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1. My dear Jack, part of my responsibility as mentor is to share life experiences with you, share life principles. #Letr2Jack
2. The whole idea is to prevent you from making my mistakes, help you avoid the missteps of others, and to turbocharge your journey. #Letr2Jack
3. Mentoring gives you tuition. Better to learn by tuition than through experience. Experience can be very costly, even deadly. Not everyone survives experience. If you’re eliminated in the process of learning the knowledge does you no good. #Letr2Jack
4. It’s a small world. That’s a phrase you’ll hear quite often as you grow older. But you won’t fully appreciate it without the benefit of age. #Letr2Jack
5. There’s something called the order of life. I’ll try and describe it to you using some illustrations. You see, when you come out of school there’s the usual scramble out of the gate. Some will edge past others, and very swiftly. #Letr2Jack
6. But the race does not necessarily belong to those people. They may be expending energy prematurely for the purpose of one-upmanship. Young people do that a lot. Notice the postings on Instagram. #Letr2Jack
7. Some will zoom past because they have the advantage of parentage. Their parents give them leverage. And so while others are still trying to find their feet they just seem to coast along. #Letr2Jack
8. Take a young lawyer fresh out of law school. He’ll be looking for pupillage but the guy with rich parents can actually afford to set up his own practice. Not a wise thing to do but he can. #Letr2Jack
9. At that particular point in time the guy with rich parentage has a distinct advantage, and this to the despair of everyone. #Letr2Jack
10. In that early scramble some of your colleagues will have good corporate jobs. Some may even end up company secretaries. (I’m still using law analogy). #Letr2Jack
11. Company secretaries are the ones who farm out briefs to practicing lawyers. They’re very important to the success of young lawyers. They give young lawyers an opportunity to break into the corporate sector. #Letr2Jack
12. A wise guy in that position will help as many people as he can. That’s because those guys he doesn’t help will still make it. Only that they’ll have made it without his help. It’s all a matter of time. #Letr2Jack
13. By the time they make it they won’t need him again. After all when they needed him he wasn’t there. They made it in spite of him. #Letr2Jack
14. Therefore help all those you can in life. Be of help to as many people as God brings your way. Who knows what tomorrow holds. It’s a very small world. #Letr2Jack
15. But what I really want you to see is that that early scramble is not what really determines success. Success belongs to the resilient and determined, those who don’t give up. #Letr2Jack
16. And so your fate is not determined by your early disadvantages. Your fate is determined by your focus, your tenacity and perseverance. #Letr2Jack
17. At some point you’ll begin to gather steam, begin to have opportunities to display your skills and talent. That opportunity that shows you your life potential will come. #Letr2Jack
18. Many times in life we’re looking for that one break. But that one break is hardly ever about money. What makes the break valuable is the fact it shows us our life potential – what our life can become. You see possibilities. #Letr2Jack
19. Which is why I tell you never to joke with any opportunity to prove yourself, no matter how little the financial reward is. The law of faithfulness will kick in. #Letr2Jack
20. If you don’t help your classmates when you’re opportuned to, especially at that early stage after school you’re going to end up being one of those people asking for forgiveness on your Old Students WhatsApp group. #Letr2Jack
21. I see needless mistakes being made by your generation. One of those is trying to do today what you should be doing tomorrow. #Letr2Jack
22. I’m told for example that young boys hardly out of school are giving pocket money to their girlfriends. That sounds wonderful except for the fact they don’t have the capacity for what they’re embarking upon. They won’t “balance.” #Letr2Jack
23. If care is not taken they’ll end up perpetual borrowers – from work, from friends, from family, and from the same girlfriends. The relationship will become mortgaged. #Letr2Jack
24. Oh, if the girlfriend is out of job, or being badly paid I can understand. It’s reasonable to help out a girlfriend in such circumstances. But giving pocket money to your well paid girlfriend out of machismo? That’s unlimited liability. I hope you’re strong enough. #Letr2Jack
25. Why don’t you wait until you’re married before taking on such commitment? Don’t forget you still have to take care of your parents. You live in Africa. There’s hardly any social net. #Letr2Jack
26. There are things you do only when you have succeeded. Trying to be acting big man when your earning capacity is weak is sheer foolishness. #Letr2Jack
27. Same with blowing a salary’s worth of money on alcohol in the club. That’s not wise. You’re trying to impress people you shouldn’t be impressing. As they piss your salary is gone. You’ll have to resort to borrowing to survive for the rest of the month. #Letr2Jack
28. Being salaried that’s a stupid lifestyle you’re cultivating. Even as a businessman you can’t blow money anyhow. You don’t blow money faster than you make it. Such a lifestyle is a pointer to recklessness, foolishness or lack of self-esteem. #Letr2Jack
29. Stop trying to impress people you shouldn’t be impressing. Why are you trying so hard to impress your classmates! You’re young, you have a whole lot of life in front of you for that. And you won’t need to. Your achievements will speak for themselves. #Letr2Jack
30. Build capacity for your future. Without capacity you’ll be weakened as the years go by. Let me illustrate with another analogy from legal practice. (Remember I read law before going into branding). #Letr2Jack
31. I’m sure you’ve heard about “Charge and Bail” lawyers. They’re the guys who practice in lower courts making bail applications in criminal matters. #Letr2Jack
32. They make a lot of money relative to what a young lawyer joining proper legal practice will earn. The charge and bail lawyer can make in one day what that guy will make in three months as salary. It’s alluring. #Letr2Jack
33. But the charge and bail lawyer suffers distinct disadvantages with respect to the future. For one he is restricted to inferior courts of record. #Letr2Jack
34. He hardly practices in higher courts and therefore doesn’t need a real library. That limits his knowledge of law. He’ll hardly develop advocacy skill. His practice is limited to bail applications. #Letr2Jack
35. Because he didn’t have pupillage he won’t know how to run a proper legal practice. His clientele is limited, and so are the means of his clients. He won’t get into esoteric areas of law. #Letr2Jack
36. In doing charge and bail he limits future potential. He limits future earnings. How much can you really earn making bail applications? But at the beginning he’ll be ahead of his colleagues. He’ll earn more. #Letr2Jack
37. At some point those colleagues will begin to gather steam. They will have corporate clients. They’ll be in on juicy commercial transactions. They will overtake the charge and bail lawyer. He cannot begin to dream what they’ll earn. #Letr2Jack
38. Don’t be too much in a hurry in life. You will make strategic mistakes. Build capacity for the future. Pace yourself. #Letr2Jack
39. It’s like those young men who are too much in a hurry to be on their own. They’ve hardly worked for months and they’re jumping out of employment. They want to be their own boss, which is okay. But at least learn the rudiments of business. #Letr2Jack
40. If you don’t know anything about filing, can’t do business correspondence, can’t generate an invoice, can’t make a presentation, can’t interface with prospects, how are you going to succeed on your own? And what’s the hurry? Why don’t you learn! #Letr2Jack
41. When you jump out those gaps will show. Now you have to earn your upkeep by yourself, bring in the money. Nobody will be doing it on your behalf. You’re on your own. #Letr2Jack
42. The race is not to the swift, it’s to the prepared. #Letr2Jack
43. Festina lente. Make haste slowly. #Letr2Jack
44. Don’t be fooled by all those Instagram posts. Everyone is trying to impress everyone for no reason in particular. If you’re not careful they’ll make you feel like a failure, just by looking at those posts. #Letr2Jack
45. Deepen your capacities instead. Hone your skills, develop maturity, prove yourself faithful, learn discipline, learn perseverance, learn focus. #Letr2Jack
46. I have seen life, and life is still going to happen to your generation. It doesn’t seem so but it will happen. If I were you I’ll be well prepared. #Letr2Jack
47. When you look at the school photos of your parents, look at the photos of their classmates... Compare to the present. The difference between those photos from the past and the current photographs is something called life. #Letr2Jack
48. Whether you like it or not life is going to happen to your generation. Life will cure childish tendencies, clip chicken wings, force maturity. It’s a matter of time. #Letr2Jack
49. Stop doing silly stuff. Stop trying to impress. Don’t put yourself on a treadmill. Don’t set yourself up. #Letr2Jack
50. We all have different pathways to the future. Everyone invariably finds his or her way. You and your colleagues will meet in the future. #Letr2Jack
51. Have a long term view. Make yourself invaluable. Build capacity. #Letr2Jack
52. Twenty, thirty years from now you will see the truth in this letter. #Letr2Jack
53. Your mentor, LA. #Letr2Jack
55. For related letters, search for LASER FOCUS and ACHIEVEMENTS ETCETERA at jacknjillive.com.
56. © Leke Alder | talk2me@lekealder.com
