It’s a new season in most peoples’ lives and a burden was laid upon me to look for a missing key in a dark room. By intuition, I was led to the dark room; my entrance into the dark room saw me stumbling from a piece of furniture. I immediately got a grip of myself and could sense cobwebs and pieces of furniture scattered in all direction. The room was very dark and my first attempt to look for the key was an ugly incidence; my hand struck a nail and the excruciating pain made me scream at the top of my voice. I immediately removed the nail from my hand but the pain was so much that I groped for the wall to rest. During that pain period, I could not think of what to do; my first reaction was to stop the pain. Why was I even looking for a key in a dark room? When and if I get the missing key; what is the usefulness of it?
The story above is the story of numerous people in the world as they enter dark rooms filled with disordered pieces of furniture looking for keys to open the door to their joy. Dark rooms like this depict marriages, relationships, investments, education, and career choices. I am majorly interested in investment and finding the key to open the door filled with joy and happiness. The dark room I was led to was named investment. Why investment? Why not business venture? Why was I even led? I would attempt to answer these questions in a way I believe would help us understand the need to wake up to our destiny; our need to understand that the only real possession we have is “time” not money, not physical possessions, not business, not children, not wives and not even our lives. All we have is time and as the seconds keep ticking, we are moving close to the end of our lives. We are limited by this time, so how we spend it or invest it is close call for considerations considering there are no clear cuts to where we would end up when our lives are no more.
I would kick off these series by saying the only thing we are interested in is “happiness”. Everybody wants to be happy; every decision we make is perceived to make us happy. We go to school because we believe investing in education would make us happy in the long run. We wake up very early and hustle to work because we believe that investing in our work would eventually make us wealthy which would eventually make us happy. We go to our religious sect to be happy. We all have needs and based on the seasons of our lives, fulfilling those needs would make us very happy. There is a certain man called Abraham Maslow who postulated that human needs are hierarchical from the most pressing to the least pressing. He used a pyramid to back-up his point where the most pressing need of man is at the bottom of the pyramid. He postulated that the first need of man is physiological (e.g. food and shelter) then safety (e.g. security and protection), social (e.g. sense of belonging and love), esteem (e.g. status and recognition) and self actualization (self development and realization).
Since I am riding on the back of giants that have gone ahead and with little experience with people, I have realized that Maslow’s postulations are quite logical and may follow the trends of youths in Nigeria. Without taking much effort to expatiate on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, it is imperative to understand that about 75% of Nigerian youths are at the base of the pyramid. This is quite alarming because this forms the bases of every decision that a Nigerian youth makes; the root is always physiological: A prospective university student chooses his course of study based on physiological need, a young lady marries based on physiological needs, the type of job we take is based on physiological needs, etc
One of the most defining moments of my life was my trip with NNC members to Charity; we visited Remand Boys Home in Ikeja and Modupe Memorial Home in Yaba. I was struck by the patients in Modupe Memorial Home neither with pity nor with sympathy. I was struck with a passion to walk on the path that God has laid out for me. As NNC coordinator, Deolu Akinyemi, donated gifts and monetary items to staff and patients of Modupe Home, my mind started wondering on the amount of Nigerians that are destined to help the less privilege but cannot do so because they are in Maslow’s physiological segment. Is it possible for one, who is looking for, aid those who are looking for (though at varying degree). I realized that as more people aim to satisfy their needs first, it would be quite impossible to preach charity to them. You can only preach charity to those whose mindsets are aligned to such.
This led me to Professor Mohammed Yunus, the President of Grameen Bank, Bangladesh and the recipient of the Nobel Peace prize. He made a quotation that blew my mind and aligned with my unexpressive inclinations that the poor (those in Maslow Physiological Segment which is a mental state conditioned by physical experiences) do not need charity but need business opportunities with social objectives. This inclination led to the Project that won him the Nobel Peace Prize. To read more on Professor Yunus project, please kindly click HERE
Armed with Professor Yunus ideology, I realized it would be difficult to promote business venture in Nigeria because the conditions are not favorable for such. The absence of stable electric power alone can crumble the momentum of budding business owners who just graduated from the university. The only business that would create a huge momentum and hopefully deplete Nigerian Youths from Physiological segment is Financial Investment. The arts and science of Financial Investment is a must for Nigerian Youths. Since this particular subject is not taught in our schools and Finance affects our everyday lives; it is imperative that workers are deployed in this area to advice youth on best investment platforms and train them on the where with all. I have decided to take this seemingly arduous task and hopefully gain a Nobel peace prize.
Well, that last statement is not a joke but a very serious objective. We are in a verge of war; poverty is a threat to a nation, no wonders Professor Yunus was awarded a peace prize for alleviating poverty in Bangladesh. If only the USA knows that the root to terrorism is poverty, they would stop wasting resources to combat terrorism through weaponry and machinations but through alleviation of poverty. It is only poverty that can make someone commit suicide knowingly; the catch for the suicide bomber is not the Religious belief but the fact that his/her family would be taken care of for life. A man who is making enough money through business would find it very difficult to be a suicide bomber. The bait is always eaten by those fighting for survival. The major armed robbery situation in Nigeria focuses on stealing mobile phones which they sell at ridiculous prices for survival. The lingering acute problems in Nigeria results from poverty; unemployment issue is poverty based, engineers in banks is poverty based and the chain continues.
My solution to all these lingering problems is financial investment; the art, the science, the best practice of financial investment. Not just placing you hard earned money in stocks and mutual fund where you do not have control and where most people are blinded by cooperate shenanigans but looking for unpopular investment vehicles where if mastered can give you control to vast resources of wealth. It is difficult to obtain wealth from popular ventures because the crowd input hinders such. History justifies my latter statement with Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Steve Jobs and Oprah Winfrey substantiating the fact. It is not as much as the unpopular investment vehicle but the uncommon ways the individual actors play with the platform of investment.
A typical example; a friend told me about a guy that put 27 million naira in shares to get 54 million naira after a time. I told my friend that the guy that placed the 27 million is not that smart. He was obviously shocked by my statement; I am sure most readers would be shocked too. In this present Nigeria where opportunities are abound like houseflies, 27 million should be making the guy 270 million. What anybody that has 27 million naira needs to do to make 54 million is to look for a private placement and when it goes public; he is most likely to make triple his money but most people don’t even have the faintest idea. Using 27 million to make 270 million is what a wealthy man focuses on. This is simply called leverage and used by every successful business man; I call it the 1:10 rule. This season, only those that are willing to learn are advised to read this blog, those that are willing to understand the power of leverage; those that are willing to understand how Jesus Christ was able to invest 5 loaves and 2 fishes to feed 5000 people.
This season there is no need to waste the only precious gift I have from God on this earth – TIME. This season I would focus on leverage investment; I would call on God who promises to show us great and mighty things that we know not. This season we are not looking for the key in a dark room, we would turn the lights on first and arrange the furniture then we are sure we would get the key that opens the door to leverage investment. This season, I enjoin all readers to focus on Francis Bacon’s quote that “knowledge is light’ and if we are interested in leverage investment, we should visit this blog daily (even if there are no updated article, please, re-read the old ones (mastery comes from consistency). We should not easily forget the excruciating pains caused by nails when we walk in the darkness of financial investments. My prayer this season is that all that are taking this journey by reading this blog enter into financial abundance, AMEN.
