I was born in July 1975 at Frimley Park Hospital in Surrey and grew up in the neighbouring town of Farnborough, which is around 30 miles (about 48 km) south west of central London.

After a life that took me around the world, including spending time living in China and New York City, I have ended up living a few miles from where I was born.

My sister, Suet Lee, who is ten years older than me, was born in 1965. At this time, my parents lived in a tiny one-room studio flat in Bayswater. They were given the opportunity to move to a two-bedroom council house in Farnborough as part of the GLC's efforts to relocate people from overcrowded central London to the growing surrounding suburbs. So I spent the first ten years of my life in a terrace house on a council estate that my parents eventually bought. They managed to save up and buy it for a few thousand pounds when tenants' opportunities to buy their council homes became more popular and widespread in the 1970s, a trend mostly driven by Sir Horace Cutler (Conservative leader of the GLC from 1977–1981) and then heavily pushed by Margaret Thatcher's first Secretary of State for the Environment, Michael Heseltine.

I did well at primary school. I was an all-rounder at a time when school kids tended to fall into one of two camps: you were sporty and popular or you were academic and nerdy. I benefitted from the popularity that comes with being good at sports, as well as pleasing my parents and teachers by doing well academically. I was made aware of this when one of the very popular boys came up to me and said, “I wish I was more like you because you're popular and good at sports but also academic.” Maybe this played a factor in helping me avoid the bullying some of my less sporty/popular friends received. Being the only Chinese boy in the school, I was definitely targeted once or twice – particularly at home – with insults coming from other kids on the estate; but I defended myself vehemently and so it always died down.

A huge life lesson I was fortunate enough to learn early on was: you always stand up to bullies, no matter how scared you might feel.

Back then, a lot of racial abuse and ridicule was tolerated. People would openly say they were going for a “chinky” when they meant they were getting Chinese food. When people called me a “chink” I just firmly asked them not to. I never tolerated it. Unfortunately, I did see some of the popular boys I was friendly with bully others, but I never got involved. I stayed on the fringes of that group; I managed to be their friends without getting involved in everything they did.

My sister had experienced bullying, too, but had managed to grow a thick skin and defend herself. As the only Chinese family on the estate, we wore our Chinese heritage with pride, not fear or shame. Even when one of the older boys on our estate called me rude names, and chucked bricks and mud at our garden gate, I didn't take it – I chased him down with the help of other, non-Chinese friends, and we fought him off with big sticks!

I am sure that my ability to stand up to the bullies came from the security I felt within my family. My parents taught me self-respect, and my sister was a hugely positive influence on me. Being ten years older, when our parents were working long hours, my sister helped out a lot with getting me ready for school, teaching me how to dress and helping me with my homework. She taught me plenty of life skills, even “how to be cool”! She was, and has always been, a very principled and self-respecting person and if any one person was my mentor growing up, it was probably her. We are still close and speak most days.

I was still a teenager when my sister moved to Singapore. She was around 25 years old and had bought a round-the-world ticket. She had been intending to travel around the world, but during her very first stop in Singapore, she met the man who would become her future husband and decided to stay there. Knowing how much I would miss her, she cashed in her ticket and bought me a return ticket to go and visit her. I'd only been to Malaysia a couple of times, once when I was 6 and then again when I was 13, so I was very excited. Since then, I've visited my sister and her family on average once year. She has two boys who are now both at universities in the UK. It's great to see more of them now. Suet Lee has always been very wise about life. Even when I was setting up my business I would go to her for advice. She's not a businessperson – although she's actually a qualified accountant with two MAs and is now an award-winning local playwright doing a PhD in creative writing – but I've always valued her good judgement.

I was very supported at school. One of my teachers really helped me believe in myself. I particularly excelled in sports and ended up captain of almost every sports team in the school, including football, cricket, basketball and athletics. I believe this helped me develop the leadership qualities I built on later in life. I am sure it also helped that, even though we moved house when I was 10, I was allowed to go to the same secondary school as my friends instead of the one closest to us – the type of choice that is not always available to people these days. It really helped with my sense of confidence and security to start secondary school with people I knew.

In order to afford the big mortgage on our new house, Mum and Dad both worked two jobs. During the day, Dad worked as a computer operator at AA (the car breakdown service). In the evenings, he did domestic work. Mum had a position as an accounts clerk at a Swiss engineering company and worked in the evenings as a factory worker packing perfumes. For at least ten years, from the late 1980s until the late 1990s, they both worked 9 am to 5 pm and then 6 pm to 10 pm, Monday to Friday. I will never forget my mum cycling home from her day job, in the summer months, via the park where I played cricket. She would never have time to come over and watch, but she would always wave, and I was always aware that she was dashing home for an hour before going off to her evening job, cramming into that hour eating her own dinner and making a meal for us when we got in later. The reality of that always struck me.

Their motivation was to give my sister and me a better life, to give us the best opportunities they could. We never wanted for anything. If I needed the best Michael Jordan trainers for basketball (which I was really into), I got them. We weren't spoilt, and we were expected to be grateful and hardworking ourselves, but we were given the tools we needed to do our best. For that, my sister and I are eternally grateful to our parents.

I don't think it was the material things that our parents gave us that most inspired my sister and me, it was watching them work that hard and yet still maintain a happy relationship and a good circle of friends. That set an example that we never lost sight of. In fact, it inspired one of my first true goals in life: to earn enough money to allow my parents to retire and move back to their native Malaysia. I wanted to make them proud of me, but I also wanted to ensure that they got a return on their investment.

I had a Saturday job at the local ASDA while I was studying for my A levels (which were Accountancy, Economics and Computing) at Farnborough Sixth Form College. I was one of the lads collecting supermarket trolleys from the car park and stacking them up in the trolley parks for new customers. (Later in the book, I will share the details of an incident during this time that gave me a great lesson in life.) What I didn't know until many years later was that my mother used to come and watch me work, feeling sad that I had to work at 16; not that I was doing it because we were desperate for money – it was my own choice to earn some extra cash so that Mum and Dad were not so stretched – but she still wished they could earn enough so that I didn't have to work. When I found this out, I reassured her that the ASDA job gave me some great life lessons, including the value of hard work and the feeling of satisfaction you get when you get paid. Indeed, it wouldn't have mattered how much they earned, I wanted to earn my own money as soon as I could. I've always had that independent and self-sufficient streak.

I got into Kingston University to read a BA (Hons) in Accounting and Finance and led a typical student life, full of parties. I will never forget the frantic scrambling to get work assignments in on time after a night out having too much fun.

During my university years, I had several part-time jobs but two in particular really changed my life. One summer, I applied to work at Chessington World of Adventures, one of the UK's oldest and most popular theme parks. It was one of the toughest interviews I'd ever had because it was filmed so that they could see if we were outgoing enough to be public facing. Of course, this was at a time well before smart phones, so we were completely inexperienced at being in front of the camera and it was rather nerve-wracking. I got through it somehow and must have done okay because I ended up being one of the first people to work on the new “Rameses Revenge” ride (still one of their most popular rides to this day). But the reason the job was life-changing was because I met my future business partner, Tanveer.

There was also the summer job working at Stella Artois Tennis Tournament. We were paid partly in cash and partly in beer; we were allotted four pints a night… (It was a different time!) This job was particularly exciting because I ended up in the communal showers standing next to a naked Boris Becker… (Filed under “stories to tell the grandchildren!”)

The job that really changed the course of my life was all thanks to my sister. Her husband's best man worked for UBS. He made a few calls and managed to get me an unpaid internship. It was for eight weeks during the summer before my final year at university. I worked my socks – or rather my three-piece suit – off. I wasn't paid a penny. In fact, this job cost me money because I had to spend about £80 a week travelling up to London. But I absolutely loved every minute of it. I saw it as an investment and knew I was very, very lucky to be getting the experience. I worked as an “Emerging Markets Settlements Clerk” in the back office. It was essentially just an admin role, but I got to see and hear so much that went on; I tried to soak up as much as I could, which definitely helped me get a job there after I graduated. I was so excited when I was accepted into the graduate programme.

Kingston University was a good university but it wasn't Oxford or Cambridge – and that's where most people who got into those kinds of graduate programmes came from. Without having done that internship, during which I was able to prove myself and learn the ropes, there's no way I would have been accepted into the graduate programme at UBS.

While I was waiting to hear about the UBS position, I made many other applications during that summer of 1996, just after graduating. I was dearly hoping to get the position at UBS but nothing was certain and I had to have a back-up plan. I probably applied for at least 50 accountancy firms and banks, and even got quite far down the road with an international graduate programme at HSBC. However, as soon as I got the UBS offer, I jumped at the chance. It was a very prestigious position.

I was overjoyed when I got my first pay packet. I still lived at home, so my overheads were pretty low, and this meant I was able to send about £100 to my grandmother (my dad's mum) in Malaysia. This was a huge amount for her as she lived on a very modest income. I sent her money out of my pay packet for the next six months until she died in February 1997. It gave me great joy to know that I'd helped her have a little more luxury and comfort in the final months of her life.

My position at UBS was in the back office and, while I was there, I studied for my professional accountancy qualification from CIMA (the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants). UBS paid for this expensive course, which most companies did as part of their graduate programme. I felt extremely fortunate because I knew I was getting a qualification that I would have, and benefit from, for life.

After I qualified as a chartered accountant in 1999, I was offered a job by another investment bank, Deutsche Bank, which I accepted.

My job at Deutsche Bank was a good step up from my position at UBS, as it was in what is known as the “middle office.” I was employed as a Business Analyst, studying various companies as investment prospects, but I also ran a number of projects. I was in charge of ensuring the business team's IT needs were taken care of, firstly as the EU transitioned to the euro though the ERM in 1999, and secondly in the run up to Y2K (when everyone was paranoid that all computer systems would crash on 1 January 2000!). I had to ensure that our disaster recovery system was in place as computers were transitioning to different hard drives. These were huge projects and I learnt a lot about how to manage people as I liaised between the IT team and the business team.

Finally, in 2000, Goldman Sachs offered me the opportunity to work in fixed income sales in the “front office” (the place where you want to be in the investment banking world), which I obviously jumped at. By the summer of 2001, I had been made a Vice-President. (For clarification, in this world, a “Vice-President” is a level just below a Managing Director; a company like Goldman Sachs has many people at these levels, not just one of each, but it was still a huge achievement at my age.) Having qualified as a chartered accountant at 23, there I was, by the age of 26, a VP at Goldman Sachs; one of the youngest VPs they had ever had. I was on cloud nine, regularly jetting around the world to meetings in places like Frankfurt, Paris, Milan and New York. I had my first taste of the high life, flying in business class. And I was earning a six-figure salary: more money than I'd ever imagined possible. I'm sure I've never even paid myself as much as I was earning in those days, especially when you consider the bonuses we were getting, too.

And then came the moment that really shook the whole world up and certainly completely changed my life.

On 11 September 2001, I had literally just arrived back from New York. I'd stepped off a plane two days earlier having been there for three months on a prestigious associate training programme. I'd returned because my boss suddenly needed me back in the London office.

When you come so close to being at the heart of a major disaster, it really puts life in perspective. Many of my friends and colleagues were still there and though fortunately none of them lost their lives, any of us could have. The thought of whether, had my life been cut short, I would have died satisfied with what I'd achieved really gnawed at me. I realized I wanted more out of life than being a successful investment banker; I wanted to explore the world, and in particular connect with my Chinese heritage. I'd worked so hard in my career, and had even built up a small property portfolio by then because I'd invested my bonuses in property, but I wanted more enriching experiences.

I'd built up quite a large group of Chinese friends in London by that time. We used to go out en masse and always had a great time, holding massive boat parties for up to 200 people, and packing out the bars and nightclubs we frequented. We were a mixed group of young men and women, and we came from a range of backgrounds. Some were British born, some were born overseas, but we all had a Chinese background; our families came from Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong or China. It had got me more interested in Chinese language and culture.

I banked my latest bonus cheque, gave in my notice, and made a plan.

I decided I would go and visit my parents, who had recently retired and were living in Malaysia, and then go and see my sister and her family in Singapore. Then I would head to China where I would spend six months learning Chinese. After that I planned to go travelling around Australia and New Zealand. Eventually I thought I'd probably settle in Singapore to be close to my sister. I knew that, with all my experience in the banking world in London, I'd easily get a job there.

When I told Chris, one of my closest friends in the Chinese circle, about my plans, he said he wanted to quit his job and come with me. We made our travel arrangements and were all set to leave, having had at least three – maybe even four – leaving parties, when Chris suddenly announced that his younger sister, Samantha, wanted to come with us. I had met her a few times and was happy for her to come along. And I soon discovered that fate works in mysterious ways because once we got to China, Samantha and I got along really well and enjoyed each other's company so much we became great friends, which led to us becoming more than friends. And we've been together ever since!

After doing our Chinese language course in China, we continued on to Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Los Angeles, before flying back to London where Samantha needed to help her dad with his business. We arrived back in the summer of 2002. Originally, I had planned on going back out to China to do another semester, but Samantha needed to stay in London and it wasn't too difficult a choice for me to decide to stay with her.

For the next four years, I turned my attention to investing in property and went at that quite aggressively, eventually acquiring quite an extensive portfolio. During this time, Samantha and I got married; we welcomed our firstborn son, Brandon, into the world in December 2004.

Things were looking good.

However, being a professional landlord, and thus living an almost semi-retired life, was not challenging enough for me. I missed the buzz of working in a large team. I wanted to build something. I knew property, and I was good at sourcing the right mortgages, so it was a natural progression for me to start a mortgage company to help other landlords.

I started my company, The Buy To Let Business, in 2006. Thirteen years later, having grown my company to almost 200 staff members (as of the middle of 2019) and with 12,500 square feet of office space, we are a leading UK mortgage broker doing about £2.8 billion of annual business with a £12 million turnover. And now here I am writing a book about my life! Obviously it hasn't all been smooth sailing, there have been huge ups and downs that I will share with you throughout the course of the book; but I feel secure enough to say, with confidence, that I am a highly successful businessman with valuable knowledge to share from my lessons in life and in business.

Family life has also been full of ups and downs. Samantha and I added two more boys to our lively family. Ryan was born in July 2007 (a happy addition at a very challenging time as the markets had just started to crash). Then our youngest boy, Hayden, was born in February 2012. Samantha and I had both wanted a fourth child and longed for a girl. In May 2019, we got two for the price of one when our beautiful twin girls, Arabella and Lydia, were born. Our children fill our lives with immeasurable joy.

But I was also devastated in November 2018 to lose my amazing mother to a relatively short but aggressive illness. She was only 76 and had been so full of life. It was a terrible, terrible shock.

These are just the bare bones of my story; the overview of my life so far. I wanted to offer you a basic timeline because I will refer back to specific points on it in subsequent chapters as I describe specific occasions and incidents; the moments that have challenged me or inspired me – the experiences that form the basis of all I know.

But first, I want to go into a little more detail about the roles I have filled in my personal life. These are roles that most of us will have experienced. We all have parents, or people who raised us. Many of us have siblings, and will become significant partners to another person for long periods of time – and some of us will be parents, or will become parents at some point. The roles we play, I believe, have a significant impact on how we shape ourselves. These are the roles I am lucky enough to have enjoyed in my life so far; the roles that have moulded me and inspired me.

I guess “grandfather” may be a new one on the list one day… but hopefully not too soon!