While society extols “hustle culture” and valorizes perseverance, it too often overlooks the vital scaffolding that supports real success, namely, mentorship, access, and social capital. Even the most revered figures had help. Steve Jobs had Mike Markkula. Oprah Winfrey had Maya Angelou. Barack Obama had David Axelrod. Jeff Bezos began his venture with not just a grand vision but also a network of former Wall Street colleagues who believed in him and funded his dream. Success, in truth, is seldom a solo act.
There is something inherently captivating about the underdog narrative; the solitary visionary who, by sheer tenacity and indomitable will, defies the odds to achieve greatness. Modern society romanticizes these tales, and our collective imagination is saturated with them. From Silicon Valley tycoons to fashion icons and political leaders, we have constructed a cultural mythology around the so-called “self-made” individual. Yet, upon closer examination, the veneer of total self-sufficiency fades.
Behind every success lies a constellation of enablers—mentors, patrons, advisors, even kind strangers, without whom that ascent might never have occurred. The “self-made man,” as popularly conceived, is far more fiction than fact.
I remember starting out with nothing but a dream and an all-consuming passion for fashion; bespoke tailoring, avant-garde aesthetics and the enchanting artistry of the runway. My aspiration was to craft a brand that could stand shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren, and Tom Ford. But more than mere creativity, I yearned to understand the industry holistically, from production to merchandising, branding to distribution.
I immersed myself in every resource available, devouring books, watching documentaries, and scouring articles. I even undertook a six-month merchandising course to better grasp the commercial backbone of fashion.
And we launched with what was within reach: merchandising. A modest online store, built on determination and grit.
To our great excitement, Amazon took notice and offered us a storefront. That endorsement felt like validation. With renewed zeal, my wife and I committed ourselves fully, sourcing products, traveling to Los Angeles and New York for Market Weeks, seeking manufacturers, partners, and a toehold in the hyper-competitive world of fashion.
But soon enough, the enthusiasm was met with stark realities. Our supply chain faltered. We struggled to procure high-quality materials at competitive prices. Trusted partnerships were elusive. The operational inefficiencies became glaring. Every step took longer, cost more, and returned less. The lesson became painfully clear: passion and hard work, while essential, are not sufficient. What we lacked, and sorely needed was mentorship. Someone to demystify the path, to point out pitfalls, to share hard-earned insights, and to open doors we didn’t even know existed.
We searched actively. We asked around. We were even prepared to pay for the privilege of another’s experience. But our search yielded little. The fashion world, like many elite industries, is often cloistered, guarded by unwritten rules and invisible networks. After nearly three grueling years, depleted and disillusioned, we made the heart-wrenching decision to let the dream go. We were not defeated by a lack of ambition or resilience. We were undone by a lack of guidance.
While society extols “hustle culture” and valorizes perseverance, it too often overlooks the vital scaffolding that supports real success, namely, mentorship, access, and social capital. Even the most revered figures had help. Steve Jobs had Mike Markkula. Oprah Winfrey had Maya Angelou. Barack Obama had David Axelrod. Jeff Bezos began his venture with not just a grand vision but also a network of former Wall Street colleagues who believed in him and funded his dream. Success, in truth, is seldom a solo act.
This reflection was sparked, in part, by an article I recently encountered detailing the origins of modern atomic theory, a story of intellectual lineage and structured mentorship. J.J. Thomson, the man who discovered the electron, mentored Ernest Rutherford, who identified the nucleus and the proton. Rutherford, in turn, mentored James Chadwick, who discovered the neutron. These were not disjointed bursts of brilliance but a continuum of shared knowledge. Their collective achievements propelled the world into the atomic age. One is left to wonder: had each of them pursued their work in isolation, unguided and unsupported, would these monumental breakthroughs have occurred at all?
Mentorship is not a luxury, it is the invisible architecture underpinning all sustainable success. It is the bridge between raw potential and realized excellence, the difference between floundering and flourishing. Without it, even the most gifted minds squander time, energy, and opportunities learning by painful trial and error. They do not burn out from laziness; they burn out from having to reinvent what others could have easily shown them.
Nowhere is this deficit more pronounced or more consequential than across the continent of Africa and its vast diaspora. We are home to some of the world’s most imaginative, determined, and visionary young minds. Yet, tragically, far too many are immobilized at the starting line, not because they lack insight or ideas, but because they lack mentors to help them transform vision into value. The continent brims with latent brilliance, yet suffers from a mentorship vacuum. And the cost is incalculable.
This vacuum manifests in our institutions, where leadership succession is a haphazard affair. It is evident in enterprises that collapse the moment their founders exit. It shows in young professionals, disillusioned and directionless, unable to navigate the unspoken rules of success. It is glaring in our politics, where influence is often bequeathed through allegiance, affluence, or ancestry, not intellectual grooming.
It wasn’t always like that. Traditionally, African societies revered intergenerational guidance. Elders mentored through proverbs, stories, and apprenticeship. Knowledge flowed from old to young, ensuring cultural and professional continuity. But modernity, urbanization, and a relentless pursuit of personal survival have eroded those bonds. We have failed to modernize our age-old systems of mentorship, and in doing so, we have left a generation to drift.
What if someone had taken us by the hand in those early days, shared insider knowledge, or simply said, “Here’s how we did it, here’s how you might do it better”? How different our trajectory might have been. Perhaps we would have found our footing in the fashion world, not with bitter regret but with proud contribution. Instead, we are left with the ache of untapped potential.
To those who have attained success in their respective fields, this is your moral summons. Be the guide you once sought. Offer your experience as a compass for those still navigating their path. Your impact is not measured solely by what you build, but by whom you help rise.
And to those still striving, remember: seeking mentorship is not weakness, it is wisdom. Learn from others. Ask the hard questions. Avoid the pitfalls that don’t need to be repeated. There is no virtue in suffering unnecessarily when community could lift you faster and farther.
We must understand that unshared knowledge is wasted knowledge, and an unmentored generation is one vulnerable to manipulation, stagnation, and despair. If we are to break the shackles of underdevelopment, we must elevate mentorship from afterthought to imperative. Institutions must embed it. Governments must incentivize it. Individuals must normalize it.
No society can thrive without a mechanism for passing the torch. Behind every great policy, invention, and reform is someone who was once taught. These are not serendipitous successes, they are the harvest of mentorship.
Africa’s challenge is not a dearth of talent, but a failure to cultivate it. Our tragedy is not the lack of ideas, but the absence of those who will guide these ideas into form and force. Until we prioritize mentorship, we will continue to hemorrhage potential, squandering the very people who could build the future we so desperately desire.
Let us, then, dismantle the myth of the self-made man, not to devalue individual effort, but to tell the whole truth. Every success story is a collective effort. Every great life is, in some measure, a shared project. And in every triumph, there is an unsung mentor who made it possible.
The next time you behold someone rising, breaking barriers, building boldly remember: they are likely standing on shoulders. And the only way we rise as a people is if we offer our own shoulders for others to stand on too.
“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
— Isaac Newton
Osmund Agbo is a medical doctor and author. His works include, Black Grit, White Knuckles: The Philosophy of Black Renaissance and a fiction work titled The Velvet Court: Courtesan Chronicles. His latest works, Pray, Let the Shaman Die and Ma’am, I Do Not Come to You for Love, have just been released.
