Ideas Alone Won't Make You Succeed, with Dr Yasser Zaki

Yasazaki Tom Hitchcock, how are you? Very good, thank you. Some time now speak, I think last time I was talking to you was in London, I was getting you into West Ham United and you were living your best life. How were your travels? It was really good, I did have a bit of a travel to some of our international offices and thank you for the game, that was an awesome game. I had a really good time. But yeah, I know, I travel quite a bit and it’s not as exciting as it sounds, but I do tend to meet very exciting people and very interesting people and I always enjoy that. You share some stories with me already of some of the people that you rub shoulders with. I know you’ve had lunch with the Queen.

I know you’ve met repeatedly at Neckar Island, Richard Branson, so I’m sure we’re going to touch on some of those in this conversation. What I really want to get into here, Yasa, is I want to get to know younger Yasa. I want to know who you were before you started ticking off some accolades in your later life. And really understand the side of you which people do not know. Okay. And really where you come from, what sort of made you who you are today. All right, so what’s the origin story of Yasser?

I grew up in Egypt until high school and I was the active kid in the family. So I was always like playing on the streets, playing sports, running around, just non-stop. And my family are generally quite placid and quiet and there, but I wasn’t a quiet kid in the family. As I went into sports, I played basketball and that was a big part of my life. And it changed a lot of my mindset because as we were growing younger, smoking was a thing. I didn’t smoke because of sports.

And that was quite important. It reflected a lot of positivity in my life that today I appreciate. Back then it was like challenging because you want to go out with the cool guys and you want to do all the fun stuff that sport did hold me back from doing a lot of these things, which today I appreciate quite a lot.

As I grew into university, I always wanted to pay things for myself. I had a thing was taken from my dad. And culturally, it’s natural that your dad pays everything until you finish high school, until you finish sorry university. So you would pay the uni, you pay the accommodation, you buy the car, you would do all that kind of stuff as much as he can afford. And that’s natural, but for me, I was like, no, I don’t mind that to pay anything. I wanted to do everything myself. So I did some side hustles and a bit of businesses here and there. I worked into RISM in my time also and ended up running quite a large business from distant management and I had a team there and that did really well.

It was important for me to be very independent. And my dad hated that because for him, he felt that his responsibility Was to look after me until I finished uni and I was like after the first year in uni I started paying my own fees started covering my own costs that kind of stuff

That’s interesting. So is it fair to say that the cultural norms in Egypt is quite patriarchal and that’s you know there’s a lot of pride in the man been able to provide and and should provide and and essentially you broke the norm by with some self, some independence if you like. Absolutely, absolutely. It’s a thing that the father figure or the man in the house has this constant responsibility to support the family to safety. And safety for us has placed part with education. So when you finish your uni you’re ready to conquer the world. And until that point, the father, I don’t know if it’s the mother, so it’s not a male-female thing, it’s just a figure that takes control, I should say. In my family, my dad was a judge, he, and my mom is a lawyer, so it’s kind of a very legal family.

And my dad just had a bit of a status and he was in a comfortable position, so he always wanted to back that up. But for me, I was like, nah, I can do it, I can make it on my own, I can make it work and I did actually. It was quite a pleasant, but it also made me start my life very early. So I started ahead of everyone else in my family in terms of business, in terms of work, in terms of employment, in terms of when I was working, when I was studying, none of my brothers did that.

I’m sorry to hone in on this. So your father, was he a businessman himself? No, no, he understood business quite well. And he was a good sounding voice in my life in multiple situations. But he wasn’t particularly only business. Even though he was very smart in business I have to say. Because he had a lot of exposure to businesses, being a judge. But a lot of the job of a judge is more unemployment, set income, status, that kind of stuff. So I’m just trying to understand culture then in Egypt. Okay, you as an innate entrepreneur, we see them on one, that’s why we levitate to each other and we’ve got a little tribe of people that do the same things, think the same things and never switch off. Okay, that’s our weakness if you like. But is it in Egypt, is it less common or harder to lean into or is it not something that’s nurtured or accepted as much as it is elsewhere? No I wouldn’t say that the fact of life is most people I talk to want to do businesses right it doesn’t mean everyone does and doesn’t mean everyone succeeds you know but everyone has the intention of somehow running a business right and but some get into comfort zone and get content with what they had and some don’t in Egypt because it’s 100, it’s over 100 million people.

All right. When I was growing up, it was about 80 million. It’s a lot of people trying to do a lot of things in a small country with with a very striving economy at times. Population was growing significantly. So I see opportunity in that. It’s a hungry market. A lot of people see challenge in that. The problem is if you want to shine in a market that is quite evolving, quite rapidly changing very rapidly, population growing rapidly, you know, you need to do something different. And as we know in business, you have to find a problem. You have to find a solution and somehow put it together and propose it to the audience in the hopes that they will buy into your solution. That’s how you succeed in business, all right?

So the problem was there, the solution not many people worked on. I think that was the key part of the struggle. So culturally, everyone wants to do business. Every time I go to Egypt, I see every person I see with, let’s do business, let’s do business. But it’s not really a structure, right? It’s a lot easier to say than to do it. When you go into what education they have around businesses, what experience, What mentor do you have? And none of them have it. So it’s all about just ideas more than execution. And as you know, the strategies without execution is hallucination. All right, you need to know how to execute a strategy. Idea on a tone is not enough. Implementation is what makes a difference.

And you would know that very well in business. So if you don’t get in there and make it happen, it’s never gonna happen. Yeah, it’s interesting to say that. So for me, if I think about the Egyptians I know and my perception of the country itself, I imagine a lot of hustle, a lot of deal-making and breaking and all these wonderful things happening. It’s kind of got this sort of market trade to feel towards the culture, you know. but your point of ideas, goodwill and intention without action is void. That resonates completely with me. So for me personally, you know, I’m visionary as well. So it means we have ideas all the time. We see a challenge, what solution can I make it happen? Yes, I can. I don’t know.

Let’s work it out. But I hate seeing an idea go to waste. A good idea for that matter. Okay, not every idea is a great idea but it’s nice it’s nice to see them come to fruition and that’s the exciting part of business for me but in essence though you’re quite right you can’t do it all on your own we’re not all an 100% expert of everything okay we need people to challenge us we need people to hold us accountable to validate our ideas to play to our weaknesses so that our strengths can come to life, you know. And I think that’s probably what you’ve done a little bit more later on in your career and why you got the attention by some pretty significant people worldwide. I pay attention constantly, right? So I strongly believe that if I’m not paying attention if I’m not learning constantly, then I will miss an opportunity along the way.

So I work on my skill sets, but a lot because I believe if I’m not the best person for the job, I should step aside. If I’m not ready to step aside, then I’ll do everything in my power to stay relevant to the job, to be the best person for the job. And part of that job is opportunity, awareness. So when I talk with people like yourself or others, I always pay attention to ideas. I always pay attention to opportunities. And then I say, I might say that’s already for me, it’s a great idea, but it’s not for me. Or sometimes it’s for me. And I’ve had plenty of examples where I went down a road or someone just said something that said, I might, I could do something with this.

And then transform the into success. Sometimes the idea also starts somewhere else. So are you willing to be agile enough to maneuver around that change? Because I’ve seen people with these have an idea and then they hang on to the idea and then they’re flexible enough to change it. But it’s very important to understand that change the ideas could change based on your audience, your target market,

the appetite of the market. So the awareness of also the receiving party is important because it shapes our value proposition. So a lot of times when we have a business, we do market analysis, do market segmentation, find the segment we want to target, what the needs are, see if our solution is good enough and if so, we might have to change or adjust it. This process requires someone that is willing to be checked, not just put ego in the middle because ego can break ideas. Yeah, so essentially what you’re talking about there is the spirit of innovation if you like because the idea behind that is That you want to fail as quickly as possible to succeed Okay, so you can have a good idea you’d be surrounded by good people you’ve taken action one action two Now you need to have some persistence, but you need to be willing to try to break things To make it work and bring it to fruition. Okay, so obviously we know So the modern day, here we are today, you’re based in Australia, okay?

You’ve got an organisation called TLC which is predominantly in the NDIS space, okay? So a lot of people listen to this, will know it’s already, but we’ve got audience worldwide and they don’t know that. What makes you unique in the market right now, yes sir? I believe that the trickiest thing in the disability space, because our business is not only disability as you know, so we’re in a global operation, we’ve got technology, we’ve got advisory consultancy training, even food and beverage arm that employs people with disability at an open employment, open business, we’ve got travel agency that consults on accessible travel and with governments and things like that, right? So it’s very broad than just the one business. But the essence of it is one of the trickiest things in the space of the disability sector, which you are very aware of, is that historically it was very non-for-profit based mindset, right? So very social run businesses and all the CEOs were very good at the social aspect of it. Then the India ice came about and it corporatized and privatized the sector, created a consumer driven market. And that is so shift in the way that management needs to happen.

That’s when you start finding a lot of non-for-profit style going bankrupt into administration and shut down because you cannot just run from a social angle. There is an angle of business that you need to understand corporate management. And the other side of it is when you go very corporate, then you lose the touch and the care and the love for people, which is why this sector flourishes and why this industry is important. So how do you keep the balance right? That’s where it’s very rare in the sector. And I do believe I have that because I worked in corporate, I worked in business, but I also worked in the government and I worked in disability sectors and I worked in the sphere organization. I worked as a support worker myself and I worked all the way up.

I started business in Stamford in London Business School and and all these things but also started Sociology, CFO, and disability, community services, all that kind of stuff. So the balance is what’s difficult. It’s commonly would have a very corporate mindset or a very social mindset. But I do believe I do hold a reasonable balance that helped me out to shape the organization. I’ve been able to predict a lot of the changes that happen in the NGOs, which mean that we maneuver around it. simple example, the minister just recently announced that kids under nine might not be on the NGIS. We predicted that 10 years ago. We saw that the government eventually is going to do that. So we never really had a target audience around kids with autism specifically. We do support them, we do a lot of work with them, but we didn’t base the business on that because we didn’t trust that the government will honor that for life. They’re pushing back on the state government.

And having been there around the negotiations around the state government and the federal government, you could see that eventually this was a very quick check sign and then all these things will come up. So that’s where I would say it’s very unique innovation. You mentioned earlier, we’re very innovative. We don’t like to do the norm. We believe in blue ocean strategy doing things differently and delivering it differently. That was one of our biggest challenges in the NDIS world. NDIS, what would be the biggest challenge in the NDIS? In my opinion, biggest challenge in India is if you’re funded by the government you have to spend the money based on the government regulation, rightly so, and then the delivery has to be based on those checkboxes and compliance, which ultimately can limit your innovation significantly, because I give you the money, I tell you how to spend it, I tell you where to spend it. So basically when you look at 90% of providers and I do a lot of market research, 90% of providers provide pretty much the same. The amount of times I ask providers, can you tell me what’s your point of difference? And the answer is, we really care. I mean, that’s not a fault of difference. That’s a given. People that don’t care should be out of that sector. So caring is the norm.

What’s not normal is the people that don’t care. So the narrative needs to change. So when you ask about a point of difference, I need to see a blue ocean mindset. I need to see see that I do these things differently, that there was this outcome. Or I accept the fact that I accept the fact that I cannot do it differently. So I just need to do it better. I don’t say I’m different. I say, no, I provide the same as everyone else, but I pay attention to customer service, I pay attention to outcomes, I pay attention to safety, I pay attention to quality of service delivery, I pay attention to system implementation, I pay attention to my branding, my brand position, this is actually my point of difference, not the actual service that I’m delivering. Being honest and on-bar with what you’re delivering is key in any business and that’s where I see gaps in our sector because people say something that doesn’t practically align with the delivery. You can’t practically do something outside of what the NDIS tells you to do unless you do what we did. So what we did is we went out of the NDIS and started a completely self-sustainable business to be able to deliver an outcome different from what the NDIS particularly focuses on. But that means we don’t take We have to generate our own funding, we have to generate our own income, we have to generate our own revenue to run a business that can do things differently.

So you can see the difference in mindset. This is literally corporate versus social thing. Yeah, and it’s interesting to see both worlds dip into each other. I know when I first dipped a toe into the NJS, I was off the mindset of the the open market and I saw essentially businesses that have been institutionalised rapidly and couldn’t see the wood for the trees in many cases. But it also meant that we had a lot of value to enable change to better the set of circumstances if there were a business owner, a provider to be able to function a little bit more smoothly and not be in a state of overwhelm, maybe have some time left for their own family. You know, all these things but it is interesting so I do find the point of difference point is actually quite interesting because when we speak to a whole load of providers it’s pretty common that we see people have a lot of similarities and a lot of people fly the flag we’re different because we care that’s a very very common one and it’s always bothered me for two reasons one it’s a prerequisite you’re you’re in the caring industry, you just need to be of the elk, otherwise it’s not going to work. And I’ve lost a point on the second one. Yes, I have. I’ve remembered it now.

Is that they should be self aware that this is what everyone else is saying. If you know what everyone else is saying, you can’t say that’s different. Okay? It just means you’re very insular and that’s not a good somewhere. And that for me, in businesses, that flag if you’re just not aware of your own surroundings. 100%. That’s why we do comparison analysis. We don’t use the word competition in this line of work because we cannot compete on people’s lives. But understanding what the others are doing, so we can complement each other rather than just, you know, doing the same thing. But again, if we do the same thing, it’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with that. But let’s acknowledge what it is. So, before I touch on the queen, the late Queen and Richard Branson as a sign-off because I do want to touch on those I think anybody who don’t know these stories they will interest them because not everybody has the privilege of meeting these people or spending time with them but before we do that what’s what’ve we got in the future coming up for Yassar what we got you know maybe in a year’s time five years time what you know if you’re looking far enough backwards you’re also looking far forward. Look, I’ve had a bit of a change of narrative over the last few years shaping up the future. So I am separating my personal branding and thinking and business mindset away from the one entity versus the many entities. So I’ve got Laura Cowell who runs the Google in Australia and I trust her 100% and she does a good job there. And that is part of my strategy. So I can step away and then do other things. Okay, to do that, I had to shape myself into the mindset of business, being a thought leadership around business, and what that looks like. So I’ve been working very hard on rebranding myself to be part of that world. So I’m doing a bit of education. I don’t know if you’re aware, but I’ve just with my doctorate in business administration.

And again, that’s to shape my mindset and credentials to back me up for the journey to come. That’s actually just part of the journey. You know, it’s not about being a doctor and all of a sudden it does sound good, but it’s not really about that. It’s about, this is the platform and the credibility that I’m creating for myself. So I can become a sole creator in the business world. And the reason for that is the world becomes better when businesses do well. economically gets better, employment gets better, the country gets better, the harmony gets better, people feel happier. So I feel that I have a mission to play that goes beyond myself as a person, and it’s to support other businesses and support other people to be able to flourish.

If I can just contribute my little bit. Again, it’s not just me, it’s me and other people that play part of it. And then if people are paying attention, then hopefully it will deliver good outcomes. So eventually I’ll be stepping out of the operational work. I’ll be going into the chairman role, which is more strategy work, high level work, which is something I enjoy quite significantly. All right, it was nice to get a timestamp on your journey. And I think if you listen to this back again in five years time, and what have you, you’ll be, you’ll probably enjoy some of your own words, which will be interesting. All right, so we promised the audience, you’re gonna mention the queen, to mention Richard Brass and which ones you want to touch on first?

Look, I don’t go into depth about the Queen’s story because she’s just passed but it was an interesting experience. And when I went to London, it was just fascinating how much the Queen meant so much for English people and you would know that. And when you go in the presence, she is a fascinating woman. He just has that aura. The experience was unique. I think it was quite overwhelming actually. And I don’t usually get overwhelmed, but it’s just the structure behind it, the way you had to interact, the training, how to bow, how to salute, the etiquette around the Royal Family. And the discipline behind that was quite fascinating. And I didn’t realize the significance of this, except long after when I took casualty with people about it.

That’s not a casual thing, this is quite special. I know it was a special journey, but if I take it away from the Queen, the Queen was not very well, she passed away four months after she was quite older and a little bit frail but her presence was pal. And I want to take that to a point of charisma and leadership is such an important thing. You don’t have to say much to lead if you’ve got the right aura around you. So that’s a big part of my life that I am very proud of. I understood the significance of it when I started feeding the journey. A lot of people were like, ah, okay, it’s not about the market. No, it’s not about the market. It is a fascinating experience and people need to understand that.

It’s powerful. It’s elegant. It’s class. It’s history. It’s a lot of good things and and and you know we can always be on negatives Very easy to find negatives in positives, but I can tell you now that if you are a believer in leadership This lady was a leader Right. There’s no question about that So that that was it learning clear for me. I met very interesting people in that room as well And some of them are see my friends from all over the world And and that was quite a positive How did I have the chance to sit down and have chat with everyone? No, it wasn’t like that. Some people don’t understand the concept, right? It’s not like we sit down and we’re like having a full-on conversation.

There’s a structure around what that looks like and the structure requires this little bit of distance and that kind of stuff. Okay. And Richard Branson, you play chess with him. He never puts a t-shirt on for you by the sounds of it. But you see him quite regularly as his son in himself on his island.

What’s he like for company? Honestly, I’m fascinated by this man. And it’s not an easy thing for me to say. I mean, a lot of big business people, a lot. Maritja Branson is just a beautiful human being. The humbleness, the grounded energy. the, you know, this guy doesn’t age, the energy, the appetite for adventure regularly, the valuable conversation and the honesty. You’d never have a conversation with him and you’d feel like he’s just wish you were she around the conversation. He just says it as he believes it. But what, why Richard Branson for me? Because I think that’s an important question, right? The alignment in values was quite important for me. He is a very successful business person, but he’s a flantropist. He’s about doing good and helping the world to become a better place.

And he does them both really well. He makes a lot of money, but he helps a lot of people. And that balance to me is such a significant and important balance. Like, I don’t have enough when I sit down and chat with him. don’t have enough. He’s just a man that you’d enjoy his company and you can talk about business, you can talk about doing good in the world and he’s just interested. Fascinating. So listen, thank you for those insights. Yes, sir. That draws us to a close now. But it’s been a pleasure chatting with you and getting to know a little bit more about you that probably isn’t in the public eye. Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed it. to welcome. Thank you very much. Hello again it is I am Mr Purple thanks again for watching this video if you like my videos we like what we try to do here please subscribe if you haven’t done it already the other thing that’s very popular right now is the t-shirts the Mr Purple t-shirts there’s lots of people wearing these at the moment you can grab yours on our website copying this link below so once again thanks for listening we love your feedback engage with us and speak soon.