100. My best friend Jitesh Odedra interviews me!

SPEAKER_04 0:07

Hello and welcome to this episode of Ways to Change Your Workplace with Myself, Prina Shah. This episode is a really good one.

SPEAKER_05 0:20

Hello, and welcome to this very special episode of The Ways to Change Your Workplace with Myself Prina Shah. It's episode 100, and I'm doing something a little bit different. I have a very special guest with me, my best friend, Jitesh Odedra, who lives in the south of France. He is a teacher of English as a second language. He's a professional counsellor, and he's an all-time fun guy. What can I say? Jitesh, hello and welcome.

SPEAKER_02 0:50

Hi, Pina. It's a pleasure being here.

SPEAKER_05 0:52

Thank you. This is the most polite I've seen you, so I love it. But for all for our audience listening today, I am gonna do something really different, and I'm gonna hand over the control, the reins to Jitesh to ask me questions. And just in terms of background and context, Jitesh, I just want to tell the people who are listening that you're my best friend from gosh, how old were we? We went to lower school together. Yeah, I really disliked you by the way.

SPEAKER_02 1:25

There, yeah, it's funny because I have to always say I've known her since.

SPEAKER_05 1:30

Yes, we've known each other for a long time, but then we became friends, I guess, more in our early teen years. Hey, in upper school days, and a bit of a caveat as well. I'm very lucky in my life to have many, many deep connections with many people, and my other best friend, Polly, is in Northampton, so I love Polly as well. Jitesh, don't get jealous.

SPEAKER_02 1:54

Yeah, no, no, I love Polly as well.

SPEAKER_05 1:57

We all love Polly, but Jitesh, Ways to Change Your Workplace is what my podcast is called, and it's episode 100, and I'm handing the reins to you. And shall we begin with I guess my corporate life? I think I've been more of a corporate person than you ever have. And do you remember the days when I got my first ever job at British Telecom on the graduate program?

SPEAKER_02 2:22

Of course I do. I suddenly noticed that you had you had a laptop and you had a phone. And I was like, whoa, Prina, you've succeeded in life.

SPEAKER_05 2:32

I had a laptop and a Blackberry, forget a phone, a Blackberry back in the day. Didesh, even in those days, my response to you was I respected you.

SPEAKER_02 2:43

You were like, it's just another way of enslaving me.

SPEAKER_05 2:47

I've been quite the anarchist, I guess, in a corporate world anyway, haven't I? And exactly my first ever job, a graduate job at British Telecom, you know, an amazing, amazing graduate program, which has set me up for life, I must say, for the rest of my career. And Yetesh was so excited about all of the technology and all of the goods that I got from my organization. And my response to him was, yeah, but that's just another way for the corporation to enslave me, as I said. From that perspective, even from day one, I have been a little bit um wary about working in a corporation. So I think even from those days, Jitesh, maybe there was a little entrepreneur budding in me. I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 3:32

Yeah, you were fiercely independent. You didn't always say what you thought, but you knew that what you thought had a value.

SPEAKER_05 3:39

Absolutely so. And I still feel that definitely so, which is why I set up my own business as prunesha consulting. But then I thought there was something bigger than me, beyond me, which is why I have then created this podcast and rebranded or evolved my brand to focus on ways to change your workplace, Jitesh. And you know why I do what I do. And episode 50 was a huge episode for me. And if you haven't tuned into it, people check it out. I explain why I do what I do in that episode, and it was really scary for me to put it out there in the world because it's quite the vulnerable episode. And before I put it out in the world, I actually sent the audio file to Jitesh first and my mom, right? Yeah. So, Jit, over to you.

SPEAKER_02 4:27

The first question I wanted to ask around that, it's it was an experience that you still carry today. We we still speak about Anilankal, he's still he's still very present. And what I wanted to ask you was what are the strengths that you've got from that that you apply today? What are the gems?

SPEAKER_05 4:44

Oh, what are the gems? Oh my gosh, from that. Now, for people who haven't listened to episode 50, let me summarize one of the many reasons I do what I do. My dad was an alcoholic from a young age. And one thing when we emigrated to the UK, as Yatesh knows, my dad was really impacted by the migration and the lack of status that he had within the workplace. So he was a managerial level in Kenya days, and he really dropped from the hierarchy when he moved to the UK because he was given all of those lines of, well, you don't have enough experience, you don't have UK experience, and no one valued his experience from Kenya, third world country, especially in the UK. So my dad's identity was very much linked to his workplace, as many men's identities are, even up until today. My dad not being able to find proper work, so to speak, that suited his identity, he ended up working as a shift worker in a bakery, and lots of manual labor. You know, he worked damn hard to get us to where we are. However, that really exacerbated his alcoholism. And Jitesh's question to me was how has that impacted me? Is that what you asked, Jitesh?

SPEAKER_02 6:02

What are the gems? What are the strengths? What are the positives out of that experience that made you who you are?

SPEAKER_05 6:07

So from an early age, he got me questioning the way off the workplace, thinking, Oh, this is what's impacting my dad. I was really close to Papa. Um, we had the best relationship, but then when he'd go on this Jekyll and Hyde kind of journey, well, I used to observe him at his workplace, thinking, what the fuck is his work doing to him? So one of the gems is me observing and questioning the way of the workplace. That's one thing, definitely. And then Jitesh, you and I get on because you also have an alcoholic father, he's still alive. Am I okay to talk about that? Yeah, and Pim Uncle is still alive and kicking. So Jit understands a lot of what a child of an alcoholic has gone through, which is why I think you and I are besties, really. So the other gem as well is that I have learned very quickly on to develop a thick skin because you have to. I can read characters quite well, I think. I'm very good at deflecting to the other. So, from a coaching perspective or from a business perspective, that's such a damn good skill because it gets you to focus on the client rather than yourself, it helps you to connect with people so much better. Ditach, I think it's given me charisma and a character because if we did not laugh, we'd be crying.

SPEAKER_00 7:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 7:31

So I think I've got a good sense of humor as well, thanks to that.

SPEAKER_00 7:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 7:35

Can I ask you, what do you see in terms of the gems of the stuff that we both have been through, but what you've seen from my perspective, because it's all about me today.

SPEAKER_02 7:44

The only thing I I question slightly, and I I don't know if it's me or you you can add to this. When you said thick skinned, I almost think our skins have become more porous. Oh in the sense that we absorb a lot as well. Yes. So when you say thick skin, I was like, okay, what does she mean there? Because I'm not sure it completely left me with a thick skin. On certain issues, it makes me quite cold and blunt, and that's where I can be thick skinned. There's certain issues which are quite clear-cut for me.

SPEAKER_06 8:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:14

Where you just know, okay, there's no need for emotions here.

SPEAKER_06 8:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:18

And there's certain issues where emotions will dominate. The choice, it won't be a logical choice, it'll be an emotional choice. And the fact that it's an emotional choice will mean that it's a logical choice for me. Because it's addressing an emotional need. We were talking about with a friend the other day. We're talking about starting points, where you started from and where you are now. This experience helped us to say, I want to get away from my starting point. I want to rise and climb as much as I can from my starting point and learn and develop and grow in whatever sense. But I don't want to replicate the life of my father.

SPEAKER_05 8:53

A hundred percent. You and I had conversations early on about breaking the cycle, even though you know Lillas didn't have that language in us. We just knew we didn't want to perpetuate the same old shit.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 9:04

You know, the alcoholic father perspective and the domestic violence and everything else that goes on within life, then, and we wanted a better life. I think early on for myself, I knew I wanted to get out of Northampton. I knew there was a world out there, and I think you were just the same as well, yeah, which is why we're truly connected. But what was out there was the unknown. We didn't know because our echo chamber was so so small with the little school, and then the Indian Guju community, Gujati community, came chobadat, and you know, it was very limiting. And then I went off to uni at Lofborough, and you went to London, and oh my god, our eyes opened to the world, didn't they? The first time they do.

SPEAKER_02 9:53

I've got a question for you on that basis, and I don't think I've ever asked you this question, despite knowing you for so long. What did you want to be when you were 15?

SPEAKER_05 10:02

Oh, okay. I wanted to be either a teacher or a counselor. Oh my god, interesting question. Even when I was young, young, you know how I mean, uh, I'm sure many kids do this. We used to play teachers, I was a teacher, and my sister was the student always. So that was one thing. But then a counselor, because I heard about the concept, Yitesh, but you know, I'd never been counseled before when I was young anyway, because Indians don't do that, or our family certainly didn't value counseling. But I truly saw the the benefits of it from what I had seen and heard. I remember then, even as I was older, even when I got into the career in HR, I still thought counseling, counseling, counseling. But then I found an alternative to counseling, which I for myself was better in that I wouldn't be taking on the negative load of others, but I'd be still helping people in a positive way. So I ended up down a different path to yourself by doing the diploma of coaching. That's when the aha moment came, and that's when dots started to join. So I've benefited greatly from that coaching diploma first off, but then you know, like I've evolved beyond coaching to consulting to training.

SPEAKER_02 11:19

I remember you doing the Samaritans. Yes, even before that.

SPEAKER_05 11:23

Completely, it was always there. I did voluntary work as a telephone counselor for the Samaritans when I first moved to Perth because I really wanted to give back. And at that time I'd always done voluntary work of some sort, but the Samaritans really spoke out to me because, unlike other phone counseling kind of agencies, their program was thorough, super thorough. And even though they came from a religious background, they didn't shove religion down the people who called, whereas other phone names here do, so that didn't sit well with me. Samaritans was something else, Jitesh. Oh my god, that opened my eyes to a whole different world, and it opened my eyes to the fact that I didn't want to go into counseling. I couldn't take it. That vicarious trauma, the stuff that you hear, the stuff that you pick up. I did Samaritans voluntary work for two solid years, and I remember I used to do a Thursday night shift, and then we had to do an overnight shift every fortnight as well. The overnight shifts were something else because the phone would be off the hook. And as much as I was giving back and you know doing wonderful stuff for the community, at the end of it, I felt super drained, and the stuff that I heard from the calls that you get, I couldn't deal with it, it was too much, Jitesh.

SPEAKER_02 12:42

Yeah, it's funny one completely another side note. It's just there's something about the weekends and the human experience. We feel loneliness on the weekends because we're left with ourselves sometimes. If you're not in a conventional situation and you haven't got the family and the kids, and the dog and the lawn and this and that, and you don't have the job, yeah, suddenly you have time to yourself and your thoughts come. So I can imagine why the weekends were off the hook with Samaritans, because that's when the demons come back.

SPEAKER_05 13:11

Yes, absolutely. From my perspective as well, I don't have kids, I have a partner, but no mega commitments of the kids sort looking after my mom, who is wonderful. But you know, when you have a lot of free times, and then after you do those shifts, the Samaritan shifts, a lot of stuff stayed in my head, and it still has stayed in my head. Yeah, it was quite a bit.

SPEAKER_02 13:31

I bet there's certain calls that you can remember in detail. Certain.

SPEAKER_05 13:35

100%. The child, child sex stuff, child sex abuse was especially awful when kids call and you can't do anything, and it's a phone line, so you have to be there. That's what really, really impacted me. But even through Samaritan Gitesh, I have to say that was one of the best training courses I've ever ever had. It was an eight-week solid intensive training course, one evening every week for eight weeks, and with that, I learned the best kind of questioning skills. I learned even more how to relate with people, I learned how to paraphrase, to summarize, how to pull things out of people, you know, from a conversational perspective. I learned so much and I've benefited so greatly from the Samaritans' experience and the training.

SPEAKER_02 14:26

With all the kindness in the world, I want to ask you a question now. What was an experience where you learned nothing? Where you just think your skills weren't utilized, where you felt frustrated because you were just thinking, okay, this is somewhere where I'm just wasting and killing my time.

SPEAKER_05 14:44

Okay. It would be at the end of my corporate career. I reached the peak. As you know, I was the boss off and I was bored as fuck. I really wasn't enjoying it. I had an amazing team, so a beautiful team. However, the work itself just got so mundane that all I was was a pen pusher. It was just red tape Jadesh. I was writing memos for approval for crap that other people would do. I wanted to be that person who'd be doing this stuff. But you know, at that level, you're more of a conductor of the orchestra rather than being a musician within the orchestra.

SPEAKER_01 15:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 15:20

And I really learned then on that I love being that musician. I love being a conductor as well, absolutely. But I fucking hate writing memos. It kills me. And the red tape off a workplace. The other thing that really got to me as well, the higher up you go, the more political it gets. Life's too short. I I really wasn't into that kind of crap either, which has really impacted, you know, now the way that I work, workplace politics and office gossip and toxic cultures, all of that I've come across. Just the mundaneness of work as well. I absolutely have come across it. I'd say the place where I learned nothing would have probably been at the end of my career, which is why I left.

SPEAKER_02 15:59

Okay. And I say that in harshness. Of course, you learned something, you learned, but it was just your skills weren't utilized.

SPEAKER_05 16:05

My brain wasn't utilized to the best of its ability. And I wasn't giving back. That's the other thing. So I was just there, but not there.

SPEAKER_02 16:12

Okay. So you give me this beautiful image of an orchestra that I thought of. I don't conductor. The image that then relates in my head is this idea of a puppet, and a puppet that comes alive when the strings are pulled.

SPEAKER_05 16:24

That was me in corporate days.

SPEAKER_02 16:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 16:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:28

And I was gonna say, what would be the strings that get your puppet moving? When do you become alive? For me, I just I was thinking when I do English teaching, there's a part of me that becomes theatrical. You become alive because you've got to be animated, you gotta seem excited.

SPEAKER_05 16:44

You are on, aren't you? So when you're I I call it, I mean, we've talked about this at length. So when I'm facilitating sessions, when I'm giving keynote speeches, I shit myself. Oh my god, I am nervous, absolutely so. And I've prepared a lot, but then when I'm there, when I'm on stage, when I'm performing, so to speak, I am on. Even if I've had the worst night's sleep, there's something about it that gives you such a buzz. And any session I have, I always text you there's an update, or I'll give you a phone call on my drive home, and we'll we'll digest it, we'll we'll dissect it, in fact, a little bit, won't we? To talk about, and from your perspective as well, you're quite the performer in the work that you do, so there's similarities there.

SPEAKER_02 17:29

No, I guess it's interesting. It's funny because you do it more often than I is you're in different environments. I don't know how you do it. When I'm teaching in my language school, I know exactly how things work. There's very little problem solving other than the content where suddenly you've got a logistics thing as well. There's new people, you're meeting someone new each time, you're going into a new audience, you may never see them again. Yeah, it's a one shot there.

SPEAKER_05 17:56

I like the excitement and the nervousness of it as well. I think that's one of the things that does get me going, definitely. So it is the thrill of each in that respect. And then, yeah, like I talked about workplace politics earlier, some projects I like doing and then finishing, and then that's the end of that. Sometimes all good things come to an end. So I like working in a project capacity with some clients, and some clients I love the long-term relationships we have, so I feel like I've got a good mix that way, Jitesh.

SPEAKER_02 18:28

Yeah, you've got the best of both worlds.

SPEAKER_05 18:30

Yeah, I also love, like through my current business, podcasting. So this podcast, I frigging love, you know, I love geeking out and researching and learning, and that's given me that.

SPEAKER_02 18:42

This is a new part of you that I've seen because I'm a bit of a anti-technology, yeah. Um says a lot. Yes. But you what I noticed is you really got onto this, we're the same age, but you really got onto this technology thing. You started doing these Zoom calls, you started having these interviews, you started setting up pages. But you didn't know this stuff, you're not from an IT background. What was it in you that said, I want to do this rather than reject it like me? That's yeah, that's I want to know what was it for you.

SPEAKER_05 19:22

I guess I'm motivated to be my own boss, and with that, if let's say basics, if I don't have a website, then I'll be the best kept secret and I'm not gonna get clients. That was the first thing. Um, my first website was so bad. You should check it out now, it's brilliant. Um, like it's an evolution, Jitesh. I feel like if I don't do it, I'm gonna fall behind, especially from a business perspective, and technology is changing so so rapidly. I'm not mega technical, I guess I'd say I'm medium technical if I'm to compare myself against my peers. I love it, I love learning Jitesh. So the thing that I've really enjoyed about being my own boss now is that yes, I do all of the delivery work for my clients, but then all of the other background stuff. So I am the finance officer, I am the I'm marketing, communications officer, comms, podcasting, everything. And one thing I learned early on, or the one big promise I made to myself is whatever I end up doing, I'm gonna do it myself first. So a la this podcast, and you know, learn how to do all of the technical elements, and then I will outsource it. I need to learn about every single part of my business, then I'm happy to outsource it.

SPEAKER_02 20:36

Yeah. Okay, I just I've got a question around the podcast. What was one of the most difficult moments around the podcasting? What was difficult for you around podcasting, and what was easy for you around podcasting?

SPEAKER_05 20:48

What was difficult for me around podcasting was initially I wanted big, big people on the podcast. And I thought, who's gonna speak to little old me? And then I thought, fuck that, stop talking like that, Pruna, you know. So I had to have a big conversation with myself, and then I thought, no, I am good, I am great at what I do, and I started to reach out to wonderful people, like these big sinkers, and people started saying yes. So I've had some amazing guests on the podcast, Yitesh, that I would not have even dreamt of when I first started it. So the hard thing for me was my own mindset to get over my own mindset, and the easiest thing for me is to have these wonderful guests and to pass on their message as well, you know. And these are wonderful people, so I'm very particular about the people that I invite on my podcast as well, because it has to be good for my audience, you know, it has to be worthwhile.

SPEAKER_02 21:42

You're scraping the bowel today.

SPEAKER_05 21:45

I'm not, come on, not at all. So I think that's been really good with it, and just I have made some amazing connections. And Jitash, I've learned so much as well through the podcast, and I know you've listened to quite the You and you were talking about the toxic masculinity one, which you really enjoyed. All of those different ones, it's just fascinating topics. And the other thing, Jitesh, as well, is that when I worked in the corporate land, I had shackles. I couldn't be creative, I couldn't have the conversations that I wanted to. I'm my own boss now, I can do what I fucking want to, and I can talk to who I want to about what I want to as well, which is the other bonus.

SPEAKER_02 22:24

Now, the pleasure of me being the interviewer, I've got a question for you, another question talking about creativity. There's a part of you which is extremely artistic. How do you deal with that part of you?

SPEAKER_05 22:36

Yes. Many people may not know. When I was working in HR in my early 30s, I had an early midlife crisis, I guess you could call it that, thinking, what the hell am I doing in HR? So I became a glassblower's assistant for six months at a university. Then I fell in love with all things art even more. Then I started to study a degree in contemporary art while also working. And I've completed my degree of contemporary art over four years. It ended up being, and I, you know, became a practicing artist and I've had many an exhibition. But I haven't exhibited, I probably for around six years now, Jetesh. I haven't created a piece of art. And for people on YouTube, I've got some artworks there behind me, the kangaroos and all, you know, the paintings behind me. So what do I miss about it? The tactile element? Definitely so. But I feel I get that from cooking. I love cooking, so that's another creative outlet. But what my business gives me is the creativity of thinking to so I'm still super creative with my business. So creativity of thinking for the podcast and you know the various guests and the kind of questions I'm gonna ask them and what I'm gonna pull out of those conversations. The creativity to work on amazing client projects where I can choose this is where we should go, or this is how we could go. Let's think outside of the box. And my clients have faith and trust in me and go with me from that creative perspective as well. The other creativity element I've had also is last year or the year before, I think it's been a couple of years now. I self-published a self-coaching journal, You Can't Stop a Shooting Star. And I journal today myself. So I'm still creative, Jitesh, but in a different way, not in the typical artistic sense of being creative on a canvas. I still feel like my creative brain is being fed just the tactile element of paint and spray paint and brushes and glass blowing. That's not there, but it's not gone, it's not out of me, it's there. It's a time element as well, Jetesh. You know, like with a corporate job and then life as well, you know. I want to live, yeah. But there will come a time, and the thing with art is it will call, it will come to me. You can't just pull out a painting out of your ass, you have to really think, you have to feel, you've got to be in the moment, haven't you? You can't just create from an artistic perspective. That's all no.

SPEAKER_02 25:10

And talking about creativity, I would like you to project yourself from 10 years from now.

SPEAKER_06 25:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 25:17

What would you have achieved by then? And where would you be? What would be different? What would be the same?

SPEAKER_05 25:23

In 10 years, I would have written at least one book. In 10 years, I'll I'll be even more global than I already am and traveling even more than I already am. I'll be working in south of France every now and then, and I'll be visiting. I'll be visiting you more in 10 years. I feel like as being my own boss, I have freedom of time, which is amazing. It's the best thing in life, yeah. I feel in 10 years I'll have more of a routine in relation to free time and the work-life boundary as well. I think that's the evolution of me in that respect. In 10 years, I will have even more impact in helping even more people to find ways to change the workplace because I truly genuinely believe in it. Jitesh, in 10 years, the world of work is going to be so fucking different that it scares me and it excites me as well. So I always have to keep on top of my learning with the evolution of everything that's happening societally in the workplace. So that's good. What will be the same? I think my character will still be the same. I think I'll still have the love. I still will have the love of what I do. And you know, everything I look at as an experience. So every single, I mean, even this week, it's it's just been such an amazing high. Like everything that I do is a wonderful experience. So I'm very grateful to have all of that. So I think that gratitude, my sense of humor, my character, it's all still gonna be there. That's gonna be the same.

SPEAKER_02 26:52

Excellent. I think your personality will remain exactly the same. I think that was a good thing, but I think also your personality will become not your personality, your way of engaging with people will become even richer if that's possible. And I hope you write that book. There's a burning part of you that wants to cap the capture what you've learned in a book.

SPEAKER_05 27:12

100%, and I've put it out there to the world, so I've got to fucking write it now. Hey, I need to pull that finger out, Yitesh. Yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 27:21

Why did you move to Australia? Why did you leave the UK? And what has Australia given you?

SPEAKER_05 27:29

I left the UK in my early 20s. I was working really, really hard, really long hours in London, living in a dive. That's all we could afford, me and my partner, and Australia was this shiny, happy land, land full of promise, hope, and joy, you know. Grass is greener on the other side, and all that. So that's why I moved, really. You know, so I was working damn hard, wasn't really saving much in London because the cost of living was so so high, especially in our 20s. And then we moved to Sydney, Jitesh, and Sydney was much the same as London. I thought, what the fuck have I done here? Honestly, so so we lived in Sydney for a couple of years, but then we moved to Perth in Western Australia, and I think since then life has truly changed, and I feel settled here. Perth is beautiful, Jitesh. There's so much opportunity here. I've had the ability to quit corporate life and set up my own business. I don't think I'd have that in Sydney. I think there'd be far more competition. In London, it will be even harder. Like, how do you stay afloat in London? Yeah. So I think Perth has given me a lot, and that's why I am where I am as well, J.

SPEAKER_02 28:47

Okay. Prina, the question I wanted to ask you was you've done a lot of individual sessions where you coach people.

SPEAKER_06 28:55

Oh, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:57

Can you think of one moment where actually you learned something that changed the way you work? One of those life-changing moments for you in your sessions when you were coaching it, just a gem that was dropped for you by the person that you're supposed to be helping, where you thought, ooh, the roles are reversed.

SPEAKER_05 29:17

I learned from every single one of my coaches. Um I'm straying away from coaching more so now just because it's so time-intensive. However, I learned from all of my coaches, they're amazing, and I keep in touch with the majority of them. They're beautiful people. I coached an Indian politician, and she's amazing and super, super high flyer. But one thing that she was working on, Jitesh, was how she could bring her brown self to the table, to the political table. And that has taught me so much. I think from then on, it's about me bringing my true self, you know, my Gujati self, talking about my background, and then after that, that's after that, I recorded episode 50 to explain why I do what I do. That was my pivotal moment.

SPEAKER_02 30:07

That was your learning from that. Be yourself, bring yourself to the table. Now that goes on to my second question that I had. There's an Asian aspect, there's an a uh a weaker Indian aspect, but a very strong Gujarati aspect. You have these layers. What do these layers mean to you right now when you redefine them? Being a woman, being of Asian origin, but then being of Gujarati diaspora.

SPEAKER_05 30:35

I'll talk more to the Asian and the uh Gujarati aspect, more so, Jitesh. I live in Perth and it's very white in terms of the corporate scene. I have only had throughout my whole career, Jitesh, only one brown manager similar to myself. I've been working for freeing donkeys years, yeah. So I feel that I am representing people like me because there's many of us out there, but we're still not mainstream, and that really gives me the shits. And that's something you know I am on my high horse about, and stuff really needs to change because organizations bang on about diversity, equity, and whatever, but I still feel there's a lot of lip service there, and that really truly needs to change. So for myself, I would say that I didn't have role models, I didn't have brown role models, Jitesh. I didn't know that you could do this. Yeah, you yeah, we both didn't, right? So I want to be that role model, not from like that higher mighty perspective, but if you see her, you can be her, you know.

SPEAKER_02 31:39

Sorry, it takes just a moment to uh walk down memory lane. Yeah, the only time it was called to be Asian in the early 1990s was Grass Apache Indian, Apache Indian, yeah, and Goodness Gracious is me.

SPEAKER_05 31:57

Fuck yeah. So this is talking to our UK background, uh TV comedy series called Goodness Gracious Me when we first properly saw brown people on TV, yeah, and the whole world changed for us then, didn't it? It's like, well, we can do this as well, yeah. These are people like us. So, gee, I want to be that, I want to give opportunities in that respect to other people like us as well. And you know, not like us, like people who are diverse, you can do this, you can be your own boss, you can do whatever the fuck you want to, and you might you can make a positive difference to the world in the way that you want to. So I want to show people that you can do that. The exciting thing, I have my niece, my 16-year-old niece Jit there, she's gonna be doing work experience with me in November.

SPEAKER_02 32:42

My god, that would be fun.

SPEAKER_05 32:44

So I'm really flattered, you know. But I think there's a big aspect there of me being female because I have worked in male-dominated industries and I still do a lot of my competition, so to speak. I I don't have competition, people work with me because they want to work with me, but those who label themselves as my competition, a lot of them are men. Yeah, I don't feel like I compete with anyone apart from against myself, really. And then the Asian perspective and the Gujarati perspective, I'm representing because there's not many of us out there representing, and that shit needs to change.

SPEAKER_02 33:17

I wanted to add another layer to that, being a child of an immigrant and being an immigrant, or you being an immigrant, or we're both immigrants as well. Yeah, what does the immigrant experience give me?

SPEAKER_05 33:27

Oh my god, the work ethic that I have, Jitash, as you know, I've got that voice in my head, you know, child of an immigrant, like your parents work so fucking hard to get you where you are, you've got to work hard as well. That's the voice in my head, but I still feel that it's not enough. But what is enough? When will it be enough? And that's how our parents drove us, yeah. And you know how it was when I got results at school and when I told you Oh my gosh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:59

The only time Trina, I think what it is is I by my own life, I can't I can't repolate others, but it's this idea that we're just programmed to search for something in the exterior. The external is supposed to give us this the whole time. And it's such a wasted effort and time because it's not in the external actually what you're searching. A hundred percent Yeah, whether it would be love, whether it would be money, whether it would be work hard, that voice saying work hard, it's the external voice, even though it's it's coming from inside, it's coming from this history and thinking.

SPEAKER_05 34:36

That's a really good point. I got really competitive with myself, so you know, I got all into metrics and data and all of that. Probably last year I got super fucking anal with all of the numbers in my business, but then I got obsessed with it, and I really had to have a conversation with myself to just drop that thinking and just be myself and return to myself. And as soon as I did that, everything changed for me. It's about letting go, isn't it? That control aspect of things. Yeah, we control nothing, really.

SPEAKER_02 35:08

Yeah, I had another one for you. There's this prina that I know that is in perfect that has succeeded in um working as a consultant, had a rich history before that, okay. If there was this ultra ego prina that indulged her senses and took another path, who would this other prena be that you could almost feel comfortable being in her skin?

SPEAKER_05 35:36

Easy answer. She'd be that contemporary contemporary artist, Jitesh, a hundred percent.

SPEAKER_02 35:43

Okay, what would she be doing now?

SPEAKER_05 35:45

She'd be traveling the fucking world, exhibiting honestly, and just yeah, living her best life and learning and experiencing and constantly giving back to the world as well. And so when I mean, when I worked on all of my art series back in the day, Jitesh, I didn't just you know pull it out, it had deep meaning to it. Like every single piece of it was me, it was my baby, you know, going out there into the world. And the older ego, I think, would be artist Prina out there doing her thing, exhibiting and learning and making the world a better place in that way.

SPEAKER_02 36:18

Now, the magic wand question.

SPEAKER_05 36:21

You're gonna ask me this question for the first time ever.

SPEAKER_02 36:25

The magic wand question, Freina.

SPEAKER_05 36:27

So the magic wand question, Jitesh, that's a reminder prompt. Jitesh is gonna ask me, Prina, if you had a magic wand, what is one way that you would change the way of the workplace? Yeah, Jitesh, I haven't even thought about this like in depth, you know. Like loads of my audience members have, my uh interviewees have. But from my perspective, and I guess especially because we've been talking about my dad in this episode, I would still go back to the way I would change the workplace if I had a magic wand, is to really review the institutional systems of a workplace that still tie men to their jobs in a really negative way, Jitesh. Beyond my dad's stuff, the identity, of course, that a man has to his job and therefore to society.

SPEAKER_02 37:15

You have to be the bread owner, you have to keep the family going, you've got that pressure, that tension.

SPEAKER_05 37:21

Absolutely. But then when I've worked internally, Jitesh, the stuff that I have seen is that workplaces don't make it okay for men to ask for flexibility, for men to have, you know, good paternity leave, for men to be there for their children, for men to give back to society in the way that they want to. It's still a fucked up system, it's still not there.

SPEAKER_02 37:43

Can I add men in depression?

SPEAKER_05 37:45

Yeah, all of the above. Yes. And you know, so getting back on my high horse, the other thing as well, so women, we talk about equality and all of that. And I ask, why the fuck would you want equality? If men aren't happy as they are in the workplace, why do we want to be like them? I think we need to fuck the system all together, review it, look at it, and create a better and bigger new system and find proper ways of working that are positive and that feed our soul, and yes, feed the frigging economy as well. So that would be my answer to that question, Jitesh.

SPEAKER_01 38:20

Thank you.

SPEAKER_05 38:21

And with that, we end the podcast, Yitesh. And I cannot thank you enough for the tough, curly questions that you've posed to me. We've gone deep in some areas, so thank you for that. I love you.

SPEAKER_02 38:33

Always a pleasure. I love you as well.

SPEAKER_05 38:35

Until the next time, maybe episode 150.

SPEAKER_02 38:39

Yeah, I'm up for that.

SPEAKER_05 38:40

If you like this episode, check out the show notes and sign up for my newsletter.

SPEAKER_04 38:45

That will help your workplace to be less shitty. It's full of novel ideas, good food for thought. And if you like this episode, pass it on to a list to people who will benefit. Add your good feed done for the day. Also, remember to subscribe to the Ways to Train Your Workplace podcast via your podcast provider. And I will see you in the next episode.