← Konnected Minds Podcast with Derrick Abaitey
Konnected Minds Podcast with Derrick Abaitey
Segment: Why Africans Stay Broke - Stop Praying for Money, Start Building Wealth.
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There are so many areas of people's lives that you can look for what the problem is and help them. People can pay you to even help them build wealth. People pay you to give them knowledge that they don't have. That's why teachers and coaches make money. People pay you to heal them. Right? So an entrepreneur is basically just helping people achieve the thing that they could not achieve themselves and helps them solve some sort of issue they have. That's the first. Number two. Number two is distribution. You might not have a product, you might not have a service, but you have a system that helps people distribute those products, which means you are the one helping people, devising a medium for people to sell that problem or sell that solution, whether it's a product or like a supermarket, right? The supermarkets don't own the water. They don't own the clothes. They just know that people need water. People need food. They know that people need so, so and so. So they have a shop, they import those things and they sell, right? That's the second type of way of building wealth, right? The third. And the truth about that, the higher you go on the run, the more capital you need. You need. So it's not something that just say, oh, I want to just start this. So our starting point would be step number one. Yes. Okay, great. Yeah. So number three. Number three. And let me even use, let's say something like Facebook. This typical example, when Facebook started, he just wanted to get a platform where people could connect to each other so you could be in your school. It was a school system, right? So it could be maybe your own class, you know, what another person is doing in that class. It was a simple problem, so that people. To make people more connected. It was even a problem that most people did not even know that they had. So sometimes you can solve a problem that most people don't even know that they had. Some. You can solve a problem that, yes, people know that they have this, but you can also solve a problem that people don't know that they have. Do you understand? So Facebook started that way, right? Then he moved from school, right, To a wider audience, which is not anybody can. Come on. The Pianist. So Facebook became like some sort of distributor for connection. Jonathan the third way is value chain, right? Which is, for example, you are controlling the whole value chain from the producer to the distributor, the manufacturer, all the way to the consumer. Jonathan. So when you see companies that have. Yes, let me. I mean, oil and gas, for example. Let's see companies that have oil and gas fields, they also have oil and gas vessels that transport it. They also have a refinery. They also now have a station, which means across the whole value chain, they are present and they extract value across. You can apply in the fashion business too. Instead of you just being a store, maybe a boutique, you now own the place where the boutique, the clothes are manufactured. Right. You also own the retail outlets where the clothes are being sold. Right. Do you understand? So like a Zara, for example, they own the whole value chain, right? Yeah. So you see that more capital is now required, which means you're not extracting value across all the different aspects of value chain. And unfortunately, majority of Africans are usually in one and two. Step one, step two. Do you understand? So like Facebook, for example, now, the higher they went, they now eventually became a place where it controlled the whole value chain, right? So for example, they have server rooms where before Facebook will probably maybe be depending on other servers to be able to store their data, energy suppliers and all those kind of things. Owning across the whole value chain. And it started now acquiring other businesses that plug into that. Yeah, right. Number four is a platform or an ecosystem. Now don't just own the value chain, you now become a playing field for other people to transact, which means it's not just you transacting. You've not given people a place to come and transact. Okay. Facebook is a place where businesses come and transact, where people come and do business and they make money off everyone. People advertise on Facebook just like Amazon. So it's a platform or it's an ecosystem. It's the same thing that Steve Jobs did with the App Store. So everybody has an app. The developers who build apps, they will put it on the App Store and Apple takes a commission. The same thing with Apple Music, what Spotify is doing. So you see the companies I'm mentioning now, if you think about the value of those companies, you can see how much they are worth. If you look at Flutterwave in Africa, what does it do? It's a platform where it plugs into all your transactions, which means no matter where you are in the world, if you want to be a payment processor, they charge a commission for you to be able to collect your money. Yep, that's a platform. We all know that Flutterwave has already become a unique cause. Once you create a place for other people to thrive, you thrive the most. That's how the people outside the country or outside the continent think. It's not that. It's just me, me, me, me, me, me, me. Do you understand, Dangote? When he started with cement, he grew it up to cement and then started going into fmcg. Now, I don't even know which part of the FMCG in Africa that Angote is not really controlled the whole value chain of cement. He was first importing cement into the country, which is there was a problem that he helped people to solve. People needed cement to construct because Nigeria was growing in terms of the infrastructure. Started importing it, then started manufacturing it. So you will not go to supermarket and buy Dangote cement. Right? He owns the value chain from manufacturing to distribution, to transport. You see Dangote trucks on the road to the end user. He owns everything. Do you understand? Then instead of going into cement, did the same thing. Instead of going into flour, did the same thing. I think he went into some other food stuff. So I don't know if the business succeeded. I think spaghetti once entered into noodles as well. Right. If you notice, they keep moving up. They keep moving. The last stage, yeah, which is where very few billionaires are, is an investor now. At that stage, you've already built your platform or whatever, you've made money, right? You now begin to invest in other businesses. You begin to build more businesses. Because most people think that when you hear investments, just think stock markets, real estate. A business is an investment. Okay? The wealthiest man in the world owns up to like five businesses. Elon Musk, he owns Twitter, he owns SpaceX, he owns Tesla, he owns the boring company he owns. There's one other company that Neuralink that has to do with the mind and putting chips inside the brain and stuff. Multiple businesses. That guy is an investor. And he probably also owns his own private investment company. Warren Buffet is an investor. This is why he's one of the wealthiest men. Warren Buffet makes approximately about 700, I think $776 million or so a year on Coca Cola dividends. That's higher than the Coca Cola CEO earns. So the Coca Cola CEO earns a particular amount per year. Warren Buffet earns more because he's invested in the company. Mention any big billionaire today, you will see that they have multiple businesses. But for you to get to that level, Dangote has multiple businesses. Tony Elumelu in Africa has multiple businesses. Femi Otedola just released his book Multiple Businesses. He was in oil and gas. He left oil and gas, went to power. He's in banking. Do you understand? But to get to that stage, it's a process. It's a process. Tony Lomelu took a while. Temi Otola Took a while. Ali Kodanguti took a while. Bill Gates took a while. To build and sustain wealth. It takes a while. So the problem I've seen is social media has made you think like this. The time to build wealth. Even this Davido that we celebrate. Davido was doing this music thing since from when he was in university, before anybody knew him. Yes, he came from a wealthy place, but he was guys who has work ethic. There are many people that have come from a wealthy place and have zero work ethic or zero talents. It took him a while to get to this Davido that we celebrate. That guy probably has like how many albums. So even what you see and you see all the wealth, he's buying this, he's buying that, he's buying this. I mean, I might not be in support in lavish display of wealth. What I'm saying that the principle is that he has built it over time. Now here I see him investing in some companies. I even saw that. I think this major company that is in Africa now, the mobility company Spiro, he's an investor in the company. He posted it on his page one time, right? So him is now also saying that this music has made me money. Let me now begin to invest in other businesses. Is it mindset? Social media is telling us a lie. Social media has sold a lie. So delayed gratification is not even a thing in our vocabulary in Africa because we think, let me put. And that's why forever collect people's money. I don't know what it's called in Ghana, but it's a money market. Money making market or something like that is like a scheme where they tell you put in this money, you get in this money out. Put in this money, you get this money out. And people always, when the thing eventually collapses, a lot of people lose money because what it is selling, that's the reason why the place where betting companies will make the most money is Africa. What betting is selling is greed, which is put money inside, bring it out. He's selling delete gratification. Instant, instant gratification. Selling instant gratification, right? So when you've grown up in that kind of culture and you say, my brother, we two of us before we were broke and I met him two years after he said, oh more. I put my hand into this, maybe some sort of like in Africa, we call it jazz or some sort of ritual and you have to go and do some fetish stuff and they made money. So you now think that if I do this too, I'll make money or I did something fraudulent, or let's say I put money inside betting, a betting company and I made money, it shortens the time. Social media has sold us a lie. Wow. When you look at Africa today, what is the biggest lie that the youth have been told about success? The biggest lie that I believe the youth have been told is just pray money will come. That's the biggest lie. Just pray. It's a very, very sensitive topic. Right, because of how much religion is part of our culture. Just pray and money will come. So we delegate our work to God. That's what has made a lot of us lazy. We don't work for money. We pray for money. No society was built on prayer. No business was built solely on prayer. I'm a person of faith and I believe in prayer. But I have gotten wise enough to know that prayer alone cannot do the job because even people that are not of faith, countries that are not of our faith, have been built. Connected Minds podcast.