The Break School

Business Story Telling Coach and Founder of Storywallahs, Ameen Haque helps us understand what makes stories authentic, how stories shape our lives and how can you and I leverage the power of stories to improve the quality of our lives and businesses.

List of Questions from the Episode 

1. What movies and stories are you reading right now? (03:12)

3 Big Takeaways from the Conversation 

1. If there is no conflict, there is no story - Isn’t this beautiful. Just think, If you have always had a comfortable life, if you have always tried to play safe and be where you are, then do you really have a story worth sharing? On the other hand, if you’ve taken up a project that sent jitters down you spine and challenged your gut, if you’ve pushed yourself beyond the cushions of your comfort, then perhaps, things are difficult right now but remember while you go through it, you are weaving a story that you will be proud to share.

Great Stories Help us deal with fundamental human conflict - As Ameen mentioned, The primary purpose of stories is to help deal with a conflict. There are good movies that deal with conflicts of present times and then there are religious stories from lives of Krishna, Buddha, Mohammad and Mahavira that deal with human conflicts that have existed for thousands of years and are here to stay as long as we exist. Now extend this to business story telling. While pitching to/your clients, do you just focus on your skill sets or do you focus on the conflicts of your clients and tell a story that explains how your skills resolve those conflicts

Let the audience own a part of your story - I’m going to repeat a quote that Ameen mentioned in the conversation “When you are a laying a mouse trap, don’t place so much cheese, that there is no place for the mouse to come”. This is a message I’m going to reflect upon in the next few days. I would like to understand how can I weave a call for action within a story without explicitly giving out a call for action.

Founder and CEO of Project DEFY Abhijit Sinha, talks about creating learning centers without teachers, raising funds, Building teams, Starting a social enterprise and defying conventional understanding of education.

Questions from the Episode

1. What is Project DEFY and who is it for? (02:06)

3 Big Take aways from the episode

Your Team is your Feedback Loop – This was a jewel in the entire conversation. I have always believed your team is your greatest resource but I never thought of each member in my team as a powerful feedback loop. As Abhijit mentioned, bringing in people who give you uncluttered, hard headed feedback, offer solution and are also willing to execute those, can go a long way in building sustainable organizations in the long term.

It is important to find Donors to fund your social enterprise but it is equally important to ensure they don’t influence your core values and beliefs, let alone compromise on them. At Project DEFY, one of the core beliefs is you don’t have to be paid unfairly low just because you work in a social enterprise and no donors could dictate what they paid their employees.

Learning rooted in curiosity is far more powerful than learning rooted in curriculum. When you learn something to solve an immediate problem or fulfill an immediate need, you get immediate feedback. If what you are learning solves your problem, you retain and build on that solution. If it doesn’t, then may-be you are not learning well or you need a different solution. Well, You may ask, Itis possible to let every person decide what they want to learn when there are limited students but can you do this for all the kids in the world? Honestly, I don’t know! I’m just hopeful, with the increasing penetration of internet and availability of knowledge, this should be possible for a lot many kids in the times to come.

Resources Mentioned in the Episode

1. Project DEFY - https://projectdefy.org/

Traveler and Biking enthusiast Amrutha Kashinath and Shubra Acharya hold the record for fastest journey between Kanyakumari and Kashmir on bike by two women. On the show today, I have Amrutha Kashinath to discuss how she managed her expeditions along with a job, what goes into preparing for such long distance expeditions and how safe is it for women to travel solo in India.

Important Questions from the Episode |

1. How did you feel when you finished your 6 day long trip from Kanyakumari to Kashmir? (02:55)

3 Takeaways from this episode |

1. Sometimes opportunities come in the form of accidents – In her 1st expedition from Bangalore to Gujarat, Amrutha was supposed to be a pillion. However, when one of her group members met with an accident and there was nobody to ride the bike, Amrutha pushed herself to do it. We have all been in such situations, where we compelled do more than we think we can. For instance, when our boss goes on a long leave, or when we forced to learn a new software or when we are compelled to build a 2nd source of income to support our families. These situations are painful when they occur but in the long term, they help us uncover abilities that would have remained hidden in our usual day to day life.

Do you often sign up for online courses but never really start learning?

Do you often decide to eat healthy food when you are sick but go back to your old ways as soon as you recover?

Do you often aspire to find better career opportunities but do nothing more than consuming a few inspirational videos?

I often do. In fact, all of us do. It’s a problem called the “Intent-Action” Gap.

On this Episode, I have Anurag Vaish, Co-founder of India’s leading Behavioural Science firm, Finalmile Consulting, to help us understand the reasons for the huge gap between what we commit/Intend to do and what we really do. At Finalmile, Anurag has led projects across domains such as Financial Services, Health Care, Education with the goal of designing system to achieve compliance and Adherence. On this Episode you will learn

1. 3 major reasons for Intent - Action gap

2. How to strengthen your commitments

3. The power and limitations of “Inspiration” in driving action. 

List of Questions from the Episode

1. Does reading Behavioral Science books such as Nudge, Thinking fast and slow etc. help people change their Behaviors (04:50)

Why do we continue in careers we don’t find meaningful? 

Why do we continue to use old tools and softwares even when there are better alternatives available?

Or why are we so afraid of trying something new? 

In this 12-minute snippet I unpack The Status Quo Bias, a major problem in our decision making that makes us resistant to change. I explain its underlying causes and two possible ways we can avoid the bias and make better decisions.

References for further reading -

1. https://sites.hks.harvard.edu/fs/rzeckhau/status%20quo%20bias.pdf

Happy Listening and learning

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Engineer, Carpenter & Founder of Maker’s Asylum, Vaibhav Chhabra talks about quitting his job to build Makers Asylum, a leading maker's space in India, How maker's community enable people to build what they love and what stops us from giving our ideas a physical form.

Questions from the Episode - 

1. What is a maker space? (02:26)

3 big Takeaways from the Episode -

1. The biggest obstacle to making what we want to, is picking up the tools and making it. Very often, Our inability to get out of our comfort zone is worse than any external challenge. May be we are afraid of failing, may-be we are afraid of not knowing how to build but then, you can learn. A maker’s community is defiantly a great place to learn. But learning requires time and effort. We cannot binge watch Netflix and then expect to learn to build something incredible. 

This is our third episode in the personal finance series where we try to learn how to save money to do what we love from a Behavioural Science perspective. Behavioural Science tries to understand why humans behave the way they do & then design effective systems to influence human behaviours for better outcome.

My guest today is Benis Kumar Moses. Benis is a Behavioural Architect at India’s leading Behavioural Science consulting firm Finalmile Consulting. His close to two decades of experience in financial services market offers him a deep understanding about people and their relationship with money. We discuss about the biases that stops us from saving money, how to reduce the gap between what we intend to do & what we do and how to improve our ability to deal with uncertainty.

You can find the list of all resources and links mentioned in the episode at https://thebreakschool.com/saving-money

Questions from the episodes - 

1. What is Behavioral science? (02:09)

2019 has been a special year.

Starting this podcast gave me an opportunity to have conversations with path breakers who gave up conventional careers to pursue what they love full time. This snippet is a summary of 5 powerful lessons I have learnt from these conversations. I don’t claim these will transform your life but I assure you, if you believe in not spending your entire life doing what you don’t find meaningful, then these lesson will help you in your pursuit of doing what you love and lead a meaningful life.

You can find the complete transcript of this snippet at www.thebreakshool.com/lessons

If you loved this episode, don’t forget to share this with your friends over WhatsApp. If you would like to receive future episodes, then subscribe to the break school podcast on Spotify, Stitcher, Castbox or Apple podcast.

Just doing what you love doesn't pay your bills. However, for people to pay you for a specifically skill, you must be really good at it. One of the most powerful ways to sharpen your learning is to find a mentor.

By mentor, I don't mean finding a paid coach, although that really helps as well. This snippet is about finding a life long guru, who can help you master what you love.

In this snippet, we focus on two aspects - What do you need to convince someone to be your mentor and two, where can you find mentors.

Find the full transcript at - https://thebreakschool.com/mentors

Happy Learning🙂

Personal Finance Coach and author of the award winning personal finance blog Cashoverflow, Pardeep Goyal talks about developing passive income, experimenting, common mistakes while saving money, his learning from two failed start ups and a lot more.

List of questions from the show - 

1. What is cashoverflow? And who is it for? (02:08)