The Opportunity Behind the Rich Gate

How many opportunities do we miss simply because we don't know enough to recognise them?

I bought my first flat in Lagos and sold it two years later for close to twice what I paid. I had no real estate background, but the part of that story I find most interesting isn't the numbers. It's that I probably would never have found the opportunity if I hadn't first stayed there as an Airbnb guest.

Before that stay, I had already made an assumption about places like this. I thought the properties would be extremely expensive and naturally accessible only to people with a lot more money. It wasn't about feeling like I didn't belong there. I simply thought I knew what it would cost, and when you think you already know the answer to something, you don't always think to investigate it.

Why would I enquire about a flat I had already assumed would be ridiculously expensive?

I wouldn't have. But I ended up staying there anyway, in a flat inside the same estate, because that was simply where the Airbnb booking put me.

I wasn't there looking for property. I had simply booked somewhere to stay, but being inside the estate gave me a completely different view of it. I could see the flats properly, understand the environment and observe what was actually there rather than relying on what I had assumed from the outside. Somewhere along the way, curiosity took over and I started looking at the properties differently.

That is what stays with me when I think about the flat. The opportunity didn't suddenly appear because I arrived. The properties had been there and the market had been there. What changed was the information available to me. Once I knew a little more, something I had never considered became something worth investigating.

Eventually, I bought that flat and sold it two years later for close to twice what I paid. It makes a great headline now, but knowing the ending can make the beginning look far more calculated than it actually was. I didn't book that Airbnb because I had spotted an undervalued property market, and I didn't have a plan to buy a flat, flip it and eventually build a property company. One thing simply led me to look more closely at another.

The buying process taught me something different about opportunity, too. Finding a good opportunity is one thing. Having enough information to know whether you're actually getting a good deal is another.

I had already enquired about the flat through an agent, and made an offer on that basis. The agent represented the owner. Later, I learned that what the owner was actually willing to accept was considerably less than what had been presented to me — the kind of gap you could illustrate simply: an owner willing to sell for £10, a buyer being asked for £25 for the same thing. But by then I had an existing relationship with the agent and an offer already on the table. I couldn't just go around them and deal with the owner directly, even once I understood the numbers better.

That isn't a story about a deal falling through. It's a story about how much a transaction can depend on who you're speaking to, and when you find out what they know that you don't.

That experience became part of how I eventually thought about JESFEM. Not because one property transaction suddenly made me an expert, and certainly not because I decided I was going to fix an entire industry. It was much more practical than that. I had experienced what it was like to enter a market without knowing all the questions I should be asking, and I had seen how expensive a lack of information could become. When I later began building a property business, verified opportunities and clearer information mattered to me for a reason.

Looking back, the Airbnb, the flat and the gap between what I was told and what was actually true all seem connected now, but they didn't feel connected while they were happening. That's often the luxury of hindsight. We turn a series of decisions into a strategy because we already know where they eventually led.

What interests me more is the opportunity I almost wouldn't have looked for in the first place. It makes me wonder how often we do this in other parts of life. We decide something is too expensive before asking the price. We assume an industry is too difficult before understanding how it works. We decide an opportunity is probably meant for somebody with more money, knowledge, connections or experience, so we never get close enough to find out whether our assumption was right.

Of course, sometimes it is right. Some opportunities genuinely aren't accessible to us yet. Some numbers won't work and some doors will remain closed. But there is a difference between discovering that after looking and deciding it before you have looked at all.

For me, a very ordinary Airbnb booking happened to open this particular door. Behind it was a property opportunity I hadn't known to look for, a lesson in how information moves through property transactions, and eventually part of the thinking that would shape a business.

The opportunity had been there all along. I just needed to know enough to recognise it.