No one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens but its lowest ones.

Prisons are an interesting place, people are usually polarised in their viewpoints like everything else in society. Although, human nature drives the way we treat our prison populations. The public believe prisoners deserve punishment, harsh sentences, rehabilitation and removal from society to ensure they understand the consequences of their actions.

The UK has the highest prison population Western Europe, it’s a revolving door, with over 50% of prisoners reoffending within 2 years of release. Something is clearly not working here. The purpose of prisons is to teach individuals how to stay away from crime, to build functional lives that contribute to society. Instead, prisons are the universities of crime, a naive first time offender will go to prison to understand and learn the complexities of different offending behaviours while experiencing the lengths people will go not to get caught.

Throughout life, we struggle to live a truly authentic life; one that addresses our need to self-actualise. It’s difficult because our society is one where attachment is viewed as paramount to progression. To be attached to financial gain, romantic love, success, fame and image is testament to what it means to be alive in the modern, capitalist system that we inhabit.

Our attachments are thrown onto us for survival as a child. A defenceless toddler would be unable to feed or find warmth unless they were so fiercely attached to their parents. Even throughout our growth as a human; these attachments shape us for better or for worse.

Our teenage years are marked with the attachment to our wider community and society. The school we study at or the university we attend all create this deep sense of attachment to who we are. Our friend’s opinions on our fashion, our tastes and career path all begin to mould us into this inauthentic automaton that isn’t aware of its own social conditioning.

They don’t fill any of the emotional voids that we ignore; instead they help us to build this false sense of the World. Ironically, our false narrative is usually shared by the vast majority of society- part of this capitalist, western, commodified and consumption driven consciousness that isn’t natural or rational but somehow makes sense.

It’s clearly not working.

The way we have chosen to live as Western civilisation, using capitalism to drive our economic principles while trying to adapt to technologies that only a small percentage of humanity truly understand.

Through all this mess and complexity; detachment appears to be one of the easiest ways to reach a level of contentment in this dynamic and rapidly changing reality.

To be detached, is to let go.

It’s to let go of your attachment to the outcome. To be present through the process.

Once you let go of your attachment to the way things ‘should’ be, your mind will instead focus on what ‘could’ be.

Everyone talks to themselves. It’s a habit that many just can’t control, whether this self-talk is negative, positive, happy, sad or depressing. It feels like a relentless stream but it’s just a reflection of our interpretation of events.

If we interpret events in our lives to be highly related to things outside of our control (external locus of control), then we are more likely to have negative self-talk and ultimately to be unhappy. This is the person who blames their parents, children, community, society, pet dog or the illuminati for the struggles and suffering in their life.

They tend to believe they are powerless and helpless in the face of life. The entrepreneurs who appear with this issue tend to blame their employees, the market and list reasons outside of their control for the reason they are unable to find success.

Individuals with an internal locus of control believe they are in control of their destiny and have a tendency to focus on what they can control disregarding the rest or trying to tackle what they cannot control in a methodical and objective manner.

These individuals realise that their daily actions and habits pre-determine their fate far more than the political leaning of a government or the perils of growing up in a repressive household. It’s realising that we can look after our health, our finances and our relationships to create a positive well-balanced life through daily actions that are within our reach.

When performing research on how entrepreneurial narratives influence an entrepreneur’s journey; I learned that some of these individuals were school yard entrepreneurs determining their financial wellbeing at a young age through minor enterprises which had no real significance to anyone’s trajectory but their own. It shows initiative, proactive thinking and drive within someone who has yet to fully understand society or its complexity.

Entrepreneurship itself is defined by an individual who participates in the creation of social, cultural or commercial value. These individuals are in essence creating something from nothing financially (nothing being their idea).

They mould together pre-existing technologies, concepts, models and experiences in unique and valuable ways that lead to a return on their human investment. This requires a degree of self-belief and too a point of almost delusion too walk away from mainstream thought around education, work and finding meaningful careers.

Our aim is to empower disenfranchised individuals and communities across the country with inclusive capitalism. Inclusive capitalism is providing the same quality of financial products, services, business services and advice to individuals regardless of their background. Our focuses are categorised into health, wealth and love. Each is like a subject in school that we empower individuals in by providing links to research, literature and help them to draw conclusions. Business is about people, hence why we believe that our differentiating factor as an incubator, is that we nurture talent from the ground up. We believe in human capitalism- whereby nurture humans builds capital within them that can be deployed to benefit the wider society. It's a new and innovative idea that removes the selectivity from traditional incubators and accelerators. We hope to achieve the mission of bringing 1 billion people into positions where they can contribute to society in a way that's meaningful and fulfilling to them. 

We hope you can join us on this mission to change the world. 

Human Capital + Community = Progression in Humanity 

Wealth is often correlated to financial success and the accumulation of capital which can be restrictive and toxic for individuals when they aim to acquire these goals. I've observed firsthand how individuals will sacrifice relationships with family, friends and loved ones for the chance to earn more to accumulate more material possessions and continue this hopeless cycle. At 3T, we believe that wealth is part of a holistic concept of spirituality, relationships, human capital and health. The synthesis of these concepts lead to a wealthy human condition- one that's filled with peace and contentment. 

To become wealthy: 

Becoming wealthy, the capitalist sense of the word needs to be reformed. Fast cars, mansions and egotistical displays of capital are detrimental to ourselves and the people around us. Let's rewrite what it means to be wealthy, but first we must start with ourselves. To truly understand where to find peace- we must first to look to find wealth within ourselves. 

Throughout my own journey as an entrepreneur, a student, a friend and a high achiever in a variety off career settings; I have come to understand that to be successful in any arena, you must master the art of selling.

To Sell is Human- Daniel H. Pink is the perfect book to better understand the true definition of sales, once it has been separated from the dirty stereotypes of used car sales and constant telesales. Sales is about communication, empathy, understanding an individual’s needs, desires and how to motivate them. You could be selling a bedtime to your child, you could be selling a new home renovation idea to your partner or you could be convincing a co-founder to move the business in a new direction. All of these instances require a similar set of skills and abilities to attain a successful outcome.

We often consider sales to be associated with a single part of a business, this fails us considerably as we then end up believing that the sales department is responsible for convincing our customers about the quality of our product/service. Whereas, when you think of the best and most successful businesses in the World such as Apple; it’s crazy to think how much selling the customers of the brand and the fans who love the organisation do. How many times have you heard a sales call from Apple? On the other hand, it’s usually the customers who end up selling Apple’s value to their friends and family.

As an entrepreneur, your sales ability will determine your ability to convince investors to give you money, to attract high value talent and to ensure that your team is inspired to achieve your mission. Moreover, it becomes a key part of selling yourself, as much as people may believe in your product or vision, they will never align with you unless they believe in you. This requires you to sell yourself; your talents, your flaws and your story. You must understand how to be authentic, honest and express your humanity to ensure people understand what you are about and who you are

Addiction to positive and negative habits can be observed throughout humanity. We are addicted to caffeine, exercise, social media, porn, drugs and alcohol. It's a part of the human experience yet we reserve it as a shameful and taboo part of existence. By providing children and adults with education around the pervasiveness of addiction and how it can be tackled as an individual and collectively- we can begin to reduce the harm it does to our society as a whole. We will never get rid of addiction as a part of the human experience but by raising awareness of it as a neutral and normal part of what it means to be human- we can reduce the loneliness, isolation and difficulty that people feel when undergoing this experience. Only through understanding, acceptance and empathy will we ever be able to reduce the stigma and fear that surrounds this topic. Objective truth surrounding addiction is our liberator- to view addiction to coffee as the same as addiction to heroin but only with different consequences. The war on drugs has caused us to take a moral high ground on this topic which has led to untold death, harm and destruction throughout the world. It's time to change the narrative, addicts are victims of their own humanity. Addiction is part of what it means to have habits, to undergo trauma, to escape our realities. Through education and support, there can be a real shift in our ways of tackling it when it appears in a pathological form. 

Curiosity is the catalyst behind greatness and the ability to accumulate useful knowledge. As children, we are curiously searching for answers from our parents, our friends and our surroundings. As we age, this curiosity becomes dulled, school and work tell us the facts, what's expected, what's useful and what's not. We lose the spark that makes us unique, that enables us to constantly seek useful information and apply it. When was the last time you actively desired to find out more? To find out more about how to be happy? To find out more about how to live a life worth living? These questions require you to be truly curious, to be willing to understand and learn more about the World that surrounds us. At 3T we believe, nurturing your curiosity and enlivening it will enable you to live a truly fulfilling and authentic life that allows you to blossom into the best version of yourself. To simply maintain that desire to know more and to understand more will enable each individual to identify their own calling, their purpose without feeling it's a burden or useless. Curiosity is a prerequisite to intellect, to greatness and to becoming the individual who you want to be. We must be prepared to admit how much we don't know, how much we are ignorant too, this is the only way for us to understand how important our curiosity is in allowing us to become the best version of ourselves. 

The idea of a community is a social unit shared by humans who have commonalities in values, religion, location or any shared trait.

As the digital world consumes the majority of our daily lives; we become distanced from other people and the human interaction that coincides with this. Our communities have moved online onto social media platforms that care more about monetising our data than providing us with the human experience that we have shared for thousands of years.

The lines of traditional communities have blurred; as the West becomes more secular; religion, ethnicity and traditional family values have become poorer predictors of strong communities. To find your own community; you can either wait to move to the right location or the luck of the draw.

The easier option is to focus on building and nurturing your community throughout your life. It’s creating an environment that celebrates shared values, activities, traditions and knowledge that follows the same principles of openness, transparency and democratisation that exists online.

Find out more about what 3T do and how to get involved! 

Let us know what you think at 3tcollective.com