116. Ex-Prisoner to Business Owner: Journey, Money Management & Using ChatGPT to Improve Your Finances ft Sobanan Narenthiran

What does turning a prison sentence into a mission for social change take? Meet Sobanan Narenthiran, the CEO of Breakthrough Social Enterprise, who shares his extraordinary journey from medical school to prison and beyond. We discuss his experience in prison, his transition back into medical school and building his business.

Sobanan explains how Breakthrough leverages AI to empower underserved communities with financial management tools and career development resources. This episode is a powerful testament to the impact of accessible education and strategic financial planning.

FOLLOW SOBANAN:

• LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sobanan-narenthiran/
• TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@sobanan.ceo.of.br?_t=8q05TpTVKls&_r=1
• Breakthrough Enterprise - https://www.wearebreakthrough.org/

Chapters

• 0:00 Journey From Medical School to Prison
• 8:00 Financial Literacy and Reintegration Challenges
• 12:06 Learning Financial Literacy and Investing
• 17:20 Breakthrough Social Enterprise and Capitalism
• 20:18 Empowering Through Financial Literacy and AI

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey guys and welcome back to the Penny to Pounds podcast with your host, kia, and this is the podcast we aim to dispel your myths, simplify difficult financial jargon and rectify your own personal problems. Happy Monday, everyone. I hope you've had an amazing weekend. I am always back with another incredible episode for you. If you haven't listened already, make sure you check out the episode before that, where we're talking all about degree apprenticeships and how you can get into tech without having to go to university. But this episode is a really interesting one and I've been so eagerly awaiting to talk to this guest. I'm not going to spoil it and give it away, so guest who are?

Speaker 2: 0:33

you. So hello, my name is Sobilan. I am CEO of Breakthrough Social Enterprise, and my journey into this career, or into this role, was quite an interesting one. So we work with people from underserved communities, helping to bridge the gap between the people of today and the industries of tomorrow, but I never really saw myself getting into this um type of role when I was younger. But um here, would you like me to share the journey?

Speaker 1: 0:56

yes, I was gonna say let's talk about your early years. Thanks. I like to kind of unpick with our guests where they started and how that brought them to where they are today yeah, of course.

Speaker 2: 1:04

Um, so I grew up in northwest London, edgware for those of you who know Edgware or Harrow but um, so I was like quite an interesting upbringing. My parents were quite working class but always sort of instilled in us values of education and, you know, managing money as well as sort of like being conservative with our finances. But throughout, like growing up in London, I think you're always like involved in this dichotomy of like you, you know your life at home and your life outside Right. So throughout school I was like quite good at school. So I went to a grammar school for about two and a bit years, absolutely hated it there, ended up at a state school and, yeah, it was a really interesting experience because I think I always saw both sides of that fence growing up. But yeah, 18, I went off to medical school. So, um, yeah, that was always my ambition growing up. Um, yeah, wanting to be a doctor always found biology and chemistry super easy. And um, yeah, that's when my life took a few unexpected turns.

Speaker 1: 1:54

I always find it so interesting when people really know we had this conversation off camera we will really know what they wanted to do when they're younger, because it's amazing that you knew you wanted to go into medicine. You find I mean I'm quite envious that you found sciences very easy. I wish I did, I liked it, but it wasn't too easy for me. But when I was in school I was just kind of figuring it out, yeah.

Speaker 1: 2:12

I just took everything, did what I did and just kind of went with the flow and whatever I did. Well, and I said, okay, I'll just progress in that and that's what. I'll do, but it's crazy. So how was it for that period of time that you were actually studying medicine? How was that for you?

Speaker 2: 2:25

so I really enjoyed it.

Speaker 2: 2:26

Like I think, for a lot of people on the course, they had incentives, whether that was like family incentives or even, like, I guess, the clout incentive of like oh, I want to become a doctor for the sake of being a doctor.

Speaker 2: 2:36

But for me it was just like I've always wanted to find ways to help or serve people using what I found to be the easiest parts of like what it was to be me, and I always like relied on intelligence or academic bits of my work. So, yeah, I found it really fun and like quite easy. I think the most interesting bits were we had to like pretend to have consultations on camera, right? So, like you know, you'd like I'll be looking into a camera and be like hello, my name's Soberland, I'm a second year medical student and I'm here to do xyz, and I found like that really interesting and like how you had to almost shape who you were and how you presented yourself in order to be a good doctor. But, um, yeah, it was a really insightful part of my life okay, now let's move on to the next part.

Speaker 1: 3:13

So obviously, studying medicine. Then things took a different turn. What happened next?

Speaker 2: 3:18

being at medical school, you sort of notice different groups of people, right, and I think, um, coming from a working class background, do you know?

Speaker 2: 3:24

I had to rely on my student loan and um, yeah, had to find ways to be creative around managing money. And we lived in a house it was me, my best mate, a few other people I knew from back home and we were really poor at managing money in the first bit of our first year, if that makes sense. So everyone thought creative ways to um make some money, basically, right, and my best mate came up with the idea of selling weed and um, yeah, he started doing that and initially it started to go relatively well and, yeah, as we started to sort of go into the second year, it was sort of like an operation that was like ever expanding and um, yeah, and then what ended up happening was, I think we were like 20 years old it was like a week after my 20th birthday we like the house got raided, we got arrested by police and um, yeah, ended up getting convicted with a conspiracy to supply cannabis sorry, it's just the way you're delivering it.

Speaker 1: 4:10

You sound so like upbeat, but I know at that time that was not the case. It obviously is not what anyone thinks is going to happen, especially if you think everything's going so well. So how did that change your life? I mean, naturally, that is a massive thing to so. How did that change your life? I mean, naturally, that is a massive thing to happen. But how did that shift your life for?

Speaker 2: 4:28

you. So I think it made me hyper aware of, like the reality of society. So, like people at university, in medical school, you get middle class kids from across the country and when they're caught with drugs or they're involved in something, it's dealt with differently by the police and university compared to a couple of working class kids of color from London and um, so like that was like quite insightful for me because, like I always grew up telling my dad how proud I was to be a British citizen and my dad used to say to me that in London you're British but like when you go outside of London people don't see you as a British person, they see you as an outsider and like. So that was like, I guess, like compounding that. Like you know, the first time as I experienced racism were in Plymouth.

Speaker 2: 5:07

The first times like I experienced that like institutional inequality of like criminal justice again was like going through the courts in Plymouth. But it also made me like super independent in a way. So, like you know, I had to figure out how to get a part time job. I had to figure out like I didn't actually tell my parents up until the day before I was convicted, like actually sentenced oh my gosh, how did you keep that a secret? So we literally, like me and my best mate, like lived five minutes away from each other, so we just used to literally like rely on one another to keep things going and then just literally like kept it to ourselves dealing with it and I took it to trial. So like I had three trials one collapsed, one was a hung jury and the third time I was convicted and your parents didn't know at all.

Speaker 2: 5:43

They only knew the day before. So, like on the final trial, the day before our sentence is when they found out, and they found out because of a local newspaper. Oh my gosh, yeah, it was pretty intense, pretty intense two years of my life. I was like what, 19, like 2021? So 21 is when I got sent down.

Speaker 2: 5:58

And then, like just when I turned 20s, when I got arrested that's so intense and you went through that all by yourself baby, yeah, me and my best mate and a few of our friends and stuff, but yeah, yeah, like it wasn't like um, but I didn't want my parents to feel helpless because I think for me the way I dealt with it was, like, you know, I bought a textbook on criminal law, I started to like understand how to represent myself, like all of that stuff, and like help my lawyer and my barrister, but I think for my parents they would have just felt like helpless, almost thinking. Like you know, I think parents can often be like blame themselves for what happens to their children, whereas, like the reality is is like it wasn't their fault. It was just sort of like, you know, dumb decisions of like what were like 19, 20 year olds you went down that path.

Speaker 1: 6:33

Obviously you got caught and that is what happened. But I think even the fact that you mentioned that you bought a book on criminal justice really just shows how you are and how driven you are and just trying. I feel like learning is at the base and the cracks of everything that you said so far. Yeah, like obviously being really good at science, medicine, and even when you are caught in the crosshairs, studying and see what you can do to try and help yourself is really that's what really comes out. So now, obviously you've been sent down. How long were you sent down for?

Speaker 2: 7:03

so. So the judge gave me two years, eight months, but of that I had to serve a year before I was sent out on tag.

Speaker 1: 7:08

And how was that experience for you?

Speaker 2: 7:10

So like I had a surprisingly good prison experience. Like I was in H&P Exeter, h&p Guy's Marsh and in Spring Hill for a few weeks and I think like being in those prisons in the southwest of the country they're like majority white prisons, so a lot of the um like people from like urban centers across the uk so manchester, birmingham, london, sort of like hang around together and like look out for one another and because of that like I guess I got um and like weirdly I had like mutual friends of mutual friends that I knew that was somehow inside. So it was like I had a very like a nice experience, as nice as it can be, in prison. But like prisons in the uk are pretty dire, like you know, suicide, self-harm, drug use, um like even just like the sheer level of like racial tension that exists in british prisons is pretty insane I didn't know that was even well.

Speaker 1: 7:53

I mean it sounds a bit naive for me saying out loud, but I didn't know that was such a big problem, necessarily in the prisons yeah, it's surprising.

Speaker 2: 8:00

So I didn't realize the level of extremism that exists until I was in prison because, like you see both sides of that fence with very extremist views who are willing to like yeah, I don't know like take it to violence quite quickly. And like it was actually Christmas Eve in Exeter when, like a race riot broke out between the white prisoners and the prisoners of color. Like you heard everything, from monkey noises being made out of cells to, like people saying the n-word, like everything was going on and it was just over. It was over something stupid, like someone pushing in on the server queue or something like that. And but yeah, showed you how sort of like yeah, you could feel those tensions.

Speaker 1: 8:31

How did that affect you? Obviously, you're reintegrated into society. We're kind of bringing it back down into money then. So obviously you can explain it better the process of when you get released. What does that look like? What are you left with? Are you set up with like, okay, now you're gonna start off your life again. Here's where you can go and work. You have to go and figure out that yourself. How does that look?

Speaker 2: 8:51

look like so, like for me, I guess I was very lucky, right, like I had a bank account before I went into prison, had a driver's license, id, all of that kind of stuff, also had like a working history and education, but, um, essentially the support you're given is very limited employment. Now the prison service does give you more support with employment but, um, yeah, you come out and you're practically like you have to figure it out yourself. So I didn't have to sign up to like job seekers or anything like that, because I went straight back to university. I think it took me like six weeks to get a part-time job.

Speaker 2: 9:19

But, like for a lot of my friends that came out, um, who I'd made in prison were like that wasn't the case, like they were like homeless, like years onwards and had limited support from probation or the local authority. But you're meant to have like a probation assessment a couple of weeks before you're released. You're meant to have, like you know, money management, training, things like that. But it sounds great in practice it doesn't really happen in reality. So a lot of people come out very unprepared. I think the discharge grant has gone up for like 47 to like 87 pounds or something like that, but still not a substantial amount.

Speaker 1: 9:51

Is that one off, or is that recurring?

Speaker 2: 9:53

Oh, no one off payment.

Speaker 1: 9:54

So it goes from 47 pounds to 87 pounds. You can depart.

Speaker 2: 9:58

Yeah, so when you leave it's called a discharge grant or something like that.

Speaker 1: 10:00

Yeah, or something like that yeah, wow, that's next to nothing, yeah people don't have things previously set up or you don't have a plan once you leave, that's nothing yeah, it is.

Speaker 2: 10:07

It's difficult because I think the reality is is that if you don't know how the system works and you're not able to like a lot of guys in there can't like they struggle, might struggle with communications or like interacting with like legitimate figures of authority. So it's like you know you're experiencing homelessness and you go to the job center or the local authority and they're dismissing you. It's like learning how to navigate those things is like the key to being able to overcome it. Right, being persistent and like, but even then like you kind of have to accept that you know local authorities in the uk are failing the job center struggling, so like it's almost like navigating there's multiple barriers and like for a lot of people it's just really difficult, which is why oftentimes people will just re-offend just because it's that much easier than trying to do something new.

Speaker 1: 10:47

Absolutely. That's what you hear all the time. You hear a lot of people who the reason why they're re-offending isn't because they want to necessarily. Some people, yes, but some people know it's because it's just so hard when they get back out that it is like it's just easy just to go back in. Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah, you know what you're working when you're back in, you know what to expect. It's just easy to go back in. Yeah, and I think that that's part of a system that obviously needs to be fixed. How important would you say is? Obviously in society, but obviously, coming from your background, obviously you haven't been in prison. How important do you think financial literacy is?

Speaker 2: 11:15

so I think, um, so I always look at like comparing like outcomes for different groups of people in society. Right, and I think one reason like so I'm from a Sri Lankan Tamil background and if you generally look at like Sri Lankan Tamils or South Asians, especially like Indians, and um Sri Lankans, like they do quite well in society, purely because of the financial literacy that they show, like my mom and dad, like you know, my mom and dad have um enough money but will still look for the cheapest ways to do things. Like my dad will has been investing since he like first came to the country and they used to, like you know, in the 90s you'd invest using teletext, so you literally have the I don't know people if your audience is young enough to know what I mean, old enough to know what teletext is, but like um, yeah, you press a button on the tv, you have words that stream across and um, he used to literally pick investments on there and then sell them at the end of the day and like we were lucky because, like me and my sister got, I guess, like a front row to that education growing up. So, like for me it was always like understanding how the economy works and, like, for a lot of my friends from different backgrounds, it was always like sharing that insight that I got growing up with my friends, like when I was like 19, like, I think, like 1920, and it was like when I first started getting interested in like technology, um, like AI, blockchain, things like that, and I remember like literally sitting my friends around and just being like all right guys, like this stuff in the next five to ten years is gonna like 10x, 20x and, um, you know, my friends used to think I was crazy because I'd literally be telling them saying like, oh, like, ai is going to be one day running the economy and all this kind of stuff, right and um, it was really interesting because I think it's that learning and also that ability to be frugal or like to, um, you know, delay your gratification, however you want to call it that enabled me to like get through prison, get through my life and still be okay, no matter how hard life got.

Speaker 2: 12:53

But a lot of the times, like, I think there's like also that emotional component as well where, like, if you struggle to manage your emotions, it's even harder to manage your money, but like going to prison, prison. I think I just realized. Well, before prison, in medical school, I realized, like middle-class kids have a different view of money to like those in the working class, right, we earn to live, whether it's they like almost like earnings almost separate from their lifestyle. So they almost look at like, okay, our money will come, it's going to come one way or another. How do I make that money come? And then how do I, you know, say 50% and enjoy 50%, right, whereas a lot of my friends I remember when we first got our student loans like people would be spending it, blowing it, literally playstation, going out, um, and like, don't get me wrong, I was guilty of that. In the first three weeks I managed to spend my student loan but, like, by my second student loan I'd learned my lesson yeah, yeah, right and you've got to make mistakes to learn.

Speaker 2: 13:42

But like then going into prison, I think I saw like the other side of that, which was like how middle class people think, or those in the working class, and in prison it's like you know they that world from like 12 or 13. You're now in your mid or late 20s.

Speaker 2: 13:53

That's all you've known for the best part of a decade and a half, and someone's coming in telling you that you know you need to figure out how to open a bank account and do this like you're so outside of the system that, like the system seems alien to you right and the same way, if you told a normal person like you know the life of a crack dealer, they would be like that's alien to them and I think, like there's almost this, this bridging that needs to happen in society between different socioeconomic groups, for us to go like it's not your fault or my fault or anyone's fault.

Speaker 2: 14:34

It's like how do we learn together and take responsibility as communities or as collective groups of people? Try to do that in prison. A lot like talking to guys showing them you invested £100 in Google stock 20 years ago. You'd be like rich beyond your wildest dreams now, right, but like no one thinks like that, because like it's much easier to think, let me buy a pair of Nike trainers for £100 because I get that now. It was always interesting to hear people's pushback or like why people didn't want to do what they wanted.

Speaker 1: 15:08

When you grow up. I know how everyone in my area thought.

Speaker 2: 15:12

Because I grew up in.

Speaker 1: 15:13

East London. I knew we all thought very fairly similar, Right, and my dad, similar to your dad, was kind of a bit more of an anomaly. He was a very financially savvy Off the back of my sector. He'd made me younger but by the time I'd come financially savvy.

Speaker 2: 15:25

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 15:26

So myself and my brother got to learn that. But then you meet different people and I'm still learning and hearing different perspectives from people and you hear. You know there's some people who don't believe in savings. They think I should spend the money now.

Speaker 1: 15:37

Everyone says you're going to die anyway you know that kind of morbid response but then you have other people who say you know you invest, so then you can live, you can continue living the lifestyle that you have. You know everyone's got different perspectives and it is just kind of bridging that, as you say. I'm bringing that together and putting that education, things are booming. You know, when we talk about money, there's always this big talk about investing.

Speaker 1: 15:57

And I think investing is a great tool that people can use to grow their wealth over time. However, it's still a point that I think people want to learn about. So are you investing, and what does that look like for you?

Speaker 2: 16:07

I've always been into investing, since I was 19 is when I opened my first sort of stocks and shares ISA and started putting money away. There's a lot I've learned since then, right, and I think like having nine years I'm 28 now and having nine years of like history, I think the things I've learned is like investing should be boring, so like investing should be. I think Warren Buffet says it's like watching paint dry, and long term investors will always outperform short-term investors because the way markets work are buyers and sellers and you know someone's got to lose money for someone else to make it right.

Speaker 2: 16:35

I've always looked at the data behind this and our Hargreaves and Lanzan one of the largest providers of stocks and shares is in the uk have a thing on like what makes an iso millionaire and like it's just a funny fact. But people who forget that their money's in their accounts are the ones who are most likely to become iso millionaires because they just don't touch it. But you have to look at it like what am I going to put my money in and what can literally like if the world was to shut down for 10 years, the markets were to close, what would I be comfortable, knowing that my money's in that and I'm not going to touch it right? So for me that's like big tech. For example, you know Google, amazon, microsoft. I know that like if Google was to shut down tomorrow, you know we'd be pretty messed up. Like the world would pretty much end. Sounds dramatic, but it is close. Yeah, 100 right. Like we wouldn't be able to search for things. Look at youtube like most of us watch youtube. When was the last time you watched bbc one live? But you watch youtube. Like all of these types of things like I think it helps you to form a perspective of the world.

Speaker 2: 17:27

Like, capitalism is about using money for votes. So your money, every pound you have, is a vote. And now what are you going to vote on? And a lot of the times, people vote on consumption. So, like you know, when was the last time you put a pound in Nike versus buying a pound of Nike trainers?

Speaker 2: 17:43

Right and like, every decision can be compartmentalized in this, and I look at capitalism as a game and investing is. You know, it's like the level up in that game. You know, build your rainy day fund, pay off your debt, have a budget, all of these things. And then when you get to the top of that game and you know you're a world-class player, you start investing and you learn the game of capitalism. So, like, understanding that these big companies are going to be there, understanding that smaller companies are where you can make a lot more money quickly, but just understanding that in this game, like're gonna have to lose to be able to win. And it's about time in the game, not trying to get there as quickly as possible, but also recognizing that no one's gonna help you get there. You know, get rich quick schemes are just like they're just scams.

Speaker 1: 18:22

There's just 100. There is no such thing. I feel like those kind of when you hear that people say I'm gonna do this. If that were the case is what my dad always told me. If that were the case, everyone would be doing it 100%.

Speaker 2: 18:31

Like I get people all the time, like in prison and outside, coming to me saying like, oh, can you manage my money for me, can you do this? And I can always explain, like if I was to do that for you, like that's me, I would be instantly lying, like I would be like a thing of me trying to show you certainty when I know myself that the world is uncertain, right, and then, um, like it's weird, because I always say, like if someone promises they're going to make you money, they're lying, because like they would have done it for themselves and they wouldn't have needed to take your money. And I think people just need to have that assumption that doing this is going to be hard, otherwise, yeah, everyone else would have done it already absolutely so.

Speaker 1: 19:03

Let's bring it to today. Then talk to us about the business that you run and the work that you do.

Speaker 2: 19:08

I run an organization called Breakthrough Social Enterprise and it's really about I think I said it earlier but bridging the gap between the people of today and the industries of tomorrow. So, like I recognize, like over the last eight or nine years, now, that you know, all the technology exists, whether that's AI, robotics, 3d printing, blockchain, metaverse technology but what's the issue is that normal people, or like the average person, doesn't have the talent, skills or resources to access these industries right Now. If you look at the average salary in an industry like AI, you're talking about hundreds of thousands of pounds a year. And then you look at, like you know, your average salary in something like digital marketing or social media management and it's much lower, and the reason is is like it's the value added to the economy. But the issue that I see is, like, like these industries are populated by the same individuals, right, like those who go to Oxford and Cambridge or top universities or um, you know from more affluent backgrounds, those who traditionally white or East Asian, and I think the biggest issues is that if we don't have diversity in these sectors, we're going to see the same issues that we saw with social media and, like these algorithms, with AI and other forms of technologies with much more, I guess, dangerous consequences, right.

Speaker 2: 20:18

So a lot of it for me is like how do we bridge that gap for underserved communities? So Breakthrough initially started working with people in prison and people at risk of entering the criminal justice system, but what we did was broaden it out because we recognize there are multiple cohorts, so those you know over the age of 35 up to 55, you know young, economically inactive people like that, numbers rising all the time 18 to 25 year olds who aren't in work on an education and you know are struggling to reenter anything and we teach them how to do things. Like you know, how can you use AI as a coach and a mentor? How can you use it help manage um your finances or manage, like, what's going on in your head? And I think like for me, that's like the biggest interest, because it's like the next evolution of technology will either be way worse for social inequality or it can be something that really helps to make society better for us all ai is just that space.

Speaker 1: 21:09

That is so interesting. We had this conversation as well. It's just so interesting because we don't know what's gonna come and what that looks like. I'm a big fan of ai always learning nice. One thing that I'd say I use fairly often, but I know my dad loves his chat gpt yeah and I think there are some really good benefits when it comes to using chat gT, money being one of them. So how could people use things like chat GPT to benefit them when it comes to like money, education and just understanding money better?

Speaker 2: 21:40

one way is if you wanted to download your bank statements or download your investment accounts and then upload it to chat GPT and ask it to run an analysis and give you an idea of your performance, what you're doing right, wrong, where's your going. It can perform that data analysis relatively quickly and give you something that's quite insightful. Then why I asked ChatGPT to do is like you can ask it to act as a someone, someone famous, you know. You know you might love Warren Buffet, right? So you say, act as Warren Buffet and pretend you are my financial advisor this is my incomings outgoings, you know.

Speaker 2: 22:10

Upload your statements, provide me with 10 actionable steps that I can use to, I don't know, get to 1 million pounds in 10 years, right? And it will literally provide you with a step by step plan on how to do that. And then, alongside that, it's like, say, for example, you want to look at a company to invest in, what you can do is upload everything about that company on the Internet, that company on the internet. Use ChatGPT to search the internet about that company and give you, like detailed research into, like you know, your advantages, disadvantages and whether you should make an investment, and even things like probability calculations or data analysis. It can do, you know, just using a simple prompt, and I recommend, like people, just experiment with it, because the more you realize it can do, the more you realize it's almost, like you know, a co-pilot that can help you through that entire journey.

Speaker 1: 23:00

I think that is such a smart way to use ChatGPT that I haven't even considered, because I have done a lot of ChatGPT.

Speaker 1: 23:02

But there's even more that we can do I feel like we still haven't pushed the bounds of how much we can use AI in ChatGPT. So that is such an incredible way. I'm going to go home and let it grill me, and then it grilled me. I feel like I'm fairly good, but I'm going to see what ChatGPT says about my spending and how I manage my money, so that's really good. I want to ask you, then, in terms of your social enterprise, what has been some of the successes that you'd like to share that you think is just amazing.

Speaker 2: 23:24

Someone started working at KPMG straight out of prison, so literally he was serving a prison sentence, was released and then three weeks later working at kpmg. You know apprentices working at some of the largest national organizations, like mott mcdonald, for example. We've done work and gotten people into an academic program and a graduate program at dxc and I think one of my favorite stories from there is like there was this girl on the program who was? She left school at 16 and, um, you know 16 or 17 and like she was one of the highest performing candidates at the dxc assessment day, competing with graduates. And I think to me, like stuff like that is just amazing, like where you know, even where someone hasn't had a traditional background, they can still perform in those environments.

Speaker 2: 24:03

And then on, like on this current cohort, there's a girl who's currently studying at Exeter University. She's studying law, right, and she just chose to do the course. So we only get funded for a portion of the people we do and we do we'll do a larger number of people for free. Yeah, so she's studying law, she's in her going into her final year and she just did the course, literally as a learning experience. She didn't do it for any incentive of a job or starting a business, and the way she got engaged with things like AI and like understanding the impact that will have on things like the legal industry, I think was really inspiring to see, because in that 12 weeks, she was able to design a career for herself, design what her future could look like and understand her position in that future as someone with legal experience.

Speaker 2: 24:42

And yeah, that's. I guess what we're trying to do, like what we're trying to achieve, is create an alternative to university where there's a standardized human education, because I think school doesn't really do that right and we think that you know things like relationships, how to use technology, financial literacy, um, how to like navigate life's ups and downs, like every single human being across the planet needs these things. But how can we do it in a free or very like next to no cost way that involves the most amount of people possible?

Speaker 1: 25:11

I think that's incredible, the work that you're doing, and I feel like it's so good to hear success stories sometimes, because it really does put into perspective just the amazing work that you're doing and just inspire people, really, really inspire people, and it's inspired me, so I love that. Before we round up, then, I want to ask you what would be your top three pieces of advice that you give just in generally.

Speaker 2: 25:34

I think people should know I'm gonna say more so when it comes to financial literacy, but just in general, as well, I think the secret to like wealth, or building wealth, or like having the life that you actually want, is like it starts with like, yeah, learning, simply lifelong learning, and I think in order to learn, you need to approach it from a place of very like a no ego and um a level of humility like understand, like the older I get, the more I realize, the less I know. And I think, using that context, understand like you can learn off anyone. You can learn what not to do, but also what to do, use, like, all the tools that are available to you. Number two is understanding the difference between wealth, as in like assets relationships, that idea of net worth versus cash, because I think a lot of people think cash in their bank accounts means that they're well off, but you know cash depletes, whether that's inflation or whether that's just from spending and like where you, when you have assets. So like you know intellectual property, a book that you wrote, or music that you've made, or artwork, anything right, all of these things are worth their weight in gold in comparison to just pure cash, but you can make those things for free. So like no one really has an excuse not to get involved in that, but also understanding like wealth is relationships, like I understand that a lot of opportunities come to me because of who I know and how I know them. So recognizing that, like you can build that from any position, right, you don't need loads of money to be able to do that.

Speaker 2: 26:51

And the third thing is, like, don't ignore the current technological trends. So, like I always say to people, if I came to you in the nineties and I said you know you need to get involved in the internet, software engineering, coding like what would you have said to me? Cause I think a lot of people think in their heads that you know what's happening now is somewhat different to then, and it's not. It's just that technology involves in like what you'd almost see as phases or like industrial revolutions, right? The last one was, like you know, how do we get all this information onto the internet and how do we get information democratized? We've achieved that. Now it's like how do we make the information we have intelligent? How do we make it interactive, individualized, and so, yeah, like, make sure you're aware of this.

Speaker 2: 27:31

Like you know, all the majority of the largest companies in the world today are technology companies. They're all involved in building AI products, building VR products and like. You've got to ask yourself why and how do you get involved and position yourselves for that? Like, even if you've got a business, think about how you integrate things like AI into that. And if you're someone who's at school, school like, start using that technology before you become. Like, before you become it's too late. Basically because if you're in the 90s, you would have wished you did that and now you actually have a chance to do it again, right?

Speaker 1: 28:01

exactly right and um, yeah, so that would be my three main points I think there's some great points there, especially the point of technology. I always say like, just I think also your first point of lifelong learning.

Speaker 2: 28:12

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 28:13

Some people think right, I know what I know, and that's it.

Speaker 2: 28:15

Exactly yeah.

Speaker 1: 28:16

Look at this. Ai. What is technology? Who's who knows what's going to be here in 20 years time? Just always learning and figuring out how you can make it work for you, whether it's like this unit career in it, if you've got business, how out how you can make these new innovations work for you as well. So 100. Thank you so so much for coming to this podcast. It has been such an insightful episode and it is incredible to hear your journey and the things that you were currently doing. But for everyone listening and watching, where can they find you?

Speaker 2: 28:43

find me on linkedin uh, under my name, and I can spell out what key you can put that in the description and, um, outside of that, tiktok. I'm on tiktok and if you type in breakthrough social enterprise or our website is wearebreakthroughcouk, you'll be able to find us on there and be able to link into a lot of our things amazing.

Speaker 1: 29:00

Thank you so so much again, and to everyone listening and watching, we'll be back again next week with another episode. Bye guys.