0:00

How I did it, I got a license,

0:02

I hired people, and I grow hacked the

0:04

shit out of it. Like I literally published

0:06

14 hours a day, typos galore like all

0:08

over the place, and I just did publishing

0:11

in digital in a way where no one

0:13

had seen here before. We did

0:15

transgender stuff stuck in the airport

0:17

when Stephen Gerard was drunk dancing

0:19

in the thing, when Bieber was

0:21

in Brasti, when the shake walks

0:23

into the restaurant, we were publishing

0:25

like they didn't know what. That

0:27

happened. Time out in what's on

0:29

magazines and digital here with June

0:31

10 posts on Facebook a week.

0:34

We did 14 a day. Welcome

0:36

to the Entrepreneur Experiment Podcast with

0:38

me, Gary Fox. Today. is a really

0:40

milestone moment. I told you we're going

0:42

to go global and I've gone ahead

0:44

and done it. This is the first

0:46

in a series of podcast you'll hear

0:49

over the next month or so from

0:51

the Middle East. Today is Richard Fitzgerald

0:53

from Dubai. He is the founder of

0:55

the Augustus Media Group. He is behind

0:57

brands such as Love and Saudi, Love

0:59

and Dubai. He's an investor and he's

1:01

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1:04

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1:06

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3:15

Richard, welcome to the pot. Thanks

3:17

Gary, good to see you in Dubai.

3:20

And most of all, thank you for

3:22

hosting us. You're welcome, we're in your

3:24

house. You're in our house. What a

3:26

slick setup. Our Augustus Colosseme, our office

3:28

studios in Dubai Production City. Thank you.

3:30

Good designers, we were here about three

3:32

years, but yeah, it's nice to, new

3:34

people to see it, it's nice to

3:36

use it. Something else, me and Ben,

3:39

I'm just telling Ben on the way,

3:41

I was like Ben, you're going to

3:43

enjoy this place. It's like, we've been

3:45

in a lot of places. We've shot

3:47

in a lot of places, and it's

3:49

just like, it's just so well done. Where

3:51

did this vision come from? I

3:54

mean Augustus, the name Augustus

3:56

is a character in a

3:58

period of history and Emperor

4:00

Augustus and I think it's

4:02

interesting right Mark Zuckerberg studied one

4:04

thing in Harvard, Rome at the

4:07

time of Augustus. He didn't even

4:09

finish it. He didn't study Roman

4:11

history. I think there's something about

4:14

what Emperor Augustus did. I remember

4:16

in Irish history we did Audovon

4:18

Binsmark and he united Germany. I

4:20

just I just liked history or

4:23

just liked that idea. There's a

4:25

few answers to this one but Augustus

4:27

in theory. So when he came

4:29

in, adopted kind of son of

4:32

Judas Caesar, Rome was a mess

4:34

and he turned it from a

4:36

republic into an empire. And that

4:38

was sort of a few, you

4:40

know, I think 17 BC or

4:42

something like this, when he

4:45

actually took over. And then

4:47

after Christ and after he dies,

4:49

like 70 years later. because

4:51

he's only 18 or 20 when he

4:53

took over Rome. Then Rome had 200

4:55

years of peace. So we said our

4:57

vision, our mission, our mission particularly, is

5:00

to become the new media company of

5:02

choice in Middle East and North Africa.

5:04

But our vision is bigger. It's established

5:06

a new order in media and advertising

5:08

globally. And that... name and that

5:10

person was of apt for that.

5:13

We wrote that mission down Gary

5:15

in 2015, 2015, when I bought

5:17

the franchise of Love in Dublin

5:19

and it's dictated so much of

5:21

the direction of the company. The

5:23

other thing that Augustus did, if

5:25

anyone's been to Rome and anywhere,

5:28

you see political boards and you

5:30

see sculptures and headshots and stuff

5:32

like that, Augustus was the first

5:34

person to put his headshot around

5:36

the city. And you know it's

5:38

so fascinating they actually did an exhibition

5:41

in Hamburg in Germany in January last

5:43

year I travel when I found out

5:45

about it was in the last week

5:47

I flew to Hamburg to see the

5:49

exhibition it was built in some like

5:52

images and power and mocked at the

5:54

time of Augustus in Rome and this

5:56

institution was able to get all these

5:58

marble stuff from everywhere. because it's very

6:00

known in this of curating and bringing

6:02

things together. So I was like unbelievable.

6:05

And I saw the coins. He was

6:07

very like how the Shakes do now

6:09

and how MBS and Saudi is doing

6:11

the Neom stuff. They would announce the

6:13

new temple on a coin. In like

6:15

2025, they put the coin because they'd

6:17

nowhere else to, there's no social media

6:19

or whatever. And that would inspire the

6:21

people of Rome that there's going to

6:23

be a big temple built in four

6:25

years time, you know? coins and imagery

6:27

to show it. He's accessible to people

6:29

at the time, ever and had coins

6:31

and ever... That's how he did it.

6:34

And like, I have coins now from

6:36

the exhibition, like with him on it

6:38

and stuff like that. There's a few

6:40

other brilliant stories. So that was the

6:42

sort of like imaging and stuff like

6:44

that. And now I think, like I've

6:46

been here so long now, I've been

6:48

here 13 years, now I think... Why

6:50

was I, why did I pick an

6:52

Augustus name? Like people don't know it

6:54

that bad the Nabatians, they're, you know,

6:56

Petra and Jordan and that sort of,

6:58

they're sort of rewritten out of history

7:00

and then also the Amayas and the

7:03

Persian empires and things like that, why

7:05

did I pick a Western, like Rome

7:07

is in our brains, but it's not

7:09

in everyone's brains, you know, so that's

7:11

Augustus. Other slight nod was. You know,

7:13

my confirmation name, I picked Augustus, but

7:15

actually saying to Gustin is the, I

7:17

picked Augustus because my grandfather was no,

7:19

as Austi, and I thought that was

7:21

his name, my mom told me that's

7:23

his name, but he died in 1952

7:25

when she was two, but I picked

7:27

it after him, and my brother's just

7:29

been to Ireland and he's been going

7:31

through the archives. My grandfather had a

7:34

letter factory, Dickens letter factory in Ireland

7:36

in the 30s and 40s, and he

7:38

listed it on the Irish stock market,

7:40

stock market. and there's photos of his

7:42

brother with JFK and all this or

7:44

so in America bringing money back all

7:46

that stuff. So it's kind of like

7:48

that, you know, the aspirational thing of

7:50

like, you know, my dad died when

7:52

I was young as well. So that's

7:54

sort of thing of like creating something

7:56

that's sort of a nod to that,

7:58

but also something that's big enough to

8:00

navigate all this media fragmentation that's going

8:03

on. But that's the name. That's the

8:05

vision. Another thing I'll tell you about

8:07

it is that... What it means something

8:09

to you, like so often people pick

8:11

names and you're just like, oh we

8:13

got off whiteboard, I'm like, eh. It's

8:15

nice one, it has, because it's your

8:17

life's work, right? Hopefully. Yeah, you'd like

8:19

to think so, but I mean, yeah,

8:21

I can also, like, you know, don't

8:23

get attached to anything that you can't

8:25

walk away from a 30 seconds, be,

8:27

be it, there the heat. He's a

8:29

great movie. You know, the guy, before

8:32

I left Dublin in 2009, I was

8:34

in London for a couple of years

8:36

before the Olympics and I remember going

8:38

to... What's your background? Social media. I

8:40

joined Cybercom Huskies in Dublin in 2007.

8:42

I graduated, I graduated, I graduated... in

8:44

New C.D. with economics in German, 2002,

8:46

2006, and I got a job in

8:48

outdoor advertising, 7 and 6 cheese stuff

8:50

in newspaper. You know the boxes outside

8:52

the news? The whole of these pages?

8:54

those ads with a company outright and

8:56

then I did an evening diploma with

8:58

a guy called Anthony Quigley in 2006

9:01

in Dublin and DIT. He's marketing his

9:03

shoes. Yeah and I got I did

9:05

well for the first time ever and

9:07

so I knew I liked this stuff

9:09

because I kept reading about like digital

9:11

agencies in London I loved all this

9:13

stuff back then and Cybercom Johnson Vartis

9:15

and Robri gave me a job after

9:17

like two or three interviews and all

9:19

of a sudden in two or three

9:21

years I was doing digital marketing for

9:23

Coca-Cola Banerads. Lloyd's Bank, my group is

9:25

UK, dual collection, like Cybercom Huskies had

9:27

everything back then. They had all the

9:30

banks, they had Diageo, we were doing

9:32

flash banner ads, displays, I was doing

9:34

paid media, I was doing everything, like

9:36

Google ads, the first Facebook ads, I

9:38

saw social media, Twitter accounts for Coca-Cola

9:40

in Dublin, co-Cola cities, and we gave

9:42

away prizes before Coca-Cola had a global

9:44

social media guidelines, before they paid us

9:46

for it. We did it before, you

9:48

know, and I was telling them, hey

9:50

guys, say... up a social media division.

9:52

They're like, no, you get in trouble

9:54

with your clients, Richard, not your dyslexia,

9:56

but you make mistakes. I remember, I

9:58

used to emails for Erlingus and I

10:01

never checked them and I always got

10:03

the prices wrong. They'll kill me. Kind

10:05

of important. Because they were doing these

10:07

blasts, like they were doing these blasts

10:09

like 49 quid to Boston or whatever.

10:11

And like, I always got it wrong.

10:13

And like they'd be like, I'm like,

10:15

like, like, I got it's my colleague,

10:17

it's my thing. I thought so, but

10:19

I always clashed with my bosses and

10:21

like there was two bosses in Dublin

10:23

that you know didn't get on me

10:25

ever thought it was my fault and

10:27

then I went to London and clashed

10:30

with my boss again and I went

10:32

to like a career psychologist or whatever,

10:34

coach or whatever, and she was like

10:36

yeah you're not really cut out for

10:38

this. I'm like, but I know it

10:40

all like I'm good at it. The

10:42

career is in like social media or

10:44

like just having a boss. I said

10:46

to me she goes. You could never

10:48

have a boss again. I know, I

10:50

know. It's just not wired that way

10:52

or it's just not. The freedom is

10:54

just worth anything to me. It's worth

10:56

any figure you can put on it.

10:59

Sometimes like that's what you need is

11:01

someone to go, hey Richard, just set

11:03

up your own thing. Well, maybe, but...

11:05

The next company I went to cared

11:07

more about like careers and you know

11:09

they were a big agency in London

11:11

with 400 people and they were like

11:13

best places to work and they they

11:15

told us they hired external coaches they

11:17

told us conflict resolution and LP and

11:19

my bosses were great and I got

11:21

promoted for the first time out and

11:23

it taught me like did I help

11:25

you the coaching? Yeah yeah there's definitely

11:28

management stuff I remember going into these

11:30

things saying this is how you deal

11:32

with difficult people because I read it

11:34

in football biographies, they manage your biographies.

11:36

And they're like, no, don't kick a

11:38

boot in someone's heads. Right, I would

11:40

be, Bergi wasn't right to hit back

11:42

up at the boot, you know, that's

11:44

not how we do it here, yeah.

11:46

I read all those books as well.

11:48

But we can learn from anywhere though,

11:50

you can learn, but yeah, it's, it's

11:52

the style, it's not. but I think

11:54

you know going back to that sort

11:57

of boarding school thing and stuff like

11:59

that is that like you conflict your

12:01

conflict a bit and then you sort

12:03

of learn how to manage upwards and

12:05

learn how to work and so you

12:07

know I was 32 when I left

12:09

this industry and set up in my

12:11

own but I always treat myself as

12:13

an employee I don't think of myself

12:15

as an entrepreneur and uh... Even now?

12:17

Yeah. Really? Yeah. Who surprises me how

12:19

often I hear that? Why? I have

12:21

a salary, I have responsibility and I

12:23

don't want to act like an entrepreneur,

12:25

I don't want to think like exiting,

12:28

I don't want to think like fundraising,

12:30

I don't want to think like pivoting,

12:32

I can be an entrepreneur, I created

12:34

social media departments for mine share in

12:36

Middle East North Africa, I hired 40

12:38

trilingual graduates in Beirut, and I created

12:40

a social media department from 2012-2015 2015.

12:42

profitable, CFO loved it. The reason I

12:44

ever left any company is because they

12:46

weren't as ambitious as me, you know,

12:48

like Cybercom wouldn't open a social media

12:50

department, so I went to We Are

12:52

Social, which became the biggest social agency

12:54

in the world in London. In London,

12:57

when I went to MEC, part of

12:59

that mine share group, I'm thingy, the

13:01

reason I left was because they wouldn't

13:03

make me social media direct. My bosses

13:05

were, I was 28. promote me fast

13:07

enough so I got social media director

13:09

job here and then and then they

13:11

wouldn't create a branded content department or

13:13

an influencer department so it's like I'll

13:15

go and do it somewhere else this

13:17

sounds like you're just born to be

13:19

an entrepreneur maybe I don't call it

13:21

or stuff but everything you're describing like

13:23

the like the speed you want to

13:26

execute at the vision you have like

13:28

the the action you want to take

13:30

like the urgency you's dripping out of

13:32

you's dripping out of you's dripping out

13:34

of you's dripping out of you's dripping

13:36

out of you's dripping can't do well

13:38

in a corporate world as well, right?

13:40

I want to list the company. I

13:42

want to, you know, we share all

13:44

our... numbers like I'm not trying to

13:46

flip things like I invest I have

13:48

a 50 fund on the side but

13:50

I'm trying to build something. Oh that

13:52

time. I saw that like that I

13:55

was like I like that. They knew

13:57

Augustus. So what what project here I

13:59

guess? What were you in London? You

14:01

were consensual. What was here the next

14:03

move? Not necessarily Gary like I had

14:05

a I had long hair. I was

14:07

a mini shortage. I have a fixed

14:09

gear bike back then. I liked London.

14:11

I moved to be involved in a

14:13

city. and it was leading up to

14:15

Olympics and I thought it's going to

14:17

especially different you know but I left

14:19

a month before the Olympics I hear

14:21

like yeah I missed the whole crack

14:24

because I got offered a job as

14:26

social media director in Dubai and it

14:28

was on double salary in tax-free oh

14:30

well I think I think I got

14:32

up to I wasn't paid well in

14:34

those years I started in Dublin on

14:36

20, 23,000 euro in and when people

14:38

you know in 2006 I moved to

14:40

London, I took a pay cut to

14:42

go to London when everyone was staying

14:44

during that recession. I went on 20,000

14:46

sterling in London when I was 25.

14:48

I got up to like 28 when

14:50

I went to MEC and then 33,000

14:52

sterling and here they offered me, I

14:55

think like between 2012 and 2015, like

14:57

I was taking in 10,000 dollars a

14:59

month tax-free. then I thought more at

15:01

the end like they promoted me fast

15:03

I became such me the director then

15:05

region such me the director I was

15:07

putting into 12 MDs across the region

15:09

and CEO you know and that was

15:11

that and then but the other reason

15:13

was like it was exciting you know

15:15

especially when I landed had we been

15:17

here before no I flew true Abu

15:19

Dhabi once so I'd never been here

15:21

I just rocked up I rocked up

15:24

it was just like job before did

15:26

you take job before you come out

15:28

took the job. They wanted to meet,

15:30

I was in London in April and

15:32

signed, they wanted me in a month

15:34

and I was like, look, I'll come

15:36

on second in June. I landed on

15:38

the Friday and back then the weekends

15:40

were Friday, Saturday. I walked into the

15:42

office on the 3rd of June 2012

15:44

and I stayed in the hotel for

15:46

a month and for 100 days I

15:48

didn't leave the office and I did

15:50

33 pitches in under days and I

15:53

basically built a social media markman out

15:55

of nothing. I was so indeterminate because

15:57

when I moved from Dublin to London

15:59

I lost my job in seven months.

16:01

I bought a bike and went to

16:03

every football game, every art gallery. and

16:05

I was like I'm not making this

16:07

mistake again so I was coming over

16:09

here I got all those 100-day books

16:11

and I was like I did interviews

16:13

with everyone across the I was speaking

16:15

to MDs in in Iraq in North

16:17

Africa in Tunis I was like what

16:19

was your what was your goal 100

16:22

days what you want to achieve? set

16:24

up a social media department get business

16:26

build a revenue stream I wanted to

16:28

prove that you could make a business

16:30

out of social media community management. In

16:32

MEC in London they were giving it

16:34

away for free. They were making so

16:36

much money from buying TV ads and

16:38

outdoor. Okay, they were doing social as

16:40

out of value and I wanted to

16:42

do the unit economics and the margins

16:44

on community management. Capate odds were coming

16:46

but wasn't really there. Like the whole

16:48

Facebook thing was only really kicking in

16:51

and they were about four years behind

16:53

like we are associated with setting up

16:55

social media department in 2012, you know?

16:57

I was wild to think how that's

16:59

not long ago. No. like this is

17:01

really interesting getting into this into this

17:03

with you because like it's such an

17:05

evolving space like that's not that long

17:07

ago to think that this wasn't really

17:09

a thing we were the first agency

17:11

in the world to set up a

17:13

Facebook page for HSBC and it took

17:15

three years to do it because of

17:17

the sanctions Syria and all this sort

17:20

of stuff. The compliance was mad but

17:22

like other things we'd set up like

17:24

Nissan Middle East like we'd set up

17:26

all that stuff they didn't have Instagram

17:28

they didn't on Facebook like barely and

17:30

yeah so that was the goal to

17:32

establish that and you know at the

17:34

end of that I was sort of

17:36

a little bit restless but when I

17:38

was here in those years I didn't

17:40

really see Dubai like I was in

17:42

Beirut in... in Egypt, in Jordan, I

17:44

was around us. So your job was

17:46

all over the region. So you came

17:48

into the buy, but your job was

17:51

to build a social environment for the

17:53

whole region. They had 12 countries, yeah.

17:55

They had 12 our 13 offices covering

17:57

what we call Mina, Middle East, North

17:59

Africa. It was interesting later years with

18:01

Eminem, Neil from Kuchin, and those guys

18:03

who bought Love and Dublin, trying to

18:05

negotiate with them about this region. You

18:07

know, when I was signing what we

18:09

called a license IP and brand-off, off

18:11

them. I was trying to tell them

18:13

that like you know Morocco is ours

18:15

they're like we go on holiday there

18:17

sorry it's kind of more Europe you

18:20

know I was like no but I

18:22

really this what it is right truly

18:24

it's covered under like some sort of

18:26

like yeah really defined it well well

18:28

well I mean not just then but

18:30

like is it defined like it's turkey

18:32

like because people say mean ass me

18:34

now with tea with turkey and different

18:36

you know with tea with turkey and

18:38

different global brands global brands break up

18:40

the regions in different ways. Really? Yeah,

18:42

like, I thought it was a standard

18:44

thing. Okay, not necessarily, like some people

18:46

do, some people do this region out

18:49

of Europe. Yeah. So, E-M-E-A, I mean,

18:51

here are those titles, so that's Europe,

18:53

Middle East and Africa, but some other

18:55

people might do it out of Singapore

18:57

and Asia, you know, and we didn't

18:59

get Turkey in our little bundle of

19:01

16 countries. I was going for, you

19:03

know, like, like, like, like, like, like,

19:05

we're trying to do. But yeah, so,

19:07

so, so, but after the three years

19:09

of doing social media for mine share,

19:11

I was restless. Sounds like you just

19:13

are restless as a person. It sounds

19:15

like you were just like we've covered

19:18

so much. We're like what, 15 minutes

19:20

in. So, at what point then did

19:22

you think right going to do this

19:24

for myself? Over the years, I would

19:26

meet with people and I would say,

19:28

hey, you'll be my partner with social

19:30

media agency and I thought you had

19:32

to have some fresh idea to serve

19:34

a social media agency. I was thinking

19:36

real-time agency and things like that and

19:38

I never set it up. And I

19:40

would get restless at night and stuff

19:42

like that. Like, you know, self-actualisation, like,

19:44

am I doing the right thing or

19:47

whatever? And equally I was thinking, am

19:49

I career climbing at WPP? Will I

19:51

get to know Sir Martin Sorelmore and

19:53

blah blah blah, all that sort of

19:55

stuff? So I might go in the

19:57

corporate ladder or will I go and

19:59

do something? So I didn't really know.

20:01

and I remember flying back from baby

20:03

with I just flew down I had

20:05

to deal with some stuff I had

20:07

to fire someone actually on that trip

20:09

and I maybe been back on the

20:11

flight writing as a business plan as

20:13

a pitch to a guy who had

20:15

a tech bot app who was one

20:18

of our clients here so we used

20:20

to run like Twitter campaigns for Nissan

20:22

Infinity and they would do the also

20:24

trigger reply as like a design image

20:26

to the users or whatever and they

20:28

were building that software. So he'd raised

20:30

some cash and I pitched him to

20:32

BMD and he gave me the job,

20:34

right? And I had three months to

20:36

get out of that. They didn't put

20:38

me on gardening leave but I had

20:40

to spend three months working in the

20:42

summer of 2015. And at the same

20:44

time I messaged Nile Harbison in Dublin

20:47

who'd been doing loving Dublin for about

20:49

2012. I go, Nile, this is cool,

20:51

what are you doing with it? It

20:53

goes funny you say, I just met

20:55

with her. and we're going to do

20:57

a franchise thing. I'm like, cool. Like,

20:59

ChatGPD wasn't around at the time, but

21:01

coupled together a 10-year area developer agreement.

21:03

And so in September I'm wearing two

21:05

hats. I'm MD of Branster, it was

21:07

called, a social tech software, that's since

21:09

One Plus or shut down and whatever.

21:11

And then I'm also the owner of

21:13

Love in Dubai, which hadn't launched. and

21:16

I registered Augustus Media, I hired an

21:18

editor from a big magazine here like

21:20

Styleist, like ITP, all that stuff, and

21:22

I hired one social salesperson and I

21:24

got, I had 20 grand, my brother

21:26

gave me 20 grand and a few

21:28

months in, and a few months in

21:30

it wasn't making money and I was

21:32

stressed out because I was MD trying

21:34

to go start up at weekends, trying

21:36

to force. Bring me back though to

21:38

the, you'd spotted love and up and

21:40

bobbling up at the time, I did,

21:42

yeah. You'd kind of keep an eye

21:45

on the scene at the scene at

21:47

the scene at home, and you were

21:49

like, and you were like, and you

21:51

were like, and you were like, I

21:53

in the scene at the scene at

21:55

home, and you were like. Why did

21:57

you go the licensing route as opposed

21:59

to setting something up yourself? I don't

22:01

know. I think, you know, back then,

22:03

like podcasting, like Tik-Dok, back then blogging

22:05

was really big, like 2010-2012, but every

22:07

blog looked like a blog. Love in

22:09

Dublin didn't look like a blog. It

22:11

looked like a media company, and it's

22:14

really hard to nail it. And it's

22:16

part art, part, part science. part like

22:18

magic. I think about it, I'm obsessed

22:20

about this all the time. It's true,

22:22

I like how you do that with

22:24

your finger, people who've got listening, but

22:26

like it is, it's like a lovely

22:28

restaurant or whatever, and when you see

22:30

something that has that, Shenaseh, qua, whatever.

22:32

So when you walk into a beautiful

22:34

hotel, I always love hotel lobby to

22:36

walk in and I'm like, ah, yeah.

22:38

It's really luxury, but you feel comfortable.

22:40

Yeah, that magic feeling. Yeah, that's right.

22:42

See a beautiful brand or something like,

22:45

that's the feeling. Yeah, and you go,

22:47

oh, I'll do that. And you go,

22:49

no, it's hard. So, so we paid

22:51

for that. And we paid, I think

22:53

we were paying like 20 or 40

22:55

grand a year eventually. And it became,

22:57

I think we were paying like 20

22:59

or 40 grand a year eventually. And

23:01

it became, it became, like 20 or

23:03

40, or 40 grand a grand year,

23:05

eventually, eventually, eventually, eventually, or 40 grand

23:07

year, eventually, eventually, eventually, or 40 grand

23:09

year, eventually, eventually, eventually, or 20 grand

23:11

year, eventually, eventually, eventually, or. That was

23:14

the only thing people read all day.

23:16

So the island parents smashed it, like

23:18

he created that, but I mean, down

23:20

here, he wouldn't. No, no one knew

23:22

it. And also, also media isn't necessarily

23:24

like McDonald's, like what size straw to

23:26

use and stuff like that. So it's

23:28

not a natural, like what size straw

23:30

to use and stuff like that. So

23:32

it's not a natural franchise, although they

23:34

pay it like, they pay a franchise

23:36

fee. But we needed to localize it.

23:38

So I had the brand. I had

23:40

a brand that no one knew right

23:43

but I had to I had to

23:45

build the brand I love and Dubai

23:47

brand and that's why I choose that

23:49

like and it just it's like startup

23:51

it's just one less thing to worry

23:53

about at the start but I had

23:55

no business and from month one we

23:57

nailed it like we I was doing

23:59

a blog in London 52 burrito days,

24:01

whole of this story, but I was

24:03

doing like 5,000 page views a month,

24:05

like one two burrito days, yeah. Yeah,

24:07

I want to supply, I basically dated

24:09

a different girl every week for a

24:12

year, and it became really big in

24:14

London at the time, like BBC, the

24:16

Metro, all that stuff. I wanted to

24:18

at Chalango, a burrito chain in London,

24:20

at a Twitter festival in 2010, and

24:22

I did it in the evenings, and

24:24

I just, they requested a different girl

24:26

every week and wrote about it. That

24:28

is wild. Still on the love? You

24:30

still aren't going to have to read

24:32

that. That sounds like a good read.

24:34

So like, you clearly had this idea,

24:36

this restlessness. So then, love in Dubai,

24:38

what was your vision? Like, what was

24:41

your plan? Because I think, and I

24:43

asked this every single time, and I

24:45

labor on this point, on the part,

24:47

and I make a point of calling

24:49

it out every single time, zero to

24:51

one, because I want one person listening

24:53

to start a business out for listening

24:55

to you, or listening to you, and

24:57

the next to you, explain why you

24:59

did it like what was the process

25:01

of going from zero to one you

25:03

bought the franchise and then what I

25:05

think I wanted to set up a

25:07

social media agency or social media thing

25:09

and this became it right and instead

25:12

of being an agency became a media

25:14

company and I was just restless to

25:16

do something and that was it you

25:18

know how I did it I got

25:20

a license I hired people and I

25:22

grow hacked the shit out of it

25:24

like I literally published 14 hours a

25:26

day typos galore like all over the

25:28

place and I just did publishing in

25:30

digital in a way where no one

25:32

had seen here before. We did transgender

25:34

stuff stock in airports when Stephen Gerard

25:36

was drunk dancing in the thing when

25:38

Bieber was in Brasti. We were public

25:41

when the shake walks into the restaurant

25:43

we were publishing like they didn't know

25:45

what had happened. We just published time

25:47

out and what's on magazines and digital

25:49

here. We're doing 10 posts on Facebook

25:51

a week We did we did 14

25:53

a day from day one just hit

25:55

with value. Yeah, you were like we

25:57

were gonna hit this with such volume.

25:59

I was so obsessed, relentless with it.

26:01

Like I remember, like I had to

26:03

rent out a spare room in my

26:05

apartment, I didn't know cash, like, talk

26:07

about the money thing, a year into

26:10

it, we had no clients, and I

26:12

was like, this is going to be

26:14

easy, I'll just sell to the agencies.

26:16

But even though we built an audience,

26:18

they didn't buy it. Why? I think

26:20

you need to, we're publishing, you need

26:22

to build credibility first, and audience isn't

26:24

enough, per se, per se for the

26:26

big brands. Which is while considering for

26:28

the big brands, which is while considering

26:30

your background, which is while considering your

26:32

background, You'd been on the other side

26:34

of the fence, that's why I was

26:36

so interested to see, you probably had

26:39

all the clients, you just turned it

26:41

on. I had all the time, I

26:43

was so sure of it there, I

26:45

was so sure if I have an

26:47

audience I'll be able to sell and

26:49

I couldn't. And then I had to

26:51

start selling equity and that's where it

26:53

got dicey because I was giving away

26:55

5% and 10% for like 40, we

26:57

were down, I still have 75% in

26:59

the first year. And then we rolled

27:01

them all up to the parent group

27:03

now. We're now in 22 countries, 11,

27:05

and 22 cities, sorry, we're in 11

27:08

countries, and we have a streaming service,

27:10

and we have ODM and an agency,

27:12

you know, with 110 employees, we did

27:14

$12 million in gross revenue last year,

27:16

this year we'll do 15 in shot.

27:18

And your dollars, your dollars, yeah. And

27:20

accepting a pandemic year, we do 20,

27:22

25% debit every year, dividends, reinvest, grow,

27:24

with 50 people in Egypt. 50. 20

27:26

in Saudi, first foreign owned company in

27:28

Saudi Arabia, I fully own it, media

27:30

license, regulators, like mad stories, or tell

27:32

you. 2016 to 2005. That's a big...

27:34

Yeah, we've got a lot to cover.

27:36

Yeah, 25... We've got a lot to

27:39

get through here. Yeah, yeah. I'll go

27:41

fast. Very good. Well, I think that's

27:43

your nature, but like, with loads time.

27:45

Bring me back to the 2016, so

27:47

year one, tough. grinding out you were

27:49

just relentlessly volume volume volume when did

27:51

you get first line I think well

27:53

actually good good question because my first

27:55

client wasn't on love in Dubai my

27:57

first client was a social media retainer.

27:59

$50,000 was about $10,000, $12,000 a month

28:01

because that's what I knew. So I

28:03

went back to pitching Infinity Middle East,

28:05

which is part of the Nissan group,

28:08

and I had a few malls here

28:10

and I hired social media execs separate.

28:12

So I was doing two things. I

28:14

was like, I broke out of the

28:16

MD thing by first of May 2016,

28:18

because Love and Dubai has quarterly page

28:20

views or whatever. And then by the

28:22

end of 2016, when I was doing

28:24

editor full-time, I started selling restaurant packages

28:26

for about $2,000 over a few months,

28:28

articles, which did a lot of sponsored

28:30

articles back then. Okay, like 3,000 page

28:32

views. for a thousand dollars or whatever.

28:34

We did a lot of sponsored articles.

28:37

That was our main branded content unit.

28:39

Before now we're in reals and tic-tocks

28:41

and videos and lives and Instagram stories,

28:43

takeovers and stuff. But back then our

28:45

native-viewed it was articles onto Facebook. We

28:47

were huge. We got two million fans

28:49

and Facebook quite quickly. We're now at

28:51

one point in day, obviously it tailored

28:53

off a bit. But one of the

28:55

other tricks then was end of 2016,

28:57

I'm sending to restaurants, I'm sending to

28:59

restaurants, We didn't see but getting the

29:01

guaranteed coverage thing. We were always guaranteed

29:03

the page views. So we wouldn't say

29:06

coverage. We'd say, here's your article, here's

29:08

your link, pre-approve it, publish it. So

29:10

here we didn't do reviews. Love and

29:12

Dublin did, we didn't. What did you

29:14

do? We did click bait stuff, we

29:16

did curated viral stuff. And the influencer

29:18

does this, someone falls, someone says this,

29:20

we call them rip shares, videos like

29:22

the Bible, like we would just take

29:24

videos, brand it, tell a bit more

29:26

story and just put it off. You

29:28

have a context, but even in 2025,

29:30

that's now huge again. We still do

29:32

that. The oldest new, like this whole

29:35

thing of like, you'll never guess what

29:37

Richard did. He was on his podcast,

29:39

probably, here it is, like, it's just...

29:41

That's all it is new. The curation

29:43

thing on Tikak is very interesting. So

29:45

true, yeah, yeah. And that was the

29:47

model, that was the fast type of

29:49

thing. That was the content. Plus real

29:51

news. real news like breaking government stuff

29:53

like shouldn't the pandemic like people wanted

29:55

to know what's going on and like

29:57

there's a lot of immigrants who move

29:59

here and people want to know what's

30:01

going on so like and they became

30:04

to rely on love in Dubai they

30:06

trusted us we were first we were

30:08

fast we have 15-minute approval rules like

30:10

we're trying to get stuff like you

30:12

put you put a headline in if

30:14

no one disagrees with it goes out

30:16

15-minute rules And the journalists that put

30:18

in the story go to an editor

30:20

or someone to approve, bang. Yeah. Yeah.

30:22

And if you don't get approval, it

30:24

goes off. And you have to teach

30:26

the editor, you have to teach the

30:28

writers to curate, to pick, to package,

30:30

to distribute. And you empower them to

30:32

do all that. And you protect them.

30:35

And you try and let the, this

30:37

is why we don't hire freelancers. We

30:39

need people to retain the knowledge of

30:41

what's going to trigger people, what's going

30:43

to upset people, what's the comments, what's

30:45

legal, what's defamation, all that stuff. That's

30:47

a good insight actually because I was

30:49

actually wondering so you do you you

30:51

staff people so then they build up

30:53

that knowledge bank of going this is

30:55

the loving way. Yeah exactly. How did

30:57

you grow so bring me back to

30:59

like where you hired your first couple

31:01

people? How did you grow then to

31:04

like obviously you've grown exponentially but like

31:06

how did you grow the first couple

31:08

of the first couple of years? There

31:10

was one thing that we did, there

31:12

was a newspaper here called Seven Days,

31:14

a bit like, what was the one

31:16

in Dublin, Metro Metro, at least I

31:18

was, yeah, our, I was two with

31:20

them, yeah, our daily mail or whatever,

31:22

and they were free in all the

31:24

buildings, like you know, if you live

31:26

in Dubai, you usually you might rent

31:28

in a high tower, you go you

31:30

go down in the morning, if you're

31:33

not driving, you pick up what was

31:35

called a Metro newspaper and you're a,

31:37

that shift to print as well from

31:39

digital that weren't on it and I

31:41

contacted the CEO and I'm like I'll

31:43

buy your Twitter account and he's like

31:45

and in the end I don't think

31:47

he really knew he's like here are

31:49

the log-ins for our Facebook or Twitter

31:51

because I dealt with so many issues

31:53

of Facebook not letting us change names

31:55

like I remember Henkel like Wilkinson's sort

31:57

they just wouldn't let us change names

31:59

so I'm like I'm never going to

32:02

be able to change the name of

32:04

the Instagram page and the Facebook page

32:06

of seven days u. So I didn't

32:08

offer him for that and in the

32:10

end he goes 20 grand and it's

32:12

a load of money to us back

32:14

then load him on it. What are

32:16

we going to do with them? Murch

32:18

them, we love them to buy. But

32:20

you were going to try change the

32:22

name to a little bit. Okay. And

32:24

I still remember it as beautiful. I

32:26

was playing five-a-side football one night and

32:28

Seven Days UAE had 600,000 Facebook fans

32:31

with 200 and they had 40,000 Instagram

32:33

followers. So you're able to put the

32:35

page together really? Do you know how

32:37

it did it? This is 2017. I

32:39

got a letter from the CEO of

32:41

Seven Days saying we're shutting down, people

32:43

in the UAE subscribed to our page

32:45

to receive news. They no longer receive

32:47

local news. I endorsed Love and Dubai

32:49

to provide local news to our followers

32:51

and Facebook at the time in Dublin

32:53

and I saw the fans talking up

32:55

every hour. It wasn't one slick, it

32:57

was over a 12-hour period overnight. I

32:59

woke up the next day and we

33:02

had 800,000 Facebook fans from 200. We

33:04

had 60,000 Instagram followers, we now, 1.4

33:06

million, but I'm loving to buy alone,

33:08

like I think like 15 million over

33:10

a world, but we have 20, we

33:12

had 20, 20, right? And then I

33:14

got KG Harvey who runs a comms

33:16

agency here, asks her for a favor,

33:18

she pushed this out as a PR

33:20

everywhere. So we, so it would say,

33:22

how did you just, uh, loving to

33:24

buy a choir is seven days, seven

33:26

days, such to meet assets. And everyone

33:28

read this and gone like, oh my

33:31

God, how did they do that? And

33:33

then so, as someone who's, who's trying

33:35

to grow like social accounts and stuff,

33:37

test sheet. But you know what happened,

33:39

right? We went from 700,000 page views,

33:41

like this is a year and a

33:43

half of growth hacking, and they were

33:45

at about 500, and we didn't buy

33:47

their SEO domain, we bought the social

33:49

profiles. So we went from 700,000 page

33:51

views in December 2016, we crossed... into

33:53

a million because of this in Jan.

33:55

By June 2017, we did 2.9 million

33:57

page views. We did 23 articles on

34:00

the 50 June June, the Qatar blockade,

34:02

a big story in the region, and

34:04

then another viral article, Riana was dating

34:06

some Saudi guy. And we got huge,

34:08

we got 2.9 million page views that

34:10

month, all on the back of that

34:12

sort of extra social followers. And so

34:14

you credit been able to transfer them

34:16

across from social, you were able to

34:18

directly see. brought this in and they

34:20

were able to directly see the pageries.

34:22

It was for Facebook. It's Facebook, yeah.

34:24

Really. And then that kicked on the

34:26

brand and that gave us, going back

34:29

to the credibility part, you know, like,

34:31

Nyle had, um, had, you know, rugby

34:33

captain as his chief friend, like he

34:35

got credibility earlier by doing tricks, like,

34:37

how do you get credibility as a

34:39

brand? How do you get credibility as

34:41

a brand? How do you get the

34:43

big guest on? How do you do

34:45

this? Like, what is credibility? And I

34:47

realized I didn't need it. credibility was

34:49

buying seven days that made me a

34:51

newspaper you know without having framed probably

34:53

in people's heads what you were you're

34:55

like oh it's not just this it's

34:58

hmm that's genius it worked and I

35:00

always look for credibility I'll always look

35:02

for you know what gives it's a

35:04

big credibility I'll always look for you

35:06

know what gives is it a big

35:08

guest is it marketing is it buying

35:10

a billboard is it something you need

35:12

behavior you need people to wake up

35:14

in the morning and go what did

35:16

love and buy say about that as

35:18

well and that's from product But that's

35:20

from like you're having people online at

35:22

the right time knowing how to do

35:24

the right story. Like I remember this

35:26

plane crashes, like there was an Emirates

35:29

plane crash and we had half a

35:31

million page views from one article because

35:33

we were number one on Reddit and

35:35

in the US. It was all extra

35:37

on traffic but like just having the

35:39

team to know how to publish. To

35:41

use the word safely, the word safely

35:43

to disembark, that Emirates Corpcom's team were

35:45

so aggressive on instead of like evacuating

35:47

crash. Like it's all these words, it's

35:49

all this calm stuff. Is it tricky

35:51

to operate in the Middle East as

35:53

a restrictions? Yeah, you know, I love

35:55

this question and I hate it for

35:58

a foreign audience because the West will

36:00

never get us, you know, that we're

36:02

brought up even in Ireland. in the

36:04

media world, related to the First Amendment

36:06

of a constitution for a country of

36:08

a few hundred million people in the

36:10

18th century. Like we think of freedom

36:12

of speech as media, that's what we

36:14

think, and we don't understand anything else.

36:16

So I don't want to, that's why

36:18

I say here, because I don't want

36:20

to explain anything else, but I see

36:22

the benefits of it, I see no

36:24

phone hacking, I see no Caroline flag

36:27

committing suicide because of... media stuff, I

36:29

see no Princess Diana Paparazzi stuff, I

36:31

see none of this stuff here, right?

36:33

And people will say different stuff, but

36:35

I like it, and we have simple

36:37

rules, no profit, peace be upon him,

36:39

no leadership, and no defamation. So don't

36:41

go out there and say Gary's bad

36:43

his job. Who am I to deprive

36:45

you of the chance of earning a

36:47

living? So we don't do it. Okay,

36:49

that's really interesting. So I think traditional

36:51

media is in deep, deep, deep trouble.

36:53

traditional media trust is gone. It's gone.

36:56

It's actually like, it's over, isn't it?

36:58

Like, it was tumbling for a very

37:00

long time. It was tumbling. That's when

37:02

I came here, I asked, I was

37:04

like, this is the future media. I

37:06

literally walked in, got in the phone

37:08

last night, I was like, this is

37:10

the future media. I literally walked in,

37:12

gone the phone last night to Ben,

37:14

I was like, wait for the phone

37:16

last night to Ben, I think this.

37:18

I think this is it. I think

37:20

about you guys as it is the

37:22

future media. But it's both right, it's

37:25

these two together and it's us doing

37:27

social, it's us doing the clips, this

37:29

will go out, the clips, I do

37:31

a couple of million views. That's insane.

37:33

Like we do what, 12, 13 million

37:35

views last year in social, like that's

37:37

a lot for one person, I've got

37:39

a team around me, but like, when

37:41

you think of that reach, but then

37:43

I look at traditional media. like RTE,

37:45

Irish Times, like it's gone. Like it's

37:47

going, going gone. Like after COVID it

37:49

was just like bang. People like don't

37:51

trust any RTE says, they don't trust

37:53

any RTE says, they don't trust any

37:56

RTE says, they don't trust any RTE

37:58

says, which is a problem. It's a

38:00

trust probably, it's also a business model.

38:02

The traditional media problem has been going

38:04

for a long time, like they just

38:06

can figure out how to make it,

38:08

yeah. That's the only one he kind

38:10

of trust to go there actually. Everyone's

38:12

got an angle. And now everyone in

38:14

the public knows this. Every knows there's

38:16

an angle. They knows there's like censorship

38:18

of some form of another. And I

38:20

think that's going to your last question

38:22

about is it hard here? I think

38:25

media needs to be up front about

38:27

their angle. Like it's in the name.

38:29

That wasn't brought by. Like we're positive

38:31

about where we're from. And when we

38:33

hired journalists in Baghdad or Gaza or

38:35

Gaza or Cairo, we want them to

38:37

defend that city that city. Right, and

38:39

the same with like smashy business, wants

38:41

to be the young person's Bloomberg, it

38:43

wants to, it's the tagline is for

38:45

the driven, the dreamers, the doers, like

38:47

the angle is there, I call it

38:49

a media lens, we don't have to,

38:51

we're not impartial, we're pro. Like we're

38:54

positive, like we had a journalist here

38:56

once who wanted to do all the

38:58

sort of like investigative journalists about business.

39:00

I'm like cool, there's a place for

39:02

it. There's a place for it and

39:04

there's also a place for it on

39:06

Smashie, but actually if someone raises money

39:08

or someone tells the story on your

39:10

entrepreneur podcast, we're going to celebrate that.

39:12

Like what's wrong with inspiring stories, you

39:14

know? And that's all this podcast is.

39:16

I say to people, I'm like, no

39:18

prep needed, it's your And I am

39:20

pro, I do not go after people,

39:23

I do not clip things to make

39:25

people look bad. This is pro business,

39:27

this is to support, celebrate you, but

39:29

also, as I said earlier, to inspire

39:31

one person to start something. There's enough

39:33

negativity in the world. There's enough people

39:35

going after people. I don't want any

39:37

part of that. Zero. I don't want

39:39

to spend my life doing things like

39:41

that. I want to be a net

39:43

positive to the world. world and like

39:45

I think there's a lot of place

39:47

for that you interpret it how you

39:49

want you make your own you get

39:52

your media from here here and here

39:54

you make a judgment on that that

39:56

there's enough people with negativity in the

39:58

world people bias towards negativity because it

40:00

sells media has biased towards negativity in

40:02

the media has biased towards negativity in

40:04

the complete ground direction. Now everything's negative.

40:06

That's true and there you said it

40:08

like it's okay to have an angle

40:10

you know then immediately after you have

40:12

to stand for something like you were

40:14

obviously very similar it's positive You have

40:16

to have an angle. And understand that

40:18

this is your audience. You can't be

40:20

for everybody. If you're everybody, you're for

40:23

Manila. And that's the problem with all

40:25

media is that they were used to

40:27

be for everybody. Everyone used to get

40:29

the same news and the same outlet.

40:31

Now you get your phone out. Any

40:33

bit of information in the world is

40:35

available to you now? I think the

40:37

problem is, like, if you think of

40:39

here, they have media offices in all

40:41

the Emirates to buy Abu Dhabi and

40:43

they have social media cans. So that's

40:45

like RT or whatever, like that's the

40:47

news, right? And you have a thing

40:49

called Wham, which is the National News

40:52

Agency. That can be Vanilla, that can

40:54

be news. But when it's state-sponsored, like

40:56

RTE is, or whatever, it can be

40:58

news, you know, but their challenges, like

41:00

how do you have an angle? Like

41:02

BBC is challenged as well for the

41:04

same reason. In this part of the

41:06

world, they think BBC has always been

41:08

biased, you know, but yeah, everyone has

41:10

different views on different views on different

41:12

views on different views on news. It's

41:14

fascinating though because media is still like

41:16

we were talking about before we came

41:18

on air like media is just it's

41:21

up in the air it's there for

41:23

grabs I think like you guys are

41:25

innovating in a lot different ways but

41:27

like just feels that there's a tipping

41:29

point now it feels like there's something

41:31

else happening that these new model is

41:33

coming for because it's taking a long

41:35

time right so bring me back then

41:37

to like 2017-2018 it's starting to grow

41:39

you've kind of hacked your way to

41:41

like a couple of min page trees

41:43

was there a moment for you're like

41:45

this is going to work this is

41:47

going to work I think you seem

41:50

like kind of guy you knew is

41:52

going to work from the start, but

41:54

was there a moment where you're like,

41:56

I think we're on some here? You

41:58

know, we were, since day one, we

42:00

run the business in the same way,

42:02

we do. I have the same three

42:04

board of directors. They get an email

42:06

in eight of the month with the

42:08

P&L. We have, where did they come

42:10

from? One from Syria, one from Jordan,

42:12

and one is my brother William in

42:14

San Francisco. But they're basically through old,

42:16

the first two are through work I

42:19

used to work here. people I knew

42:21

through the industry, they invested. So they're

42:23

kind of like investors as opposed to,

42:25

you know, they get dividends every day

42:27

or they look after their investment, but

42:29

they allow me to have that, is

42:31

it due diligence or that governance? They

42:33

give me that governance. I haven't missed

42:35

a board meeting, I haven't missed a

42:37

board report. in 10 years, like I

42:39

don't miss them, like I do four

42:41

every year, they get their annual report,

42:43

we do audits and all that sort

42:45

of stuff, even as we grow, like

42:47

we have to do audits in all

42:50

these countries, we have so much compliance,

42:52

we've enhanced legal counsel in Egypt, we're

42:54

getting bigger and bigger, you know, we

42:56

want to be in Afghanistan, we've licensed

42:58

in Pakistan, all this sort of stuff,

43:00

right? So, you know, what else do

43:02

we do on the reporting side of

43:04

things? Every month I send a first

43:06

report to all our staff, so everything

43:08

grows incrementally. Like, like I was managing

43:10

a social media team in Mindshare or

43:12

whatever, if I have three people in

43:14

my team, I will manage those team

43:16

and I will communicate to them. When

43:19

I started here, I started with emailing

43:21

three people, then five, then ten, and

43:23

we went from a co-working space with

43:25

three laptops. I remember leaving Branster and

43:27

going into Astrolabs and thinking, oh now,

43:29

now I need to look big here.

43:31

So I'll pay for the desks at

43:33

the back, right? And I think like

43:35

the desk at the back were $100

43:37

more than the free desks. People in

43:39

co-working spaces will know this stuff. And

43:41

I couldn't afford it after two months.

43:43

My head and hands walk back into

43:45

the cheap seats, right? Yeah, back to

43:48

the front. But I was like, okay.

43:50

After five visas I have to get

43:52

out of here because they only cop

43:54

you at five. Remember driving around J.L.T.

43:56

People know Dubai and looking at their

43:58

towers going when we could afford one

44:00

of those offices. So when we were

44:02

five people, we had to move into

44:04

a space that we could grow to

44:06

eight people. Then we got an office

44:08

in 2017, and by 2019 we moved

44:10

into a place that had 20 people,

44:12

and then eventually we moved in here,

44:14

but at the time we opened office

44:17

in Saturday and all that sort of

44:19

stuff. But going back to the question,

44:21

so like, I didn't, there was a

44:23

tipping point, but in 2017, we were

44:25

profitable. So 2016, that year I moved

44:27

in in the first, 2017 we were

44:29

profitable and we started paying dividends. And

44:31

it was just incremental from there. Like

44:33

I published the stats, like it goes

44:35

from $1 million to $2 million, to

44:37

$2 million, to 3 to 4 to

44:39

5 every year, 20-30% growth on average

44:41

every year. And we just make decisions

44:43

along the way. Like we just, it's

44:46

almost like a board game of risk

44:48

where you're like putting people into each

44:50

country, pulling back. This is the base,

44:52

protect the base, open the base, open

44:54

the Nabbabadabi. Last year, actually a year

44:56

and a half ago, and we did

44:58

half a million dollars, a bit more

45:00

overall, actually close to eight or nine

45:02

hundred thousand dollars gross if we do

45:04

rev share or transfer pricing. A lot

45:06

of that is from Dubai, but with

45:08

four people in an office in Abu

45:10

Dhabi, now I'm opening a branch of

45:12

Rassakima where the, you know, the gaming,

45:15

what do you call them, casinos, casinos

45:17

are up and yeah. So, so step

45:19

by step all the way, but I

45:21

don't think like... I don't think, even

45:23

now I'm not getting complacent, like, it's

45:25

been disrupted all the time by AI,

45:27

by creators and everything. Like I know

45:29

that we have a revenue number, but

45:31

equally our number isn't interesting to most

45:33

people. Our 12, 50 million dollars, private

45:35

equity don't look at that. You know,

45:37

so, you know, built such a big

45:39

business to employ so many people, but

45:41

like, yeah, they all looked like the,

45:43

what's the 100, like, what's going to

45:46

get to a billion? What's going to

45:48

get to a billion? And what's 25

45:50

or $30 million revenue? And like, you

45:52

know, and then the value, we've had

45:54

valuations over the years. I remember one

45:56

year we were, someone offered us $3

45:58

million for the business, and we were

46:00

doing three million, and I was like,

46:02

what? And then the next time someone

46:04

off, on a 12 million year, someone

46:06

offers 12 million, but they were kind

46:08

of going to offer a 6, of

46:10

which they would pay 3, and then

46:12

use your profits over the next few

46:15

years. But like in America, yeah, seller,

46:17

seller, seller, financing. Yeah, like, whatever, whatever.

46:19

And like, and then they would get

46:21

to 51 and kick you out in

46:23

three years. And I'm kind of like,

46:25

but we're doing 12 and we're doing

46:27

12 and we'll do 15 next year.

46:29

10x, whatever it is, there has to

46:31

be multiple. It can't be just for

46:33

like your rem. You're like, I can

46:35

just do nothing and still make the

46:37

same money. Whereas you're a driven guy,

46:39

you've got like the playbook now. And

46:41

also we bought out of the franchise,

46:44

so we don't, we know, we own

46:46

the IP here, we own Smashie, we

46:48

own everything. Okay. So we don't. When

46:50

did you buy it? They had decided.

46:52

that media wasn't for them, a really

46:54

nice guys, and they kind of tried

46:56

everything. They tried to merge us back

46:58

into Dublin and they sort of wanted

47:00

to sell off the assets and then

47:02

sell, and eventually they sold them to

47:04

Greencastle Media, and London is still going.

47:06

But we paved what would have been

47:08

our royalties for that year to get

47:10

out of the royalty thing, and it

47:13

would have become quite costly for us.

47:15

After five years, we would have had

47:17

to pay 5% of growth. and that

47:19

would have become quite costly because we

47:21

were doing it we're building up to

47:23

a couple million you know and each

47:25

city the reason we didn't expand so

47:27

fast is because each city instead of

47:29

20,000 dollars in the agreement that I

47:31

signed a five-year into a 10-year agreement

47:33

would have been $40,000. Oh wow. So

47:35

if I opened in the 22 cities

47:37

I would have had 22 by 40

47:39

plus 5% of gross and then in

47:42

10 years they could have flipped it

47:44

to someone else. Okay. So it made

47:46

no sense. Yeah and you know to

47:48

be fair like they didn't really buy

47:50

the IP in the region. They didn't

47:52

protect us. There was so much stuff.

47:54

that we were open because they didn't

47:56

grow the brand, neither had left and

47:58

they didn't grow into nationally in the

48:00

way, so we were kind of going,

48:02

hang on, like we're open here, someone

48:04

can just register loving in Saudi or

48:06

whatever. Okay, right, so you're exposed. Yeah,

48:08

and we needed to, we needed to

48:10

invest. We needed to invest in the

48:13

brand, we needed to do all that

48:15

sort of stuff. So it was an

48:17

amical deal and then it allowed us

48:19

to set up a lot of Facebook

48:21

pages and load the Instagram pages which

48:23

have now grown really big just by

48:25

having the freedom to, and we changed

48:27

the brand a little bit, you'll see

48:29

the Arabic on their loving, we kept

48:31

the same style of everything. So we

48:33

bought out of that and then and

48:35

it was a really good deal. It

48:37

was a really good move. And then

48:39

you've expanded like crazy. Bit by bit,

48:42

we tried at the time we put

48:44

up an incorporated JV partnership thing, we

48:46

thought we'd find someone like us, and

48:48

we thought we'd flip the model that

48:50

made it hard for us, so we'd

48:52

go, we won't charge you to punch

48:54

us, we'd give it for free, but

48:56

let us own, you do all the

48:58

work, and we'd own, uh, minority, 40%

49:00

of our business, and, in the end,

49:02

you have to, uh, put the money

49:04

in any way. People do it differently,

49:06

but we decided to do it ourselves.

49:08

So with Egypt and now like you

49:11

know in Levant region, so Levant here

49:13

is Syria, Jordan, Palestine. Iraq really and

49:15

Lebanon right so around there is known

49:17

as the Levant or Al Shams so

49:19

we don't have an office there but

49:21

we've two journalists in Gaza when I

49:23

said in Baghdad one in Beirut two

49:25

in Amman and we're doing Syria now

49:27

that hopefully in Charlotte that sanctions get

49:29

removed so so that area is remote

49:31

for us right everywhere else we have

49:33

an office per se and we have

49:35

full-time employees and by an office like

49:37

people say why do you have an

49:40

office? It's not necessarily an office, it's

49:42

more like you have a bank account,

49:44

you have a media licence. You know,

49:46

people will try and do remote working

49:48

stuff and you can. You can do

49:50

drop shipping and you can do all

49:52

that sort of stuff. But to be

49:54

the biggest media company in Syria or

49:56

Cairo, I can't do that from here.

49:58

I can have, loving Cairo is the

50:00

biggest account from here with remote workers,

50:02

but I can't be known on the

50:04

ground. I can't stand up when I'm

50:06

getting legal suits because I don't have

50:09

a licence. Right? So, going back to

50:11

the credibility and the legitimacy. And this

50:13

is a thing I don't think people

50:15

can value. Like, going back to the

50:17

gusts, this thing, the train tracks, building

50:19

the infrastructure across the region. No one

50:21

has the licenses we have. And I

50:23

can say that you're now protected, because

50:25

in media the killer is, you're only

50:27

as good as your last podcast. Because

50:29

I was explaining the model of someone

50:31

yesterday, he was an investor, and he's

50:33

like, explaining podcast, how's work? I was

50:35

like, it's going bad, it's going to

50:37

bad, you know, you know, you know,

50:40

you know, you know, you know, you

50:42

know, you know, you know, you know,

50:44

you know, you know, you know, you

50:46

know, you know, you know, you know,

50:48

you know, you know, you know, you

50:50

know, you know, you know, you know,

50:52

you know, you know, you know, you

50:54

know, you know, you know, you know,

50:56

you know, you know You know, when

50:58

I was in like, my mode is

51:00

really just myself going out and doing

51:02

it every single month, but like, you've

51:04

now built a motion. We have a

51:06

regulatory mode. Like in Saudi when we

51:09

had a regular issue and when we

51:11

solved it, I realized it's good that

51:13

they've renewed our license and they're watching

51:15

us. They're checking the comments. Did we

51:17

allow that? Did they not? For five

51:19

years there was nothing. And now that

51:21

they gave us a stop in the

51:23

wrist and go, hey, and we're like,

51:25

tell us what to do, how do

51:27

this, how do this, where's the line?

51:29

Yeah, and even people from the region

51:31

go, Rich, how do you get that

51:33

extra license? It's called GM or in

51:35

Saudi, it was called GCOM. How do

51:38

you get it? And now we have

51:40

it. We have it. Obviously, I have

51:42

it. We have it. Obviously, I have

51:44

to protect it every year. But we

51:46

have it. Obviously, I have to protect

51:48

it every month. How have you learned

51:50

this? by failing. Like, or honestly, like

51:52

I've changed colors and logos in Saudi

51:54

three, four times, like languages. I just

51:56

believe in the product can work locally.

51:58

People say, people, every idea, love and

52:00

work. because it's expots. No, it works

52:02

in Cairo, but Cairo is different to,

52:04

because they call it ABC class, like

52:07

Class A speaks English and others, so

52:09

we do a bit about there. In

52:11

Saudi we have Love in Saudi and

52:13

Green Bill Arby in Arabic and then

52:15

we have Love in Riyadh and English

52:17

and we do the red ones all

52:19

around the kingdom like Alula, Jedda, Shargi,

52:21

all these ones and it's maybe not

52:23

perfect but it's working, so... but it's

52:25

seven years and it's still like half

52:27

it's one-eighth of the size of UAE

52:29

business so market entry any entrepreneur market

52:31

entry is probably the hardest thing because

52:33

you think you've cracked it a restaurant

52:36

a brand like front it's the hardest

52:38

thing to get right all the time

52:40

but I hear it from Irish entrepreneurs

52:42

going to England so like for you

52:44

to go to all these different countries

52:46

with so many different nuances people have

52:48

said it to me like Philip from

52:50

therapy was like you know Gary Glasgow's

52:52

different to Leeds, the Manchester, Manchester's a

52:54

hell of a lot different than London.

52:56

So like, if they're, you know, starting

52:58

to go across like a 60 minute

53:00

flight, how, you've said by failing, like,

53:02

but it's ambitious, like, you really seem

53:04

to be very, very ambitious to grow

53:07

the brand as hard and as fast

53:09

as you can. Yeah, I don't know

53:11

about hard and fast, I don't think

53:13

it's zero sum, I actually see it

53:15

as 30, 40, 50 years, I don't,

53:17

I actually see it as 30, as

53:19

30, as 30, as 30, as 30,

53:21

as 30, as 30, as 30, as

53:23

30, as 30, as 30, as 30,

53:25

as 30, as 30, as 30, as

53:27

30, as 30, as 30, as 30,

53:29

as 30, as 30, as 30, as

53:31

30, as 30, as 30, as 30,

53:33

as 30, as 30, as 30, as

53:36

30, as 30, as 30, as 30,

53:38

as 30, as 30, But maybe over

53:40

that time you still need to go

53:42

hard and fast, you probably do. But

53:44

other things that we've learned is it's

53:46

local, so it has to be local.

53:48

We need people who know the city,

53:50

love the city, but there is a

53:52

playbook. Like there's, how do you do

53:54

love in Dubai and love in Ireland?

53:56

Like feck our strength girls thing, right?

53:58

That doesn't work here, right? You know,

54:00

but there are things that nostalgia works,

54:02

national brands, national heroes, people work, people

54:05

work, and... that type of stuff. Like

54:07

there's a crown prince in Dubai super

54:09

popular this crown prince and Saudi super

54:11

popular. There are actors and celebs and

54:13

Egypt who are super popular. There's national

54:15

airline carriers here. there, there, there, there's

54:17

nostalgia. If I tell you, you know,

54:19

what was the sweet or the dessert

54:21

that you remember, Christmas, growing up, you

54:23

always, you think of something. If I

54:25

say that sentence to people from Jordan,

54:27

from Lebanon, from Saudi, from Egypt, from

54:29

UAE, they all think of something else,

54:31

but the same. triggers the same emotion

54:34

so you need the journalist to package

54:36

that 13 chocolate bars you remember growing

54:38

up that works in 200 countries and

54:40

it's a different article in everyone. So

54:42

it's a psychology piece as well you've

54:44

understood the psychology of human nature. Emotely

54:46

you have to drive emotions. How do

54:48

you find these people? Because you've said

54:50

journalists there and actually caught my attention

54:52

because it's a totally different skill to

54:54

what we classically would have known as

54:56

journalism. I did a journalism master's, and

54:58

it was really funny, I did it

55:00

right at the end. I'm sorry I'm

55:03

good at this, yeah, okay. I would

55:05

have known, it's absolutely zero to do

55:07

with it, it's very funny, like nothing,

55:09

zero to do with it, because they

55:11

taught you the old journalism print, Marvel.

55:13

They did, but they did something else,

55:15

you finished the degree, and like, university

55:17

I think there's a lot to do

55:19

with that. And what happened? We still

55:21

hire journalists. But what we get is

55:23

someone who has that old model, but

55:25

they still are fact-checkers curious. They believe

55:27

in the discipline. But what we do

55:29

is we teach them how to curate.

55:31

I teach them how to go on

55:34

to Instagram Places when there's a concert

55:36

on to see the viral video of

55:38

the stories the night before. People go

55:40

to be average, we go down with

55:42

a mic, no we won't. We'll sit

55:44

back in, we'll take from the 30,000

55:46

phones that are there. Stop thinking like

55:48

you're important. You're not curate and then

55:50

once they have found the video that

55:52

choose that exciting thing Remember there was

55:54

one like Steve Ioki was in Dubai

55:56

and he shoved a cake in someone's

55:58

face. Remember that? Yeah, we go we

56:00

go we go get that not by

56:03

being there We go go get that

56:05

because I train them to where to

56:07

look how to look and then How

56:09

to package, package, and then how to

56:11

distribute in real time. That hook, that

56:13

headline is important. Choosing that image on

56:15

canvas, that emotion, that story, all that

56:17

stuff. That's really interesting, curation. And we

56:19

only hire journalists, really. And you still

56:21

hire journalists, yeah, in the traditional sense.

56:23

Yeah, but journalists who want to be

56:25

media personalities as such, as opposed to

56:27

creators. Yeah, I still hire journalists. And

56:29

I bring in interns from all the

56:32

journalists, universities, universities for a month for

56:34

three months. Wait until they graduate and

56:36

give them a job. Two, three years

56:38

later. And then, but we chance everything,

56:40

like, I don't worry too much about

56:42

hiring. If they have a good energy,

56:44

a good attitude, you know the way

56:46

some start-up podcasts say, I hear so

56:48

far fast, I don't, I hear fast,

56:50

far fast. You know, I love that,

56:52

I'm Blackman Rovers fan, and Mark Hughes,

56:54

when he was manager, he loves triling

56:56

players, what? I can't get rid of

56:58

them. The one yesterday. But like I'm

57:01

watching a lot of Saudi League these

57:03

days. But anyway, so he would trial

57:05

a player. He would put them in

57:07

training for a few months. And then,

57:09

and I love that, I love that

57:11

approach. And people, we always pay interns,

57:13

but people sort of look down an

57:15

internship. But I like testing young people.

57:17

I like putting people on camera early

57:19

in their career. We have a 20

57:21

year old here who were helping through

57:23

university because she's that good. You know,

57:25

it's that good, she's so bloody talented.

57:27

And I can see it, and like,

57:30

sure, there have been mistakes, and yes,

57:32

I've had legal fees, and we have

57:34

loads of issues and stuff, but it's

57:36

worth it. That's the price success, isn't

57:38

it? There's like, find the cost of

57:40

success and pay it. I find interesting

57:42

about the, almost like a... It's kind

57:44

of looked down on at home as

57:46

well as like people doing kind of

57:48

like you know practical skills they become

57:50

the carpenter or tradesman you don't sit

57:52

in a college for four years to

57:54

become a carpenter you do your you

57:56

do your apprenticeship. I think a lot

57:58

of businesses need to think like this

58:01

especially on entrepreneurs, you need to think

58:03

of like bringing people through apprenticeships. Because

58:05

you learn by doing. You don't learn

58:07

by, you don't become a good broadcaster

58:09

by reading the book by podcasting. You

58:12

learn by doing it. It's the same

58:14

with, definitely the same with journalism. Because

58:16

it's that thing, right? If you're listening,

58:18

I'm doing that thing, I'm doing that

58:21

thing, I'm doing that thing with my

58:23

fingers again, where I'm just rubbing

58:25

my fingers together, like this seems

58:27

relatively new, isn't? Three years, yeah,

58:29

12,000 square foot studio, we pay

58:32

about, what's 600,000 euros, that much

58:34

in rent a year, and it

58:36

costs us a million to fit

58:38

out from free cash for a

58:41

million dollars. Yeah, yeah, and people

58:43

will say, why build fancy studios

58:45

when you can do production? And

58:48

I get that, but you have

58:50

to look at what happens after you

58:52

do things. Does your revenue explode?

58:54

Is the space, you know, can

58:56

you think, can you hire more

58:58

people? Does it do this? Does

59:00

it create opportunities? And the answer is

59:02

yes. So we had an event here for

59:05

200 clients on Friday. You probably

59:07

see remnants of it. You know,

59:09

we paid $20,000 just to host that event

59:12

for a Ramadan event, but we had,

59:14

you know, heads of marketing at Nestle,

59:16

at Nestle, at Hilton, U.M. You know,

59:18

we had all these people here. no

59:20

small no small media companies doing this

59:23

but we want to be big and

59:25

we'll be 10 years this year we'll

59:27

do a big stunt for love in

59:29

Dubai and whatever but you know so

59:32

so that so we invest in the

59:34

studios I'll do this in Egypt I

59:36

have studios in Riyadh rest of places

59:38

kind of like co-working off a space

59:41

with studios but gradually will grow I

59:43

believe content is manufacturing I didn't hire

59:45

a back office in Egypt or India.

59:47

I hired journalists here and I treated

59:50

the unit economics about manufacturing within

59:52

the UAE because the UAE

59:54

is Rosweetland country and people

59:56

think made in China or

59:58

automotive parts in Germany. I manufactured

1:00:00

content here and I found the price

1:00:02

point, a business model that kept that

1:00:04

20% margin because I had to. I

1:00:06

didn't have investment, I had a franchise,

1:00:08

so I had to make money. and

1:00:10

I had to have that bank balance

1:00:12

every month. So I really, you know,

1:00:14

from the Bay Area experience in Mindshare,

1:00:16

I saw the pros and cons of

1:00:18

having to back office and content. Didn't

1:00:20

really work. Now we do our tech

1:00:22

in Egypt, but we keep the content

1:00:24

here and it allows me to have,

1:00:26

like one weekend last weekend, we did

1:00:28

17 shoots across the UAE, I was

1:00:30

saying off air before, we did 80

1:00:33

real shoots each month in... October, November,

1:00:35

December, and December. And because we hire

1:00:37

young journalists, creators, and we have a

1:00:39

client service team, and we book the

1:00:41

clients, and, you know, so that's why

1:00:43

we invested in the space and the

1:00:45

studios and things like that. Are there

1:00:47

mistakes? Maybe, like these studios aren't at

1:00:49

capacity, because it's in a Tiktok era,

1:00:51

but I'm okay with it because our

1:00:53

revenues growing and things like that. But

1:00:55

like, it allows us, you know, we

1:00:57

still, we look at, to be the modern media

1:00:59

media company across the company across the region,

1:01:01

We don't buy radio licenses for the sake

1:01:04

of it. Stick with digital, text audio, video

1:01:06

and build our own IP. And when you

1:01:08

think of text audio and video, we have

1:01:10

35 podcasts, but they're not like yours. They're

1:01:13

the 11 to buy show every day or

1:01:15

the 11 Bahrain show or the loving Muscat

1:01:17

show. Like if you go on and you

1:01:20

want to hear about Kuwait, you can go

1:01:22

on the 11 Kuwait show 10 minutes, one

1:01:24

journalist once a week. I will grow that.

1:01:26

I now have 1.3 million downloads a month

1:01:28

from podcast network from podcast

1:01:30

network. But without having one guest,

1:01:33

we have guests, but without like,

1:01:35

that's not the format. You're manufacturing.

1:01:37

Yeah, manufacture. And the same with

1:01:40

newsletters. We've 144,000 subscribers on newsletters,

1:01:42

but it's not a core business,

1:01:44

but I'm trying to build up

1:01:47

that first party thing. And then

1:01:49

with video, we have 250 social

1:01:51

media channels, with 50 on TikTok. You

1:01:54

know, 22 on 11 and 13 on

1:01:56

Smashi, plus a few of English and

1:01:58

Arabic and Arabic double up. So we

1:02:00

managed all those Instagram accounts and now

1:02:02

we're big into AI as well. How

1:02:04

is AI changing? Well, firstly, we

1:02:06

use AI cameras, a bit like

1:02:09

those same cameras Nickavaran and Jews,

1:02:11

but we use AI cameras to

1:02:13

do Futsal volleyball, Mahalmo and basketball

1:02:15

to broadcast live sports on a

1:02:17

smashy TV app at like $5

1:02:19

a month subscription. So we replaced

1:02:21

the OB truck, we were targeting

1:02:23

the legacy and combat TV stations,

1:02:26

the RT's of here. instead of

1:02:28

going after Netflix and the zone

1:02:30

and that stuff. And we're using

1:02:32

AI cameras for that. That's one.

1:02:34

Two is software that everyone has

1:02:36

access to. The big household names

1:02:38

now pretty much. Chatty, BT, SORA

1:02:41

and all that, but a lot

1:02:43

of others. What are you using

1:02:45

it for? Captions, automated highlights, cloning

1:02:47

voices, audio labs, for podcasts. You

1:02:49

can listen to a podcast today

1:02:51

that that we use AI for the

1:02:53

script and we use AI for the

1:02:56

voice and you wouldn't know. I think it's

1:02:58

wild isn't it? And we're embracing it.

1:03:00

I've said an internal target to get to

1:03:02

50% of our content but at the end

1:03:04

of the year to be facilitated by AI.

1:03:06

I want to, I want to, all those cities

1:03:08

that we don't have more content in, I

1:03:10

want to do it, but I don't want

1:03:12

to do it, most AI contents crap, but

1:03:14

it's moving so fast, I want to do

1:03:17

it in a way where it's doing it in

1:03:19

a way that's good. Yeah, you predict

1:03:21

my next question, because... We talked about

1:03:23

taste a lot and style. How do

1:03:25

you do AI but with the same

1:03:27

style that you guys have? Because obviously

1:03:29

your voice, your tone, you have that

1:03:31

feel. How do you use AI without losing

1:03:33

that? It's getting there, I mean not, you

1:03:36

don't do it fully like, but you're

1:03:38

getting there, it's getting there, it's getting

1:03:40

there, like it really is, now ChatGPT

1:03:42

and that stuff, no, and not everyone

1:03:45

knows the level that we're talking about,

1:03:47

like Mid Journey, SORA, like all these

1:03:49

other softwares, this world called Hayjan, which

1:03:52

does the cloning, audio labs is exploding,

1:03:54

audio labs I think is, it's a

1:03:56

unicorn already, it's raised 250 million dollars

1:03:58

in a year, like... There's all these

1:04:00

softwares explaining, I invest personally in some of

1:04:03

these softwares to keep an eye on it,

1:04:05

but it's just that acceleration of AI. I

1:04:07

don't want to be sitting here, Gary, and

1:04:09

letting AI our lunch. And I'm not afraid

1:04:12

of it either. I might be afraid of

1:04:14

Gen, of AGI, I might be afraid of

1:04:16

robots and that stuff, but for media I'm

1:04:19

not afraid of it. When color TV came

1:04:21

along. other people would have sold their animation

1:04:23

stuff. You know, when, you know, when, you

1:04:25

know, when technology disrupts media. Yeah. So we

1:04:28

need to, we need to embrace AI. And

1:04:30

we do it with investments. You know, this

1:04:32

is the thing, like we will, I was

1:04:34

so tight on software that I wouldn't let

1:04:37

people get a, like a Photoshop or license

1:04:39

extra or whatever. Now I opened up the

1:04:41

credit card. I'm like, last year was, we

1:04:43

tried 304040 softwares, you know, way more than

1:04:46

we would have ever spent on software. And

1:04:48

I'm like, guys, just go with it, just

1:04:50

run. It's very accessible now, though. Because you're

1:04:53

talking about $20 a month. I remember buying

1:04:55

Photoshop devices is grand. I was like, oh,

1:04:57

geez, a lot of money. Whereas now you

1:04:59

can just like go, yeah, let's try this

1:05:02

from up. Yeah. Three, you can just like

1:05:04

go. Yeah, let's try this. Yeah, let's try

1:05:06

this from up. Yeah, let's right. Yeah, let's

1:05:08

right. Yeah, let's like, let's right. Yeah, let's

1:05:11

right. Yeah, let's right. Yeah, let's right. Yeah,

1:05:13

let's right. Yeah, let's right. Yeah, let's right.

1:05:15

Yeah, let's right. Yeah, let's right. Yeah, let's

1:05:17

right. Yeah, let's right. Yeah, let's right. Yeah,

1:05:20

let's right. Yeah, let's right. Yeah, let's right.

1:05:22

Yeah, let's right. Yeah, let That's what it

1:05:24

is. High look and go right. It doesn't

1:05:27

replace me, but it speeds up my flow,

1:05:29

my process, like a lot of stuff you

1:05:31

do, media is repetitive. Every time you're doing

1:05:33

titles, tags, descriptions, you know, you're doing all

1:05:36

that repetitive work, whereas if you're aiding the

1:05:38

talent of journalists that you have, that's really

1:05:40

interesting. The Fitzy fund. What is that? Well,

1:05:42

it's nothing majorly legit, like it's, it's, I

1:05:45

started investing in... media tech stuff in the

1:05:47

emerging market when I basically I found a

1:05:49

podcast platform in Lebanon and I brought to

1:05:52

our board and like guys I think we

1:05:54

should invest in this and they're like that

1:05:56

sounds like more a rich thing like me

1:05:58

than an Augustus thing like cool okay I'm

1:06:01

gonna invest in it and then it kind

1:06:03

of went from there and then basically what

1:06:05

it's allowed me to do Gary is stay

1:06:07

disciplined on the sort of profitable growth of

1:06:10

Augustus without pivoting into tech and zuck and

1:06:12

distract from the court yeah so I then

1:06:14

grow Augustus as what it is and I

1:06:16

know the margins and I never tell someone,

1:06:19

hey, invest in VC and me, I'm going

1:06:21

to make a sass for podcasts or a

1:06:23

sass for new setters, and then... but I

1:06:26

know I need to scratch at age or

1:06:28

I know I see all this stuff so

1:06:30

I get dividends every year and I put

1:06:32

like you know 50 or 100K dollar tickets

1:06:35

into this stuff and then I was like

1:06:37

okay I've about seven or eight of them

1:06:39

or whatever and I set up 50 fund

1:06:41

and I see it as a 10 year

1:06:44

fund and if I get return on that

1:06:46

I'll then hire a private equity person or

1:06:48

a VC person I'll sit them in Abu

1:06:51

Dhabi and I'll try and raise money for

1:06:53

the second fund so I'll fund that maybe

1:06:55

with... I have an idea of like a

1:06:57

million or so over 10 years and like

1:07:00

what like say say seven or eight of

1:07:02

them three of them are definitely failing like

1:07:04

you know like three or four one or

1:07:06

two might make it and that's like it's

1:07:09

scary and hairy like I've just got married

1:07:11

of certain family like I need to do

1:07:13

other investments that sort of stuff so like

1:07:15

what like ancient investment not for the faint

1:07:18

of heart like it's not fun it's actually

1:07:20

is fun but it's not profitable it's not

1:07:22

profitable it's not smart and a lot of

1:07:25

people yet every founder wants to do it's

1:07:27

to do it's to do it's to do

1:07:29

it's to do it's to do it's to

1:07:31

do it's to do it's to do it's

1:07:34

to do it's to do it's to do

1:07:36

it's Every single founder I talked to, I'll

1:07:38

ask you the quick fire around now in

1:07:40

a few minutes, but like every single founder

1:07:43

I'm like gonna give you 10 million and

1:07:45

they're like, I'd like invest in either my

1:07:47

own business, which I'm like cool, but partner,

1:07:50

they're like, oh I'm a mess, they're like,

1:07:52

oh I'm a mess, they're like, I'm like,

1:07:54

oh I'm a mess, they're like, I'm like,

1:07:56

oh I'm a mess, they're like, like, I'm

1:07:59

like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm

1:08:01

like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm

1:08:03

like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm

1:08:05

like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm

1:08:08

like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm

1:08:10

like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm

1:08:12

like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, investing

1:08:14

but in others stuff they have no expertise

1:08:17

in like oh yeah well the classic we'll

1:08:19

open a pub or we'll open a coffee

1:08:21

shop you're like you know nothing about that

1:08:24

yeah don't like you whereas like you you

1:08:26

have a lifetime of social media media expertise

1:08:28

for you to go off and invest in

1:08:30

investing in like an Irish bar It makes

1:08:33

no sense. No. Well, I mean, yeah, it's

1:08:35

not a portfolio, but you can build a

1:08:37

family office in different ways. I agree, but

1:08:39

I don't do it, but like, I'm doing

1:08:42

it inside with growing, you know? If I

1:08:44

ever sell this or whatever, I don't want

1:08:46

to, I want to list it, or I

1:08:48

want to grow it, but like, it's also

1:08:51

allows that sort of, that could become something

1:08:53

itself, like, like, you know, like, you know,

1:08:55

there's a few different, there's a few different,

1:08:58

there's a few different, there's a few different,

1:09:00

a few different, a few different, a, a,

1:09:02

a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a,

1:09:04

a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a,

1:09:07

a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a,

1:09:09

a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a,

1:09:11

a, a, a, a, a, a, a and

1:09:13

I keep looking at the creator economy. You

1:09:16

know what, as a founder, like I might,

1:09:18

you say, I'm restless and stuff, like I

1:09:20

might think, what would Love and look like

1:09:23

if there was a dating element to it,

1:09:25

if there was a matchmaking part in the

1:09:27

app, would the app grow faster? Could we

1:09:29

get subscription? But instead of doing that, I'm

1:09:32

like, no, let's provide utility, let's have fast

1:09:34

social news there, we're building an AI writer

1:09:36

to do more articles on Loveen as well,

1:09:38

and Loveen as well, with the, with the

1:09:41

tone and everything, with the tone and everything.

1:09:43

I think you need that because otherwise you

1:09:45

do exactly what you said there you start

1:09:47

becoming a bit of everything. Yeah. And whereas

1:09:50

you know exactly what you are, exactly what

1:09:52

you're not. And I know it takes time.

1:09:54

I know my streaming bet on sports needs

1:09:57

another 10 years and I bought myself that

1:09:59

time with our board by giving them dividends

1:10:01

and not having to raise money. Okay. So

1:10:03

yeah, the Smashes is a separate app that's

1:10:06

just streaming, streaming service. Yeah, I mean, well,

1:10:08

basically, the Smashie is 13 vertical, Smashie Business,

1:10:10

Smashie Sports, and for the user, it's a

1:10:12

newsletter or a podcast and social media, so

1:10:15

it's just like loving. But instead of being

1:10:17

an app and a website like Club and

1:10:19

Dubai, it's a streaming service as well. So

1:10:22

I monetize on that, but I build community

1:10:24

and audience, and I try and get sponsor

1:10:26

content. on Smashy Business. Like Smashy Business is

1:10:28

the media partner, like we'll be at website

1:10:31

in Doha and Qatar on Sunday next week.

1:10:33

I know this is timely, but like yeah,

1:10:35

basically Smashy Business is the brand that goes

1:10:37

to all the startup stuff. We did leap

1:10:40

in Saudi last week. We're at Chargen Financial

1:10:42

Fast for last week, we'll be a step

1:10:44

conference to buy and rise up. So we

1:10:46

have five in Egypt, we have five different.

1:10:49

But I don't go there with love in

1:10:51

Dubai, I go there with Smashy Business and

1:10:53

Smashy Sports tries to do, tries to tell

1:10:56

what's happening in the Saudi League with Rinaldo

1:10:58

and you know the latest stars and stuff

1:11:00

like that. It's so timely considering the focus

1:11:02

that's on it now. You're a huge ideally

1:11:05

set. You've kind of half touched on it

1:11:07

there like you've covered a massive amount of

1:11:09

ground in 2016 to 2025. What's the next

1:11:11

couple of years look like for you like

1:11:14

what your visions you clearly have a very...

1:11:16

direct one. I want to get to 25,

1:11:18

30 million dollars by 2030-ish. We have a

1:11:21

full plan on this. I think I can

1:11:23

do it from the Gulf States, the economics

1:11:25

of, I describe the Middle East and North

1:11:27

Africa a bit like not in terms of

1:11:30

size but in terms of economy like US

1:11:32

and then Latin. US is good economy, Latin

1:11:34

is a mixed bag and the Gulf is

1:11:36

flying. The Gulf, modern city states don't know

1:11:39

the rest that made them. The modern Gulf

1:11:41

states like they're all a bit different but

1:11:43

like Abu Dhabi Doha Dubai flying and then

1:11:45

the rest are figuring it out like Saudi

1:11:48

is definitely interesting. Rio is amazing, like so

1:11:50

exciting, it's completely different, the new metro is

1:11:52

open and the numbers are incredible, like it

1:11:55

opens up the city, Chedd is another one,

1:11:57

we haven't opened an office in Chedda yet

1:11:59

we will, I think I can get, without

1:12:01

getting private equity and baby equity, I think

1:12:04

I can get to 25, 30 million dollars

1:12:06

from these cities while growing in Iraq, loving

1:12:08

in the Levant region and then slowly dipping

1:12:10

our toes risk style into North Africa, Chinas,

1:12:13

Casablanca. Al Jazeera, things like that. And then

1:12:15

streaming. I think the market will heat up

1:12:17

in 28 to 30 in streaming. when more

1:12:19

smart to be penetration comes here. I think

1:12:22

I'll be in a position to buy more

1:12:24

sports rights then. And so that's the sort

1:12:26

of goal. If we can get to there,

1:12:29

we need to get to $100 million revenue.

1:12:31

There are only handful media companies in the

1:12:33

region, including the big tech firms who do

1:12:35

that and a billion. The guy who found

1:12:38

in Morningbrough once said that like media is

1:12:40

one of the easiest sectors in the world,

1:12:42

not easy, but one of the margins and

1:12:44

the multiples are more than a coffee shop

1:12:47

to get to get to... over 10 million

1:12:49

dollars, whatever figures that is, but one of

1:12:51

the hardest to get to 100. I think

1:12:54

that's seven and eight, is it? Seven or

1:12:56

eight or eight or not. Anyway, yeah, I

1:12:58

should have. So, but like, so it's the

1:13:00

hardest to get, you can get to 10-12,

1:13:03

like we have, it took 10 years, it

1:13:05

wasn't easy, but to get to 100 million

1:13:07

super hard and that's the goal. What media

1:13:09

brands you look at, like new media brands

1:13:12

and look at and go up, they're smashing

1:13:14

it? podcasts, because they're not media brands, like

1:13:16

Pierce Morgan's on sensors, what you're doing, diary

1:13:18

CEO, they're smashing it. Like, you know, look

1:13:21

at look at Spotify's top lists in the

1:13:23

US, Huberman, Joe Rogan, they're all smashing it.

1:13:25

Yeah, and then obviously the crater led stuff,

1:13:28

but I wouldn't really call the media brands,

1:13:30

you know, the Logan Paulsen, CSI, I don't

1:13:32

really call them media brands, like they have

1:13:34

media, they have YouTube revenue, but the new,

1:13:37

the, the, the, the, the, hot thing this

1:13:39

year is is podcast as video as this

1:13:41

sort of stuff I think they're smashing it

1:13:43

I think they're replacing TV like if you

1:13:46

want to sell a book you go on

1:13:48

a podcast now you don't go on the

1:13:50

late age show you know and that was

1:13:53

different with Oprah ten years ago how do

1:13:55

you think it's gonna get free advice here

1:13:57

how does that model evolve because that's what

1:13:59

I'm thinking about every single day my every

1:14:02

waking hour I'm waking like how does this

1:14:04

what I do evolve how does what I

1:14:06

do evolve business wise our audience? either sign

1:14:08

deals directly with the streaming services, or you

1:14:11

find a way to get subscription, or you

1:14:13

get bigger brand deals. So you're saying that

1:14:15

Dublin isn't... out podcast studios, you find some

1:14:17

way in Dublin, whether it's the mansion house

1:14:20

or whatever, to pay you for a year.

1:14:22

and are a developer and they will be

1:14:24

the number one thing and then you sell

1:14:27

your ads on top of it. So you

1:14:29

do it direct, you keep building, you don't

1:14:31

make t-shirts and hats and stuff, you can

1:14:33

merge but you do subscription branded content and

1:14:36

then also CTV ad tech. The revenue that's

1:14:38

going to come from podcast on Spotify, Spotify

1:14:40

did a headline recently that they gave out

1:14:42

10 billion in advertising to music, you're going

1:14:45

to get some of that. Sony music are

1:14:47

making 99% of their revenue from streaming services

1:14:49

now. It's all flipped in 10 years. Musicians

1:14:52

now are making money from Spotify. Podcasters are

1:14:54

going to get that and they're going to

1:14:56

get it from Netflix. Netflix are building an

1:14:58

ad platform. So it won't be just like,

1:15:01

hey, pay. The Revshare will be real like

1:15:03

YouTube, but it'll be different. And then the

1:15:05

other way is podcast networks. So Red Seed

1:15:07

Hat does all the right-wing stuff in the

1:15:10

US. They just sold it to Toobee. They

1:15:12

do the Tucker Cross and everything like that.

1:15:14

So someone could approach Gary, someone legit or

1:15:16

whatever, and go, hey, I'm never going to

1:15:19

interfere with you, but I'm going to round

1:15:21

up Ted podcasters in Dublin. I'm going to

1:15:23

build a fanciest studios, and I'm going to

1:15:26

make you grow on social. and then and

1:15:28

then they will sell that business to someone

1:15:30

in the future and they will help you

1:15:32

grow as well. Goldhanger, I actually did that

1:15:35

myself, I think something I need to do

1:15:37

myself. You should, Goldhanger does this. Gary Linekers,

1:15:39

Goldhanger has the rest of politics, the rest

1:15:41

of history. There's two media companies in the

1:15:44

UK, Goldhanger. and tortoise media. And tortoise is

1:15:46

a turtle is slow, so they do, the

1:15:48

difference in what you do and what I

1:15:50

do, you do slow news, I do fast

1:15:53

news. You drop an episode each week, it's

1:15:55

highly produced, high quality, and there's a business

1:15:57

in it, absolutely. The other trick that dire

1:16:00

CEO does, he'll do a three minutes, the

1:16:02

podcast is a feed, podcast like social media.

1:16:04

The app is different to Netflix. think about

1:16:06

it when you when you go on Netflix

1:16:09

and they drop in a new show it's

1:16:11

always the earliest episode first next secondary because

1:16:13

that's how we watch TV shows podcast is

1:16:15

different that's why cereals that's why cereals never

1:16:18

worked on some did but they don't really

1:16:20

work because the latest episodes the last one

1:16:22

is the end so no one built a

1:16:25

podcast like Netflix And even Spotify are going

1:16:27

to have this problem. Like Spotify is built

1:16:29

like Apple feed, the latest at the top,

1:16:31

flip it. You know, I tried to invest

1:16:34

in some podcast apps like that who went

1:16:36

to Disney. Disney don't want to do deals

1:16:38

with Apple because they want to do, you

1:16:40

know, Indiana Jones as a 12-part podcast, highly

1:16:43

produced, but they need an app and Netflix

1:16:45

is the app, you know, they need a

1:16:47

place where it's audio. You know, audio production.

1:16:49

Like and Audible is really good, like I

1:16:52

listened to 1984 as an audible and it's

1:16:54

done by, I think the guy from, I

1:16:56

don't know, I think it's the guy from,

1:16:59

from, one of the famous English actor and

1:17:01

it's a brilliantly audio produced, you know, so

1:17:03

there's value in that, but like what's the

1:17:05

app, where does it live, what's the business

1:17:08

model? Yeah, I think audio discovery and podcast

1:17:10

discovery and genre is poor, I think that's

1:17:12

why I think going video first is, it's

1:17:14

just been a game change, a game change

1:17:17

for so many. quit far around.

1:17:19

Okay, what books should every entrepreneur read?

1:17:21

Oh, there's so many cliches on these

1:17:23

ones. I know you're referenced zero to

1:17:25

one and that like, I've read them

1:17:27

all, I've read them all and I,

1:17:29

it's funny, I do rating review, can

1:17:32

I answer long on this? Okay, so

1:17:34

on good reads I do review, clip

1:17:36

it and say what the dog goes,

1:17:38

but no, but I do good reads.

1:17:40

I'll tell you what, my strategy is,

1:17:42

I read 20 to 30 books a

1:17:44

year on audible, for the last six

1:17:46

or seven years, knowledge compounds and I

1:17:48

find it such a brilliant trick and

1:17:50

I do it while I do triathlon

1:17:52

training and I rate them all on

1:17:54

good reads app and I have three

1:17:57

categories of books that I read and

1:17:59

go and rotate. One is the startup

1:18:01

founder book. Two is a business book,

1:18:03

an entrepreneur book, which is different. I'll

1:18:05

tell you why. And three is a

1:18:07

Middle Eastern book, politics or history. I'm

1:18:09

finishing a book about World War I

1:18:11

at the moment and Syria. And it's

1:18:13

so fascinating. There was a constant, what's

1:18:15

happening right now. Anna Sir Campbell did

1:18:17

a podcast with... with Ahmad al-Sharin in

1:18:19

Damascus last week and they're talking about

1:18:22

writing the constitution. They wrote one and

1:18:24

the French got rid of it. They

1:18:26

wrote one hundred years ago when the

1:18:28

French kept it to the 1975 and

1:18:30

then disposed of it. They have a

1:18:32

liberal constitution. Fascinating. Anyway, so that's the

1:18:34

Middle Eastern book. The startup books are

1:18:36

tenpenny, principles, like all these books are

1:18:38

really good, zero to one, they're all

1:18:40

really good. I like them all, like

1:18:42

how's in France influenced people, influenced people.

1:18:45

five a.m. clubs not as good as

1:18:47

the atomic habit's bloody excellent. It's the

1:18:49

most, I talk about this all the

1:18:51

time. Like I literally should have, James

1:18:53

Clear should be giving me profit share,

1:18:55

I talk about it almost on every

1:18:57

single episode. I think you're really curious.

1:18:59

It's very good, but the books I

1:19:01

like are the autobiography. It goes back

1:19:03

to when I read... Give me a

1:19:05

couple, give me like one or... Sorry,

1:19:07

the one, William Randall Hurst, and then

1:19:10

the one about the Daily Mail guy

1:19:12

in Ireland. He's actually a brick guy

1:19:14

a hundred years ago. Those are the

1:19:16

two best books for me. Perfect. And

1:19:18

also obviously, right of a lifetime, these

1:19:20

are cliches and shoe dog. Yeah. She

1:19:22

dog most recommended, by a mile. What's

1:19:24

something you learned the hard way? In

1:19:26

this business story, definitely working with authorities

1:19:28

and legal and stuff like that, I

1:19:30

learned it the hard way. My passport

1:19:32

was taken for 18 months, public prosecutor,

1:19:35

linked to a person known in the

1:19:37

Ireland world, but I'll leave it at

1:19:39

that. As articles around that sort of

1:19:41

stuff, I learned it the hard way.

1:19:43

It cost me a bit of money

1:19:45

too. So you were stuck here for

1:19:47

18 months? Yeah, technically, we were able

1:19:49

to swap passports, but I was basically

1:19:51

in a bit of a conundrum for

1:19:53

a while. Wow. I have to tell

1:19:55

me about that offer. What have you

1:19:57

sacrificed to achieve your success? I wouldn't

1:20:00

call it. I definitely, the word would

1:20:02

be sacrificed, but I put everything else

1:20:04

on hold for this. I lived life

1:20:06

like a monk. I gave up friends.

1:20:08

I kind of, not resounded to not

1:20:10

getting married, but I kind of decided

1:20:12

that this would be okay. I was

1:20:14

content. from about up until last year,

1:20:16

up until two years ago, from 2015

1:20:18

to 2023. And I still like, I

1:20:20

just sacrificed a lot, like I just

1:20:23

sort of, but I found myself through

1:20:25

that. I found that sort of zone,

1:20:27

I found that sort of knowledge compounding,

1:20:29

fitness, discipline, control, emotional intelligence. I found

1:20:31

all that sort of stuff through this.

1:20:33

I think we're going to have to

1:20:35

do a second part because there's so

1:20:37

much I wanted to ask you about

1:20:39

like, I do business body brain. Didn't

1:20:41

we get to brain or body yet?

1:20:43

What would you do to ever give

1:20:45

you 10 million euro? To put it

1:20:48

across my portfolio, I'd invest it across

1:20:50

what I'm doing. I have some property,

1:20:52

I have some crypto, I have some

1:20:54

ETFs, I have some bonds, I have

1:20:56

some equities, I have Fitzy fund. and

1:20:58

property, I just put it across portfolio,

1:21:00

I've read all the portfolio books, the

1:21:02

good weather, bad weather, Robbins and stuff

1:21:04

like that, like, so I just put

1:21:06

it across portfolio, I just, I'd probably

1:21:08

push it a little bit, I'd parse

1:21:10

some of it, fund, would I put

1:21:13

it into this business? Probably not, I

1:21:15

think we can get debt if we

1:21:17

need to, we've had debt before, would

1:21:19

I buy it on one particular thing,

1:21:21

maybe not, I'd do that. I've learned

1:21:23

about investment about investment, like the amount

1:21:25

of people, especially. they call us ex-pots

1:21:27

over here and they're like hey when

1:21:29

are you going to move back home

1:21:31

what you mean when are we going

1:21:33

to drive home this afternoon what so

1:21:36

like that sort of stuff they just

1:21:38

asked me all the stuff that my

1:21:40

head's not comprehending so anyway I learned

1:21:42

to investment myself so I'm not brilliant

1:21:44

sounded But I will continue to do

1:21:46

that. Okay. I'm going to give you

1:21:48

one million euro to invest in one

1:21:50

person or one company, not yourself. Who?

1:21:52

The latest one I invested in was

1:21:54

one called Beth.aai. It's a Jordanian guy,

1:21:56

Palestinian Jordanian guy and Amman. And Amman,

1:21:58

BITH, Arabic word for broadcasting. It's video

1:22:01

software, it's like v.io, it's like a

1:22:03

lot of these video AI highlights. If

1:22:05

anyone's listening, like it's super cheap, it's

1:22:07

$10 a month, it gets all this

1:22:09

stuff that other people will charge you

1:22:11

2030. So I really like what he's

1:22:13

doing, and I've made failures, I've invested

1:22:15

in a... a competitor to open Sea

1:22:17

Nifty Sook because the two founders had

1:22:19

done it before. They were in their

1:22:21

40s, I'm like, that's gonna work. They've

1:22:23

had five failures, but they came from

1:22:26

the Venture Studio ID and they just

1:22:28

flipped at the first sign of trouble.

1:22:30

So they just pivoted. So I like

1:22:32

this guy, Omar Dweck, I like what

1:22:34

he's doing, Jordan's fully developers, a lot

1:22:36

of the good stuff that's come out

1:22:38

of there. So I really like this

1:22:40

one, bit. Bit. Bit Same one. This

1:22:42

is a, you know, this isn't perfect.

1:22:44

It's been hard, you know, but I

1:22:46

know how to run it. I don't

1:22:48

know how to run anything else. I'm

1:22:51

not good at raising money. I'm not

1:22:53

good at telling people something that's not

1:22:55

going to happen. So I would build

1:22:57

the same one. I'm glad I'm happy

1:22:59

with what we built. Yeah, build the

1:23:01

same one. I guess this media. What

1:23:03

do you believed or the people will

1:23:05

find weird or strongly disagree with? I

1:23:07

think I've probably said of some of

1:23:09

it in terms of media and rules

1:23:11

in the region. You know, yeah, give

1:23:14

me a clue, like what else would

1:23:16

I say on that? Like, I genuinely

1:23:18

believe that the global South is the

1:23:20

new superpower. I really think that the

1:23:22

American Empire is dying. You know, if

1:23:24

you read books from, you know, early

1:23:26

20th century, like 1905, the newspapers used

1:23:28

to say, used to not know who's

1:23:30

going to... to be big at the

1:23:32

end of the century because the Brits

1:23:34

were big back then. They didn't really

1:23:36

know. Like America, a couple markets in

1:23:39

America only happened over time. Like it

1:23:41

wasn't big. Like America was youngish back

1:23:43

then. And I think they're on the

1:23:45

rest of mate. What's happening at the

1:23:47

moment? I think they're on the rest

1:23:49

of the Middle East. I think they're

1:23:51

on the rest and made MBS. I

1:23:53

think they show shade at these neon

1:23:55

projects. I think they underestimate Indonesia, Singapore,

1:23:57

China, I think they underestimate the Middle

1:23:59

East and I really think that, you

1:24:01

know, I'm thinking global south, like I'm

1:24:04

not going back to Europe or Ireland

1:24:06

or America, I don't invest there, I

1:24:08

don't look there, you know, and India,

1:24:10

India is underestimated for how big its

1:24:12

stock market is, they've got two stock

1:24:14

exchanges and no one talks about it.

1:24:16

When Modi was with Trump, they were

1:24:18

just laughing at translating English into English.

1:24:20

It's just, you know, there's just a

1:24:22

global racism problem, you know, anti-Semitic, Islamophobia.

1:24:24

It's just a global issue. and I

1:24:27

think they're going to get to come

1:24:29

up and it's like if you're if

1:24:31

you're literally as you know Irish people

1:24:33

felt it for years right like this

1:24:35

English approach this sort of cockiness and

1:24:37

stuff and Americans are going to get

1:24:39

hit they're going to get hurt well

1:24:41

it's all coming home to roost right

1:24:43

now where I think if you look

1:24:45

at the UK and you look at

1:24:47

the US formerly superpowers and they're going

1:24:49

to go to either those two places

1:24:52

right and that guy when you and

1:24:54

I grow up I'm assuming we're in

1:24:56

you and you and you and you

1:24:58

and you and you and I grow

1:25:00

up and you and you and you

1:25:02

and you and you and you and

1:25:04

you and you and you and you

1:25:06

and you and you and you and

1:25:08

you and you and you and you

1:25:10

and you and you and you and

1:25:12

you and you and you and you

1:25:14

and you and you and you and

1:25:17

you and you and you and you

1:25:19

and you and you and you and

1:25:21

you and you and you and you

1:25:23

and you and you and you and

1:25:25

you and you and you and you

1:25:27

and you and you and you and

1:25:29

or London. Whereas that's why I'm here.

1:25:31

I'm here to learn, I'm here to

1:25:33

understand, is this the new future? And

1:25:35

like I'm here what, just under a

1:25:37

week now, it feels like it is.

1:25:39

I'm telling you it is, like, when

1:25:42

I moved to Dubai in 2012, my

1:25:44

buses were like, why are you going

1:25:46

here? Two million people? Dubai already is

1:25:48

going to be four million people. UAE

1:25:50

is going from eight or nine to

1:25:52

11 or 12. And then the Middle

1:25:54

East North Africa of Africa is 340,

1:25:56

340 million people, 340 million people, 250.

1:25:58

Enterprise Ireland helps to support and fund

1:26:00

a vibrant startup ecosystem, providing supports, insights

1:26:02

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1:26:05

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1:26:07

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1:26:09

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1:26:13

For more information about how Enterprise Ireland

1:26:15

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1:26:17

visit Enterprise-Ireland. Helping our startups, go global.

1:26:19

What's been your worst investment? Probably that

1:26:21

nifty-sook thing is bad investment, but to

1:26:23

be fair to them they try to

1:26:25

know us guys, but I've made a

1:26:27

few poor startup investments on that level.

1:26:30

Some stocks are like I'm messing buzz

1:26:32

feeds. to learn anything. There's quarterly shares

1:26:34

and stuff, but I didn't lose a

1:26:36

ton, but they just ban investments. Some

1:26:38

of the stuff that I've done here,

1:26:40

like I bought some stuff that hasn't

1:26:42

paid off, it's taken longer. You know,

1:26:44

I did Arabic streaming OTT linear with

1:26:46

Smashi at the start, and it took

1:26:48

a while to get that right. Luckily

1:26:50

we were making a hundred we're making

1:26:52

a lot of money on Snapchat shows

1:26:55

so my board weren't questioning smashy revenue

1:26:57

but like some of the stuff I

1:26:59

did early on streaming I probably went

1:27:01

too away from what we were doing

1:27:03

on loving too early on some of

1:27:05

those decisions and things like that I

1:27:07

didn't but I didn't go all in

1:27:09

so I was able to like pivot

1:27:11

and tweak and stay long term. the

1:27:13

entrepreneur experiments because I believe that's what

1:27:15

business is. Yeah. The best on the

1:27:18

best on entrepreneurs I know are like

1:27:20

calculated risk takers. They do a little

1:27:22

test here test here test here test

1:27:24

here on keep testing. What's been your

1:27:26

best investment? A cliche like Warren Buffett

1:27:28

like investing yourself but I think you

1:27:30

know going back to those seven days

1:27:32

assets that lemon franchise thing we'd already

1:27:34

built the business but like those type

1:27:36

of things where we're such good deals

1:27:38

like unbelievable deals when I look like

1:27:40

price and value on what we get

1:27:43

out of it in the future. Unbelievable

1:27:45

deals. Like I like Podeo, I like

1:27:47

that, like they just done a 5.4

1:27:49

million dollar series A, a podcast platform,

1:27:51

like hosting, what do you use to

1:27:53

host this? Lipsin, so a bit like

1:27:55

that for the Arab world. Like I

1:27:57

think that's a good one, like you

1:27:59

know I put 100K in, it's on

1:28:01

paper where it's 6 or 7 under

1:28:03

K now, but like nowhere near, like

1:28:05

the business model, like the business model

1:28:08

isn't perfect, perfect, perfect and perfect and

1:28:10

stuff, and stuff like, and stuff like,

1:28:12

and stuff like, and stuff like stuff

1:28:14

like, like, like, like, like, like, like,

1:28:16

like, like, like, like, like, like, like,

1:28:18

like, like, like, like, like, like, like,

1:28:20

like, like, like, like, like, like, like,

1:28:22

like, like, like, like, like, like, like,

1:28:24

like, like, like, I've invested okay on

1:28:26

some shares. I brought my goddaughter one

1:28:28

Tesla share for $250 and now it's

1:28:30

one for because I did that Splistlin.

1:28:33

But I did that like 10, I

1:28:35

think she's eight, yeah, on her birth.

1:28:37

And that was a good investment for

1:28:39

her class. That's brilliant, I love, I

1:28:41

love stories like that. What's your final

1:28:43

piece of advice to every entrepreneur listening

1:28:45

or aspiring entrepreneur listening? Come to Middle

1:28:47

East, go to Saudi, go to Riyadh.

1:28:49

Is that really the new spot? Yeah.

1:28:51

It's not the new Dubai. You will

1:28:53

have to think Arab. You will have

1:28:56

to, it's in our world, and it's

1:28:58

not Dubai. And if you want the,

1:29:00

not the trappings, but if you're a

1:29:02

little bit mercenary, if you're a little

1:29:04

bit like that Dubai bling style, then

1:29:06

it's not for you. But yeah, you

1:29:08

know, as well as like web three

1:29:10

and AI, like if there's a place,

1:29:12

if there's a time. I would go

1:29:14

to re-ad. If I was, I like

1:29:16

that I spent my 20s in Dublin

1:29:18

and London, I love the crack I

1:29:21

had. I love that, I got that

1:29:23

kind of out of my system, I

1:29:25

love the fun. But from 28 to

1:29:27

say 42 now, or soon, I love

1:29:29

the Middle East and you know, things

1:29:31

for everyone, depends what age they're at,

1:29:33

but reads on one. I was just

1:29:35

at leap last week. Like in three

1:29:37

years, four years, they built CES, Southwest,

1:29:39

Southwest West West in one. Like leap,

1:29:41

yeah, 200,000 people, unbelievable. Tech, business, both.

1:29:43

Yeah, yeah, the startup, like web summists,

1:29:46

but bigger. I've checked