Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Saad Mohseni - CEO of the Moby Media Group | Radio Free Afghanistan

Transcript

Saad Mohseni - CEO of the Moby Media Group | Radio Free Afghanistan · Success Story with Scott Clary

• 0:00
  When you do something new, there are all sorts of risks.
• 0:02
  They're exhilarating and it's exciting to always do something new and I think that's
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  feeling you want to recapture if you can again and again.
• 0:09
  Saad Mosaini, the Afghan Australian entrepreneur behind Moby Group, has done just that.
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  From launching Afghanistan's first privately owned radio station,
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  after the fall of the Taliban, to creating TV channels like Tolo TV that reach millions
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  across South and Central Asia, Saad is redefining what's possible in media.
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  It's just convenient for the Americans to give money to people who were quite
• 0:31
  rather cool, quite hardcore, were motivated by religion because religion is always going to be
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  a strong motivation for me.
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  But here's the real story. How did Saad turn a war-torn country into a thriving media landscape
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  all while under constant threat? And what does it mean to preserve Afghan culture under the
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  weight of political change? Afghanistan was a peaceful nation, hundreds of thousands of tourists
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  visited Afghanistan in the 70s. You know, the hippie trail for the Americans, it was a sort of a
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  trap of swords for the Soviet bear. In this episode, we dive deep into the extraordinary journey
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  of a man who brought entertainment and independent news and to the forefront of Afghanistan and beyond.
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  Get ready for a powerful conversation about resilience, vision and the future of media
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  in frontier markets. You won't want to miss it.
• 1:12
  Never be afraid of doing too many things. Always bite more than you can chew them than chew like crazy.
• 1:18
  Welcome to Success Story. I'm your host, Scott Clary. The Success Story podcast is part of the
• 1:23
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• 1:28
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• 2:48
  Sad. I'm very excited to do this. You've had an incredible life, an incredible journey.
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  Obviously, I mean, you wrote the book Radio Free Afghanistan. It sort of highlights everything.
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  But we're going to go into some of the details at least on this show. And I think that a fun
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  way to start it off, because again, you have had such an interesting life. If you look back,
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  what was a major inflection point? A major inflection point that sort of pushed you on the path
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  that you're on today? And there's been many, but try and think of one that really stood out.
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  Well, in terms of this business that we established in 2002,
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  was just to let go of the life we had in Australia and to get back to Afghanistan and to start to
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  embark on this journey that at the time we had no idea what it would lead to. So that sense of
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  excitement you get when you start something new. It wasn't the first time I had done it, but nonetheless,
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  it was like a bandy job. It's like going off. But I think it's exhilarating.
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  It's exciting to always do something new. And I think that's that feeling you want to recapture
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  if you can again and again and again. And even talked to me about the like what was going
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  through your head at that point when you decided to go back to Afghanistan and you wanted to build
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  out, you wanted to build a Moby out. I guess in 2002, that was sort of the first iteration of that.
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  What was what prompted you? Because that's I mean, outside of the fact that you have ties to
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  that part of the world, that's not the the easiest entrepreneurial vision to pursue is like the
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  best way to put it. If I was going to start a media company, I wouldn't think, okay, I'm going
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  to move out of Australia. I'm going to go to Afghanistan. I'm going to figure out how to build
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  this thing from scratch. So what's going on in your head? Well, I think well, of course, you have
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  to be passionate about the place and the people. And you do want to make a difference.
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  You know, there's there has to be a sense of, I don't know, duty or responsibility.
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  You know, a lot of things we do are motivated by, you know, by things that which don't really
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  move us. But I think you need to be moved by something you want to embark on. And in this,
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  in our case, if you know, my background, my father was an Afghan diplomat. I was born in London.
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  I went back to Afghanistan and I was three. We left again when I was seven. We went back to
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  Afghanistan when I was nine. We left again when I was 12. And then we were living in Japan when
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  the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. So it became impossible for my father and the family to return to
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  Afghanistan. So we immigrated to Australia. But the sense that, you know, we needed to get back to
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  Afghanistan was always there. You know, unlike a lot of other immigrants, we never felt, well,
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  this is it. We're going to move to Australia. And then for the next 25 generations,
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  we'll be in Australia. So when the opportunity came up, so to speak, to go back and to have a look,
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  we did. So there was, we were, we were really motivated by finding a way to contribute to the
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  rebuilding of the country, so to speak. The country was happening another opportunity after
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  many, many years of war. But like most things, the business was almost an accidental business. We
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  set it up, not expecting it to do anything. We wanted to get a manager to run it. It was very
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  controversial because it was music, it was radio, it was media, and it sort of sucked us all in.
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  All four siblings eventually got involved in the business. But not knowing, you know, where
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  was going to go? I mean, there was a lot of uncertainties at the time. So
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  but those early years were very exciting at the same time.
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  Yeah, I mean, I think it's important. So maybe paying to picture for listeners in 2002,
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  what, what was the state of Afghanistan? Because you mentioned it was risky, it was a little bit new.
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  So walk me through sort of like the political climate, cultural climate, what you're walking into
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  when you have the idea, I would like to make some sort of media group media entity in Afghanistan in
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  2020 and 2002. So when you, when you do something new, there are all sorts of risks, right? There's
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  the physical risk in a place like Afghanistan. There's a regulatory risk in terms of, you know,
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  will we get a license? Can they take the license away from us? How risky is it from that person?
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  There is the business risk. Is there a market, you know, whether we investing in, will it yield anything
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  for us longer term? There's also issues like capacity building and infrastructure and so forth. But
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  at every level we had, we had to deal with risk. So we had to get, we became the first company to
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  get a license. So I literally had to with a dossier in my hand and folder and, you know, paperwork,
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  I had to go from office to office to get people to sign on. You know, in terms of the documentation,
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  we were required. And then we established a sort of a way to get a license. We were the first
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  one to do it. And then there was the physical risk. People threatening you. Everyone had a gun
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  and a machine gun. Lots of militias on the streets of Kabul. There was the business risk because
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  there was, there was no advertising market at the time when we set up. Capacity was a major issue.
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  No one had worked in media before. We had to like get people and train them up.
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  And that's just to stop. But to do everything yourself, you get the sense of what you need to
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  to do. And you know, when I say we, I mean myself and my siblings, whether it was editing a program
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  ourselves or doing a new story or recording a, you know, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, for example,
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  to fixing up a generator or a transmitter on the hilltop, we did all of those things ourselves.
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  So you get a real sense of what that, what that business is about. And then you look under the
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  bonnet. And that in itself is very good because, you know, going forward, there's nothing we have
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  not done when dealing with people. Right. So you build a business from a, you know, from the ground
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  up. And that is, is, is very important, I think. I mean, like most, most entrepreneurs don't worry
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  about their physical safety got for bid when they're starting a business in, in SF. But
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  a little bit, a little bit different. So in 2002, the Taliban was just removed. But you still have
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  a lot of, a lot of danger. Like you said, there's a lot of militia, a lot of guns, probably a lot of
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  fear and anxiety, it just permeates the, the climate of the country. And was, was there pushback
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  about having, I would say, not government, it's not government funded, it's not government regulated.
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  It's really just private industry media. Was there any pushback at all? Or was it, was it welcomed
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  in 2002? Was it sort of like riding that tide of we're done with the Taliban? We want to
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  adopt new and innovative and things that are going to create better culture and society.
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  Well, it, it was mixed. So we, we thought about let's be methodical about this. We do the survey
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  of a thousand households. What do you want to hear on this radio station? And surprisingly,
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  most people said, we want religious programs, documentaries, we don't really want music,
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  we want classical music, and that's it. So we literally thought, well, wow, you know, we were,
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  we were totally wrong about this market. But then we took a risk. We threw out the, the research
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  and this comprehensive survey. And we went with what we thought was, you know, I've got our instinct
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  in terms of what people would want to hear. And, and, and the reason why it was successful was
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  because people actually wanted to listen to pop music. They wanted light banter, they wanted
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  some news, but not too much news. They wanted fun stuff. I mean, and, but at the same time,
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  there were elements within our society, particularly that time in Kabul, who didn't appreciate
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  the format, our format, that is, you know, format that you have today on your FM stations,
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  for example. So there was this pushback from certain elements of society and certainly from
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  the religious and political establishment. But we hung on. I mean, I think when you're pushing
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  the envelope, you take it to the edge, but you've got to be careful not to go over it. But you're
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  constantly pushing the envelope, which we're doing today, even with the Taliban. So, but, but you
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  need to know where their lines are. Now, of course, we always overstep the mark and sometimes we
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  pay the price. But nonetheless, that has to be the nature of the beast, particularly in the
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  media sector. And when you say there's, I have so many questions, it's just fascinating. So,
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  first of all, I'm going to talk about overstepping the market. I'm going to talk about sort of you
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  pushing the envelope, which is just like a very, that's very entrepreneurial anyways. That's
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  just something that I think all good entrepreneurs do. But when you look at a landscape like Afghanistan,
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  where there is no infrastructure built, just even briefly just talk to me tactically,
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  is it raising my, I mean, like the cost of infrastructure to build this business just seems
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  insanely huge. So, did you have to raise a lot of money? Was it something that you self-funded?
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  I don't know the actual, the origin build out for this because again, you didn't have all this
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  existing media infrastructure in place to service a whole country. So, that means that you have to
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  be the one building it while simultaneously offering the programming. So, it's not
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  simple. It's very expensive. I'm assuming it's exceptionally expensive. So, how do you actually
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  accomplish this? Well, I mean, we, the initial business was actually quite, well, relatively
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  speaking cheap. I was in the country. I went to see the minister for information on the culture
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  who happened to be an old colleague of my dad's from the 70s. It's very sort of eccentric man,
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  very cultured. And he said, why don't you set up a fan radio station? And I said, what about
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  the licensing issues? Well, you said, you know, we've had this meeting in Bond,
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  international community came together and we formed this government, this sort of all-inclusive
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  government that was, that's going to replace the Taliban. And we've agreed in principle to have
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  free media. So, you can set up a radio station, and a TV station. But it was too early for television
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  because no one had access to electricity. Radio is easy. You can put a battery in. So, we thought
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  when we start with the radio station. But, you know, how much does it cost? How do we sustain
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  this business? And at the time, there's quite a well-known author called Ahmed Rashid who had written
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  a book called the Taliban. Six months before the Taliban was dislodged and became an international
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  ambassador, was, you know, basically on the on the books to read on, you know, at every university
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  that offered international relations. He became the celebrity, Pakistani national. He happened
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  to be in Washington meeting with the head of USAID, this guy called Andrew Nazios. And he said to
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  Andrew, yeah, I've got this young man in Afghanistan. He may do a radio station. And Nazios said,
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  let's, let's, let's go and help him. So, I mean, there, there are folks back in Kabul
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  reached out to me. And we did sort of back of the envelope numbers and it was going to cost like a
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  half a million. And, and I think they said, well, we can only do 220,000 dollars or something around
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  that. And they're actually quite reluctant. It's not bad at all. But they did it very reluctantly
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  because a lot of USAID government folks don't like the private sector. They want to work with NGOs,
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  they want to work with the UN. They don't like to deal with full profit business businesses. And
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  lucky for us, Andrew Nazios, who's a Republican, was pro-business today. This is, you know,
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  this is, this sounds like a good idea. And for us, it was, you know, help us buy some equipment.
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  We'll figure out the way to sustain this business. So, we put up the three siblings,
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  fourth, if you include my sister during this later, but we put together about $350,000. We set up
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  this business. So, for just, you know, just under $600,000. And, you know, we grew up in Australia
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  and Australians are sort of pioneers by nature. We find a bunch of Australian consultants. We came
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  to Kabul, like, they didn't even do the research. They just showed up in Kabul. And next thing,
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  we're building out this TV station with radio station, sorry. And then even on the training side,
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  we got a bunch of Aussies to come in and help with training of our staff on the ground.
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  So, it was not expensive, per se, but it was complicated, you know. You know,
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  where do you put your antennas or mass and your transmitters and how do you service them?
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  It's a very mountainous country. How does your signal reach the different parts of the city? How do
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  you amplify your signal? Things like that. Those are things that we had to learn. And actually,
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  we needed clever engineering to be able to achieve what we did. But it was relatively speaking
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  quite cheap. And it literally paid for itself in less than a year. And then we expanded,
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  we went beyond the cities. But how did it pay for itself if there was no advertising market?
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  Because that's how radio stations media make money, right? It's advertisers.
• 17:06
  Well, I mean, as we were developing this business, this country of 20 million people,
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  they started to consume, where there was SIM cards for their telephones or cooking oil or, you know,
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  soft drinks. And there was a lot of advertising from the NGO community, you know, like the particular
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  NGO does. Also, this is, you know, why is hygiene important? Let's put this ad on the radio. So,
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  the advertising market grew quite organically as we grew so that the advertising market.
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  Now, a large proportion of that was a portion of that was sort of do good public service
• 17:49
  announcements, but also a lot of commercial advertising. So while we were sitting up the business,
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  there wasn't much advertising. But as we were building the business, it sort of it came.
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  And then then you expanded to television in 2004. And was there was there the switch over to
• 18:07
  television? I mean, I don't know the state of Afghanistan in 2002. You said people had issues
• 18:13
  getting access to electricity. So in those two years, that seems like a, I mean, the country's
• 18:19
  moving along quick. If in 2004, all of a sudden you're able to move into TV and it can be a
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  profitable part of the business. So walk me through sort of, I mean, again, people probably don't
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  understand what was going on in the ground in Afghanistan in 2004. But it seems like the country
• 18:35
  moved very quick after the Taliban was dislodged to build infrastructure to build these markets.
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  Well, what was interesting was, and again, you know, you sometimes have to ignore data.
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  Firstly, radio listenership was very high always because if you recall, the Soviets invaded
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  Afghanistan. People needed to get proper information. So the BBC, Voice of America,
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  various other outlets were always popular on the shortwave frequency. But it also meant that, you know,
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  90% of households had a radio set that they would listen to, you know, under their blankets or,
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  you know, in a quiet room because they didn't want the communist officials to find out that they
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  were listening to, you know, evil radio signals from the West because you know, Afghanistan was
• 19:27
  at mind in the war against the Soviets. So when you always television radio was going to be
• 19:33
  popular and we're going to be able to reach people, television was another issue and we looked at
• 19:38
  the data in, you know, like, for example, places in Bangladesh and there's usually a correlation
• 19:44
  in terms of electricity and television viewership. So if there's no electricity, no one buys TV sets,
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  we looked at the data in Afghanistan, access to electricity in 2004 was still very low, it's like
• 19:58
  20%, 25%. But we thought, well, people have embraced modern media, you know, for example,
• 20:08
  because on our radio network, we had music and chitchat and news and so forth, but we also had
• 20:12
  lots of like our own version of Dr. Ruth. And people could call in and talk about their personal
• 20:18
  problems, we had like radio drama series. So we felt, hold on, if we do a proper television
• 20:26
  network, people are going to find ways to watch these programs, electricity or no electricity.
• 20:34
  We also figured out that, you know, with the TV set, you don't need much electricity,
• 20:37
  you're going to be entrepreneurial, that there were these micro, let's call them hydro stations,
• 20:45
  you know, communities set up their own things. There's a stream going through the town and then
• 20:49
  they access this plant, so-called plant and they can, you know, provide electricity to say 20 households.
• 20:57
  So we're sort of hopeful, but again, there was a huge, you know, there was a huge, there was a
• 21:02
  huge element of risk in terms of launching those business, which we did again in 2004. And what
• 21:09
  was extraordinary was television viewership continued to go up and electricity remained constant
• 21:13
  for years. And what we discovered was that people became, people were actually even more entrepreneurial
• 21:20
  in terms of generating electricity. For example, they would use a car battery to power up a TV set.
• 21:28
  Or there was a communal television set that, you know, in a neighborhood that people would gather
• 21:32
  around and watch a particular program. So then, you know, so, but, but what made the difference
• 21:40
  was the content that we have. You can't just set up a TV station and expect people to watch it. We
• 21:45
  had to have like compulsive viewing type programs that we, we went around the world and we looked at
• 21:53
  different formats and we sort of chose the ones we thought would resonate with people.
• 21:58
  From Indian soap operas, which we dubbed into local languages, to our own version of the
• 22:03
  idle format, game shows and so forth. And for most people, if you look at the 2004, 2005, 2006,
• 22:12
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  interesting. So people were not tapping into the grid. And was there was there a reason because
• 23:07
  of that was it just distrust? I'm just curious why people were trying to find all these entrepreneurial
• 23:12
  innovative ways to to to watch TV to live their life. Was it just massive distrust with the
• 23:20
  government? Was that something that was like prevalent in in 2004? Was that really the issue?
• 23:24
  Or is it just really they're waiting for the government to come build infrastructure they can tap
• 23:29
  into the grid, but they're just slow to rebuild. And this is the way to do it.
• 23:34
  I mean, Afghanistan was stuck in the dark ages in the 90s. The country just to give you some
• 23:41
  perspective, people assumed that Afghanistan was always mild and conflict, but for a century or so,
• 23:49
  there was no fighting in Afghanistan. And there was it was very brief. So my father's generation,
• 23:55
  who my father born in 1926, his father's generation, and his probably grandfather's generation didn't
• 24:01
  see conflict. And so Afghanistan was a peaceful nation. And as a matter of fact, hundreds of thousands
• 24:10
  of tourists visited Afghanistan in the 70s, you know, the hippie trail, all of that. It was very beautiful.
• 24:16
  It was very it was very beautiful. It was just it probably was it was probably if you were coming from
• 24:25
  the West, it wouldn't feel that different in terms of culture and what you could do and what you
• 24:32
  could go see and like your experiences compared to fast forward to 2000 or during Taliban rule.
• 24:38
  It's a very different Afghanistan. A lot of places in the Middle East were very different
• 24:42
  after Soviet intervention, right? Before Soviet intervention. And I mean, I've looked at the
• 24:49
  story of Iran when there's the Shah was still in power. Like some of these places were absolutely
• 24:54
  beautiful and very modern before or at least tolerant. You know, there's a very good friend of mine
• 25:03
  and there's a chapter about him in the book, Tom Preston, who lived in Afghanistan between
• 25:10
  Afghanistan and India in the 70s for five or six years. And then when the Soviets came, he was
• 25:16
  kicked out and he came to New York and he was one of one of the founding fathers of MTV. He then
• 25:21
  went on to become the CEO of MTV Networks and then Vycom Paramount. And he talks about the 70s
• 25:28
  as this wonderful period where people were very tolerant. I mean, they didn't didn't have to embrace
• 25:35
  a Western lifestyle. But when confronted by Westerners, they were happy. They were like, you
• 25:40
  do your thing, we do our thing. They were coming through the country. And what was extraordinary
• 25:45
  about the late 1970s, if you look at 1978-79, three or four really shocking things happened,
• 25:56
  shocking for the region that we really haven't recovered from. A, the Shah of Iran was toppled
• 26:05
  in 1979, which was significant because the Shah kept the balance in the entire region. He was a
• 26:13
  very dominant character. He was very close to the Americans. He was perhaps the closest of all
• 26:19
  the leaders you see in the Middle East over the last century. Secondly, there was a Russian
• 26:26
  coup d'état, sorry, a communist coup d'état in Afghanistan in 1978, which then led to the Soviet
• 26:33
  invasion of Afghanistan. Three, the major mosque in Saudi Arabia and Baka, which is very
• 26:42
  important to Muslims, was occupied by a group of religious zealots, which although they were
• 26:48
  eventually killed, but it made the Saudi regime very cognizant of how powerful the religious
• 26:54
  establishment within Saudi was. And then they rolled back many reforms in the late 70s after
• 26:59
  the incident. Fourth, there was a deal between Sadat and Begin, which then allowed for the
• 27:08
  normalization of relations between Israel and Egypt. All these factors led to the region,
• 27:15
  and particularly Afghanistan, getting radicalized. And when the Soviets invaded for the Americans,
• 27:21
  it was sort of a trap of sorts for the Soviet bear. It was an opportunity to punish the Soviets
• 27:27
  for what they had essentially done to the Americans in Vietnam in the 70s. So then the Americans
• 27:32
  pumped a lot of money into the country to groups, opposed to the Soviet Soviets, but these groups
• 27:39
  were predominantly religious groups. And it was convenient to the Americans to give money to people
• 27:46
  who were quite radical, quite hardcore, were motivated by religion, because religion is always
• 27:52
  going to be a strong motivation for people. Throw a lot of money in, and then the
• 27:59
  the Saudis at that time, which we've had the regime, well, their form of Islam is called
• 28:04
  Wahhabism, which is quite extreme, quite dogmatic. Then there were Wahhabi institutions
• 28:12
  then set up thousands and thousands of religious schools across the Afghan Pakistan border
• 28:18
  to indoctrinate these young kids, these refugee kids, in that way of thinking,
• 28:25
  these kids would eventually become the foot soldiers that would fight the Soviets.
• 28:31
  And then they were effective. They were effective. It became the bear trap. The Soviets were stuck
• 28:36
  in this conflict. They were not going to win. It became very expensive for them. And by 1989,
• 28:42
  they wanted that. And they left. But what they also left behind was hundreds of thousands of
• 28:49
  these religious zealots with guns willing to fight. And the Americans also walked away from it all,
• 28:54
  saying, well, we thought, you know, this was this proxy war against the Soviets,
• 29:00
  we're out of this country. And then of course, Afghanistan was then my, in this
• 29:04
  civil war of sorts from the power vacuum, I guess, when they, when the power vacuum, these,
• 29:11
  you know, sort of power hungry religious leaders for each other until the Taliban came.
• 29:18
  And then they became the most dominant group in the country. They ruled Afghanistan from 1995
• 29:25
  to about 2001. There was some opposition, but in significant. But in the five years they were in
• 29:31
  charge. Afghanistan suffered greatly. And the civil war that proceeded. So infrastructure was
• 29:41
  destroyed. People were made refugees to the vibrancy of a couple of million people was reduced
• 29:46
  about 700,000 people. So when we arrived in 2002, it was like a zombie town. You know,
• 29:54
  people had this blank look on their faces. And that's the reason why we felt it was so
• 30:02
  important for us to offer something, some hope. I mean, when you talk about music and entertainment
• 30:07
  and so forth, and people can be dismissive of these things. But, you know, I mean, we are,
• 30:12
  you know, even in the Middle East today, people say, well, you know, can we go and destroy
• 30:16
  these groups? And it's, you know, I always say, well, it's, you can destroy their infrastructure,
• 30:21
  you can destroy their leaders. But it's, it's much more difficult to destroy their, this, this
• 30:26
  idea of what they represent. We always have to work towards providing people with a better idea,
• 30:32
  with hope. And I think in a lot of ways, music, entertainment, soap operas does that. So that's
• 30:40
  sort of in a nutshell, in terms of what we were facing. And this scarred traumatized country.
• 30:48
  And for us to sort of, you know, provide something that was, you know, what satisfies,
• 30:54
  satisfy people's need for the things that, you know, many folks in the West take for granted.
• 31:01
  Definitely. I mean, we don't, we definitely take it for granted. I can't even imagine,
• 31:07
  because now it's generational trauma at this point in 2002. It's not like it's just even one
• 31:13
  generation. So there's children that have grown up in this relatively very oppressive
• 31:20
  environment. And you're bringing something so new to them. I mean, I'm curious if,
• 31:28
  I don't know if you did this purposefully. I guess you did to a degree, because you had such like
• 31:33
  personal ties to Afghanistan. But I think you really just wanted to make the country
• 31:40
  move in the right direction, make the country have hope, make the country have something to to
• 31:46
  live for that was not oppressive. That was not the way that had been since whatever the date you
• 31:51
  mentioned in like the like early 80s when kind of the country was a slowly devolves into a
• 31:59
  shell of its former self. Like talking about like, what did you, what did you notice happened
• 32:04
  in Afghanistan as Moby grew, as your influence grew, as programming grew, as more people watched
• 32:12
  television, watched radio. Like what was the, what was the, what was the, the, the result of all the
• 32:18
  work that you did? You're going to be very careful because a lot of times people say, wow, you,
• 32:24
  you sort of social change in the country is because of the media and so forth. I sort of,
• 32:33
  I think you can help facilitate a fast-track social change, but it's going to be done in an
• 32:37
  organic way. So you cannot, you're going to be careful in terms of not imposing your will
• 32:45
  basically, so to speak. I think it's going to be done in a very organic way. So you nudge things
• 32:50
  along as you're developing this business in terms of programming, but at the same time it has to
• 32:58
  feel organic and natural. But I think what, because you have to remember that in Afghanistan,
• 33:03
  in 2002, we had a really young population, median age was 17. The youngest country outside
• 33:12
  of Sub-Saharan Africa. Why was that? Why, why so young? As a curiosity? A conflict.
• 33:19
  So people just live long. There was older older, older, older men were dying. Older men were dying
• 33:25
  or disease. A lot of people had a lot of kids, because as Charles Mortality was high,
• 33:31
  and it's a natural phenomena that in conflict areas people have lots of kids, and it's sort of
• 33:40
  used the demographic of that country in terms of making the population much younger. If you look
• 33:46
  at the theory of those countries as well, where they had the famine in the 1980s, they also have
• 33:52
  very young populations, same with Somalia, like the Horn of Africa. So, but even today,
• 33:57
  Afghanistan's population is quite young. It's like 18 and a half, but so the country was very young,
• 34:03
  it was very impressionable, and we thought, well, if anyone's going to adopt these new things,
• 34:09
  it will be this younger population. So it was also taking a risk in terms of the younger Afghan
• 34:17
  population, and we're lucky to have this audience that was receptive. Now, for television,
• 34:24
  it was usually dealing with single TV households, so we had families gathering around the TV
• 34:33
  set, so we had to take a bit of a, like say, okay, it's going to appeal to like, at 35-year-old
• 34:40
  woman and her family, but she was going to determine us to what programs they would watch.
• 34:48
  And nowadays, of course, there are extra TV sets, and people can watch things on their devices,
• 34:52
  but at that time, so it was slightly female skewed mid-30s. But nonetheless, it was general viewing,
• 34:59
  it was for the entire family. But what was interesting was, because someone asked me the other day,
• 35:05
  like for example, having men and women in a studio, it was highly controversial, because people were
• 35:10
  saying, how the hell can you have a man and a woman in a studio laughing? And there was a cartoon
• 35:17
  of two individuals under the blanket in a bed with microphones, and it said arm on FM.
• 35:25
  And it was controversial, but it was quite extraordinary how quickly that became the format,
• 35:32
  and everyone else copied it. So you sort of facilitate social change by exposing people to
• 35:38
  something, and then within a very short space of time, they adopt that particular format,
• 35:44
  or a way of presenting. And that's because I think we were dealing with a much younger population.
• 35:51
  So it was, I mean, it was well received. People like to modernize if they have the opportunity to
• 36:00
  do so. And I mean, like fast forward a little bit. I mean, I want to touch on this because I
• 36:05
  think it's very interesting. You just wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post. And obviously,
• 36:13
  Afghanistan has gone in the opposite direction recently after the U.S. pulled out, and then
• 36:20
  halibens now in charge again. And maybe just talk a little bit about what you believe to be
• 36:28
  issues in Afghanistan, how you're navigating all this change. I mean, like, for example, I'm even
• 36:34
  curious as somebody who's built out pre-media, do you feel safe even going into Afghanistan with
• 36:42
  the Taliban there? Is that something that you feel comfortable doing? Or do you stay outside the
• 36:47
  country now? I stay outside the country not because of safety issues. I just think just the optics
• 36:55
  are not good. We're dealing with a movement that has banned goals from going to school.
• 37:05
  They've made it restrictive. These policies are fairly restrictive in terms of women working
• 37:11
  for private organizations or government organizations. It's just not a good look. Now, it's
• 37:18
  possible for this movement to change its ways, but until that happens, I think it's best for me to
• 37:24
  stay outside the country because I will also meet with me and I'll put my pictures and so forth
• 37:30
  from social media and so forth because I would like to show that people are coming back.
• 37:36
  Basically, in some ways, endorsing their rule over the country.
• 37:43
  So I'm careful, but I talked to them outside the country. I see them by people deal with them.
• 37:49
  The Taliban are a reality we have to accept, which is what I've explained in the op-ed.
• 37:59
  What's interesting is that three years on, the way that the West has approached the Taliban
• 38:06
  hasn't worked because their policies become even more restrictive. But the country is on the verge
• 38:14
  of a humanitarian catastrophe. So my argument is the world needs to engage, not recognize the
• 38:20
  Taliban, but needs to engage more with the Afghans with Afghanistan and needs to be underground
• 38:27
  to assess what's going on. But while they're there, they should also talk to the Taliban because
• 38:32
  I think that they can be more convincing in terms of encouraging the Taliban to change their
• 38:39
  ways by sitting across them in a room, then by abusing them from the UN 10,000 miles away.
• 38:48
  And engagement is always important. Talking to your enemy, talking to people you don't agree with,
• 38:53
  exchanging views and so forth. But being sort of a didactic and condescending and abusive
• 38:59
  is not going to work. I mean, these guys were living in caves for two decades. They're not
• 39:04
  going to care about sanctions. They've survived much harsher environment. So that's been in a
• 39:11
  nutshell, my sort of narrative of late encouraging folks in Washington, London, Brussels, and so forth
• 39:19
  to engage more with the people of Afghanistan. And then, of course, also the authorities in Kabul.
• 39:26
  Well, because I would assume, I mean, out of everything, the people in Afghanistan, not the Taliban,
• 39:33
  people in Afghanistan got the short end of the stick on this one. Like, now they have
• 39:40
  an oppressive government and an oppressive regime, whatever you want to call it. And
• 39:45
  I'm not an expert in geopolitics and international relations and foreign policy, but
• 39:53
  I would assume that, like you just mentioned, the humanitarian crisis because of the rest of the
• 39:58
  world kind of just abandoned Afghanistan after the Taliban took over. Yeah, I mean, if you take
• 40:05
  a step back, we first got, you know, if you look at conflict going back to late 1979, it was
• 40:13
  essentially because we were fighting the West's war against the Soviets. And if you look at the numbers,
• 40:19
  Afghanistan's population is 12 million in 1978. In the years that followed, the decade that followed,
• 40:26
  we had 7 million refugees, like almost half the country left. We had a million dead and a million
• 40:34
  handicapped. It was the most mined country on the planet. You know, you see more people with
• 40:40
  a missing limb than any other country on the planet. So that's a price the Afghans paid for it.
• 40:46
  And the conflict that followed the weapons and everything else was left over of the cold war.
• 40:53
  And then of course, in 2002, there was this hopeful period where the Afghan people, particularly
• 41:00
  the women were promised, you know, education, we will never abandon you again, lots of hope. And
• 41:08
  of course, the international community was very much involved in this sort of nation-building exercise,
• 41:13
  which we can talk about. It's a separate, I think it's a separate podcast whether it works or not.
• 41:18
  And it looked quite a lot of money spent, a lot of money wasted, of course. But the Afghans
• 41:23
  ended up with a very corrupt regime, pro-Western but corrupt in that on one side. And on the other
• 41:31
  side, you had the Taliban. And we did some surveys in like 2019, 2020, 2021. The Taliban's approval
• 41:39
  rating never exceeded 15 percent, one five. But the government's approval rating was also around
• 41:46
  17 or 18 percent. So you had two really unpopular movements. The people were sort of
• 41:55
  really not really involved because of the corruption and everything else, even the elections were not
• 41:59
  fair. So, and then the Americans decided to leave in a very sort of, as you recall, it was announced in
• 42:07
  mid-April, 2021, they would leave. They left, they're leave by the end of August, 2021. And four
• 42:13
  months and two weeks, they're gone. And the government is basically handed over to the Taliban.
• 42:21
  So the Afghan population really hasn't had much say in terms of this transition from this
• 42:29
  pro-Western government, corrupt but still fairly liberal, to a hardcore religious group. And then
• 42:37
  all of a sudden sanctions are imposed. Well, there are old sanctions from the late 1990s, early
• 42:43
  2000s. They saw the good grandfather then because the people who were sanctioned are in charge.
• 42:50
  So in a way, the West's continues to litigate against the Taliban, but in the process,
• 42:55
  hurting the people on the ground. I met to, you know, to add, you know, field to the far,
• 43:06
  hundreds of thousands of Afghans, the best that we have, are then helped to leave the country.
• 43:13
  So there's enormous loss of capacity, the best educated, best qualified Afghans, are then
• 43:20
  flown out of Kabul, 200,000 of them within like two weeks. And they're continuing to give people
• 43:26
  visas, believe the country. Now, I don't think there are any bad intentions. I don't think they
• 43:31
  want to create this vacuum, but nonetheless, probably a lot of governments feel compelled that,
• 43:35
  oh, this guy worked for us at some stage, or he was doing a project that was, you know,
• 43:39
  that related to US interests. So let's make this guy feel safe by getting him out,
• 43:44
  getting his family members out. But it also means that there's enormous loss of capacity within
• 43:49
  the country. So this punishment of sorts continues. And then it's so that people, you know,
• 43:56
  government officials have washed their hands off the nation and its population. It seems at least
• 44:03
  from where we stand. How do you, I mean, as a media company, how do you still operate, or what is
• 44:10
  your mandate post, post Taliban coming back into power? Are you still able to operate? You said
• 44:17
  to a degree, you know, you still have your team on the ground that communicates with the
• 44:21
  Taliban. So I'm assuming everything's still up and running. But there has to be some sort of
• 44:26
  censorship. Yes, no. What has changed? Well, they're now in charge, right? So they have
• 44:34
  decreed that there's no music. Wow. That there are no soap operas at all. But we have game shows,
• 44:42
  and we have, you know, talk shows. There's lots of children's programming. There's, you know,
• 44:50
  cooking shows and travel shows and so forth. So, you know, we have family food and things,
• 44:55
  shows like that. But, but, you know, it's, it's not like it used to be. So it's a sort of the business
• 45:06
  enough, got to send us ring fence. And we self-sensor obviously. But there's still enough
• 45:14
  entertainment to, you know, keep people watching television in the country. But also, people now
• 45:20
  have access to the internet or satellite television. So if they want to consume music and soap operas
• 45:25
  and things like that, they also have the option to do so. But what's also important for us? I
• 45:33
  mean, we talk about educating and informing our news operations continue to operate. We still have
• 45:38
  women working for us. As a matter of fact, we have more women in our news department than we did
• 45:44
  before 2021. We've gone from eight to 20 women and found out the camera behind the camera,
• 45:50
  research, you know, production and so forth. So news is important for us. It's very, it's a tight,
• 45:58
  it's a, it's a real tight road in terms of how we do the news. We run the news operation. Nonetheless,
• 46:04
  as I argue, there's probably no news story that we would not cover. We may not cover something with
• 46:10
  a great deal of fanfare, but we still cover cover the important news items of the day.
• 46:18
  But the other one, which I think is really important is education. Because girls cannot go to
• 46:23
  school. We've created these education programs in mathematics, physics, biology and chemistry for
• 46:31
  seventh, eighth and ninth graders. We're going to expand that to 10th, 11th and 12th grades and two
• 46:39
  languages. So we have enormous output in terms of education programming on television, on your
• 46:47
  sort of linear TV network, also available in our O2T platform on YouTube and so forth. But
• 46:53
  so the education undertaking, I think it's perhaps one of the most consequential things we've done
• 46:59
  over the last, you know, 25 years. And it's sort of, is it an alternative to going into a normal
• 47:07
  high school? Of course not. But it's a bridge between three bands and whenever that these bands
• 47:13
  are lifted, which I think they will be, whether it's by four or so, they volunteer to lift these
• 47:20
  bands. I think you cannot indefinitely silence half your population. So this is the work we're
• 47:27
  doing now. And it's sort of, we're sort of, I wouldn't want to use the word stuck, but it's,
• 47:34
  you know, you're damned if you leave and you're damned if you don't leave. It's one of those
• 47:38
  situations. And, and the Taliban have no issue with you doing this?
• 47:45
  Well, you know, it's a, the movement itself is, which we've discovered, which we saw the new,
• 47:51
  but we're discovering even more, is that it's not a monolithic movement in that there are different
• 47:59
  points of view, vis-a-vis education or even entertainment. There are people who are more pragmatic.
• 48:06
  I wouldn't say moderate, but more pragmatic than others. There are elements which are
• 48:10
  very conservative. And there are elements who are much more pragmatic in terms of
• 48:17
  day-to-day stuff. They've visited, you know, the Gulf, like as in Qatar or the UAE or Turkey,
• 48:24
  they've seen things. Their kids have been to school, whether it was in Pakistan or Doha and Qatar.
• 48:31
  So they have a much more pragmatic approach to things like education, compared to other elements
• 48:40
  who, you know, have never venture that they don't believe women should leave the house.
• 48:46
  They should get married, you know, as soon as they turn 15 or 16 and that should be the end of
• 48:52
  anything to do with girls or their education. So we have to sort of work with the more
• 48:59
  pragmatic types. But the question is, who's going to prevail at the end of the day? And I have,
• 49:04
  you know, I have no idea that what's going to happen in five years or three years or even five
• 49:10
  months. What do you, what do you, what do you hope, at least,
• 49:15
  mobile group? I mean, what do you hope you and your company and your group of companies
• 49:23
  can really accomplish with an ideal outcome? Because you have a place in this story now,
• 49:30
  just because media is so influential in terms of culture and society. So
• 49:36
  best possible outcome, what would you like to have happen in Afghanistan? Because you even
• 49:41
  mentioned before, it's very interesting. I didn't know that, that the government, that the US
• 49:46
  was supporting at a 17% approval rating. I mean, two points more than Taliban means that
• 49:53
  there hasn't been a good option in years. And since the dates you mentioned, whatever,
• 50:00
  the late 70s or early 80s, it's just been kind of shit repeatedly. So what do you hope?
• 50:06
  Well, I mean, this is a big debate now. And in terms of, you know, a lot, it was America's longest
• 50:13
  war, they spent a trillion dollars, you know, my friend Tom Fresson, I mentioned, he says, you know,
• 50:18
  the $220,000 grant to us was probably more consequential than a trillion dollars spent on
• 50:24
  like contractors and building roads that basically were in channels within six months.
• 50:29
  Because of the system is just corrupt, you know, whether it's the contracting business,
• 50:35
  that's sort of, you know, with the beltway band that's dominating in Washington,
• 50:39
  is just a very corrupt system, whether it's about arms manufacturing or building roads outside.
• 50:45
  Nonetheless, it was transformative for the country. So it actually transformed the people of
• 50:50
  Afghanistan. And so for us, it's, it's how to keep the hope going, how to sustain some of the gains.
• 50:58
  If there's a woman who, you know, speaks four languages, you know, you want her to continue to
• 51:06
  speak those languages to pass those, you know, skill sets to her kids, for example, if possible,
• 51:12
  to provide her with some hope that she can one day work again. And I think the thing that's
• 51:19
  important for us is, you know, how do we ensure we don't lose those gains? We will lose them
• 51:27
  in the next decade. I mean, this is not one or two year thing. This is a, we're looking at things
• 51:32
  a decade at a time. And for us, I think the other important thing is that if you look at the West,
• 51:39
  now it's about tolerance, intellectual humility, to continue to have an open mind about things,
• 51:47
  because there's no doubt that the current regime in Afghanistan is going to attempt to indoctrinate
• 51:54
  these especially young men to make the more religious, perhaps more intolerant, more ideological.
• 52:04
  And we have to provide them with the tools and skill sets to always take a step back
• 52:10
  to question and challenge things. And we have, you know, this mass media operation
• 52:16
  at our disposal that we can teach people these skill sets and to have respectful women and so
• 52:21
  forth. So it's, you know, maintaining this, you know, maintaining what we have is the ultimate
• 52:28
  goal. I mean, it's, you know, we are on our back foot, collectively speaking. But, you know,
• 52:35
  it's a, there are no good options. We have to go with what's the least bad option in a country
• 52:42
  like Afghanistan. But at the same time, we can't lose hope. I think I have a great deal of hope
• 52:49
  when I look at the people. We've done this series of programs on female entrepreneurs in the
• 52:55
  country. Ironically, the Taliban are allowing female entrepreneurs. So they're getting these
• 53:00
  licenses to whether it's operating a fish farm or a catering business. And these are inspirational.
• 53:05
  These women running these businesses, mostly out of necessity because they have to provide for
• 53:10
  their families. So this environment, this tough environment is also making people more entrepreneurial.
• 53:18
  More determined. And we're just to help where we can. I love that. I mean, it's so, it's very
• 53:28
  interesting. So it seems like, and this is not meant to paint the Taliban in a positive light.
• 53:34
  But it seems like there's leniency. Even though there's massive disregard for, for humanity,
• 53:43
  like for human life in some capacity and, and just respect for individuals and their freedoms,
• 53:49
  there seems to be at least, hopefully, like you mentioned, the pressure from the rest of the
• 53:55
  world is forcing them to be even a degree better than they used to be before. For example,
• 54:01
  they're allowing women to be entrepreneurs. That's, that's an amazing thing. Even in a very
• 54:07
  shitty circumstance, it's still an amazing thing. So there is some hope, like you mentioned,
• 54:12
  there is some hope. And I do believe that if, if I don't really understand why they wouldn't
• 54:16
  let them go to school, but they let them be entrepreneurs, but it doesn't really matter. The
• 54:21
  point is they should be doing everything. And at the bare minimum, if they're allowed to be entrepreneurs,
• 54:26
  that's, that's, I guess, a tiny bit of a silver lining in a really dark situation. But yeah.
• 54:33
  I mean, I mean, I mean, I see a lot of statements, you know, that's at the U.N., or whatever,
• 54:38
  you know, over the last 20 years, I've heard lots of platitudes, and people make notes
• 54:45
  of statements, but you know, where we deal with real world issues. And for us, it's, how do we
• 54:51
  deliver real results? You know, I can make a big statement, and it's not going to result in anything.
• 54:57
  But the important thing is to just focus on real changes. And a very prominent international
• 55:07
  head of an age agency told me that once the Taliban announced that they would ban
• 55:12
  women working for NGOs. So he went to Afghanistan and he went to Kandahar, which is the sort of
• 55:19
  the center of the leadership, basically, very conservative. He went to Kabul even to Iraq.
• 55:25
  And by the end of his trip, he had convinced the local authorities to allow 65, I think,
• 55:32
  or 70% of his female employees to return to work. Because he convinced them that their presence
• 55:41
  you know, would help Afghan women that they would help in those areas, you know,
• 55:48
  avoid a catastrophe, a humanitarian catastrophe. And they agreed to it. So that's again,
• 55:55
  it illustrates that engagement is important when you sit opposite someone drinking in the
• 56:00
  endless cups of tea, and you know, you present the facts, you can convince them, and you're dealing
• 56:06
  with individuals. So I think it's so important, you know, people, people in this world today,
• 56:11
  people don't talk to each other anymore. Even in your country, people are in their bubbles,
• 56:17
  and they'd like to paint the other side. They have this very black and white
• 56:21
  approach to things. A very binary views, a view of their
• 56:27
  oppositions of their speech. So talking, I mean, again, I don't want to be a accuser being naive.
• 56:33
  I just think that talking is better than not talking. That doesn't mean that you
• 56:38
  open the floodgates and give them everything they want, but dialogue is important.
• 56:43
  I fully agree, and it can make change. As you look at, as you look at sort of the current
• 56:51
  landscape right now, from a business perspective, what strategic moves do you have to make to,
• 56:58
  I mean, you're built, you have a business and a conflict zone that's currently run by a regime
• 57:04
  and an oppressive regime. So how do you, as a business owner, how do you navigate that?
• 57:10
  You don't want to close up shop. You're offering hope to the Afghani people,
• 57:15
  but obviously it's not easy. So as an entrepreneur, how do you navigate this situation?
• 57:21
  Well, you know this, because you know, you obviously, this is what you do, but I think
• 57:28
  for businesses, you need to be able to act very quickly. You have to be very nimble, no matter how big
• 57:35
  you are. I think you have to have this, you know, the spirit of, you know, you have to pretend almost
• 57:42
  like you have five employees. And you have to be that dramatic in terms of like cutting costs,
• 57:47
  for example, or giving rid of studios, or if you have to let go of individuals who work for you
• 57:57
  in order to survive. So I think in 2021, we realized that revenues are going to plummet,
• 58:04
  and that's exactly what we did. So we completely reassessed the way we were doing things.
• 58:09
  And the nature of the business completely was transformed in those months that became a very
• 58:19
  operationally speaking, a much cheaper business to run. And we've maintained that sort of thing.
• 58:25
  So we're like, I mean, I always tell people, we're like a startup. And for the last 20
• 58:30
  something years, we have the startup approach, which can be very stressful, because every,
• 58:36
  you know, we have these existential threats on a weekly basis. But, you know, advertising revenues
• 58:42
  are down by 70%. But, you know, because obviously the economy has also been hammered. The cost of
• 58:51
  running a business in Afghanistan has also been reduced significantly. And nowadays, you know,
• 58:58
  you can produce things outside, and you can put them together in a third country. So we have
• 59:02
  smaller operations across the region that allow us to continue to maintain our operations within
• 59:09
  the country. But we still have 400-500 people working for us in Afghanistan across all platforms.
• 59:15
  That's a bit. And even with a 70% drop in advertising revenue, which is a huge drop that would
• 59:22
  destroy most entrepreneurs, after the restructuring, after sort of slimming things down,
• 59:27
  getting very lean, self-500 employees in Afghanistan, you've maintained profitability.
• 59:34
  It's still a successful business in 2024.
• 59:37
  Well, our approach now is break even. So for us, breaking even is the, you know, focus.
• 59:46
  Because now it's not just about profitability, it's about survival. But I think that if we can maintain,
• 59:50
  you know, or break even or fight loss, it's acceptable to us. Because the population, I mean,
• 1:00:01
  it's gone from 20 million to 40 million in 20 years. But the population is still growing at 3%
• 1:00:07
  per annum. And by 2060, 2070, there'll be like 100 million individuals in the country. So I think
• 1:00:15
  that even off a low base, things that picked up, some, for example, just give you an example,
• 1:00:21
  on one of the large beverage companies, there's something that year on year,
• 1:00:26
  sales of their products have gone up by 40%. But even, you know, the country gets lucky once
• 1:00:33
  in a while because of the sanctions against the Russians that a lot of products are being bought
• 1:00:39
  in Afghanistan for re-export to Russia, like Western products, you know, like beverage companies,
• 1:00:47
  you know, whether it's a, rather not name them, but you can guess, you know, fizzy drinks with
• 1:00:52
  Western brands are selling like crazy. They can't produce enough out of Afghanistan. So in some
• 1:00:57
  ways, things have picked up a little bit because of other factors. Very interesting. If you were,
• 1:01:03
  I mean, obviously, so the book, Radio Free Afghanistan, people can, I guess, get that now if they
• 1:01:11
  want to learn a little bit more about, actually, you tell me. So if somebody picks this up,
• 1:01:15
  what would be outside of your story, what would be one thing that you would really like them to
• 1:01:22
  take away from, from the book and your life and your learnings and your lessons in Afghanistan,
• 1:01:27
  and the history of the region? What would be the one thing?
• 1:01:30
  Well, I think in the book, I've tried to explain that it's not just my story, that a lot of people
• 1:01:36
  contribute to this, to this business, and they have their own stories, and the book is as much
• 1:01:46
  about their stories as much as, you know, it's about my story. So I think to build anything that's
• 1:01:53
  worthwhile, it's a collective effort. I think that's important. The other thing, of course, is that
• 1:02:02
  you know, people face many challenges, and I think you can come almost any of them.
• 1:02:08
  If you have the discipline and the commitment to move forward, but I think there's going to be,
• 1:02:15
  I think people are just too focused on bottom line and make money, and I think I discovered a lot
• 1:02:21
  of people are not passionate about what they do, and they don't care about the people they work
• 1:02:26
  with, or the environment they work in, or the line of business that are involved, and I think
• 1:02:31
  there's a lot to enjoy while building a business, and I have to have that passion about what you do,
• 1:02:37
  is I think it's also really important. I never be afraid of doing too many things. My brother
• 1:02:46
  used to say that, you know, always bite more than he can chew, and then chew like crazy.
• 1:02:50
  I like that. I like that. I mean, I think if I'm talking to an entrepreneur in the US, and the,
• 1:03:00
  I mean, the lessons that you give about why you built what you built, I think are phenomenal,
• 1:03:07
  and I think that you did it for all the right reasons, and I think that that's why you're
• 1:03:11
  successful, and I think that that's something that a lot of entrepreneurs can take away. Like you
• 1:03:15
  mentioned before, they're building for the wrong reasons, building to chase money, or fame,
• 1:03:21
  or influence, or notoriety. I actually don't even think it's a sustainable way to build, because I
• 1:03:27
  think the challenges that you're going to have to overcome are going to sideline you and take you
• 1:03:34
  out of the game way before you actually build anything significant. I mean, look at what you were
• 1:03:38
  up against, and it was love for love for Afghanistan, passion for what you were building.
• 1:03:45
  You're trying to not just build a company. You're trying to improve and better society of a
• 1:03:52
  people. Like that's not a selfish reason to build a business. So I think that that's a great lesson
• 1:04:01
  for any entrepreneur. Not everyone's going to build in a conflict zone, but the point is all the
• 1:04:05
  lessons as to why you were successful, and you were able to succeed in spite of all the
• 1:04:11
  circumstances that were against you. Those are lessons that apply to anyone.
• 1:04:15
  And the friends you make along the way, whether they're your employees or colleagues or partners,
• 1:04:22
  I think because obviously we confront death, whether it's threats or your employees
• 1:04:30
  getting killed or friends getting killed, I think you always think about what will I reflect on
• 1:04:38
  when I'm about to die on my deathbed. It's never going to be about financial gain or the size
• 1:04:44
  of the bank account. It's going to be about the relationships and the things that make you feel
• 1:04:49
  good about your life and what you've achieved and work with. So I think those are important things.
• 1:04:54
  I think people are very myopic in terms of building businesses in the West nowadays. It's very much
• 1:04:59
  about building something exiting building something else and doesn't matter if they burn their
• 1:05:04
  bridges or upset people or destroy relationships. I think it's always good to take that step back if
• 1:05:11
  you can. I love that. What did we what did we not talk about that you think is an important lesson
• 1:05:17
  or an important thought? Well, I think it's important to also remember that everything passes.
• 1:05:24
  If you're facing a major tragedy or if you fail, eventually it passes. Nothing is permanent,
• 1:05:36
  good or bad. Good. Very good. Very wise. Where should people connect with you? I mean,
• 1:05:42
  the book's going to be on Amazon. It's going to be wherever you can buy books. I'll put all
• 1:05:47
  the links in the show notes. Where else do you want to send people? Do you want to send people
• 1:05:51
  to your social website? You let me know and I'll put the links below, but just drop some handles
• 1:05:56
  or whatnot. Great. Now I'm on Instagram and Twitter and everywhere. And so forth.
• 1:06:06
  I'll put I'll find them. I'll put them all below. Last question. I always like to ask people
• 1:06:11
  because again, you've had an incredible life. Many seasons to your life. We spoke about really
• 1:06:17
  the one business that you've built, but I know that you've built a lot of other things in your
• 1:06:20
  life as well. So if you look back now and you want to tell your 20-year-old self some advice,
• 1:06:26
  what would that advice be? Well, I don't know if I want to do anything differently because I think
• 1:06:31
  in a failing or being involved in things which are not successful or just as important as being
• 1:06:37
  involved in successful ventures. I think what shapes us eventually are a sort of combination,
• 1:06:44
  a collection of everything along the way. I don't know. I think people are really hard on themselves
• 1:06:53
  nowadays and people should give themselves a break. I mean, you're allowed to fail. You're allowed
• 1:06:59
  to not do well. Not everyone's an entrepreneur. I mean, that's another lesson for people.
• 1:07:05
  It's sometimes better to be part of a good team and work for salary and maybe have some options.
• 1:07:17
  I think a lot of people try attempt to be with its podcast thing or creating an app. I think every
• 1:07:23
  person I meet wants to be involved in these businesses. What's success? How do you define success?
• 1:07:35
  It's about having friends around you, family, enjoying the things on a day-to-day basis.
• 1:07:44
  Sometimes being an entrepreneur is a lonely existence. You're out there on your own and making
• 1:07:49
  decisions and living with the stress. I don't know. I think so many years on, I still don't know
• 1:07:58
  to be honest with you. I actually like that advice. Black and white response. No, no, I don't need
• 1:08:03
  black and white responses. I like that answer a lot. I like the answer of I wouldn't change anything
• 1:08:09
  because the failures and the lessons made me who I am. At the same time, I tell that younger
• 1:08:16
  person, that younger sad or younger squad or whatever. It's okay to fail because that's really
• 1:08:21
  going to make you who you are. All that advice is good advice. I also try and tell people to not
• 1:08:26
  just jump into entrepreneurship just because. It's okay to figure out different paths that
• 1:08:33
  you have to know your North Star too. You have to know what you value. For a lot of people,
• 1:08:38
  entrepreneurship is high risk, high burnout, high stress. If they don't figure it out properly,
• 1:08:45
  then they're going to burn relationships with their friends or family. There's a listen,
• 1:08:50
  anybody can do whatever they want. I think that trying, failing, and being okay with that
• 1:08:56
  failure and trying different versions of life is very smart advice. No one has to, again,
• 1:09:01
  we don't have to be so myopic. We can do different things. We can be different people. That's smart
• 1:09:06
  advice. The journey is fun. The fun bit is the journey. We've exited a lot of companies. It was
• 1:09:15
  always sad actually when you get the check and that's it for that business. The stuff leading to
• 1:09:24
  that was always more gratifying. The stuff that we had to do that led to that exit or
• 1:09:35
  following that business. It should have been the most exciting day, but it was actually the most
• 1:09:38
  depressing in some ways. I think that's the reason why is because you're building for the right
• 1:09:43
  reasons. When you're not building for the right reasons, then sometimes people can't wait to get
• 1:09:49
  rid of the business. But if you build for the right reason, it should be sad because it's your
• 1:09:54
  baby. You poured your heart and soul into it. Correct. Yes.