Yes, I’m going to talk about Patrick Schwarzenegger.
People love to hate on nepo babies these days. If you’ve missed the memo, “nepo babies” are the children of celebrities, politicians, and other influential folks who get opportunities, acting roles, jobs, media coverage, largely thanks to their family name or connections.
The backlash has been swift, especially when these nepo babies try to defend themselves. The usual line goes something like, “Sure, I got my foot in the door, but I still work hard. Nothing’s been handed to me.” That’s the part that really rubs people the wrong way, because the open door, the audition, the meeting, the platform, the trust fund, that’s the part most people never get.
Now, to be clear: I’m not here to defend nepo babies.
But I also think we need to take a wider-angle look at merit itself. Because merit is… slippery.
As my friend Siobhan Aspinall puts it, I’m about to trauma dump a bit. My father’s side of the family was well-off, but when he left us, my sister and I stayed with our mother, who came from very different circumstances. Her family were refugees from Silesia during the Second World War. We did well enough; there was stability, but not abundance. My father supported us as minimally as the law allowed (it was the ’80s, different times, different rules), and eventually he remarried. My half-sister, raised with more comfort and security, eventually inherited the family business. If you ask her, she’ll tell you, without hesitation, that she earned everything on her own. All merit. As for me, I built Gerard Search from the ground up, not with inherited wealth or a financial cushion, but through persistence, long hours, plenty of mistakes, and the kind of learning that comes only from doing the work. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was mine.
But even I don’t get to claim I did it all on my own.
That’s the trap we fall into when we talk about “merit.” We imagine it as this pure, self-contained formula: effort leads straight to success. But life is rarely that simple. Yes, I worked full-time while going to school, but my parents helped with tuition. My mom always supported me, and it was my stepfather who made coming to Canada possible for me. That support matters. So do the mentors who saw potential in me, the friends who took a chance, and the early clients who said yes before I had much to show. All of it matters.
Hard work is real. It counts. But so do open doors. And most of us, whether we want to admit it or not, have had at least a few cracked open for us, even if they didn’t swing wide.
And yes, there are people who never got the open door. Never had help with school. Never had a mentor, a professional connection, or even a sense of stability to stand on. That’s real, too, and we need to say it out loud. Those stories matter, and they’re often invisible in the glossy narratives of success.
So here's the turn: instead of denying the role of privilege or pretending merit floats in a vacuum, what if we acknowledged that relationships matter, and then worked to build and share them?
If you weren’t born with connections, it’s harder, but not impossible, to build them. Start by showing up in your community. Support others without expecting anything back. Reach out, even when it’s awkward. Relationships take time, but they grow. And when you're in a position to help, do.
And if you do have a network, think about who you could hold the door open for. One person who’s been a powerful example of that for me is Paul Nazareth. I’ve known Paul since 2008, and he’s the embodiment of generosity in action, always connecting people, sharing opportunities, and making time for others. I’ve heard him say more than once, including to me directly: “Tell me how I can help you.” And he means it. That spirit of making your network matter for more than just yourself is exactly the kind of leadership we need more of.
We don’t have to keep pretending we did it all alone. That myth doesn’t help anyone, and frankly, it’s not even true.