I was invited by Dr. Yasser Hosni of Nile University to give a speech about successful bootstrapping in Egypt at Nile University. An excerpt of the presentation is available below.
Yasser Hosni, Ph.D., PE. President, Int. Assoc for Mgt. of Technology (IAMOT) www.iamot.org Co-Chair IAMOT 2011 Conference, April, 10-14, 2011 Miami Beach, Florida, USA
Fellow IIE, Professor Emeritus University of Central Florida
Designed, launched and managed a Covid19 Business Continuity Emergency Response for Egyptian CEO, the page for the campaign can be found at: https://www.egypreneur.com/covid19/
Featured interviews with Remote Workers at the Coastal City of Dahab as a basis for both research and media effort to transform Dahab as an international “Remote Workers” hub. Interviews included:
Assem Emam, Startup CEO
Mysara Sani, English Language Tutor
Reham Gehad, Online Personality
Denny, Innovator
Abdullah, Sales Professional
Tamer, Software Engineer
Find the interviews on Egypreneur on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/egypreneur
[Music] welcome back new viewers and in this segment of our program we are going to have an interesting interview with mr abdul makhdi he is an executive business coach who uh will tell us more about the key questions that their business owners should ask themselves as eddie and 2020 morning good morning and thanks for having me good morning mr abdul always a pleasure to have you with us to start with what is the first question that a business owner should ask himself as he is assessing the year 2019 as it is wrapping up and what should be his question for what he should be doing in 2020. yeah i think that would be are you playing to play or playing to win because in business like some businesses do exist for a while and have been around for a while and they are not thinking about how they are approaching the problem how they approaching the products how they are selling the products how they are delivering the products and accordingly they would have a lot of other opportunities that you’re not looking at so the big question by the end of the year which actually comes naturally because that’s the time of the year in which people are like closing their accounting records and looking at the business performance so it naturally comes in that there’s a lot of questions and a lot of activities goes around assisting the previous year in terms of how well we performed and looking at what should we doing next year from our perspective what we think about once we really look at it from a strategic standpoint is you might actually be performing very well but in in the wrong market or this product might be like an old product there are new products in the same industry or you might actually be better be competing in a different industry so these are all big questions that people need to start asking themselves one of the big challenges that owners usually do not have like the time and also sometimes not like the setup and the intellectual capacity and the knowledge of pursuing such activities so i think like organizing events and activities for them in which they can get together and like produce something in a short period of time that’s one of the most important things for them to do during times like this by the end of the year so mr abdul what are the strategies that business owners need to change in the coming year yeah i think like when it comes to strategy because the strategy seems like a fancy word and like there’s a lot of like thinking a lot of like guessing that goes around a strategy is like simply answering a number of questions so if you define like which industry and which products are you offering in the market to which customer and how exactly are you offering it what is your competitive advantage what is your pricing and how your organization is serving that and how are you building sustainable profitable advantage out of that probably if you build that you arrived at what a strategy is yes i think it’s um it comes into analyzing each of these questions and looking at how do i answer this as a business owner so if i’m able to look at let’s get started with the industry and the products that we offer if we look at let’s say that we’re in the tourism industry so the tourism industry have been around for a very long time like it’s egypt so it had been around like um but we can actually look as a tourism company where we’re selling tourism products expecting people to arrive at our gates in downtown cairo and this might be a very kind of old way of approaching like direct traffic but now we have the internet so a lot of people actually come to egypt and they have booked already everything so they are not looking for anything to be booked while they are there so does this mean that we need to have our offering in our marketing being done online that’s a very simple question an example for how changing the way that we work could actually lead to better outcomes yes and that goes to every other aspect that we talked about mr abdul allow me to to ask here as a live co as a business coach what advice do you give here the business owner as how he should be reassessing what he is doing he is uh is having to reassess the product that he is producing um at the time he should be doing some renovation here to cope with the the the new developments the new technologies how years you should be handling the product that is providing yeah i think the first thing is taking a step back because like during the year and mostly owners they are also owners who are operating the business so once they are involved in the business they are working in the business so they are like in touch with the operation and how different employees interact and how our customers interact so like you need to take a step back to be able to look at the business from a distance and that’s something that’s needed you have reassessment for them exactly exactly to do reassessments so yeah it’s even one of the things that we do is we take them to like out of the country out of the whole city so sometimes we go to the countryside we go to other like retreats around like coastal cities so this is very necessary for them to disconnect with the business and to be in a new environment so one of the biggest challenges is actually disconnecting that’s the first step is that you have to disconnect with what’s happening and look at it from an assessment standpoint with very simple points and ideas other than going through a lot of materials to to study so having this time and space in order for you to afford to do that that’s one point and also to be able to produce something out of it that that’s quite challenging so the first advice is to disconnect indeed so mr abdul how does the business operator know that he’s targeting the right customers and how can we define the segments and position the product and the business is uh in the market yeah i think like products it starts with the industry but if we like um like industry is going to be like too much for us to be able to analyze to look at how the industry is performing to look at like how the industry dynamics for that the biggest winning companies within this industry like to cluster that and understand the offering in the market share and then we get into the products because like understanding what kind of product at what phase is a product that we’re offering is very very important so we understand it as emerging products like if you look at all that like for example technology in egypt you can look this as like emerging offering like people trying to get you to do everything through the internet so you can say that there is a level of growth that goes into that but it takes its time like it went well with transportation so it’s kind of emerging so you see these emerging offering and there are like growth phases like products in the growth phase you can say that in transportation for example like technologies in the growth phase so that offering is in a growth phase so we look at the products that’s it’s not people not a lot of people are utilizing it and then the product that there’s a lot of people going to be utilizing that within the next months and years and then there are other old products that have been around for a very long time there is a high competition in these products and accordingly there is a low profit margin so you have to understand where your offering lie exactly in terms of like this circle is this something that said that’s old and there’s like little profit margin but it’s it’s uh it’s sustainable and you expect how much money you’re gonna make or this is something at the gross growth phase like the best area to operate is in the growth phase if you understand that this is a product there’s a lot of growth going there you need to be there because that’s where the money is and that’s where the growth is so if you’re able to operate out of this growth phase that’s going to be vital and the next question that you need to to ask yourself is how do i actually sell this product because you understand that there are like there are different products that that can sell for like two pounds and the other for 20 pounds so it’s my product should sell for two or twenty and based on based on what because also that’s a different messaging and different customer and different channels to to decide so understanding like how do i position my product in the market is also very vital and also takes a lot of understanding and analysis to what’s being offered and that competitiveness within a product i might figure out that i actually would better go for a niche like a differentiated like a high cost product and that and accordingly i need to invest in the development according accordingly so there is there is some and usually the working strategy they say that there is part rigor part is a lot of intellectual work and analysis and part is about creativity so it’s about coming up with new ideas and innovations so like balancing both of knowing the data and knowing what are the possibilities so mr reabdo how do innovation and flexibility a play at all in all of this and is strategy something you can change in the future or event while executing yeah that’s an excellent question and i think it’s actually a big question like why we’re looking at strategy by the end of the year and why we could actually have been looking at a strategy along the way but it’s always it’s always about milestones so if we say that we’re going to be looking at our strategy at each quarter that’s going to be effective for us to judge that i think some of the big stories is that there is uh there is a company that was selling like an accounting software for individuals and they were like they were getting a lot of inquiries from their customers which actually meant that they were not using this accounting software for individuals but rather they are using it for companies when they looked at it they saw that majority of their users actually are small business owners so they built another tool that specifically made for small small business owners and he made six amounts the business they were making out of their tool and that happened through their openness and flexibility to discover what the client wants what the customers want and being able to adjust the offering based on that so there’s like strategy is never guaranteed so this is also strategy is an experiment so you come up with ideas and basically you experiment with that you have a strong understanding that this is more likely to work so it’s always called the optimal strategy it’s like the strategy that’s most likely to work but you execute that and you learn from the response in the market and you adjust your strategy so working your strategy is something you have you have to be doing on a ongoing basis and flexibility plays a major role in that yes to what extent innovation and flexibility is play are playing an important role in all of that in uh choosing the the right uh business and in continuing to do so and to develop and to have innovative ideas not to to die in the in the business or not to have innovative ideas so you fade out yeah exactly i think i think the first step as we said is it’s about the process because we’re talking about someone who had been in the business for a long period of time so when they think about their businesses thinking about like gigging getting like 7 30 a.m in the morning and then just going to work and then like interacting in a very specific way so for them to get out of that and to get into a creative process or semi-creative process it’s quite a challenge so that’s why in order for them to be able to get this stage you need to disconnect them by saying that we are taking it going for a retreat so we’re getting out of town so we’re getting into a countryside we’re getting to a coastal city so for them this trip actually has like a psychological effect in terms of brainstorming exactly i’m gonna be i’m gonna be away from my office and then i’m gonna be like thinking of new ideas and also having this as a guided session in terms of you have someone who really tell you now we’re gonna be doing that and you need to think about that so it’s it’s like evolving in like a conversation like because usually when we talk about like um like a strategy initiative with consultants we expect to produce like 30 pages documents that really saying different aspects analyzing different aspects but if you have a single piece of paper and then you’re playing with variables and you’re building different scenarios yourself and you’re able to judge accordingly that’s like like that’s an environment in which you can come up with a lot of innovative ideas and you can have a lot of flexibility in choosing with them while we work with entrepreneurs we usually advise them to produce three different scenarios so you assess your this year’s strategy and then you produce three different strategies and then you choose it’s your job then to choose which strategy would you like to pursue exactly so can you tell us a simple step-by-step formula our audience they can go through uh to develop a possible strategy for their business definitely i think like there’s a canvas that’s already designed that actually should be used in designing these strategies it’s actually created by like two two of the biggest names in a strategy a.g lafley who was like the ceo of png for 10 years and who transformed the company and the dean of one of the businesses schools in canada so it’s uh it’s um like it’s a very very kind of known i think you can find it in google and work through it it starts by defining what’s our winning aspiration how do we define that we have won and also there’s a lot of tricks that’s that’s there in terms of defining ones that are winning aspirations so one of the biggest pitfalls is that people say that i would like to double my sales next year and this he’s saying like doubling our sales is going to be something like positive and there’s an element of looking at your goal based on the industry so understanding that like if i’m selling like 6 000 units and the market is worse is like 50 000 so by then and i have three competitors that mean that i actually have two percent market share so looking at your winning expiration based on the mark in the total market share is very effective for us to make sure that we’re actually making the best use of our assets and our our time also while running the business so what is our winning aspiration where do we play so where exactly are going to be selling that where the geography which kind of product categories how do we win what is our competitive advantage like how do we kind of offer the products and then what are the internal capabilities that we have so what kind of employees do we need to have what kind of professionals do we have within the company and then what are the management system what are the the system of reward and management that we need to put in place in order for us to be able to manage all this process so it’s just a single piece of paper if you go through it answer it like why also understanding like that the defining factors of each kind of question but then you can actually communicate this strategy in three minutes so it’s always an effective approach for you to develop that even as a business owner or someone who works very closely with the business owner who can actually have that and sit with the owner for 30 minutes and have a conversation about it so sir to what extent does the wellness of the business depend on its employees experience within the company years in business yeah definitely if you look at it from a strategic perspective we say that if business is going through a lot of shifts and a lot of pivots and a lot of changes that mean that employees need to change and shift with what’s happening in the business and actually not all employees do have the capabilities to shift and change like and also there are a lot of like psychological aspects like positivity positive attitude etc that plays a major role in doing all these kind of shifts and change management so when we look at it in terms of defining the the hard side in terms of the technical skills and also the personality the personal skills of these employees is very very vital for us to be able to kind of develop this strategy because if we take the owner away from the business and we work with them on developing a strategy and they go back to their employees it’s gonna be impossible for them to operate that because like employees do have a different kind of mindset so by then that is like the next step once you come up with a strategy like a good approach is that you involve as many of your staff as possible for them to understand that’s what we we’re going through so engaging employees whether at the first session or the second session the challenge for them to understand what’s happening but actually get them to be more supportive of the initiative because they understand what’s going on they are not threatened by the changes taking place and also it becomes that if someone is not it’s not okay for them to be part of that change but then it’s might be a good choice for both the owner and the employees to kind of to break that partnership so finally i’d like to thank you mr abdul maghdi executive and business coach thank you for being with us today thanks for having me thank you very much thank you and by the viewers we come to the end of today’s edition of breakfast show i’m shining either and i was joined today by my colleague thank you and they see you tomorrow with a new
viewers as we promised earlier at the beginning of the show that we are going to talk about the uh public speaking and how to develop our skills for public speaking for presentation that would be our topic for discussion now with our dear guest in the studio mr abdul madhi his public speaking coach good morning sir good morning good morning mr maggie first uh why are public speaking skills important for business executives no i think like every one of us would think that public speaking is a key skill for business executives and lots of other types of professions i think for lectures for entrepreneurs and especially for business executives what do you want to do in business is that you would like to leave a very positive impact they would like to gain people’s confidence in what you’re promising and what you’re like inspiring them to do so all that makes public speaking a very very important key skill for business leaders executives entrepreneurs and lots of other professionals how do you teach the entrepreneurs or the business people the employees these skills what are the steps needed in order to learn the basics for a good presentation for a good communication and uh public skills yeah thank you for asking that because that’s that’s the most frequent question that we get at carry toastmasters club which is a club for public speaking yep and most of the people who come for the first time they want to have like a cheat sheet for public speaking what do i have to do and the answer to that is that public speaking is a learned skill is that you have to like experience it so the best way to learn public speaking is to actually deliver speeches and there’s a lot of experiences that’s available in clubs like toastmasters for example where you can prepare speeches delivered get feedback and that’s how you learn public speaking of course there has to be outlines in things like preparing your speech your body language different other areas that you need to understand but by that it becomes about experiencing the delivery and getting feedback and accordingly getting better in your public speaking skills so a short answer probably you cannot teach public speaking you’re not going to learn public speaking by reading a book but you have to be out there speaking to the people and inspiring them getting feedback and learning from that how mr abdul how can we do that as it as a coach what are the most important tips that you give to your students or the people who are getting the course in order to do that you know because somehow um it’s um in certain people it’s been born in it’s in the character for others it’s not so how can we reach that yeah i think that usually goes on a case-by-case basis so it depends on the individual himself or herself but the key guidelines is and the key areas that people need to be ready with is self-confidence is that you have to people have to develop their own self-confidence through putting themselves out there to kind of be able to develop their skills so first is having the readiness to actually deliver the speech and sit in front of people and deliver the speech i think this is something that we’re often people who are need coaching is to be pushed slightly to start giving more speeches so one of the key areas is pushing people to to deliver more speeches and to also reach bigger audiences this is this is a key area and afterwards it comes into things like their body language you know like there’s a study that was uh being made um analyzing what affects people what are you speaking so if you’re watching me talking right now and you’re conceiving me um what is affecting the way that you’re conceiving the speaker and it turned out that 55 percent is about the way the uh the move their body their body language how they express themselves their facial expressions their hand movements and all that to 55 of the way people conceive you is about the way that you um move your body while talking and 38 is about the total voice to what extent you’re able to control your voice you kind of you can get on a high pitch or a lower pitch you can get fast or slow you can pause so all these affects the way people perceive you and only seven percent for the words so usually people worry a lot about what they are going to say but rather the impact is often created by the way they move their body the way they change their voice so accurately some of the key areas for people to learn is the way they move their body how do i move my body while speaking my fascial expressions my hand gestures and all that and also using the voice how do i alter my voice between a high pitch a lower pitch and all that so readiness pushing them practicing the body language getting more experience through delivering speeches and then working on their voice so what are the things that people should avoid while delivering a speech yeah i think there is a lot of common pitfall that people fall under once you do that the first is actually losing the audience at the first few seconds yes if you’re speaking the audience it’s very important to sit the frame is that if you kind of convey confidence and kind of articulate your your entry right i think that’s actually sets the frame for you for the rest yes of the speech to continue influencing them and keep them engaged and connected so one of the the biggest pitfalls is that people do not prepare an attractive entry or introduction to their speech and accordingly they lose audience for the through the rest of the speech um another area is structuring the speech itself giving thought to the structure of the speech of having an introduction a middle and conclusion an ending or a conclusion so um like thinking before you speak about the introduction the content of your speech and the conclusion is very important and also to be prepared another area is rehearsal is that if you’re giving an important speech for politicians for example they have to do lots of rehearsal before they’re important like talks and for example if you look at the presidential campaigns we have coaches traveling with them while delivering their speeches all over uh mr mcd we have to ask here because uh certain people do have a charismatic skills by nature when they start to talk you’re attracted to to what they are saying you are impressed other they are not they might be shy they might lose their audience for example because somehow they are redundant somehow the the way of talking is not attractive so how can i gain my audience that is what i’m saying but with uh how i’m saying uh the content yeah i think that’s very right i think charisma seems like something that people are born with but i would disagree slightly with this i think charisma is something that can be developed with practice so um the answer how do you practice that because to attract our audience it’s not somehow very easy a target here yeah i think when we analyze charisma and what charisma is about big part about charisma is about the way that i perceive myself which is about self-confidence understanding myself and understanding my limitations on my key areas of his strength so when people are pretty happy with themselves they become more charismatic because you can see through them through their energy how they are expressing themselves of interaction as well exactly so one way of looking at charisma is self-development and understanding yourself in order to become more charismatic once you understand yourself you have to look at what people are looking for so there is a key skill of cold reading is reading the audience understanding what the audience are expecting uh what inspires this kind of audience what this audience are looking for and accordingly i address them with the language with the uh thinking level that they would be um more ready to understand and and and commit with so what are the basic principles of communication and public speaking yeah if i would sit like basic principles it would be understand your audience you have to understand the audience you have to understand the environment in which that you’re delivering the speech you have to do preparations yes you have to research and especially if the topic is uh has some dense content you have to research you mean that anyone can deliver a speech in a good way and attract audience or uh only some people have uh this talent well some people do have more talent so they are talented by nature and some people can work in developing that so we would say that everyone can start developing their public speaking skills through finding the right environment to develop their speaking skills
okay viewers and you are still watching the breakfast show and in this segment of our program we will talk about how can entrepreneurs and smes survive the impact the economic impact of coronavirus and we are joined today by mr abdul magdy he’s a business coach and he will talk to us more about this morning good morning good morning sir what are the indications of coronavares and the resulting lockdown on the entrepreneurs and the smes yeah that’s not good i think all of us can see by like looking at the indicators especially we usually go at like the stock market looking at how the stock markets are performing and also understanding and visualizing the effects of the lockdown that that this is getting into an economic recession and it’s also going to be kind of intense giving that the underlying economic activities are quite suspended to a lot of extent so it’s about like projecting how bad things are going to go and the time is going to take it to recover but we can see that like the effects of a lockdown and suspension of a lot of economic activities are going to be intense in the economy and accordingly also it’s going to be on small medium enterprises and entrepreneurs so what are the top challenges of working remotely or at or at home yeah i think like the the solution for a lot of industries who are able to kind of to afford to work from home is that the do it so i think like because people couldn’t actually come to the head office or to the companies like offices so they start trying to work and produce remotely and we can imagine all kind of like distractions that happen inside home because like usually employees are used to go out in the morning and go to their workplace and they have their setup they have their desks and they usually do not have that at home i think certain industries in the past years have been having that so for example those working in technology or internet businesses they’re quite used to that so they might have actually maintained a home office for a very long period of time one of these people have been lucky to have a home office since for 14 years so i know exactly how you kind of you can isolate yourself from the surrounding environment and you have your own setup to be able to produce but i think like one of the big challenges of jumping into remote work unprepared which is i see as a challenge here is that you have a large number of people like to work remotely you have to work from home and they were not trained and they were not on board and accordingly you don’t have the tools or the mindset to work now so we can imagine all kind of distractions delays and deliverables and if you listen to a lot of business people who are really talking about it they see that there is no productivity at all so these are all kind of challenges that’s happening right now with the sharp transition into virtual work yes well mr magazine what is the smart work program and what are the main components of it yeah i think like smart work is a term that’s used for a certain type of like contracts and i think like this this has been going on for a lot of industries in which that there are people who can actually produce works remote like remotely or independent office space so of a specific physical space so smart work is not like a new term but rather it had been around in which that you kind of contract with a company through which that you’re an employee of the company but you can actually work independent of the physical space and sometimes it’s about a number of days so you’re required to work for example like half the time from an office and half the time remotely so smart work is about an organized program that gets into the contract the agreement between the employer and the employees about how they’re gonna do that remote work thing so it’s a it’s a proactive approach to look at the virtual work dilemma that we’re getting into right now is that it gets into the agreement as an employee and an employer is that this is how remote work works yeah and by then within a program there’s a lot of components with it and some of this is to the employer side and some of them to the employee side so it balances the expectations and the way things work between employers and employees so i think like companies who had smart work programs right now they are the luckiest because their employees and their management know exactly what to expect and understand the dynamics of how things should work and some of the companies right now are actually looking at how do i kind of change that immediate change into virtual work into a systemic way of managing that and these are the companies that’s right now looking at smart work yeah so as a team leader or a ceo of a company how can i know if formalizing a smart work program could be good for me yeah i think that that’s going to depend on a lot of factors so this is the industry in terms of what is the industry that i’m working on like for example if i work in technology if i work in knowledge related some people like working design offices so they like they design products they don’t have to kind of be involved in execution so any like knowledge based or like remote support even people work in customer service because lots of customer service jobs have really moved online so you’re doing chat even doing video chat and also we’re going to be seeing technology evolving to provide the tools for people to do that conveniently so if i am the employer if i’m the one who’s responsible for running the business i want to start thinking of does this work for me and i would figure out if it doesn’t work fully like to what percentage can i make it work for me and i think because like for the challenges and also the benefits of managing like a physical work environment because if we look at it other facts of this independent industry things like traffic and commute because people normally like wake up in the morning and they spend one one and a half hours getting to the workplace so this is a lot of wasted time that that usually like happens every day so if i’m an employer if i’m able to save that time and save that headache with my employees i pro probably should expect more productivity but as an employee who used to go to work every day in the morning the smart work is it convenient for him or at the the beginning it could represent somehow a burden on him or he he might get bored from from doing that yeah i think it’s a sharp transition especially for the employees who have been doing it for a long period of time so for them to have the idea of working from home i think people who work in technology on the internet they have some like funny memes that goes around for saying that now people should not be expecting that you’re working from home so when you tell someone that you’re working from home they do not believe that so they you think they are unemployed so a lot of extent the culture of having people working for home is not out there and there are many challenges especially if someone is managing a household so there are kids and there are responsibilities and there are different types of distractions so it becomes really difficult for them to manage their productivity during that time so how can uh i avoid these challenges yeah i think like the best way to avoid these is to actually have a program something that’s already designed where you onboard people to it so it’s not just an event something random that happened but rather you really think that through and that actually comes in when you sit down and you think about like how do i make that work on uh on the long or the medium term and when you think about you think that there is part of it has to do with the physical environment right because my employees are going to be working from a specific desk so i want to make sure that they have a physical in a specific room so i want to make sure that they have this room or they have this section in a room where they have the desk convenience they have the it set up they have they have the computers you have the internet connection so they have everything they need for them to produce that work yes so one component is actually producing like having the physical environment available for your employees another part is also having like the software and the systems to manage tasks so a big part is like waking up into in the morning just going to the desk you have to see that these are the things that i’m expecting to be doing like to be doing and i’m also can connect to the rest of the companies there’s like the internet is like pieces things like facebook for example it’s like social network where you can go there but you’re going there to work so you find like your manager is giving you a task and you can actually report the amount of time you worked on that task so having this it set up and the project management tools and the dashboards available on these species is very vital for them to know where they are of the hitting app yes so if we took care of the physical environment and we provided them with the tools there is a big impact that comes to the mindset mindset and well-being so it’s about how does people think and i think that’s that’s a pretty tricky part and there have been a lot of efforts especially from that people department or what used to be called the human resources department in terms of how do you kind of how do you get people excited to do the work how do you make sure that they are kind of being productive while sitting on this computer and producing the work so there’s a lot of thinking that has to do to go into the idea of productivity and mindset still you have to be productive because there is an amount of work which should be uh done at a certain time or there is a due date uh sometimes you you do conferences via the the video calls so you are somehow committed to to to to work uh i think that’s a big challenge i think when you think about it that’s the biggest challenge i think why you see there’s a problem with virtual work because you cannot guarantee that employees are going to get things done because they have on time especially because if they have a lot of distractions even if they have a deadline even if the tools in that there is a deadline for it they are going to procrastinate if they don’t have the setup you know there is no internet connection yeah a lot of distractions with the load on the internet uh these days it might be a challenge as well yeah you have all kind of factors that might affect for them to be able to commit to it and i think that’s where mindset comes in in terms of i could have the setup i could have the tools but i have to have the mindset and attitude to be able to go through the experience and produce the kind of work that i’m supposed to be producing so sir do you believe that smart work can go beyond the phase of coronavirus yeah i think it’s uh i think it’s good to look at it right now for a lot of companies who could actually have been doing smart work and i think looking at it proves to be successful in many companies it actually had proven to be very very successful in some companies yes and i think also it’s like it becomes successful for certain times of employees and certain employees have hard time being on board into it so this is another tricky part of like getting people who are not used to technology for example training them to technology so this is another component of doing some effort and boarding people into that system and i think like onboarding is the key word here because you can find the tools you can find everything but you have to be managing that properly and also you have to be doing that in a very uh calculated and calm manner in which that you do not over stress people because this is a new experience for them so you have to be very empathetic in terms of handing like um handing them this in a very kind of easy way taking care of their well-being their stitch levels etc and we’re actually seeing a lot of technology tools but getting into that so there’s a lot of ai tools that actually assist in employees activity like there’s voice enabled tools that you can talk to which basically making sure that you’re listening to a certain type of music you’re following up with the tasks so we’re seeing a lot of voice assisted technologies but getting into that space in which that you’re waking in the morning there’s someone who talks to you it tells you what you’re supposed to do and this is all the voice automated technologies things like alexa and siri if you’re acquainted with that on a mobile phone that you kind of assist you is finding things on your phone and technology is getting into having this virtual manager or virtual coach that you can talk to and by then they cannot only take care of the tasks but also they take care of your well-being because you understand your character the personality type what you probably should they should actually suggest for you you need to take a break right now because that’s how intelligent technology is potentially getting into that yes uh sir what is the first step i should take as a business owner a ceo or an employer in order to start implementing the uh the smart work yeah i think like like lots of changes i think the biggest stress comes when you just jump into it without any preparation so i think like there’s a code that says that says people are often not trained to jump so definitely shifting into smart work is a big jump but you need to be trained with that so you need to kind of connect with people who do have the experience when it comes to smart work and to kind of consult them into how do i put together a program that fits my company and how do i train people and onboarding into this program and guarantee and manage productivity moving forward so i think like the the best advice for people who are considering smart work is to kind of pause take some time to reflect on that and allow the time to design and to implement the program thinking about it as a program as a comprehensive program not just as a software tool of bringing up a project management tool because it goes way beyond that so sir if we go back to talk about the smes and to what extent this industry is affected by coronavirus yeah i think we’re gonna we’re gonna be seeing a lot of big companies having cash flow issues and equity in small companies being able to kind of also having cash flow issues so they’re going to be a lot of challenges especially in industries like the tourism for example so you see that there are industries that’s kind of being totally locked down and i think like we have been talking a lot for what we call a digital transformation yeah getting things done over the internet so small and medium enterprises are able to move right now into an internet component not just with smart work getting them employees to work remotely but looking at their strategy and their business model and how they can integrate technology that’s a very important point to mr abdul to what extent the young entrepreneurs and the owners of is could adapt here and try to survive what we are going through how they can manage to um get used to uh what’s going on in order to um have a business which could serve what uh the world is going through yeah i think also because this is this is quite a this is a big event so having a lockdown and having a disease this is this could have a lot of traumatizing effect on people so the best advice the first thing that i personally did is to like self-isolate and reflect on that so you’re just slowing down just not doing any communications and just taking my time into adjusting into that so i think like pausing for a few days not for a very long period of time but for a few days to reflect on that understanding that this is what it is i mean like this is happening because some of these businesses and small businesses they’re going to shut down but the thing is and there’s no way for not not to shut down depending on the industries but they could actually come up with a new idea how they can think out of the box and get new ideas which can survive and serve during that very hard time i think one of the good things right now is that there’s a lot of learning resources that’s just made available online so for them if you run a business and the business became not possible for it to go on and then you have to go through that the bad experience and i think it’s going to have to do a lot of healing time and i think we have to also during times like this we have to be very considerate and empathetic in terms of people are going through things so allowing them the space to get to kind of go through that and being like soft with it but by then we can have a lot of learning resources to see how how they can actually make that work with the new world with the new internet with the e-commerce and then they come up with different ideas in terms of like i’m going to move forward doing that which could be like somehow um complementary to what i used to do or it could be totally different so but then once they figure that out they can actually like as also things become clear with time and also capital becomes more available again they could probably be able to raise funds build a new team and and launch if they were not able to maintain their current operation yeah so uh what are your tips uh to young entrepreneurs at this time yeah i think i think it’s um i think actually personally i think like the young entrepreneurs i don’t think they are that affected by by this event as much as bigger companies so you see bigger companies from people having a lot of payroll and then they have they are taking care of 100 people obligations it’s a big yeah so for entrepreneurs we’re like small teams like they’re two three people they’re getting started they most likely they don’t have that a lot of financial resources and they could actually be working remotely i think for them it becomes about you know like becoming stoic you know like like one of the the concept is becoming really um adapting to what’s happening and also taking it from a positive perspective seeing that these are the things that couldn’t be done because i could see a lot of things you know like there’s a lot of memes with people having like there’s uh a car parking and then there is something big that’s kind of crashed into it and seeing that this is how entrepreneurs um like how chronovirus treated entrepreneurs and then they crashed their cars basically so there’s a lot of people lamenting that the things are destroyed so and that could actually be good for them to reflect on that for a while but afterwards the question is how do i really think about it differently so this is crushed okay i’m fine with it i went through the experience what do i build right now because also it’s very good for a recovering economy to have the entrepreneurs we’re going to come up with new ideas and find out what the economy should do but i think also for egypt it could be a positive thing because we have a lot of young population these could be empowered with the internet so egypt could actually offer a lot of technology enabled and internet-enabled services that would actually drive like economic input into egypt do you think uh mr magdy that the ideas after the uh covered 19 would be different from that of before can we start to have new ideas uh maybe more remote services can can we do that can we we start to have more innovative ideas here yeah i think i think 100 percent and i think like there is something that that’s being said by that which is like when it comes to digital transformation they tell you who took the initiative on digital transformation in your company your ceo your cto or covet 19 and usually people say covet 19. because like people who work in technology we have actually seen all these patterns evolving this time so in the past 10 years we’ve been seeing all these things moving into remote work the economy changing and there was a lot of initiatives and projects in the startup that moves into technology right now is the current situation you’re gonna see that a lot of people are gonna start seeing that so a lot of bigger companies are gonna start seeing that there’s an opportunity with technology there’s an opportunity using the internet so definitely things are going to be different not just with the technology like enabled but also in a way people interact so there’s there’s a lot of theories there that we do not have to get into but whether that the bigger companies are going to survive and expand whether it’s the smaller businesses whether like business is going to be done in a localized environment so these are all different patterns and also depending on how things go when it comes to the timeline and we hope that hopefully like the lockdown is lifted and we’re back to work very soon so i’d like to thank you er mr abdul maghdi business coach thank you for being with us today thanks for having me thank you very much always a pleasure to have you with us uh mr abdul and our dear viewers that will bring us to the end of this edition of the breakfast show you were in the company of myself and my dear friends thank you mahisti and they see you dear viewers tomorrow with a new
[Music] welcome back dear viewers and in the segment of our program we will talk about the role of entrepreneurs in the success of businesses and we are joined today by mr abdul magdee he is an entrepreneurship expert good morning good morning mr abdullah always a pleasure to have you with us sir to start with the role of mentoring here how important is the role of a mentor for the entrepreneur and the owners of the small businesses yeah definitely i think mentors play a major role in the success of businesses i think if you look at any successful business especially started by someone who’s like young and entrepreneurial and have the energy and the time and most likely lacking the experience there are definitely some mentors who do have the experience and the maturity who actually have an informal relationship with that entrepreneur to help them excel further so like wherever we look at any company or any industry we can find like a succession of those successful people who who build big companies and big successes and then they mentor the next generation of entrepreneurs so and also it’s not just about business in our lives we’re gonna usually see that there are like we lean towards talking to certain people like while taking certain type of life decisions so definitely mentors like come in different aspects of life but business is has a very crucial importance so so what are the good examples of mentorship our audience can relate to i think that there are plenty of those i mean if you look at the industry that you’re at i think like any viewer can actually extract three examples from all these different industries yes i think if you look at the construction industry uh we have like some of the companies that’s existing right now without mentioning their names they’re actually a succession of the founder who mentored those who are from their families and also in egypt we have a lot of family businesses so we see that usually the suns are trained and mentors during that period of time by the parents who started the business so whatever sector that we look at we can look at this succession of expertise and maturity like being passed on with a new generation yes mr after what actually could go wrong in a mentorship relation yeah i think to answer that we have to first understand that the dynamics of the mentorship relationship so it’s an informal relationship usually there’s no transactions taking place so you’re not like hiring them as coaches or consultants so it’s highly informal and also it’s between someone who like wants something or like needs a certain type of support from someone else and so begin a lot is going to depend on the mentor themselves and what extent are they ready and mature enough to provide that so there’s always a challenge of having like people who are very self-centered who do not listen who like use it as a way like to kind of showcase their expertise and their connections other than providing valuable advice some of that comes in the shape of very generic advice like focus you just need to focus which actually works like on a like on a generic theatrical stage but when it comes to business you have to be very detailed in terms of what to focus on when and why so like avoiding the the the ego testicle types who might not have the competence and also have the characters to deliver that expertise yep so how are mentors they’re different than coaches and consultants yeah if we look at coaches and consultants it’s usually there is that transactions going on there so you hire coaches like to increase your performance and also you hire consultants to develop certain types of materials in terms of like mentorship it’s usually a non non-paid relationship relationships like someone that you you like and aspire to be like at a certain area and then you’re kind of you arrange to meet with them uh frequently or in frequency to discuss like matters with your business and also that is part of that not only dependence on the business but depends on you so if you’re an entrepreneur who’s a mentor and you started like free companies they could actually be mentoring you throughout these different companies so there’s usually chemistry between the entrepreneur and the mentor which makes it tricky that you have to like make sure that this chemistry exists in order for you to proceed with a mentorship relationship mr abdul how i can compensate or reward my mentor yeah i think i think that the biggest compensation reward for a mentor because if we have that if we have it in mind that they are people who are like older and more mature is to actually succeed and especially yes like execute with the the they tell you so i think thank you message yeah i mean like thank you messages come second to that but when they look they haven’t had a meeting with you three months ago and you went ahead and you have done that and you were not kind of um updating them but rather you found out i think they’re going to be really happy next time they meet with you when you tell them that oh i might excuse you advice by the way and that ended up happening so for them to see that you’re really appreciating what they are sharing with you by executing it and making it happen in the market that’s the biggest reward i think there are different setups in terms of someone really commits to an organization so if you’re on a one-on-one relationship and you’re starting an organization like some of the models in which that you bring them in as an advisor so they get some highly minority equity in the company so in exchange for these like sessions you can get like something like in the us for example it’s point five to two percent equity in the company so you can bring them in to take that shares in the company like as a symbolic share and uh like some good examples of mentors and also these states were fun so um like like we look forward to you flying us on um on a private jets to when you have your company kind of expanding that you’re going to be rewarding them like whether formally or informally and they’re going to be celebrating your success so mentioning their names is something that they also appreciate to keep their light legacy within the industry is that how does my relationship with my mentor change over time yeah i think i think lots of that is going to depend on the entrepreneur themselves because like when we look at a mentorship relationship there is a lot of activities that’s happening by the entrepreneur because the mentor usually they could be spending an hour or two hours a month with you but by the end of the day you’re working on your business all like all that time so like who is the active player here it’s the entrepreneur the one who’s executing the business so with executing the business you control lots of the dynamics of how this relationship evolve i think like if you tend to dislike that the the the advice that you’re getting from the mentor i think by then the relationship was informally dissolved as well so there will no mutual interest in like contin continuing this relationship though if you’re executing on that and that advice but then things could be moving forward you could be starting a company could be inviting them to join like the board for the company so um like like you’re gonna see that by focusing on executing what you’re working on with the company and making it a success and by then you can keep the mentorship going on yeah so what do i need to take into consideration if and when i start mentoring others yeah i think i think that’s that’s a very tricky question because you know like if you’re it also depends on two things this actually depends on your personality type so lots of this depends on the type of person like there are like people who are naturally lean to be more empathetic so the they could relate to people and they could listen to them and also in terms of availability of time and space because like if you’re young and if you’re like moving ahead who’s executing companies like and running businesses it’s gonna be difficult for you to allocate the time space and also the thinking and the focus to do that so you have to be like honest with yourself whether you actually have the right intentions you have the time and also you’re gonna pay the focus and the concentration and the listening with that individuals that you’re going to be mentoring and i think like the a good indicator is that to come out of intuition so you feel like yeah that seems like i have been there 10 years ago so i can probably mentor someone at this like at this stage because i know how it feels so usually it comes in terms of like with a lot of intuition is that i can relate to that individual so if you get that spark is that i can relate to that individual maybe it’s a good indicator for you to proceed with mentoring them indeed so one last question sir can everyone be a mentor or there is a certain personality type i think personality type plays a major role but i think by then everyone is going to find a personality that matches them that basically that that they could be mentoring with so definitely finding the chemistry is is vital so once you find the chemistry i think that’s going to be a good match indeed mr abdul maldi our entrepreneur expert thank you very much uh for being our guest for today thanks for having me thank thank you thank you mr abdul and by the viewers we come to the end of today’s edition of the breakfast show [Music]
to speak about the modern sales cycle good morning good morning good morning junior magdy thank you for joining us and uh so a very rich topic um where do you want to start yeah i think i’ll have to agree first with what my majesty said is that the internet had been like changing our behavior as users and also on the other hand for businesses that have been becoming like challenging to stay up to date with how the internet works and how for their businesses to move further especially they had been in business for a long period of time so we have a big industry which is like the digital transformation which is about helping businesses that have been around for a long period of time of how they be able to kind of ride the digital age so we will have to agree when it comes to attracting clients which what we call it like generating leads and qualifying leads and closing businesses because businesses are based on transactions they want to get clients and they want to get transactions done so for them they see that lots of these transactions which used to happen like in store like people walking in or happening offline now have moved online so the challenge for business owners especially small business owners how do i follow that trend how do i change my business and my approach to be able to capture that business from online so i want to stay with the consumers sorry um and gm magna i want to say with the consumers because most of our viewers now are our consumers they’re not the business owners uh that’s the the 80 20 rule the 2080 rule so um i assume and you correct me if i’m wrong that most of those who uh search online and purchase online are youth and and sometimes children now but but not not the elderly not the those in their 60s 70s or 50 and you tell me and and thus how is this affecting the the market in general and let’s speak about egypt yeah i think like if we think about like the the age group who move in online we can say that like the what they call the y generation or like those who are like the 35 right now like starting 35 37 right now they are starting to have lots of their transactions happening online so maybe like those are older or less likely to to make a purchase decision online and they will have like the other ways in which they like to investigate different sales decisions prior to making a transaction and we might prefer to schedule sometimes to go for a store and and then like compare what we have seen online with what’s possible online especially if they’re purchasing services like that’s physical so this is still like a large percentage of consumers especially in countries like egypt in which that online is not becoming as big as it is in other markets to actually get an idea of what’s offered there how much is it and then they go to trust to the stores to make the purchase decision make the transaction through a physical store but can’t we say that the idea that we go shopping and we walk in the street to buy our stuff has a big change then before because i i do see a lot of my friends and myself think that it’s much easier to just purchase what we we do want online so to what extent that is affecting the idea that we go for shopping or to go to the stores even for uh food shopping uh mr next yeah i think like if we look at other markets and also we’d understand what’s happening in egypt is also to some extent it’s going to be following what happened in other markets like some of the the quick decisions like when it comes to grocery shopping right now for example it’s uh you just as you are surfing the net you just uh uh advertisement or the product popping up so it’s more attractive soon yeah and you usually see offers and better prices than you like exactly and if we talk about things like frequent purchases like grocery shopping is basically you have solutions right now that’s more like subscription based in which that you have you have a box and then you have things like gradually being developed to that box and then you have the user has a dashboard in which that they can fail the exactly they want so it’s more about you know like what is the user quite like is looking to purchase so if it’s a like frequent items or it’s like uh something that you purchase in a in a year like like uh clothes etc or is it like more like something they’re gonna push in five years so the behavior is gonna differ according to what exactly they are purchasing but the thing the challenge also for business owners is gonna come into that the need to get into the mind of these consumers and understand how they are thinking and what the process and how but then i would shift part of my process online to match like the behavior of consumers etc how dangerous is it for children to get into this cycle they are already and and sometimes they buy stuff or they order stuff that their parents are not even aware of or haven’t taken the permission for so how good or bad is it that children are getting into this um uh cycle and and and how can we regulate uh or should the cycle be regulated yeah i think i think like 80 percent of that would actually go into like the parental control in terms of like the parent managing like their children’s access to technology and to what extent do they use technology and what they’re allowed to use it for and not i think like a precious decision they usually require a credit card or transaction so there are different ways in which that this could be moderated in terms of we do not allow like in the devices and the hardware they are using like the credit card is not inserted there so they cannot finish transactions there will be always like different solutions in which that they can basically tab into an existing account etc like if it comes to subscriptions for example so if you’re sharing like a store subscription they can order different applications so i think the easiest way to look at it because also from the other hand like those who are doing marketing they have to be responsible in terms of what they kind of promote directly to those who are under age but by the end of the day it’s gonna be the parent decision responsibility to moderate access to different like platforms in which the purchase decisions are happening um mr magdy what are the main elements here uh that we do need to put together for a successful marketing and sales plans for the current year 2020 as we are starting in new year’s what are the new ideas the new challenges the new uh things that we we need to reach here in order to change or to improve in the marketing strategies yeah i think like if i look at everything that we discussed in terms of how consumers are thinking about the sales and how they are moving online right now like my biggest challenge as a business owner as an entrepreneur is to look at the opportunities in which they can adjust my operation to kind of to be able to attract some of that business what are the tips here that you do give for your um as you are giving lectures or you are giving courses here for the young entrepreneurs and for the young business owners who are doing marketing uh marketing and sites online what are the tips here that you are gonna give this year yeah i think like like it’s not it’s not actually like if we think about like how the internet is changing things i think there is a there is a very interesting analogy which actually is based on einstein and he was like having the finals exam and like his teaching assistant figured out that he’s actually like sending the same test as last year and then he kind of brought that to the attention of einstein and showing like like you’re actually giving them the same exam as last year like so he said that the the questions but the answers did so i think it also applies to business owners in terms of yeah in terms of you know like it’s a step stella in order for you to make a successful sale it is like it’s the same like psychology but there is a different process yes so the thing is about like hammering on the skill sets and hammering on the basic skills for people who are doing the marketing and the sales while also moderate like look thinking about the process differently looking at how does it like for example if we think about it what usually happens is that we think about it in terms of five stages we need to figure out who are the users so the first step is to understand what are the perfect profile for our users so if i have like three personas for the users who buy from me or buy my offering who would they who would they be like how old are they where do they live how much they are willing to spend how frequently do they make this purchase so i need to understand a lot of details like who these customers are and then i need to know like where do they go so do you usually spend a lot of time on youtube do they kind of go to educational websites do they do a lot of business networking on linkedin so i need to figure out what sites or like where do i find them so figuring out the child channels through which i can reach out to them and then i know that what are their pains because i know who they are and and like where they are but then i can actually like design my message in terms of talking about like um solving some of their problems or offering them more efficiency according to their needs so but then i i knew who they are i found the channels and then i sent them a like a very direct message for them to take an action and then once they take a specific action i have to make it easy for them to initiate this conversation and once the initiate this conversation i have to have like a well-designed sales process and people who are like qualified and also like like operating with a lot of ethics and sensitivities in order for them to be able to kind of close the sales cycle yeah if we think about it online if we if we’re talking about sales specifically i mean if if users go online and then they they do the whole purchase decision online by then there is no sales to be done so the sales profession is is done but that’s not the case i think in a lot of industries like people are still the they see the product they might actually add it to the shopping carts but by then there are different other elements that they need to get answered in order for them to take the precious decision and this is a transition in which that you need a sales professional who really knows exactly what they are doing and they have like systems in place and they are well trained and they know how to handle that in order for them to close the sale indeed so so the sales profession is is very much alive but you’re saying um engineer mcd that the job description has changed and that research and development perhaps r d is now the main task of the of uh and keeping up to date with technology is the main task of the of the sales uh department yeah i think i i fully agree with that if we’re looking at hiring sales professionals in today’s world i mean if we’re looking at if we have an online business or an e-commerce store or like we’re selling business services and we’re looking at sales professionals how do we kind of assess whether these are it’s probably the most important job probably in today’s world i mean in the business cycle yeah like definitely closing sales is very important i think there is a very important job to be done in terms of building the strategy in terms of how do i get the right like clientele get the right kind of personas but by then definitely you have to look at the sales professionals and you have to assess like there are like four different areas department that will tell you who are you targeting first of all i mean it’s it’s part of the strategy they are already part of the strategy aren’t they because if you don’t have a client if you don’t have an art targeted audience then you don’t have a business all together so so so i i don’t want to be um um you know i’m just asking your opinion i mean are we getting into a world where the sales department is basically the most important in the cycle well i i think like like that the example that i have given in terms of if we’re moving towards an automated sales cycle or automated like marketing and sales cycle we see that sales is not even as much as it used to be because if we’re looking at offline stores so offline stores like sales is the most important thing because you have walk-in traffic these people are they are walking in the streets at like a lot hard like street for example and then they go into the store so there’s a lot of success is going to depend on the personality and the talent of the sales person but like i think in in the modern world we need actually to get the right traffic so there is a lot of weight that goes into defining where do we find the customers who they are and how do we target them so there’s a lot of weight that go that goes into kind of getting the decline but i need to get the advice of the sales department to to do that yeah i think what also happens is it becomes a it becomes a matter of analytics and automation so because because these are like digital platforms so let’s think about it as an email list if if the way that i generate business online is that i get people to download a pdf and then i get their email and by then i have an analytic tool to tell me like them the names or the the regions or which parts and car these people are coming from and by then i have a lot of data in which that i’m accessing through analytics tool that’s not necessarily coming out of like the direct sales professionals that’s that doesn’t mean that like sales are not needed or they are not important but by then it becomes even more important for them to invest on like different capabilities and skills this makes it easier for them to close the sales cycle some of these things that we look at is like they have like four different parts like some of them are iq so definitely like sales people have to be really intelligent in terms of and also we think about aq which is like acquired intelligence in terms of for them their ability to learn update themselves that’s it’s highly important and also like tq which is like technology intelligence we have to be like up to date with with technology and you have to be trained on technology and one of the things that’s usually sad when it comes to the sales professional as we’re talking about the level of importance is like there are two types of sales people in the future those who like tell the machines what to do or tell the technology what to do and there are those who get told what to do by the machines yeah so and the different then most likely gonna be the fourth part which is emotional intelligence is emotional intelligence is by the time that i i got all these flow from online and i have these profiles and i’m sending a particular message to a particular individual to what extent do i understand where they come from and i understand how to like interact with them in terms of do i give them a phone call do i send them a message like do i wait so there’s a lot of decision that has to do with emotional intelligence in terms of motivating my own feelings and also and my own emotions and also understanding how this is being perceived so by then if i’m a sales professional or like if i want to become a sales professional i would look at like investing at least like four different quadrants and also becoming really like iq this is something most likely i’m born with so i could be like like even if we say that those who are kind of in a lower like high q but have like have higher eq yeah and tcu they could actually be very good engineers
business coach and consultant good morning and thank you for joining us good morning it’s a lot of change in weather today so i get my sweater on mr abdul um from your point of view what are the major opportunities and challenges facing the smes nowadays in egypt yeah i think like smes is like the biggest question mark and exclamation mark when it comes to the egyptian economy because we know that over 90 percent of employment in egypt goes to micro small medium enterprises and also we see a lot of potential from that sector all around the world and i think like uh like according to a lot of like economic projections egypt is projected to be among the one of the 11th largest economies and that requires change in the small medium enterprises sector and from my perspective working closely with entrepreneurs and small medium enterprises in the past 12 years i can see that there’s movements that could be done with the entrepreneur the person who’s running the business and the way they lead the business and and these actually also they start getting more apparent with the changes in economic conditions with technology etc and i think like on top of that comes into that the uh the idea that goes on was change always are you fixed or are you changing the change so it’s fixed with this growth mindset are you growing with the changes or are you fixed in the way things are working i think this is a very very big challenge for like businesses and individuals who had been like running a certain lifestyle thinking in a certain way and now we need to change that into like this is the way it works this is a new way it works and that’s how we should grow with it yeah and that second to that and also a sub idea to that is basically lots of businesses are relying on what we call it hand to mouth which basically i’m gonna go it’s like employment it’s just like remaining by the end of every month that i get my check and then i live off that check and i think majority of small medium enterprises are also kind of being operated with the owner thinking the same way which also it’s that it’s a downside when it comes to innovation and looking at different possible ideas and changes so how do you really escape this hand to mouth lifestyle and i think with that also there is it is a sense of excessive competition so there is there is a sense of copycatting anything that happens so if there is a type of business that’s working right now like there’s a lot of copycats that operate on that business and there is little innovation and there is a there is a huge sense of like it’s it’s all competition competition other than looking at the strategic partnerships so all these are different variables that if the owner and the entrepreneur focuses on solving that within themselves i think they would be capable of getting over any changes or challenges within the economic like environment in which they operate right and now when it comes to business and small businesses especially specifically personal contacts and relationships are very crucial how far do you think personal contacts would lead to the success of a small business i think definitely while operating a business getting personal with the people that you work with but actually for building better relationships and much more fluid dynamics of how do you interact but i think one of the challenges for the way that we operate businesses in egypt is that it becomes about for very strategic decisions in terms of who i’m gonna bring in to do a specific job it becomes about those that i’m most connected with not those who are most competent which is which is it’s always a downside for businesses because if i want to make my business successful in a competitive environment i have to be looking for the most competitive way to do things and if i rely on my personal connections on like people who i kind of owe something or they owe me something so there is always these kind of um relationships as slightly complicated and that these really influence the decision making on which that who do i bring to the business so getting into a pragmatic mindset in terms of i have a problem and i want to fix it who’s the best person to do that even if i have never met this person before where i never heard of this company before so getting more uh being pragmatic like a pragmatist about how do i solve problems in a very practical way this is a very much needed while also maintaining the personal connections with the people that you work with yes does operating in a hand to mouse versus the capital finance style make a real difference for the owners of the smes exactly you know if we think about smes in different sectors let’s take the tourism sector as one of these examples if i’m operating a tourism facility there’s most likely lots of things to do in terms of maintenance operations in the facility that i manage there could be some lots of marketing work that i can do in terms of highlighting like like the the different programs that i can offer my visitors etc and that all requires investments so i need i need a a bunch of money set aside for these kind of activities and if i’m operating hand to mouth which means that i wait to make money out of the clients who come to me to be able to spend and to live off of that and my family by then i have a very little chance of being able to make that investment into this project that’s going to turn the business around so the way businesses succeed is that you make investment you bump in capital for a specific objective or like money for a specific project and this project brings in outcomes as a result of this project so operating hand to mouth is is a big challenge for people to move beyond just doing this job and then this job and this this job and right now there is a lot of opportunities for people to start thinking in terms of finance there are different finance vehicles whether it’s uh it’s uh it’s lending or it’s equity so if someone really is running a business and they see that they want to grow it by 10x so this might be a fabulous opportunity for them to talk to equity investors they go to people and tell them i’m going to sell you 10 of the company today you’re gonna pay a million pounds in five years this this million pounds that you paid might actually be 20 pounds depending on how the company is going to grow as a result of you putting the 1 million pounds right now in my company so this is an equity investment and this is an opportunity for businesses that thinks in terms of big growth so if you’re thinking about 10x this is possibly a good idea for you to go on an equity investment and you’re going to find the investors who are willing and and hopefully able also to make this investment on the other hand if you’re a small business and you have a smaller project and you’re looking at growth it’s not necessarily to that level but then you can actually go for loans and there are like different vehicles that exist including the egyptian banking sector and different other like trade finance organization that that’s like to finance different deals and allow entrepreneurs and businesses to be able to supply like that the products they expect you to supply or do the operation that they want so these vehicles already exist and i think also a downside is that mostly it is not part of the mindset of majority of egyptian businesses to seek external finance so it’s kind of rare for them to think in terms of i’m going to get an equity investor i’m going to sell and get a partner for 10 of the company it seems like a foreign idea and it could be yeah and also in terms of like thinking about the downside of getting a loan from the bank etc and uh and also there could be some like like challenges in terms of going through the administrative process et cetera so these all are reasons that keeps lots of businesses operating hand to mouth which is it’s a it’s it’s hindrance to a lot of growth potential for the economy so if we’re thinking about freeing the economy and moving it to the next level we have to both make this vehicle more ready to receive entrepreneurs and also we invite more vehicles to exist in the market at the same time we have to be teaching the entrepreneurs and working with them closely on getting them ready to identify what kind of capital do we need and how do we prepare ourselves to be able to talk with the investors like or the lenders as an expert in the field of smes or small and medium enterprises what fields in egypt would you encourage young entrepreneurs to start with yeah i think like the answer to that comes down to the entrepreneur themselves so one of the things we think about especially if we’re getting for startup is that people usually succeed in what they are most passionate about because building a company is a tough process and they’re going to be a lot of failures so if we’re talking to young entrepreneurs about what they need to pursue i think that has to come naturally to them out of discovering what they are most talented and what they are most passionate and what the market needs also i’m talking about market needs here in egypt yeah exactly you know like we have a we have a concept that we like to to kind of uh demonstrate to young people who are looking for that which is what we call the hedgehog concept and there is there is a very interesting idea from a business book that that’s really studied american companies and why some some companies grow and why some fails and they came up with the idea of like there are like the if there’s a wolf and he would like to eat either a fox or a hedgehog which do you think he’s going to go for a hedgehog or a fox i mean like they’re going to start with the fox they’re going to start with like like with the fox but the fox is pretty smart so the fox has a lot of talents so the fox is going to get over the tree he’s gonna like he’s gonna give that the wolf a hard time but then if if the wolf tries to attack the hedgehog the hedgehog is not gonna do anything he’s gonna just like export his it’s uh it’s it’s peaks etcetera so this would actually challenge that uh despite the fox is pretty smart it has a lot of talents and a lot of ideas but then the hedgehog you have only one thing but you cannot get over this one thing so an idea that you need to really understand what is your one thing that you should be focusing on and then there are like three circles that you can draw and you can do this right now is it basically what i’m most passionate about so i can write down what i’m most passionate about what i’m competent at what do i do best and where are the economic opportunities if i see something that matches that i’m really passionate about that i’m competent at it and also i can make money out of it so by then this is an area that i need to focus on right mr abdu magdy our business consultant
[Music] welcome back eddie viewers and in this segment of our program we are going to talk about cyber security and how can we protect protect ourselves from the downside of technology and we are joined today by mr abdul mahdi he is a technology executive good morning good morning good morning good morning mr mcd happy i eat happy to have you with us and so let’s get to the point directly as much as technology is facilitating our lives there are many threats to individuals and organizations alike so we know that cyber security is a term used to refer to the domain of practice that has to do with the protection online first of all what are these top threats when it comes to individual use or organization use of of the internet yeah first good morning and thanks for having me and happy thank you and to our viewers okay and yeah i think like we all love technology i mean like all technology advanced the advancements all the social networks all the different tools and apps that we use we love that and that’s forever expanding but it comes a downside that we hear a lot about lots of issues that has to do with security and privacy so people getting in trouble losing losing their data and even like getting into some like almost close to like threats to their own safety so like cyber security is the term that has to do is like moving security into the virtual world but with everything that has to do with technology if we look at what had been going on in the past like decades and in the past year we’re going to see that there are different patterns of the the different types of threats one of the the top threats these days is what we call ransomware which i think we heard a lot about that in the past year and i think like if we look at it statistically recently in like this year there’s over 14 billion dollars of losses as a result of ransomware so this is a huge loss what is ransomware ransomware is like when hackers access your device and lock it by scrambling data so you have your pc or the company has its own server and there’s a lot of files that we’re working on so if hackers could access that system they’re going to scramble data so you cannot see these data and then they’re going to give you a screen telling you that your data is locked pay me like a thousand dollars in order for me to give you access to this data so this is this is ransomware that’s a huge number 14 billion dollars that’s a huge number yeah that’s a huge number it’s like uh like it’s the biggest threat for cyber security these days and uh and also the 14 billion is almost in the u.s alone so this is wow this is a massive threat so if you look at cyber security is taken very very seriously on a global scale and even the governmental or international levels so ransomware is a big threat and i think by then it’s it’s uh it validates the need for us to be like safe online and also to be cautious in terms of the different types of attacks besides ransomware there is lots of phishing attempts which is like much more like simpler in which that someone is sending us an email with a link and but the email is coming from someone else other than the person that we know so we think this is an email from a co-worker or a friend and then we open it and it’s actually coming from someone else who’s like using the same name and then there’s a link through which they can like access our system or hack us in different way so these are some of the samples some of the top threats also if we look right now like in businesses and even individuals lots of us really update our data or upload our data into the cloud so we use like cloud providers like big companies we put our data online because we might lose our phone or change our phone and like some of the standard features when we have a new device or a laptop is that we kind of upload our data on the cloud so all these data are in the cloud so if there is any threat that goes into some of these cloud providers these are like the biggest providers so they are the techno the biggest technology providers which has an upside in which the dr they have the most advanced protection but also any any issue that happens with them that’s gonna also affect us like other things like using different software that’s especially in companies if i use a third-party software that i give it access to my system if anything happened to this software it’s most likely to affect my system as well because hackers can use it as as backdoor so these are all different types of threats and i think it’s um so we can say that cyber security is getting more advanced than just having an antivirus like an antivirus is something that’s that’s important to have to lock our security but also there is a component of being aware of how to protect yourself things like phishing attempts there’s a there’s always what they call it hackers call it social engineering social engineering is it when you organize your thoughts in which that i know that i want to access your system and i say she’s your friend so i’m gonna use her system to access your system and i’m gonna organize an interaction of you like if i know what you’re gonna be preparing tomorrow i’m gonna send you an email relevant to what’s gonna happen tomorrow at the right time and then you’re gonna click the link because you’re in a rush and by then i’m gonna access your system through her so there’s a lot of tricky and very deceptive techniques that’s used by hackers and by then part of this is about understanding that also being cautious and verifying like that we are on the safe side beautifully explained so mr abdul as a technology user how can i protect myself from these attacks yeah i think like there is there are two components there is like the the hard part in which that i have to secure my software and hardware is that like um if i’m using if it’s my pc for example some of the most obvious things is that i have the right anti-virus software and the security updates so one big part is right now most operating system they have their own like security built in so there’s a big part of security that’s kind of built in within like a windows or mac or whatever system that we’re using and there is additional software to protect it from very specific like threats like viruses and malware etc so i have to make sure that my system is up to date in terms of um like doing full protection and also understanding that there is like a quick update to smile because like as companies discover there are threats they produce a new update and sometimes you have to download this update like quite quickly to protect yourself because if there is like a window three days if you did not install the latest update within this period of time it might be a window for hackers to use it because by then once it’s announced other hackers really know that it exists and they can use it and usually we’re quite lazy or we’re working on something so we usually say later later tomorrow remind me tomorrow so it’s uh it’s um it’s advised it’s like late at night as you’re done with your work leave the system like updates at night and make sure that you’re protecting yourself from that like hard part the soft part is also being cautious is in being able to identify this is a possible threat this is like a social engineering attack and understanding also that this is this has to do is training so there’s a lot of intense training especially at the corporate side i mean if you’re being on board i had an experience in washington dc for three months and the first task before i accessed their system was going through a two hours of cyber security training so the first thing in order for for us to give you access to our system you have to get training and when it comes to cyber security you have to understand all these terms and how to deal with it and also as you go along there is a lot of like drills there’s a lot of training exercises you might actually get an email from a colleague and it’s not from a colleague they want to see if you’re capable of protecting yourself this way so there is a component in which that taking care of my like software and also taking care of my focus while dealing with different like even like friend requests and lots of messaging and messengers and whatsapp so understanding who’s sending that and uh and how to deal with it if there is there is a threat as well well um listening to you engineer magdy a funny thought came to my mind um uh you know i i got the feeling that you um cyber security um professionals uh are like the police and the hackers are like the thieves i mean that’s just the and i got the impression by by the number of times you repeated the the word hackers that it is the fastest entrepreneurs the fastest growing job in the world now i mean you could maybe some kids you would ask some kids what do you want to do when you grow up this is crazy you know and they tell you they don’t tell you i want to be an engineer a cyber security engineer they tell you i want to be a hacker so so i mean you listen to kids and yeah we’re laughing now but but this is very very threatening so so talk to us about that yeah it is phenomenal yeah yeah it is and i think also it’s like part of us especially like when you’re younger is that we want to do like adventure stuff yeah so hacking is like a beautiful world of being able to do something you’re not supposed to do so i actually got into hacking as a teenager so i was online and i had a coach yeah and then he said that he’s gonna start like teach us a hacking and then he was teaching us hacking by recommending books that we read and then we have a discussion around it and um like the author of these books was kevin mitnick he’s like one of the biggest names when it comes to cyber security he was actually a hacker so what usually happens with these is that there’s always well the reason the last cyber security engineer i guess who must know a lot about hacking exactly a forward an ex-hacker would be the best exactly because these hackers like they get like when they are caught and they are offered either would you like to spend your life in jail or do you like to work for us so this is this is usually part of it is there is a lot of transitioning hackers who get into the like in supporting the uh the security efforts so definitely during these years if you’re like teenage years you get really interested in these things and by then there is there is an ethical burden in terms of understanding that you’re going to use that knowledge in kind of in doing right like good things not doing bad thing which is also like it’s part of the training so whenever you go into the cyber security training or like hacking training and most people like to use the word hacking training because it’s like it’s much more entertaining and much more active yeah so once you go into that some of the first things that even your coach tell you is that you have to promise first that you’re not going to be using this knowledge and doing anything illegal because also it’s his responsibility to to do that so yeah definitely it’s a very like flourishing space professionally and also it’s a very um important aspect because by then the police forces are moving online and also it has huge impact we talked about like one type of hacking is 14 billion dollars so this is huge money like and also it becomes really sophisticated with a lot of emerging technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence so this space is pretty much emerging and um and i think you’re like you brought up like some people have it within them is that they want to be stopping the bad guys so but then these actually make the best type of what they call it white hat hackers yeah so mr hamdu how do you see the future of technology with all these uh cyber security challenges yeah i think like once some once like something is growing there has to be like that the safety and security and privacy has to be growing with it which we see that there’s a lot of effort in that space and also there’s a lot of promotion for cyber security with like the attacks so one thing is that there is an effort to respond to some of these attacks so we hear about all that data data linkage from facebook we hear about the uh like the influence on the us elections using different hacking techniques so i think there’s a lot of learning that goes into the industry as we see different types of implementations for these like hacking or manipulation techniques so there’s a lot of learning that goes on from the industry itself and i see as you cannot stop and you should not be stopping technology innovation but rather you have to understand how it works and also you grow with it so there’s a lot of research and a lot of efforts a lot of corporates that really work on the security front and also there is a lot of recruitments that happen on from the side of the bad guys and understanding how they work engineering their methodology and also having them also included in the discussion when it comes to cyber security i think if you look at different parts of the world there’s like big security conferences which is like hacker conferences so you go you go there to get hacked and i think like there are a lot of interesting reports on the media in which the journalist goes into this conference for and they are preparing a report and by then the objective is for a hacker to penetrate his phone and to do something with it and actually they demonstrate in camera how does this work so this actually adds a lot of visibility to the topic to the viewers and also it shows to the community of how these things work and how to stop it so definitely in terms of like visibility that’s going to be like spreading awareness and having people aware that this is how it works and this is how to stop it these are vital points to like make sure that we’re growing our safety and security while technology is growing right um and mr um mike the engineer magdy what kind of knowledge and training is needed to tighten the grip on cyber security within organizations now yeah i think like different organizations had like they have different systems of how they approach cyber security like everyone agrees on the importance of cyber security especially with more critical organizations like banks and institutions like that even like usual businesses so like the standard procedure right now is to have an onboarding training in which that once you’re like becoming an employee of this organization you have to make sure that your knowledge of cyber security is up to a specific standard sometimes also organizations use different tools so you have to be trained on a specific like um like exercises and behaviors working with these different tools of how to protect the cloud application et cetera there are usually different notifications that really pop up so paying attention to that understanding that this is not something to say i agree or i dismiss you have to really pay attention to what’s on the screen and um and by then you have ongoing drills like trainings that you know that while working in something there might be an attempt like as part of the hr department or as part of like the cyber security team within the company to discover uh threats i think hackers say that uh humans are the weakest link so when you like in the hacking community say that humans are weakest link because like systems could be protected but if there is specific users you can actually use and manipulate these users to access the systems so that’s why it’s very crucial for lots of training and focus training activities to take place of course for a larger organization that becomes like much more possible because if you’re a smaller organization like um employees probably do not stay that long and most likely rely on third-party applications so you don’t have big infrastructure to protect but it’s but also you can find like much much more faster and cheaper options to to get your employees and a staff if you’re a small enterprise or or like a growing business on like using uh not necessarily very advanced uh very complicated and very lengthy and costly systems of training uh but rather having things like on the spot that allow people to to do that like some of the interesting applications is something that called cyber security assistance so it’s like an artificial intelligence assistant that once something is happening with your system it tells you that this is a threat take this really seriously mr mcgee what is the best university degree to to take to to prepare uh for a career in in cyber security well i think from from what i see like universities take different approaches to that and depending on their computer science so i think like when it comes to computer science you’re going to find specialities it has to do with cyber security i’m not sure if this is an undergrad degree but definitely there are post-grad degrees there is very deep like specializations in that but i think even cyber security is usually part of the curriculum anyway for things that i i think even has to do with business not just like not not just engineering or or software engineering so i think also we’re going to be start to see that even like for example yeah i think actually some some schools might be teaching basics of cyber security because like once you become a user as a child it’s the best time for you to learn we can safely say that this is an area i guess uh that will expand in the in the upcoming decades can’t we definitely that’s actually becoming because like we used to live just in the physical world and now we’re partially also living in virtual world so like the safety and security that we had there there are another scope so we have to expand that so when it comes to safety and security uh this is gonna be covering a bigger uh part of our perception when it comes to security and definitely like in the physical world we can see and we can sense but by then in the virtual world it’s much more subtle and it could actually be very damaging so yes definitely they’re going to be a lot of expansion in the space in the future so finally in two minutes mr magdie can you tell us more about how can we protect ourselves from social engineering yeah from like social engineering from all like cyber threats it’s it’s about first and not to freak out because i actually this is like one of the things because lots of people when they actually hear about cyber security they kind of say that okay i’m not gonna use my phone i’m going to downgrade to my old nokia from 20 years ago so this is usually it’s not a good idea because lots of these manufacturers they have a lot of protection built in but i think the best you can do is to keep yourself updated with what kind of threats are are happening and i think like it’s the rule of the media as well as that we’re talking about cyber security we’re talking about there’s something called ransomware that people could look your phone and then ask you to pay a ransom so understanding these terms and having the user always reminded by tools and by the media and by different training in their organizations that this is cyber security and this is what you kind of need to be aware of this is this is the best approach so having consistent updates and a base of knowledge when it comes to cyber security how to protect myself without freaking out so i would be comfortable using technology while also i’m aware of when threats might arise and how to respond to them so finally i’d like to thank you mr rabdo and mcd technology executive thank you sir for being thank you for having me thank you thank you and happy here it’s been very informative thank you thank you thank you muhammad and by the viewers we come to the end of today’s edition of the breakfast show see you tomorrow the new crew [Music]
welcome back hey viewers and in this segment of our program we are going to talk about the future of business with automation and voice assistant technology and to know more about this interesting topic we are joined today by mr abdul maghdi he is a technology executive good morning good morning good morning dr abdul to start with we all know that the artificial intelligence is actually rapidly coming with business automation applications how soon is the voice assistance coming uh to the surface and to be more uh common uh to be used by the normal users yeah thanks for having me and thanks for considering artificial intelligence and presenting applications for technology i think it’s a very important topic for our viewers and also for business owners i think what we have been seeing in the past years in terms of there’s a lot of talks about artificial intelligence and intelligent automation and then we’re looking for the applications to enter the business space i think what we can actually be seeing which was what we’re talking just about is things like i want to go from point a to point b i want to use like the traffic on a drive and by then i can use something like google maps to guide me there so and also i can use that relying just on my voice without having to type an interactive technology so i think what’s emerging right now is that we can start using technology with our voice without having to use touch or clicks etc which is becoming more convenient for us in certain situations so if we look about that if we look also statistically around the world we’re going to find that like a simple task like search engines like search engines are reporting right now that fifty percent of the queries that goes into search engines are actually inserted via voice so people other than typing on google they are asking google and this is a very important indicator to look at how voice technologies are emerging very quickly and how there could be a lot of applications coming up to help businesses and also individuals in the near future so a very strong indicator that voice technologies already already here there are a lot of applications for for example one of the statistics says that like almost 30 percent of the us population do have smart speakers things like devices that they can talk to and the applications of home automation the fact that you can run the lights you can like like do um a full check for the uh security system it can even like turn on and off the oven so all these applications it has to do with home automation have been evolving in the past years and we can see a lot of this getting into business as well so mr how do what are the main tasks uh are we expecting for these assistants to conduct yeah i think for what we have seen so far with all these like voice assistants is like the simplest with things like managing calendar for example so we have our calendars we would like to book like different slots in our calendars and confirm these slots so voice assistants are very good at doing that in terms of like communicating the slots because also there is like very little number of information involved with that yes so reminders reminders is a very big point because it’s a voice system and also reminders always have been tied to voice so uh when we were like wanna walk up like wake up in the morning we want to have like sub watches all that smart assistants are very efficient and not because also they have a voice interface so reminders even like checking emails reading different articles so right now if you’re like multitasking if you’re doing something in the kitchen and you can actually get your smart like voice assistant to read an article for you so you’ll be multitasking like um so accessing emails managing calendars hitting reminders and a bunch of other tasks these things are actually happening right now like i personally use lots of these applications and it’s very very convenient of course also other things that has to do with home automation which is like controlling different facilities at your home running music lights etc that would bring me uh mr maddie to ask who is expected to be controlling this voice assistant market now and who is expected to be controlling it in the coming future yeah i think that’s up that’s a big question and also it’s like a big question mark because like definitely the big technologies companies are the ones in control because first they have the traffic and also they have advanced technologies so they are able to roll this out very quickly and we can see like companies like google they have their own like system google assistant and also given that they have an operating system for phones so by then like the google system is installed on android phones so but then there is a vast market for them they can already tap into the same thing goes for apple we have their own devices in their own software so they have siri for all like apple uh computers and apple devices and also lots of other emerging technology companies and competing technology companies they have their own like technology assistance which shows that based on having an ecosystem they are able to launch and take advantage of these systems one of the emerging trends that’s happening right now is that entrepreneurs and those who has like ideas for specific uses are able to either integrate some of these skills into some of these existing systems like alexa for example having elixir scales teaching some of these devices to do things beyond what it’s already doing or some other companies are coming up with their own devices to offer specific benefits specialized benefits to consumers so sir what are the biggest threats and drawbacks of these technologies yeah i think like once we start talking about intelligent automation and artificial intelligence we always have like the threats to job security for people because that’s the beginning of automation so a lot of us start thinking that our jobs are going to be partially automated yes so this is one aspect of it or not on an individual user perspective there are a lot of concerns about privacy because the way these devices work is that you you like for example this is a device and when i actually activate the device i say that i call the device by name and by then the device is activated by me calling the device name and for that the device has to be listening 24 7 for me to activate it which actually means that we can access the voices in the surrounding so a very big concern is privacy if i have a device like that and it can actually hear everything that’s happening so i have to be very mindful on where do i place this device and uh and also who’s gonna access this information so privacy is a very big concern for users like generally when we talk about the population we’re talking about like things like job security uh people who also think that like if my my phone if i can do it on my phone or i can type it on my computer so why would i need a voice assistant so this is also some population this is still have not reached the need for the voice system so these are all concerns but comes on top definitely is privacy and data protection um mr mighty is this technology controlled by the giants of the technology or there is a chance for the smaller teams and young entrepreneurs to uh have a role here yeah i think that’s a big question i think that this is something that’s emerging right now we cannot judge whether this is successful or not because technology is sophisticated you know like building a system like that has different steps and you need like you have a very strong thick stack to do that you have to have like for example how do you activate the device how to get the device to to kind of identify the word that you’re speaking and like transfer that into text and then process that and find the answers and then get the answer from being a text format into a voice format and speak it back how do you do them to do things like context switching like if you’re talking about a topic and then you change the topic they have to have the intelligence of linking these topics so these are all like technology challenges that requires advanced technology and advanced programming skills so um that actually makes it less likely for smaller companies and smaller teams to build something but there are like open source solutions this is starting to pop up which actually like free code this available in the internet that you can download and you can start building something with it which actually gives hope for these smaller teams and we started seeing like teams from around the world coming up with solutions like that so they use these open source technologies we build extra layers of technology and by then you’re able to utilize this for their own advantage but definitely we can see that like it’s a split the market is a split between the big like technology providers but by then if you can find a niche as an entrepreneur you can find a niche of something that you have experience with and you can design it in a way that allow people to converse with and then you have very specific responses that mostly like a big technology company is going to take time to get there that’s and provide you with a competitive advantage a very good example is one of the smart speakers that launched on kickstarter like um they kind of were raising funds through an online website through people actually pre-order the device that device was helping english speakers learn chinese so um and they were actually almost like 10 000 x so like they raised like 100 times the amount they wanted to raise so they wanted to raise ten thousand dollars they ended up raising over a million dollars so um this shows that there is a big market for that and even for those newcomers and a small team they can if they find the right niche if they build the right product they can actually create market for them so mr aldo at what extent these technologies will uh um affect the business building process and also uh the uh business owners and customers yeah i think when we talk about business because most of these applications are like for users and for home automation yes we are starting to see some applications getting into business but so far it’s quite basic like one of the applications in business for example is meeting management yes is that you have this as a meeting assistant so if we’re having a meeting here we have this is an assistant to like take notes and also uh brief us and what happened in the meeting and actually prepare the to-do list etc so these are becoming some basic business applications beside also you can use some of the other features like managing calendars etc but i think that there are very specific business uses things like running advertising campaigns in which that we see emerging trends so if i’m a business owner and i would like to reach customers and i would like to run advertising campaigns on different websites like facebook et cetera so um what i usually i need to know how to design such a campaign or i need to hire an agency so some of the um the technologies that’s emerging is that you can have an assistant to run your advertising so i can have a conversation with an assistant about who am i targeting like what are their age group what is the product that i’m selling and based on the information that i provide to this assistant they build and organize and manage the campaigns for me so this is this is huge actually because by then as a business owner i have direct access to running these advertising campaigns and reaching my customers relying on that intelligent assistance so running advertising campaigns maybe like onboarding new customers so if i if i run a medium enterprise with like 50 employees and i’m looking to scale to 70 in like two weeks so i’m gonna be on boarding 20 new uh people and i need to spend some time in training on boarding them some of the applications is on boarding new staff members and for that we have to have a smart assistant to be having a conversation with like new teammates yes indeed mr abdul finally how do we and our viewers get ready for the usage of such technology yeah i think like a very good point is to start using it right now so whenever you find the voice option like in an environment which you can have a voice option i think it’s good for you to start using it because also like all these applications are based on machine learning so the more you use it the more it’s going to get better so if you’re especially if you’re like technology minded and if you’d like to get these technologies to advance quickly start using that whenever you have an opportunity do not be shy once you for example if you’re driving and you would like to like be following this google maps you don’t have to be looking at device maybe like like train yourself to listen to it so this is like one aspect in terms of as users and also as employees and as staff and as workers i think it makes it much stronger and a stronger position to maintain like our career once we integrate with technology so um it’s going to be difficult for us to compete in the full scope of our work with technology but if we’re really smart about it we’re going to rely on technology and like for example if i have this intelligent assistant and i run an agency i’m going to get this assistant to my side as an agency so by then i’m not going to only use my intelligence but i’m using my intelligence and that of the assistant other than being replaced so try to avoid getting in like direct competition with that assistant but see how can you integrate it in your work yeah indeed so finally i’d like to thank you and mr abdul magdy a technology executive thank you for being with us thanks for having me thank you very much always a pleasure mr abdul and that our dear viewers will bring us to the end of this edition of the breakfast we were in the company of myself yeah and my dear kelly gesh thank you very much thank you mahisi and by that gpu as we come to the end of today’s edition see you tomorrow the new crew [Music] you
it comes down to performance and being able to judge their performance based on the specific standards or if you’re in a process of actually nurturing this talent so it’s a it’s a it’s like a double-sided to what extent do you want this town to be mature in order for you to pick it and then what kind of efforts do you assume that you’re going to be able to exert until they are capable of performing in a certain position or a certain environment so this is this is the the part in which that i have to judge if someone who’s a scouting for talent am i willing to invest and for how long in developing this talent and what extent do you have to be ready right now to perform so and my strategy is going to depend on like how far along am i in this cycle so that’s talented discovery has have to be controlled the program or a natural process yeah i think when it comes to talent discovery at the early days so if we’re in a young age if we’re getting into school if we start figuring out where what we want to do with our lives so by then there has to be lots of space given for play and discovery and like looking at different like specialities for us to look at so during that time and actually whenever we have time to explore it at any age to kind of explore different other verticals it makes a lot of difference for us to actually like look at all these different verticals and exert some effort there in order for our talent to come about so if we look at it at the young age definitely having an exploration like time for exploration is very vital for us to be able to kind of for our talent to have the chance to show up yes discovering the talents mr abdul should it be done through the parents through schools all through professionals that maybe would be more aware of the real talents that the youth are having yeah i think if we think that everyone is talented so by then it becomes the the function of all these different stages so it starts with parents parents has to have the flexibility for their kids to look at different disciplines and to allow them the time to explore that and also pick at the areas and to invest in the areas in which that they could have potential exceptional talent so it starts at this stage and once they go ahead by then they’re at school but then their teachers they have to have an eye also for different speciality and i think it comes obvious sometimes so sometimes it’s not hard to tell that someone is particularly good at writing or someone is good at sports so by then having the the flexibility and having the authority as well to invest in in their talents and i think the other aspect would come when it comes to a hiring decision so once am i even like investing in someone as a venture capitalist i’m giving them money to build a project or i’m picking up for a position or i’m getting them into a paid position in a specific like team so by then it comes more like judgment of their particular talent and their flexibility like to learn i think there is different approaches especially even if i’m at the at the company stage of how do i really pick people who are not necessarily have demonstrated talent already in that area and then to take them from different disciplines and put them where they would perform better one example is one advertising agency that became very popular and i think they made lots of their success out of spotting people who had nothing to do with advertising so they went to different disciplines like stand-up comedy for example yeah so they attended like amateur stand-up comedy and then they picked up talent out of those who actually go for open mic days and these actually become exceptional talent for the advertising industry so it doesn’t have to be very structured it could actually be even if you’re in the business part and you’re in a judgment stage you could actually have a lot of creativity in terms of where could i find the people who could be talented for the position that i’m looking for yeah so sarah what is the importance of iq tests in discovering uh talented students yeah i think like all different assessments including iq tests has an indication to different like skill sets and cognitive abilities but even when it comes to something like iq tests like there have been research done and after a certain threshold like it doesn’t make a difference what’s your iq so if you’re over 120 it does make a little difference in terms of how does it influence your work so like lots of these tests are slightly exaggerated in terms of like saying they have a massive iq because it it practically could not actually make it related to the talents uh mr abdul because sometimes maybe your iq is quite high but or it’s not high and you are talented very much in art or in painting or a comedian or exactly or even in social skills i think one of the studies in looking at successful people looked at iq and they found that people was even hierarchy was not as successful as others despite that like if we look at 120 and the threshold someone could have like 140 iq but they are not really successful at all on the other hand people with just an iq they are way more successful and it comes down to other variables like for example social skills these people are able to convince other they are able to communicate with others so this becomes a different type of intelligence but not necessarily measured by iq so all these tests and assessment can give us indications is that people are really talented and they have these cognitive abilities so it’s an interesting analytical skill but it cannot be taken as the exclusive tool for choosing people for different positions of course they are indicators but they are not the exclusive tool to decide on something so sir how can we help talented people to rediscover themselves and um put them on the right track that’s a very good question because i think that that actually applies to all of us yes i think like when it comes to nurturing talent there is something about consistency yeah i mean like one of the things we didn’t talk about is that like talent starts to appear after a certain amount of time of practicing there so if i would say that i i like sports i like martial arts like if i go and i get started with martial arts and i should not really expect myself to be performing exceptionally from the first like class yeah definitely once i reach like what’s said to be 10 000 hours but then i start showing exceptional talent so by then in order for me to compete professionally to be able to present myself professionally i have to spend a long period of time so allowing people this period of time in which they are not exceptionally talented but they are acquiring this talent and they are practicing is very vital in order for them to reach that like mastery stage so like thinking of how can i get more time practice time in order for me to like start reaching the mastery stage is something that all of us can ask ourselves i think whether they are students of the university they can like join different clubs whether they even professionals they can look at different other organizations that can support their like the area that you’re interested in if it’s about like martial arts or any other sports looking at extra training time so looking at that the time that you spend practicing is very vital for the level of advancement in your performance so looking after different training opportunities and spending that time this is a very important point and also beside looking at the time is also having consistency in practice right now there are different applications it’s uh it’s really work on different scale so i like to every day i spent five minutes so in the past six months i was spending five minutes like practicing on different math skills writing skills speaking skills so these are applications that trains you on a daily basis on your scale so but then when you’re tasks with performance at a specific like situation but then you’re able to perform because you have consistent practice in this area so definitely consistent practice and also good like spending 12 minutes on discovering your personality type or different like areas of interest could could actually be worth the investment so if there are tests that exist online like from 10 to 15 minutes we’re gonna tell you that you’re possibly a very good storyteller or you could be a great coach so these are tests that already exist online that can actually give you that kind of indications also career-wise if you’re able to go for things like fellowships last year i was just i was in washington dc and i was told that i’m a great talent for a strategic communication agency despite that i never had a strategic communication on my cv i i didn’t even know what a strategic communication is but by then through going through different experiences you discover that all right there is there’s something called that and you’re actually a good fit for it and it never happens until you actually put yourself in different situation that’s not directly tied to what you’re doing so having the time for experiments and flexibility is something that you can actually help you discover different other talents or mostly like combining different parts of expertise that you already have in a way that’s that you haven’t really thought about before so and i think even like for the people who are more mature so they have years of experience they can look at it from that perspective how can i combine different parts of different talented into a specific position that can actually help me either start a business or have a certain position in the business or to even have a new career so this is a vital point of having the time for experiment and play so finally i’d like to thank you mr abdul makti a business coach thank you for being with us today thank you for having me thank you very much so thank you and without our dear viewers we come to the end of this edition of the breakfast show you were in the company of myself my seraphia and my dear kid shirinade thank you very much thank you maisie and see you tomorrow viewers with a new crew [Music] you
i think all of us are trying to improve somehow and especially in areas of interest and expertise and areas that we decide to pursue in life and there are many ways for us to improve some of which is attending courses like looking at stuff online and also seeking the experiences through which we can have improvements one of the best ways for us to do that which is also much closer to sports is having coaches so if we look at football for example we’d see like teams are being classified classified into successful or not unsuccessful based on the quality of the coaches and the performance of the coaches that they have so if we are pursuing improvements in our daily lives and our professions we would be seeking coaching and the right coaches to be able to move to the next level so if we look at the difference between like acquiring the knowledge in a specific field and also improving our performance in in the same field or in any field we find that acquiring knowledge that we can pursue different lines for that like training courses for example pursuing academic degrees all this would contribute to our knowledge but if we really want to improve our performance in a specific like field we have to be looking at the coaches who already know the best ways for us to improve our skill sets and our performance so definitely seeking coaches who really know what they’re doing when it comes to a specific vertical is very vital for us to improve our skill set yes mr abdul how the coaches actually could help in other words how the coach is different than a therapist or just a friend who is sharing information or experience with us yeah that’s a very good point i think one of the big challenges that once there is a coaching relationship established is understanding what to expect from the coach so in terms of what do you expect from the coach i think like the the biggest word is going to be performance because coaches are focused on helping you become better at kind of doing something specifically if we’re talking about young entrepreneurs we’re talking about business executives it’s about executing the business and moving the business forward so it’s about like focusing on the different areas of performance for a specific individual being empathetic with them and then helping them move to the next level so focusing on performance and performance improvement is a vital keyword here when it comes to what do we expect from coaches so so why choosing the right coach could be decisive factor in accomplish accomplishing um goals in life yeah i think like if we look at like the process of improvement if we rely and also the coach coaches are it’s a very very important and intimate relationship to a lot of extents if we look at those in sports we would see that there is a huge difference that’s made in like a player’s performance based on the kind of coaches that they have so if we look at this close relationship between between coaches and crew chiefs we would see that this is a very strong and important relationship and based on that like looking at the right coach would be very vital to how far we’re going to go with that so for us to find the right coach this is gonna be affecting our performance this could be like reaching the goal faster so becoming better faster i mean like even if we look at sports i know people who were interested in a specific sport they spent three years pursuing that path and then that improvement was not really fast enough but with the right coach they were able to reach that kind of performance in like six months so like saving time saving money and improving fast and rapidly i think these are the benefits of finding the right coach yes mr abdul um what are the qualifications of a good coach how can we choose a good coach and we know that beforehand yeah that’s a very difficult part to actually discover that before having the experience itself so like one of the the best things to do is to actually know what you’re looking for and also look for specialized coaches i think there are like generic coaches people can coach you across like like there are life coaches there are like business coaches and there are some like deeply vertical and specialized coaches and i think it’s gonna also depend on who’s seeking the coaching and to what extent is the problem wide or is it narrow so and and based on that you’re going to figure out what kind of coach you’re going to be like aiming for so um like if i look at picking the the right coach i would actually understand what do i expect from the coach what what is the outcome that i’m seeking so if i’m if i’m an entrepreneur for example seeking to raise funds for my business i would see that the outcome is for me to be qualified to talk to investors and secure funding for my business so this is my objective and by then i’m gonna be looking for the coach who actually know that topic who actually like has access somehow and understand the process and probably went through it like before so if i find someone with that i would possibly just look for a meeting an introduction meeting with them and i think lots of coaches professional coaches offer that is that you can spend luck one to two hours like with them having an introduction meeting without committing to a coaching relationship so having this kind of dating relationship is in which that you sit with the coach and you see whether you got chemistry do you like to talk with this person would you trust them with your secrets this is a very vital step like one other aspect is looking at others from the industry and how they what kind of feedback they have from this particular individual if you are talking about more professional coaching or coaching for younger entrepreneurs or for startups how intimate here are we talking about the relation between the entrepreneurs and the coach and to what extent the experience of the coach could actually help in the format or the um system of the startup that the young entrepreneurs maybe are going to do yeah that’s a very good point i think also we have to highlight that there is a difference between coaching and consulting so big part that has to do with building organizations are like consulting in this case what’s the difference here between the mentor and the coach yeah i think like the mentor it’s uh it’s more like um like a spiritual relationship to what extent is that mentor someone that you look up to and who accomplish some something and then like you have mostly less frequent organization than a coach the mentor is someone provides general direction like advice when it comes to general direction so which direction should i take so like a mentor would be someone like could possibly be more senior like older with a lot of experience someone that you look up to as as a character and as an individual and by then they provide you in conversation about the general direction so there’s a lot of things in common with coaches but coaches are mostly focused on performance and specific goals so if you you hire a coach because you have a very particular objective that you want to reach and then this coach while not guaranteeing that you’re going to reach that goal because that’s something outside of their control they do their best in getting you as fit as possible to reach that goal so this is a distinction between like the mentorship and the coaching relationship getting back to your question when it comes to if we’re focusing on startups i think by then a coach would better actually be focused on a specific individual within the company so there could be like group coaching for a whole startup but it’s going to have a different format i think some of the best ways to do that is to either like coach the ceo or coach the management team even like sometimes independently because people sometimes have different agendas and like a coach has to be committed to a specific individual so the highest value could be from coaching the ceo himself and also like this i could have a coach everyone else within a team could could get a different coach but by then if you focus on the performance of the ceo the way they look at the business the way they interact with people and also possibly bringing a network of people to to kind of grab and like motivate the ceo in a specific direction i think that would be an like extremely valuable thing just spotting on a specific individual because this is like a somehow an intimate relationship and yes when it comes to startups if we’re talking about coaches and startups because like startups are evolving organizations so there’s massive risk and massive change and a lot of uncertainty so it gets very intimate sometimes and i think like some of the downside is that there is massive expectations of what the coach is going to bring us so if you look at if we’re building a startup with an idea and we’re seeking funding i might assume that my coach is going to possibly just give me access to the funds while the coach can actually help you become more ready to access the funds you cannot guarantee that and also there are many variables it has to do with verifying that this is actually a feasible business idea and this might not be the the area in which that you have requested for the coach to coach you might be like performance oriented and they are not necessarily like looking at the strategy of the company so understanding while this is going to become like personal and intimate is that this is what i provide you and this is sometimes like as coaches you have to repeat that is that in this part you probably need to talk to a therapist i can connect you to a therapist or i can connect you to a consultant but when it comes to that like i’m concerned about you and your performance with the business and that’s what we’re going to focus on during the sessions so you would think about it pretty close to therapists when it comes to like good coaching they’re going to become like more intimate but it’s actually focused on more performances what do i do in order to get there so sir how can i know the coaching program uh and the format that fits my need yeah i think like some of the best things is to have this customized so like coaches offer like specific programs this could actually be time based mostly it’s time based because like in a coaching interaction that what you do is quite different and a lot different context so you need to actually look at it in terms of like what time do i have as an executive because if i’m a ceo of a startup i’m probably very busy if i if i have like 10 or 20 staff and i’m recruiting heavily so i’m i’m possibly busy and my coach is also busy so i need to look at what kind of like time limits do i look for
and welcome back how’s the view is continuing in the same uh uh almost uh idea which is the development of the teamwork how to work in a teamwork how uh to uh have a proper uh job uh in order to excel and to develop our skills that would be our topic of discussion for today with our dear guest in the studio and mr abdul rahman magdy our business coach good morning good morning good morning first of all if you can tell us about how can working as part of a team be successful yeah definitely i think like one of the biggest challenges facing companies especially in emerging markets where there is not that much of investment in education is how people can get together to work as part of the team and how there could be connections between people based on their competence so the fundamental idea here for the individuals and the teams to be aware of their own competence of the value they bring to the table and then understanding also the competence of every other member and team and seeing how we can fit all these combatants to build a strong team this is one aspect in which that i have to understand what am i good at first and then understand how would i offer this to the team in a way that would maximize the productivity of the overall like a team and company eventually and i think one of the most important ideas as well is how do i set up the leadership for this team because like leadership is usually a source of conflict so like people usually want to move in at different directions and there is usually lots of competition around who takes the leadership so by then there has to be a very strategic and non-emotional approach to who gets in the leadership and also choosing the formats of how the team is formatted around the leadership like one of the the patterns that’s being kind of promoted and getting popularity is having like a v uh curve like if you’re moving forward you need to build a hierarchy which is like a like a like a command but you can actually have like like birds if you see like birds you fly in uh in like uh v curves like that so there is someone in the leadership once the you know they get tired they kind of move to the back and someone else takes the leadership so that would make leadership more democratic and accordingly would allow people to like focus their attention on providing the best work and also establishing connections and uh like meaningful relationships with people around the team and the institution as well yes uh mr macd from your point of view does connections matter beyond competence and hard work yeah definitely i think if we look at any company or any team who wants to get things done eventually connections is central to getting things done why why because i need to get something done that is definitely somewhere someone who’s very competent in getting this thing done at the lowest cost and the piece of information that basically the contact details of this individual at a certain point in time is extremely valuable so if you can look at it you’re into production and presenting so if you think in the studio there is definitely in a critical condition there is someone that you need to call you need to get their attention because that would be extremely valuable for the seconds that you have to get things done so definitely from that angle is finding the right talent who can get things done with a proper cost in a proper speed this is something that’s extremely valuable for any business or even any social setting yeah yes um in your opinion how can uh approaching the challenge of building connections uh help us in achieving our goals in in in a working environment yeah definitely like as we mentioned connections are very important so those who do have access to the connections most likely to be promoted into leadership possessions and also most likely to add more value to the team so from that angle if i understand that connections is something that’s very valuable if i like have part of me focusing on of my time focusing on building connections and getting to know what people are offering relevant to my industry and i can possibly bring in these connections into the work environment whenever we have a need for it that would be an extremely valuable skill set so by then by developing my ability to build connections and meaningful connections and being able to engage and influence these connections to come in and produce value by then i’m becoming extremely valuable to the work environment i’m part of yes yes uh to be successful uh on the professional and on the social level uh mr abdul we have to nurture our network how that could be done on the long term yeah i think by then like this idea of building connections and the skill sets and the way and the approach that that you embody to build these connections you have to make this a lifestyle so it becomes the way you think in terms of when i go meet someone i need to understand what do they need so what do they look for and what are the accomplishment at so understanding when when we deal with any individual is that there are always two parts to look at what do they offer what are their most competence what do what they can get done better than anyone else and what are their needs what they’re itching for so if i understand these two pieces of information about every individual but then i have a this central skill set and i have a decent communication skill by then i can engage with people in a way that help them fulfill their needs and demonstrate their competence in the best way possible if i establish many connections like that and i will able to bring these people together but then i will be building my own personal network which is by then by consistently engaging with them in a productive way offering them opportunities to become better at with their competent ads or to demonstrate that and also to fulfill their needs on becoming extremely valuable to a large number of people and by then there is a personal network that’s growing and i’m in the center of this personal network that can possibly by then be focusing on making me successful as well because this is what i’m doing to them yes uh what could be in your opinion one of the major challenges of facing uh a working environment yeah i think like that’s gonna like differ slightly in the setup for the working environment but what we’re talking about today in terms of becoming more empathetic is looking at people as people other than looking at them as what we call it as resources so we have the the old approach of looking at human resources of looking of individuals as resources and assets for the company but rather the trend and thing that’s working there is becoming more empathetic towards the individual understanding their competence and understanding their needs and their individual case their personality type and engaging with them in a way that actually help them to fulfill like their demonstrate themselves openly and to fulfill their needs and to excel at their competence so looking at individuals as individuals and integrating that across the whole operation of the business is extremely valuable thing to focus on if we’re like looking about long-term sustainability and people loving their work and becoming more committed to it if you treat them as humans you’re going to love that how we could develop that at the employees the mr abraham how that could be reachable because not every employee has these potentials and these skills so how can we develop that yeah i think like the strongest component in any setup is the culture and i think the leadership are what are consistently influencing this culture so there’s a lot of things to be done systemically when we look about the personal or the hr department that we have systems ways of people to discover their competence there are many questionnaires that’s available that people can go through and extract their core competence but what always win is the idea of getting senior leadership walking across the employee employees and talking to them so talking to them face to face and also going to depend on that organization size is that the more time you need to commit it to talk straight to people and understand their their challenges so becoming less focused on looking at screens and having direct conversations with people would be an extremely valuable tool beside of course the knowledge about how do i discover people’s confidence how do i i focus on that positively that’s that’s also a core competence in terms of building the systems to maintain that but in the core if we find leaders who are like walking with employees having discussions with them openly that would make them more open to contribute and to bring their concerns to the leadership and eventually solving that and becoming more committed to the work environment yes uh picking on what you just said you spoke about leadership so what are the one of or some of the traits uh essential traits or must-haves of a successful leader yeah thank you for asking that because also it comes very close to to the idea of building connections you know like connections has to do with being empathetic so if to connect with someone i have to be there as a human being other than someone with demonstrating authority so the old pattern of looking at leadership and power is looking at it as an authority is in a title so by then like leaders who kind of embody this attitude is that i reached that position because of my years of hard work and i deserve that and it’s my position right now and i demonstrate though 30. so here we come into in any exchange with someone i’m talking in a position for 30 and that’s kind of the bad leadership attitude sometimes it works on certain environments but that’s not how you get sustainable development and sustainable um kind of winning for businesses to work they have actually conducted research to see even in very critical environments like um like fund managers and investment bankers etc and they found that they actually though there was an extensive research and it’s very difficult research as well because they got senior leadership on camera and seeing how they interact with their employees and their investment opportunities and they analyze the data in terms of their approach to kind of leading these very critical industries in which that when we think about investors we think about people who are being aggressive and they’re in a very kind of dominant position but they found that those who were more empathetic and dealing with people as humans were actually more successful in terms of the return of their investment because also there is a critical component once you go to the positional power is that you actually start losing lots of intelligence from the community so people going to be feeding you with what you need to what you want to listen to other than what’s going on so being empathetic dealing with people as human to human demonstrating some vulnerability it’s not that i know it all and these are also something to um instill in individuals who eventually is going to become the leadership so the best way also as we said is to build the culture of that in the companies and in a society as whole even when you look at it from the household how people were brought up so people who were brought up in authoritative households are more likely to be more authoritative you want to control but those who had the space to participate with their parents to take decisions and to kind of participate with their colleagues and with their siblings they’re more likely to become more empathetic and open for these experiences so even families here do have some responsibility in bringing in the right leadership attitude and eventually leading in that direction yes the leadership as you have kindly mentioned uh mr abdul is very important and but how a a person could be a successful leader and gain the love and respect of his um of the employees that he’s working with or the people who are under his management and yet he should be firm and he should reach the deadlines which are set for him so how can we reach this very tough equation yeah this is a very tough equation for any leader because if we look at these two extremes we mentioned usually those who are very strict and very sharp they are most likely are very good at getting things done in the short term so they know how to set up very strict rules and to get everyone to stick to it on the other hand when you think about people who are more empathetic we’d understand if i said that i couldn’t match the deadline because of such that they would eventually understand that i think the challenge here is looking at this as a long-term venture as long-term investment and that so i have to be like mostly outsourcing this responsibility of managing the deadline to the rules and the the code of conduct within the society so other than me telling you to do that we said we sit down as a group and we say that these are the responsibilities of every individual within a group we want to meet this deadline like you actually build emotional capacity for people in readiness you understand their needs so by then they if there is any challenge they can talk to you so you opened up all the challenges and any possible challenge they might face to face this objective but then he created an open environment but by then there is responsibility so when it comes to matching deadline there is responsibility and there’s going to be some tough conversation so when you’re empathetic it doesn’t mean that you do not have to be confrontational sometimes you have to even be more confrontational because being creating this empathetic sphere would require people to become more vulnerable and the first one who’s going to become vulnerable is you as a leader so when you say that i need this to get done and we need this as an institution you’re making yourself vulnerable and then they are seeing that they’re contributing to that and most people are going to respond positively to this and those who does not respond positively maybe you just do not need them in their team so but then if people does not fit within their culture maybe the good decision is to just let them go yes indeed uh by this uh we come to the end of this segment uh we are that we really do appreciate your insight mr rahman business coach thank you so much for being with us on the breakfast room thank you for having me thank you very much it was a pleasure to have you with us thank you very much i know that our viewers will come to the end of this edition of the breakfast show you were in the company of myself thank you thank you the dear viewers until we meet again [Music]
[Music] welcome back and in this segment of our show we are going to talk about the leadership and the social dynamic and how to cooperate have a healthy and fruitful and productive work environment that would be our topic of discussion with our dear guest institute mr abdu magdy he is an executive coach good morning sir good morning well good morning well definitely first of all to be able to develop the human capacity we have to identify the different personality patterns and how to approach it so how can that be assessed yes definitely i think like the objective of every organization and every team and every project is to make the best utilization of everyone into achieving a specific objective and i think one of the difficult challenges there is understanding what people actually want out of the experience their preferences in terms of communication and also how to kind of get them to work together to achieve that objective so this is usually a kind of a big challenge and sometimes unfortunately it’s a unspoken off challenge for organizations and how to get this social dynamics components uh going so and and definitely there is there is some times in which that a lot of work environment actually research shows that there is huge percentage in which that employees are very much unsatisfied they are losing energy they are not excited to go to work and that sometimes is a challenge of not properly understanding and addressing different personality types and not understanding social dynamics at the level of complexity requires to get things going dr abdul from your point of view of course there are different types of personalities that do exist in a group how do they interact and how should they interact together in order to achieve the required objective that’s a very good question i think that’s actually the core of understanding and working with social dynamics i think like we have different like personality archetypes that actually built around everyone’s like approach in life and almost philosophy so um as we understand if we if we like imagine any project or organization as a bus which is like one of the uh the famous ways and easiest ways to comprehend that we’re going to be seeing like the ones who are in the leadership they are the ones who are leading the bus the they have the map they have the understanding they understand the objectives that they are they have the strong character in kind of leading that force and these are the alphas so the awfuls are like um the of uh like abilities and decision making they voice their opinions and basically they are like strong leaders who push things farther afterwards we’re going to find like betas who are not necessarily as dominant in terms of their behavior and their psychology but rather they are fine who’s following the leader and for them it becomes more about a social experience other than about the the objective itself and we have other rules but i think like the last rule that we look at are the sigmas which basically they are more like like the alphas but they are introverted so other than like being in the front of the bus they choose to be at the back of the bus and be focused on observing what’s going on and they prefer to only interfere once they can actually bring something positive to the table so understanding these different personality types in the middle we can see people who are quite like separated or isolated they do not they do not have interest in like doing any influence but rather they are happy to be kind of provided with what they need um like to survive and continue being part of the group so we would actually find from that when it comes to a matter of leadership and moving things forward we have the alphas at the front and we have the sigmas at the back of the bus where basically um the alphas are if things are going very well then the oppos would actually be doing 100 of the work but by then if things are not really going appropriately by then the sigmas might actually feel obligated to interfere uh with the group dynamics now definitely when we talk about group work that needs cohesion now definitely each of us is different from the others so definitely sometimes there’ll be friction or disagreements so how can we create cohesion within the group to create this group dynamics that you were talking about yes i think like human society like agreed on having a code of conduct when it comes to like interactions like this so there is no other solution other than for people to talk together and to specify what are the principles upon which we want to move forward and that has to be like an open sharing process in which everybody really opens up and and writes down what they really care for and the challenge with that is not that this exercise does not take place because usually it takes place in all organizations and projects but by then it becomes a responsibility of the entity that’s actually controlling this setup is to maintain no breaking of these rules from anybody so an organization that’s actually managing this environment should be very like decisive and sharp in terms of tracking these like principles and to treat everyone equally in terms of of violating or probably needing to be coached on how to adhere to that so in an environment for example we say that our principle is trust yeah it’s not possible to be broken inside the circle and then this is not being addressed so if we say that this is about trust then if trust is broken we need to say that trust was broken and we’re sorry and then we’re not going to do this again and we move forward but in case trust is broken and you do not go there and say that trust is not broken is not broken this is not addressed properly and directly in the same way it was made that actually creates a lot of tension and that creates possibly a lot of depression and a lot of unexpressed feelings and by then people do not have the energy or the motives to contribute equally to the group mr anto uh what would be the negative scenarios that could occur if we cannot maintain the um cohesion inside the group and the dynamics inside the group of the teamwork yeah i think like the the first thing that gets lost is the objective which is basically why are we here because if we look at a group that’s working together they have a specific objective and probably everyone would have a different objective from their perspective but by then there has to be a properly defined objective for the whole group and basically um what’s what should be done is that everyone is contributing in a way for the this final objective to be reached so um getting back to your question when it comes to uh what needs to be done the question is about what needs to be done to maintain um like this looking towards the objective uh i think that um getting back to um to what was written in terms of the code of conduct and interference from this organization is vital because if we don’t do this we’re going to have lots of energy we’re going to have people who are uh possibly depressed we’re going to have some abuse and harassment at the workplace and we possibly are going to get into because also understanding that the power dynamic within the group is there are actually some very powerful people who are not bringing their power to the group and sometimes if these people really understand that things are not going well and they’re going to bring that in a way that’s not going to be convenient to everybody so sometimes we have a lone wolf scenario in which that the whole group is being punished because uh we’re not adhering to that i think we have a lot of creative examples like in the movies there is a movie called law abiding citizen um the movie called the rock even like scent of a woman these are all movies that discuss right is that people with like a sigma personality type they are put in an environment where the law is being broken and this not being addressed and then the situation goes totally dramatic so understanding that this would be the fault of the authority or the organization that they are not addressing things explicitly because if they address things explicitly they say that this is a code of conduct we’re gonna have to follow it equally by then there will be no friction people going to be happy energetic and moving forward and usually problems happen when the organization or the leader are not identifying that and expressing it openly now you’ve classified the work group in alphabet up to and that some are doers and some are not but then how can we create incentive because definitely if you’re a sigma individual or if you’re a gamma one you might not feel that you have a leadership perspective so maybe you wouldn’t be as incentives to do to give your best so how can we bring the best out of everybody so that eventually everybody more or less of course it’s difficult to to have everyone alpha but at least everybody will be really effective and energetic exactly i think i think part of the question is that not actually everyone wants to be alpha because there is like for example there is a social course to be in an offer in terms of maintaining lots of social connections and social relationships and not everyone is willing to to make such an investment but i think it’s it comes back to the responsibility of who is holding the floor the organization or the leadership that’s holding the floor they should be actually introducing lots of exercises and games that allow people to identify the different personality types and also understanding that as a group work together this happens naturally so um like if the organization in which this exercise is taking place is not intelligent enough and aware enough and doing like enough work and identifying how can we like get people to openly share about their preferences their personality types what they want out of the experience there are many exercises in which this could be done and it becomes a necessary for these exercises to take place by them to what extent the individuals here in the group could influence a role and they have their own way of changing their status yeah okay i think like that’s more of a leadership question because as we said that like alpha seems to be like the most desired uh like like uh status and uh accordingly there there would seem to be a lot of competition around who’s gonna get into the leadership which actually happens across all organizations so all existing organizations that is usually different uh like like political struggles that goes around who actually influence the the outcomes and uh and i think like one of these like like one of these necessary ingredients for individuals to also understand is that they have to accept the rules they have to accept that this is this is my things and this is the way that i would like things to be done and they would actually communicate this to others so for example if i’m if i see myself as an as an expert who does not want to lead i would actually go to the group telling that guys i have a technical expertise i have no experi like interest in leading that uh but rather i would like to contribute my expertise in a way that’s most convenient to others so being open and expressing the way things work for you uh would possibly be like one of the best ways for this to go on also understanding that there is a cycle because people go through different experiences and with these experiences some people could change their perception so some current sigmas could for example if we can see someone who’s like 55 60 years old who is um like an advisory board member of an organization so as an advisory board member he provides expertise to the leadership but he’s not actually in the leadership so there are different changes that happen with age with experience and i think it’s important to identify and understand how can we move move on and move forward while getting all these issues addressed and avoiding negative scenarios that might evolve from lack of understanding a lot of addressing things properly so how can we detect whether we’re on the right track or not yeah i think i think there are like analytical ways to do that in terms of like surveys and things like that but the best way is that for the people in the leadership is to actually walk in like in between the teams is because uh like if they show up and say that how was your weekend uh were you enjoying your time do you feel energized if we see that the energy in the room is low that means there is something wrong going on so direct personal interaction becomes very necessary for to understand and identify that there is something might be going wrong and by then they would introduce the necessary actions to fix that yeah but mr abdul we can develop the awareness of the leadership in order to feel that uh and to be aware that there is actually a negative energy no i should boost the morale of the employees not everyone and not every leadership is aware of that yeah i think that’s a very very big problem because also we have different types of institutions and organizations and the leaders have different like uh educational backgrounds so not all of them understand that um like what’s going on with any they have a problem they do not understand what’s going on or how to fix it so it becomes necessary for them to do the actual efforts to seek consultants um to actually be protein and provide them with the the actual insights into what’s going on how to fix it and they have to also be flexible in taking this feedback because sometimes it’s very difficult for people in the leadership to say that we do not know so they have to reach that there is a problem here and we do not know and we need help in fixing that so um for them to confess to that and address it that becomes necessary for like the objective and the group to move forward indeed doctor abdul marti our executive coach thank you very much for being our guest for today a pleasure thank you thank you very much doctor and that brings us to the end of today’s episode of breakfast show but first of all i’d like to thank my colleague majesty robia thank you very much thank you very much joshua thank you very much and have a good day everyone [Music]
welcome back dear viewers and now in this segment we are going to talk about training young youths to find suitable jobs how to encourage young entrepreneurs and how to increase their potentials and skills in young generations and we are joined here by mr abdul maghdi entrepreneurship expert good morning good morning mr abdu mr alto can you please highlight briefly the key trends in the workplace today as a result of the changes in the technology and in the economy yes i think by looking at the economy and the evolution of technology and the promises of new trends like artificial intelligence and automation and even the trends in the past 20 years when it comes to like the way the economy works and the increase of on-demand products and services that there have been a shift on having a lot of labors working on demand and moving into being self-employed if we take examples like some of the car sharing companies in which that individuals are able to offer the service of driving others other consumers across these car sharing apps so then it becomes an opportunity for those who can actually find a source of income through through technology in this way also this affects not just on the individual level but on a major corporate level we can see lots of corporates shifting the way they work and the way they interact with their employees there is a movement towards outsourcing so they rely when external contractors were not necessarily on the payroll of the company as as employees for the long term so and also the technology allowed lots of potential entrepreneurs to jump in and to start their own businesses so we can see lots of evolution towards people moving towards self-employment through offering something to the market lots of people utilizing digital platforms to increase their income and accordingly becoming less likely and at least interested in regular traditional jobs and also corporates looking at utilizing the gig economy or consultants or external contractors and that also created a different set of co-working uh places and uh types of applications platforms that became really popular to match the needs the demand and and the offering in this uh in the market now uh mr mcgee we have some new concepts in our world of economy like self-employment freelancers uh outsourcing sites so can you elaborate on these new concepts yes definitely as we can see like self-employment had been around like since ever like but it was kind of exclusive for like artists and those independent workers craftsmen etc i think what we can see right now in terms of entrepreneurship or self-employed is that there is a larger opportunity for like different types of professionals white cooler professionals to get into being self-employed so the opportunity having digital channels and also different tools to find jobs like linkedin like facebook etc to be able to promote themselves and find jobs this allowed a different category of people to jump in and being able to become self-employed as a result these people are actually doing business they will look for the places for the services that they can rely on to expand their businesses so if we can think about it where should these self-employed work should they start their own offices or should they utilize some like shared offices for example so this becomes evolution of shared offices or what we know as co-working places and it’s good to know that like right now in egypt there are over 200 co-working spaces spread around the country so um but all over egypt all over egypt yes and i think most of them are in cairo giza so it’s quite uh becoming quite intense in terms of the availability of those these spaces that’s available for those who are self-employed and working on their own to utilize their own offices so that’s where like self-employed and entrepreneurship we can look a lot of lots of corporates they are changing the way we hire others for particular jobs but there is a movement where it’s outsourcing there’s a lot of external consultants utilization of outsourcing sites where the corporate can post different jobs and different and also relying on innovation programs even like bringing people from outside the country to bring in ideas and come up with products for some of their challenges so these are all kind of trends that evolved from the changes and technology and the way like people work yeah mr after let’s break down these trends and get to know more what they might mean for our viewers for to what extent as we have been talking here about the co-working space how the co-working space could be beneficial and important for someone who wants to start a new business for example yeah i mean like we know business there has to be like consistent business communication there has to be some secretarial work there has to be a way in which the packaging and the branding of the work environment is done which could be actually very challenging to have in at home and also about productivity because if we’re talking about those who are self-employed or they are solopreneurs they are working on their own they have the challenge of where are they going to work from and there are some still challenges in getting the culture off home offices out there so like managing a home office could be challenging so having something like co-working spaces in which that they could basically have their business address to the co-working space they would have a flexible desk in which they can like work and security and exactly security and facility things like meeting rooms sitting down with their clients in a convenience environment so all these are potential services for the self-employed or the solopreneurs to utilize from working spaces and we see that trend also has a as a positive connotation also it has a negative connotation why because the negative connotation would be looked at from the changes in the concept of find a stable traditional job so we can see that as all these trends come by it’s it becomes like less likely for people to find or to go for a traditional job which allows other people who are kind of open enough for the idea to find other alternatives to increase their income so we could see that this is a shift an individual could be ready by looking at like um like a process of what how can i engage in this type of economy by offering services and products so sir what about the demand for these jobs and who needs these services and how do they get to choose and guarantee the results yeah i think if we look at specifically corporates like looking for professional jobs to get done or even like at home looking for technicians to fix something at home etc there is always a challenge of guaranteeing the result that’s why it becomes kind of important to look at the brand and the platform that’s offering the service so that’s uh that’s also an opportunity and a challenge for entrepreneurs is that who are building these platforms is to put together the like the quality standards the guaranteed results the the testing of service providers before offering a service so there have been different models on offering these services and some of the positive trends in this direction for example is things like this star rating like is as you utilize the service provider you’re able to leave feedback and give a star rating so by then if i’m looking for the service and i can go there and i can look at the star rating and the feedback by different service providers so this allows me to choose the ones who are best performing also it allows for those who are getting there is to offer services even for free to increase the rating so accordingly having things like creating systems allows for professionals who are offering the service and also for those utilizing the service to have an expectations about how things are going to go in the future so uh technology played a rule there and also there is a shift also beside these open platforms to have much more like community based controlled platforms like for example we see that these are the 200 most demanded jobs or these are the two most most demanded like functions and accordingly we offer these and you order from us as a brand and then we outsource these to others so there’s another like concept in which that you order from a specific brand which also is gaining popularity because by then the the quality and the guarantee comes from the brand other than from the individual themselves yes uh mr mcd as an entrepreneur expert to what extent the gig economy and the entrepreneurship and the startups are now uh taking the ground and the the youth are more willing to work in that the domains and fields more than just being an employee in a big company or um an internal multinational company yeah we see we see like entrepreneurship and startups is becoming an active trend so i think we would say that majority of youth as he gets into the university like from 18 to 22 they start viewing entrepreneurship and building startups as very desirable they can relate to all that the cultural and like media like stories about uh bill gates mark zuckerberg etc etc i think all these successes stories you see now they have the youths are more creative they are having more creativity now than before do you see do you think so yes definitely like technology have it like evolved and provided them as a platform to express themselves so they kind of have to do something to express themselves and even like this form of self expressions work on their ability to add something and to um to build something and express their creativity so definitely they have been becoming more creative and as a result of that and sometimes it happens naturally because like some of the stories of entrepreneurs we have ladies who like to kind of design things for themselves and then they post that on instagram for example and their friends like it so we start another channel to sell these uh kind of handmade uh craft so some of these businesses has evolved using technology women are cooking now and selling food through the the social media and many projects are going on uh exactly i mean like delivery of uh groceries delivery of uh fruits and vegetables cooking and lots of other this is your advice to housewives who want to make use of their time if they have some free time yeah you know it could be more sophisticated it depends on the individual themselves so it depends on the individual and the skill set so if someone comes from a professional background who used to work in business administration for example there could be better opportunities for them offering secretarial services for example so they they become like the secretary for a number of entrepreneurs so uh if someone comes from a professional background and they’re able to respond to the phone like access emails do some online research but then it becomes um it could be more like higher value service to offer secretary or services in case they are better at it from other but definitely those who are better at cooking they can actually like start offering uh like cooking services and different types of services so i think it would get back to the individual understanding their core competence and um and accordingly they would be able to focus on that and that’s where they can find success in like in an open economy because if they are like competent at that if they do a good job so by then their brand is going to be known and accordingly we’re going to get more clients and we’ll be able to grow this even beyond an individual business that could grow to a lot of companies like there is lots of um like household businesses that are starting from home for like students and their mothers they’re starting to like do their cooking business and selling that and then they start building like doing ads and by then it goes beyond their home they have to be the kitchen and shops they are opening shops and chains as well uh many that start with small businesses and then they expand it to a great extent exactly exactly so it becomes a very interesting test bed for new ideas so i think like for individuals they could look at the top three things they are very passionate about the there is something we call the hedgehog concept like the hitchhike concept is the interaction of intersection of uh what you’re passionate about what’s your competent ads and what you can make money doing so if someone is is like would be able to list the things they are very passionate about they are competent at and you could make money with you could experiment with like a few things a few offers and out of this you would selected something that’s much more consistent could generate more consistent income from them okay i’d like to thank you mr abdul macd entrepreneurship experts for being with us today pleasure thank you very much uh mr abdul and happy aid [Music] and this brings us to viewers to the end of today’s edition of the breakfast show i’d like to thank my colleagues we come to the end of this edition till tomorrow with another question [Music] we’re gonna celebrate [Music] [Applause] the 1998 fifa world cup final was played between brazil and france the host nation on the 12th of july at the sandonee stadium the final was contested by brazil who were then the defending champions having won the previous fifa world cup four years earlier in the us 94 and the host nation france who had reached the final of the tournament for the very first time france won the match decisively three nothing a blowout to claim the world cup for the very first time for the timing of the match two days before busty day adding to the significance of the victory zayn dean zidane one of the match and man of the tournament scored twice before halftime and emmanuel petty added a third goal in the last minutes the match had an attendance in the region of 75 000 the match also saw speculation on the condition of the brazilian striker ronaldo who suffered a convulsive fit on the eve of the match after initially being left out of the team sheet in spite of his physical state it was announced just 72 minutes before kickoff that he was going to play in the match ronaldo sustained an injury in a clash with french goalkeeper fabian abaces although it was believed that the decision to play ronaldo had backfired it was understandable as the player had been a crucial member of the site throughout the tournament having scored four goals and created three more but 1998 was zayn and deansy dance here it was france’s year
[Music] welcome back our dear viewers and now we are going to talk about the social and power dynamics at the workplace and we are very much delighted to have our dear guest in the studio mr abdulrahman and our entrepreneurship expert to shed light about that topic good morning good morning good morning mr mcd first uh between being desirable and negatively negatively perceived the why is a power such controversial topic yeah i think like power would be a very controversial topic because it’s something desirable i think all of us would like to be more powerful and i think all of us also do have negative experience with powerful people so there is always like a dissonance internally when people talk about power is it do you want more power because they equate power with freedom though they also have experiences where is the responsibility and also sometimes having to face other powerful individuals who are not allowing them to do what they want so that’s why there is always like a dissonance and approach of power some people really want to go for becoming more powerful and also they are shy away from getting into the stage of becoming powerful mr magati mentioning three different types of powers we have character position knowledge and resources what at uh what are the common traits among people with these different types of powers from your point of view yeah i think as you mentioned like uh power and powerful people the kind of common different brackets that are people who really have this power as a result of their possession so they have a specific position within the organization or the society and based on that they are powerful because they can practice their authority as part of this possession there are others who is interesting characters and insights and these people can also like influence others based on their character traits and the different abilities and i think what all these different characters have in common is their their ability to connect with other people and also their ability to be grounded in different situations so they are not they are not easily moved to a specific direction they have their own thinking their own strategy and basically they when they have a person-to-person interaction they know exactly how to deal with different characters and with different types of people so i would say that being powerful is having a lot of self-understanding understanding self and the ability to profile others and understand their needs and accordingly relate to them individually and as groups properly and we most likely by then that’s what people in different like possessions of power would would be able to sustain the power uh based on these traits so sir what is the difference between approaching interactions from status and likability perspectives yeah i think in a recent book called popular there have been a lot of research especially when with teenagers during the like adelsine stage that actually uh classifies people into five like categories there are people who are like highly accepted or like the ones who are popular during like the high school uh like stage of everyone’s life we could relate whether during high school we were very popular we were very accepted we are very liked or were very controversial some yeah we can all always relate to profiles of people who had been like controversial here they are like sometimes very well liked and sometimes also it’s kind of hard to relate to them and also there have been like others who are like uh ignored or neglected uh from the group so looking at the um the part of either being accepted and being popular or being controversial i think that’s actually um gets with us as we grow from the auto scene stage into like our like current positions and what we’re doing so uh getting back to your your questions in terms of like um what was the uh like like the the common traits or uh like like how this affects the uh the actions of people and and society uh i would say that that we come at the current stage with the same mentality uh that that gets from this stage and accordingly uh we could see that uh some people year into status status is by then is something that you gain as a result of actions that could be aggressive so status is like i would say that i’m able to force people to do something based on my own social status so by then status is something that reflects authority and actions that could not be always positive though that likability is uh people who are mostly have been in accepted category as during their unseen stages that they are used to being part of community so it gets down to uh cooperation versus authority some people look at leadership possessions and like being powerful from the perspective of actually having status so being able to control people and manipulate them and moving in your direction versus being likable in terms of like dealing with people in a fair way so individuals will start liking you and based on that you grow your power accordingly and i think we can see some examples even like with some of the football players experts like musa for example if you look at musa we see that he seems to be a very nice guy and actually people like him so this is more like he gains power based on likability so he’s able to perform his job properly properly and based on that he uh actually gains a lot of likability versus a status others who might become a president of a specific club or they have a specific authoritative rule and based on that people have to follow them because of their authority and what they would do if they didn’t other than being likeable give us these examples of how a powerful behavior look like yeah i think like um we all can actually identify that uh normally like as human beings we could see the different aura of power that people are able to uh like a display i think i could relate it like to this while getting into the building because while getting into the building the security was because you have to enter the building with a card so you have to have an access card and i’m a guest so i’m i’m invited i don’t have access card so while actually accessing from the gate i uh did not even stop to kind of explain but rather i continued walking and told him that i have i’m a guest i have an invitation somewhere so being proactive in mentioning why you’re there and actually getting into a place as if you already know what what has to be done i think that’s actually could be seen as powerful behavior because you understand the rules and then you’re able to communicate that properly without having to kind of hesitate like another way to look at powerful behavior is uh response is that sometimes when people get like negative or positive response from others they change their attitude their ideas the even like they would change their facial expressions but rather powerful behavior and powerful individuals usually they are more still and they are more long-term thinkers other than having some immediate response to specific change on time which also displays that like whatever happens is not is not affecting me and there are philosophies that build around that for example stoicism is one of the philosophies that kind of promotes the idea of uh not being emotionally reactive to whatever happens rather looking at things on its long-term projections so i think this is something very apparent when it comes to powerful behavior no short-term reactions is knowing what they are doing they follow the rules but by then they do this uh very fluidly and very smoothly yeah so sir can you shed light on the social hierarchy and how can i detect my place in it yeah i think if we look at like studying how like the the social structure is um is set up is it we will always like within groups we see that there is someone in the leadership so what do you call it the alpha so whether the alpha male or the alpha females they are ones with some like strong leadership traits they are able to lead the group and um mostly influence where the group uh goes so offals are usually um like the the extroverteds they are very good with people they have a sense of direction and they are very good executives so these are the alphas who come into uh usually the leadership of different groups and usually the alphas are to a lot of extent uh assert their influence on others so usually an alpha would want others to follow them and want others to acknowledge that they are the leaders so here comes the difference with what we call it beta or like that whether the better males or the bit of females that they are the ones who acknowledge that the alpha is the leader of the group and then they work under the alpha so they are accepting the fact that in their actions within the group was going to have to be influenced with whatever the office says so these are also other individuals whose leadership skills and with quite some influence but they do not see themselves as like the deciders of their own destiny or the ones who take the absolute leadership of the group but rather they participate under the umbrella of the alpha and and then we get to the gomers who are actually happy to be part of the group they do nothing do not have skills or aspirations to uh get into the leadership of the groups and another interesting profile that usually coming from the controversial category is what we call the sigmas or the lone walls are the ones who actually cert like uh live in close proximity with the group but they are not necessarily um like following the alpha so usually uh they are ones who are highly independent uh usually they have an expert profile they have knowledge and insights they are able to survive on their own and in a lot of cases there might be some power struggle with the current alpha the current leader of the group or in some cases there could be some arrangements worked with um with them so i think looking at your situation in uh in the workplace and not necessarily in terms of possessions but in terms of group dynamics to what like extent are you able to influence the decisions you can actually see where do you relate are you an alpha are you the absolute leader are you asserting your dominance over others do you want others to like submit to you or are you following the leader so you’re getting your stuff done but you have a leader that you have to get back to while doing everything or you do not really care about that so for you it’s just about enjoying your time and doing your craft or are you someone who i do have your own agenda and uh you are slightly manipulative and you know how to get what you want and often the alpha does not like that because the alpha like people who uh follow them as they see so i think like relating to these different profiles we would be able to identify which category do we belong to mr um how to deal with someone who is exercising excessive unfairly power against us yeah i think this is um this is a very tricky part that all of us face in our careers and in our lives usually uh if we are within a group there has to be like if it’s an organization we have to have some uh rules and ethos for how the organization works and our commitment as individual would be going towards these like ethos of the organization of the um like probably the hr rules and etc and sometimes people uh based on like either like social circles or it clicks with any organization try to influence uh our possession with within the group uh based on how are we closely tied to them so uh the best like response to that is actually not a direct response direct immediate response but is actually becoming grounded as if not having a very immediate reaction to every specific um like like action that’s given to us from these powerful individuals and rather focusing on doing what we do very very well so becoming excellent and at what we do this is a core to be able to maintain our possession and then referring to the to the rules and regulations within the organization and also understanding that it’s grouped so usually there is someone who’s above this alpha within this group if we are a group within a larger group we’d understand that by doing what we uh what we’re supposed to do very well but then we’re serving like like a higher status individuals and like a much more powerful entity which is the organization and at some point in time we might have the opportunity to showcase our commitment and showcase like lots of unfair activities that’s happening to us like probably indirectly through our constant efforts so for example if we look at within a specific group uh there is someone that’s uh quite ignoring or putting aside someone who have qualifications to to move ahead because they are not like personally submissive to them for example like if we say that an alpha who is pretty much about over asserting themselves and someone who has to be like the lone wolf of the group because they do not think that they should submit to the same way things work at some point in time they might discover that this alpha you do actually have a leadership that’s mostly like they are sigmas who are actually directing that so usually in in social situations and in organizational situations we uh we judge quickly in terms of who’s in charge and sometimes the ones that looks to be in charge they are not an absolute power they are not the all-powerful but rather there are others who could be more powerful than them and usually those who are more powerful than them who does not want to get into the specific group dynamics they would be looking for other contenders to the level of leadership which also gives a lot of opportunities for sigmas and that’s why alpha is always fear signals because by then if they are not following them if there is someone who’s looking at the group they would understand that it’s not all following what i say but rather there are other directions of becoming more powerful so by then by doing what i what i do very well and by not being overreactive on a situation by situation basis but actually looking at this as a long-term strategy and transition eventually we will discover that there are like higher sources that’s going to notice the dynamics that’s happening than the group and sometimes it could be about exiting the group so if if this is the boundaries of this specific groups and i could not see any solution to that so one of the uh actions to be taken is actually becoming a sigma or becoming a lone wolf so if you used to be part of a group and by then you see that they are moving in a totally different direction eventually uh that’s how like people become sigmas is that they decide to be uh probably for a period of time close to the group but not necessarily part of it so uh in two minutes tell us quite quickly to what extent does social media and technology have affected the way uh we deal with power yeah i think like if we look at like modern interactions like whether socially within organizations we will see that like uh power have moved into like digital profiles so if you look about uh look at like facebook instagram twitter and all these social profiles like the the number of followers probably influence um like the uh the power that someone would have within a specific uh group and also it was kind of influenced people’s approach to power so people would would look at having probably more followers and much more intense interactions within a specific group would somehow get them obsessed about this idea of gaining status as we talked in like popularity the book that like compares the two different types of power like based on likability or status social media has like the um usually it puts matter in front of people so people would see themselves through the increasing numbers of interactions like expecting the likes and the engagements etc which which actually gets people to be more like status obsessed they always chicken out to what extent are they they’re gaining power and one of the things that comes as a result of that is that there’s a lot of people who have lots of followers and interactions online though they do not actually have any friends which is like one of the things that you would see is that they have huge followers but uh they have to have dinner alone or they do not have like any kind of uh intense social interactions compared to what we see uh online entrepreneurship expert thank you for being with us today yeah thank you always a pleasure thank you very much sir thank you and with that viewers we come to the end of this edition of the breakfast show you were in the company of myself my sirabi and my dear creature thank you very much thank you mahisti and see you tomorrow your viewers with a new [Music]
welcome back and to shed light about how entrepreneurship could boost the economy and be an important element in achieving a great and uh productive economy uh we are joined here in the suribao by our our entrepreneurship expert good morning good morning uh good morning doctor today we’re concentrating on the value of uh the business networking to grow the business now um what are the key aspects in such a concept doctor yeah i think like business networking as we know it is the ability to connect with other people i think one of the big challenges that entrepreneurs go through while they’re starting their own businesses even like those who had been in business for a while is that they stay focused in their business so they work inside the different dynamics and aspects of their business and they do not have the time or the focus to look like to get out of their business and to look at building strategic partnerships and building relationships around the business so business networking comes in handy for business owners and ceos that they’re able to shake hands with different potential partners potential hires potential clients and potential partners for their businesses and definitely that would be able to boost the business in case that you build the right relationships at the right time so having like an ongoing flow of new connections at the right time if you’re able to take advantage of the right connection that provides opportunities for growth definitely when is a good time dr abdul for owners to seek business networking when they should start to do so well i think um i think all the time i think like even at the point in which that they are starting to think about a new business idea there is going to depend on what do what do they discuss and the type of networking events they go to but definitely once they have an idea stage they have like they’re interested in a specific industry or an idea and by then they they would start networking and uh seeing what people in the industry are thinking and what are the interesting ideas that’s going around that because by then at the idea stage they’re going to move into product stage you’re going to know who’s qualified enough to build the products what are the existing partners that i can partner with to grow the business et cetera what about the specific challenges that a business network networking would be a good and useful to help and overcome yeah i think like different people use different networking for like different objectives i mean like one of the most popular is lead generation if you run a business and you’re looking for clients going to business networking events or like setting up profiles on business networking events is a vital way for you to connect with potential clients so definitely lead generation is a big part of it recruitment is is one required especially sea level executives if you’re looking at people with a lot of expertise so like going out and shaking hands with them and getting to know them personally before you go through the recruitment process is also a very effective uh process the expanding your network looking at like what’s happening in your industry and other industries is also another objective for which business networking is a very good investment what are different formats of business networking online and offline owner can take advantage of yeah i think like if you look at the the concept of business networking like if you believe in business networking and if you’d like to embody that and everything you do you can use whatever platform to do business networking we could see people using facebook groups for for business networking there are like dedicated websites like linkedin and several other regional websites that could be where you can set up your profile and do a lot of business networking um so do you believe that the social media here is playing an important role and the new um applications here that we can use for business networking as well exactly like if you look at business networking online and offline there is an interesting balance between that if you’re able to use online to build credibility and build your profile and get to know people and allow people to access your profile and to know what you’re working on this is going to be an interesting way to initiate connections and definitely all the available applications whether they are actually dedicated for business networking or even like some people use dating applications for business networking so there’s a lot of different utilizations for all social networking and connecting people application that uses connecting people the interesting point when it comes to moving these relationships offline which is the um which makes it actually more lively and more effective because once you meet someone and shake hands exchange business cards have like short discussions um these are like builds of stronger relationships other than just connecting on some kind of social network now doctor how much is too much of engaging in the business networking activities yeah i would say it gonna depend on that on the rule of the person inside the organization but there is a very popular term that’s used by uh people who usually criticize those super um like networkers which is not working so other than networking is written as not working like people who have like it’s their full-time job is just to go to networking events get some snacks and talk to people without actually having anything to do so this is an extreme case which actually happens sometimes because networking with the specific personality types could be very addictive so especially for business owners who should be busy doing other things they should like engage in networking activities as much as they would generate an ongoing flow of connections new ideas but not make it a full-time job so like once or twice um a week uh could be actually too much for uh probably too much it’s gonna depend on the business the stage of the business but looking at relevant networking events and focusing on that would be of a lot of value uh doctor how can we find relevant networking opportunities that’s a that’s a very very important question it’s also a challenging question uh because like when we look at it networks could actually be exclusive at some time so there are some like membership-based networks that’s closed for its members which i think majority of networks like to maintain like uh quality and relevance that’s why they are closed so they have to become a member first like before you um so there is these membership-based networks which you can get to know like very popular associations and networks in which that you can look at the terms what do we focus on is this relevant to me and by then you sign up to the membership you become a member of the network so identifying these networks that’s relevant to you and engaging with their activities is the straightforward approach definitely there is a lot of interesting things like applications like meetup and several other networks in which they have an events section so you can look at the events section and see like relevant events that’s scheduled there are something called events aggregators which is like different websites and applications that search the internet for events for geography so for example you can look at all relevant events in egypt and then you can filter that by business by specific industry so taking a taking a look at all these events probably you can do this yearly and quarterly so at the beginning of the year if you’re in charge of the market if you’re a business owner you can go at some of these event aggregators and build a list of the big networking events that might take place in in the coming year and basically you start signing up to these relevant events and then quarterly look at so you can actually break this down into a system so you would have an ongoing flow and commitment to attend some of these networking events because also sometimes as a business owner if you focus on the business you’re going to forget all about the networking components so it’s it’s always good to have a reminder that i need to go and look for networking events and attendant but definitely that doctor requires a lot of planning so how can we plan to be able to acquire an efficient network networking event and attend it and also impress others with what we have yeah i would say that when it comes to networking like experience is the ultimate teacher so i think it takes a lot of experience for people to know which are the relevant uh networking events etc but i think you can look at credible events for for example if you’re in a specific industry you’re going to look at others in the industry for example they had some positive feedback in very specific events so by then these seems to be critical credible events that i would like to attend as well and um and like looking at the event description and specific details probably getting in touch with the event organizers and understanding more about how does it work and all these are different ways to like identify that these are the most relevant events to me and before that definitely knowing what i want so um like there are some generic networking activities and there’s some very specific networking activities so knowing what i’m looking for and then looking at and investigating further the credibility and the program for the events for which i engage what are the highlights here of business networking etiquette uh doctorate yeah i think when it comes to business networking one of the big challenges especially like once people are going for lead generation is that the it becomes like overly salesy so they are like over sales themselves or they sell their products and services which is actually like in the networking environment you could actually promote yourself and promote your products and services but you have to do this intelligently it like how is by looking at what the network cares about so looking at this particular event what is it about and basically from my background and my connection how can i bring value to this and um like for example if we’re in a facebook group and this facebook group talks about a specific topic and i want to promote an upcoming event that i’m organizing um there is an approach for me to take the link the sign up link to the event and go to the group and to post it there until people please sign up to my event this is a very salesy and almost like unwelcomed approach though if i look at what this network talks about what do people there want to know and then i write a post i thoughtfully spend like an hour in writing a post that’s relevant to the network so people start reading that and you see that oh that seemed very critical i’m getting value out of reading that and then by the end by the way we’re organizing an activity if you’d like to take this further you can sign up there so this is a very decent way to introduce your activities to introduce yourself so um not being salesy but rather adding value that’s the biggest way to establish credibility in a network is that um you know they they call them cedars and leechers like if you’re a network and basically we’re contribution-based network i would either see the network by offering something offering value or i would actually be taking value out of the network so um the the highlight of being good at business networking and seeing what the network cares about and then providing value without having like any strings attached to doing that so if you go there provide value and then you don’t even introduce any service next time people are going to come talk to you to know what you’re doing so not being pushy but rather having a balance between bullying and pushing this is a very interesting uh like social concept and that works in business networking yes now doctor how to measure the impact of the networking activities how do we measure it for a company how would they measure the impact of what they are doing yeah i think that’s that’s a quite difficult question because like it’s it’s debatable in terms of i went to an event and i made some connection i met some 15 people but by then i’m not sure how many of these connections uh are becoming uh like fruitful win so i think you can do this on a yearly basis so if you’re if you’re a company and if you’re using business networking like uh you have um like a dedicated section or like indicated a period of time for business networking you can actually look at the effectiveness for each activity that you engaged with and you do that by basically writing down the contacts that you have created connecting with them and following up with them and basically once you do that you look at the rate of like established connection whether you’re generating new clients whether you establish new partnerships whether you moved into a new direction so um like when it comes to networking and making connections with people becomes more like long term and that sometimes after three years of meeting someone you remember that i know someone who had expertise in this area so probably i can connect with them so keeping the contact details engaging with people in a way that’s very convenient to them and by then you can start measuring and seeing the impact of these various networking events does it need intelligence uh dr abdul or does it need training here in order to do that networking in a positive way yeah i think definitely it needs both so it needs social intelligence to engage effectively in networking events not to be in ag because we do meet a lot of people who are just enact in order to sail or to have a good networking and it does reflect negatively on the person in front of you exactly yeah exactly i think like um also when it comes to like the best practices besides not being salesy and rather adding value a big part of this gets back to the social skills of the individual like social skills is basically other than uh like pushing what i have i would i would be spending more time getting the other person to talk about themselves understanding what are the challenges how do they view the world their their brain frequency how they are thinking about the world and then i would be presenting to them an idea or a concept that’s quite relevant to them something that you can relate to so this becomes like very convenient to them because you’re not like pushing an agenda on them but rather you’re engaging in a conversation with them like another aspect of that is not being pushy in the follow-up process i mean like if you’re following up with people and they probably they have been nice passing your business card but they are not interested in doing business with you so it’s it’s always healthy to how to draw a line here between being a nag and um pushy in front or with the person in front of you and just being an intelligent person who is attracting the attention of uh the the person in front of you and gain his attention and interest as well yeah i think like by then is it the talent here somehow well definitely it evolves into a talent but it’s about consistently thinking about providing value to people because by then like the talent is understanding people understanding their personality types what you’re looking for and then bringing value to them so it’s as if like i went to networking events not knowing what to expect and then someone spent three minutes knowing what uh my challenge is and then he thoughtfully uh thought that there is an interesting person that you can talk to or i know a website where you can find a lot of these listed where i have a format an excel sheet templates in which that you can use to get this done so by then if i if i introduce this to someone they would definitely be very interested in following up and taking the relationship farther because i actually added value and right now in business they say that there is an evolution in the way business is happening into what they call it open random and supportive so they say like businesses and and establishing connections in the business used to be uh closed selective and authoritative like there’s no hierarchy but rather what’s happening right now with a lot of innovations and new ideas is that you want to get to know a lot of people they do not have to be at the same size of the company they do not have to be as successful as your company per se but you would like to know what’s new what are the evolving companies etc so being open random and supportive and supportive here is by paying it forward it’s looking at what people are looking for and helping them with that that established definitely a lot of network credit that you can utilize uh on like getting favors from others from the network afterwards because you have consistently added value to it now doctor definitely this would be easier for a brand new company starting off because it’s still creating its image but what if this company is an older company now would changing the image and the branding require more networking efforts and to what extent would a company with a certain image be accepted within the networking community yeah like definitely i would say that more established companies or let’s call it institutions and institutions we have hierarchy and considerations for who to do what so the challenge usually from these entities engaging is choosing the who is going to engage on behalf of the company so by then it’s um because if the ceo is not available then like business development manager who should actually be representing the company at these events so giving authority to the individual to represent the company and also these individuals we do not have a very large scope of uh like authority to communicate on behalf of the company so usually we engage to the level that’s slightly personal so for even those coming to represent companies you should be allowed by the entity to kind of become like personal so they are communicating as human beings even if they are doing that on behalf of the company and and by then i mean like it and like for the companies they need to establish institutions we have the challenges that business the business environment is evolving quickly and there is new innovative startups so you want to go engage with these like new ideas to kind of um stay in touch with the trends because if entities are not doing the networking components if big companies are not doing the networking components or like the foresight components which is networking is a very big part of it by then like in a few years they’re not going to be in touch with new technologies and we have seen a lot of successful partnerships that happen between startups and big companies by having executives in the big companies coming to look at what’s happening there and seeing okay we can actually support this project because this is going to upgrade the way we do things inside our big institution so um like looking at it from an innovation perspective and being open about it having much more authority to communicate like on a personal uh side beside also the the corporate affairs and then following up with this consistently within the structure itself so it becomes more that i establish the connection with you and then i’m going to guide you inside my institution to take this opportunity further indeed uh dr abdul um at what extent these business networking could be boost to the economy yeah i think like um like business networking activities usually brings brings about a lot of opportunities that’s not seen so there’s a lot of business opportunities and potential new businesses that’s not on the surface because no one is talking about it because like every business owner is kind of they are working on their business they are focused exclusively they might have some very interesting experiences to share but unless they open up and they start sharing these experiences and these opportunities and by then you would say that like a few ideas together actually build a huge knowledge base upon which that you can first upgrade the level of knowledge and awareness within the industry and then you can definitely build new businesses that takes advantage of different components there could be some entities that build advanced capacity and technology components there could be others on like a business or sales or marketing capacities so if you bring all these ideas together but then you’re able to build new companies and new institutions and new kind of partnerships between different entities that would eventually boost the economy yes indeed now doctor when it comes to the business networking to what extent can it be challenging for some businesses yeah it actually could be challenging for some individuals because like we kind of like sometimes you classify people into introverts and extroverts so um like extroverts are they’re pretty fine with the stimulation so they they would go out and talk to people introverts usually they come and you find the corner and they settle down there so um like and this is very challenging because like networking is about walking to people and like shaking hands with them and having initiating a discussion with them that’s why there is like models that gets everybody to kind of do an organized networking which what they call speed networking so speed networking like activities is that it has time slots to say five minutes in these five minutes there is like something like a bell so every five minutes the build rings and then you have to move and talk to someone else so you organize the environment so if you have a hundred people in the room every five minutes they have to move to talk to someone else so by then like for these introverts who are not really used to this networking environments they’re going to find that someone else has to reach out and talk to them and and also for organizers sometimes you could find these introverts and like guide them into and introduce two uh to to each other’s to start talking together so like for these type of personalities there are specific formats that would definitely work for them and make it easier for them to engage in various networking events indeed mr abdulrahman our entrepreneurship expert thank you very much for your precious input thank you thanks for having me thank you very much doctor and that brings us to the end of our episode of breakfast show but first of all i’d like to thank my colleague maheshi thank you very much russian thank you very much our videos still tomorrow with another group it’s goodbye for now [Music]
[Music] welcome back and in this segment we will be talking about the green interpretership and how we can create an echo and the environment friendly business and i’m happy to have with me today mr abdul mahdi and he’s an entrepreneurship expert good morning thank you morning games first define to us what does it mean by a green startup yeah i think like green usually when the world is used it has to do with the environment so like when we talk about green business we’re getting startups we’re talking about businesses that’s taking the environment into perspective on and built around objectives to sustain the environment and like take care of the environment by conducting its businesses so i think in the vast decade or something there have been a lot of talks around like uh csr and the social responsibility of the businesses to consider the environment while operating their businesses this is almost the naked generation or the second generation from this thinking is that you’re creating businesses on top of ideas that’s about taking care of the environment so that’s what green startups is yes and what about your particular program because i understand that you’re part of an interesting initiative as well yeah i think that the switch med initiative is executed by the european union and they have the partners here in egypt to kind of like get in touch and work closely with green startups which is something that’s had been happening in the past like almost three to four months so and like a process for green startups those we with interesting ideas and projects in socially responsible or environmentally responsible businesses around the theme of responsible consumption and production like applying to the switch med program which is like executed by a number of organizations including the unido and particularly funded by the european union and throughout the process there were like eight companies selected to pitch their businesses to startups so they went through the process of training and capacity building in order to kind of build the core business model for their businesses and also be ready to pitch their businesses to investors so yeah like switch med uh contests it’s actually executed regionally around the uh mediterranean like the house of the mediterranean so egypt was one of the participating companies in the contest and we had eight companies selected to pitch and like in the event itself there were seven companies that presented their businesses to investors and stakeholders so in your opinion uh why for-profit companies might consider uh the environment that’s a very good question i think it’s one of the first questions that we have got while working with the entrepreneurs themselves because they asked why would investors invest in a something that takes care of the environment other than something that goes after profit so i think the bottom shift that’s happening right now is that beside operating a business that seeks profit like considering the environments and the concepts around the environment might actually make the business more profitable which is what one of the most obvious cases in the companies presented is like utilizing like assets that does not have value right now and actually generating value out of this through the the the process managed by the company would actually one of the cases one of the companies that participated in the program it’s actually creates a new material out of getting to like recyclable materials and mixing them together like creating a like another material with better mechanical properties and as a result using this material to build usual products that’s used in things like lighting poles cetera and the result of their products is uh three times cheaper than the ones in the market so for them they can keep a profit margin that’s much higher and they would actually supply products that’s very effective and fulfills the objective with even better properties so if we look at it from this perspective there is a lot of innovation that can take place in using recyclable materials to create both profit while also taking care of the environment another idea that was shared is is dried uh fruits and vegetables and like the idea is that in egyptian farmers they almost waste like 40 50 of the crops especially for very specific crops and like one of the innovators in the program like um like he created a device through which these farmers can actually dry these vegetables and fruits in-house in the farm itself so they actually they can ship it or they can transport it to the markets in which it’s being sold way way cheaper because by then you can condense like 50 tons into just one ton like when you dry it which actually was a very smart idea which like it would have both an economic potential and also it kind of solve like an immense problem that’s facing like farmers and the economy at large yes i understand also that there was one of the projects where they mixed the fiberglass with cut was cotton or cartonage yes yeah that was a project that i was i was uh like initially talking about yeah mixing fiberglass was hardened cartoons yes and by then creating a new material and the good thing is that like these products are being bought by even like ministries interiors and some high profile customers who are using it in lots of applications like in-street booths traffic booths like polls and different applications in which that the material is proving to be a very good alternative the ones in the market so and that’s potentially a huge market to be addressed so like there’s a lot of scope for innovation for new ideas that like goes around recycling while also being under the theme of being responsible in in consumption and also responsible in production so you’re not abusing the environment in any way and you’re using materials that’s already partially produced yes so tell us about the investors where are they interested in adopting some of these projects and start implementing them yes definitely i think when it comes to investors investors usually look at like um two perspectives like there is a perspective which is like the hard part which has to do about the the business model and the financial aspect because that’s their job they are investing money and they’re expecting return so for the when the hard part is kind of fulfilled with the data and the entrepreneur being ready and presentable by then i think lots of these especially private investors they would actually consider projects because they also take care of the environment so there is a sense of being motivated by the fact that this is an environmentally responsible business is even a plus for some of the investors once the the interest in the profit is secured of course yes i understand that there were several projects as well and i’m quite interested in the one that turns waste into fertilizers that that’s a very interesting project especially that in egypt we have a lot of waste yeah i think that’s that’s right i think that’s that’s one of the interesting projects that was presented is that you can use waste and we’re building a quite a big device so that’s that’s one of the challenges for the entrepreneurs that they needed the capital in order to build like um like a large uh chamber for kind of processing the waste and um and basically the idea is you’re collecting organic waste and then they they have a device like a champer through which they convert this into fertilizers and basically this fertilizer can be used as a cheaper inter alternative to uh kind of planting even in like um like areas in which that currently it does not have the right soil for like plantation so the project has a lot of potential especially when it comes to like egypt’s objective to expand uh the green uh parts of egypt so they produce fertilizer that’s much uh cheaper and also fulfills a lot because i think we import lots of fruit felt lighter so there is a gap in egypt’s production versus the import and we have been trying to reduce the uh the gab for importation so that’s another interesting project that fulfills the gap of our need to import and also opens up lots of potential but then if we have cheaper filterizer fertilizers that’s usable for creating much more green space in egypt i think that’s a very interesting idea and a very interesting concept usually the challenge that entrepreneurs get stuck at the execution challenge because to do something like that you need at least half a million egyptian pounds so who’s gonna do the initial half uh a million pounds so i think that’s why there is also beside the private investors who would probably could consider the risk once they see the maturity i think there could be engagement with different government and if you told me that they were cooperating with the ministry of environment as well in these projects right yes what other institutions are you cooperating with well i think in the event itself we had representative from the ministry of trade and industry and the ministry of investment and and foreign relations so these were all official parties and we were also doing engagement with gaffy and multiple other entities like under the umbrella of these ministries so i think there was some quite good engagement with different institutions and also we produced some materials after the event to continue further engagement with these projects and mobilize support for these entrepreneurs now so you’ve spoken about some of the challenges but what other challenges are you facing especially to be able to promote for your startups yeah i think like um like part of the challenge for startups is actually building a startup because building a company sounds like an exciting venture but there’s a lot of work behind the scenes so there’s a lot of challenges in getting the entrepreneur ready and get them committed and get them to work in the business for an extended period of time because like all these projects we’re talking about you can look at that entrepreneurs have been working from three to five years to read to get the projects to this level of maturity so this is a lot of work and a lot of commitment that’s being put into the the project so guaranteeing this continuous commitment is something that’s uh that’s uh very vital to the survival of the idea the concept and its potential us also building a team like moving beyond the innovation because like we’re talking about innovative concepts here like if you’re capable of moving beyond the originator of the idea and building a team and an institution i think that’s the most difficult transition is that there is someone who built something of value now we want to appreciate this person recognize what they have done and they want to build an institution which is what the company is around this concept to be able to scale this impact and have people with different skill sets and like marketing and business in sales etc to be able to expand the company so moving from an individual innovator’s idea which is pretty smart and has an impact into a company that’s executing this aggressively in the market that’s where we need lots of stakeholders to be involved and that’s why the event took place in order to collect and gather the stakeholders and investors to support these projects so what are the next steps for green startups in each well i think by now i think these green startups who participated as a switch med contest i think they gained quite an exposure and experience when it comes to their businesses like one of these participating companies is uh traveling to barcelona uh like to participate in switchmate connect next year so they are having even international exposure uh to represent egypt in an international contest yes switchmark is an annual occasion annual event yes i think it’s uh it’s a program by the european union i think we have an annual event that that takes place together uh different parties and that beside this uh like a single company that’s presenting it’s a project is that the the rest of the companies are continuously working on a project we’re continuously in contact with them to make sure that they are proceeding with contacting investors and stakeholders and we we look forward for opportunities to connect with any stakeholders so i think to find online even if you google and search for green startups in egypt i think it’s gonna you’re gonna land on some of these projects and uh potentially they would be very open for different types of collaboration now how expensive are are these startups like to create a business which is environment friendly is it is it cost friendly or is it expensive inexpensive because of the devices you’ll need to use well i think that that would depend on each individual case but we can say that like these entrepreneurs the strap their companies so far so they were actually spending on their own so we would think that they spend probably a few thousand dollars in kind of building the devices etc and they reach the prototype stage and i think that’s the stage in which that a business needs an external capital so i think like most of the startups were raising some somewhere between 500 000 to 2.5 million egyptian pounds like 500 000 egyptian pounds to 2.5 million egyptian pounds these it starts at least in a sense that’s a lot for a young person isn’t it well i think uh this might be young for like um like much for a young person but i don’t think they were young i think like some of the participating companies were more mature individuals i’m talking about the youth themselves the entrepreneurs who started the idea itself yeah i think like um like we can be pretty flexible in defining youth so i think some of the participants like 45 and 50 years old so that that’s a still an innovative uh concept and they’re still entrepreneurs so they actually also they are managing cash flow so they are used to running companies some of these are already existing companies with existing cash flow the mixing of the fiber glass et cetera that’s an operating company so they they know what to do with the money and uh and by then even like some of them who are at a less mature stage they would require less amounts of capital but when it comes also to investing for like professional investors they would be looking for like amounts like 500 000 different pounds 2.5 that’s still very comfortable for investors so how do you choose the participating companies well the parts many companies was choosing that contest itself which is like managed form from barcelona so i think like the um the idea was looking at the startups with the most potential those who already have exerted efforts in building something they have a product and you would need this kind of training and exposure in order to like take it to the next level do you find many egyptian companies interested in this uh event yeah i think this is uh this is almost one of the yearly times that’s being done in egypt and i think the level of participation and commitment of the participants have been very good now apart from this particular event tell me more about what do you advise entrepreneurs when they are starting their projects well actually there there there could be lots of lots of uh pieces of advice when it comes to what people like need to know once you’re starting their businesses but i think one of the uh of the core components that we even sense it with this program is the need to have like a sense of a timeline in which that during the timeline you’re going to be extremely focused on a very particular idea so for example the next six months my company’s objective is to present the business in front of this panel in this event so i would be very focused on like bringing everything into a very specific objective that i have in mind so i think especially when we’re talking about like underfunded understaffed companies we’re talking about the need to be very focused because by then it’s it’s all mobilized in the mind of a single individual so once we have a very a single objective just one thing to be done and then they bring everything under the umbrella of this one thing because these things would be necessary for the execution so i think like focusing on a very specific objective on a on time intervals would be a very good strategy for startup startups like to keep moving forward whatever is happening around them okay mr abdul mandi entrepreneurship expert thank you for being with us sir thank you thank you and now we will be going to a quick break and we will be looking at our live news and we’ll be back for more on breakfast [Music]
[Music] welcome back our dear viewers as we have promised at the beginning of the show that today we are going to talk about the importance of technology to what extent technology could help in boosting the business in Egypt and to solve the problem of unemployment and also to uh boost the economy uh through um attracting more investment and uh uh pushing forward the economy uh as as a whole to shed more light we are very much delighted to have with us Dr Abdu magdi is a technology consultant hello sir it’s a pleasure to be here thank you good morning uh Dr Abdu first to what extent technology help in minimizing running costs of business yeah I think like in today’s business and today’s world technology is integrated in everyday’s life and uh for business owners we’re looking for ways to minimize their costs I think there’s a lot of Technology Trends and Technology tools that’s available for them to do that yes and also to shift the investment that they have between different channels for example when it comes to advertising marketing and reaching the Right audience we’re seeing a lot of businesses using Facebook and Google advertising lots of channels opening up in terms of reaching to the customers in terms of managing customer relationships you might be able to use something like a CRM tool or customer relation management so when we look at technology and its rule in in business we can see that there’s a lot of potential in reducing costs and also helping businesses expand and reach more customers Mr Abdu what are the specific trends that are expected to be in focus in 2017 I think we have been seeing a lot of Trends coming up like like big names like Internet of Things uh Automation and virtual reality so these are all emerging trends when it comes to technology that’s influencing Like the Way businesses is being done like if we look at some of these concepts for example automation we can look at how each and every part of business can be automated starting from the marketing from the production lines there’s lots of tools that’s being developed in enhancing automation artificial intelligence is another aspect in which that’s analyzing and taking decisions based on like analyzing data within the business is something that’s coming uh to be done automatically as well so virtual reality is another aspect in which that people can like look at for example in a real estate business there’s a lot of applications when it comes to real estate and uh architecture Etc when it comes to Virtual Reality so all these are Trends that’s emerging and um the good thing is that some businesses have already started like building applications and taking advantage of these Technologies to enhance their business so in your opinion is internet marketing affecting business negatively um I wouldn’t say internet marketing or technology is affecting business negatively because like um as a technology evolves it open like it requires the right professionals and the right labor to get things done so I would say that like U when businesses and economies are embracing technology uh they would have a better chance for them to develop their business enhance their economy and it’s not going to be an issue yeah technology like U makes some existing ways of doing things unnecessary but it also opens up lots of possibilities for new ways and new possibilities how could be done Mr AB I think it has to be done by embracing technology I think it’s not like an individual decisions in which like which technology tool to use but I think on top of the business or the organization there has to be the thinking in terms of what are the technology Trends how can we take advantage of them and accordingly when you have that strategy people and also the technology people within each company looking at the best ways they can utilize business by then they would be directing and training their existing human resources to utilize Technologies and accordingly they would not need to to replace them though they would even need to kind of recruit people is who are used to and who are capable of dealing with this technology so how can small and medium Enterprises make use of advanced technology yeah I think one of the misconceptions that comes to all these uh big technology Trends is that it’s very expensive so mostly if I’m a a small business owner it would be difficult for me to take advantage of all these uh nice Trends though I think like one of the business models for the big technology providers is is a subscription based model which basically you can subscribe monthly or even less than that so you pay as you go for utilizing these core Technologies which is which makes it very possible for small business owners to access these Technologies and take advantage of different parts of these emerging Trends in their businesses uh how thees could benefit to the maximum from the technology uh Mr well I think like small small businesses can look at the way you do business generally I think they would need to analyze the whole cycle of that their business go through and they would look at the best technology tools that’s available for them to take advantage of it I think if you’re building a new business today if you look at how do I look at my operation at my Administration payroll management at my marketing and I would subscribe to a number of tools I might find that I purchase subscription let’s say was $1,000 $2,000 a year but by the end of the day I’ve actually put aside a lot of hassle in terms of managing staff and in terms of doing things a classic way so if you’re setting up a new business or you are upgrading your existing business and its infrastructure you would look at subscription based tools that can kind of that you can utilize to run different parts of the business and that’s the best way smes can take advantage of these emerging Trends and Technology generally so how can a business owner stay ahead of uh technology and make sure they don’t miss a growth opportunity yeah I think that that will depend also on the background of the business owner I think like people who are not from a technology background which I think like this would apply pretty much to them because they are not technology people they are not naturally keeping themselves updated with what’s happening in in the technology front I think for them to subscribe to a few resources that’s sending like regular updates when it comes to what’s happening in technology and how to take advantage of it like I think there’s a lot of business networks and a lot of Publications in which that they can find lots of resources when it comes to like um keeping ahead and also understanding the uh competitive components of of new technologies and what other uh like businesses regionally and globally are doing within their specific uh industry as well how can technology technique help business owners develop their businesses in a way that Pro probably uh save costs yeah I think when it when it comes to save costs I think it’s going to come down to uh Automation and also to labor so basically you can reduce the cost when it comes to labor you can reduce the cost when it comes to production you can reduce the cost in overall planning and administrative cycle so I think if you break down what you’re spending uh in business so you’re going to be spending in administration you’re going to be spending in production and you’re going to be spending in sales and marketing and I think like in all these aspects there are different ways in which that you can optimize your operation embracing technology Trends which will dramatically decrease the cost so to what extent the technology can scale the business geographically yeah I think this is a very very big area when it comes to scaling like because a technology infrastructure has like infinite possibilities when it comes to scale if I’m keeping my customer database on um online on the internet by then I can have endless number of customers or if I have a website where people sign up they create an account so by then I can have like endless number of customers the same thing if I’m relying on for example call center operations that that has lots of automation integrated to it I would see that automating the process is not going me if I’m a a new business owner I’m starting uh a new startup maybe uh for anme or something like that how I can adopt a system that could help me to reduce the cost to be um uh to do better marketing uh through using the technology yeah I think this usually starts with Google actually it starts before that it start with the intention so once you decided that you want to embrace itology yes is that you see that for example let’s take one aspect when it comes to marketing see that I’m spending a lot of marketing and I would like to kind of U manage my spending and manage manage my operation when it comes to marketing I would go to Google and say that marketing technology I would search for any uh kind of keyword that would give me resources when it comes to the latest marketing techn marketing technology tools uh I would I would learn that there’s something called marketing Automation and there are some different Tools in which that I can use to automate lots of the uh used to be kind of uh manual operation that happens when it comes to marketing uh I would kind of shift big part of my advertising budget into digital I would be able to access clients using different websites Facebook and different other channels and by then like by searching and having the intention to go and search for the right tools to utilize I think you can reach like the right tool and the right uh paway all the other option is that you can also look at different technology service providers so if you reach out those Service provid close by and ask them about what is the best technology that I can use for example to reduce my um like production costly if I’m a factory for example and I’m looking at more advanced technology when it comes to mecatronics for example uh I would kind of look at the right Consultants to find out the latest technology Trends and how they can be integrated within my business so so technology is the is thought after as a challenge to business it affects employment and make people stop needing some of services they need to pay for what’s your take on this well I I think as we said it’s it it becomes the attitude of the uh economy or the society or the business and that’s that’s looking at technology I think if we are uh embracing the new if we open for the new uh but then we will be able to kind of restructure our approach to embracing that and accordingly structuring our employment and lifestyle around the emerging technology Trends because uh like when we look at it we can never stop technology technology is uh developing and uh there will be ongoing Trends and there’s no way to to stop that so uh you cannot like stop the time in terms of like having the the the business going the same weights is being done maintaining the same level of skill and awareness for human resources so this is not possible because technology is going to continue being emerging I think it comes to the people in the leadership to look at that as a strategic matter for them to embrace technology to train their staff when it comes to technology and also for the new generations at schools and universities they have to be also trained on the latest Technologies uh because by then they have a better chance on getting employed and possibly starting their own businesses as well many people now are working in the field of Technology itself uh by using um or using the technology like using mobile apps for example or uh marketing their stuff through social media or even working through social media Now by uh doing some catering or selling online um so to what extent the technology uh in that way is developing new businesses I think that’s a very good question because like the the the big thought is that uh technology is no more an industry but rather technology is a service to Industry which means that there’s not those people who are working in the technology industry but rather like in all different Industries so if we look at agriculture if we look at production if you look at real estate all these different sectors they actually have to have a technology component integrated to them so I think we we’re starting to think that there is not these technology people which we used to call them in information uh technology or it um I think like what’s what’s coming is that like technology is being embraced within different economic sectors within different companies we’re starting to to see CTO or chief technology officers people who are responsible of uh like finding the best technology for the business to grow even startups who are not from a technology company so they are not an IT company but rather they are using technology to best Ser their customers so I think the uh the way to answer your question is that technology is no more an independent industry but rather it’s it’s an integral way to do business and accordingly like all companies has to be embracing technology they have to be having a technology component we might actually be utilizing a very small part of the economy that’s actually developing the technology itself but rather everyone within the economy is concerned about technology and utilizing technology in their business so mentioning Internet of Things Big Data analytics and Automation and many other uh words that you said what they what are those uh expressions and how can uh business owners use them to create more intelligent products uh in their business yeah I think like if we look at like some of these uh concepts for example iot or Internet of things we’re going to be seeing that lately like everything had been connected to the internet so for example if you’re connecting like a camera to uh to your business reconnecting any kind of device this device is is is like always on and always collecting data so if you’re able to process these data on a large scale but then you can reach a lot of Intelligent Decisions so by then a concept like internet of things that’s uh like gives us access to a lot of sources of data that can be utilized in different ways um artificial intelligence is another aspect in which that like machines can start becoming intelligent and responsive to human behavior so uh these are all different Trends that’s emerging and I think like uh we are starting to see businesses embracing that for example a very big um like Trend that have been like emerging even lots of Egyptian companies have been embracing that is what they call chat bots so chat Bots it’s um like as we all chat on like WhatsApp or Facebook or whatever you can actually add a chat agent that’s not actually backed by an individual but rather it’s a it’s an automated chat agent that you can ask different questions too so you can find lots of businesses um would actually who are not on 247 uh you would just be able to download their chat bot and by then if you have any question if you need any support inquiry is going to be directing you to the right resource so having something like chat Bots is something that’s being embraced and I think this is something that has uh lots of potential also to uh grow in utilization and like all these Technologies bring us these tools so there is the core technology Trends itself and then the tools emerging from these trends so I think as we start seeing lots of these tools and the good thing also because we’re all connected today on mobile phone on desktops we all connected to the internet 24/7 so as consumers we start utilizing these uh as consumers first and and hopefully this is going to be like a shortcut for businesses to start utilizing that as they see it as consumers first indeed uh Mr Abdu magdi our technology consultant thank you very much sir for your precious input thank you thanks a lot thank you very much thank you Mr Abdu and now dear viewers this brings us to the end of today’s edition of The Breakfast show i’ like to thank my mahti thank thank you very much and of course our dear viewers tomorrow wait for us again in The Breakfast show with another fruit and then it’s [Music] goodbye
for many uh many opportunities as we do have a lot of potentials all this and more we are going to discuss with our dear guest live here in the studio who is an expert in the matter mr abdulrahman meghdi entrepreneurship expert thank you very much for being with us sir thanks for having me well uh good morning mr abdulrahman uh first of all tell us about your insight concerning a promotion of tourism and in a creative and different way yeah i think in my experience it’s like a naturally evolving phenomenon when it comes to entrepreneurship and people moving towards self-employment globally and because foreigners especially consider egypt a fabulous touristic destination they want to work and also they want to have fun in egypt so a pattern of activity that started happening in the past years was what is called co-working spaces in touristic and coastal cities around egypt by now i think we have three different co-working spaces in algona and dahab and there are others evolving in hergad and other cities and the idea here is that there are egyptians who are like self-employed they work in knowledge economy so they are not associated with a specific space they can work through the internet and also there’s a lot of foreigners on the other side who work at the same industry like designing websites writing code editing and writing publishing just a very quick and brief definition of this word the knowledge economy yeah the knowledge economy is all the activities it has to do with knowledge so it’s not about trade it’s not products not physical products but rather it’s about using the knowledge and expertise in doing business things that’s like almost virtual like writing editing designing so it depends on the scale of the individual other than any trade activities which is actually a huge industry globally so when it comes to the economy this is a huge industry and i think in egypt we still haven’t tabbed i mean how i can improve my knowledge economy i mean courses for example should i take courses should i train myself uh a self-trained this can be on online on the internet to go to certain places i mean how i think the challenge usually is not in in the lack of knowledge but it’s rather on if i have the knowledge how to use this knowledge to become an entrepreneur how to use this knowledge to offer services in the economy so i think in egypt there’s a lot of people with a lot of fabulous expertise when it comes to the the area of their interests and expertise but the challenge is usually how do i offer this service globally so what we’re talking about is that these co-working spaces or what we can call it clubs in these coastal cities can be a hub for those knowledge economy entrepreneurs in egypt to go there and to serve the global economy through these hops and the same thing would be for other entrepreneurs globally they would look at these clubs or destinations and coastal egyptian cities as places to go to to do business and also have fun so they would come for a week they would sort out what you want to do if you want to build a new website in a week you’re going to find the egyptian professionals to do the design write the copy publish it and host it and during this week while between the meeting they’re going to go from snorkeling climbing whatever they want to do so i think it’s a it’s a very fun package if this is being offered to um like foreign entrepreneurs they would come they’re going to have fun and going to do business now to what extent is that applied in egypt like you’ve mentioned there are some but to what extent is it and how workable and feasible is it well yeah that’s that’s a challenge because these become an individual initiative so it’s someone who sees the opportunity in doing that for example a german lady who visited dahab and she she loved the city and she wanted to stay there but she didn’t have an idea of what she wanted to do she thought of the idea that lots of her friends are coming to dhab so why not to start this club to get them to do the business to do the work in this place and also to attract egyptians who can actually work with them so this happens as an individual efforts so far there are some projects that being talked about like in technology in these remote areas but we haven’t seen something very solid to this extent and also not packaged in a way to attract foreigners to do business in egypt there are some consideration that has to do with the furnishing of the places there has to be consideration about internet connection which is actually the top on the left because uh like foreigners are used to very uh fast internet speed so they have to see something reasonable once they they come to egypt so the infrastructure for their internet speed the the furnishing and the packaging and the maintenance and sustainability of these clubs i think that’s that actually makes a very interesting national uh project between like trade international relations and tourism uh this is a very attractive area to attract tourists to do business and to connect with egypt i want to return once again to the human being i think that many egyptians knew how knew how to to be expert in this experts in this field in specific but they don’t know how to convey the message how to implement this on the ground how to deal with people and here by the way i’m speaking about simple egyptians not that well educated not that uh well cultured you name it but some they knew how to use their skills but they cannot they are not directed well how we can solve this problem or this is a very um sensitive equation well i think there are two aspects to that i think yeah as you mentioned like knowledge is something people acquire with time so usually if someone stayed for 12 15 years in the industry they become an expert they have the best buy all the experiences that they need and you have the expertise here comes two challenges the first has to do is what you mentioned as a service culture is that i am a service provider there are some specific regulations and ways to deliver the service and to maintain the level of service with the customer i think this is something that we’re lacking in egypt when it comes to the service culture and um me becoming a service provider and serving the client and how communication should go how should i get paid this is it because this is very important how i can solve this how i can move this person from from being not knowing even the potentials he has to someone who is that much successful and using all what he has because we are talented i mean egyptians learned very easily they knew how to absorb knowledge but to to use this this is the issue yeah i think here comes the rule of training and coaching and also experiences that gather the egyptians with their foreign counterparts like some of the best experiences would you bring the egyptian who do have the talent and expertise and they stay for two weeks to um like mingle with foreign entrepreneurs and to understand the qualities by which they work like i know lots of egyptians who started working at the age of 18 with foreign entrepreneurs and after four years they cannot relate to the egyptian market so it’s about the experience and the standards by which you get used to work so if you start working according to a specific standard of service it’s going to be very difficult for you to downgrade so if we benchmark the service culture and the ability to market and promote by offering training and coaching experiences for egyptians working on knowledge economy and offering them the opportunity for actual real experience and projects through which they can actually start benchmarking themselves to a specific standard so these are the the two ways to like enhance the likelihood of the knowledge economy and knowledge entrepreneurs in egypt to offer service globally now as an entrepreneurship expert to ex to what extent have you worked on these new projects or initiatives yeah i think like because these already are initiatives that’s happening in egypt so i get i get the chance to get in in direct contact with all these initiatives and what i can see is it because it depends on a specific individual that is usually the financial risk and lots of efforts that’s actually in the weight of a single individual so there is no structure to what’s happening it’s just an individual initiatives and it comes with challenges so for example if business is not big enough you’re gonna have to move to uh to another area so there’s a shift in location one thing that’s happened is that the german lady wanted to take a one-month vacation she has to shut down the club because she’s in a vacation she doesn’t have a staff to manage the the club so are these are some challenges to getting these to operate to a specific standard i think if there is an investment in a company that would go there and set up some really stable clubs managed properly and it it’s uh sending consistent marketing messages to achieve this is to have companies already there to manage this and to be on permanent basis i mean not something temporary yeah and that requires investment and investment requires infrastructure so it’s about the risk like someone or a company taking the risk to go and set up something there and i think we have seen some examples for foreign entities coming to places like ilgona but i think there is a chance for other mainstream areas or much more like areas like dahab and other uh destinations this was my coming question regarding the destinations regarding the touristic locations in which you see a lot of potentials are there and just waiting for someone to discover them yeah i think dab is it comes on top of the list because like maybe because it’s my personal favorite but also it attracts a type of character that’s um in a knowledge economy and they’re actually looking to relax and stay in the long term so if you go to the hub you’re going to find lots of like foreigners who are staying there for six months for a year for three years sometimes so these people come and they don’t actually settle down in the town of dahab and i think that’s provides an opportunity to build the um what we talked about in terms of the service culture um the infrastructure necessary for them uh to settle there and accordingly build a momentum and build an environment that supports uh business locally and globally now i’m quite interested in what you were talking about that german club for instance now you’re saying that she’s offering them services online so are they doing services that takes place in egypt or are they just visiting and they are just checking on their business abroad because what no it’s it’s mainly the internet so that will be um not like an industry or investing within the country itself it’s not like importing exporting or or or having a solid project in egypt so i’d like to understand more like is it just facilitating them to run their personal business abroad or is it creating businesses within the country itself actually it could go both ways i think for the time being because they are visiting mostly they are working on their own businesses and if you look at it what do people do in companies in any type of business you’re going to find like like 60 80 depending on the company is something that’s to be done online and most of those who come as individuals they usually have their own websites and they are selling products and services online which is actually a huge industry we have seen recently in the region some billion dollar investments in like e-commerce websites so these entrepreneurs are running these type of businesses it doesn’t have to be a small business they could be on a laptop you’re going to see them on a laptop and actually it’s a huge business online so most of them actually work within the industry of technology and internet business and knowledge economy so these are the uh industries but there’s other companies that might want to do what they call tree tree which is also a very big type of trading businesses we know the corporate training style that you go inside the company and do the the corporate training there is a new model which is retreats is that uh you could be a company in germany and you want to train five of your employees yeah and thinking thinking out of the box and so we do have much more questions but unfortunately we’re running out of time so we’re going to leave you sorry with our promise to see you again in another episode of our breakfast show mr abdullah magdy the interpreter expert we have today thank you very much for your input thank you for having me thank you very much sir and that brings us to the end of this episode of breakfast show but first of all i have to thank my colleague thank you very much nermeen thank you russia tomorrow is another day with another proof it will only online tv [Music] you
welcome back eddie viewers in this segment we are going to talk about the performance of the egyptian economy and how can business leaders how can business owners deal with the changes in exchange rate how can they adopt a new strategies to develop their business and work and to shed more light on this issue i joined here in the studio with their mr abdul maggie he is a business strategy coach good morning good morning good morning mr magdy sir how do you see the changes that occurred on the egyptian market after the liberalization of the egyptian pound and to what extent that could have an impact on the prices of commodities yeah of course i think all of us are witnessing in egypt the uh as you mentioned the devaluation of the egyptian pound as a result of like the free float that we have witnessed have affected most businesses and individuals when we look at businesses we can see that in a transportation sector in the um all sectors actually but all those relying on transportation and relying on machinery that’s being imported uh from abroad all these sectors are affected and of course as a result of the devaluation we’re expecting regular gradual increase in prices and accordingly it becomes challenging for both individuals and businesses yes so how can business owners deal with this yeah i think like um this is what we call disruption in the markets and i think for the egyptian economy we can look this on the long run from a positively positive standpoint like if the the macro economics go well as a result of the like a liberation of the egyptian pound as we mentioned like if we if business owners are able to sustain themselves and rebuild their businesses during this transition most likely economy is expected to improve in the future so the best options for the business owners right now is to revisit their strategy and to assess what they should like what is what is best for them to add to kind of reflect to this uh devaluation in egyptian pounds like some of the highlights of that and some of the actually good news for someone for some of the business owners in egypt are those who are already targeting the international market so for those who are already selling their products and services to the global market which is very active in the knowledge and the technology sector so those who have clients who are bringing already in the us dollar so um these type of businesses like they can view this as as a positive like um from the same point of the currency part and i think what could happen in the uh for egyptian businesses is to think how can we target the global markets so for all businesses across all sectors to think about first how can i sell globally because like the uh the free float means that we are closer to the global markets and we’re more competitive when it comes to the global market so whatever sector i’m at right now how can i expand my business geographically and also like in terms of the market size like for for for a business owner going through this transition it might be shocking to a lot of extent when they look to the numbers but what is advice is for them to actually look at what matters so it’s always advised to cut to the chase look at the bottom line of your business like the the volume of the business that i’m having is usually is a result of the number of clients that i’m having yes the average a sale and the frequency of sale so that’s basically by the end of the by the end of the year that’s how i calculate my profits and my revenues so as a business or owner it is if as a result of this devaluation i’m going to have to lose some clients probably i should start thinking about increasing the volume of sales that i’m having or the frequency of sales these clients are approaching me so doing the balance with these with all these variables is vital for business owners and like one of the usually highly advised exercises during these times is to visit the strategy of business owners and there are lots of tools and templates and way of thinking when it comes to how they can approach the strategy exercise and they can come up with a new strategy of their company to to be uh dealing with the new challenges and the new changes that’s happening in the market uh mr mati we have to mention here that during the past three days akhbar yum was holding its conference its economic conference with the challenge uh to face the challenges that egypt are facing concerning the economy the way to the future the breakthroughs and challenges at what extent uh this uh conference could be tackling the main problems that the egyptian economy is facing yeah i think like lots of uh conferences and events i think it’s uh it’s a very good investment of time for business owners to be part of such conferences and events because like the biggest threat for business owners during a time like that is for them to kind of uh look at things uh internally try to analyze things from sources like what’s being said the hive so going to these events and actually knowing what experts are saying and knowing also the options that they have that’s is a very positive action for business owners to take and usually during these conferences there’s lots of actual numbers and statistics being shared which actually makes the decision the decisions taken by business owners uh more to the point and and most likely to come up with better results for their business so to atex and the imf fund will uh give the egyptian economy a boost at this stage yeah i think like when we look at it from the the finances standpoint from a macroeconomic perspective we would say that this is a positive sign so egypt was able to attract external funding uh from imf which gives other investors the confidence to start economic activities in egypt so we can look at it as a positive uh like point on the short and medium term and hopefully um like that’s that’s quite a work when it when it comes to macroeconomics we hope it’s going to be like a shock for the economy to recover and as i said it becomes the rule of the private sector to rework their strategies and to find the best ways and the most efficient ways for them to run their business i think right now is a time for efficiency so in order for businesses to survive and flourish we have to work internally of how to like focus on what matters to them choose what to do what what to do and what not to do probably they might choose to close parts of their business or be new ones so it’s uh it’s time for change that requires lots of focused studies and some quite hard decisions as well uh mr mcd to what extent it’s time now to encourage the young entrepreneurs to enter the market of uh egypt yeah i think it’s not just for those who kind of call themselves entrepreneurs already and i think right now is an interesting time for everyone who’s looking to increase their income to look for other ways for them to increase their income and i think what had been happening around the world in the past 10 years is that lots of people have been moving to running virtual businesses so starting businesses on the internet around something they are proficient at getting that to other people coaching them and providing different types of like consulting coaching and probably uh speaking services so we think this model fits lots of expediency professionals in egypt and we have seen lots of people who are not like addressing themselves entrepreneurs moving into offering products and services online which i think that’s going to be a very interesting trend because for them also they are able to access global markets and like for this category of people who are who do have a focus to scale or or talent in something specifically that they can either educated online or coach other people um i think they have to benchmark themselves according to the global standards so they have to look at who’s best in the world in this matter to learn from them but not locally so they have to be thinking globally when it comes to benchmarking their scale because by the end of the day that’s going to be their markets and also they have to think intelligently when it comes to marketing and innovation so like relying heavily on digital marketing and also having lots of innovation in the way they package their products and services so it’s a very interesting time for those who are jumping into targeting global markets as entrepreneurs this might be challenging times for those addressing the local markets uh but i think it’s an interesting time for existing businesses to move into the global markets and also for those who are regularly probably employed to start like a side project also targeting the global market and what’s your advice to egyptian citizens at this stage yeah i think for egyptian citizens i think what’s happening right now is that we’re moving we’re becoming more open to to the world and i think the world um things according to a concept of individual capitalism which i think this is something that needs to be uh spread and educated for young egyptians specifically yes and um like individual capitalism is that an individual looks to themselves as an asset so myself the way i speak even my face my skills and abilities these are assets that i should monetize in the market so it doesn’t become that i’m searching for an employment opportunity but rather i’m investing in my knowledge on my skills and my abilities in order to be able to solve problems and then using myself my assets as the way for me to make money in the world so looking at yourself from this perspective i think it’s challenging according to the culture because like we we always like like look up to employment and multinational companies but i think we need to be talking to younger egyptians that it’s time for you to consider individual capitalism is to analyze your skills your abilities and to think that i’m going to monetize these abilities maybe sometimes by employment maybe sometimes through working as a consultant maybe sometime through starting an online business yes so it becomes you have to be more creative exactly it’s about innovation and creativity and also the way of thinking that i’m not searching for a job yes but rather i’m developing my skills in order to be able to solve problems that’s going to help someone else so i’m going to be driving economic value as a participant in a global economy and strata would take it from here not searching for a job because unfortunately many youngsters many people are complaining because of the unemployment and yet they are uh sitting at home just sending it to their cvs and waiting for the job i think the the the world market has changed now people are uh do uh have their own ideas young entrepreneurs entering the market so how can we change that concept of just sitting at home waiting for the job opportunity to come yeah i think some of the things that i personally was witnessing in the past years and i think also if we take a tour around egyptian universities we’re going to see lots of student organizations and student activities that’s promoting the concept of entrepreneurship and like matching the students with the knowledge and abilities and access to equip themselves incubators in order to help the the young entrepreneurs to enter the market exactly that’s that’s an extra step for them to be providing systemic programs to help them to start their businesses i think the culture plays a major role which is which becomes also the responsibility of the media and also for universities to start focusing beside the academic component and to spreading the concept of entrepreneurship and opening up to global markets and getting people to think about what can we do to monetize even during the time their studies so having more like market oriented education system i think um all that might provide better economic opportunities for egypt because the challenge economically and the value of the egyptian pounds by the end of the day depends on the level of productivity in the economy and the contribution of egyptians in the economy and we’re soon having 100 million egyptians and if we think that they’re going to become like a combatant globally and they will be able to provide products and services online that’s going to be a huge economic contribution and accordingly we can see the egyptian pounds uh increasing in value in in relation to other currencies so um do you think that the egyptian market is now more attractive to investors than before i think from one angle i can say yes so uh with the devaluation of the egyptian pounds it becomes cheap so current code cheap it’s uh actually actually it’s it’s not cheap the egyptian that do you mean the dollar the egyptian pound yeah i mean if i if i used to if i’m investing like a million dollars so it’s an incentive yeah for things to to a lot of extent it’s an incentive for them because uh like um i mean the chief becomes the labor and yeah yeah with the evaluation of the currency it becomes cheaper for those so one side and also we don’t have two parallel markets which is uh more important we don’t have two markets for the dollars it’s only the bank now yeah i think like um like the more this like dollars become available in the banks i think the more it becomes more attractive to um like investors and businesses to operate and give them confidence in the direction of the economy yes so definitely it becomes egypt egypt becomes attractive to uh foreign investors with the imf loan and also with other economic activities that uh that’s starting to show up but becomes a responsibility also for individuals and i think like um if individuals are able to understand this properly and to work with it by offering products and services globally i think that’s uh that’s a way to recovery for the egyptian economy do you expect now investors would start to come to the egypt more after the liberalization of the uh there are there are other important variables but possibly yes in comparison to before the decision after the decision it’s more likely for them to consider that given some of the variables yeah indeed mr abdul maddy business strategy coach thank you very much sir for your precious interest thank you thanks a lot thank you mr mcd and now dear viewers uh we come to the end of today’s edition of the breakfast church i’d like to thank my dear friend majesty robia and thank you very much our view viewers tomorrow we will be back with another crew with the breakfast show till then um [Music]
be talking on the second segment of the show on the effect of new technologies and advanced technologies and accomplishing business in egypt and worldwide of course we will be talking about youth entrepreneurship and how can they accomplish business using the different applications and specified or made for this uh special target and we also be using talking about using internet mobiles even the social media to accomplish business and on this issue we’re glad to be joined by mr abraham entrepreneurship and expert on smes thank you for joining us and good morning
thank you for having me thank you good morning mr dr abdulrahman and let’s first uh talk about the effect of what you’re doing on entrepreneurship and how could it be able to be pushing business uh climate in any country yeah i think what are we talking about when it comes to technology and how technology disrupting the business i think like in the recent years we all see how fast technology is evolving so it’s just a matter of years and technology are being turned around and people have to update their software and change their hardware and also like the vast growth of the internet and in the best decade that makes things evolving very very fast and i think when we talk about either starting a new business or existing businesses this evolution of technology and this rapid change in technology will have to affect the way business is conducting is being conducted and we can look at this from an entrepreneur as people who are starting new businesses they have to take into consideration the utilization tools and the potential customer base that’s using this technology if we can look at like businesses like the car sharing apps like um different type of applications that reporting traffic like using events we can see lots of successful examples that’s utilizing the um active users on the internet and if we look at industries especially in the us for example there’s a massive technology industry that takes advantage of the availability of users on internet for e-commerce or different types of applications like ending with the application uh pokemon go even like it’s uh it’s an old game that was brought back as a mobile application and increased the valuation of the company by almost nine billion dollars so all these are ways in which technology is changing the business sphere right uh what about the you’ve just mentioned the different applications used specifically for watching business would you tell us more in detail so what types of applications are used to accomplish business definitely i think it’s uh starting from the business creation process i think if you’re doing planning for your business you will find different tools that’s currently available that can help you plan ahead for your business like even developing a business strategy uh hiring you can use internet for hiring you can use accounting softwares online accounting softwares to manage your accounts you can use um like different websites with which is going to send you some knowledge about your industry updates about what’s happening with your industry you can use what we call the crm or customer relation management tools which that you can have all your customers in a single tool and you can even like connect the records to the internet so you can look at their twitter stream their facebook profiles what they are sharing online so all these are different set of tools that businesses can use today in order to enhance their knowledge and awareness about their clients and also save a lot of coasts and have much more efficiency in the way they conduct business right uh what are the challenges that are meeting interpretership here in cairo from your own perspective if we’re talking about entrepreneurship we’re just starting new businesses we’re going to see that like technology makes it easy but in order for you to kind of move move ahead you have to have the right to bring the right talent into building the right software tools or technology tools and i think like the funding space in egypt did not mature to the um to the needed maturity level for entrepreneurs to be able to kind of graduate um world-class applications and world-class uh software and technologies so in terms of developing new technologies it’s still challenging to write to find the right like funding sources for that so lots of egyptian entrepreneurs and companies who start in cairo and find some success or potential we receive funding from outside each when we have to relocate either to the gcc or to the u.s to further invest in building their technologies and eventually it becomes um like a a company founded by egyptian but it’s not an egyptian company so um the challenge of the funding the challenge also the market itself is that the user days in egypt egyptians and the region the use of technology did not mature that much yet the use of online payment is not that popular so all these are challenging challenges in accessing the user base in egypt and monetizing that so usually the talent front and development of technology for entrepreneurs and also the customer base for them and utilization of online payments these are the two sided challenges that usually technology entrepreneurs face right as an entrepreneurship expert how do you think we can or the government maybe can help the youth in establishing small businesses of course we’re talking here about smes or small and medium enterprises how can the government support this yeah i think like if we look at different um environments and how the evolution of small medium enterprises and startups has happened i think there was a little intervention from the government where only like the green light which i see that in egypt the government is doing some efforts when it comes to different entities like etida for example it’s a it’s an entity by the government by the ministry of communication information technology it’s specialized in helping small medium enterprises in a technology space and also there is a subdivision called teak or technology innovation and entrepreneurship center which is also specialized in helping entrepreneurs so these are government entities um that’s working with entrepreneurs i think like there has to be a different way to look at the industry because most of the government decision comes into building um real estate building hubs and and i think we need investments more in the mines and investing more into the culture of utilizing technology looking at very seriously at online payments so things that goes into the routes like online payments and like investing in the talent i think these would be more valuable um beside the investment in real estate and the major projects tell me exactly what do you do in your office i mean uh telling you to project and how important is it in that field or that medium yeah for us we’re specializing in helping entrepreneurs so like usually entrepreneurs find us by searching on google searching for egyptian entrepreneurs or startups usually land on our website and then they register and they send us their problems or they send us what do you want to accomplish so what we do is that we analyze the profiles of these entrepreneurs and we categorize them as well we can see that there are startups there’s high growth companies usually started by people with experience in technology or having someone who’s experienced in technology on board who want to scale very fast so these are fast growth companies that’s called startups there are others that’s small and medium enterprises companies that existed in the past five years they’re already very stable they have a number of employees and things have been moving steadily and usually these are looking for how to use technology to grow our business so the challenge for the first segment is how do we build our business based on technology and and kind of utilize technology as a platform the small medium enterprise which i think is going to be the vast majority of egyptian entrepreneurs they are running small medium enterprises stable yet small companies that wants to utilize technology to scale its operation which i think that’s where the majority of work is being done is that facilitating access to advanced technology to small medium enterprises so our mission is usually how do we bring the best available technologies to egyptian small medium enterprises there are some very interesting business models that make the investment and technology early on for businesses very small for example you can subscribe to a tool for your accounting needs and you can do this by paying a monthly subscription so it’s a pay-as-you-go basis um these are type of private uh companies private business companies support giving this this support this yes right of course there’s a lot of obstacles hindering small and medium enterprises in egypt up till now what are the major obstacles and how can we overcome them yeah i think like to distinguish also between the startups and the small and medium enterprises serves that they be young fast growth companies they have their own set of challenges and also smes do have their own challenges i think if we if we look at the uh the positive side i think ceremonial enterprises needs it we need to look at their structures and we need to kind of advance the business knowledge to kind of manage the business more professionally and firmly and like above all looking at the business opportunities differently so having the the knowledge of business strategy and understanding where the market is going and how to shift towards that so i think um like evolving a small business into a dynamic evolving environment changing the market and changing with the technology and that’s where the opportunities lies for a majority of these small businesses of course there will be challenges when it comes to funding do you want to scale their operation and you want to like find external funding there are some challenges there there are challenges in finding and retaining the right talent for them so all these are challenges that exist for small medium enterprises but we look at if things are going well on the technology in an innovation market front you’re going to always find a solution to these kind of challenges right mr abdulrahman magdie entrepreneurship expert many thanks for joining us sir thank you thank you for coming and i guess this brings us to the end of this edition of the breakfast show my name is tina and all the pleasure to have with me ramsey for saturday morning partners until we see you again tomorrow have a great day [Music]
welcome back and it’s time for our first segment here on breakfast show and today we will be talking about youth and entrepreneurship and means of helping them in starting a new business in terms of labor marketing as well as the various improvements that could be added to their business and economic empowerment and joining us right now in the studio to shed more light on that topic is mr abdulrahman maggie is a writer as well as an entrepreneur expert welcome with us and good morning
good morning it’s a pleasure to be here good morning now let’s start by defining uh what is entrepreneurship because so many people don’t really understand the definition how would you define it to us yeah entrepreneurship is defined as the practice and the skill set needed for people who want to start and grow their own businesses so the word entrepreneur it comes from the French and it actually into two uh segments which are the ones who start enterprises or the ones who start companies yes and um like even like one of the things that we did we tried to figure out in the Arabic culture an Arabic word that corresponds to entrepreneurship and we couldn’t get any close to that but uh i mean like there are some words that expresses being self-reliant and dependent and the ability to build things in your own so entrepreneurship is the practice of building businesses
okay mr abdulrahman now in terms of our youth how can we help them sort of business especially that usually they have a low budget
yeah i think the good thing is that startup entrepreneurs usually start with a very low budget and i think the good thing also that we can look at most of the successive stories that’s very popular around the world globally and also in Egypt because like in the recent year we started having some local success stories as well if you look at the Microsoft the apple all these companies we know that they start in the garage so the good thing about entrepreneurship is that you can start from anywhere and it becomes a matter of the skill sets and the ability to build move step by step to be able to build and scale the business so for Egyptian youth the good news is and now we have the internet now we have like changes in the structure of how business is being conducted now we have more openness from the bigger business historic with the smaller businesses and now we have like smaller opportunities exist exists in uh in the market which entrepreneurs can take advantage of of course it’s not an easy process there is lots of steps and lots of challenges along the way but we can say that the opportunity exists for those who can get themselves involved with the network because if we talk about it step by step if i get the idea or i have the passion or i have the dream to start my own business first thing i need to do is that i need to hang out with the people who are starting their businesses so if i have to find if i’m an egyptian youth and i want to start my own business i have to find where are the people who are starting their businesses hang out yes and you can find lots of events lots of clubs or you can join other youth for starting your own businesses online of course yes online and offline there’s lots of events taking places there’s lots of hubs that’s starting that’s called startups and like if you use uh even like google you can figure out some of these hubs that exists in in Cairo and also in other governorates around Egypt so if you hang out with the right group of people already starting their own businesses you will be involved with the events the right events that will equip you with the skills with the network and then you have to get the idea once you have a solid idea that actually touches your own passion by then you can really start taking the first step uh searching for your co-founders the guys or the girls that I’m gonna start the business with i kind of start assessing the financials i can start looking at building my marketing plan and my business plan probably i would need funding i would like to hire a couple of people get my first office scale get my first client and keep moving until i able to expand a business and the good thing is that if you look at the past five years there are at least four egyptian companies that were able to raise funds from outside egypt in more than one million dollars so egyptian youth who started businesses in the past five years they were able to get external funding of the amount of i mean external funding like international funding from major investment companies in the uk in europe and even in the u.s these egyptian entrepreneurs they just they were just like me and you and they uh they started up the exact same way that i just told you hanging out with the right crowd uh like being open to learn new skills engage with the right crowd work an idea be flexible to pivot and change the direction and by carrying all these steps and enjoying the process eventually we’ll be able to build and scale a great company
okay perhaps what distinguishes startups from other types of business is that you can cut down the number of staff and you can actually start up on your own and i have seen personally so many people who started just on their own and they started their online business and that was what distinguished them from from other types of business for example i’ve seen people working in the field of jewelry making jewelry and marketing their jewelry uh online so uh how do you see the what characterizes uh entrepreneurship from other types of business
I like to define is entrepreneurship i like to say that entrepreneurship is is a quite a generic word for people who want to start their businesses but there are different types of businesses okay there’s a lifestyle business and there’s a startup business so a lifestyle business is something that depends on my own lifestyle if I’m a jewelry designer for example and i think that um i used to work at a specific shop and I want to start my own business and the way I think about this and by the end of the day what distinguishes a lifestyle business from a startup business is how I think about it I might have the attitude is that i want to just build this as my own business so other than giving my time for employment I’m going to work in this business and keep it a small business to a lot of extent have my own job and this is going to be my lifestyle business on the other hand startup business is something that i design for growth so start usually have innovation lots of innovation and have massive potential so in the lifestyle business I’m gonna design like five pieces and sell it per month and I’m gonna make x amount of money and that’s how I think about it for the next five years for a startup business i would like to write down the process of designing the jewelry and i want to organize the production line of the jewelry and i want to scale this globally i want to sell all around the world and i have no ceiling to the amount that I would like to to sell so these are some of the decisions that entrepreneurs have to take early on would i like would i like to go for a lifestyle business or what would i like to do for a startup business um actually both can be started in a low budget uh but startups would require more effort would require more knowledge and also require external capital because eventually even if i start with two employees and i proved the concept so i built a product for example a technology product a product where people can purchase um like anything online for example and by then i started with with two people two employees and i arrived at the area that there is demand that i have to scale and i have delivery to handle so then i need external funding so startups requires external funding it needs lots of other different types of support so startups is high growth and this might not be suitable for everybody because it’s quite challenging a lifestyle business on the other hand and like one of the things that i see and actually lots of ladies for that is that especially ladies they get into the lifestyle business and they do excellent and some of them actually scale this and make it much more bigger businesses so um a lifetime even more convenient for women who have children who are working on other jobs for example unions especially i mean stay-at-home moms yes or usually are not employed we usually start lots of them in Egypt right now they are starting lifestyle businesses and they’re even even to shift and to scale these businesses like and also um ladies are also starting startup businesses there are some like some of the best startups in Egypt are actually started and led uh by ladies as well so it’s like a decision that you have to take when i go for a lifestyle or go for a startup um and actually i can shift i can start as a lifestyle lifestyle and then i shift at the right moment into this is a startup I’m going to open up I’m going to hire people and by then i decide to get myself out of the process and just oversee and design the process and make sure we’re able to grow tremendously now in terms of the startup business these they need as you said external finance and although recently like during this month there were a lot of inter and advertisement from certain national banks that encouraging the use come and do your own startup business and we’ll finance you but still do you feel that the banks in Egypt especially the interest rate is really helping the youth in terms of taking a loan and starting their own business because usually the interest rate is quite high well like i know about the initiatives of lowering the interest rate to five percent which is an interesting initiative but i think that that would go for more established businesses because the banking sector do have requirements and these requirements are not fit for someone who’s just starting a business so you need like they’re going to be requested at least three years of fully furnished accounting which is not gonna be available for a company that’s just starting out so there are some complexities that comes into that like dealing with banks and also banks are risk sensitive um so it just makes the startup the early stage businesses are not very favorable choice for them to get involved with but the good thing is that this startup in industry actually there’s especially in the us there’s which is something also that’s arriving in Egypt like quite slowly but it’s it is starting to evolve with time there is a finance industry that works in a startups there is a venture capital this is an industry that’s specialized in hunting the ideas that would have a potential for growth that things like Facebook things like all these small businesses that have the potential to grow these investors would be able to kind of invest a hundred thousand US dollars today and probably in six months this hundred thousand would become a one million dollars or 10 million dollars and in some cases can like get a 1000 x if the company is successful and growing properly so probably if we want to look at this strategically we would look at the possibility of finding the right investment vehicles for this startup stage because it requires a different mentality a different risk appetite and around the world the tools that entrepreneurs can use to develop and grow their businesses have been emerging and the biggest trend right now which I think is suitable to the Egyptian mentality is the crowd funding which is basically that you can submit your idea and you can allow other people to invest in your business so I think this is an excellent opportunity for Egyptians because lots of Egyptians would have a small amount of capital we usually put it in the banks or the invest in real estate if we tell them that there are existing startups that needs cash to scale and these actually are highly qualified individuals running these startups and they have been doing this for three five years and right now they need five hundred thousand Egyptian pounds and the potential for them in two years to reach this amount and you can actually each contribute like 20,000 pounds or 100,000 pounds and you own an equity in this company so like potentially a tool like that would allow entrepreneurs in Egypt and would give them access to something that would like help them source the the right capital for their companies and also with given an alternative investment opportunities to those with a small amount of capital would like to invest so I think when it comes to the banking sector maybe if we think about it differently of empowering the emerging vehicles for investing in startups and small businesses this might be a good option because I’m not sure how the banking sector would get into investing in startups even like this didn’t happen in the U.S. this didn’t happen like in a lot of other countries around the world the banks are still very risk sensitive so you usually do not engage in a very early stage of start-ups
okay how do you see entrepreneurship when it comes to affecting the egyptian economy ?
well i think to be honest i think that’s how like where the egyptian economy should be going and it should be going way more stronger because if you look at egypt like you have like a youthful huge youth population these youth population they are mostly graduating from university universities they are highly skilled uh they are very ambitious they are very well connected with the rest of the world in social media and they are very good at using technologies they they speak foreign languages so they become a very very important and strategic asset that can actually build businesses to sell products and services all around the world so right now there are the business models that allows building businesses that works on the internet or even like that uses the internet as a marketing channel for the products and services so i think if we look at the egyptian economy and if we look at the youth and the potential that start-ups would happen and actually around the region we have examples of countries that was able to create what they call the startup nation is that like the whole university all those graduating they are actually starting businesses so they are not the graduation projects for example becomes an actual business and we have some successful stories of egyptians who actually took their graduation project into becoming an actual business so i think if we want if you want to think about the egyptian economy strategically given also the huge youth population that we have we say that it becomes a startup nation let’s go for a startup nation model we want to empower these young people we would like to give them access to the knowledge to the tools to the network and we would like to evolve lots of startups that would be able to kind of um contribute to advancing egypt itself and also be able to sell and create economic value for the global economy and all around the world now what about the challenges facing young entrepreneurs in egypt well there are plenty of that and i would say that uh challenges are different from the step in which the business is is emerging um so there are like one challenge that has to do with the experience and knowledge is that to a lot of extent the idea of starting your own business and a scalable business it’s not something that’s uh that’s very popular i mean like we have the understanding of the classic business model of starting a shop starting like a small business in a in a cookie-cutter way that’s something that you really know how it works but it’s trying an innovative business with the potential to fail um i think we there’s a lot of learning when it comes to understanding the tools and the attitude about going into that there are some cultural problems also to be honest like given what we talked about is that we’re not used to this type of business so when someone really say that i’m innovative and i’m starting a new business to do something we’re ever heard about so usually there’s attitude okay okay good luck but there is uh to a lot of extent lack of belief people are not going to put their their money into these businesses so like um like understanding that innovation or something with potential this is also leaves quite a cultural challenge as we move forward we could find uh probably a challenge when it comes to the funding is that if i built a business and i need um to bump in more capital right now to scale the business i think that the options are very very limited at the current point in time so lots of lots of these startups they have to offer services rely on their cash flow to finance their expansion which is a very exhausting process and lots of worthy startups and worthy companies that could scale otherwise with external capital it has to provide services that’s not in the core to be able to attract the capital so all these are challenges and i think it becomes a matter of maturing and and here become comes the endurance part i think there are some very very interesting stories for the ones who were able to make it of how they actually went through downsizing like some of the success stories that exists right now some of them went into 70 downsizing so if they had a team of 20 they ended up just they lost most of their team and they ended up like small group and most likely they had like delays and uh and their salaries and lots of lots of challenges um but they went through that so they learned how to go through that another part is the flexibility of pivoting okay i was intending to do that but all right let’s say that this didn’t work so now like i say that this is uh we have the stigma around failure but so for me to convince that this didn’t work probably it might seem like i’m saying that i was not uh i was not smart enough at the beginning so like but to me for me to have the courage to say that this didn’t work it’s time to visit and also to communicate this to the team around me and to even the parents everyone who’s looking at the startup to do this pivot also this becomes quite like a sharp change um so all these are challenges but it comes down to the tense and endurance of the entrepreneurs are starting to process okay since we are running out of time i have just one final question for you if you would like to answer it briefly you touched on a very important issue which is funding perhaps this is an essential issue when it comes to entrepreneurship how would young entrepreneurs convince investors with their ideas oh um the good thing is that i’m writing a book about that i’m writing a small book about that and um like i think it comes down to a core belief in what they are doing understanding of what investors are looking for because you have to look at it from an investor standpoint an investor would like to put right now ten thousand pounds in one year it’s gonna be a hundred thousand so an investor someone who puts ten thousand and it gets ten percent of the company after a year the ten percent of the company right now equals hundred thousand so that’s what he’s thinking about that one challenge is that entrepreneurs usually get there with the attitude is that this is my i’m passionate about i’m gonna talk to you about myself and my ideas and what you’re doing you have to think about it from the perspective of investors is that i’m going to give you a stake in this company and this company to have the potential to grow and in order for them to be able to communicate that there are some hard scales and there are some soft skills the hard skills comes into understanding the potential for scale the potential for growth and being able to calculate and and kind of um do this properly and on the other hand he has to communicate this and have the charisma to convince the investors that i am the qualified entrepreneur to tap into this market opportunity and to scale this company so i think with the balance of the hard skills and the softer skills if i’m convincing right convincing you right now with the facts and figures and you see that i’m qualified enough most likely you’re going to put money on the table so a balance between both of that that’s that’s usually what gets entrepreneurs to respond to formula of success
yeah okay mr abdulrahman meghdi water an entrepreneur uh entrepreneur and expert uh thank you very much for shedding light on this very important topic and coming today thank you very much
thank you well indeed thank you
Tech Entrepreneur, engineer, teacher and researcher.
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