Spencer Lodge - How You Can Help To End Human Trafficking

0:01I am so glad you could join us. I'm your host, Mo Gaudet This podcast is nothing more than a conversation between two good friends sharing inspiring life stories and perhaps some nuggets of wisdom along the way This is your invitation to slow down with us Welcome to Slow Mo

0:34Welcome back. Today, my guest is finally, finally, my friend. After a very, very, very long time where we attempted to get together, I'd probably say because of his mistake, but I'm not sure if he will accept that, we ended up meeting a year and a half after my dear friend and co-author Alice Law introduced me to Spencer Lodge. And Spencer is, I think, a part of every story in a very, very interesting way. He comes from humble beginnings. As he says on his own profile, he becomes something out of nothing. And in that journey, he becomes a very successful serial entrepreneur here in the Middle East.

1:23He establishes companies that don't only make money, but also make a difference. hires incredible people who are motivated by success in all of its constituents, if you want, including making a difference to their clients. And then he just decides to create a podcast, which becomes the most successful podcast in the Middle East, hosting incredible guests from my favorite human of all time, Stephen Bartlett, all the way to another favorite of mine and a a wonderful encounter with Tony Robbins and so on and so forth. And he starts to communicate a message, even though he does not need a podcast in any way, to make a difference to the Middle East region by bringing different thoughts, different approaches to living.

2:12And then in the middle of all of this, he just pops up, packs up, and goes to create documentaries about issues that matter or to do philanthropic work that makes a difference. If you sit with my dear friend now, Spencer Lodge, you would get the vibe of a very serious businessman. Everything's organized, targeted, he does it really well. He looks at numbers and reviews and all of that. But then a minute into it, you get that vibe of someone who is entirely about making our world a tiny bit better. Why that dichotomy, where all of that drive and energy has come from, is the topic of our conversation today with my dear friend, Spencer Lodge.

3:01Thank you for making it at last. It's been... Okay, so let's tell the story. it's been um what february 2021 uh you you know alice was visiting dubai you you know she went and met you she said you guys have to meet and you know you guys have to be on each other's podcasts and yes we both agreed and then we only met in february 2023 right correct i followed up with your team several times oh i don't know why i'm saying this in public but uh what happened the truth of the matter is i was given a phone number which i thought was yours i whatsapped it i was um offended that i didn't even get a no thank you i don't like you i didn't get any response at all and then funnily enough and i'm not sure if you know this but another good friend of mine then met you and they were chatting to you and they they called me after and i said how should take this jails with this fascinating guy called Mo Gaudet.

4:05And I'm like, what, Mo that never responds Gaudet? I said, that's interesting. So it makes time for you, but not for me. Okay, who is this enigma? So I apologize. You did actually have the right number, but that right number, like literally around that time, it was my UK number. And you know, I moved to Dubai around the end of 2020. And so basically, I let that number expire. So there is a very anonymous guy out there or lady that have been getting lots of messages. Wondering what is podcasting. Yeah. Spence, it's, you know, we're becoming closer. We're hopefully going to be working together soon.

4:47You know, and you tell me a lot about your journey. And I have to say, it's quite fascinating how you ended up where you are. So if you don't mind sharing a little bit, how does someone from the UK who comes from middle class or not much, let's say, end up being one of the most successful and impactful? You're one of the most influential 100 people in, is it in the Middle East or is it in Dubai? Yeah. So how does that happen? I think, you know, whenever anybody has their own story to tell, it's quite difficult because you don't look at your own story as anything other than your normal do you yeah it's like I woke up every day I did what I do my shirt you know got on a plane and so you don't you don't think of it as being anything unusual but I suppose when I go back and I I look at my family history and and see where they came from my mom what her family's looked like my dad I see great examples of hard work and passion and commitment across the whole family for very different reasons.

5:55So not just from a commercial or business point of view. So on my dad's side of the family, my grandparents were missionaries in Nigeria in 1935. And my dad was born in Nigeria because he's the son of a missionary and his sisters were born there too. and so all was very everything revolved around the church um what they were doing to try and make a difference to that environment at that time so then i look at my dad's sisters and all of the family are missionaries now so the whole family are missionaries none of them apart from my dad myself um and my sister were not and so there's a real commitment to their faith and a real commitment to trying to do good in the world.

6:40And it didn't mean anything to me when I was young. It was just what it was, you know. Then on my mum's side of the family, my grandfather was in the Second World War, so he was in Dunkirk, and he was known as the barefoot bricklayer because he literally came from absolutely nothing and he used to lay bricks barefoot. He was a builder. And he helped to rebuild the country after the war and he was in the Channel Islands in Guernsey building there and they saved up enough money to open a green grocers in North London and my grandmother run the green grocers and my grandfather laid bricks they had five kids and and and again they didn't really have much but there was a real steely determination to be something or be somebody or achieve something which we which we see my grandfather did now again didn't mean much as a kid you know my On my parents' side, my grandfather had a fairly nice house and we'd spend a lot of time in the garden.

7:36On my dad's side, my grandmother had a, my grandfather, they were preachers. And so they had a house given to them by the church. And so that wasn't very fancy. But what was interesting is when you think back, my mom and dad got divorced when I was seven years old. And my dad then went back to Nigeria to work in the oil industry. My mom had to start again with nothing. and so when my dad my mom and dad got divorced my dad went bankrupt so there was no money so I was with my mom at first and I could see my mom working three jobs working really hard I used to walk home from school so we used to finish school at I think at 3 45 and I would walk at seven years old I would walk along this main road until my mom drove past 45 minutes later on her way home from work and I'd jump in the car with her and go home.

8:30And I would try and see how far I could get each time. And this is back in the 70s. My dad went to work in the oil industry in Nigeria because he needed a job. And I went to spend time with my dad in Nigeria as well. And I just saw these two people with an incredible work ethic. And that work ethic to me meant something. Now, nobody in the family ever went to university. Nobody got degrees or high education. And so, you know, you used to hear the story about if you don't go to university you won't amount to much you won't get a great job and stuff like that but then i then go to school aware of this and nothing goes in so everything i'm learning i'm interested in the subjects whether it be chemistry or history or geography i'm really into the subjects but nothing stayed in my mind so the moment an exam came i was looking at this list of questions you know with my pen and my pencil and my eraser we used to have there and I'd look at it and I'd be like, hold on a minute, I've just been revising for the last three weeks.

9:27How come none of what I've revised is in these questions? Why are they asking a different curriculum? And it felt like that. So I then left school again with only one qualification. I got one O-level, that O-level was in English. And literally I was told, you know, not much is going to happen to you because you can't be a stockbroker, you can't be an engineer, you can't be a lawyer, you can't be this or that. You're just going to find your way. How old were you when you left school? 16. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And so I then, I got a job in sales and that's how my, my work began. There you go. That's what we all did.

10:01Yeah. Yeah. If you don't, if you don't know much, you become a salesman. Yeah. But it's true. But what I was taught in sales is, is one of the most important skills that I've used in my life. Absolutely. And it was rejection. Oh, interesting. So rejection was something. I thought it would be conviction, like convincing people. No. Rejection. dealing with rejection it's really interesting when i think about it because i don't talk about it often but when i started working i was selling office equipment so my office was in a kind of like converted knackered old warehouse um in southeast london um all of the sales people had a patch and so my patch was ec3 so one of the postcodes in the city and every morning we had to go and knock on doors and not houses but offices and we had to go into the office ask for a compliment slip remember those used to get compliment slips in companies a compliment slip with and ask for the office manager's name and what equipment they had so canon copiers or xerox copiers whatever they may be and then i'd collect these slips and then at lunchtime i'd go back to the office and i would learn them out and i'd cold call them but on the first day my boss said to me right you're going to make these 100 calls i want you to get me 100 people to say no to you interesting now bear in mind i've had some training you know and i've got my kind of cool must call she i've got my objections she as well so if x objection happens this is how you answer it but get me 100 people to say no i bet you can't that's a very interesting request yeah so i got on the phone and people were saying no and that's the nicest thing they were saying you know lots of bad words and occasionally if somebody was kind of interested i put them off no maybe not the right time for you anyway got to the end of the day got my 100 nose went to see the boss he gave me a high five he said brilliant job i'll see you tomorrow wow and so bear in mind i'm 17 or 18 years old at the time the next day go and get me another 100 no's so again 100 no's the third day is like right you've got 200 no's that's awesome today yeah i know weird isn't it yeah but he says today i want you to get me 99 no's so go and find 99 and just one yes okay do you think you can do that i'm like yeah now that went on it went from 99 1 it went to 98 2 to 97 3 so 97 no's three yeses and what happened is he was teaching me to understand that there was no way i was going to get acceptance or a yes without getting no's first so i had to earn the yes and the only way you could get the yes was by getting no's first i think you should write a dating book maybe it wasn't 100 the numbers were probably as high as that oh very high in the pub on a friday night is she isn't she yeah but but but what it was teaching me to do was to understand that rejection was part of the success game where and when you look at a lot of people that struggle in business rejection is a real killer for them you know getting no's from people really kind of it hurts them emotionally it hurts their heart it's like oh you know i called mo up and mo didn't buy that apartment from me ah you know he said no to me he said no to me he doesn't like me and that feeling people have then makes them fearful of prospecting for their business and so that was a really valuable lesson and then and this goes on actually to the pub story i was in london in ec3 down by tower bridge we had a road called the minaries and at the bottom Some of the minaries was a wine bar and I would go to the wine bar on a Friday night with my mates and we'd go and have a few beers.

13:38And I walked in that bar that night under the arches and she was there. And she was just the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life. She had a dark brown bar with big brown eyes. It's beautiful. And I looked at her and I said to my mates, look at her. They're like, go and talk to her. Oh, I'm not talking to her. Rejection. Don't want to talk to her. It's guaranteed rejection. you know my i was maybe a six out of ten she was definitely a 10 out of 10 and so i was gonna get a no i'm actually told that the tens out of tens actually struggle because nobody approaches them well i tell you what this is exactly what happened i had a couple of drinks i can't know like ready to be rejected i can deal with that no it's happening tonight anyway and a few drinks a couple of hours went by and then i she looked at me again and i thought i'm going over so i walked over and said hi to her and introduced myself and she said why did you take so long oh wow i was like what would you mean she said you've been staring at me for two hours um and so we you know i learned about you know a job a family and whatnot she worked at an architect firm in in the city i just got to know her a bit and then after a while she said so what do you do i said i'm a salesman and she went oh oh that's heartbreaking she says why and i'm like well what were you expecting she said i don't know a doctor an engineer a lawyer an investment bank somebody rush your heart yes in that moment and i said to her your company is an architect do you have clients she said of course i said and those clients how how did the company get the clients they're like well we have this you know this team of people and they're responsible for bringing the business to the company i was like okay and if those people didn't bring clients to the company would the company make any money and she said no and i said would you get paid your salary she said well probably not and i'm like those people those people are the sales people yeah they're the backbone of your business because no sales people means no revenue no revenue means no job for you so maybe just maybe you should show a bit more respect to sales people add on top of the fact that they probably have psychological highs and lows every day that you couldn't possibly imagine because of the rejection they face they've still got to put a roof over their heads they've still got to feed their family they've still got to put their kids in school and pay for their car payments they go through all of that without a fixed salary maybe we should show them a bit more respect and it was in that conversation that everything changed for me about being a salesman I it was almost I'd sold myself in that conversation about how important it was to be good at sales and to understand that that was critical to any business That's amazing.

16:21Did you ever kiss? We dated for two years. Did you? Yeah. Yeah, that's a good salesman. Then we broke up. And the funniest thing happened. About 10 years later, my mum sent me page 7, 10, whatever it was, of the Sun newspaper in the UK by fax. She won the lottery. No way. She won the British lottery, yeah. Her and her family won like 9 million pounds on the lottery. Oh, man. You know, I've never approached a woman ever in my life. Really? Not once. Yeah. What, you've never gone up and said, hi, my name's Mo? Never. Not once. Is that fear of rejection, do you think? Ah, hold on. You've never, I thought you were saying that you've never approached, they always approach you.

17:05Yeah, they do, but that's not the topic. That's not the topic. The topic is actually. I want some of that cologne. No, I, you know, I have, I have to say in my mind, it is not fear of rejection. It's more fear of awkwardness. So in my mind, first of all, of course, I was lovingly married for so long, so I wouldn't approach a woman. But then by the time I was, you know, in my mid forties, when Nibel and I separated from one side, I never knew if the woman I'm approaching is single or not. and isn't it awkward if she's not, right? And then the second, which I know is a very interesting thing is I don't know, I'm not a good judge of age, okay?

17:48So, you know, thinking of myself as a mid-40s, like middle-aged crisis kind of person, sort of saying like, okay, what if she's 19? Like, I don't know, right? What if she's 25? Isn't that too young for me, right? And so basically I never in my life, not once ever walked to someone and said hi. God, there's some stories you're selling yourself on, aren't there? I'm not a very good judge of age. I don't know whether they're married. Who knows? What man ever knows whether the woman's in a relationship or not? Yeah. None of us do. Yeah, exactly. I don't know. I mean, I'm not saying this is something I'm proud of.

18:26I mean, this is my therapy session, right? Even though I'm now in a wonderful relationship for a couple of months, so I'm not looking. but when you said that i was like and you you describe her as the 10 out of 10 and i'm like what's wrong with me like why did i never do that i think that when i was a kid and we're similar ages but i was 53 yesterday so are you yeah you're doing well my man thank you sir yeah when i was young we didn't have any of the tools that are at our disposal today and so what was what were your choices you could meet somebody at work yeah boring you could meet somebody on public transport on the way to work less boring you could meet somebody in a bar or a nightclub you could be introduced by a family member yeah or one of your mate's sisters yeah it's not like it's not like you had many options and so when you interact i mean and of course before we had these devices we interacted with each other so much more yeah but um you know I worked, when I was young, I worked at a dry ski slope in London.

19:37And the girls that worked at the dry ski slope were the girls that I dated. You know, when you're at school, you date the kids from school. And I'm sure at university you find... Yeah, you know, statistically, until the 70s, I think, the average American would get married to a person that lived within the same block or two blocks away. There you go. And that was it, basically. And I think the idea was that because there were very few opportunities, you were not as dreamy as people are today. So, you know, you just looked around you in the same, you know, few buildings of a block and you go like, oh, she's the nicest or he's the nicest.

20:15Fine. Let's go ahead and do this. Right. which is quite interesting because today's world I think is we're being spoiled by all of those products if you want whether that's in dating and relationships or in business as a matter of fact I mean I look at your business and you know I work with the lovely Daniel who's was the CEO of of Safe Hands and the reality is unless you're very specific about what you're offering and you're very unique and you're very, you know, perhaps a lot better than a competitor, there are way too many people offering the same thing. You think about it, you know, here in Dubai, we have a gazillion real estate brokers and a gazillion real estate agencies.

21:01I mean, how many, 12 ,000 or something there are in the companies. And so how do they differentiate themselves? I have no idea. You know, they say, well, our service is better. Well, everyone says that. We'll sell your property faster. Well, everybody says that. Some of them wear a three-piece suit to look different. Some of them wear a polo shirt and jeans to look different. Unless you're going to dress up. The actual product is not different at all. Yesterday I was looking at Dubazel, the classified place for cars. It just hit me that I may want to get a truck at a point in time to go back to my roots of handcrafts and so on.

21:38And I will never do it, but why not? So you just look for any brand and they're like 10 ,000 cars for sales, right? And there is so much out there. And yet humanity somehow continues to think that there is value. Like, I don't understand how could there be, I'm not sure, I haven't checked, but I'm sure if you checked for a Rolls Royce in Dubai, you'll probably find 100 for sale, right? How can we associate value with anything that still has 100 of it on sale, right? And, you know, it's quite interesting how that abundance, I think, has spoiled our lives so much. It's interesting, you know. I used to be the guy that would buy a new car every six months.

22:22I think you've had cars and I've had cars. Oh, did you? But I've got this desire to keep my car. I know. For as long as I possibly can. I know, I know. And it went through 190 ,000 kilometers the other day. It did it? And I was so happy. I'm like, this is coming to 250. 50 this is this is i was really interesting different kind of joy right absolutely it's like and my wife's like please get a new car get a new car and i'm like no i'll just get this one if i gotta get i'll get it resprayed why just get a new car because it'll cost you money i'm like i know but this car's never let me down it's my best friend and you know i've got an emotional attachment to it now and uh i'm gonna hold on to it shakes you know what i did recently so of all my old cars.

23:03You know, I had a fleet. Yeah, I apologize. I'm not that way anymore. But I had one car, when Ali Habibi, my son, Ali, when he wanted to buy a car, of course, being a spoiled rich brat at the time, I'm not anymore, everyone. I basically said, anything you want, Habibi, anything. Like, you want a Porsche 911, I'll get you a Porsche 911. And he, in his very, very gentle and kind way, was like, Papa, that's not nice for my friends. My friends can't afford this. So if you're really, really kind, buy me a little bit, a small SUV so we can put the band equipment in it. He had this band, they were famous in Dubai.

23:39And so we did that. And then it was one day he was at one of his friends and some driver rammed it literally in Marina. And so it was totaled. And he was about to go to uni. So he sort of said, you know what, I'm not going to buy another one. can I use your car every now and then? So he used my Audi A8, which is now 20 years old, exactly. And 140 ,000 kilometers on it. And I recently decided, you know what, it's an Audi. It's supposed to drive a million kilometers. So I basically took it, I restored cars for so long. So I took it to the same guys that I used to restore cars with. And they were like, why would you do this?

24:18This is an Audi. It's not like one of those fancy cars. And yeah. And I decided you know what i'm gonna drive this every day until it's 300 000 kilometers hug him when i'm getting in hug him when i'm getting out and honestly it's such a joy it's it feels brand new it runs where does that happen because my dad keeps cars forever now but back when i was young he didn't and i used to watch him and i'm like dad get a new car get anybody no this and my dad comes from the era of a peugeot 504 you know the the everlasting african car you know for the rest of your life the thing that never go well it does go wrong it's easy to fix and so my dad my dad's he's a toyota man now and he has a land cruiser but it's like 20 years yeah he's like it's never gonna break and if it does i'll get it fixed and i'm like why not buy a new one and now i'm the i'm the guy that sits there and i talk to you and it's like where do we get to a point in our life where we go yeah enough of that that's a bit ridiculous i think there was a meme or of sound clip by Morgan Freeman, where he said there is an age beyond which you are not impressed by a lot of it or most of the shit that impressed you before.

25:25I mean, the reality of the matter is that you try things, right? And then, yeah, like I tried it, they were advertising it to me as this incredible piece of success and joy, and it's not really, right? And I think we start to value longevity. like you know I'm looking forward to the day where you're probably going to look older than I am when you're 65 but you know I mean it was really it I love those things I love the idea of we've gone through life together right I don't know when did that happen I think when I stopped trying to impress others I mean I rarely ever tried to impress girls but you know after my separation i did a little bit but now i don't and you know it's wait i tell you what you remember the time that mark zuckerberg said i have i only wear gray t-shirts and i only wear these black jeans or whatever it was that he wears i have the same 10 t-shirts and 10 10 pairs of jeans so i don't have to think about stuff now every young person that watched him say that on a video was sitting there you're mad but every older person was like that's a really good idea how many t-shirts do i need i actually have exactly 10 yeah and i'm planning to go so i'm going to london in a couple of weeks time and i buy them from uniqlo so i'm planning to go with five of them and come back with a new five and you know that's it the old five would remain you know given to someone or at charity you find your color in your thing you know my kids say to me dad why do you always wear blue?

26:59And I'm like, I like blue. That's it. I can't give them anything else. But what about dark green or brown or bay? And I'm like, but I like blue. But hold on. So, but you're still very passionate about what you do. It's not about, so you're not excited about things. I think we all get to that point at a point in time. But when you do something, like you really put your heart in it. Work-wise, philanthropy and so on. I think men, whoever that man is, needs mission and purpose. And I think that when you don't have that, which I didn't for a period of time, when you don't have that, it can become a very dark world very quickly.

27:48And so mission and purpose enables you to be really passionate or enables me to be really passionate. I've got to focus on something. so you know let's say you and i you've got aquariums here so let's say you and i as we love aquariums should we start an aquarium business yes let's okay if we started if we started an aquarium business the the laser focus i would have around that the reading the studying the planning the thought about being in that business would be consuming the way your fish just dying in there but for me it would be just like you know honed in when i've got lots of different things to work on i struggle to focus so i need one thing and then then to do it until until i'm ready to give it to somebody else to do something with and then move on if i've got five things to deal with at a time invariably i don't get very far so and then that doesn't have to be work related that could be you know a diet or fitness or or something related to the things that I care about.

28:48Taylor, my eldest, when she left university, she applied for five jobs and she had four interviews and she got four rejections. And so in that moment, she was like, her head was down. You know, she's driven and focused, but she was devastated. And I'm like, why would you be devastated? She's like, well, dad, because I applied for five, I had four interviews. They all said, no, what's wrong with me? And I'm like, you just left university and you're useless. That's what's wrong with you right now. You're no value to a business. Go get me a hundred no's. well what i said to her said look you this is the way you approach it so we sat and planned it and i went laser focused with her on you know the job site she had to go to how she would use linkedin how she would then go and go to recruitment companies and i made her apply for 30 jobs a day every day for a month wow and so she applied for 30 jobs a day and i made a report to me at the end of every day those 30 jobs well at the end of the month she'd applied for 600 jobs she'd had umpteen interviews and she ended up being in the position where she could choose who she worked for and she worked for the company she wanted to but giving her that focus and me focusing on it just for that month you know we were all in that deep no toes in we were that deep in the water um that was the outcome and it was to demonstrate to her what you can do when you really apply yourself okay but also to me it gave me something really exciting to focus on for that period of time i mean i i always tell people that i mean they you know finding a job finding a mate finding whatever doing anything really is a matter of practice so the basically the more you're you're applying yourself to it the more you go to interviews yes you get rejected as the byproduct but the real product when you think about it is that you've learned something you've you know you've had a question that you haven't heard before now you can think about it then you can go back and and answer it better next time can I ask you you said men need purpose do you believe women need differently?

30:39I'm not a woman. Ah, great answer. And so to, to answer on behalf of women, I think would be unfair of me. I think we as a human race, I think we need purpose and, but our purposes are different, but from my own experience and through men that I've spoken to, when I've seen men that don't have purpose, I've, I found them to be in the same or similar dark or lost space that I was in when I didn't have it. I think that's so interesting because I, One of my favorite interviews on this podcast was Edith Eger. And Edith was drafted to Auschwitz when she was 16. And she took a very different path in life than the very famous Viktor Frankl.

31:22Yeah, Man's Search for Meaning was all about meaning and purpose and so on. She was all about compassion and nurturing and connection and being the best version of herself. And at the end of the interview, it just hit me so strongly that in that same situation, a man and a woman would take a very different path. I mean, man and woman is biology, but I would always say masculine and feminine would take a very different path. Masculine would be more about doing and hitting targets and impacts in life and achieving things, while feminine would be much more around being. okay and who am i and how do i present myself and how do i connect to the rest of being and so on and it's it's quite interesting of course feminine and masculine is not man and woman you could be very very feminine and have male biology that doesn't matter but that's really interesting when you said man search for purpose i would probably say the feminine would search for for other things, compassion, love, connection.

32:31That book had a big impact on me, that Man's Search for Me. Man's Search, yeah. That was one of the, well, still to this day, one of the best books I've ever read. It is an incredible book. You should read Edith's though. Yeah. Yeah. You've made me want to now. Yeah, I mean, she's an incredible angel. I mean, at age 94 now, she's still out there trying to make a difference to the world. And I have to say, they're complementary. They are very, very necessary views of the same topic, if you want, from two angles. So let's talk about meaning. Against all reason and logic, you recently took yourself on a journey that is dangerous, that is costly, that is difficult, that is against the advice of many people given to you because of how dangerous it is to build a documentary around the topic of human trafficking, which I have to say is one of my top purposes in life is to try and do something about human trafficking and slavery, modern-day slavery.

33:39Very difficult topic, very, very violent topic. Tell me about that story and how far did it go? So I used to go... here in Dubai we have something called the Capital Club and I used to go on every Saturday to something called the Social Capital Club which was part of the Global Sustainability Network run by a guy called Raza Jaffa and each week we would have a talk from somebody who was doing something worthy and then we would talk about what we could do to focus on goal eight of the UN Global Sustainability Goals and which trafficking is part of and then I met a lady called Maria she came in and she was this little demure Portuguese lady and she told us her story and as she told us her story I was blown away by what this woman had achieved and in very simple terms Maria is an orphan herself from Portugal after a crazy journey ended up being cabin crew for Emirates went to Bangladesh was there for two days on a layover saw these kids that were struggling in the slums and decided to do something and she flew back to Dubai sold her possessions flew back to Bangladesh and started to try and help a family and then she googled how to raise money for charity and the first thing that came up on google was climb Everest now this is a woman that's never even stepped her foot in a gym and so in her mind in that moment was okay so if I climb Everest and I get sponsors, I can help more kids.

35:13It wasn't, oh my God, I've got to climb the biggest mountain in the world, okay? And might die. It was, I just need to get over this hurdle to help more kids. So the positioning in her brain, I thought was fascinating. The fact that most people look at the biggest mountain in the world and are terrified by it, but she just saw it as something in the way of helping children. And so she then did that. She raised some money. she helped my children she built a school in bangladesh to teach children english so that she could bring them here to the uae and now she's brought over 600 kids here um educated them here through thick and thin how does she bring them i mean does she find foster parents for them she she brings them to her she's in at the moment in her own two-bedroom apartment on the shakeside road i think there's 12 kids with her oh my god she's got 50 kids here at the moment in various accommodation she rents apartments she brings some of the mothers as well sometimes um and her job in her mind is to give them an education and to get them into university and to get them a start in life and for 18 years she's been doing this and she is the most driven stubborn caring and compassionate human being I've ever met so I was really moved by what she was doing and I then asked if I could meet the kids and so one day she allowed me to meet 12 of the girls and within a second I'd fallen in love with all 12 of them and felt I had a sense of duty to try and help and so this is she said do you want to meet the kids I said yes she said where should we meet I'm like you tell me anywhere um she goes I don't know I said how about we go to the mall of the emirates so she's like fine so we met at the mall of the emirates these kids from the age of 8 to 12 came over said hi to me i said right kids who wants ice cream and maria looked at me she said just be careful they've never had ice cream oh my god and in that moment i was like what do you mean they've never had ice cream i'm like my brain was like every kid has ice cream but these kids had never had no not every kids and so we took them to the the fun fair in the mall and and then we We took them.

37:23I'll never forget something, one of the kindest, most genuine people I've ever met did something for me that day. I posted on Instagram while I was with these kids that my audience, please, I need somebody to come and join me at the Mall of the Emirates. I need you to give me three hours of your time and ask nothing in return. Is anybody out there that can help me? I got a message from a guy that owned a real estate brokerage called Loai, Providence Real Estate. he said to me where are you what time do you need me and I said by my message I sent back what time I needed he said I'm on my way you didn't say what for I just said I need some help with some kids dropped everything came and he then spent the next few hours with the girls and I we went into Cara for and I said to Maria what do the girls need and she said they need everything and I'm okay what do they need tell me what they need she's everything and there's myself and Loa with four trolleys and we walked into the into the the carafor and i went over and i said to the kids get yourself some pajamas and they're looking at me they're like what to keep and i'm like oh my god yeah yeah get yourself a pair of pajamas each get yourself some sneakers get some underwear whatever it was they were fascinated by hair clips like truly fascinated by butterflies and and and stuff pretty things teddy bears i saw them just standing looking at these hair clips and so So we got them hair clips and then female sanitary products and anything that they needed.

38:54We filled these trolleys up with. We go to the counter and this lovi, this friend of mine, he refuses to allow me to pay. He pays for everything for everybody. Very kind gesture, something I'll always have huge admiration for him for. He's a genuinely decent human being. but in that in that in those few hours i was then connected to these girls and i wanted to try and make them smile that wasn't that was my thing is that how do i make them smile so i contacted another friend of mine called tyrone reed who was the ceo of alabar enterprises he's now the head of emirates airlines catering division i said alabar enterprises you've got candylicious the kids candy store I said is there any way I could bring these kids over and they could have a look in the shop and uh he said to me how many you got I said I got 12 he's like leave it with me the next day he said meet me at Marquette which is next to Candylicious so I met him at Marquette with the girls they met Ty and they bought them lunch they get a VIP tour in Candylicious and every one of them was told you can have whatever you want take whatever you want none of them took anything more than a tiny little bag of sweets he then took them into cinema he had a private screening of aladdin for them they had aladdin and then he took them to learn to ice skate the generosity of people is it's overwhelming for me because their kindness means a lot and so then it was just what do i do i need to i need to keep helping and and so i that's what i've done i was my birthday yesterday and my wife's like what are you doing what do you want to do who do you want to see and i'm like we're seeing the girls and she's like you know what about your friends catching up you'll have lunch i'm like no i just want to see the girls and they've grown now and this is five years ago so they've grown and they're now they're now good friends and some teenagers and going through their challenges in life and went through their exam results yesterday but it was that that really started the the idea around what i could do to make a difference hold on before we continue there So, I mean, in a very interesting way, you're shocking me because I have not actually realized that this exists in Dubai.

41:16The lush, you know, very, very fancy. Yes, of course, I can imagine there are people that don't have as much, but people who don't have at all that are not, you know, in the blue collar labor camp type thing as kids. we didn't used to have this in the in the region because you know if you couldn't afford to keep your kids here most workers would keep them back home and travel back and forth right and i think when you talk about it it's not at all dubiah you know i think there are of those kids back in bangladesh there will be several million in africa there will be several million and so on in a very unusual way, while you focus only on 12 of them, or maybe at that point you focused on 12 of them.

42:02This is something that the world needs to wake up to, that when we talk about discriminating, I think that the idea that some children have never had any caring, giving, any childhood at all is something that everyone needs to wake up to. look the the issues are societal they're cultural they're you know i heard a statistic the other day 1.2 trillion dollars arrives into africa every year in aid and only 15 of it gets to where it needs to go and so while there's people that have got their hands on the generosity of others there's always going to be these problems. One of the other things I think is really important to understand, though, as well, is that a lot of the time we're giving them fish rather than teaching them to fish.

42:55And I think a lot of problems can be solved if we spend the time, and that's why education is so important, and that's why Maria cares so much, because she brings the children here to get them into school, gets them scholarships, gets them to school, and then she wants them to go to university. And some of them are in university in Portugal and America and stuff, and she gets them in because if they've got an education then they can have be free thinkers they can be critical thinkers and they can build careers and if they build careers and they can provide the 12 that i've worked with i've obviously i have a close connection with that that crazy 12 but there's 50 or so of them that i see on a regular basis okay so so now you're awakened let's call it yeah so what so then what happened is the following so the actual story of the documentary came the podcast was all about personal development and i was interviewing tony robbins and gary v and all these people and and and great people then i interviewed a guy called nick yaris who was on oh yes death row yeah for 12 years or a crime i didn't commit and in that one interview of me not speaking for 45 minutes just with my jaw open as he told me this extremely painful yet beautiful story i thought i need i need more stories like this this is interesting to me and so I went down the path of learning about people that had been through unimaginable experiences unimaginable horrific journeys and then I met a guy called Leon Logothetis who had a tv show called the kindness diaries and in that tv show he believed in the kindness of others and so he decided to try if he could travel around the world and rely on the kindness of others and he could accept food shelter and fuel for his motorbike but he couldn't accept money and he traveled around the world and made a documentary and when he experienced an extreme act of kindness he replayed it with a life-changing gift so there was a homeless man in america that helped him he got him an apartment there was a guy in india with a tuk-tuk that helped him that was that had broken and fallen apart he bought him a new tuk-tuk leon was um very lonely as a boy and so his best friend was his dog and in peru he saved you know he paid for a hundred dogs for a year to be looked after all this kind of stuff great great gifts and so i interviewed him and at the end of the interview i said to him look i'm a bit jealous that you got a tv show and i don't and he said well why haven't you got one and just looked straight at me and i had no answer for him and he said if you had a tv show what would it be about i said human trafficking why because of what i'd seen from maria with what happens to the children there and other guests that had been on the show that had been trafficked.