How To Find Your Purpose in Life with Vee Kativhu

what would you want to do for free if you didn't have to think about bills and all this other stuff what would you happily dedicate your time to for free and that thing that thing is embedded in your purpose that's a good starting point hey friends how's it going welcome back to deep dive in this episode i have the immense privilege to speak to v kativoo who has written this book empowered and v is like me an educational youtuber but unlike me she is like a published author now having actually written publisher book she's like mates with michelle obama she's an activist she does a load of stuff around helping improve access to education for people all around the world and genuinely there were some moments in this conversation that really i brought tears to my eyes just hearing the the authentic and honest and really inspiring way that v naturally speaks about her upbringing and her mum and the stuff that she's doing and i'm not really one to feel emotional about stuff but like there was something about chatting to v for the first time that really really got me so yeah it was it was really good and i hope you guys enjoyed the episode as much as i did so yeah overall in the episode we discuss v's journey to education and doing this empowerment thing that she's into and we talk about her mission and purpose that really genuinely does seem to be to do good in the world and i'm you know you'll see in the episode i get a bit flabbergasted as how as to how altruistic her motives like genuinely are whereas mine often tend to be far more on the selfish side of things for like fame and power and money and all that all that kind of stuff anyway i hope you enjoy the episode book is really good you should check it out it's actually sick and it's genuinely like a really a really pretty like work of art as well you'll see if you're watching this on on the youtube channel but yeah i hope you enjoyed this conversation between me and v let's go for it v welcome welcome to the show how are you doing i'm good thank you ali how are you i'm great i've been following your your journey on the internet for such a long time this is the first time actually we're meeting in real life i know it's it's quite exciting and it's quite weird on the internet because you've seen someone every day you watch their story i know you were just in pakistan like i know so much but now i'm like oh hi but i already know so much and it's quite a weird and backwards way of doing it but it's it's it's nice to meet you in the flesh um so you've got this book oh which is it's coming up very very shortly i mean it will it will be out by the time people see this yes this is very cool it's like it's like a work of art almost i feel like a proud mother that's so pretty honestly i feel like this is my baby and the insides the colors it's me it's yellow bright it's energy it's sun it's ah yeah what was the story of getting up getting the book deal oh my gosh people ask me this all the time and i don't know if this is a regular story or this is not a regular story but i just got an email i got an email from my editor mirai who is incredible and she was having a bad day she was having a really bad day or something like that and she went on the internet and she stumbled across my videos and she went into like a six-hour video watching non-stop and she just got to know me in that time and she was like the moment she was done she had to email and say your your life and your story and your advice it needs to be a book and she emailed that day i think and then i replied the next day and this journey began and well wow when so when when was that and how was that journey from from email to now when the book is in your hand so quite ironic i don't know if it's ironic but um i started writing the book the same day i began my degree at harvard so they happen at the same time so i guess the email came two weeks before three weeks before so you got into negotiations the back and forth all that stuff and then you begin so yeah and what's that what's that process been like for you writing the book while doing uh doing a degree from harvard like that's a pretty big deal i've done some crazy stuff in my time but that was the craziest because it's just two big commitments two things that you should be giving a hundred percent of your entire time to and i'm doing them simultaneously so that was quite odd but also exciting because i think i work best when there's lots going on rather than one thing and i've never just done my degrees i've never just done one thing it's always juggling and i like that so the process was good um i had to take time off youtube at some point for like two months because it got quite a lot but um we're here now and i have a degree and a book now so pretty happy yeah congratulations thank you i saw lots of very cute photos from your graduation yes your kind of at-home graduation party that your family through for you and like your friends and balloons ah listen let me tell you something when it comes to celebrating and celebrating life my family don't play games they are unapologetic about the fact that you've gotten this far as in anyone it could be me could be anybody you've gotten this far through your hard work and life is not easy the world puts a lot on you especially as a young woman who's a black young woman right the world puts a lot on you as it is so anytime you get a win they're like we will celebrate this till kingdom come so when the pandemic was happening the schools were not giving us graduations my family said okay that's fine good for them but we're gonna carry on so the balloons came out we ordered the gowns and the whole the whole nine yards and i was really happy fantastic um so i want to go into a lot of the stuff you talk in the book because really like the whole thing live your life with passion and purpose um and you've got some interesting thoughts around how to find your purpose and goal setting and all that kind of stuff before we get into that i wonder if we can talk a little bit about your your background kind of your childhood all that kind of stuff because it's it's quite inspiring story so for people who maybe aren't familiar with your story i wonder if you can give us like an overview of kind of where have you come from and how did we get how did we get here so i was born and raised in zimbabwe a beautiful beautiful beautiful country on the southern tip of the african continent and i was raised there up until the age of about seven and in that time frame my father passed away when i was about two my mom moved to england when i was two and then my sister instantly got separated from me because obviously you're gonna stay with family members while your mom's away and they can't afford to have both of you so we were split up so i think being born and then straight away your family is gone that was really really hard and i was raised as an orphan i had orphan status in zimbabwe and that was really difficult because people treat you different like you feel the constant sympathy and all that kind of stuff and then we got reunited when i was about seven or eight and then i moved to england to be with my mom and that story of getting to the airport is always a funny but sad one for me because we literally got to the airport my sister and i after being reunited and we saw two women my mom and her best friend and i was like i literally don't know which one she is that is how much i just didn't know her and my sister ran to one person i ran to the other and of course i got the wrong one and um yeah but since that day my mom and i have been like best friends to make up for lost time i think we bonded so quickly and now we're inseparable you know and then yeah i got to the uk went to school and wanted to go to oxford that was a big deal for me because i thought life it's for the living and i want nothing but the best that it has to offer so i went to oxford well when i wanted to go to oxford my teacher said no she was like no it's not for people like us and that was not gonna work with me because my mom since since we've been reunited she just she just wanted me to have everything like she wanted me to go after life because it'd been so hard to begin so when i said i want to go to uni her instinct was well we're gonna we're gonna choose whichever one the best one which one's the best one google it came up that was literally how we chose i typed in google what's the best where is the best place to study history oxford came up i said that's where we're going so when she said no it didn't make sense to me i said but why you know and then i didn't end up going sadly because i just didn't have my school support and then the next year the foundation year came around i applied for the foundation year got into oxford started youtube and then the rest is history what is the foundation year ah the foundation year so it was this pilot scheme and course at lady margaret hall oxford which was like a bridging course to kind of help students from backgrounds like mine who would have wanted to go to a place like oxford but because of circumstances out of their control they just couldn't or they maybe didn't meet the grades or whatever the reason could be this is like a foundation year like um a bridging course or a fast track to get you up to speed with what you might have missed out on in that year before you do your undergraduate so you get onto the foundation year you get to oxford you're there but you're not yet there so i had to like wake up from my room at oxford to go downstairs to interview for oxford by my professors who've been teaching me for the past few months and they're like hi how are you i'm like we we we've done this before like come on and then you find out when whether you've gotten in or not by going downstairs again to open your letter in the principal's office instead of it being sent home so that is like such an odd way but yeah which is a course that they took on 10 students from the uk and i was one of them luckily i was really happy about that but only seven of us got to continue so it wasn't guaranteed that you would go on to do the degree at oxford so yeah that was really hard yeah really hard and and why did you go for history that's a good question i just i love understanding the world and my place in it and for me to do that i have to go back in time to understand how things work i can't just take things to face value like i need to know but why like where did this begin you can't tell me this is like the philosophy of education i need to know what is philosophy where does it begin like who are the first philosophers or help me understand just the core of something in the start of it things like anything like racism politics whatever like we didn't just end up here something started or something happened first and i love investigating so that's why history for me okay so that's interesting so like a lot of people i know included like well me and all of the people i know from immigrant immigrant backgrounds yeah would not study something like history because the mindset would be what the hell are you gonna do with a history degree become a history teacher yeah and and so for a lot of people that i know it's like medicine engineering law are like the only professions yeah and therefore are the only things that you can possibly do at uni otherwise you're going to end up i don't know unemployed or whatever like was that something that went through your mind at all or no no my mom i honestly i think the world needs to have my mom have her own show have her own book like she is a character within herself but when she was raising my sister and i she never had any expectations on us so i never got that aspect of oh my god you must become a doctor or a pilot or she was just like you must become a v that was her thing and whatever it is i wanted to do she would then follow suit so she'd just wait for me to tell her this is direction and then she would figure out a way of supporting that or just listening or whatever she could do so she's got this let them fly mentality so i never i never had that pressure i mean there was a time she mentioned the word doctor but like she said any kind of doctor she never specified so if i do a phd then technically she gets her dream right but um yeah she supported the history dream at some point it was music at some point it was spanish like i never went down the lawyer the traditional route never was in me okay so then you started at oxford um what was that experience like for you broadly yeah gosh well i mean the first thing is obviously the lack of diversity is is a big big thing that plays a big role in your experience if you're not a student who's from that background right so as a young black woman stepping in and only seeing like that my year i think had 32 black students out of like 3 000 undergraduates or something like that and that is a big big big difference right and there are what 30 colleges or 32 in oxford so all of us are split amongst those colleges so you might be two or three maximum of you in your college and that was so different to what i'd known before so that was a little bit hard but it was fine because i made friends and my college was really nice but also been on the foundation year made it like an extra layer because people were asking all the time like what is that like what do you mean your foundation your student what does that even mean and how come you're saying you're not sure if you'll be here next year like we're all freshers and i just had to keep on explaining i mean actually year zero not year one so next year is my first year but this is my year zero they're like why didn't it be a zero so i think that made the experience a little bit more difficult and because i can compare from my actual first year to my zero first year i can see the difference like that yeah i was tense and i was constantly like feeling like i need to explain my place all the time and justify it and because it was so new this course we literally had people from tv shows wanting to do documentaries on us right they were emailing all the time we had newspaper people we had politicians come and visit us we had all like the attention was crazy because people were like wow oxford doesn't do this and now cambridge after like four years has adopted the course onto their stuff so it's been slow but people are finally getting around to it and it was just weird being the first on there yeah so so you said that it was it was hard being one of 30 something black students in yeah in the year group yeah why why was that hard uh like yeah it was hard because you you are constantly speaking for your entire race right whenever something goes on yeah it's well what do the black students think and it's like we were so small such a minority group that you're always feeling like you're representing all the time you know when conversations of hair come up and you change your hair again and again no one's already told people i'm black i changed my hair it's protective styling today i have blonde hair to when i have red i can have long hair could have short hair it's just how it works people are always asking stuff you're cooking your food like what is that it's just like a constant thing and then the boys will start telling you oh on my bucket list it's a date of black girl and you're always seen in your race and not just as a person so being a small group of you it's magnified because i don't know you and then you start to feel paranoia about certain things that aren't even like happening because you're on defense you're already like if i speak right now this is just what v thinks and don't put me in with everybody else because we're not the same and they'll just like paint you with the same brush right as if all black students have the exact same experience or the same thoughts it's like no get to know us as individuals stop saying acs african caribbean society just lumping us together all the time you know so i felt like i couldn't just be a student i felt like there was a responsibility that came with my place and also knowing that you need to do access work because you got to make sure more of you get in so that this experience is no longer alien or oh my god v is there and she's black it should be v is there yay you know and it's not necessarily because i'm black so i knew i couldn't just be there and party and just be like a student i had to also do all this work to make sure other students like me came in so that we can change narrative a little bit but yeah there are many reasons why it was hard but that's just a little bit of why yeah like it's it's it's hard to really imagine that like it was kind of the same at cambridge like very few black students in each year you'd be lucky if in a college there was like one or two black students um i think when it came to asian students there were always many more like still a minority compared to white people but like a sufficient critical mass that for me i never felt like yeah i was like one of maybe like five or six brown kids in the college but there were there were enough overall that yeah i didn't feel that kind of i was representing my race yeah i think black people just get it worse than asian people asian people do it's just we win yeah no it was it was difficult like it was really really hard and people always knew you because you stick out more so and then when things are happening your college or university will always call you to do the press things and they always say come on come on like can you speak for us and you just think no actually because i think that as an institution you have a lot of work to do and before we now stand up for you you need to stand up for us and show up for your students and show out for them and stop saying that you want to diversify and then don't really do it like stormzy offers a scholarship and you turn it away turn it away yes and then it went to cambridge like what do you think like things like that why would you say no and you can't you can't tell us why things like that you just get a little bit tired and you feel like am i fighting the world just just to exist in this space do you want me here you know and that's why the channel began truthfully that is that is why i started doing youtube because i was like i can't keep doing these conversations with people that i don't think care i might as well just go to the internet and tell young black students you can be here and you deserve a space here if you want to occupy it and you don't have to change who you are just come as you are i've never quite been able to make the argument for this to other people because when it comes to the diversity stuff i guess some people would say well it's not like the university is being systematically racist and kind of oppressing black black people for example it's just that black people don't get the grades what what do you say what do you say to that always been like yeah that one makes me really really angry because i don't think that there is a shortage of young intelligent talented and incredible black students in the uk i think there's a lack of opportunity a lack of nurturing and often a lack of love that's what i really think and if you're in a school like mine like i just shared my teacher saying no does that mean v wasn't smart enough no because at that exact time that i went up to them to ask about this oxford journey three a's top a's like you couldn't question them and it was what the time when you could only do your a levels like first year then second and you get your results so i couldn't have scored better if i wanted to so at that time what's the reason to say no to a student who's passionate and has the grades and then what if i don't apply now you think there's not a lot of black students that are smart but there was one she just didn't have the support to get here so where do we go with that argument really and truly and also if you are in a school like the school i was in where you'll go into class and you've now gotten that a in your first year and you know you're on track to get your a stars you walk into class and they're telling you you're sitting next to someone who got an e fair enough love it let's all help each other i need to get my education right now i can't babysit someone else because they need to be looked after by a teacher who's who can support them they need to be in a different class because now what are you going to do when you have an a student and an e student you've got to teach at b grade you have to teach at b grade do i have a chance of getting that a star really so is it a lack of smart intelligent black students or is it a lack of funding a lack of resources and a lack of support in our schools that's the question i would want to ask let's have that conversation with whoever's saying that yeah we're going to take a very quick break to introduce our sponsor brilliant brilliant is a fantastic online platform for learning maths science and computer science with interactive and engaging courses that i've been using for many years but to be honest i wish i'd had their lessons in maths to hand when i was preparing for my bmat when applying to medical school a lot of the time when we're taught maths at school the focus is on empty memorization of formulas that we can apply in our exams but the great thing about brilliant is their courses teach you how to actually understand concepts from a first principles approach and develop the intuition to solve problems also their computer science series is absolutely sick they've got some fantastic courses on algorithms on learning to program with python they've got a whole series about cryptocurrency and understanding exactly how things like bitcoin work from the ground up which is genuinely fascinating so if you want to give their lessons and maths a try or even science or computer science then head over to brilliant.org forward slash deep dive and the first 200 people to sign up by that link will get 20 off the annual subscription to the website so thank you so much brilliant for sponsoring this episode the other question that i've never been able to answer is what should the university do about this because the problems are more upstream they're more like earlier on in life earlier in in childhood like the school system the education system and then when it comes to the actions of an individual university you start saying well it's not their fault that like i don't know the low performing schools don't like encourage the students as much et cetera et cetera and then the conversation goes so far back and so abstract that it stops becoming about things that universities can do and they often use that as an excuse to not then do stuff oh no the conversation is still very much about what the universities can do because let me tell you the journey begins with yes with family members and how many oxford students have you had and then you get to the school and the lack of resources but then they get to the point where some of those students do still make it through that filter system so you might still have a student like me who finds her school gets to that place and finally has an interview oxford wonderful fantastic now when she gets into that interview there are these things called unconscious biases right we need the universities to start training their professors to start helping them look out for talent that is just beyond an a star for example because let me tell you something that b grade that i'm talking about where i've earned it next to an e student and a d student and i've now had to fight for my class and all the stuff that b has been earned through blood sweat tears it stands at the same position as that a start and people find it difficult to understand what i'm saying when i say that contextualize it okay if you're in a school where there are four of you and you're learning and your teacher knows how many times you've blinked your report card is accurate it is exactly about you whereas some of our report cards are copied and pasted when i come out with my b grade or my a grade you better give it some respect all right so when you have things like that and students like that applying to places like oxbridge these universities need to contextualize look into how did that person get was their heating working where they able to study and revise and for them to still have the courage and bravery to apply and make it as far as an interview maybe in the interview let's give them a chance you know maybe because people connect to people that they're similar to so when that student walks in and says oh my god i saw you at the races and my dad always comes to your club and whatever instant connection you're like ah they get it they'll understand they'll fit in you get in then the student comes in coming in from hackney they didn't have the heating on they didn't have the school support they're nervous they can't look in the eye but they've still applied and they still managed to ace that essay and whatever whatever can we start contextualizing that's what i've got to say you speak pretty passionately about it i can like i can like feel feel feel the passion yeah yeah yeah that's why that's why the channel began i had too much to say that was penned up inside and it was just frustrating because every time i'd go home i'd be hearing my friends like oh my god feel like what do they eat over there is it lobster like they're riding around in harry potter like gowns and all this stuff i'm like you're so smart one of the smartest people i know but because of a lack of confidence a lack of support and a lack of thinking you can fit in a place like that we've lost you like you're you would never even consider coming to visit me because you're afraid of being put at a dinner table with five forks five knives all of this stuff when you would have actually like we needed you you know what i mean we needed someone like you so i get frustrated and passionate because i i see the students that that are missing out or that are at the other end of it i i see them and i'm like man if the world had just given you a little bit of love yeah you could have done wonders so that's why wow so given that the world is the way that it is um what can maybe if there's a student in that position listening or watching to this what can they do to kind of help take matters into their own hands while at the same time campaigning and wishing the world will change alongside yeah well that that is why the book the channel anything that i do that's public or on the internet why i do it is for that reason for someone who would have been like me who needed that older big sister because for example my mom i told you she lets me lead and then she follows right she would have never been the one who would have said oxford now follow me and i'll help you like that would have never happened she doesn't know anything about it doesn't understand how the system works and there are lots of students like that whose parents literally have no clue so if there's a student like that and then she goes to school and the teacher's like no no no we're not interested and also i must say before i answer your question i don't blame the schools either because sometimes they just don't have an understanding of oxbridge themselves and they find it intimidating too or it's a little bit like extra work we do personal statement classes for 25 students and now v wants a separate one for oxbridge because it's different we don't have the time or the resources so it's easier to say no not because their hearts are unkind but it's just what they know maybe and whatever so want to highlight that as well like there could be other reasons and yeah i can i can i can forgive that yeah um but yes those students who are at home who are wondering what they can do to kind of help themselves get on the internet watch youtube channels like mine the resources are free that like you don't have to pay for this you don't have to have extra private tuition like get on the internet there are so many study tubers out there so many blogs out there there are so many helpful things and sign up for free classes like empowered by v like i hate to be that person but things like empowered by v where every year we're having these annual events that are free having students like myself or jade or i mean we're gonna get you on there one day people like jack ali coming on to explain their experience how they write their personal statements how things like you just can't put a price on this stuff you know what i mean that can be as helpful as what your counterparts i mean i don't know because i've never been taro or eaten but what they could be getting there like we're trying to bridge the gap as much as we can so use all of these free resources around you because they're there for a reason and they are helpful i must say so myself empowered by me um just as an aside um how how do you feel about the fact that it's called empowered by v like yeah your name being part of this like yeah okay so basically that is that is a story within itself but i was with my friends and i was like guys this event is coming up and at the time we were just calling it the event the event the event the event i was like no we need a name like this is getting ridiculous it needs a name and they're like what do you want to do like what is what's going on it's like i'll empower people and then i just call it empowered and we're all loved empowered like yeah that works great then i was just like it doesn't it doesn't feel complete there's something missing there's something missing and then i i suggested i was like what if we put by v but a silent by v at the time it was silent so it was like just so they know it's me doing it so like empowered and underneath it's like it's by v yeah then they're like no uh it needs to be empowered by v together and once it began it was three in the morning yeah we had rich tis tea biscuits we had cups of teas there was no turning back and i was like okay okay we'll do it for now but i was like i don't know if if it's a right thing to have my name in there because they're finding their empowerment for themselves and we're just helping facilitate that we're not empowering them they they're just looking for it you know it was too late by the time we had the event the students loved it they're like yes this is what it's all about woo and i try to change it every year we do a survey i'm like guys we're going to change it to something else they're like no then i was like fine we'll have to call it ebv so i refer to it as ebv because i'm like you know it feels more comfortable but they're like now empowered by v so it's stuck now and and and there's so many times i wishing you how many times this conversation happens every year i'm like right it's getting bigger now like we've got 15 000 students tuned in can we change it before we get to 20th yeah like no people like the name no one wants to hear it and no one wants to hear it so yeah i i hope that doing the book and call of the book empowered people think i'm talking about the book yeah but now i'm like now it's just confusing because it's two things like empowered overwritten by the only powered by the event i don't know where we go from here the branding is not quite yeah right but yeah yeah i remember so when i was um when uh jade was on the podcast and we were talking about her book it's the only study guide you'll ever need she mentioned about how she cringed at first about the name it's like oh it's a bit much but then it kind of grows on you and you realize that actually i i like i just thought it was a great name and i think empowered by v is a great name but i guess like as v person you feel a bit weird about the like yeah and i thought about it i was like i'm sure there are people out there who you know like i don't know tommy hilfiger mark jacobs where at first they thought are we gonna really now it's just noble right and i think for people who encounter it for the first time or are just coming to it it's just it's just a name but for me i'm like oh because i start to think about the word the meaning and like by v and what does that mean am i the one doing it am i yeah but i you have to sometimes also let things have their own life so this is now beyond me which is crazy to say when it's got my name but it's now outside of me like the students have ownership of this now and i love that they get to shape and craft what the things we talk about are what that platform looks like what the instagram does like how that platform in space helps them they shape it so i can't take it i can't go in there and be like well i don't like the name so i'm just changing it it's too late now actually if i wanted to three years ago was the time now so what what is empowered by me yes i love that question people always they're like i don't want to ask because you're so passionate about it and like you talk about it for so long but can you just tell me what it is again but um yeah it's an academic empowerment platform so we're just bridging the gap between academic ability which the students already have and self-belief which they don't have so we're just trying to merge the two together to be like you are that person you better own it and start taking up your space because the world is it's yours for the taking and you can't help where you were born you can't help the situation that you're in but you can help how you react to it and what you do moving forward so take those bad moments reframe them if the glass is half full or half and look at it as half full always never half empty because the moment you start looking at is half empty you're missing out opportunities you're literally missing out what that half glass of water could do for you could save your life right but you're so focused on the lack of that no and i always tell my students as well that even if you have walked a really difficult journey in life that doesn't make you less than if anything it makes you phenomenal because if you can end up in the same seat in the same table as other people who've obviously and i this is the thing people often think that i'm really angry at people who've had an amazing life i'm like no that is what everyone wants to have like i want my children to not have to suffer like i don't think your achievements are more we should cut for them more because you had to struggle like i don't want people to struggle that is the whole point of everything we're doing like we need everyone to be in a place where they can have things they like without having to have blood sweat tears but if you have had to have that that that shouldn't be something you're embarrassed about like if anything there is strength in your story there is strength in the journey you've walked and be proud of it because if that's what you can do when you didn't have a lot imagine when you have the resources you're going to be unstoppable like we should be afraid right now like you are on on your on the journey to just doing amazing things so that is that is what we try to do in power by v just trying to let students know that you are worthy of everything you want you're worthy of being successful you can't let your start determine your end that is not how it works and we're going to reframe and so what's the other one what does that look like in practice like how how do you yeah empower people like this we have workshops so many empowerment workshops which run for like two weeks for example and we'll take students they'll come along ask them surveys what are the things that you're struggling with most and where do you think you need help with the most they'll tell us and it's typically it's always always things like i don't think i deserve this or my family comes from this background and i'm just not sure people will look at me in a respectful light or always it's never to do with can you help me with getting better grades it's never that they know that they're smart it's always people just don't support me or i don't have that empowerment circle around me or people who are telling me you can do it and then we become that for them so we figure out what they are struggling with and then for the two weeks i just work with it it's kind of like coaching in a way it's like coaching and talking to them and working through that with them that's one element then the biggest element is the event which is the annual event that we do and getting all these people who i consider experts in their field my friends are phenomenal i think they're doing great things and we get them in and like okay jade you're great at the personal statements okay eve benny you're great at talking about mental health and all this other stuff so we bring them together and have this massive conference and the students are taking notes they're taking like mad notes and then they always tell us because we get feedback the feedback we get is crazy they'll tell us like after three months they'll come back and be like by the way the notes i've made from powered by v the event i'm still referring to now and i'm still using and like i am feeling it so it's just about giving people a boost and letting them know you can do it because sometimes it actually is just that someone has literally never told you i can see you you're worthy of this and you can do it go and people it can change your mindset like for me if that teacher told me yes ah that no shattered me and i didn't apply in the end i didn't until i got that foundation here the next year so it can change everything for you even though you have those a's that no or i don't believe in you game changer i feel like i just lived such a privileged upbringing in that no one's ever really said no and like you know things are going well you get good grades you're like obviously you're going to apply to oxford cambridge obviously you're going to go for medicine cool let's go for it like no real adversity along the way yeah and i guess i also don't speak to enough people who have actually had some level of adversity in their lives to actually just like appreciate that that's a thing it's it sounds like what you're saying is that for a lot of these people they need that just just that boost of motivation that actually you can just do it that is it because imagine when you're at your lowest like whatever that looks like for you or whoever else when you're at your lowest moment or you've worn an outfit and you're doubting it you're already like look in the mirror like i shouldn't go out like this and the uber's outside it's telling you come on come on let's go and then you bump into someone on your way out and they're like oh what are you wearing it's just confirmed all your fears you're going back in that house and you're gonna change like that oh if you do leave you're going to be looking down and thinking i should have never worn this and closing your jacket and that is the same element of like support that people need in their regular lives you're already thinking man like we live above the chicken shop right we live above the chicken shop it's always so noisy people already look down on me at school they laugh at me we don't have enough money there's no gas electricity and i'm gonna go and sit next to people who are gonna be the future prime ministers at oxford no way i could never go there and then finally get courage to like tell your teacher or maybe i'm thinking of it and they tell you it's not for people like us your fears are already on the brink what you the last thing you need is someone to confirm them especially when they're not true and it's just like it's just not even true your fears getting confirmed the worst thing so we have to come in and like try to undo that and some of this stuff is years in the making this is from high school primary school which is always been in circles of people just being like this is it there's nothing more to it and like i need to come in and be like come on you've got this and at first they're like oh look at this girl what's shawn about like boost of energy like girl get out of here and by the end of it they're like yeah i can't do it and then when i get the emails being like i applied and i got in yeah oh just fills me with joy and it's it's every day i get those messages every day v by the way like i i would have never applied he he kind of striked me as like the modern-day tony robbins in like a great way because like i think every generation has these kind of motivational people that really what they do is they empower people and kind of give them permission to do the thing which they already have in them anyway yeah um you know tony robbins there's this book called um the magic of thinking big which like had an enormous impact on me like 10 years ago when i first discovered this kind of stuff and it sounds like that's what you're doing for kind of this this current generation of students and it happened by mistake yeah it happened by me it was just anger like it came from anger of sitting there constantly at university in that foundation yeah and just seeing the things i was just seeing and like hearing or feeling and i just thought to myself why am i looking down on myself why am i looking in the mirror and the imposter syndrome was hitting me i just kept thinking they've definitely made a mistake they're gonna genuinely come in here and be like what like you're the first in your school like your family haven't do do they even know what oxbridge stands for like most of them are literally like what are you talking about oxford cambridge together oxford oh okay like it's that kind of conversation you're having you're not starting with which college you're starting with this is what oxford is and this is why i want to go there so i just thought what are you doing here and after i met the people i met and they tell me that they've had five brothers and sisters come here and their parents met here and like their dad paid for that building and i'm like the first time i saw oxford was when i went to move in that was the first time i stepped foot in the city little in the university was moving in day and these were telling me they've grown up coming here for picnics and lunch and you feel so out of place it is ridiculous and i thought nah like i can't believe i was gonna not come here and oxford by the way is a representation of whatever it is in your life that you're thinking of it could be your dream job could be your dream whatever i just happen to experience this i thought i was gonna not be here because of a lack of confidence and a lack of support it just frustrated me like i was so mad i was so mad and i started the channel and i think one of the first videos i ended up deleting it because it was i was like is oxford diverse is it no it's not but we're gonna change that and i was just literally screaming and then obviously the channel took shape and now it's in a better place yeah it's it seems like you're genuinely kind of mission and purpose driven thank you and like a really okay so the reason i'm i'm so surprised by this is because like you know there's there's a quote which apparently is often attributed to jp morgan which is that um you know someone always has two reasons for doing something um the good reason and the real reason and if i think about my motivations for starting a youtube channel yeah i i could say that you know there's you know i want to help people i like teaching people study tips and the comments are nice and all that kind of stuff yeah but really if i dig deep i i love the attention i love the admiration the social status the prestige the money associated with it that kind of stuff um and if i have to be honest with myself then that's probably a significant part of why i do the youtube thing and the internet thing on top of like the whole yeah helping people aspect of it um that's interesting i'm just kind of curious like because for you it really sounds like the helping people is like the majority of it yes yeah what's going on yeah well the thing is before i began youtube i didn't know anybody in youtube like all my friends or people that i've known is through doing it and like they reach out i reach out and then now you cross paths and then you become friends right but i didn't know anybody and i didn't really consume youtube i still don't right now people always ask me who's your favorite youtuber who do you watch i don't really use the app for my own personal i just upload and i go right so when i started it you have to imagine like no one no one i knew was doing it and i would i would share the link on facebook for my friends and family to like share to their to their nieces and nephews whatever i was like oh if we can get 100 people we did something like it never it just never crossed my mind that youtube could be a job that blew my even when my management approached me i said what like i just i don't know why i didn't know because i guess no one talks about it on the internet really like now it's more open with people like you as well sharing the stats and the figures and stuff but i just didn't know you could actually have a living on there and sustain yourself so i was working in mcdonald's before i went to uni so from mcdonald's i was not thinking like youtube i was like we want to get to you like a starbucks like who knows i could level up you know that is literally what i was thinking and so starting it it would be so hard for my brain to have known that yeah and i remember literally saving every last penny she's like we need to get something like a camera or something that we can use because my sister was like oh my god like that's money you're never gonna see again you know like it's gonna be gone i was like well you know if i want to make videos what am i going to do and i no one would have told me it was an investment because it's going to return like i don't even think like that so i don't know like if i had to try and think of what the real reason yeah oh i was just angry yeah that is it and i if i hadn't gone to oxford i don't think i'd have started a youtube channel it just came from people kept asking me questions like what do they eat there how do you do this let's just send a link it's easier to send a link it was i guess that could be the real reason laziness i couldn't be bothered to keep saying the same thing over and over again let's put it on the channel let's have everyone watching it in their bedroom you can go back pause rewind whatever so i don't know so the the success that you've had now on on youtube one one thing that a lot of youtubers talk about is as the channel goes bigger even like what what started as a um a vehicle for empowering people giving good educational content that kind of stuff now becomes like oh will this video do well how did that video perform 10 out of 10 oh no i feel depressed because my video didn't perform very well oh yeah how do you feel about the stats i hate that feature on the thing anyway about this one out of 10 10 out of 10. before that i really like i just didn't i didn't think it was necessary i don't know who said yeah let's give that feature a go but please remove it wherever you are youtube world but once again my mom she she is so good at keeping anybody's feet on the ground as in she'll be like whoa whoa whoa did you see that like over a hundred people commented we couldn't fit them in our back garden to give them tea to say thank you and i'm like mom you're so right like we actually couldn't fit these people on our street or in our back garden so for me to ever be ungrateful or not ungrateful that's wrong because it is a craft is a job and i can see why people be bothered about if it doesn't perform well but for me to be if if it's had 10 000 people watch it that's a lot of people when artists do sell out a show and it's ten thousand they're like whoa but now the internet obscures our view and makes ten thousand seems small and it's like i don't know the numbers just are so big to me they just they're so massive and the fact that people will be watching your story and you have like 10 replies i'm like these are 10 human beings who are coming into your world and then leaving a comment or leaving a like or watching i can't i don't know how to explain it my family just celebrate everything yeah and if i was to ever go to them and say oh my god only got 10 000 views they would humble me so quickly like what 10 000 people this didn't exist a few years ago and maybe also i need to start having that mindset of like keeping track and tabs on the numbers and stuff because i don't know i don't know i don't know but as of right now it's like what was the purpose of the video or the channel and if the purpose is to reach people 10 000 people is not about like that is a lot of people now if you get 100 000 or a million that's like a bonus you know and i don't know i wish i wish people could like spy on my family for a week yeah and just see us when there's no because i think people often think oh because the camera's on yeah that i have to say this stuff or that i have to be like super positive and like whoa i wish you could see the family with no camera this is us 24 7. and jade i went to visit her in berlin and she'd just been on a bike accident and i was so sad for her and i went to see her and my mom was like oh she was feeling it she was like oh my god i thought i could when it happened i felt it i said well no you did it you didn't feel anything stop it but she's so like in tune with her emotions and stuff and then when i went to cj she was like write this in a card for me because i couldn't see her so she texted me and said put it in a card as jade was reading it she was crying i was like why are you crying like i was so shocked because i wrote it out for her i was like why are you crying she's like does your mom speak like this all the time is this just how you are like yeah that's you got hit by a bike so she's to tell you like get rid of the victory slayers the people who don't want to see you win your light shines it was full of all this stuff and jade was like literally sobbing and i was like oh why she said no one says this stuff to me and i can't believe you're raised on this i was like this is so normal to me that like when i read i was like that's just her saying look at well soon right so if you saw her family behind the scenes it's just constant we just we live for this yeah so it's like kind of constantly the like the gratitude stuff yeah we really are and i think also it's when you've seen what the other side of not having it is like right i'm very very aware that at any moment all of this could disappear any moment it could disappear and i could easily there is no reason why i could easily not be working mcdonald's again right like yes of course now it's a bit different maybe with the degrees and all this stuff but a few years ago there is what is the real difference between my sister and i because she's still at home right and she's still working a regular job and all this stuff and i just happen to be this new world but whenever i go home like my mom my sister my mom's running for the bus every single day she's she just won't she won't do her driving lessons i don't know why but she's still running for the bus every single day and if i'm gonna go somewhere with her we're getting the bus and my sister still works a regular job and if i say to her on my birthday or i really want this she's like excuse me that's 50 pounds that takes me this many more hours to get you're not having that it's still i could never lose sight of it because it's it's just there it's at home and when i call my family in zimbabwe like it's i don't know so 10 000 we celebrate that it's not a low number to us that's pretty good i'm gonna i'm gonna clip that and like save it on my on my computer like whenever i see like a 10 out of 10 video i'll be like no i need i need to motivate call me mom call my mom that i'm telling you this woman she's got some classic things that she says and growing up i would just be like oh but mom like all my friends have barbie dolls and they're gonna get them for christmas and i really want one we couldn't afford a new barbie doll no way she'd take me to the car boot sale and we would go through the second hand stuff and then find a barbie doll and i'm like but mom like it's got a scratch and it's missing like an ear she's like no no no no you're looking at it wrong reframe it this barbie doll is so special she's got a story to tell your friends barbie doll like it's brand new great i'm happy for them but look at yours like can you imagine what happened for her to lose her ear you can imagine anything you want in your book it's got a tea stain what was the person reading it thinking she would make everything so much fun and nothing was ever be sad about this it was like no embrace it like we found your barbie doll special in the back of the boot at the corner like you were meant for her you were supposed to save her did it that kind of stuff that was her all the time yeah it's so weird i'm like tearing up as you're describing that because i'm like i'm like feeling stuff feeling the passion oh stop does that look dude yeah it's such an unusual amount of like just positivity that you just don't encounter in real life normally yeah no i get this all the time yeah even my friends that i'm friends with now they're literally like like i really thought it was because you're on instagram like your story needs to be jazzy like you wake up like this yeah 9 a.m and you're like singing and dancing and you're and to me it's so normal like i don't even see as i am a certain way i just think this is this is it you have one life i'm not going to waste it being sad love it um i have so many questions about the book um so my baby um it's it's really nice it's it's like it's like very very like nice nice nicely packaged um initially when i heard you were you were when i heard you were writing a book i just sort of had in my head like uh the standard penguin nonfiction book yes it's just so so pretty yeah yeah yeah i thought i i made sure like my my editor is really incredible like i keep saying she she really knew me well because she'd obviously studied my channel before she reached out and she'd had an idea and the fact is as well she messaged me what she thought she wanted me to write and i already had a google doc of like what i would want to write in the future if i had a book it matched so much that's why i was like yes because for me i was like you've understood me we've never spoken before and you've actually gotten the vision from watching random bits of my videos and i was like yeah we're doing this so when it came time for the colors or the book she already knew if it's not an explosion of yellow bright sunshine and someone feels happy when they see it i don't want it like we're not doing the cool thing or like it needs to be oh no i want it to be exactly what's going to be inside there yeah that's why i got little gold little bits because when you finish reading it i want you to just feel like you can take over the world um so the first chapter is about finding your purpose yes um so okay let's say i don't i don't really know what and what my purpose is yeah how do i how do i go about slash how does a viewer listener go about answering this question of like what the hell is my purpose yeah that's a question i get all of the time and i always say what is what is that thing that thing that just you can't stay away from it you keep thinking about it and obviously this can go wrong i do understand that like you could be thinking some bad things and i could be encouraging the wrong thing but let's just begin off of the base that it's a good thing and it's a regular thing right what is that thing that you can't get off your mind a debate here on the bus and you literally strangers you have to turn around and chime in or anytime you have a chance to do free things you're researching it like you just can't stay away from it what is that thing that thing has something in you that is driving you like you want to be a part of it you want to what what would you want to do for free if you didn't have to think about bills and all this other stuff what would you happily dedicate your time to for free and that thing that thing is embedded in your purpose that's a good starting point so when you figure out what that thing is and then you follow that track for me helping people okay you want to help people of you what do you always do what are you always doing oh in class you get in trouble for teaching people you always find yourself speaking up did it oh maybe it's education i don't know and then you start to like go down this little rabbit hole until you figure out what that specific niche within it is and also when you're finding your purpose it's not like you have to make a lifelong decision like you're married to it and that's the end of all no you could have a purpose that you want to pursue for the next three years and that's that and then you're done with it and you want to move on to something else that's okay finding your purpose is not it's not final it's like what michelle obama says you're becoming you're always constantly becoming and things might change who knows what v in 10 years will be doing i hope she'll be doing this but i might fall out of love with it or i might feel like i've given all i can give and there's nothing else things are not gonna i don't know who knows but it could change but for now figure out what you can't stay away from what is always on your mind what keeps you awake at night what world problem bothers you to the core and that is where youtube began right i was like man the lack of diversity is oh it's so annoying i'm going to start a channel so it could be oh i hate the way that i keep seeing dogs being treated when when they're stray dogs or when they're abandoned oh i'm going to go to the vet and then you're talking to the vet and then you want a work experience then you figure out this new thing you want to do you just kind of like you need to track it trace that thing don't like ignore the thing that's living in your heart you know what i mean let's say you're halfway through your jpmorgan internship and the bros are like hey v how do i find my purpose like for because like the the way you're describing the purpose stuff is very like mission driven like you know what what's the what you want you want to solve and to be honest if i think of most of my friends and me as well like we don't really have that oh my god i just feel so passionate about like diversity that that's going to be my problem and equally i can imagine a bunch of my friends who now work at places like jp morgan and mckinsey and stuff they're not particularly thinking how am i going to change the world they're kind of thinking i want to make a lot of money and have a good life like well with people like that i'm pretty sure that when you're at jp morgan or wherever you are i'm pretty sure when you get home there is something that has your interest there is something that you try to fit in your spare hours because you can't do it because of work right there is a thing you've got skills things that you're just good at whether you love it or not you're good at it then you have things that you really care about or that you want to be in you have to find a way of merging those two worlds right you want to be able to go to work or go to the thing that you spend mostly time doing and love it so if you're at jp morgan and yes you're doing amazing you're getting all the promotions in the world but you're still feeling like something's missing then that's obviously not your your purpose your purpose is it's the thing that you're rushing out of work to go home to do and that could be gaming i don't know it could be wanting to create the most diverse game or maybe the most interesting game that young people can use because i don't know or maybe you want to use a game that people who might have disabilities can use to do like you need to just find what your interest is and then unpack it from there so even if it is painting or maybe you love skateboarding or whatever it may be people had to create microsoft right we had to get a version of microsoft and that probably came from song and being like i like coding or i like doing the dirt and now microsoft went on to help people do different things like we use microsoft for good you know so i think it's thinking about what what do you like to do in your spare time yeah in your spare time when no one is monitoring you where you're not being paid you're on holiday it's christmas break okay you're at your mom's house it's christmas break there's a week to what you're gonna spend your hours doing and you might find yourself on the trading apps or the stocks apps and you might find actually i just like making a lot of money that's okay too you just got to live for you and if that thing that you're doing is making you happy if jpmorgan makes you happy it doesn't have to don't have to call it your purpose you just call it the reason i'm living i don't know yeah there's a um yeah on the thing of kind of finding your purpose there's a phrase that i heard which is that um you know that that that thing that you think about in the shower is probably the thing that you should you should probably be doing that's what i'm talking about and that was that was really helpful for me when i was trying to figure out do i want to continue doing medicine or not because i never think about medicine in the shower and i was like okay interesting and then like at some point further down the line uh i was i was doing a whole like deep dive into the internet and books and stuff to answer this question of like how do you figure out what to do with your life um there was another exercise i came across which was kind of like the sort of uh ideal ordinary week three years from now like fast forward your google calendar whatever and just block out what would you like to be doing what is your ideal i love that and you know what are the what are the sort of hobbies what are the things you want to try out what's on the bucket list and again i kind of did this and i was like half an hour later i was like there was no mention of medicine anywhere on this list ah ugh damn that's annoying yeah cause i really i really wanted to feel passionate about the medicine stuff and i just realized it doesn't really it didn't really feel like my purpose it didn't really feel like my jam exactly and then there was the whole like suncoast thing around it the whole while i've invested eight years into this already the whole what are people gonna say what's my mom gonna say people on the internet gonna hate me for this because if you suddenly leave the nhs that's a big deal etc etc um but it's so it's like for me i guess it's still a work in progress but i keep looking for other ways to kind of because i think like as you said it's not a permanent decision like i think a lot of people think of the idea of i need to find my purpose as this is the thing i will do for the next 80 years of my life yeah but the way i kind of try and think of it it's more like this is just the next season of my life and for the next season of my life i like the idea of you know the thing i think about in the shower is making youtube videos so let's just do more of that yeah and then maybe my plans will change five years from now but try and try not to think too hard about it further down the line yeah i i love that i really really love that you said that about this is just the season and if that season lasts 30 years great you had a great season you know like it's fine and if it happens to last a year okay like i just quit my job i just i literally just quit my job a week ago and i felt great about it i thought it was going to be one thing it turned out to not and and i'm not going to keep myself trapped in something because i announced it to the internet like that that point that is when i'll know that something has gone wrong for me because uh-uh that's not why we were here that's not what this is all about and if i now start shaping my life based on what we'll do better like will perform better in the views or what people will think about it then ah something has gone really wrong there's a quote that i wanted i've been thinking about recently which is that um your passion is for you uh your purpose is for others whoa discuss your passion is for you and your purpose is for others i suppose i can see what they're saying like you could you could have a purpose that you're serving but you're not passionate about it like medicine right you could be a really great doctor and obviously when you are there doing your doctoring stuff you're saving lives right and that obviously serves all of us and the nhs and the the uk and we appreciate it but if you're not passionate about it then you're not pouring into you you're now running on empty so i think i agree with that quote like your passion has to be something for you so you need to love medicine you need to have you read um when breath is air yes like he was living right like even on his dying days he was so committed to it because it was everything for him now imagine if if it wasn't like i don't think that book could have read the same right you can hear it and i think i think your passion does need to be something that you love something that it's in your core and then the purpose follows it right because you can serve others when you're at a hundred percent yeah it's it's it's pretty hard like even i guess celebrities when they've got all of this money and they've got all of the time and all the stuff when they choose their causes that they're campaigning for technically they could put that money to good use for different things but they have to choose something that they're not just the face off like you need to be able to show up we need more than just you putting your money in okay it needs to be more than just a quick instagram tag like do you really care and i think that's that's the beauty of being able to define what that means because anyone could come up to me and say but the the climate crisis is more important than education right now right people could justify any of the 17 sustainable development goals and tell you that actually should be this one that you're focusing on yeah but if if my passion is not there yes of course i care about the climate crisis it affects every single one of us but it's not something that i'm gonna invest as much as my time as i would education and that is okay we're one person you are not a time traveler you can't be everywhere at once so find what it is that for now you care about who knows in five years i could be the biggest climate activist in the world who knows but for right now you this is what i'm doing i care about it and i can serve people and if you can get those two to me magic yeah the analogy that came to mind as you were saying this was uh you know on airplanes to like put your own mask on first yeah and then before helping someone else i feel like putting your own mask on first is finding the thing that you're passionate about that you enjoy and then you can be like all right cool now that we've taken that box let's now turn my attention to kind of helping other people because if you try and do the helping other people without feeling feeling the passion you end up like burning out and yeah ultimately it's not like that is such a good analogy and i can literally visually see it it makes so much sense imagine imagine trying to put everyone's mask on yours is not on you're literally running out of oxygen you can do more when you are at 100 i always say that it's in the book i'm like you can't give the world a hundred percent when you yourself don't know what that looks like for you and when i took that two months off the internet to write my book and focus on my degree i couldn't do it i couldn't do it and i will never try and do it i will never try and show up when i haven't yet showed up for me and i know that that can sound a bit selfish and i'm good i'm glad it does because you should be selfish with your mental health with what your needs are before you try and give to the world because then you'll go resentful okay you'll grow resentful like imagine you put all those masks on everybody else and there's no more left for you yeah you're not going to be feeling the greatest because you're going to be like what about what about me like who who's the doctor for the doctor right that kind of thing i just think um find find your passion make sure make sure you feel alive yeah that's very much the vibe i got um so i i did an interview with chrissy chella who um had that book over there um do do this for you oh yes i think i watched um a clip so she's she's great um and she's also very very much like mission focused to try and kind of empower women to take better care of their health and be more confident that kind of stuff similar to your kind of vibes um and she was saying that as well like you know she wakes up at five in the morning which is amazing wow and then um kind of between 5 a.m and 10 a.m those are her hours for her she like goes to the gym does the training does her commute all that kind of stuff so that when she goes to work she can then show up fully for the mission yeah but her needs come first still at the end of the day yeah i feel like that's like a really great way of because i think often there is this like a lionization of the martyred of the motto like oh this person is giving so much of themselves that they've killed themselves in the pursuit of this like goal that's like okay but this is not very sustainable no no that's why i was saying it um earlier about the fact that you you need to you need to be able to make sure that you yourself know why you're doing something and there's a book start with a why right you've got to start with a why because if if you're if your mission and your purpose are kind of like aimless and you just do it because you've been told to do it you'll lose momentum and i say this to students as well about choosing your degree for example right because people always ask me this question how do you know what the right degree to choose is blah blah and i'm like when your parents have like told you what you had to study or society tells you this is the right thing to study yeah okay great you're gonna apply you're gonna get into uni you're gonna you're gonna do well in this first few weeks it's gonna be great then that essay crisis is gonna hit and let me tell you what's gonna keep you going when those moments arrive is your passion for the thing caring about oh my god i really want to understand history and my place in the world oh you have to get through this essay right that that little thing then keeps you going like i love my degree it's just a hard day now i hate in your degree plus having the crisis and having to go through the lectures it's going to be a pretty difficult road so i always try to say if you can because i know that there are people who are in situations where they don't have a choice right this is what you study because it's what we've always done that's what gets the money and that's the end of discussion but if you have the choice and you're able to exercise it you better do it because not a lot of people have that yeah so you better use that privilege when you have it nice um so changing gears a little bit we've talked a little bit about purpose i'm very interested to hear thoughts about goals okay because i've been i don't know i'm quite anti-goals okay so my so my theory and goals is that a goal is like a fine if it's like it it sort of gives you a direction um but then i find it helpful to just like forget about the goal because the way i think of it is like it's it's not really about the destination it's far more about the journey yeah as miley cyrus says it's the climb and you know one of the things that i can do uh kind of day-to-day that will help make my life more fulfilling or more more more meaningful and more impactful without really thinking about like the destinations i'm trying to get to it's just interesting i might have to disagree because because um so you're trying to make your life better trying to like put systems in place that can help make it easier like what you're saying like day to day right but also the thing with goals is they don't lock you into anything right and i speak about that in my book when i'm talking about the goal setting systems that i use they don't have to lock you into anything like you if your goals lock you into something you're doing it wrong they need to be adjustable they need to be able to change depending on the context you can't be like the goal is to be a cheater at harvard and then a pandemic hits what do you do now we just give up on the harvard dream no you have to adjust to your circumstances and your situation financial pandemic whatever it is so i think that your goals they shouldn't be locking you in they should be something that you can adapt and doing them regularly helps as well so being like oh i have to do this one thing and that's what my life is driven towards already you can see where the floors are in that but every every month or every two months people do tend to do three months quarterly whatever it may be every month or so what season am i in what prioritize what do i want to prioritize right now and then having something you're working towards because for example saving like imagine just saving and there's no goal that you're saving for when that nando's takeaway temptation comes up you're gonna get it but if you have a rough idea like oh i roughly want to save for my first deposit for my home and i need 30 grand or something in the next three years it means that every year i need to save 10 which means that in six months five which means this month i could there's rice at home so like it kind of an analogy no i love it it kind of helps but i can agree with you about the idea of the things that are permanent nothing should ever be permanent i don't care whether it's marriage whether it's a home whether it's even your degree or your job nothing should ever because you're evolving human you're multifaceted your your emotions change your goals change whatever it may be but i think to not have goals at all i can i i struggle to see where the motivation will come from because like you could wake up every day and decide i don't know you just wake up every day and then you're just doing what i don't get it okay so if if i think back to when i started the youtube channel yeah um people are like what are your goals for the channel and i think generally what people are expecting is some kind of number that i i want to hit 10k subs i want to hit whatever okay and my philosophy on this was always like i don't care about the number i just want to make one video one one video every week if i can just make one video a week then that's all good see me that's a goal okay yeah so maybe you can say the same thing we're just kind of using different i completely understand what you're saying about like oh it doesn't need to be if i don't hit a million by the end of 2020 okay yeah input goals versus outcome goals okay so well one video a week is an input goal that's 100 within my control okay whether my video gets 10 000 views or not is broadly outside of my control yeah so with with that in mind what's your what's your stance on output goals or our outcome goals rather oh it's tricky it's tricky yeah it's tricky because i can see i can see why people would need them because they're like oh this idea of the million subscribers right that's what's going to be driving me whereas for me i'm more like you in the sense of why don't we just think about the systems that we're going to have and if that if it so happens that you get the million fair enough if it's like even with graduating like my mom i mean starting to sound like she doesn't expect anything off me but she did think i was gonna graduate but she didn't necessarily care what i graduated with yeah like there was no if it's not a first class don't bother she was like if you enjoy your time you learn stuff you put yourself out there you raise your hand in class you actually immerse yourself in this oxford experience and you own it as your own for me and her i'd reach the goal like the moment i finished my exams i closed my laptop because obviously i was at home i walked downstairs to like a party like my mom was there was we didn't even know my results yet did he even send off did the computer crash i don't know but i finished yeah and that was what we cared about so i can see what you're saying and maybe actually i live my life avoiding the output goals like the big strong things but you still need something like it's like a to-do list we all we all like what i say we all i love it to do this because when you take it off you just feel like imagine being like your to-do list is in your head and it doesn't matter as long as you wake up today yeah right it's gonna be like you could just spend the whole day just on netflix yeah so i don't know i find it tricky to see how you could live without any type of goals sure yeah maybe maybe maybe the discussion is what's the version of goals yeah no i think i i think it is that because like i i have loads of goals but they're all like broadly input goals that are within my control yeah that's okay too yeah i don't think i don't think it has i don't think people need to put pressure on themselves to be like if if i finish law school i've got to be a lawyer now who said who what if you i have a friend like right now and won't say his name i don't know if he cares me to say this but i have a friend who's doing medicine and he literally has no desire to practice it he just enjoyed learning it yeah he's someone to be honest he's going to be a doctor by the time january arrives and we're i'm so excited for him like i can't wait to help him plan this graduation party and the fact that he doesn't want to be a doctor now let's figure out what you want to do i don't think the degree's a waste yeah in my eyes like i don't think the ultimate like this goal is only achieved if you then become a doctor and i want to raise my kids like that okay so so continuing like because i'm i'm i'm really curious about you about your thoughts on the on this gold stuff so would you would you set the goal of get into harvard or would you set a goal of apply to harvard with the best application i can i can do okay that is that is that's really good really good stuff there have you mine personally which i don't know if it's gonna contradict what i've said would be the getting in okay the getting in would be one thing staying in is another and the graduating is another okay i would split them into three yeah whereas i feel like other people would put the getting and staying in and graduating is like one thing and the goal falls apart if one element is not there but for me the getting in is like oh my god like and this genuinely happened we had a party for the getting in when i finished the exams at the party and then now the graduation you saw in the garden like it was genuinely three elements and there's gonna be another one because there's they're doing in person at harvard so we go again but um and that's that's great that's okay so i don't know if that answers your question but i will split it into rather than the applying part but even though i still celebrate that as well because i have lots of students that come up to me like i applied for oxford got the interview and i didn't end up getting in i'm like hello you still got the interview like that is amazing right so i think it depends on the individual and how they want to break it down but for me if i was looking at that mba situation the getting in is one part of the situation then the actual enjoying it staying in if my mental health is not doing well when i'm there if it's not what i enjoy i'm gonna leave but it doesn't take away from the fact that i got it and then if i end up making it to graduation my god that's like a whole other thing just basically i guess find ways to throw as many parties as you can that's how i live life no i mean that makes a lot of sense and the way like motivation is sustained is through these like little successes and the more you can celebrate the successes along the way the more motivation there is and it's kind of fun and life is good and and you don't discriminate within them like i said when i walked down those stairs after finishing the last exam in oxford the party was already happening and my family would not have treated that party differently had there have been ended up being a fail in the grading whatever yeah they that party still has its moment so i think it's really respecting each part of the process as well if if you're gonna go down the route of focusing on your input goals you might as well do it properly um yeah does that make sense but there's still goals yeah they obstacles i think yeah my thing if i don't believe in goals is actually like a semantic thing i do believe in goals just generally goals in my control and input goals yeah cause like you know i'm i'm working on a book at the moment and when i there's like two different goals that i have had at different points one of them is i want this to hit the new york times best seller list wow and the other one is i want to write a book i'm proud of oh and when i think about that first one it sucks all of the motivation out of writing this book yeah that's it just feel safe because like because see what you're doing there is you've placed you've placed the importance or the success of the book in the new york times and like what other people have decided as opposed to what i've decided about it whereas where is like if the book is great and let's just say it hits the uk and does amazing the uk but people are really using it and they are they are opening that thing they're highlighting there they're putting different bookmarks they're like printing it out telling their friends sending quotes sharing it versus it like maybe it hits the best times because people just buy it but they never read it what would you prefer it just having the title of bestseller or it being like an actual piece of people's lives that's that's the thing that i want do you know what i mean and also for yourself right like i we haven't this book is not out yet my book is literally not out yet but i look at it with such pride like it is my genuinely my baby like i've read it and reread it and read it and reread it and i will share it with people that obviously in my circle that i can and i'm so proud of it now now what happens next once it's out is so out of my control that i haven't even i haven't even thought about okay where it what's gonna happen to it once it's out because whether or not it does well or not like i still wrote that thing that's still one year of my time of my thoughts of my life in there and i'm still so proud of it hence the book launch party is happening two days after it's out right because you know how the family works now might as well party exactly imagine if i was to wait only i'll only do a party when it hits new york's best seller right and then imagine it never does yeah and then it's like what so was yeah the book is gonna be sitting there like what did i do like i still came out i still i was here and it's still helpful for the few people that read it and it doesn't deserve a party because it didn't hit certain numbers like but also i get it i get it you can't just be like as long as it's out there i'm happy because it's still also a business it's still also there are a number the people involved in this are people who you know i get it you also need to be realistic i think i also avoid too much of that conversation too much like i need to find a better balance and it's one of my goals for 2022 is to kind of be more businessy business-minded and less detached from it because i think i've been so put off from it for so long and i just don't know why and i think it's i think it's the reasons of why i began the whole channel right like to not think of it as like it's a brand or all those words make me so uncomfortable and i'm like why i need to tap into that look into that and for so long i was like oh it's so good like i just don't care about it like yeah i'm so great it's like no actually like that is not what the version of empowerment that you're trying to build is about you want your young girls to be financially literate you want them to be as knowledgeable about what's happening with their mortgage as their husbands are like they're equals in this you want them to be in the labor market like you don't you're not just trying to say empowerment in education it's in every aspect so for me to shy away from the business aspect when it's happening it's not as though i'm at home thinking about starting a channel i'm like oh it's got to hit this many numbers and we've got to get make this much money it's already happening so why am i avoiding it that's something i've got to like battle with myself so i can't blame you for thinking about the new york times bestseller but also i wouldn't want you to be lost in that and lose the fact that you've just written a book like don't lose this chasing just this because imagine i'm not saying it's gonna happen but imagine that never happens does that mean you never celebrate your book no exactly yeah that's like that that kind of difference between those two different goals like a book i'm proud of versus book that does well on the stats basically i think that that difference is my philosophy on goal setting which is that the write a book i'm proud of to me feels like a much more motivating goal when i sit down and think okay i'm going to try and write a book and proud of it it feels good um as like a goal to shoot for do you think the two are not compatible or something like are you thinking if you wrote a book that you were completely proud of like you put everything into it that it might not be a great book or are you like should we write for the new york times bestseller and that might be a book you're not proud of like do you think the two can't exist together i think they can exist together and i would love for them to exist together but i i just sort of think of it as like whenever the goal shifts too much it's like for example if i make a video and my mindset during the video is i really want this to be the best video i can make versus i really wanted to hit a million views it's like it might actually be the same video at the end of the day but the way i've approached it when i'm thinking about my own authenticity and making video i'm proud of is so different to the way i approach it trying to get a viral video well i think in my personal opinion if you are to make a book you're proud of because you have to think it's not just by luck and because you're really good at numbers that you know how to make a channel grow people also are buying into your personality they like the way that you look at life like you are like quite a unique person i think and like just the way that you do things and everything and it's quite like captivating right so so i can't see how you simply focusing on writing a book that you are proud of how you don't see that that or automatically follows with the bestseller because to me you doing it your way your complete authentic weight just because of how you think and look at the way you're doing youtube right you're setting the pace and like you're setting that bar so imagine you actually just do the book the way you want and forget that the algorithms of best sellers and whatever it may be because yeah it might have worked in the past but what if you're on the cusp of a new way and then you're always going to be what we all follow so i think you trusting your instinct and doing it your way to me is an automatic new york time that's why i'm asking like do you think that do you think is this one yeah yeah no i think hopefully hopefully one will lead to the other but also i'm trying not to think of the hopefully i'm just like because if you went the other way around yeah i don't see how that would go that would go well because you might study like okay what are the ten latest bestsellers that have what was the same and did they include that it's like reverse engineering sucking the life out of it kind of yeah and i think those moments that you're gonna be writing two in the morning or whatever where you just can't put the laptop down and you actually turn your phone off chinese takeaway and you're just like i think that's going to be like your best chapters you know what i mean yeah so um fingers crossed yeah but it's a good question though which which way for me i think we all know which way i'm going to go i do i have not looked at anything like i did not study my market and i don't know if that's a good thing i'm not sure if i'm proud of that because i also think that success is when preparation miss opportunity right so did i prepare the best i don't know because i really did not look into anything it was just i'm writing from my heart and i hope that this resonates with someone and let's see what happens so maybe in the next book if i do a next book i might try that approach and i could produce something even better or what who knows it's just different ways to approach it yeah what are um what are empowered life goals empowered life goals so empowered life goals are essentially long-term goals that you might have but they are driven and are embedded in everything that makes you feel whole everything that makes you feel like you are living your true authentic life and you're truly empowered and by that i mean everything you're doing is your choice or the majority of it some things we really can't control but the majority of it is your choice you wake up feeling like okay i'm designing my life the way that i want it to be and it's something that it's it's it's it's within your control it also has a self self belief self confidence that it's all centered around you so empowered life goals would be things that you don't you're not making decisions based on what you think is the right thing to do like oh i've got to go be a banker or i've got to go get married at 25 because that's what like my grandma says right it is actually i want to travel and i want to have kids when i'm 35 yeah and that's one of my goals like i do want a family but don't rush me i want my family at this stage or actually i want to go and study law after medicine right like you want to feel completely and totally you i just don't like one life on earth and you're gonna have that time shaped by other people and you're living for other people and you're trying to please other people and it's like we don't know what happens after that's a whole different podcast and a whole different conversation right but let's just pretend for a second that we don't know so let's just cut that thought off for now and this is it this is all we've got and it's like there's no do-over and you spent it worrying i always think man if we could calculate the amount of hours we've spent worrying and doubting ourselves and i want if we got that time back i wonder what we could do different i just wonder but yeah empowered life goals are just things that are entirely driven by your passion purpose the things that you like the things that you enjoy and they don't always have to be purposeful i don't ever not everything that i do has a purpose to it okay there are some things that i just do because i just like to do it this is just what i just enjoy and that's okay it doesn't always have to have like a a bigger outcome or a bigger goal to it it can just be oh i'm doing this because i like it like i'm going to take zumba classes there's nothing else to it apart from i just want to go and dance zumba so empowered life goals are things that are entirely centered around the things that make you happy and yes yes life is not always happy sometimes you have to encounter hardship and different things but if you have the choice like i keep saying why would you choose the bad things why nice um what's your pyramid method oh my god so the pyramid method and i don't know where i got this wrong i don't know if i read about it or if i made it up i'm not sure but what i do when i'm looking at setting my goals i i visualize it as a pyramid right so i'm looking at it as what is the thing at the top for this season for this moment in my life okay i want to write a book that's what i want to do i really want to write a book and i want it to be out when i graduate don't know why this is what i wanted and that's okay sometimes there's no reasoning to it but it makes sense to you i want it to come out by the time i've graduated in 2021 cool so you put that at the top of your pyramid like it's in the top square then everything else under that pyramid the things the structures that make that pyramid stand up tall proud and it's the biggest and the baddest and the greatest that's what's going to matter now these are your systems so what you slot in here is what's going to uplift that goal so okay cool so if we want to do in a year we want a book and that book has to be 60 000 words it means that we need to write thirty thousand in the next six months so then the two slots underneath are going to be thirty thousand thirty thousand then either side's gonna be how am i gonna make sure i get to that thirty thousand okay so it might mean that we need to make sure this month we're writing one thousand words and then if it's 1 000 words okay it means that today i need to do five hours of work whatever it may be so it's a way of like breaking down things to bite-size intricate chunks that you can see from a day-to-day perspective because sometimes i think when people set goals it's so far away over there that it feels unattainable and it feels so out of reach and then before you know it the years ended there's no book because it's so overwhelming that you just never start so i like to break it down to this week what does this week look like and that's the bottom of your pyramid that's right here what does this week look like in order to make sure in one year that goal is reached and that is how i approach everything almost i break it down too and also sometimes your goals might not be something that's feasible for you not because you can't do it because you're not good enough for it it's actually just nearly impossible considering what else you're doing like you just don't have the physical time and breaking it down in that way you can actually see oh it's 500 words a day that takes three hours actually i'm at school that time i can't do it right now so maybe you'll extend your goal to write the book in two years time and now it's more manageable so the perimeter system for me is looking at the structures that i'm using and making sure that the systems can accommodate the goal because you can't have a goal that's systemless it doesn't work no that's true it doesn't work i mean it's okay so um one of one of the things that stops people that makes people shy away from goals is fear of failure and fear of rejection you have a whole you have a whole thing about this oh well what's your what's your thing about rejection oh you know how they have their love languages yeah and the five they need to add one for me about rejection and failure i'm like that's your love language oh this is me like talk to me listen failure is another chance to try again and i really mean this when i say failure is like my fuel like i i i thrive from it because it's like okay now i've just gained insight into something and i have this pebble uh analogy that i heard it was so good and i just kept it it's like being on a pebble and it's full of like a pebble beach of you know pebbles i don't know what else to say pebbles and someone tells you there is a hundred million that's obviously gonna change your life a hundred million dollar check under one of these pebbles go the first thing you do is turn over the pebble you're standing next to an eye's not there you're not gonna go home no you're not there's a hundred million on this beach that's yours you're gonna keep turning these bubbles over and as you're turning each of these pebbles over guess what you're gaining information about where that money isn't okay and you're going to say okay that section over there i've checked it out it's not over there and you're just going to now put a little method in place i've looked at the i've looked at it until you find it you're not going to give up yeah so yeah that's just that's just what i think um yeah like the the the chapter is about this idea that rejection is redirection what do you mean by that so rejection's redirection so when you get rejected from something you're gonna you're gonna still live like that is the reality you're not gonna die from this okay when you're rejected from university when you reject from your job you're still gonna be here so now that we know you're going to be here there needs to be a next step and the next step is redirection like you're not going to stand still you're not that door has closed it it's inevitable another one has to open now what that other one is going to be that is going to be how we based on how we approach it how we frame it we're going to enter this as a new opportunity so it's a redirection it's like something greater is coming and why do i say it's greater because you've just you just gone through an experience that's made you stronger it's giving you information it's you're a different person now like when your next moment comes it's redirection like there is nothing else to say apart from you were going to go this way you can't now so you're going that way you're going to make the best of it because that's what happens you've got to live in the moment of what you're at and what you're doing and if you get rejected from it live in the moment of that and give that a full chance so that's what i mean failure is another chance to try again is you turning that pebble over the money's not there now you know where else to try now you know where it's not and it's as important to know what you don't want to do or where you shouldn't be as is to know what you want to do and i look at it like this right your ultimate happiness is like here whatever that means is here and every time that something doesn't quite go the right way or you get rejected or fail whatever you're just like ticking off you're just like literally getting closer and closer and closer and closer to finding yourself to finding what you like knowing your boundaries knowing what excites you all this stuff you're just getting closer and closer and for me that's why i celebrate leaving that job because now i know what i don't want to do it's definitely that one now let's let's go again yeah it's great it's great stuff one of the so one of the things that we teach on um when i teach like uh people how to start youtube channels and stuff is the idea of having an accountability buddy and i saw that you talk a lot about accountability partners as well what what's the what is an accountability partner for you and and what's there what's the benefit oh you really really read this book okay accountability partners what i call them like your empowerment circle so accountability partners is how everyone knows it but in our world we call it empowerment circle so it's having people there that are invested in you they're invested in you what you're doing seeing your growth and seeing you succeed so that when you might be doubting yourself or having that moment where imposter syndrome creeps in there is another version of you someone who's holding you ideas who gives like a aaaa let's not be drastic and delete the channel because today you didn't get the views you wanted like give it a week let's draw come back to drawing board and go again so having an empowerment circle or an accountability partner is someone who can hold you accountable to what you said you want for yourself until you obviously are like seriously my goals have changed it's not what i wanted more fine but if it is what you want and you're having a bad moment i'm telling you now you need people around you who are invested in that because if you don't you can talk yourself out of anything i think we've all seen it you know you've got to wake up for the gym at 6 00 am you will talk yourself out of it and you'll stay in bed you know you need to walk past that shop and just go home and cook you will buy that food like we all have those moments and having an accountability partner is kind of like it's kind of like having a parent there before you spend your money every time and have to explain why you're doing this amazon order you know like it just gives you that other layer of yeah let me think twice before before i do that thing that might be not in my best interest so for me having my empowerment circle is is being able to go to them and say i really want to write a book but i'm feeling nervous about it and then they're like you want to write a book call it this like let's let's start fleshing out and they give me hype like they hype me up and help me see that vision bigger and also when i'm like guys i can't do it i want to quit and there were moments i wanted to quit my channel there were moments that i was like no i'm done and my sister was like no no no no remember why we started this and then like they helped you like come back to that moment and i'm so grateful for that because it was so close when did you want to quit oh my gosh how much time do we have i wanted to quit when i was at uni because people were sometimes not kind that is an aspect of it like you would assume because this is you know something that's so student-driven and so mission-driven that everyone would love it and support it and that's not always the case people didn't like what i was doing and i wouldn't i don't want to use the word bullied because it's so it's such a big and loaded term but people were unkind and i was just like man i just want to be a student like i just want to be at uni and be able to go to a party and be like hi i'm v and not someone be like you're v and then already they've got a judgement or already they there there's some motive behind it that you don't know or whatever like i was starting to find that difficult and there was a time i'd walk past like my college and walk past a room and i can hear them watching my video like laughing oh yeah and i was like oh this is a beginning though you have to think i started at uni so they watched it go from zero to where it is now it's not like i got there and i was doing it and then like have to respect it because it's what i do i was at the beginning where it's still it's still like if you say something that might trigger me i could stop it's still at the beginning stages and i almost stopped wow almost stopped what kept you going my sister my mom my accountability they were absolutely empowerment so absolutely not gonna have that yeah and if i'd given a good reason of i no longer enjoy it it's causing me to feel unhappy they'll be like you know what fair enough like the job like you gotta go it's time we support it but because of other people you still like what you're doing but because they've laughed at you and everybody was so sorry and that's what got me i was like keep the same energy keep the same energy if you're going to be mad about it be mad about it forever don't be mad about it and i'll be the first in the comments you go v as if as if you don't know what happened last semester it was a whole situation i hate that i really hate that like you can see someone is enjoying what they're doing and they're doing it for a reason for a reason that is bigger than all of us like we we're trying to help and they were in the that's what keeps getting me they were in the videos in the beginning they were helpful talking to the students guys hey guys hey guys now now you don't like it questionable do you get much hate these days not to my face i i don't know what happens behind the scenes and i definitely don't read any of these uh gossip guru things or tattle things i don't know i don't read them i don't read them at all i i found out what they were when we had this sleepover at oxford with all the study tubular out there people i was like what is that like what are you on about tattle what does that mean i went on there and i said yeah my sister was like she was like you better stop because i i read i thought oh yeah that's interesting is that what you saw and i was like refreshing for a week i was in this tattle the hole yeah and i was like yeah same i was on it for about a week as well before i realized okay yeah and the thing is once you start hearing it you're like i need to hear more and then and then i i saw myself go on my channel i was like hey guys i i wasn't hey guys because someone said it was too loud yeah i thought wait a minute i think i put it in the book like if you're going to change yourself based on what per se someone's going to say today v you're too loud tomorrow they'll say you're talking too quiet someone's gonna say your voice is too squeaky before you know you're on your channel being like hey guys we're gonna like you don't even know what to do anymore no can't do that like yeah you just have to give yourself a chance in this world man yeah retweet um final thing i wanted to touch on was you're like surprisingly open about talking about money yeah that's quite yeah um why is that shocking because most people aren't and it's still like a taboo thing yeah um and like i'm very open to talking about money and people find to find that weird yeah i'm always a bit like baffled why it's so weird like why it's like a cabbage thing to talk about money okay so here's my thing about money right when when everything on youtube started happening like i was just so open with my friends and family just because it was like oh my god this is crazy we've just gone from mcdonald's money right i was making like four pounds 95 an hour or something like this and then now you're like oh my god there's a few hundred pounds in my account and that's shocking like we're all like what so i was just open to talking about money with my friends and family from the beginning because we just could not believe our eyes like what for one minute they're asking me giving you how much for one minute that would have been how many shifts at work for us so it was just blowing our minds then i got onto the internet and i don't know it was just weird like you couldn't really talk about it because it felt like rude like it felt it felt like and i just didn't get it because obviously i always knew i know what my mom makes what my sister makes my friends like it's not a secret if you work at the kfc with me i know what we're wrong like whereas in this world it is such it's so in the book i was so i really wanted to talk about it but i also knew like there were still these like social limitations like i couldn't be like so today this is how much i made in this hour so i was like okay i can put some distance between it like i can say when youtube began in the first two years yeah this is how it was going and that's because obviously that's not where we're at now but i can say okay this is how it was going in this is these are numbers which i still think are crazy right i went from something like there was a a you just a brand that i was working with and when i befriend management they were like yeah i'll be like we've stretched our budgets and like we can give you 200 for like a minute's work and you know you know that's and i was like oh my god i'm so grateful thank you so much and i was so over the moon that i had management yeah and like three months later the same brand the money was in the thousands and i was like i haven't grown that much nothing has really changed here and that made me angry because it was like so once again a lack of knowledge and knowing means that you just can get ripped off all the time yeah when like why is me having management means now you can pay times 10. like how does that make any sense so in the book i discuss like adsense fees things like that in the first year of youtube because i feel like okay it's fair enough it's far away yeah yeah it's far enough away but also it's still mind-boggling like even when i we're my friends because obviously i mean now with friends and family and everybody it's just like okay they know they get it so now they they still have those prices in their mind as well because i just don't talk to him about it anymore now because it's i don't know there's just no point anymore we get it they know we're amazed by it it's done whatever so when they read that they're still like whoa so i was like okay this is still something good to share because it still shows you how drastic the jump is and i just couldn't believe it like i'm a university student making thousands from being on the internet so what what were the figures from years one and two so years one and two i think there was a video that i did on youtube and it got like 2 000 piles or something in that month because i think it just did really well and then the brand managements were getting management deals for like four thousand here five thousand hey and i was like first year bloody hell that's pretty good no seriously because in that first year that's when i was blowing up yeah right so they managed me when i had like i think they came to me and had 15 000 subscribers or something and then within four months we were like we hit 20 30 40 50k so in that time i guess when they're pitching they were like she's gaining 10 000 subscribers every month or every week you better do it now while you know what i mean so they were getting amazing deals and i was like what in the i literally went from my mcdonald's paycheck to this there was no there was no gradual to it whatsoever and that blew my mind what's that like how does that change change your perspective if at all the good thing is like i keep saying the friends and family at home nothing has really changed in their world so it's still the same so we still have those conversations and i'll still do budgeting talks with them and like i can't be like well it's only a hundred it's like no it's not only a hundred that was how many hours work for you i still need to be in tune with that but also i can't be on the internet like guys i gotta get pot noodle today because i don't have to let's be realistic here like i hate when people pretend when you know you know you're in a better situation like you you don't need to talk about port noodle right now you know if you really wanted to get a table you could order it and that wouldn't do anything for you so i it was tricky but my audience are amazing like whenever especially disney right like i work with disney a lot which i mean we know disney's got deep pockets right it might my audience know that and whenever i post like a disney ad they do the best like you could get 500 comments on a disney account because they're like supporting like oh my god oh damn hold on you got the yeah yeah they're like get more yeah they love it that's like pretty unusual like most audiences will be like oh you're a sellout no no you're like hell yeah yeah they're like you deserve this like absolutely you've been doing this you've been working hard and i think they know the journey as well yeah this is new and the first in my family to be seeing this kind of money right i actually think my mom was like i said oh my god let mom give me 20 pounds and now i'm like oh my gosh i could make my mom's salary in under a few months like that blows my mind right so now i know there is a responsibility that comes with that like i will always help my family when i can they and they don't they don't um i don't know what the right word is they don't oh what's the word it's not it's not abuse expect it no like they don't exploit that they don't like they wouldn't be like okay now that you're making some money you've got to take care of everything no like it takes a lot for me to like mom let me take your winter coat shopping she will still be like should i just go to primark and like let's find one in the sale i'm like mommy whichever one yeah exactly it's like i've got this or if i i say to meet me in town when i'm going home she'll literally like i'm gonna get the bus i'm like can i just order an uber uber's expensive 20 pounds i'm like mom it's okay like she's still in that space so i don't think there'd ever come a time where i could lose touch of it yeah because it's always around me but yeah i i'm lucky that my audience are so supportive of it they don't skip ads they love when a video is sponsored like they do well my videos like i've never had an issue with branded content or my audience being like what are you doing and because everything is all like 16th is amazing my management they never bring me anything that's not aligned so if i do a deal it's always something where my audience gets something out of it and they obviously never have to pay for anything that i'm doing so for them it's like wait she's got a brand deal and all you have to view it and like it like that's a literal have to do and we still get to consume her content for free online we still get to come to events for free like all the empowered empowered will never be a monetized or charged thing so for them it's like what it was a comment and to to be honest with you that is logical like i don't get when people get hate but ads i guess maybe if their audience feel like you've you've grown our community and now you've just stopped what we're doing just for you to be doing ads and just use the numbers for that like maybe that's where they get annoyed whereas for me i'm like if this ad is not if it's not feeding in does it make sense for example i'll work with people like the civil service and in the ad we will have a link that people can go and apply for like help on getting onto the fast stream for example so i've definitely made money from working with civil service but my audience have been exposed to this thing and they also get a link like nothing is ever unaligned in a line to whatever the word is yeah do you do you find that as you make more money your goal posts for what a good amount of money is shift no right because as long as i have enough for what it did yeah then it's five okay do you know what i mean so you're thinking in terms of like oh you know the channel's making x amount of revenue this year and kind of next year kind of be cool to like i don't know 2x 3x that kind of stuff i feel like by now you know yeah that there is number one i don't have a team right so like i mean i think what you're doing here is so cool i think i texted you about it like i in 2022 will definitely be trying to start thinking that way but currently it is just me yes my management is there but their job is solely to go and get brand deals and my job is to keep the channel alive so that brand deals can go on to something right but there's no team that's like let's analyze stats or these are our financial goals because there are people to feed right like you have a team people who are relying on making a salary here so like you need this it's a whole operation whereas this is just me just me and my ideas there's no one else so there's never been a deep dive into this is the channel's like forever no she's like oh this month i'm like oh yay yeah that's a good number yeah that's pretty because my rent's paid up front i pay my rent up front yep my rent's paid up front what is it what do you do with the cash what do you mean like do you invest in stuff or like okay so you see my friend he's really great for this he was like v you can't just have money sitting in the bank like you need to do something with it so i've got onto this thing called it's the chest change name to circa 500 or something do you know what it used to be called tick er t i k r okay something like this it's really great it's all about like being able to invest into causes that help the world so it's really nice so you can choose which kind of investing you want to do and i've chosen people and environment so every month takes a few hundred out and it goes in there and it's nice but that's as far as i'm going and most of my investment is my education right like harvard i paid for myself a scholarship but that was really cool that i could even do that like it was like okay we didn't get the scholarship i guess yeah we've got to go withdraw 27 grand and just pay for this up front and that's a really nice thing to do and like the phd i'm not super stressed about oh my god gotta get scholarship if i get it great if i don't i guess we're gonna pay for it disney disney so um yeah for me now it's it's my investments i guess are in things like my education the apartment which is it is it's a really nice apartment it's really great but for me i'm like why i can live there so why would i not so things like experiences traveling but also this app investing in there and as 2022 comes financial literacy is what's on my agenda and now sitting down and talking with my accountant talking maybe getting a financial advisor and just chatting about okay you can't just keep pretending that this is just la di da is just happening by chance like it's happening let's track let's invest let's let's be more financially wise here and also start to be business-minded as i shift into like my adulthood i suppose so yeah and i think that that would be a really interesting strand of content on your channel like documenting the journey of you learning about financial literacy exactly and it's going to be from scratch and it's just going to be it's like just a genuine journey of okay guys i know how to accept that as much as i love what i'm doing it it also comes with this side of things that brands are gonna want to work with you because they they also love what you stand for and and my audience understands and i love that because it'd be so hard for them to be like but you're supposed to be doing this because you care so how is this is there an ad in the middle yeah it's like does that take away from the fact that the content that you still got after that one minute was still helpful no and they really really get that and i i'm lucky really lucky because i know it can be different audiences can be quite touchy about that but not mine i have a few kind of rapid fire questions if that's all right oh that's nerve-wracking um i mean the the questions are rapid the answers don't have to be but yeah um so what what advice would you give to your younger self the question i asked everybody what advice did i give to my younger self i always say this but i don't know if it's so true because would everything that happened that happened i don't know but to my younger self i'd have told myself to start being more audacious sooner no what do you mean like right now there's no goal that's out of my reach there's nothing that i would say maybe don't maybe don't think about that like oh everyone do phd like don't think stanford no that's not going to work or you want to do a speech don't think the u.n like there's nothing that is too big and i feel like there was a time when i was younger even though my mom was supportive like i keep saying she said lead and i'll follow so if i didn't choose something that was really really high then it wasn't going to happen right so i wish that i had started to see myself as i do now a lot younger especially when i was trying to like unlearn all of this you're an orphan stuff which doesn't even make sense like number one i don't know why the robin culture does that but if you lose a father then you are an orphan but it's like that doesn't make sense because you still have a mom but it becomes with all that like gender inequality stuff they don't view the mom is significant enough that your status changes based on your father so i wish that i'd unlearned that what i'd inherited from that orphan like that's what you are and they treat you that way and being so nervous and like never really like speaking up wish i'd learned that sooner but also you know that's life yeah um who's had the biggest influence in your career would you say gosh i don't know i guess i would say really really powerful women like oprah winfrey or michelle obama's you know people like that i think really inspire me because they've made names for themselves based on themselves and even though someone could argue but michelle her husband was the president it's like yeah he was but have you ever heard her referred to as barack obama's wife like you don't really ever hear that no she's her own exactly it's michelle obama yeah and he's like oh yeah she's married to barack but it's never oh he's a wife and i really like that i like when women obviously malala like i mean you know she's just amazing i think watching her as my friend is is like i get a front row seat at the world's greatest show she just navigates everything with such grace she's so powerful and assertive and does it in such a way that's just so ah it's just so good and she never has to raise her voice he never has to do all of these traditionally um traditionally masculine things that a lot of women tend to have to do to be seen or heard she's just her and you will listen like that room will go quiet for her and i love that so i think in my career people like that have definitely influenced me a lot to just be my authentic self and exist within my story and find power in that and not feel like oh my god i have to go and make a gimmick out of this or i have to go and jazz it up for it to be special it's like no this is this is what happened i can't i can't go back and undo it so what i'm gonna do is celebrate it and you're gonna hear about it love it what's one tip for someone looking for success oh gosh i guess i would say understand what success looks like for you because the moment that you think it's this formula or it looks this way you're never going to reach it because you're aspiring for someone else's version of something and even when you get there you will find that you won't be happy okay the goalposts will keep on moving and keep on changing so the number one thing that has to be at the forefront of everything is what is your version of success your version of success could be going to school finishing uni and then getting married having children and then being a stay-at-home mom that could be your absolute aspiration and then that's what you want to do and that's okay and when you've reached you could be like i've got my three children and i feel successful and for someone else that could be their worst nightmare they could be like i want to travel the world build an empire be a ceo own the company whatever it may be and that's their version so figuring out what it is for you is a first step and then you go out and you start to do it you start to ask for help get on linkedin if you have to type in the job title you're aspiring to do ask that person for a coffee or go to your teacher do you know anybody or you just now you start the grafting but the first step is figuring out what makes you happy not what you think is supposed to make you happy because that's a whole different thing but what actually makes you happy and sometimes you could think that's what it is you can get there and it's not yeah it's okay we pivot we maneuver we adjust we keep going what's your definition of success my definition of success is for me to be working with other change makers in a space where i feel valued seen where my ideas and my opinions are contributing to something and we are working on this mission for girls education that is that is just ah on my travels when i was in zimbabwe and i was talking to girls and orphanages or visiting the schools and they were just telling me like i just i just want to learn like i don't want to get married and i know that's what's coming next month like just seeing it live in the flesh and knowing that could have been me i think that is that is what drives me the most is knowing if my mom hadn't been as brave and strong as she is managing to leave the uk to come here to do what she did to set up and get us over here i would have been the girls i'm talking to so for me it's like nah i just i want to work in that and for me success would be seeing that number decrease 130 million girls out of school 130 million that is massive so being able to know that that number's decreasing and that we're creating generational change yeah that would be success for me what does the first and last hour of your day normally look like oh my gosh the first hour that's in the morning that's my favorite time honestly i love it i play music i have really nice happy music you know like soul sister hey soul system that kind of stuff like i'll just be singing i'm sure my neighbors must think what is going on in there i'll wake up shower i have music blasting the whole time um drink some water have porridge do my hair do some makeup put on a cute outfit and then go to my oh to my office in the next room and then i open the laptop and i emails admin it's always my first thing respond to the things that need to urgent response then after that it's tackle the rest of the day nice as it comes and the last hour what does that look like the last hour i always to be honestly i end up talking to my sister like my mom and my sister we love a good group chat called we have a chat about how our day looked i might read and then that is it or sometimes i'll watch something which is always dangerous because if i watch something i'm just gonna like fall asleep it's gonna keep playing i don't sleep great so i tried to keep my phone away from me because that i think i learned that from you i watched a video where you had your phone like charging somewhere else yeah actual alarm clock game changer yeah yeah which is crazy because i was like it's like oh buy an alarm clock but i watched one of your videos and i was like let me try this and i slept so great like when my phone is away from me i sleep so well but yeah that's what the last hour it could be a bad hour and i'm watching something and i fall asleep to that or switch to the family read a book then go to bed nice um what physical item so this is something that's like maybe less than 100 pounds um do you think it's like really underrated or the what physical item couldn't you live without i think my tripod oh okay yeah but that's because of the line of work that i'm in right my tripod enables me to have freedom like i can just go anywhere and i can do it because i like to capture what i'm doing i really enjoy that some people find that strange to like leave your life documenting it but i like it and i also love doing it so my tripod means that i don't have to have people with me all the time yeah i just have the clicker the tripod i can put my camera on there on my phone on there it's the same height as me i can twist it turn it i go on holiday on my own my entire photography's myself like all that kind of stuff whereas before if i didn't have it i always have to think someone come out for dinner with me someone come to shopping with me so i can twirl and i don't have embarrassment i set up the tripod i do my twirling i do what i want to do like nothing really phases me so my tripod gives me that freedom to be able to do those kinds of things without having to think companionship all the time yeah i enjoy being alone so it allows me to be alone it's very nice tripod is that one yeah it's like predictable does that like extend as high as you yeah not not exactly but it's like about eye level and i have a few of them at home because sometimes it's annoying to like twist and turn so i have that one for the camera i have one for my phone and and then i buy everyone this tripod yeah like it's a gift that i give everybody and they love it like they're always like that's the best thing you gave me literally that i i need to check out that tripod yeah oh yeah it's really really missing one of these things in my life and i've had this one for like now i think two years maybe and it hasn't never broken so my tripod and that cost like 20 pounds but it allows me to be able to do things on my own um what book other than yours would you recommend to everyone that is a really good question now are we talking about recommendation because it's an enjoyable read or because it's helpful let's go both okay it's like one one for each so something that i think is really really helpful is a book by a person called we should all be feminists i don't want to say you're so controversial right now but like the book is still great chimamanda chimamanda adichie and gozi people are a bit annoyed at her right now but that's different story but the book is really great we should all be feminist yes we should all be feminists it's tiny it's like this little book that one and um the feminist manifesto both by her tiny little books you could read it in two hours for that oh it's so good talks she's writing a letter to her friend about how to raise her baby girl and she's like please don't put these expectations please don't use this language please just let them and it just talks about why feminism is important and how it's not something that's like radical that everyone just thinks about and it's not this bad thing you're just literally asking me to equity and equality right like it's it's just great so that one for being helpful for i think everybody should read it and then just a book that i enjoyed educated oh yeah by tara i think that book had me on edge there were some moments because like that really happened the skin was peeling and i'm like oh the moment i'm like no i'm crying like it had me in all the fields and it's michelle obama's favorite book too i mean the the next question oh well actually i'm i'm curious so if you if you lost everything so all the money's gone all the followers are gone etc how would you how would you rebuild would i rebuild would you rebuild yeah i guess that's the first question that's the question because i suppose if if it's all lost right it means that there's another chance to try again now it's another chance to reinvent so if i had to rebuild it i guess i guess you would just relaunch your channel and like say guys we're back and then try again but i think maybe i would go down a new route like maybe i would think about instead of being on camera maybe i'll write instead so i'll now go to zimbabwe and work with cam fed um and then maybe write articles about what i'm seeing or maybe i go down there and i i now run help run the organization right i think i'd still be making impact but maybe in a different way i don't know if i would do it on the internet necessarily now it's like i'm in the flow of things that it's happening but i don't see myself on the internet forever i don't see it being here for me beyond five years now so in three years if this phd goes ahead like i definitely love documenting when i'm studying and i love speaking to the student community but like once i i'm done i don't know if i i don't think i would enjoy it anymore that's the honest truth so i see myself that there's like a three year to five maximum um lifetime on this and then i might tap out and um yeah like i definitely don't see it in my post study world with me like i definitely don't it's not something that i want to do and it's not something i'm going to do but um yes i've had to rebuild i think i'd be really happy actually because it's like well what can you do it shut down what was going to happen yeah and it would just be like a new existence like it's just a new world like you would now live within your means like if the youtube money stops it's like you just adjust you downsize on the apartment you move to a city that's cheaper and you figure out a way of living that suits what you're doing and now you're not on the internet like it's not even like you have any any any requirements or like right now it's like i need the office right like yes i could technically just be at home but like the you know you need to put all your lights up and the family's sleeping at certain times and you're hi guys there's a lot you know i need my own space i need the office i need to do that whereas when you're no longer in that world yeah your work is at it's over there like you go home just to sleep we don't need all of this what we've got right now right so i would just i would just start a new route to be honest i think i'll be happy um what quote or mantra do you live by oh that is that is really good there's three that already come to mind the top one is that you're deserving of everything you want in the world right that one i believe to my i tell myself this every day because now there's nothing unless i'm just not qualified for it like you're not gonna put me in the surgeon's chair because i'm gonna someone's gonna die yeah i'm not gonna be able to save the life right but if i were to go to medical school and i was a qualified doctor but in my field in my lane there's like like why there's nothing that is too about if i'm human i'm here and some other human can do it too so can i then the other one is definitely my rejection one like the whole idea of rejection is redirection failure is another chance to try again it means that life it never stops you still have a chance every day you wake up you get to to to start fresh it's never like oh it's too late you're never too old do that degree 45 okay you can still hit here you can still go in and take information and write notes you can go to school and finally journey or destination ah of course it's the journey it's gonna be done of course it's the journey destination is a bonus yeah journey is the beauty of it the journey is the fun part the journey is where it's at because that is where you learn where you grow and where you get to create and exist and then the destination is like ah we got here and even when you get to destination you're still on the journey and that that's the tea thank you so much there's been enough oh my gosh i think this is the longest interview we've ever done no way we've been talking for over two and a half hours so um i just want to say yeah thank you thank you so much it's been a real joy like i think the the passion that you exude is just so infectious um it's like experiencing it in real life is like it's it's like on another level compared to like on youtube or in instagram stories so yeah i just think it's been fantastic and i've taken a lot of a lot of like really like yeah life life lessons away from it um and i guess you aren't really trying to be a guru as such but like i think you're just like accidentally just like ridiculously inspiring so um i'm sure everyone who who watches listen listen we'll get a lot of value from it guys check the book out link in all the things um and yeah it's gonna be everywhere in the stores like go and look for it which smith water stones i don't know how to say the word foils follies whales never heard of it yeah it's a bookshop that's a bookshop okay cool it's one of the pretty big ones out there but yeah it'll be in there as well nice wherever and i just i just hope that people who read it just find it motivational and practically helpful and that when you finish reading it puts a smile on your face that's all i want i'm sure it will and i can't wait to do a proper video about it lots of really useful lessons that i think can be turned into a nice little nice little video um yeah thanks and uh guys thanks for listening and hit the subscribe button and check out v all links in the video description and we'll catch you later right that's it for this week's episode of deep dive thank you so much for watching check out v's book it's generally very good it's a work of art links to these socials and her book and all the things in the video description and the show notes and wherever you're watching this please do check the link in the video description in the show notes that will be a link to apple podcasts to leave a review for the podcast if you like this episode i'd love for you to leave a review because it genuinely does help more people discover the podcast anyway thank you so much for listening have a great day and i'll see you in the next episode bye

Channel: Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal

Views: 183,873

Keywords: Ali Abdaal, ali abdaal, ali, vee kativhu, Live Your Life With Passion And Purpose, Empowered, Empowered by Vee, Studying At Oxford, university, advice for university, uni advice, studying, study techniques, How To Find Your Purpose, How To Overcome Fear Of Failure, financial independence, money, diversity, Black Lives Matter, what to do after uni, what is purpose

Id: an2413AMr6I

Length: 130min 33sec (7833 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 13 2021