Funktastic Chats

How to Feed Starving Children by Drinking Coffee with CEO Vin Singh

February 09, 2021 Mike Zabrin Season 1 Episode 6
Funktastic Chats
How to Feed Starving Children by Drinking Coffee with CEO Vin Singh
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Are you fueled by money, or by purpose and personal growth? Today we're talking to the CEO & Founder of Free Lunch Coffee, Vin Singh. Growing up in India, he accomplished all of the goals and dreams instilled by his parents. A six-figure income, Vin had all of the luxuries he dreamed of growing up in India, but he still felt unfulfilled. Vin quit his job, sold everything he owned, and traveled the world to set out to find his true gift.  This is an inspiring interview about a man who had it all and gave it all away to help others.

If you'd like to make a difference and end child hunger with your morning coffee, it's now possible.

We're going to learn about Vin's new company, Free Lunch Coffee. They are on a mission to end hunger from the lives of underprivileged children.  When you buy one bag of Free Lunch Coffee, you are also providing 10 meals to children in need. AND, Free Lunch Coffee gives away 50% of the money they make to end hunger in the lives of young children. 

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When you buy one bag of Free Lunch Coffee, you are also providing 10 meals to children in need.

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I've got a question for you. Are you fueled by money or are you fueled by purpose and personal growth? How would you feel if you had everything money can buy, but it was from doing something that you did not enjoy. Our next guest poses the question, if you only had six months to live, did you make a difference in the world? Today, we're talking to Vin Singh. He accomplished all of the goals and dreams that were instilled by his parents growing up in India. He moved to Australia and got a great education and had a six figure income. We're going to learn how he had all of the luxuries Vin and his family dreamed of growing up in India and why he recently sold everything and invested all of his savings to start over again and find a purpose in life. The purpose is helping young children in poverty in South Africa, through his new company, free lunch coffee. This is an inspiring interview about a man who had it all and gave it all away to help others. Hey, did you know I use Dubsado to help me run my business? This is the CRM meant for creatives. From client management, contracts and forms, automation and workflows, sending invoices and getting paid, scheduling appointments, accounting and reporting and so much more. Go to www.dubsado.com and when you sign up using the coupon code, funktasticchats, you'll receive 20% off your first month or year with Dubsado. Welcome to funktastic chats. I'm your host, Mike Zabrin, and this is the podcast where we team up with the most successful leaders within the creative field to help you navigate being a boss and dominate the creative field with originality and vision.

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Would you like to make a difference with your morning coffee? How do you feel about ending child hunger with your coffee? Let me introduce you to free lunch coffee. They're on a mission to end hunger from the lives of underprivileged children. When you buy one bag of free lunch coffee, you're providing 10 meals to children in need. And free lunch coffee gives away 50% of the money they make to end hunger in the lives of young children. How cool is that? And just beyond a fantastic cause free lunch coffee has great coffee that is specialty grade certified, organic and fair trade. And in fact, they offer a hundred percent money back guarantee for 30 days. So if you absolutely don't love their coffee, they'll give you a full refund and you can keep the coffee too. So you really have nothing to lose and they also have some amazing custom mugs and tumblers. And remember with each purchase from free lunch coffee, you are also supporting 10 meals to children in need. Free lunch coffee is offering a 10% discount to the loyal listeners of this podcast. Just use the coupon code Funktastic at checkout. So we were talking to the founder of free lunch coffee, Vin Singh. Hey, how are you? I'm pretty good. Thank you. How are you doing? Really good. So you're talking to me from Ecuador, right? Do you live in Ecuador right now? Right now I'm traveling in Ecuador. It's great to chat with you because not only do you offer great coffee, that helps a great cause, but your own story of personal growth and leaving your corporate job to pursue your passion is really inspirational, to me and everyone who I'm sure has had the pleasure of interviewing you. But before we get any further, let's talk about the coffee. For those of you watching on YouTube, I've got a bag right here of free lunch coffee. It's dark, smooth, simple origin from Peru. I've noticed chocolate, honey, black tea notes in there. What have other people have been saying about the coffee, Vin? They're loving it. It has a smooth texture and it's a dark roast, but it's not too dark. People that usually don't drink darker roasts, they're still enjoying it. And you also donate 10 meals to starving children in South Africa with one bag of coffee, right? With one bag of coffee that I just got, this helps 10 meals. This is through the lunchbox fund and their mission is they provide a nutritious daily school meal to children who would otherwise go hungry. And that only is it just a meal, the meal encourages the children to attend school and helps them be able to concentrate while they're there. How did you find out about the lunchbox fund? My original idea was to have my own charity like this. I was thinking about it and realize I want to do something about it because I believe we have so much abundance in the world. But when I listen, watch on TV, when I see that young children that die, or they get sick due to malnutrition, that really it breaks my heart. It doesn't make sense because look at us as a species, we have so much abundance on this planet. Now that we have driverless cars on the road and soon we'll be going in space, and on the other hand, we have children dying because of not having enough food. So yeah, that doesn't make sense. Yeah,I mean the lunchbox fund, they're a ginormous organization. I had I had never heard of him, but until couple of weeks ago, when I was researching for this podcast and looking up your coffee. They've helped almost about started the pandemic alone. Where do you see your partnership with them evolving as free lunch coffee continues to grow over the years? Of course, as we grow, like we just started, but I can see that if we grow bigger and bigger, then we can ask them to start going in different countries, not just in South Africa, all over. My dream is to, you know, go all over Africa and help all the children to give them free meal in the school. And it's not just the only if you are getting the meal, like the best, that's the most important thing. That's the only meal of the whole day, but we are helping them to get off the street because they don't have motivation to go to school. Sometimes, in many cases, they have to walk like a couple of miles just to go to school. And the parents are poor. They go to school, they will get nutritious meal. This is the motivation for them. Then that will help them to get off the drugs, get off the street, get out of the war or whatever gangs they're getting into. I really believe education has power to help them to get out of the poverty. You traveled a lot too. You grew up in India, you traveled to Australia, you lived there for a while. Now you're an Ecuador. Did all the traveling you did really open up your eyes to poverty firsthand? I experienced not just poverty, the experience, the love, the compassion. I feel like we all are connected in so many different ways. We look different. We like, we have different language, different customs. What does it matter if you follow like the God has created art in seven days or evolutionary theory, either way we all are connected and yeah, I really believe that. Yeah. I, definitely want to go back to how that came into free lunch coffee, but let's go back to the beginning of Vin Singh. As you were growing up in India, what were some of the core values and expectations as far as an education and a career that were really instilled by your parents and your community? So I grew up in Mumbai. It's a big city and my parents, they really believed if you're not educated, if you don't have a college degree, then you're not successful in life. And to be successful in life, education is really that's the key and you got to have education and you have to study harder. You have to get good grades. My dad is masters in mathematics. He has double degree and he has special education. So that was in the family. And we were like, we are not rich. We were just a middle class family, but still they said, okay, if you want to be successful in life, there's no other way. That was the mentality. Study, get your good grades and do whatever you want as long as you get good grades, then you play or whatever you want to do. And then from India, did you move straight to Sydney? Australia? I moved to Melbourne and to study my masters and to study MBA, and I had no plan. I wanted to do my master's and go back to India and get a better job because I was working as a manager in McDonald's. That wasn't, I mean, it was nice job, but it wasn't great. And I realized I'm good with numbers. I have good grades. So I want to go on and study my MBA and come back and get some nice, better job that was okay. Were you an investor? Did you work in finances and investor? I was managing using currency risk foreign exchange risk for an investment bank. Yeah, for an asset management company. You had a six figure salary and most people would all over the world would define to you as very successful. Talk to me about having everything, a person that can want. What were some of the luxuries that you had that as a young kid in India you dreamed about, and, in some ways you felt unfulfilled? Well, growing up, I used to watch a lot of Hollywood movies and I was used to seeing the movies. Oh, okay. You have a nice apartment, nice car, nice life. You could go anywhere in the world for traveling for vacation, or go to any restaurant to eat. That was my dream to have a stable life, comfortable life, a life where I don't have to worry about money. No, I don't have to worry about when the next payment, like next salary will come. And I had everything when I was living in Sydney, I had my corporate job. I used to work for an asset management company. I used to manage currency rates, currency risk, and I would go to, I went into Europe and all over different places in Asia for my vacation. I used to get four weeks of vacation. On weekends we could go anywhere for eating and it I had all the comfort. I didn't have to worry about money, but deep down, I wasn't happy. And that was shocking to me. I was reading an article on forbes.com. It says something like 20 to 40% of people hate their jobs. That's a big number and I don't think you necessarily hated it, did you? I mean, you were good at your job weren't you? Yeah, I was enjoying it. I wouldn't call it...yeah, no hate is a strong word. I was good at it, I was enjoying it, but I wasn't loving it. In what ways did you feel still unfulfilled? What you just described to me sounds amazing to me. But then again I don't know if you could see it, but I have a mug here it says, relax, the bass player is here. And I used to keep this at my job when I was working a corporate job, because I had a crazy boss. They may be happy it says relaxed on it. But anyway, what ways did you still feel unfulfilled at your job with all the luxuries that you did have? I mean in the beginning, it was quite nice. I was enjoying it for a few years, and then I went to personal development. Now I'm into spirituality and personal growth is important part of my life. And then I still follow Wayne Dyer. He passed away and he was big on personal development. I started going more on the route of personal development. I realized there's more to life than having a nice job and nice life and we are here to make a difference. We all have a gift. Like you're a musician, you have the gift of music. And then I started asking, what is my gift? I didn't know what was my gift because I grew up and everybody told me like, society... My family told me you have to study hard, get your place, go to college, have a nice job. Nice life, but that wasn't my gift. So, yeah, I started asking, well, what is my gift? What is my purpose? Then the purpose came to in my, like in life. I realized okay, If you got to have purpose in life, it's just, we are not here just to make money and live have children and die one day. Yeah. Just like you need to be surrounded with love, to feel happiness. You need to be surrounded by your passion to feel fulfilled. And you said something really interesting. You said one question everyone should ask is what would I do if I only had six months to live? I want to create something. I want to give a gift before I die and leave the world in a better place. Talk to me what types of things go through your mind as you ask yourself that? Yeah, if you have to ask two questions in life, and one question is like, what would I do if I knew six months from now I'm going to die? Because the reality is we don't know when the show will get over. We don't know, we act like you got forever, but we don't. If you look at the history or pattern, everybody has died. So if six months is a good amount of time to create, to plan, to do whatever you want to do. And I asked myself, then I realized if I knew I'm going to die in six months of time, I definitely don't want to do my corporate job. I want to make a difference. I want to find out who really I am without inside the facade with the raw me, and I didn't know who I was. So yeah. Having the insight that you have now, as someone who recently found their purpose in life through free lunch coffee, how would you add on to the values your parents instilled in you to maybe your own children? Very good question. So first of all I'd tell my children, money's not everything. We have to find our passion, what we really good at. What gives us joy? Yeah, when I was growing up, I was told, okay, education is everything. You have to get good, grades and good marks, we have to modify a little bit. We have to say, find your passion, find what makes you fulfillment. What gives you fulfillment? What gives you joy? Like intrinsic joy. Like by itself, if you do something, if you're a musician, just feel good at piano, that just gives you joy. So find something. If you had a good tennis player or if you like to mountain climbing or whatever would like to cook or help or talk, listen to other people. If you want to be a therapist. Find that, first of all, find the fulfillment and joy, but whatever you do at an early age. That's what I'm going to teach my children. I tell them like, and then tell them, okay, now if you find it, if you have found your thing, like you're really passionate about now, find a way you can make a difference. Now find a way you can create value to other people. Yeah. Money is only the value that you place on it, right? Some people they have money to offer and that's it. Was it scary for you to leave your corporate job? Where you working and then secretly putting money away for the side hustle of free lunch coffee, or did you just quit and then I'm going to figure it out as I travel? No, I started saving slowly for a couple of years I started saving because I realized I wanted to do something. I didn't know what I'm going to do, but I started saving. Another question we have to ask, what would I do if I didn't have to worry about money? If I had all the money in the world, what would I do? And I asked that question to myself and I had no answer because I was doing that job because it was giving me a paycheck, but I didn't know what it was my gift. I didn't know what is my purpose in life. And I realized I was too comfortable in my life. Wow. And then you gave everything all away, right? I mean, you were making a six figure salary. You gave away your apartment, your car what other sacrifices that you make? No, it wasn't a sacrifice. I have to go outside my comfort zone. I have to grow. I have to evolve and by definition I can not grow if I stay in my comfort zone, if I stay in the box. Yes, I get at that box, so now I have to break through that box and then I realized, okay, I have to close everything completely so that I have nothing pulling me back. Nothing, no incomplete loop, like systematically closed everything. Quit my job is sold everything, donated all my clothes and shoes. I wanted to face uncertainty and unknown because I realized that's the path to grow. That's what I'm going to realize what is my gift? Yeah, to go in unknown place, like jumping off the cliff, is safe, is there life there?It's secure, it's comfortable, but you have to jump in the ocean to find the real treasure. I came across a quote and I feel like this describes you and I feel like everybody should listen to. Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. You know, money will not make up for the lack of imagination or the lack of brain power and it's important because a lot of people here in America shoot for the money. They don't shoot for the knowledge, you know, and I think that's really inspiring that you gave away most of the luxuries in life that you had to shoot for the knowledge. You came across free lunch coffee through a shoe company, is that right? Yeah, I was looking at toms shoes and I was really inspired by them. I said, wow, this is amazing. If you buy a pair of shoes and you donate another pair of shoes and people like children in need, and I realized I'm passionate about ending hunger from the lives of young children. I said we have more companies doing that? Instead of wishing somebody do something about it, why don't I do something about that? Like I like the Ghandi quote to be the change you want to see in the world, so why don't I do something even the small way. Do something about it. Where do you see free lunch coffee going within like the next five years or so because you guys recently launched, right? It was only a few months ago. Yeah. A couple of months ago, you guys have this ground coffee from Peru. Do you guys see yourself having multiple different blends, working directly with farmers? Where do you kind of see yourself in the next 5 years? That's my plan, to buy directly from the farmers, give them the best value at the moment we are getting like, it's a fair trade. Get directly from the farmers so I know where the coffee is coming from. Meet the farmers and then give the best coffee available in certified organic fair trade. I want to create my goal is to get out on trust so they can make a bigger impact, you know, help more children. And my goal is to get rid of hunger from our world. That's my plan. That's my dream. There's something that just feels good about more than the taste of drinking this coffee. It's no matter what I do today, I've helped somebody. I'm literally just sitting home in quarantine watching Netflix, and I've helped people in South Africa. It's pretty, it's a pretty amazing feeling, you know? Where did you come up with the idea for South Africa in particular? I wanted to make a difference. Where are the children who are most affected by hunger and Africa came to my mind so I started looking out there. Originally I wanted to start my own charity and reach out to the children and help them directly in the schools because instead of giving them food to their house, if I give them the food in the schools and they will get multiple benefits. Not just the food, they will get education, they will focus on their gift that will help them to get out of poverty. So that was my plan, then I realized I cannot do everything in the beginning. I have to collaborate with people who are already doing something like that so I can focus on at least for the business side, because I can, I was planning to start nonprofit organization, charity. I have to solely rely on donations and it's really hard to get donations. People don't trust this because we all heard stories about, you know, like 50 or 70% of the money goes to pay staff and admin and all those kinds of stuff. And then, and benefits really small. So that's where I wanted to start a business. The sole purpose of the businesses support the cause. But if you need an investor in the business, that's why I said okay, half up, at least half of the profit will go to the cause. And then I was started looking okay, where, what can I find if somebody is already doing the thing I want to do? And I started doing research and then I come across to the lunchbox fund. And they have pretty good ratings like ETO 85, 90% of the money, most of the money goes for the cause. That's great you know exactly where the money's going to. I feel like that was a big selling point for me. I mean the lunchbox fund is such a big company. Is there a certain financial plan that you have in mind for if I sell this many bags of coffee, then I'm going to come out with this blend. Do you have those set numbers, those set metrics in your mind, as far as the big scheme of things, I was just wondering that. And then also is this an ongoing cost for you to keep making this coffee and eventually give even more profits to starving children? Yes. I've invested all my savings in this project, in this business, and I'm not good at, I'm not good in marketing. I don't know much about anything about online marketing. That's the place I'm struggling at the moment to spread the word. So it's tough and maybe there's a possibility I have to shut it down because if you don't sell all this coffee then I have to shut it down because it's really hard. So hopefully we will survive. Let's talk about where you can get the coffee www.freelunchcoffee.com It is amazing coffee and there's a subscription feature too, right? Tell me about the subscription feature you guys have.$15 and 29 cents you get a bag of coffee every month. You can sign up for two or more and remember with each bag you are providing 10 meals to children. If you buy two bags of coffee that's 20 meals to children. It's every school that Monday through Friday, when you drink coffee, somebody is providing meals or somebody and two bags of coffee I think as a two people household, you can drink two bags of coffee easily in a month. So that's, the whole idea. Like it's not just drinking great coffee, it's organic fair trade, but you are making a difference by just drinking a coffee. When you buy one bag of free lunch coffee, you're providing 10 meals to children in need and, free lunch coffee gives away 50% of the money they make the end hunger in the lives of young children. Free lunch coffee is offering a 10% discount if you go on their website enter the coupon code. Funktastic at checkout a freelunchcoffee.com. Vin Singh, thank you so much for joining us today. What is your Instagram handle?@freelunch.coffee. Follow us on Instagram, buy some coffee, help the children and help us to survive and grow. That's awesome. Well, I found the coffee great, but I found you so inspirational from the beginning because I've had a corporate job working in my past and I got into the corporate job because I was so into it at first and then it just kind of died away a little bit, you know? And then I started being a musician full time. Now I started podcasting, and so as someone who just has these different passions, it's been really cool to talk to you and to know that, Hey, these values that we've been instilled in our whole life, money, education, It's not everything. Your happiness and your fulfillment is everything. So thank you, Vin, I really appreciate it. Hope to stay in touch with you and I can't wait to get some more coffee. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. And that was Vin Singh. Go on www.freelunchcoffee.com and pick up a bag. Not only is it amazing coffee, I drink it every morning, but it's also amazing to know that you're helping starving children too. Just an inspirational story all around from Vin Singh. Now I want to hear from you. What do you struggle with most as a creative business owner? Drop me a line, drop me an email, friend me on Facebook, do whatever you gotta do, but I want to know what you struggle with and the types of guests that you would benefit from so we can all learn together. And if you are a business owner within the creative field and you have a story that wants to be heard, drop me a line and we'll bring you on the show if you could put up with me. Have a great week. Be extraordinary, and we'll see you next week.

Welcome
Dubsado CRM (affiliate)
What is Free Lunch Coffee?
What Does The Coffee Taste Like?
How Free Lunch Coffee Helps Starving Children
Growing Up India and Getting an Education
Why Money Doesn't Equal Fulfillment
Why It's Essential To Find Joy & Purpose
Why Vin Sold Everything He Had To Face the Unknown
How Vin Found His Passion & Purpose