 Hello and welcome to Leaders Room. My name is Kate Sweatman and I'm with Iklif. I have with me here today I'm delighted to introduce you to in fact Sahar Hashemi. She's a serial entrepreneur. She founded co-founded Coffee Republic in the UK and she runs skinny candy And we're delighted to have her here today because she has a lot to say around Starting a company but even more importantly from our point of view from the leadership point of view is innovation So Sahar, thank you very much for coming. No, it's a complete pleasure. I'm delighted to have you here I know this isn't your first trip to KL What I'd like to ask you about first of all before we get into some of your eight lessons around entrepreneur innovation is How you entered into the field of entrepreneurship actually because I do know that you were a lawyer and I know that your brother who's your co-founder was an investment banker and You know that is a path that's clear It's actually something that you can easily see what the future is going to be if you work very hard and are successful And yet you left all that and you jumped into this world of entrepreneurship And I'm wondering if you could tell us about how you how you did that Well, yes, it's an interesting question because I never ever thought I was an entrepreneur I was growing up. I suppose in the 80s and there was just you know in terms of role models in the UK We had kind of Richard Branson and that was it and he was a bit of a kind of superhuman nature And you just no one could relate to him. So I thought well clearly. I'm not the entrepreneurial type So when I was choosing my career, it wasn't even an option in the 80s So you became a kind of lawyer or banker or accountant and I chose the law and I kind of very much I studied at university. I enjoyed it when I joined the law firm I love doing my training, but very quickly I realized that actually once I sort of did my training and actually became a fully-fledged lawyer I realized oh, there's a disconnect here between who I am what my personality is and What lawyers need to be and I realized it sort of didn't suit my personality and I just remember Complaining thinking this is not me But I think in the 80s very much it didn't have to be you what you did you sort of put your work face on You didn't have to have that strong Connect between who you are and what you do So I ended up staying in this law firm for five years and I would have never thought of leaving because once you get on the path It's difficult to leave it just we have a lot of investment. You've got a lot of education There's a lot of expectations around you and there's that brass rain called partnership out there And you're working your way up and if you leave you've lost everything you worked for and then sometimes I suppose events happen and Sometimes I think Unfortunately, we don't need to we don't make changes that we know we need to unless something kind of drastic happens and what happened to me was We I come from a close family of four and my dad died very subtly at a young age And that was in a way the spark that was what I just suddenly it was like a wake-up call thinking look, you know, I'm doing something. I hate every day. I go there just for the paycheck and Surely I just realized also my dad died that actually life is short and you've got to do some of you Absolutely love doing where you could be you And I left this law firm and it was a bit of a leap because I had no idea I was leaving all this behind everything I built most of my kind of life from sort of since I was a teenager But it was a leap and I'm happy I took the leap How did you get the insight as to what leap to take because one of the things that we know from our experience? We we we deal with people in corporations all the time and a lot of what we talk about is, you know What is your purpose? You know, who are you inside and I think it's you're making it I love to know a little bit more about your story about how you know, there are many many paths out there You could have said well I'm going to become a kindergarten teacher or I'm going to become or we can become a neurosurgeon But you became an entrepreneur and so I'm wondering how that happened. Okay, funny enough when I say leap It was a leap literally a leap down a cliff. It was not a leap into entrepreneurship It was just leaving and it was just and I actually left and I had no idea what I was going to do And I kept thinking well, I'll be in house lawyer. Maybe like that I'll be a bit closer to business and so it was just a leap into in a way Self-discovery for a want of better work and actually yes expert And I decided just take some time off I'd never taken sort of any time off kind of through education and work and I went to visit my brother Bobby who was working in New York as an investment banker and Really, that's when I was in New York and I fell in love with skinny lattes But again, I fell in love with him who's exactly and that was I think if you remember New World coffee had just opened in New York But I fell in love with it again You know, I was fell in love with it, but I came back to my brother and I said gosh I really missed them I can't believe we haven't got these coffee bars as I was going for my job interviews to be in-house lawyer And my brother said I can't believe you've said this is a great business idea. I was like business idea You know, I meant why didn't someone else open it for me to go to it? I I didn't think that was the business idea and there was it that was the first Kind of seeds of entrepreneurship because it was something I needed as a customer Exactly and I hear you know jumping ahead 20 years one of the things in your book is you know get in the Feet of your get into the shoes of your customer and that's what's gonna give you insight Essentially kind of what I learned on this journey at coffee proper being an entrepreneur is I did something that was very much me I love tasting things. I love eating things. I'm a real consumer So I would you know, I ended up connecting myself Isn't there a big jump between loving to drink coffee and then running an empire? Well, you know think about running an empire is you know once never to talk There's no such thing as running it you do once every time, you know And you just slowly get used to that I think what people find daunting actually about entrepreneurship is this idea of subtly if you know no one Kind of no one is born 50 and no one is you know You just it's a step-by-step day by day stage and it's actually very doable Which is why my first books called anyone can do it because you know, I never thought I would be like this And yeah, so so so that's and interestingly actually on the flight here I was reading there's a new book called creative confidence by David Kelly and Tom Kelly from IDO And that was interesting There was a whole kind of chapter there about how we used to do stuff because it looked good And that was a thing to do and you know your parents were proud and and now people are just actually have to be much More true to who they are and they don't choose their career because it's the thing to do when it looks good And it's safe because they doesn't exist I suppose so it's essentially about you know Something that actually suits your personality and is you did now was this a break for you in terms of your family You said your family is very strong very close and you lost your father. Did your family? what was their attitude about work and Life because I'm relating what you're saying back to what a lot of people would say about the Asian culture Particularly Chinese Asian culture, which is actually you do do what your parents want you to do because that's the filial piety thing and Your parents know better and so and they're trying to look out for you They're trying to keep you safe and so they try to help you Create a future that they know will get you there and what I'm hearing you say is that maybe that's harder to do now Than it used to be maybe that was a maybe that was a good path when you only had you know, Dr. Lawyer accountant But now you've got Dr. Lawyer accountant, you know skinny candy options and so it's much much even if your parents are Have all the best intentions. It's very hard for them to actually figure out what your future should be for you That's right. Yes, absolutely, and I do get terrified the idea of young children now wanted to be entrepreneurs at a very young age and We did it and I always I mean, you know, my my my dad I so we had my mom and my mother was actually very very supportive because my mother is intuitively a Wristaker and a adventurer and my dad much more conservative So we always think if only he knew what we ended up doing that we both chucked our jobs as Lauren the rest of Anchor I would have probably killed him off anyway that decision in itself But yes, but you know sometimes I think I suppose sort of which is kind of what I believe as well Is that it's quite good at a young age to go and work somewhere and have a profession learn work ethic And then maybe later on and then maybe parents have more confidence in their kids once They know they've done that and they've earned their stripes in a way and I learned an awful lot Being in law firm of my brother at the mess of bank and I see people who have had the traditional Career I think have learned a lot of disciplines that they can I was gonna say discipline I think it's true. It is true. It's work ethic is a discipline That's sometimes entrepreneurship is a bit the Wild West, you know Yeah, absolutely, and then those those are tools that are very useful That's very interesting because I think you're being very modest when you say well You start out and you learn and you go and next thing, you know, and you have this empire because most companies Do either stay small or actually fail within the first two or three years So there's something that you did that was different. There's something that you managed to do to get over that dangerous hump and Would you attribute it to your training? And no, do you know what I actually treated to is that fact that? We just genuinely we were our own customers. We loved the product. We done our research We were out there seeing what's out there I was lucky that my partner was my brother who had the financial skills So together we made the perfect entrepreneur I spend a lot of time judging a lot of business plan awards and entrepreneur awards And you know, it's when you see why businesses fail people often go into businesses where they just think it's a good idea Someone said it's a good idea. They haven't really thought it through. They don't really know the market You often find the reason why so many businesses fail. It's just this sort of again lack of thoroughness Yes, it's a lack of thoroughness. They don't they don't really know they didn't hadn't planned it properly Interesting how about building the business in terms of people, you know, we're a leadership and governance center So we're always interested in the people aspect When you build a business much larger It goes beyond your own dream and even beyond your own skills into Finding people and sort of getting them up to speed so that they can do what you need them to do When you're not in the room, right when you're not in the shop because you ended up with how many 110 shops, right? So any insights to share on that well, okay I think you've had a big point for me because that's sort of currently what I What I do a lot of and kind of it's sort of in a way goes goes to my habits because I Used to think, you know companies start off small They need the entrepreneur and when you get big you just need professionals to run the company And in a way that people who show up on time and do their job and absolutely sort of, you know It's kind of exactly people managers, you know Who's professional job is managing and they should think and that's how we felt the coffee Republic, you know We build it up. There was a lot of passion a lot of out-of-the-box thinking and when we got became an adult in a way When the company became an adult It's sort of we felt like oh now it needs almost adults supervision. So I'm fascinated by what you learned in retrospect growing Coffee Republic Attempting to professionalize it having it work to an extent, but then you came to a realization that Maybe that's not the best way forward for a company So can you talk more about that this whole notion of innovation and entrepreneurship happening throughout the company? Yes Well, I think kind of I suppose, you know You you really learn from your mistakes and it was only once I left go for Republic that I realized the idea that we thought Oh, we're just the entrepreneur and entrepreneurs are good for startups and entrepreneurs don't actually belong to a company that grows up How wrong that was because the world's changed to such a kind of level now whereby every single company needs to behave much more like an Entrepreneurial company let much more like a startup because even if you're a gigantic company, you still need the agility the flexibility The forward thinking but what about alignment? What about alignment? How do you make sure that those people who are being so entrepreneurial and creative aren't just Heading off in the wrong direction. You see I think they get this sort of misconception about people being entrepreneur creative as in they are risk-takers out there taking bold risks and for me and ignoring everyone else and you know taking Searing the company off in another direction. You know for me creativity is the everyday stuff. It's in the really mundane stuff It's constantly reviewing what you're doing seeing what the competitors are empathizing with your customers And seeing what's out there and making sure you're ahead of the curve The way I learned this lesson was you know when we were small at corporate Republic We were a typical startup. No head office. No hierarchy. No bureaucracy. We were out there with the customer We were all our own customers each person had a pet store. They would get to pet store every day So you know constantly people knew what was going on in the field And it was out of the box thinking because we were new so we didn't hire all those experienced people We didn't hire people who knew we couldn't afford people industry with industry experience So all we could afford was coffee drinkers was you know kind of fanatical coffee drinkers Who were really obsessed with what we did and really believed in the corporate Republic? But as we got bigger very very gradually we started attracting the CVs We brought people in from larger companies and they said oh, well, you know, we need a structure and we know And of course there's a balance there because you can't run a company with 100 bars, you know out of a kitchen table So you do need certain structures and disciplines But sort of ways to keep track of things. Okay ways to keep track of things But that came at the expense of sort of it was like, okay now suddenly and I remember when this new Cohort came that we hired because we thought we needed them almost barriers went up around desks, you know Okay, what's your title? Okay, that's your title. You focus on that area. I became marketing director That was going to be only my area marketing Um, you know, then the whole out of the box thinking goes because you hire someone from Nestle And he spends his whole time telling you got a thing he does and that's you know, they try that Nestle Nestle has commissioned huge money on that believe me that idea doesn't work So suddenly and then very much so suddenly the head office becomes very important It all happens at the head office, you know, it's all about the meetings It's all about the people down there don't feel as invested anymore because frankly they aren't there And then you're fixing to come far away because you're so busy in the head office That you don't have time to go out to the stores anymore And I could see this happening and I didn't quite realize what was going on I was like, I'm in the store and sometimes I was like, oh, why aren't you at the office? What are you doing? Well, it was really important to go and have a latte every morning and see what was going on Rather than read some market research report or some mystery customer And and that's when I saw the difference between entrepreneurial culture versus corporate culture And it's really kind of once I left I realized that Kind of what large companies are struggling now with this this idea of you know, how to be innovative They have so many resources, but it's just this lack of creativity, which is basically ideas plus making it happen So what happens? Why why do people love corporatization so much? Why do people want to have the walls up in effect? Why do they enable the the titles to take over? What's your theory? My theory of that is that it's been like that since the beginning and it was fine in the 70s and Kind of 80s because change wasn't that big So as long as you set up things were you know the status quo was pretty much the status quo You know throughout your whole career and all you needed to do was just turn up and the pace of change wasn't so much So I just think it's actually a habit and I think in large companies because these things structures have been set in stone in a way They have become very rigid structures I think technology has made a big difference too. Don't you think because now you can be out in the field And you can be in connection where before you couldn't you sort of had to choose I'm either in headquarters where I'll be talking with my You know peer group In the in the different functions all the time or I'll be out in the market And I'll be receiving orders, but I can't be both and now you can't be both And we was they don't realize that it's an interesting way. There's a disconnect They haven't caught up with technology the the way technology has so you know in the same extent I always say people in big companies listen the same way that on a sunday you still get work emails It wasn't like that before I mean before you'd have to actually turn up at the office to get you know Get a voicemail or hear a get a get a sort of receiver fax And now because workers encode so much on people's lives There's no quid pro quo Whereas I think it should be the reverse and people should be allowed that flexibility And much more openness and once you remove those old structures I think people are inherently creative It's just they have and they want to believe they want to engage They want to be part of this work, but if you keep if you keep you know counting their hours And and and clocking them in and out then they're going to respond in kind and say well If this is how you're counting me then this is how I'm going to count you And then it becomes it's sort of an almost slightly antagonistic relationship between the individual and the work as opposed to We know we have faith in you. We know you're doing your job. We know you're excited You know, we're on you know, please stop working so hard Because you're because you're getting over involved We have time to you know, me you have time to have your recording like long get out there have time to spend time with customers You know, let's see how many meetings are necessary. So for me it really is and I think corporations are a huge need of them They feel The people in it feel oh, I'm not the creative type entrepreneurs are different So I spent a lot of time working within corporations saying actually, you know, we are all the same It's just that you've got these structures, which are just like literally Stifling any creativity you have or you may have gone through a system that has And this is something I hear about a lot in asia Which is you've gone through a system that basically made you want Rewarded you for knowing a right answer As opposed to rewarded you for pushing on an idea or even challenging an idea or coming up with a different idea And so that's it seems like the The challenge for people who've been through a system like that wherever that may be Is that much greater because they've got to take more layers off of themselves in order to do that So i'm really curious in your workshops. How do you do that? How do you do you ever run into sort of some tough nuts that say listen? I i'm closed and you actually help open them I mean, I mean it's really interesting because I'm the way I do it and this is how I tackle creativity is Because there are these wonderful creativity books by i'm sure people you know, but I kind of find these sort of Something's complicated and if you're you know An executive it's just it's not it's for me I just figure that listen and this is what I've realized isn't entrepreneurs This is what we think about these a couple of stocks that we stick to and if you think like that then this will Really help towards you becoming entrepreneurial and again. I think it's about energy It's just that you you do have so one of them is I can go through my habits But you know becoming your customer Genuinely, you know experiencing what they experience not reading a market research report being out there Seeing it cooling. We're not so different from each other Whatever that person's experience whatever you experience is what they experience. Okay. I was in a room with someone and someone said Whoever it's a customer put your hands up a consumer Do people it was in the corporate environment people never put their hands up. They didn't consider themselves consumers. It was really extraordinary Whereas you know for so for so the way I see this entrepreneurs It's really easy because all entrepreneurs start as customers themselves. You know, that's that that's all they look at So so that's a really obvious thing that changes energy hugely and I even I have this I've got to pharmaceutical companies and a lot of them actually they chose that job because of the drugs helping people's lives But there's a disconnect. They forgot why they're there. They never even see that end result They're there managing that becomes what they do day to day is just their career Versus and so once people start engaging with the end that to me the whole idea. That's a great example Why did I go work for a pharmaceutical company? Because I know they create products that save lives, you know, or improve the quality of life To me that implies a lot about what the role of the senior leader is To help people to stay connected to their own mission to stay connected to why they joined Do you have any ideas around that? I mean, what happens to the person at the top? That who probably also joined for the same reason for all the best reasons What happens to that situation that person at the top or that team at the top? Where somehow they they they sort of forget they they fail to help people connect to their own best self That's right. Yes. No, absolutely No, interestingly, um, I just actually went to breakfast with um, so terry lehy of tesco kind of I'm sure you're coming and he said something interesting about market research He said by the time market research reaches the CEO's office it becomes a fairy tale You know, so in a way by so sanitized that you know, it's not the real story Yeah, it's completely just just, you know, the first person that gets the market research changes around and you know, it's exactly by time Absolutely, that's it. And so therefore I think it's companies that are, you know, again, you know It's it's I suppose just a bit of stereotype to mention a sort of steve jobs person But when you read someone like that who was so close to the end product, um, you know Howard Schultz of starbucks, you know, why did he go back because you know, probably he visited 26 stores a week When when he was CEO and he's gone back to do that because for him It was all about what was going on the theater the hiss of the coffee making the frothing of the machines So it's about all CEOs need to get back to that and you know, we sort of fall in love with the empire It's not about that. I think everyone needs to get back to the customer And which is what entrepreneurs do because there is no kind of empire there. It's just the customers all you have really Yeah, so that's my first one. My second one is get out So that's the whole thing we're discussing was you know, the reason why the I don't see the customer there so busy having being busy Exactly and bureaucracy then that kills it that whole Presentism that actually still exists Presentism yes, I mean showing up is Make sure you clock in before a certain hour make sure you clock out after what happens in between or what you're doing at your desk Yeah, and and sometimes I go through when I do my work So we go through the kind of their their weekly diaries and often they have conference schools With people within the same off like in the same building, you know how this and these are I mean, they never kind of get out there. Let's get out And this is just a conference school is not where creativity happens And they spend a lot of time reading reports and stuff So this idea entrepreneurs are out there because entrepreneurs don't have head offices So they actually have to be out there because you often work from where you are or do you see what I mean? Plus you're just constantly figuring it out. That's the nature of an entrepreneur. You're constantly figuring it out Exactly So that's that and kind of and again this whole idea of the royal visits that people do You know kind of again working with a beauty brand company They said that sometimes when senior management go to see the setup in a department store of the beauty brand Everyone knows everything's polished almost freshly painted by time they get there Absolutely everyone knows and they come like with a whole entourage and you know And that's stuff entrepreneurs then do so I reduce this all to real simple stuff entrepreneurs because I think My third one is the importance of being clueless Which is basically entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs are clueless. So there is no dominant logic There's no this is how we do things here It's just you know, you you you you see stuff because you you're you're like a novice You know, you're like a you look at from the outside. So you spot opportunities others miss Um, so that that is kind of a big point of this idea of unlearning Becoming a bit clueless forgetting about what you always know. I think I think it's an important one I think that's very important. I can see that and yet I can also see that you do you do know some things And so the balancing act is there a is balance the right way to talk about it or is an interplay Yes, an interplay. It's being aware. Yes I mean what I try to do again I'm not because you try but the but what I what I try to my workshop is um I have sort of limiting phrases versus clueless phrases and some of the words that and people are just, you know As soon as you ask people it just comes out, you know, oh, no, this is not how we do it Oh, no, then this is not the right time. I mean, this is not important now This is how we do we're too busy now for this You sort of it just kind of is all these words that without realizing it become That's the thing and people say that and people are often responsible themselves They become aware they say it a lot So it's kind of in a funny way It's the language is the attitude of you know, am I looking at this afresh or am I looking this with all this baggage that I carry And I really sold out and is my ego involved in whatever however I've done it before because I think that's a lot of what happens when you get these people in from Company x and they join your organization and they how do I imprint on here? How do I show my value? It's all about their own security around Showing that they're valuable as opposed to saying hey, you know what I'm new here. Let me see what I can learn Yes, exactly. And then that then that's where you sort of said, you know, a lot of that's why they say, you know Everyone's reading the same diet of information That their competitors are reading, you know, everyone meets the same market research reports Again the book that they were saying they copy and paste, you know, it's the same thing So this is the idea of actually, you know, what sounds like bad market research. Yeah, absolutely But they tend to do that. They're just sitting there is a lot of bad market research So this is about being an outsider checking the box again. It's not passionate It's not passionate saying well, there's a process the process includes this It happens to be market research. Okay, let's check that box. Exactly. But it's not deep curiosity Exactly. It's not deep knowledge And what seems to be the passion is deep curiosity is actually What's better for you as an individual have deep curiosity and have passion or take the box I'm taking the box is very boring thing to do and you turn into Automatum when you take the box, you know, whereas when you're exercising curiosity in the workplace That's why entrepreneurs have so much fun and love it Because that's what you're doing. You're exploring and what I find actually often is People are very different how they are like at the barbeque the weekend than they are in the workplace and Applies quite a bit for men as well. I think and so sometimes they don't bring those same skills of Playfulness and that sort of thing to the workplace. So this is about, you know, removing everything they know So my cluelessness my fourth habit is Is notching up on nose Which is basically Yes, notching up on nose, which is basically receiving a lot of nose So what I mean by this is, you know, when we were at comfort public, I mean, we got rejections from 40 bank managers That's nothing because Howard Schultz of starbucks got 278 bank managers So that's the idea that entrepreneurs often get nose in pursuit of their idea because innovation is really messy And no one's going to say oh my god genius idea. This is brilliant. People always reject ideas But there's a lot of conservatism from everyone's part and especially big companies So this is the idea that actually no one's going to say yes. Oh my god, that's such a brilliant idea You're going to get a lot of resistance because new things are resisted. So you need to factor that in I'm thinking back to when I was when I was in university and graduating and of course everyone applies for jobs Right and people get a lot of nose and the way that they dealt with that Rather than get rejected was to tape them up on their walls, you know But so you could make fun of the no you could make fun of the no and just say oh, I got another no today You got to sort of take the power out of the no and not let it bother you It's almost the word homeless has to become meaningless Exactly, you know because it's just someone's opinion and they don't know what you know They don't know they haven't got time. Maybe they had a bad day. They said no, exactly And yet this got a real stigma. I think in companies. Oh, I went someone's almost said no Oh my god, like this is it, you know, I remember when I was at a law firm It was just someone saying no to an idea was really you were sort of struck down So I think is this and this sort of attitude to and that creates fear and I think there's a little fear in organizations And fear. I think there's the biggest Block to creativity because fear makes us complacent here in judgment. Yeah, well, it's it makes you very worried Yeah, so as the leader and again, I'm drawing this back to we recently considered I told you before we got going here. We recently completed a very large study of asia Asian leadership and one of the things that Actually is no surprise. You didn't need a large study for this Was that it's often the culture in many asian firms in many asian families in many asian countries That there is a boss at the top who is very much respected And the form of respect is to not speak up The way the form that the that respect takes is to Do what the boss says and this is obviously a tough thing For a company that needs to be innovative because every company needs to be innovative these days So, you know, maybe now or maybe later you can give us some advice on Either to this person or to this person on what needs to change in that relationship It's probably both actually But what advice would you have on the basis of your attempting to help people to become or organizations to become more innovative How can they get past that very entrenched dynamic? That Is actually, you know centuries old Yeah, I'm gonna say well, that's the kind of million dollar question in a way I suppose kind of what happens is presumably the the the leader on the top realizes that some sort of change needs to happen Right. I mean, that's the thing. I mean if you're a leader and you've really got your kind of head to the ground You realize actually Things are changing to this way. It's not going to work anymore So then the question is what do I need to change? So I think the leader needs to change their own behavior about how he released they released sort of, you know kind of people's creativity And you know, once it's released the way I see it is, you know, I don't know much about company culture All I know is about individual behavior And once everyone buys into this idea that they need to behave differently and it's actually fun to behave differently And there's a bit of reward in it and then there's reward in it. It's certainly no punishment And exactly that sort of that's why I just believe you just slowly that's how you create kind of culture change for me It's individual. So, you know, that's what I kind of working with small teams And you know, what I'm seeing in corporations, which is why me as an entrepreneur gets invited constantly to big corporations Is they need that they listen We need these people to they're too stuck there. They hate change And it's that sort of stagnancy is not it's not good for a company in this it is crazy world We live in so I think everyone's realizing how important that is and it's becoming a bit of an imperative I think for everyone to change they everyone Top down to to change how they behave are there certain industries or certain parts of the world or certain Types of companies that are getting this message more quickly Are there certain for example, are there industries that are being more affected by safe technology change? Or are you just finding that there's sort of a general awakening to yes I think yeah, it's a general awakening in their pools and there are changes happening You know people are behaving differently, but it takes a long time because that old World Corporate culture, you know was there for a long time. So it takes it takes time to change direction Of a big ship like that I think there's definitely you know one can always sort of celebrate the kind of those sort of convalesced startups and You know, that's how they do it But you know, I think that change is happening in what you call the kind of bigger kind of companies And it's just in little pockets Um, it's just that they don't kind of they haven't seen the results yet And it's it's a difficult thing to put your finger on But the fact that people are surviving means they're not behaving in the old way because I'm convinced the old way is just Just no company is going to survive if they behave Yeah, and then young people you see if it's when it's less fun You're not going to attract the the young young people don't want to Well, you're certainly not going to attract people who want to be creative. Yeah And young people I think because you know because of technology the way their brain is wired They're completely I mean they're not going to work for a company that Treats them like that. So yes, it's interesting. Yeah so, you know Any words of wisdom I mean for For for people who are trying to make that shift like say say we're say We're dealing with someone who they're at the top of the house They've had a more traditional kind of upbringing and they've had a more traditional kind of experience They get it intellectually that they need to make this shift But there's other things that need to happen inside of them to truly Open up and feel comfortable with this to start talking to some people more on a first name basis To start really listening to new ideas and speaking last instead of first You know to truly keeping the door open in fact maybe moving the door so that it's not at this big office at one end of the You know one end of the building to you know more central location What kind of advice can you give to that person who's trying to make that shift and Is hitting a bigger barrier perhaps than they know how to do it and this person You were thinking the sort of leadership person right? Yeah You know I mean what I find is often because this is kind of who sort of often instructs me with a problem You know people at the reason why they have got to the leadership position because they do have passion for the product Which is how they made themselves there or if there were so they do have something have that special connection They they have it. It's just that it's been suppressed. It's there But even for them it's been suppressed even for them They haven't got time to be out there with the customers anymore because they're because they're managing people and people You just think manage your managing per se was all you did So I think even for people like that that you know they really are Often get back in touch get back in touch absolutely And I recently sat on a very interesting board at an energy company And it was I don't sit on boards because I don't like the way kind of boards operate But it was called a consumer council. And so we had the CEO of the company We had the heads of all the departments, but we also had two of the girls in the call center at the call face We had I actually sat there as a customer I became a customer of the energy company and it was just we were just discussing the real stuff with the CEO there with the managers of the teams there with the girls from the call center saying yes You know, this is the problem we've got and a lot of real issues were discussed and the energy of the company changed They made huge changes because real stuff was discussed in real time with people from the call face You know was just this hierarchy doesn't work for anyone either or the the the person, you know, kind of way down So I think it's about everyone reconnecting with why do they do this? Yeah, yeah, are there any, um, I guess the last question Are there any industries that you've encountered where that's just not possible No, not at all. I you know, that's why when I sat on this energy company I was like, oh my god, that is so boring. You know, how could someone like me sit on the utility energy? That's exactly and yet it was one of the most interesting things I ever did because I just said, you know, Everyone's got a consumer. That's a beauty. Everyone's got a customer. It was got a consumer and everybody needs energy Everybody needs energy. Everybody needs telecommunications. Everybody if you're making something that nobody wants or nobody needs, then you're not in business So by definition, if you're in business, there is some sort of deep need that you're actually Meeting and you've just got to reconnect to that exact and often people who actually work there Must have had some connection with that with that product and that's what you often find, you know I think passion is a bit overused in a way for me passion is, you know Everyone's got some sort of connection to why they worked at whatever company it is And it's all about is going back inside and finding what is that connection? What do you actually love doing and reconnecting so once everyone works In their calling in their flow in their zone I think everyone performs better and and that's how you get energy change culture change. That's great Lovely. Well, I I could feel your passion and your energy. I can see why you're so successful I would love to talk to you more But I think we've come to the end of our meeting unless there's anything else that you'd like to say No, I've enjoyed it tremendously. Thank you very much Well, thank you very much. This has been Sahaj Hashemi here from with us with the leaders room And so I'd like to thank you very much for joining us here at Iqlif and I wish you the Best visit here in KL. Thanks. So thank you from the leaders room. It's a wrap