Ladies and Gentlemen,
I welcome you all to this seminar. The topic before us today is very huge and full of hard contents and radical ideas to disseminate. I know for sure that some of us may find some of the bitter truth very offensively, but I will like to warn us ahead that the opinions expressed here are purely mine and they are an age long observations and careful conclusions I have come to imbibe about Finance, money, freedom and life in general.
So let us kick off with a probing question?
What is Financial Freedom?
Financial Freedom means you have enough wealth to live on without working. Financially independent people have assets that generate income (cash flow) that is at least equal to their expenses.
Financial Freedom is the gut to be who you truly desire to be without being constrained. Financial freedom is much more than having money. It’s the freedom to be who you really are and do what you really want in life. Financial Freedom starts from the mind. It is a mindset phenomenon.
If you want to be financially-free, you need to become a different person than you are today and let go of whatever has held you back in the past. It’s a process of growth, improvement and gaining spiritual and emotional strength to become the most powerful, happy, and successful “you” possible. That is the true reward of financial freedom.
To do justice to this seminar, I hope to lead this discussion along the following routes:
- The Side Walk Route
- The Slow Lane Route
- The Fastlane Route
In order to follow me clearly, it will be nice to visualise these three type of route.
The Side Walk Route is the financial route most travelled by most people. The characteristics of a side walker is to have no financial plan at all. A side walker is one salary away from being broke. He or she on this route have no single savings. The dominant philosophy of this kind of people is enjoy life today and face life any how you see it tomorrow. They have no retirement plan at all. All that is in their mind within every 30days pay cycle is consumption. How to manage the salary or monthly income until the next month.
The Slow lane Traveller, is a person with a financial plan to attain financial freedom in old age. This person is desperately attached to a long term career with structured retirement plan such as Pension and gradual Savings over a long working life. Take for instance if a man's level of wealth to be financially independent is N100 million Naira and he can averagely save N1.5m yearly it means he will need about 45years of consistent savings to attain this. If he start working at age 25years add 45years that means he will attain financial freedom at age 70. With the everyday stress of 8am to 5pm daily plus traffic time the health of this 70 years old man is likely to deteriorate. This is why I call the slow lane financial freedom philosophy a wealth on a wheelchair. This is the route our educational and career has planned for every NYSC graduates....😜 we have to liberate ourselves from the slavery mentality
Just the way you see dangerous pot holes, and contours and accident causing traffic jams that may make a journey of 2hours becomes a 7hours journey, in real life the slow laner may face financial freedom journey prolongers.
These uncertainties can be disguised in the following questions.
1.What is the assurances that a slow laner will live long enough to age 70?.
What is the guarantee that accidents that will disabled the person and thus affect the career depended upon to save to be wealthy at old age.?
What about sack, redundancy, lay off, etc?.
What if the economy becomes so bad with hyper inflation, massive retrenchment etc.?
What if the stock exchange crashed, the house built get burnt, having to cope with expensive terminal disease of a family member. Etc.?
The best route with the highest reward is the fast lane.
The fast lane looks easy and lazy to the inactive observer.
This fast lane has proudly produced the youngest millionaires, like:
The 10 richest billionaires under 35
Mark Zuckerberg, 33. Worth: $56 billion. ...
Lukas Walton, 31. Worth: $11.3 billion. ...
Dustin Moskovitz, 33. Worth: $10.7 billion. ...
Scott Duncan, 34. Worth: $5.7 billion. ...
Bobby Murphy, 28. Worth: $4 billion. ...
Evan Spiegel, 27. Worth: $4 billion. ...etc.
In Nigeria we have:
10 Youngest Billionaires in Nigeria (2018)
There are scores of young people making waves across the country and beyond.
Many of these enterprising individuals have gone on to found multi-million dollar companies and in this post, we will be looking at 10 of these young men.
Youngest billionaires in Nigeria
- Igho Sanomi
Igho Sanomi was born in Agbor, Delta State. He is the richest billionaire in Nigeria with an estimated worth of $1 billion.
His business interests include telecommunications, shipping, aviation, engineering, construction and real estate investments
Currently, Sanomi serves as the Executive Director of Cosmos oil AG. He is also the founder/chairman of Taleveras, an energy trading company.
- Ladi Delano
Ladi Delano founded a Chinese Alcoholic Beverage Company, Solidarnosc Asia in 2004 at the young age of 24. The company was known for its premium brand of vodka, Solid XS.
At some point, Solid XS had a 50% market share in China. It became the mainstream liquor brand and was popular in over 30 cities. Ladi eventually sold Solidarnosc for $15 million. Subsequently, he used his profit from the sales to establish a real estate investment company which is based in mainland China.
Delano is a serial entrepreneur who made his first million when he founded his first company, Solidarnosc Asia.
Currently, Delano runs Bakrie Delano Africa (BDA) which is a $1 billion joint venture with the Bakrie Group of Indonesia.
In 2012, Delano featured on Forbes list as one of the young millionaires to watch out for in Africa.
- Linda Ikeji
A few years ago, Linda Ikeji broke the news when it was reported that she had purchased a property in the exotic Banana Island for over $1 million.
Linda was born on the 19th September 1980. She began her career as a model before quitting to becoming a full-time blogger.
Currently, she is the highest paid blogger in the country. She started her blog from the cyber cafe before she could afford an internet connection at home.
- Jason Njoku
Born on the 11th of December 1980, Jason Chukwuma Njoku is the founder of the internet company, IROKOtv. He is also a start up investor with investments in several budding start ups in Nigeria.
Jason came up with the iROKOtv idea when he was living with his mother as 30 year old. According to him, this was his 11th attempt at starting a business.
In July 2012, he was named by Forbes Africa as one of the ten Young African Millionaires to watch out for. He has also been named as one of Fast Company’s Top 1000 Most Creative People in Business.
Jason is also the founder of Spark, a $2 million investment company for Lagos based internet start-ups. Some of Spark’s initial investments include Tolet.com.ng, Hotels.ng, Drinks.ng amongst other.
- Sijibomi Ogundele
Born in Agege, Lagos, Sijibomi had a very humble beginning but he had an innate desire to become rich, confident and unique. Over time, he was able to leverage his network to create wealth for him.
He is the founder of the Sujimoto Construction Company Ltd, a multi-million dollar construction company with assets in cities like Accra, Dubai, Lagos, Riyadh, Paris and Madrid.
Sijibomi is a trained lawyer but he has amassed skills and experience in business, strategy and investments over the last few years. And this has been pivotal in building his brand as a successful businessman.
- Abiola Olaniran
Abiola Olaniran is the founder of the Nigerian gaming company, Gamsole. He is also Nigeria’s highest paid Windows Game developer.
He founded Gamsole in 2012 and the company’s games currently has over 10 million downloads both local and international from the Windows Phone store.
Abiola’s interest in software spans back to when 15 years old. His interest in programming led to him study Computer Science and Mathematics at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife.
- Tayo Oviosu
If you’ve heard of Paga, then you may have an idea of who Tayo Oviosu is. Paga is the brainchild of Pagatech Limited, a company founded by Tayo Oviosu in 2009.
Prior to launching Paga, Tayo worked at Cisco as the Manager, Corporate Development where he was responsible for strategy, acquisitions, and private equity investments in four technology sectors including Virtual Computing, Application Networking, Security, and Network Management.
He was pivotal in helping Cisco’s expansion into Africa. Before working at Cisco, Oviosu worked as a Senior Consultant at Deloitte where he worked on cases in five industries – high tech, telecom, pharmacy retail, government, and healthcare.
- Mark Essien
Mark Essien is the founder of Hotels.ng, a prominent hotel booking company in Nigeria. He was born on the 18th of December, 1980. Essien is a Nigerian entrepreneur, software developer and startup investor. He was born on the 18th of December 1980 in Ikot Ekpene in Akwa Ibom.
Prior to founding Hotels.ng, Mark Essien had previously built a file sharing software called Gnumm which was acquired by Snoopstar.com.
Also, he created one of the first DirectShow based software-only Mpeg Encoders, Standard MPEG – which had high class clients such as Disney and the American Military.
Mark featured on the Forbes list of 30 youngest entrepreneurs in Africa in 2015. His company, Hotels.ng is said to be worth over $4 million as at 2017.
- Tonye Rex Idaminabo
Born in the 80s, Tonye Rex is a Nigerian entrepreneur. He is the first West African to be appointed to the board of World Leaders Forum.
Rex is a trained lawyer with a LLB degree from Glasgow Caledonina University in Glasgow, Scotland.
He founded the African Achievers Awards in 2011 and founded Reputation Pool in 2016 which creates reputation polls and rankings.
He was recognized by Forbes Africa as one of the 30 Most Promising Entrepreneurs in Africa.
- Iyinoluwa Aboyeji
From Andela to Flutterwave, Iyinoluwa Aboyeji has been blazing the trail with his innovative startups.
Prior to his sojourn in the Nigerian internet space, he founded Bookneto, an online learning platform in Canada which was acquired by the Canadian Innovation Centre.
His current business, Flutterwave is a provider of technology and infrastructure solutions for digital payments across Africa. The company is a multimillion dollar company that has processed over $760 million through 7.5 million transactions for merchants in partnership with financial institutions across Africa.
I was in Flutterwaves Company in Lekki Phase 1 last monday, the ITech company is so unique with a look and feel ambience that reflect excellence.
My people it is time to dismantle the agelong lie sold to us. All our financial wisdom or knowledge if at all we were taught one are all a mixture of Side walk and Slow lane which at best will make one a millionaire in tens of millions in Naira. To really be a financially independent young person...the way forward is not a JOB or a Business company that may be even worse than a job...what the FASTLANER knows how to do best is turning ideas into reality. FAST LANERS are INNOVATORS....take it or leave it.