Blessing is the Business Inclusion Programme Manager at NatWest, where her role focusses on breaking down barriers to enterprise for Ethnic Minority owned businesses across the UK. We talk about the challenges and opportunities for Ethnic Minority owned businesses and the impact on the country.
This is the second episode in the 2024 Black History Month mini series.
Listen on Spotify, Apple or YouTube.
In this episode we discuss:
- Escaping the clutches of the British Army in Zimbabwe
- The challenges faced by ethnic minority entrepreneurs
- The 4X impact that ethnic minority businesses could have in the UK
- The power of talking to customers
- Ensuring your activity aligns with the overarching business strategy
- How and why NatWest is supporting entrepreneurs across the UK
- Fitting in and belonging when moving countries
Blessing Mutamba
Blessing is also a co-lead of the NatWest Group Global Multicultural Network which promotes inclusion and allyship for employees working within NatWest across all the offices in Europe, India, UK, USA and Asia.
She loves all things inclusion and sits on NatWest’s Colleague Advisory Panel which provides insights and feedback directly to the NatWest CEO’s Executive team and board non-exec directors. Outside of work, she also sits on an advisory panel for Ending Workplace Exploitation in Wales and she’s on the ITV Cymru DE&I panel.
She runs a confidence coaching and mentoring programme for young Zimbabweans living around the world alongside her side hustle as a gift concierge. She’s a three time pageant queen both nationally and internationally and absolutely loves cooking, travelling and making memories with loved ones.
Find Blessing on LinkedIn
Recommendations
- 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
Strategy Sessions Host – Andi Jarvis
If you have any questions or want to talk about anything that was discussed in the show, the best place to get me is on LinkedIn or Instagram.
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Episode Transcription
This transcript has been done automagically using Happy Scribe and hasn’t been checked by a real person, so there may be some hilarious mistakes where the AI can’t work out our accents – I’m sure they’re trained on just the American accent.
[01:00:00.07] – Andi J
Blessing Mutamba. What one thing do you wish it would have known 10 years ago?
[01:00:04.23] – Blessing M
One thing I wish I would have known 10 years ago is that other people are always going to have their opinion on how I should define myself. And I wish I had known that it would affect me as much as it did. And I wish I would have known that it’s actually okay to not feel like I need to fit into those external definitions.
[01:00:35.10] – Andi J
It’s really an interesting answer to that. And I’m not going to ask how old you are, but I feel like I’ve been on a similar journey, certainly in my teens and when fitting in is really important. Right through to late teens and early 20s, going to uni, finding a whole new bunch of people to fit in with. And I’m not convinced I ever truly discovered who I really am until my 30s, really, which is still now in the rear view mirror. But is that something that you learned the hardware then over a decade or more?
[01:01:08.18] – Blessing M
I think so. So my story, I suppose, is a little bit different because it’s not necessarily down to my age. I’m 28, just to get the cat out of the bag. But it’s more because… I was born in Zimbabwe, and I lived there until I was seven. And being a native Zimbabwean in Zimbabwe, obviously, you feel at home, you You have the people who you’re friends with, you have your family around. So I feel like that was my initial experience of life, and that was what I thought life would be like throughout my whole time on this Earth. My family moved around quite a lot when I was younger. So we first moved to Ireland. We lived there for seven years. And then after we lived in Ireland, we lived in the channel Islands. So lived in Guernsey for 11 years. And all through those times, there wasn’t a lot of diversity. I think in Guernsey, I was the only non white child in the whole school. Not even.
[01:02:02.28] – Andi J
I’m laughing, buddy.
[01:02:04.27] – Blessing M
I’m sure you can imagine what it has been brought. I always felt like I had a really good sense of what the world is going to treat me like because of the start I had in life. It’s not like my parents moved to a different country before I was born, and I was almost introduced into that as the life I knew. It happened at an age where I was entering my formative years. I didn’t really know how to process a lot of the So the emotions are speeding as a result of all the prejudiced racism that I was experiencing. So I think that’s why it’s been a bit more different for me because I’ve always just been the person who has something different about them in every space. But because I had that comparison of what it feels like to not be different, that’s why it was just even more hard-hitting. So I’m saying to people, well, I can identify as being Irish, but I can also identify as being Zimbabrian. And other people are saying, well, no, you can’t be because there’s no black people in Ireland.
[01:02:58.27] – Andi J
So Yes.
[01:03:00.23] – Blessing M
Yeah. So I think that’s what it’s down to, really.
[01:03:03.20] – Andi J
And I don’t know what your parents were like. My grandparents were the Windrish generation who came over from the Caribbean and passed down through my dad as well. But there was certainly an element of my grandparents were grateful to have the opportunity to come and serve the queen. That’s the way they saw it. Our queen asked us to come to the mother country. No, it was our queen, to come to the mother country because they needed us. And they felt grateful for that. So when things didn’t go right or didn’t fit the way you expected them to do, they just didn’t complain about it. They just got on with it, which my dad’s generation, I can’t really speak for, but maybe didn’t do that quite as much My generation were just like, what? That’s madness. We want change. We want things to be different. But there was never any discussion of that because it was almost like, if you had a problem like that, you went to your parents, they just like, just shut up and get on with it. And I don’t know if that was just because for me, it was the ’80s or if that was just that first and second generation migrant thing.
[01:04:03.17] – Andi J
But it was very much just like, Stop complaining about it. Just get on with it because we’re lucky to be here. But I was born in the UK. I’m like, What do you mean lucky to be here? I was like, You’re from the Caribbean, these great islands. Why wouldn’t you want to be there? So, yeah, I don’t know. Did your parents have that just get on with it approach for you? I think so.
[01:04:19.27] – Blessing M
I can definitely relate to that. And I also think that the experience of being a child moving to a different country versus being an adult moving a different country. For me, again, that’s the biggest parallel I always draw, because when you’re a bit more established in life, like you say, you have a bit more of a sense of who you are, where you want to be, or what direction you want to go in. But when you’re in those years where you’re really building your character as a person that you’re going to bring into your older life, it’s just so much more difficult to navigate. I think when I was trying to process everything and trying to communicate and say, Mum, something’s happened to me. It’s made me feel sad, but I don’t know why. My mum would just not really be able to ask the right questions to get to the answer. She would just be like, Oh, you’re fine. It’s just your hormones. You’re just a teenager, that thing. And also partly as well, to your point around the generational bit. So in post-colonial times in Zimbabwe, I think there was quite a relationship that had a lot of friction between Zimbabwe and the UK.
[01:05:28.10] – Blessing M
And you can see that in how Let’s say, for example, my parents’ generation would interact with people from other countries, but also how we interact with each other amongst the Zimbabwean community. I think there was that element of, Oh, don’t ruffle any feathers, or or don’t cause any trouble. But it was more from the point of view of because we know what we’ve been through before when we have tried to stand up against the system or stand up against colonialism. My mum tells me stories about how when she was in school, the British soldiers would come in and they would be trained to run into the bush and lie on the ground so that they literally could just save their lives. And that’s something that’s so close to home for me because it’s like my mum who’s telling me these stories. So For us, it was more about because we have a real strong connection and presence to what could be if you do cause any trouble, my mum was more like, just don’t try it because I don’t want you to put yourself in the face of danger.
[01:06:30.19] – Andi J
British colonial history is taught in a very interesting way in British schools. And look, there’s a lot of history, and Britain on its own has an awful lot of history, and kids don’t spend a huge amount of time studying that. So I fully appreciate that you don’t get to study every single aspect and every single interaction of British colonial history. I understand that. But it’s very much one-eyed. Oh, we put the railways in India. Oh, the sun never set on the British Empire. If you want to learn about the massacres, you want to learn about what the Brits did across all of the continent of Africa, across Southeast Asia, India, and around there. I always say when people talk about the things that happen under colonial rule, and it’s like, you might be able to argue whether they’re good or bad. But I think we can all agree when Hitler took your ideas and turbocharged them for the Nazis, that means they weren’t good ideas. They were just not good ideas. That’s a good point.
[01:07:26.23] – Blessing M
I never thought about that, actually. Yeah, you’re right.
[01:07:28.20] – Andi J
That’s where he got a lot of his ideas from. What did the Brits do? So yeah, and hearing those experiences of your mum being taught to run out to stay away from the British soldiers. I think a lot of British people hearing that will be like, No, I can’t really have happened.
[01:07:42.17] – Blessing M
I know. Yeah. I mean, even for me, my mum tells me the stories. But to a certain extent, I also feel it’s difficult for me to put myself in that situation and imagine myself in that situation. And I think maybe what I like to think the turning point for me was, is the the fact that I know what it’s like to be in those conversations where you’re trying to communicate about your differences, you’re trying to find the similarities that unite us as people. And I know what it’s like to have those conversations from a place of anger. I think that’s where it does more damage. And that’s where I found that the conversations and interactions are just a lot more counterproductive. So for me, I’ve taken it on that, yes, of course, I do have my heritage and I do have my history. And it’s really, really appalling that my family, like I say, even other families that we know have been through those things. But I’ve taken it upon myself to think, Okay, how do we break this cycle? Because we don’t want to keep telling the stories to fuel the fire. We want to keep telling the stories so that we can break down some of these barriers, and we want to break down some of these systems.
[01:08:44.25] – Blessing M
I guess maybe that’s where the turning point for me was I had to just sit down and think to myself, You know what? I can’t keep being angry because, yes, it’s really annoying, frustrating, enriching, all the words. But at the end of the day, if I just become part of the problem, then what am I doing with my life?
[01:09:03.06] – Andi J
How do we take that and be productive with it? Yeah, exactly. Wow. What a place to take a breath. That’s a great start. Thank you very much, Pleasant. Hey, Hope, and welcome to the Strategy Sessions. My name is Andy Jarvis. I am the host of the show and the Strategy Director at Eximo Marketing. Thank you for downloading this episode. This week, I’m joined by Bless Mutamba, who works for NatWest. We’re building on the conversation that you may be listening to last week, which was the live episode to launch Black History Month in the mini-series that I’m doing. Blessing has some research and some background in the impact of ethnic minority businesses on the UK economy and also the support that is maybe lacking or required to help those businesses grow and thrive. So that’s what we’re talking about today, how businesses grow and that type of thing and the support that’s needed about. Thank you for tuning in. Thank you for listening. If you could rate this episode and rate the series wherever it is you listen, go and just pick your phone up at the minute. They have a five-star rating. And if you don’t like the episode, you tune in, you think, I’m going to stop listening to this.
[01:10:03.28] – Andi J
It’s not very good. It might be a bit weird, but please do send me an email. My details are in the show notes. I love to hear from people. If no one ever tells you what they don’t like, you can never improve. So I really do appreciate any and all feedback on the episode. Let’s just get into it. Let’s get Blessing on and listen to what she has to say. Blessing. Thank you for joining me on the strategy sessions. Tell everybody a little bit about where you work, you’re at NatWest, and what you do there.
[01:10:31.03] – Blessing M
Yeah, definitely. I’m the business inclusion programme manager within NatWest Group. So that encompasses Royal Bank of Scotland and Scotland, Ulster Bank in Northern Ireland, NatWest Camrean, Wales, and then NatWest in England as well. So my main focus for my role is breaking down barriers to enterprise for ethnic minority-owned businesses. It fits into our wider strategy of supporting underrepresented groups within their entrepreneurial journeys. I work alongside colleagues who support women in business, youth enterprise, social enterprises, and other parts of the SME landscape.
[01:11:04.07] – Andi J
I know from meeting you at a session where you’ve been through some of the research, but you don’t just think there’s a problem in ethnic minorities starting businesses or growing businesses. You know there’s a problem because the research supports it. What information have you seen or have you gathered that helps support the premise of what you do?
[01:11:22.20] – Blessing M
We are very fortunate enough to be industry-focused as well as obviously focused on our core and our core communities. NatWest Group collaborated with Aston University Centre for…
[01:11:38.05] – Andi J
It’s a great name, isn’t it?
[01:11:39.21] – Blessing M
I know, because every time I said… Sorry. Aston University Centre for Research and Ethnic Ethnic Minority entrepreneurship. That’s the one. I always abbreviated to CREME. That’s why I have to think about the letters. But anyway, so we collaborated on the Time to Change report. The Time to Change report looked into both the opportunities but the barriers that the ethnic minority entrepreneurial landscape faces within the UK. The main headlines, I suppose, is they found that there’s no lack of ambition when it comes to our ethnic minority communities. Having said that, though, we see a drop off in activity after around about three and a half years of trading within ethnic minority communities in comparison to their white British counterparts. The other big thing that they talked about was how we could actually increase the contribution of ethnic minority businesses to the UK economy by four times if we actually effectively supported ethnic minority in businesses. That’s down to a few different factors, which I won’t go into because we probably need a three-hour conversation for that. But I just think It was really eye-opening to give a balanced view of what the challenges are, but also, like I say, focus on the opportunity, because a lot of the time with research, it tends to look at either one side or the other.
[01:12:58.10] – Blessing M
Whereas this research, for me, why I find it’s so impactful is that it just levels out the for and against of why we’re not effectively supporting ethnic minority-owned businesses. But it also had 10 evidence-based recommendations that it published. It’s not one of those reports that we wanted to just publish and not necessarily give people actionable items as a result of it. I really like it because it actually talks about things that we could do in policy, things that we can do in industry, and also as individuals as well to really push the agenda of supporting ethnic minority.
[01:13:35.07] – Andi J
Excellent. Now, this is an episode in the Black History Month mini-series that I do for the strategy sessions. But just to be clear for everyone who’s listening, you’re talking about all ethnic minorities in the UK. So they’re not so much there, whether they’re Black or African or from the Caribbean or wherever, but it could be Polish migrants or just all ethnic minorities in the UK.
[01:13:53.27] – Blessing M
Yeah, all ethnic minorities. But like I say, within the work that we do, we also try and be really specific and focused within our strategy. Again, I’ll pick out an example. We worked with the Black British Initiative in partnership with Soweto University as well, and they run an MBA programme specifically for Black founders. We actually contributed to, I think it was 10 or 15 sponsored places on that programme. We do like to also just aggregate some of the activity that we do, because I think the experiences you find in different ethnic minority audiences are not always going to be identical. So we’re very much aware of the fact. But yeah, obviously, we still have our all-round ethnic minority support as well.
[01:14:36.28] – Andi J
And the fact that a job like this exists in an institution like the NatWest Group might be surprising to people, perhaps, who maybe don’t follow banks all that much. But banks were traditionally known as not leading social change. They’re very conservative institutions. We just took people’s money, looked after it, and charged you a lot for the privilege or something like that anyway. But this is a wider movement within the bank, isn’t it? To what end, I suppose? That’s the question.
[01:15:06.02] – Blessing M
That’s a very good question. And it’s a question we always ask ourselves within my team on a daily basis, because you’re right, I think we can’t be everything for everyone. So there is a limit in terms of what we can do. Like you say, at the end of the day, we are a bank as well. So we can’t necessarily engage with every single industry sector that we’d like to engage with. But at the same time, I think, like you say, my job does exist for those exact reasons to break down some of those barriers. So I do think that within the parameters of what we are able to do and within the parameters of what we do know, we’re trying our best to move in the direction that is going to benefit not only our existing customer bases, but our future customer bases and our future communities as well. And I think you see it in different parts of the bank. So for example, we’re very big on supporting enterprises in general. And one of the objectives that came out all the research came out of all the collaborating with grassroots organisations was that we actually aim for 20 % of our enterprise support to be specifically reserved for people from ethnic minority backgrounds.
[01:16:12.14] – Blessing M
That wouldn’t have happened if we didn’t do the groundwork, if we didn’t have the conversation. Sometimes it might be like we’re shouting into an echo chamber or people are just giving us feedback and it’s not going anywhere. But actually, when you see all the different pockets of how it’s influencing what we’re doing as a bank, you start to think, Okay, this is actually the real tangible results that we’re achieving. So yeah, I love it. Obviously, I’m biassed, but.
[01:16:37.03] – Andi J
How good is NatWest compared to all the other… No, I’m not asking you that question. But I’m interested because as you said at the beginning, your role takes you across the British Isles. So you’re working in Wales, Northern Ireland, England, Scotland. And as someone who’s from England, moved to Northern Ireland 14 years ago now. Goodness me, I’m old. But as someone who’s moved across different parts of the British Isles, you see different migration patterns in different places. So how does that show up in your research? And do you have to provide different support in different parts of the business because of that?
[01:17:10.11] – Blessing M
Yes, to a certain extent, yes. I mean, the underlying objective is really to break down barriers to enterprise, like I say. But I think the difference is in the approach. So I’ll give you a very quick snapshot of what that means for our strategy, and hopefully that can bring to life some of the themes that I hope we try and achieve. So for example, in London, in the Southeast region, it’s very diverse. The entrepreneurial ecosystem is bustling. There’s a lot of resource infrastructure and connexions to other parts of the world available for businesses in general, but obviously for ethnic minority audiences in general as well, because it’s so diverse. Our strategy within London is actually to work with community trusted voices and work with those people who I suppose you could call influencers in the sense that they have a strong network amongst-I thought you were going to say strong TikTok game then.
[01:18:05.11] – Andi J
I know what you mean. Imagine. Oh, my goodness. You’ve got to be great on TikTok. We have to lead the whole episode.
[01:18:10.26] – Blessing M
We work with people who we know have trust in different communities in London because we’ve already achieved the traction that we need to achieve in having the presence within our ethnic minority audiences. However, if you look at Northern Ireland, for example, our strategy is more actually We’re just building the trust. Initially, we don’t want to go in for the hard, join the accelerator or become a customer because we’re not there yet. We need to actually build the trust with our communities. So all the events that we’ve been doing, inviting stakeholders through our doors, actually making the Ulster Bank offices more of a neutral place rather than just a big, shiny building that no one goes into is what we’re doing within our strategy here. So I feel like for me, like I said, that’s how we’re doing the research in terms of really interacting with people as humans, just asking the questions, talking to people, building the trust in them.
[01:19:02.29] – Andi J
I’m glad you said that blessing, because it’s almost become a catchphrase of mine now that I tell everyone to talk to your customers. It’s what I talk about all the time. Regular listeners of the podcast are rolling their eyes now going, oh, God, there he goes again. He just talked to his customers. I promise.
[01:19:16.11] – Blessing M
Andy didn’t brief me.
[01:19:17.17] – Andi J
No, no, no. Thank you very much. But you’d be amazed how many companies don’t get out of the four walls that they live in. And especially in a role like yours, where you’re based in Cardiff, but you’re working across different parts of the country. These The easiest thing in the world to do would be to stay in a bunker in Cardiff and never go to London, never be in Scotland, never come to Northern Ireland. And that be it. We know what’s going on. But it’s really important to understand what’s going on on the ground and hear firsthand from people, isn’t it? How do you go about that? Because you can’t be everywhere all the time, can you? That’s true.
[01:19:48.10] – Blessing M
I think I go about that. Yeah, obviously, the world of online is amazing. So for example, we did an event in Aberdeen in Edinburgh not so long ago. So there were two separate events, but I just connected via Zoom. I think that is really powerful to just show that actually we do want to be there wherever we can, but when we can’t, we try and make the effort. I would say in general, in terms of our face-to-face interactions, the way that our strategy is divided up into different pillars, I suppose, is we have… Well, actually, this is something that I invent, and so I don’t even want to talk on behalf of the whole bank. It’s just more a theory that I thought might work.
[01:20:28.09] – Andi J
That was a note to the press office of NatWest. There you go.
[01:20:32.12] – Blessing M
Sorry. But yeah, so the way that we, I suppose, class our outreach is the first one is knowledge sharing sessions, and knowledge sharing, specifically speaking to ethnic minority audiences. So from the research, we know that different types of information are harder to access, for example. So we’ll do a knowledge sharing session on how to scale up through exporting opportunities because that’s something that we see a lot more ethnic minority in businesses looking to, and also information in itself. Like I say, it’s not always easy to access for every community. The other thing that we do is we align with the inclusion calendar. It’s obviously Black History Month, salvation, parentage month, thinking about things like Lunar New Year, making sure that we’re actually communicating the message that we want to join other communities in their celebration, and we want to bring people along on the whole entrepreneurial journey at different times of year that are significant to different communities as well. We look at knowledge sharing, we look at the inclusion calendar, and then the other big thing as well is opening up our networks, because I think, like we’re saying around, there’s no lack of ambition.
[01:21:42.18] – Blessing M
Ambition sometimes can be lost in trying to find the right type of support or trying to find the people who want to support or trying to find your potential partners or collaborators as well. We’ll do things like round tables. I run an entrepreneurial forum which is made up of minority entrepreneurs, feed that back to senior leadership as well. So we’re not just doing the nice stuff of showing up, having an event, having some food together, also doing the other stuff behind the scenes of actually bringing the tangible evidence to the decision makers within the group to say, okay, what do we need to do to reflect it in our strategy as well?
[01:22:19.01] – Andi J
In a bank, banks are huge organisations. There’s lots of people, lots of moving parts, lots of real estate, and also lots of things going on there. So how do you take the overall strategy and connect that through to the delivery of… I hate strategy and delivery. Actually, there’s a great blog post about it. It’s called Strategy and Stewardship rather than strategy and execution or strategy and delivery. The latter phrases make it sound like we’ve done this great bit of work, you need to go and deliver it. Whereas strategy and stewardship is about you’ve got to be able to steward it through the process. Whatever you call it, how do you make sure that happens in an organisation with a lot of moving parts, a lot of people to interact with, a lot of different brands to interact with? How do you make sure that stewardship happens?
[01:23:06.07] – Blessing M
I suppose on an organization-wide level, thinking about, like I was talking about the objectives we have for support going to ethnic minority founders, that actually does go into our ESU reporting or our social impact reporting. I think for me, that just shows a very clear line of people keeping track of our progress and making sure that we’re achieving that. I suppose at a more grassroots or localised level within my team, it really comes down to not only speaking to colleagues when there’s something to be done. Actually, for example, so really good example is I started running cultural literacy sessions with my colleagues, my customer-facing colleagues, and we’ve rolled it out to about 400 colleagues at this point. But I don’t just end at, I’ve delivered the That’s it. See you later. Go on your way. I keep that conversation going. We have a team’s channel now. We have a newsletter that I send out to remind people about the principles that we talked about in the workshop. I think for me, it’s really just keeping the conversation going and also finding those new opportunities based on the initial conversation, which I suppose really boils down to the fact that sometimes it’s about identifying the need before it becomes a need.
[01:24:31.08] – Blessing M
No one ever said, Oh, you know what? We really need cultural literacy workshops. It was more I came to the table and said, I think we should do this, and then we did it. So I think that’s how we just keep that conversation going, keep it relevant, because I feel like once you have that in road, it’s just a matter of going in and relating it to our organization-wide strategy, but then saying, Okay, so what are we going to do as individuals to contribute to the bigger picture?
[01:24:56.05] – Andi J
There is that little bit, and you almost mentioned it in passing about making sure you’re connected to the organisation organisational strategy, because the number of… Certainly if you’re going to access budget in a larger… Larger, you can see where my head’s been this weekend. If you want to access budget in a larger organisation, you need to be able to show it’s going to help send them It bought faster towards one of these strategic pillars, don’t you? But that sometimes is not maybe in line with what you maybe see on the ground or what you see is happening. Do you get that frustration? Do you see that sometimes, or is it at the minute relatively straightforward for you to go, No, How that aligns with this pillar?
[01:25:31.09] – Blessing M
Yeah, I think I see that definitely on a day-to-day basis, but also just, I think, inherently within the organisation. And I think it really is down to the fact that because we’re such a large organisation, different people approach it in different ways. So if you go to speak to someone who’s maybe in a more commercial department or someone who’s just thinking about lending or something that’s very structured and the answer is either yes or no to something, they will have a very different view on someone who’s maybe in a bit more of the purpose-led part of the bank where we’re looking at the impact rather than the commercial return. I don’t think it’s down to… It’s no one’s fault, I suppose, in the sense that people are conditioned to think in the way that they’re conditioned because of the part of the bank that they’re in. I think for me, it’s about, to your point, actually defining what value looks like and making sure that’s done to a consistent level and also just acknowledging that value is going to be different to everyone who is involved in the process of achieving what we’re trying to achieve.
[01:26:37.04] – Blessing M
So I do get frustrated, yes, I won’t lie, but I can also understand why people think the way they think or have the feedback that they do have.
[01:26:46.19] – Andi J
I don’t think I’ve ever consulted with any company, large or small, but definitely with a large company, where the word frustrated hasn’t been mentioned at once. So you’re not alone there. Everybody’s just trying to… You get quite clear divides between what this job and that job does, and they won’t help, and this one. And there’s all sorts of bits like that. But generally speaking, you think the path of the direction of travel is going the right way?
[01:27:07.23] – Blessing M
Yeah, 100 % agree. And again, like I say, I’m biassed.
[01:27:11.01] – Andi J
That’s all right. We’ve got just out of shot that you can’t see the PR team are stood here holding a gun to a blessing’s head. No, they’re not. I’m only kidding. I know, I scorted it off the premises. So let’s roll back a little bit to the research, because from memory, when I heard it, it was a little while ago now, there were some really interesting things in there. I think one The other thing was that ethnic minorities are supported by their communities a lot more, and that almost becomes like their opening sales channel and support channel. So that was not a huge difference, but certainly a noticeable difference in the research compared to white businesses, if you want to call them that. That’s that in the UK. I’ve probably got my language wrong there.
[01:27:48.05] – Blessing M
Well, yeah, I get the essence of what you’re trying to say. I suppose if we think back to the nature of a lot of ethnic minority communities, so you’ll have first generation and second generation. A lot of the time you’ll find that some people become accidental entrepreneurs. There are obviously people who have a vision and they 100% go up to that as well. I think that there’s a mix there. Why I think that’s important to mention is because when you think about the people who become accidental entrepreneurs, they will often sell to their neighbours or sell to their neighbourhood or maybe go through word of mouth, for example. They will employ their family members as their staff, and then before they then expand. So I think that’s where it becomes more important to actually have those conversations with people, because a lot of the time, if you speak to people like those, They won’t see themselves as entrepreneurs. They’ll just see themselves as, I’m just trying to make ends meet. So that’s where it becomes really important to broaden people’s horizons and think about, actually, you’re doing something amazing here. Not everyone can manage a team of five and still They have their 9:00 to five job and still have their family and still have everything else going on.
[01:29:05.05] – Blessing M
Then when it becomes a case of expanding into different industry sectors or diversifying whatever it is they’re doing, the conversation becomes a lot more daunting because you then switch to, Okay, this is what a business owner would do. This is what an entrepreneur would do. But all the while before that, people wouldn’t have seen themselves as entrepreneurs. I think that’s where it comes down to being very committed to tapping into potential and actually just always shouting about the successes that people are achieving so that we can hold a mirror up to a lot of the people who are doing amazing things and actually say, No, you know what? You are pretty much an entrepreneur, you are a business owner. I think that’s probably where we see the biggest difference of converting from that mindset of, I’m just doing this because it makes money to, actually, I’m onto something really good here.
[01:29:55.26] – Andi J
Yeah, I’m onto a winner. And some of the challenges that you you mentioned that ethnic minorities face. Sometimes it’s very practical, and maybe that’s not even the right word, but access to understanding where support can be and where funding can be, which maybe if you grew up here, you know that there is a chamber of commerce. So you know there’s a way you can maybe tap into those networks. But are there any other structural challenges? I’m not trying to lead you down a path of talking about racism or anything like that, but any more difficult to pin down challenges that at that ethnic minorities face?
[01:30:31.15] – Blessing M
Yeah. So off the top of my head, I mean, there’s loads, but let me just skim over a few. So one of the key pieces of feedback that came back from the entrepreneurial forum was around how because someone is a migrant or they’re from an ethnic minority background, a lot of the business support providers that they have gone to almost lower their ambitions on their behalf. That’s interesting. Yeah, exactly. So you’ll have a business advisor saying, What Why you just start off small rather than aiming big when someone has the idea and the passion and the drive? So that was a really interesting insight because I think it comes down to, I guess, maybe people not having exposure to the different experiences of migrant and ethnic minority communities. But actually, when you think about, like I say, the sheer resilience and, like I say, creativity and diversity of thought within those communities, there’s so much that we could do much more on.
[01:31:29.03] – Andi J
And there’s a lot to dislike, perhaps, and hello to my American listeners. There are a few, about 20% of the audience. There’s a lot to dislike about the way that the rugged individualism of the US has been taken and pushed to an extreme. But There is within the core of where that came from, something really, really that rings true and really, really positive is that the people who went to America had to basically go make it, not with their bare hands, the Native Americans were there anyway, but there’s lots of places in America where nobody lived and they had to build that community. That spirit of entrepreneurialism got them to where they’re going. And that holds true for migrants coming to this country. If you left your home country at the age, as we heard earlier in a different conversation, 17, 18, to go and live somewhere where the language isn’t maybe the same, the culture’s different, the weather’s different, and you have to put down roots, build a business, find a job. That spirit of that grit and that enterprise, even if it’s working as a bus driver or as a nurse, which is what a lot of migrants came to do.
[01:32:34.17] – Andi J
But there’s still a spirit of grit and enterprise there, isn’t there? That got you to there. So the fact that you said, I think we could grow it four times the amount of economic impact. That feels like just a huge miss by the country to not be really focusing on this.
[01:32:49.04] – Blessing M
Definitely. I totally agree. And I think it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge all of the great work that is going on. But I think, as you and I both know, it’s such a vast piece of work. Any form of progress is always going to feel like it’s going to feel minuscule compared to where we need to go. So definitely, I think there is that. And us having conversations like these, seeing organisations embedding it into their culture on an ongoing basis. We were talking about not just talking about these topics during Black History Month, but actually all throughout the year is really important. To your point earlier, the Time to Change report did actually find that some of their Black respondents, specifically, did feel like racism and prejudice did contribute to the support that they received within their journeys. But I think the other really key thing here is if we strip back to the basics of what we’re trying to talk about, it’s people interacting with people, really is what we’re saying. I think one of the major barriers that entrepreneurs from ethnic minority backgrounds feel is that I suppose in the UK, rightly so, financial services and business support organisations are regulated, and There’s only so much we can and can’t say.
[01:34:01.27] – Blessing M
There’s only so much we can and can’t do. I think that contributes to the interaction feeling more bureaucratic, feeling less personable, feeling more like just someone filling out a form and being a number in a queue. When you think about, again, the sentiments that were shared in the time to change report, that really came out that actually some people are just put off from interacting with organisations because it’s too robotic or it doesn’t feel human enough. And when you think about a lot of cultures that are very dependent on building a relationship first before you go into talking about what support you can provide, it creates a really big rift. So it is that. But then also, I think it then contributes to what we call perceived versus actual barriers, where it can feel like an organisation doesn’t want to interact with someone, but actually that might not be the case. I mean, there are cases where actually there are only certain interactions that organisations can help with individuals. But in those cases, when it’s not, I think something that would be a really strong step in the right direction for business support organisations and financial services providers is actually just to demystify a lot of those processes.
[01:35:12.08] – Blessing M
For example, what does a good credit file look like? What does it mean when we talk about interest rates? If there is a reason why we can’t support or interact with someone, they have a point of reference rather than just being told no, and that’s it. I think for me, that’s why I feel like our strategy is quite strong because we’re looking at building the trust, building the relationships, but also obviously then supporting through our core products, our services, and our propositions as well.
[01:35:39.22] – Andi J
Excellent. There’s great sales pitch for NatWest as well. How do people get hold of NatWest if they want to start a business with them?
[01:35:46.12] – Blessing M
They can go to the website. So we have our NatWest business banking website. Of course, if anyone wants to connect with me on LinkedIn, blessing the Tanva, I’m more than happy to also make introductions to my colleagues who work on that side of things. But No, really. Obviously, the Accelerator is a really fantastic resource as well.
[01:36:05.03] – Andi J
Must also say I’m part of the Ulster Bank Accelerator in Belfast. I’m a fan. There’s a lot of great support that comes out of there. Some great speakers come in and talk about whether it’s selling or scaling or various bits and bobs. So yeah, really only positive things to say about it. Yeah, so I’ll do the sales job for you.
[01:36:22.08] – Blessing M
Thank you, Andy. Is it because we’re recording?
[01:36:23.23] – Andi J
Is that why? Absolutely. Once you turn the camera off, I’ll tell you exactly what I think. That’s my real feeling. No, no, no, that’s not it. No, it generally has been really positive and really great. Meeting, but also that bit about meeting other people on their journey, different stages of their journey. So it’s not just what the NatWest Group and your staff do, which is very important. But meeting those people on that journey. There’s a couple of marketing companies, creatives, brand strategists, that thing. And we’re all at different points in our journey and different points in our career. So being able to… You know, did you ever had someone do that? I’ve got this invoice. It’s over due by three months. What What do I do about it? Being able to have those conversations with someone who’s walked that road before has really, really helped.
[01:37:05.21] – Blessing M
I totally agree. Definitely. And also it opens your eyes to new ideas as well. And with new ideas, because we don’t know what they are, we never know to ask the question about, How are you innovating on this? Or what are you doing with that? So I think for me, that’s another key thing about being part of the Accelerator community is that it’s a constant journey of learning and also being exposed to other industries as well, because there’s some things that can actually be taken, lifted and shifted from other industries that can be applicable to yours, and there’s some things that other people can learn from you as well. So I personally love that interaction factor, like you say, and just sharing information, sharing knowledge, and yeah, taking over the world.
[01:37:50.07] – Andi J
So there’s the story of it was at Stanford University. I’ve forgotten the name of the building. Is it Building 101 or something? I can’t remember. But it was a really It was a shitty building that nobody wanted to be in. So the mavericks and the weirdos got shoved out into this building and all started. But it leaked. There was a really bad cafeteria. There wasn’t one on every floor. There was another that just one. And what happened was people from different disciplines were putting different bits of it, but they all had to eat together. They all had to try and fix holes in the roof together. And all of a sudden, all these great innovations started coming out of it. I think it was Bowles, the high-end music earphone speakers and stuff, came out of somewhere One who was in the music part of it and someone in the physics part of it going, oh, hold on actually, we can solve this problem together. And it all spun out of it. And there’s loads of other different businesses have come out of their, the companies that I cannot remember now, but you would have heard of, that all came out of these interactions between a chemist and a sociologist or an audio expert and a physicist all going, oh, hold on a minute, that’s just physics.
[01:38:53.04] – Andi J
We can help with that. And you crash these ideas together. So that bit of different businesses in different sectors working together, I absolutely love.
[01:38:59.26] – Blessing M
Definitely. You remind me of them. I don’t know if you saw this YouTube video, but it was a group of engineers that were given the task of getting a basketball through a hoop without actually throwing it.
[01:39:10.20] – Andi J
Okay, now I’ve never seen this.
[01:39:11.28] – Blessing M
How they all came up with different contraptions that transported the ball to the net. I must find it for you because it’s really exactly what you’re saying.
[01:39:19.07] – Andi J
If you can dig it out, we’ll put it in the show notes because it sounds fantastic. So brilliant. I’m aware you have a flight to catch. So I want to go back to the beginning and where we started. You started by talking about, I think, about belonging and things like that. And as now you’ve been in the bank for a number of years and you travel all over the around the country with the bank and things, are you more comfortable in what belonging means to you now? Have you reconciled that with yourself, do you think?
[01:39:47.00] – Blessing M
I don’t think I’ll ever get to a stage where I feel like, okay, I’ve figured it all out now and I know the crowds that I feel like I’m belonging.
[01:39:55.29] – Andi J
You just have to be a man in the 40s to have it all worked out because we’ve got it all sorted.
[01:40:00.21] – Blessing M
My mum missed a trick there, didn’t she? But what I will say is where I draw a lot of comfort and a lot of my ability to keep a level head from is the fact that anything that’s going to happen in my future is going to require the future version of me. So I feel like anything that happens in my life now that makes me inherently question what I think I’ve built as the environments that I feel comfortable in, the people who I want to be around, I always stop and think and actually analyse it and think, Okay, am I comfortable with not fitting in with this group? If I’m not comfortable, what do I need to do to get there? If I am comfortable in fitting in with this group, what do I need to do more on? I think it’s not necessarily a case of always chasing those outside factors that contribute to my sense of belonging. It’s I’m always thinking about within my inner self, am I happy with where I am? And if I’m not, why is that? I really just do a lot of work of digging deep into what are my triggers or what’s making me feel that sense of belonging, because I’m never going to always be in the same place doing the same thing around the same people.
[01:41:20.07] – Blessing M
So I just think that the universe, and this is so mystic, Meg, but I really do think that the universe puts me in those situations for me to question, and it then becomes my duty to take on what I need to take on, learn what I need to learn, throw away what I don’t need to throw away, because the me that is required to survive for the remainder of my life is not going to be the same version of me who I am today. So it’s more a case of building that sense of resilience of, you don’t need to internalise everything, but out of the things that you do internalise, what are you going to do with that? Don’t just stay stagnant and let it rattle you for no reason.
[01:41:57.12] – Andi J
So I think I I’m not often lost for words, but it’s struggling to put these things together. The way you describe that, it feels a little bit like a journey I went on, but I only went on it after being through some pretty horrific grief, where I think I spent a lot of time pre that, not worrying too much what other people think about me. I mean, there certainly was a lot of that when I was younger, but just trying to be in all the places all the time and trying to make myself I fit in all of those places all of the time. And it was exhausting. I think what happened coming through that grief process is realising the situations I wanted to spend more time in and being very comfortable being in other spaces, even if that meant… Even if I didn’t fit in those spaces. And it feels really tight to jump from grief into work. But I consult, and I’m in a different place quite often. I think if I’d have been doing this 10, 15 years ago, I would have been in each of those places trying to make those people like me.
[01:42:59.29] – Andi J
And now I’m just in those places talking to those people about their business. And sometimes you fit and sometimes you don’t. Some clients I’m really good friends with, some clients we’re very professional with. And it doesn’t matter. They bring me in for my skill, not for being a great lad. So it was an interesting journey to go on. And do I wish it had gone on earlier? If you’d have asked me 10 years ago, I’d have said yes. But now no, because it’s just part of that journey that I’m going on.
[01:43:23.21] – Blessing M
Definitely. Everything has its time as well, because I do think that sometimes, and this This is just from my personal experience, so I suppose it’s not applicable to everyone. But sometimes I feel like we’re not ready to receive some of the information that is sent our way. Actually, for me, I’m sure that… Well, actually, I know there’s times that I could have responded to things better or done things in a different way. But I’m also like, if I had been that person, say 5, 10 years ago, then I wouldn’t have evolved from it as much as I would have if I have that same information now because I’m a bit more grounded in where I am. But if I had taken on that information before I got to this point of being able to just regulate how I respond to things, then it wouldn’t have been the same. So I think I totally agree with you in the sense that the journey is the journey, and we just need to be aware of what it’s trying to tell us and what it’s trying to teach us.
[01:44:19.20] – Andi J
Now, it feels like a very awful, difficult, hard turn. Like I’ve yank the handbrake on and I’m spinning the wheel going off in the other direction to go from that discussion to say, Blessing, tell us about a book or a podcast you’d recommend to everybody else before we wrap up this interview because you need to go. So, yeah, like the hand brakes on, the smoke’s coming out of the back tyres, and we’re going off in the opposite direction. I need to lie down after that.
[01:44:42.25] – Blessing M
I know.
[01:44:43.08] – Andi J
So I’d be a really shit therapist, wouldn’t I? That’s interesting that you’re telling me about your trauma. Now, did you see the paper this morning?
[01:44:51.14] – Blessing M
No, but it’s all connected, though. So I think, yeah. And it’s nice to be able to say some of these things out loud, because it’s not often we do get the chance to you. So thank you for just going in all the directions that you have gone in because it’s been very enjoyable. But okay, if I was to recommend, I’ll go with a book. And the book that I’d like to recommend, which I have found really helpful is The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. The reason why is because it has taught me a lot to do with being able to be okay with the fact that I can’t change everything. And it’s taught me a lot about getting to what I believe is the closest possible version of myself who is true to themselves and is authentic. I still think, yeah, I’ve got lots to do as a journey, but I just think that book just put so much into perspective and put so much clarity around things. And it’s applicable to work life, to personal life, everything else.
[01:45:56.09] – Andi J
Probably the book I’ve lied most about. I’ve never actually read it, but I’ve told so many people I have read it. It’s a good book. Partly because, to go back to wanting to be popular, wanting to fit into spaces, it never felt like a book that I cared about reading. I do now, I want to read it, but it never felt like a book I had the slightest bit I have interest in reading. But lots of people who are respected kept saying, You should read this. But I was like, Oh, no, I’ve already read it. And I just used to lie about it.
[01:46:22.11] – Blessing M
So has no one ever asked you what your favourite- I did.
[01:46:25.22] – Andi J
I googled it once and found what the seven things were, and then just, I can’t even remember. I should have done that then.
[01:46:30.29] – Blessing M
Oh, gosh.
[01:46:32.03] – Andi J
That’s just the asshole I was back then. So I will read it. I’ll make that promise to you now. I’ll read it. Listen, thank you very much. Blessing, Mutamba. Thank you very much for your time today.
[01:46:41.12] – Blessing M
Thank you so much for having me.