Najee Hannigan, a 26-year-old Philadelphia entrepreneur, pushed his friends and cousins to set away $50 per week so that they could all participate in something significant together.
They had successfully gathered enough money to acquire their first real estate property two years later. “Go alone if you want to go fast.” When Hannigan approached his two younger cousins, Meqai Herder and Ahmid Hill, both 23 years old, and his two long-time friends, Tyree Harvey and Darius Jacobs, both 26 years old, about a business plan in the hopes of changing their lives as well, he remembered the African adage.
Hannigan believed it would be a fantastic idea for each of them to save $50 per week or $200 per month in 2017, and that the money they saved might be utilized to buy an investment property.
“The most difficult aspect was convincing them that time will pass anyway and that we can either invest in [ourselves] or continue to let time pass us by,” Hannigan told Because of Them We Can. Within two years, the group had saved enough money to purchase their first property, which they want to refurbish before renting it out.
They’ve also set up a property management firm with the aim of acquiring more homes in the future. Despite their initial skepticism, Hannigan, who is also the founder and co-owner of the childcare provider Extraordinary Scholars Academy, was grateful that his friends trusted him completely.
He believes that trust is what allowed their strategy to come to fulfillment. “Find people you trust and never give up. Don’t argue about dumb stuff and always think of the bigger picture. Giving up something like cable or clothes for a year or two can put you in a position to have it [for] a lifetime.”
The five friends, on the other hand, are continuously thinking about what could happen if they stopped doing what they were doing and utilized it as an incentive. “We knew that if we gave up at any point that we would end up like everyone else, stuck.”
