In Port Harcourt we say, na money dem dey take stone money! It basically means that you have to spend money to make money. The idea comes from plucking the fruits off a tree. When a tree starts to bear fruit, to enjoy its fruit you must detach the fruit from the tree. Some trees are easy to climb, some trees bear low-hanging fruits which make them easy to reach and enjoy. But for those trees that make their fruit inaccessible, you need a tool to pluck the fruit once it is ripe for eating. You may choose to wait for the fruits to fall down on their own, but chances are that before that happens, the bats and other winged creatures would have had the best of it. So, we use sticks or stones or some other tool to shake ripe fruit loose from their branches. That’s where the saying comes from.
This applies to our lives. Whether it is for personal advancement or business interest, when the desired outcome is to make money, you usually have to spend money to get your reward. If you want to be part of a certain profession, you must spend money learning and doing what it takes to enter that profession. If you want to start a business, you need money to start and run the business. When you do not have your own money, someone else can front you the money, sometimes at a price. At the root of it all is money. You may have your own stone or you may have access to someone else’s stone or you may even borrow a stone from someone. The bottom line is that you need that stoning money to make more money. Beg, borrow or steal, they say. Beg, borrow, but don’t steal, I say. The law will catch up with you if you steal. So beg or borrow. Negotiate the best terms to get that stoning money. Make what sacrifices need to be made.
So why do people expect to get good service for free? How do people expect to advance in their money-making desires without spending a dime? Another saying goes that even in Freetown there are no free lunches. It does not happen. To get value, you must give value. It is an exchange. Whether or not the exchange is direct or not, an exchange still takes place. If what you have to exchange is your intellect, you must have spent some money to refine your intellect and the knowledge that you have into something of value that can be exchanged for money.
For most of my working life, I have earned a living with my intellect. Sometimes I have made the mistake of giving away my intellect for free, to much regret. It certainly does not make for good business returns. Rather, a barter of skills is a smarter way of giving your intellect if money is not involved.
Free is good, we all want free, but free rarely gets you where you want to go. Be prepared to pay something (no matter how small) for services to advance your business or enhance your personal skills for better opportunities. If you believe that time is money, even when you have trained yourself in acquiring a skill, the time you spent on yourself is money. The time you spent correcting and fine-tuning your mistakes is money!
Remember, there are no free lunches. To get the best value, be willing to spend money.
Na money dem dey take stone money!
