Don't just invest in any venture, plan carefully

Jaluum Herberts

So the other day a friend of mine called me to tell me about this investment opportunity they had.

They were wondering if it's something I may consider.

So I asked them what it was. Crypto currency they said. Nope I wouldn't, I replied.

But you haven't even listened to me they said. I haven't even explained it to you.

Explaining it won't make a difference, we would just be wasting time discussing something am not going to do now or in the near future.

Is that a good way to spend this time and your airtime!? I smilingly inquired. Okay let's leave it he said sounding frustrated.

Not wanting him to leave feeling bad I decided to labour and explain to him why.

For starters I don't jump onto everything that comes my way. The world has a billion opportunities and am not about to go chasing after every opportunity that comes my way even when it's genuinely real.

I know I can't do everything or be everywhere then otherwise I would be nowhere. I pretty much have a clear path set out for myself.

What I want to do, when I plan to do it and how I plan to do it. It sounds crazy I know but yeah I kinda have it all planned out.

Whether it work out as planned is a whole other story but I will follow the plan. Do my best and leave the rest to God and fate. Why do this!?

Because I know I can't do everything so I have to chose what it is I want to focus on and go after it with laser ray focus.

When it comes to investment my path is pretty much drawn. I know a million things I can put my money in and make money but most importantly I know that I can't go after all a million of them because that's the fastest way to lose money real quick.

Making money takes more than just going after opportunities.

It takes skill, knowledge of what your trying to make money from, it requires money itself and most importantly it requires your time.

Reality is you can't be knowledgeable about everything and if you chose to be you won't have time to make money because you'd have to spend all your life learning.

You can't have the money to throw all over the place. My experience is money works better when it's consolidated in one place or not overly spread out so to say.

Then we all have 24 hours a day and rarely do we live beyond 100 years. Out of those years you have 20 years or so of growth (school).

30-50 years of working and if you still have life by then, then you will have 10-15 years to live after work.

You'll be 85 years then waiting for the curtains to come down on your life, that's if you're lucky to make it that far.

Now with all that taken into context, you have just about 30-50 years of work of which only 30 of those will be your energetic years. How you use them is what makes the difference.

What am I trying to say, you don't have forever.

You have limited time and the earlier you figure out how you want to make the most of it the better. Running all over the place or after every shiny thing that you come across isn't one of the ways to do so.

That's why you need a plan.

Something that will help you remain on course and stay away from distraction. In investment that plan is your investment portfolio.

This will spell out clearly what investments you wanna go after in life. It's your compass in the sea of investment.

Investing without one is like sailing in the sea without a compass.

You just never know where you are going to end up.

Your journey might as well just end up anywhere, North Pole, South Pole I mean anywhere haha.

And for any one who wants to invest or is serious about investing and isn't on some kinda trial and error approach I advise you have one (investment portfolio).

My investment portfolio is simple and you can take a hint out of it and create your own. 35% private business, 20% equity in local businesses, 30% equity in foreign/international businesses, 10% bonds and 5% real estate.

So when you come to me, your investment opportunity better fall in any of those categories.

As you can see there is no forex, no crypto-currencies, no network-marketing, no insurance plans, mutual fund, exchange-traded funds e.t.c not because they don't make money or aren't wise investment options but because I won't do everything.

I have chosen my speciality and will focus on that it's that simple. Spend more time on that, accumulate much more knowledge on that and consolidated all my monies on that.

That's how hugely successful investors invest. Investment isn't a wild goose chase or a headless chicken like run around the neighborhood. So before you start investing and putting your money in places, determine your investment portfolio based on you skills set, knowledge base, time and risk appetite.

Jaluum Herberts Luwizza is a founding partner and COO at Young Treps,Campus Doctor, Boroboro, a Keynote Speaker,Writer, Columnist with the Nile Post.

He is also a Business & Investment Consultant with YOUNG TREP East Africa's No.1 Business Management and Consultancy firm that helps people start and grow profitable businesses.

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