Since I began pitching this idea to potential investors, family and friends, I have heard words like ‘It is a great idea’, ‘You are sitting on a goldmine’, ‘If you are successful, you will become a household name’, ‘Be careful, your idea can be stolen’ (Thank God my dream can’t be, anyway).
While I
am happy to receive that much positive feedback (-only one person, based in
America, has told me it can’t work), I need more than that. Yes, I also need cash oh.
My
dream: To build Africa’s largest
savings network society. I just don’t want to tell people (it is good) to save,
I intend making available the process and system and a network that will enable
them to do that in order for them to achieve their financial dreams. I want at
least one person to say that because of Credicoins Network, they moved out of
poverty into financial freedom. [I also want it to be a Type II Social Business as explained by Yunus in his book.]
Their
financial goals: No one becomes successful in life who does not
live a goal-oriented life. Life is all about focus, and focus about purpose.
In that vein, our network will centered around only two things:
1) Recruiting subscribers who will all have financial goals (at least two per account, maximum of three).
2) One of the goals (COMPULSORY FOR EVERY SINGLE MEMBER) will be to become and remain a millionaire by paying themselves for life (at least the minimum amount).
It will not be easy but when you set goals, the impossible becomes possible. Present-day savings societies thrive because members task one another on (achieving) their financial goals. My two-year, short term financial goal is still to raise N1 billion (about $6 million) globally. And I have already started the process of achieving it.
I love setting and achieving goals the very same way footballers love scoring goals, and football fans love watching them scored.
In that vein, our network will centered around only two things:
1) Recruiting subscribers who will all have financial goals (at least two per account, maximum of three).
2) One of the goals (COMPULSORY FOR EVERY SINGLE MEMBER) will be to become and remain a millionaire by paying themselves for life (at least the minimum amount).
It will not be easy but when you set goals, the impossible becomes possible. Present-day savings societies thrive because members task one another on (achieving) their financial goals. My two-year, short term financial goal is still to raise N1 billion (about $6 million) globally. And I have already started the process of achieving it.
I love setting and achieving goals the very same way footballers love scoring goals, and football fans love watching them scored.
While I won’t say that I am very
successful, I have achieved so much in the last ten years of my life because I
set goals for myself.
Between 2004 and 2014, I have written two yet-to-be-published manuscripts, I learnt the guitar on my own, I have composed and recorded good songs in a studio, I taught myself to trade forex, I started learning French, I wrote and passed a graduate management course, I won a million naira on Who Wants To Be AMillionaire just two months to my final Medicine and Surgery professional exams, and did most of these as a medical student and never failed any major MB exam.
I always push myself. I tell myself every year, I must learn something new and increase my value. At the beginning of the year I task myself on one major thing or skill to add/learn, and at the end of the year, I always look back to ask, ‘Siji, did you successfully add it to your personal development and value?’ That’s why it seems I can do a lot of things in a short period of time. I challenge myself and read widely a lot. This is the result of setting goals.
I also task myself on being able to make money easily. Only now, I have to also learning to save and retain money more easily (since becoming wealthy isn't only about making money, but also retaining most of what you make).
Between 2004 and 2014, I have written two yet-to-be-published manuscripts, I learnt the guitar on my own, I have composed and recorded good songs in a studio, I taught myself to trade forex, I started learning French, I wrote and passed a graduate management course, I won a million naira on Who Wants To Be AMillionaire just two months to my final Medicine and Surgery professional exams, and did most of these as a medical student and never failed any major MB exam.
I always push myself. I tell myself every year, I must learn something new and increase my value. At the beginning of the year I task myself on one major thing or skill to add/learn, and at the end of the year, I always look back to ask, ‘Siji, did you successfully add it to your personal development and value?’ That’s why it seems I can do a lot of things in a short period of time. I challenge myself and read widely a lot. This is the result of setting goals.
I also task myself on being able to make money easily. Only now, I have to also learning to save and retain money more easily (since becoming wealthy isn't only about making money, but also retaining most of what you make).
Reducing
Global Poverty:
"To me, poor people are like bonsai trees. When you plant the best seed from the tallest tree in a tiny flowerpot, you get a replica of the tallest tree, only inches tall. There is nothing wrong with the seed you planted; only the soil base that you gave it is inadequate. Poor people are bonsai people. There is nothing wrong with their seeds, but society never gave them the proper base to grow in. All it takes to get poor people out of poverty is for us to create an enabling environment for them. Once the poor can unleash their energy and creativity, poverty will disappear very quickly." - M. Yunus (From the book, Building Social Business)
If you truly want to move a person living beside a river out of poverty and hunger, you don’t give them fish, you teach them to fish.
This informs why I get angry (together with many global others including Yunus) at ‘Foreign Aid Organisations’ such as World Bank and IMF who perpetuate a poverty mindset while paying lip service to global poverty eradication with their 'aid' policies to developing countries like Nigeria.
Instead of building systems and processes to effectively end poverty, these organisations maintain the vicious cycle and poverty trap (according to Jeffrey Sachs' argument) that the poor find themselves in.
I read Mohammad Yunus' Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and The Future of Capitalism (-he is the 2006 co-Nobel Prize winner widely regarded as the father of microfinance). In it, he talked about the difference in the way International Economic organisations such as IMF and World Bank measure economic growth and how microfinance institutions living among the poor measure theirs.
He noted that while the World Bank will measure macroeconomic parameters of a developing country such as prompt debt repayment and GDP growth, often giving them a clean bill of health even if their policies are anti-poor, the microfinance banks and of course the poor, look at the rising inflation rate (which might be because the government printed more money to pay off its debt), or, the rising unemployment rate (because the government isn’t truly providing jobs to raise GDP), and so on, and conclude that there is no economic growth.
[This played out in the last presidential elections here in Nigeria. Little wonder our outgoing president Goodluck Jonathan lost the elections after becoming grossly unpopular with the poor. He kept talking about Nigeria’s economic growth as measured by the World Bank while ignoring the fact that the average graduate is still unemployed and most are unemployable. And the naira was fast losing its value. Nigeria is presently third in the World poverty index.]
I like to use the anti-slavery (abolitionist) movement and the paradigm shift behind it to explain this key principle.
President Obama will probably not be the first Black president of USA if he had been born of and grew among freed slaves- because of a stereotyped mindset. It is one thing to pass laws and promulgate policies to free slaves and reduce poverty, it is another to make enabling environments/systems that truly enforce those laws and ensure that fact, effectively convincing the people that you truly want them (to be) free.
Moreover, having a right mindset is necessary to move from poverty to wealth. Even in the Bible, the adult Israelites who left Egypt as freed slaves all died in the wilderness simply because they still carried a slavery mindset that couldn’t take them to the Promised Land. And though they were now free, GOD COULD NOT AND EVEN NOW, CANNOT HELP A PEOPLE WHOSE MINDSET HAS NOT CHANGED REGARDLESS OF PHYSICAL STATE OR RESOURCES. It takes a right mindset to act right.
In summary, for poverty to be reduced globally, we can’t just tell the poor to save, invest, build businesses and spend less (even though they have to do all that). We have to make available for them (too) automated systems for saving and investing, knowledge and information systems and of course, the right communities that will ensure they truly become comfortable in life. And if any poor person is truly serious about moving from lack to abundance, he or she must be willing to plug into those systems made available and make the necessary mental shift and lifestyle sacrifices required.
For these poor among whom I live, it is not going to be easy to help them. It is not going to be instantaneous, or a year’s worth of work. But we will get there because we are willing and determined to take the right steps, one at a time, to getting there. However, we must first identify the road that will take us there, or have we?
"To me, poor people are like bonsai trees. When you plant the best seed from the tallest tree in a tiny flowerpot, you get a replica of the tallest tree, only inches tall. There is nothing wrong with the seed you planted; only the soil base that you gave it is inadequate. Poor people are bonsai people. There is nothing wrong with their seeds, but society never gave them the proper base to grow in. All it takes to get poor people out of poverty is for us to create an enabling environment for them. Once the poor can unleash their energy and creativity, poverty will disappear very quickly." - M. Yunus (From the book, Building Social Business)
If you truly want to move a person living beside a river out of poverty and hunger, you don’t give them fish, you teach them to fish.
This informs why I get angry (together with many global others including Yunus) at ‘Foreign Aid Organisations’ such as World Bank and IMF who perpetuate a poverty mindset while paying lip service to global poverty eradication with their 'aid' policies to developing countries like Nigeria.
Instead of building systems and processes to effectively end poverty, these organisations maintain the vicious cycle and poverty trap (according to Jeffrey Sachs' argument) that the poor find themselves in.
I read Mohammad Yunus' Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and The Future of Capitalism (-he is the 2006 co-Nobel Prize winner widely regarded as the father of microfinance). In it, he talked about the difference in the way International Economic organisations such as IMF and World Bank measure economic growth and how microfinance institutions living among the poor measure theirs.
He noted that while the World Bank will measure macroeconomic parameters of a developing country such as prompt debt repayment and GDP growth, often giving them a clean bill of health even if their policies are anti-poor, the microfinance banks and of course the poor, look at the rising inflation rate (which might be because the government printed more money to pay off its debt), or, the rising unemployment rate (because the government isn’t truly providing jobs to raise GDP), and so on, and conclude that there is no economic growth.
[This played out in the last presidential elections here in Nigeria. Little wonder our outgoing president Goodluck Jonathan lost the elections after becoming grossly unpopular with the poor. He kept talking about Nigeria’s economic growth as measured by the World Bank while ignoring the fact that the average graduate is still unemployed and most are unemployable. And the naira was fast losing its value. Nigeria is presently third in the World poverty index.]
I like to use the anti-slavery (abolitionist) movement and the paradigm shift behind it to explain this key principle.
President Obama will probably not be the first Black president of USA if he had been born of and grew among freed slaves- because of a stereotyped mindset. It is one thing to pass laws and promulgate policies to free slaves and reduce poverty, it is another to make enabling environments/systems that truly enforce those laws and ensure that fact, effectively convincing the people that you truly want them (to be) free.
Moreover, having a right mindset is necessary to move from poverty to wealth. Even in the Bible, the adult Israelites who left Egypt as freed slaves all died in the wilderness simply because they still carried a slavery mindset that couldn’t take them to the Promised Land. And though they were now free, GOD COULD NOT AND EVEN NOW, CANNOT HELP A PEOPLE WHOSE MINDSET HAS NOT CHANGED REGARDLESS OF PHYSICAL STATE OR RESOURCES. It takes a right mindset to act right.
In summary, for poverty to be reduced globally, we can’t just tell the poor to save, invest, build businesses and spend less (even though they have to do all that). We have to make available for them (too) automated systems for saving and investing, knowledge and information systems and of course, the right communities that will ensure they truly become comfortable in life. And if any poor person is truly serious about moving from lack to abundance, he or she must be willing to plug into those systems made available and make the necessary mental shift and lifestyle sacrifices required.
For these poor among whom I live, it is not going to be easy to help them. It is not going to be instantaneous, or a year’s worth of work. But we will get there because we are willing and determined to take the right steps, one at a time, to getting there. However, we must first identify the road that will take us there, or have we?
By the side, let me share some other things I learnt from reading the book.
[If you want to read many such titles 'for free', you can subscribe to Scribd (@ about $9 monthly), or you can subscribe to Audible (@ about $15 monthly/audiobook), to listen and download them on a monthly subscription- first month is free. You can also use Whispersync for Voice/Immersion Reading to read and listen together if you own an Amazon kindle.]
I Like this quote from the book concerning the big Multilateral Institutions like World Bank and IMF;
"It never occurs to them that these institutions themselves may be contributing to creating or sustaining poverty. Institutions and policies that created poverty cannot be entrusted with the task of eliminating it. Instead, new institutions designed to solve the problems of the poor need to be created."
You can read the book to know why he believes the present multilateral organisations are no longer relevant and effective today in fighting global poverty and need to be overhauled.
Thank you.
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