How a 29-year-old became a millionaire after growing up poor in London

Timothy Armoo is a 29-year-old millionaire who became rich by selling his influencer marketing firm for eight-figures, but the young, Black entrepreneur had to beat the odds to find success.

Armoo, the co-founder and former CEO of Fanbytes, hails from what was one of the most impoverished areas in south London and as a teenager lived with his dad on a fourth floor council estate — public housing — on Old Kent Road in the borough of Southwark.

“It was the poorest place,” Armoo told CNBC Make It in an interview. “It was at the peak of when Peckham, Brixton and Old Kent Road were having their beef [British slang for conflict] so it was in the middle of the gang warfare. Between 2005 and 2012 was the peak of the South London gangs.”

Trust for London names Southwark as one of 19 boroughs that have “significantly” higher levels of poverty compared to England as a whole.

Armoo knew he was poor, but he had a keen entrepreneurial spirit and managed to cobble together some money by starting his own tutoring business at 14-years-old.

He taught fellow students math and as more students approached him for help with other subjects, he started connecting them with tutors he knew and took a cut of the fee.

“I remember very specifically the first time I connected these two people,” he said. “Jane needed some help with chemistry, and I connected her to Harry, and Harry helped her, and I got £5 (around $6.6) in commission for connecting them, because [the business] charged £15 an hour.”

It was only when Armoo received a scholarship to go to a private boarding school when he was just 16-years-old to complete his A-Levels — equivalent to the Advanced Placement program in the U.S. — that his entire view of wealth changed.

“I remember one day this kid got picked up in a helicopter,” he recalled. “It opened up my eyes that there is a way to build wealth and you don’t have to be Richard Branson. There’s a whole world of people in between there.”

He started to realize that “money was a tool” to change his life and the fastest way to escape poverty was to start his own business.

“When I was growing up on that fourth floor council estate, I would always say to myself ‘This is temporary. This is temporary. This is temporary,'” he said. “I didn’t get to choose the circumstances I was in at 10 years old … but at least I got to decide what ends up happening.”  

Here’s how Armoo went from living in a council estate to starting his own business and then becoming a millionaire before the age of 30.

Armoo was 17-years-old and still completing his A-Levels when he sold his first business, an online blog called Entrepreneur Express, for £110,000, after only 11 months of running it.

“Everyone’s aspiration was to go to Oxbridge [The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge] and mine was just ‘I want to make money and I want to get out of my s—ty…