In a room full of CEOs, business executives and creative practitioners on Tuesday evening (July 23) at the S Hotel, NCB Financial Group chairman Michael Lee-Chin outlined a framework for becoming wealthy and a business success.

Sharing anecdotes from his journey of building wealth as a Jamaican in Toronto, Canada, he started the presentation with one question: What is the one thing that if I can give, it will be of maximum benefit?”

This was a question the Jamaican-Canadian billionaire began asking himself at age 26 when he started selling mutual funds in 1977, then aged 26.

A graduate of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, with a Bachelor’s in engineering, Lee-Chin returned to Jamaica for two years and found work. After those two years, he went back to Canada to find a job as a civil engineer and sent out application letters and his résumé to over a hundred companies.

With no successful reply, he said he had three options: sell soaps, drive long-haul trucks, and sell mutual funds. Lee-Chin chose the last.

Being a salesman of mutual funds back then, the business magnate recalled, required hard work – cold calling and knocking on doors – since he knew nobody with money.

“But being an immigrant, you don’t feel entitled to anything. So you have to just work hard, be gracious, accept the rejections, and when someone says ‘Yes, you can come and see me’, just have gratitude,” Lee-Chin said,

Back then, he met with clients at 7:00 pm and 9:00 pm and presented to them the benefits of a mutual fund. He reiterated that before he began his presentation he asked himself: “Mike, what’s the highest value add you can give this family tonight?”

His answer: “Make them wealthy.”

This, Lee-Chin, said required being in Rhino mode – taking on the three characteristics of a rhinoceros. He developed a “thick skin”, kept his head down (focused) and kept moving forward.

Using this analogy was a perfect segue for Lee-Chin to share his second lesson, which he learnt in 1982 when taking his first son to kindergarten.

“When I got to school, I noticed that a majority of the dean’s honour students…were immigrant names. So I concluded that – this was back in 1982 [and] I was 31 – I concluded that immigrants build countries. That was my hypothesis from seeing the names in the principals.”

Pointing out that the United States has become a world superpower because of immigrants, Lee-Chin then shared the characteristics of immigrants.

“Immigrants have a fresh pair of eyes and ears,” he noted, explaining that they see things differently and their ears are attentive to learning.

The second characteristic, Lee-Chin outlined, is that they are problem solvers. Third, they connect dots and last, they align with people.

“So, I learnt a lesson as an immigrant that has served me well since then, since I became conscious.”

These characteristics of immigrants form part of Lee-Chin’s daily toolkit, which he uses in a disciplined way to grow.

Commenting on connecting dots, he pointed out that “the more disparate the dots, the more one has to think”, which sharpens one’s problem-solving skills.

More importantly, these assets later helped the entrepreneur transform a legacy financial institution in National Commercial Bank (NCB).

Following the acquisition of NCB in 2002, Lee-Chin set out to change the culture of the bank and turn around its fortunes. His first act was to change the mantra of the bank to “building a better Jamaica”.

While noting that the NCB was then seen as a failed institution that was bureaucratic, uncompetitive, had no sales culture, and where staff morale was low, the chairman said he introduced immigrants to “reset, recalibrate standards”.

Doing so, Lee-Chin revealed, set NCB on a trajectory to become the leading financial institution in Jamaica in the ensuing years.