As we conclude 2013, try your best to do whatever you can to achieve maximum results. If it’s a bad habit such as boozing or smoking or overspending that you had planned to defeat this year, it’s not yet too late. 

But for the goals you find impossible to achieve in these few remaining days, I will encourage you to use this festive season to evaluate why you failed to achieve them and then lay strategies to make sure that in 2014 you achieve them.

Allow me share with you a reality that you should keep at the back of your mind while evaluating your 2013 and setting goals for 2014: We live in networks. I am not talking about telecom networks or sexual networks; I am talking about human networks, the groupings of people that we find ourselves in for they have a significant role in causing our success or failure.

They can determine whether we get rich or stay poor. It is factual that the people we spend most time with have a level of influence on what we eventually become; they participate in shaping our destiny. If you want to earn more money, save more, invest more and see yourself grow financially every day, you must be on the network of those who are doing the same. 

That there is a thread of characteristics that links all financially successful people; they stay in the same neighbourhoods, hangout in the same places, read the same books, marry amongst themselves, visit each other, seek advice from each other, and keep networking amongst themselves. 

They are on the success network. On the other hand, there is a chain of characteristics that links all financial failures; they want to earn more but want to work less, they blame other people for their poverty, they spend more than they earn, they network with each other, marry amongst each other, seek advice from only amongst themselves, stay in the same neighbourhood, fear risking their money and so on. 

It matters a lot what network you are hooked onto. Are you in the network of drunkards, promiscuous or frustrated lazy men who think they are unsuccessful because the world is unfair to them? Or are you on the network of achievers, people who seek new ideas, share opportunities and are not afraid of taking risks? 

It’s not rare to find someone who wants to succeed as a great businessman screaming among others for a whole day with his eyes glued onto the screen as soccer players make their money. Strange how you find someone who dreams of becoming a great musician in the company of people who know nothing about music!

If you want to become a great sportsman, what business do you have hanging around brick-makers? If you hang around nine broke people, you are likely to become the tenth!

Part of the reasons why I joined the world of business was because of the influence from my enterprising friends. Without the right people around you, your great ideas might die. You need to join success-minded people, even if it means spending money to share a moment with them because every minute you spend with them is not being wasted but rather invested. Stop thinking that successful people are unapproachable, a theory I’ve come to disprove over and over again. 

Networking with the right people will open for you doors to opportunities that you never knew even existed. It will turn your equation from poor to successful. Stop lamenting about lack of opportunities; look for them through people around you. 

I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Bake is the MD WORLD OF INSPIRATION & Founder, AUTHORS’ FORUM / +256-704666851