The Power of Gap Analysis and Storytelling with Krish Patel

Tom: Hello and welcome to the Make Things Better podcast. Today I'm joined by Krish Patel. Welcome on the show Krish, how are you doing today?

Krish: I'm good, thank you. I'm really well in a wet winter's day in Manchester.

Tom: Yeah, good to have you here. It's always fun to record and

you've done quite a lot of podcast yourself as well, haven't you?

Krish: Yeah, so I run a podcast and we've been doing it for over two, three years now, 150 guests and yeah, it's been fun. So yeah, definitely run a podcast but a bunch of other things all around the power of stories.

Tom: Yeah, and I'm really looking forward to exploring that a bit more. It also takes the pressure off me a bit knowing that you've got a bit of experience doing the podcasting, so I'm sure I'll learn a few things from you as well.

Krish: I'm not used to being on this side though, so if I'm, how do I say it, if I start asking more questions and you're asking me then tell me off because I'm never the one giving the answers, I'm usually the one giving the questions.

Tom: Yeah, I'm the same whenever I've been on a podcast before. I'm like,

I just want to ask questions, I'm not used to this, but yeah, cool. So yeah,

do you want to start off by telling us a bit about yourself and kind of

your background, how you ended up getting into what you're doing now?

Krish: Yeah, it's a little bit of a long story but I'll tell you a little bit about who I am and how this journey kind of came about. So essentially I'm from Bolton, born and raised big up Bolton, so the land of the clouds, I always say blue sky doesn't exist in Bolton and football was everything. You know, my first memories on the surf were of me kicking a ball, I don't remember

anything else I wanted to play for the mighty Bolton Wanderers. And yeah, I was just told that it would never happen. I'm half English and half Indian. I've always felt English, I've always looked Indian, so I never fitted in. I didn't speak Gujarati, the language in our Indian dialects, and I didn't look white. So I was racially abused from as young as I can remember and all I wanted to be was a footballer. And people would be racist and then teachers would do the same and essentially not believe in my potential and at the age of 18 I became a professional football player, playing for Bury.

Now I always, even to this day, I still think of it as a failure because I didn't make it as a permanent pro. But I played in League Two, we got promoted to League One, and then I got released and headed over to the US to play for six years in America, which was amazing. But I cared about superficial things, mate. I cared about girls, parties, yeah, I cared about all these kind of things and when I headed over to the US, things completely changed and I started caring about people. And I can go into a little bit further on why that happened and things, but essentially 2016, 2017, I decided I was going to run four marathons in four days. I was going to build, I was going to raise enough money and I'd go to Africa and build a schoolhouse in Uganda. I was going to volunteer and ended up building a schoolhouse, raised over £10,000.

I'd never ran a marathon in my life and everyone was like,you're mad, never volunteered, never been to Africa. And I came back and I was like, you know what, helping people makes me feel amazing. It's the best feeling in the world, so what can I do next? And then I started supporting homeless people in Manchester and I saw there were so many homeless people here and that's when things got mad because I started getting abuse. How dare you help homeless people if they're not willing to help themselves, who do you think you are trying to help them and all this kind of stuff. And I was running a homeless outreach group in Manchester City Centre called Brew power for about four years and I decided to, you know what, I'm going to do something to show you that we can do something.

And I swam 53 miles all the lakes in the Lake District to help 36 homeless people into employment in Manchester City Centre and I was working a job I hated. I was working, the job wasn't terrible but I was working behind a computer desk all the day and it wasn't me, I love people. And I was, you know what, I want to help people in my full time and not just in my evenings and my weekends, how can I do that? And that's where Tales from Spire started. I basically came across a homeless person who said to me stories are the pages that make up this book we call life and that was it. We all have a story, how do we use those stories to encourage others?

And I shared a story of a friend Danny who was homeless, he'd got off the streets and I put it onto a blog, I called it Tales to Inspire, put some help lines at the bottom and I thought I'd put it out there and within a day a young lady was going to take her own life, read Danny's story and she went and got help. She messaged us saying she felt encouraged when I got help by one of the help lines. That's one day. I didn't even think I would read it, like or my mum would read it or whoever would read it and it already helped someone within a day and within three days it had been read in 15 countries around the world and I started to think maybe there's something to this storytelling and ever since we started the blog I quit my job, I'm quite a full-time entrepreneur, I didn't earn any money out of it for at least a year.

Then schools reached out. Can you deliver workshops and the corporate space reached out? Can you support us? And then we developed into a audio podcast and to a video podcast and basically it's just this this organisation, which is a not-for-profit organization that's designed to inspire change through the power of stories.

Yeah, and that led me to start my other company that I have a based on storytelling and yeah, it's just how do we inspire people through people-to-people connection and it's something that I never thought I just thought I'd always loved and if I think of stories I envision myself sitting with my grandparents just talking and me just being you know lost in the moment. Yeah, and that's exactly what it was for me is it brings back that you know.

Stories transcend time and it's they're just incredible. It's just creating the space for it.

Tom: What an amazing story and what changed when you were in America then because that sounded like quite a pivotal part in your sort of your journey?

Krish: Yeah, so the US was interesting. So the way it went is I just finished at Bury playing football over here and didn't know where to go and I was getting trials and conference football and in places and I was like, you know. I dropped out of school at 16. I'm gonna be a full-time footballer. It's like screw GCSEs, I don't need to do them again.

And I ended up getting an email saying do you want to come and play on a full-ride scholarship in California living in a mansion close to the beach.

Tom: Sounds good.

Krish: Like unbelievable. It's the dream and I was like, I don't even think I like I asked my Mum and Dad. I was like see ya. I'm off to to California.

But I ended up getting there and there was 55 people for a 23 person team.

I was living in a three-bedroom house with 13 other guys, we were two and a half hours away from the beach that we were promised and my scholarship was lied to and the place was just completely different to what I'd expected and we'd all been lied to and there was this one guy in our team called Gabi and he was always smiling and I just couldn't get my head around why this guy was always smiling, what's he got to be happy about? He's not even in the starting team. He's living in the basement. So it's worse than me and he hardly speaks any English. He's from Brazil and he always said "Never give up. Never give up." I was like bro. Get out of my face you're too happy like and then I got to the point where I didn't really want to talk to him and one day I said I'm going back to Bolton.

I’ve had enough of this over here in the US and he stopped sat me down and he said “if you keep running away from your obstacles, you'll never overcome anything in your life”

One, I'd always wanted the comfortable life. I'd always wanted the glory, but I hadn't wanted the struggles to come with that glory.

Tom: And that is that what you mean when you said earlier about the desires that you had when you were younger?

Krish: Yeah exactly that, I wanted the big house, the cars the superficial things. But I didn't want the hard work that came with that. I only saw the end goal and I didn't see the process and the other side of that which really changed my life is he didn't speak to Krish Patel the person in front of you today.

He spoke to the best version of me the one that I didn't even believe was there and he took me under his wing and he taught me how to see the potential in others and that changed my life because I went from valuing like the things that I valued to seeing potential in others and really starting to treasure the person in front of me and my environment changed.

I started then practicing Buddhism which completely changed me as I was the least religious person in the world started practicing Buddhism and then everything my environment started changing, people started coming up to me going I'm struggling my mental health or I'm feeling suicidal or I'm self-harming and now I'd be like, why are you coming to me? I'm the guy who cares about this superficial stuff like what are you doing coming to me and I realised because I changed, people started seeing the potential, I created a space for people to share and that's all people needed was a space to share and essentially, that's when everything started to change this. I'm supporting people in my immediate environment. How do I basically transcend that around the world, if I can message someone from around the world I can help someone all over the world.

You know the power of one is immense and that one person Gabi I will be forever grateful for. He saw the potential in me and completely changed my life.

Tom: What way did he see the potential in you? And how do you feel like that's led to you seeing them seeing the potential in others as well?

Krish: So the way that he did it. He did it really annoyingly actually he didn't give up. He didn't let go and he just, he believed that I could do whatever I wanted to do.

So he would say like go for it. If that's what you want for your life go for it and you can do it, but my values are very superficial. So when they came and it happened, say the girl or the money or the car, I realised that that wasn't happiness.

And then once that changed, my happiness started to change. So, all right, get the car. And he keeps saying, you know what, mate, you can do anything you want. You can get the girl if you want. That's not happiness. Until you change you, nothing's ever going to satisfy you.

And essentially it was this process of not saying, you know what, you need to change this. This is who you are. Just believing in you and believing in the potential and everything. It was a slow process that just took me on his wing. The power of belief is incredible. And if it's based off true respect and values, that was amazing.

So that was two years of sticking with Gabi and practicing Buddhism at that time as well. He introduced me to Buddhism and that completely transformed my life, into a philosophy where I had a foundation. I'd never had a foundation.

And a foundation is probably one of the most important things you can have for your life.

Because if someone said something negative to me back then, negative to me, I'd be like trees with shallow roots. And the wind would come and I'd have fallen over and I wouldn't know how to deal with it. When I got released from football, I was broken, mate. I had no idea what I could do with my life.

But now I was starting to put roots down to who I was. Nothing can take me down and let's go for it. So essentially, it was helping me build a foundation for my life so that whatever comes in the future, I can support myself and then support others.

And then in terms of supporting others, it was really simple. It was just creating space.

And it was essentially doing this, giving people the space to share and listening to them. The power of communication, I always was taught that it's talking. It's actually listening. 75% listening and 25% talking, even though I'm doing 100% of the talking today. But yeah, essentially that's what happened.

Tom: Yeah, so you've managed to create a space now for people to share their stories. And how has that been and has it changed you in any way? Or do you feel like because you did have that foundation ready, you've kind of been set from there on?

Krish: No, it's completely changed me. I will never, if I say, if I came to this podcast in a year's time and I said the exact same things that I'm saying today, tell me off because I do not want to be the same person in a year's time than I am today. I always want to be completely developing and changing and improving my life.

So it completely changed. I've had the honor of spending an hour minimum with 150 individuals for them to share their stories, their truths, their life lessons. Like, that is incredible. Like, I feel so, as my job, I feel that's like the most precious thing that I can have.

And those people have all shared moments of wisdom or truth or lived experience. None of it's academic. None of it's from a book. It's all things that they've lived, you know? And that power of lived experiences is remarkable. So having that space with those different individuals, it's kind of flickered light bulb moments for me. You know, it's ignited, created loads of sparks. I think, man, I could do this.

It's taken the ceiling of limit that I thought was on my life and said, actually, Krish, you can be whoever you want to be, whenever you want to be and however you want to be it.

Today, I could be a postman. Tomorrow, I could be a footballer. And the day after, I could be, really, you could be anything in your life and go in a million different directions, which are all great.

The key is that you know which one you want to go down and there's no failure, you know?

Fail forwards, essentially.

Tom: Yeah, amazing. And when you've been like talking to all of these different people, is there any stories that stand out in particular or do you feel like they all have the same sort of value to?

Krish: Depending on where I'm at in my life, the stories resonate completely, you know?

I'll always have, our very first story of Danny's will always be like the one because it was like the first story.

Tom: How did that come about again?

Krish: So Danny was homeless and Danny was on the streets and I actually didn't know him from our outreach. I was introduced to him through an amazing organisation called Invisible Cities, Invisible Manchester.

They're a social enterprise based here in Manchester. They give tour guides of the city through people who've lived experience of homelessness. So through their eyes, they're trained and supported and they're amazing. So that's how Danny, basically, I was introduced to Danny there and I interviewed Danny. It was supposed to be an hour interview. Three and a half hours later, I was still interviewing Danny.

Tom: No way.

Krish: And I was like, Danny, any chance, man?

So Danny was amazing. He shared his story and yeah, and that was the initial one that opened the doors, you know, to this is possible.

And, but man, I mean. Each time, at the moment, I've been listening to a lot of our stories of entrepreneurs. So, Joe Foster, who's the founder of Reebok, and Yves Keke of Bunley Baby, which is an incredible, incredible organisation that supports sustainability for baby clothes.

Hannah Cox of Better Business Network. There's loads of entrepreneurs that I could, like Lee Chambers, there's loads that I could just go through. Josh Connolly, who's an amazing individual, basically got through addiction and so much, and now he's basically changing people's lives across the world. And it's basically, wherever I'm at, I get the opportunity to tap into whoever I want to tap into, and have that hour's space.

And the other thing that's beautiful is it doesn't have to go through the podcast. I can just pop them a WhatsApp message. I consider them all as my friends. So, essentially, pop them a message, pop them an email, can I have 20 minutes of your time, or an hour of your time, or do you want to meet for a coffee or some food?

Today was with Pammy, one of our ambassadors, this morning, doing some filming. So, you know what I mean, I get to really connect with these people, wherever they may reside across the world. It's really special.

Tom: That's amazing, and I imagine it helps the guest as well, to be able to share their story. A lot of people nowadays don't have the opportunity to do that, especially people who are maybe homeless and a little bit neglected by the rest of society. To give somebody in that position to share their story can be really, really powerful. Do you think it helped Danny a lot?

Krish: Yeah, I think it did. Danny's an interesting character. There's a few ways to look at it. They're very sensitive topics, some of the topics that we talk about.

I will never force anyone to share their story. It's really ensuring that they know where their story's going, and how comfortable and where they're at in terms of their space.

But, for example, with Danny, it was just amazing. I didn't even have to ask him any questions.

It was just like Danny being Danny. If anyone knows Danny Collins, essentially, he just went for it, and it was amazing. But, through the power of other people's stories and the way that they share is I give a voice to people who may not necessarily be heard.

A platform that others may not listen to, may not even be interested in listening to, or not be aware. So, one of the things that we've raised awareness on, of refugees and gender equality, I can go through it, homelessness, disability awareness, inclusion, racism, whatever, financial hardships, anything, entrepreneurship, adventure, the list goes on.

But it's raising awareness of these, but through the power of lived experience. I would never know what half of these people would go through, unless I've lived it. Just telling you recently, I ruptured my Achilles, and I was basically one-legged for like three months. I never realised how hard it is to live with a disability, until that happened to me.

Now, I've interviewed hundreds, well, lots of individuals with disabilities, and they've all shared with me how difficult it is to live in a world that's not built for them.

So the question is, how do we provide a world that's built for people who may not be the norm?

And I think that's one of the big things is, I may not be normal the way I look, or the way I talk, or the things I've been through, whether that's whatever it is, but how do we give a voice to that and adapt the world for everyone, as opposed to the majority?

Tom: And I think it starts with listening. That's the first place to start, and that's why sharing stories, but as you say, the listening side of it is just so, so important.

It's something we do quite a lot at Hive, I would say, when we're talking to people. Let's say someone wants a website, and it's a bit of a plug really, but yeah, it is just all about listening to the users. At the end of the day, that's who the website's for, so it's, ok, well, what are the main pain points, and how can we understand them, and then work with them, because there's so many different considerations to make, there's so many different accessibility requirements that are needed, and so it's really, really useful to go and do user research and actually just go and talk to the users.

So this is kind of the website language of me coming out now, but moving back to you and your story. So I want to ask you a bit more about Uganda, and I think that's super interesting. So you went and built a school, is that right?

Krish: Yeah, so there was already a school built. Essentially, I was volunteering, I was coaching football, I was working with children with disabilities, with homeless children in an orphanage, and I was volunteering there, and there was a school in a small town called Garuga, and there was children not going to the school, so I kind of confronted the headmaster, I was like, he's called Peter.

Peter, why aren't these children coming to your school? And he's like, we don't have the space. You know, Uganda's really hot, and then it rains a lot, and they need a safe space. So they had the space on the school, but they didn't have the building or infrastructure. I was like, sustainable, something sustainable to support others.

That's what my aim was, we called it the Road to Uganda, the four marathons in four days. So that was it. So essentially, instead of building a school, there's a lot to building a school, and you hear about it all the time, oh, I built a school in Africa or whatever.

You've got to go and get the salaries, you've got to get the new jobs, you've got to get the infrastructure. This was a school that we added on another building that essentially everything was already there.

They had the teachers ready to teach. We just needed the building to be able to support the children. So that building went up and supports 150 children every single term. So that's since, what, 2017.

I was 24 at the time. So I was like, as much as it sounds amazing, I was doing this as well to learn about life. I was trying to uncover and reveal who I truly am. I still am today. I'll make so many mistakes, and it could have been a complete flop. I trusted a person who I'd known for two weeks with money. People said I was mad. What are you doing trusting a Ugandan person, they're going to run away with the money. But someone saw the potential in me.

Why can't I do the same for someone else? And that's exactly what happened, and it was amazing. So yeah, there's a lot of risks. But Uganda is, anyone who goes to Uganda, it's just amazing.

I mean, the vibe of the people and the spirit, it's just, it transcends, you know?

And yeah, my heart. I always say I've got three homes in, I've got one in England, I've got one in America. I've probably got two in America, actually. And then I've got Uganda.

Tom: How long were you living there for?

Krish: So I was only there, so the first, I was there for three weeks the first time. And then I was there for another two and a half weeks afterwards. Which, people think, how did you do what you did in two and a half weeks or three weeks and then two weeks? The question is, how do you squeeze as much out of life as possible?

So if I'm going to live 70 years, I'm going to live the equivalent of 200, I'm going to live in this year 10 lifetimes, or 10 years worth in this year, you know?

And how can I live so much in each year and each moment so that someone who lives a regular 70 years, I've, you know, I've tripled it. I've done 210 years worth of life in this.

And that's essentially what I did. I was, I went, I'd leave at seven in the morning, every day, and I wouldn't get back until 12, 12:30 at night, in a foreign country.

I'd never been to Uganda. And I was just out and about, man. I was on the, they call them border boarders, they're motorbikes. You jump on the back of one of them and you're off. And essentially, I was going to different places. Then I was out meeting new people.

I'd go to the bars. And I'd basically just immerse myself in the community and find out just how amazing it was. And basically, there's a really cool thing that I learned at uni in America.

It's called gap analysis. And it's how do you find the gap? If you can find a gap, there's a solution for that. The question is, where are the gaps? And all I do now is I'm looking for gaps.

I'm looking for gaps so I can find solutions. The issue that we have in this world is we see problems and we complain. Problems are the perfect opportunity for solutions.

And that's where maybe my, the way that I think of as an entrepreneur or whatever is, especially in the work that you do is, and Hive is, you're looking for gaps so that you can provide solutions for people and for organizations so that they can create even more impact. And that's my whole vision of how I work, which was flipped.

That was, whilst I was in that class and he was talking about gap analysis, I remember thinking, I'll never use this. But obviously, the seed was planted.

Tom: So instead of thinking of something as a problem, would you usually frame it as a gap instead?

Krish: Obstacles are our greatest opportunities. And it goes to the point where I'm now, and as hard as this sounds, I'm now seeking obstacles because I know the amount of growth that I will get from that obstacle, provide myself and others with so many learnings to then create bigger impact.

So that obstacle, do you remember when I said, oh, you can't keep running away from obstacles and essentially, I wanted a life with no obstacles?

I'm a completely different human. And that's why I know, when you speak to a person who's lived on the street, so you speak to someone and someone say, oh, they'll always be that way.

That's absolutely rubbish because I know my values completely changed. So if we give the opportunity for someone else to completely change, they can do. The issue is, if their trauma's difficult, it's going to take them a long time to break through. So it's having support there that's best.

And that's where the issue is in a lot of societal issues is that the support is not there.

We're very quick to judge, but how can we put a network of support there for people so that if they do fall off the off the wagon, that it's okay. Just get back on. Progress isn't linear. And I really struggle with this concept that one of our ambassadors and team members, Azeem, he came up with his that progress isn't linear, that essentially you start at point A, you want to get to point B, imagine January, it's perfect timing, but essentially I want to lose weight. I'm going to lose 15 kilograms. And then you have a weekend where you eat chocolate sweets and you go have a roast dinner and basically you fall off. You think you failed.

Actually that's just part of the process towards getting to point B. If you stop there, right, you have failed. But that is how the rollercoaster rides to improvement. And it's just remembering that progress isn't linear.

Tom: So yeah, just going back to gap analysis, would you say in finding those gaps in a way you're finding purpose and meaning in life because between the solution and the problem you have an opportunity to make a real impact on the world?

Krish: Yeah, exactly. So essentially that through finding the gaps, I've been able to uncover a person that I didn't know existed in myself, which is so strange to say that, you know, and this is the crazy thing, Tom, is if I don't know who I am 75% of the time, how the hell can someone else judge who I am? Because I don't know who I am. So it's the beautiful thing is that we're always uncovering our true self for that moment and then moving forward.

So whether if it's, and I'm talking about the self here, but it's exactly the same for an organisation. It's exactly the same for a community. It's exactly the same for bigger like huge organisations. You always have to reveal a new self because if you don't, you'll get left behind.

I mean, you can go into organisations such as Blockbuster or Netflix and compare the two and see what happened to one and what happened to the other, you know, and it's just, how do you see the gap and how do you reveal a new? And I think that's amazing.

Look at the way the world's going at the moment with technology and the way it is and AI and everything that you see, essentially we are finding gaps and we're providing solutions. If you're not willing to look at the world as one that's changing because it's changing. If you stay still, you're not improving. If you refuse to accept it's changing, you're not getting with it and you're going to, you're going to fall behind. Change is going to go, whether it's for the better or for the worst, it comes down to the person in the mirror.

Tom: What if the change around you is getting worse and you don't want to align your life with the change going on around you? What would you say to that?

Krish: It's a difficult circumstance, isn't it? It's hard if you're looking at the individual and we're looking at it from a, from an individual's point of view, family is the hardest thing. So first and foremost, imagine a parent and you're in a neglected, a family that is neglects you or whatever. So each moment there is no one size fits all solution to any of this. So if you're in a family and that the thing is, what's best for you, you know, how can you be safe? First and foremost, if you're not in that environment that you feel is best for you and if it's actually damaging you, you have to figure out a way that you can get out of that.

So first and foremost, how do you get out of that environment to be able to support yourself? Now it may be with a partner, it may be with children, parents, it may be with the work colleagues, whatever it is. If you then feel that you can't do that, then where's the gap or where's the solution? So what can you do to change that?

Now there'll be things that people talk about the blame game. The blame game works for no one, right? And if you blame yourself, that includes yourself. Oh, I got myself into this situation and this happens to so many people. So it's my fault. No, like this situation has happened because so many causes have come. This situation can change because you've got yourself there. The beautiful thing is you can get yourself out of it. And it's how do we look at it from that perspective?

So if your environment's not where you want to be, that's okay because you can change it.

Tom: Yeah. Yeah. I don't think that's really true. And I think this is a problem that a lot of people have is that they'll have like a problem in their own life, but it can be hard to see the gap and see the solution because they can think that that problem is to do with who they intrinsically, inherently are, when really it's nothing to do with who they are deep down and there's no flaw in their character.

Instead, maybe they've been told that there was something wrong with them. Because when you're younger, you can get told you're stupid or you're an idiot or like, you can be told all kinds of horrible things when you're young. And those beliefs can get so ingrained in your mind that it can be hard to realise that actually you can change. And sometimes you do just need someone to believe in you and realise that actually your potential is limitless. You really can just become whoever you want to become.

And I think it sounds to me like a lot of your work is about helping the world see that potential in people, I guess, right?

Krish: It is, it's exactly that. It's seeing the potential in others, you know, and seeing, I think you've said it better than I could ever have said it to be fair, mate, but it is that.

So how can you see that potential in others so that we can together make change?

Tom: Yeah, make the world a better place, that's the goal.

Krish: Which a lot of it, and I get it, because I was that person, it's so fluffy, you know, it's so fluffy and it's so, oh, you know, like I get it from my own parents, like my mum was like, oh, your head's in the clouds thinking this world's a perfect place. I do not, like, if anything, I think this world's a really tough, it's probably the, there's nothing harder than living, you know, because it is so difficult. I have been at a place in 2018 where, you know, I always say that I wasn't suicidal, but I definitely had thoughts and questions about why I'm on this earth and is there any point in this?

And I still, even when I have struggles to this day, you know, like I get to the point of I'm striving so hard, but is this coming to anything? You know, why is it so hard as an entrepreneur who does what I do? Like money, I struggle with money, like, because I can't get it in because I'm trying to do good. Why is it that do good means no money, it should be free? Actually, no, if you're doing good, you should get paid double. And this concept, and this is my own concept as well, that I need to change in my own life.

So it's just the easy route isn't always the best route. And I think that needs to be a heading above the door of my house, that the easy route isn't the best route. And one of our ambassadors, Dave Cornthwaite, always says, if you get a choice between two journeys, always take the one that has the best story.

You know, and I think that's what I'm trying to do.

Tom: Yeah, and it's amazing to hear as well, because you could have gone down the route if you wanted of maybe being less purpose driven, less bothered about like having a real positive impact on the world, and maybe have made a lot more money and not had some of those worries.

But you really give me the impression that you're somebody who's like fully proud of what you're doing. And you know, you've got like this really nice foundation and so like positive and it's like, that's more valuable than like just the money or like the superficial sort of things that would maybe be easier to obtain in a way and not come with as many challenges, but staying true to what you think is the right thing to do has richer value than the wealth that seems to be like the option that's presented as like the right thing to chase in society, at least by some people.

Krish: It's kind of a, it's a really difficult concept because money matters. It really does. The best way for me to explain this is, there's an incredible philosopher, he's called Tsunesaburo Makiguchi he's from Japan. And he's actually the first president of the Soka Gakkai, the Buddhism that I practice.

And he said that there's three keys to work, beauty, gain, and good, okay? So beauty is like, how beautiful, how much do you enjoy your job? How much do you enjoy it? What does it do for you?

You know, and gain is what do you get out of it? Is it financial? Is it happiness? And good is how much impact are you making on this world? You know, and I realized that the job I had in 2019, you know, I wasn't earning a lot of money. I had the same amount of money at the end of the month than I did at the start of the month, so I had no gain. I was not impacting anyone's lives, so I had no good.

Tom: What were you doing back then?

Krish: I was working as an admin assistant behind a computer desk, so I wasn't impacting anyone's lives. And the beauty, I didn't enjoy it, I hated it. So beauty, gain, and good, I had none of it. So with Tales from Spire, I had the beauty, I loved what I was doing, slash I'm doing now, and I had the good, I was making impact. I didn't have the gain, I had no money. Two out of three made more sense than zero out of three, and I'm still struggling with that third one, but essentially it's, right, I know I've got two out of three, you can make money, there is money out there to be made, and money is important, however, I am not going to sacrifice my values for it.

And that's the key. We've had so many organisations reach out to us who have put a lot of money down and said, can you come and help us? And essentially we've realised they're just working with us because we're either brown faces or we're working with certain things.

So it's a tick box. And then it comes to conundrums for us is, do we work with that organisation or do we not? Are they paying us enough so that we can impact others? Or actually, you know what, they need to change a lot before we'll work with them. And it's not saying actually, we won't work with people who are struggling because the change has to come from them as well.

So essentially it's weighing those up on a one-to-one scale. And the other side of something that you talked about earlier was people having, people thinking that they are intrinsically bad or intrinsically good.

There's another concept from a person called Daisaku Ikeda, an amazing philosopher and author. And he talks about the river and he talks about how you will never, ever change a riverbank. And that's very much like your personality sometimes. There are certain parts of your personality that are intrinsically you. For me, I don't want to say I'm funny, but it may not be like the certain parts that that's just me and that's who I am.

But what you can change is the quality of the water in that river. You can change the quality of who you are. And for example, the river could have no fish in it or it could be thriving with fish.

It could be crystal clear. It could have loads of things going in it. And that's exactly the same with your personality and who you are. People are trying to often change the things that they can't change instead of actually changing the quality of who they are. If we can change the quality of who we are, then essentially we can do anything

Tom: Yeah, yeah. Some of the stuff you said today kind of reminds me of stoic philosophy. I don't know if you know that.

Krish: Yeah, of course.

Tom: Just focusing on what you can control instead of what you can't control. And yeah, that personally makes sense to me. I think there's just so much outside of our control that can be really challenging.

And we could focus on that and not do anything about it, or we can just focus on the small things in our own lives that we can improve. And then if we can change the bigger things that are outside our control and make a positive impact in those things as well, then yeah, by all means go for it.

But I think one of the worst things to do is to focus on what we can't control and not do anything about it because that just leaves us feeling so powerless, at least in my opinion, I think.

And usually people can do more than they think about the things that they think are outside their control when really actually there may be, maybe there's a bit more that they could help out with here or there, I don't know.

But yeah, I think about believing in yourself is so, so important. And I wish we had more people kind of seeing the potential in others. I feel like through school and stuff as well, kind of like the grading system and how you have people in different ranks and then being judged from such a young age, I think it can really dent a lot of people's confidence as well.

And so it can be really hard.

Krish: We're living in broken systems, mate, to be honest. If you look at it, we do loads of things in schools. We go into, we do wellbeing workshops in schools. We bring in our ambassadors to talk in schools and we help put people's stories into books and to documentary series in schools. It's amazing what we do in schools. We do live events and all sorts of things.

But the system is effectively broken. Until we accept the system is broken, we are trying to create people who are fit for jobs.

Tom: Yeah.

Krish: Those jobs may not exist in the future. And who cares if they do exist because they're people? Speak to the person. How are they going to live? What is happiness? Where's the foundation? How do we speak to that potential? How do we promote creativity? You know, entrepreneurship. Like I go into schools and I speak about entrepreneurship and the teacher sometimes look at me like, what's that?

Like, and it's like, I get it because you're being taught by a teacher. Often teachers can be people who have been in the same job or needed the comfort or needed the security.

I've got a family. Often this isn't the case for entrepreneurs. And it's like, how do we create a space that doesn't just look for the masses? How does it support the individual within the schools? And I mean, I speak to so many students who are just not happy with the system there.

I speak to so many teachers. I was in a school last summer and 27 teachers left that school over that summer. Teachers are not happy, you know? And it's once again that sometimes the system change comes within, but then sometimes the change has to come from outside or together.

And I think there's a few areas of our society that we're living in at the moment where there's going to be a serious revolution. There's going to be people standing up and saying, right, this has to change, you know, the way we operate in certain areas and good. Let's do it because I think things have been built on a power system that isn't supportive of the individual.

Tom: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, I'm quite privileged in a way to listen to so many people share their struggles with me personally as well as I do some Samaritans volunteering on the side and the amount of people who have problems where they could have the help and support and they wouldn't be having suicidal ideation if they just had like a, you know, somebody to go and see at the like a therapist or something that in the past would have been provided by the NHS, but now they're on like a massive waiting list.

It's just like these structural issues are actually like leading to people being suicidal. It's like, this is. You know, this is outside of their control completely and they really can't impact that necessarily and it's structural issue, you know.

Krish: I remember when I was running there helping to run the homeless outreach group brew power back in 2021. There was a young man called John, Jonathan. It was amazing always had time for him and So he struggled like struggled he'd been foster care he'd been in a lot of difficult circumstances during his childhood and one day. I remember waking up. It was in in the winter and found out he'd passed away. He died on the streets because of the cold weather and I remember the next day one of the homeless outreach groups was talking about Jonathan and talking about him on the radio and saying that there's some people you just can't help was that was the phrase that came out of it.

I remember thinking the issue is that what got him to that place where he doesn't trust anyone. What happened in his life that he doesn't trust?

Did he have one person that saw that potential and really stuck with him? Just one person all it takes is one and I later found out and about his story that it'd been difficult he had such a hard life and we come across so many of these people on the streets. This is just one example people in the streets and we're talking about an extreme example.

However, look at anyone and if you look into your life. Can you name five people that you trust with your life? That is a really big thing when I I was having a Therapist and I would recommend it to anyone and that she said to me who are the two people in your life that you can share things with and not get advice back from and just share.

Yeah, and I was I remember thinking never looked it. I've always if I share something I want someone know what I want to be dealt with done. It's heard yeah, is it? Yeah, and that is it that's all we're looking to be done is to be heard and to have trust those two things.

You can really really transform the world and I think from an individual level that counts but from a from a work relationship from an employee relationship since Covid the amount of employees who are changing their jobs changing their roles or changing what they do and essentially realize that they're not happy and the other side of it is do they trust their employer?

No, it does their employer truly trust to that and individual is both ways and do they trust each other? So how do you then build a culture that thrives? When you're only in the office one day a week, yeah, you don't even see the people that you're working with how do you build cultures?

One of the things that we're getting asked that tails to inspire quite a bit is to go into these companies and organizations and try to connect people to people and essentially build cultures that thrive again and where do we find once again the gaps in that and each is different. It's really really cool. We're doing but it's once again is it's culture and trust. It's simple human value stories, you know, it's something that's been with humans forever like this has been something that they shared around the fire. But we kind of return into that, you know, it's amazing.

Tom: Yeah, definitely. Has there been any gaps that have been particularly noticeable to you.

Krish: I think the gaps are going into the unknown.

Since Covid and this is a fair play to a lot of the bigger companies and organisations. That they have tried to accommodate and the ones that haven't simply haven't survived often unless they're really big companies.

But they're going into the unknown. They they've never had to deal with these working circumstances. They've never had to deal with such change in their employees lives. And so the big gaps essentially for the working companies or the individuals and to support them is how do you support the majority and the minority at the same time and how do you how do you do that? So it's more of a question is how can we build team culture?

You know, how do we do that? And from our perspective is it's really really simple it’s right. It's people-to-people connection. It's getting them back in person. It's going doing things together. It's working on projects. It's having you in one team work with another person in another team. You in one team work with another person in another team. Oh, I didn't know that person worked on that I didn't even know that person existed in this company. Well, it's only a company of 15 people, how did you not know and then why are you not working on that thing?

Because actually your expertise could be so it's like transcending those boundaries making aware what people's roles are and the simple thing of I Never knew that you were to Samaritans I've worked with you for five years. How do I not know that right?

So it's like getting to know the individual to really then help support the individual if you don't know the people we're working with, and if the company doesn't know the people that they're supporting as employees, how are they supposed to support them?

You know, if I try and, if one of your key values isn't money and it's time off, and I'm trying to have some more money but work even harder, you don't care, you've got as much money as you want, what you want is freedom so you can go and travel, you know, but it's alright, I'm just going to keep giving you money.

Actually the thing you need is the thing that we've not even given you the opportunity to share. I think it's really speaking to the individual.

Tom: Yeah, and ensuring that they're really listened to and trying to create a culture where people understand what other people do, so then they can really build those connections and see how they can all thrive together really, because if an opportunity comes up and then you know that like, oh yeah, that person over there in that department can help with this and maybe they'd actually really enjoy that because I know they're into doing this or that, then you can really like create something out of what would have been nothing if you didn't know that they did that thing right.

Krish: Building bridges essentially is how do you build bridges within your working team and cultures. The old-school leave your personality at the door doesn't work. You turn up to the workplace, I'll leave my personality at the door and then I'll pick it back up when I leave, it doesn't work anymore because you've got so much with you in your personality that can help your workplace to thrive.

Your passions can come into your workplace and help it thrive so much. The only issue is we never asked you what your passions are. It's then creating that space. So yeah, it's a really, really special thing that we're often working with or we're getting more into working with certain companies in terms of culture.

Tom: Awesome. I think the other thing with working remotely nowadays as well is that sometimes it can be harder to like really get your personality across if you're just using like a Slack channel or something. So yeah, I agree personally like having that time in person as long as, I mean not everyone's going want to be in person and that's cool, I respect that, but there's going be a lot of people who do want to meet up in person, feel listened to, feel heard and also just have a bit of a laugh here and there as well.

Sometimes that's all you need in a company is to get on with your co-workers and enjoy it and maybe not be focusing just on the work the whole time. And creative ideas often come when we're not like in a meeting trying to come up with a creative idea.

Yeah, that also happens. Yeah, final question for you then Chris and thanks so much again for coming on the podcast. What can people do to make things better? And you can interpret this however you like but we're going ask for like one answer because I feel like you've already given quite a lot but we'll go with it.

Krish: What can people do to make things better is to speak to a new person. Speak to one new person every day that you've not spoke to. It's really simple and but that one person will give you a different idea, a different thought, something different that can really be special to your growth.

Tom: I love that, that's amazing and I wish I could do that personally like I don't feel like I am at the moment but I think I'd gain so much from that like hearing different people's perspectives and opinions is one of the reasons I just love hosting this podcast because this conversation like it's taught me so much in just like an hour it's like that is valuable you know that's what I love and I enjoy it so I'd definitely be an advocate for that advice as well for sure. Alright, thanks so much for watching or listening. I hope you have enjoyed the podcast.

Krish: Where can people find you Krish? So people can find me at Tales to Inspire on our socials or wherever that is and on my website at talestoinspire.com or Story Oak, my company that I didn't talk about where we capture people's real life stories and we put them into video documentary series for them so that no story goes forgotten and that's storyoak.co.uk and once again just type in Krish Patel and you'll find me.

Tom: Awesome, thanks so much coming on the podcast and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day, goodbye.