Latest / King Dems Podcast | Growth Mindset, Leadership, AI and Business Insights / Globalization, Trade Policy & AI Risks: Growth Mindset Strategies w/ Babak Hafezi

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Globalization, Trade Policy & AI Risks: Growth Mindset Strategies w/ Babak Hafezi · King Dems Podcast | Growth Mindset, Leadership, AI and Business Insights

• 0:00
  So I think if you're interested in global policy, I, if you're
• 0:03
  interested in your stance and how the world is working around
• 0:07
  you and how that impacts you, I think this is a very, very
• 0:09
  important podcast, right? Ultimately, you don't live in
• 0:13
  your own economy better self. You're living in a competitive
• 0:17
  environment and whatever happens somewhere else in the world, it
• 0:20
  impacts you in one way or the other, maybe with massive
• 0:22
  delays, but it impacts you. So being educated about global
• 0:26
  policy, being educated by international economics is
• 0:29
  critically important to see where you stand in the world and
• 0:32
  what affects you and how you can actually monetize that.
• 0:37
  So that that's what I would argue is, is how critical to
• 0:39
  this. Number two, it's any podcasts
• 0:43
  and and podcasts are a great way of becoming more in tuned when
• 0:48
  the industries and segments that you're in and learning from
• 0:51
  other people's experiences, right, is to build a larger
• 0:54
  library of experience knowledge. And you don't have to experience
• 0:58
  everything yourself, but you can actually read about it and learn
• 1:00
  from other people's experiences. So that's why podcasts become so
• 1:04
  critically important. Before we dive back into today's
• 1:05
  conversation, I want to share something important.
• 1:07
  This episode includes a pay partnership with Better Help, a
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  I know for my own journey as a leader and entrepreneur that
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  partnership with their help and I encourage you to take that
• 2:01
  first step. If you've been thinking about
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  it. Sometimes the best investment
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  you can make easy yourself. Welcome to the King Dems
• 2:11
  Podcast, where we share the stories of extraordinary people
• 2:15
  and dissect hot, relevant topics that shape our world.
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  From visionary leaders to trailblazing creatives, we
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  real questions. This isn't just conversation,
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  Breakthrough, starts here. Music licencing reimagined.
• 2:41
  Your life, ladies and gentlemen, who once again welcome to the
• 2:44
  Kingdom's podcast and Diary of a CFO.
• 2:48
  Today our club will be a very, very important guest fighting
• 2:53
  out of New York by way of Washington, DC, United States of
• 2:58
  America. Beck, Walker, Bobberg or Fuzzy.
• 3:04
  How are you, Bobby? Oh good, thank you.
• 3:06
  Wow, now I feel like I'm boxing and the lights are missing.
• 3:10
  Whoa, that is the Bruce Bluffer introduction.
• 3:13
  That's big special arts. You know, life is a fight
• 3:16
  anyway, so welcome to the economic fight.
• 3:21
  Wow. So I've actually prepared your
• 3:23
  your fantastic introduction based off your fantastic
• 3:26
  profile. So sit back and let me give you
• 3:29
  your flowers today on the King James Podcast and Diary of a
• 3:34
  CFO. We are joined by a global
• 3:36
  business strategist, news advisors, shaped Fortune 500
• 3:40
  CEOs, governments, investors and entrepreneurs across continents.
• 3:46
  From guiding Morgan Stanley during the IPO to advising
• 3:51
  international government and scaling companies worldwide,
• 3:55
  Baba Khashezi needs a true authority in strategy, risk
• 3:59
  growth and international market expansion.
• 4:02
  As the founder and CEO of Hafezi Capital International Consulting
• 4:08
  and agent, Professor of the International Business Arts,
• 4:13
  American University, Babak, a wealth of experience that blames
• 4:18
  academic figure with the real world impact.
• 4:21
  Bob Buck, it's a privilege to have you on here.
• 4:25
  Welcome to the show once again. Thank you very much.
• 4:28
  Thank you. And that was a mouthful, that.
• 4:31
  Was a mouthful because your career is a handful.
• 4:38
  No, no, no. It's one that hard for maybe
• 4:42
  maybe a globe for because it's amount of the whole globe.
• 4:47
  Well, it's good to have an impact, right?
• 4:50
  Ultimately, I think that we all live to make impact.
• 4:53
  Absolutely. That that's, that's the main
• 4:55
  goal. You know, I always tell people
• 4:56
  that I'd rather impact obedient lives than make a billion
• 4:59
  dollars because that is what legacy is about.
• 5:02
  But you know, talking about the globe, right, it's interesting
• 5:06
  for us to know about globalisation and that's
• 5:09
  something that is very, very what I say important to you as
• 5:12
  well, given how your body of work has been able to keep
• 5:18
  global impact. Our love for each educators
• 5:20
  about globalisation and how it speaks to what we have been put
• 5:26
  together. Many thanks to quoted right.
• 5:29
  We talk about the China U.S. trade and industrialization
• 5:33
  policies. So let's start from
• 5:36
  globalisation. Yeah, I think one of the key
• 5:39
  elements of globalisation and I think one of the key reasons
• 5:42
  that we became so globalised is because we lived in a world, you
• 5:47
  know, pre World War Two, in a world that was very combative,
• 5:51
  where, you know, friends and foes were always at war.
• 5:54
  And that it did not allow for economic development on a large
• 5:58
  scale and limited people and it created a lot of instabilities,
• 6:02
  economically speaking. So we designed a system after
• 6:05
  World War 2 with the Bretton Woods agreement to to really
• 6:08
  integrate the world and and create institutions.
• 6:11
  And this is a keyword institutions to really be able
• 6:14
  to systemize and and allow us to engage in trade.
• 6:18
  And that system became very America centric early on in the
• 6:23
  50s and 60s and all the way to about the early set.
• 6:27
  America was a big recipient and a winner of that because the
• 6:30
  factors around Japan and the European markets had, you know,
• 6:33
  this is created after World War 2 and America was the only fact
• 6:37
  that was open for business. But then when competition
• 6:39
  started, when Japan came back to the market, when Europe came
• 6:42
  back to the market, it relocated positive competition.
• 6:46
  And then in the late 70's, the beginning of the late 70s and
• 6:50
  early 80s, we have the financial behemoth, which is China, which
• 6:54
  back then was really nothing economically speaking.
• 6:57
  And they started becoming competitive in a global market
• 6:59
  sale. And in the 80s and 90s and
• 7:02
  2000s, they became the manufacturing hub of the world.
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  And we have seen massive dislodgements globally in terms
• 7:11
  of manufacturing jobs, in in terms of economic growth in
• 7:16
  certain sectors. And so this has become a social
• 7:20
  challenge. It started in economics, entered
• 7:22
  politics and then now it's social.
• 7:24
  So it's impacting us on, on, on multi layers.
• 7:28
  Social Economy wow, so you know, I remember doing my first degree
• 7:34
  in economics and being taught the theory of comparative
• 7:39
  advantage, right. So there are sectors in which
• 7:44
  China, for example, has comparative advantage and
• 7:47
  America has comparative advantage.
• 7:50
  The basics in economics is a country should focus on the area
• 7:55
  where they have the comparative advantage, right And I from
• 8:00
  other countries, you know products guarantee not or they
• 8:04
  lack the comparative advantage, right.
• 8:07
  So bringing it to like a personal and individual level.
• 8:11
  But for me growing up, I was talented at music as talented as
• 8:14
  speaking, but I always met people who were more talented
• 8:18
  musically, but I really did not meet people who were that
• 8:21
  talented as me speaking wise and I decided to focus on speaking
• 8:26
  right. So taking it back to America
• 8:30
  versus China, right, there's something I love to see.
• 8:34
  Why hate when you can collaborate, right?
• 8:37
  So globalisation has broken down the pivotal physical walls or
• 8:45
  physical barriers that we used to have prior to technology to
• 8:49
  advancement. So what is your opinion on what
• 8:54
  really needs to be done right in order for US, China, the rest of
• 9:00
  the world to collaborate instead of Haiti and, you know, we have
• 9:05
  global economic prosperity. So absolutely the notion of
• 9:11
  comparative advantage at this is a critical notion economics that
• 9:14
  that is that part in central. But you have to understand
• 9:18
  economics is not always foreign policy, right?
• 9:21
  And this is where economics and foreign policy kind of go in two
• 9:24
  different critical ways. And in a sense that if you're a
• 9:27
  hegemonic power like the United States is, and you want to
• 9:29
  maintain hegemonic power, economic coercion and economic
• 9:33
  power is critically important because that is what you need to
• 9:37
  force other countries into to be able to, to still remain
• 9:40
  powerful, right? I would argue that globalisation
• 9:43
  can actually be divided into kind 6 narratives.
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  And those six narratives are kind of the establishment
• 9:48
  narrative, right? The the establishment narrative.
• 9:50
  Is that what you're talking about?
• 9:51
  That comparative advantage is important.
• 9:53
  We we win in certain industries, we lose in certain industries,
• 9:56
  but everybody wins in the process.
• 9:59
  You also have this what's called the left wing narrative, which
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  is a win lose situation. We have actually four win, lose
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  situations, right, depending on where on the political spectrum
• 10:09
  that you're in. And that is that the elites are
• 10:12
  the ones who are winning, right? That in this case of
• 10:15
  globalisation, the elites are the winners and everybody else
• 10:18
  loses in the process. The third way is the corporate
• 10:21
  of power narrative, which is the corporations win, especially
• 10:25
  multinational corporations win at the expense of people.
• 10:28
  The the right wing populist argument is that the people on
• 10:32
  the other side of the world in developing countries are winning
• 10:35
  against us, that we'll lose it in the process, right.
• 10:39
  And then again still win, lose. Then you have a Geo economic
• 10:42
  narrative. This one is the one in
• 10:44
  economics, you know, for us to maintain our competitive powers
• 10:47
  economically that we need to diminish other people's economic
• 10:52
  powers and we're becoming too reliant at others.
• 10:55
  And the last one is the global threat narrative, which is a
• 11:00
  lose, lose narrative, is that everybody loses in this right.
• 11:03
  We're losing our jobs, we're losing our autonomy, we're
• 11:06
  losing all these different elements.
• 11:07
  And everybody else is, you know, and then you don't have you
• 11:11
  don't have critical critical manufacturing domestically, you
• 11:15
  lose talents. So all of those are kind of the
• 11:18
  narrative. So those are the six narratives
• 11:19
  of globalisation and where you fall economically, where do you
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  fall socio politically? It impacts the way you see the
• 11:26
  world. And I wouldn't argue.
• 11:28
  And so the way you perceive it, the way where you where you see
• 11:31
  the world impacts the policies you implement.
• 11:36
  Absolutely. So think about it from a Brexit
• 11:38
  perspective, right? The, the Brexit perspective was
• 11:42
  to certain degree of Geo economic narrative that that we
• 11:46
  don't want to give power up to the EU, that we wouldn't have
• 11:49
  our own autonomy, that we wouldn't grow internally, right?
• 11:51
  That was an argument and we only dominate by somebody else.
• 11:56
  So that that Geo economic is also a geopolitical argument.
• 12:01
  And that got intensified more after COVID, like if you think
• 12:06
  about what the impact of COVID and the inability for us to
• 12:09
  access materials easily globally because of supply chain
• 12:12
  disruptions. And that really impacted our
• 12:15
  mental models per SE of how we see the world.
• 12:18
  And that has kind of changed the narratives of how we see the
• 12:22
  world and hence economics. This is actually very true and a
• 12:27
  lot to unpack. Right?
• 12:29
  The Geo economics is looking at the way perspectives are aligned
• 12:38
  based off the geography. And you really can't blame
• 12:41
  people for wanting to protect their territory because man is a
• 12:46
  social animal. Human beings are territorial in
• 12:49
  nature. You identify with the territory
• 12:52
  in which you inhabit, right? To protect it.
• 12:57
  But a lot of times we cannot see the bigger picture and that's
• 13:01
  why I I see this. I've said this on the podcast
• 13:04
  before that the capacity of a man is dependent on 4E's, right?
• 13:09
  That is their education, their exposure, their experience and
• 13:13
  their enlightenment. And that is why we have
• 13:16
  platforms like this, you know, to bring that enlightenment to
• 13:19
  help people understand the bigger future, right?
• 13:23
  The, the, the, the first law of the jungle is self preservation.
• 13:27
  But a lot of times you don't realise that being greedy and
• 13:32
  not looking out for others is counter intuitive in pursuing
• 13:37
  self preservation. So I'd like for you to touch on
• 13:40
  that from an economic perspective and also within the
• 13:46
  industrial policies, right Titus?
• 13:49
  Industrial policies. How does you know industrial
• 13:52
  policies and instances of overproduction?
• 13:56
  EG you know steel, solar, impacts of global markets and US
• 14:01
  based industries. Right.
• 14:04
  So I think there's another element that there's an R
• 14:06
  missing in your word, which is risk that humans are in
• 14:10
  generally not willing to take excess amount of risk, right.
• 14:13
  And when your livelihood is being threatened, that is
• 14:16
  because that becomes the, the nasty, the protectionism.
• 14:20
  It's how can I protect my, you know, my industry?
• 14:22
  How can I protect my livelihood? It's the best.
• 14:25
  And then sometimes in that process, I mean, you thinking
• 14:27
  you're doing a good thing, you're actually creating more
• 14:29
  barriers for your sustainability and you're making yourself less
• 14:32
  competitive in the global market space.
• 14:35
  And that's where human. Exactly, exactly, exactly.
• 14:39
  So that is where where we are, you know, we were being
• 14:42
  challenged. So when we talk about, I think
• 14:45
  it's really important that we look at when we use the word
• 14:49
  China, we shouldn't look at it from a Chinese perspective in
• 14:53
  terms of a country, because many times the in the West, when we
• 14:57
  use the word China, we think of the central government making
• 15:00
  this decisions, which if we look at from a, from a company
• 15:03
  perspective, it's not, it's actually much more distributed.
• 15:06
  You know, there is no central authority in in China that's
• 15:11
  setting policy in terms of economic, in terms of business
• 15:15
  policy, right? What I mean by that is that
• 15:17
  there's no person in the Chinese government says this is how much
• 15:19
  steel we're going to produce every single year.
• 15:21
  And it's what's happening very similar to what the USSR used to
• 15:23
  do. It doesn't exist per SE is
• 15:25
  corporations. These are capitalistic
• 15:28
  corporations that have access to raw materials that they have
• 15:30
  created infrastructures with the help of government.
• 15:33
  Obviously in sourcing Robert products.
• 15:35
  Most of us are coming from emerging markets and frontier
• 15:38
  markets. So we're talking about Africa as
• 15:40
  a continent, We're talking about South America as a continent.
• 15:43
  That's where the Roth models are coming from.
• 15:45
  So that's because they have that much capacity, they're producing
• 15:49
  to decrease the cost as much as the possible can to remain
• 15:53
  globally competitive. And that's why you have
• 15:55
  overproduction in China now. In the early 2000s, you did have
• 16:00
  dumping where they brought things like tyres into the US
• 16:04
  market, right? And they dumped it into the US
• 16:07
  market. Don't.
• 16:08
  Forget. Africa.
• 16:09
  Don't. Forget Africa 100% of course,
• 16:12
  but the problem with Africa and institutions are weak, right?
• 16:15
  And because institutions are weak, they they cannot contact.
• 16:18
  Individuals. Weak institutions.
• 16:20
  Correct, correct, correct. So because Africa, the African
• 16:24
  continent in general does not have strong institutions to
• 16:26
  protect businesses, what ends up happening is the African economy
• 16:30
  suffers from it, but the US was able to actually win and they
• 16:34
  won. In the case of tyres in the
• 16:36
  United States, the problem again is the institutions are too
• 16:39
  weak. They were designed for the 1960s
• 16:42
  and 70s and 80s or all the way to the 90s, but they're not
• 16:45
  designed for the 2000s where speed is critical.
• 16:48
  So when you take a case to the World Trade Organisation, it may
• 16:51
  take 3456 years for it to be fully determined.
• 16:55
  Right by that time any industry is dead.
• 16:58
  So we need to refine institutions, including the WTO
• 17:03
  to, to, to short to showcase faster processes of
• 17:06
  enlightenment, of, of legal enlightenment and, and, and
• 17:10
  education. So it's really, really
• 17:11
  critically important. But unfortunately what's
• 17:14
  happening is that our institutions are not keeping up
• 17:16
  with the rate of business, where businesses speed has
• 17:19
  dramatically increased and the instant institutions that are
• 17:24
  behind it are not keeping up. And it's creating massive gaps
• 17:28
  that are created that's creating these uncertainties in the
• 17:31
  market. Industrial policy is being
• 17:33
  damaged in one way or the other, and delays are happening and job
• 17:36
  losses are. You know, Speaking of the speed,
• 17:39
  the speed keeps increasing over time, and we now have something
• 17:43
  that is very, very dear to my heart and links to my government
• 17:47
  name, AI Artificially Intelligent.
• 17:50
  I often joke about it that it's like my parents saw something
• 17:53
  that other people did not see coming.
• 17:55
  My name is Adam. And why am I sharing the same
• 18:00
  initials as artificial intelligence?
• 18:02
  And artificial intelligence is something I have personally
• 18:05
  used, you know, to build my video career.
• 18:08
  My company and I see the speed of this large language models.
• 18:15
  I train AI models and I see that speed at which they respond and
• 18:22
  adapt, innovate. It's really, really what I see
• 18:27
  alarming that the institutions that are meant to be protecting
• 18:31
  our interests, right, are not adapted to the times.
• 18:36
  So like, what do we need to be saying to the policy makers?
• 18:39
  How do we need to drum these into the ears that if you don't
• 18:44
  speed up in terms of your adapting to what is happening,
• 18:50
  especially with AI in business, I think we we are probably going
• 18:54
  to have another World War. I don't know.
• 18:56
  I think that's probably I. Mean don't don't forget the both
• 19:01
  things can be true right? Large learning models are
• 19:04
  extracting data from from outside sources.
• 19:07
  So large language laws to certain degree are actually
• 19:10
  infringing in IP laws. Think about all the data that
• 19:12
  are extracting to create the LM models, right?
• 19:15
  Many of them are based on extraction of IP laws.
• 19:18
  So we there's no protection in IP in that sense. 1 #2 What
• 19:22
  happens if a an adversary wants to degrade our LM and create
• 19:29
  content that is absorbed by the AI?
• 19:32
  So we don't have any systems around that either yet.
• 19:34
  So I think that we're in a completely blue ocean over here
• 19:38
  and that there is no regulation. We don't know where we're going
• 19:41
  and there could be massive social implications and
• 19:44
  challenges ahead of time. We have had remember that we had
• 19:48
  a different word for artificial intelligence up to about 3 or 4
• 19:52
  years ago and that was called machine learning, right?
• 19:56
  Machine learning was very systemized, was very, very, you
• 19:58
  know, there, there were systems in place.
• 20:00
  But artificial intelligence has taken at a different route and,
• 20:03
  and for example, things like things like landing an aeroplane
• 20:07
  and, and flying an aeroplane, they have been part of the
• 20:10
  machine learning process for decades.
• 20:12
  We have ample amount of data, but because we have such refined
• 20:14
  data, because we have had so many issues that we were able to
• 20:18
  solve. Because we know what the
• 20:20
  outliers are, where the anomalies are, when we're going
• 20:23
  to solve for that. We haven't had that right now
• 20:26
  with AI because it's on a massive scale, right?
• 20:29
  And I think that we're going to see massive amounts of legal
• 20:32
  issues and social issues that are going to come up in a
• 20:35
  negative way. So both positive, but also in
• 20:38
  the negative way that we have no legal protection from, which is
• 20:41
  going to be quite worrisome. It's, it's really crazy, you
• 20:47
  know, how can you regulate something that you don't
• 20:49
  understand? Well, the same, you know, we
• 20:52
  don't understand. I mean, I mean, think about it.
• 20:53
  I mean, for example, right now we let's talk about artificial
• 20:57
  intelligence in in, in an autonomous driving cars, right?
• 21:01
  As of right now, main insurance companies in the United States,
• 21:04
  if you get an interaction with an autonomous car, the automatic
• 21:08
  fault is on you, the human, and not on the on the machine.
• 21:12
  So what they're saying is the machine could not actually
• 21:14
  create an error. It is you that created the
• 21:16
  error, right? So even our mental models around
• 21:22
  AI still not refined correctly and we're saying that the
• 21:25
  machine makes better choices than humans do, which in many
• 21:29
  cases they may, but it doesn't. That's not totally true for all
• 21:32
  circumstances because the variables are difficult.
• 21:35
  So this idea that that's the way that we're, we should go ahead
• 21:38
  and, and be is, is, is, is weird.
• 21:40
  So I think that the fact is, I think people do not understand
• 21:43
  and comprehend the fatality of it.
• 21:45
  And rather than saying, listen, we're going to put this in a in
• 21:48
  a box and and figure out how this played in a box and then
• 21:51
  extract the T humanity in general, we have just unleashed
• 21:54
  in the humanity and say, let's figure it out and go along as we
• 21:58
  can and see what happens. And that is freewilling
• 22:02
  optimism. And freewilling optimism can
• 22:05
  actually lead to so many undesired or unwanted
• 22:09
  consequences and outcome, Right, right, right.
• 22:12
  We can only hope for the best. So let's talk about, you know,
• 22:15
  the trade negotiations. Like in your own view, how
• 22:17
  effective are current US, China trade negotiations that's
• 22:22
  addressing long term economic imbalances?
• 22:27
  And the the first thing I'm going to say is I don't think
• 22:29
  tariffs by the nature are bad. Let me explain what I mean is
• 22:32
  tariffs if they're implemented cohesively and concurrently with
• 22:35
  a very well designed foreign policy can actually be very
• 22:39
  effective as a form of really feeding change in the market,
• 22:43
  positive change in the market. And we have seen that
• 22:45
  throughout. You know, we have for example,
• 22:47
  sanction, sanctions are also form of tariffs, right?
• 22:50
  It's the restrictive trade policy as well.
• 22:53
  So you can see how sanctions can be effective in economic
• 22:56
  limitation and, and, and create increases in cost for certain
• 23:00
  countries. We've seen them in Iran, we're
• 23:02
  seeing that in Russia. So we've seen in, in, in
• 23:04
  Myanmar. So we've seen those throughout
• 23:06
  history. And they and yes, they're not a
• 23:08
  panacea for regime change or for anything else, but economically
• 23:12
  speaking, they're pretty powerful and increasing domestic
• 23:14
  costs. But the current unfortunate, the
• 23:17
  current process of tariffs and the way they have been
• 23:21
  implemented by US are quite half hazard, I would argue.
• 23:25
  Meaning that they actually did not achieve any real goal other
• 23:30
  than creating, you know, a, a system of making America an
• 23:34
  antagonist against even it's friends, even it's allies, right
• 23:39
  to to, to have high tariffs against Canada, against Mexico,
• 23:45
  which are your key trading partners against the United
• 23:48
  European Union in general. It is honestly a repressive form
• 23:54
  of economic warfare that does not help in any meaningful way
• 23:58
  the US economy. As a matter of fact, it
• 24:01
  decreases foreign direct investment into United States.
• 24:03
  It creates massive uncertainty in terms of where the US stands
• 24:07
  and what the policy is. And #3 it decreases innovation
• 24:11
  as well because ultimately we need for us to invest our
• 24:14
  country to increase innovation because there's a lot of things
• 24:17
  that we do not know. And hence foreign people bring
• 24:21
  new knowledge, new know house into the US market.
• 24:23
  And that's the, the, the beauty of, of, of global trade is that
• 24:26
  you, you bring different minds together and you create
• 24:29
  something completely new that you wouldn't do individually.
• 24:31
  So I think that the, the form and the method methodology
• 24:35
  that's been imposed is actually creating a system which is
• 24:39
  making the US less competitive globally and as making the US
• 24:44
  less investable. And I don't believe that
• 24:48
  manufacturing is going to come back and mass the United States.
• 24:51
  And if it does, it's predominantly going to be
• 24:53
  automated manufacturing. It's going to be things that are
• 24:56
  that you know that that automation can handle much
• 24:58
  easier. So I agree with.
• 25:00
  You. Yeah.
• 25:01
  So automation is going to be the key element of of job reduction
• 25:06
  in the US at a larger scale. And I'll give you, for example,
• 25:09
  one nuanced case. McDonald's right now is working
• 25:13
  on a process to limit the number of employees to about 3 to 4
• 25:17
  employees per McDonald's. Everything is going to be all
• 25:20
  automated. So that's a lot of low income
• 25:22
  jobs that are going to be gone. And if McDonald's is good at
• 25:25
  doing it, correct. If McDonald's is doing it, then
• 25:27
  all the other competitors have to do it as well to remain
• 25:30
  competitive and to remain to regain pricing power.
• 25:33
  So ultimately the machines are the one that that have been the
• 25:36
  biggest evil in human history. You know, it is not different
• 25:41
  coloured people from different parts of the world.
• 25:43
  It is machines who are the biggest job destroyers in our
• 25:47
  livelihood. And honestly artificial
• 25:49
  intelligence is going to make it even worse.
• 25:51
  So it's the, it's the extension of that machinery from Steam
• 25:55
  into, you know, LLM that's going to completely change the way
• 25:59
  that we actually do. I hope, I hope I'm not going to
• 26:03
  get new enemies because of my because of my initials.
• 26:08
  AIA lot of people already showing me hate.
• 26:12
  They're like your AI. I heard you're coming for our
• 26:15
  jobs, but I'm not coming for jobs.
• 26:18
  I'm here to help you. I mean like for example, the
• 26:22
  steel industry, right, 8090 years ago had 300,000 employees.
• 26:26
  Now you're running with 2030 thousand employees.
• 26:29
  You just don't need the issues. And even even in cheap, cheap
• 26:33
  countries like labour, in terms of labour compared to the
• 26:36
  developed world, right, like China, Chinese are also using
• 26:41
  automation and it's creating less jobs in China, right?
• 26:44
  So this. Is not.
• 26:45
  This is not a purely, you know, Western concept.
• 26:48
  It's a global concept. So this is no, and you're not
• 26:52
  getting it. You're not getting.
• 26:54
  It sadly, sadly. You know what?
• 26:56
  When people ask me like why are we losing jobs?
• 27:00
  Why are jobs being caught, I tell them just two words. 2
• 27:06
  words are the answer number one word is automation #2 word is
• 27:11
  recession. There you go.
• 27:13
  I don't know, do you? Do you have an opposing view?
• 27:16
  No, no, I would, I would add another is lack of innovation.
• 27:19
  I think lack of innovation is another one, right, Because how
• 27:22
  do you produce new jobs, good jobs?
• 27:23
  It's innovation, it's new fields that it cannot be replicated in
• 27:26
  cheaper country because of knowledge isn't there.
• 27:29
  The best example I'll give you is back in 2008, 2009, when the
• 27:34
  US and economy was haemorrhaging about jobs, specifically in the
• 27:38
  car industry, there was a small little electronic car company
• 27:41
  called Tesla that was producing jobs and increasing jobs and
• 27:45
  creating a new market that didn't exist, right.
• 27:47
  Whatever you think about, you think about politically from
• 27:50
  Elon Musk, let's put that aside. But from what he's done in, in
• 27:54
  creating a market in the US that it was, it was one of the
• 27:57
  hardest markets probably to to enter.
• 27:59
  He did a fabulous job in entering the market and changing
• 28:02
  it and creating jobs, manufacturing jobs when the the
• 28:05
  audit industry in the US was haemorrhaging jobs and and went
• 28:09
  bankrupt because of it, right. And that's a great example of
• 28:13
  where we need innovation and innovation is a critical
• 28:17
  component to our growth, which means for innovation to happen,
• 28:20
  we in good education systems, not just the college level, but
• 28:23
  from primary all the way to 12th grade and then also into the
• 28:27
  college system and, and, and post post, you know, bad for
• 28:31
  system. So we need good education.
• 28:33
  That's critically important. Those are the kind of things and
• 28:35
  elements that we really need is innovation.
• 28:38
  That's what's going to create new industries.
• 28:39
  That's what's going to create new jobs and good quality jobs.
• 28:43
  I one of the things that I, that frustrates me so much is that we
• 28:48
  don't necessarily want our kids to go and work in a factory
• 28:51
  floor working 10-15 hours, you know, in a job that may not have
• 28:56
  a great quality of life. I mean, that was the point of,
• 28:59
  of growth and, and development is that we don't want to be in a
• 29:02
  really, really dirty jobs, right?
• 29:05
  We want to be in clean educational jobs that we add
• 29:07
  value to society. I'm not diminishing the value of
• 29:10
  dirty jobs. They're they're in critically
• 29:11
  important, but everybody, every parent wants their two kids to
• 29:15
  have a better quality of life. So why are we regressing now?
• 29:19
  Why are we thinking that a regression is the model that's
• 29:21
  going to impact humanity in a positive way?
• 29:23
  And that's the answer big challenge it's.
• 29:27
  Actually very true. You know, dignity in labour is
• 29:32
  very, very important, right? And nobody deserves to use that
• 29:36
  dignity. I respect every, every job, you
• 29:38
  know, I say I respect hustle, people's hustles hard percent.
• 29:43
  It's as legitimate, right? Right.
• 29:47
  Dirty hands make clean money. 100% this is not, this is not an
• 29:52
  issue of degrading jobs, right? It's an issue of that as a
• 29:55
  society, we, we, we don't want everybody to be a farmer.
• 29:58
  That's why we, we moved from farming 400 years ago into now
• 30:01
  having different jobs. Otherwise we could still be in
• 30:03
  farming. I mean.
• 30:04
  Well, somebody has to do it. You're 100%.
• 30:07
  I'm not, I'm not diminishing farming, right, But I'm just
• 30:09
  saying that we have moved from farming because there are other
• 30:13
  jobs that are also the pay better that have a higher
• 30:15
  quality of life, right. And even farming, think about
• 30:17
  how much technology plays in farming and that created massive
• 30:20
  amounts of efficiencies. And we're not doing everything
• 30:22
  by hand anymore or with animals anymore.
• 30:24
  We're doing with machines and ideal curve has gone up
• 30:27
  dramatically in that. So it's an notion of innovation
• 30:30
  and innovation is critically important to a better quality of
• 30:34
  life for all of us, number one. And #2 to also create new
• 30:38
  industries and new segments that will pay high quality jobs.
• 30:43
  I, I love, I love that word innovation.
• 30:45
  It's a word that is very, very dear to my heart.
• 30:48
  As a matter of fact, if you go onto my company's website, it
• 30:51
  reads where finance expertise meets tech and media innovation.
• 30:56
  So if it wasn't documented, it wasn't done innovation because
• 31:02
  like you rightly said, with innovation, we were able to
• 31:06
  execute view ocean strategies and then to uncontested market
• 31:10
  spaces and create, you know, new opportunities for yourself and
• 31:15
  for people and create new livelihoods for people.
• 31:18
  I think I very much appreciate that perspective.
• 31:21
  But let's talk about the noble supply chains.
• 31:23
  With the shifts in supply chain strategies like, how should
• 31:27
  businesses and policymakers think about diversification and
• 31:31
  resilience outside of China? So I think that that has already
• 31:36
  happened. If we look at for example,
• 31:38
  Walmart and one of the largest companies in terms of sales in
• 31:41
  the world, retail companies around the world.
• 31:44
  Walmart back in the since before the first trip administration,
• 31:48
  their total exposure in in procurement from products from
• 31:51
  China was somewhere in the 80 to 90th percentile depending on the
• 31:55
  quarter. So about 80 to 90% of everything
• 31:57
  came from when it came when it came to Walmart.
• 32:01
  Today that number is about 60%, right.
• 32:03
  So it's a pretty large shift if you think about it from the
• 32:07
  largest retailer in the world. We are seeing this notion of
• 32:13
  shifts depending on what country you're from.
• 32:16
  If you're in the US as an example, the shifts went from
• 32:20
  China to Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia and Malaysia.
• 32:24
  And so that's where the shifting happened also to Mexico,
• 32:27
  obviously, you know, for, for the, the lower production price
• 32:31
  qualities, they shifted there. So we, we're seeing that the
• 32:34
  shifts are happening to other countries around the world.
• 32:37
  Another element of, of this is that the, the, the issue
• 32:42
  simultaneously is that because the US system, the way that it's
• 32:47
  being run right now is in silos, meaning that immigration is not
• 32:50
  aligned with trade policy. When you have a company like
• 32:54
  Hyundai who is investing in the, you know, 4 is creating a
• 32:58
  factory, investing $4 billion in the US and they are about 6
• 33:02
  months before opening and they send their engineers to train
• 33:04
  everybody. And then ICE picks all the
• 33:07
  engineers up, puts them in, in, in, you know, in handcuffs and
• 33:11
  gaols them without water. And then that creates a massive
• 33:14
  economic imbalance, risks that were not there before.
• 33:18
  So if you're looking for foreign direct investment into the US
• 33:21
  and manufacturing into the US, your immigration policy and
• 33:24
  every single other vertical has to align to be able to allow for
• 33:29
  that. You cannot say you need to
• 33:31
  invest $4 billion into the US, but you cannot have any of your
• 33:35
  employees come over here and train people.
• 33:37
  That just can't happen, right? So you cannot have one without
• 33:41
  the other. You need everything to be
• 33:43
  aligned. So when it comes to policies, we
• 33:46
  are not running cohesive structured policies.
• 33:49
  Now, one of the key elements that kind of COVID implemented
• 33:53
  is that it taught us that we need to rethink cost versus
• 33:57
  security, meaning that, you know, this comparative advantage
• 34:01
  notion was that we have to go to the cheapest country around the
• 34:03
  world. I think that COVID showed us
• 34:06
  that no no longer should go to the cheapest country in the
• 34:09
  world. We need to go to the securest
• 34:10
  country in the world, or we can make sure that we have good
• 34:12
  relations with them. We can extract and do things
• 34:15
  whenever we need to. So we we, we, we are in this
• 34:18
  process of going through what we call a re establishment of
• 34:23
  production autonomy, right? That's kind of in the process
• 34:27
  that we're going through and I think it's a very healthy thing.
• 34:30
  I think that that's going to obviously increase costs.
• 34:33
  So we're probably going to be in an environment where inflation
• 34:36
  is going to be continuous. And the reasoning is because we
• 34:39
  went from the lowest production country in the world to now
• 34:43
  going to the securest country in the world.
• 34:45
  And that obviously is going to have inflationary elements built
• 34:49
  into it until we can create mass scale, until we can create
• 34:53
  structures that enable price decreases.
• 34:55
  But in the short term we're going to be there.
• 34:58
  And then also I think we're trying to re establish who are,
• 35:03
  who do we want to deal with? Are their values concurrent with
• 35:06
  ours believe there that's where we are figuring or assess.
• 35:10
  We're figuring where we are. We're assessing where our trade
• 35:12
  policy is. And I think that's where we find
• 35:14
  ourselves both in the EU, in the UK, in in North America.
• 35:19
  That's where we are right now. Obviously, if we look at the
• 35:23
  bricks, they are looking at very differently from the Burke's
• 35:26
  perspective is how can we make sure that the powerful countries
• 35:30
  that we have been dealing with, who in many times were our
• 35:33
  colonisers, how do we create independence from them and allow
• 35:37
  the ourselves to actually run our economic policy without
• 35:40
  dependency on them in terms of economic policy, in terms of
• 35:43
  trade policy, in terms of banking.
• 35:46
  So where can we create systems where we can, in a sense of the
• 35:49
  front, run them or circumvent them if they decide not to work
• 35:52
  with us? And I think that's where BRICS
• 35:55
  is becoming the powerful player there.
• 35:58
  I had that block of countries with, would I say, strong
• 36:05
  economic power on a global scale.
• 36:10
  So just for the lead man, I think the BRICS countries we're
• 36:14
  looking at Brazil, Russia, India.
• 36:17
  India. Who?
• 36:18
  Else China and it's. China.
• 36:20
  South Africa. Korea.
• 36:22
  Africa has been added. Yeah, Korea.
• 36:24
  South Korea. There's not Korea.
• 36:26
  Korea. Sorry that.
• 36:27
  There's no key, right? China, South Africa, right?
• 36:30
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 36:31
  So we're looking. At how many countries here BRICS
• 36:34
  right? Yes, but we have others that
• 36:37
  have joined as well. For example, Iran has joined
• 36:39
  them, North Korea has joined them.
• 36:41
  So we have, you know, so, yeah. So this bricks is the acronym
• 36:45
  for the for the, you know, it's 1980s acronyms of the biggest
• 36:49
  countries of his growth, but they have been expanded down to
• 36:52
  include other countries as well. So like from a global economy
• 36:59
  perspective, right, for the audience to be able to
• 37:02
  understand the implication of decisions made by bricks, you
• 37:09
  know, on the global economy. So if you're looking at from a
• 37:13
  percentile or percentage perspective, what percentage of
• 37:17
  the global economy the bricks are blocked?
• 37:22
  They're somewhere between a 30 to 40 and 40% of the global
• 37:25
  economy, right? They're pretty substantial,
• 37:28
  large amount of economy. They're also growing rapidly.
• 37:33
  They some of them are very raw commodity focused.
• 37:36
  So think about Brazil as an example.
• 37:38
  Heavily raw commodity South. Africa.
• 37:41
  Heavily raw commodity, right. Russia have a raw commodity, you
• 37:46
  know, and then China is manufacturing has less raw
• 37:49
  commodities, right. India has some raw commodities
• 37:53
  in natural, in some natural resources, but also again very
• 37:56
  similar to China, the next manufacturing hub there, right.
• 38:00
  And it's the secondary implications, what we call
• 38:02
  second derivatives are all the contracts and negotiations that
• 38:06
  can go into developing blocks that allow trade to, to decrease
• 38:11
  the the frictions of trade to decrease between countries.
• 38:14
  And I think that that's exactly what BRICS is doing is how can
• 38:17
  we create systems within our existing network of countries to
• 38:22
  decrease the friction of trade between US and to also limit the
• 38:27
  choke points that countries in the in the West could have, for
• 38:31
  example, choke points on banking, right?
• 38:34
  Think about that, this idea that everything has to be determined
• 38:37
  into dollars first before it clears into the system.
• 38:41
  If we circumvent that in the US loses a certain type of a
• 38:43
  hegemony and the dollar uses a certain type of value.
• 38:46
  And that's what they're working on right now is how they can go
• 38:49
  ahead and limit the, the, the the issues around that is how
• 38:53
  can we go ahead and trade directly within our currencies
• 38:56
  without converting it into either EUR or dollars?
• 39:01
  So. From.
• 39:04
  An automation perspective. Now, how has industrialization
• 39:12
  and technology right we shaped that industrial landscape
• 39:17
  globally? And what is the role of the
• 39:21
  Greeks in this power play? Well, they are.
• 39:27
  I mean, that's where the raw commodity comes from.
• 39:29
  I mean, every single cell phone manufactured starts somewhere in
• 39:33
  the African continent, right? That's where the raw commodities
• 39:36
  are. When you talk about raw
• 39:38
  commodities, that's where they come from.
• 39:39
  And they need to be taking away, you know, away from think about
• 39:43
  this, a small piece of metal of some sort keep gold, silver,
• 39:48
  whatever it is, is extracted from somewhere in Africa, moved,
• 39:53
  you know, by by truck to a port, maybe transferring from anywhere
• 39:58
  from, you know, Nigeria all the way to Djibouti.
• 40:01
  To be able to, to from Djibouti to be placed on a, on a boat to
• 40:05
  travel to China and then to be redeveloped into a part of the
• 40:09
  chip, right. So this entire supply chain is,
• 40:13
  is dependent on rock commodities.
• 40:15
  So how can you speed up industrialization?
• 40:17
  How can you speed up manufacturing of chips?
• 40:20
  How can the speed of the manufacturing of natural
• 40:23
  products that go into what we call intermediary products that
• 40:26
  go into larger products, How can you all do that systematically?
• 40:31
  And if we look at China, for example, one of the numbers I
• 40:34
  saw was they control about 90% of rare earth middle development
• 40:37
  and about 60% of the raw aspects of it.
• 40:40
  So they have a monopoly of raw earth minerals and that's what
• 40:44
  goes entirely into modern technology.
• 40:47
  Everything from missiles that we use to bomb those parts go into
• 40:52
  there all the way to your newest iPhone.
• 40:56
  So that is necessary. You know, that is not that this
• 40:59
  is a necessary tool. And China has been very, very
• 41:02
  good at creating monopolistic powers, both on the raw side as
• 41:07
  well as on the naturalisation side, which again, if we moved
• 41:12
  out towards security, you see how that becomes kind of
• 41:14
  critically important for for demonic powers to create
• 41:19
  resilience against that. Yeah.
• 41:23
  And of course, you know from a broader global impact
• 41:26
  perspective, what are the brother implications of the US
• 41:30
  China tree relations for international trade, policy,
• 41:35
  geopolitics, and of course, the global economy at large.
• 41:40
  Well, the way it's looking right now and if if we move forward
• 41:43
  and I think that this is where it's going everybody segment A
• 41:46
  multiplarity where we're we're going to go back from A1 unified
• 41:50
  system of global trade to a multi polar system of global
• 41:54
  trade. We're varying hegemonic powers,
• 41:58
  regional hegemonic powers are going to go into different
• 42:01
  segments and and trading blocks. And so that we're see we're
• 42:05
  going to see a multipolarity. I don't believe in the
• 42:07
  multipolarity argument. I think that one of the things
• 42:09
  in trade is the larger the systems are, the better it is.
• 42:13
  So I believe that we're probably most likely going to go into
• 42:15
  bipolar model and we may go into multipolar beginning and then
• 42:19
  eventually go into bipolar model.
• 42:21
  And the bipolar model is going to be an American LED system of
• 42:24
  global trade, a meaning that the American system will be American
• 42:27
  banking institutions, American economic, economic and political
• 42:29
  institutions and dollar based trade.
• 42:33
  And we're going to go most likely in a Chinese based model
• 42:37
  of international trade, which is based on not necessarily on the
• 42:41
  RMB, because I don't think China wants to actually make the RMB a
• 42:45
  global market because there's a lot of issues domestically that
• 42:48
  creates and allows for, you know, for for for flight of
• 42:53
  capital outside of China. So they mean use a BRICS
• 42:56
  currency, a secondary currency to be able to achieve that and
• 42:59
  protect their domestic currency. And so we, we most likely will
• 43:04
  see a BRICS style or a secondary currency that will challenge it.
• 43:08
  So we may have more integration between the EU, the UK and and
• 43:13
  the US and Canada and Mexico. And then we're going to have a
• 43:17
  bipolarization of the world with China and many of the developing
• 43:21
  markets joining them. And so the, the, the question
• 43:24
  from a global perspective is what do you do if you Saudi
• 43:27
  Arabia as an example? So Saudi Arabia's largest
• 43:29
  trading partner is China. 18% of Saudi oil is sold to China.
• 43:33
  It's it's its largest partner in terms of oil.
• 43:37
  Whereas in militarist, militaristically you are based
• 43:40
  into the US, but economically you're dependent on China.
• 43:43
  Which one will you choose, right.
• 43:45
  So those are the kinds that are in particular dilemma.
• 43:49
  No, those are the questions that you're going to have.
• 43:51
  Or for example, a country like Mongolia, right?
• 43:54
  A country like Mongolia, which is trapped between Russia and
• 43:57
  China, but it's looking, it prefers to look to Washington
• 44:01
  for economic, you know, liberty. So what do you do when you're
• 44:04
  those countries, when you are when you do so this is the
• 44:07
  challenge of the next multipolarity system.
• 44:10
  These are the elements which will, you know, countries will
• 44:12
  have to decide based on their own self-interest and
• 44:15
  motivations by the different blocks to entice them to come
• 44:19
  into under system. And so we're going to see is it
• 44:22
  reshaping of the global system in a probably once it's one of
• 44:27
  those once in a lifetime shifts. The same way that I talked about
• 44:32
  the Bretton Woods system, how critical that was in reshaping
• 44:34
  global economic policy. I think this next move is going
• 44:37
  to be one of those. It's going to impact our next
• 44:40
  global economic policy for at least 50 to 100 years.
• 44:45
  Interesting stuff. So let's let's look into the
• 44:47
  future, right? If you were advising the US
• 44:51
  government or multinational CEOs today, C-Suite executives, what
• 44:58
  strategies would you recommend to navigate news uncertainties
• 45:03
  around the US, China trade relations?
• 45:06
  So one of the, in the short term, it's really hard, right?
• 45:10
  In the short term, it's very, very hard because you don't know
• 45:13
  what's happening if you wake up 1 morning and then you have
• 45:15
  another tariff. Like for example, over the
• 45:18
  weekend we woke up to in the US having new tariffs on
• 45:22
  pharmaceutical products, as an example, or kitchen cabinets.
• 45:25
  So right now it's exceptionally hard to kind of do anything
• 45:28
  because you have to assume that eventually they'll get to your
• 45:31
  industry and sector in terms of tariffs.
• 45:34
  So the question becomes what do you do outside of the US?
• 45:38
  Right now the powers of most of these organisations is outside
• 45:41
  of the US because it's much more stable, right?
• 45:44
  So I think that what you do is you have to create outside
• 45:46
  entities and you have to create those identities with, you need
• 45:50
  to use those outside entities as a means of trading and and also
• 45:54
  creating relationships with the, with the regional governments
• 45:56
  there. Saying that just because of this
• 45:59
  is more corporate perspective, just because of the government
• 46:01
  is doing AB and C, We as company A do not believe necessarily in
• 46:05
  the same policies and we would like to still be heavily
• 46:08
  invested here and then maybe not trade with the US, but to trade
• 46:13
  with other markets that we're in.
• 46:15
  It's important to understand that 60 percent, 60 percent of
• 46:20
  the S&P 500 brings its money from outside of the US, So
• 46:24
  they're selling out to the US. So global sales for US
• 46:27
  corporations are critically important, critically important.
• 46:31
  So we cannot, we, we cannot walk away from that.
• 46:33
  That has become, so it becomes to look outside of the US versus
• 46:37
  in the US. Once we have much more clarity
• 46:40
  and we know what the policy is and it's not going to change
• 46:42
  every weekend, that's when we can start looking domestically
• 46:46
  as to what to do then and how do we reshape those relationships
• 46:49
  that we have created externally. We're the ones that we have
• 46:52
  domestically, right. We also have to look at
• 46:55
  resiliency in terms of what other supply chains and where
• 46:58
  other where, where else we can do our supply chains fairly
• 47:01
  quickly. So creating options A through Z
• 47:05
  in terms of countries and identifying production
• 47:07
  facilities outside will become critically important just so we
• 47:10
  know where we can go to just in case of tariffs are implemented.
• 47:14
  And the number 3 is how can we use arbitrage as it comes out to
• 47:19
  A minimising the tax liabilities.
• 47:21
  So we know that we have tax liabilities from 125% all the
• 47:25
  way to 10%. How can we use arbitrage to
• 47:28
  minimise the cost and move it to countries that are much more
• 47:30
  efficient in terms of tariff policy?
• 47:34
  So those are the elements that we're we have to go through and
• 47:37
  that's what most corporations right now are going through.
• 47:40
  Unfortunately, by the time they go through it, it may be null,
• 47:43
  void, because it's a very strong chance, very, very strong chance
• 47:46
  that most of these tariff policies are going to be deemed
• 47:49
  unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
• 47:52
  We already have two courts in the United States that I've said
• 47:54
  that they're, they're, they're unconstitutional.
• 47:57
  We're waiting for it to go to Supreme Court next.
• 47:59
  And, and, and there's a very strong chance, somewhere between
• 48:02
  a 60 to 80% chance the, the Supreme Court will say the same
• 48:05
  thing. So if that happens, then we're
• 48:08
  back to .0, right? Exactly.
• 48:12
  But the, the issue is that one thing about this administration
• 48:16
  is that they're consistently looking for other small points
• 48:19
  to go after. So just because this one is
• 48:22
  teaming unconstitutional, it does not mean they have three or
• 48:25
  four other things that they can go in and implement.
• 48:27
  And then it will have to go through the judiciary system.
• 48:30
  And we'll take another a year and a half to two years to
• 48:32
  figure it out. And, and so we, we, we may be in
• 48:36
  a different dilemma, same dilemma, different circumstances
• 48:41
  in the next 18 months. So that's why holding tight and
• 48:46
  not investing domestically is going to be probably the the
• 48:49
  smartest policies right now. Also domestic manufacturing, you
• 48:54
  cannot base your domestic manufacturing on a one to five
• 48:57
  year timeline. You're generally looking at a 10
• 49:00
  to 30 year timeline for this. So you, you, you again, you
• 49:03
  cannot repatriate everything and create things domestically if
• 49:06
  you do not have clarity on that. So those are all the issues that
• 49:11
  you have. And obviously every corporation
• 49:13
  has its own sub issues because how they manage the
• 49:16
  organisation, how to manage the supply chain, always implement
• 49:19
  all those, actually implement differences and striations and
• 49:23
  implementation. So that those are all the
• 49:25
  elements that we got to take a look at.
• 49:28
  I'll say follow the money, chill.
• 49:31
  Even Peter Piper dictates the tune.
• 49:33
  So I hope, I hope that pirable sounds thus far right.
• 49:39
  Wow. So thank you very much again for
• 49:42
  being on the show. I have to close this with the
• 49:45
  five question quick fire round. Are you ready to rumble?
• 49:50
  Let's see what happens. OK.
• 49:52
  So number one question, what's one book that has profoundly
• 49:57
  shaped your thinking on East as and leadership?
• 50:01
  So it wasn't a book, it was a class that I took in System
• 50:05
  Dynamics and it is a system dynamics book, right?
• 50:10
  And it is it was a great book. It was a great class that I took
• 50:15
  and it was all about how to think outside of the general
• 50:18
  notions of black and white and to look at the grey area.
• 50:22
  I think that we live more in grey matter that then we look in
• 50:25
  the black and white. And I think that that's that was
• 50:28
  a the system dynamics class, and the book was the most critical
• 50:32
  part of how it changed my perspective of life.
• 50:36
  Interesting. I love that it's quite
• 50:39
  documented. I always talk about kicking
• 50:40
  outside of the box, but who wrote that book so we can have
• 50:44
  that book in the description? It was Professor Sherman.
• 50:47
  Professor Sherman, I think, wrote the book.
• 50:49
  OK. I will find that it will keep.
• 50:51
  You It's a very, very thick college book, but the amount of
• 50:55
  the plethora of stories that it has on, on mental models, on how
• 51:01
  we see the world and how we structured the world and how
• 51:04
  that impacts our cognitive and how cognitive biases impact our
• 51:09
  perspective of life really, really is absolutely amazing.
• 51:14
  I love that you mentioned the cognitive biases because I have
• 51:17
  identified that in a number of people and you know that you
• 51:22
  realise that you're actually making decisions based on a
• 51:26
  cognitive bias, but people cannot see it.
• 51:29
  A very good example is a recency bias.
• 51:32
  You're making a decision based on recency bias.
• 51:35
  You should know that because that's the last item that was
• 51:39
  that had an impression on your mind and that's why you think
• 51:41
  that is the best, but that is not necessarily the best.
• 51:44
  So I think it is any time we need to learn to be when I say
• 51:49
  unbiased, neutral, you know, you know that you'll be able to
• 51:52
  make, you know a better informed decisions.
• 51:55
  Thank you very much for that one.
• 51:57
  OK, so the next one is if you could give one piece of advice
• 52:02
  to your 25 year old self, what would it be?
• 52:08
  So I always tell my students, if you're not growing, you're
• 52:12
  dying. And what I mean by that is that
• 52:14
  if you're not learning every single day something new, you're
• 52:18
  falling behind and you're becoming you're, you're left
• 52:21
  behind, right? Think about going back 345000
• 52:26
  years when we're trying to fight for food every single day,
• 52:30
  right? The difference between living
• 52:31
  and dying is people who, you know, they tried new things.
• 52:34
  And if you know, if they found different foods to eat, the one
• 52:38
  nutritious, they found two different ways of actually
• 52:41
  engaging in warfare to be able to hunt and to eat right.
• 52:44
  That was all about learning. So if you're not learning,
• 52:48
  you're dying. I love that survival of the
• 52:51
  foetus that there is there is a proof of we are come from a
• 52:55
  Nigeria in Yoruba land PC that the day we die is the day we
• 53:02
  rest that learning is a lifelong exercise right We keep learning
• 53:07
  every day and. Every single day.
• 53:09
  Learning is the day you die. It just didn't stuff.
• 53:13
  So coffee, tea or something stronger.
• 53:16
  What fills your work days? So I'm very biassed towards
• 53:21
  coffee. Very good guys, what's coffee?
• 53:25
  The point that one of my students actually opened up a
• 53:27
  coffee shop and I joined them in the process.
• 53:30
  So I am very biassed towards coffee and yes, there's nothing
• 53:35
  more refreshing. Listen, I come from a Middle
• 53:37
  Eastern tea drinking establishment.
• 53:39
  A good tea always hits the spot, but a good latte is also
• 53:45
  amazing. OK, OK, OK.
• 53:48
  Cheers. Just do that.
• 53:49
  OK, So which country or culture has influenced your world view
• 53:53
  the most and why? So I'm a so I grew up.
• 53:59
  I'm an Iranian who fled Iran because of the revolution.
• 54:02
  We went to Austria. I grew up in Austria, I grew up.
• 54:06
  And then from there, we ended up moving to Spain from Spain, we
• 54:10
  ended up moving to Australia, from Australia to the United
• 54:12
  States. And then I went to boarding
• 54:13
  school in Madrid. I believe that every single
• 54:16
  country, every single country in the world has an amazing way of
• 54:22
  reshaping and shaping us. So every touch point with every
• 54:25
  country for me is an awakening as as as a person, as an
• 54:31
  awakening in in terms of learning.
• 54:33
  And it's also seeing the world from a different perspective.
• 54:36
  It also sheds discrimination because as you see the world, as
• 54:41
  you see how other people live, as you humanise everybody else
• 54:45
  in the process, it allows you to really see that we are 99.9% the
• 54:50
  same, right as humans are differentiating factors and our
• 54:53
  DNA is minimal. So I don't want to say there's
• 54:57
  one country because it's not true.
• 55:00
  It's every country, right? Every country, every touch
• 55:02
  point, every background, every form of learning makes me more
• 55:06
  complete as a human and it makes me see the world from a
• 55:09
  different perspective, which I think is the beauty of life.
• 55:12
  That there's no one true sense. It's the multiple sense, the
• 55:15
  multi layered sense. And that how every single person
• 55:19
  lives their life is a is a natural beautiful thing.
• 55:21
  And for us to be in their shoes to live it is what makes us
• 55:24
  human. But empathy?
• 55:27
  Well, I, I love that and how that, you know, it's interesting
• 55:30
  how you mention it, a couple of countries, Austria, Spain, we
• 55:34
  are on the Apple top 100 charts in Spain, in Austria.
• 55:39
  Beautiful. I think in India, in Poland, I
• 55:42
  think we're #17 in Poland today #5 in Zimbabwe, top 100 in the a
• 55:47
  number of countries. That's quite interesting.
• 55:49
  And you think about it, even in Saudi Arabia as well-being top
• 55:53
  100, It speaks to what you say. Yeah, I mean.
• 55:59
  Information. 100% I think that one of the things that, you
• 56:02
  know, one of the things I always thought is, oh, I'm educated.
• 56:05
  I will not fall for propaganda. And sometimes you realise, wow,
• 56:08
  you really fell for the propaganda, you really fell for
• 56:12
  that, right? Your biases are really, really
• 56:15
  bad. And when you go to foreign
• 56:17
  countries and you see what's on the ground versus everything you
• 56:20
  have been fed, you start realising, wow, there's a huge
• 56:24
  difference. And that's why I love
• 56:26
  travelling. That's why I love seeing people
• 56:28
  for who they are, not to be informed by others in the
• 56:31
  process. Exactly, exactly.
• 56:32
  I I left that, you know, quite interesting have some countries
• 56:37
  that I'm from Africa, you know, the way people, especially the
• 56:40
  western world paid. So African countries, they're
• 56:42
  like. 100%. Have you been there?
• 56:44
  You see what is on ground like it's a deeper reality.
• 56:49
  So say less. I go there and find out by
• 56:51
  yourself. Wow.
• 56:52
  I mean, they'd love to put Africa like the 1984 Ethiopian
• 56:56
  famine crisis. And that's the mental model that
• 56:59
  Africa lives in, sadly, right? They have not seen the level of
• 57:03
  wealth of Lagos, of Casablanca, of Rabat, Alexandria.
• 57:09
  So you haven't seen the level of development that has happened.
• 57:12
  And then what happens is that's the issue, right?
• 57:15
  When you when you have good leadership and you when you have
• 57:17
  good institutions that are redeveloping the country and
• 57:21
  then where the West is not investing in that.
• 57:23
  And then you you start travelling there, you see the
• 57:26
  airports are better than our airports.
• 57:28
  There's an issue. It's a massive issue.
• 57:31
  I, you know, was it 2 years ago? I was in Morocco and I had a
• 57:35
  good time. I'm like, OK, why interested.
• 57:37
  Yes, exactly. Wow.
• 57:40
  So it's kind of interesting. I think people should travel
• 57:43
  more and you know. 100%. Find out more by travelling
• 57:46
  more. Last year I was in Lithuania and
• 57:50
  so it was asking like, what did you go to do in Lithuania?
• 57:52
  OK. I'm like, OK, I got this.
• 57:54
  I got this from Lithuania, you know.
• 57:56
  Nice, I think. Very.
• 57:57
  Were you in Vilnus? Were you in Vilnus?
• 58:00
  Yeah, I was in juniors. I was in the corners as well.
• 58:03
  I am beautiful, beautiful country.
• 58:06
  I am. Beautiful place, beautiful
• 58:08
  place. And of course you've got
• 58:09
  Estonia. You've also got Latvia as well.
• 58:13
  Correct. Amazing place, amazing people,
• 58:15
  but you know, people only want to travel to the popular places.
• 58:19
  I'm not both about popular places, you know.
• 58:21
  So I, I think that that's changing, right, especially with
• 58:24
  like for example, we talked about before we came on the,
• 58:27
  the, the, the depreciation of price of cost of travel.
• 58:30
  Think about that how how much that has changed right from the
• 58:32
  70s until the 80's, the price of travel has substantially
• 58:36
  decreased. The quality has also decreased
• 58:39
  to certain decree. But the, but the, the, the
• 58:42
  accessibility of travelling right for, for, for a person,
• 58:47
  for a person to pay 1617 lbs and to travel from, you know, one of
• 58:52
  the airports in, in London to, to anywhere in Europe.
• 58:56
  It's pretty, pretty amazing. So, but the point is, don't go
• 59:00
  to Ibiza. Choose other markets.
• 59:05
  Now, now you're attempting me. You're attempting me to call out
• 59:08
  to airlines. You're attempting me anyways.
• 59:15
  I'm going to call them out. I'm going to call them out.
• 59:17
  Don't call them out. They could become.
• 59:19
  Partners EasyJet a riot air please you guys can do better,
• 59:27
  right? You guys can do better and of
• 59:29
  course PG can become partners, you know?
• 59:31
  Exactly, exactly, exactly. We'll do our next podcast from
• 59:34
  the aircraft. How about that?
• 59:36
  That would be great. That would be fantastic.
• 59:39
  I I I need to play, I need a seat in was a pool in business
• 59:43
  class. But the crazy thing is I think a
• 59:45
  lot of EasyJet and right air fly study will have a business
• 59:49
  class. So how can you do that?
• 59:50
  No, they don't. They don't.
• 59:51
  They don't. OK.
• 59:52
  So let me call my preferred partner, British Airways.
• 59:55
  Yeah, you are. What's up, British Airways?
• 1:00:00
  I think British Airways was the first one, the very first
• 1:00:03
  business class. Flight I I ever had I I did have
• 1:00:06
  a good time with them. So guys, I spent my money on you
• 1:00:10
  guys. So it's time for you guys to
• 1:00:11
  spend your money on me following you guys Co sponsor the podcast
• 1:00:16
  at first. Let us have our next episode.
• 1:00:18
  Myself and Barbara Percy on the British Airways.
• 1:00:22
  I'm pulling it now and of course, you guys, I'll get to
• 1:00:26
  tag you. So the last question right here
• 1:00:29
  is what's 1 quote for mantra you need by that our listeners can
• 1:00:33
  take away today? So one of the things I feature
• 1:00:37
  glad on learning from failure, right?
• 1:00:40
  And and and anything related to failure.
• 1:00:43
  I think it's wonderful. I think that ultimately failure
• 1:00:46
  is what allows humans to good failure.
• 1:00:49
  Intelligent failures allows us to to really become better at
• 1:00:54
  what we are. So to me, again, it goes back to
• 1:00:57
  this notion. If you're not trying new things
• 1:00:59
  and learning new things every single day that you are falling
• 1:01:02
  behind and you're dying and you're failing.
• 1:01:04
  So that to me is the mantra of life is try new things.
• 1:01:08
  Don't be, you know, learn research as much as you can,
• 1:01:13
  learn with others where others have failed and why.
• 1:01:16
  And then try, if it's a really, really big risk, try and small,
• 1:01:21
  small portions. And then as you become
• 1:01:24
  successful and learn scale. So that's kind of a the mantra
• 1:01:29
  of my life is so you are ever evolving, you're ever learning,
• 1:01:33
  the mark is changing on you. And the only way you can become
• 1:01:36
  competitive is really to understand where the market is
• 1:01:39
  and where you are and how you can finance yourself and become
• 1:01:43
  the best version of yourself. I love that absolutely this is a
• 1:01:47
  man that allies with my philosophies.
• 1:01:49
  I really appreciate and of course, you know, I always love
• 1:01:52
  to say not even gratitude is good attitude.
• 1:01:54
  And when a person shares the time with you, they share their
• 1:01:57
  life with you because the SI unit of veteran life this time.
• 1:02:00
  So once again, thank you very much.
• 1:02:02
  I love and respect to you, to the audience, to the audience,
• 1:02:07
  conceive beliefs, try to thrive and achieve.
• 1:02:10
  For me, it's goodbye. Brethren.
• 1:02:12
  Barber, do you want to leave a shout out to anybody?
• 1:02:15
  And who do you want us to go back to?
• 1:02:18
  I just wanted to say that the world's inclusive.
• 1:02:20
  An inclusive world is better than an exclusive world.
• 1:02:23
  So let's strive to to bring everybody in and make everybody
• 1:02:27
  live a better life. Wow, thank you very much guys.
• 1:02:33
  It's goodbye for me.