My 9-year-old asked me if I have a million pounds in the bank.

Hello,

A few weeks ago, my daughter asked me if I had a million pounds in the bank. She'd seen the houses near where we live, worked out they cost more than a million, and figured you need that much sitting in your account to buy one.

I could have said "don't worry about that" and moved on. Instead, I explained what a mortgage is. How you borrow from a bank. How interest works. She's nine.

She was fascinated. Not politely interested. Genuinely fascinated. She asked follow-up questions I wasn't expecting. She was doing maths in her head, I didn't think she could do.

That night, after her book, she said, "can we talk about something again tomorrow?"

So we started doing this. Every evening before bed, I ask her one question: "What are you interested in today?" And we spend half an hour talking about whatever she says.

One night, she wanted to know about tribes. I told her about the Sentinelese, people on North Sentinel Island who've had no contact with the outside world for thousands of years. Her eyes went wide. She couldn't believe people could live so differently from us.

Another night, she wanted to know if it's better to have a business or a job. So we talked about salaries, taxes, and what happens to money before it reaches your bank account. She learned "gross" and "net" in the same evening, and I watched her face change when she realised how much disappears.

One night, we talked about North Korea. How some governments control everything. How children there grow up with completely different lives. She didn't just feel sad. She wanted to do something. She wanted to know how kids her age could help.

None of this is in any curriculum. None of it.

I love school. My daughter loves school. She needs it for friendships, structure, and a hundred things I can't give her at home. I'm not anti-school. But I do think we need to be honest about what it doesn't do.

The way most schools teach hasn't fundamentally changed in over a hundred years. The model was built for a different world, one where the goal was to produce reliable workers who could follow instructions, show up on time, and do the same task repeatedly. That made sense when most people left school and walked into a factory or an office that worked the same way for forty years. I don't say that as a criticism of teachers; most of them are brilliant and doing their best inside a system they didn't design. But the world our children are walking into looks nothing like the one that system was built for. The way we work has changed. The way we earn has changed. AI has changed what jobs even look like. And yet we're still sending our kids into classrooms that don't teach them how money works, how to think about risk, how to start something, how to speak in front of people, or how to have a conversation about the world that goes deeper than what's on the test.

That half hour before bed has taught my daughter more about real life than any homework sheet. And it's taught me that children are ready for these conversations way earlier than we think. We just don't have them because nobody told us we should.

Try it tonight. After the book, before the light goes off, ask your child: "What are you interested in today?" Don't steer it. Don't turn it into a lesson. Just listen and have a real conversation. You'll be surprised by what comes out.

This is why I built what I built.

Rise to Lead is my public speaking and leadership programme for children at The Patch in Twickenham. It teaches kids the confidence to stand up, speak up, and believe what they think matters.

Young Founders House launches April 16th - a business and money club for kids, where they learn how money works, how businesses work, and how to think like someone who builds things. 

Both part of my work at Configur Academy: https://configuracademy.com/

I built these because of those bedtime conversations. Because one night my daughter looked at me and said, "why don't they teach us this at school?" and I didn't have an answer. I still don't. But I stopped waiting for one.

A few weeks ago, I shared a short book about my weight loss and health journey, and the identity shift that made it possible.

Not the routines or the rules, but the internal changes that had to happen for me to stop cycling and start moving forward. I’m mentioning it here for anyone new, or anyone who wants to understand the deeper work behind sustainable change.

I’ve been writing these pieces in the quiet, between school runs, work, and late-night thinking, but I’ve started sharing more of the journey in real time too. The reflections, the systems, the messier parts of reinvention that never make it into the newsletter.

If you want to follow along, you’ll find me here:

LinkedIn
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Website: orgesameli.com

Come say hi. It’s less about followers, more about finding the others who are doing the invisible work too.

If something in this email made you pause, think, or feel seen, send it to a friend who’s been quietly trying to make a change, too.
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