Dr.  Farrah Gray arrives Nigeria to partner MTN’S Budding Entrepreneur Business Grant & Mentorship programme and will be addressing seminars in Lagos and Port Harcour in addition to the CEO breakfast session tomorrow.  He will also help to mentor winners of the business plan competition that grants a cumulative N30million to outstanding business ideas.

In 1970, the African-American singer Nina Simone launched herself into the global limelight with a song that became a Top 10 R&B hit, an anthem of the American Civil Rights movement and an enduring tribute to the power of the human spirit: ‘To be young, gifted and black,’ sang Simone, ‘Oh, what a lovely, precious dream …’

The song takes its theme from the famous and oft-quoted words of the American playwright, Lorraine Hansberry, who said in a speech to a group of aspiring writers that ‘though it be a thrilling and marvelous thing to be merely young and gifted in such times, it is doubly so, doubly dynamic—to be young, gifted and black.

The eventful life and astounding achievements of Dr. Farrah Gray are a powerful testimony to the actualization of youthful potential, when it is harnessed and channeled to the service of a higher purpose – a purpose that motivates the individual that pursues it to scale whatever hurdles life throws at him.

That purpose, when it comes to fruition, also empowers not just that individual– financially and otherwise – but also enriches his physical and social environment, as well as his nation and humanity as a whole. At only 27 years of age, Dr. Farrah Gray has achieved far more than many people manage to achieve in an entire lifetime.

Not only is this rare prodigy globally recognized as an entrepreneurial icon and business mogul, he is also a bestselling author and media tycoon, as well as a philanthropist, syndicated columnist, and motivational speaker.

The CEO of Farrah Gray Publishing, he is the youngest person ever to open an office on the iconic Wall Street, New York. According to the influential People magazine, Gray is the only African-American teenager to rise to become a business mogul without being in entertainment or having a family connection.

Born on 9 September,1984 in Chicago, Illinois, he grew up as the son of a single but hard-working mother in the city’s impoverished South Side, his family’s poverty was so dire that, as he put it, ‘the only thing in our refrigerator was the light that comes on when you open the door (of the fridge).’

Rather than be held down by these adverse circumstances, however, Gray was spurred by them, and by his mother’s will and determination, to try and make something significant of his own life. At the tender age of only six, he started his first business selling hand-painted rocks, for use as door-stops and book-ends, as well as home-made body lotions, from door to door.  He has never looked back since then.

At eight years of age, he co-founded the urban Neighborhood Enterprise Economic Club, which was a forerunner to his later venture, the Wall-Street-based student-venture fund, the New Early Entrepreneur Workers, also known by the catchy acronym, NE2W.

From his early to his mid-teens, Farrah Gray invested in a wide range of commodities, from pre-paid phone cards, one-stop mail boxes, fast food and media programs such as the interactive teenage talk show, Kidztel, and ‘Youth AM/FM’, as well as executively producing a comedy show based in Las Vegas. By the age of fifteen, he had developed his own food company for kids, Farr-Out Foods, which he sold two years later for a whopping 1.5 million US dollars – making him a millionaire for the first time.

During his pre-teen years, Dr. Gray’s budding career as an on-air personality was no less remarkable, most notably as a co-host of the widely syndicated celebrity radio/television show, Backstage Live, in which platform his precocity and engaging style led to many speaking requests from all over the United States, and in the process helped launch yet another career – that of the motivational speaker. At the age of twelve, he already had a lucrative nationwide speaking career, commanding between 5,000 and 10,000 US dollars per appearance.

In a trend that is fast becoming something of a natural progression, Gray’s speaking engagements soon led to what has turned out to be an equally illustrious writing career, with the publication of his first book, Reallionaire – Nine Steps to Becoming Rich from the Inside Out, which chronicles the extraordinary and touching story of his rise from welfare recipient to business mogul, and then offers nine key steps to success.

Each stage of Gray’s progress is marked by one of the principles of success he learned along the way, thereby creating a step-by-step primer for others who wish not just to create success in their own lives, but to do so with nobility of spirit, charity and concern for the welfare of others.

Enthusiastically endorsed by such luminaries as former US president Bill Clinton, Jack Canfield, (author and initiator of the popular Chicken Soup for the Soul book series) and others, Reallionaire is both an instructional book and a story to inspire others to live life to the fullest.

Gray’s resilient, never-say-die spirit shines through on every page, and the lessons he imparts are reinforced with so-called Reallionaire Exercises at the end of each chapter, making the book a must for anyone seriously interested in getting ahead on his or her own terms.

In the end, however, the real inspiration of Reallionaire is the importance of mentoring young people and of never underestimating anyone, especially oneself. In addition, he leaves readers with the message that success is not really about money, but about doing the work you were sent to do in the world, whatever that is.