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How Businesses Can Use Podcast Effectively w/ Anand Dattani | Roots to Routes

Anand Dattani

Roots to Routes

Powered By:

hsbcinnovationbanking logo

How Businesses Can Use Podcast Effectively w/ Anand Dattani | Roots to Routes

Anand Dattani

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Roots to Routes

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Anand Dattani Roots to Routes
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About Anand Dattani

Episode 157: In LAB #40, Amardeep Parmar from The BAE HQ, welcomes Anand Dattani, Data Strategy and Podcast Expert

This podcast episode discusses how businesses can leverage podcasts for growth, featuring guest Anand Dattani, who shares insights from his experience hosting over 80 podcasts and launching a new app called Lifetimes.

Anand Dattani

Roots to Routes

Show Notes

00:00 -  Intro

01:15 - Anand shares his journey into podcasting and its impact on his business.

01:39 - Discussion on the value of podcasts for founders and SMBs.

02:41 - Benefits of podcasts for busy individuals and targeting the right audience.

03:36 - Addressing the misconceptions about starting a podcast as a business.

03:51 - Anand’s advice on the journey and commitment needed for podcasting.

05:01 - The importance of consistency and finding your niche in podcasting.

06:36 - Using podcasting as a marketing tool and managing expectations.

09:22 - Challenges and barriers in podcasting and managing return on investment.

12:46 - How podcasting can build expertise and trust over time.

14:12 - Acknowledgment of the episode's sponsors and their support.

15:18 - Strategies for maintaining consistency and interest in podcasting.

17:40 - Transition and pivoting in podcasting content to maintain interest.

21:44 - How Anand's podcast led to his business idea and the creation of Lifetimes.

26:04 - Using podcasts to grow a business through multi-dimensional content creation.

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From the first time founders to the funds that back them, innovation needs different. HSBC Innovation Banking is proud to accelerate growth for tech and life science businesses, creating meaningful connections and opening up a world of opportunity for entrepreneurs and investors alike. Discover more at https://www.hsbcinnovationbanking.com/

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Anand Dattani Full Transcript

Anand Dattani : 0:00

Depending on the studies, there's like 50% of founders or SMBs owners who actually listen to podcasts. Generally, these are people who are interested in growing themselves or interested in growing their business, and podcast becomes a great way to find that kind of information while you're on the go.

Amardeep Parmar: 0:21

How businesses can use podcasts effectively. We look at what's the point of a podcast for a business. Is a podcast a business itself? What challenges do people consider before they even start, what some of the biggest benefits are and how you can use it to grow alongside your brand? To help us answer that question today, we have Anand Dattani, who's hosted over 80 podcasts on his podcast Roots to Routes. Off the back of that, he's created a new app called Lifetimes, which is growing with the help of his podcast and the audience insights. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. I'm Amar from the BAE HQ and this podcast is powered by HSBC Innovation Banking. So, Anand, great to talk to fellow podcaster on here and obviously you've been building your podcast quite some time now. What's been the point of that for a business, right? So why should business people consider even going into podcasting?

Anand Dattani : 1:15

Yeah, it's a really good question. Uh, firstly, thanks for having me on. It is lovely to connect with a fellow podcaster and friend. But the the interesting thing for me and I'll set that presence now is that I started a podcast purely out of a huge interest I had and I did it over lockdown and then over time, as I've niched, my business has come up. But obviously there'll be people listening who will be okay, I've got a business.

Anand Dattani : 1:39

Now I'm thinking about podcast and a lot of it. In the beginning, I'll admit, I didn't understand the scope of how. I don't know if powerful seems like a cliche word to use, but it can be in like both a personal and professional sense. So even if people are like kind of juggling between both, there's huge values on both sides, but there's that on the business side. That's one of the best marketing tools you can think of, right? So I think the type of people, especially if you're a founder or a small business depending on the studies, there's like 50% of founders or SMBs owners who actually listen to podcasts. So if you're targeting that kind of audience, you will find them in the podcasting space because generally these are people who are interested in growing themselves or interested in growing their business and podcast becomes a great way to find that kind of information while you're on the go in a busy lifestyle, because you're not forced to sit through a one hour seminar or you're not forced to sit and watch a YouTube video.

Anand Dattani : 2:41

You can be like, okay, I'm in the car or all I'm cleaning my room and I haven't got enough time, let me just listen to something. So you're automatically being able to go into a platform that is targeting probably the people that you need, and medium sized, like business workers or owners, the number actually grows. So the higher you get in the SMB space anyway, you're actually reaching more of those guys. So, marketing wise, yeah, it's been an excellent realization that it's not just a place where people listen to stuff like Call Her Daddy. No, no disrespect to that, it's great, but that's you know. You think that, okay, am I going to find the right people here? And you definitely can, because podcast opens the door for any type of subject conversation and as long as you do the kind of I mean I'm sure we'll get into that the keywords and seo and description stuff that makes it discoverable you're just increasing your odds of finding that person and it's interesting as well, as we've both talked about this.

Amardeep Parmar: 3:36

We've talked about podcasts and business separately, and this is a question I get a lot which I assume you get a lot too where a lot of people want to start a podcast as a business and that's the key way they're going to make money in revenue. What thoughts do you have on that?

Anand Dattani : 3:51

I may sound controversial, I don't advise it, but I also don't say no to it. And this is from my own personal learning, which is that you will go on a journey when you start podcasting where you may think, okay, this is what my podcast is going to be about, and you know I'm sure you've experienced it where people have come up and they've said, yeah, I want to start a podcast because I want to talk about X. You know I want to talk about let's go with mental health, not to slam on mental health, but it's just the one that I hear the most of right now. I'm like that's, that is great. You should talk about it, especially if you come from someone who's experienced it, either in your family or what, what your niche is, and you think you have a lot of value to offer in talk about mental health. But when you start speaking on a podcast, a lot of things will happen where, firstly, you'll be like am I actually good at being able to talk about this on a recorded platform? Because I'll throw in another benefit, which is, if you have a business and you it's your own business, the classic kind of like founder thing is this is my baby, I've created it. I'm really good If you're really good at having that like one-on-one conversation with people to talk about what your business is.

Anand Dattani : 5:01

The issue is you can't have thousands or even hundreds of one-on-one conversations all the time to reach all those right people. So, on the good side, what podcasting does is it allows you to have a soft version of that one-on-one conversation that reaches these people, because now they hear more about what your specialty is and what you're talking about and then if they're really, really interested, then they reach out to you. Then it's kind of like a warm lead as such. But what you'll then find is that that one-on-one conversation maybe you're really good at having it in person, but when you're doing it in a podcast means and I can speak from experience right, it comes across as boring, or you're. You know it's not as succinct and and all of things, and it may not take people down the route they want.

Anand Dattani : 5:48

There'll be a lot of learning, but the learning could also be like maybe I can't make a business out of this, because the other thing not just in podcasting, and probably anything that you do that you want to grow it's about consistency and commitment, right, and I'm not saying you have to be honest with yourself upfront. I'm not going to ask someone, yeah, but are you going to do this weekly, Are you going to do this biweekly? Because maybe they don't know, but all it will become is okay, try it out. Right, try it out for 10 episodes. Don't dedicate to being like I'm going to throw in 10K because this is going to become 50K, because you see the Stephen Bartlett's and Chris Williamson or whatever, and you think they've done it. They've done it because, firstly, timing helped and maybe their network that they had, but mainly they just weren't consistent with it. So try 10.

Anand Dattani : 6:36

Don't put all your eggs in this basket like this is going to be my business. But yeah, let it find your niche for you. But yeah, let it, let it find your niche for you. If you don't really know that strongly, see if you can actually pick up that sort of audience and it. You don't need to put a number on the size of it.

Anand Dattani : 6:53

But you know something that I learned off you in what you've you know, what I've heard from you say is that it's if you start with people that you know and people that you think are people that are interested in what you're talking about. Again, let's talk about mental health and then you either send them the episode if you're doing a solo one or you get them on as a guest. Start with there and then let it grow and see if it reaches more people, because word of mouth is powerful if a guest comes on. This is something that I've learned. If a guest comes on and they really want to share it and then refer you to other guests, you're doing something right. If they don't really do so, yeah, you either adjust and then you adjust and then and see if it works.

Anand Dattani : 7:33

But if you're just finding it's not working and you found that all of a sudden, this thing that you really enjoyed going into, you now actually don't enjoy doing it and you're just doing it for the sake of it. It really shouldn't be your business, right. Like any business, I guess. It's like leave your passion as your passion, don't try and make your purpose and I think that's that big divide Something should be kept as a passion, even sport, right? One of the best things I heard was like you don't have that flaw of excuse once you turn your passion into your purpose. Like if you love football and decide to become semi-pro, you're going to have to do things like not go drinking on a Friday night, or you're going to have to do things like wake up early and go for that run, or like make sure you stretch, blah, blah, blah. All of a sudden you may find you hate football because you're doing all that. Podcasting is the same. You can do it as a hobby if you've got the time.

Anand Dattani : 8:22

If you don't have the time, you're like oh man, I can't go and visit my girlfriend or boyfriend this weekend because I need to do this podcasting, don't make your business, right?

Amardeep Parmar: 8:30

Absolutely, and I think that's the commitment side which a lot of people forget is that, and I think completely agree with this is, unless you make a massive song and dance about starting a podcast and so I always say as well, don't do that until you've got at least 10 episodes where you've shown actually I do enjoy this and I want to continue doing it. Otherwise then it does look silly, right? If you make such a huge fuss about like I'm gonna be a podcast, I'm gonna be the next Stephen Bartlett, and then you give up after three episodes, and then people will be like I told you, right. And for people who are they're not thinking about this is gonna be their business, right? So thinking, okay, I've got a business, I wouldn't use a podcast to generate leads for me. What are some of the challenges in that respect? Right, because, as you know too, is that podcast is a long-form format yeah, isn't the most discoverable. So what have been some of the challenges that you think that you've had? Also that other people are going to potentially suffer when they start their own podcast?

Anand Dattani : 9:22

Yeah. So when it comes to the challenges, I'll firstly I'll say that so the barriers to entry for podcasting are actually very low, right, if you think about, like I said in the beginning, it's great for marketing and I'll get into all the benefits of why it's great for marketing. But to start with, comparing it to like running Facebook campaigns and Instagram marketing and TikToks and all that, they can also be quite low. But obviously you're talking about quite a significant budget sometimes that you put if you really want to get your name out there big time or your brand, with podcasting the barriers are low because all you really need is a platform and you don't even need paid platform. You can use something like zoom or skype and record on there. But a lot of the easiness kind of stops there because that's you know. We've talked about the challenges of consistency that come in, but another big challenge is probably and you kind of touched on it it's probably the expectation of what you think that podcast can do. Cause and I've seen it right You've done way more episodes than me, but how you know, having done, you know, excess of 50 episodes and planned for, like another, it'll be at least a hundred In the beginning you see some spikes when the guest is really good and they do lots of sharing.

Anand Dattani : 10:36

It doesn't necessarily mean they're all going to translate. It's actually often not the best way to generate a bunch of leads, but it's great for generating your kind of brand expertise and having good conversations. So the challenge is the expectation that you probably set on what it can do. There's a lot of stuff that you can do to position it to make it really effective, but you know kind of don't go in there and be like, right, you know I'm going to spend X number of hours, because one thing to know is a podcast effort is not that one hour conversation, it's multiple hours of like, finding the guest, the research, um, doing the title and description, all the, all the fun stuff and you can get someone to do that for you. But it is just know that if you're looking at return on time invested, the challenges that that return is going to be lower once you actually figure out all that, those time elements in it. So yeah, it's hard to answer the challenge question in the sense of these are all challenges that can be overcome, but some of those challenges are managing your own expectation of what it can do, because again back to that consistency point if you stick at it, it's going to do two things. You're going to become so much better at speaking about what your subject area is. You know, the classic thing you hear from a young age is one of the best forms of learning is teaching. This is this is what you're going to be doing, right, whether you have another guest on and you're seeking their expertise, you're going to learn from them. But then ideally, you want to show your own expertise in the area, and it probably helps more with service things like therapy and coaching, but I'm sure it translates to the product world as well. As you do that you're going to become so much more succinct and comfortable at talking about these topics. And then people start to realize, oh wow, this guy actually knows some stuff that I find interesting. That will help you. But, yeah, don't suddenly start to expect that each one of these people that, even if they suddenly become loyal listeners, that they're suddenly gonna lead to a massive revenue increase. Uh, if you don't keep showing that value.

Anand Dattani : 12:46

You know some people and ideally people listening are probably people who listen to podcasts as well. Maybe it's a a question to ask yourself how many podcasts have you listened to? Where you really like the person, you like the product or the service, have you, after episode one, gone and purchased it? Maybe and you'll get lucky with some people like that Chances are you'll listen a bit more. Maybe then they will talk about an event that they're hosting. Then you'll go to it, or they're like going to be at some stall or seminar somewhere selling their product. Then you go and then you check it out.

Anand Dattani : 13:17

It's quite a big step to expect someone to click on that link, go through the shop cart journey and then bam, you have a customer there's, there's a longer runway, um, but yeah, I, I should. I don't want to put people off it because the upsides are massive If you reach that audience. The fact that the lead conversion is maybe lower than other forms. You also have the chance, at a low level, of I can put a one hour episode and potentially hit a thousand people, instead of going out doing LinkedIn searches of like leads and then speaking to a thousand people once. You're just speaking once and hitting a thousand people. So just balance that expectation. Uh, definitely, and yeah, time, make sure, make sure you've like cut out some time that this is an actual marketing or sales part of your, you know, sales process.

Amardeep Parmar: 14:10

We hope you're enjoying the episode so far.

Amardeep Parmar: 14:12

We just want to give a quick shout out to our headline partners, HSBC Innovation Banking. One of the biggest challenges for so many startups is finding the right bank to support them, because you might start off and try to use a traditional bank, but they don't understand what you're doing. You're just talking to an AI assistant or you're talking to somebody who doesn't really understand what it is you've been trying to do. HSBC have got the team they've built out over years to make sure they understand what you're doing. They've got the deep sector expertise and they can help connect you with the right people to make your dreams come true. So if you want to learn more, check out hsbcinnovationbanking. com. So, on that, if anybody's listening to this right now and hasn't already, thebaehq. com/ join. So that will be our little CTA there.

Amardeep Parmar: 14:55

And, like I said, there's going to be many people listening to this who've listened to multiple episodes who haven't signed up to us. It's free, but it's a very common thing where it's a medium that people are coming to listen to a podcast not necessarily to go and buy something else and that trust and loyalty. Over time, they necessarily to go and buy something else and that trust and loyalty. Over time they might speak well about you to other people. Other people might go and buy your product it's a long game.

Amardeep Parmar: 15:18

And mention that long game and consistency. How have you kept up, and maybe you haven't seen the results you wanted at the beginning. What's your secrets to doing that, so that maybe people listening right now can go ahead and do that themselves?

Anand Dattani : 15:31

It is a yeah, that is a really good question. Some. It's a question that I've had to actually ask myself, especially when I was doing a lot of the editing myself. Which is what? Why? Why have I? Why am I still doing this?

Anand Dattani : 15:42

But, um, that's where I think the uh and probably I should have touched on this earlier, right? So if, say, if some people have that dream of becoming a podcaster because it's great, especially if you follow podcasters, you see the spaces that they've got themselves into uh, very cool, and this is again I'm kind of like interweaving benefits with the challenges here. But you know, it's good to balance both in your mind, to know what matters to you more so the benefits. And this is a quote that I heard off uh, do you know Timothy Urdu? So, yeah, so he. There's one thing he said when I, um, I met him. He said increasing your network of influence is increasing your surface area of luck, and the idea is like, the more people you speak to, so you know, having done 300 episodes yourself, some guests, you'll speak to them and then you'll probably never hear from them again. But then there's other people may even become friends, but in between that there are people who they may not become your like friend that you speak to regularly, but they may remember you and be like oh hey, you know I'm hosting this event or there's this really cool event going on. Do you want to come? Could just be a cool event. Um, or hey, oh, I just thought of you because I remember the conversation we had and blah, blah, blah I blah, I'm now going to connect to you. So it opens all those massive doors of, like the influence that you have.

Anand Dattani : 16:58

But the, going back to your question of what's kept me going, it's you need to actually really be interested in what you're doing. On the podcast, the topic area, so you are asking about the people who have, like a business right Founders. Ideally, you're a founder or you work for a small company that has a high growth run rate, because you actually that's your baby, or you really believe in it. So that's a really good starting point. So, going into podcasting, you should actually really want to always learn more about whatever that topic is, otherwise it shouldn't really be your founding business.

Anand Dattani : 17:40

So, for me, what's kept me going is that, even though I didn't start with a business idea in mind, I actually just really cared about what I was talking about or what the guests were talking about on the show. And so, even during the times of editing and the boring stuff, what I was editing was a conversation that I would have wanted to listen to anyway. And then if someone referred to me another guest because they said this guest has a profile that fits your podcasting right, which is collecting stories of people's family background and how that's influenced the cultural differences they were raised in and how those cultural influences and that generational impact has then gone on to you know, their, their founding passion or or business. I really like those stories, their founding passion or business I really like those stories. Now I've niched down a bit more and we can get into that in a sec, but I always enjoyed having those conversations. So even if my head was like, yeah, but I'm not actually you know that last episode came out and it got zero return that I could see I was like, yeah, but I love meeting that person and what we spoke about was super interesting.

Anand Dattani : 18:49

So again, in the business sense, it's either you're speaking to a prospect or another expert in the field and if that is your founding thing, whether it's a product, say again, you're into something really specific, like prenatal or postnatal gym workouts for women. Right, that's your thing? Then a podcasting is great because you can talk about all the things that you've learned and you know what your audience is going to be. But if you have an expert on, surely you're going to learn something for them, so you'll want to keep on doing it. So, really, yeah, the thing that kept me doing it is I genuinely am interested in it and anytime that I found that I wasn't, it actually led me to like slightly niche down or slightly change lanes on it, because I realized, like um, just to give a personal example, in like season two of my podcast, I was speaking to people of uh who had an immigrant story themselves, because my podcast started with me collecting my own family's immigrant story. Then, after doing a, a few, they were great and I learned a lot.

Anand Dattani : 19:49

But because I'm not an immigrant myself, I kind of felt a bit not inauthentic.

Anand Dattani : 19:54

But I'm like I don't love doing this because I feel like I'm just interviewing them. I can't really bring across any of my own stuff because I don't have an immigrant journey, but what I do have is like family who have an immigrant journey, and I also love people who've decided to leave their nine to five and start their own thing. So that became the niche where it's like okay, let's speak to other founders, authors, actors, singers, people who are kind of trying to create their own thing, who have that kind of background story, and then it like made it a hell of a lot more interesting for me. So what? Yeah, what kept it going was just I really, really I would listen to this if it wasn't my own, and so you don't necessarily need to have that stance, but just actually know that I I'm enjoying going into this conversation and not like, oh man, I need to do this because, you know, I got told by my mentor that I should start a podcast, but really I don't want to do it, it's not going to last.

Amardeep Parmar: 20:50

So it's interesting that you said about the transition and pivot right, because I've never done a seasonal-based podcast right where I would recommend other people to do it. So it's one of the weird things of do as I say not as I do because starting the BAE HQ is all the way after I've done 100 episodes. So I knew that I could maintain that consistency. But if you're new to the game, doing it in seasons gives you an easy get out clause so you can say, oh, the first season was meant to be 10 episodes, rather than you got busy and you couldn't do more than that, right? So I think it's quite a nice way for people listening. If you're thinking about do I start slot, just start. I can only do one season and then assess that. Was it useful? Did I enjoy it and then go? Based off that as well. And you mentioned how the podcast led to your business idea. Can you tell us more about that? So how did the experience of interviewing people lead to ideas and customer research that could then create a company?

Anand Dattani : 21:44

Yeah, it's a really good point and it's a really nice or like serendipitous time that you're asking this, because I, yeah, started the podcast in 2001 and without a clear vision of where it was going to go uh, something that I wouldn't recommend to someone. But it's also to make the point that you can do it this way. You know if you're, if you're starting off with like, yeah, but I really want to do a podcast because I have something that I want to share on a stage that could potentially and I put that word potentially reach a lot of people. But because I was collecting people's personal family history and the impact that's had on how they then grew up and what they went on to do. There are a lot of like indirect things I realized about myself and about the commonalities that you see between guests, and that was, firstly, by like, understanding that generational journey that your family have been on. It helped people build a appreciation for the things that they've been through and also how some things like the concept of risk and entrepreneurship has always existed, but it's changed. So a lot of people they come from backgrounds where their parents or grandparents moved country because they had to, they were taking a risk or, you know, they had an entrepreneur mindset because they wanted to provide a better life for their family. Because that's happened,

Anand Dattani : 23:13

lot of the people I speak to and of course, you know a lot of the time we're speaking to people who it's worked out well for them, but they are able to take their own risks because their family took a different set of risks that set them up for a life where it's like, okay, I don't need to worry about fending for my children. Where it's like I need to leave country to do it, but I can now look at things that are going to create a positive impact on the world. Right, so I can now leave my job and then put the money that I've saved up into starting a climate change business, because I really strongly believe about climate change. Um, so when, when those kind of stories of how much people understand about themselves and their identity and why they should now have an appreciation and a determination to be like I'm going to go on and serve my own family legacy well by doing what I really believe in it made me realize that the podcasting itself. It was one way of doing these conversations, but I wanted to now scale that through something like a tech platform, which, again, the more I heard guests talk about starting a tech platform of their own, I'm like man, I really want to do this. So then I thought why not create an app that encourages people to collect these family stories themselves, rather than coming on a podcast to do it, because, at the end of the day, there'll be certain things in their family journey that they probably want to maintain within their family right To then share with. I want to hear from my grandparents because I want my grandkids to hear it. I don't necessarily want to tell Anand the full details in a one-hour episode that's going to shoot out to his audience. So then that led to create Lifetimes, which is encouraging people to collect media, either in the form of audio, video or pictures, store it on a family timeline and preserve it. So, yeah, their grandkids can know something about their great granddad that we didn't have the opportunity to know it.

Anand Dattani : 24:58

hose, again, if you ask me a year ago, if you were my like business mentor, you could have probably helped me figure out this idea.

Anand Dattani : 25:05

But if you're like, oh, hey, you're going to create a tech platform, I'll be like no, but then just naturally, over time, I'm like, okay, this idea just kind of formed because there was suddenly started to be some like indirect benefits of my conversations that were enlightening me to go on that journey. So I don't know, I don't know how common it is to say that that would happen for another person if they started a podcast, but just to know that, yeah, like again back to the thing, go 10 episodes. Don't set high expectations, but just leave your mind open for the fact that I'm probably going to discover stuff about myself that I didn't expect to. I on the good side, which is it's helped me come up with a business idea and it's expanded my network, or on the bad side, which is man, I'm terrible at this, or I don't enjoy it at all, or while I've sacrificed, you know, my social life, um, and I don't want to do it anymore.

Amardeep Parmar: 26:00

And how are you going to use the podcast to help actually grow the business now?

Anand Dattani : 26:04

I think this thing will be really useful for people because, again, figuring it out, so podcasting, the great thing about it yes, it's a one hour episode, but it's kind of it's so multi-dimensional, right. So I don't want to talk too much about a space that I'm not an expert in, but the SEO side of it. You do a podcast off the back of that. That. You upload that. If you have done video form or even this kind of like online conversation, you can turn that into short clips. You can then create transcripts off of it, which most likely are going to have keywords in it. So I'm going to just focus a lot more on that stuff. Now that I've niched in on what the business is. Some people will be lucky because they they've got the business, then they're going to start the podcast then. Then they already can do the next bit. But it is kind of.

Anand Dattani : 26:47

I've got an easy route to create SEO content on my website that doesn't require me to write long blogs. I just transcribe it, make sure the keywords are correct. I've actually hired someone to do that because, learning SEO myself, I don't want to do it. Yeah, I've just I've done one piece of content that has multiple subsections that I can create off it. So that's really my focus, and then I'll be glad to speak again in like six months and see if it's actually worked. But it's one of the biggest strengths of it you can create blogs, social media content, information products, whatever you want. That's what I'm really going to do now, that I've like fully niched on. But it's taken years, but that is the plan.

Amardeep Parmar: 27:26

Awesome. So I have to move the quick five questions now because of time. So first one is who are the three british asians you think are doing incredible work and you love to shout them out?

Anand Dattani : 27:35

Yeah, this uh is basically gonna be three guests that I've had. Uh, one of them is a guest you've had is that well which is Navjot uh, Navjot Sawhney, the Washing Machine Project, purely because, firstly, he's just a super kind-hearted guy, but also what he's doing with the Washing Machine Project. That's really an example of taking your knowledge and really helping people with positive impact. You need it.

Anand Dattani : 27:56

The other two one is Ketan Dattani, and his story is fascinating, but he does sort of a climate change recruitment business to really appeal to a generation of, you know, people from underprivileged backgrounds who maybe don't know that you can have a career in this space of, like, sustainability and climate change if you want. He's great. And then another girl who's half she's mixed, but she her name's Lucy Fulford. Reason for her is she's written a book that I would have loved to write, but she's got a journalist background and so she's written it way better than I ever could. But she talks about that Ugandan expulsion period, which is what my parents went through as well. So, yeah, just getting that whole topic out there of that point in history which is how my podcast started, yeah, huge shout out for her writing that book.

Anand Dattani : 28:50

Books called exiled by the way, I didn't mention.

Amardeep Parmar: 28:51

Awesome. And then if people want to find out more about you, your podcast, your company that's coming out, where should they go to?

Anand Dattani : 28:54

Best place is probably my instagram or linkedin. So anand's world a-n-a-n-d-s-w-o-r-l-d on instagram or Anand datani on LinkedIn. And then, yeah, there's the links to the podcast, but also the lifetimes platform that that should be released in the next six weeks. Best place, best place to find me.

Amardeep Parmar: 29:08

And is there anything that you need help with right now that the audience could help you with?

Anand Dattani : 29:11

Probably less on the podcast and probably more on the platform, because this is the first time I've ever created something. I've got an MVP that's in development. But, yeah, if anyone is interested in like finding a way to gather their own family story and preserve it in a family tree and use ai tools and all the fun stuff, it's lifetimesapp. com or you can reach out to me and be like, tell me more. Uh, that's on the, you know, generating users. But anyone who wants, who like, likes to help people get their platform off the ground, I could, I could do with endless support. I will wake up at 3 am if that's the only time someone can make themselves available. But yeah, when it comes to, you know, creating the actual MVP, getting it out there, pitching, uh, yeah, all of those kind of things, I would uh happily, happily, uh use that support.

Amardeep Parmar: 29:58

So thanks so much for coming on today.

Amardeep Parmar: 29:59

Have you got any final words?

Anand Dattani : 30:01

Yeah, thanks so much. Probably just just speak to people, man, you know like podcasting is obviously super powerful in making social connection. But back to that whole point I said about growing your network. That increases your surface area of luck. Just go out, speak to people. I know it can be daunting and I don't want to go down the rabbit hole of the whole loneliness epidemic since COVID, but founders can be some of the loneliest people, um, and every conversation doesn't have to be a what's my ROI with that person. Just being able to maintain that like emotional uplift of speaking to people uh is is probably it helps people going, it helps like keep away disease and all the fun stuff. But just, yeah, just speak with people.

Amardeep Parmar: 30:45

Thank you for watching. Don't forget to subscribe. See you next time.

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