It is a very simple art once you understand it. You are earning income, then you spend less than you earn, ploughing the rest into an asset that will bring you income, provided you do not fall sick and you have no Pastor Adeboye laying ambush for you, then you will soon be a millionaire, even a billionaire, if that is your focus. It is a simple undertaking which you do not need to go into crime to see through.


Without any capital, you can make money by selling your physical labour, then save part of the money to use for venturing into business.


The lower your capital, the higher your returns on your investment. It is possible for somebody with a total investment of one hundred thousand to recover the money within two or three months, especially if the person is a youth with not much expenses. For example, I turned 4 thousand naira into 53 thousand in three weeks in Ikoyi, Lagos, 2001 by retailing GSM cards. If the OAU had not resumed, I would have gone to half a million Naira, then rented a shop, employed someone, the returns on investment may then drop, but depending on the industry and the season that industry is in, it may also shoot up astronomically to maybe ten million naira or more in three years.


But let us use a saturated market like the GSM distributorship that I was in, in which there is no room for any innovation other than organisation and pricing. What you are going to gross in profit monthly will be a bit lower than one percent of your real investment. In such a business, there is little or no intellectual property involved, just trading. So, when I had over 1.5 million naira invested in kiosks, paid rent, stock, equipments and consumables, I stretched myself and I was making over 200 thousand naira a month which was over 1 percent of my capital investment layout, however, the business as a going concern was worth at least 3 million naira. That was in 2009. However, expenses were over a hundred thousand naira a month, so, monthly I was saving around 60,000 at least, after expenses, by 2009. So, if the business was valued at 3 million naira as it was, then the gross monthly yield was under 1 percent, like 0.8. That was the figure I and a friend involved in the GSM distributorship arrived at back then.


So, if you have 1.5 million naira only, real money in business and goodwill with customers, you can inflate yourself by having many shops, many employees, then you will use credit to stock your shops in part, with good monitoring, you can go up by 75 percent in a year, even 100 percent, to close at 3 million naira for the fiscal year that is worth, like 5 million naira as a going concern but you will need dedicated employees and I had them. So, with ordinary trading with no propping up, you can double your small capital, say, some millions, every year, I was doing better but you will need many people helping you.


On the other hand, an investment in real estate yields 10 percent pa on avg. So, to collect rent of 1 million naira pa, you must invest 10 to 15 million in real estate.

If you have a big business worth 200 million naira and it has no intellectual property, it will be said to be doing well, if it can grow by 50 to 100 million naira a year, even with intellectual property. That is a lot. It is more difficult with huge capital. Huge companies like Microsoft, Apple will find it hard to grow by 10 percent after expenses, sometimes their yield maybe lower than real estate, if they grow at all but they have thousands of employees and millions of customers. The rule is 'slow and steady'.


One must always remember that a large income for the enterprise one heads is only justified by the number and well being of employees. For example, a SME employing some people in Lagos, maybe making 5 million naira a month and 60 million naira a year is at par with an 600 million naira real estate by gross income. An ongoing production concern in a saturated market, say a bakery or a hotel worth 100 million naira can also gross that profit pa before expenses. So in essence, a concern grossing 50 million a year is an around 600 million naira real estate or 100 million naira venture if the concern is using only bank loans, backed with assets that are at work inside the business like office buildings, industrial machines, patents and etc but a business worth less than 100 million naira can still have such gross profit in Nigeria, if it is a priviledged dealership, licensed distributorship and etc.


So it goes on. Very straightforward and simple.


Your responsibilities.

Not less than 30 percent of company profit should go to the employees, not management. In Nigeria, MDs make 6 million, pay less than 1 million as salaries, pay 1 million to banks as interest and spend 1 million on their children overseas, yet they complain of no market as a result of bad economy in a country where big men like them spend one billion dollars a year on children school fees in Ghana alone not to talk of North America. If Ghana alone takes one billion dollars a year of Nigerian money (forex) in school fees, then Europe and North America will take more than that. So how can the economy grow for your business to flourish if you make 6 million naira, pay staff less than a million, Pay banks over a million, and spend 2 million overseas? Multiply that by 200 thousand for people like you. The ideal thing will be to pay 1.5 or 2 million naira to your employees which will mean like double their salaries, while you explain to them how much the business makes every month end and end of fiscal year. That is the best way to run a business. All my books used to be kept by my employees, my debts, profits and etc. I had no business secrets hidden from my employees and I would be ashamed to spend 5 million on a kid while spending a million on ten of my employees. I would not dare. The problem is that business owners take advantage of the no wage regulation regime in Nigeria to abuse workers. European and American companies do not do this but it is done by Nigerians, Chinese, Indians, Lebanese and etc especially to the lower cadre or rank and file of workers. However, there are still fair minded business owners who use the policy of calculating a certain percentage of net profit that must go to the workers as benefits, these people also have their children working alongside their employees, if not as salaries, they make up the percentage as bonuses to the employees but it is the government that must bell the cat by regulating wages to take income tax. I am not against going to school abroad. Not at all. My Dad schooled in the UK, his brother in the US and some of his sisters, my mother's sister schooled abroad. Many school teachers in Ilesa schooled abroad but back then Europeans, Arabs, Americans schooled here as well and here was better run. If everywhere is equalised or the person sponsoring such education is doing so out of real excess and not squeezing it out of the economy as in his or her employees, then it would be right.