The Ssese Principles

In Greek mythology, Sisyphus, a great warrior, had been condemned by the gods to push a rock to the top of a mountain, where it would of its own weight fall to the bottom. Sisyphus would shove it back up, only to have it roll down, again and again, the process continuing forever. What a torturous existence! The idea was that no punishment could be worse than futile, hopeless effort. Unfortunately, many of us today endure a Sisyphus-like existence when it comes to managing our money and accumulating wealth. Some of us go through life struggling daily to better manage our money and build wealth, making valiant efforts worthy of a noble warrior only to find that our efforts have produced insignificant results and limited options. Like Sisyphus, we try again but often find ourselves in a sad and discouraging cycle. To break the dreaded but very real Wealth Sisyphus cycle that so many of us experience, more than 20 years ago, while earning my Masters of Business Administration from the Amos Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, I initiated a ground-breaking study to analyze the success factors and success blueprint for new economy entrepreneurs. This study, which initially spanned more than a decade but which now is an on-going research project that already spans more than two decades and consumes my time on a daily basis, was so revolutionary that it helped change the way America looks at entrepreneurship and wealth management. This initial research project has spawned multiple books, training tapes, workshops, seminars, our Centers for Wealth Creation through Entrepreneurship and our e-learning company, EntreTeach Learning Systems, LLC. I have had the opportunity to work with government, foreign nations, major corporations, small business institutions, and some of the most successful entrepreneurs in America. Suffice it to say, I have learned a lot from friends and partners in my journey to add intellectual value to the art of entrepreneurship. One of the revealing lessons I’ve learned from this research is the relationship between entrepreneurship, wealth, and the idea of doing well by doing good. To me, this means creating wealth through entrepreneurship in such a way that not only do you personally benefit but others do as well, while leveraging the principles that God has provided us as enablers. The wide spread confusion around the topic of wealth creation and wealth management has caused great confusion and has resulted in people making terrible mistakes that have often led to financial ruin and disaster. As I traveled the world lecturing on entrepreneurship and its relationship to wealth creation, I made a commitment to someday write another book on how to create and manage wealth from a Godly perspective. This book is my attempt to keep that promise. No place was more confused about the issue of wealth creation and management than the people who lived in my old childhood neighborhood. As a child growing up in the rough and tough neighborhood of the Cherry Hill community in Baltimore, Maryland, the church was often our compass as we navigated the treacherous seas of life. Although we were poor like most families in our neighborhood, our parents made sure that every Sunday morning we were in church (we started worshipping on the true Sabbath, Saturday, once we became Seventh Day Adventists). While I would certainly concede that the church has been a rock of hope and salvation for a dying world, many of our well-meaning spiritual leaders have mistakenly used the word of God as an impediment to wealth creation instead of as an enabler. For example, in my church back in the old neighborhood, we were taught that money, power, business, and wealth were inherently bad and evil. If you desired any of these tenets of capitalism, you were doomed to suffer hell’s fire when Jesus returned to claim His children and rid the world of the damning effects of a world lost in sin. As a young man who spent most of his waking hours concocting new ways to make money, obtain power, and enjoy some level of business success, as well as the inherent wealth that comes with all these achievements, I was perplexed as to what was the proper synergy or syneticism between my spiritual convictions and my strong desire to achieve wealth and business success. So my search began. As I prayed and began to study the Holy Scriptures for answers to my nagging questions, God began revealing to me nuggets of wisdom, through His word, about how to “build wealth from the inside out.” In other words, how to do well and do good, at the same time by putting to use God’s powerful and ageless principles. What I found to my amazement from my study of the Word of God is that, contrary to what I was taught as a young child, God is not against wealth or riches. He is not against business success and the enjoyment of material possessions. What He does caution us about is not to make riches, material gain, and wealth our Gods. He admonishes us not to put anything before Him, His Kingdom, and His agenda. God reminds us that putting anything (i.e. money, wealth, possessions, sex, spouse, land, etc.) before or above God is simply idolatry and God will not allow idols to take his rightful place in our lives. In fact, all that we have, own, say or think is owned by God and is simply loaned to us while we live and should be committed to and invested in His Kingdom. The Lord can count on righteous men and women of means to carry out His Kingdom agenda and to work to accelerate the day of Jesus’ second (and next to last) return. Not only did I learn that God is not against us enjoying wealth but that He gives us the roadmap on how to achieve it! Deposited among the Holy Scriptures like nuggets of gold found in the gold mines of Johannesburg, South Africa, were the jewels of wisdom that pertain to wealth creation, wealth capturing, wealth management, and wealth maintenance. While I have read most of today’s popular books on business success, wealth management, and personal success, the Holy Word of God prov