Sola Adesakin is an experienced and versatile Chartered Accountant with about 16 years hands-on experience on Personal and SME finance. She is a Personal Finance Coach, Author of 4 books and a conference/seminar speaker. Through her blog and The Smart Stewards Academy, she has helped many people bounce back from stress to rest and from debt to wealth. She continues to influence women by her blogs and has been featured on a TV show that aired globally. In addition, she is very versed in developing of solid financial systems for SMEs.
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Sola holds a BSC in Applied Accounting from Oxford Brookes University, United Kingdom. She is a Fellow of the Institute Of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN), a Fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants of The United Kingdom (ACCA) and a member of the Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada(CPA) She also holds an MBA from the Edinburgh Business School (Heriot-Watt University) Scotland.
She holds a Certificate in Entrepreneurial Management from the Enterprise Development Centre of the Pan Atlantic University, Lagos Nigeria being a recipient of the WomenX Scholarship (A collaboration of World Bank and EDC). She is happily married and a mother of three boys.
Sola says her journey to building wealth has been interesting; Not only has she learnt through certifications, she has grasped the secrets of wealth building through her personal experiences. Her passion is to help people; Men and women, young and old, maximise their resources, talents and gifts.
Financial freedom or independence is, first of all, a journey and then, a destination. It can literally be explained as having enough income to fund your living expenses, for the rest of your life, without having to work full time. There is no one way to achieving this.
On achieving financial freedom, she revealed that for some, it is easy to achieve through investing and saving over a long period, while others just go ahead to build successful businesses that will generate income to fund all aspects of their lifestyle requirements. “Whichever way, financial freedom cannot be achieved without the application of basic and sound financial rules. No one arrives ‘there’ just by chance; everyone has got to work their way into financial freedom or independence.” Said Adesakin.
Sola agrees many people make money mistakes because they sometimes invest wrongly, indulge unwisely and are helplessly indebted, but what she does, though her organisation is to teach people to become better managers and stewards on that journey towards financial liberation.
When she qualified as a Chartered Accountant years ago, she began working in managerial roles and after a while, she got a relatively good job and started to earn well. Unfortunately, all the things she learnt in school as an Accounting student and in her professional certifications did not impact the way she spent money.
Being a Chartered Accountant didn’t amount to good personal finance management for Adesakin, as she probably fared worse than people who had little or no theoretical knowledge of finances. “My Finances were scattered.” She admitted.
Her finances were always out of shape and she was regularly in debt. her salary would not last beyond 3 days after receiving it, “I was a spendthrift I would draw down on my savings less than a week of keeping the money aside and I felt totally helpless. When it dawned on me that I couldn’t continue that way, I made a commitment to making a change and things turned around for me.” She stated.
Coupled with the necessary knowledge and appropriate certifications, Sola embarked on that rewarding journey of helping and teaching people about managing their personal finances and today, she lives a fulfilling life with amazing testimonials.
