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“Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit, and lost without deserving.”- William Shakespeare 

People have asked me so many times why I strongly advocate Leverage Investment; I may not have been able to articulate the reason succinctly but I instinctively knew this was what I should pursue in this phase of my life. The commercial viability of leverage investment in itself is not enough reason for my drive towards it but the society in which God has placed me and the solutions I am meant to proffer finally opened my eyes of understanding. Nigerians have been raped of their natural resources; we are like princes that walk the street while the slaves ride on horses; we have all the natural resources but cannot appropriate it to better the lot of an average Nigerians. When we look at countries like the UAE (which has similarities with Nigerian except population wise), we cannot but weep for our dear country. Our population is meant to be our greatest asset but it has been used as an excuse. 

 

 A Nigerian youth (let’s use a guy) graduates from the university and pursues a job. The individual gets his hopes dashed after two years of running around from one test center to another and he decides to do something for himself. He rallies around for capital and he realizes that the environment is not conducive especially when he sees his mates in the corporate world moving ahead in life. He fails to understand that the people in the corporate world are more disillusioned than he is. The allegory of the Nigerian work force is individuals who use big padlocks (costing 1000 Naira each) to secure pairs of slippers (costing 70 Naira each). There is definitely a huge despair in the Nigerian air and it seems as if there is no change in sight. The change that must come is not a national change but an individual change which we are unwilling to sacrifice for. It is this change that leads me to leverage investment where you can use little or no capital to control huge asset. Let me use a personal example to drive home my point: 

 

 My younger brother just graduated from the university and told me he was not going to work for anybody. He wanted my advice on a business project he was developing with some of his friends that have vowed to take the same “no work for anybody” route. I was immediately intrigued and fascinated until he said something that immediately bleeped a red flag. He said they have aggregated huge capital for the project. What does huge capital mean? He started mentioning the numbers which was running to tens of millions; he said they were getting the money from relatives. He said they had it all planned out so I asked him for the numbers which he was unable to produce. I pointed out to him that business cannot be properly planned without numbers even if they do not have it documented, they should have estimates off hand. He said that it was not a problem that they would sort it out. 

 

 

Ordinarily, I would have let them be but because he was my blood brother and I could see the eventual doom and pain ahead. I asked him to take a walk with me to chains of stores where they sell spare parts. I advised him to leave his friends alone if he was serious about not working in the corporate setting. I advised him to take 12 months to do internship with one of the Ibo traders selling spare parts then after that he would be ready to do business. He could not believe his ears and I knew he had so many negative things in his mind to say but because of the Yoruba culture he was accustomed to, he merely said he was going back to his friends. Tough love would not let things be so I asked him why he came to me for advice and he said because I have been successful in business and rhetorically said what I knew was on his mind “you did not learn business from illiterate Ibo boys; why am I advising him to do such.” 

 

 My brother has talent for business and he has proven it many times by sinking goods I import but this was not about just selling things, it was about controlling and managing resources profitable. It was a different terrain and I wanted him to be prepared for it. I have 8 years business experience; 2 years on the street and 6 years of corporate business experience. I have learnt from both worlds of street and corporations but I have learnt more from the street. In the street, you would learn to produce water from the desert but in the corporate world, you would learn language, finesse and management of resources without personal risk. There were differences between the two but the two experiences have shaped my life and I would not trade the experience for anything. If I could turn the clock around and reverse 8 years, I may have joined the Ibo brothers for at least 6 months because I would have learnt a perspective of business that can never be taught in the boardroom; I would have learnt raw ways of making money through synergy and street capitalization. This was what I asked my blood brother to do; to sacrifice 12 months of his life to develop business instincts, people segmentation, employee management, opportunity creation and money management skills. 

 

 The wisdom that Nigerian youths and young men do not embrace is that they have to go down before coming up. Before you expand, you must prune unwanted weights and all these things take time to accomplish. God was about to take His own people to the promise land and the first place God took them was the wilderness to shed their Egyptian mentality and develop in them a new skill to combat the enemies they would eventually encounter. I immediately knew the problem with my brother not heeding my advice; what would people say? I tell all the people I am fortunate to advise that they are not ready to fulfill their destiny if they are bothered about what people would say about taken decision that would change their lives. I know it’s not as easy as I put it because I had to fight off this ego mentality myself and it took me time to accomplish. We want acceptance from every single person especially those we have high regards for but the truth is that we cannot become successful if we depend on what people would say about us. This is the true prerequisite to all notable accomplishments of men; they ride above human displeasures of their activities even from their loved ones, to accomplish their aim. 

 

 Okay, back to the topic on individual sacrifice to achieve national development; how many of us are willing to sacrifice our ego and put in the requisite time to achieve greatness in whatever we dream of. How many of us are willing to look past the comments and opinions of people to improve ourselves? This is the bane of all movements that call for change where most people prefer to be in the spectator seat rather than be in the game. Before one can come to the point of leverage, one must be willing to put the necessary preparedness to it just like David defeating Goliath. David using a sling and a stone to kill the powerful Goliath is the pictorial example of leverage. It is not just the stone that killed Goliath but the forces that accompany the stones; the prerequisite experiences that have come together to make the force behind the tiny stone powerful enough to achieve its aim of killing Goliath. It is the experience of killing the bear, killing the lions and protecting his father’s sheep that were behind the forces that killed Goliath. This did not just happen overnight but a series of accomplished events that makes the proverbial saw sharp enough to pierce through any material. 

 

 The David killing Goliath episode is a case study that leads to true successful investment culture. David has learnt not look at the outside to judge what he can accomplish; if not how do we explain a teenager fighting with lions and bears. He has learnt to judge inwardly by focusing on his spirit (or what is called intuition or superior intelligence). This is where we learn the difference between those we regard as genius and those we do not. Most people are programmed from childhood to rely on their five senses to make decisions but beyond the five senses is information from a different realm. This is what most people refer to as intuition – a particular feeling that their five senses cannot capture but they know it exists. The intuition cannot be really understood at least not at the time it makes its impact. In order to fully understand this, let me use the way I understand it to explain it to you. 

 

 Man is made up of body (5 physical senses), the soul (the mind and the heart) and the spirit. The body is the physical part that is evident to all; the soul is the part we see when emotions crop up or when there is a spark of brilliance but the spirit confuses a lot of people. Not so many people are alive to the spirit or are able to interpret the feeling derive from the spirit realm. Since the body feels form the earth realm and the spirit feels from a different realm, the soul picks up the sensitivity from both the body and the spirit and turns it into understanding. The body and the spirit cannot understand the feelings but it is the soul realm that converts the feelings into understanding. It is very possible to feel the spiritual realm without understanding the feelings because we are not use to the feelings of the spiritual realm which we term intuition. Understanding the feelings of the body is a different stead since most of us are used to it; we immediately understand hunger pangs, appreciate finer things in life and interpret weather changes but the feeling we get from the spirit is a difficult thing to interpret all together. 

 

 The dichotomy exists when we feel something from the outside (the body) opposing what we feel inward (the spirit). This is where confusion begins to set in and most people lean towards the outside because they are used to it. They trust the feelings from the outside which may partially produce results but totally neglect the feelings from inside which gives wholesome result. The more you neglect your intuition, the less your soul feels it and thus takes every feeling from the outside body; this is the difference between great investors and average investors. Great investors rely on their intuitive feelings and stay faithful to it. I lost more than 750k naira last year because I neglected my intuitive knowledge and absorb the outside feelings. The more you obey the intuitive feeling, the easier it is to decode what the feeling it’s telling you. Most Christians automatically have this intuitive feeling alive in them but the more you neglect it, the less it becomes operative. As someone who has neglected the promptings of the intuition on many cases, I know the challenge associated with obeying it. 

 

 

I had meeting with some guys from America about Swiss Cash Invest; I was very impressed with their presentation that I promised to sign on immediately. As I was about to sign up, I had a disturbance in my spirit that indicated to me through experience that I should not sign up. I was in a fix; my body was eager for it based on what I was seeing but my intuition was totally against it; there was a thug of war. Because I was so impressed with the presenters, I leaned towards signing up. Just one day after, the Swiss Cash Invest website went down and there was no more Swiss cash; my 150K disappeared. I did not bother about my loss much but my disobedience to my intuition. I asked for forgiveness and moved on. I have learnt over the years never to disobey my intuition even if I have promised my partner, I would always listen to my intuition. Your intuition is a financial leverage that would differentiate you from an average investor; it brings you to all truth that you may not see at the moment. It would take constant use of this intuition to make you master its use. 

This was the reason I asked my brother to join the Ibo traders to develop his intuition as he makes his mistakes through internship. He would learn to know when a deal would fail or when a deal would profit; all these comes from learning with those who can give you the numbers of a business off hand without the theory of business case. These are people who do not have formal literacy but are handling and managing millions of naira. An average spare part shop in my neighborhood has a turnover of about 1.5 million naira most days; these are guys seriously aggressive about what they do. Whatever you dream of doing, its best you learn from those who have gone ahead of you no matter how the world perceives them. When you have learnt to use your intuition, you would realize that huge capital is not as important as most think and in a country like Nigeria where funds are scarce for the average graduates, it is important to learn how to leverage and starting with developing your intuition is the right direction…………..