Latest / WHAT I'VE LEARNT / Beyond Words - Kieron Bryan

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Beyond Words - Kieron Bryan · WHAT I'VE LEARNT

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Journal Bryan is a keynote speaker, entrepreneur, and writer who transformed a 25-year prison sentence into a foundation for success.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: During his time in prison, Turin read over 250 nonfiction books across history, philosophy, economics, and science.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: He earned a first-class business degree, organised motivational events, invited charities inside, delivered speeches and created programs to help others use their time constructively.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: He also learned forex trading, studied every book on blockchain available, and wrote a children's book teaching chest, later becoming the first author in the world to sell its characters as NFTs.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Since its release, Kieran has completed a master's innovation and entrepreneurship, spoken at universities, charities, and the House of Lords, and built a diverse portfolio of ventures.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: So it just goes to show that books can take you on a journey and they can transform lives.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for having me.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Pleasure.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: We were thrilled to actually discover you when we were doing some research and we came across your Instagram and your story.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Can you tell me a little bit about, let's tell our listeners where it all began for you?
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I was born in Manchester.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's in the UK.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I moved to Birmingham, then I moved to London.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: So they're three of the biggest cities in the UK.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: So that was my start growing up.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Tell us a little bit about education and what it was like for you.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because you obviously, as our listeners will hear, Kieran ended up in uh prison as a result of a series of events.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it was really during that time that you became engrossed and engaged with the power of the book.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: But let's go back to how did you end up in that situation and what led to that?
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: And what's your understanding of um how things could have been different, or really whether you had the supports you needed and how you ended up in a prison situation?
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I think that it was very unfortunate my story because it it pivots around the conversation.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: So before early, early teens, um, primary school and stuff, I was like devoted to football.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I eat, breathe, sleep, dedicated to football.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I think one at one time, about the age of 13-14, I was at my friend's house after a football match.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: We went to the toilet.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm eating lunch with his parents, and they're like, Oh, what do you want to be when you grow up?
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I said, a footballer, obviously.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: So they started laughing.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: So I was confused, what what why he's laughing?
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: Danny wants to be a footballer as well.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: So they was like, um, yeah, but he we have our own business, he's gonna go to university, we're gonna give him the business when he when he's old enough.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: So he's got a backup plan because every kid your age wants to be a footballer.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: What is your backup plan?
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: But obviously, they were trying to help me, but I come from a different environment and I had the different worldview than they thought at the time.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: So at the time I was thinking if I didn't make it in football, then I'm obviously gonna be on the streets hustling like everyone else, because that's the only options that I knew where I was from.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: And when I explain that story to people from different um cultures, it seems um insane or laughable to them.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like they're actually in shock when I say to them that a lot of people from my demographics and where I grew up, if they think if they're not gonna make it in football or a rapper, then there's no option but the roads.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: And obviously, that is a naive way of thinking.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: But if everyone you know and everyone you see thinks like that, yeah, then it's not so naive.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: So um, so after that conversation, unbeknownst to them, I left that conversation thinking, okay, so I need to be hustling and doing the football just in case I don't make it, and that led me down a very slippery slope after that.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: What does it mean?
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Can you okay?
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: So what does hustling mean?
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because that's got a broad application.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: Is hustling combination is you yeah, what what does hustling mean in that context?
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: So basically, I'm thinking that I'm I'm at that age, I'm thinking that the only successful people that I know that look like me are either doing sports or they're out on the streets selling drugs and driving nice cars and wearing jewelry and that kind of thing.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: So um at that age, I never left the cage.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: Every all the kids knew me on the estate for never leaving the football cage and just playing football from morning until night, basically.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: So um, so after that conversation, that's when I started to um think that I needed a backup plan.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: And my backup plan, unfortunately, wasn't to to get a trade or to to become a doctor or a dentist or something like that.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: It was to hustle.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: So that was my first stepping out.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so basically, what you're saying is sort of the upbringing and the context in which you were living, really, you didn't feel like there were many options.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so the options that you chose are what you saw around you, and that led you where you obviously ended up in a I'm assuming you were arrested and you were in some sort of drug bus situation or something that actually um so that was later on down the line.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: So what I actually done was I was very into football at the time.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: So after having that conversation, I went to school and I think I was in the ID department, and I printed out some flyers, and on the flyers it basically said two pound the entry per player, and it's five-a-side tournament, and you can have seven people on your team.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: So you basically have two substitutes.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I printed the flyer, and I asked the lady who ran the youth club on Saturdays if I could use the field outside the youth club and the football goals that they had in the um community centre.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: So she said, yes.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: So that week, because I played football a lot for the district and different counties and the actual school football team, I would always leave lessons early.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: So what I'd done that week is just every every like the lesson after lunch, so like two o'clock, I would tell the um teacher that oh, I've got football, so I've got to leave early.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: So because they're so used to it, they wouldn't bat an eyelids and I would go to the different schools in the local areas.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: So Monday I would go to two schools, Tuesday, and I would hand out these flyers.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: And the flyers were for football.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: Just say there was football.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: For a football tournament.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: So basically what I'd done after I had that conversation with the um with my friend's parents, the next week I went to school, I made some flyers for a tournament, um, and it had a hundred pound prize money on it.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: But obviously for school kids that time,£100 prize money was massive.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: But I knew that I only needed I only needed about um about three, five to ten teams to be able to have the um have the money to pay the prize money.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: So, and I knew I'd be able to get just with people I knew.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I handed out all the flyers.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: The Saturday came, and the whole um field was full because um bare different kids come with their parents, which I didn't anticipate they were gonna come with their parents.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: So the field was full.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: I paid my friend's older brother to referee the matches, and we had to have four sets of goals instead of two sets, and um played the tournament.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: My team won the tournament because we had the best um team, because I knew all the best players, and um that's the money I used to um buy my first um consignment of drugs.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: So, really, you started off with good intentions and with a sense of community and a sense of trying to carve your path, and you got sideswiped by a choice.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: I think I think I think that's very, very nice to say that I started with good intentions.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um I was making that tournament because I thought I needed money to buy some drugs to start selling drugs.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um obviously the youth worker lady that lent me the gold was going crazy over insurance, and all the parents would just like because that because I went to this girl and I that worked in Tesco and I said to her, if you buy me some burgers and Christian drinks from Tesco, whatever, however much you spend, I'll give you double back.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: So if you spend£50, I'll give you£100 back.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I had some burgers and Christian drinks there.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: So that organization, if someone did pull me and say, Oh, if you've got this organization skills, you can use it.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to go and sell drugs.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I would have been saved at that time, but I didn't realize it till 20 20 years later when I'm telling the story of um how I started out.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm assuming, based on what you're saying, that you got caught.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: And how old were you at that time?
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, when I got my sentence, I was about 20 years old.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: I got a 25-year sentence for attempted murder.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: So that was um involved in a shooting with another guy who had a gun and a bulletproof vest, and we was in an argument and stuff went left.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: So I got 25 years for that at about the age of 20, 21.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: So 25 years, it must have been a pretty serious um charge.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: And clearly what you're saying is it all started with that one drug purchase, and then it just um deteriorated until you found yourself with, I'm assuming, the wrong crowd, and and things got I mean, that's a pretty that's not a short sentence.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's a clearly you got yourself into one big super mess, and that's pretty scary.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: And 20 is so young, and so do you think that retrospectively um you weren't given the guidance, the education, the mentors, the role models?
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: Is that I mean, how did things go so drastically wrong, do you think?
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I think that it is a combination of lots of different things because I did have good parents, but at a certain age, you're hardly seeing your parents if they're at work and that kind of thing.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so the environment you live in and the school that you go to and what you consume it is is your reality, and that is what you're gonna base your worldview on.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: So in school, I didn't know this at the time, but if you read the subcontext of what I was being taught, and what I understood is that um the Europeans went to Africa, um, they found uncivilized people who were cannibals.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they was enslaved, and after they were enslaved for around 300 years, they became civilized and then they was let free.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that education instilled an inferiority complex in me that I wasn't aware of at the time.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: So I know around um work experience and me and my friends, we always had like an anti-work, anti-establishment kind of aura that would that wasn't justified in anything because our parents worked, we know people that work, but it was just something that that that that wanted you to find a different way, like being a footballer or a musician, or or or or being hustling and and being out of the system.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I feel like subconsciously that's what was making me seeking more a different path than getting a job working, because I felt like I now understand that just getting into that situation and and and letting someone tell you, oh, go clean a toilet, for example, it's gonna feel like the whole weight of history is coming down on my shoulders because I didn't understand it properly.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: All I understood was that subcontext of what I just um relayed back to you because that's what I'm being taught, and when I read between the lines of what they're teaching me, obviously it was way more sugar-coated than that, but that is basically what they were saying to me.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um that's interesting.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I felt like once I got locked up, because if you mix that education with the environment you're in and the music you're listening to, and the people you're around, it it it it it it it basically leads you down one road and everyone's going down the same road that is in your peer group, and anyone who makes it out is an anomaly.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so an exception rather than a rule.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: So so that was the context.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: Now I know how naive and and and and narrow thinking it was, but that was the context that I was in, and that I find so many people still in now.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um so when I went to prison, I was just chilling myself one day, and then I heard a joke on something like a Jimmy Carr panel show or something like that.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: It said, if you want to hide something from a black man, pull it in the book.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I remember thinking, oh, that's offensive.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: I was I was offended by that.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I thought, all right, let me go and get a couple books.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: So the next time I hear that joke, it doesn't apply to me.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: And even though no one's here in the cell, I don't feel like embarrassed.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I went and got a couple books to test out the rule or the joke.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to hide something from a black man, pull it in a book.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: And it's evidence of my mentality at the time because what I wanted to find out about is what I heard my older um sister and her friends talking about, which was Biggie and Tupac.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: So in my mind, I'm thinking, oh, I hear older people talking about no one knows what happened to Biggie and Tupac, and I've heard this joke.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: So if the joke is right, the information about what happened to Biggie and Tupac, two unsolved things would be in the books.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I went and read.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: And guess what?
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: Every single thing was in there.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: Everything, who was sitting where, what happened there, I thought, okay, maybe this is the fluke.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: Let me read about JFK then, because no one knows what happened to JFK.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: So then maybe it won't work.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: So then I went and read lots of books about JFK, and everything you can think of of what happened with JFK is in the books.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: So that made me believe, okay, so there's hidden um knowledge in the books.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: So once I read about the true black history, I think that was one of the stabilizers for me that was able to get rid of the inferiority complex and allow me to be ambitious and look at the world in a complete um different way.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: And that was just learning about um black history pre-slavery, what existed there pre-slavery.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that along with my business degree, and I ended up reading around 250 um non-fiction books.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: So incredible education and that oh, thank you.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: That that allowed me to have a paradigm shift, and that new world view is what was able to make me make that change.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: So you were, I mean, first of all, congratulations because that's quite extraordinary, and also I love hearing the power of literacy to transform your journey because really, you know, they say it's like traveling.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's like it opens so many doorways.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: So it's such an extraordinary example of that.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: It you know, your your story demonstrates that, and you could have actually gone on a different path within prison.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now you're in prison for was it 16 years?
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: How long was it that you actually did time?
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: So I've done three three years um when I was like 17 to 20, then I was out for a few months, and then I've done the 13 years, so like 16 years altogether in um in the short space of time or not a short space of time.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, that's a very long stint to do that.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: And and so you used your time to educate and evolve and find, I gather you found solace also in some of these stories, because often when I interview people, they'll say literature is where I go to when I'm feeling like, you know, overwhelmed by life, because they often, let's be honest, it's the hero's journey, which is often every story, right?
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the rise, the fall, the the revival, you know, it's like almost every story, whether you talk about it in fiction, yeah.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, or or whether you talk about it in in I love, I also love real stories.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it's interesting you read lots of um um memoirs and biographies and historical books.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: So for you, did you find, other than getting history straight in your head by reading some of these books, did you also find solace in fiction?
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: Did you find that also like I I had at that at that time I was like allergic to fiction for some reason because I felt like so.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: I would go to the library, and I don't know if you've ever seen these books here, but it'll be a book, it will have a sexy girl on there, it will have a guy in a chain, a gun on there, and I think they're called urban books, to be um to be honest, and um I would see my friends getting them books, and I would be so confused because there's nothing that when you're in these um high security long-term prisons, everyone's in there doing big sentences, so you assume they've been around the block.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm confused of what you could get from that book that because I would have a World War II book and they would be just as confused, like, what can you get from that book?
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I I would explain that this book has got reusable knowledge and stuff that really happened.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how I would explain learning about history, for example, is I would explain to them and I would say, imagine we're in a cell with 10 of the most serious, dangerous prisoners, which just happen sometimes.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: We might just end up chilling in a cell all together.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: And you go to the toilet and you come back, and when you come back, there's a tension you could cut with a knife in the room.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: What would you do in that situation?
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: What would be this smart thing to do in that situation?
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: And what they would often say is find out what happened from someone they're close to.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: So they're gonna go up to someone, give them a little whisper, what's happened, who's had an argument, and the information that they would get back would let them know what angle to stand at, who not to talk to right now, where to stand in the room, who to watch out for.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: So all of that information will be valuable to them.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: And if they did come in the room and didn't find out that information, they'll be at a weakness, they'll be at a disadvantage.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: And what I say to them is that's how you're born.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: When you're born into this world, you're born stepping into that room without knowing nothing, not knowing what's going on, what country's doing what, why people are doing what they're doing, and learning history allows you to look at that picture because once I read um a lot about history, black history, world war two, etc., when I'm watching the news, all of the references and the context and the stuff that they just assume you know, that I didn't know what they was talking about.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: I knew what they was talking about now.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: So the world was completely different to me.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I felt like that's why I didn't um use no time on fiction because there's so much that I didn't know of real stuff that happened just about um black history, for example.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: That is so fascinating.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: And that's with me paying attention in history club.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: So, really, what you're saying is that it equipped you.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: You were trying to equip yourself for the world around you because you didn't you felt ill equipped prior to that.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so, what you wanted to do is soak up all the information you could, the facts, to equip yourself in your world and in this situation.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: You're in the prison world, so obviously, but really to give context to your own history and your own people and your own community and your family.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so I find that really I so get you, by the way, because I love I'm a real um, I love memoirs and biographies and history, and so and I'm a documentarian, so I believe in that whole um the more knowledge, in a way, the more knowledge, the more power, right?
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: To to on self.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: Definitely, definitely, definitely.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: And you're showing, you're really showcasing that.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I have to say, you're very articulate and you're very uh you've explained that really well.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there are some people, obviously, fiction provides, you know, some sort of relief and and distraction.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it's interesting to me that you chose in the heart of this, what must have been a very tough time in prison, in a sentence that was pretty long, that you chose to go that route and to not necessarily find you weren't looking for escapism, you were looking for more reality.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I argue to you that if you read some of the biographies like Napoleon, um Marcus Harvey, Alexandra the Great, you're not gonna find fiction books that are more like take you on that journey.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I agree with you, yeah.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: So, so so some of the stuff I was reading about Australia, for example, and how it was founded and that kind of stuff, the Commonwealth, all of that kind of stuff, to me seems way more interesting than something someone made up because it's really it is true and sometimes it's stranger than fiction.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: Some of the stuff that happened, you could you literally couldn't make it up.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: Make up, yeah.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I'm trying to say?
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I I wasn't, I don't think I was missing out on that.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: I did read um two books that are fiction that I don't count as fiction because they help me so much in real life, which are The Alchemist and Um Celestine Prophecy.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: Have you heard of any of them?
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, of course I have.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: Both of those are great books, and I understand why, because they feed the soul, yeah.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: So, so so them books, I couldn't even go as far to call them um fiction.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't dare because um the the the way of thinking that they help me achieve is help me in in too much of a real way, and I think that's what the book's for it is is the instructive book of how to um navigate, how to do that.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's it's it gives you tools, it's in a way.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um so interestingly, how did did reading and immersing yourself yourself in these stories, did you find that helped you navigate your internal world while you were in prison?
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I don't know if it's necessarily um an excuse that I made for myself, but I actually genuinely believe that because I read stuff about that governments can predict the prison population, and as soon as a baby's born, they're able to tell if the baby's gonna be likely sent to prison or not, based on the parents.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: And they're using statistics and and and models that are far more sophisticated than me just looking at two of my friends that I know and say, uh, that baby's doomed because I know the parents, they get it.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I can tell that that child might end up in prison.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: So if they can do that to a more sophisticated level, I don't know if I'm making an excuse for myself, but I believe I'm more like I was on like a funnel or or at least a slipstream to end up in the situation that I ended up in because of um all of the um different factors that play a part in just the environment that I ended up in and the upbringing and my parents and how they were raised and the world they were raised in.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: So going to prison and reading different concepts and just understanding things to a different level made me look at risk reward in a complete different way.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: So, for example, something like easy money.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, hustling, hustling on the streets, for example, yeah, is we is called easy money, I'm sure you've heard of that term before.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yes, but but it's probably more in your context.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so when when people are selling drugs and making money on the streets, they always call it easy money.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: And when I was sitting in the prison and I was relaying my life, and I think I was 30 at the time, and I was I was imagining myself at 18 years old in a different city trying to start a drug phone from scratch.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then I imagined an 18-year-old um who had a different environment, a different background, working trying to get people to sign up to a charity.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and this is an anecdote I would explain to different prisoners.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: So you've got two 18-year-olds, you've got one that's trying to start a drug phone, and one that's trying to get people to sign up for a charity, and he's getting£12 an hour, and this guy's getting paid whatever he makes.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: And they start at 8 in the morning, and they're hustling through the day, 12 o'clock.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: The guy who's working for the charity can have a lunch break, 12 to 1.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: He finishes at 5, he goes home, meets his girlfriend, eats dinner, watches these standers, and goes to bed.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: In that time, the drug dealer would still have to be working till 4, 5, 6 in the morning because there's different drug habits that come alive at different times, meaning you have to be up till 6 in the morning and then be ready for the people waking up at 6 in the morning.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: So there's no time off.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: There's no time off.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: Now, what I realized is that if you swapped them, if you swapped them around, the guy who has no experience in that world and hasn't been grew up in that environment would find it very hard to start a drug phone from scratch.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: Because he's got to worry about the customers, he's got to worry about police, he's got to worry about other drug dealers, and he's got to worry about people robbing him just in the first day.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: So if they were to swap, the guy who was doing the charity is most likely to get himself in the big problems.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: Where the guy who's been selling drugs and hustling all his life has been witty and would most likely do all right just having to sign people up for a charity.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: He will probably have a good easy day compared to meeting meeting um addicts and having to sell them and hide from the police and hide from other drug dealers.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: So when I really understood that if it was easy, they should be interchangeable.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: But obviously, one one of them's easier than the other.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: One of them you can build your credit, and one of them you're not looking over your shoulder all the time.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: So which one is really easy money?
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I know it sounds so um so so simple now, but that realization was a big realization for me sitting in prison, and to be able to um really articulate them concepts really in my own mind and be able to explain it back only came after I was reading and learning and doing my business degree while I was in there.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: Is the only way I could settle that in my mind, understand it, and be able to articulate it to other people.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: You going back out to selling drugs is not your easiest option.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's just a brilliant um example of the power of what you chose, which was once you got in there, you chose to educate yourself, to enlighten yourself and to find understanding.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: You're clearly a very smart man who, and the way that you talk and the the way that you relay these scenarios indicates a man of you know, great thought, and there's a philosophical overlay and all of those elements.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the other thing is that it's like anything, I suppose.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: You stretch your cerebral ability when you read and you immerse yourself and tackle things and take yourself out of the comfort zone and all of that, which clearly you made a choice to do.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: Did you find that um I mean that's a really good example?
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: What it what you're saying is it actually transformed your thinking.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, definitely, definitely.
• 30:52
  unknown: Definitely.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so at that age, I was convinced I'm gonna die before at the age of 20, 26, in a hail of gunshots.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: And that was okay with me because that's the life I was living, and that's how the end is for everyone.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, if you make it to 26, you must have done something real um real um magic.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: So so that's where I'm coming from.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: So even now I've been out two years.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: There's some people like friends, family, etc., that I meet, and they think I'm all pretending just because I've got police on my back.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: So they think it's but I understand the person they knew had no escape.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: There was no, there's no way you're gonna change that person's mentality.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: They're gonna think like that forever because that's how deep in the thinking I was, if that makes sense.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it does make sense.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: And also, I suppose the the other thing that I I mean, I note that you you do a lot of advocacy and you go to schools and you're you're in the you know, you've you talk about this um at many um uh events, and you you speak about how literacy has transformed your life, but also how important it is moving forward to to basically bring literacy into this into certain areas and arenas, including prisons, which all have libraries, but well, do they all of them?
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know that they all have libraries, but certainly you talk to that.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, can you extrapolate a little bit about what you would like to see change in that context?
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: In terms of the prison and education, um, one of the things they do in prison, I don't know if you're wearing the UK, is they have workshops there.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: And in these workshops, you'll be usually doing work for some contract with the prison that I didn't understand at the time because it didn't make sense, like you'll be breaking CDs or ripping cloths or something, but or doing some sort of recycling.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: And that job doesn't even exist on the outside, it's just the prison contract because they're paying the prisoners£20,£30 a week.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: And once you do that job, you can earn bonuses in these workshops.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: And if you scratch this many CDs, um your standard pay is£20, but it goes up to£30 a week, for example.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_01: But in education, there would be a max of£10 a week.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: So what that does, it doesn't incentivize anyone to do education.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_01: And as you know, education is a thing like it you just need that little spark that could take you in the in any direction.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_01: So where they've got people on cues to get into these workshops, even if they get into education, is just to um to wait until there's an opening in the workshop.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: So just crazy reasons.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: I don't understand.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's crazy.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: And then they say education is their priority, but it's only crazy if you don't know how the money works behind the scenes.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: If you understand how the money works, then it makes full sense.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: So that's one of the things they do.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: Another thing they do, especially with long-term prisoners, is that say you get um you got a recommended sentence, which is like 30 years minimum, which is called a life sentence, or you got a straight sentence where if you got 30 years, you would do 15 years.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_01: And what they do in these prisons is that you have these rehabilitation courses that are targeted to your type of crime.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: And if you got a 30 years, it usually means you might have been on trial and remand for maybe two years.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: So you're two years into, and say you have 30 years to do or 15 years, it doesn't really matter.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: But let's say you're two years into it and you've just been sentenced, but you've done two years.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: The next two to three years, you can appeal.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: You can appeal, and there's different steps of your appeal.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: But in that time that they're appealing, after they get sentenced, is when they will bring the rehabilitation course to the prisoner.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_01: So at that time when you've just been sentenced, then they start saying you are sentenced now.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: So you're a convicted prisoner.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: So these are the courses that your crime Pacific has to do.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so that means I'm in class now doing a rehabilitation course for violence, and in the class, all these people have just been sentenced and are appealing their sentence.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: So they're not going to be able to rehabilitate or take on the lessons of this um workshop because they're rehabilitating.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they're appealing their sentence, and they haven't even come to terms with their doing a big sentence because it takes six years.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_01: Because even prisoners told me it takes six years for you to even sink in.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, what are you not talking about?
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: You're not talking nonsense.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: And how would you even know the exact year?
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_01: But they was right about everything.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_01: Everything they said, they was right.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_01: They said after four years, people are gonna stop visiting you.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, not me, I'm too popular.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: Four years to the day, it happens to everyone.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: Your visitors just drop off the map.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: After six years is when you first realize I'm really gonna have to do this sentence.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: The queen is not gonna sign a pardon.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_01: There's nothing crazy gonna happen to get me out of this situation.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_01: So that's now only when you started your sentence, really.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_01: But before that is when you would have your interaction with education and you're doing your rehabilitation courses.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: So you're basically on your own.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's because you're not, yeah.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: That is quite it's sort of quite daunting, that whole like the way that you described that.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: That is that's a pretty um um sort of frightening notion.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: And what you're saying is it's really only in the sixth year when people really recognize that this is what's happening and that they've got to somehow find a way to navigate it.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: Well, because you could you could spend four or five years of that appealing, so you're still not really guilty because your last appeal would be.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: I understand.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, your last appeal wouldn't have got knocked back till year five.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's when they said you've run out of appeals now.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's it.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_01: So that wouldn't have happened till you're five years in anyway.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: And for you personally, you had it was a 25-year sentence, but you served and and just to clarify, yeah.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: So so basically during that time, did you find that that applied to you?
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: That you, as you just said, really was it at a six-year mark that you or had you already started processing your position and how much did reading help you do that?
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_01: No, I went I went through the same process that I just described as as did lots of different prisoners, but I wasn't on a parole sentence.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_01: So my one is straight release at the halfway point.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_01: So once once I read, once I heard that joke and I started reading, I started doing a business degree.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: What year was that?
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: When I started reading.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, when I started my business degree, I think maybe 2016, maybe.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_01: Because it takes six years while you're in there.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, so no, yeah.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: How long into your sentence did you start?
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um that process.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so that that sort of resonates with what you're saying.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, no, they had they had the um they the prisoners that are doing them 30 years, 20 year sentence, they have it down to a T.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: They even told me that your eyesight is gonna go after five years here.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm thinking, what is wrong with these crazy guys?
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_01: And then in after five years, I couldn't read.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when you're waiting for your eyes to um yeah to refocus when you're looking at a small piece of um writing, one day they wouldn't adjust back, so it was still blurry.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_01: But I used to be able to do a party trick where I could use the read the smallest writing far away, and I used to be like, Can't you read that far away?
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: And then after five years, it's gone like that.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason is you don't see any long distances.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: You get what I'm trying to say?
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: You're only seeing short distances, yeah.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_01: So so they literally have these years of when stuff are gonna happen, they have it down to a T.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_01: And they're just telling you, and no one believes them.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: I I found myself telling prisoners myself, and they didn't believe me either.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: That's how quick the time goes.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: That is really quite an extraordinary reflection, and I've never heard that before.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's so interesting for our listeners, and so therefore, your reading really you started your business degree and reading a lot at the sixth year, roughly, Mark.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I was reading, I was reading a lot of biography.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_01: So once I read the um history, black history, I had a new mentality and a new ambition and a new um confidence to to what I can achieve with my life.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what can I do with my life?
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_01: I I I'm not gonna be like um uh a gun, a gun shooting drug dealer because I look at myself as more than that with more potential than that now, which I didn't look at myself um like that before.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_01: So um so once I was reading about um people like Nelson Mandela or Thomas Ankara or different people who they were gonna be starting in a worse position than me.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_01: So they're starting poor in a poor country, and they reach to heights that I don't even um have ambitions to reach.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_01: So they're becoming presidents or president of the UN or something.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm reading about people who start in a lower position and ending up in a higher position than than I even um intend to try and get to.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_01: And what and what that gave me is confidence in that I'm just poor in a rich country, and all I want to do is be successful in business.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: So the distance I have to travel is tiny compared to the distance that I keep reading over and over and over again, people traveling the and from worse starter positions than me.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_01: So if they're able to do that and and and and everything I'm reading, someone's doing it in a different thing against all the odds.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_01: That means I can do anything.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_01: I've got I've got no excuses.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_01: So at one point I went to a prison officer and I said to him, Can you go and Google for me all the jobs that make£50,000 to 80,000 pounds a year?
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_01: So he's like, Why?
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, I've been sitting in my cell doing some numbers, and that's how much I need to make to maintain the life I was living when I was a drug dealer because I don't want to lose that kind of um privilege, yeah.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_01: So then he's gone back and he's come back with a pilot, a judge, and a lawyer, for example.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I remember showing the education teacher, oh, I can't even do none of these jobs.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_01: And she had like a disgusted look in her face here.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm like, why?
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_01: What's wrong?
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_01: So she's like, the officer has brung you jobs that he knows you can't do.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_01: These are not the only jobs that make 50 to 80,000.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_01: So she brought me another list, and on the list was entrepreneur.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_01: So then that's the one I latched onto because when I read it, it matched um my personality.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_01: So when I was reading all these um biographies, I kept noticing that they was all a good orator.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I didn't know what the word meant at the time, so I had to search up the word, and it means good at public speaking.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_01: So what I did is in the prison, I became the organised, I organized the motivational events for the prisoners, and I would invite different charities in and I would give a speech, and in the speech, I would say that I am taking the opportunity now, whilst I'm in prison, to get good at a skill that will be useful on the outside because everyone who's successful says that there was a good public speaker.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm using this opportunity while I'm here with you now.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_01: That's why I'm up here speaking.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what are you gonna be doing with your time in here to get you better for the roads on the outside?
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I was doing that, and that was changing my mentality, and that was coming from reading.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_01: And also, um, I was doing my business degree at the time.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I started, I was talking to a girl and my sister, they were all in childcare.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_01: So they wanted to start a business, they wanted to open a nursery, but obviously I couldn't help them with that from the prison.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I came up with an idea to say, let's become the Oscars of prisons.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: mean of nurseries and we'll go around and we'll give each nursery a grade and we'll pull it on the internet because in the UK you only have offstead.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_01: So the only other option you're gonna have is offstead which is more like the the they meet the demographic they they meet the criteria to be open.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_01: They've ticked all their boxes or you can go to what the nursery says about itself.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_01: But there's no one independent gonna be saying if you've got two nurseries on your doorstep which one should I choose and why because the Osted's just gonna say they're eligible to be open and the other information is going to be biased.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_01: So we started that business and then we became a consultant because people started asking us to help them open nurseries and stuff.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_01: We won a couple awards and then to have a product to go with the website I wrote I wrote a book that teaches kids how to play chess so for school kids.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like a nursery rhyme but it teaches them to play chess in the nursery rhyme story.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I um published that started selling that on the website and then I read all the books on blockchain technology and cryptocurrency that were published at the time and then I don't know if you heard of crypto art called NFTs.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_01: I sold the characters from the kids' book as NFTs whilst I'm in prison and I was the first person in the world to do that.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_01: So all of that just from reading and just from educating myself whilst in prison because I was just so eager to utilize what I was learning from the business degree so that I I I started the business while I was still in there.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well Kieran you're such an inspiration it's an incredible story and really you are a living walking example of how improved literacy can be transformative and it's actually critical whether you're in prison or whether whatever the circumstances because that's a pretty tough environment but really what you're saying is books gave you hope.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_00: They gave you a sense that there are options outside of the the walls literally the walls but also the way that you had sort of grown up and the the things that you'd seen and it gave you um options and a sense that you were limitless that really you have every right to carve your path or your destiny and in that sense that's very much what the World Literacy Foundation is about is making sure that everyone has access to books and and it's extraordinary how few people there are so many people that do not have access to books and don't understand the power of books as you said like education you know was the least rewarded in the prison system you know that that that concept so do you have hope for change in the prison system and are you involved in the advocacy of improving access to education and literacy in that context I'll be running workshops with the National Literacy Trust um over here in the UK and um I'll be going to select committees in the House of Lords trying to advise on how to um improve the education system what it's like um trying to do a handbrake turn in a cruiser ship and trying to um change trying trying to change these these systems but um the best the best way is just to be be an example of the people that in the situation I was in and I think that is the most effective way I can help at the moment.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well you certainly exemplified that and congratulations to you and I'm um it's a great story and thank you so much for joining us um at Beyond Words Global Literacy Podcast.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure our listeners will love your story and good luck with everything and thank you for sharing your story.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks Kieran Well at the World Literacy Foundation we believe in literacy is the foundation of lifelong learning and education.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_00: People who cannot read or write experience difficulties with simple everyday tasks such as reading the label of a medicine bottle, filling in a job application or understanding a traffic sign.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_00: When we help someone to acquire literacy skills we're empowering them to access to better opportunities in life to break the poverty cycle.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's a global organisation in Africa, Latin America, the United States, United Kingdom and in Australia.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_00: The World Literacy Foundation is on a mission to ensure that every child regardless of geographic location has the opportunity to acquire literacy skills and books to reach their full potential.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_00: We're striving to eradicate the literacy by 2040 reading and writing should just be a basic right not a privilege.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_00: So please if you're interested head to our website at the World Literacy Foundation to see what is happening globally this extraordinary organisation when we realise that there are 750 million people who cannot read and write.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_00: So see if you can contribute and make a difference