Hello, welcome to Storytelling For Business, the podcast that helps you build better customer relationships by telling stories your clients want to hear. I'm Katie Flamman, a voiceover artist specialising in corporate storytelling. That means everything from adverts on TV, radio, and online to training courses, inspiring company anthems and explainer videos about new products and services. My clients range from big business to charities, to governments, to NGOs, helping them all to share brand stories and business developments.

But why is business storytelling important? What makes a great story? And how can storytelling create leads for businesses and build lasting client relationships? In this series, I'm exploring those questions with some guests who work in the creative industries and other guests who don't, but who can still teach us about successful storytelling. At the end of every episode, I'll summarise my key takeaways. And at the end of the series, I'll pull everything together for you.

Today's episode is about impact and how getting your audience involved in the stories you tell can literally be a lifesaver. Chris Lomas is the chairman of Hope4, one of the fastest growing not-for-profit organisations in the world, and they have offices in the UK and Moldova. Hope4 was one of the first NGOs on the ground in Moldova, providing life-changing support to thousands of women and children flooding across the border from Ukraine when Russia invaded. Chris founded Hope4 with his wife Zoe, to help orphans and victims of child trafficking, but their charity does way more than that. And I'm so happy that Chris is here to tell us more.

Chris, welcome to the podcast.

Wow. Thank you. What an introduction. I'm so happy to be here, Katie. Thank you for having me.

Well, okay, let's dive in. What is Hope4?

Hope4 is deliberately vague in as much as when we first came to Moldova, we thought we were going to be Hope4 Moldova, but we soon became aware that Hope4, dare I say as a brand, signals something far greater than just one segment or one country or one aspect of anything in that country, and that really we've become hope for whatever we need to be, whether that's hope for victims, orphans, widows, it's whatever the imagination thinks it can be.

That's kind of beautiful and stressful because it seems to me that whatever comes up, you are there to kind of deal with it. Tell us about Moldova, the headlines of Moldova, its issues. Just because some people might not even have a very clear idea of where Moldova is.

There's a board game in the UK called Where is Moldova? And it's this geography board game. Oh, the irony. Because we travel a lot, particularly from a fundraising piece. We were in the U.S. a while back. And I'd have constant conversations, "Hey, we are from Moldova," and the glazed look. And in fact, the ones that make me smile most is those that assume they know where it is and say, "Is that New Hampshire?" Or something like that.

Not very.

No. Exactly. So when I say to them, "Okay, we are surrounded on three sides with Ukraine," they get it. It's Europe's poorest country. It competes ironically with Ukraine for that title, but it's Europe's poorest country. It suffers 80% poverty. It's current inflation rate is around 32%, and fuel has gone up by more than 600%. So people without before have even less now. And in fact, recently we learned of several people who had lost their lives simply because they can't afford to put fuel on the fire. Just to heat our home, it's gone from around £4.50 a day to £25 a day. That is unsustainable. And so, people have got a choice this winter... Winters, by the way, can get to as low as -20, -30 degrees centigrade. They have a choice. They either freeze or they starve or both.

And so, we are on a race against time. I mean, we can't do everything, but we've deliberately positioned ourselves as people that will fight poverty, human trafficking, and support refugees. And this is why the support of the international community is critical in saving lives.

Tell us how it began.

Oh, my goodness. So our why, our why gets me even now. And so, I was running a successful printer business, selling sustainable print services, but to the office sector. So you can imagine the negative impact that COVID had on my organisation, because offices emptied. Where our costs still continued, but our profits plummeted. So, it was tough.

And anyway, I was working and I heard Zoe begin to sob. So I went downstairs and asked her what the matter was, and she explained. Zoe's Romanian. And Zoe, present company excepted, is the nicest human being I have ever met, and I just happened to be married to her. She's an extraordinary human. In all the time we've been married, this is going to sound crazy and perhaps even boring, we've never argued, because I live with love, and that's how it manifests every single day. So she's gentle, she's kind. And I heard her crying. And I asked her what was wrong, and she said that she'd just read in the Romanian news in a region that she grew up in called Iași, which I ironically is just across the border from Moldova, she read that during a three-month period during COVID, that 74 mums checked into a maternity hospital, gave birth, and then snuck out without their babies because of their poverty, and it caused her to cry.

And of course when she said that, it caused me to cry as well, and it still does. The idea that people in a moment of desperation did what to us seems the unthinkable. And yet people that are so convinced that they can offer nothing to this baby, not through selfishness, but through desperation, but that was our why.

And she famously said to me, "I want to move to Moldova." So she'd just come back from helping orphans. And if she was sat next to me, she would complete the sentence, because I said over my dead body, because I had no call and no desire to come to Moldova until that moment, when I realised that I have an opportunity. I'm 52, I don't act like it, but I'm 52. And I thought, "I've got an opportunity while there's breath in my body to make a difference." And I didn't know what it looked like.

Because of COVID, our finances had been decimated and I'd attempted to sell the company, and it looked as if it was successful, but it failed in the end. So we literally moved with nothing. So we used the last of our savings to get some of our furniture across and moved into this house, and that was to look after some orphans. But we weren't allowed to immediately look after some orphans because we had to go through the residency process and different things.

So during that period, I got busy. So I brought, and this kind of goes back to the original point, I bought entrepreneurial tenacity. So I'd brought that kind of business tenacity and that entrepreneurial flair into the NGO sector. And rather than sit around waiting, we got busy. We started to reach out and to use LinkedIn particularly as a way of communicating what we were doing and sharing with the world.

And that's the funny thing, during the first 12 months, the world wasn't listening. And I was going through this massive learning curve in terms of who we are as an organisation. And so, it was important to truly understand who we are and what we do.

And so, we have three pillars; fighting, poverty, human traffickings, and supporting refugees. And I started to try and understand what is the common theme between those three. And really, I started to think about the body. And if we understand that our extremities represent human trafficking, poverty, addiction, loneliness, and all those aspects, domestic violence, abuse, trafficking, if I've already said that, but they become what we see. And at the heart of it is poverty.

And it's incredible how you can link all of, for example, Moldova's issues to a diseased heart. And so, rather than simply focus on what we see, I'm going after the heart, because I believe by doing that, we can start to impact the obvious things about the things that we deal with over here. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does, completely. And there's lots to unpick there, but what you said about knowing who we are, I think that's relevant to any business, because whatever message you're trying to get across, whatever you're trying to achieve, it's got to come from a place of self-knowledge and authenticity. And I think your authenticity comes across hugely in the broadcast that you do on LinkedIn. But knowing what the company stands for, do you think there's any kind of differentiation between what Chris Lomas' values are and what Hope4's values are? Is there any difference or are you one and the same?

I would say one and the same. For us, it's all about love. I talk about oranges quite a lot, because I get to speak in different places now. And I always take an orange with me with an orange squeezer, and I talk about how we're all squeezed. Pressure's always applied. And I typically will get a child up to help me demonstrate. And I'll ask them, "If I squeeze this orange, what's going to come out?" And they look at me really confused and say, "Orange juice," or suc de portocale, as they call it. And I say, "Well, what if I really squeeze it hard? What's going to come out?" And they say, "Well, suc de portocale." And I say, "Well, that's right." And so, we demonstrate it.

We press it really, really hard and squeeze it really, really hard. And sure enough, what comes out is orange juice. And then, I challenge those in the room, "What comes out of you when you are squeezed?" We don't do what we do to impress people. We do it because it's the right thing to do. And whenever I'm under pressure and whenever I'm being squeezed, I have to make sure what comes out of me is what underpins everything we do, which is love.

So let's talk about how you communicate that message. This podcast is about Storytelling For Business. And the stories you are telling, they're heartbreaking, they're powerful, and they're really from the heart. And you've really developed personally as a storyteller over this time because your messages are really life or death, aren't they a lot of the time?

And do you know what, Katie? When I read your email in preparation for this, I was kind of humbled because I don't see myself as a storyteller. I certainly haven't set out, and I don't wake up every morning thinking, "Right, I'm going to tell a bunch of stories."

I tell you what, I've had to learn something. And there was a brilliant lady in Dubai who contacted me to say, "For goodness' sake, stop what you're doing." And I hadn't realised, but because of my lack of experience within the charity sector, that I became that typical charity that wanted to shame everyone into doing something. And I would show you pictures of orphans, pictures of hungry people, and pictures of desperation and say, "Well, what are you going to do about it?" And I had to soon realise that that doesn't work.

It's still the way a lot of the big guys do it. And I'd love to just touch on the big guys and what differentiates us as an organisation. But we've all sat there with our dinner and just about to tuck into our mash and peas and they show a picture of an emaciated child and really guilt people into responding, and are successful in doing that.

But this person contacted me and said, "Look, that isn't the way you should do it, because people love what you're doing. They love you and Zoe. And they will donate because they love you."

And my sister was a critic as well, my sister in America. She was like, "Oh, my goodness, you make me feel guilty every time I open your posts." And that wasn't what I was trying to do. That was just a lack of education, a lack of understanding in terms of the journey we were on. It was conceived from a place of love. It was conceived from a good place, because I don't profit.

Zoe and I don't pay ourselves a salary, so I'm not profiting from anything. We take what we're given and immediately translate it into tangible aid. And it was about eight months ago that I had to switch. And so, I started to tell stories. I started to report.

Can you share one of them now?

Okay. Can we talk about Doyna? Two days ago, we visited her. She is the victim of domestic violence. It started when she was 15. She been with the same man, but he started to physically abuse her from the age of 15. She's now 23. So for eight years she was... And we've seen the bruises on her faces. And she has three beautiful children. I think it's six, four, and one and a half. And beautiful, beautiful family. She herself is timid. She's just a baby herself. A call had come to us, "This person's in distress. They're in need." So we went to this temporary house. Katie, I can't even convey how small it was. It was so small that when I took the recording, it required people to leave the room. So it was just me and this family because-

So it's one tiny room?

Yeah. I couldn't extend my hand with people there, it was that small. And she has nothing. She has nothing. This brave young lady has made the decision that she is going to leave this guy. And I said to her, "First and foremost, not all men are like this, but we are here to protect you. We are here to support you." She has to leave this house in two to three weeks.

And so, when I conveyed in this, I'm just presenting the facts now. I'm not demanding something from the audience. I'm not saying, "Okay, this is what I want you to do." Now, it's an invitation. And you probably recall from the video, I said, "I invite you to be a part of this solution here." And her needs are vast. We need to protect her. We need to protect the children. We need to get them into education. We need to obviously get her a house.

This clever man of hers bought a car and put the loan in her name, and now he has nothing to do with her. He's been told to stay away. He can't hurt her anymore. But her child support gets swallowed up in that loan, so the bank keeps it. So she has no money, she has no way of supporting herself or her children. Her needs are complex. There's obviously trauma-informed care that we need to provide.

It's such a desperate situation. And I know all this happened when Hope4's ambassador, Lea Turner, was with you. She was visiting Moldova for the first time. She's a LinkedIn influencer and coach. Can you explain the impact of that one video you made?

So the combination of that and the other videos that we were putting out over the weekend was that Lea Turner raised £15,000 from her community, but she was instrumental in raising only 15,000 today, but instrumental in raising what has been quarter of a million pounds since the war began.

Which demonstrates a simple point. When people believe in what you're doing, they will rally round and they will support. And this translates to business as well. If people are just real and credible and authentic, got friends now across the LinkedIn platform, and they're not trying to sell all the time, they're just trying to be real and relatable, this will always rely on a community. And the community is all about relationships.

And so, I had to realise that I have to form relationships. We feel, over the last two years, we've been building our credibility, our transparency, our authenticity, and to a point now where I don't feel the need to constantly beg people. I just feel the need to enter into relationships and really to use social media, in particular LinkedIn, with the incredible support of brilliant people like you and Lea Turner to really take people on a journey with us.

LinkedIn has become your main platform for sharing your work, Chris, hasn't it? You post videos pretty much every day and you've created a signature style, which is almost like a mini news report with a distinct sign-off. Tell us about that.

Yes, I've become known for this sign-off, which some people like and some people hate.

Go on, tell us your sign-off.

I will update you further. And really, that again was an accident. On the 24th of February, last year, we were having breakfast together, Zoe and I, in our house in the north of the country. We're in the process, this week, of moving to Chişinău. The windows began to shake. And it was 9:00 AM, the windows began to shake. It was the sound of thunder. It sounded like 4th of July outside the window. And because it was daytime, we knew it wasn't fireworks, and we instantly knew that the war had started, and that was the proximity. We're just a few kilometres from the border. And it was that moment that our lives changed irrevocably. We haven't stopped doing what we came over to do. We're still fighting poverty and human trafficking, but now we became a humanitarian organisation.

But here's the point, Hope4 has actually, its potential has outgrown Moldova even. So we're already looking at Hope4 Romania, Hope4 Ukraine, Hope4 Poland, Hope4 USA. When you consider the issues of human trafficking across the world. We've got family in between Vegas and Florida. And those two states have major issues, particularly in the context of Miami, for example, with human trafficking.

And honestly, Katie, I just think somewhere, someone along the line is going to come along and say, "I love what you guys are doing." And so, everything I do right now is about being investment ready, is about positioning ourselves to such a degree that when someone comes along and says, "Chris, I've got £1 million," or £10 million, or £100 million, or even £1 billion, I know exactly how we can translate that.

So Chris, right now, even though Hope4 has huge ambitions and is growing rapidly, it is still a small charity. So how can you compete with the bigger players? And this is relevant to any small business, I think. As a small voice in a noisy world, how do you get your message across, so that people listen, follow through, and take the action you're asking for?

Do you know I got goosebumps? You just asking me that question. I think it's turning up, and people will eventually see your passion, people will eventually see your credibility and authenticity and value for money. We don't have the overheads. And regardless of how we grow, we always want to be able to provide the greatest value for money for those who are investing in us, but also those that we serve. And so, I've been a small business owner. I've kind of been through those challenges.

And honestly, I wish I knew then what I know now, because I think I've been infinitely more, and I use this word lightly, but for the context of this conversation, I've been more successful as a charity organisation than I was as a business organisation, purely because it's not about shareholders now. It's about lives. And you mentioned it before. In fact, one of the questions you asked me in the email was what gets me up in the morning, it's because lives depend on me turning up.

So I've got one more question for you. We've talked about all the amazing and powerful stories that you've been telling and the incredible work that you've done. What does your story look like for the next five years, Chris?

We want to grow, not because we are building a brand or a reputation, but we're building a principle, we are spreading love. And there is this direct correlation between if we grow, we are helping more people. And so, we want to launch into Romania, Poland, Ukraine, we want to launch into the U.S., because we believe that... I mean, there's bigger charities that can do this, but we have to understand there's a collaboration.

And I think we have positioned ourselves in a unique way. And that has been based on two years of hard work; six, seven days a week, 16 hours a day, particularly over the last 12 months, of just going the extra mile, being transparent, being relatable, being real, I hope. And so, I want that to grow. I don't want to be, not confined to Moldova, because we will always be here, but I believe that as we rally support, as people start to look at us and say, "Okay, my money's safe, my investment..." And someone in the U.S., a friend of mine, Lydia Higgins, made a great statement. She said to me, "So what you're doing is connecting people with their own impact." And it was just like, "Yes." And I said to her, "You haven't trademarked that or anything, have you?| Because that's now become our signal, connecting people with their own impact. That's it. Being able to demonstrate to people how, if they trust me with £1, if they trust me with cost of a coffee, that they can actually see how that is impacting real lives.

Where do you get your passion from? And do you ever wake up in the morning and think, "Uh-uh. I'm not doing it today?"

I'm not a morning person. I get up at 6:00 AM every single day because it's discipline. You won't see me this morning. I almost crawled out of bed. And it's partly because of the long hours that I work.

But my passion comes from knowing that every single day I'm saving a life. Every day do I actually prevent someone from dying? Of course not. But I'm bringing something far more powerful. I'm bringing hope in a hopeless environment, in a hopeless situation. And that is dangerous, because you start giving people hope, they can achieve anything.

I come from poverty. I know what it's like. I can relate to these people. People think I'm just this smart individual. No, I'm not. I've known what it's like to go hungry. My parents worked really, really hard. But I've known what it's like. So I'm passionate about people that are relying on me to get out of bed and change their lives forever.

But Katie, I can't do this alone. I need you, I need Lea, I need everyone listening to this podcast to say, "Okay, I'm with you," because it's only together we are hopeful.

And if you give people hope, they can achieve anything. Wow, what a way to end. Well, Chris Lomas, thank you so, so much. And just before you go, tell us the website, so that people can reach out and donate to Hope4.

Thank you so much. So it's hope4.org. So hope4.org. And they can search us on social media, @wearehope4.

Chris obviously works in the charity sector, but so much of what he was saying is relevant to all types of businesses.

Here are my key takeaways. One, you can't guilt or shame or bully people into heeding your business calls to action. They have to want to. And storytelling is a brilliant way to connect with your audience.

Two, Chris talked about connecting people with their own impact. He's found that by inviting people to get behind his work, they become part of the solution and the story.

Three, relationships are the main drivers for business growth. And being realm credible and authentic is the best way to develop those relationships.

And we'll be talking more about authenticity in our next episode.

So for me, it's all about, "This is me. I'm doing the very best I can. I'm just a human," and it's easier to just be me.

That's business organisation queen, Lizzy Parsons from Start Small, Plan Big. Next Time, Lizzy talks about keeping it real and staying true to herself in good times and bad.

Storytelling For Business, episode five; Vulnerability, Connect and Reflect is available now. But this episode is finished. Once again, a big thanks to Chris Lomas from Hope4. He's always up to something. So for updates on the charity's work, check out his LinkedIn videos and give him a follow. And if you'd like to donate or find out more, visit the Hope4 website. All the details are in the show notes. And mine are too. I'm Katie Flamman, and this is Storytelling For Business. Until next time, goodbye.