I am really blessed. Training, writing, teaching takes you places and gives you a lot of time with a very very different set of people.

Teaching ensures that you meet the highest energy kids with stars in their eyes and believing that they will change the world. Yes sometimes they do get carried away, but many times they have their feet on the ground.

They join big companies, small companies…and a full range of companies in between. Many of their hopes are achieved, may are not. Some lose hope, many do not. Life goes on. Then there is another set of kids…another year.

Some of the kids I met in 1998-9 are now mothers/ fathers with toddlers and talking of parenting problems! Imagine when they met me for the first time – parents were the problem, now it is parenting!

Then you meet young Assisstant managers – normally the starting point in the financial services industry also. Amazing energy these kids also bring in. I train them and say ‘do what is good for the client’ the boss says ‘you know who is doing your appraisal, don’t you?’. These kids are now managing their parent’s ire about their boy(girl) friends, clients and bosses expectations, own conscience, market movements, clients ire, …and they are partying in the night. Great job kids. Occassionally they crib saying ‘i want a finance profile’ – some have the guts to change, most do not. Life goes on.

Then you meet people from the media. Clearly the job of the media kids is to bring the viewer, excite him enough for him to keep coming back again. And again. Without any training, or too much guidance these kids do a good job of the work given to them.

Then you meet the regulator. Very nice human beings who have developed the skill of seeing with a long telescope. Sadly they cannot see near their own feet. They have a telescopic view, a helicopter view and a super broad view on the industry. However many of them are not practical enough to see near their own feet.

Then you write a book or a blog which is a concoction of what you have heard from all of them Sometimes it is the clients who are shouting or screaming ‘bad product’ some times it is the mutual fund screaming ‘the regulator wants to finish us’…

You hear all this and smile…life goes on…