Paul is an incoming management consultant at Bain and Company. Before that he was an investment banking summer analyst at RBC after declining an interview at Goldman Sachs and founder of a food delivery company called Dine Easy. He is currently in his final year in the honours business program at the Ivey Business School.

In this episode we talk about why he chose investment banking and consulting and if he was chasing prestige or doing what he genuinely enjoyed. We talked about how he feels when people say “you only got an opportunity because you’re black or because you’re a woman”, why he left banking to join consulting and much more.

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2018 was a very eventful year for me. I also read some interesting books that provided me with a lot of new perspectives. I think 2016 and 2017 were more transformative years in terms of new ideas gained from books. Without further ado, here is a list of the best books I read in 2018 and key takeaways and big ideas from each book and a bonus section on new blogs, podcasts, youtube videos I enjoyed in 2018.

Best Books of 2018

1. Crushing It, Gary Vaynerchuk
2. Principles, Ray Dalio
3. Influence, Robert Cialdini
4. Bad Blood, John Carreyrou
5. Leonardo Da Vinci, Walter Isaacson
6. Programming Collective Intelligence, Toby Segaran
7. Ogilvy on Advertising, David Ogilvy

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In early November 2018, a family friend messaged me on Whatsapp asking me to send links on a trading algorithm and website which I built. I was curious why she asked, but decided to just play along and send her the links without asking any further questions.

A few weeks later she messaged me again asking if I would be willing to teach her son how to code. I agreed to do so and also tutored one of her coworker’s sons. We moved at a very fast pace of 2 hours/day, twice a week since I had to leave for a trip to Europe very soon. Over the course of those sessions and even though I was the teacher, I think I learnt just as much from them as they did from me. Here are some of the most important things which I learnt.

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5 Things to do in Barcelona, Monaco, Nice, Madrid and Lisbon

I just got back from a 14 day blitz of London, Paris, Nice/Monaco, Barcelona, Madrid, and Lisbon. It was an amazing experience, if you are going to any of these places here are somethings I think you should try to do.

Note: You should also read my post 7 Tips For Travelling to France, Spain, Portugal or Anywhere in Europe. The two posts together contain a lot of helpful tips for anyone travelling to Europe.

Eat a Paella and Tapas in Barcelona

Spain is known for their famous dish called Paellas and Tapas. If I had to give an analogy you might understand, Palleas is basically rice stir fry with seafood (or meat or other vegetable) and Tapas are essentially appetizers. The analogy doesn’t do the food justice (google it to get a better idea) but they are really good and I recommend you try them, also a good rule of thumb is to eat the local cuisine of wherever you visit.

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Emily Chen (IG:em.chenn) joins us on the first episode to talk about how she got into U of T medical school without a degree, advice for students studying pre med programs and the importance of work life balance and self care.

Video:

Podcast:

Listen on Spotify

Listen on iTunes

Timestamps:

What type of high school student were you – 1:10

Cold Calling Professionals in grade 10 – 2:37

McMaster Health Science Rejection and wakeup Call – 4:09

What if I I don’t get into medical school – 5:00

Biggest life jumps and importance of self care – 8:12

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A few days ago I was on LinkedIn and read an article about the world’s youngest self-made billionaire, 27 year old John Collison from Stripe. In the article he mentioned that his success was a result of “intense application and hard work…But I also think that luck was required too… There are [others] who are smarter and harder-working than us who just didn’t get the same good fortune.”

As usual, in the comments section people pitched their ideological camps and started arguing. Some said that his success was purely a result of the luck of being a middle-class white male. Others said “Luck does not exist, you can do anything with hard work”. However, like most things in life the truth is a lot more nuanced and is a balance of both sides.

The luck debate is one that has been brought up many times in all walks of life and while I see people passionately argue both sides, I rarely find a perspective that properly contrasts the strengths and flaws of both arguments. For a long time, I intuitively knew that the short answer was “both”, but I had a hard time articulating my thoughts in a clear, cohesive way. Fortunately, as I write this at 2:53 am in the morning, in a flash of inspiration, I think I have a neat analogy for understanding how luck impacts our life.

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