From Flat With Rats To Asset Manager And Teaching 1 Million To Invest w/ Alpesh Patel OBE | Praefinium

Alpesh Patel: [00:00:00] And I was the shy sport at school. I don't think I spoke to girls until I was about 17. They told me, oh, you're gonna go into media and government. I said, no, don't be silly. I'm training to be a commercial barrister. What I didn't realize is I really just wanted to be self-employed. It wasn't that I wanted to be a barrister so much.

Alpesh Patel: I don't wanna be a worker. I'm gonna give more away to somebody. I'm not getting my fair share, the money stuff. Maybe it was 'cause how I grew up wasn't that important. 

Amardeep Parmar: Yeah. 

Alpesh Patel: It was just what. The happiness it could bring others. I said to my aunt, I think I found a calling here. I think it's to use this fame such that it was, you know, the ft.

Alpesh Patel: Bloomberg, all the rest of it to do something useful.

Amardeep Parmar: Welcome to The BAE HQ where we inspire connecting guide the next generation of Asians. If you watch this on YouTube, make sure you hit that subscribe button, and if you're listening on Apple or Spotify, make sure you leave us a five star review. Today we have with us Alpesh Patel OBE, who's a Asset manager, the founder of Campaign for a Million, which is helping a million people to learn how to invest.

Amardeep Parmar: What was the first one? 

Alpesh Patel: Deal maker [00:01:00] 

Amardeep Parmar: and a deal maker. 

Alpesh Patel: Don't edit that out. Actually, it's too funny.

Amardeep Parmar: This is what I do is I can just pause it. My face doesn't move. 

Alpesh Patel: Yeah. 

Amardeep Parmar: And then when I edit it, it's not obvious.

Alpesh Patel: Don't edit that bit out. 

Amardeep Parmar:Yeah. 

Alpesh Patel: People love the, the, the sort of outtakes being in the show 

Amardeep Parmar: That is a train  of thought  there.

Amardeep Parmar: How are you doing? 

Alpesh Patel: I'm all right. I'm happy. I'm, I am getting happier despite the fact that I'm overweight and a bit older, but there's a happiness, as we were talking earlier about just having the freedom of. Being older, there are benefits your knees go. But other than that, so I'm all right. Um, I wasn't like this in my twenties and thirties.

Alpesh Patel: I was a worrier. 

Amardeep Parmar:Mm-hmm. 

Alpesh Patel: Not a warrior. Well, I was a bit of a warrior, but a warrior. 

Amardeep Parmar: And if you go back even before that, when you were growing up 

Alpesh Patel:  Yeah. 

Amardeep Parmar: Did you think that you'd be what, doing what you're doing today?

Alpesh Patel: No chance. Well, the only person who got that right was a priest who did my astrology. So when I grew up in Leeds and sort of no silver spoon in, in Armley where I was born, I, I was saying to my aunt just the other day, I was saying, you know, the only thing I remember from childhood is just.

Alpesh Patel: Immense amount of love. I had an extended family. I was just, we didn't have loads of money, but just that closeness. And I [00:02:00] still have it with all my cousins in London. All the rest. I just went on a holiday with two of them in Morocco. So that was the big, I mean, so many people will be able to relate to that.

Alpesh Patel: It's nothing special about that in many ways, but it was special. But no, I this, so this astrologer had said that I'd be involved with government and the media. Now I plan to be a barrister. I remember when I was practicing as a barrister, my grandmother reminded me of this, this astrology, and I said, you know, when they do it, when you're born, I, I dunno if Sikhs have it.

Alpesh Patel: Um, but Hindus often have it and I don't think it's to do with Hinduism as much as it is to do with just culture. 

Amardeep Parmar: Culture, yeah.

Alpesh Patel: But anyway, so they told me, oh, you're gonna go into media and government. I said, no, don't be silly. I'm trained to be a commercial barrister. We're not even allowed in front of the cameras.

Alpesh Patel: I mean, back then you really didn't have sort of celebrity barristers. You sort of don't even know. So I thought it was all nonsense. And then what made you wanna become a barrister though? Well, An uncle of mine would let me watch drum pole and, and it seemed a really sort of good high status stature, good profession to be in.

Alpesh Patel: I had no legal background in my family, but sort of guiding hand of my uncle and they were self-employed. What I didn't realize is I really just wanted to be [00:03:00] self-employed. It wasn't that I wanted to be a barrister so much and I was the shy sport at school. I don't think I spoke to girls until I was about 17 and.

Alpesh Patel: Funnily enough, some of them message me now through Facebook and will say, God, you were never like this at school. You were so quiet and shy and all the rest of it. So it was the barrister thing was just, yeah, it's a good profession. Get to dress up in a gown. I should, there's no confessions coming out.

Alpesh Patel: And yeah, so I thought, yeah, good training and self-employed was the most important thing. And then once I got there and had my, after I had my first case, I think it's roughly, I decided I don't want to do this. This is pretty dull, pretty boring. 

Amardeep Parmar: What happened then, because obviously, You've been through that training.

Alpesh Patel: Mm

Amardeep Parmar:. You then realize you don't really enjoy it and it's like, well, if they sunk cost, right? Like how do you, then 

Alpesh Patel: it's an important lesson for everybody, which is, look, there's two things. One is hopefully you can avoid going down sort of the wrong steps beforehand by investigating, well, am I really gonna enjoy this?

Alpesh Patel: Am I just going on a conveyor belt of this is box ticking and I should do this? I think people are a lot more liberated now, and you've got people, more people dropping outta university now than you'd ever have, or not even going to university. So you've got first ask, do I wanna be on this? [00:04:00] Compare belt.

Alpesh Patel: Having said that, the training as a barrister has been phenomenal. It's, it's the best training in the world for business in many ways. In many, many ways because advocacy, negotiation skills, conference skills are having meetings, and you are self-employed. You're thrown at the deep end. You know, you'll have clients who

Alpesh Patel: could be worth gazillions and it's you. It's not like at a law firm where there's a partner who will handhold you and you are the quiet one in the corner. No, you are the one doing the talking. You are the one leading that meeting. So you are taught leadership essentially. So the training wasn't wasted.

Alpesh Patel: All of my grandmother thought it might be, and I've used it ever since because it helped in when I do public speaking, of course, all that training and confidence helped. So I would say to people, even if you're not, Planning to do it, do it. And now even in government, when I'm introduced in my role as government deal maker, they'll often say, you know, they'll say, say your bio, and I'll forget to mention barrister.

Alpesh Patel: They'll say, oh, Andy's a barrister, and I still dine at the inn. So it gives you something in terms of training, it gives you something in terms of self-confidence. And just, just to close off on that point of self-confidence, I ask my tutor at university, I asked him, I said, so what's the difference? What do you find [00:05:00] amongst the students?

Alpesh Patel: You know, the success ones, the unsuccessful or the private school educated ones in the state school? And he said, well, the main difference between private and state he found wasn't intellect, because if they got into the university, they probably all had a similar level of intellect. He said the private school ones were just more confident.

Alpesh Patel: Now I see that when I drop my son off to school who's very shy and I see some of the other students are just naturally more confident and there's a lot to be said for confidence, making up for a lot of other deficiencies, sort of, well wallpapers over a lot of deficiencies. So anything that builds your confidence, and it doesn't have to be that you're embarrassed, but whatever does it, I think it really helps.

Alpesh Patel: It stands you apart. It helps in terms of charisma and just helps open doors. 

Amardeep Parmar: How did you then take the massive left term you have? From the barrister career to what you're doing now? 'cause obviously, was it media first, right?

Alpesh Patel: No, actually, funnily enough, it was the trading side first. What shaped me was the fact that, although I never wanted for anything ever, it was never like, oh no, I don't have this, I don't have that.

Alpesh Patel: It just, it was just a wonderful childhood. But what shaped me was that made me realize that actually. Workers tend to get a [00:06:00] bit screwed. There's a lot of workers who are gonna be nodding at this going, oh yeah, you're right, actually, you know, because the employer must be extracting some kind of rent out of them to make the excess profits for the capital holders.

Alpesh Patel: I mean, that's obvious. So this is even without, this is not saying they're a press necessarily, though. Some will be and are, and that's why we have unions. But that made me think, I don't wanna be a worker. I'm gonna give more away to somebody I'm not getting my fair share. So I thought I wanna be the, who's getting their, who's getting the excess profits here?

Alpesh Patel: Well, hang on. It's the capitalist. I better be the capitalist. That was my thought. And I, I, I raised this at a talk at Eaton, by the way, and they have a partnership with other, other schools and there was, two ladies from a girl school nearby who said that's what it made you think. It didn't make you think you want to help the workers.

Alpesh Patel: And I thought, sorry. No. At 12, it didn't make me think that. It made me think I better become a shareholder. So I started investing. I borrowed a hundred pounds from my aunt. We lived opposite a post office where they had lots of free leaflets, and I found this leaflet about investing in government gilts.

Alpesh Patel: So I thought, okay, and I love collecting free leaf. I mean weird or what, but I loved creating, you know, collecting free stop. I'd go to Halifax [00:07:00] Building Society. They have all these free leaflets. I just pick up all up and then read them. I'd actually read them and look, it's free. It's great. You know, most people would read the Beano at that age or whatever, but I did a bit of that as well.

Alpesh Patel: So I just got the bug that I wanted to invest 'cause at that time you had privatizations, you sort of sent in a check from a family member filled in the form in their name, and you got double the money back in the early eighties. This is nuts. And of course when you're at school and being able to do that for family members, I mean, you become favorite nephew.

Alpesh Patel: Uh, I still am, but you know, it blows your mind. And so I've always loved the investing side of things. It's not the greed, it's not, uh, all that money. I didn't keep a profit share of any of that. And people might say, well, that's where you've gone wrong. I just gave it back to the family members. I just, that was the other thing.

Alpesh Patel: And the weakness or weakness or whatever I have, which is the money stuff, maybe it's 'cause how I grew up wasn't that important. 

Amardeep Parmar:Yeah.

Alpesh Patel: It was just what the happiness, it could bring others, uh, was more important. I, I don't wanna sound like, you know, Christ embodied or anything daft like that, but it was just that.

Alpesh Patel: And so that's where the bug came and it stayed ever since. And that's where the education, teaching other people to do it, it brought [00:08:00] me happiness. I thought, well, okay, that's the one thing I know I'm good at, so let's see if I can bring happiness to others through getting them to understand how to invest and so on.

Alpesh Patel: And that's happened and that then, Has a feedback loop of makes you feel worthwhile as if you are your occupancy of a space on this planet and all the oxygen you've been converting to carbon dioxide might not have been a worthless existence after all, because it's the only thing I'm, I think, really good at on the investing side.

Alpesh Patel: So yeah, that's how it started. And then the media came along because when I wrote a book, and there's a whole story about that, I can tell you later how I sort of hustled to get that book. But once I wrote the book, and this is where sort of luck comes into life and as you get older, you look back in your life and think, you know what a hundred other people say, luck has got a big deal to do with many things.

Alpesh Patel: So the global head of TV at Bloomberg TV just happened to be watching my interview on C N N and I got a call saying, would you like your own show? That's nuts. That shouldn't happen. So when people say to me, how did you get into there wasn't training, they just brought me on. They did a bit, you know, sort of make sure you.

Alpesh Patel: Sort of lean a bit forward 'cause you've got a bit of a belly and all of these little things and make sure you wear the Exactly, yeah. Uh, make sure you [00:09:00] wear the right color clothes and all the rest of it. But there is an element of luck and well putting yourself out there so you can get lucky. I get run over by luck as it were.

Alpesh Patel: That's important. Uh, but I'll stop there 'cause you'll wanna ask other questions. 

Amardeep Parmar: Yeah.  So about, say you covered quite a lot there. So that's the investment side came from 

Alpesh Patel: Yeah. 

Amardeep Parmar: And then you were doing that at the same time as the Law?

Alpesh Patel: Uh, yeah. I, well I did it from the age of 12 all the way up till now. So it's always been initially a side gig, what we'd call today a side gig.

Alpesh Patel: And the reason I recommend it for people is this, I knew when I was about 12 years old, I thought, okay, I've got plan a barrister. There were two other Plan Bs. One is investing, the other one was writing. My uncle had bought me a calligraphy set and at the back of this little booklet it said the pen is mightier than the sword.

Alpesh Patel: So I would practice great speeches from history to what end? I do not know, but I get, I got a book on world's greatest speeches and I just rehearsed them and I recommend people do this to this day. 'cause now you get the opportunity to speak 'cause of social media in those, none of that existed. But I would do it and I'd do it because I knew.

Alpesh Patel: The pen and the word were mightier than the sword. And that just blew my mind. Just that phrase that how much power you can have [00:10:00] just through being able to write. Well, I mean, Obama's proof of that. There's a Bloke came outta nowhere, gave an amazing speech, you should be president, but he had credentials behind it of course, which is why he could give that speech.

Alpesh Patel: But he. My God, he was head and shoulders above anybody else. So that power of speech and the power of writing and, and when I do my TikTok videos, people ask me, you know, what, what advice would you give? And I'd say, if there's some secrets to success in life, which will help you leapfrog, well, one thing seems to be getting elected to something, which I've never done, but you know, have you noticed?

Alpesh Patel: You get elected and get elected, all of a sudden you've got people who are absolute numpties, but they get to meet. Yeah. I mean, we won't go into politics, but yeah. So you've got get elected to something. Not for me. Then the other bits are public speaking and like I said, I was shy sport at school. So it can be learned and learning to write well.

Alpesh Patel: So learn the skills of rhetoric. Just see, learn about, you know. Patterns, rhythm, cadence, all of those things. And that's incredibly important because when you find yourself on stage, they will sooner. Although somebody will say, yeah, that guy, and then even, you know, people like me will get ahead. So thanks to all the shy ones for, you know, [00:11:00] not being my competition.

Amardeep Parmar: It seemed,  for example, me seeing here right now with you and all the people I've interviewed, it's because the writing initially, right?

Amardeep Parmar: So I started writing that got an audience, and that then put me in the room with all these different people who've done such amazing things and 

Alpesh Patel: Yeah.

Amardeep Parmar: Like in your twenties, you're doing all these different things. What did you actually enjoy the most? Or what, did you have any direction in your head, oh, this is what I wanted to do in the future?

Amardeep Parmar: Or was it more just enjoying process?

Alpesh Patel:  It's a really good point you raised, which is, you know, there's that Venn diagram isn't there? What do you enjoy? What are you good at and what earns money? And you've gotta try and get all three if you can, in life. And, and of course, you know, look, I get people in their twenties who say to me, uh, should I get a job in investment banking?

Alpesh Patel: And I say, well, I've never met a happy investment banker, but it'll earn you enough. Money to set yourself up. So I won't say no, but remember before your soul turns to, so to leave, you know, don't forget to leave. And before you get, you know, the family and the cost and the higher cost of living and all the rest of it, and you can't afford to leave, just remember what the end game is.

Alpesh Patel: So, the enjoyment, and I enjoyed in my twenties, oh, I didn't do any public speaking in my twenties. The, the media stuff came up when I was 29. It was really [00:12:00] spooky. It was my birthday, my 29th birthday, and the email came from Bloomberg for my own show and from the financial times, from my own column on the same day.

Alpesh Patel: Oh yeah. I mean, I've gotta fi, I've gotta hunt that astrologer down. Who did my, I think they call it John and Bud three, don't they? I think they call it John and Bud Three. I might be wrong. That might be the one where you match husbands and wife. It could be a different story. But yeah, so for me it was that pull of what I enjoy was so important to me.

Alpesh Patel: More important is to other people. And I was willing, so I used to live just around the corner from here at South, um, Southwick Street. When I was training to be a barrister. I was willing to leave the bar and live in a rat infested. Fifth floor walk up at 97 a Southwick street. And hopefully they've solved the rap problem now in order to be independent and do what I wanted and what I enjoyed as opposed to what paid.

Alpesh Patel: And if you want it that badly, that's the metric. What do you want that badly? And I just wanted it that badly. And when it came to investing and writing, and I started writing my first book when I was about 26, uh, but started preparing for it when I was 25, it was, I was willing to work till four in the morning.

Alpesh Patel: [00:13:00] And so I have this, I said it on a TEDx talk recently. I have this rule when people wanna ask, you know, ask me what should I do? And I say, it's the 4:00 AM rule. Are you willing to work till 4:00 AM or are you willing to get up at 4:00 AM four? And if you are consistently because you want to, not 'cause you have to, then that's the thing you should go for.

Amardeep Parmar:I think  that's a huge mistake a lot people make is about they do things 'cause they feel like they have to do it. Like, oh, I need to wake up at 4:00 AM. Because I have to, because that's where I'm successful rather than I'm in the  forum 'cause I'm so excited by what I'm doing. 

Alpesh Patel:  Yeah. 

Amardeep Parmar:And I always see the people who get the furthest in life are the ones who they're really excited by it.

Alpesh Patel:  Yeah. 

Amardeep Parmar: You do have, you do have the people who are very cold and they're just very mechanical and 

Alpesh Patel:  Yeah. 

Amardeep Parmar: they can get far 'cause they're so analytical. Right? 

Alpesh Patel:Yeah.

Amardeep Parmar: But you said it, not me. 

Alpesh Patel:Yeah. 

Amardeep Parmar: But it is the idea, like it can work that way too. Yeah. But you've gotta have a very specific personality to that work.

Alpesh Patel: It's a lot easier. Yeah, when you love it. When I was at university, one of the books that I read was, actually, it sounds cliche, Anthony Robbins awakened the Giant within and he said, look, if you're not excited, just make the goals bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger until you are. And I thought, that's crazy.

Alpesh Patel: What? So I just kept doing that, just 10 Xing, and then it was like, wow, I really want to get up in the morning. 'cause I'm like, I'm aiming [00:14:00] for that. So it taught me to shoot for the moon. Now Robins is gonna find this and make us go completely viral, but that's what it was. It was a little thing like that.

Alpesh Patel: Why not just have. You know, set yourself sights high. I get really angry at people who are cynical and just go, nah, no, won't work because of this. You know? And you see it a lot on social media, and I just think if you've gotta lose a mindset that you're always gonna lose and you're not hopeful and you're not optimistic and you're not willing to fall 99 times and not be put off by that because hey, that's part of the learning process, but you sit as learner, everything's against me, then you've got an attitude problem.

Alpesh Patel: And again, the cliche is your attitude determines your attitude. I know it sounds cliche and people say, yeah, but it's easy for you because no, screw you. It wasn't easy for me because of what? What? So, no. Yeah. In some ways I think, I dunno what it'd be like, I grew up in a council estate and with no, you know, I was lucky enough to have an uncle, well, two uncles who were very

Alpesh Patel: amazing mentors who would take time out for me. So yes, it was luck in many ways. And yes, I am [00:15:00] fortunate, but there are those who are far more fortunate than me who are whinging. So if you're more fortunate than me in whinging, I'd like to come over and slap you. Don't think I'm allowed to say that, but well, it's what I'd like to do doesn't mean I'm going to, 

Amardeep Parmar: But it's obvious. Like you  said, you like you're living in the right infested place for a while. 

Alpesh Patel:Yeah. 

Amardeep Parmar: But now, obviously things then did take off

Alpesh Patel: And there were rats. I'm not talking big mice. I'm not being, you know, I'm not being squeamish. They were big. They were big enough. I mean, they were little cats, but they weren't cats.

Amardeep Parmar: And then obviously the thing did take off. Right? And it did like grow from there. And a lot of your time, like more recently, I guess, is spent a lot of you, you've done, like, I couldn't even name all the different things you've done in terms of like helping the like Asian community and like the global ties as well.

Amardeep Parmar: And what took you down that path to give back? 

Alpesh Patel: So  much of life I discovered was, there's a part which I think is Destiny. When I was writing my FT column, the earthquake in Gura happened and I remember giving a talk and I said to a whole bunch of company, when you're writing in the FT you got a lot of big companies who wanna work with you and you know, they're, they take your calls.

Alpesh Patel: So I got a whole bunch of 'em and said, look, I was also writing for Shares [00:16:00] magazine as Editor of their online trading section. And I said, look, they'll. Donate a free page with your logo on it to thank you for donating to the Earthquake and Shares magazine said, yeah, we'll do that because you know it's good for us.

Alpesh Patel: So look, you've got a big Indian audience, et cetera, et cetera. And those companies donated and they could write it off as a marketing expense 'cause their logo was appearing so it wasn't a donation, which they couldn't. And they could market. They said, yeah, we'll do it because the marketing expense. And ish, by the way, can we have a lunch just to discuss, you know, your FT article that's coming up.

Alpesh Patel: You know, all of this. And so what happened is I said to my aunt, I remember after one of my talks where again, I'd done the same thing. I said to a broker, I'll give the talk, don't pay me. And more importantly, I'll give the talk. But I want to raise funds from the audience, uh, for the earthquake. So when that happened, I said to my aunt, I think I found a calling here.

Alpesh Patel: I think it's to use this fame. Such that it was, you know, the FT, Bloomberg, all the rest of it, to do something useful than just talk about investing, which to me is important, but do something bigger. So that's what then led me into those other things. Now was [00:17:00] that because, uh, it occurred to me, was it just in my genetics that I'd want to.

Alpesh Patel: Try and do something more useful. There was a whole host of things, but it just depends how you're made up and, and I was raised in a way where you did those things, and so that's what helped. But it leads to a bigger point for your audience, which is as you get older, you wanna find a purpose in life when you're younger.

Alpesh Patel: And it's like Maslow's hierarchy of needs when you're younger. It's food on the table, pay the rent. Okay, um, go on holidays, blah, blah, blah. As you get older, you want a bigger purpose in life. You want to know, and the stories you tell yourself are more important than what the objective truth might be. Uh uh.

Alpesh Patel: So you say to yourself, well, actually this is a bigger purpose. Now other people could go along and crap all over and say, ha, I got the Nobel Prize in. Peace, my friend, and you are just talking about raising a few thousand for this. But the point is what, whatever you can find that purpose in life, that's what makes your life more fulfilling.

Alpesh Patel: And we want fulfillment. Wanna feel that we did something which is important. That's what we want as we get older. And so that helped. Now when people say, why do you do some of that? My answer isn't, oh, because it's [00:18:00] such an important cause. All those things that I truly believe. I also did fundraising on

Alpesh Patel: Anti-sex, sex slavery, uh, which is how I met my wife. Um, she was in the audience and I should say she wasn't sex trafficked or anything. She just happened to be in the audience at Barclays when I did it. And the reason I did those and when people ask me, why'd you do it? People are naturally cynical. Very often.

Alpesh Patel: So I tell 'em purely for selfish reasons. The selfish reason is it makes me feel better that I've done something useful and fulfilling and, uh, I get lots of thanks from people purely selfish. Then they leave you alone. If you tell them it's because you know what the numbers are, the statistics are in fact, why don't you care about this as much as I, why aren't you rowing with me on the whatever floor of Barclay's Bank it was?

Alpesh Patel: Like a Muppet to raise funds for these six girls who are rowing the Atlantic to raise money on the anti-sex slavery stuff. Uh, because people don't care about most things. Why should they? There are other problems. So normally I just tell 'em that it's purely for selfish reasons. 'cause what they wanna believe anyway, and then they leave you alone.

Alpesh Patel: But actually the real reasons are ones I've told you, which to some [00:19:00] extent are selfish fulfillment and it helps others, which then makes me feel better. So maybe it's all selfish, but it works. 

Amardeep Parmar: And as part of that, right, you wanna help a million people learn how to invest? 

Alpesh Patel:Yeah. 

Amardeep Parmar: So can you tell us a bit about that?

Alpesh Patel: So I started this campaign to teach million people to invest 'cause I thought, what joins all the dots? You know, the famous Steve Jobs speech, if you haven't seen it, people go watch it on YouTube. The Speech by Steve Jobs at Stanford. And that's what joined everything that I'd done in life. The, the books that I'd written, it's 18 odd books not on investing that some were co-authored, but I, I did write, those people asked me, did you ghostwriting?

Alpesh Patel: No, I enjoyed writing. So I wrote them and then, the, the TV stuff on investing. So I thought, what joins the dots? Actually it's helping people to invest the retail client. And if you saw my inbox, my wife sometimes asks me, 'cause how come you're so self-confident? And then she looks me up and down, you know, I know what she's thinking.

Alpesh Patel: Holding middle aged fat low. I said, you should see my inbox every day. And literally it is there. And so the campaign, yeah, maybe it's selfish 'cause it, I just get an amazing inbox when people say, oh wow, have that really helped me. And there's a ton of free resources we've put together, but it's solving a bigger problem, which is the social mobility.

Alpesh Patel: I mean, I got to where I [00:20:00] am as. You know, could be higher, could be better, but anyway, not, not on the floor. Um, because of investing and knowing that that, that stuff, so people don't know what rules people's lives, their mortgages and interest rates obviously as a result. So finance and their pensions case, it's all finance.

Alpesh Patel: And if they don't know about investing and what's moving those things then. They're working really hard in their day jobs, but they're not making the most of their money. So the campaign for a million.com gives a ton of free resources, including internships for people who are in their twenties, and it's got some people into JP Morgan and Merrill Lynch and all of this, and also download copies of my book for free, programs for free.

Alpesh Patel: So just teaches them more about investing or for free. And, uh, free webinars. Free videos a whole, 'cause I had all this content 'cause I'd written the book. 

Amardeep Parmar: Yeah. 

Alpesh Patel:  So anyway, I was just trying to stay relevant. I mean, who reads books anymore? Just converted it all onto digital and online and then, realized, oh my God, this is better than I thought.

Alpesh Patel: 'cause of the feedback. So that's, that's sort of my big thing that I'm focused on. Although I happen to be chairman of the Lombard Trust as well, [00:21:00] co-chairman with Lord Bilimoria, which supports widows and orphans. But I have to say, I spend end up shame shamefully I'm afraid. Spend more time on investing.

Alpesh Patel: 'cause it's what I know than on raising funds for the  Lombard Trust, which actually reminds me, I've gotta reply to Lord Bilimoria to meet up.

Amardeep Parmar: Really enjoyed this and you've got so much to talk about. It's like I feel like we've any scratched the surface of so many different things. 

Alpesh Patel: Sorry. 

Amardeep Parmar:So we'll get you on again in the future.

Alpesh Patel: Well, it's up to them, isn't it? It's the people watching. 

Amardeep Parmar: Yeah. 

Alpesh Patel: You get feedback saying, oh please, Lord. Don't. 

Amardeep Parmar: Yeah. 

Alpesh Patel: Then you know, we won't. 

Amardeep Parmar: So we have to jump into the quickfire questions. 

Alpesh Patel: Yeah, go for it. Go for it.

Amardeep Parmar: So first one is, who are the three British Asians you'd love to shout out you think people listening right now should be paying attention to.

Alpesh Patel: Yeah.  Okay. So number one, Baroness Verma. She, before she knew who my wife was, what she did when she wasn't even my wife, she was just, you could argue a nobody. She just helped her and she's helped so many others. And character they say is doing stuff for people when nobody's looking and people who can't do anything for you.

Alpesh Patel: She has character and I've seen it firsthand. I've been on ministerial trips with her when she was a minister, and I think she's underestimated or [00:22:00] under regarded in terms of, I've, I've been in those meetings and I see the way in which she runs them, hosts them. This is somebody I admire and is of the highest caliber, and I just don't think it's well known enough.

Alpesh Patel: I'm just incredibly impressed with her and everything she does, and whenever I, if I WhatsApp now and say, can we meet tomorrow? Unless she's out in the country, she'd say, okay. Yeah. I mean, that's. Ridiculous. That's just incredible. So that's one. Another one I've already just referenced that my wife, I'll tell you why.

Alpesh Patel: Um, similar reason. What, what's your wife's name? Uh, Aekta  

Amardeep Parmar: Yeah. 'cause sometimes the audience doesn't know that. Right. So, yeah. 

Alpesh Patel: And I, and I had to think about, so Aekta, she's global head of venture capital for the British government. That's a woman. Happens to be Indian as well. So you might say, well now we've got an Indian Prime Minister.

Alpesh Patel: You'd say, well, underachiever, but you know, that's a big deal. She was at the cabinet office, weren't many Who were her gender and ethnicity? What's gender and ethnicity gotta do with it? Well look at the statistics and now, I mean global head of, there aren't many women in venture capital and she's really pushing to get more out there.

Alpesh Patel: They've just done a green, green company's competition to bring a. Bunch of British companies to [00:23:00] the Middle East to get funding. Okay? So she's raising money, it's solving some of the world's biggest problems. She'll say, it's not me, it's my team. I know she'll say that. And it is her team. She's got an out.

Alpesh Patel: She always tells me every, even she's got, my team's just amazing. And she'll also say, her bosses are amazing in the civil service. And I'm telling you, private, this is what our bedtime conversations are. You wait till you've got a kid, your's gonna be the same. And again, it's, look, she doesn't want the. The, the sort of the shout outs and all the rest of it.

Alpesh Patel: But I think it's amazing. And on top of that, she's a mother of a five-year-old who's a difficult five-year-old. You can't understand what I'm saying, so it doesn't, but he's a really difficult five-year-old, and she got me as a husband as well. I mean, that really makes life difficult. She manages all of those with charm, a smile, uh, and finesse.

Alpesh Patel: So I, I just think it's extraordinary. Absolutely extraordinary. The third one, This is where it gets difficult. We've got a bit of a tiebreaker here. Okay, so I'm gonna cheat. I'm gonna say Ka Ria. I've known him when he was just Karan Bilimoria. I was actually there when he was, uh, when he took, um, when he joined the House of Lords, uh, at the ceremony.

Alpesh Patel: So I'm gonna put him up [00:24:00] there. I'm gonna put Lord Lombard for the widows and orphans. And I was there when he joined as well, and. Uh, Rami Ranger for his braveness. Uh, he just says it the way he sees it. Okay. Yeah. So I'm gonna say, um, those three, I think in British Nation now, you might as well, wait a minute, what happened to the very young ones and all the rest of it?

Alpesh Patel: And there are a whole bunch of young ones who are impressive, uh, out there as well. But I've sort of said the older ones because I'm closer in age to them. God help me. Um, but I'd be happy to shout out. There'll be loads of young ones out there and I do interviews on my YouTube channel with, with young ones to give them a

Alpesh Patel: bit  of a shout out and and say, wow, this is amazing. And I think that there are people out there feel free to get in touch and I'm happy to shout them out on social media and say, wow, this person's doing this, this person's doing that. And I write a column in the Asian Voice newspaper as well. 

Alpesh Patel: Happy to shout out on there as well, because there are unsung heroes all over the place. So that's just three. I could go on this. Hit the meta at, um, who works for the King does amazing charity work, um, in British Asian Trust and really admire what he does and how many years he's been doing it, uh, as well.

Amardeep Parmar: So I was [00:25:00] gonna ask you next about. What's one thing you can, like people listening right now want help or guidance to something and you've mentioned that like you can give 'em shoutouts or free your social media. Is there anything else you wanna mention that they should contact you about?

Alpesh Patel: Yeah, the, so it's always the balance between time and impact.

Alpesh Patel: And so to give the highest impact I created these virtual internships. So if you are in your twenties where you are anywhere in the world and. We do the same training that I would do staff who join my firm. It's, we just made that available online and it's updated regularly. So if you wanna learn about investing, uh, you wanna learn about trading.

Alpesh Patel: The reason that's worked so well is because they're able to put on their CVs, and I've just written a reference this morning for someone, and they're able to put on their CVs that they were mentored by me, an f c, a regulated asset management company. And that helps the CVs of quite a lot of people who would never get access to that because when they're, when they're going for a job and the employer asks for a reference, I can say, yeah, this is the work they did.

Alpesh Patel: 'cause back at the backend, we can see the material that they've gone through. 'cause we can see, you know, they, yeah, they did complete the lectures and they've gone through it. And I know what that work is because [00:26:00] I created it. And I know on the Telegram channel they do see this every day and so they get that interview and it goes ahead.

Alpesh Patel: That's impact, which doesn't take up too much of my time. And that's the most important. I've also started doing monthly, uh, networking events. I'm chairman of City Hindus Network and the India League, and so we do monthly events, uh, at the, on the strand and there they can network with me and 80 other people from the city.

Alpesh Patel: We've got everything from hedge fund managers to accountants to lawyers, and I invite them to that as well because it allows them to network. So again, Impact, high impact, low time, as it were. Um, because what I don't ever wanna do is just stop and give up and say, no, no, I'm too important. Sorry, I'm, I shouldn't be doing that.

Alpesh Patel: I mean, I have to stack dishes in a dishwasher when I get home, so I'm not too important for anything. So, yeah. So that works out well.

Amardeep Parmar: Is there anything that you need help with right now as well, other than, The dishes. Of course.

Alpesh Patel: Yeah. The dishes. My wife's gonna kill me. She's, yeah, you are begging it up as if you do stuff around the house.

Alpesh Patel: Are you kidding me? Let get, let me put it in the comments how little you do. The, the biggest thing is I just wanna get the word out about the campaign for a million because it, it [00:27:00] gives me a direction and purpose, but also because there is a genuine problem out there where people are paying away fees to investment trusts, or they don't know what's in their pension.

Alpesh Patel: They're underperforming. They don't know that they could do better, and all their life's work is sort of not earning them, what it should earn them separate from that. It it, it's just that the people who are hardest hit and the data shows it. Guess what, as always in society is the ones who can least afford it.

Alpesh Patel: They're the ones who are the hardest hit. 'cause guess what? Rich people will just hire somebody to do the stuff for them. So I think that education part on campaign for a million dot com's really important to me. Um, and when I get the feedback off, it makes my day, makes my day more than, well, my son never gives me a hug when I walk in.

Alpesh Patel: I've told my wife now, if she doesn't gimme a hug the next time I walk in, that's it. I'm, I'm, I'm still gonna walk in and just suffer. But, so that's the closer I get to hugs every day, the emails I get from people who read it and, and say, yeah, this is really helpful. Thank you. So, yeah, you see, I still try to impress people and I'm still trying to, still in need of a hug.

Alpesh Patel: So that's what it is. I get these virtual hugs and, and it helps them. They're not gonna give them, unless it helps that people don't do [00:28:00] that. So, yeah, that's the main thing for me.

Amardeep Parmar:  So had a lot of fun  with this conversation 

Alpesh Patel:Thank you. 

Amardeep Parmar: It's one of those things I think we could talk for hours quite easily.

Amardeep Parmar: So have you got any final words to the audience? 

Alpesh Patel: Well, there's a phrase I've come across recently, and I've used it quite a lot. I did a government event the other week and I used it there as well. And I think it's one of the most inspiring things to say to yourself when you're feeling a bit down or

Alpesh Patel: Life's not giving you exactly what you thought it would, and it is, you did not come this far only to come this far. I didn't invent the phrase, but I think it's probably something which, you know, will help you get through stuff when you hit a roadblock and so I'd probably say that, and I guess aligned to that is another one that got me through a lot of rubbish about 15, 18 years ago, which is that, um, and this too shall come to pass.

Alpesh Patel: I think that's from the Bible. Uh, so I've, I've just ripped off God. But you know what you gonna do? I'm sure it'll forgive me.

Amardeep Parmar: Hello. Hello everyone. Thank you so much for listening. It makes a huge amount to us and we don't think you realize how important you are because if you subscribe to our [00:29:00] YouTube channel, if you leave us a five star review, it makes a world of difference. And if you believe in what we're trying to do here to inspire, connect, and guide the next generation of British Asians, if you do those things, you can help us achieve that mission and you can help us make a bigger impact.

Amardeep Parmar: And by doing that it means we can get bigger guests, we can host more events, we can do more for the community. So you can play a huge part. So thank you so much for supporting us.

‍

‍