NOWA 🌍

“I intend to bring the art, the faith, the conviction of my community into the art world”. — Victor Ehikhamenor “Aruosa” (eye of God) 2024, Charcoal and acrylic paint on paper.

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@weltszzn 😂😂😂

Michael Jackson really got in the studio and said you ain’t my bitch & that ain’t my kid hehe wooohoooo 😭

@shxkxbabu 😂😂😭

e dey happen idan mi. just pray make she see this tweet

My cousin told me two things when I got to the UK as a student. First was. Never do odd jobs; they are a trap. Second, sort out everything related to credit on time, as you are looking for something better to do. That guy I met at Enfield 22 years ago, who was washing cars, did not have a credit card or a mortgage. He kept sending money home, but it kept losing value, thanks to inflation. Meanwhile, I know someone who has bought over 40 properties using the UK banking system (before the rules changed), and their properties have appreciated. I have relatives who have lived abroad for decades and are still struggling with the mortgage for one property, and others who have a portfolio of assets, including businesses. The difference was how they started. Those who started with "struggle jobs" somehow maintain that siege mentality and think small. Survival usually limits people's options, but I learned early that doing software testing gigs from the school library was a more sustainable option than carrying boxes at Tesco. If you have a university degree, you have to think bigger and better than those who do not.

Without trying to be funny, the Nigerian dream is to game the system to achieve a life free from want, worry, and the pressures of responsibility. It is about making money without effort and getting things for free without working for them. This is why you see people who travel to places with plenty of opportunity to achieve things with hard work still being caught up in crime and fraud. One could argue that it is the same for all humans, but in Nigeria, it is cultural. We praise and worship those whom we think achieved this by being "smart" and not those who did it through hard work and sheer effort. Even when we discover that people are rich, we never think it is from effort; it is likely because they gamed the system. The Nigerian dream is to game the system and do nothing. That is why corruption and fraud are commonplace. It never used to be like this, and not all Nigerians currently think this way, but a majority now do, thanks to the madness Nollywood has infected the society with, in the name of entertainment. Now, we are too far gone.

@ogheneyxle 😂😂😂😂

“make them cry” in pidgin is now even more fitting

If you are broke and the first thing that comes into your mind is selling property to make more money, then you are walking on very dangerous terrain. It is not a sustainable way out of the problem of insufficient income. If you now have to sell the property to pay off debts, then maybe you should seriously consider a career change and give up entrepreneurship. I have seen former "big men" go through this phase and finally be saved when they open up, and their friends rally around them. This is why African politicians will always support corruption. Their income is never enough to sustain their lifestyle. This is also what leads to all the bad side deals in the private sector and why they exclude outsiders from their circle. For those in sports and entertainment, it is brutal. When Davido mentioned that his Dad would send him $300k after a show, I laughed because the man probably knows his burn rate and cash cycle better than anyone. You can't plan a life around doing one-off deals, but you can plan a life around working with a group of people to generate constant income. The reason the Lebanese, Indians, and others are better businessmen in Africa is that the business groups they form are equivalent to corporations, with proper support and planning. We have cooperatives, but they don't function the way the Lebanese and Indians in Africa do theirs. Most people in our cooperatives are typically there for emergency loans or crisis support. They don't see them as an active business organization that is responsible for their regular income. An Indian friend I grew up with was one of the richest people I knew, but was also one of the most frugal. Any fancy car he was driving was usually one that he imported for sale. He was the one who wanted me to buy houses in Calabar almost 30 years ago at 100k Naira each, but I didn't see the value then. He bought several and housed his staff there. He was always "switched on" and in moneymaking mode, and we did some interesting deals together while he still had his factories selling regular cheese balls and biscuits. That regular income from those factories was sacrosanct. Those were his core products; the side deals were for extra income. For me, those side deals were my main source of income until my cousin, Lateef Belo-Osagie, made me see the folly of consulting and tech deals. He told me to go and get a job. I struggled with this until I took the course at HBS with @JosephBFuller, who gave us the truth about consulting and services. It was a zero equity game. Find products to build and sell daily, or join a corporation or group that does. The lawyer guy who kept his 9-5 in the tweet I quoted earlier is very smart because a constant income source lets you plan better. The best business people I know sell something almost every hour. Sometimes, every minute. If you don't have more income coming in than outgoing expenses, you are definitely going to end up in financial trouble. If you are in a group that does business together, you should all aim to generate regular income by selling products consistently. Before we were chased away from the POS agent business by those with more resources, my dashboard showing regular income from those transactions used to give me more joy than anything else. These days, it is Stripe. Each sale gives me joy.

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“I helped a man climb a mountain and found that I too had reached the top.” — Unknown

The biggest regret that people have on their deathbed is that they lived the life expected of them instead of a life true to themselves.

Major life cheat code: Don’t romanticize potential. Measure yourself by what you consistently do, not by what you believe you could do one day.

Hantavirus: what you need to know. Please share widely.

This is cope. You can discourage people from yahoo without lying about reality. Yahoo is simply financial crime and the bulk of the world money is gotten from financial crime. London itself is the financial crime capital of Europe. Many yahoo boys diversified their assets, cleansed their money and are living on investments. How you make money is irrelevant to the world system, it is what you do with the money you make that determines if you live in wealth or poverty. You can make money legally and still go broke. When we say actions have consequences - even the right ones, it means that making good decisions and living your life right does not mean the universe will reward you with wealth. Most times, it means you won't make money, but you'll be able to sleep because your conscience is clear and you wake up holding the full measure of your integrity. To make money in this world, most times, you need to dead your conscience. It is a dog eat dog world. The whole point of living right, is because it is right, not because it will fetch you money. Many times, it won't because you convince yourself that all money is not good money. That is the consequences of making the right action. The world system itself rewards ruthlessness. If you get caught and punished- that is consequences. If you never get caught, and you live large - that is consequences. Actions have consequences- you just never know which one is yours.

Nobody is going to discover your genius if you keep it in your head.

@MrBeast @DareJulius4 .

If this tweet has exactly 1 like in 24 hours I’ll give that person $1,000,000

You just need to take a good look at all the older people who didn't get to live the life they wanted, and it will become obvious that the causes are always the same, generation after generation:

Making eba before going to bed so you can have cold eba and hot soup for breakfast

The longer you postpone building the life you actually want, the more likely you are to settle for a life you merely drifted into.

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.

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