Girls Know Nothing - S2 Ep18: Gaby Mendes | Talk Twenties, Podcast Hosting & Festival Hints

Episode Date: June 7, 2023

GKN is a female-focused podcast hosted by  @SharonNJGaffka @jessiereneewynter GKN Social Channels: Https://linktr.ee/girlsknownothing  Instagram: @girlsknownothingpod  Tiktok: @girlsknownothingpod TikTok: @girlsknownothing

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like probably like having kids or a parent like there's there's a real big gap in there welcome back to another episode of girls know nothing this podcast episode is actually a little bit of a twist as i appeared on our next guest podcast to almost two years ago now. Gabby Mendes is the founder of the award-winning Talk20s podcast and media platform. The platform is aimed at educating 20-somethings on things that you need to know in adult life that you just weren't taught in schools. So welcome to the studio Gabby. Welcome to my studio. It's very, very weird to have the shoe on the other foot because when we first met, I was in your studio. You were, yeah.

Looked very different how I did back then. But I can't believe that was almost two years ago. I know, time flies, doesn't it? That clip that I put on my TikTok from our episode still gets so many comments on. And it still circulates linkedin now so it just blows my mind and i'm kind of got a little bit of FOMO when i see your podcast now like how big it's gotten how much it's grown i'm like damn why didn't i do it now come back on we'll have you round two

hi guys i'm back again just for the just for the fact of going to liverpool to be honest i think that's the the best part but um you know i feel like you know so much about me from having me on your podcast but I don't feel like I know that much about you apart from the podcast so you know before Talk20s tell me a bit about you like how did like what were you doing before Talk20s? Yeah so I uh graduated from university and not gonna lie I had absolutely zero idea what I wanted to do with my career I was like one of those people where I was like oh I just I couldn't I couldn't figure it out I didn't know what subjects to take I just I just didn't know some people do they're like they want to be a doctor great fine follow all those qualifications I didn't know so I I don't know

if you remember doing these but back in sixth form where you do like a quiz and the quiz at the end of it tells you what career you should go into and every single time I did one of those quizzes it was like you should be a teacher you should be a teacher you should be a teacher so all these things I was ticking was leading me to teaching my mom I was like you should I think you'd be a really good teacher she'd wanted to be one and never got around to doing it and she was like I think you should go and do it it's a really like great career and stuff so reluctantly but like also kind of found an interest in it I did end up going down the teaching route and I ended up after university going into secondary school teaching and I just knew straight from the off I was like it wasn't something that I think is something you have to

do with teaching something you have to put your heart and soul into you have to want to do it from the very beginning and because I was um and an ah-ing so much I just knew when I got there that my heart wasn't fully in it I did it for two years and whilst I was in my second year of teaching I got given a sixth form group of students so I was like 21 22 at this time and they were like 17 18 so it's like a four-year age gap and it was ridiculous that I even got put in this position I don't think they're aware of my age I think they just saw like Miss Mendes oh yeah great she'll go for sixth form and then paired me up with them and it was both like a blessing and disguise uh well it was like a blessing and a curse really because basically I ended up dressing like a grandma for a whole year

because whenever a teacher used to come into the classroom genuinely they would look around because I would just blend in so the only way I could not blend in was to dress like uh you know a really like grandma teacher so I used to do that but but I think on the blessing side of things is that I really opened up to they really opened up to me it was loads of conversations that we used to have about life skills like they wouldn't ask me questions about what they were studying like their a-levels they would ask me like, how do I get like a debit card or credit card? Or what's it like moving out for the first time? Or my mental health isn't great.

Like, how do I do this? Or what subjects should I choose for my career? And I was like, once you leave school, and even school doesn't set people up for good life skills, to be honest, but like once you leave, there is genuinely nothing. And at that moment in time, I was really struggling myself. I was really suffering, really bad anxiety and stress

because I just knew I wasn't in a career that I loved. So I did two years in teaching and then was like, I know I've got quite a business head on my shoulders. Even though I've gone down this education path, I really do feel like there's some stuff that's just not, some of my skills that just aren't being used by the fact that I was teaching and nothing in teaching is to do a business. So I was like,

let's kind of move into a business setting. Went and started working in the events industry, did a couple of years doing that and launched what I thought would be an events company for young people that would help with all of these life skills. And then COVID hit. So my second career got completely scuppered by COVID covid so I was in the events industry and obviously nobody could meet in person so it was like what do I do I can still do the mission of talk 20s by starting a podcast and then that's where it all began so it was talk 20s what the events company would be as well so that's how the yeah so talk 20s was supposed to be an events company it was supposed to be a large-scale event so the events job that I went into and what inspired me growing

up I don't I don't know if you ever remember do you remember the clothes show the clothes show live that used to happen in Birmingham so as a kid I've always been to those shows growing up my mum used to take me from about the age of 11 we used to go and honestly this just fascinated me I thought it was the best thing I'd look forward to it every single year and then I went to the University of Birmingham and the clothes show is held at the NEC in Birmingham so then when I was at university i worked at the show so i used to sell eyebrow makeup and all that kind of stuff at the show and i loved it it doesn't exist anymore which is so rubbish i think it like finished like 2016 or 2017 it was a while back now maybe even a bit later than that but um i loved it and i was like wouldn't it be really cool if there was an event for young people that felt

really cultural cultural really enjoyable, but also at the same time, a little bit educational at the same time. So that's what I wanted Talk 20s to be. And I was only going to start off small, like a really small event. And even that didn't obviously take off, but the podcast did. And then now we're three years in and we're thinking about launching that for Real World 20s Fest. But I'm glad that I did it this way around in the end anyway. When you were saying that every test you did made came back for you being a teacher I was sat there thinking I thought you'd make a really good teacher so like even like speaking to you I actually could see that but it's weird that you had like a nice

well it's not weird it's nice that you had a nice experience with some of the like teenagers you were teaching because teachers in my school especially male teachers in my school that didn't have that big age gap between the sick formers got eaten absolutely alive and but I I remember actually like thinking back to when I was that age I when we left school I had the only reason I knew how to do certain things was because my dad taught me how to do it but then not everybody has that same luxury and even when it came to like a job application not a single nobody teaches this stuff nobody teaches you and you know well so where like apart from the the teaching stuff like how did the pod how did you start your podcast because you know everybody has a podcast now but

yours has got a very good niche and um you know you have such different range of guests on how did you decide like this is exactly what it's going to be like I think it's really evolved over time like I started doing a podcast during covid across zoom like in the little tiny box room it's in my house and that's how it all started and I just started interviewing friends people who I thought were really interesting and I tried to always put like an educational spin on it so it's always it's always fun like we always have a gig going and laugh but you should at the end of it get something out of it that's either educational or like helpful to your life in your in your 20s and I just felt like there was a moment

that I when I stepped out into adult life and I just felt so overwhelmed by the amount of stuff that you have to kind of just feel like you know what to do and quite often when you're thrown into a workplace or other settings you're not always surrounded by people who are of the same age when all the way through school you've probably had people of the same age in your year group the whole time and then you step into adult life and like everyone's all different ages um so I felt like I still wanted to bring that community of that age group together because we all have all have something in common and that we're all trying to figure it out no one's got it no one's got it all figured out but we're all trying to get closer to what it is that we want want to do so it was kind of that message that we wanted to

convey and then through each episode we kind of cover off a different topic with like you say like a wide variety of guests what do you think has like been the biggest struggle of setting up talk 20s and trying to get your mission out there um i think it's tricky because like for a long time it was like a one woman band and i think when you've got a mission that is so big and so vast you really do need a team behind you to kind of get it out there and get support and stuff like that so i've been so lucky to have a lot of support from the beginning but it's really started to pick up traction now that the team is growing and that there's more to the message and the and the mission than just me

because it's never been about me and my story and I never really wanted that to be the focus I was going to start with an event where you wouldn't even know if I was the organizer that was the whole plan and accidentally I'll just become a podcast host and all of this kind of stuff that I never really expected but you know as the team has grown there's just so much more capacity for that and I don't ever see it like just me being the face well you know that we want other people wedi tyfu, mae'n fwy o gefasityd i hynny ac nid wyf arfer ei weld yn unig, ond efallai yn y ffos. Wel, rydym am bobl eraill i ddod i mewn a chynhyrchu gyda ni hefyd. Un o'r cwestiynau, mae hyn yn rhywbeth roeddwn i'n meddwl yn bersonol pan oeddwn i'n edrych ar eich cyd-destun eich hun, roeddwn i wedi ddilyn chi ar y cyfnod cymdeithasol am lawer o amser. Yn amlwg, rydych chi'n gwybod,

roedd yna stori gwirioneddol neu stori rydych chi wedi ei roi am bob amser gael partner gyda ganlyniad stafell, fel y gall un ohonoch chi fynd allan a gwneud a story that you put up about always having a partner with a stable income so that one of you can go off and do what you wanted to do do you think that that's one of the reasons that young people will struggle to go and start off doing like going after things they're passionate about because they're worried about stability because that's what we're told a huge a huge privilege that i have is that i've been with my partner since the first year of university almost coming up for a decade now like i'm 28 now like that is a long same age and i do not feel like long time um so i've really grown up with him like and like

he's always been there for me always incredibly supportive um and that is that is an unspoken privilege that nobody really talks about if you're living in a couple where you're sharing the rent you know rent's so expensive everywhere nowadays but if you're splitting that in two fairly or you know whoever's you know if you split it like by percentages or whatever you do that's a privilege like there's so many of my friends well most of my friends are single actually and they have to cover all of their rent but they might be living in a space that is pretty much of a similar size to what I'm in but you know I but it's split between two. So there's so much there that I think it prevents people

who potentially are single or don't have that support from people around them to go after something like what I've been able to do. And I do owe a lot to Dan for that situation. And now we're in a position where he's quite entrepreneurial as well, and he wants to launch his own stuff. So now that I'm in more of a stable position,'s able to to make moves in in his side of things but for for a while

yeah he was the one he was just like look I'll hold down the four I call it being the anchor you're the one that's kind of not just financially as well also emotionally because whenever you make a change there's always peaks and troughs but yeah I think that's so crucial to to doing anything do you think you'd have advice for anyone that doesn't necessarily have an anchor that still wants to pursue things they're passionate about? I think it's for me, like also creating security. You can create that for yourself as well,

like and feeling confident. So having a bit of savings to go off so that if you want to go for something, like when I took the leap and left my events job to run Talk20s full time, I had built up like some savings to see me through even if I couldn't take a penny of income from from what I do um and I think that's really important and that you can definitely do that on your own so yeah there's definitely ways that you can do it and I think just be sensible about making decisions like I think we had um Jessie from who's like Mimi Darling Beauty on

TikTok and she talked about she just literally just quit her job like randomly like before she ever was big on TikTok and just didn't really know what she was going to do next I think she was said she was going to be a wedding photographer but had no plan or whatever and stuff like that and I think you know she was reflecting on that as like one of her biggest like adulting mistakes and I think yeah like you probably need to have a bit of a bit of a think before you start jumping from from from thing to thing but it's definitely not impossible like I've seen loads of my friends do it what do you think is the biggest thing or best thing you've learned from your guests from talk 20s oh my god I learned something new every single week like every single week I'm so lucky because I feel like especially in the past three years like I've

developed into to someone that's so I want to say like it's it's not it's not to boast or anything but it's like I'm just so well-rounded because I've heard so many so many different people's opinions and I'm sure you feel it too on life so I get to be like I get to absorb all that all the time and I just feel like a sponge and I feel like it's nice to hear people's perspectives all the time um I'm trying to think I think one of the things I loved from like what you were saying with the whole LinkedIn thing about people's um being really transparent with like salaries and stuff like that I think that's a huge discussion that's come out of the podcast it's been a really positive one um I don't know if you've talked about it much on your podcast before but every job description should have at least at least a salary bracket like don't you think

no definitely to be fair it's not really something i've spoken about since actually your podcast episode when it went viral i think it's one of my most viewed videos still two years later and i was like wow people really like yeah it's a really it's an angry point for some people because young people always like yeah it should be and then old people i know and i don't and it's now we're seeing loads of stories and articles about young people saying we're not standing for it we're not gonna they don't even apply if they don't have a salary listed it takes time to apply for a job nobody wants to apply and then get to it and then be like oh this is like less than i'm earning right now or i'm not going to be able to live off bryd, neu dydw i ddim yn mynd i allu byw o'r salariad honno. Ond ar yr un tro, gallaf weld y

wahanol rhan o'r pethau lle mae'n debyg, wel, efallai y byddai'n gwneud yn amrywiol i bobl gan ymgysylltu, ond dim ond oherwydd maen nhw'n gweld y ffigur y mae hynny yw, a phethau. Felly, mae'n un anodd. Rwy'n credu y bydd mwy o gyflawniad yn gweithgareddau swyddi yn well yn gyfan. Rwy'n credu mai fy problem yw fy mod yn rhywbeth yn rhywbeth yn gyflawniadwy am bopeth. I think more transparency in in job applications is would be better overall I think my problem is that I'm just too transparent about everything yeah so then I just expect everyone else to also be extremely transparent about everything but they're not and that's fine but I think that's probably my lesson for today to not expect myself from other people now I feel like I'm in therapy yeah um but don't worry I won't make this into a therapy session about me um earlier you were

talking about how um you know you wanted to set up talk 20s as an events company and i know something that you were really passionate about talking about on this episode is as 20 talk 20s first 20s first 20s first so i actually don't know anything about it apart from briefly hearing from your socials so like i want to know all about it now so what what is it going to be imagine that you were going to a freshers event at university right uh but it's for graduates so you leave university in school and all of a sudden like your friendship groups are taken away and you don't get to do fun things like freshers anymore it's like straight into real adult life but there are tons of brands and companies that would love to intro you to their to their brands or like have stands and stuff like that there are tons of companies

that would help with workshops and amazing speakers and stuff like that and essentially that is what we're planning a festival full of goodness full of workshops full of speakers live music to come along that will help you figure out your 20s so whether you're trying to navigate your career manage your well-being improve your finances uh there's going to be something for everyone at 20s fest yeah see like i'm we're the same age so getting to my late 20s i feel like i should have everything together and like know everything and how to do everything i definitely don't and sometimes like i mean when i look at your your socials like you know you've been down for a decade i'm thinking oh my god like i'm not even

anywhere close to that but then you probably look at somebody else in their 20s and think the same thing right 100 and it's it's nice to know that i'm not on my own you're not in feeling that way and i think we so for our for 21st right now we've been collecting loads like pre-registration data so we've been asking loads of people about what kind of age they are and what are their biggest challenging challenges they're facing in their 20s right now and right now the survey is saying that 60 percent of uh the people that have registered have really worried about their finances in the last year 57 have had mental health challenges and 49 have lacked social interaction and have really struggled making new friends in their 20s

that's just three things that are really high percentages or that are what young people are feeling right now so if you're like see yourself in any one of those categories it's really nice to know that you're not alone so we're using all of that data that people have told us that they're struggling with and we will put on specific workshops and sessions and speakers that can specifically help with those things plus we're going to have a really big like friendship element to the event so you know there'll be an opportunity to connect and we've got some we're working with a really cool event partner to connect people whilst they're at the event so you can actually make friends when you come as well so those three things kind of sound like they're repercussions of the pandemic you know you feel like a lot of young people especially young people in their 20s kind of got left behind when it came

to support or you know the next stages of their life and do you think that's the reason why we're seeing such high figures of those statistics i think we're forgotten about like we'll they'll look and they'll speak about students a lot of the time graduates will get a little bit of air time in the news after that point no one really picks you up unless you're like probably like having kids or a parent like there's there's a real big gap in there where people are just like yeah get on with life and we're never really reported on and nobody's really like pointing us in the right direction there isn't something that really defines that age group except from this uncertainty and you're trying to figure out your life and that is common ground but it's not enough necessarily for people to be writing articles or news on because it's not big life occasions but it is an experience

that we're probably all going through and I think that's what's been really tricky from the other side of COVID is is we are all experiencing these things at really high levels you know the worries about finances the worries about our mental health the worries about like connections but we're not really being covered in the media or supported or thought about in government at all um because there's other things that they I'm guessing finding more important but everyone's experiencing it so there should be something out there that is helping solve these problems because it was kind of i guess inevitable you know if we spent like pretty much two years all sat in our homes that a lot of these things would come about for young people um that are

different than other generations at this moment in time so i this is just me being really nosy now about what brands are going to be at um 20s fest wow what can you tell me that's going to be there at 20s we're in lots of conversations now um we're actually just like signing on the dotted line with a few different things in the venue and stuff like that so it's all like still really early um so yeah i can't tell you any specific brands and stuff like that but a lot of the ones that you'd feel excited about are seeing it freshers we're hoping that it will feel like you know i said about close show live like you go there for a fun day out we don't want it to feel like you're going back to school like this is not a corporate event like it networking is the worst

thing no no we want it to feel really fun and like the only way that we can do that is like by collecting this pre-registration data because I know I talked about the things that people have like really struggled with in the past three years but we've also got what's the what's your biggest success in the past year and there's people who have got a promotion they've been traveling for a year they've you know they've got a great achievement at work they've they've got engaged and all these things that you know people feel like they make them really happy or they've got you know they've overcome an eating disorder all of these kind of things which are amazing and we'll also be celebrating that it's not going to be all doom and gloom because we can't have that because your life isn't like that in your 20s no exactly I

think it's just nice to know that there is somebody that's out there looking out for us as a group I know you don't I know you always want to be like the not necessarily the face of talk 20s and kind of be a bit more behind the scenes but you know I want to know like what how you found it trying to start up all these things and like you know find the next big thing as somebody who is trying to also navigate their 20s like what was the biggest struggle for you becoming self-employed and starting this I have really struggled it's not it's not easy starting a business like especially when you're like your vision is like massive and you're like I want to achieve all these different things and you've got so many different goals but you really are one

person and I'm not going to say I'm a person that had a ton of connections in business as well which I think helps a lot I've made some really like big mistakes along the way and like have really struggled at different points I've tried to surround myself by good with good people but not always been successful in that that you know there's been some weird parts of the business journey that I've been on that I look back now and I'm like oh my god I can't even believe I even entertained that um and if I went back again I would never even entertain those conversations but at the same time we wouldn't be where we are right now so I think for me personally the journey has been really difficult and I've had to rely heavily on you know getting up each day and just knowing that the mission that I'm trying

to do and the team we're trying to do is one that is worth fighting for because if it were easy everyone would do it and it's definitely not easy but how do you keep that motivation high because when you don't have a routine or you don't necessarily know what you're getting up for then it is really really hard and challenging yeah I would say it's I just say it's really hard I think think the thing is, I would probably say that for me, there are peaks and troughs. There are some weeks when I'm like, yes, this is the best thing ever. And I think that also, I'll be really honest, comes a lot with like validation. So a podcast episode has done really well, or we've just had a pitching from a new brand partner that have signed with us, or we've just had loads of great feedback on something else that we're doing and I think that really helps

the momentum but that doesn't always come all the time so there will be weeks where the content has not done as well for whatever reason or you've had a few um setbacks or negatives or rejections and stuff like that and then your motivation just hits the floor and it's like how do I even get myself out of that space so I really do feel like for me it's just been that roller coaster and we I often probably too much spend my time validating what we're doing based off oh we've just had this guest say yes or or they that episode has just done amazing or we've just had this many signups for 20 they that episode has just done amazing or we've just had this many signups for 20s fest etc etc and I think that's probably the only thing that helps

keep me going which for some people in business if you've not got that constant feedback loop and you don't have things going in a positive trajectory that can be really hard but sometimes it goes not in the right direction and then you're like oh what's going on so when it's not going in the right direction what do you do for yourself to kind of get yourself back on track I I would probably say that I spend more time focusing on myself that seems like a kind of the opposite thing to do you probably want to like invest heavily in your business like what's going wrong like let's fix the business stuff but I think sometimes for me taking a step away and actually just having a bit of space from it actually is more is more it is better for my brain it brings about more creativity it brings about a different way of thinking sometimes if you're stuck in like a

and either an echo chamber or something that is you know the same kind of mindset that you're in every single day removing yourself to a different space it might be going for a really long walk if I've got that time it might be going home to see my mom and dad for a weekend it might be you know going on a little holiday or weekend away I think having that time and space away from what you do is so valuable because it allows you to like recalibrate and go okay there's more things going on in the world than running my company and then you can come back to and go actually I got inspiration from all these other different spaces that I wouldn't ordinarily have seen if not so for me I don't know I don't know about you but I find inspiration from loads of different places and sometimes I

just need to remove myself from the day-to-day yeah because I was going to ask you next about your thoughts on toxic grind culture especially as somebody who's self-employed you feel like you have to be on it all the time and you see like certain people with microphones on tiktok that only talk about how like you know they get up at 5am and they're working straight away and they don't go to sleep and like it's just it's a lot and when you go through the the trough essentially you feel like well maybe i'm not doing enough maybe i need to do more like you were saying so you know what do you think about toxic grind culture and how we use that to educate young people i think hustle culture is icky like i hate it like i do not believe that you should be working day and night no matter whether you work for someone else or or you work for

yourself um i just don't think that's a healthy mindset that we should be living in. And I don't think any 20 something should be doing that because there is more to your life than your career. Like at Talk20s, we say that we have four different content pillars. One is finance and money. One is career and business. One is wellbeing and relationships.

And one is fun and adventure. So therefore career and business is 25% of the things that we focus on. There are three other things that we focus on there are three other things that are so important so you know remind yourself how's your mental health doing how are things going with your relationships that's not just your love life but also with your friends and your connections and your family and stuff you know are you having fun are you enjoying yourself are you seeing the world are you doing things that that make you happy you know and how

do you feel financially as well at the same time I think there's so much more to life than just what you're doing with your career I see so many people in their 20s really really stressed about that like I've not quite made it in my career but they might be doing other amazing stuff in in other areas of their life but they don't see that because I think we place so much focus on hustle hustle hustle in your 20s you've got to get to this point in your career because of xyz and and i i hate that personally yeah it's that um quote that always sticks in my head it's like in your 20s you're building the table and then for the rest of your life it's not like that though is it because when you look at certain people that have done really well like what's his name who's the guy that made kfc didn't make it until he was like 80 something

oh yeah um what's his name i can't remember the guy's name um yeah colonel sanders never made kfc until he was like yeah and he's 80 there's loads of people like jk rowling didn't write harry potter i think she was in her 40s or something like that yeah and i had loads of like rejections and things like that so it's about like kind of learning to redirect yourself is there anything you wanted to like get on like to talk about 20s fest in particular uh no not particularly because it is pretty fresh and no like we're just about to sign the venue contract and then we will be like pushing it out so this is a nice little teaser so i know i really wanted to know all the bits before yeah it's one of those things you're like

oh I don't want to say people like who are like you know we're in conversation with and then they're not sign or whatever and then people be like I came for that do you ever feel like there's a lot of pressure on you because you're of what you're doing yeah but sometimes I try and black it and like block it out like I forget sometimes that like we'll put stuff on social media and then people will see it and then I'll see them like in person in a few like a few weeks later and they'll be like and they'll relay the whole thing and I'll be like how do they know that by me oh wait yeah I it was in a podcast or I put it on my stories and this and this and that like I think we sometimes forget how many people are watching what we do and like yeah i think it's quite overwhelming it's like no one you don't really think about certain things

until someone points out to you yeah and that's how i feel every time i see talk 20s content i'm like i'm being called out again but that's like it's a nice way because i again when you were breaking down the four pillars i never thought about life as that. For me, pre-COVID, it was always like 70, 80% work. And then when COVID hit, I was like, oh shit. Like when I lost my job, I was like, I don't have anything else. And I think that's why I hate school.

I think we place too much of our identity around what we do for a career when that is just a part of what we do and our careers change over time right so that means our identity is constantly changing no matter what i've been a teacher i've been an event professional and now i'm an entrepreneur and podcast host like and and soon to be event event company owner like it's our lives are ever changing and evolving and but if you place too much emphasis on on your career then your identity is just always going to be fixed like that and I think there's so much more to that than than just what you do for work what's your relationship with

like the education system now if you're because what I love what you guys do but then it kind of like doesn't tell you that school's pointless but pretty much says that what you learn in school isn't applicable necessarily to real life yeah um so i'm quite open about this but like we applied for innovate uk funding for 20s first okay and it's like government funding if anyone doesn't know what innovate uk is it's like government funding and they you know they they push like either like 50k or something like that into different companies and we didn't get it but then i'm not surprised that we didn't get it because we pretty much say like government you're letting us down in this kind of area and we need help with that and like it was not on their agenda necessarily to help young people in that way. And I'll probably get into a lot of trouble for saying this, but I don't think it's necessarily on their agenda to help young people with money because the banks then benefit from us being rubbish with our money. Like it's not it's not on their priority list to help young people with their mental health. universities right now they're trying to take away like hardly any blame for any kind of mental

challenges that are faced by their students up to the point where you know people are you know taking their lives taking their own lives and the universities want kind of no part in oh like we should have we have a duty of care like there's so much that is like going wrong and that that's why that there is there is a need for a company like this um to exist but i think yeah we are pointing out the fact that like this stuff should be taught in school but on the flip side i also think that like if we were taught this stuff in school would we have listened like i'm not sure i would have i think i just yeah like that's true would we have taken it in would it have been relevant i think it's when you hit those challenges in your 20s like for example like if you know this won't be applicable for

some people like we're in london based you know you might not buy a house until you much later on in life that might not be a priority for you but if you're in the north it's a lot easier to to get onto the property ladder because the deposits are less and all that kind of stuff but like you're not going to want to learn about how to buy your first home when you're in secondary school that's not that's not helpful but who teaches you that stuff when you actually get there even like it's even challenging speaking to even a mortgage advisor because it's such there's so much jargon there and you don't know who to trust and who do you speak to this because you know there's so much

going on so there is so much life skills that we feel like we need at different points in our lives and there just isn't one place where you can do that like i would say that we're kind of a comparison to like what money-saving expert but with a gen z twist this is why i say to young people all the time about um i find people young people that aren't interested in politics icky for that reason because that's why i say to young people all the time about um i find people young people that aren't interested in politics icky for that reason because that's why i feel like we get left behind because we are not the target voter or like because we don't help them win they're not gonna care so that's why i think from a young age people should know about politics because we don't have we would have less of these issues and people would take us more seriously but then that's just bad and innovate uk for not even considering it to be fair the

feedback that we got back was super positive like they loved the whole idea they were like they thought it was amazing they thought that the vision beyond what we were doing was great like there wasn't really a scrap of like negative feedback in there one of the things was like the feedback that we got was like what if like core members of your team were to leave I was like that is that is a challenge for any single business that is not an excuse to not allow us the funding um and also like there were statements in there like this would be a really good use of like government funding okay great if you've got that statement in there why not give it to us um but i think the main probably reason was is that the the fund that was that we applied for

was to help creative industries in particular and 20s fest is probably more of an all-rounded thing to help young people as opposed to just the creative industry so i think there is that element like the scopes weren't quite there but it wasn't the first time that we've applied for innovate uk it was the second so not upset about it at all not upset about it because when they see 20s fest they'll realize what they're missing out on i do you know what i think you should just do a little stunt outside how's the parliament or outside the office with your like 20s fest boards and stuff like that and just remind them yeah they missed out on yeah so i always ask guests similar final questions um and I kind of tweak it to based on

what they're talking about. So, you know, what would you say to people that have ever doubted your success based on the fact that you are a young person or doubt anyone's success based on the fact that you're a young person? Just because you're a young person, it doesn't mean that you don't know what you know.

Like have confidence in yourself and what you believe in, because I bet you there's rooms that you walk into that you don't know what you know like have confidence in yourself and what you believe in because I bet you there's rooms that you walk into that you actually do know more than the people around you I think today we've just been at the podcast show in London and I think I was really nervous about going to the podcast show in London because I was like oh my god it's gonna be all these podcast experts like going to a room and I'm sat in these talks and I'm like I actually know a lot of this information already I'm like I actually should have had more confidence in myself that I knew this and I think that's the case for many young people I think own the rooms that you go into because you'll be surprised how much you do know and how much is and how much your knowledge

actually is relevant coming from the age that you are I think we have a special uniqueness that we've got a different perspective on the world because of where we're at in our lives like a younger perspective on everything is actually really valuable in a lot of companies so like don't dim your voice speak up and and show you know show them what you think about the world and share that with your your colleagues and and your loved ones and stuff like that because I think it's really important that we do thank you so much for coming on and sharing a bit about your career. And I am going to be one of those people that comes to 20s first. Please do.

Any excuse to go somewhere and have fun. Yes. So I'm really excited and I can't wait to see what else you get up to. And yeah, good luck. Thank you so much for having me on the podcast. I've loved it. I had tattoo removal. Oh gosh. Essentially yesterday. Mae'n dda iawn. Mae'n dda iawn. Mae'n dda iawn. Mae'n dda iawn.

Mae'n dda iawn. Mae'n dda iawn. Mae'n dda iawn. Mae'n dda iawn.