The Unpreached Truth: God & Money

The High Price of Ignorance: How Knowledge Shapes Success in Business, Finance, and Life

• Nikolai X. Greaves, MBA, Mdiv • Season 1 • Episode 22

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Have you ever tallied the true cost of what you don't know? Join us as we unravel the staggering price of ignorance, both in the boardroom and your living room. We dissect the pivotal role that feedback plays in refining products and services, emphasizing the fallout businesses face by neglecting insights from customers and employees. This episode serves up a hearty dose of wisdom, straight from Benjamin Franklin himself, reminding us that the expense of ignorance often surpasses the investment in education. We're bringing to light the necessity of market research, the influence of media on our values, and the unmatched power of informed decision-making. We underscore the dire consequences of underestimating the value of knowledge and the pitfalls of myopic cost-saving strategies.

Speaker 1:

You don't get up one day and say, hey, we have a product or a service and we're just gonna give it to people because we think it's a good idea. If you try that, more than likely your idea will fail. If you don't have the feedback of the people, not just that you are giving the product or service to, but if you don't have the feedback of the people who are working on, that product or service is gonna run into problems and it becomes costly because you are now going to waste time and money investing yourself in something or going a direction with a product or service when it may not be what people want or need. It was Benjamin Franklin that once said the only thing more expensive than education is ignorance. Ignorance is costly, it's expensive. I'm not here to suggest to people that everyone needs to have a degree or diploma, that you need to attend an Ivy League institution, though I'm beginning to understand why many corporations are fixated about where you went to school, what level of education you have, what kind of resources and talents and skills have you developed over the years, how you think matters and, as I was sharing with somebody the other day, good questions often lead to good data, and when you have good data you can make good decisions. But when you create an environment that promotes ignorance, that promotes fear, where there is punishment associated with asking good questions or there's punishment associated with seeking knowledge, there becomes a significant problem. Organizations spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to do market research. They want to know exactly what's going on with their customer. They have a target audience, they're paying attention to their competitors, they're paying attention to industry trends, and all of these things take place to be able to solve some of the greatest challenges that the marketplace faces, that consumers face, that the nation may face, that the world may face. The point of business and entrepreneurship is not for the bag, it's not for money, it is literally to solve problems. And when you create environments where people cannot feel free to share their ideas, they cannot feel free to ask good questions and to reflect on what we are deciding to do, we run into significant problems. Some of you may or may not know. When you're doing market research helps you identify the different opportunities you have. You don't get up one day and say, hey, we have a product or a service and we're just gonna give it to people because we think it's a good idea. If you try that, more than likely your idea will fail. If you don't have the feedback of the people, not just that you are giving the product or service to, but if you don't have the feedback of the people who are working on, that product or service is gonna run into problems and it becomes costly. Because you are now going to waste time and money investing yourself in something or going a direction with a product or service when it may not be what people want or need. Maybe it is something that people want or need, but the timing is wrong. Maybe you need to wait a little bit longer or you need it sooner, but the fact is that ignorance becomes costly.

Speaker 1:

When we do not invest our time in learning, in growing, in looking back on our mistakes, and we're just plunging forward with ambition and with drive to do whatever we need to do, we are going to find ourselves running into problems. And this doesn't just stand true for organizations. This stands true for religious institutions. This stands true for individuals who are trying to figure out what they would like to do in life, how they would like to manage their budget, how they're going to fix their finances, how are they gonna take care of things. Here's the truth putting your bills in a drawer somewhere and ignoring it, not looking at your credit score and paying attention to what's going on with your credit, not paying attention to the investments that you may or may not have, not paying attention to the trends and the things that are happening around you. I'm not saying to be anxious about it, but I'm saying that ignorance becomes costly.

Speaker 1:

There are people who do not realize that it is ignorant to keep buying cars over and over and, over and over again for your whole life. And then you don't have a house because you don't know that cars go down in value and that houses tend to go up in value. And how do you know that? Well, when you go and sit down and try to close on the house, you start figuring out how much paperwork you got assigned versus the paperwork that they'll let you sign on a brand new car. You go to any auto dealer. You go get a car. The paperwork isn't that much, but you try to close on the house and you have stacks of paper. Because it's a high, it's an important investment, it is the beginning of wealth building. Getting a house renting all the days of your life is ignorance. Ignoring your credit score is ignorance. Going to payday lenders whose facilities look better than yours is ignorance.

Speaker 1:

Assuming that everything that is around you is for your benefit and for your good is ignorance. Assuming the food that you get from that fast food restaurant that you believe it's contributing to your health and you're not aware that it's diminishing your health is ignorance. And the truth is, if you keep eating the same things which the research may show can cause you sickness or disease. There are, of course, things in scripture that talk about what to eat or what not to eat, but even if you just ignore the facts in front of you, it becomes more expensive. Watch this. It becomes more expensive to end up in the hospital and having to undergo surgeries and procedures than it would have been for you to focus on your healthy lifestyle early, as one of my friends, dr Goring, says. I love the fact that he said this when we were in college. He said if you don't pay for your health now, you will pay for it later, and that was when I was debating with him whether or not I needed to get a gym membership. And so ignorance is costly.

Speaker 1:

Ignorance is costly when you spend time listening to music and messages that degrade you as a person, that degrade your community and degrade who you are and degrade your values and teaches you something that makes no sense in terms of practical living, versus listening to an audiobook that can provide education about the world, that can help you start a new business, that can help you experience healing and growth, that can increase your understanding. Ignorance is costly, folks, and in 2024, you cannot spend time running your organization, starting a new one, coming up with a new goal or idea, and not understand how education can free you and if you invest your time in educating yourself. Educating yourself about finances, listen. Some of us know more about who they're going to pick for the NFL draft and who they're going to pick for the NBA draft, and we know more about the dynamics that happen in certain places and spaces. We know about a lot of things that happen behind the scenes, and we'll watch hours of content scrolling through apps, scrolling through social media, trying to find out the next gossip from another entertainment source, when you could have committed that same time and energy to reading a book, to listening to an audiobook, to educate yourself on the importance of faith and finance and family values and taking care of your and planning for the future and taking care of your family and providing acts of service rather than thinking about what is in it. For me, all the time, these things matter, ignorance is costly.

Speaker 1:

You know, I remember that I was working with an organization. The organization was hoping to turn things around in terms of their culture, but one of the biggest challenges this organization faced is that they literally had an infrastructural problem. You see, they had purchased a building that was getting older, that was having all sorts of issues, and they had financial expenditures in terms of renovating the building and they wanted to do more with the building and expanding. But they really needed to fix some major things that were going on with that property. And I remember that I got with the leadership team and I had a conversation with them and I proposed the idea that we need to, before doing any fixing in the building, before we do any sort of renovation, before we think about it expanding, before we consider whether or not we are going to pay off this loan or that loan, what we need to do is we need to do an appraisal of the building. The appraiser would come by after you pay them a small fee and they will assess the value of that property in the context of the neighborhood and what the market says that property is worth.

Speaker 1:

Now, why was this important? Because this particular organization was in so much debt that it begged the question if it was worth investing their time and their energy into renovating the property or fixing these major changes, or would it make more sense going to another location? But whatever decision that they needed to decide, you can't do it without appraising the property and getting an idea of what that property is valued. Instead of looking at the strategy down the road, instead of understanding that knowledge is power, instead of paying attention and taking the time to spend a couple hundred to even a thousand dollars to allow somebody to appraise this property, the leadership team began to fight and they basically said we don't want to appraise the property because we don't want to spend money on appraising the property. Ignorance is costly. And because they made this decision, they're still running into financial challenges, they have not been able to advance in the work that they need to do and they found themselves in a state of financial stress and strain simply because they wouldn't take the time to study and to spend the money on things that would matter to allow them, as an organization, to thrive and to succeed.

Speaker 1:

So, ladies and gentlemen, when you are making choices, sometimes you're going to have to spend something. You're going to have to spend a couple dollars to go to the gym. You might have to spend a couple dollars repairing the vehicle rather than buying a new one and being stuck in a car note. You might have to spend a little bit more money on vacations and honeymoons and trips with your family so that you can invest time in your marriages and your relationships and with your children. You might have to move to certain neighborhoods that allow, where the wealth allows, for a better educational system. You might have to move your money to make sure that the organizations that you support are being held accountable for the dollars that they're doing. You might have to spend money here and there, but don't think about it from the perspective of how much I'm losing.

Speaker 1:

Think about what can change in my life. There's a business concept that talks about opportunity costs, looking at two different options and what you stand to lose and gain if you choose one option versus another. It's not about saying to myself well, I don't want to spend my money here, I don't want to spend my money there. Ladies and gentlemen, unless you live under a rock, you're probably going to spend your money. What are you spending it on? Are you investing your money on things that bring your value down, bringing down your net worth, bringing down your family, or are you investing in things that makes a difference in society? Are you charitable in your giving? Are you committed to ensure that messages of hope and inspiration go to places and places? Do you spend time making sure that you become a better person, and what do you do to invest in that? What are you doing to make sure that somebody else's life might change or that your life can change for the better? So I'm encouraging you today to not think about it as how much you may have to lose in terms of a dollar here or a dollar there.

Speaker 1:

I like to suggest today that ignorance is costly, and the day that you begin to ask God for wisdom, to make a different series of choices, to try to reposition yourself, the day that you decide that you matter, that you need to be valued, that you want change in your life, that is the day that you begin to head in a direction where you begin to not operate your life based on ignorance. You get to operate your life based on education and knowledge and wisdom. And wisdom the Bible says God gives out liberally. The Bible says if any man or woman lacks wisdom, god will give it to them. You just have to ask.

Speaker 1:

You see, I said that ignorance is costly. It's costly, but there are ways and there are spaces and places that we can go, that we could begin to see a difference in our lives. And I hope that today, that you will feel inspired to begin to redirect your finances, that you're no longer supporting toxic environments with your dollars, that you're no longer spending time hanging out with people who do not care about your life or don't see the importance of your life. So my challenge to you today is to remember that ignorance is costly. The education can transform your life. The education can transform your life.