Olumide Emmanuel, popularly known as the Common Sense Guru, is one of the world’s leading Relationship Experts, Motivational Speakers and Wealth Creation Agents.
He is a man of multiple grace whose influence spreads across the religious and secular arena with local and international awards to show for it. He is a best-selling author of over thirty books both from self-published platform and world renowned publishing houses. His books are well celebrated worldwide with eight of them already translated in other languages.
With an Executive Masters Degree in Business Administration from University of Huddersfield in the UK and A Real Estate Executive Certificate with a special focus on Capital Markets, Project Finance, and Business Strategy from the prestigious Harvard Business School in the United States, Olumide Emmanuel is loaded with all round success. He is the Host of the daily “Pathway to Wealth” Radio broadcast and the weekly School of Money TV broadcast all over Africa with millions of followers; the weekly “Success, Business, and Leadership School” where a new breed without greed is being raised, empowered and released; monthly “School of Money Seminar” where thousands of participants are being mentored and guided for cooperative wealth; and many other conferences like the “Wisdom For Singles”, “Wisdom For Couples”, “How To Be A Best-selling Author”, “How To Build A Successful Business” and “How To Be A Millionaire”.
He is the Senior Pastor/Setman over Calvary Bible Church (CBC), Idimu, Lagos and the Empowerment Assembly (TEA) in Ikeja, Lagos. He is also the CEO of Common Sense Group, a company with subsidiaries in Real Estate, Oil & Gas, etc.
A few weeks back, this energetic Common Sense Guru had an Instagram live chat with City People Publisher, SEYE KEHINDE where he spoke on how to thrive during and after COVID-19 as an individual, a corporate organisation and a nation. Below are Excerpts.
How has it been in the last 3 months of lockdown?
Well, it’s been an amazing time. It’s been a unique curve, a learning experience for everyone and I believe that it’s a time to learn a lot that will help us move forward.
What are the lessons to learn from COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown?
There are Personal lessons to learn, Family lessons, Corporate and Organisational lessons and then there are National and Political lessons to learn.
On a personal level for me, this COVID-19 season has been like a time of reinforcement of all the things that we have known and that we have helped people to understand over the years.
Number 1, health is wealth. If you don’t know this before, now you that having a good health is more superior to all these pursuits of humanity. Number 2, family is important because at the end of the day, it is all about you and your family. A lot of people have in the past joked with their health and family but now you realise that it’s all about you and your family because many people in the pursuit of wealth have lost their health and family and are now trying to use the money to buy back what they have lost.
Number 3, it is also important to understand that God is the master of the universe. God is the ultimate of everything because without God, there is nothing you can do. Now, the entire world has come to a standstill and have realized that scientists cannot help us, politicians cannot help us, only God can help us when the chips are down. Then when it comes to investment, most of the things we have shared over the years about the importance of savings and investments, the importance of having multiple streams of income, a lot of people have now seen the value of that because many people are suffering now because they didn’t have any savings. They didn’t know that there will be a lockdown that will affect them for this long. Some people have only one source of income that is now badly affected and now they have realized that that is not a good way to operate because the way they operated pre-COVID is now affecting their lives in COVID and post-COVID.
On the family level, a lot of people are now forced to stay with their families. There are marriages that they thought were ok but now have realized that they are not. Because now that many husbands and wives are locked up together, they have discovered that they don’t really have a strong marriage and that they have been using work and school runs to cover up their weak marriage while some have discovered that they are strong and doing well, others have also realized that they are weak and need to do better. A lot of people are also beginning to know more about their children because many people especially men don’t really know their children because they leave a lot of responsibilities for the women. But now that everybody is locked down at home, they have seen that their children are not really whom they thought they were and there are a lot of things they thought they knew about their children that have now come to the fore.
On the corporate level, organisations have now had to sit down to look into their products and services and their existence. Organisations have now been able tofind out if they are still relevant because you cannot be analogue in a digital generation. So a lot of businesses and organisations are now realizing that they have to re-evaluate their reason for existence, their products and services to find out whether they are still relevant; they have to re-evaluate their business model, mode of operation, and if they don’t do that successfully, many businesses will not survive after this period, they will die with COVID-19.
On the national level, what this has made us known is that a lot of nations are not really ready for crisis. You see that this is not a Nigerian or African crisis, it is a global one and a lot of health sectors all over the world have been stretched beyond their limits and for us here in Nigeria, it showed that we don’t even have a health sector. All the politicians and all the people that have had the opportunity to lead this country in the last 50 years should right now bury their heads in shame.
Is there a spiritual side to all these?
I am a Christian, I am a pastor but I am not religious. I don’t believe in religion because most of the time when people want to escape critical thinking, they blame it on religion and ethnicity. The entire world is spiritual. We live in a spiritual world. You are either in a secret cult or in the secret place so it’s not COVID that is bringing spirit-matter. You are either in the Lord or the world, in the light or in darkness, in the covenant or out of the covenant. There have been sicknesses before COVID, HIV, Ebola and Cancer have all been there. Any sickness, disease or anything that disturbs the peace of mind is of the devil. It doesn’t have to be COVID. Whether catarrh, cold, boil or fever, they are all spiritual and not of God. But it is not only spiritual, it is also habitual and attitudinal. If you don’t take care of yourself, if you eat the wrong kind of food or you don’t cover yourself properly, you will fall sick. So when we say spiritual, both the natural and spiritual realms are governed by laws and principles. When you live according to the laws and principles that govern life, you will not be a victim but when living contrary to those laws and principles, then you become a victim. So it is of the devil because it is negative but it also has a human aspect. We have all broken the law of life for people to be creating virus in the laboratory, for people to be cooking up the virus as a biological weapon and scientific research and be careless enough for the same virus to now affect the populace, there is a human doing also.
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