Be A Professional Human Being With Rajan Nazran

Posted by John Livesay in podcast0 comments

We’re all born with a brain and not a calculator. That is why it’s so important to tell stories and connect with people emotionally because that is what drives business. This is what journalist and entrepreneur Rajan Nazran believes in. Calling himself a professional human, he explains on today’s show with John Livesay how being one is all about taking a deeply human approach to deal with whatever situation is on hand. They also talk about the art of storytelling, what the human experience is all about, and so much more. Rajan has travelled to over 58 countries, taking on some of the biggest conversations and covering stories from around the globe the Global Indian Series, an immersive platform that provides original and exclusive content based around the lives of people of Indian origin.

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Listen to the podcast here

Be A Professional Human Being With Rajan Nazran

Our guest on The Successful Pitch is Rajan Nazran, who talks about the fact that we’re all born with a brain and not a calculator, and why it’s so important to tell stories and connect with people emotionally. He said conflict resolution is a silent orchestra, that you have to interpret what the notes are. Enjoy reading how he’s done this around the world.

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Our guest is Rajan Nazran, who is an award-winning explorer, content producer, entrepreneur and over the last couple of years, traveled to 58 countries, building networks and building Global Indian communities through his mediums. As a result, he is a highly established network and has brokered many deals independently. His network extends to heads of states, ministers, CEOs, entrepreneurs, and he’s the Senior Partner of NazranRoth and Chief Explorer for the Global Indian Series. He’s also an International Chairman for the Center for Leadership Development in Africa and an Executive Member of The Kenya Society. He’s the International Sports Director at the Corinthians Football Team of Malta, and he sits on the board for the Mental Health Change Working Group of England. Rajan, welcome to the show. That is quite the bio.

One does try. That was pretty good.

I always like to ask my guests to take us to their own story of origin and you decide how far back you go. It could be your childhood or school because you said to me earlier, you consider yourself a professional human, which I’ve never met anybody who’s put those two words together. A lot of us are focused on the awareness of being as opposed to doing. The concept that we can be professional at being human and make money typically is what the word professional means, you’re an expert at it. That alone is fascinating. I’m curious to see how that all came about, this urge to travel and this urge to make such an impact in so many ways?

First and foremost, John, it is a deep privilege to be on your show. I’m humbled for the fact that I’m here, especially amongst your guests that are far greater than I. It’s a nice place. How far back do you go? Being of Indian origin, we believe incarnations or reincarnation, going back too many lives. To give a brief background, my mother was born in the Philippine Islands in Cagayan. My father is born in Punjab, India and I’m from the UK. I am pretty much 50 shades of brown that automatically is the Indian community.

In fact, we’re the karaoke singers of that. Growing up was slightly different for me. I got to see the world in a different light because culturally, you don’t know where you belong to but you get this perception of identity that comes in. My mother was an entrepreneur. She set up a working group for Asian women in mental health. She became an artist and did incredible tapestries in museums now in the VNA. My father is incredibly hard-working from becoming a bus driver towards setting up the factory, then going to cars and they both work hand in hand.

I grew up around this series of passion, which is saying everything we do we do it because we believe that we’re making a difference. Whether it is to help and support Asian women or if it was to say, “What can we do to help support the country that we could have then,” which was the UK. From there, I went to university and this urge came in, which was saying, “I want to explore the world. I want to see where I fit into it all.” As every young person comes through, I did what you normally do, which is door-to-door sales, thinking, “That’s how I’m going to get my financing together.” I did that and went to university.

I was fortunate that I was at the right place at the right time. There was this whole Erasmus Scheme that took us to Italy where we could study abroad. I was there and I happened to be there when the Italian Olympic team was there. I did quick courses in NLP and hypnotherapy. I pitched my way into the Indian team and became their first youngest ever mental coach. That’s where I first started from.

I was there doing things with athletes in the interim. I got headhunted. It’s the right place at the right time. I got to go to Israel for P3 Consideration work. I went to the Middle East working with this great guy. He took me under his wing and told me about the weird and wonderful world of the media so I was getting aboard with him. My story has been one of either the constellations coming together or downright stupidity at times of saying, “What if,” and ending up in places. That’s how it all clicked off.

I want to double click on this background you have on what you called practical soft skills, the neuro-linguistic programming because I wrote a blog about soft skills that make you strong. A lot of people think, “I’m an architect. These are my hard skills.” Soft skills are not something that’s that important and of course, now we realize that soft skills are defined as empathy, listening, storytelling, EQ, emotional intelligence, not only your IQ.

So many entrepreneurs forget that as a key element of their success, whether it’s to get funded or to get the right people to join their team and eventually, you have to create a way to convince people to buy whatever it is you’re selling or download an app, etc. I want to hear and I know that you’ve incorporated this into the NazranRoth offerings of what kinds of things have you’ve done. What do you notice across countries? This ability to connect with an audience and everyone processes things differently is a starting point. Can you tell us a story about using soft skills to help companies in different countries?

[bctt tweet=”Conflict resolution is a silent orchestra you have to conduct.” username=”John_Livesay”]

I’ll continue an even better story than that and I’ll get to that. You probably know that I’ve been held hostage in Eastern Europe, so I have to use my words to get me out of tricky situations. I’ve been to 58 countries. Being held hostage. I was in Syria during the Ebola crisis, and at that moment, I came across a family who unfortunately lost somebody. The police were saying that they’re going to arrest me as a part of it. I was there. The power of soft skills is not left to the wells of business. This is who we are as humans, which is what I say a professional human. This is our faculties to be able to speak, understand and absorb.

Taking that to the wonderful world of internationalization, we work with a lot of clients to help them develop their own narrative, their own story, especially countries towards forging a way for them to get FDI, Foreign Direct Investment. It’s like what you say, everyone looks at this and your first notion is one has to be incredibly strong. You have to be academic and tell people the numbers. The numbers are what make things happen. There are only so many numbers you have for a country.

What we do is we reach out to that and say through the product offerings we have with the Global Indian Series, “Why don’t we showcase a softer form of public diplomacy. Let’s tell the stories that connect human beings together, not with each other but with a country.” We’ve done that with, for example, Portugal. We did this massive pitch in Portugal and we brought together some amazing individuals and we took a massive spin saying, “Rather than focusing on the economic support, let’s focus on the human interest of Portugal.” That feature that we created reached out to over 40 million people.

We did an event at the end of that and brought over $3 billion in private net worth to that event. We brought together people who are interested in the stories and human response to the businesses that showcase their humanity. Lo and behold, business takes place and that’s basically real-life practical soft skills. It’s not about getting people to vote for you. It’s about a country embracing who they are, that living organism of identity and culture. Allowing that to go through the narrative, the tonality of their words, the way that people view them to be. In that sense, we’ve helped.

In corporate, we’ve done the same thing. Some companies get some tricky situations that they need a bit of help and support with. Rather than going down the normal, typical legal route, we help them shape themselves and have those softer conversations with people that have a lot of empathy, emotional intelligence, and intercultural communications. To get them to connect powerfully with people that gets the end result on people saying, “I’m prepared to give you ten minutes of my time to listen to you. Let’s take it from there.” That’s the type of stuff that we get involved in again, comes back to the professional human element saying, “We’re all born with a brain, not a calculator.” If it is emotive beings, John, like you, you’re emotive. You wear your personality and your heart on your sleeve. That’s who we are as human beings. It’s common sense that’s what drives businesses.

I love that because it’s so visual. It brings it to life in a completely different way. The global business partner that you offer companies is what allows them to achieve real-world success because there are differences in culture. I know from my advertising background that certain campaigns don’t translate. I remember Body by Fisher for sportswear translated in Spanish to Corpse by Fisher. A car here in the States was called Nova and of course, in Spanish, that means no go. That’s not probably the best name and that’s the tip of the iceberg from an advertising standpoint of the need to translate what you’re doing from one culture to the other.

Is there anything that you see that’s consistent? For example, we’re all wired for stories, no matter what culture we come from and things like that? I would say, since you’ve been to so many countries, that you might say, “We have more things in common than you might expect. If you’re a global company already, and/or wanting to go global, here are a couple of things you might want to keep in mind.”

Coming into that tone there, the art of storytelling is like what you do. You’re an alchemist. You bring together these remarkable emotions, and you connect them together. If we were to put you in robes, we’ll call you guru, in that sense. The art of storytelling is this since time immemorial. Before TVs, what did we do? We stood around a fire and we told stories. We looked at the stars, and we conjured up images of how the gods or goddesses of our choices created the world. We forget about it. We try to make everything so robotic in nature. We forget that it’s the human element that makes us do things so some of the commonalities are down.

In the story alone, people know that the second thing for companies that do go global is that intercultural competence. One needs to know, as you said, that it goes beyond the notion of words and linguistics, but also the way that business is done in emerging markets. Who do you know? How do you know them? How well can you navigate through the policies and procedures to get the end results? Not everything is clear and the same.

One of the biggest obstacles a lot of international companies have is that they take the month of what they think the world is and they go to those countries and they don’t realize the world is different there. Therefore, we help them navigate those spots with that silent guardian that supports their journey because we can open up the doors where they need to be bearing in mind, I’ve got a footprint in over 58 countries that I’ve been to and I’ve got a lot of exposure there. Also, at the same token, we help them and practically assist them towards speaking to the relevant people because we know what those political landscapes are.

Professional Human Being: We do everything we do because we believe that we’re making a difference.

The other thing that I’ll say that’s a common tonality that I see is yes, “We’re all similar,” but the way we interpret our coaches is dissimilar in those markets. In the US, it is direct and straightforward. In Britain, we have the James Bond attitude of the globe, where if we take them to certain markets like Ethiopia, it doesn’t translate well. You need to be more aware of what takes place. What are their cultures? What are their stories? What defines them? How do they want to be treated?

I know that one of your expertise in NazranRoth is the national branding and PR, so it seems to me that what you’re offering is the ability to have the right message to the right person through your network at the time. When all those things align, then results start an act, people start taking action and wanting to partner with you. If one of those things is off and you don’t have the right person, you’re not in the right room, or you don’t have the right story it’s this recipe for success basically. You’ve got all of these pieces from all of these different experiences and countries, that a lot of people need you as the International Sherpa. That’s how I would phrase it.

The other thing that I’m fascinated about is what you’re doing under human excellence is conflict resolution. That is something that can destroy a start-up faster than anything, is a conflict between founders and it’s a big red flag for potential investors. It’s also a conflict within big companies. People say that they don’t leave their job, they leave their boss. The way conflicts are resolved from country to country is quite different. If you’re interacting with people from Japan, from what my study has been, they hate conflict. You never hear stories of people screaming at each other and they also don’t like to say no.

It’s almost like this silent orchestra that you have to read between the words to understand. It is a sign of orchestra. Conflict resolution, when you go and deeper, as you rightly say, it can be from person to person. Business to business. Communities to communities and nations to nations. It all starts off with understanding what are the core deliverables of human behavior. Why do people behave in a certain way? It goes even deeper into this whole notion of purpose and integrity. That’s how our viewpoints are formed. We’re fortunate, so when it comes to countries, we got four former heads of state on our advisory committee for NazranRoth. That helps because they’ve been through all that and they’ve been to some of the most challenging times you can ever imagine.

Donald Ramotar, the President of Guyana, was there at the most complex trading of Venezuela and Guyana of oil. He was there. He had to navigate the shores amongst the other guys across Africa. The way we normally deal with it is that we take a deeply human approach and that is the common core of the professional human. What is currently taking place, and how does it have a human-based impact? Regardless, if you’re head of state, get your person to the ground on the verge of being destitute, we all have emotions, that EQ that you named it to be.

Once we start taking that approach, and we realize as a species of human beings, we have this common denominator of behavior, it’s a lot easier for us to come in and deal with the situations on hand. It gets slightly difficult and murky is when you got large boards on the brink of almost killing each other along those lines. That’s when we have to deal with multiple personalities. Our secret there is, is there any magic to the toolbox to have a look at what is the human response to this? We need to understand what are the words behind the words. We’ve only got there like you creating incredible work that you’ve been doing over 300-plus podcasts. We’ve only got there because of the years of dedicated travel of experience and practically going to the countries and feeling it, blood, sweat, and tears. There’s no real genius behind it. It’s literally the experience I’ve been able to build up.

I see that some of your clients include Deloitte, which I find fascinating that you’re both well-respected advisors and consultants and yet even a company as big as Deloitte needs your expertise. Is there a story of what they engaged you for? Was it navigating some of that?

I can’t go into too much detail there but you’ve done your research. We worked with Deloitte, BP, SR, and Maersk, the big shipping lines. They sent me to Congo to the DRC to work with their people here and that was onboard a ship. That’s real conflict resolution. There are a lot of things happening. It’s because we know the markets, we know the people and we know how human behavior rates, we’re not in competition with anybody. We got the collaborative approach. If companies see that we can help and support them, we come in and we do that. We have large-scale clients to small start-ups. It makes no difference. We’re all humans on our own voyage of life. If we can be of help, we help out. It’s not an issue.

The takeaway is, no matter how big a company is, the smart ones still engage others to help them, especially in an area that they may not have all the expertise. If we can look at that and incorporate it into our own mindset of not trying to go it alone and think that, “That must mean I’m weak.” It’s flipping it on its head. Soft skills make you strong, collaboration and having other people partner with you makes you stronger. All of that has now led to one of your flagship services, which is the Global Indian Series, where you are everywhere and have some amazing stories there. Can you share with us the origin story of how that came about and what people might want to explore?

Absolutely. The story came from pure and utter frustration like everything else. When one travels, you go to all these countries, you meet with the people and you realize, forget about the flag of India. As people of similar type of origin, we’re everywhere but we don’t know about each other. That has a huge impact because politically and economically, it has an impact, victims of society and identity. Once you start to realize, with every country, everyone defined this notion of indigenous like this white elephant in the room. Some people held the tail, others the trunk, others the legs.

[bctt tweet=”An emotional connection breaks through the noise and clutter.” username=”John_Livesay”]

Everyone’s holding on to the same notion, but we’re different descriptions towards it and that has a huge impact for generations. Some people then take this historical route of, “Our traditions are set in stone. Women behave like this and men behave like that.” Others take it as a fluid part. I thought, “Let’s change this. There’s a lot of misconceptions. Let’s build an active living encyclopedia, a bridge that connects us all together and say, “We are brought up into an identity though, let’s face it, we’re all born into this planet out of luck, an agenda out of luck and in the country out of luck. Any form of wisdom out of luck.” It’s this identity thrust upon you that you have to live and die towards.”

You don’t understand what that identity is because if you don’t it controls you. That’s where we kicked it off. we did not create features. I was physically traveling to these places prior to COVID not in a hazmat suit. All of a sudden, COVID kicks in and you’re thinking, “What do I do next?” That’s when we kicked up from the digital side. We bring the podcast in and now what you hear is this living encyclopedia of the human experience of people.

We’ve had kings on that, heads of state, billionaires, people dealing with alcoholism, nations from around the globe, people there are coming together in a spirit of being a human being and saying, “We’re unmoored from what we thought was normal.” That’s been the beauty of it. It’s something I’m passionate about. It is part and parcel of one’s life mission to understand what is a brief fabric of humanity and is a common core there that we can learn from each other with.

One of the things that fascinated me was the fact that you talked about there are over 70,000 people of Indian origin that call Portugal home. That’s why that partnership made such sense, where you created this whole print feature that was viewed over 30 million times and you were able to get sponsors who wanted to target that audience. I thought it would be interesting for people who might be wondering, “How does a podcast go global and how does tapping into a specific country appeal to the sponsor?” In this case, it was the family hotel and resort. You might want to talk a little bit about that.

We had JLL that supported us. We had PLMJ, a massive law firm. We had Nova Business School in Montana. We’ve got loads of different companies that came together. The whole notion of what we do is a sentimental journey of the human spirit of us and bringing that up all together. What we turn around to our sponsors is, “In this world, there’s a lot of noise.” That’s the reality. You get 1,500 pieces of info thrown at you, bashing for attention and saying, “Listen to me.” What do we all want to know? What we want to know about people like us and the stories that mount our own hearts because that’s the person that gets our attention.

We created and part of what we design in integrity is, “We’re going to cover the story. If I don’t get any sponsors in, I may be bankrupt, homeless, and my wife may be annoyed at me but this is a commitment I have made to me and the high purpose of being, so I’m going to do it.” Lucky for me, the sponsors would rather you do not jump off a cliff, we will help you as well. They got involved with us and what they got out of it was a meaningful connection with not only India, not only with their global audience in Portugal, but they got to be part of the history books on what makes us a living encyclopedia.

They realize quickly at the end of that, that has a lot of collateral because not only now are their responses, the hearts, and minds of a community, the hearts and minds of a community that is across the globe. People that have both wealth and experienced know-how but also community is hard to reach. That’s why they jumped on board with us because there’s a bigger play here like us and like we did with Malta.

The government of Malta supported us and we had big organizations there. We did stuff across the Caribbean. All the large organizations said, “We get you. We understand you,” because now they realize that what we offer is an emotive outreach to the world’s biggest community. What our community realizes is we’re no fluff. We do this without fear or favor. We have no political sides and we say, “Let’s showcase a road as it is not as we are.” That’s a powerful medium for us.

I love what you said here that when you offer emotive outreach, it breaks through the clutter and that’s why sponsors are hungry for that. Every good marketing and advertising is all about good stories about emotional connection. If people don’t have an emotional connection to a story, they don’t remember it but when they do, they share it and tell others about it. That’s what everybody in marketing’s dream is. It’s having something that is so good that people want to tell others and become brand ambassadors for you and that is the magic of what you’re doing.

It doesn’t surprise me that you’re getting all kinds of high-level government officials and high net worth individuals together because it’s your passion that’s driving this. The big takeaway for the readers here is, people buy your energy. I remember once being interviewed for a speaking engagement and my agent wrote back and said, “They picked you. They liked your energy.” I thought, “They said that not, ‘They liked your book or they liked your topic, or whatever you proposed.’” It was, “They liked your energy.” The more we remember that, then the more we transcend all the differences we have with each other.

Professional Human Being: One of the biggest obstacles many international companies have is that they take the mindset off what they think the market is.

If you think of money as energy and action, it’s not such a leap of faith to go, “I am so committed to this.” My passion is so strong, that I know that will attract the right energy, aka money, to support this because it’s giving them real value, which is that laser focus. People are going to as I say, “When you tug at heartstrings, people open their purse strings.” You do that well. I’m excited to see the continued global impact you’re going to have. Is there any last thought you want to leave us with?

It does, doesn’t it? What you said there, we owe it to ourselves to understand who we are as human beings. Your business is your life. Everything you do goes towards a repertoire of your human experience on this planet. Therefore, for us to almost compartmentalize and say, “That is the business side of me now. That is the parental side of me. That’s the lover of me,” is crazy. In the bigger image, if you were to take that 50,000, 60,000, and 70,000 view from above the heavens, then you realize that we are all living in this fragility that is called the human experience.

Everything we do has to drive out who we are internally. Your readers, for example, if they’ve got a business and it’s successful, but they don’t feel happy, that’s a showcase to them saying, “This is your life. Do not waste it.” Likewise, if they’ve got this pursuit of something that they’re going for the finances for, there is a small, narrow-minded existence, because that doesn’t go with them. It’s only going to be who we are, that emerges to the greatest out of there. For me, that is my final thought there. It’s saying, “We owe it to ourselves to become professional humans.”

Whenever we speak, we never speak about money, we never speak about what’s in it for you and what’s in it for me, we speak from the integrity that holds in true of what it means to be human, the species that interacts with each other. That’s what makes me alive. That’s why I’m so drawn to the work that you do, John, because there’s none of this preconceived idea of saying, “This is what I know.” You’re that medium that executes a perfect unionship between people that says, “Let’s have a look at what is that inner yearning that we all have one-on-one together and where are we heading to together as a community of people, not only an individual?”

You’re transcending the concept of having transactional relationships with people, including ourselves. When that happens, everything lines up and your purpose, your meaning and you’re not so it’s a disjointed person going, “Is this all that there is. I thought if I got all these achievements and accolades, I’d be happy and I’m still not happy,” and vice versa, “Why can’t I do what makes me happy as a living and be a professional human being?” What a great way to end and if you want to know more, you can go to the Global Indian Series, the podcast is the same name and also NazranRoth. Thanks so much for sharing your passion and all these wonderful stories.

Thank you. This has been fun. It’s been cool.

I loved it too and I’m sure our readers will as well.

Important Links

• Rajan Nazran
• NazranRoth
• Center for Leadership Development in Africa
• The Kenya Society
• Soft Skills Make You Stronger
• Podcast – Global Indian Conversations
• Better Selling Through Storytelling Method Online Course

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