Self-Devpt. Nuggets™

A client once told me how the first boss he worked for often told him:

“Look Alooya, if you work 8 hours in a day for an employer, start making effort to work one hour per day for yourself as well. Think of things you can do for yourself to earn income that will benefit you. Over time, increase the hours you work for yourself to 2, and so on. ”

[NB: Few employers will say stuff like that to their employees – especially in my part of the world. They would be scared of losing the employee, since it would make the latter aim for self-employment!]

He took the advice to heart, and it drove him all through the time he spent in paid employment – which was over 3 decades.

By the time he retired, he had learnt how to multiply money that came into his hands (e.g. salary) – generating multiple incomes streams from a variety of channels.

Just like his former boss had advised, he’d started by devoting a fraction of his time to exploring alternative ways of earning income. To avoid compromising his commitment to his employer, he focussed on passive income generation sources (one example later).

The money his part time endeavours generated was channelled into developing properties that today generate passive income from rent collections.

Whether you’re already retired or preparing to do so, it pays to know how to enter into the world outside salaried employment. It’s not as organised and predictable as the organisation you work in.

Many things can go wrong at the same time, and directly threaten income you earn.

Realising He Needed to Augment My Income

When he returned from a 4 year overseas assignment, he used the funds he’d saved to help his kids settle down in their various chosen locations.

Then he began thinking of what to do with the bulk funds that was left.

He considered getting a good car, to replace the aging had had. Many people would probably have gone for that option too.

But he had had a tough childhood, and learnt from painful experience, to find ways to make my money work for him.

So he did some more thinking.

After a while he realised the lack of water in the area he lived necessitated his leaving home almost every day to use his car to fetch water.

It occurred to him that if he bought a new car, the wear and tear would make it age fast.

What was more, he considered that at his age (then 50), carrying heavy kegs filled with water around on a daily basis, posed a danger to his physical well being. If nothing else, his hips would suffer for it.

That valid concern made him decide to sink a borehole in his compound.

He had always been one who believed in achieving lasting long term benefits from any investment he made. So when they encountered a bed of rock at 75 feet, he instructed that it be drilled right through by another 70 feet.

The result was that he ended up piping naturally pure water to the surface!

Wasting no time, he set up a manifold outside his house where people began trooping to buy his “pure” borehole water.

It was a great success.

Daily revenue rapidly grew, and at a point he was selling N7, 000.00 worth of water daily!

Doing some more thinking, he decided to use the income stream from sales of water, to further his ambition to build properties to rent out.

Today, the house where he started that water business from, hosts four (4) apartments, each of which houses tenants that pay rent to him!

In other words, he channelled the income from the water sales, combined with some of his salary, to build more properties.

Final Words

Anybody can use this same model, to prepare for self-employment.

It goes without saying, that all employees will one day have to leave their jobs, via retirement, resignation…or redundancy.

Therefore, adopting a strategy like that described above would be a smart thing to do.