$247M Net Worth, $100k/Month Burn: Inside Onyi Odunukwe's Money

**Daniel Berk** (0:00)
Onyi Odunukwe says his net worth today sits at roughly $247 million.
About 100 million of that is in commercial real estate he owns outright, and the rest is split between his tanning and wellness franchise businesses and 26 other businesses by his account. But how he got here is unusual. He's the son of two Nigerian immigrant doctors. His mom is a pharmacist and his dad is a surgeon. He was on track for medical school in Arkansas until a stranger financed a supplement store for him.
And after he tasted the lifestyle of building businesses, he realized he never wanted to stop building. What originally started as an afterthought tanning salon grew to seven locations by the time he was 30
Now eight years later, he has over a hundred franchises with even more than that planning to be launched. What I love about getting to tell a story like Onyi's is that his story is a business builder's playground. There's a Slack channel in the Hampton community that I'm a part of called Talk Business Ideas. And it's full of a bunch of founders and builders looking for their next business idea. If Onyi's story fires you up as much as it does for me, you'll probably love the Hampton community too. Founders have done 25 million on average, built real businesses, compare notes with each other, and it's all private and safe. If that sounds like a world you want to join, over 1000 founders already have, and we'd love to have you as well. Check it out at joinhampton.com or reach out to me personally, and I'll hook you up. Now let's get into this. I'm Daniel Berk, your host, and this is Moneywise. Well, Onyi, thank you so much for joining us on Moneywise today. How are you doing?
I'm doing great. I'm really excited to jump in to who you are, what makes you you, and what makes you unique. Tell me about yourself. Tell me what brings you to Moneywise today.

**Onyi Odunukwe** (1:45)
Yeah, so my name is Onyi Odunukwe. I am the son of Nigerian immigrants. My mom was born in London, my dad was born in Nigeria, but they both grew up in Nigeria. And both are doctorate moms of PhD pharmacists, my dad's a surgeon. So I would say growing up was upper middle class.
Middle class, upper middle class, probably, but my parents, they live a very modest lifestyle, so probably more middle class.
I was going to follow in their footsteps, I wasn't going to go to med school, so I went to college for four years, I went to nursing school and actually dropped out my finals week, my senior year. And then I ended up finishing my degree about five or six years ago, but got into business at 21, formerly a bodybuilder. And so I had an opportunity where somebody would honor finance and say something in store for me. So I started doing that, didn't really well at that. Within six months was again location number two. Location number two was too large for a supplement store. So I wanted to bring something, another modality in and ended up being tanning. And that kind of has led me to where I'm at today.

**Daniel Berk** (3:08)
What did your parents say when you told them you're opening a tanning salon? That's a big difference from nursing school, to medical school, to tanning business operator. I mean, what was their reaction?

**Onyi Odunukwe** (3:21)
They weren't fond. I think that, you know, that time, I signed at least 2009
This is back when everybody watched CNN. And Mr. Cooper came out with like a special, one of those like, you know, almost 60-minute style specials about how bad tanning was. And I'm one of my best friends who's now a corporate lawyer in DC. And my dad were like, hey, I think this is a bad idea. And then I just kind of kept with it. And, you know, obviously I was right.
But, yeah, I mean, it was just, you know, I think sometimes people say, like, if I had to do it all over again, would I do it over again? The answer is no. But not because anything bad happened, because I have no regrets, but more just like the knowledge that I have now, I would have made a more educated guess, which would have led me away from what I did. But sometimes like that, you know, immature naivete kind of allows you to just like do something that doesn't really make sense and it ends up working out.

**Daniel Berk** (4:25)
So when you look back on nursing school and on that sort of side, I guess, side quest to where you are now, do you think you would do it that way again? Do you think there were valuable lessons you learned on that initial part of the journey that led you to opening a business or was it unrelated?