According to the most recent quote, Freddie Figgers’ company is worth $ 62 million dollars, something he achieved by being good people and talented.
Figgers was abandoned when he was a baby next to some boats of trash in rural Florida in the United States.
“The kids used to make fun of me; they called me ‘trash baby’ , they told me ‘nobody loves you … you’re dirty’. I remember times when I would get off the school bus and children would grab me and throw me in garbage cans and laugh at me, “he said in an interview with Jo Fidgen for the BBC program” Outlook. “
“It got to the point that my father had to wait for me at the bus stop and accompany me home. And the children would harass me even more, making fun of him: ‘Ha ha! Look at that old man with a cane. ‘”
Figgers’s father, Nathan, had 74 years old and her mother, Betty May, 66 when they took him in.
They had children of their own and had taken in dozens of others children over the years – many of them while their own parents were in prison – and they had planned to stop because they were old.
But suddenly, Freddie arrived.
He had no one who wanted him, so they adopted him and raised him as their own.
When Freddie started asking questions, Nathan related his story.
“He told me: ‘I’m going to tell you bluntly. Your biological mother abandoned you or and like me and Betty we did not want to send you to welcome, we adopt you. ‘ I felt like trash and I always remember him grabbing me by the shoulders and saying: ‘Never let that upset you.’ ”
“ My parents gave me all the love that anyone could ever want . They did everything for me. I never felt the need to look for my biological family because my mom and dad, my Betty and my Nathan, they were everything to me, and I loved them. ”
“ They are great people. They taught me to be of integrity, to always do the right thing, to never forget my origins. I saw my father always helping people, stopping on the way to assist strangers, feeding the homeless …
“He was an incredible man and I want to be like him.”
From trash to treasure
Nathan had two jobs, as a maintenance worker, Betty May was a farm worker and, although they did not have much money, when Freddie was 9 years old they bought him a gift that changed everything: a Macintosh computer… broken.
“On weekends I went with my father to do what we called ‘garbage diving’, wandering around different neighborhoods in search of things that people would have thrown away, as the saying goes: what for one man is garbage, for another is a treasure “.
” I have always been fascinated by computers. He dreamed of a Gateway computer but we couldn’t buy it. ”
On that occasion, his father took him to a second-hand store where they convinced the salesperson to sell them an old and damaged computer, for which paid $ 40 Dollars.
“I was happy. Since it wouldn’t start, I took it apart and realized that a component was broken and everything flowed naturally. My father worked in maintenance, he had many things at his disposal, such as welding guns, radios, watches … “
” I took parts of a radio alarm clock and soldered them and after a few 50 attempts finally got the computer to work. It was then that I knew that was what I wanted to do in my life “.
” That computer erased all the pain of bullying. While they teased me at school, I thought how much I wanted to go home to play with my computer. ”
“ I learned to code at 10 or 11 years and I started writing basic programs. It was then that I started to move forward. ”
Salaried passion
Little After learning the language of computers, he got his first job. To the 12 years old.
“I attended an after-school program and spent it in the computer lab.”
“No there was a computer technician so when a machine stopped working, they unplugged it and stacked it with the other broken ones. I would take them and replace the damaged parts of one with the good parts of the other. ”
At that time, the executive director of the program was the mayor of the city of Quincy and When she saw what Freddie had done, she was astonished , asked her parents for permission and took him to the town hall.
There they had dozens of broken computers and Freddie dedicated himself to fixing them by going every day after school. They paid him $ 12 dollars per hour, but “it wasn’t so much for the money… I had a lot of fun!”
Three years later, when I was 15 years and was still working for the municipality, a firm offered a program to monitor water pressure meters for $ 600, 000 Dollars. The officials thought it was a better idea to entrust it to Freddie, who created the program they needed for the same salary that they had been paying him.
It was then that he made a decision.
“By then, school was bored so I decided to quit and start my own business, although my parents did not agree.”
dad
When Freddie was 17 years, Nathan, his father, became ill with Alzheimer’s.
“I remember a The night we went to sleep after watching a cowboy movie that he liked a lot, and at two in the morning he woke me up, rifle in hand, convinced that he was the hero of the film, telling me I had to leave town . I managed to take the rifle from him and put him to bed, but the next morning he was gone. ”
“ He left home thinking they were chasing him and sometimes he forgot to put on his shirt or pants, but I noticed that he never stopped putting on his shoes , so I opened their soles, put a circuit on them, with a microphone, a speaker and a wide-range network card and integrated that with my laptop ” .
“This was all before Apple or Google Maps existed, so I integrated it with Tomtom so that when my father disappeared I could press a button on my computer and ask him where he was.”
“So he would answer me ‘I don’t know where I am’, as soon as he said something I could tell if he was standing, sitting or lying on the floor.”
The GPS he had created also allowed him to know exactly where N athan.
The time came when the family began to insist that he be admitted to a nursing home, but Freddie would not allow it. He carried it with him everywhere.
“He didn’t abandon me, so I wasn’t going to abandon him.”
Young and unique
A few years later, Freddie sold the shoe technology smart that he had created to take care of his father for more than $ 2 million dollars. But it was at this time that Nathan’s health deteriorated and he died.
Freddie could never buy him the car and fishing boat he liked.
” It was then that I learned that money is nothing more than a tool and I decided to do everything possible to try to leave the world better when it is my turn to leave, because my father, without being rich, had a impact on the lives of many people, and I wanted to do the same “.
And I had a plan: to launch a telecommunications company because I had detected a gap in the market : Large companies did not invest in rural areas like the one he lived in – North Florida, South Georgia – so there was no infrastructure for them to enjoy fast connections.
“Most of people were still using dial-up dial-up to access to Internet. So after 394 attempts, finally the FCC granted me a license. ”
The FCC is the Federal Communications Commission, an independent state agency of the United States, under the direct responsibility of Congress. The FCC is responsible for the regulation (including censorship) of interstate and international telecommunications by radio, television, wireless networks, telephones, satellite and cable.
When Freddie finally received his license as a telecommunications operator, at 21 years, became the person The youngest and the only African-American to get it.
Freddie began laying fiber optic cables and building telephone towers with his own hands to forge a firm, Figgers Communications, valued at tens of millions of dollars.
But it’s what he does with his earnings that sets him apart.
Chain of favors
The Figgers Foundation offers scholarships for African American students and contributes with assistance in situations of stre. During this pandemic he has been supplying personal protective equipment and digital learning tools for disadvantaged children.
Freddie, for his part, continues to invent health products, such as the smart shoes he made for his father.
The inspiration for another of his inventions was another traumatic experience he had at age 8, when his parents went to visit Betty May’s uncle and found him dead, due to a diabetic coma.
14 years later, created a program to try to prevent this type of death .
“Diabetics were targeting their blood sugar levels but in rural areas, like South Georgia, where my mom’s uncle lived, there was no one who came to check regularly. So I created a smart glucometer that, after taking the measurement, shares it with your phone, your doctors, your family members and your insurance company, so that if something is abnormal, send an alert. ”
Betty May is still alive, although she also suffers from Alzheimer’s. “She was always very proud of me, although she never understood that I worked with computers … she thought I worked with VCRs!”
Your advice to others ?: “Don’t let your circumstances define who you are and give other people opportunities” .
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