time and a far cry from $1.20 a week.

Carnegie soon became indispensable to Scott. The real turning point came not too long after he was hired. Carnegie was in the office alone one day when news came of a wreck on the Eastern Division. Rail traffic started backing up; instead of shrugging his shoulders and saying “not my job, not my problem,” Carnegie chose to take action. “Mr. Scott was not to be found,” he would later write. “Finally, I could not resist the temptation to plunge in, take the responsibility, give ‘train orders’ and set matters going.”

It was no easy decision. Although Carnegie had watched Scott deal with similar problems in the past, lives and property were at stake. “I knew it was dismissal, disgrace, perhaps criminal punishment for me if I erred. On the other hand, I could bring in the wearied freight-train men who had lain out all night. I could set everything in motion. I knew I could.” And he did, forging Scott’s signature and issuing orders until rail traffic was back to normal.

Thanks to Carnegie’s determination and hard-won abilities, Scott started opening doors for the young man and teaching him the skills he would need to succeed in business. Later, he would help Carnegie make his first investment, launching Andrew’s career as a capitalist in earnest. By 1860, at the age of 25, Carnegie was making almost $50,000—more than enough to count himself as wealthy.

“Opportunity” means a set of circumstances in which a course of successful action is possible. Opportunity is abundant. What’s scarce is the willingness to take advantage of it. To the extent a country is free, a person with no money, no education, no connections can rise as far as his ability and ambition will take him. But developing ability and ambition is a challenging, uncomfortable, even scary process. Relatively few people in any era choose to do it, and as a result, few capitalize on life’s unlimited opportunities.

In Carnegie’s words, a “man may be born in poverty, but he does not have to go through life in poverty. He may be illiterate but he does not have to remain so. But . . . no amount of opportunity will benefit the man who neglects or refuses to take possession of his own mind power and use it for his own personal advancement.”

That was what led Carnegie to success: the constant use of his mind in pursuit of a better life. Whether he was learning a new skill, taking decisive action in an emergency, or forging the most innovative and efficient steelmaking company in the world, the commitment to following the judgment of his reasoning mind was the only opportunity he needed.

That—the willingness to think—is something no one else can give you.

Culled from: http://www.forbes.com/

LATEST CANCER INFORMATION from Johns Hopkins

AFTER YEARS OF TELLING PEOPLE CHEMOTHERAPY IS THE ONLY WAY TO TRY AND ELIMINATE CANCER, JOHNS HOPKINS IS FINALLY STARTING TO TELL YOU THERE IS AN ALTERNATIVE WAY …


1. Every person has cancer cells in the body. These cancer cells do not show up in the standard tests until they have multiplied to a few billion. When doctors tell cancer patients that there are no more cancer cells in their bodies after treatment, it just means the tests are unable to detect the cancer cells because they have not reached the detectable size.

2. Cancer cells occur between 6 to more than 10 times in a person's lifetime.

3. When the person's immune system is strong the cancer cells will be destroyed and prevented from multiplying and forming tumors.

4. When a person has cancer it indicates the person has multiple nutritional deficiencies. These could be due to genetic, environmental, food and lifestyle factors.

5. To overcome the multiple nutritional deficiencies, changing diet and including supplements will strengthen the immune system.

6. Chemotherapy involves poisoning the rapidly-growing cancer cells and also destroys rapidly-growing healthy cells in the bone marrow, gastro-intestinal tract etc, and can cause organ damage, like liver, kidneys, heart, lungs etc.

7. Radiation while destroying cancer cells also burns, scars and damages healthy cells, tissues and organs.

8. Initial treatment with chemotherapy and radiation will often reduce tumor size. However prolonged use of chemotherapy and radiation do not result in more tumor destruction.

9. When the body has too much toxic burden from chemotherapy and radiation the immune system is either compromised or destroyed, hence the person can succumb to various kinds of infections and complications.

10. Chemotherapy and radiation can cause cancer cells to mutate and become resistant and difficult to destroy. Surgery can also cause cancer cells to spread to other sites.


11. An effective way to battle cancer is to STARVE the cancer cells by not feeding it with foods it needs to multiple.

What cancer cells feed on:

a. Sugar is a cancer-feeder. By cutting off sugar it cuts off one important food supply to the cancer cells. Note: Sugar substitutes like NutraSweet, Equal, Spoonful, etc are made with Aspartame and it is harmful. A better natural substitute would be Manuka honey or molasses but only in very small amounts. Table salt has a chemical added to make it white in colour. Better alternative is Bragg's aminos or sea salt.


b. Milk causes the body to produce mucus, especially in the gastro-intestinal tract. Cancer feeds on mucus. By cutting off milk and substituting with unsweetened soy milk, cancer cells will starved.

c. Cancer cells thrive in an acid environment. A meat-based diet is acidic and it is best to eat fish, and a little chicken rather than beef or pork. Meat also contains livestock antibiotics, growth hormones and parasites, which are all harmful, especially to people with cancer.

d. A diet made of 80% fresh vegetables and juice, whole grains, seeds, nuts and a little fruits help put the body into an alkaline environment. About 20% can be from cooked food including beans. Fresh vegetable juices provide live enzymes that are easily absorbed and reach down to cellular levels within 15 minutes t o nourish and enhance growth of healthy cells.

To obtain live enzymes for building healthy cells try and drink fresh vegetable juice (most vegetables including bean sprouts) and eat some raw vegetables 2 or 3 times a day. Enzymes are destroyed at temperatures of 104 degrees F (40 degrees C).

e. Avoid coffee, tea, and chocolate, which have high caffeine. Green tea is a better alternative and has cancer-fighting properties. Water--best to drink purified water, or filtered, to avoid known toxins and heavy metals in tap water. Distilled water is acidic, avoid it.

12. Meat protein is difficult to digest and requires a lot of digestive enzymes. Undigested meat remaining in the intestines will become putrified and leads to more toxic buildup.

13. Cancer cell walls have a tough protein covering. By refraining from or eating less meat it frees more enzymes to attack the protein walls of cancer cells and allows the body's killer cells to destroy the cancer cells.

14. Some supplements build up the immune system (IP6, Flor-ssence, Essiac, anti-oxidants, vitamins, minerals, EFAs etc.) to enable the body's own killer cells to destroy cancer cells. Other supplements like vitamin E are known to cause apoptosis, or programmed cell death, the body's normal method of disposing of damaged, unwanted, or unneeded cells.

15. Cancer is a disease of the mind, body, and spirit. A proactive and positive spirit will help the cancer warrior be a survivor.

Anger, unforgiving and bitterness put the body into a stressful and acidic environment. Learn to have a loving and forgiving spirit. Learn to relax and enjoy life.

16. Cancer cells cannot thrive in an oxygenated environment. Exercising daily, and deep breathing help to get more oxygen down to the cellular level. Oxygen therapy is another means employed to destroy cancer cells.