He had called me out of the blues, told me he was stopping by and just drove into the compound in his white Range Rover Sport.
Stunned the hell out of me.
I had very little time to put my house in order.
And then the only alcohol I had in the fridge was just a bottle of vodka and a half filled bottle of coke. This isn’t exactly the sort of thing you serve this kind of guy.
Anyways, he turned down my offer to take something and just took a look at what I was doing on my laptop instead.
‘’What’s this?’’ He had asked.
‘’Facebook ad, sir’’. I replied. Happy that for once I knew something he doesn’t. So I quickly gave him a crash course on Facebook ads, how it works and all that.
If you don’t already know. Facebook ads are those sponsored posts you see on your Facebook timeline.
He takes a look at the numbers.
‘’What is that?’’. He said, pointing at the budget column.
‘’The budget’’. I replied.
He looked at the budget for a while. Lost in thought. Then he looks at me.
‘’What happens if you double that budget. Does the result increase? Will more people see and buy your stuff?’’
‘’Yeah’’. I replied. ‘’In an ideal situation that is how it works. Why?’’
‘’Because you should be spending more’’ He replied.
And then as usual he grabbed a pen and a paper and wrote one sentence.
‘’The person with the most cash wins’’.
Then he points at it and reads it out loud.
Then he scribbles something else: ‘’If you are not the guy with the most cash, be the guy with the most leverage’’.
He waved the paper at me and then added. ‘’And if you are the guy with both, you will be hard to be stopped’’
Then he crossed his leg and leaned back on his chair. Then looked at me intently and began:
‘’Do you know what happens behind closed doors when the big boys want to start a company?’’ He paused, like he wanted me to say something. But I kept quiet and so he continued. ‘’First they set up a team, then they raise funds….’’
In that order.
They set up a team.
Then they raise funds.
There is always the main guy. But there is always a team behind them, and they don’t run the business with all their money. They use mostly investors’ money, and very little of their own.
They understand that they are not good at everything so they get people who are good at what they are not, then they raise a lot of cash and go in very hard. They don’t go half way, they push it all the way in.
Then he waved at my laptop. What are you doing here? Running your own ad on Facebook with a budget like that? Is this how you want to get big?
I did a double take. That really did hurt a little coming from him.
He leaned forward.
‘’Look son’’. He said. ‘’Read the news. There is a reason there is a board of director in big companies. There is a reason the CEO doesn’t do the books. There is a reason you hear Dangote say that they brought in a percentage of the money for the refineries and then went out and got different banks to bring in the rest of the funds’’.
….there is a reason you see him on the news and he is surrounded by all those white people.
Team & Investors Money. That is how the big boys play.
If you must build a big business then you must master how to build a deadly team, and raise a lot of money fast and then go in very very hard without blowing everything. Do it at your level now. Practice.
Then he looked around my sitting room. ‘’You have a really nice place here’’. He said. ‘’So when are you getting married’’.
We laughed, and our conversation drifted away from business.