Latest / The Backdrop Podcast / Episode 15 - Simon Mellor, Founder and Principal of Long-Stile FZE

Transcript

Episode 15 - Simon Mellor, Founder and Principal of Long-Stile FZE · The Backdrop Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome back to the backdrop.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_03: Our guest today is one of the event industry's most accomplished international business leaders.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_03: With a career spanning more than 20 years across the Middle East, Europe, Asia, and the Americas, joining DMG Events as vice president and concluding his tenure as president of the Middle East, he led a 28-event portfolio across 10 countries, growing revenue from$79 million to$106 million in profit by 35%.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_03: Later as regional CEO of Messi Frankfurt Middle East, he steered a$64 million business through COVID and into record revenue and margin performance.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_03: Across his career, he has generated more than$93 million through pioneering event concepts and launches while transforming organizations, building high-performing teams, and developing lasting relationships with governments, multinational corporations, and industry leaders.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_03: Today, as principal consultant at Longstyle FZE, he advises international organizers on GCC market entry, partnerships, and new opportunities.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_03: Episode 15 of the backdrop welcomes Simon Meller.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_03: Simon Meller, thank you for joining us today.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_03: Honestly, it's uh an incredible uh pleasure to have you here.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_03: I think you're probably one of the and you'll probably resist this, but one of the longest standing pillars of the events landscape here.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_03: And you've you've done some incredible work leading some incredibly uh uh you know strong organizations.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_03: And even before that, you had another, a whole other life publishing.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_03: And so I really am looking forward to our conversation today.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_03: But first off, how are you?
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_03: How's everything going?
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_02: Good morning, Michael.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for the invite.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um, this will be an interesting experience.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I'm good.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_02: I'm good.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_02: It's been an interesting six months.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_02: Don't need to go into that, but um yeah, looking forward to this discussion.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_03: I am as well.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_03: I think there's uh there's a a lot uh that we can get into um because of your journey and and because of uh all of your accomplishments.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_03: And I I first want to start at the beginning.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_03: Before the events uh industry uh took hold of you, there was a publishing life that you had uh uh long time ago.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_03: And it was it was it stretched, I think, from from UK um and and then it just went well I'll I'll let you explain that.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah, so that was my my uh my background.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_02: I mean technically not many people know, but I'm a farmer by profession.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_02: I grew up on a farm in rural Staffordshire.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I always felt that was my direction.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I pursued it from an educational point of view, and up until discovering I could play a little bit of rugby, farming was was everything I was doing.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um I have an elder brother who at the time was working as a journalist within agriculture, and in a conversation, it may have involved alcohol, I can't remember, he had shared with me his frustration with the commercial teams.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_02: And I wasn't a commercial person at this point, I was just you know working on farms.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_02: And and he said they just don't know anything about the industry, they don't understand farming, and yet they're trying to sell media.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_02: And it it it sort of sowed a seed for me, which as I was completing my education, I uh I just reached out to all of the three publishing companies.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_02: I had done a a study on advertising effectiveness, uh, and was lucky enough to get offered three interviews, and I ended up in East Anglia working for one of the specialist farming press titles, and it it taught me a lot.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of lessons on that I learned over that six or seven years that have stayed with me.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_03: So the publishing, this this past life of publishing was, and I think it's something that probably stays with you forever, and it's the teachings of that, including working in South America, working in China, working in Canada.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, how did this sort of form your mindset uh moving forward, working with different working within different cultures and very, very diverse cultures?
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the publishing was was interesting because we were a controlled circulation publishing house.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_02: So very much about market segmentation.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_02: I learned very early that your buyers in a market are not your entire market, the majority of buyers are concentrated into the upper echelon, and it became the sort of foundation of how I sold and how I understood the market, and I had an advantage that I had had a mixed farming background, so I could connect with clients perhaps more quickly.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um at the same time, I seemingly uh was able to see opportunities, and I can't explain why.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_02: I'm a dyslexic by education, so sometimes that gives you a slightly different approach to think about it.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_02: Intuition, yeah.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and I just saw gaps and opportunities that I thought we could exploit.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_02: And I'll give you a good example.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_02: We were a monthly, one of our competitors was a fortnightly, and we were losing revenue in key times of the year.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_02: So that spring and autumn period, we were losing revenue every week because we were only publishing once.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_02: So I came up with the notion of why don't we make our journal fortnightly for these key periods, which which everybody looked at me a little bit sideways, but in the end, we convinced them.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_02: So we we gained the benefit of low cost at the difficult times of the year, November, December, January, and we gained from the market share that we took all the way through the spring and the autumn.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_02: And it it was in relatively small uh beer at the time, but it allowed us to really push forward, put more content into the market, be seen to be listening to our readers.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_02: And publishing and events are two-dimensional, three-dimensional.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_02: It's the same process, yeah.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_02: Which is why you see a lot of people transition into events from publishing.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_03: I I think early on I identified that uh that uh well, this was sort of my my little metaphor was that a conference was like a magazine.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_03: You know, all of the articles were the speakers, yeah, and the the advertisements were the sponsors.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_03: And it's just like it says it's two-dimensional, it's it's it's it's very much the same.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_03: But you worked in so many different uh so many different countries and regions, but China, is there anything that caught you off guard working there?
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_03: How long ago was was China?
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_02: So I'll I'll I'll I'll do the loop from the UK to Canada.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um it took me quite a while to get out of agriculture.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_02: I spent three years as a headhunter, which became a skill for building teams later in in my career.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um but but through through the publishing connection, I started to kind of bounce my way through different divisions, in this industry divisions.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I was I was often that guy who was given a magazine that wasn't performing, and can you go and do something with it?
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_02: You come up with a few fresh ideas, and as soon as it starts to move, they pull you off it and put you on something else.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_02: Which has its frustrations, but I enjoyed the the variety.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: And it was through that journey that I got introduced to a VP in Canada who brought a project in.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_02: We had a large, very successful oil and gas pipeline event in Calgary, and there was a notion of, you know, maybe we can take this into Russia.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_02: So I was sent into Moscow to negotiate with the oil companies as to whether we could launch something in in Moscow, which was a real eye-opener.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and we failed.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_02: It's a good example of you try and not everything works.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_02: But the relationship with Peter in Canada had been sort of formed.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_02: So, a matter of a few months later, I got a call with an initiative that was being put together from the Alberta government and CNPC, the biggest oil and gas company in China.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_02: And the notion of can we create an event for the heavy oil industry, kind of a pseudo-OPEC type model, and engage with the countries around the world that have deposits of heavy oil.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I flew over to Beijing for meetings and somehow miraculously managed to persuade them that we were the right people to do it.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_02: The Alberta government couldn't deal with anything commercial, so they gave it to the DMG team in Calgary.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and that started my journey into China, which was so different from the UK and Canada, which in itself was a bit of a cultural leap.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I'll explain that.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_02: So in the UK, everything is very formal, getting access to government and ministers is not an easy process.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_02: I remember within a couple of weeks of moving into Caldery, I got invited up to Edmonton to meet some of the government team that were responsible for promoting the oil sands around the world.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_02: And within within a 10-minute conversation, I got a minister handing me his mobile phone number and saying, if anything, you need anything, just give me a call.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, what?
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_02: And he goes, Yeah, yeah, no problem.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_02: Weekends, I'm always available.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_02: And that proved to be the case.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_02: Uh had a lovely, a lovely occasion at the actually at the event in in China.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_02: I'd I had the energy minister from Alberta join us.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_02: He was doing one of the keynotes.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_02: And uh the um lovely gentleman, Angelo, half Canadian, half Chinese, who was the sort of cultural in-between in the project, introduced me to a lovely tailor in in uh in Beijing.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_02: So I was getting a final fitting of my uh of my suit for that particular week and standing behind a mateship curtain, just about to pull my trousers up, and Angelo pulled the curtain back to can I introduce the minister?
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_02: And I just looked up at him, you know, I was on, I was sort of crouched out.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, Minister, you've already caught me with my pants down, quite literally.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_02: Literally.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_02: So that and you know, that bit of humor just kind of created a bit of a bond.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_02: We ended up having a great week.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_02: But to your question of the difference between the openness and approachability of Canada and the quite stark difference in China, where some of the things that have stayed with me were, you know, that first of all, it's relatively easy in the Western world to network your way up a um management structure.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_02: So you'll get introduced and you get introduced up and up and up you go.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_02: That was never the case in China, right?
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_02: I had a a very interesting guy called Mr.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_02: Han, who was the CEO of it.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_02: And he would never allow me access to his senior management, even though we needed discussion to sort of develop a content and ensure the event would work, but starkly different.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_02: And and that was a side, you know, when you go in with very much a Western mentality, which that's your business background, you can't have anything else, and then you come up to the way the Chinese then were thinking, and obviously they're evolving and they're moving forward all the time.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_02: But at that point, it was, I would have likened it to I was trying to play soccer and they were playing hockey, or the opposite way around.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_02: You know, they it was just a completely different game, different rules.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_02: They looked at things in a completely different way.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_02: Back to a publishing reference.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_02: I remember they showed me the event guide that we were going to pass out to all of the attendees.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_02: And every Chinese company was in the first half of the magazine, and all of the internationals were pushed at the back.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_02: Sitting down with Mr.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_02: Hans' team, and I'm like, we we need to recognize that you've got see very significant players like Suncor and ExxonMobil and BP and Shell.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_02: They need to be in the first half as well.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_02: And they'll be like, why?
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_02: So it was that cultural adjustment, and you know, flying from Calgary into Beijing for and that I did that journey back and forth for about 18 months was in initially very challenging, but ultimately, you know, fantastically rewarding.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um and again, just to highlight the point about the deal is never done in China.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we we had a structured deal signed between the Alberta government and CNPC, and the notion was that we would move the event to the alternate destination.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_02: So we started in Beijing.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_02: The plan was we would move to Edmonton.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_02: Edmonton would host on the last night of the event in Beijing.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_02: We we had a very sort of Canadian evening, Canadian food, Canadian speakers, with a notion of this is where we're going.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_02: That's two or three hours before the event, after the Chinese had realized that we'd had got, I think there were 14 countries represented at the event at senior level.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_02: They suddenly decided, actually, we're just gonna keep it here in Beijing next year.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, no, you can't do that.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_02: And they'll be like, no, it's been so successful, we think we should just stay here.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, but but we've all agreed that we would go to Edmonton.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, we're gonna keep it here.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_02: So in the end, we we simply rebranded in Canada.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_02: It it had been a conference, we moved it to a Congress, okay, and just went forward.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_02: And it took it took quite a few months for the Chinese to eventually realize that okay, we we need to be where the whole world is, which is they're gonna be in Edmonton.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_03: But it was an interesting journey.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_03: It's difficult stakeholder management.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_03: And it's and it just it just leads me to believe now that such an incredible response and enjoyable response to a question, I think on my part could have been far better curated.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_03: Because that was that was the way to go.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, that the I the Canada to China and the and the um this complete difference in in uh in the mindset and working mindset with stakeholders is is uh is pretty interesting.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_03: And I find it when you mentioned that the minister walked up and it didn't surprise me.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_03: There's something off-putting about Canadian leadership where they're very, very unguarded.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I remember in it's like 1999, I was in a I I think it was in a pub or restaurant or something like this, and Paul Martin, the Prime Minister of Canada, walks in with one guy that just looks like his lawyer, and they sit down and they order a drink and some something to eat.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know where, but I just sitting there and I'm watching him was like, that's the Prime Minister of Canada.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_03: And he's just sitting there like and it's just they just have no, I don't know.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_03: There's just they just don't really, you know, put put sort of a a bubble around themselves.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_03: It's very, very uh it's nice.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_02: It's nice because it shows a lot of humility, but uh um well I I I'll share a a a personal story when I not long after I I relocated, which I think highlights the point you're making, which is how how open and supportive Canadians are as a nation.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_02: And there's no there's no sort of societal steps in the way that you do you get in the UK, you know.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_02: It's very different.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_02: We we had an office just opposite one of the one of the supermarkets, and we'd go and pick up our lunch sandwiches and soup or whatever, and we'd sit around the boardroom table.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_02: So there's about six of us, and I was busily uh not really paying attention to the conversation.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_02: And this would have been October, November.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_02: And uh my colleagues were like, So what are you doing this weekend, Michael?
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_02: And they were like, Well, I'm I'm gonna go skiing this weekend.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, really?
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_02: And what will you put in your car in order to make sure that you're winter prepared for that journey?
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm watching this conversation and not taking any notice at all.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, we need blankets and we need extra winter clothes and we need water and spare batteries.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_02: And this is all flying over my head until the next day at lunch when um my my partner, Wes, superhuman being, leaned over and said, Simon, do you remember the conversation we were having over lunch yesterday?
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, No.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_02: Then he went, you know, the conversation about winterizing your car and making sure you've got everything in it you need.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, no.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_02: And he said, We know you're renting a car every weekend and driving up to Lake Louise to ski.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, yeah, I ski every Saturday.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_02: He said, You have absolutely no idea the danger you're putting yourself in because that rental car has got nothing in it.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_02: And if you get hit by a blizzard, that's you finished.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, really?
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm like, okay, I I need to think about this.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_02: But it was just the nature of how they did it and thoughtfulness.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_02: The knowledge that, you know, we even in a few short weeks, you were already part of the family.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_02: I had three wonderful years in Canada.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we had uh we we were talking this before we started filming about uh um, you know, yesterday was the 25th anniversary of 9-11.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_03: And I'll never forget that and I one thing I'm very, very proud of being from Atlantic, Canada, being from Nova Scotia, is at that time when we we took in tens of thousands of people uh into our homes that were flying in that couldn't land, and we took them into kind of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, maybe, maybe some other parts, New Brunswick, PEI, and uh give them places of stay and blankets and recreation centers.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, it's uh I I'm proud of that of that that part of it.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that there's a real unification of Canadians now.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_03: But we won't go into to geopolitics because that would uh yeah, that would be uh that would be my first choice for podcasts, but I'm not um not really uh thinking.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_02: Hopefully engaged with that, but yeah.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, so let's let's uh yeah, let's talk about uh let's talk about you.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_03: Um so South America, China, Canada, you you've been all over the place.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_03: These are just a few play.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_03: You've been all over the world, you've you've represented, we talked about some work in America uh for firefighters on the same uh on that same tone.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_03: Um but has how is all of this come together to sort of form your mindset when you when you approach um when you approach events, when you approach strategy and planning and opportunities and things like this.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_03: Obviously, if you were only in one country and you had sort of you didn't have sort of a a divergent um opinion on on how things should uh should be formed, then you wouldn't be where you are.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_03: But I think probably a lot of that has to do with the fact that you've got a global mindset.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I've been very lucky.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um and from a from a business perspective, I enjoy that cultural interplay.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um I don't know why from the background of a rural farm in Staffordshire, I would I would have that or enjoy that, but that's the the fact of it.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_02: So the differences between Canada, China, Venezuela, and Dubai or Abu Dhabi and even Riyadh are things that not everybody has takes the time to understand the nuances of difference of of how people engage and how they want you to engage.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um and that the transition here to Dubai, to the UAE, even the difference between Dubai and Abu Dhabi, and I've I've worked in both is it's it's there.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_02: And you you have to adjust your your play accordingly.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_02: And particularly, and I I was lucky enough to be in Saudi quite early back in 2013.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and again, a very different market, and a market that's moved.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: So far, so fast.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_02: But they have their own way of needing to do business.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_02: So I I like that interplay.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_03: So you you moved fast forward a bit to to now the Middle East, uh, which you've leaned into a bit here, but we both arrived in 2008.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_03: You arrived in 2008.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_03: It was a very interesting time to arrive in Dubai, and it was a it was a real pivotal time.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, everything the Berge Khalifa was being built.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, um, you know, Palm was being built, Dubai malled, the the uh the metro was being built.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah um I've got grainy footage from my old BlackBerry of of a half-built uh Burge Khalifa.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_03: So it was a really, really interesting time.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_03: So when you arrived, what did you immediately recognize in terms of the market and in terms of of the the sort of the working style here and and just the strategy that this incredible country in the city was was starting to create?
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: I I think the um the scale of the ambition is what struck you back then.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um you know the the scope of that architects have to build and design buildings in a you know in a quite extravagant style.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um and there were so many major projects live at the time.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I came in to take on a construction show, which which, if you can recall, um the industry was just beginning to go into a very tumultuous state, which was a real challenge at the time.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_02: But the the sheer scope and scale and openness of of what Dubai was trying to do was was what made you realize that okay, this is not this is a very unique place to be, and you know, you just have to hold on and go with it because it it was charging forward.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_03: It was really developing at that time.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_03: I think the first event was was it big five?
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_03: It was.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think I was at big five, it might have been ATM, but I was at I remember it was I was I took a picture in front of Trade Center in my cheap polyester suit.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_03: This guy come kid coming in with uh, you know, uh you know, thumbs up and and very excited to be in Dubai.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_03: And it was it was it was one of the two.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_03: I can't remember, but so you were at so you you you led the charge at DMG, and then um, and of course, 140 people at Messi Frankfurt, um where you were so you went from that mindset through all of this of an event director to now governing over as as sort of the north star for the group to be able to to sort of lead them into the next uh phase year after year.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_03: What was that like going from event director straight into that complete governance?
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_02: That was an interesting journey.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: And um I think at the time uh I had I had had my time on Big Five.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um when when Jeff Dickinson came into DMG and I moved up to to take on Adipec, which in itself had uh a need to develop at that time.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_02: It was sitting at sort of number five in the world.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_02: I had a relationship with the market because of the time in Calgary with the global petroleum show.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_02: So the market was understood known and understood, but against the other big four global shows, we had some adjustment and some work to do, and we had a very competitive conferencing partner at the time.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um so those were all sizable divisions and challenges.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_02: And when the opportunity came to to take that DNG role, that leadership role, I think if I reflect, it was a struggle adjusting from having senior colleagues to to having that role of being a bit isolated.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um and I, you know, I I genuinely struggled with that adjustment.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um I ended up going and doing an MBA.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_02: I I always felt I didn't have all of the skills I needed.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh probably a a latent reference to my dyslexia and performance at public school, which was much more to do with sport and education.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_02: So I always felt I had something to prove.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and doing the MBA was was that route to to prove for me anyway, which I remember at the time Jeff had said, you know, you you don't need to do this.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, well, I I do.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_02: So that was that was what led to but was it also like a self-driven milestone?
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, very much so.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I I had I learnt a lot studying in Shanghai, Boston, um, London, San Francisco, and here in Dubai, a very, very broad, eclectic cohort, um, which which was brilliant, and I think that was part of the reason I got the opportunity at at Frankfurt.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_02: And the transition from sort of event director to a CEO type role was much easier at that point, where I didn't have any legacy.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_02: I had a a set of fairly significant challenges.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um, there was a number of problems with that business at the time, and it and it it meant that we had the chance, and I'm not uh in any way, shape, or form sort of claiming credit for what we did at that business.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_02: I had a fantastic team of people that contributed and and really made the difference.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but we we built a leadership structure, we we you know had a a look at all of the projects that we had.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_02: We looked at our partners in Saudi and we made a lot of significant decisions at the time, which uh which allowed us to move forward and and make gains.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_02: We had a bunch of financial challenges.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_02: We were the worst-performing business in terms of profitable contribution.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_02: We had a huge issue with with the newly um commissioned sort of VAT.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_02: We had a big debt that we had to deal with, and it it threw me into that executive function without needing to have the time or the inclination to be an event director.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_02: So that that was where the transition really happened for me.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_03: So you're kind of like jumping on the back of a lorry doing 100 kilometers an hour.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_03: So Messi Frankfurt, CEO, you were overseeing a lot of different divide, diverse section diverse uh sectors.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, you're managing massive budgets,$65 million budgets.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_03: When did you when do you realize when an event has actually hit its ceiling or when the team is really not, you know, uh happy with pulling that growth lever?
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um so I I think in terms of in terms of event growth, uh ultimately our limiting factor is physical space, right?
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_02: I think if you've got a a project that is venue bound, then you are, you know, you're facing challenges of how do I strip out elements of that event and launch um satellite events, which was something that Big Five did very successfully.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_02: But at Frankfurt, it was a different set of challenges.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_02: There was uh I I was trying not to be commercially responsible.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_02: We put a leadership team in place: operational head, marketing head, commercial head.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we brought HR into a leadership function.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_02: There had not been a leadership function previously, so that was a big learning exercise for for everybody to be able to stay away.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_02: And we had at the time three pretty enormous product portfolios:$10,$11 million shows, beauty, automotive, and and security.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_02: And again, those three um portfolio heads were not a part of the leadership discussion.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_02: So you you've got this sort of a leadership structure and and not the commercial people that are responsible for the$50,$60 million worth of business.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_02: So again, we we adjusted and brought them into the environment.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_02: And that was that had its challenges for everybody because previously they worked in the business where that was not, you know, I wasn't asked to do those things, I wasn't asked to do budgets, I wasn't asked to um operate in this way.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_02: So there was a lot of a lot of movement and adjustment needed before we eventually really started to get things moving.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_02: My my sense of when do things hit a ceiling is I I've always had, and this is a lesson that was taught to me by by Peter Falloon in in the Calgary office, which was we don't organize exhibitions, we organize shows.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_02: And that's a terminology that you'll be familiar with.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_02: That's a yeah that's a Canadian expression.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_02: And he said, when you're organizing a show, you need to entertain and not entertain in the way of you know humorous stage performance, but engage with fresh thinking, new products, different sections, and I've always wanted to push events in that way.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_02: I I I remember uh doing a little secret shopper exercise with Intersect before I joined.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_02: I knew I was joining, but nobody, it wasn't announced.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_02: So I I had a little walk around, it was timed with the show, and and I remember it struck me that there was no content on the floor at all.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_02: It was just exhibition space.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_02: And credit to the team, everything was sold, but there was no education, there was no it lacked that content, which which you accepted that in order to use that content, you've maybe have to take something out, but but you get so much more engagement if you build content in, and that that's probably from understanding as a as a publisher, recognizing that you have a dual role between content and promotion, yeah.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and we had lots of opportunities within Frankfurt to pull those levers as you so aptly describe.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I remember with with with the beauty show, we had a a London competitor that was running our his own awards in the middle of of our event, which was chaotic.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_02: Well, not just chaotic, but it was it was like, well, our guys get a night off and we get to go to their show.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, yes, he's basically pirating our audience that we've spent five, six hundred thousand dollars marketing to to get them to come to our event.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_02: Why would we not do it?
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, we don't we don't do shows, we don't do awards, but let's let's figure it out.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_02: And we yeah, very successfully, and credit to Elaine, she ran an amazing job in producing those awards, and they've gone on to be you know one of the one of the main knights of that particular industry, which is exactly what they should be.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_02: So I think there are always levers to pull.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_02: You just have to explore them.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_02: And I'll give you another example, and again, the credit does not go to me, but back on the uh on the Adipec days, I remember sitting with a conversation with one of the uh one of the big five consultancies and talking about the industry.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_02: And at the time I was trying to persuade them to be a part of the event, which they were always reluctant, happy to speak, but reluctant to spend money at the event.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_02: And he had sat and explained to me during this meeting the the gap that was existing in the market where there were so few young people coming into the industry because science and oil and gas dirty industry was not interesting to young people.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_02: So there was this dearth of talent moving through the industry.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_02: At the time, they were in their late 20s, early 30s.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_02: But he said this people are not coming into this industry, and that's a problem people don't recognise.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I sat down with a couple of colleagues, um, Hannadi being the one that was most influential in the in the process, and we reached out to uh to the local schools in Abu Dhabi and figured out okay, what if we could get people from the ages of sort of 13 or 14 before they've settled on an education, you know, a senior education route.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_02: And we sat with uh a number of the service companies, Halliburton, Slumberger and the likes, who had training facilities here in the region.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and we we came up with this notion of okay, maybe we could take 20 kids out of school into the training center, give them a a day, half a day, dress them up with all the gear, and show them around the facility, show them a well, show them casings and and the the real industry, you know, in a very controlled and safe way.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_02: And we we got such an amazing response from these kids.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_02: I remember one uh one young lad getting on the bus after we'd spent a day at um Halliburton, I think, and he said, I'm my my dad's in the oil and gas industry, and I never understood what he did, but but now I want I really want to do this.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_02: And we created a section within the show, and and always very mindful of the fact that you don't want kids running around shows, and you know, we didn't encourage children into that environment without putting them in a very controlled way, but we had a a section within the show where you could do science experiments, just fun science experiments.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_02: We had a simulator for for port management, the big, the big the big uh tanker vessels.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_02: We had kinetic energy demonstrations, and Sheikh Noyan, who was who was kind enough to give his patronage to that concept, which we called young Adipec.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_02: And Hernadi, to her credit, and that's been running now, I don't know, maybe 14, 15 years, she has seen kids come through from 12, 13 years of age all the way through to graduating as petroleum engineers.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_02: And I and I think that is that really plays to what our industry is capable of doing.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_02: And and she has been outstanding at managing that project.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think it's how you present the spirit of something in it's uh when I was uh I was country manager for Society of Petroleum Engineers, and I would speak to auditorium of auditoriums of of like in universities, Maharsh and the Institute of Technology in India and in Delhi and places like this, and I'd speak to students and just talking about how exciting their path is and energy, how it may change over time, but but there were I've never seen like young people so excited about an industry.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_03: So I think it's how you, you know, how you form it in their minds rather than give them the chance to create their own optics of it's not the place for me to be, or it's so you said filthy, that sort of thing.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_03: But but back on the um on the event side, we were talking about growth and and you know, whether it's growing or it's underperforming, or it doesn't always sit on the PL.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I don't I think sometimes, um, I don't know if you agree with this, but it's not always this way.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes you have to think laterally as well, right?
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_03: Create new experience, like you said, with with the awards and Young Adipec, you just have to create something new around it and and stay within that ecosystem, but but just uh create new thinking around it and um uh yes, I I wanted to sort of of the nearly 30 years that you've been in this industry, is there any part of that time that you relish the most that you think was the most enjoyable time where you probably had the best ideas, where you worked with the best people?
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_03: Um I don't want to put you on the spot and alienate anyone.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_03: Is there any any time that you were you felt most proud of within that period?
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_01: There's there's probably a couple of stories uh which and I'm not sure.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, pride is is the notion that you would say, okay, that gave me a an enormous sense of pride, but it wasn't it wasn't a accomplishment.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_02: It wasn't an accomplishment.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I I've never been one to kind of reflect, which is probably a failing of mine.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and interestingly, your invitation to have this discussion kind of got me digging out old notebooks.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_02: I've always been a big notewriter and just reminding myself of of some of the things that we've done.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_02: But the story I would like to share is mid-COVID, and and we had a uh we had a show at the time, Paperworld, it was 10 days out from opening, and it and it understandably got shut down, and the whole business just ground to a stop.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um and I remember as we were coming through, and there was lots of things that we had to do to survive COVID, we didn't lose any staff or very few staff, which was to the credit of the team in Frankfurt who said, Okay, let's hang on to everybody.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_02: It later became a problem, which I can explain, but I'll focus on this one particular point.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_02: But as we were coming out of COVID, we had uh an intersec event that was being planned.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_02: And it was it was at a time when we were investing in that particular brand.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_02: We were we were building a lot of content on the floor, a lot of theaters, and and really sort of pushing it forward.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_02: A very good event director at the time, Christine Davidson, doing a great job on that particular event.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I got a phone call at home.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_02: We we had isolated the entire operations team uh in in uh you know, we were not as a company in our offices, but the ops team had gone in and they were almost working in isolation from each other in the office, with a view of thinking, okay, I can't afford this team to any of them to catch COVID.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_02: And Jamie McDonald, who was the ops director at the time, had rebuilt the team.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_02: So we had a lot of new faces in there.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and I got a call from Jamie, it was nine o'clock at night, uh, three hours before we were due to take the tenancy of the trade center.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_02: And he he's called me up and said, I just tested positive for COVID.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's like and he said, I can't go on site.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and I'm like, he said, I don't know what to do.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_02: And he said, I haven't got any symptoms.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_02: He said, I think it's a false test.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm like, okay, look, well, there's not much we can do about it, so let's deal with the deal with the challenge.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, let me let me think.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_02: I had been very lucky uh that I knew Tim Hawes at Tarsus.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_02: Uh his son, my daughter at the same school, so there was a there was a connection.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, and I thought, you know, the air show had happened uh, I think three months previously, and I was trying to think who is around operationally that's doesn't have a show coming up, and I thought I knew that was a biannual show, so I I gave him a call.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_02: He was in my phone, I gave him a call, and and I explained and said, Look, Tim, I've I've got a show moving in the three hours.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_02: My ops director has just been diagnosed, well, just been confirmed as COVID positive.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_02: You know, have you got anybody I can I can work with?
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_02: And he said, Leave it with me.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_02: Fifteen minutes went by and I'm sitting sweating, trying to figure out, okay, what's who else can we call?
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_02: And he called me back and he said, No problem, he said, my team will will come on site for you.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, Karen McConaughey and Sarah rocked up to the venue with no brief in what was a pretty complex move in for a big show talking 11 halls.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_02: And Jamie quarterbacked it from his home.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_02: Uh And Karen and Sarah just assumed the role.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_02: They slipped in.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_02: We moved the show in without any real major dramas.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_02: And it it sort of played to what this industry is, which is it is it's connected with people that really, really care about delivering events.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_02: And it's not just trade events and conferences, it's everything.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_02: Sporting events, music events, festivals.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_02: There's a real sense of if you're if you're in this industry and you get it, you love it, and you you understand the the and then that was a real cry for help from me at the time.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um we had within Frankfurt uh created a set of staff awards.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um we had a lot of challenges coming out of COVID.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_02: We we had held on to all of our teams, and not realizing that a lot of the other organizers, DMG and the Trade Center and Informa, had let a lot of people go.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_02: And we had not anticipated the recruiting pressure that that was going to create.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_02: So we suddenly came under the focus of at least two organizations that were like, okay, Frankfurt's got a lot of people that have got 10, 15 years worth of experience.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_02: And we started to get harvested in in a simple way.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_02: So we needed to come up with some new initiatives and credit to Ted Bloom, he was one of the ones that we were working very closely together.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_02: And um, we had these staff awards where we were recognizing new players, experienced players, managers, etc.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_02: That particular year, it's like three or four months after Intersec, we had an outstanding contribution award.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_02: We gave it to Karen and Sarah.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_03: Amazing.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_02: They weren't even in the butt, everybody understood what they had done.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_02: And we wouldn't have delivered that show without them.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_02: So having them come to our internal staff awards and be given an award was was that was that was a lovely moment.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_02: Very, a very proud kind of uh experience.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_03: That that's like that's literally like a script from a film.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_03: That that's like where the audience gets up and claps, you know.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_03: The cavalry have arrived, and it shows that uh that brotherhood, sisterhood of of the events industry, yeah, that interdependency among uh within each other, and I and I guess a little dose of empathy as well.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_03: And knowing that been there done, you know, we want we we we don't want to see you, yeah.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's uh that's an amazing story.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_03: That's incredible.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_03: So is there anything we can uh I'd like to I I mean, I want to know a little bit about what's going on now, long style.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_03: Can we give now long style?
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_03: I had to look it up.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_03: Mountain range, Cumbria.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_02: Oh um.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_02: So the the yeah, the history to long style is um it's quite a normal thing in the UK, okay, especially in the farming industry, to name all of the fields.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_02: So when you're coordinating uh activities on a farm, everybody knows where to go because a field has a name.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_02: So Longstyle was the name of the field that our uh farmhouse kitchen overlooked.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_02: So uh I had I lost my father at a very young age.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_02: He was I was five years old.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_02: So my affinity to uh our farm back in Staffordshire is a very strong one.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_02: So that's uh interestingly, my email address, Centafs, is was our biggest field on the farm, and Long Style is is another uh field at my my dad's farm.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_03: I I I had no idea that there was a thing, but that's uh that's that's it.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_03: It makes sense.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_03: That's the history to it.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_03: So what's uh what's next for you?
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_03: I know that uh there's been you know you've you've been going through some some personal things.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if it's something we we'd like to discuss, but I know that there, you know there's been a lot of developments uh that have happened over over the last little while that have sort of changed the calculus of your your life a yeah.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_02: You know, yeah, it was a challenging uh challenging period.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_02: My my wife was diagnosed with leukemia just going into COVID 2020.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um and whilst we were in sort of lockdown, it was relatively easy to to be in two places at once.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_02: My daughter, who was five at the time, was here in Dubai with me.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_02: Paula was very ill in hospital and isolated because of COVID.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um and that was super difficult because we were we had been advised professionally to, you know, keep everything normal.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_02: We were very worried about how Georgie wouldn't would manage that time.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_02: But the counsel we had was, you know, just keep everything normal here, and it as long as she sees that you're okay, then she'll be okay, and as that proved.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_02: But we were living this kind of dual dual life.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um after Paula recovered, uh, and that was I was six, five, six months, we we relocated Georgie to the UK.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_02: Paula was very wedded to her cancer team, understandably so.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_02: And so we we did the sort of distant relationship thing.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_02: She was re-diagnosed the second time with leukemia in 2023, I think.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um, another prolonged period of of hospitalization, and that was as we were 2022, as we were coming out of COVID, and that that left me in a very challenging situation trying to be in two places at once.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and Frankfurt were amazing for the first five or six months, and eventually we had conversations about we don't know where you are, what's happening.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and we we came to a settlement of okay, I will step back.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_02: Ted has gone on and done a an outstanding job with the business, but it left me uh, you know, kind of searching for what what's next.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_02: At the same time as that, uh, as I was leaving Frankfurt, my brother, elder brother, was very ill with um kidney failure.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_02: And he had been uh uh it's a it's a hereditary disease in our family.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_02: My sister has it, my uh brother had it chronically, I haven't.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_02: So uh eventually I said to him, Look, you know, you're you're on the he was about to go on dialysis.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_02: Why are we not having a conversation together?
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um so I I went and got tested, uh and we were we were able to to manage that that transplant.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_02: So in May of that year, we we you know we were both in hospital together and managed that that transplant and it was a success.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_02: He's back to full health and and I'm half the man I used to be.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe a 10.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_03: 90 percent.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_03: But that's uh yeah, I don't know.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_03: I don't even know how to respond to that.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_03: I honestly I think that's it's it's well don't ask me for my other kidney.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_02: I need that one.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_02: Do you do a liver you can?
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_02: That was a that was a serious joke at the time.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_02: We very protracted process in the UK, and there was a moment uh the last meeting with the surgeon or the surgical team, and uh and I said to him, I said, Look, you know, let's assume that this is a success.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_02: My brother goes on and lives a perfectly uh you know a full life, and his cause of death is nothing to do with kidney failure.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_02: Can I get it back?
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_02: And he did exactly that, and I'm like, I'm not joking.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_02: And he went, um, no, it's a one-way stream.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, why?
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_02: It's clearly compatible.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_02: And he went, sir, by the time you've donated and recovered from this, you will not want to do this a second time.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_02: And boy, was he right.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_03: It was it was used once, used twice.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_03: It's just okay.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_03: But I think levity is important in that situation.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_03: When when both of my parents died at separate times within 2024, my sister called me after my mom passed and said, Um uh Michael, uh, I'm afraid we're now orphans.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm just what are we gonna do?
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_03: Do we go to go for adoption?
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_03: So um, yeah, it's important to have that levity at these times, but that's that's an incredible story.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um, if you can't do it for your brother, who can you do it for, you know?
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_02: So um the easiest decision you can ever make.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_02: 100%.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_03: Uh all of us were really, really uh thankful that we got to hear your journey and and and everything that in all of my research, I didn't get even to the tip of the iceberg on.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and I'm so glad that it all came out and we got to hear an incredible story from someone that has done so much in this industry and continues to do so much.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_03: And uh I I hope that someday we can get you back again and catch up.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_03: Look forward to it.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_02: Appreciate the time.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_02: It's been an interesting experience.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks so much, sir.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks a lot.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_02: Appreciate it.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_03: Here at the backdrop, we work hard to bring you the people, the stories, and the perspectives behind one of the world's most dynamic industries, events.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_03: So if you enjoy the conversations, like, comment, subscribe, and join in the conversation.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_03: It all helps us keep the backdrop growing.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_03: So thank you for watching.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_00: The backdrop was recorded live at OneCentral in Dubai United Arab Emirates.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_00: It was hosted by Michael McClennan and produced and edited by Dan Powell.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.