Early one Saturday morning I found myself in a diner on the Loughborough estate in Brixton, waiting to meet one of my earliest mentors, Karl Lokko. Karl had been once one of the most feared gangsters in London, if not the UK, but turned his life around to become a highly influential community activist, public speaker and advocate for social change. We were meeting that day to discuss a business idea. We were, separately, doing an increasing amount of consultancy work for big companies in the UK, and wanted to find a way to put young, talented people in touch with corporations seeking fresh ideas and inspiration. As well as benefitting the companies we were working with, we wondered if the project could be a way to help those who might still be living the wrong sort of life. I asked Karl a simple question: how many of your former gang members are still in the game?
Karl’s answer surprised me. Most, he said, were in prison. Some had been killed. But many were still active. Karl was an anomaly, in choosing a different path. We discussed why this might be. For the majority of people who grow up in the sort of environment that we did, the number of positive role models, especially in terms of possible career paths, are few and far between. For me, at least, it was only my exposure to worlds outside of my own that opened my eyes to what I could become. Anyone from my area, who didn’t have the kind of access (through luck, privilege or hard work) that I had, would have a very different vision for their future. A limited one.
I have already talked about how someone’s background might influence their future, both in terms of educational attainment, and involvement in the criminal justice system. But I think the relationship between people’s class background and our career paths is just as important. The government’s own commission on social mobility found that in 2018–19, people from better-off backgrounds were 80 per cent more likely to end up in professional jobs than people from working-class backgrounds.1 The report concludes that: ‘Being born privileged in Britain means that you are likely to remain privileged. Being born disadvantaged however, means that you may have to overcome a series of barriers to ensure that you … are not stuck in the same trap.’
This chapter tells a story of what those barriers can look and feel like. It is a story which is partly about attitudes, role models and self-belief. To a large extent, what we can achieve is dependent on what we believe we can become, and that depends on the people around us, and how the rest of society looks at us. It is also about material barriers that face people from working-class backgrounds trying to make it in the world.
In a really simple way, I think about this in terms of my rides on the 345 bus. My end point was very different from my start. Boys of my age in some of the grand houses in Kensington and Chelsea were likely following different models — and a lot more of them. You follow what you know.
For me, it was the drug dealers or fraud boys with the nice chains, brand-new trainers and expensive cars. People who looked like me and lived in my neighbourhood. People who may not directly encourage other young people to follow their lifestyle, but who provided an example. A simple way to dig yourself out of poverty.
The material reality of inequality of opportunity can also be looked at from the view of the 345 bus window. At the start of a journey on that bus, you see people struggling. Yes, some people have time to think up business plans, or to get qualified for professional jobs. But there are also many people working hour after hour just to feed their kids. If you’re struggling to pay your bills, you don’t have capital to risk on starting some firm! At the end of that journey the feeling is different. You can almost smell the money and opportunity. Kids my age would be getting private tuition, their path to uni easy, and when they grew up they’d have access to capital to be able to invest, and to take risks.
This is the problem and challenge me and Karl wanted to address. How could we encourage young people who don’t have positive role models to believe in themselves? How could we provide the opportunities for them to act on those beliefs? If we could answer both questions, we were convinced we could help create a new generation of entrepreneurs.
One final thing. Before we continue, I want to challenge our understanding of the word ‘business’. For me, we need to move away from companies and commercial activity, that all-too-familiar picture of men in suits (white men, all too often), and towards something different. What I understood by business growing up was entrepreneurial spirit. The motivation and imagination you need to transform an idea into reality and to create something for yourself. It’s about money, undoubtedly, but it’s also about self-confidence, empowerment, initiative and experimentation. It’s something I believe we need to nurture more in young people, especially at this current moment in time, if we want to see a new generation surpass the achievements of an old one – a goal that seems increasingly unlikely in this world. As Karl put it that morning, what does success look like? How do we get there?
*
I am a community champion. I am interested in the local as well as the global. I believe you need to think about both in order to effect real change. I am a pastor and have been involved with the church for almost nine years now. I do a lot of consultancy work and connect with a number of charities. I’m a poet and a writer. I’m also a husband and a father.
When I was fourteen, I was a glorious mess. I’d been cut in the face, stabbed in the chest. At fifteen I lost one of my closest friends. He was murdered by my side. I was very involved with gangs. We made the front page of almost every national newspaper. I had abandoned my education, which is a shame, because I’d always loved to learn. I had taken my year nine SATs when I was in year six, and did well. But by fifteen, GCSE time, I had to make a choice. I couldn’t hide it any more. I was derailed, I chose the street. And in that world, I was excelling. I was on my way to achieving my goals. I was a prominent figure in the London gang world. I was also making a lot of music. This was back in the MySpace, Bluetooth era. Back when music used to get passed from phone to phone, playground to playground. I used to calculate my success based on how long it took my music to reach family friends in Luton. How long it took them to get in touch with me about my new music. Sometimes it was only a week. I was a hood celebrity, but I was a mess. A glorious mess.
It was a nightmare, but at the time, it was a dream. I was succeeding. I had street ambitions, back from the age of ten or twelve. From the first time I witnessed a real act of violence. Someone was shot, right next to where we were playing football. And instead of running away, the shooter came over, took off his jumper, and started playing football with us until the police came and took him away. It was traumatic, but it was also romantic. My whole life changed in an instant. I had never seen guns before. I had never really seen violence before. I was traumatised. But there was also something alluring about it. You’ve got to remember that we had nothing. People from our socio-economic background, from our areas, were powerless. I felt that powerlessness even at that age: nine, ten, eleven. And the brutality helped to overcome that. All of a sudden I saw someone who looked like me wielding real power. That was how I interpreted that act. It became my dream to follow in that shooter’s footsteps. To have the kind of power he had. It was a con, of course. But it was a dream nevertheless.
Fast forward a few years, and I was at my peak. I had got to the point where I didn’t have to do the work. I was like a general, a boss, a CEO. I could just say a word and something would happen. I thought I had arrived. And I had no intention of slowing down. Considering the cards I had been dealt, I thought I had the best possible hand. We were driving German cars, wearing Italian clothes, money in the bank. Meanwhile my parents were still working sixteen-hour days, still unable to make ends meet. I was firmly on my side of things.
I was nineteen and I had it all. Until I suddenly didn’t. Until I realised it was all a lie. It was a deception. I was shown that my enemy was not my enemy. The boy across the road who looked like me, but was just with a different group of boys, was not my enemy. Same pain, same struggles, same ideology. Different ends.
In school and at home I had been taught that if I worked hard, I would succeed. I had been taught the difference between right and wrong. Those seeds had been sown, but they had remained as seeds until that point. It was Pastor Mimi who started to water those seeds.
*
I started my first ever business at the age of eleven. On my way into my very first day of secondary school, I bought an eight-pack of double chocolate-chip muffins for £1, with the idea of selling them at the bargain price of 50p each at break time. If I sold them all, it would give me a tidy profit of £3. At lunchtime, after meeting some of my new classmates, I asked them if they were interested in my product. I managed to sell two muffins and ended up eating the remaining six. The first business lesson I learned was an important one: never eat your own product.
Even though I had only broken even, my entrepreneurial interests took root. From the simple (and perhaps obvious) muffin business model, I was inspired to think up new ways to make money. The only problem was, when it came to selling snacks, I was a rookie compared to the older kids. Some students were turning over up to £200 a week simply reselling cakes, biscuits and the odd fizzy drink. And if you were just a young apprentice like I was, on occasion you would find yourself getting ‘taxed’ by the sellers. After handing over a product, an iced-ring doughnut for example, they would say, ‘Break me some,’ and tear off a piece of the doughnut for themselves. You couldn’t really say no if someone asked you to ‘break me some’. I was angry, but in awe. That was how to do it. Sell it first and then eat it.
Rather than jump back in, I started to watch these business operations within the playground and began to learn a few important lessons. The main thing I realised is that this wasn’t fun. Many of my peers were selling as a matter of survival. I knew of one young person in my year group who was a young carer for his mother, but with the added responsibility of looking after his younger siblings. They had next to no disposable income and sometimes not enough food in the house. Selling snacks in school was an opportunity to provide for his family. There were rumours of another boy who was selling snacks to help his older brother pay off a drug debt. We were only teenagers, not anywhere near adulthood, yet making money for some was a must; not for extra pocket money or clout, but just to get by.
Any business will face hurdles and barriers in its early days and selling snacks in the playground is no exception. The biggest barrier at our school came in the form of Mr Thomas, ‘the Regulator’, the man who would one day bust our operation (yes, I am still bitter about it). Mr Thomas was one of the most feared and respected teachers in the school, and somehow head of year for three separate year groups. During breaks and lunchtime he would stand and watch over us in the playground and even had a network of ‘undercovers’ (student informants) who would notify him of anyone ‘shotting’.
At the time I never understood the school’s policy, nor Mr Thomas’s mission to stop people making money. Aside from the obvious health and safety risks (people sometimes sold out-of-date products; you had to be careful), it seemed to me to be the easiest way to teach young people about business. We learned the basic principles of supply and demand (no one wanted muffins; I had lots); captive markets (the school cafeteria was awful and no one could escape to buy snacks for themselves); marketing strategies (you were in luck if your name started with the same letter as the snack you were selling); and monopolies (the short period when the school bully got in on the action and scared everyone else off). It felt to me that the snack shop model offered us lessons the school was not providing, lessons that might serve us well in later life. It was a way for young people to provide for themselves. I was proud of breaking even, but some of my peers were dreaming of mega-riches.
Don’t believe me? There are two snack-shop legends who will help me make my case. Nathan John-Baptiste, aka ‘the Wolf of Walthamstow’, was turning over around £25,000 from selling snacks from a school toilet before he was caught.2 He managed to achieve this extraordinary number by employing an army of students to work for him on a commission basis. Rather than supporting him and helping to develop his obvious talent, he was given several warnings by the school before being excluded.
Or there’s Bejay Mulenga.3 Bejay built on the resale snack shop model, but offered students something different—an accepted tool kit and model they could use to create their own businesses in schools. At the age of fourteen he launched Supa Tuck and within three years had a network of franchises across 100 schools, reaching some 5,000 pupils. Within his first year of trading, he had already turned over an extraordinary £250,000. Also extraordinary was the fact that Bejay operated his sweet shop empire with the full co-operation and support of the schools involved.
These might seem like small examples, but they clearly show that there is space and opportunity for students to succeed if they are given the right guidance and support. But what if they are not? What else can young people do to get ahead?
*
Following my failed snack initiatives, I continued to experiment. I set up a car cleaning business for a short while, washing cars every Saturday for £15 a go. A little while later, another business opportunity appeared; a family friend asked if I would like to decorate an office building block he had recently rented. A little over-excited, I said yes, not realising that the building was three storeys tall and had dozens of rooms. Two months in and close to despair, I had to think of a new strategy. I began to invite my friends to come along and help, in return for pizza and snacks at the end of the day. We got there in the end but, needless to say, I was very glad when it was over.
To tell you the truth, despite my enthusiasm I was completely lost when it came to the world of business. I had no practical business skills. I knew nothing about money management. I didn’t know how to value my time or what I might be good at. I’d developed some soft skills in organisation and marketing from my extra-curricular work, but I didn’t know how to apply them or what to apply them to. The closest I’d ever come to building a business model was studying maths, but I couldn’t see how Pythagoras’s theorem was going to help me kick-start an empire.
And then I saw someone on television who changed my world completely. Jamal Edwards was a young entrepreneur and the founder of the successful music and media platform SBTV, which had helped launch the careers of artists such as Jessie J, Ed Sheeran and Tinchy Stryder. He was speaking about the importance of ‘self-belief’ and how that had helped him to build his business. A seed was sown. A year or so later, I had the opportunity to interview Jamal on television as part of our school’s Young Reporter project, run in partnership with the BBC. To say I was inspired is a bit of an understatement. At that time, if I could have selected any one person to be when I grew up, Jamal Edwards was it. He was articulate, he was funny and, most importantly, he was encouraging. He talked to me about self-belief and told me that if I ever had a good idea, I should pursue it. Don’t pay attention to the voice of doubt or to anyone who’s trying to put you down, he said. If you believe in it, you can make it happen.
Not long afterwards I had an opportunity to test this theory out. Through our school project, I had visited the BBC a few times. The BBC at the time controlled the two biggest youth radio stations in the UK: BBC Radio 1, and Radio 1Xtra. However, the BBC itself felt anything but young. The senior staff members I spoke to didn’t even seem interested in youth culture. I listened to a lot of radio and followed both stations obsessively, and picked up on a few things that they could perhaps improve on. I was only fifteen at the time, you have to remember, and would be the first to admit I had no real idea about radio programming. I did like music, however, and I thought I knew young people. I was a young person, after all.
I had an idea: the Radio 1 and 1Xtra Youth Council. I wanted to bring together a group of young people from across the UK who could act as an advisory board to the BBC, providing direction on everything from show content to social media strategy, to marketing and advertising campaigns, to corporate social responsibility. It was a good idea, I thought, and so I decided to pursue it. First I had to find someone to talk to.
Ben Cooper was the controller of Radio 1 at the time, and a Very Big Deal, so he was obviously first on my list. After many drafts, I finally had an email I was happy with. But I was too scared to send it. What if he ignored it? What if he shot me down? What if I got in trouble? I deliberated for a while, but eventually decided that, even if I was shouted at, I would at least know that I had tried. I held my breath, sent the email to him and waited. And waited. And waited some more. And then, once I was convinced I’d never hear back, I received a reply from his office manager, Lim La, asking if I had any time the next week to meet Ben to discuss the idea in more detail. Yes! Can you imagine! I was over the moon.
Our very first meeting was on a Thursday afternoon. I spent a bit of time preparing and even got an outfit out ready. And then, I forgot. I got home from school and opened up my emails to see a message from Lim La. It said, ‘Hi Jeremiah, how far away are you? Your meeting with Ben started ten minutes ago.’ I placed my head in both of my palms. I was embarrassed, petrified and angry with myself for throwing away such a golden opportunity. I wrote to Lim La and apologised. I think if I had been in Lim La’s position I would have ignored my message. I could guess how busy someone like Ben was and to keep him waiting for so long was, for me, an unforgivable offence. But for some unknown reason, she decided to give me a second chance and simply rescheduled the meeting for the following week. There are a few people I have met who have changed my life for the better and Lim La is one of those people. I’m forever grateful to her for not giving up on me.
The night before I was due to meet Ben, I stayed up late, working on my pitch. All day I ran through the script in my head, silently rehearsing for the meeting, so I wouldn’t make a misstep. Finally the moment came. I walked into New Broadcasting House and was escorted into the Radio 1 playlist room by Claire, the veteran receptionist. After a few minutes Ben walked in and shook my hand. There I was, age fifteen, in a suit that was a size too big for me, with my rickety black laptop patched together with tape, sat next to the boss of the radio stations I loved. I began my pitch and we had a long conversation about the direction of radio, as well as the work Ben wanted to do at Radio 1 and 1Xtra. I thought I had done reasonably well (I had made it on time at least) and left the building feeling on top of the world, eager to get started.
A few weeks went by and I didn’t hear anything back. I am no good at waiting. I didn’t chase Lim La, because I didn’t want to put her to any more trouble. At a certain point, tired of checking my emails, I started to believe that my pitch was no good. What was I thinking, contacting the controller of Radio 1? As disheartening and deflating as the thought was, it gave me some closure at least, so I started to think about what I could do next. And then, one Friday afternoon, I was at my friend Henry’s house playing Call of Duty on the PlayStation, when I received a call from a random landline. I picked up. It was the outreach manager from Radio 1. I jumped up, frantically gesturing at Henry to lower the volume of the TV. I was prepared to hear bad news. Luckily for me, it was the opposite.
Congratulations, she said. Everyone at the BBC was very impressed with my idea and they wanted to get the ball rolling. She asked me if I was happy to become the founder of the Radio 1 Youth Council and said that they were thinking of announcing the initiative at their annual press conference in a few weeks’ time. I think I managed to squeak out a ‘yes’, before I hung up. I spent the next half an hour jumping around the room with Henry. I decided then and there that I would never expect the worst. I was elated but, weirdly, it made me think even harder about what I would have done if they had said no. A friend had said some wise words just a few days before: it’s not a question of winning and losing, it’s a question of winning and learning.
The next couple of weeks were a blur of meetings, briefings, workshops and one-on-one sessions with various important people at the BBC. And then came the announcement, accompanied by a full-page profile in a national newspaper. The headline read: ‘Radio 1: “Teen Hero” head of Youth Council called in to help boss Ben Cooper (44) bridge the generation gap’.4
I had the opportunity to visit the BBC over the next few weeks to help them scope out how the actual youth council would look. We then worked together to select a group of thirteen amazing young people from all over the UK. These young people had previously engaged with the BBC through work experience, their outreach programmes or events. Finally, in mid-2016, we hosted our first ever youth council meeting. I couldn’t believe that an idea I had put down on paper had actually come to life. I had never experienced anything like it before and kept grinning the whole way through the meeting.
Beyond the project itself, I had also created a new family of incredible young people who all shared similar interests. Out of this group, I created some friendships for life. Joel Borquaye, who had previously had the opportunity to do a work experience placement at the BBC. Ore who was scouted via work experience, alongside Jaguar, who was also building up her dance and techno DJ career. And how could I ever forget Naomi, the Welsh bashment queen whose extensive knowledge of dancehall and reggae would blow anyone away.
Every time we had a youth council meeting, we were presented with a new problem by a different department, from marketing to programmes or even outreach, with the aim of each meeting concluding with a solution. We had the opportunity to present new ideas for the Radio 1 Big Weekend, at one time the biggest free ticketed music event in Europe. We helped build up the #1millionhours campaign: kicking off on 1 December with the first drive in the lead-up to Christmas and running throughout 2016, the stations shone a spotlight on all things volunteering, in a bid to highlight the benefits of volunteering for young people. We were even given the opportunity to feature in an advert for Radio 1 that was aired on TV with Jaguar as our leading girl.
The youth council was a huge success. It showed me that I had a voice and that my ideas were valid. Looking back, it is scary to think that it almost didn’t happen because I was too afraid to press ‘Send’.
*
I first knew Pastor Mimi as Aunty Mimi. Her son was in my school. We used to go to each other’s houses, eat, play. Our families knew each other. She also ran a Saturday school that I used to go to, learning literacy and numeracy.
Over time, me and her son started to follow a darker path. Gangs. She began to see me as the corruptor of her child. As a mother or father, you protect your investment! My parents did the same, whenever someone they didn’t like came round. Every time Aunty Mimi saw me knocking at the door, her heart flipped.
Through her school, she was also reaching out to gang members, trying to engage them in conversation, attempting to steer them away from crime and towards God. Not Aunty Mimi any more, but Pastor Mimi. She counselled young boys and was managing to get through to them. She converted one of our friends and I immediately started to pay attention. I wasn’t interested in changing my life at that point, but I was curious. I’m naturally curious. But I soon found that I was getting something from our conversations. After every chat I felt a lot better, just being able to speak to somebody.
She differentiates between a person and their actions. She believes that you are who you are and you do what you do. Two separate things. She would also say, ‘You are not gangsters. You are young men who have made some bad decisions, who have received the ideology of “gangsterism”. It’s the ism that is leading you down the wrong path.’ The more we talked, the more I told her. She could have sent me to prison if she wanted to, but she didn’t. A bond was formed. I trusted her. I opened myself up to her. It got to the point where she wasn’t just encouraging me or prompting me to talk, but was actually someone I saw as an advisor. Even if my question was, ‘What do you think I should do? Should I put a hole in this person?’ Her answer was always no, of course, but I began to listen to her. I was able to reflect on my worldview and on the damage I was doing. She created that space for me to think and reflect. My idea of winning began to change. We were top of the street league, but no one knew about the street league. The street league suddenly meant nothing. I realised that we were losing. Losing sleep, losing peace, losing time, losing friends, losing sanity.
I eventually moved in with her. She opened her home to me and to a lot of my friends, creating a kind of informal gang rehabilitation hub. She didn’t have a big house either. There were seven of us boys in one room, top to tail! It was a space for reflection, for healing. For hope, reformation and transformation.
I believe in something called the butterfly effect. The idea that a butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the planet can cause a hurricane on the other side. Without Pastor Mimi, I would not be where I am. And when I renounced gangsterism, a lot of people followed me. Without Pastor Mimi, I would be one of four things today: a criminal, in prison, insane or I would be dead. Simple as that.
The other person who had an enormous impact on my life was Asher Senator. He ran an organisation called C.O.D.E. 7 and let me use his studio for many years. He gave me a focus when it came to making music. Asher was a musician who had enjoyed a level of success in the 1980s with Smiley Culture. He was always clean dressed, in a suit. He was not a tall man, but he seemed like a giant. If Asher walked into a room, you would know about it. He was always chipper. Always smiling, always taking the time to greet everyone and make everyone feel welcome. A presence. If Pastor Mimi taught me about my heart and my mind, Asher taught me how to move. He taught me how to manoeuvre in the world.
He also taught me a few basics. When I knew him, he was spending a lot of time raising funds for his youth organisations. He showed me that it’s one thing to have an idea, and another thing to make it happen. You need to think of the basics.
He also introduced me to John Kerridge, Assistant Director for Lambeth at the time. John’s a good guy. A clean-hearted public servant. Initially, he was helping me to write the book of my life. He bought me my first Dictaphone. We built a relationship and used to meet once every couple of weeks at an Indian restaurant in Clapham. It was the best spot, one of those if-you-know-you-know places. Nothing more than a house. But over those conversations, he helped me to build up my confidence. He allowed me to picture a different future for myself.
And so then John introduced me to Camila Batmanghelidjh at Kids Company. Camila was a huge figure in my life – a tireless community organiser. She worked every single day. We used to meet up on a Sunday morning. Kids Company was one of the only charities that was felt at ground level. I take my hat off to her, to this day. She helped to mentor me, introduced me to people, showed me how to get things done.
And the late Tessa Jowell too. She believed in my voice. She believed that other people needed to hear what I had to say. She sent me on a course on broad-based community organising which changed my life. There was a sesstion called ‘Relational Power’, which showed me the power of networking, the power of relationships, and how people can help you to incubate your ideas and make manifest your objectives. I took the principles of that course and injected it into my life like steroids. I was having forty or fifty meetings a week.
A by-product of the streets is that everyone is humanised. Everyone is the same. Violence does that. Because no matter what someone is wearing, what status they have or how protected they feel, they are still human. They will still have the same nine night, if you know what I mean. They will all have the same burial.
For years, because my currency was violence, I was never star-struck. I’d seen untouchable street dons disappear. I knew everyone was vulnerable. Everyone has to die. At a very basic level, it’s not a strange concept. Everyone’s the same. I also believe that people have more in common with their fellow human beings than they have points of difference. We have the same fears, anxieties, loves, wants. We have the same bodies. I always understood that fundamental point. I was also confident in who I was. I knew that I was an asset on any team. I could make a contribution to any conversation. I never doubted that. So whenever I met people, they weren’t meeting Karl Lokko, some unknown. They were meeting that confidence. It was the same with everyone. From billionaires to buskers.
*
After a successful eighteen months helping to run the youth council, my time came to an end. I was struggling to balance my schoolwork with my other commitments (the extra-curricular activities didn’t stop just because I was working with the BBC, trust me). But instead of an end, it became the beginning of something else. During my time with the youth council, I was told by a lot of people that I should take the project outside of the BBC and create a business. The idea was simple. Companies and institutions across the country were failing to understand and reach young people. They were not looking to young people for answers, they were spending huge sums of money on market research and advertising campaigns. It seemed crazy to me. Surely there must be some way to connect the two groups? The problem was, I didn’t know where to start. As I mentioned earlier, I had never learned any practical business skills at school and I didn’t know anyone I could speak to about taking the idea forward. I mean, how do you set up a business, age seventeen? However, despite my lack of knowledge, I decided to see what I could do to get the idea going.
I went back to my battered laptop and started researching the leadership teams of big companies. It seemed like the easiest step would be to email CEOs and COOs to tell them about the work I had been doing at the BBC, to see if they would be interested in discussing a similar set-up within their own companies. Tracking down email addresses is not easy, but I became an expert at it, spending hours browsing the web for clues and details.
I spent a few weeks slowly building up a database, carefully drafted an email listing my recent accomplishments and the achievements of the youth council, and personalised each one. When I had about forty perfect emails in my drafts folder, I hit send and sat back, feeling pleased with myself. The next day I opened up my inbox, talking myself up in the way that you do when you’re waiting for good news. ‘Maybe I’ll find twenty replies? It was a good message after all. Actually, no. Let’s say fifteen. I don’t want to get too gassed.’ Finally the page loaded: zero responses. Not even an acknowledgement email. This was disheartening. Following my previous experience, I refused to be defeated by it and just thought that I needed to go back to the drawing board and think up a better idea. Daryl came round that night and I told him about my lack of success. On the wall of my room was a framed letter from the then prime minister David Cameron, commending me for the work I had been doing in the community.
Daryl pointed at it. ‘Bro, you’ve got a letter from the prime minister in your room. You’re seventeen. Never doubt yourself.’
I explained to him that maybe I just needed a new approach.
Daryl shook his head. ‘If you stop sending emails, the possibility of a response is still zero. If you send one more, you’ve got another chance. The more you send, the more chances you’ll have.’
He was right; all I had to do was keep going. I knew my business idea was sound; all I had to do was find a way to make contact with my target clients. I had the skills, knowledge and experience to succeed, so it was up to me to make the next step. I kept going. While continuing my search, I’d come across the email address of the CEO of Rolls-Royce Holdings, Warren East. I’d decided not to send him an email, as I wasn’t sure how much a luxury car company would care about young people. Still, it was worth a try. I spent a day or two researching the company and drafted a new email:
Dear Mr Warren East,
My name is Jeremiah Emmanuel, I am a seventeen-year-old youth influencer and campaigner from London. Over the past six years I have worked with hundreds of young people in various different sectors and I have built up an understanding of how to drive engagement, reach target audiences and create conversations.
Last year I founded the BBC Radio 1/1Xtra Youth Council, this was because I identified a gap between the BBC and their target audiences. Since its birth, the stations have both been given advice on live events, content and shows, and now have a greater understanding of how to reach young people. Since then I have gone on to work with dozens of companies who have also wanted to achieve the same goals as the BBC.
I think Rolls-Royce would benefit from the advice of a similar group. I believe in youth and community engagement, and what could be better than having a greater insight into the minds of young people through a group of ‘youth experts’.
It would be great if I could start a conversation with Rolls-Royce about such a group as I believe it could have a massive impact on the way you work with young people.
Please find below some links about the youth council and also what David Cameron had to say about my community work.
Kind regards,
Jeremiah
The next morning, I opened up my emails again, expecting a zero, but saw an email from Warren East in my inbox. A response from the CEO of Rolls-Royce Holdings:
Jeremiah
I have forwarded your email to the appropriate person in Rolls-Royce.
Thanks for making contact.
Copied in was the global head of community engagement for Rolls-Royce, Paul Broadhead. And the rest was history. I was ecstatic. After a few meetings at their corporate head office at Buckingham Gate in London, we got to work.
The company was trying to understand why only 3 per cent of work experience applicants were from BAME backgrounds. I organised focus groups with young people from Birmingham and Derby. Participants looked at facets of the company’s branding, register, social media content, website interface, marketing materials and more to see if there were any obvious barriers to entry for people of minority backgrounds. Rather than it being a problem pushed back on potential applicants, we helped the company to see that they needed to do more to ensure their schemes attracted people from all backgrounds. Together we came up with a new set of criteria for the company to consider to help increase the number of applicants from BAME backgrounds, and asked our participants to present our findings back to the company. It was a success. Rolls-Royce, one of the most prestigious and exclusive brands in the world, listened to us. My company was born.
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In 2016, the year I created my company, 663,615 other new businesses were registered across the UK.5 In the same year, 328,000 businesses collapsed.6 It’s been stated that 30 per cent of new businesses fail within their first two years. The odds are scary. I didn’t know how slim my chances were when I first set up my business, but then, I didn’t really know much about business. Again, I turned to my trusty laptop. I discovered that the government did, at one stage, have various schemes to help support new businesses (the business growth service, most notably). However, like many of the services that allowed young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to access the opportunities that they are otherwise denied, most were closed in early 2016 as part of a broader range of budget cuts at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. So school was no help, my family couldn’t help me (although they tried) and the government had nothing to offer. In the end, it was a friend of the family who provided the solution, allowing my idea to be housed as a company within his own, with invaluable support and assistance provided about the nitty-gritty details of fund-raising, organising payrolls, paying taxes and all the things you wouldn’t really have a clue about as a teenager with limited business experience. The plan was for us to start out as a small part of a much bigger company and see if we could make it on our own after a year or two.
With the structures sorted, all that was left was to work out what we needed to do to make ourselves successful, to provide a service that companies would actually want. My experience with Rolls Royce gave me a confidence that my company offered something that was needed. I quickly realised, however, that it was not going to be possible to replicate the same model for business after business. Each company we worked with had their own specific ethos, their own specific customer base and their own culture and traditions to work within. We needed to be flexible, but we also needed a simple way to achieve our objectives without rewriting the rule book every other week.
More than anything, I knew that young people were the foundation of our work and our reason for being. That meant providing a platform for young voices was our primary goal, but we also had to find a way to ensure that these voices would be heard and understood. Once we were clear on our mission, we could create a blueprint to inform our work going forward. As with all of our projects, we spoke to the young people we worked with and managed to distil our programme down to three key elements that could be rolled out and reworked with every new client.
We knew that, whatever we did, it had to include young people. We worked hard to expand our network of young people across the UK and developed a new focus-group model that could be tailored to the needs and aims of individual companies. The focus groups were not what you might imagine: awkward conversations over lukewarm cups of coffee in fluorescent-lit meeting rooms. Our focus groups were designed to prompt maximum conversation, with staff members facilitating and recording conversations and giving everyone around the table an opportunity to speak and be heard. We stepped away from traditional settings and gave the members of each group additional roles and responsibilities to ensure that they never strayed too far from our objectives. We needed a way to directly access the insight and experience of young people and our new groups provided that.
More than individual groups, however, we knew that if young people were to be a permanent factor in the decisions of a company, they needed to be able to provide input more than once every few years. We helped establish youth advisory boards – groups of young people employed by each company on a permanent basis – who were provided with a clear remit for ongoing and future work and were on hand to help tackle any questions that arose.
We also knew the benefits of speaking to individual members of staff and dismantling some of the limits of hierarchy. We created a reverse mentoring programme in which senior members of staff were advised by trained company contacts or junior members of staff, allowing space for fresh perspectives and new ideas to flourish. Of the three core practices, reverse-mentoring has proven the most popular and most successful; our network of reverse-mentors now includes schools, charities, companies and youth groups from across the UK.
One of the first organisations we worked with was the Queen’s Commonwealth Trust, the Queen’s official charity, established to champion, connect and fund young leaders who are ‘working hard to change the world’. The charity was already doing some extraordinary work, but wanted to learn more about what a new generation felt about the social and environmental issues that affect (and divide) the world today.
We also worked with Superdry, to try and help them to reach a younger audience. That was a lot of fun. The groups we brought together were tasked with rethinking the company’s marketing strategy; participants were introduced to new lines of clothes that were soon to be released and asked to create a quick campaign to target young people. With a new perspective came a fundamental shift in our understanding of the brand, and a lot of new ideas. These mini-campaigns were fed back and helped inform Superdry’s future strategy.
We worked with Nando’s on an exciting reverse mentoring project, connecting a group of young people from across London with the Nando’s senior leadership team. We provided all of the young people with training prior to the session so they went in equipped with the right skills necessary for both sides to benefit. The aim of the project was to allow the executives to absorb the opinions of the young people and implement them in future projects, while the young people benefited from having the opportunity to make lasting contacts as well as getting the chance to receive feedback from a top person in their field of interest for free simply by participating in this unique experience. The initial meeting took place in the secret kitchen used by Nando’s to test their new creations, where the young people and executives were able to meet for the first time and begin to talk. It was the start of a six-month journey, in which my company helped facilitate and expand the conversations taking place, ensuring that both mentors and mentees had a productive, rewarding and, most importantly, valuable experience.
We established a youth board at Parlophone record label to provide a direct link between senior music executives and the audience they were trying to reach. I will always remember our first meeting, where the new youth board members played the veteran industry figures samples of their personal playlists. Of all the creative industries, the music business is without question one of the most opaque and difficult to access. Our youth board helped to open up Parlophone in new ways, providing an essential sounding board and a source of advice on a variety of questions.
These were some of our early successes, but there were also many failures. Many unreturned calls and emails, many miscommunications, many promising leads that took us nowhere. But we persisted and adapted and, by the end of our second year, we had a roster of over a dozen major clients and were growing rapidly.
Like so much of my success, luck played a major part in the process, but I also had to work with what I had. I didn’t know much. What I did know was what I liked and what other young people liked. I had the self-belief that Jamal Edwards had emphasised and the support of friends like Daryl who were honest with me. I also knew never to give up.
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We think to dream is an achievement in itself. The reality is that we are not starting from zero. We’re starting from minus ten, minus twenty, minus thirty. To scale the negative to get to the positive is huge. The possibility of failure feels much greater than the possibility of success. Moving up and out of my old life felt like walking along a tightrope. And when I got to the other side, there was still wonder at how the rope had managed to hold my weight. Still a risk of falling back in various ways.
God is my life. I know that the Creator has deemed me valuable. That simple fact gives me peace. It gives me confidence. If I’m ever feeling nervous, anxious or uncertain, I have a conversation with my Maker and the fears fade away. I am able to do whatever it is I have to do. It helps to keep things in perspective. It helps to keeps me humble too. A lot of my humility comes from my knowledge that I am a creation. I was created. It is that humility and that grace that allow me to succeed.
Biblical stories are not just stories for me. I was David and the world was Goliath. All I had were stones. When I was sending out emails, looking for opportunities, in my lowest moments, those emails were my stones. That’s how I live my life.
My story starts with weakness. I was getting robbed and I no longer wanted to be robbed. So I joined together with other boys who were getting robbed. We had a bit of strength together and we also had company in our misery. There was a formula. If you had your eyes open, you could easily see others who looked like you. Who looked like the kind of people you needed. I was kicked out of college on my first day. When I tried to get back in, I was told that I needed to achieve distinctions in my work in order to stay. So I knew I had to surround myself with people who were getting distinctions. The distinctioneers! And I found them. And we got distinctions.
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Despite all of the barriers to entry, entrepreneurship has always appealed to me. This career path will not appeal to everyone but that’s a good thing. There are amazing people who I’ve had the opportunity to work with simply because they are employees of a company and I myself value the hard work put in by my team. At the same time, I believe entrepreneurship encourages innovation. If I hadn’t pushed through and set up my company, which we went on to call EMNL, Rolls-Royce may not have improved their engagement with prospective employees from BAME backgrounds. Nor would Nike global footwear execs from Portland, Oregon, have had the opportunity to take part in a speed-dating session with youths from London’s inner-city communities, and gain authentic insight into their largest consumer demographic in the UK. Business, at its best, is all about helping people and I make sure that my business helps the people who are important to me.
When we execute our ideas, it is not only us who are able to benefit. In doing what I was passionate about, it was not only these larger businesses that benefitted, it was also a number of individuals. For instance, 60 per cent of the Radio 1 and 1Xtra Youth Council went on to find jobs within the BBC and that is before we were even a business. At Rolls-Royce, having a more diverse intake for interns led to a more diverse workforce and a better business, I believe. In everything I’ve done, I’ve tried to provide what I wanted when I was younger—an opportunity to broaden my horizons and learn from different people. That’s all.
According to official figures, entrepreneurship in the UK is declining, but it should be on the rise. In 2018, there were 381,000 new businesses registered and 336,000 businesses that closed.7 I believe Generation Z is the most entrepreneurial in history. In my view, as the next generation of consumers, we expect more from businesses in terms of their commitment to making a positive impact culturally, environmentally and socially. We are used to working for our success and don’t expect things to be handed to us on a plate. We know we have to be more creative, more industrious and more dedicated than ever before, if we are to achieve our goals. We need to find new ways to encourage entrepreneurship among a younger generation and help young people transform good ideas into a better reality. Most importantly, we need to change our view of what a businessperson looks like.
As I mentioned at the start of the chapter, my conversation with Karl in Brixton on that Saturday morning eventually led to an idea. Between us, we knew so many talented, intelligent, creative individuals who were lacking the experience, qualifications or contacts to get a foot in the door of the industries they were most interested in. We knew some incredible designers, analysts, entrepreneurs, publicists and marketers, who were all known by a different name. Karl started talking about a couple of boys who had been in the gang with him. He put the word ‘gang’ in air quotation marks, saying that it was really just a group of his best friends from school. These boys were not thugs, criminals or predators – they were simply young people who had limited options and enough strength in their unity to make money and wield influence. He talked about how unknown the gang was when they started and how amazed he was, after a few months, to hear boys in a completely different part of London talk about the gang with fear. That was marketing at its best, surely? We laughed, but he had a point.
And now we had a chance to keep the door open for them. We started writing up a list and scribbled a title at its top – ‘The Hidden Alumni’ – a small part of an entire wave of disenfranchised young people who we thought we could help. If there is anything I’ve learned about business, it’s this – make sure you give as much as you get.