Dear millennials, you see this as your small business; it will grow bigger in the next decade or two.
It will be bigger than your imagination, and it will employ thousands of our people as employees, providing food on the table for every person who works for the business.
When you have finally arrived in your days of prosperity and abundance, please resist the urge to take your young kids abroad.
Our parents made that mistake, and it did not end well for them or the business they ran.
Let’s learn from their experience.
I was told the story of a billionaire businessman who built a duplex in Ikoyi just to entice his only child to come back home and run his business in Lagos.
The young man was not interested; he has found another passion and mission in the western country where he grew up as a child.
As I have written in the past, those impressionable kids that you take away at a relatively young age will never come back.
You will lose them to a foreign culture and foreign experiences, and they may not want to come back to a third-world country that doesn’t have light for a start.
The reason we don’t see a Nigerian business dynasty run by a second generation is primarily because of this factor.
Indians do better than us in this regard.
From the cradle on, they start training their kids for the enormous responsibility ahead.
They do everything with intention.
They take the succession of their family business very seriously.
That is why you see an Indian kid that was sent to Oxford University going back home after his or her studies because the kids know that there is a family business to run at home in India that will be handed over to the next generation.
In fact, sending an Indian kid to Imperial University is to equip the child with the skills and connections that the child will need to expand the family business.
Everything is properly planned from childhood to adulthood.
This is why Indians run older family businesses all over the world, which are handed down from generations to generations.
The Indomie noodles that we enjoy in Nigeria are a family Indian business, run by the third generation of the Aswani family, the Indian family behind the company.
In some Indian family businesses, you see 10 members of that family working in the business.
I read a story of an Indian family business that sells meat and groceries in the UK.
The kids went to the best schools in the UK, but seven of them are working in that shop today.
That is an example of a parent who did his or her homework well.
We can copy the Indian example.
Your family should stay with you in Nigeria, but only travel when it is necessary, like on summer holidays.
Take the succession of your business seriously.
Start early to show your kids where the money that funds their lifestyle is coming from.
Kids are kids, so they will pick up interest once they are exposed to the business early enough.
Train your kids with the mindset that they have a family business to run when they are older and a family legacy to uphold.
Be intentional about this by avoiding the pitfalls and mistakes that our parents made.
I hope to see more thriving family businesses in our lifetime and in our generation.
Yea! It is possible.
