When to say 'No': 4 rules of success by Selim Bassoul

Gulf News

Selim Bassoul, 63, has an enthusiasm that is both child-like and infectious. In the first two minutes of this interview, he got right down to business — his 4 rules for success.  Read the full story here: https://bit.ly/3cumciv  Subscribe to Gulf News on YouTube and watch more of our videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/GulfNewsTV  See more videos at https://gulfnews.com/videos Read more Gulf News stories here: https://bit.ly/2HLJ2km  #UAEnews #business #Dubai

Transcript

00:00A lot of people can talk about charisma, intellectual stimulus, they can talk about motivation,

00:11inspiration, but I think the four that struck me the most, when I look back over 30 years

00:17of his amazing career, phenomenal success, is the fact that I'm curious.

00:21I like to seek out and act upon advice of others, listening to others, and seek the

00:28input and the feedback from different opinions and perspectives.

00:32I think the second one is my willingness to take tremendous risks.

00:37I think to innovate you have to experiment, and with experimentation there are failures.

00:46So that's number two.

00:47Number three is act with speed and agility.

00:51I think we need to be a cheetah in the world.

00:53The cheetah is the fastest animal on the planet, and they are rarely, rarely being

01:00caught.

01:03And the key of speed and agility is not only to think fast, but act fast.

01:09And finally, the most important of them all is say no often.

01:14People come up with ideas, customers ask you to do this, and say it's not my core competency.

01:19Saying no is the best thing that people can do, and co-focus and prioritize what's your

01:25core competency, and no to anything else that distracts and clouds your judgment.

01:31So go back to four.

01:33I would say being curiosity is number one, willing to take risks, speed and agility,

01:40and the word no in your vocabulary on daily usage.

01:43Well, after 41 years in the States, in the U.S., I had a choice to make.

01:52I could go back to U.S., or I can come and experiment and try again the experimentation

01:56and try something new.

01:58I decided to come to Dubai.

02:00I've heard about Dubai.

02:01I had visited Dubai, and I like it as a visitor, but never lived in Dubai or in the UAE.

02:07And I was very, very impressed by living here.

02:12Very minimum red tape, we're able to get our residency, the paperwork, online, others.

02:17The friendliness of the culture of Dubai, I love it.

02:22The diversity of this place.

02:25But the most interesting thing that struck me is the location of UAE and Dubai.

02:33I think I find it in the middle of the Silk Road, in a sense.

02:37Equidistant from Singapore, China, to U.S., to Europe, to the Middle East.

02:42The heart of doing business, very easy.

02:45The transportation, whether by sea or by air, makes it very easy.

02:48I can go anywhere around the world directly without having to transit somewhere else.

02:53I like the fact that there are a lot of great talent here.

02:57Dubai attracted some amazing people to come and work here, which makes it easy to hire

03:02people and work.

03:03And now I have basically joined a local company, a local manufacturing company, called Intercoil.

03:13I love the fact that it has very smart people, starting from the owner, CEO, to the manufacturing

03:21people, to their IT people.

03:23Very diverse background.

03:24It reminds me a lot of the U.S.

03:26It reminds me very similar to Middleby.

03:29Melting pot.

03:30And finally, what I like about Dubai is the fact that it's open for business.

03:37They managed the crisis of COVID amazingly well, and they are open for business.

03:44What do I tell a business today, a leader?

03:48Again, navigate the now.

03:50Now you have to basically build up your cash reserves, change your metric from profitability

03:57to cash, reallocate your resources, and eliminate underperforming programs and products, plan

04:08for the recovery, accelerate digital analytic data, refocus on innovation, rethink your

04:19operating model, meaning identify and prioritize, and finally, figure out how to create rapid

04:30revenue resources, such as rethink your pricing, your promotion, optimize your search engine,

04:41your demand planning, and the third, similar to the leaders of Dubai, lead the next normal,

04:49meaning segment your customers and say no to many of them that are no longer fitting

04:55your next process.

05:00I joined the board of Six Flags a year ago, and I just got elected as chairman of the

05:05board, and this is a pure example of transformation of the leadership and the management of Six

05:11Flags in terms of managing what you talked about post-COVID.

05:17This is a company that has, it's the largest regional amusement park company in the world.

05:24It's publicly traded.

05:25It's a multi-billion dollar company with over 100,000 employees, between full-time and seasonal

05:32employees, and suddenly when COVID came, all the parks were shut down.

05:37We're losing 60 to 70 million dollars a month's bleeding of cash because the parks are closed.

05:45And how do you reinvent yourself?

05:47Well, we went into several things.

05:50One, we changed our business model.

05:52Now, we went into what I call virtual queuing, contactless, able to come into the park and

05:59go, no contact with anything.

06:02We changed the way the rides are done to become totally sanitized and safety, to provide safety

06:08for our employees, for our customers, and our employees.

06:12So we disrupted our business model to creating a complete safe environment, by the way, not

06:18only to check when you come in, but to provide you a safety environment in terms of sanitation

06:23and how we provide sanitation inside the park.

06:25The park opened.

06:27So opened at 50% capacity.

06:30Now what do you do with pricing?

06:31How do you entice people to come and think it's safe?

06:34And that's when you disrupt your business model, and Six Flags is a huge example of

06:40navigating the next normal.

06:46There's something, inner, inner, inner bell in me that's saying I want to be there.

06:53So ultimately, I went up, I drove up to the refugee camp, and I went, walked into the

06:59refugee camp, and I didn't know what to expect.

07:04And I saw 80, 90% of them were women, children, and elderly.

07:13There was no men in those camps.

07:17And the women were spending time going fetching for wood.

07:20They would spend eight hours going outside the camp, being attacked by people, being

07:27maybe raped, maybe being abused.

07:31And then they come back to prepare an open fire to cook.

07:38And the girls were not going to school.

07:40Sometimes the girls would go help their mothers.

07:43And those people, when it's raining, they have no, they spend three, four, five, six,

07:48seven days without food because the wood is wet.

07:53So I said, I need to help those people.

07:56I need to help them not to go look for food.

07:58I need to do something with an innovative product where they can go in and use it for

08:03multi-use.

08:05So because there's no electricity, you know, the electricity in the camp is very expensive

08:09and most people could not afford it.

08:12So I said I'm going to create an oven that they can use inside the tent, not only to

08:17cook, but also to heat.

08:19That uses almost no wood, very little combustion.

08:25So they generate electricity from the heat of that oven so they can charge their phone

08:29or a lamp so that people can study and be connected or watch on a laptop, get a laptop

08:34and be able to study.

08:37And it could filter water.

08:38It can take water from a sewer and it will provide drinking water.

08:44So I went back to my team at Middleby, and that's the power of when you have an amazing

08:50innovative culture and disruptive culture and say we need to generate an oven that could

08:55be safe for small children, can be put in a tent and be able not to create carbon monoxide.

09:04And we created the refugee or relief oven that has been, it has 28 patents on it.

09:11And this is what creates my legacy at Middleby.

09:14That's why I'm proud of my engineers.

09:16I've asked Salim to advise us on how we can grow the business.

09:19So knowing how disruptive it is and knowing that how the expectations are way high and

09:26he expects things to be done in a very agile, very fast manner, you know, I still decided

09:33that I need Salim to help me disrupt and grow the business.

09:39Even though, and usually entrepreneurs, I mean it depends on how aggressive you are,

09:43but sometimes people tend to be defensive in such situations and not take the more of

09:49the aggressive route and when you have uncertain times like the COVID-19 times.

09:57Whereas I see this as an opportunity for us to, you know, change, transform, look to the

10:04future with a much more aggressive, much more bullish outlook.

10:10I think there's a lot of great success stories.

10:12And whether it's Hassan, whether it's Tariq, there are loads of manufacturers here that

10:17are world beaters.

10:20So it'd be nice actually to start a series of what we'll call, you know, say reigniting

10:24the economy, right?

10:25So it's after COVID, let's look forward.

10:28Let's not get stuck in the mud of negative thinking.

10:31Be positive, think big, move forward.

10:34So I think there's amazing amount of content here to share and I think when entrepreneurs

10:40share through this sort of means, I think people get inspired, like Salim was saying

10:45earlier about handicaps or whatever.

10:49Stories should be positive, good news stories.

10:52And I think that's the real series here.

10:53So pick up different entrepreneurs, tell their stories of how they're transforming to reignite

10:57the economy.

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