Faris Aranki

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome everyone to the TROD podcast. Coming to me, a special guest all the way from London, England. Thank you very much for Your time is Mr. Farice Aranki. [00:00:09] Speaker B: Hey. [00:00:11] Speaker A: Very successful entrepreneur with a compelling story and I here to have his time is very valuable. I appreciate him for it. Thank you for coming. [00:00:19] Speaker B: Hey, it's absolutely my pleasure. Thank you for the invite and I'm really looking forward to the conversation. [00:00:24] Speaker A: So I mean your accomplishments, I mean you go back to going from all the way from being a, an educator to working as a journalist with police, to various other companies that you've worked for, to finally starting your own consulting business. I got to hear this story. I don't want to even be able to list off these bullet points. Tell me how it all started. [00:00:44] Speaker B: Oh, well, it's many years ago. I know I don't look that old, but I am. I've had a, you know, 20 plus year career. So many years ago when I graduated from university, I, I didn't know what I wanted to do. Russia, the economy at the time wasn't great. So yeah, I dec to find a career that would allow me to travel around the world and live in different countries and that's. So I became a schoolteacher, a high school teacher in fact, and I was teaching high school math and economics and I taught, I went and worked and lived in Latin America, in Southeast Asia, in the Middle east, and then here back in the uk I was teaching. So I spent six years teaching subjects, had a great time. I learned so much about different cultures as well as teaching and have so many great experiences from that. But ultimately I came back to the UK and realized that hey, it just been a great vehicle to travel and experience. It wasn't going to be my vocation. So I looked to make a change, but I didn't know what I wanted to do. I still didn't know what I wanted to do. So I tried a few different things. So I tried my hand at journalism, I tried my hand at working for the police. And then ultimately I ended up joining a oil and gas company, heyware in Europe. I joined them and I learned all about the oil and gas industry and I quickly raised through the company, end up in their strategy team. And then one day a headhunter rang me and recruited me into strategy consulting where I spent the next 12 years from analyst in the consulting world to partner. So I became a partner in one of the firms I was at and after doing that for a year, I decided, do you know what? That was fun. But I'm Going to try something else. And that's when I started my own company. That was five years ago. [00:02:32] Speaker A: Right. And that's amazing. And so you've already. And with all of this success that you've had working those previous companies, you've gotten really, really well reception and your clientele speaks for it. And I love the name that I looked it up because immediately I said, where do you get that name from? And so I'm like, it's a finishing stone in Japan. [00:02:49] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. [00:02:51] Speaker A: It's amazing. Which is amazing. So I thought that was a remarkable name that you selected. [00:02:55] Speaker B: Yeah. So five years ago, I set up the company and I wanted it to be all about getting more out of human beings. And so when I was thinking, what is a great metaphor for that? One day I was making a dinner. I was making dinner with my Japanese knife set and the knife was gone dull. So I had to sharpen it using my sharpening stone. And I was like, hey, this is a great metaphor. What is the Japanese word for this? And that's when I lost about four hours of my life. Russia. Because the Japanese have such a culture around knives, swords, stones, they've got whole websites. And that's when I discovered the sheer ghetto is the stone you use for the sharpest finish. [00:03:32] Speaker A: And then so basically, anytime something's dull, it needs a skill. Sharpening it needs to make sure that's more refined. Doesn't mean you need to toss it out. It means you need to work better at that particular function that tool had. [00:03:43] Speaker B: Which is. [00:03:44] Speaker A: Which is great. [00:03:46] Speaker B: Yeah, 100%. When we could all be a little bit sharper. You know, when we turn up at work, when we do stuff, and that's basically what we do. We help people unlock that sharpness, either because we get in the middle of them and unlock it, or we train leaders to do what we do to get the best out of their teams. And it is really, really impactful. [00:04:06] Speaker A: So what did you do in your. In your career that made you say that you could identify weaknesses? Obviously you were a strategy consultant. [00:04:14] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:04:14] Speaker A: But it seems like you were good at identifying weaknesses, which is primary. The reason why somebody has a strategy consultant in. In their company, their business, etc. Where did you find, you know, your niche to do that? [00:04:25] Speaker B: I think I've been something I've been developing since I was a kid. Right. Which is, you know, as a kid, I desperately. Like many kids, I really wanted to fit in. Right. And so I was. How do you fit in? You can only fit in if you understand the other person. So I learned. I learned very early on how to read people. Read their body language, see what made them tick, and therefore, when you're reading a person, you can see what also isn't working for them. But, you know, when I was a kid, I didn't appreciate that as a skill set. It was only when I work, actually, when I walked into the room as a school teacher and I was trying to work out why were these kids resistant to learning, where could they be better, that I started to first use this skill. And then I found it was a skill that really set me apart in the business world. And when it came to setting up my business, I wanted a simple way to communicate this to people. And so we came up with what we call the famous Shia ghetto equation, which is, if you want to be successful at anything in life, Rashad, you need three components. Okay. You need iq, which is really great ideas. You need eq, the ability to take others on the journey with you. And you need fq, which is focus quotient. So that's where I'm looking for. Where could you be better in your iq, EQ or fq? [00:05:40] Speaker A: Yeah, it's crazy. I saw that formula as well, too good. And it was really, you know, it stuck with me because people try to over complicate things often. Right. When it comes to. They really do. Right. Like, you know, and so, you know, when you broke that down to three quick things, I was just like, well, dang, that's it. Right. It kind of stops you in your tracks a bit. [00:05:59] Speaker B: Yeah. So, you know, I always say to people, it's one of those three things. If you tell me whatever your objective is and explain what you're doing, I'll quickly identify, you know, and it could be anything from I want to. I want to lose weight or I want to learn a new language, to we want to, you know, implement a new IT system in our company. [00:06:17] Speaker A: For sure. For sure. Yeah. [00:06:20] Speaker B: It's always one of those three things. [00:06:22] Speaker A: Yeah. It's identifying weaknesses and making a solution towards what exactly is the pain point of a particular problem. So my question is, did you start this by yourself exclusively or did you have other partners? [00:06:35] Speaker B: So I started on my own when I set up the business five years ago. And for the first year and a half, two years, I was completely on my own. But we had Covid during that time. So there was periods where I had no work whatsoever. But once it took off, it really took off. And I quickly brought others on board from my network, people who had great skills, great People skills. Today we're a team of seven and we work with some of the biggest companies around the world, you know, the likes of Amazon and Heineken. And we actually have 50 clients in different countries and we just continue to grow. [00:07:10] Speaker A: Yeah, which is fantastic that you grew that so well. And obviously your skill set and background speaks for itself. I saw that you had came from the energy sector, so. But which I'll ask about in a second. But one question is like the pinpoint question I ask almost everybody that I've had a chance to talk to. Artificial intelligence. [00:07:26] Speaker B: Yes. [00:07:27] Speaker A: Because obviously it's, it's, it's, it's rampant. Every company wants to get into it. Has that impacted your business? Do you utilize it for your company itself and what's been the success from it? [00:07:36] Speaker B: Yeah, so I do utilize it. Me and the team, we utilize it. I use it most a lot to bounce ideas around with, to sort of, you know, if I want to design a workshop or an interaction for a team, I'll, you know, I'll use it to get some stimulation of ideas from ChatGPT and that's what I encourage all my clients to do. Yeah, use it as a thought partner. Use it as somebody. Because you're in a bad place if you're the only person coming up with ideas in your company. And in terms of my business, actually I see it as a bonus. Right. Not just for the efficiency, but the more people use AI ironically and sadly, the less their people skills, you know, come to the foreign. You know, the, the more intervention that people rely on computers and stuff, they stop having the difficult conversations, they stop doing their own thinking. So more and more we're asked to come in particularly around that EQ bucket, that emotional intelligence and work with. So. [00:08:36] Speaker A: And I would imagine, well, you know, it's no secret that be just us being able to be on this podcast has been, you know, 20 years ago, you know, just that really wasn't possible unless you were affiliated directly. It was a high cost software to do so it's great, I can talk to somebody London in real time. But it's also lost that emotional connection because people are texting, people are want to communicate just by messaging, which I'm sure you've identified through a lot of companies. So how did you, what did they have to do internally that you found that solution to make sure that they were utilizing that emotional sector which has gotten lost, particularly post Covid. [00:09:13] Speaker B: Yeah. And you know, as the generations go through, I look at my nephews for example, the thing that scares the most is picking up a phone or, you know, if their phone actually rings as opposed to a message, they're like, you know, I'm like, you know, you answer the phone, it's a skill. And you see this. More and more people just want to deal with things, with messages. They don't want to actually talk to each other. So what do we do? We. Sometimes we go back to basics, right? I go into companies and say, right, let's set up random coffees, right? We'll get random people to have a coffee together or we'll turn things into a game. So I recently was working with a. A bunch of very alpha traders. So in a company who. Their whole mindset is, I have to beat everybody, including my teammates. I need to make more money than them. I need to. So they were not. Their first instinct wasn't, I'm going to collaborate with this person, I'm going to talk to them. And literally I watched them. I watched them for a week. They'd come in and they wouldn't talk to each other. They were just head down, you know, I need to make more money. I don't trust you if I give you information. And I was like, this is not a healthy place. There's no emotional intelligence there. So I got them all round. And I said, rashid, I said to them, rashid, I said, who wants to play a game? Winner takes all the money. And suddenly they got interested. They were like, oh, there's money involved and a chance to beat my opponents, who are my team. And they. So I said, it's $100 in each person. So, you know, there was eight of them. And they said, okay, so $800 on the table. And they said, what's the game? And I said, right, this round one is. Guess how many kids we all have. Right, right. So I said, there's eight of you. You're each only allowed to write down one number. You cannot repeat a number of somebody else. So they all. They all wrote a number. And then I said, you know, and some guy said, 16. Because on average people have two kids. Someone says, 17, right? And they thought that was the point of the game, but the point of the game wasn't that. And I said, okay, well, there's only one way to find out. Let's go around and ask each person about their kids. So I'd say, rashad, do you have any kids? What are their names? How old are they? We'd spend five minutes per person. And then we get round. And then we get round. [00:11:14] Speaker A: Right, right. [00:11:15] Speaker B: So the whole Point of the exercise was them to learn about that thing. The next week we played Dream Holiday. Right. I played a game around. What's your dream holiday? The third week I did it around pets. The fourth week I did it around cars. The fifth week I did it around hobbies. Right. By the end of six weeks, these people were just chatting to each other. How are your kids? Oh, how was it? How was the, the hockey game at the weekend that you played in? [00:11:37] Speaker A: Right, right. [00:11:39] Speaker B: Because of that, their trading performance as a team went up. [00:11:43] Speaker A: Because when you have trust factors, right. You had a team working together towards the company, towards the goal. [00:11:48] Speaker B: Exactly. So it's old fashioned stuff like that, that often I go in, if I have to improve the emotional intelligence and the team working, I'll sometimes do it with a game. I'll do it without them realizing. Just get people talking about human things and good stuff happens. [00:12:02] Speaker A: That's fantastic. And you know, you, it did organically because then next, you know, I'm sure, like, it probably stopped people in their tracks, particularly in an alpha room together when they're all like, what do you mean? I have to, you know, particularly guys as a whole, it's pretty hard to start telling me about your kids, your holiday. And IT guys immediately can throw up barriers of what they will and won't talk about, you know, because that's how we're kind of manufactured and made in a way. [00:12:25] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:12:26] Speaker A: So that's a fantastic, valuable tool. Yeah. What made you go into business for yourself? [00:12:36] Speaker B: So there's a couple of factors. One was, so I'd made it on the face of it, right. I was a partner in a consulting firm. So I like, by the way, when you make it in an industry, you realize there's just another ladder ahead of you. Right. But I'd reached this nominal ladder where I've been accepted in. And as part of that, the company gave me a coach to work with. The intention being that coach would help me unlock getting to the next level. Right. Which involved generating more sales for the company, let's be honest. But in working with this coach, she identified and helped me realize that I wasn't enjoying the job anymore. I was just going through the motions. And I sort of adopted that to reach this high level. And she said to me a key question one day, she said, look, you've still got 25, 30 years of a career. Could you imagine doing this every day for the next 30 years? And I went, hell no. Right? No. And as soon as I said those words came out of my mouth, I Was like, wow, I didn't realize that, right, but what do I want to do? Right? Then the question became, what do I want to do? And the more I explored that, the more this idea of running my own business, not just because I wanted to run a business, but to ensure that I did the stuff that I enjoyed day in, day out. So that's, that's why I decided to leap and build a business. Initially, it was just to give myself what I wanted. It wasn't about the money, it wasn't about the empire. It just so happened that the business worked and it grew quickly, but it was, it was to fulfill that, that, that sort of, hey, I want to do stuff that I find fun every day. [00:14:09] Speaker A: Absolutely. And I saw you, you, you touch companies at every single stage, you know, from startups to larger companies. Where do you find are the most, you know, I'm gonna work. How do I word this? The most innovation or the most challenges, right? So you're dealing with a startup, so you're dealing with young ambitious people, maybe not even young, just ambitious people who want to get their foot in the door, just like you did when they started their own. What's the first thing you would tell those, those people who are starting their, their own business when you're starting with a startup and they're looking to, you know, penetrate, enter a market, be successful, and maybe deal with competition, threats, etc. [00:14:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, the thing, and I love the startups, right? You tell them something on a Monday morning, by Monday afternoon, they're doing it, right? Whereas in the big corporates, you tell them on a Monday morning, in about two months, they'll have a meeting to discuss what you told them. And I love my big corporate clients, if any of them are watching. [00:14:59] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:15:00] Speaker B: So startups are great, but they don't know a. They don't know what they don't know, right? They think, they think they can conquer the world, which is a great asset to have, but sometimes you need a bit of reality check. But also the biggest thing that we help them with is that they try and do too much, right? You look around the room, you go, there's only four of you. There is no way you can launch a second product, enter a new country, you know, hire 30 people, so which one are you going to do? And they look at you and go, why do we have to pick? And you're like, because you'll end up doing three things badly rather than one thing really well, right? And so that's the greatest thing that we do a lot with startups because their culture is great, their mindset is great, and their ambition is great, but sometimes it gets them in trouble to try and do too much. [00:15:43] Speaker A: Yeah, right. And it's funny you say that because. And I mean that very respectfully, because you have to conquer one thing. Right. It's kind of like, you know, you want to lose weight. Okay, well, first try to clean up your diet first if you want to be serious about it. Right. Because, you know, people fall off after like a month because it's too hard. [00:15:59] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:15:59] Speaker A: So, but if you say, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna walk or I'm gonna do just this one thing, and then I'll evolve and take steps to the next thing, and that works really well. And that's, That's a great process because I'm sure people, when they have ideas, all they want to do is, you know, the next thing, the next thing, the next thing. Let me do five, six, seven things at once. And then things can ultimately get very muddled in between that. [00:16:18] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And everyone wants immediate results and stuff. But, yeah, just, just break it down, Simplify. Yeah. You know, there's. There's this popular Myth about the 10,000 hour rule. Have you ever heard of 10,000 hours? [00:16:31] Speaker A: But I don't remember too much of it, so I'd love you to. [00:16:34] Speaker B: Which basically says it was put out there by a kind of a psycholog, an economist who said that to pick up any skill, you need to dedicate 10,000 hours to it. Now, it's, it's partly been debunked whether it's 10,000 hours or not, but it's basically saying that if you want to, you know, become a world class, or, you know, you want to become really good at golf, put in 10,000 hours of practice. Right. You want to become really good. Yeah. But that's to become completely good at golf. Right. Subsequent studies have shown that if you want to improve an element of something, all it takes is 20 hours. Right? Oh, wow. So instead of, like, if you walk up and say, I want to be a great golfer, that's 10,000 hours. But if you say, I want to be good at putting, just putting. All right. Or just specifically putts that are uphill. Right. Pick something very specific. 20 hours, you will master it. [00:17:25] Speaker A: That makes sense because you focused on. [00:17:27] Speaker B: One thing, focus on that one thing. And that's where our element, that we go into companies, because so many people get distracted, they. They get bored and biased. They cannot assess how much effort it's going to take. And they go, of course we can do all that. And we have to go in and firmly say, if you really want to do this, strip away the noise. [00:17:45] Speaker A: Right, right, right. So you were working as a school teacher and then you went to journalism and then you ultimately worked with the police. Can you give us kind of the details of that portion of your career? [00:17:57] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. So six years in the classrooms, which, like I said, took me. I lived in El Salvador, teaching in a high school there. I lived Nepal, teaching in a high school there. I lived in Palestine, teaching in a university there. And then I was teaching in a school in, in northeast London, which actually was the, the toughest school of the fort, let's be honest. But yeah, like I said, I realized I wasn't going to be my vocation. So I looked to change and I was 26 at the time and I was like, what do I want to do in my life? It's a big question. Right. And I don't think anyone knows any. I still, you know, you know, you can be in your 40s and not know. So I was like, because I was, come from a scientific background, I was like encouraged to test and learn. So I thought, hey, you know what? Journalism sounds good. So I got myself an internship with a broadcaster here in the UK that people might have heard of the BBC. Oh yeah, yeah. I worked in their newsroom for that small company. Yeah, that small company. So for three months I was just a researcher, a runner, seeing day in, day out. And I, you know, and I discovered that I enjoyed it, but it wasn't going to be the career for me. Similarly, I then went and worked for the police. So I did that for three months. I worked in a, in a police station here in London. And I really got to see up close how, you know, because sometimes institutions like the police, you only see from the outside, of course, and, and you only, you only read about in the newspaper usually when things go wrong. Right. So to see on a day to day basis what the police did, and to be clear, I wasn't a policeman. I was what they call a civilian support. So you work in the offices of the police, but you're not, you're not a policeman. And again, fascinating, but I realized, hey, this ain't for me. Right, right. But it was, it was a fantastic three months and I still draw on a lot of the things I learned there about analyzing crime patterns, about human behavior. That was a big thing that the police taught me just as much as school teaching did. And you know, journalism taught me a lot about fact checking, about not believing the first source of information. So I, you know, I've always said that we are a combination of all the experiences that we have. So I couldn't do today what I do if I hadn't been a journalist for three months, if I hadn't been in the police for three, four months, if I hadn't been a school teacher. And so I'm grateful for all those. But ultimately they weren't, you know, it was as much about closing them down as, as doing them because I wanted to. [00:20:21] Speaker A: Right, right. So that ultimately led you to finally decide that. But you, you utilized all those skills that you had built in those other professions. [00:20:28] Speaker B: 100. [00:20:29] Speaker A: So, yeah. So when, when is there something. You hear a lot of bias oftentimes when they talk about. Well, the, the, the younger ones that come up don't have as much listening skills or, you know, they're hard. So have you. When you work with those startups, is there a difference between generational of dealing with this particular group of people in demographic age of startups versus another group in startups? As far as listening growth or, or. [00:20:55] Speaker B: Hey, I think all humans are terrible at listening. Right. I think categorically, if humans could improve one skill, Listen a bit more. Right. Everyone. And everyone says I'm a great listener. And you're like, really? And I often do experiments with, with groups like, okay, let's see how well you're listening. And they were all fundamentally terrible. So I don't think it's a generational thing. [00:21:14] Speaker A: I think, please don't test me. [00:21:15] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's similar to, you know, there's, there's a lot of people talk about a growth mindset. And again, I think, I think they, only 10% of people have a growth mindset. You know, a lot of people will say they have a growth mindset, but how many people constantly are challenging themselves to learn more, do more, not just sit in the default. That's, that's, that's a lot of effort. Right. So invariably. Yeah, you know, does it. I think you hit a sweet spot. You need to be young enough to still not be stuck in your ways, but you also need to have had a bit of experience to realize that there's plenty of things to discover out there. [00:21:58] Speaker A: Understood, Understood. So when you're doing consulting with different other, you've have a, you have a very good international background. When you do consulting with other countries or you're helping a client penetrate into a new market, which could be a new country, you know, and their experience probably isn't that high of doing that. [00:22:16] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:22:16] Speaker A: Or if you work with established companies. What, what. How do you handle going into a country that has different laws, different rules, different, you know, legal systems and things like that? What research involves with that? [00:22:27] Speaker B: Yeah. So we, you know, I, as much as I know, you know, I still don't know everything. Right. So it can go to a country. So how do you learn? How do you learn? You listen, you find people and you learn from them. Right. So. And a great way, if you're, you know, invite people in from. Who do similar things to you, listen to them. As long as. As long as, you know, they're not competitors and they're willing or, you know, let's say you're. Say you're a multinational, say you're the head of, I don't know, Amazon. Right, Right. And you want to, you know, look at how to improve things in a. In a different country that, you know, you're. You go to that country, invite some of your employees from the shop floor, listen to them, observe. So it is about getting the right people in front of you and listening and not assuming you have the answer, but genuinely listening. So that's what we, that's what we do or encourage teams to do. Of course, you can shortcut that by reading reports, but you know what, A lot of people read a report and they'll, they'll, they'll sort of get it academically, but they don't get it until they actually see it in action. [00:23:29] Speaker A: No question. No question. [00:23:31] Speaker B: Yeah. That's why. Meet more people from the culture is a big factor. [00:23:35] Speaker A: Fantastic. I did see that you were a president of a university or a chancellor of something that was. [00:23:41] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. That's where a lot of, A lot of things clicked into place. So when I was at university, I got involved in the student side of life and it culminated in my final year. I got elected as student president. So this is like you have to run an election and you have to get all your students to vote for you. And I was fortunate enough, they voted for me. And so for a year, I got to. I got to sort of be the head of the student council, which was a great position. You know, you get to boss other students and get all the things. Do you know, from an early age, it taught me about, you know, leadership, responsibility, getting to see the bigger picture, that when you're, when you're just a student, you don't get to see, like, how does the university operate? What are the decisions that Impact all the students. That was a great year. And again, you know, those, those are sort of experiences I fold into what I do today. [00:24:33] Speaker A: That's. That's fantastic. That's fantastic. [00:24:36] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:24:36] Speaker A: So right now you're in England. What have you learned? Different. Other, other customs that even apply just in Europe themselves when it's some of the neighboring countries. I've never been to Europe. Are there, is there different things that you've dealt with from a neighboring country even standpoint that you had to adjust your business practices? [00:24:55] Speaker B: Yeah. So cultures, cultures, all cultures are different. Right. And Europe, I know many Americans think Europe is one big splodge, but each country has, even within countries, they have different cultural, you know, ways of doing things. So you do have to adapt, you know. And, you know, like the British are very passive aggressive. They won't say what they think. Right. They'll use sarcasm a lot. The Dutch are very direct. Right, okay. And it was funny. One time I was running a project where I had. It was a Dutch company had merged with a British company and then they'd been taken over by an Indian company. [00:25:32] Speaker A: Oh my. [00:25:33] Speaker B: So each of our meetings had a mix of these three cultures. Now, as I said, the Brits are very passive aggressive, so they wouldn't say what they thought during the meetings, whereas the Dutch would say exactly what they thought. And the Indians culture is very subservient, so they would just stay quiet and agree with whatever the most senior person in the room would say. [00:25:49] Speaker A: Okay. [00:25:50] Speaker B: Which meant that we weren't having honest conversations each time. So I was like, how am I going to overcome this? Right? Because we need to, we need to work as a team. So as well as getting them to know each other, what I did is for that group, I said, you know what, from now on, we're going to operate in the Palestinian way. And I said to them, I'm Palestinian. Here's how we make decisions in Palestine. And I just made up a bunch of rules. But what it basically meant was it was me communicating to them that no one of your cultures is going to dominate in this room. [00:26:21] Speaker A: Got it. [00:26:22] Speaker B: We're going to agree a new set of rules on how we operate. [00:26:25] Speaker A: Got it. [00:26:27] Speaker B: And because it was like, oh, it was neutral and it was like a fourth part, they all adopted to it and it made, after we agreed that we just work so much quicker and smoother together. [00:26:36] Speaker A: That's fantastic. That's awesome. And that's the thing. As opposed to sitting silent or ultimately not working towards the goal that you all wanted to when it came to the success. The success of that acquisition that took place. [00:26:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:26:48] Speaker A: And so there's a lot to be learned from that even. And like, and to your point, we look at, I, you know, just in my mind, I look at, you know, Europe is just another state, you know, okay, I'm in Michigan, you know, like, okay, what's the difference between that and Ohio? You know, very minimal when it comes to. But it's totally different. There's languages and all different sorts of cultures. [00:27:05] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:27:05] Speaker A: So that makes a lot of sense. That makes a fantastic amount of sense. Well, I know your time is valuable. There's a lot of things that I've background. I could go point, you know, pinpoint by pinpoint, and I think that would. Would, you know, monopolize the rest of your life. Of all the questions that I would. [00:27:20] Speaker B: Have, well, you know, you know, you know, we say, rashad, always leave something to come back for. So something for me to come back. So something for the listeners to come back. You know, we can always do a part two Godfather. Part two was just as good as Godfather, the original. So I'm not saying this is as good as the Godfather, but not as close. [00:27:36] Speaker A: It's not even close. We won't talk about the third one right now, Right? [00:27:39] Speaker B: No. [00:27:41] Speaker A: Did you have any questions for me? [00:27:43] Speaker B: Hey, loads, but let's, you know, what's. Who. Who has been some of the best guests that you've had on your podcast? [00:27:51] Speaker A: Oh, well, you know, I'd say right now, since I just started, there's been a. There's been quite a few of them, actually. You know, I don't want to do a disservice of who I don't name. I've had an actor from Los Angeles that's, you know, he's also a musician as well. His name is Patrick Boylan. I've also had a gentleman name of Terry Tucker. He was actually a SWAT negotiator as well, too. He's fought through cancer. So, you know, that's just a small snippet of the people who have gotten. [00:28:13] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yes, your listeners should go and check those out. But, but what's, what's one of the. What's been a powerful learning for you, Rashad, from those interviews that you've taken away? [00:28:23] Speaker A: You know, what I learned is that people who have success and have done very successful things want to share it with people. They're not closed off. They have a lot of knowledge to share. And if you come from a pure place and you're genuinely curious, you have to beat down the door to get people to want to talk about their success because it's magnetic. You can't come with a bad attitude to people who are trying to do positive things. You can't waste their time. They view their time different than the average person. [00:28:51] Speaker B: Right? [00:28:52] Speaker A: They do. And it has nothing to do with, you know, they've prioritized what matters to them. So I'm not smart enough. I've said this to multiple guests. I'm not the smartest guy in the world, but I have one thing that I've always wanted to do because I'm a curious person. So that's why I created this podcast, the Randomness of Nothing, because it's not about anything specific and I don't want to over talk you, but it's about subject matter experts, careers, hobbyists who have been successful in their fields. And I want to get a chance to find out what they knew, what they learned, their challenges along the way. So ultimately I could pick their brains and apply some of that to the audience and to myself. [00:29:29] Speaker B: That's great. I love the attitude. And if everyone out there had a little bit more curiosity, the world would be a much better place. [00:29:37] Speaker A: And I appreciate that, you know, and I'll make sure that hopefully there's a part two. I know your time is very valuable running a company as successful as you are. I'm not sure what time it is over in London, but I think it's late. If I'm not. If I'm not, it is late. [00:29:51] Speaker B: But it's. It's all good. But it's been a real pleasure, Rashad, and it's been nice, you know, sharing my story, sharing some insights with the listeners, and they can always look me up. I'm happy to carry on the conversation. I answer every. Every question, every message I get on LinkedIn. Just look up Faris or Anki. There's only one of me on LinkedIn. [00:30:09] Speaker A: That's what I wanted to say. You're really prolific on there too, because, like, you blog like crazy. I was like, wow, this guy's on giving a message every single day. [00:30:18] Speaker B: Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah, it's amazing. I say that LinkedIn is my journal that you just happen to be allowed to read because for me, I. I process what happens to me each day on LinkedIn so that I can be better. And I'm happy to share that. [00:30:32] Speaker A: Absolutely. Thank you so much for your time, sir. [00:30:34] Speaker B: All right, thank you very much.