Hello hate mail my old friend - here we go again!

Boy that was fast, I knew I was tackling a controversial issue but the hate mail came sooner than I thought. In my most recent post, I talked about the story of Reggie Nelson which was featured on the BBC - now as a rule, I don't publish my hate mail nor do I give haters the room to air their grievances here if they are unwilling to conduct themselves in a civil manner, but allow me to summarize two points they made. Firstly, I ignored the fact that Reggie was involved in schemes to encourage young black people into further education and the financial services sector. Secondly, they also pointed out that in sharp contrast to Reggie who was doing a lot to help others, I am not doing anything to encourage more working class, gay or Asian people into the financial services sector and thus by that token, I am a selfish bastard compared to Reggie, who is a generous person giving back to his community. The accusations are that I have become successful and am now doing nothing to give back to my 'community'; that I am spending my free time doing fun activites rather than charity work. And they also accused me of being judgmental when it came to Reggie's choice of university - Kingston. 

Now some of these criticisms are totally fair - of course I could be doing a lot more charity work, but then that can be said about just about anybody really. So if we were to turn our attention to the kind of work that Reggie Nelson is doing - he's going around telling others his story, trying to inspire them to dream big, to have greater aspirations and to work hard to achieve their goals. Sounds great, right? But there is a problem, a huge part of Reggie's success story was the help that he received from his mentor in Kensington, Quintin Price. I invite you to look at Reggie Nelson's Linkedin profile (go ahead, it is in the public domain) - yes his degree was from Kingston, a university currently ranked 95th out of 131 in the UK, but look at the extremely high quality of internships listed on his profile there. In the period from 2014 to 2016, he interned at BlackRock, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Aberdeen, AIM and the Bank of England. Now as a gatekeeper, if I see someone with such an impressive CV when it comes to internships, I would raise my eyebrows and think, "who's your daddy? Where does he work? Who are his friends? Who helped you? How did you manage to score all these impressive internships with such organisations?" Of course, we don't know if Quintin arranged each and every single one of those internships for Reggie (and we won't know the answer to that question unless we actually asked Quintin), but if someone applied for a job and claimed that he managed to score all those prestigious internships all on his own with absolutely no help, I would smirk and go, "yeah, right." I also note that prior to meeting Quintin, Reggie's only work experience had been with a football club, working in a stationary shop and as an office assistant in a sugar company.

So what will happen to a young, black teenager who attends one of Reggie's workshops and think, yeah I wanna become an investment banker at Morgan Stanley, I wanna become a hedge fund manager at HSBC or I want to become a corporate finance specialist. Then what? Would Reggie or Quintin personally mentor each and every single young black person who asks for help in those workshops? Let's get real here, you're telling a bunch of teenagers to dream big, but without actually giving them the kind of help that Quintin gave Reggie, I'm afraid you're only setting up for disappointment. It was one thing mentoring Reggie, but what if Reggie sent Quintin a whole stream of young black people to mentor, would he have the time or willingness to do that on top of everything else he is already doing? Likewise, Reggie is still young and relatively junior, yes he has a good job at L&G at the moment, but get real: he's only been at the company for five months (and he only stayed in his first job for just ten months - now that's another Pandora's Box you don't want to open: why someone only stays in a job for such a short period of time), he won't be able to get anyone work experience or internships the way Quintin did. Well, not for a few years yet at least - let's wait till he becomes at least a senior director, manage some staff before he can pull strings and make things happen like that. He may be able to do that in the future of course, all I am saying is that as of today, I'm afraid all he can offer is his optimism.

If you would allow me be blunt here: Reggie has a degree from an awful university but his record when it comes to internships is super impressive. It's almost the kind of CV that would match this guy I used to work with (let's call him Richard, or Rich for short - not his real name): he went to one of the most expensive private schools in Switzerland as his family was so ridiculous rich. Rich spent all of his teenage years partying instead of studying, so he crashed and burned when it came to his A levels, ending up with such bad results he did a degree at Brighton University, currently ranked 106th out of 131 universities - so around the same standard and Kingston University. But guess what? Rich's daddy was as rich and influential as Quintin Price, he managed to score very impressive internships every summer like Reggie and upon graduation, he barely passed his degree (remember Brighton is quite a party town - Rich barely attended his lectures). Daddy made a few phone calls and his first job was at UBS because some senior director there owed daddy a favour. I know Rich well, he is by no means stupid, he just didn't put any effort into his education, he never bothered to study for a test or an exam - that's why his results were atrocious. It is hard to be motivated to study hard when daddy is ludicrously rich and you have millions in your trust fund. But once he was in an environment where he actually found something he liked, something he was interested in and could apply himself, Rich started working hard and to his credit, he managed to carve a very successful career for himself in corporate finance. He is now a CEO and highly respected.

Now to be fair, Rich's father only managed to help him overcome the fact that he was a lazy brat who never studied as a child, most of us ordinary, working class kids had to get straight As and a degree from a top university in order to even get a good job upon graduation whilst someone like Rich could well and truly mess up his entire education and still waltz into a much better job than the rest of us because of his father's connections. In case you didn't get the memo, life is not fair. But that's as far as the help went, once Rich got his first job, he had to work hard to prove himself there regardless of whom his father was and that's exactly what Rich managed to do, to his credit. Many of us wouldn't even get that chance to prove ourselves to these top corporations because we wouldn't even get our foot in that front door, not without someone like Quintin Price opening that door for us. So yeah in Reggie's case, just like Rich, he ended up in a terrible university because of different reasons, but clearly he's not stupid and Quintin Price managed to give him a chance to prove just that to potential employers by getting him internships. It is a credible story: "my father died when I was a teenager, that's why my results were poor and I didn't get a good degree. Life was very difficult then, but let me prove to you over the next few months that I am anything but stupid." Reggie was hungry to prove himself, Quintin gave him the chance - how many young people will actually get that chance to prove themselves without some help from an adult?

The fact is many young people from deprived neighbourhoods and poor families do have aspiration and dreams; what they lack however is the means to make those dreams come true. Let me give you an analogy: imagine if I worked for Tourism New Zealand (TNZ) the official company promoting New Zealand as a tourist destination. I show up in the most deprived part of London and I meet a captive audience of young people: I give out free gifts like T-shirts, postcards, key chains and caps - the kinda stuff you'll find in any tourist gift shop in New Zealand. I then serve my audience the most delicious snacks from New Zealand like fresh kiwi fruit, Manuka honey ice cream, green lipped mussels and Feijoa juice (that was my favourite drink when I was in South Island NZ last year). I then show you a video about how exciting and fun New Zealand can be (watch the video below) and after all that presentation, sure everyone would love to get on the next plane to New Zealand for the adventure of a lifetime. But do the poor people in my audience have the money to buy a plane ticket to New Zealand, never mind pay for the hotels and all the fancy excursions, skiing lessons, bungee jumps and luxury cruises to see the fjords? No, they don't have the money to visit New Zealand. Telling them that New Zealand is a great place to visit isn't enough to get them there - without somebody paying for that trip to get them to New Zealand, well, just telling them how great it is almost seem cruel, knowing the chances of them ever making it there is quite slim.

So staying with my example of New Zealand as a holiday destination, it's not that poor people don't know New Zealand exists or that they don't know enough about New Zealand - that's not the reason why poor British people don't go to New Zealand. No, the reason why they don't go to New Zealand is because they simply because they don't have the money. Just a return flight on economy from London with the cheapest airline China Southern already costs around £750 if we're looking to travel next week and then you have to spend money on food, accommodation, transport and activities when you get there. Heck, for just a day's skiing in Cardrona, I spent well over NZ$250/£125 for everything including ski hire, ski attire, ski pass, coffee and lunch - just as well I am an expert skier otherwise I would have had to pay even more for ski lessons. Thus even for one person spending just a week in New Zealand, you can easily spend over £3000. That's a lot of money for poor people and that's the main reason why they don't go to New Zealand. So do you think that it is simply a lack of aspiration that poor people from working class families do not go to top universities and then get extremely well paid jobs as investment bankers? I came from a poor working class family myself, it's not that I lacked ambition: I had plenty of big dreams about what I wanted to do with my life! I just didn't have a mentor to help me get work experience and apprenticeships when I was a young man - quite frankly, I didn't need a pep talk to encourage me to reach for the stars; no, I needed a mentor like Quintin Price in my life as my own father was totally unable to help me.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with trying to help kids from more deprived, working class backgrounds achieve a lot more with their lives - that is a noble cause, but what you need is a far more comprehensive programme to try to level the playing field by giving them the kind of help they need, the kind of help that rich, upper class parents would be able to provide their children. So we're talking about everything from giving them extra help with school work to ensure they get good grades, giving them the opportunity to do extra courses like learning  foreign languages and coding to enrich themselves, finding them work experience and apprenticeships and even if you somehow manage to provide all of that, what are you going to do about the other problems in their lives? So if they come from a huge family and the parents are quite useless at caring for all the children, so the older siblings have to take care of the younger siblings when they really should be studying or resting - how are you going to fix that situation? I'm not saying that it is impossible for a working class child to one day go to a great university and then enter the world of banking, what I am saying is that this is a difficult challenge for a child with the odds stacked against him. Children who get a lot of help often have a much easier time succeeding compared to those who are left to figure it out for themselves because they got no help from their parents. Pardon my cynicism but giving these kids a pep talk about aspiration barely scratches the surface when it comes to the kind of help they need. But if you are going to invest in such a scheme, why only offer it to black kids then? Why not open it up to all kids of any skin colour who come from a deprived background? 

If you want to get more black people into top corporate jobs, then we have to work backwards through the process and ask why aren't there more black people getting into the best universities? Typically, the top companies want to hire people from the best universities in the world like Oxford and Cambridge and I did blog about the near total absence of black people from Oxford and Cambridge. Then you realize, okay so black students just aren't achieving the results at their A levels to get into Oxford and Cambridge, then you work backwards and try to see what is happening prior to their A levels and then you realize just how black students are performing a lot worse than the white and Asian students even at that stage already - so the intervention needs to come at a much earlier stage, like when they are in primary school to make sure that they do not fall behind even at that stage. This is a problem that needs a lot of money and goodwill to solve, a pep talk by someone like Reggie is barely a drop in the ocean when you look at the scale of the challenges we face if we are going to try to change the situation. And ultimately, I don't think individuals like Reggie can make much difference even with the best of his efforts and intentions - no, a lot of it comes down to the kind of government we have. Is it a left-wing government keen to address issues of social inequality and social mobility and thus is more than willing to invest in education? Or is it a right-wing government very keen to slash public spending in order to slash the budget deficit and make the economy a lot more healthy? (Hint: our current prime minister is Theresa May, not Jeremy Corbyn.)

If you were to look at environment issues for example, you'll see how the actions of individuals may have the very best intentions - but do they actually make much of a difference in the big scheme of things? Yes I sort out my recycling carefully, I even do things like use my bathwater to water the plants in my garden and I even donate to charities that will off-set my carbon emissions. But can I, as an individual, stop global warming? No, I can't - I do what I do because it feels like the right thing to do, but I am aware of how futile it is. But when the government decides to do something like force supermarkets to start charging for plastic bags, they can achieve outstanding results very efficiently. The use of disposable plastic bags dropped by 85% within a year of the government making people pay for them - that is the kind of results a government can achieve when they pass a legislation and to their credit, yes successive governments have done a lot over the years in investing in the education sector to the point where the UK is still one of the world's top destinations for international students looking for a great place to get a degree, because so many of the world's best universities are here, in this one small country. So whilst I recognize that Reggie probably has the most noble of intentions when he does his pep talks, this is social mobility problem that only the government can solve, not individuals. 

As for why I am not doing more to help others like myself, like what about the fact that I came from a humble, poor working class family? Well, I never had a mentor like Quintin Price, yet somehow I managed to achieve quite a lot. Having a good mentor like that is like being dealt a good card during a game of Poker. You can still win with a bad hand and by the same token, I recently wrote a piece about people who were dealt a good hand but still somehow manage to mess it all up. I love reading stories about people who have managed to overcome the odds to achieve great success, that is a great character building exercise Have you heard the butterfly struggle parable?  A boy was witnessing a butterfly struggling to break out of the cocoon and he decided to help the butterfly by cutting open the cocoon with a pair of scissors. The butterfly quickly emerged but it had a swollen body and tiny wings that never developed. The boy then learnt that the butterfly was supposed to have be struggling for a long time to emerge from the cocoon for that exercise will force the fluids into the wings, allowing the wings to become fully developed in the process. In trying to help the butterfly avoid the struggle, the boy had doomed the butterfly - it will never fly with those small, underdeveloped wings. This is a story used to explain to young people not to be afraid of struggling in life, because the experience will turn them into much stronger people in the long run. Oh I have been through my fair share of struggles as a young man, learnt many lessons the hard way and it has shaped me: would my wings be as strong today if I hadn't struggled the way I did? 

Allow me to talk about a country that have been hugely constrained by sanctions in the last few decades: Cuba. Because of decades of American sanctions, Cubans have been forced to adapt to life without many imports, things we simply take for granted in the rest of the world. Cubans have been resolviendo (“making do”) since shortages of all types began hitting the island in the early 1960s, shortly after the U.S. government slapped the first trade sanctions on the Castro government. Everywhere from hospitals to universities to laboratories to factories in the country: Cubans know that they cannot simply log onto eBay or Amazon and order the spare part or equipment they need, they have to look at the resources they have before them and come up with a solution. This spirit of resolviendo which has been a part of Cuban life since the 1960s has created a resilience and innovation that would put those of us in more developed countries to shame. I have had a very tough childhood and I know what it was like to be brought up in a poor, working class family. I think it is quite condescending to imagine that people like us need to be somehow 'rescued' or 'helped' - that there is only one way to for social mobility to take place, that we all need a white, rich mentor to show us the ways of the upper classes - that there is only one way for people like me to establish a successful career and escape the doldrums of being working class to become like the rich people. So let me share with you a story that highlighted this point to me recently.

My nephew has to do a subject called food science in school and he had a cooking project to bake a cake. A recipe was provided and really, all he had to do was follow the instructions step-by-step to create that cake. My sister being the mother she is decided to have a rehearsal at home whereby she would test the recipe he was given, then supervise my nephew baking that cake. My sister then went to the supermarket, bought all the ingredients and laid them out on the kitchen counter for my nephew - now that's the kind of preparation you only see in a cooking programme where all the ingredients are laid out neatly like that for the camera to do that panning shot! My mother was there as well to help and of course, under such conditions, with two adults supervising, it was hard to mess up and of course, they baked some beautiful cakes together. Now let me contrast this to when I baked cakes when I was a kid. My mother hated the idea of me cooking: she thought I was going to blow up the house if I messed with the gas stove! I was the stealth cook, when I knew I had at least two hours, I would try to bake something and it meant doing all the preparation, baking the cake, cleaning up and eating the cake without leaving any evidence. I remember once my mother stepped into the kitchen and said, "smells like got someone making a cake". And I just nonchalantly said, "yeah, that would be the auntie next door."

I have had some horrible mistakes, my Yakult cake was the worst possible disaster, I had to throw the whole thing into my neighbour's bin to avoid my mother seeing that mess! I also made some incredible cakes as well, all through experimentation! But in trying to bake my own cakes without a recipe or any help (remember this was the late 1980s, I couldn't just Google a recipe), I learnt how to combine the right proportions of the ingredients through trial and error. However, in the process, I learnt a lot more about baking than my nephew ever will, given the rather clinical way he is merely following a strict formula, under adult supervision and guidance. Now don't get me wrong, I believe it is important to teach young people how to follow instructions, apply formulas and learn how to adhere to certain procedures - that's why it is important for my nephew to have such experiences in school, not because we want him to become a baker or pastry chef one day, but because the process requires a certain amount of discipline which he can take away and apply to other aspects of his life. Poor kids like myself and the entire generation growing up in Cuba would have always had to learn how to improvise and solve our own problems in a way my nephew would never ever need to, he is now conditioned to Google a solution and simply follow the directions step by step. That would kill any creativity or innovation, when you don't even allow yourself to try to solve your own problems by improvising and thinking quickly on your feet.

Of course, being made to struggle doesn't always bring out the best in you - there are loads of poor people who were born poor, struggle all their lives and then die poor. I'm not pretending that hardship and struggling is all you need to turn you into a success, no - some of us do need a bit of help along the way as well when we are buried under the burdens we have to carry. But if you were to ask me to return to my roots, to go back to Ang Mo Kio and encourage the kids there to become investment bankers, well - I've got news for you. Even the kids from the poorest families in Singapore do dream about going to university and getting good jobs, I don't see how me going to tell them, "because I did it, so can you if you simply follow in my footsteps" - that message just doesn't go down well with me because it is simply not true. The fact is everyone is an individual, everyone has different strengths and weaknesses, so the way you help someone succeed is not to tell them to follow in your footsteps, but to sit down with them, spend time mentoring them, get to know them and say, "okay let's find out what your best at, where your strengths lie and we shall play to your strengths to maximize your potential." That is what a mentor does and that's what young people need: they really don't need some successful person to dazzle them with stories of success and I'm afraid that's what Reggie is doing. No offence, I'm sure his intentions are good, but I'm just not convinced it is really helping because he can't give them what Quintin gave him.

Allow me to update you with a story I told you about back in May: I met a young man at an event in Barcelona and we got talking, he was a nice guy. He wanted to earn more money, he wanted to move up the food chain, he was a good salesman who wanted to increase his earnings ten-fold, ie. he wanted to add one more zero at the end of his annual earning. Some people would be happy if they can get a 10% pay rise and would be delirious if they could double their salary, but this man wanted to increase it ten-fold and he asked me for help. I did meet up with him, we chatted, I learned a lot more about his family background, his education and work experience before setting up a job interview for him. That company isn't looking to hire till Q4 this year but this gave him enough time to prepare himself to leave his current job and I am still in touch with him on a weekly basis. I wouldn't quite call it 'mentoring' per se, I'm just doing it in exchange for his friendship and also because I knew I was in a position to help him. Mind you, I have learnt my lesson the hard way about trying to help someone who hasn't asked me for help! Please note that I didn't ask him to follow in my footsteps: we were such different people. A major factor when it comes to my success in sales is my ability to speak so many languages (6 fluently, I get by in about 20) and this guy is a monolingual English guy. I didn't tell him, "you must learn to speak a few more foreign languages like me, let's start with French and Spanish". No, I am focusing on his strengths and he is going to down a somewhat different path than myself, targeting a totally different section of the market - one that simply doesn't require him to speak a foreign language at all but where he can apply some of his technical knowledge.

I thought that's a nice story to end on: that's me, the older gay Asian guy 'mentoring' the younger straight white English guy in the business - I love the fact that we're breaking the mould, we're not conforming to the stereotypes that unfortunately seemed to have been perpetuated by the BBC report on Reggie. None of this was planned by neither him nor me: we were at a huge event with thousands of delegates, what were the odds of us even running into each other at such a massive event? But somehow, I met him and his colleague (a charming Lebanese lady who speaks four languages fluently) and I agreed to help them both as I got along so well with them both. I exchanged a few nice messages with her since, but it seems she's quite content in her current job and was too risk-averse to leave her job even if it meant a pay increase. So I backed off and focused on helping the one guy who wasn't afraid to ask me for my help - I believe that in this world, we operate on a 'you don't ask, you don't get' principle and good for him for asking for help. This guy asked me and I am only too happy to oblige. I don't understand why some people don't want to ask for help, even if they could really do with some help. But there you go, I'm more than happy to help people who ask me for help, if I am in a position to help and if the request is a reasonable one. But I just don't believe in going round to people and telling them, "you need help, listen to me and do as I say". I'd leave that kind of mentoring to the social workers who have a lot more training and skills to handle very difficult relationships like that - no, I won't bite off more than I can chew.

So  there you go, that's it from me on this story. Keep your comments coming, I welcome all comments but please keep it civil. Over to you: how useful are these workshops anyway where they get someone like Reggie to tell these kids that they can become successful and make their dreams come through if they are not following through with any mentoring? Have you had a mentor yourself and what did your mentor do for you? If you never had a mentor, how did you cope without one and how necessary is it to have a good mentor? Should we try to mentor kids from poorer backgrounds or would the experience of their struggles be the best lesson they can have in life? Would you like to be a mentor one day? Let me know what you think - leave a comment below, please let me know what you think and many thanks for reading.