How to make your first ₦30 billion

While the jury is still out on if he’s really got that much money, what is true is that it is possible to own that much money. Billionaires such as Coscharis founder Dr. Cosmos Maduka have gone from poverty to wealth in their lifetime. This piece looks at what it takes to hit your first ₦30 billion.

Prepare for your first billion

Think big. Wealth making starts in the mind. Billionaires do not reach wealth status accidentally. All the richest men, whether globally, or locally, are big thinkers. They have a conquest mindset of growing bigger companies and conquering markets.

Asides vision, a common trait with all billionaires is hard work. Africa’s richest man Aliko Dangote says: “I believe in hardwork and one of my business success secrets is hard work. It’s hard to see a youth that will go to bed by 2 a.m. and wake up by 5 a.m. I don’t rest until I have achieved something.”

Wealth in billions is either inherited or built. So if your father isn’t Otedola, Indimi and the likes, then you know you have the arduous route of patiently building wealth which often takes decades. It has taken Aliko Dangote about 30 years to turn the $3,000 loan he got from his uncle Alhaji Sanusi Dantata in 1977 to billions in dollars today.

There has only been two ways to consciously build wealth. Through investments like Warren Buffet and building companies as Aliko Dangote has shown. The tougher route however, is through building companies. In Nigeria, only one out of ten new businesses survives beyond the fifth year. Of every surviving and thriving company, rarely is majority of its shareholding owned by the founder. So it’s important as a founder to be great at negotiations and retain as much equity as possible.

Often, it’s investors in the company, especially privately held companies, that control most of the equity and this makes the art of investing very interesting. There are billionaires who just make money smartly deploying their money in companies while employees in the company do the heavy lifting. The world’s third richest man, Warren Buffet, who is worth $78 billion, through his company Berkshire Hathaway makes mega investments in business he believes would keep turning profit even after decades. Brands like Coca Cola are under his portfolio.

Career professionals also build wealth by saving huge chunks of their salaries and making long-term investments in mutual funds or buying and owning successful company stocks for decades.

Stanford professor David Cheriton made a $10,000 investment in Google when the company just launched. Today, it is worth billions of dollars in Google stocks. Before the crash of the Nigerian stock market, a Nigerian writer who had ₦3000 in shares in a consumer goods company in the 70s disclosed it eventually became over ₦200 million in shares.

Zimbabwe’s wealthiest man and Econet founder Strive Masiyiwa summarised an important lesson in wealth making when he said; “If you do not know how to invest properly you will never really have any wealth of your own.”