Charlie Munger is an American billionaire, investor and philanthropist. He was the vice president of Berkshire Hathaway, which was founded by world’s greatest investor, Warren Buffet.

For the records, Berkshire Hathaway is the first non tech company in the world to worth a trillion dollar. Charlie and Warren have together made billions of dollars through investments and buying companies and developing businesses.

In fact, any time you buy and drink a bottle of coke, they make money because they own 400 million shares of the Coco-Cola Company.

Today I want us to look at some of the timeless principles of success from Charlie Munger who died two years ago at 95.

The first principle I want us look at is:

(1) Offer only what you would buy yourself-The truth is that as a business owner, you are your number one customer. You should only offer to others what you would buy. That is the only way to build trust and confidence in the mind of customers. In fact, you ought to be using yourself as the guinea pig or the model for the products and services you are dealing in. The idea is this, whatever you are dealing in, test it on yourself first. If it is good on you, if it looks good for you, then it should be good for/on others.

Just imagine Innoson driving Toyota or Honda products and telling others to buy Innoson vehicles or somebody who sows and sells agbada but dresses in suit. The message that they would be knowingly and unknowingly sending is that their own products are not good enough. So, whatever business you are in, make sure that you are the number consumer of the product or service.

(2) Focus on what you don’t know. Success is a result of continuous learning and improvement. Even the scripture says that people perish for lack of wisdom. So to do well in business, you must focus on the things that you don’t know, because when you don’t know the business you are doing, it is very easy to be hoodwinked. A lot of people thought that it is money that people use to move a business to the next level. The truth is that it is not money you need to transform your business but knowledge, because your business can never be bigger than what you know. So, like Charlie Munger stated, focus on what you don’t know and try to know them.

(3) Know something about everything – The words ‘general manager’ simply imply that you should know something about everything. It is not about being jack of all trades. You cannot claim to be a general manager when you don’t have basic ideas of what is happening in the departments that make up your business. There is no problem having your own area of core competence but you should try to know something about everything in your business.

(4) Expect problems. A lot of people think that once they are doing the right thing in business, it would be smooth sailing. But it is not so. The broad way would always lead to hell or damnation. If you are in business and everything is going well, you have to watch it because danger is looming by the corner. There is a saying that whoever, have not fallen, have not really succeeded. So, as long as you are in business, know it that problems must come. In fact, anticipate problems because, they must come. One beautiful thing about anticipating problems is that if you are prepared for problems, they will not shake you when they come.

(5) Turn pain into power. I have said in many fora that failing in business is not a crime. It only becomes a mortal sin when one fail and fail to learn from the reason why he failed. The truth is that failure makes us stronger. When we fail and learn the reason why we fail, we become stronger and better in our businesses. The lesson here is that we should be using our setbacks in business as our teacher. We should be learning from our setbacks and the more we do that, the better we become.

(6) Don’t be trapped by ideology. To succeed in business, we must not be trapped by ideology. We must not have fixed mindset, rather we must always have a growth mindset. When you have an open mind, you would be getting fresh ideas, fresh information and knowing latest trends. And these are what you need to succeed in business. A saying has it, innovate or go extinct. This simply means we must adapt and create new ideas to survive in a rapidly changing world or risk going out of business. So today’s business is not the type that one should be trapped by ideology.

(7) Work with people you admire .I have this belief that a place of work should be a place of fun, that going to work should be like going to a party. The only way this can be possible is if you are working with people you love and admire. There is a saying that a happy work force is a productive work force. When you work with people you love and admire, you are bound to be energetic; you are bound to bring out your very best; you are bound to put in your all to ensure that what you are doing succeeds.

The reason being that you see the success of the venture as the success of the people you love.

•Peter Anosike has Ph.D on Consulting and Profit Management. He is the founder of Ultimate Entrepreneurs Academy, an organisation that trains students, undergraduates and even graduates on how to become successful entrepreneurs. His contact number is 08035779230 (Please SMS only)