What’s the best advice you’d give to someone younger than you?

What’s the Best Advice You’d Give to Someone Younger Than You?
People ask me this sometimes — in DMs, after a mentorship session, once even from a nervous 200-level student who cornered me outside the lecture theatre like I was about to disappear. And I used to reach for something quotable. Something that would sound good on a wall. But the longer I sit with the question, the more I realize the honest answer isn’t one line. It’s a handful of things I wish someone had said to me plainly, before I had to learn them the expensive way.
So here they are. Not polished proverbs. Just the truth, as I’ve lived it so far.
Stop waiting for the “right season” to start.
I used to think medicine, business, writing, mentorship — that these things needed to happen in order, or in isolation, like life was handing out one lane at a time. It isn’t. I started King David Properties while carrying the weight of MBBS coursework. I started writing a novel while running a foundation. There will never be a perfectly clear runway. If you wait for one, you’ll wait forever. Start where you are, with what you have, alongside everything else you’re already doing.
Your reputation is built in rooms you’re not in.
Nobody tells you this early enough. Somewhere, a client is describing how you handled a deal. A classmate is describing whether you actually helped or just showed up for credit. A mentee is describing whether you followed through. That’s the version of you that spreads — not the one you present, the one you leave behind in other people’s mouths. Guard it like it’s the only currency that matters, because eventually, it is.
Verify everything. Trust, but check.
This one comes straight from real estate. I’ve seen what happens when people skip the verification step because a deal “feels right” or a person “seems trustworthy.” Feelings aren’t documentation. Whatever field you’re in — relationships, business, opportunities that sound too good — build the habit of checking before you commit. It will save you more than time. It will save you from people.
Discipline is a quieter love language than passion.
Everybody talks about finding your passion. Fewer people talk about what happens after you find it — the mornings you don’t feel like showing up, the patient you have to keep studying for, the manuscript chapter you have to rewrite for the fourth time. Passion gets you started. Discipline is what actually carries you across the years. If you only have one, let it be discipline. Passion returns on its own once discipline has made room for it.
Let your faith be a foundation, not a decoration.
I don’t say this to preach — I say it because I’ve watched what happens to people who treat faith like an accessory they put on for Sunday and take off for Monday’s decisions. The younger you are, the more tempting it is to compartmentalize. Don’t. Let it actually inform how you treat people, how you run your business, how you show up when nobody’s grading you.
You are allowed to be many things at once.
Medic. Entrepreneur. Mentor. Writer. Nobody warned me that becoming “many things” would feel like betrayal to each individual thing — like the hours I give to one are hours stolen from another. That guilt is a lie. You are not obligated to shrink yourself into one identity to be taken seriously. The world needs people who refuse to choose.
If I had to compress all of it into one sentence for that nervous 200-level student outside the lecture theatre, it would be this: build something real, guard your name, and don’t wait for permission to start.
Everything else is detail.