Early Business Success: A Mercedes, a Plane and a Lesson in Sacrifice

Six

to

7,000. So

most days I make about maybe 7,000 naira per

day.

But 7,000 naira

of 1978-

Mm-hmm

... is not a small money

because I was a very, very happy

person in 1978 having bought my first

Mercedes-Benz 200.

I paid-

Brand new or... Brand new?

B- Stinking new. Not even-

And you know how much I paid?

No. Like three, four-

5,100 naira.

That is the cost of Mercedes 200,

you know. Because in fact, that time Mercedes themselves,

they have not started

making power steering. So, you know, it's a little bit of a,

you have to eat eba well- ... before you can turn the steering.

But I mean, that was my first, uh, vehicle.

In business or in making about, all what I wanted was just to buy

a plane. I didn't go through any advisory or

whatever. Nobody advised me. The only thing that they did

was they put on the

engines, and I was listening to the engines of the

aircraft, you know, so.

At any rate, so I actually bought my, uh, you know, we, I bought

a plane,

uh, my first, uh, this, you know, around that time.

On

31st of March

1983, we had a plane crash in, uh,

London at Luton

Airport.

So that's why, you know, I was telling somebody when I see people

making all these things, I say, "Well, I went through the same thing." I had

27 cars. I bought my first,

you know, plane before the age of 23.

And, uh, so

that's when I realized that, look, there are two things.

Serious business does not go with

too much

enjoyment.

Enjoyment. Mm. Yes.

The two, they don't go together. You have to sacrifice one

for the other.

For the other.

And if you don't, it will be almost impossible.

Yeah.

For the first time since when we started, uh,

this, our industrial trajectory