A man has revealed he worked three jobs at a time for up to 20 hours a day, six days a week to save nearly £30,000 – and become a property investor at just 22.
Ayobami Akeju, 22, from Dartford, Kent, worked up to six jobs during 2020-21 – one as a warehouse operative at Sainsbury’s, one in an ASDA warehouse, and one working for a care home company called Kaplan Care, as well as brief stints as a car park cleaner, an Amazon warehouse worker and a night shift role at UPS.
Determined to put as much money aside as he could for a property, Ayobami worked gruelling shifts, sometimes back-to-back, to help kick off his plan to start a property investment company – the first goal of which was to save £50,000 by October 2021 to put on a house.
Ayobami bought his first property in June 2022 for £155,000 and hired a team to renovate it, with the project almost complete and set to go on the market shortly.
“I worked between 12-20 hours a day, six days a week for 10 months,” Ayobami told NeedToKnow.online.
“I once worked 38 days straight at Sainsbury’s alone – spanning from 22 July 2021 to 28 August. Similarly, during a period that spanned from 28 April 2021 to 20 May, I worked for 23 days straight at Sainsbury’s before they forced me to have a rest day.
“Perhaps it sounds far-fetched but this was and is my reality.
“Though I never felt burnt out during this period, it was a very testing time.
“My doctor told me I’d developed wear and tear in one of my knees so I began wearing knee braces for support in addition to the back brace I already wore.
“There were days where I’d have to decide whether I wanted to eat or sleep in between shifts due to the lack of time I had to myself.
“Life was very robotic and I could go days on end without opening my mouth to speak to anyone, so it was like I had no communication with the outside world at times.
“You forget how to be human. To a great extent, I had to reteach myself how to interact with people.
“I could never recommend working this hard to anybody else – it is far too painful, in every way possible.
“I didn’t have any type of social life whatsoever and to this day still haven’t seen any of my friends for the last 2 to 3 years.
“I am obsessed with achieving my goals and my strongest relationships have come to understand and support that.
“I’d change jobs if I felt my body could not cope with the demands of a role or if I believed that I could earn more money elsewhere.”
Fuelled by his goal, Ayobami worked out his monthly expenditure and knew he had “no reason” to spend more than £697 a month.
He said: “If I made £3,000 in a month after tax, £2,303 would go into my savings. I drastically saw the impact that budgeting had on my savings once I began working multiple jobs.”
By the time he launched his business, he had £33,000 in the bank and £2,000 in cryptocurrency.
He added: “I never did hit my goal of saving £50,000 by October 2021 but my mentor encouraged me to proceed with starting my business and that the rest will figure itself out. Needless to say, it did!”
He began pitching to investors and even crowdfunding to boost his efforts in February 2022. Luckily, he managed to avoid having to put his own savings into the project after an investor decided to take a chance on him with an initial £50,000 loan.
Ayobami said: “The private investor wanted to grow their savings so I offered a service whereby I invested their monies into my deal and they’ll earn a return on that investment.
“This is something that I offer to anyone with a significant amount of savings looking to make their money work for them passively.”
Ayobami is now working on his second property, which he hopes to finish by the end of the year and will finish renovating his first property this week, with plans to purchase a third underway.
He is currently in the final stages of agreeing a £20,000 investment loan, taking the total he has raised to develop properties to £199,200.
He said: “I finally purchased my second property on 25 October -–for this purchase I raised £126,500 from multiple investors and another £20,000 of investment is still due to come on board – this whole project is 100% cash funded.”
Looking back, Ayobami has had to sacrifice a lot for his vision, but he says it was never something he regrets.
He is currently working at a different Sainsbury’s branch warehouse while doing night shifts for a Parcelforce warehouse, but will become a full-time property investor by April 2023.
He added: “I didn’t find it difficult to stick to my saving goals as I am a very disciplined person. I have an understanding that I’m working towards building something giant that will outlive me – when you have that fixed in your mind, it’s difficult not to follow through with the set plan.
“I would tell myself ‘I’m broke’ and that I had no money to avoid unnecessary spending. You could argue I missed out on a lot but I’d rather sacrifice the good for the great.
“Everything in life is hard, it’s just about choosing your hard. For example, it’s hard to be working at a job you hate until you retire, but it’s also hard to build a business with no guarantees of success.”
