Last year, I assembled a team of young guys to help in searching out Nigerians that are worthy of being celebrated. We were able to unearth so many guys, especially the young ones, who are making impact in their chosen field.

We were able to interview some of these guys and they were featured on one of my websites. The host company of that site developed some problems and the whole website was lost. It was a painful experience and it was as if the vision had been abandoned. Besides the members of my team left Lagos to different parts of the country and we couldn’t continue the interviews any longer.

I was always thinking of what next to do about the project, Naija Role Models and I was thinking of recruiting new set of guys and kickstarting it all over. My schedule has been so tight that I can hardly get anybody to work with me on the project.

There appears to be a new twist to this issue now because of what I am going to be posting today. I was going through one of the Marketing Forums I frequent and a thread was started on Nigeria Scammers.

So many people said so many stuffs but there were few people that still believed there are some hardworking Nigerians that should not be labelled, Scammers. Then shockingly, a Canadian mentioned about a Nigerian making waves in Canada.

I have NEVER heard of this name before and I decided to google the name, Douglas Idugboe and surprisingly I found two website having a story on Douglas. One is our own This Day and the other a Canadian newspaper. The interesting thing here is that the Canadian website is even putting up Douglas’ story for sale!
http://www.edmontonsun.com/Business/News/2007/08/18/4427467-sun.html

I am now going to provide the This Day version of the story and I am sure you will learn one or two things from Douglas’ story. He is trully a Naija Inspiration.

Happy reading

He left Nigeria seven years ago with little or nothing in his wallet. Today, banks beg him to borrow money from them. Paul Ohia tells the story of Douglas Idugboe

His home country Nigeria became intolerable to him but Douglas Idugboe escaped with his innate innovativeness, arrived Canada with just $5 (N640) and has turned into a millionaire in seven years.

Today, little has been heard about him back home but in Canada and beyond he has become a house-hold name as a result of his financial book called Credit Miracle for Canadians.

According to his story, when he arrived Canada, he sought for loan to start his own business but was turned down by banks because he was not creditworthy.

Fired by his a self-developed maxim, he became very daring and read as many books on credit as he could garner in other to improve his situation.

His words: “I still remember, like a moment ago, coming into this country a little over seven years ago with five dollars ($5) left to my name, with no friend or relative to call my own at the time… but I had the dream, desire and desperation, which I now call the 3D of success, to become financially abundant.”

He continued: “Realising my quest for financial abundance will be futile without capital to start life with, I found myself in the halls of a bank in Montréal soliciting for a loan and I was completely denied the loan.

‘Why?’ I asked the lady across the desk

‘You have no credit history’ was the response I got from her.”

The migrant who had started some odd job to keep body and soul together before approaching the bank recalled that he had an account with the bank. He said the experience was his first in discovering that one needed “something else” in order to borrow money.

On this note, he started asking questions, reading books and gathering resources.

He recounted how endless hours was spent searching for the answers to his questions. Every answered question revealed more questions that needed answering, he continued.

“I started to learn about why I could get a bank account but not a loan. I discovered why I was getting credit card offers in the mail and not getting approved when ever I applied for one.”
Idogbue learned what it meant to build up a positive credit history, and why many people ended up with bad credit histories instead.

He learned the ins and outs of what it took to get a loan and discovered the steps he needed to take to develop a credit history.

“I discovered that there are many useful resources out there, but not always in one complete book… and never focused strictly on the Canadian credit and financial system. But I persevered. Without realizing it, I was amassing a highly valuable, highly effective wealth of knowledge… a vault of crucial information,” he said.

Later, after learning and applying the various techniques needed, he went back to that same bank and this time it was different: they greeted him with open arms and begged him to borrow from them instead of the half dozen banks down the street.

Things got even more interesting for him. At a social gathering someone asked him an innocent, rhetorical question about a frustration they had with the Canadian banking system and then their jaw dropped when he gave them the answer.

“How did you know that?” they asked. “I’ve lived in Canada all my life and didn’t know that. In fact, I didn’t think anyone knew.”

Soon, he was helping other Canadians to financial freedom by showing them what he has learnt. With a quiet thoroughness that is the hallmark of everything he does, even to his impeccable dress, he was soon being granted loans to invest in real estate.

When friends and acquaintances saw how well he was doing they kept coming to him for advice. With that, he started giving courses in credit worthiness. He wrote the book Credit Miracle which has become a best seller in Canada and beyond.

Even getting the book published wasn’t easy for Idugboe. As before, he had to pound on many a door to get his book published and distributed nationwide.

“I simply didn’t want to self-publish and try to sell it on Amazon.com.” Persistence paid off when he found White Knight Book Distributors in Toronto. The company president, Bill Belfontaine, read the book and uttered one word, ‘Wow!’ and that was it. He also has a website: www.creditmiracle.ca.

Today, he is an internationally known speaker and motivator, author, investor, financial coach, consultant, and chairman of the board for Clonewave Corp., a multi-national holding company.

He strongly believes above all things, God first, family second, and then everything else.

Idugboe is the founder and president of QuickSuccess Training, one of the quick result success training companies in North America today.

People have come from all over the world to attend his life-changing seminars, boot camps, and workshops to learn the quick financial success strategies that he teaches. He is also the founder of ChristSmart Financial Network, a church based programme seeking to educate and empower at least 450 million people to build wealth through wise financial decisions based on sound biblical financial principles by the year 2020.

Will he return to write Credit Miracle for Nigerians?

Source: http://www.thisdayonline.com/nview.php?id=87188

I am sure Douglas’ story has thought you some lessons. I will expound on this in my next post. Keep reading Naija Motivation and keep believing in yourself. No mountain is insurmountable when you have the right mindset.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 30th, 2007 at 5:39 pm and is filed under Naija Models. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.