What’s your earliest memory of money?
Staying in my mum’s shop, attending to customers and counting money with her at the end of each day.

What did she sell?
Pure water and soft drinks. Before that, she was a hairdresser, and before that, she was a full-time housewife. She only started working when I was seven and the chickens in my dad’s farm started dying. I remember when she made her first ₦1k in a day from the drinks, and we were all excited.

My mum was a hustler. From selling soft drinks, she somehow started importing fabrics from Cotonou to sell in Ibadan where we lived, and in a few years, she was making multiple Dubai trips, importing expensive fabrics in bulk. In the course of her business, she encountered some Chinese merchants, who wanted to import household and gift items, and partnered with them. Today, she has seven big stores.

So you grew up rich
There were ups and downs. Before my mum had to start business, things were okay. They had four cars between them, all bought by my dad. But he never recovered financially from the loss of his birds, so there was a period when things weren’t so great. These days, my mum would apologise for constantly feeding us eko when we didn’t have money. In my head, I’m like, “I love eko!”

As my mum’s business got better, things picked up again — this time, even better. She made the money and my dad took care of us, especially when she was out of the country. We went from living in a rented apartment to building our own house, having cars, maids, and my sisters went to a private university.

You didn’t?
I wanted to go to my dad’s alma mater to study computer engineering because we’d spoken about it for years, so that’s what I did.

Why computer engineering?
I was good at maths, and the adults around me said there was money in engineering and computers were the future.

University itself was pretty uneventful. I survived on ₦7k weekly from my parents and faced my studies. I’ve always been confident and not-so-social, so people always thought I was a snub. Before each semester, I got everything I needed — bulk provisions, new clothes, a new phone, everything — so I didn’t really need anything from anyone. I didn’t have many friends, no boyfriends, no after-school parties. After each semester, I went home and stayed with my mum at her shops.

Why didn’t you have friends?
I’ve been like that since childhood. My older sister was the beautiful one, and I was the big one friends insulted and compared to my sister. So I learnt to be unfriendly, to insult people when they insulted me. I was always brilliant, so I always came first and got prizes. That’s how I consoled myself.

Because of my personality, my mum would jokingly say I wasn’t the best person to do business. I didn’t know how to haggle or persuade people.

Interesting. Back to school
In 2013, when I was in my fourth year, I worked as an intern in the IT department of a bank. The pay was ₦40k.

About a year later, during NYSC, I overheard people talking about how the banking industry was the next big thing because a popular Nigerian bank was offering graduate trainee programs and paying ₦230k. That piqued my interest, but I didn’t do anything about it.

What happened next?
I served in Lagos, so I lived with my older sister who’d married and settled there. She’d just started an event planning business, so I helped her do some running around. My NYSC PPA was kuku at a local government office where we didn’t do much.

Did your sister pay you?
Nothing official, but there was the occasional ₦10k here and ₦20k there. I’ve never been a spender, so I was saving all the money.

Seven months into NYSC, I saw a Tweet about the same bank offering graduate trainee programs, so this time, I decided to apply. My dad, ever the pessimist, discouraged me from taking the exams. “They just want to scam you!”

Did they?
Thankfully, no. I passed the exam and a few interview stages, but when it was time to resume, the bank was concerned that I was still a youth corper. The interviewer asked me to send an email when I finished serving, that my job would be waiting for me.

I applied to two other places for work. I qualified for the first one but didn’t get the job because there was no space in technology advisory, the department I applied for.

For the second job, I was disqualified at the second stage of their interview because I couldn’t find a Nigeria ‘96 jersey.

Huh?
Internships used to ask for weird stuff like that. I know someone another company asked to bring a white Nokia 3310.

LMAO
By October, I finished NYSC, so I sent the email to the bank’s recruitment officer. They didn’t get back to me, so I just returned to Ibadan to help my mum at her shop. By November ending, they finally responded, asking me to resume training school in December. In May 2015, I fully joined the bank’s tech department at one of their Lagos Island branches.

What was that like?
My parents were excited. They thought it was great that they didn’t have to do anything for me before I got a job. They didn’t even have to buy me a car like they did my older sister because my job came with one.

It did?
Yes, but I had to pay ₦88k monthly from my ₦236k salary until I paid off the ₦5.84m it cost.

I was on the product team, and I became popular because I was handling an application that was crucial to the operation of the entire bank. This meant more work and less time for myself. I had to go from deep in the mainland, where I lived with my sister, to the island everyday. I even lost weight and was breaking out on my face, but at least, I enjoyed my work. It’s ironic because the one thing I never play with is food. Till today, I don’t spend money on a lot of things. But when it comes to food, I have no budget. Every time I was on leave, I went to Ibadan to be with my parents and regain weight.

Love it
In 2018, I ordered six shoes on ASOS for $15 a pair, and they were delivered when I was on leave in Ibadan. When I got back, I tried on the shoes. None of them was my size because I’d grown fatter, and my legs were bigger.

Because they were good quality shoes, I decided to buy them again in my new size. When I got back on ASOS, I saw that the same shoes I bought for $15 were now on sale for $7.50. I bought six pairs again, but with the intention to keep one and sell the rest.

How did you sell them?
I showed them to my coworkers who liked and bought them for ₦10k per pair. The dollar rate was about ₦400/$1 then, so I made a profit.

I guess you weren’t so bad at business
LMAO. A friend who was impressed that I sold everything in such a short time brought up an idea: shipping in shoes from China to sell. The stereotype around Chinese products being fake first made me reject the idea, but she persuaded me.

An old secondary school colleague was doing her PhD in China at the time, so I reached out to ask her about it. Coincidentally, she was already into that business. So we partnered.

She sent pictures and prices of shoes. I selected the ones I liked and could afford. We paid for the items and got them shipped by air to Nigeria. Everything happened so fast. From the time my friend presented the idea to me to when I paid for my items, only one month passed.

How many did you buy?
I’m not a risk taker, so I started with five shoes. Each pair cost ₦3500, shipping inclusive, and I sold them at ₦8500 to colleagues.

With time, I increased the number of pairs I bought, quality of shoes and selling price. I started buying at ₦5k and selling at ₦10k because Instagram vendors were selling the same shoes at ₦15k. The ones I bought for ₦7k, I sold for ₦15k. Instagram vendors sold at ₦25k.

Read full article: https://www.zikoko.com/money/naira-life/the-soft-nairalife-of-the-engineer-making-millions-selling-shoes/