Self-awareness beats hustle every time 🏁 | Kamal Ellis-Hyman (Aim A Little Higher)

We're being too soft with people and it's not serving them. We can't adjust the entire world to make you feel comfortable. Self-awareness is not fun. Sometimes self-awareness is horrible because you've got to really look at, this is my weak point, I need to work on it. I have to look at myself and go, come on, mate, are you being the best partner, even the best husband, the best boyfriend right now, or do you need to adjust some things? And it hurts and it's horrible, but you make the adjustments so that you can have the ultimate reward in the end. And it's also not this terrible, I'm awful. Just is. The other side of it is self-doubt. What are you doubting? And you're going to find self-doubt is just you knowing that you have a deficiency somewhere.

This week's Millennial Master is Kamal Ellis Hyman, a motivational speaker, entrepreneur, and mentor who's been redefining success for young professionals with his business, aim a little higher. From a childhood of side hustles to building a business that empowers the next generation, Kamal's journey proves one thing: self-awareness is the real game changer. In this episode, we get into why most people chase the wrong goals and how to fix it, the biggest mistakes young professionals make when starting out, and how to turn a personal brand into a scalable business. This episode is brought to you by OffWork. Gym memberships, gift cards, free coffee, and pizza Fridays. Well, these staff perks just don't cut it anymore. That's why OffWork gives your team something they already love. Travel. They can book their own flights, pick their own hotels, and plan the perfect getaway. All with the travel fund you set up for them. It's super easy. Just set the contributions, and OffWork handles the rest. Better time off means less burnout, more motivation, and happier employees. Give your team a perk they'll actually love. Check out OffWork today on offwork.com. Millennial Masters is proudly sponsored by Jolt, the UK's top web hosting service. Whether you're launching a WordPress site or scaling up a custom app, every great project needs a reliable home. That's why Jolt has hosting plans starting at just £3.95 a month, with unbeatable deals on domain registrations too. Why Jolt? It's a no-brainer. There's no waiting around. With support within 30 seconds on live chat, your site stays live no matter what, with over 99.99% network uptime. And you can also pay with Bitcoin or American Express, so you can rack up those points too. How good is that? Sign up today and enjoy your first 3 months free. Head to jolt.co.uk to get started. Kamal, welcome to Millennial Masters. How are you today?

I am fantastic. Thank you. It's good to be here, Daniel. Thank you for the invitation.

I love the energy. So tell me, you tried a lot of things before you settled on your career path. How did you get into or end up in doing motivational speaking?

Yeah, it was a very interesting path. As someone who— people look at me and say, you found what you wanted to do quite early. I figured this out about 17 years old. But in my mind, it was a long journey to get there. So I've always had this, this entrepreneurial desire to, to create my own solutions, create my own income, have the freedom to be, be a creative person. And I grew up with parents who were quite entrepreneurial. I'd be up at the Wembley Market every Sunday selling music and vinyls and traveling around DJing with my parents at parties. They were quite independent, which meant parents' evenings, they were there, sports days, they were there. My dad was the coach at my football team when I was younger. So I got a lot of that sort of quality time. So I just always assumed entrepreneurship meant freedom. So I'm going to go down that route. So I tried when I was 6, set up my first little, uh, do you remember Blockbusters? Yeah. I tried to recreate Blockbusters.

Before Netflix, it shows our millennial touch.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Before, before those days, I tried to copy Netflix. So I'd rent out VHSs and DVDs to neighbors, and you could ride on my go-kart and I'd push you to the end for 50p. Or you could play my PlayStation 1 for 20p and sort of got a little taste for it. I made enough money from that to hire some other 6-year-olds to run the shop for me, and thought, this is kind of cool. And as I went through school, I tried loads of little ventures, I sell hats, I ran under-18 club nights because we had a problem with fake ID at the time. So I was like, I've got a solution. Let me have the club. We'll hire it out. And that went pretty well. And I just had this, this desire for, for entrepreneurship, but I had too much of a scattered focus. I'd do it for a few months, love it, make the money I needed for whatever my outcome at the time was. Then I drop it, be like, cool, what's next? And it wasn't until finding this route that I thought, ooh, I found it. This ticks enough of my boxes. And in order to find it, I had to sort of look backwards. What's been the underlying theme in all the things I've enjoyed most? I was on the school council. I was Youth MP for Peterborough. I had a street dance crew, and it wasn't the fact that we were dancing that I loved. It was the fact that I had all these really individual characters that I got to be a leader for. But see their individual journeys and just really enjoyed watching them grow and realized there's this underlying theme of personal development in multiple areas of my life. Why not just make a career in that exact thing? I had an experience of watching a session. I told my friends about it and they were sort of like, I don't care, mate. And I realized, yeah, there's a big gap between amazing information and a younger generation. It's just not. Being bridged. So what if I could come in and just be that gap? And yeah, it sort of gave me a clear direction from there. And it's so varied. You don't know who you're going to bump into at the time. You don't know what the audience is going to be like. And that variation keeps you interested, keeps you on your toes. So I've just found a really great spot that I thoroughly enjoy. And over the last few years, we've extended now. So speeches are now just the tip of the iceberg. What we really do is we embed programs within organizations to help them get the best out of their youngest generations. And the fulfillment in that is just off the roof. And some of the companies we've been able to work with now, it's just been, you know, Goldman Sachs hired us, HSBC, Softcat Tech, like you just, they're companies that are really hiring loads of young people, creating real opportunities. And then we get to come in and help those young people make the best of it. It's just an awesome, awesome deal. It's been a great transformation over the, over the years. So yeah, just started with that reflection.

So how did you get your first gig in motivational speaking?

Oh gosh, my first gig, my first ever gig was off the back of YouTube. So I became Youth MP and I took my Olympic torch around loads of schools and that allowed me to speak to the to the students. So technically speaking, that was my first voluntary experience of speaking in schools. My actual first gig came from— I did a YouTube video in my American accent. It's the cringiest video ever. Someone saw it, liked the energy. Off the back of that YouTube video, they started following me. I made another one, which is a spoken word piece. They asked me to open their event up in Leeds with spoken word. In the audience was a teacher from Blackpool College who said, love this, we want to bring you to Blackpool and we should do a sea— it's like a season of speaking. So I'd be going Blackpool and be there for like 2 weeks at a time doing 5 speeches a day, back to back to back each day. And the reps you get in when your first gig is actually about 15, 20, 30 speeches was sort of like a baptism by fire. And It all came off the back of speaking about my passion for personal development on YouTube.

So how long did it get you to truly feel that you're good at it and then you can spread your wings further? I know that can be quite a process.

Yeah, it's a, it's an odd one. I was really blessed with my upbringing. My parents were just always pouring into me. It was like so positive. So I'm a little bit delusional. Which I think is a, I guess it's really been a helpful trait. Genuinely, I went to archery taster day with my wife and the guy said, you're really good. You could do this in the Olympics one day. And I believed it. And I was like, you're probably right. I think if I just really worked hard at archery, I could go to the Olympics. And my wife was rolling her eyes at me.

It's a sport.

Exactly. It was a similar, a similar experience with speaking where I did a few speeches and I was getting constant feedback from these teachers of like, yo, I love that. The kids love that. Only thing is there was no slide. It's just you speaking for an hour and it's great, but it'd be great to be able to follow it on behind you visually.

All right, cool. I'll add some slides.

They did the slides and you're going, oh, we love that bit you did. Can you do that again? Cause you didn't do it in the second speech. We did it in the first speech. I was like, okay, cool. So we're gonna need some structure. So genuinely in the first sort of 3 to 5 speeches, I felt such a connection with the audience I was speaking with. The feedback off the back was great. And I thought, actually, yeah, I think this might be my thing. And if you can get a room of construction lads who are being forced to be in a room, sit there like that at the beginning of my speech, to eventually—

That is a pose I recognize, yeah.

Yeah, right? To at the end being forward, asking questions, staying behind to ask questions and have further conversations, it's like, actually, maybe there's something here. So, uh, yeah, that, that whole season of those first initial gigs, it wasn't too long before I realized there might be something here. And I was blessed enough to have a mentor who saw me and allowed me to come and work with his company and go and tour around with him as well. So I had that solo experience, but also the controlled environment with someone else's company at the forefront, and I'm just a supporting part of the cast. Did the same with Barclays Life Skills, did a number of other companies just so I could go in with somebody else. So there's no pressure from the business standpoint. It's just about mastering delivery. And that gave me the freedom to get, to get good enough to, to call it my, my full-time profession.

So you haven't done formal training in this side of things, but you said you had a mentor. What were, how did that help you develop personally and professionally? And what are your takeaways from that experience?

Yeah, the formal training thing's a really interesting concept in this industry because you do have people who are psychologists, but they do a very different job. They're very like one-on-one, for example. I've seen a few people set up courses to teach you how to do it. I've done some in my time to learn. The behind the scenes business and art and science of speaking. But as far as a formal qualification, it's never really been necessary. The mentorship was the most helpful thing because in essence what you're doing is saying, here's where I'm at, that's where I want to be. Rather than figure this whole journey out myself, let me find someone who's done it, who's been there, who's made the mistakes and get them to give me constant feedback around the time. So my mentor, his name's Jackson, and he literally arm over my shoulder for many years of bringing me on the show, bringing me on the road and sitting there going, yo, that was awesome. That was awesome. Oh, if you just tweak that, just tweak that. And it's tiny little things. Then he sent me out with different team members who have completely different styles. So now I'm this exuberant guy next to someone who's really calm and delivers powerful words like that without needing to be a— and I'm like, ooh, I like that. Then I saw someone else and the audience are crying. And I was like, I don't like that. And it was good both ways to sort of go, love that. Don't like that. No, thank you. And then get to a point where you really develop your specific style. So yeah, I'd recommend everybody look for someone who's walked the journey before you so that they can look back and say, hey, by the way, I wouldn't take that left, I'd keep going straight. Or that looks easy, but if you do it now, it's actually the wrong time. I'd go the slightly harder route because it will pay off long term. And just those tiny little insights, made all the difference.

And are you, have you managed to start giving back now and mentor somebody else?

Yes. Yeah. One of our speakers now who speaks with us, his name's Luke, actually reached out to me through YouTube, comment under one of my YouTube videos. And I did the exact same thing my mentor did when I messaged him, which was ignore him completely. And he tells this story now.. But the idea is someone reaches out to you the first time, if you answer straight away, you sort of, you don't know how hungry they are. So he messaged, I didn't respond, then I watched his social and he started doing it more, then I reached out like, dude, I see you're serious, let's go. And we've built like a great friendship. He was basically the best man at my wedding. Like, we've built a great friendship now. But it was awesome to see what happened with me being sort of passed on. And we're doing the same with, with a few other people who want to get into this space, because I'm realizing now it's time to bring the next younger generation. The millennials got to hand over to Gen Z now to come and do the same thing. It's really cool to see it go full circle and amazing to see the growth where you go, geez, you're, you're great at what you do now. They find their own style, their own approach that even has elements that you can't do. And it's lovely. Sometimes I'll call like even Luke and be like, yo dude, I've got this session. I think actually you'd be better for it. Do you want to take it? Because we've got such different styles and he's so heartfelt from a, for a real present. Yeah. So I'm like, boom, we'll swap you in. And that's been a great evolution for the company. I made the mistake of making it all about Kameau and had to make a real shift to go to Aim a Little Higher. So now we're getting calls who say, hey, we want the Aim a Little Higher methods. In our organization rather than we won't come out. And that's been an amazing shift. And that mentoring really is, is going into fruition. And we've had Luke mentor other speakers who have come in and that process continues to go. So it's, it's a, it's beautiful when it's sort of, you see the cycle continue.

So I guess the journey from personal branding and the business being based around yourself to using the business name and getting more people on board is the journey of business growth as well.

Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's probably one of the hardest aspects there's been for me because at the beginning of doing this, it was, I started off doing it when I was single. Then it was me and my girlfriend and fiancée. And at that point, we just, it's great. Like even when we had our first child, we're traveling around the country. We'd go to different hotels in different cities. We really just embraced that whole process. And it worked being just me. Then you grow a family, you, you put down roots, and you look at from a business standpoint and go, dude, if you're delivering everything, this business isn't scalable. And also, you're assuming that you can deliver for everybody. And you really have to take that moment and go, actually, I can't serve everybody. I've got the method, I've got the frameworks, but my deliveries, like, high energy, is, is real like that. And for some people, that's what they need. For others, they need something different. So actually, it can't always be you. And changing that model has been really freeing on my own time and pressure. But also from a business standpoint, we can now grow because I can be in a meeting pitching to a client whilst another speaker's on the road delivering. But I know that they'll smash it because I've got, I get the feedback and Eliza collates all the feedback from clients and it's a very serious process. So because we know they're out delivering, it means I can focus on doing what I should be doing as the founder, which is new connections, is networking, is developing. Okay, this program's great. How do we make it excellent? And having that freedom of time has made all the difference. So yeah, bringing people on and, and Removing it from being just about me has been a game changer.

But I'm assuming it hasn't always been easy on this journey.

Oh no, not at all. I approached it in the wrong way, if I'm honest. I tried to get people to do what I do. Come in, come to the company, this is how I do it, this is what our clients love, so go and do the same thing please. And you can't do that, you know. I've developed my style from a a few different foundations and interests and my stories are about my actual childhood and experiences and trying to get someone else to deliver this, a joke like here, and then I'd do this and then I'd, no, I need to move around a stage, be a bit more actually, that's my style. And yes, I can give you elements of it, but you've got to find your own. And at first I just wanted people to rinse and repeat, look, I've got the formula, just do it. And then people came in and they wanted to do that. They were like, I want to speak like you. So they're doing all my jokes and my stance and my, and it's not landing. And we had to sort of reflect and go, actually, no, the gold is in the IP. It's the, it's the formula. It's the process we take the young people through. As long as you deliver that process, you can do it however feels right for you. And yes, we'll mentor, we'll, we'll adjust. We've got certain training aspects of how to, how to do this better, but we're allowing you to be you. You. And that's been a huge, huge game changer. And I think the other thing that's been an interesting journey is, as a— when you hire in facilitators and speakers, they're fantastic at speaking and facilitation, and sometimes they're not particularly fond of the other aspects of the business. So I had to learn how to hire somebody for a specific outcome rather than trying to hire Swiss Army knives in the same way that I've had to be in the business. And that's been a big mindset shift of just hire the expert. So now we've got our guy who does our copywriting, is fantastic in his strategic thinking and copywriting and communication. And I can go to him and say, hey, here's what I'm thinking, and he can make it all happen. It's beautiful. Then we've got, you know, our website dude who codes, and he was a student who went through our program actually. But I reach out to him and say, this thing's bugging me on the CRM. He's like, yep, don't worry. Message me tomorrow. Yeah, I fixed it basically. Da da da da da. I don't understand half the thing he's, he's saying, but I know it's fixed. And that's where the real power is, putting those power players in the right position, letting our speakers and facilitators just focus on speaking and facilitating. Because then it means their head is just going, that job went well. Here's what went, what could have been better. Here's what I'd adjust. Hey, Kamal, I was just thinking, and they've got the room to think about those things, because they're not also doing emails and following up with clients and worrying about invoices. And what's the Google ad campaign been like? And so that's been a huge change. And a huge lesson. I think as an entrepreneur, you know, you've got to be decent at everything when you're starting up, but you can't hire other people who think like that. One, because it's not their business, not their baby, it's not the same. But two, if it was a kind of person who would love to do all of those things, they'd probably have their own business where they have to do all those things anyway. So it was taking a step back and really learning how to correctly communicate the positions we need and explain to everybody, you're coming into this company because I have this problem and I need that specific problem, that specific element solved. How are you the person to do that? Which has been a game changer having that approach.

So is that your key question when you do hiring interviews or you've got another secret up your sleeve you can share with us?

That's, that's one of the, the key changes that I've made. It's rather than hiring a position, I'm hiring for a problem, hiring a solution. So. Marketing, rather than like, I just think we should be known more. I'm getting more specific of, oh, we need a marketing strategy that we can get to a point where we put a certain amount of money into adverts and a certain amount comes out and it becomes a mathematical equation. That's the, that's the thing we need. Let's go and solve for that. Hey, as a speaker, I'm quite high energy. Great. Emmanuel's really high energy, but very direct. Wonderful. Lou, less flamboyant and jumping around, but gosh, he's got the heart and passion. What's missing? Oh, we need a kind of person who fits this audience. And then we advertise for that directly. So yeah, that's probably, that's been one of the biggest game changers. The other thing in the hiring process for me has been a number of interviews rather than one. I made the mistake before of just like, bring your application in, one interview, wonderful. And I've made some hiring mistakes doing that, whereas now it's okay, application. Sometimes there's a mini challenge or mini project just to get an idea of how you work. Speakers have to come on the road and observe, and sometimes I'll throw them in the spot and see how they react under pressure. But it's more hiring for character rather than hiring for, you said you could do this, prove you could do this, great, let's go. Now it's more, let's really get to know the character and the person behind the application and we go forward like that and looking for way more recommendations rather than just from the cold market as well. It's been really helpful. So yeah, they've been the shifts in the hiring process for sure.

What's, what's a red flag and a green flag?

A red flag is anybody who tells you just how much they need a job. When you're just telling me about, oh yeah, I really would love a job. I'd love to get some work. I've applied for a few different places. Red flag, you don't care about this business. If I ask you, why have you chose, why do you want to work here? You can't answer that beyond what you do is really cool. It's like, I just love being on stage. A big red flag is when people say I want to tell my story, which I know is counteractive to the whole personal branding world and all that we're being shown on, you know, your X Factors and all these programs where people are like, here's my tragic story, let me share. That actually is a huge red flag for me.

I guess there are many ways you can tell your story in today's world without working for a business.

Yeah. And I think people say sometimes thinking it's a plus of like, I've been through so much, I just want to tell my story. Why? Why haven't you so much? Why do you want to tell your story? Just wanting to tell your story is okay, write a book. That doesn't get to the heart of what We do. And actually, there's a bunch of speakers out there telling these young people their tragic stories with no solution, no lesson, just, hey, here's a terrible tragic story that the young people sit there and can't relate to. It's scary. And they leave just feeling sad. Whereas what we do is we go in and we entertain, we engage, but there's a method and a psychology that we're trying to shift. We're trying to shift your perspective. And I don't need your personal story to do that. If your personal story can add a little bit of flavor to your delivery, wonderful, marvelous. But this idea that we've got to get up and use our audience as our therapist is a crazy one. And I think it undermines a lot of the industry because now you hear motivational speaking, you think, oh, here we go, tell me about how you were shot 9 times and the 10th time you caught the bullet and that was the cure for cancer and now you're billionaire, it's like, uh, that's not real. It's not helpful. Let's just have real conversations. And that's probably the best feedback we get. I thought this was going to be rubbish. They use different words, but I didn't know this was going to be rubbish. I thought he was going to come in here and give me a bunch of motivational quotes and tell me to just work harder. But actually, like, it was interesting and I felt engaged and the time flew and I didn't That kind of feedback is the best. I thought this was going to be pants because they're used to seeing that everywhere. So our unique approach, you need to leave, feel like you can aim a little bit higher, like it's actually—

I love how you drop that one in there. So I'm going to ask you about your, your method and we're possibly going to go deeper into it as well. But you, to recap, you work with teenagers and young people and young professionals to inspire them into the workforce and beyond. What sort of mindset do you see in the current young generation that's holding them back perhaps, and where you fill the gap?

Yes, it's really fascinating. There's so many different studies that you can read on Gen Z and the differences. But fundamentally, what I'm seeing is number one is a lack of self-awareness and what that means is they're being surrounded by so much information constantly. So many opinions of what's best, what's great. This TikTok's telling me I should be an entrepreneur, why would I get a job? These people tell me be reasonable, get a job. All of their own, their time with their own minds, their time to figure out who they are, there just isn't. There isn't any time. You're at school being told different things by teachers and education, then you get home and you're on your socials. Then you look at your circumstances around the street you're born on, what your parents, carers, aunties, uncles do. You put that all together and assume, right, this is my lot in life. I'll just follow this path. The amount of young people we meet and go, why do you want to do that job? My uncle, my auntie, my dad, my mum, my— and they know someone who does that thing and that's their main reason as opposed to, yo, I've just got a passion for it. I love it. I really see a future in this. We're coming from the wrong place and it's from this lack of self-awareness. And it works in both ways. You've got people who think too little of themselves, so they're not putting themselves out there for opportunities, or they're landing the opportunity, getting in there and playing it safe. Assuming, oh my gosh, I'm working for this huge bank now, or I'm working for a law firm. Do I even deserve to be in this room? Let me, let me just take it easy. Let me not ruffle any feathers. Let me just do what I'm told. But what that results in is you do nothing more than you're told. So you're not bringing you to the table. You forget that you've been brought in for a reason. And none of these companies hire young people because it would be fun. Hiring young people because they have a problem. They see you through the whole interview process as a solution. Now go in and still be yourself. And it's just coming from this rooted lack of self-awareness where we're comparing ourselves to what's out there. We feel like we're not enough. And if we can just fix that self-awareness of going, hey, here's who you are. Here's your strengths. Here's your weaknesses. Here's your morals, your values, what you stand for, and just have a clear picture. And not get too overexcited and big-headed from things you're great at. But also don't beat yourself up for things you're bad at. Just look at it all as information and objective truth. And we move forward from there. So number one is a massive lack of that self-awareness and just self-love.

Is that because of social media, you think?

I think social media plays a part for sure. But I don't think social media is the only, the only reason, the only thing to blame because on the other side of it, when you see someone who's really self-aware, social media is just adding fuel to their fire and they are smashing it and social media is being even more useful for them. So It's not necessarily social media, it's more the mindset you attack your social media with. So if I pick up someone's phone and you look through their TikTok or Instagram, you can see what they're feeding themselves. Now some of us, we follow pages that inspire us, that teach us, that double down on our interests. So we're just going to get better. You got a little bit of an interest in coding and now you follow professional coders. You follow like that Elon Musk school where it trains you to code. You you've got all that, your social media is going to be just a source of information and inspiration. You're just getting better. You've got a LinkedIn profile. And every week you're like, this week I learned this, been really interesting, and you just chuck it out there into the world. Social is your best friend. If on the other hand, you follow people who make you feel worse when you look at them, oh my gosh, they're doing so well. I wish I could do that. It's negative things about how your generation is never going to own a home and your parents bought their house for 24p, but they're going to charge you 5 million and the world's going to have a war and you're going to be drafted. So much bad news coming at them about their generation. If they're stuck in that rabbit hole, they'll believe it. And then we go, well, aren't they confident? Well, hello, you've just told them that your generation ruined everything. So it depends what is on your social media and how you treat it. Can you actually turn up? Do you use the block button? If I could just make a phone, I'd design a block button there because I don't think enough people press it. I meet so many young people who are like, oh, this person really annoys me, or this person's being rude, or they're this troll. And I'm like, block, block, block. You have the freedom. If something on your social is bothering you, it only gives you back what you tell it you want. So block, block, block.

So blocking is your key to social media detox.

Block, unfollow, block, unfollow. Every now and then I will go through my socials and just click unfollow rapidly and start again. And just let me just start again. Let me double check that everyone I'm following is there for a reason. If I scroll through and see something and go, don't like that, let me unfollow now because I might not see it again for a while. It will just creep up and grab me at a bad moment, which has happened. I'm not perfect. I've had social media people I follow that have made me feel rubbish because I'm looking at their journey, look at mine going, dude, you should be there by now. And I've had to go in and just unfollow. I've had certain socials where it was really interesting. I remember one guy, he's all about Black history and it's beautiful. And he'd be like, hey, I was in Jamaica and I found this folder and basically it's all the families that were at this plantation, is your surname there? Cause it— and I'm like, yo, this is fascinating. All of a sudden he switched up and started being, being rude about interracial dating and how you're a race traitor if you're dating outside your race. And I was like, whoa, where did this come from? Unfollow. So even sometimes it just sneak attacks you and you've just gotta be on, on the ball. Yeah, you— we watch what we eat. You're not gonna sit down and watch a TV programs that upset— well, I mean, some people do— but that upsets you, puts you in a bad mood, yet you allow these social medias to do that. You just got to use it. It's a tool. It's not good. It's not bad. It just is. What are you doing with it is where the biggest difference is. So yeah, definitely a contributing factor to lack of self-awareness. But you've also got things like, if you're not exposed to a number of opportunities, local to you. Okay, how do you, how do you aim beyond what's immediately around you? I've spoken at colleges or seen places where they've got 17 hairdressers on a course, and you go and look into the area, there's 2 hairdressing shops, they've got 1 vacancy. Now, why have you got 17 people training to do this thing where there's no local opportunities? But they're not aware that that's the case. And they're not aware of what else there could be in their area. So the other problem is when I say awareness, there's self-awareness, there's also market and opportunity awareness. I didn't know you could be an architect. I had no idea you could be an architect. Finding out when I was younger, you might be interviewing an architect right now. That'd be amazing. You get to design homes from nothing and they build it and it's there. Amazing. Didn't know how you get into architecture. So local awareness is really important. Letting people know what's available. You've got some huge companies in every city and even towns and in rural locations that people just aren't aware of the opportunities right on their doorstep. So awareness is really important as well. I want to be a footballer. Okay, we're not good enough to be a footballer. What now? I'll just, I'll just work in retail then. Whoa, whoa, whoa. How did we jump from footballer Do you know how many jobs there are in the sports space? You can bring your media skills, you can bring your journalism skills, you can bring your financial awareness and go and work in sports finance. Maybe it's law. And just the awareness of the opportunities beyond the main title we've all heard of isn't high enough. We're again making life decisions on limited options. So yeah, of course there's not that drive, that love, that hunger, because you're just doing it because it makes sense, not because it's what you really want. There's loads of these different levels of awareness that we need to work on. And that's one of the things we love doing with companies is going, okay, you're a company here. How do we let the local young people know about the opportunity that you offer? And that's been something we started doing recently that's been really awesome to see. There's an amazing company called Paragraf on the outskirts of, of Huntingdon in Cambridgeshire. They are literally competing with Silicon Valley using graphene. If they get this right, they will change the world. The speed our technology goes, the rate at which we can track health conditions, the list of things that will change in the world. And they're on the outskirts of Huntingdon in Cambridgeshire. I think it's Somersham specifically. Like, what? So we went in and we did a mini documentary about it. And now we're working to distribute that out to local schools. So they know on your doorstep, though you think your area is dead, there's huge things going on. And we're going to look to do the same thing in Lincoln, the same thing we did across Kent for the built environment sector. And we're just going to keep on doing that so people can actually know what's out there and what's available. So there's real levels to it. Um, to help this generation and it's not all their fault. We, we are making some mistakes from an organizational standpoint. Um, little things. I did a rant on LinkedIn the other day about the stupid parking machines because now you have to put your, your license plate in and then pay for your parking. When I was younger, we didn't. You just pay for your parking. So when you've got 20 minutes left, you look around the car park, you find a stranger, you go, hey, I've got 20 minutes left if you want it. And they're like, oh, thank you so much, man. And those little moments of community, my local corner shop, it's called Lally's. The owner was Bill and his dad owned it before him and his wife works in there as well. I went back to that corner shop a few years ago. Bear in mind, it's been like 15 years. He's like, hey Kamal, how you keeping? I'm like, Bill, what's up? Why? Because they didn't have a self-checkout when I was younger. So we just spoke to people. And you build all these communication skills in the most mundane moments of your life, but you've got those skills forever. Whereas now we're doing all these weird things like automated machines for checkout, automated parking, and it's going in loads of areas of our life. The GP now has the little computer where you type in your name, the little green thing.

Yeah.

Go and sit down. And it's like, why are we removing all human interaction? And then wondering why our generation hasn't got amazing communication skills. It's like, hello, we've taken it away. So there's a few things that actually some responsibility's gotta be taken from higher up, not just from, from the young people themselves, because we build the environment, we put them in it. If you don't like what's coming out, you've gotta question, well, what did you do? And what does that factory look like.

And there's this expectation, again, trying to link it maybe to social media, that success can happen overnight or really rapidly. But from, I'm sure from both of our experiences, that's not the case. And you have to stick with it.

Not at all. I mean, the amount of different little ventures I've tried and got them to a decent level where I can afford to pay my driving lessons in a car, like that's what can happen very relatively quickly to build this where we're now being trusted by these huge brands. We're launching a book next year. All these sort of really cool things that from the outside look awesome. I've been doing this for a decade. I just turned— sorry, yeah, I can't even say— I've just turned 30. Yeah, it's happened, it's happened. And I've been doing this since I was 17. So when people now are like, oh man, it's amazing, you just did that speech at the Peter Jones Foundation, and dude, like, I've been doing this for decades and it's been learning, it's been building. I had many humble years at the beginning and I've done it all with the support of my wife and it's, it's a real process people don't see. One that I used to love was I'd be in speeches and people would genuinely ask if my wife was a gold digger. And I was like, interesting, what makes you think that? Oh, well, you're doing this. I go, dude, my wife has been here from when I was 18. That's when we met, 19 when we got together, where I had less than nothing, where she had more than me actually. And we lived off of her savings because she was like, go and build this dream you've got. And we lived off of her savings. So like, I love hearing these when we laugh about it because people look from the outside and go, oh, that's shiny. That's great. Oh, you've done that really quickly. And they've just got no idea about the reality. Of what this process looks like, how long it actually takes to build something worthwhile. And many people aren't willing to give it the time to even get there. And then they think it's, oh, I'm just not an entrepreneur. I'm just not. No, no, you're just not patient. Give it time. We've got a huge retention problem with apprentices at the moment because they come in, do the year of training, and then are like, cool, Where's my raise? Where do we go from here? What's next? You know, there's this dip where people are frustrated because they've got the training, they've got the skill, but they're not being given the big projects. They're like, well, hello, I'm ready. Why not? And it's like, no, your reach is just exceeding your grasp right now. Give it time. Give it patience. I know you could get paid more if you jump to that company now, but I'm telling you, once you get there, you're going to have the same experience and they don't know you as well as this company now. It's like, everybody stop. Give it time. As these young people say, let it cook. Give it a bit of time and see what could happen. And anyone who is an overnight success, I've not met any. But if there's anyone who can build a business very quickly, in 7 days or a month, congratulations, fantastic, well done. Could they do it again tomorrow with another business? Probably not. There's a lot of factors of luck in that kind of thing as well. So That's a huge problem that I've got with your X-Factors. Yeah, these ain't X-Factors. I know it sounds so old, it's not even around anymore. But that whole, that whole social, um, the whole social media thing you've got where people go on these reality shows, Love Island, etc., and come out and they're like— it just paints this picture of, look, instant, it's quick. The people who get loads of followers overnight, the TikTok people who are selling you, buy this coin, I made this much from this coin, or I'm— the amount of people I know who do forex trading now. And like, do you think you can actually make millions off of trading when there's stocks and shares and real bankers taking out rewards from this TikTok dude? Like, come on. And also, what if you could? Is that the legacy you want? Is that your thing? You want to have made your money off the back of forex trading? And if so, fair play. I care about that stuff. When my daughters come to me and say, this is what I want to do. And I want to say, look, go out there and just build your dream. And they turn around and say, yeah, but dad, did you? I don't want to turn around and say, well, no, because actually I saw this opportunity to make some money selling. I want to be like, yes. I don't want to say no, I didn't because it wasn't safe and it was risky. I just want to say yes, look them in the eye and say yes and be a real life example of building your vision rather than taking an easier route or a cheap route where you're selling your soul a little bit in order to get this outcome.

You mentioned job hopping. Millennials are well known for it, but also the younger generation are having to do the same. And other Millennial Masters I've spoken to, they told me that's because they have few other opportunities to grow because companies would happily keep them in a particular role. What's your experience from all the young people you've dealt with?

Yeah, it's a, it's a fascinating one. Even when we go in and do trainings, we ask this question of the young people, like, what is your plan? Are you thinking job hop or long career? And generally it's about 50/50. There's a lot more young people who want a long career than we give credit for. That tell me, I want to be in the same place, I want to build a reputation, I want to get really good at it and progress within the company. And that's their vision. The job hopping thing, I think, is also a personality type. When I asked, like, really, why did I just get bored easily? I don't want to be in the same location for the rest of my life, I want to be in the same office, I want to go there, learn, grab some skills, and then go somewhere else. I don't think there's necessarily a huge problem with it. And I understand in some cases you can make more money doing the jump. But you then are going to get into that pattern. You're going to jump from here and jump to this bank, they're going to pay you 5 cent more, wonderful. But then you stay at that level, and then you're going to job hop again to keep on going. So you've got to be really careful when people promise you a lot on the front end. It's really easy to advertise, hey, I'll do this better. Once they've got you, it's always a different story. So when we work with companies, our thing is genuinely what's the succession plan for these young people? Do you understand the young person's goals and their aspirations? And can you facilitate it? And if you can't, are you willing to tell the young person that this is the reality? And that's the work that we do when we go in more like on a consultative basis with these companies. We've got a company now that we're about to work with next year. And their whole thing is actually with the opportunities. Just the people aren't taking the chance to jump in on the train and keep on upgrading. So can you come in and help us do that? And we're going to go into the company, we're going to see if we can shift it around so that more people take the opportunities. Opportunities are out there within your company. But you've got to be open telling them what your long-term vision is. And the company's got to be fair and honest as telling you what their long-term vision is. And if we can both have that honest conversation from the get-go, I think we'll be okay. There are some people who genuinely don't want loads of promotions. They want to get in, get to a level where their work-life balance is beautiful. They make enough money to fund their lifestyle, and they've got a bit extra. And their real passions are their evenings, are their weekends, where they have this activity that they love and they do all the time, or this passionate group of friends. And actually, the sacrifice they need to go up and get the promotions for the extra time The extra responsibility, the extra stress of not being part of the group anymore. I've had friends who've got promoted from being part of the group to manager and didn't like it. They start hearing about parties, like, whoa, there was a party? Oh yeah, man, there was a party. We just didn't think you'd want to go. And they slowly get sort of pushed away because now you're management, you're not one of us. And they don't want to go through that. So it's not always necessary that the company doesn't have the opportunities. Some people don't want what comes with it. So everyone's just got to have this more open communication and be honest. And as a company, I think you have a responsibility to let someone know you can progress, but it's going to take 3 years just from the get-go. So at least we know I've got a 3-year wait until I can, I can jump. And the young person's got to be willing to go, Actually, if I'm honest, I don't want to be here long term. So let me find out what the short-term projects are, the short-term goals. Let me make my metrics all around that goal. And once I get it, I can exit while still keeping friends and not burning bridges and then go on to the next opportunity. So yeah, I think there's this blanket thing of like corporate is evil, is ultimately evil and there's no progress. It's just not entirely fair or accurate. And if you want quick progress, don't go and work for an established corporate company, go and work for a startup where you can be number 3, number 4. And when the company grows, you're right with them growing, but know that comes with a risk as well. But you just got to be really honest with, and this is what I mean, self-awareness.

Yeah.

What do you want? What does it look like? And then go and do that. I could have gone down the route of being a barrister. That's what my school told me to do. Just self-awareness. I find it boring. I just, I just know I would find that boring. I'd love to walk out in the Emirates and play football, but I knew the cost of getting good enough to do that and wasn't willing to pay that price. I don't want to train that hard, train that long. I don't want to do it. I don't want to do trials. And I knew that way before I was even good enough to make that decision. I was a rubbish footballer, but I knew the price and wasn't willing to pay it. So you've just got to have that self-awareness, be honest with yourself. The companies have got to be more transparent, honest. And I think everybody can be good. And it's okay to tell someone no, not because you're wrong, because this is the wrong place for you. And it serves everybody.

So what's the biggest mistake that young people do when they start their careers?

Man, I would say the biggest mistake I see is I think they pick a job role before they love an industry. So there's this, the question we ask kids is wrong. We say, what do you want to be? What's your ideal job? And they look at job roles, oh, that job role sounds good. Where actually, I think that's the wrong question. I don't think you need to know the job role. I think you need to know the industry. What industry do you want to spend your time in? What industry do you think you could see yourself loving? And that's the question I ask when I work with young people. Oh, I love finance. Great. You don't even know the jobs available in finance. And don't worry. And the grad schemes and programs, they're gonna put you 3 months in each department anyway. But we get fixated on a job role. That's all that we see. And when there's no vacancies for that job role, we're disappointed. When we get into that job role and it's disappointing because it's not as good as it seemed on the outside, we're beaten up. Whereas if we go for an industry. Oh, the possibilities are endless. You love tech? Marvelous. Let's go for the tech industry. You might be sales, you might be development, you might be marketing. There's so many different elements to it. When I went to that Paragraph company, there was a young man who was doing sales and he's traveling around the world doing sales. And he, he's like, I don't know the science. I don't, I don't, I'm not here doing the science, but I love the company. I love the role. And he's in sales. Equally, there's another one who is actually doing the science, doing the engineering and loves it. So I think we need to stop getting them passionate about roles, start finding passion for industry. And I think you'll be better off. I think there'll be less disappointment. I think you'll be a bit more open to options and opportunities, and that will allow you to progress faster because some companies are like, this role's filled. We're good. We've got succession plans. We've promoted.

We're fine here.

But actually in this department, we're really lacking, but you're not even seeing that opportunity because you want the role and you're not thinking about the industry.

And skills can cross between different roles.

Massively. And I think that gives you way more freedom, way more space to learn and a lot more, a lot more passion and love. So yeah, that's been, that's been, that's the advice I'm going to give my children. Find an industry that you love, find an area you want to spend your time in. And take over the family business, but find an industry that you love and go in that direction.

Obviously being a good speaker has helped you in your personal and business development and you're inspiring others to do so. How can entrepreneurs and young people improve their speaking skills to, uh, grow in business and life?

It's one of those boring answers of reps. You've got to get out there and do the repetitions. You need to actually go into environments where you can speak. You need to not use a self-checkout and speak to the person. You need to put yourself into networking rooms and have that awkward moment of introducing yourself. I did a session yesterday and someone asked, how are you so confident with networking? I'm like, I'm not. I look confident. I have to psych myself up to talk to these strangers in networking rooms. I find them awkward and weird. So I've got to go, Whoo! Hi, I am Samael. It's, you don't get perfect at it, but you put yourself in the environment so you can get better. And remember that everybody's human. Now from a personal standpoint, you can practice. It's absolutely fine to stand in front of a mirror and speak. You can record yourself speaking and play it back and just hear, why am I speaking so fast? Let me slow down. I keep saying the word like. Like, like, like, let me target that word and get rid of it. I used to say literally, literally all the time. We say literally, yeah, I literally am so, I'm literally, had to go back and work on it. So you've got the two sides, go and do the thing, go and put yourself in positions where you've got to speak, but also you can do the reps in private. You can set up a camera, talk to the camera. Stop it, play it back, and listen back to it. You can do it without looking at it, so you just hear the audio and hear what you sound like. You can do it and just watch yourself and see how you speak. I'm standing like this the entire time I speak. If I did this interview like this while I was talking, this feels weird to me because I've practiced so much of— I use my hands to make my points and it helps me speak to an audience because now We're communicating on a few different levels. Yes, you're hearing me. I'm changing my tone throughout the time we speak. I've got inflections at different points, but my hands also do some of the work. So now I'm speaking to you on a few different levels where even if you can't hear exactly what I'm saying, you can see the energy, you can see what I'm doing. So I would really go back to that that basic of how do I sound? Can I fix that? Can I change my pacing? Can I adjust my tone a little bit? How do I look? Am I standing too still and I seem a bit frozen? Can I loosen up a little bit? And how many different elements can you include into that communication at once? And I think if you do the mixture of the two, going out and trying it and practicing in your own space, you'll start to see some improvements in your communication. Starting a YouTube channel was great for me when I was younger, because I had to keep watching myself.

So it comes back to that self-awareness you were mentioning earlier.

One gift I could give everybody would be extreme self-awareness. It's, it's the foundation of everything. And it's not a fun process. Self-awareness is not fun. Sometimes self-awareness is horrible, because you've got to really look at this is my weak point, I need to work on it. But it helps you get there. Self-awareness has been like, it was vital for my marriage, I had to look at myself and go, Come on, mate. You've been the best partner, you've been the best husband, the best boyfriend right now. Or do you need to adjust some things? And it hurts and it's horrible, but you make the adjustments so that you can have the ultimate reward in the end. And so self-awareness isn't this happy chirpy, I'm amazing. It's also not this terrible, I'm awful. It just is. I keep on doing this. I need to adjust it. Let me go and figure out a plan to do that. And you go and execute on that plan. And that's all it is. It's a constant checking in, a constant observation of how you're acting, how you're coming across, and then doing something about it. And it's the foundation of everything worthwhile.

You mentioned it, but in other words, self-doubt or imposter syndrome.

Yeah.

How can you motivate yourself to reach new heights and get over that fear, that imposter syndrome that so many people feel?

Yes, it feels rife right now. It feels like it's got, I don't know, I don't know how long we can blame everything on COVID.

We're almost 5 years out now.

Yeah, but it feels like it's playing a part. There's two sides to it. Imposter syndrome actually is just misinformation. What I mean by that is people feel imposter syndrome when they enter a room or a place or a level they don't think they are justified in being. So you feel like a literal imposter. I'm pretending to be good enough. You have to remove yourself and just factually look at it and go, how did you get here? And we don't pause enough to rewind and look at how we got to a place. Most jobs you're going to have to apply, or someone's going to have to see something special in you if you're headhunted. But even then, they still make you go through the application process. You have to do interviews, you had to prove your worth. But even to get to that point, you have to do the research about the opportunity. To get to that point, you have to go through education, actually taking the initiative to go and search and look for the opportunity. So sometimes we just need to pause and go backwards and go, how did I get in this room? And I've had this plenty of times. I remember going to this event with loads of different headteachers and assistant heads, and it was a full proper dinner service. And I was like, this is not my environment, man. And I sat with my wife and was like, how does this work? And she showed me about like how to do the dinner service properly and start from the outside and then in the— and get all those tips. And in there I was like, oh, I don't— why am I here? And I'd stop and go, why are you here? Let's go backwards. Yeah, that headteacher invited you. Why? Because you worked with their school and made a difference to their young people. And now that— and you track it back and go, of course I belong here. Do events with the Peter Jones Foundation. And I remember they did a fundraiser and I'm looking around and people are like, chucking these amazing bids out at this auction. I'm like, oh my gosh, how much? Am I in the right room? And you have to go back. No, yeah, I am in the right room. I was invited here. Why? Because— so sometimes you've got to just pause and go backwards. The other side of it is self-doubt. Let's explore it. What are you doubting? And you're going to find self-doubt is just you knowing that you have a deficiency somewhere. So I look at the goals I've got for the company and I'm like, well, am I, is that a bit too high? Should I humble myself and calm down? Then I've got to explore, well, why do you feel like that? I just don't know how I do that. Perfect. What don't you know? Well, I don't know how I'd, how I'd position the company. Perfect. So positioning, marketing, that's your issue. Great. Should we go and work on that? And you just break down what the actual doubt is. I would love for people to get away from generic words. We keep saying, I feel anxious. What does that mean? What do you mean you feel anxious? Like, let's break it down. When does this feeling occur? What has to happen for it to go away? And when we start getting more specific rather than general, we can fix the problem. I don't belong here. Why? What makes you think that? Has anyone said anything to you that makes you feel like you're actually uncomfortable? No. Okay, so it's you then. You are doing this to yourself. Wonderful. Why? Well, someone told me that, you know, as a black man, if I walk into— pause. Who told you that? Have you experienced that personally? No? Okay. So you're actually borrowing these fears, these doubts, these, these, these sort of worries from other people and applying it to yourself and then going into a situation. So all of them, your, your self-doubt, your, your imposter syndrome. It's misinformation. It's just based on other people's experiences or your personal doubts. So you've got to step away from it objectively and give yourself time. What's the deficiency here that if I fix that, I'd feel perfectly confident in finding this environment? And then I go backwards and work on that. So it's not a bad feeling, but the way we identify it is terrible. Because we make it sound like it's a, it's a stop. I get anxious in front of people, so don't put me in front of people ever. Whoa, stop. I had a, she would have been 16-year-old 2 days ago. Kamal, can you let me know what job could I get where I just don't have to be around people a lot? And I was like, okay, why? I just not a good communicator. I trip over my words all the time. Don't like being in big crowds. I said, okay, well, you're 16. You could, I give you a list of jobs where you don't have to be around people. No problem. We can do that. But you'll be trapped forever because you're always going to only be able to do this list of jobs. Or we could do a plan for the next 3 years to improve your communication skills and your feelings of confidence around people. And then the whole world's open to you. Up to you. We can do both. Either work. Which do you think would be better for you? And actually it's taking a moment to go, oh yeah, I'll snap. Yeah, of course. We're being too soft with people. And it's, it's not serving them. We can't adjust the entire world to make you feel comfortable. The challenges out there are good. Let's see what we can do to get you better, to get you good enough to deal with the challenges. And then we're going to keep moving forward. If we all keep slowing down so that everybody feels like they're looked after and they're comfortable, We're gonna go backwards. If we can go, why do you feel uncomfortable? Why is this uneasy? Let's fix that. Then we get to move forwards and amazing things get to happen. And we're actually serving that young person. What I did in that small conversation with that young lady is way more than if I'd given her a list of jobs where you don't have to communicate with people.

You could have taken the easy route.

It is absolutely the easy route. And she would have gone, oh, thank you. And she would have felt great. Because now I've got a list of— I don't ever have to deal with the fact that I don't like communicating. Wonderful. It feels like everybody wins in that scenario. I've solved the problem. She feels happy. Happy days. Nobody's won. We've now set another person out into the world looking for a way to adjust her life around her shortcomings rather than just helping her improve that so it's no longer a weakness. So yeah, we've got a We've gotta be careful with how we deal with people and let's actually be empowering. Hiding people from the world, adjusting things so everyone feels happy and comfortable, we're not empowering anybody. We are just lowering the bar and hoping that that will make things work. And it just won't. It's not a long-term strategy.

You said you are writing a book.

Yes.

So can you tell me a little bit about what the book is, what the premise, but also what other books inspired you personally and helped you grow and develop?

Of course, we're going for a Millennial Masters exclusive here. So the book is going to be about how organizations can unlock the potential of their young people. How do you actually set yourself up in a way? What can you do to get these young people who you know have high potential We get them through those 4 phases of growth. 4 phases are high potential, then you go into coasting. So you're good enough to do the work and it doesn't take too much effort and you're safe. You're coasting. There's no more growth anymore, but you're okay, which is where most people sit. Then you've got getting better where you're better than you've ever been and better than the majority of people in your same space and not the space nationally, but your office. Or, you know, I used to be a street dancer. I was good in my city, went to another city and was blown away. But in my city, I was like, I'm one of the best. So you get better. And then there's high performance, which is ultimately where we want to get to, where we are just in our zone. We're on fire. We're using initiative. We're looking for opportunities for growth. We fail. We don't cry about it. We go, hmm, interesting. Why did I fail? Okay. I'm not going to make that mistake again. Let me learn from it. Let me adjust. That's high performance. So how, as an organization, can you set it up so those young people go through all those 4 stages? And also, how do you keep that Gen Z chain intact? Because you've got to have awareness, then you've got to recruit, then you've got to onboard, and then most importantly, you've got to engage and retain them. So what can you do at each of those stages to make sure you're serving the young people as best as possible? And, and that's the, that's the premise of the, of the book as a whole. And. It's going to basically be a bit of a guide of how you do that, how we've done it in organizations. Yeah, if we get that in enough hands, I'm hoping we'll see a genuine shift in the number of young people finding the right path for them. And also organizations, whether you're a startup or you're a legacy company, knowing, all right, here's the slight things I've got to do to get the best out of this, this generation. So yeah, that's the plan.

I'm sure we'll make— I'll make sure that your book will be included in the Millennial Masters Book Club when it's out.

Amazing. That'd be awesome.

But tell me about any other books that you've read that inspired you or pushed you forward.

Awesome. So, gosh, Key Person of Influence, Daniel Priestley. Fantastic book about personal branding, differentiation, and how to approach The world of business through a personal brand that doesn't leave you tied to the business in the same way that I was initially. It was a fantastic book. I think my favorite books of all time is The Slight Edge by a guy called Jeff Olson. And it's the whole concept is pretty much how the tiniest difference now can make a huge difference over time. And I read that book, I must have been 15 or 16. And it just shifted my whole entire mindset of, oh my gosh, you mean the best people we see versus the average, it's a tiny little shift in skill, in ability, in perception. It's just a tiny thing that's made them go up there. And how compounding actually works. That book is like foundational. I absolutely love, love that book. So Yeah, Slight Edge by Jeff Olson, Key Person of Interest by Daniel Ionescu is a huge one. And the Bible. The Bible. I read the Bible. I wanna say every night. There's, I've missed, I've missed, I've missed a night every now and then, but more or less every single night I've got at least, at least a, a chapter of the Bible. Why? All the wisdom I go and see, I'll see a speaker be like, that was amazing. Wow. I'll go to Proverbs, be like, oh, dog, this is Yeah, there's so many ideas that I've had that I thought were like original or like great insights. And you read the Bible and it's, it's all there. It's just the ultimate example of all the things that are good in character, you know, of from the guidance of Jesus.

That's the New Testament, right?

No, no. Old Testament too, which I know people will be like, whoa, what? The Old Testament's great. The Old Testament has an underlying principle about trying to— the journey of being at a high enough standard and the consequences of not reaching that standard is the underlying vibe and feeling I get from the Old Testament. It's, you are given this gift, what are you going to go and do with it? And anytime it goes wrong, it's because we walk away from the source and we start thinking that we're the hero, thinking that we're the king, we've got control, we can do whatever we want, you people should look at me as more than you. And once we get into that space, how much of a disaster that is. Whereas if you keep the fundamentals right, everything actually works out pretty beautifully. And once you start mistreating others, once you start judging others, once you start elevating yourself over the person who needs the most help, We are in trouble and it's this real, and it's, don't get me wrong, there's, it's a journey. It's a journey. There's some highs, there's some lows, but ultimately the message is have high, high standards, meet the requirements and everything will be wonderful. Fall short of that and things start to fall apart. Because you don't get something for nothing. So yeah, I'd say Old and New Testament. Both different approaches, like the parables from Jesus are just like fantastic. How, how he managed to do such amazing messages in such simple stories is a gift that I am trying to study and learn to do better. So there's two very different approaches, but actually the underlying message is the same. And I think if we all just incorporated that into our lives, we'd just be happier. We'd be a happier nation. We'd be a happier country, happier world, because we'd all be looking out for each other and not trying to get one up on each other and trying to be, look at me, look at me. I'm better than you. I used to do rap battling when I was younger, and you win a rap battle by insulting the other person so much that they're left lower. Or by bigging yourself up and building yourself up. And I think that's where we are going wrong. We, we feel like we need to put everyone else down to be good enough. Whereas actually, if we all just built ourselves up, helped our neighbor get up, helped other people, things would flow fantastically well. There's more than enough resources in this world for everybody to be good. We just gotta work.

So what role does faith and/or religion play in your life?

It's, so I've always grown up in a Christian household from my grandmother specifically. My parents less so, were very much, hey, look, wherever you go, study, believe, whatever you want, we don't really mind. It was my mama who used to take me to church and that kind of thing. So there's a foundation there, but then once my grandmother died, I was like, well, hold on, she gave her whole life to to Christ from, from the age I knew her anyway. And she died from, from a heart condition.

What the?

This doesn't make sense. It put me off religion completely. And then maybe 2, 3 years ago, I'm looking out at the world and the world's going crazy. This world's just going absolutely crazy. And I'm like, huh, that's interesting. So we go online, buy a Bible, and mine arrives, and my wife buys one like the same time. And we're like, that was weird because we didn't have a conversation about this. And I just thought, I don't know what's in there. I've never read the Bible. I've just got these assumptions and I make these statements about the Bible. I haven't read it. Let me just read it. And you start reading, decide I'm gonna read from back, from front to back, start through. And I was just like, whoa, it just felt like truth, like a solid foundation of here's a set of principles. Not everyone's gonna gonna like having to live up to principles. We've got this idea now of like freedom, just be whoever, do whatever. And actually that ultimately doesn't lead anywhere. As a dad, if I tell my kids, just be yourself, man, do what you want, they'll be eating chocolate for breakfast every day. They'll go to school sometimes. MrBeast will be on every TV in the house and they won't sleep because actually we need guiding principles.. And the further we go away from guiding principles, the more we go into chaos because there's nothing to hold the whole truth. So for me, it just serves as this foundation. And what it did was it removed my ego. We did this interview 5 years ago. I'm telling you how amazing I am. Like, yo, I spoke here, I spoke here, I delivered this, I made this transformation in this person's life. That was me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me. Which when it's going well, feels wonderful. But that follows when it goes wrong. When it goes terrible, that's me, me, me, me, me too. So I'm literally victim to my circumstances. When business is going well, I feel like I'm the best. When it's going terrible, I feel horrible. I remember we went for our first house and the mortgage got rejected because of me and my credit score. Because I got a loan when I was younger and I didn't even realize I defaulted on a payment. So we're sat here, saved up, ready to buy this house and it rejected. Why? Because of you. That feeling is one of the worst feelings I've ever had because it's all me, me, me. What Christianity has done for me is realize it's not actually about me. There's a solid foundation that's bigger than me. I've been gifted this life and actually it's, I'm just living out an opportunity that was given to me. And it's not about me, it's about God. It's, it's so much bigger than me. And when it goes well, I thank God. When it goes terrible, I thank God. I'm like, thank you for this challenge. 'Cause I know on the other side of this challenge, there's, there's something for me. There's growth, there's a lesson, something's on the other side. So thank you for this challenge. And now I can approach life in a way where I take it day by day. I don't feel like my ego's blowing up when it goes well. I don't feel like complete abstract failure when it goes wrong. I'm just at peace at this awesome level because I know there's something bigger than me. There's a principle to live up to, and ultimately I'm just part of a far bigger plan. And as long as I do good, the next life's gonna be gorgeous. And I've given myself up to someone who outthinks my thinking. Jesus is the greatest example of how to, how to live your life from a moral point of view. It makes me put my wife first. It makes sure I notice my earthly sinful desires and influences. And I catch it way quicker. I used to have such different perspective on like, I don't know, I could sit down and be like, watch a TV program that's got loads of lust in it and that's fine. Who cares? It's just, just watching it. It's not a big, big deal. Now I'm just not interested. I literally will like, uh, become a bit of a prude, I guess, but I'm just not interested. I don't want to see it. It's, it's not for me. It's not filling my spirit. I've got my wife. I'm good. I used to like, you'd walk around and see an attractive woman and be like, oh wow, she's fine, it's fine, I can look. Now I'm like, God bless, I hope she finds God, marriage, and children. Like, it's just a different way of looking at the world because it makes you realize this is everything. This house I've got here, my wife, my children, my faith, it's the foundation. So everything else is just a bonus and the weight is removed from my shoulder. And I feel so much better for it. And I have, I feel a responsibility to go and help others. Whereas before it was like, oh, if I help them, I could write about it and that would sound good. Now it's just my responsibility because that's what the instructions were to do. So let me live up to it. Yeah, it's, it's, it's beautiful, man. It's, it's honestly beautiful. Got baptized last year and yeah, it's, it's been a, it's been a real game changer. From a mental health perspective and just from a, from a direction perspective.

So would you say that you are basically a latecomer into religion and rediscovered it as a source of grounding yourself? Is, is that one of your secrets and habits to, to staying grounded?

Massively. Massively. I think. I was in it. I didn't really understand it because it was just, I had to go to church on Sundays. It just, you know, mama wants to, I'm going to go if mama is fine. I was never serious about it. I've always known there was something bigger. I'm not, I've never believed this is all luck. You're trying to tell me just randomly there was some bang and now, now we get to walk around. I touch a switch and there's light. I can have an intellectual conversation. I have 3 children who are all completely different. Though I'm with the same woman in the same environment with the same morals and principles, yet my eldest personality and my second, they couldn't be more different. But that's all luck. I've never bought into that. It doesn't make any sense to me. So there's been a foundation there, but I was just like, whatever you believe, you believe, it's fine. You're all saying the same thing anyway. So once I started actually reading and researching and trying to find my home, which meant looking into lots of different religions, it wasn't like, has to be Christianity. Just this one felt like truth. And I would say now, yeah, it's absolutely my, my secret weapon, if you will. It, it grounds me. Every night I'm on my knees to pray. I pray over my children. I pray next to my wife. And even in hearing what my children pray about, what they're grateful for, what their desires are, hearing my wife speak, there's something completely grounding about that experience that every night I'm reminded there's something bigger than me. And I hear where my family's hearts are at, at the moment. Even if I've been out all day long, even if it's been a busy day and we haven't had a chance to really have a deep conversation, I hear it in our prayers. And yeah, it's just, it's just beautiful. So it's absolutely my, my secret weapon behind the, hey, what motivates you? What keeps you going? How do you, why are you not walking around like a, a big head like you used to when you're in secondary school? Why are you? What? Why are you humble all of a sudden? Yeah, absolutely a grand event.

In the Bible, there's lots of stories about sacrifice.

Yeah.

What's the biggest sacrifice you've had to make to be where you are today?

Oh, great question. Yeah, sacrifice is a recurring theme and something that we've all got to do. I would say biggest sacrifice, the biggest sacrifice I go in a couple different directions. One is, I think, social life. I've let go of a lot of friendships that weren't serving me anymore. And I think when you grow up, you think, oh, these people are gonna be my friends forever and ever. And then you get to an age where you all just want different things from life. You go in different directions and you've got a choice. You can sort of remain the same and keep the same group and just, just adjust what you want so you match, or you can sacrifice that, go, actually, think I want this thing. I used to have this goal. My goals when I was younger were so backwards. My dream was, right, gonna have a son but be single and travel the world with just my son and 6 months here, 6 months there. And then I meet my wife on our first date. She's like, if you can't see yourself marrying me, having kids with me, don't waste my time. And you've instantly got this moment of, but I've pictured this thing. This sounds way Cool. 'Cause like, you are amazing. So you sort of, you sacrifice your old, your old goals or your old idea of what's perfect and you open it up to, to another, another way of living. So I think, yeah, sacrifices, probably sacrificing my old, my old goals, my old habits, my old need for approval from everybody. I needed to be liked by everybody. Which meant loads of different friendship groups, trying to serve loads of different people at once. And now actually I've sacrificed that idea of everybody and I've given it all to, it's my wife and my kids. And if I can go and be helpful in my work, fantastic. But I don't need to have so many friends. I don't need to be the center of attention all the time. And I've definitely got rid of that side of me. Whereas had you met me as a 15-year-old or 16-year-old, or— ah, dude, I loved it. I charged people to come to my 17th birthday party and made a fair bit of money. I made a whole event out of it. I had posters, I had tickets. So it's just a completely different space. So yeah, I'd probably say sacrifice old desires that actually upon reflection wouldn't have served me at all. But at the time I thought, oh, that'd be the coolest thing ever. So yeah.

So as a parting shot for our viewers and listeners, what would be the business and personal advice you would give to your younger self at 17 when you were just starting in business?

Yeah, business advice, I would say build this business as if you don't want to do it forever. Build this business if you're going to do it for just the next 5 years, and then you're going to sell it for £10 million. Build it like that. Because what that would have made me do is it would have made me think way bigger way earlier. So I wouldn't have become this one event person that I used to be where I'll come to a speech. Yeah, it was great. See you next year. And that felt like the win. Whereas now the win is Hey, let's work with you over the next 6 months, the next year. Let's really do some organizational change. Let's work out where the young people are not happy. Let's— and actually making consistent transformation possible rather than the one-off, hey, hey, this is great because it was about, I enjoy it, pay's all right, happy days. Whereas now it's, how do we make lasting transformation that makes a long-term impact? So build the business as if you don't want to do it forever means you have to put people in place. You have to put systems in place. You have to build it in a way where you could actually let any, not anybody completely, but you could bring different personality types to come in and still achieve the same outcome for the people you serve and the clients. That's been a massive change that I've only been doing for the last sort of 3 years, maybe. Whereas if I'd started like that, the bins would be way bigger right now. We'd have way more success stories of individuals and organizations. And I think we'd be working beyond the country at this stage. So I'd say build it as if you want to sell it in 5 years and you don't want to do it forever. And that would have changed how I approached the whole entire business. I'd have built a business, not a great job that I'm the boss of. And then personally, I'd say to myself, Kamau, you're not going to believe me right now. Marriage is going to be the single most impactful factor of all the things you're dreaming about right now. You want to build a big business? You're going to build it once you get serious about your marriage. That's going to be the foundation. You don't believe me right now. You'll— trust me, it's going to get better once you're married and you're committed to, to this girl here who you've dated. Propose now. I would say Children are going to humble you and inspire you at the exact same time. So get married and have kids ASAP and get your backside to church. I mean, it would be my, my personal standpoint because genuinely marriage is the absolute hack to all of my personal growth. I don't seek approval like I used to because I've got my wife next to me. I have a place where I can come and just be me. I can go, "Nah, good. This is bugging me. Can't believe this happened. I feel a bit nervous about this. I don't know if I even belong to be in that group." And it's her who I, "Bleh." And she goes, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. Let's go." And I get that foundational peace and a love like I've never experienced before. When someone like loves you and chooses to marry you is— there's no, I don't, there's such a big choice and commitment and I feel it every day. So I'd let myself know, look, get to that quick, build it like you don't wanna keep it and you are gonna be set. Don't worry about having loads of friends, you'll be fine. You will find that same level of, not approval, but that same level of attention because you're a big attention seeker. From being married and having a set of amazing friends, a small number of amazing friends, and then you're going to make some great friends through work. Work has connected me to such cool people. Like, we met through work. It connects me to such cool people. And I could go out and have a coffee with you tomorrow and have a good time and a good chat because actually you can build great relationships through your work. I've got clients, I go and I get there and we spend 30 minutes just catching up. You know what I mean? The football result happens. I know I'm going to get a text from these 3 clients about what's just happened and you've got relationships like that. So don't stress about the friendships and stuff. It's going to come through the work you do. So yeah, man, build it, get connected with your wife, ASAP, and relax. It's going to be good.

This has been a great chat. Thank you for sharing all the wisdom, Kamal. And I'm looking forward to sharing your book with the other Millennial Masters when it's ready. They've heard it here first.

Absolutely. I've told, I haven't told anybody. So there we go. Millennial Masters exclusive. And thank you very much, man. Your, your, your interviews are so interesting because you're going past just the, so how do you motivate the young people? How, how does that work? And you go into the person behind the business, which is really cool. I love your approach to it.

But they have to stick till the end for that one. So this will be another gem at the end of the interview for everybody who listened or tuned in this far.

That's it. You've earned it. You've earned it. But no, thank you so much for having me. It's been an absolute pleasure and love what you're doing.

Thanks, Kamal.

Awesome.

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