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THE INTERVIEW: We are extremely pleased to have this opportunity to interview you Nadim and share your knowledge, experience & insights with the GallantCEO audience.
We always begin with a little introduction!
Please tell our audience a bit about yourself and your company.
My new business makes AI Advertising to unlock value in ‘backlist’ products that previously could not afford publicity. It’s a way of technology helping the Davids take on the Goliaths. I’ve always liked the new, the ones in the shadows hoping for the light, the innovators rather than the establishment. I like origination so much more than mere iteration.
I’ve had a lifetime of being fascinated by people and what makes them tick, from initially studying Philosophy and Psychology to building market research businesses, developing an island into the anchor of a whiskey, food, and music business, harnessing AI to manage brands, and now, to employing the latest in AI to build advertising that can bring the hidden jewels of human endeavour and creativity into the limelight…I love figuring out what we do what we do and like what we like!
2021 and 2022 has been a tough year for businesses around the globe.
In your experience…
How businesses prosper in 2023?
I think ‘The Pandemic’ mainly reinforced the need for focus. We need to be listening carefully to people’s needs, being creative about offering them new solutions that might answer an unexpressed need and being flexible in accommodating change forced upon us all by circumstances. This is always true, but Covid made us really sit up and think – it was an abrupt interruption of ‘just carrying on’ and caused to re-evaluate a great many dimensions in our life.
Strangely, I found it all very liberating, at least intellectually, and I think we have been reminded to do what we do, as well as we can, and to be humble about our place in the world.
The economy has been turned on its head in the wake of the pandemic.
What should businesses focus on in 2023?
I’ve seen the focus shift so abruptly and mercilessly, from Growth to Efficiency to Profitability to Immediacy. You must know how to make money quickly, repeatably, and predictably. And now!
Many businesses went from working in the office to working at home.
What are the pros & cons of working from home?
Working from home is wonderful for comfort, time-saving, and being able to be productive for a longer span of the day while incorporating the things one likes to do at home. But that’s for those who have homes that can accommodate work without intruding on life, and that is not the case for many. For some, working from home is a miserable incarceration and we must respect the need to give people we work with space to be their work-selves too.
For most of us, there’s a need to be with others, to create and iterate, to feel affirmation, to be lifted in spirit and generally to feel alive and sociable. A sensitive blend of work from home and work together (in an office or elsewhere) is best.
The war between Russia and Ukraine has caused a rising effect on inflation…
How can business owners combat the rise of inflation and what have you done to combat inflation?
When you have food and energy prices rising at a rapid pace, to levels far beyond those to which we’ve become accustomed, it’s hard to ‘dictate’ that wages should not rise to cope with them. So the only real impact that can be made by a business is to make itself as efficient as possible, so that it uses its capital as frugally as possible, employing leaner technologies and processes. It’s a good time to look at your ‘productivity stack’ and make it as spartan as you can.
In the last 5 years, we have seen the rise of Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, NFTs, Digital Marketing, and many more!
What do you think will impact the world most in regard to online selling?
The advent of large language models in AI, to analyse and evaluate opportunities, and of generative tech to produce assets employable by marketing, changes the way ‘online selling’ will look forever. It’ll be far more efficient, focused, and relevant, making businesses more profitable and people more fulfilled. It’s a very exciting time. We are disrupting a huge industry that has long moaned of having a broken model – well, the time has certainly come for a fix and we’re excited to be leading it.
On a more subtle note!
If you could have dinner with three people, dead or alive who would it be and why?
A cruel person. I want to learn what drives them so that I can find a way to act as an obstacle to cruelty, which I hate.
A kind person. I want to understand what a commitment to compassion and charitableness looks like throughout life.
A very funny person. There really is nothing as invigorating and joyous as uncontrollable laughter and it’s truly amongst the best and most efficient spirit-lifters there is.
Reading is still one of the most popular ways to learn anything.
What is your most recommended book(s) by who and what did you learn from them?
Our business brings ‘backlist’ things into the limelight – things which could not previously afford to be publicised can now come readily into the public mind. It’s so exciting. And this really does apply to books, where there are millions of authors who have penned beautiful jewels of literary brilliance, never to glint in the reader’s mind.
It doesn’t always end well, of course! I recently read a book called ‘The Last Opium Den’ because it’s always held a fascination for me, and I don’t quite understand how, as a product, that industry just died, replaced by other even more egregious and damaging drugs. It was a disappointing read, where the author got in the way of the story with too much fancy writing and self-righteousness.
I like books that show me into people’s minds and thankfully, there’s an endless supply of great books and great minds.
What is your purpose for getting out of bed each day and what do you aim to achieve in the future?
As a business leader, it’s always pleasing to end the day feeling my efforts have that day improved the business. You have to have conviction in what you do, remorseless energy, and relentless commitment if you want to make something work.
I always build businesses and I’m less motivated when they’re truly successful and simply need more and more administration. I like to invent and make things. I prefer to originate, not iterate.
As a person, I realised that an average life has 28000 days. It’s really not that many! So I do try to ensure that each day has something that makes me feel a little more fulfilled and glad to be alive.
