After the UBA takeover in the '90s, I asked my uncle how they planned to respond to GTBank, which was growing very rapidly and dominating the middle market at the time. He said they would create many regional GTBanks inside UBA instead of going head-to-head. They did just that. The regional directors were the MDs of their region, and they adapted to the needs of each region's market. This allowed them to grow tremendously until internal crises changed everything. I was thinking of that strategy when looking at GTbank and others that have now become old.

No "publicly known" habit of the billionaire that you copy will ever make you a billionaire. If it worked, we would have had far more billionaires.

The things that make most people rich are the things you should fear the most about them. They rarely share those things. This tweet came about because of a recent interaction that sparked a memory. Many rich people use other people and throw them under the bus. At a certain level of wealth, this becomes an unconscious habit, yet it still attracts sycophants who rationalize actions of the wealthy.

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation” - Henry David Thoreau

I remembered this quote while I was in Lagos. It was evident all around. Both the rich and the poor in Lagos are desperate, and I finally discovered why. Limited options and constraints lead to desperation. Nigeria is full of constraints. Many people make excuses for and rationalize those constraints, but they are still constraints. Imagine going to a bank and not being sure that you will get the money that you want. Imagine not being sure if you will be arrested for nothing.

In my software testing days, I met a company that wanted me to recruit educated Africans as testers and they wanted to pay $200 a month. The Naira and Cedi weren’t so devalued at the time and it was ridiculous. I told the guys that nobody would accept that. They argued that Indians took even less and I should find people who would accept the amount. It was stupid because I was expected to make some profit on the $200 as well. It came to roughly $10 a day. I passed on the contract and decided to find testing deals by myself.

When I see pitches from people who don't know me and are just trying their luck, I feel a pang of sadness, but I do what I have to do and tell them the truth. Try to make good friends, and those friends will be the people who help you to move forward. Strangers rarely help. Don't make friends with people when you need help. Don't reach out to people only when you need help. Some of the people I do business with today have been my friends for decades. I met them at school or through other friends. That is how trust is strengthened.

20 years after university, I found a classmate working as a security guard in a bank. I took his number, and we discussed what happened to him. He had traveled to Germany for work, and all the money he was sending home was squandered by a relative until he got deported. I also met a classmate from primary school who was my barber in Ikeja at Class Night Club those days. He was in tears as he was cutting my hair. We discussed the past and the future.

Both guys found their feet and are now doing much better than they were at the lowest point.

Finance is about ecosystems.

I learned so much from my uncle by just watching how he used leverage to build wealth. The first and most important thing is a personal balance sheet. Know the value of your assets before you take on liabilities. That valuation came from insurance. All his assets were insured and had value placed on them. It made it easy for him to use them as collateral to get leverage for other assets, which were again insured. His father-in-law was one of the biggest insurance brokers in Nigeria at the time, so he used them a lot.

There is old money, new money, and wannabe rich money.

I was traveling on Emirates to Uganda once, and they upgraded me to First from Economy. As I was going from Economy to Business and First, I was looking at the differences in how people dressed and carried themselves. A lot of the guys in Economy Class were traders. Some had money but didn't spend it lavishly on a short flight between Dubai and Entebbe. They were mostly dressed informally and were respectful. Business Class was full of people dressed up and uppity. Most likely company people.

Jay's (not his real name) father was a well known religious figure. The family is wealthy and he married into another wealthy family. His wife was gorgeous and accomplished but he had one weakness. He slept with maids and househelps in our estate. I was shocked when I found out. It was a perversion and he was a sex predator but he didn't see it that way. He genuinely felt that it was some form of benevolence. He would argue with the bible and show how Abraham and others were truly polygamous and I later discovered that his father had secret families.

I have been laughing at the clowns trying to humiliate someone for buying a house on mortgage because they are ignorant AF!!

A small story, when my best man got to the UK, he needed a car and he decided to buy a Mercedes for £8k cash and was proud of himself. He later regretted Why? He told his Indian colleague and the guy was quiet for a while and decided to help him do some Math. That money could have been down payment (or part of it) for a mortgage of a house that he could have rented out to pay the mortgage of the same house and a car loan.

Racism sadly works in America and that is why Homelander is using it on his last stretch. Going full racist will divide the country and it helps him.

A lot of people are quietly racist and he is sending them a signal to vote or act with extreme prejudice. The fires have started Going full Proud Boys is not a mistake, it is very deliberate. He uses everyone including the racists.

After my son was born, we went visiting my wife's cousin in Atlanta but I had a meeting back in North Carolina and I drove back alone. A trucker I overtook stalked me.

Someone I know reached out to me for help but didn't specify what he needed help with and wanted to call me first. I had already concluded that he would ask me for money and formed my response in my mind. He called, and it wasn't money. He had to make a health-related decision. I felt very bad about my initial assumptions, and I would have given all I had now to help him overcome his problems. I have been calling him daily to follow up, and he keeps thanking me and telling me it is okay. He has enough money to solve the issue. He only needed advice.

"Nigeria's biggest trick is convincing you that nothing is happening. Meanwhile everything is happening." - @YarKafanchan as revealed by @DavidHundeyin.

I have been thinking about that profound statement for hours and realizing how true it is. Many people in Nigeria are for sale It is when they reveal their true colors after negotiations and being settled that people are surprised. No Nigerian surprises me anymore. The evils people are capable of because of money and power are beyond imagination. Plus many are trapped because of their ambition.

The first form of formalized apprenticeship training I had seen in Nigeria was with my classmates who were engineering students mandated to do industrial training and provide reports afterward as part of SIWES. Even in the 80s, they struggled to find suitable placements. Unsurprisingly, 100% of my engineering classmates at that time ended up in banking and other professions like information technology. I remember one of them, an engineer at Xerox, coming to meet us at school once during our MBA and just returning to resign. This was early 90s

I caught up with my cofounder in Australia this morning and discussed current tech trends. As he shared his experience of being acquired by a global tech company, I realized that if shared publicly, the conversation could have been better than 99% of tech podcasts today. We also discussed his daughter, who is just entering the job market as a developer, and the challenges she faces thanks to the current AI wave. His son, who is still in school and learning from those challenges, is doing things differently. I am also priming my kids for it too.

One thing that will never be discussed or exposed are the cults behind politics and power in Nigeria. The struggles we see outside are far less than the fights unseen. My grandfather was almost a victim of those cults and was caught in between them. He was lucky to survive. All political assassinations are sanctioned by these unseen cults. Most are to serve as a deterrence. There was a case where the man was shot many times and the car was burnt s while those who killed him waited to be sure that the job was completed. It was a message.

When I was living in Nigeria, I was so ignorant.
This guy used to go drinking with us and spent a fortune every night. We were trying to find out what he did for a living and discovered he was running an outsourcing company. Outsourcing, we asked. Was it that profitable?? Yes!!! It was profitable because it was ALWAYS an insider deal, and he was a front for the bosses. He didn't have one company alone but a group. Each subsidiary was an SPV with the insiders. I didn't grok this until I was on his side of similar deals and had a gun to my head.

I have always told people that the disposable cash thing we keep using to judge our markets is a myth. It is more about choice, wants, needs, options, and availability of credit.

I could afford another sofa but I decided to fix the old one. Why? Because it is my choice. Now, if I had been given the option of trading it in for a new one and paying the difference over time, my choices would have been vastly different. Plus, there was an upholstery guy recommended to me who had worked on my car and I saw that he was great. Those were my choices.

“Sell at a premium and don’t sell at desperation” - @mcuban

There is nothing that puts people off a service business more than desperation.

A lady came to our estate looking for houses to clean. I needed a cleaner but I didn’t hire her. I preferred one who was recommended. It is also the reason why people end up being poorly paid but remain at their jobs. Confidence is much more scarce than we imagine.

My problem is that all the desperate people I have helped have also turned out to also be terrible people. Maybe I’ve been unlucky, I don’t know.

My greatest lesson learned from watching SharkTank for over a decade is that people can still win in seemingly crowded spaces with uniqueness and simplicity. Scrub Daddy is a perfect example of this. It applies to everything also in Africa. Many never try to be different. I see people copying a strategy and branding or marketing exercise simply because it worked for others. They want to do exactly the same thing and in the end waste a lot of money while being drowned in the noise. I have been steering a founder away from influencers for months.

Breakups are painful, and heartbreak can do things to your self-esteem that you never thought were possible. Most people will go through one major breakup, and I tell younger people to prepare for it with some ground rules: 🧵 Rule 1. NEVER compare yourself to other people.

Comparison is not only the thief of joy but the root of all inferiority complexes. Every human being has unique advantages. Some find them in each other to complement themselves, while others remain searching. It is not you.