Episode 387: The Power of Resilience with Paul Hannaford
⚠️WARNING: Mature Content – Strictly for Viewers Over 18 ⚠️
This episode contains sensitive discussions that may not be suitable for everyone. We explore topics related to drugs, gang crime, suicide and addiction in a frank and explicit manner.
⚠️ Viewer Discretion is Advised: If you are currently struggling with addiction, substance abuse, suicide or gang-related issues, please refrain from watching this content. We do not intend to glorify or recommend any harmful behaviour. Instead, this episode aims to shed light on these topics for a mature audience.
Please share responsibly and with careful consideration of others’ well-being.
Paul has told his story to over 1 million children and counting – in a bid to stop drugs and gang related crime. We fully support Paul’s initiative as an impact brand.
Show Highlights:
- How resilience in overcoming adversity is important for business owners.
- How to rebuild from the ground up, no matter how tough the circumstances.
- The true art of a comeback, when setbacks are inevitable but success is ultimately defined by how you respond to them.
- The importance of using a personal story to create a lasting impact.
Links Mentioned:
Get your Business Growth Secrets SUCCESS PLANNER for FREE and profit like a pro: https://adamstottplanner.com/free-book47315172
Adam’s website: https://adamstott.com/?el=Pod
Watch the Episode on Adam’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/adamstottcoach?el=Pod
Connect with Adam on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adamstottcoach/?el=Pod
Join Adam’s network on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-stott-coach/?el=Pod
Coaches, consultants, and business owners – lower your marketing costs, increase ticket prices, and get more high-ticket clients: https://3daybrandbuilderworkshop.com/start-here?el=Pod
Transcript:
Please note this is a verbatim transcription from the original audio and therefore may include some minor grammatical errors.
[00:00:30] Adam Stott: One of the biggest questions that business owners ask me is how do they get started?
[00:00:55] Often people consider themselves to be In difficult situations or difficult circumstances. And today’s episode of business growth secrets. I’ve got an amazing guest with me that really has started from the bottom different difficult circumstances and built their way back up to go out and make massive impact in the world.
[00:01:18] Has got a message that really resonates with me and I wanted to bring him on because I truly believe that not only can his story and message help a lot of people but it also can inspire business owners to Become more resilient take more action and realize if it’s meant to be It’s up to me. You’ve got to take those steps and make those actions.
[00:01:42] So I want to just say a big, big welcome to, to, to Paul, Paul Hannaford, who’s coming and joining us on the podcast today. How we doing, buddy? We’re good.
[00:01:49] Paul Hannaford: Yeah, very well. Thank you for the invite.
[00:01:51] Yeah, no,
[00:01:51] Adam Stott: I’m really excited. Um, I have, uh, been reading your book, uh, which is an incredible book. And we’re actually going to give a copy away to somebody in the audience.
[00:02:01] We’ll tell people about that at the end. And you’ve got this incredible story of resilience. So. Obviously I know all about it, but the, uh, the guests for the first time are hearing it. So why don’t you take us back to where things started from you. You’re now in a position where you travel the UK, uh, soon to be traveling the world.
[00:02:23] Speaking, inspiring children. You’ve spoken to over a million children on the dangers of drugs. Uh, you’ve spoken to the police on understanding drugs, the impact on society. You’ve had all these different, um, amazing experiences. But where did things start out for you? And if we went all the way back to the beginning, tell us a little bit about you, Paul, and what you’ve been through.
[00:02:46] Paul Hannaford: My childhood? You know, like your earliest recognition of childhood, I guess, would be about seven or eight. And I lived in, I was born in East London, and mum and dad moved down to Hornchurch in Essex. And I remember my dad, his name was Ted, and, you know, he was mighty well, I was fascinated with him. You know, he’d take me to West Ham, you know, and it was, it was great.
[00:03:07] And I remember I got to the age of nine, and my mum and dad got a pub in Essex called The Cricket, and it’s not there anymore, and it was great. So I went from living in this three bedroom house to this great big massive pub, pool tables, fruit machines, you know, any kid would love that, wouldn’t they? But, unfortunately, my, you know, my dad was quite a heavy drinker.
[00:03:24] And when they got the pub, we used to have like half an hour’s drinking. And I noticed him and my mum were arguing quite a lot. And then over a period of 12 months, it being the pub, um, their, their, their relationship broke down through alcoholism. And I remember coming home from school one day, junior school, and, uh, I got to the back door and I let myself in.
[00:03:41] And my mum was there with like my little brothers and, and four big suitcases full of clothes. And she said, we’re going. And I looked, I’m going where? And she said, I’m leaving your dad. And she and I went. And she just, we went, we’re gonna move somewhere else. And from that day, you know, I never see my dad again.
[00:03:58] And he was my absolute wealth. So basically at the age of ten, me heart’s broken, you know. I’m just a ten year old little boy. I’ve got three little brothers. Eventually my mum, and she’s entitled to do this, got a new man in his life. And, you know, I found it hard for him to accept him.
[00:04:14] You know, it wasn’t like my dad was a really bad man.
[00:04:15] I maybe accepted him quicker. Anyway, I’ve still got a life. I’m a footballer, love playing football. Went to play for West Ham, you know, I’m not sure if I was good enough. Then I got into secondary school, so things started to change really. I was a little bit out more, and I started hanging about with these boys when I got to Year 9.
[00:04:28] So I was around 13, and they were sort of smoking cannabis and cigarettes. So I was alright with the cigarettes. Cannabis I was a little bit, you know, reluctant, but I guess peer to peer pressure. And I tried it, and I liked it. Yeah, I liked it a lot. And do you know what, within a matter of a few months it sort of really changed me.
[00:04:44] I lost interest in football, playing football. I started to rebel at school. So my behaviour in school eventually they wouldn’t tolerate it, they’d chuck me out, went to another school and they’d chuck me out. And then within a space of like a year
[00:04:54] Adam Stott: So really you, there’s that much of a ripple effect from just a moment and a decision.
[00:04:59] Paul Hannaford: Yeah, a bit of trauma. You know, and then what happened was, it get to the point where no school can tolerate my behavior. For one, I’m playing truant, I’m not turning up when I’m in school, I can’t concentrate. I was never diagnosed with anything then, you know, I don’t know if it was a bit of ADHD going on.
[00:05:13] But, so what happened was, where no school in the community would take me on because of my behavior, There’s certain schools now, there are many more of them today, called, uh, Alternate Provision, APs. And what they are is, they come under the umbrella of SCMH, which is Social Emotional Mental Health, or PROs, which is Naughty Kids.
[00:05:29] So I turned up at this school in Essex, and it’s just, it’s like a bomb going off. There are boys in there a little bit older than me, some girls, mostly boys, black, white boys, Asian boys. So I started hanging about with these boys, and, you know, they’ve become friends of mine. But I didn’t realise these, between nine and twelve boys, are starting to battle gang members.
[00:05:45] So I joined this gang, I’m the youngest gang member. And gang rules, well, my gang leads are there, and he, he, what’s that, he’s giving me a big knife to carry, and I’m like, what, he said, and I, you know, and, then the drugs started to change. You know, we’re taking A class, now, none of us have got jobs, so we had to commit crime to get drugs, you know, and we’re out shoplifting and there’s street robberies going on.
[00:06:03] I didn’t really like it at first, you know, it could have become quite violent, but then, this is all I knew. You know, hang about these boys. So now I’m part of this group of boys. Then I start picking up convictions.
[00:06:13] Adam Stott: Hey everyone, hope you’re enjoying the podcast. We’ve got a free training that I’m doing right now online from the comfort of your own home called Stand Out Brand.
[00:06:22] What this does is it shows business owners how to get noticed on social media stand. Get more leads and get more sales. So if you want to make more money in your business, head over to Adam stop. com forward slash SOB. That’s Adam stop. com forward slash SOB and join us on the free three day workshop, stand out brand.
[00:06:45] Paul Hannaford: My first predecessor, I served at 14. So I go to this prison in Kent, and they shaved all your hair off. It was like one of them short shot shops, they give you all this clothes to wear, and you have to march in and dig in, and, you know, and I, I got, you know, I remember cleaning my boots one day, you have to clean your boots, and my boots weren’t clean, this prison guard, you know, and he stamped somewhere in the yard and smashed on my face.
[00:07:05] You know, like, they’re trying to rehabilitate me, but they’re physically abusing me. So now I’m picking up resentments. And within an hour of being released, after that first three month prison sentence, I was on off licence, nicking four cans of beer, drunk on the way home back to London, committing crime.
[00:07:19] So, you know, it was like, I needed, it was like, I was this little boy lost, with no dad, I needed a little bit of love, but these guys are humiliating me, and I was straight back to my gang, that’s all I knew. So, time went on. 18, now old enough to drink in pubs. Now years ago, the crime sort of changed. So what we started doing was, if you remember like credit card fraud, we’d get credit cards.
[00:07:37] It weren’t like today, you’d have chip and pin, you’d just go and, you know, there was like PDQ machines. So at the age of 18, you know, I’m alcoholic, I don’t realise it, can’t stop drinking every day. And I’m, and I’m taking drugs, like obviously cannabis, a bit of cocaine, ecstasy, LSD. And from the outside, I look great.
[00:07:52] Very immaculate, smart, I had hair done, I should be able to crimp it back, you know, I’ve got nice clothes. So, but inside obviously, you know, I’m unwell. And I honestly thought that that was my life. That I could serve the off prison sentence for maybe petty crime. And I’d go on in life and I’d, you know, duck and dive and get through life like that.
[00:08:11] And always have nice things. And it got to the point, one of my prison, one of my gang members was in a prison. Why was he in prison? He didn’t tell me. He come out, he tried heroin in prison. There’s lots of heroin in prison. And that was a drug that, you know like, the word heroin, you associate, People we see on the streets today, you know, I see them this morning, begging, injecting, junkies, yeah?
[00:08:29] Adam Stott: Yeah.
[00:08:29] Paul Hannaford: There’s no way I’d ever touch that drug, because I see what it did to people. But anyway, over a long period of time, he told me he’d come out, he took it, and one night, went back to his place, and he had a bit. And, uh, and, just curiosity, I guess. And I tried it, and I’m smoking it in a flat in Barking.
[00:08:43] And that night, my life changed forever. I’ll never touch alcohol again, I’ll never touch weed again, I’ll never touch another drug. And I took it and I felt, it gave me this unbelievable buzz, but do you know what? Next day I woke up, I felt dirty, I felt horrible, I felt disgusted, I felt ashamed. And I said to my, my, my gang members, listen, don’t tell the rest of the gang.
[00:09:00] I said, cause, you know, you know, that’d be it. Anyway, three days later, I can’t stop thinking about it. Heroin, heroin, heroin. And, uh, went to school, didn’t have a bag. And then, within three months, um, I can’t stop smoking every day. And when was I starting to lose weight? So my gang site noticed him, where you been, you’re losing lots of weight.
[00:09:18] So within about six months I come out of the gang and I found myself living in drug abuse. So it’s actually terrifying as you
[00:09:22] Adam Stott: go through this. It was, it was a really,
[00:09:25] Paul Hannaford: really, like, as I say, I took a lot of drugs from the age of 13, 14, and then at 22 now, I’ve gone from being this 18 stone gang member, immaculately dressed, girlfriend at the time, who I eventually left, to living in drug dens, losing a vast amount of weight very quickly.
[00:09:46] And these guys I used to see sitting on the streets begging outside shops, I’m hanging about them and I used to sit there judging them and, and you know, and I’m, I’m part of them. And that was really quickly like that. Then what happened was over a period of time, I started to see people smoking crack cocaine in drug dens.
[00:10:03] So I tried it and it got me like that. But the thing with crack cocaine is you can go and spend a grand a day on crack. Well, heroin, 100 a day, comatose, it’s a different sort of drug, it affects you differently. So, obviously my shoplifting has gone for the roof now, so I’ve got my money for drugs. So I go to Lakeside, Bluewater, all over the country.
[00:10:21] And what I had to do was, my drug habit went up to about 500 a day. So for me to get 500 cash, I’d have to steal from shops around 2, 000 worth of stuff. Now the reason I’d steal 2, 000, the people that buy the stuff off of me in the pubs only give me a quarter for it. So if I take them two grams of Ralph Lauren shirts, Armani suits, they give me 500 quid.
[00:10:40] So that 500 quid should last me a day, depends what time I get the money. But the problem was then, I started to inject it. So I started injecting in my hands and then obviously all my veins died. Now, you’re meant to use a needle once, chuck it away, but I’d use the same needle, because I only got one needle for the whole night, 50 times.
[00:10:56] So what happened was, obviously my legs started getting infected, blew up, like balloons. Then I started picking scabs and my legs literally broke down. Now, I don’t know if you can see my legs now, obviously they’ve healed up over the years, but it ended up, my left leg had a big hole in it and it just stunk.
[00:11:09] And I remember waking up in these drug dens in the morning and, I’d wake up in them all in these crack dens, and please believe me right. On your way here this morning, all of us in this room have gone past a drug den together, you’re probably unaware of it, yeah, and I wake up in this drug den and there’d be people lying there with limbs missing, girls would come in early hours of the morning, three o’clock, and the reason they’d come in three o’clock in the morning, because sadly, the way they get their money, girls on heroin, not all of them, but some, they sell their bodies, become sex workers, and they’re someone’s daughter, and so we hear the door go and one of the girls would come in, she’d be out all night sleeping with strange men.
[00:11:44] And then we sit there chatting away, but when I wake up in the morning the first thing that hits me in the morning is pain. Because the heroin’s wore off, which is a painkiller. And my leg’s throbbing now. I didn’t have any bandages. So the only way I could Stop the blood coming out of my legs every day.
[00:11:57] I’d go and get sanitary towels or nappies and sellotape around my legs. But the problem was, at night where I’d been lying down, the blood and the pus in the nappy or the sanitary towel soaked into it. So I had to put my leg in the shower or the bath. Now most crack dens don’t have hot water, so I’d have to run cold water off it and pull it off.
[00:12:15] And as I’m pulling it off the nappy, chunks of skin and blood are just pouring out the leg. So then I’d have to put a fresh nappy on it or sanitary towel. Now I’ve not eaten for five days, I’m starving to death, I’m not bothered about food, I’ve not brushed my teeth for weeks, I’ve not changed my clothes for weeks, I stink, I’m rotten, my teeth’s rotten, I don’t care about that, I’ve got to go out now and get 500 quid.
[00:12:37] So I put a new nappy on my leg or sanitary towel, go out, get a taxi, and go to Lakeside Bluewater. And that went on. Every day for many years, all right, I’d get your prison sentence and even though I’d go to prison for shoplifting, which I’d get between three and six months, even though I’d get out of prison and used within an hour of being out of prison, so, you know, I was re offending all the time, the time I went to prison, I stopped taking drugs, I got into sort of a drug free wing, so that sort of gave my body a rest and I started to slowly recover.
[00:13:06] How
[00:13:08] Adam Stott: did it feel when you recovered? Did you have intentions to stay, I know that, on the, on the Stratonower or, or not? No, I, I
[00:13:17] Paul Hannaford: never, I, I, I was caught, when I was in his drug dens and I’m injecting drugs, the last hit of the night, I’m in his drug den, so, I’m so, I’m so exhausted with life, spiritually, emotionally, mentally, I’m at rock bottom.
[00:13:30] I don’t care about meself. I’m, I’m a mess. And when I have that last hit of the night, and I’m on that blood stained sofa in a crack den, yeah. I’m quite happy not to wake up in the morning. I’m really that, that, uh, that, that far gone with life, that, you know, I’m, I’m, you know, I don’t think I’ve got the courage to kill myself, but I’m quite happy to have that last sip, because I know what’s, I know what’s coming next morning.
[00:13:56] Groundhog Day. The pain, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the desperation of going out stealing and getting money and sitting in these cracked dens. So it got to the point where I was finding it hard To get to shops, and when I was going to these shops, Harrow itself, it’s all the big department stores, they had pictures of me.
[00:14:14] I was a prolific shoplifter, stole millions of pounds worth of stuff. So I was going in, the security guys would bang on me straight away. So I was finding it hard now to get money. But I still need 500 quid a day. So it got to the point where I was exhausted all avenues of getting money. But what happened was, when I was a gang member years ago, we had some guns, and we always had guns when we was gang.
[00:14:32] Some real, some not real. And I buried one many years ago. Only my mum’s house was on a fish and chip shop case, so I didn’t eat beef with gangs. So I went round and dug it up. And I started robbing drug dealers. Now, you can only rob some of these drug dealers, please believe me, it’s not a great idea. And I remember one night, I robbed some dealers up in Good Maze, and I robbed these dealers.
[00:14:48] And I went to this drug den, there was two bags of heroin. I looked, one of it was in a block. Now normally, when you get drug deals, they’re normally in little wraps, clingfilm wraps. So I scraped the block off, put it in the I know to me, obviously, one of the bag of drugs I’d robbed was pure heroin. They didn’t have time to cut it up.
[00:15:02] So I injected it, bang, overdose died, and I knew nothing about dying. And lucky enough, that night I was gonna go to McDonald’s and have a hit first, in the toilet, and then go crack then. So I went to crack then, lucky enough the guy I was in, the drug addict, Now, I’ve injected myself, and all of a sudden, I woke up with paramedics over me.
[00:15:19] In the back of an ambulance with the lights on, pumping me full of adrenaline to start naked. Yeah, alright? Now when we got to A& E, the paramedic said to me it was actually the drug addicts that called the ambulance. Now if I’d have gone to McDonald’s that night, they’d have found me dead in the toilet.
[00:15:33] Got to, got to A& E, and they give me a blood test, took some blood out my neck, and then about an hour later, they give me some pyjamas to put on, and I’m sitting there, and so I’m going, and the doctor come into my room, he looked at me, he went, you ain’t going nowhere. He said, I’ve got the results back from your blood test.
[00:15:47] He said, you’ve got blood poisoning septicemia. got four days to live. He said, if I don’t give you a blood transfusion now, and put this tube in your neck, he said, you could die. So they put this great big tube in my neck, Straight away, shiny vein I had, called a CVP line, Central Vein Pressure. And it goes down into your heart and they stitch it into your neck.
[00:16:06] I started squeezing loads of blood into my neck to get this infection away, because it was going to kill me. Then he said, we might have to amputate your left leg if we can’t get the infection under control. Then a few hours later, I realised that that big bag of drugs I’d robbed, they want to keep me four days, is in that drug den.
[00:16:20] And I know for a fact that drug addicts will find it and sell it. That’s my stuff. So about an hour later when the doctors weren’t looking, I got the needle in the tube, ripped out of my neck, blood squirting out of my artery in my neck. They all tried to stop me. I went, I’m going. You’re going to die. I don’t care.
[00:16:36] Now, on around to the drug den, convinced, I just want these drugs. I don’t care about dying in four days. I just want these drugs. He’s not having to be in my head stuff. I had to walk past a police station. Now I meant, this is the adult version of my talk by the way, what I’m going to say now. This police station.
[00:16:51] This police station I’ve got to walk past. I’ve been in there many times, they hate me, I hate them. And one night I was in there, I tried to escape. And I asked to have a shave before I went to court in the morning. And, my plan was, was to like, you know, harm myself and then get rushed to hospital and try and escape from the hospital.
[00:17:14] So I asked for a razor blade to have a shave. So I went into the shower room and I got the razor blade, just broke it open and then I stripped naked and, you know, I opened up my wrists, both sides there. And obviously, you know, and he bled to death. They see the blood. So the alarms went off in the police station.
[00:17:33] Everyone’s panicking. They chucked me in the police car, put towels around my wrist and he bled to death. But when I got to the hospital, obviously I didn’t escape because the police probably, you know, held me down. They stitched me up and then they took me back to that police station. Now, I’ve got to walk past that police station, go to the drug den.
[00:17:50] And you know what, if I’m honest with you, I don’t know what made me do it, how I did it. I stood outside his police station, I remember it, yeah, four days from death. And at that point, I’m emotionally, physically, mentally bankrupt, rock bottom, and I’ve got four days to live, and I’ve got a choice. Walk into that police station, the last place in the world, I want to ask for help.
[00:18:11] I hate them. I’ll go to that crack den and die. And I don’t know how I did it, people ask, I just walked in there, all blood in my shoes, you know, my legs weeping. I looked at the police officer, he looked at me, he knew me really well, and I said three words to him. Please help me. And I broke down on that floor and I literally cried like a baby.
[00:18:29] I mean, last time I cried like that was probably when my mum and dad split up. That decision saved my life. Now the duty of care. So they rushed me back to the hospital. They put a tube on me. That was intensive care for two days. I pulled through. But now the police are waiting for me. I’ve got warrants out for my arrest.
[00:18:43] For shoplifting. So what I did was, they took me to court. Now I ended up in Southend Court down the road here, but they put all these charges into one court. So I was wanted all over the country for shoplifting. So I went to the Chancellor’s Court. What I did was, they got me in a wheelchair, so I couldn’t walk, and they handcuffed me in front of the judge.
[00:18:58] So they sent me in front of the judge, and the judge went six months in prison for the shoplifting. Now, I went to the Chancellor’s Prison just down the road here. Now when you go to prison, I’ve been 15 times, the first person you see when you go to any prison, before they put you in a cell, you have to see a doctor.
[00:19:11] For to assess you mentally and physically you’re okay to go in the cell. He looked at my legs he went no way he said you ain’t coming in our prison with your legs we can’t amputate them we’re not surgeons. So to have my legs amputated they transferred me in a minibus to Broomfield Hospital down the road here.
[00:19:25] We got to the hospital they took me in a side room by myself they handcuffed me to the bed 25 foot chain and there was prison guards sitting there. So the surgeon come and he looked at my leg he went right Before I cut your leg off, my left one, I was trying to save your right one, but your left one’s got to come off above the knee.
[00:19:40] He said, he said, one of my colleagues mentioned we’re going to try maggots in your legs for a couple of weeks. And I thought, am I, did I am right in maggots? Anyway, two days later, these maggots have turned up in this test tube. Their babies are tiny, they’re about big. And they poured 500 maggots on my legs and wrapped in a special bandage so the maggots will breathe.
[00:20:00] Now what you have to do is maggots can only eat rotten flesh and maggots obviously. In nature, you know, flies come from flies, they’re landed animals. So they come from a hospital. So after three days, the bandage is growing. The maggots are getting bigger and bigger. And it stunk and it was painful. I used to wake up some mornings and the maggots had escaped and they’d be wiggling past my face.
[00:20:19] They’d wash the maggots off after six days, take the bandage off because on day seven maggots turned into flies.
[00:20:26] Adam Stott: And it’ll
[00:20:26] Paul Hannaford: contaminate it. So as they washed all the maggots off, they just washed them straight down to theatre, they took skin off my leg, and done skin grafts. Now I had to have 15 operations to save my legs.
[00:20:36] 12 weeks I was handcuffed as a prisoner. After 12 weeks, I woke up one morning, and I’d been off the drugs and alcohol now for three months. Yeah, and the guards were watching me. They used to put two guards every eight hours. Three months, yeah? Three months, yeah. Cost a prisoner a fortune, keeping it out. So I’ll tell you in a minute.
[00:20:54] And I woke up one morning, the prison governor come in with his suit on, he went, take the handcuffs off. And he took the handcuffs off and went, right, you’re free, see you later. And he walked off. I went, where are you going, guv? You’ve served your prison sentence. You no longer have responsibility. As he walked off, I went, I to go.
[00:21:11] He’s like, that was it. Then the nurse came into my room and she went, sorry, Paul, you’ve got to leave now, we’ll need a bed for someone else. And do you know what, if I’m honest with you, Scott, at that point, I was sad to hear. And my whole past life smashed me clean in the face. You know, I’m only telling you snippets, right?
[00:21:25] Adam Stott: At
[00:21:26] Paul Hannaford: that point, no one come to visit me. So I had no family, no home, no money, no job. The only thing I owned in the whole wide world, this is the truth, the only thing I owned personally in the whole wide world, in the locker next to my hospital bed, in a Tesco’s carrier bag, was a rotten old filthy blood stained tracksuit and a pair of Nike trainers with holes in the bottom.
[00:21:49] I got arrested by the police, and that was my world. So where do I go? I’ve got nothing. But I’ve got a choice now. Go back to the drug den, they’re still there. Or go to rehab. I’d heard about rehab years ago, so I heard about one of my pals, he was up in Western Superior, Somerset, named Larry, so I phoned him up, he got clean, and I said, Larry, any chance I can come to rehab?
[00:22:08] He went, listen, you can’t just turn up at rehab. You know, you need funding and this and that. He said, but I’ve got a friend of mine who’s a manager of rehab, and it’s like council run. So Let me have a chat with him. So this is on the Monday, so I phoned him back a couple of hours later and he said, Listen, I’ve spoken to him, he’s given you a bed, but you cannot come down here till Friday.
[00:22:26] And I said, I ain’t got till Friday, I’ve got to leave now. He said, That’s the best I can do. They will not allow you to come in till Friday. You’ll waste your time if you come in now. So the nurse, I called her in, and the sister, I got really on well with her. I said, Can I talk to you? She went, What? I said, I’ve got a place to go rehab, but I said, I can’t, you know, go till Friday.
[00:22:46] Can I stay? And she went, Give me ten minutes. And she went off, come back, and, you know, I was sort of praying, Let me stay, please, cos I know if I leave this hospital, I’m going to go crack then, and I’ll die. My legs are still pretty bad. And she walked in, she went, Alright. She goes, you know, she goes, I’ve had a chat with the staff, and we, we, we, we, we want the best for you.
[00:23:06] And that woman, that day, that nurse, saved my life. For five days, they bed me, fed me, showered
[00:23:12] Adam Stott: me. Hmm.
[00:23:13] Paul Hannaford: On the Friday, the prison come back up and give me a travel warrant because they have to get you to a destination. And do you know what I got? I’ll never forget it. My legs were all bandaged up still. And I had this old Broughton tracksuit on.
[00:23:24] I got a taxi to Chelmsford Station. And I got on this train to Weston Super Mare. And, er, this seaside town, this rehab. And do you know what? I went in there, they took me in, they gave me a little bed. Clean, nice little bed. And do you know what? For the first two weeks I was there for 12, I cried every day.
[00:23:42] I went into the bathroom because it was just a relief. I’d actually found a place that I could get better help and, you know, a bit of love.
[00:23:51] Adam Stott: And
[00:23:51] Paul Hannaford: there was other addicts there, counsellors. I was still in and out of hospital. Still in and out of hospital with my legs. Come out of the treatment centre, went to an halfway house, which they call secondary stage, and I had a bit of responsibility, and, you know, it was a better bit of, you know, and I slowly, slowly recovered.
[00:24:07] Physically, you know, I’m not 100 percent now, even though I’m nearly 18 years clean and sober. So physically, you know, I was still quite bad in my legs. Some days I was on crutches, having more operations, but I was clean and sober. And now the chance in life to, I don’t know, make amends to my family, which we’ll get to.
[00:24:26] And hopefully try and become a productive member of society. Just live normally, though, that I should have done when I was a kid. But drugs took me to that dark place. So anyway, a couple of stories short. I was in rehab and I thought, right, what can I do for a job? You know, I was unemployable really. For one, I couldn’t physically do anything.
[00:24:43] I couldn’t even dig a hole in the ground, which is, you know, no qualifications, that there.
[00:24:46] Adam Stott: I
[00:24:46] Paul Hannaford: can’t do that because my legs are bad. Yeah. On paper, if I go to a organization, some legally can’t employ people with criminal records. And two, I’ve got no education. I can barely read and write. So basically on paper, I’m unemployable, but I did look and I thought, well, maybe I could use my past experience to help kids and see what’s going on.
[00:25:06] So I took the risk, come back to Essex. I started doing a bit of TV extra work, you know, extra work backgrounds. Yeah. And I started a little bit of that. I need a little bit of money here and there. I was on benefits. So I got myself a little.
[00:25:15] Adam Stott: When
[00:25:16] Paul Hannaford: you came back to Essex,
[00:25:17] Adam Stott: how did you avoid temptation. How did you train your mind to, obviously you’ve been to rehab, you’ve been, you’ve been clean now, but there must have been things that tried to draw you back.
[00:25:29] How did you get yourself to the point where you had that resilience to stay strong through the ups and downs? Because I’m sure there were ups and downs. Yeah. I
[00:25:38] Paul Hannaford: started working a program, 12 step program. So I went to these meetings, these groups, and it started to obviously, that’s what rehab does.
[00:25:45] Adam Stott: Yeah.
[00:25:46] Paul Hannaford: It starts to look at.
[00:25:48] Not just how to get clean, how to stay clean, one day at a time.
[00:25:51] Adam Stott: Yeah.
[00:25:52] Paul Hannaford: So I started to consciously wake up and I started to get some self worth. Then I started to look at the big picture and realised that I’m not just an alcoholic addict. So, you know, I’ve got an addiction problem, but I can address that one day at a time, slowly.
[00:26:04] And it weren’t about next week or yesterday, it was about today, getting up and trying to do my best. Yeah. Take care of myself. Physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. And I started to do that. So then I started obviously helping other addicts that were coming through the system and helping them, which was great, it’s part of the program.
[00:26:20] But then, as I said, I come back to Essex and I’ve done a bit of TV extra work stuff and it started to go a bit quiet. So I thought, I’ll come back to the area where I live, I took that risk. What can I do, you know, what can I do for work? So in this little bed set I was living in, I come out one day and I see all these cool kids walking past and I thought, I just had this thought.
[00:26:38] Maybe I can go and share my experience in schools. Because I see what was going on. It got worse, you know, over the years. So I thought, I can’t just walk into a school. What do I do? So I went to, got in touch with my local council. So I give them an email. They’re a drug and alcohol service. They do stuff in the community.
[00:26:54] So they said, oh yeah, come next week. We, you know, tell us what you’re all about. So I turned up and they said, oh, the guy’s not here today. Come back next week. So I thought, I went back a week later. Oh, he’s not here today. He’s on a meeting. So after about six attempts, I thought they were trying to get, fob me off.
[00:27:07] I kept turning up. Monday morning, nine o’clock.
[00:27:10] Adam Stott: Knocking on the door. And this is, and this is the resilience part, right? Because you’ve had a, a belief that you, and what, actually I would really like to understand, why did you want to do that so much? Do you know what? Because,
[00:27:24] Paul Hannaford: because I’d slowly woken up, because addiction, you know, I’m fast asleep in addiction, I’m all about self, and then I started to realise and look and see, because I experienced it, what was going on in our communities.
[00:27:35] with drugs. Every prison sentence I served, 15 of them, was drugs. Every time I got stabbed, I mean, drug dealers money. So I looked and I thought, it’s getting worse here. Maybe I can do something with my apprenticeship, because that’s why I had an apprenticeship, 23 years on the street. So eventually, after I drove them mad, I think they got a bit pissed off me again, or fed up with me again up there, they said, come and have a meeting.
[00:27:58] So I went into this office room with these council members with their suits on, and on this, in their eyes, and Ex drug addicts, you know, what can I offer them? So I said, any chance I can come and do some voluntary work for you? I just wanted to do something, I didn’t want to sit around all day in a bed seat, you know what I mean, and, and, and that.
[00:28:18] They said, okay, they said, um, give us a couple of weeks. So about a fortnight later, fair play to them, they got in touch with me, this guy named Darren, he said, Are you free next Friday, at five o’clock we’ll pick you up, we’ve got a youth club you can go to in Rainham, Essex, to meet some kids. I I thought, yeah, I’d love to.
[00:28:34] So they picked me up, Friday night, 5 o’clock. Got to the youth club. As we walked in, there’s all kids in there playing pool, ping pong. So the guy that was running the thing, his name was Chris, he went, right, lads and boys and girls, sit down. This guy wants to speak to you. And their faces are like, what? We on a, we sit down at night.
[00:28:50] This is our ping pong pool night. We don’t listen to some bald headed guy talk. You know what I mean? It’s like, anyway, they sat down. And within a half hour, They were absolutely gripped. I was going through my story slightly. An hour later, they don’t want to play pool anymore. They are bombarding me with questions.
[00:29:05] So I come out of there and I thought, what sort of questions did they ask? What’s it like in prison? What’s it like in drug dens? What’s it like to be stabbed? Yeah, why did you do that to your family? I’ll get so many questions, you’d be surprised. Yeah, so I actually find interest in someone’s frame to what they might ask you.
[00:29:20] Yeah, why did you do it? I said, well, I don’t know, curiosity and what’s it like in prison and do your legs hurt? And, you know, and, and I said, well, everything I did was my choice. Do your legs hurt? Yeah. I’m in schools all the time now. I speak to kids as young as seven, year three, and you’ll believe it. And I’ll show them the pictures of the maggots and all that.
[00:29:40] They’re fascinated with it. But the questions you get from kids, they’re, they’re so intrigued and they think you’ve been clean for so long now, obviously since today, and more about then as well in the youth club, it’s like, what’s prison like? You know, because I understand what prison is. Prison is a punishment.
[00:29:54] And I explain to them thoroughly because I’ve been there. I can talk to them. Any kid asks me any question about anything. What’s it like to be stabbed? Been stabbed seven times. I can thoroughly tell them, yeah. This ain’t no stuff I’ve downloaded from the internet. What’s prison like? What’s a drug den like?
[00:30:07] Yeah, what’s it like to deal with your family? So I can answer every kid’s question with honesty and thoroughly. Because if I couldn’t answer their question honestly, they’d laugh me out the door. What do you know then? Why have you come to speak to us about this stuff and you have no real experience in it?
[00:30:21] So anyway, cut the story short, let’s talk. So I’ve, I’ve, I’ve come out of the youth club and I was like, wow, I really enjoyed that. I was nervous, speaking to ten
[00:30:28] Adam Stott: kids. I was scared, you know. What sort of impact do you think, because I know where we go in terms of the massive impact that you’ve had now, but in that first Talk that you did.
[00:30:38] What did you see and what type of impact do you think you had in sharing those stories? I’m a big believer and the you know through story you can create a lot of impact What did you see the impact you had in that first session?
[00:30:55] Paul Hannaford: We’ll get to that and this is this is incredible We sat started one of the boys it was sitting in front of me that day my first ever talk on a Friday night in a youth club was so inspired by it and his mates.
[00:31:08] On Monday morning, they went back to their school and they walked in to the headmaster’s office, three of them. All right, 13 year old. I said, sir, why haven’t you got this guy, Paul, coming into our school and speaking to us and all our mates about knife crime and drugs? All right. So the headteacher gone, what are you on about?
[00:31:28] He said, well, you’ve never got spoken to about this stuff. Why not? Can’t you get him in for the rest of the school? So they sort of like put it on him, these three 13 year old boys, so inspired by it. So obviously he’s phoned up the council and said, Who’s this poor guy that went and spoke to three of my students on Friday?
[00:31:43] I said, Oh yeah, he’s a local drug addict, sought his life out, he’s come back in the community, he’s now doing a bit of voluntary work. Oh, any chance he can come in and do an assembly next week? So I get a call from the council, Oh, the head teacher of that school, the kid you spoke to, 220 kids. I’m like, What?
[00:31:58] 220? I was shitting myself talking to 10. Why do you think you reached them? Because I tried to put it in my shoes. I think you’re very honest and brutally honest. Yeah. Yeah. Brutal bullshit. I’m brutally honest with you, kids. Listen, you made the same choice. I did. This is a pla and I had no props then I had no pictures of my maggots, so I tried to get from hospitals.
[00:32:19] Mm-Hmm. All I had was. You know, weeping a lot more then, and I showed him and I took down my socks and put my trousers on and said, Look, my legs still bleed everyday, you know, I’m, I’m, I’m You know, I, I shouldn’t be alive today to tell this story, and the reason I’m telling you it is because one day you’re going to get the same choice as me, you are going to get that same choice as me, if you make that choice and you continue to make it for long periods of time, there are going to be consequences, please believe me, you know, I’ve been in Doing his stuff for a long time now.
[00:32:45] So anyway, I go to the school, do the assembly. 220 kids. The kids love it. So as I’m walking out, he went, Can you come back, do the whole school next week? So I’m back, done a thousand kids in the space of a week. Then his wife was the head teacher of Upminster. So he’s gone home, obviously spoke about it.
[00:33:01] She’s gone, Can you get him into me? So then I’m speaking to a thousand girls in his school. So all of a sudden, the word is spreading slowly. Now I’m still just a man on benefits, who’s living in bedsit. And I’m okay. Yeah, I’m doing something with my life.
[00:33:19] Adam Stott: Yeah. Why did you so passionately want to do it just to help others?
[00:33:23] Because
[00:33:23] Paul Hannaford: it was part of my healing. Yeah. You know, I’m spirit, you know, I need to lift my spirit every day.
[00:33:30] Adam Stott: Yeah.
[00:33:31] Paul Hannaford: Yeah. And sitting in front of children or anyone, whether it’s be another addict, but actually sitting in front of Then I clocked on that, uh, I need a platform. I need a website, and if I’m going to try and do something with this, I can’t just, you know, willy nilly.
[00:33:48] So, I borrowed a little bit of money off someone, I built a website, and then I started going to schools. Then I got social media, so I started getting, like, the Instagram, and I, you know, weren’t too familiar with Facebook, that’s it. So I got on Instagram, and then I was putting a little post on, and all of a sudden you’ve got, like, a hundred kids commenting.
[00:34:03] Thanks, we’ve put us off drugs now, we never carry a knife. So then obviously what happened was, other schools started to get whiffed Havering. So for about three, four years in Havering, Essex, I did it for nothing. I’d done loads of voluntary work. But then I started getting schools to say to me, we’ve got, we’ve got actually money for this.
[00:34:18] The government do give us money to get people in for schools, you know, talks and that. So then I started obviously getting, uh, I’d come off benefits. And I started, obviously, paying my own way in life, you know, and paying a little bit of tax, and it was great, and I was coming into production, but my legs got a little bit better, I was going down to the gym, self worth.
[00:34:33] And, as I said, but what happened was, just before that, I started to e I sent, like, this company, I thought, right, let me get in touch with all the schools, no one knew about me, only the people in my area. So there’s this company called the Scouts, uh, Schools E mail Service. So what they said, this, this, they have a database of all the e mails of schools all over the country, 26, 000 schools.
[00:34:49] So what they said, this, that, they have a database of all the e mails of schools. So I had to pay them, so I saved that little bit of money, you have to pay them 400 quid and email every school with your website. So my website’s quite plain and jain, you know what I mean? So, the email went out on this particular Monday to 26, 000 schools.
[00:35:06] The first 10 emails I got back, I opened up, I was all excited. Please never contact us again, we’re not interested. Yeah. First 10. Imagine how I felt. I’m trying to offer you a service here to save kids lives.
[00:35:18] Adam Stott: Mm. Mm.
[00:35:19] Paul Hannaford: Now most people would have gone, maybe I’m not in the right game here. So I go to a bank manager with that sort of idea and say, I want to borrow some money to do something.
[00:35:28] It’s like, well, what have you done so far? Well, I emailed 26, 000 clients. How many said they were interested? And none of them. Minus 10. Yeah, minus 10. Yeah. So then I did it again. Yeah. Saved another little bit of money. and done it again. Then I started getting a few, so yeah, we’re interested. Then I worked out that, you know, a lot of people in education, not judging, I work with a lot of great people in education, were fast asleep around this, you know, this, this, this well being of kids.
[00:35:55] Yeah. How many talks did you get at school, you know, about knife crime, drugs and gangs? None. Exactly. Exactly. You know, and you look and you think, so anyway, that
[00:36:05] Adam Stott: was great. There’s a mindset of that if you ignore, It’s not ignorant. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Ignorance is definitely not. I find it
[00:36:12] Paul Hannaford: hard that I think if you work in education, you’ve got to have some passion to work with kids.
[00:36:17] You’ve got to want to work with kids. Yeah. But academics don’t stabilize our problems in our community. I don’t care because you’re like maths, English, football, PE, it won’t protect you from addiction, knife crime, drugs, or gangs. You have to have a man sit in front of a group of kids who’s had a world of experience.
[00:36:33] So anyway, I started getting bookings in schools all over the country. My social media got a bit of it. Then I QPR football club. Alright, they were just going into the Premier League. I said, well I’ve heard about the talks you do, can you come down to the stadium and meet us? Now I’m football mad. So I’ve gone down to QPR, sat in this box and spoke to these coaches and went, Come back next week, we’ve got some kids that are on this project with the police, come in, so please come along, witness it.
[00:36:54] As I walked out of QPR, they went, Oh, can you come work for us? And I’m like, QPR Football? Like, how cool is that? I’m now working with a brand. Yeah? Now people might take me seriously. Then London Fire Brigade, then the Metropolitan Police, then I started putting their logos on my website. Then Man United, Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea.
[00:37:10] Only the community based stuff. So I started to become a bit of a brand. Yeah, ex drug addict that was living in a bedsit on 46, 56 a week to now working with the biggest football clubs in the world. Yeah. Now, that was great. So I’d got my health back and now I was paying bills, living decently, stopping boys killing each other with knives because that cost a million pound tax payer.
[00:37:34] You know, I was really having an impact on kids. Then obviously we get to my personal life, my family. Yeah. So my mum went through hell with me. Yeah, I absolutely shed, you know, and, and, and, you know, my mum’s biggest fear was, and sadly mums are getting this on a daily basis, when the police would come around looking for me, because that was my last known address, and she’d see a police car outside pull up, she’d have a panic attack.
[00:38:02] Because she weren’t, her biggest fear was that they weren’t going to say, where’s Paul, we’re looking for him. Her biggest fear was, can you come down and identify his body? And that was my mum’s biggest fear. So when I actually got clean, and I went back to Essex, and I wrote my mum a big letter, and a men’s letter, and now I see her.
[00:38:22] And I’ve given my mum something today that every mum deserves. Peace of mind, that I’m okay today. Yeah, and also I’ve got a daughter. And I was, I was never had to see her many years ago. I had this girlfriend called Joanne and I got over and I was young in the gang. And she was a straight girl. I worked, she had a great job.
[00:38:39] I moved in with her and, you know, I fell in love with her. And then at 21, she kept saying to me, get a job, get a job. So I’d come out of the gang for a little bit, get the scaffolding and then, cut the story short. I got in the gear at 21, disappeared. Then I got a bit clean a couple of years later, went back with her.
[00:38:52] She went, Oh, you’re clean. Come back. I love you. And I, I loved her dearly. So I moved back in with her. I was, I was clean for a few months and then I got pregnant. So, you know, it was great. I was doing a bit of, you know, work, honest work, whatever, you know, I’ve got my 23 and a bit of scaffolding, I think. So anyway, after she got to about five months pregnant, I relapsed, went out one day, bumped into an addict, back out, disappeared.
[00:39:17] So about three, four days later, my phone’s ringing, wouldn’t stop, ring, ring, ring, ring. So I noticed her, looked at the phone, you know, a hundred missed calls, desperate to find me. Texts. So in the end, I picked it up one night, I’m a nut. I said, what do you want? And she was like, where you been? I’m worried sick, I ain’t slept.
[00:39:35] Crying her eyes out. I said, I’m back on the gear. And she was just inconsolable on the phone, crying her eyes out. Please come home, I love you. What about the baby? I said, I don’t care. I said, leave me alone. I blocked her. Back out every day, injecting drugs. Three months later, got nicked back in prison. In Pentonville, prison.
[00:39:53] Funny enough, I’m there next week doing a talk. So I’m lying on my bed in the prison cell, all of a sudden, when they, when you get letters in prison, they chuck them under the door. So these letters come under the door and I thought, must be for my cellmate. So I picked it up to give it to him. I’ve looked my names on it.
[00:40:05] So I thought, no one knows we’re in prison. He’s written me a letter, opened it up, read it. It was Joanne, my girlfriend. She, she phoned up every prison trying to find me, bless her. In the letter she went, Paul, please let me come and see you. I’m still pregnant. I’ll give birth in two weeks. And I never forget, a week later, she booked a visit for the Friday.
[00:40:23] And the reason she booked the visit for the Friday, because she found that from the prison. I was getting out of jail the following Monday, three days later. So I never forget, a week went by, I was all excited. And it was a beautiful summer’s day. They took me down to the visiting hall. I’m sitting there waiting for her.
[00:40:36] Now don’t forget, I’ve been in jail. I was clean and sober. You know, I had a few days left to serve. And she come walking into the visiting hall. And you know what? I’ll never forget it. She looked absolutely beautiful. All dressed in white. She had long, blonde, curly hair. She’s all big and fat. Like, pregnant fat.
[00:40:51] She was absolutely enormous. She’s just grown, you know, like, the five months I hadn’t seen her.
[00:40:55] Adam Stott: And
[00:40:56] Paul Hannaford: as she got to the, to the, to the desk to sit with me, she nearly passed out. Now don’t forget, it’s a boiling hot summer’s day. She’s travelled an hour and a half on public transport, a week away from giving birth.
[00:41:06] You know, and exhausted, desperate. And she got my hand, sat with me for one hour, we get one hour visit in Britain. She begged me, she went, please promise me, please. Can you promise me four things? I said, whatever you want. I said, I promise. She goes, you get out of jail Monday, will you come and move in my flat?
[00:41:20] I said, I promise. I said, what I’ll do, as soon as the jail let me go, I’ll come get on a train, come straight to your flat. I’ll move in with you. And she went, will you get a job, like scaffolding or something, like help out money? And I said, of course I will support you both. And she went, um. And when the baby’s born, you know, should we get married?
[00:41:39] And she got upset. I’ve got to be upset. I said, of course I will. I’d love to marry you. I love you dearly. And she went, give me your hands. And she took my hands. She went and put them on her belly. And I could feel my daughter kicking. And she went, one more thing. One more thing, most importantly. Promise me you’ll never touch drugs again.
[00:41:56] I said, listen, I’m done. I’m done. When you said that, do you think you A thousand percent.
[00:42:01] Adam Stott: Yes,
[00:42:02] Paul Hannaford: you absolutely I’m getting married to her. I’m getting a job scaffolding. I’m done with the drugs. I’m going to be a dad. And I’m going to be a decent, normal man. And a dad. And a husband. That’s what I wanted.
[00:42:14] That’s all I ever wanted, really. From the age when I was a kid. But I lost my way a little bit. So now I went by. The guard comes up and says, You’ve got to go now. Helped her. I give her a hug. So I see Monday, I love you. She walked off. I waved to her. She looked beautiful. I thought she’d just travelled all that way to come and see me.
[00:42:28] Anyway, took me back to my cellmate. I went to my cellmate, wow mate, she had the best visit. So anyway, Monday morning come, all excited. So, I got on the phone quickly. You can have these little phone calls in jail. So, Monday morning I got on the phone to her first thing before I left the jail. I was having my breakfast and I phoned her up.
[00:42:41] I said, Right, I’m leaving in a couple of hours. They’re gonna come and take me to the reception. I said, and we’ll have some dinner? She went, yeah, you know, I uh, I’ll go and have something to eat. I said, I can’t, I just can’t wait to see you. So, anyway, a couple of hours later I got released. And when you get released from prison, they take you down to the reception, they give back your clothes, your property, whatever you got.
[00:42:57] And they also give you a little bit of money, all prisoners get it, called a discharge grant. 50 quid. So I thought, right, that’s only a little bit of money, but my plan was leave the jail, go to her, give her the 60, 50 quid, whatever it was, then get a job and, you know. But when I got released, I got released with six other prisoners.
[00:43:12] And that same morning I knew one of them very well. It’s this mixed race guy named Lloyd. And I’d used drugs with him for years. And he was on his way to go and meet a dealer. So I went to the off licence to get a drink. It was a hot day. And I bought one can of beer, just one can. I was going to meet her.
[00:43:31] Bought the can of beer, drunk it. Boom, sparks off that reaction of, I’m alcoholic, so I was an addict. And instead of going to meet her, I went off with him. Spent the 50 quid on crack back at committing crime within an hour. Never turned up. Now, that’s the power of addiction. If my girlfriend, who I love dearly, Sits in front of me, a week away from giving birth, and I’m sober and clean.
[00:43:53] I look her in the eye and get her by the hand, I put my hands on her belly, and look her in the eye, I’m 100 percent facts, convince her, myself, I’m gonna get out and do what she wants, and what I want. And then within half an hour out the prison gate, I’m drunk. And within an hour, I’m in a crack bin, and within two hours, I’m back down to West End, stealing from selfish as harrods.
[00:44:13] And that’s the power of this illness, of addiction, especially that crack cocaine heroin. Hmm. Three days later, she’s in hospital, giving birth to my daughter. And I wasn’t there. And, you know, eventually she got brought up by another man. Joanne met someone, she’s entitled to do that. I think my daughter got to the age of five, Ria, the name is.
[00:44:32] And, uh, he done a better job than me. Decent, honest man. He brought my daughter up, fair play to him, you know. So anyway, when I come back to Essex years ago, Um, and then my daughter lives round here, in Romford. So I come back about 12 years ago, and she was around 15. So, sort of like, I thought, I know what she looks like, so I sort of Googled her and found her social media, her Facebook.
[00:44:53] She ain’t got stepdad’s second name, which I’m okay with. No, I had no choice to be honest. So I knew what she looked like, and I remember going into Romford one day, and I’m sitting in a coffee shop. On a Saturday afternoon, I looked up and this girl walked in with a long blonde hair. I thought, where did I know her from?
[00:45:08] And then bang, I realised. It was my daughter. And you know what she’d done? She actually got a drink and sat opposite me where you was, like literally 10 foot away. And my heart, I thought, I’m not going to say anything to her, you know, just the facts. My daughter’s sitting 10 foot away from me and I’m looking over at her and she looked like me and I thought, my God, I was just like, it was an unbelievable feeling.
[00:45:28] Then all of a sudden, this guy come in, sat next to her with bags of shopping, her stepdad. And that absolutely done me. Absolutely ruined me. Cause that should be me. I should be sitting there Saturdays, taking my daughter shopping. And a guy walked out, really upset me. I was angry, not with him, just with my past and, you know, sort of come back to haunt me a little bit.
[00:45:50] Anyway, a few days went by, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, started getting emails from schools like I do every day. And one of the schools that emailed me was called Sacred Heart, an all girls school in Essex. And the teacher said, Hi Paul, can you come to our school next week and do two assemblies for year 10 11?
[00:46:05] Put it in my diary and I thought, hold on a minute, I’m sure that’s my daughter’s school. So I checked her social media and I found out that she was in the same school. And I thought, well, I’m going to my daughter’s school. What am I going to do? I better let Joanne know, because Joanne, my ex, might want me to speak to Ria.
[00:46:18] So I managed to get Joanne’s phone number, I contacted her. I said, Joanne, I’m sorry to bother you, but I’ve got to go to Ria’s school next week. I said, do you actually want to keep her off that day? You know, when I’m going, she went, listen, I’ve already sorted your life out, well done, but sadly she’s not in that day.
[00:46:30] She’s actually at another school just down the road doing work experience. So I thought, okay, that’s okay. So anyway, gone and done the talks in the school, walked out the school gate at lunchtime in Upminster, as I’m walking down the road, I looked up in the distance, and there she was, my daughter coming towards me.
[00:46:44] Now I speak to tens of thousands of kids every year. I’m not scared of any kid. This 15 year old little girl coming towards me has no idea who I am, even though I’m her dad. And I was terrified. I don’t want to scare her. Rejection. What do I say to her? I’ve got seconds now. She’s getting closer and closer.
[00:47:00] My heart was boom, boom, boom, boom. So I walked up, put my hand out, I said, Ria. And she looked at me, she went, Yeah, who are you? I went, I’m your dad, Paul. And she gave me a big hug. And we spoke for five minutes. What we spoke about, I don’t know. I was like, in the daze, looking at her. She walked back into school and I stood outside the school, really upset.
[00:47:19] 15 years away for that. So I rushed home, and I can’t read and write properly, so I wrote her a big letter. In the letter I said, Dear Maria, it’s brilliant to see you at school today. Please forgive me what I did years ago to you and your mum. I’m off the drugs now, I’m out of that life, and I’d like to be part of yours, you know, if you, if you want.
[00:47:33] And at the bottom of the letter I actually put, like, love, dad, and a kiss, and put my address and phone number. I said, contact me if you want. Posted it. Two, three days later now, I got an obsession on my phone with type pings. It wasn’t, um, post was coming, no letter. So after a week I started to get a little bit, okay, you know, maybe I’ll send a friend request on Facebook.
[00:47:51] So I sent a friend request, no reply. So two weeks went by, I heard nothing. So after two weeks, I sort of give up hope. And I sat back, you know what, and I thought to myself, do you know what? She’s must’ve read my letter by now. Surely it’s been two weeks. She must’ve seen my friend request. And she’s probably decided that she don’t want to be part of my life.
[00:48:10] And why would she? She’s got a dad now. And I chose that rubbish, you know? And it was quite hard to accept, but I had to accept it. And I thought it was going to be quite awkward now, walking around and seeing her, because she’s, you know, in my town centre. And I was actually gutted, you know, and I had to accept that stuff, that my past obviously caught up me a little bit, you know.
[00:48:29] Anyway, the following day, after the fortnight, day 15, I got a telephone call from my mum, picked my phone up, she said, Joanne, my ex. She said, you all right, Paul? I said, yeah, I’m fine. I said, okay. She said, oh, yeah, look, it’s nothing. I thought I should let you know. We’ve just got back from holiday last night.
[00:48:44] We’ve been away for two weeks. Where he’s read your letter this morning. And he’s supposed to meet up with you next week for something to eat. And a week later I took my daughter for a cheeky Nando’s. And now I see her every week. I get baby father’s day cards. And it’s all because I plucked that courage up that day to walk into that police station.
[00:49:01] The last place on earth I wanted to go. Because there’s a message there. The last place in the world I wanted to ask for help. I got it. And that gave me a chance in life of what I’ve got today. I got it. My daughter back in my life. Yeah, my mum peace of mind. I’m a productive member of society. I educate 70, 000 school kids a year.
[00:49:23] I stop boys killing each other with knives, all kids taking drugs. I pay tax and I come out of rehab with the clothes on my back and I persevered because I knew what was going on in the world. I had patience and I kept knocking on doors and eventually they opened. And I think today that I’m in a position where I’ve educated one million kids, I want to educate one more million, you know, 10 years in me, my legs are still, even though I’m 18 years clean, I dress my legs every day, you can tell they’re weeping.
[00:49:55] And, you know, I’m in that hospital quite a lot, um, having operations, not operations, I have to have, you know, my legs sometime burst open, you see it on my Instagram. Um, so even though I’m out of that life, um, I’m okay
[00:50:08] Adam Stott: today. You know. It is an incredible story of resilience for you. What do you think the secrets to that, the resilience has been?
[00:50:19] Because like you said, to keep going every, every single day, to keep pushing forward and keep making an impact, what do you think is driving that resilience? And when you look at other people that have been listening to this, there’s all different types of people listen to this. Many of them are business owners.
[00:50:34] And sometimes they can make, they can major in the minor things. You’ve obviously had some massive things happen in your life, but you’ve been able to pick yourself back up. What message would you have for someone that’s going through a hard time right now to be able to spike their resilience and allow them to keep going?
[00:50:51] I think there’s a lot of
[00:50:52] Paul Hannaford: things I look at really, you know, as I said, cause I come out real, I didn’t know what to do, you know, just quite happy to be clean and sober and have a clean bed to get in at night. But then I found doing stuff for others, working with kids, it’s given me a bit of a passion. Yeah, we want to feel good, don’t we?
[00:51:05] And other, you know, there’s many ways of making yourself feel good.
[00:51:08] Adam Stott: Yeah. Yeah,
[00:51:09] Paul Hannaford: you know, people go out and have a drink, feel good. Yeah. But I worked out that So key, I think. Doing stuff for others.
[00:51:15] Adam Stott: Yeah.
[00:51:16] Paul Hannaford: Whether it be, you know, helping other addicts or, you know, and I found out with my mental health, you know, that, uh, severe mental health, you know, trying to kill myself, all that stuff, you know, it’s all related.
[00:51:26] Um, or a mental illness. But I do think that, that, that, just not letting them know.
[00:51:34] Adam Stott: Uh, deter me from where I wanted to be. And, and I think from one of the things that we talk to business owners about is about finding a North Star, a purpose. And it sounds to me that you found that purpose, that North Star that was carrying you through the difficult moments.
[00:51:54] And when you’ve got a mission that’s bigger than you, And you’re out there trying to make an impact and help people. That’s what allows you to keep traveling towards the destination a lot of the time in business. And it kind of sounds like that, right? It sounds like you went, you know what? I can actually go and help people.
[00:52:09] I can make an impact. I can allow other people to not experience what I have. And that sounds like it’s really helped drive you as well. If you
[00:52:16] Paul Hannaford: look over the next four weeks, I know I’ve had a bit of time off over the summer holidays, which is okay. Rest, recharge, and I need that time out because it’s quite exhausting my job.
[00:52:24] You’ve got to remember, I sit and do this five times a day back to back when our workshop’s in schools. Yes, I do tailor it. So if anyone’s listening and thinking, oh, does he talk about that stuff with primary school kids? Not at all. But I still show them images of my maggots in my legs. Kids love it.
[00:52:38] They’re fascinated. But they aren’t my bravest audience. They’re primary school kids. They’re my bravest audience. The big ones are all the six foot, Sixth formers walk in, they’re passing out. They can’t handle it. It’s the little guns, they love it. And then they go and research me, you see, because I’m only telling them 5 percent of my story.
[00:52:52] Adam Stott: You’ll know
[00:52:53] Paul Hannaford: more. Go and watch your podcast. And read the book.
[00:52:55] Adam Stott: Yeah.
[00:52:55] Paul Hannaford: Because they’re in it. Yeah. I’ll give you a prime example of my work. Ready? Over the next four weeks, I’m going to be speaking to primary school kids as young as 10. Then a few days later, I’ll be speaking to police headquarters, hundreds of police officers.
[00:53:07] Then a few days after that, I’m in a prison, speaking to murderers. So, my work’s so diverse, from primary schools to prisons to police, to parents. We’re all in this together, you know, the well being of everyone,
[00:53:19] Adam Stott: yeah?
[00:53:19] Paul Hannaford: You know, if you’re struggling, if you’re, you know, just get, just keep going. Things will, it’s, when you sit back and do nothing, nothing happens, is it?
[00:53:27] Adam Stott: Love that.
[00:53:27] Paul Hannaford: Yeah.
[00:53:28] Adam Stott: The only thing you can guarantee is if you do nothing, you’ll get. Yeah. I won’t be here today.
[00:53:32] Paul Hannaford: I won’t be here today. And I say to kids in schools and they say about jobs and I say, listen, I’m not a careers expert, far from it. But I know if I’m 10 no’s I got from that 26, 000 emails would have really affected me.
[00:53:44] Yeah. And I’d have gone, Oh, you know, no one wants me. I’m not good enough. I won’t be here today. I want to spoke to 1 million kids. I want to save lives. Hmm.
[00:53:52] Adam Stott: Yeah,
[00:53:53] Paul Hannaford: I believed in myself and I kept going. That’s okay. You can tell me no, but you know what? Someone eventually will say yes to me and I will get that job I want and I will go and be successful, measure success.
[00:54:02] I don’t think I’ll ever be a multimillionaire by doing my job. I’m not bothered about that. All I want to do is pay my bills, see my daughter, give my mum peace of mind and go out and do something good in the community.
[00:54:12] Adam Stott: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you were certainly achieving that. And I, for one, really, really enjoyed talking with you.
[00:54:19] I think it’s a super inspiring message for, for so many people that watch. And I think that, um, whether you’re a business owner that’s been watching, you’re somebody that, Know somebody that’s been impacted in their life in some different area. There’s a story here. Uh, go and share this with somebody that you feel could get some major benefit and some help out of Paul’s story for sure.
[00:54:43] And one of the things that we’ve asked Paul to do is sign a copy of his book. Uh, now we’ll put a link in the description so some people can go and get this book. Uh, but you also can win a signed copy. So if you would like to win a signed copy, of Paul’s book. We’re going to choose someone from the comment section just or in the review section, go and leave a comment, tell us about one of the things that’s impacted you on this story of resilience and tell us what your biggest moment was in today’s talk.
[00:55:12] And if you go and do that for us, you will be entered into a draw, which we’ll do on the next podcast, where we give away a signed copy of Paul’s book.
[00:55:19] Paul Hannaford: And do you know the great thing about that book? Yeah. All right. That book was written for children. Originally, I thought I won’t have the kids. I called it unconscious kid.
[00:55:28] So if you look at unconscious, right, if you Google unconscious, it tells you I’m not fully aware of my surroundings. Yeah. I’m not, you got me. So that, that wakes children up, but then I’m going to prison next week and I went to prison three weeks ago. I spoke to murderers, 50 men. They were serving life sentences for drug related murders, costing the taxpayer 50 million pounds, their first ever talk on drugs.
[00:55:50] And it’s my job to make sure the primary school kids to get to read that book will meet me, never end up in that same situation. Because I believe by not giving kids education on drugs, which we know are the main cause of harm in our community, we, we, we neglect their personal well being, and we leave them vulnerable.
[00:56:06] Yeah, and I strongly believe that if we give every kid on a level playing field, strong enough drug education and from someone with experience, then when that kid gets that chance to do what I did, they know there’s a risk of harm. And hopefully they’ll take the right route instead of that route I did.
[00:56:21] Yeah. Yeah. Maths, English, PE, good at football, that didn’t keep me safe. Someone could have sat in front of me when I was 10 before I got into that world, a teenager, and said, like, if you make this choice, this will end up, and it’s in there. Yeah. And as you know, the reason I’m ready for children, it’s I put pictures in it.
[00:56:39] Why do kids, if I don’t have my pictures, all my consequences, kids want to say, where’s Sasha Scars? Hello. Yeah. Maggots, blood, guts. Yeah. And it goes, oh, you know what, he’s telling the truth. I believe you. Yeah. Yeah. You got, you got, these children are hardwired today and you got, you know, you’re going to go in.
[00:56:54] Don’t, don’t, don’t give them some internet knowledge. You know, give it from, from rule of experience. And that’s how me and my daughter. Yeah. My mum. I saw that picture. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Do you know when I meet her? Do you know the great thing? I’ll finish on this. I met my daughter, and we go shopping, and she cost me a fortune, but she’s worth it.
[00:57:12] And I drop her off, and I put money in my pocket, and I put out some money, honest money I work hard for, and I give it to her, and she said they’re giving every penny in my pocket to the drug dealer. Because if I’d have died, like I nearly did nine times from injecting drugs, then drug dealers would come to my funeral.
[00:57:29] No they wouldn’t. But you know who’d come to my funeral? My mum. Mmm. And she died. As I said, I give many mums and dads peace of mind after meeting me and their kids go home. And I get many messages from parents, you know, thank you, my son’s come home from school today and he’s never spoke about his day at school before, only spoke about you.
[00:57:47] And you really give us something today, you know. I have no magic wand, but give me one hour with any kid and I’ll give them something serious to think about. And they can go on, and like you, and everyone else in this room that you work with, become successful, productive members of societies. I’m not waking up in prison cells or drug doorways, yeah?
[00:58:06] Cos you know when I come here this morning, I walk through Chelmsford Centre, and I see six addicts. I was there ten minutes. Three men, three women. That’s someone’s son or daughter. It’s increasing. It’s massive. In Chelmsford it’s definitely increasing. Take the drugs away, right? The prisons are 50 percent less full.
[00:58:23] Take the drugs away, the gangs can’t survive. It’s us boys chopping each other zombie knives. More drugs, more gangs, more homelessness, more crime, more addiction. And the whole world’s gripped in it.
[00:58:33] Adam Stott: Yeah,
[00:58:33] Paul Hannaford: but as I said, I’m sure that, you know, I’ll continue to do my best. And, you know, I’ve got many kids I can’t wait for Monday.
[00:58:41] It’s not a job. I ain’t got a job, I’ve got a duty.
[00:58:44] Adam Stott: Yeah.
[00:58:44] Paul Hannaford: Yeah, in society. To share my experience before I get old and boring. In the meantime, I go down to the gym every day, stay fit and healthy.
[00:58:51] Adam Stott: Yeah.
[00:58:52] Paul Hannaford: Thank you for the invite.
[00:58:53] Adam Stott: Look, I’ve really, really enjoyed it. I think it’s an amazing message. I’m really pleased to be able to support this message.
[00:58:59] Thank you. it’s super important. As I said, you know,
[00:59:01] Paul Hannaford: if any of my people out there are working with kids or teachers or whatever or anything, I’ll get, you know, I’ll meet many adults with, with problems with, you know, with drugs and alcohol and try and point them in the right direction. You know, it’s not just kids.
[00:59:12] Yeah. We’re all in this together.
[00:59:13] Adam Stott: Fabulous. Well, look, welcome. That has been an amazing episode of a business growth secrets, something I’ve really enjoyed. Tell us your biggest moments to get a chance to win a copy of Paul’s book and go and follow Paul on Instagram. We’ll put the links to all of Paul’s resources in the description.
[00:59:31] A big thank you for watching. And I look forward to, you know, really hearing more about this success story in the future. Well done.
[00:59:41] Hey everybody, Adam here, and I hope you loved today’s episode. I hope you thought it was fabulous. And if you did, I’d like to ask you a small favor. Could you jump over and go and give the podcast a review? Of course, I’ll be super grateful if that is a five star review. We’re putting our all into this podcast for you.
[01:00:00] Delivering you the content, giving you the secrets. And if you’ve enjoyed it, please go and give us a review and talk about what your favorite episode is. Perhaps every single month I select someone from that review list to come to one of my exclusive Academy days and have lunch with me on the day meeting hundreds of my clients.
[01:00:18] So if you want that to be you, then you’re going to be in with a shout. If you go and give us a review on iTunes, please, of course, do remember to subscribe so you can get all the up to date episodes. Peace and love and I’ll see you very very soon. Thank you.