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As a Nigerian with a strong<br />
entrepreneurial gift, I make it a point of<br />
interest to research or investigate if you<br />
will the lives of other Nigerian<br />
entrepreneurs who are making waves.<br />
Growing up in the United Kingdom as a<br />
child I never really felt at home, and deep<br />
down inside me I knew that my destiny<br />
was in Nigeria and that one day I will be<br />
a major player in the Nigerian business<br />
sector. After I left university I worked in<br />
countless companies and each<br />
experience was a disaster. I never really<br />
fitted in and I didn’t like being an<br />
employee either,<br />
I wanted to be the guy who owns<br />
the company and who makes the<br />
decisions.<br />
It’s a bit like renting a house or buying a<br />
house with a mortgage, I hated both<br />
scenarios because they’re pretty much<br />
the same thing. When you buy a house<br />
using a mortgage the house doesn’t<br />
actually belong to you, although the<br />
banks give you the sense that it does,<br />
and the day you’re no longer able to<br />
meet your monthly payments the bank<br />
will take the house from you. The<br />
mortgage industry is an illusion, and I<br />
BY PAUL OKADE Jr<br />
should know because after all I am a<br />
qualified mortgage broker with over 10<br />
years experience in the industry.<br />
Entrepreneurs are driven by the desire<br />
to control their own destiny. They don’t<br />
want to be at the mercy of an employer<br />
or a bank. They want absolute control<br />
and freedom. When most people write<br />
articles about entrepreneurs they<br />
always seem to allude to them to be<br />
people whose sole desire is to build<br />
large companies and create jobs etc, and<br />
yet that isn’t really the main thing which<br />
makes us tick or our primary motivation,<br />
those are simply by products, as it were.<br />
A genuine entrepreneur is running from<br />
something, and that “something” is<br />
dependency. They don’t want to depend<br />
on anyone or on anything. They have an<br />
insatiable need to be free to do what<br />
they want when they want without<br />
having to answer to anybody.<br />
Entrepreneurs are born, they’re not<br />
made. I know people who have<br />
MBA’s in entrepreneurship and yet<br />
they’re not entrepreneurs and never<br />
will be.<br />
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