Welcome to another episode of the top floor, where we explore the leadership journeys of some most influential business leaders in their industry. I'm Simon Leuch here host and the UAE Business Chair and today we're excited to have with us a season leader with over 25 years of experience in operations, strategic business growth and development in the food and industry, food and beverage industry. As the CEO of Liwa Minor Food and Beverage's LLC, he has led the joint venture between Minor International and our NASA Holdings, focusing on change management, turnaround strategies and expanding the company's franchising system across the Middle East, Asia and Africa. His extensive also includes roles at Minor International, Food Panda and M&H, Al Shire Coon, where he has driven strategic business development, operational excellence and brand growth. His diverse background in franchising joint ventures and change management, coupled with his academic achievements, make him an inspiring leader with a wealth of knowledge and experience. Today we're going to delve into his leadership journey, his challenges, his success and invaluable lessons, the environmental lessons he has learned along the way. Charles Baton-Horse, a warm welcome to the top floor. Hi Simon, an absolute pleasure being here and on your podcast, thank you for having me. Great. I want to kick off looking at the leadership journey and your background. Can you start by sharing a bit about your background and how you got into the field of operations of strategic business development? So that was a long time ago. Simon, I've been in this game 27, almost 30 years, three decades. But it was a humble beginning for me, Corey Simon. And I was actually chatting to Corey, I got your name except now, chatting to Corey last week, as I was mentioning just before we got on this. That my whole career part was certain orthodox, you know, I had no career plan, I never got into doing, I want to become a CEO, I want to be into strategy, I want to be into business development. And I was simply just a young guy at school that needed some pocket money on the weekends and I've done a bit of work on the side. But I found something that I loved and I was passionate about and 27 years later, you know, I saw me sitting here as a CEO, you know, and as I said, there was no career planning in it. What I did have though was I definitely, I definitely always lived in the moment, I would say. I was always passionate about whatever work I was doing. I was already happy in the career path I was in. And I just lived on gut feeling, I was very carefree and I had a firm value system. That whatever I do, whatever that role is, you know, regardless of title, you know, that I have to achieve at a certain level. And I think that was just my approach over the decades, you know, that short-term approach, you know, constantly learning, growing, loving my work into the camaraderie of teamwork. I think that led me through a wonderful journey, you know. And as my career and experience in education and knowledge grew, I found personal pleasure in certain parts of the business. I would say, particularly in solving difficult business problems, which other people never like dealing with. Franchiseing for me, obviously, they must fall to a continuous level of improvement. And that was just an ongoing feel for me to feed on, you know, with my kind of appetite for problems. So it just began, it just funneled and went on. Let's talk about that and try and identify some key milestones in that career's journey today that led you to your current role as CEO. Can you give us some ideas around that? So I think joining a large organization was definitely a big part of it. It was unplanned, as I said, but, you know, the journey, my journey led me along, joining some of the bigger companies like my internationals, our Shires, famous brands, and there was a couple of more in the earlier days, you know, these companies were highly structured and helped me form a streamlined approach to the way I work and plan ahead, you know, especially for the businesses and the teams that I was responsible for and that I am still responsible for today. I think that is a key milestone in it, a personal lesson that I take and I remind myself and I've reminded my son, you know, from a young age, because I wish I'd learned this lesson when I was very young, was in order to grow, you need to learn how to let go, you know, you become too stuck in the moment. And succession planning and all of these developing plans, they are highly important to the business, but a lot of that is held back, you know, as a leader, where you need to actually move on, you know, trust, trust that your team and the effort you've put into them, let it go. And what this does is it allows you time as a leader to actually start looking at the more important things and the more strategic parts of the business as you grow and as you move the business into a different level of success, you know, so that I think that was definitely a key milestone that I've learned over the years. Work life balance and reflect, I think, is a top one there for anybody in it. Work is lovely, we're all passionate about it, we all have great work, ethics, you know, intentions are good, we want to be at work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but in reality, we can't do that, you know, it's, you know, we human and we need to have a life balance and the other people in our lives that also matter and as a human, we need to balance that. You know, I like to keep a thing that I call a credit debit system, which again, Corey also laughed at, I said it's a very basic system, but I feel that if I take from the one I've got to give back from the other at some time, you know, we get work projects like now this turnaround we were dealing with this last two and a half years, it's taken a lot of time from it in my personal capacity, but you know, it's done in phases where I spend six months of my time, you know, just focusing on a specific part and getting the business to the next level, but then I mean, you know, and then my wife has credit, then I have to spit some time out of that business and go, you know, I need to put time aside for my wife, my child or my kids, myself, and get some of that, that buzz going back again, you know, so it's really important as you grow to keep that work-life balance for your own sanity in your performance, you know, it really makes a difference. It's one of the key focus points in VISTAGE that we ask our CEO members to consider. I mean, you talked about lessons and it's great to hear a CEO talk about the lessons he's learned and how he's done applied them into his current role, and look, hindsight is the exact science, we all know that, and it's one of those things that is never wrong, but to be able to recognise that, you know, you need to get out of the weeds of the business, and you need to be able to think strategically, and perhaps one of the most effective ways to do that is actually by enabling and empowering those around you to take on some of your work and distribute, I think that's great. You mentioned your education and your background there, you've got an MBA, and you've done various leadership courses, how has that influenced your leadership style? Good question. I believe it's a very subjective point, Simon, when it comes to studies, I think if you read some of Elon Musk's stuff, you'll see he goes, MBA is not needed or what degree is not needed, but I think if you look at it practically, you know, some people do it as an accolade or a piece of paper, I get it, it helps them with these applications or exploring the world or getting a perfect job, but then there's those of us that like to broaden our understanding, you know, and I find myself in that category, you know, I was always inquiring, I was always inquisitive, and there's a limit to what you can learn within a company and within a business, you know, their core focuses around what they do and what their purpose is, but a lot of time the mind is curious about things a lot bigger than that, and I found doing business management marketing, doing MBA with the specialisation in finance, it gave me that opportunity to develop it myself on things that I was not getting answers to, but also prepare myself for the future, so that I would have that knowledge bank and ability to support others around me, you know, there were a lot of times there were questions that were on the table commercially, and I just felt blank, you know, I was sitting there going, "I know I'm strong at this, but why can I not see what other people are seeing in their perspective?" And I think study started opening that up for me, you know, it gave me the ability to start going, "Ah, you know, those eureka moments," when I remember learning this, you know, and it wasn't instantaneous, it was during a journey, and I just realised at that moment, I actually remember the time and place specific where it happened, where I said, "Then I thought I can never stop learning because I'm going to stop these eureka moments," and that's what studying was for me, and that's the value it added, I just started adding more and more eureka moments, I started adding more and more value back into the business because I actually started understanding what people were talking about on quite high level commercial points at that time, and coming from an operational background into a corporate background, obviously it gave me quite a driving force, you know, career personally, which again, I just went with GATT, I was curious, and it just landed on becoming quite a powerful combination for me, so I hope that answered your question, I hope that answered your question, but that was, yeah, absolutely fine, because as I say, there's always a huge debate around MBAs, particularly when you see people under the age of 25 getting an MBA, and with very little business experience, the quality of the MBA is very important, but tied in with that, as you say, it's your capability and your willingness to learn outside of the standard courses that are provided in businesses, and that sort of thing, and that is down to you very much down to you, and it's great to hear that you're still doing that even today as a successful CEO, and I want to talk about some of those successes and challenges, what's been the biggest challenge, child that you faced in your leadership journey, especially in your current role? Is it fair to say my current role was my biggest challenge? No, we'll see a second, I'm going to let you get away with that, let's get asked a bit of it. I'll be honest, before I became the CEO for I joined ventures between my international and A&H, I was the director of international franchising for minor and A&H liver minor as the joint venture was actually my franchisee. Obviously, from a franchisee or perspective, there were certain internals I never knew about the business, I came in with a typical franchise or attitude, we need to drive sales, we need to do these things, and then eventually the opportunity came up and they said, "Will you take over as a CEO? Will you help us do this turnaround?" Obviously, for me, I thought this is a lot easier said than done, and I would all right, let's go for this, accepted the challenge and I believe I could. Not to paint too much of a dull picture at the start, but yeah, we had a lot of challenges and in the beginning, I thought our bits of more than I could chew, but once we got out with the dagger heels in, we had a very short window to work with, which became very clear from the day I landed. As part of our turnaround, the business had been in a difficult position for about 10 years, we were going to go into a new term for another 10 years, but we had a very short period to prove that level of success that we were able to turn the business around and make it what it is today. So we were deep in the red, I'm not going to give the specifics of course, we were deep in the red. We were deep in the red, we went into the black and within 25 months, we were toppling over onto the green, which was the first time yeah, it was one incredible, incredible journey. So challenge wise, it took a lot from myself, but I think it took a lot with my team and change management and everybody involved. It was definitely not a one main show. Our board was very aggressive. Obviously, they were tired of things that had happened and it was very challenging as a CEO. You sit there, you have a team that is being beaten so hard and you have a board that is so desperate to get results and you have to sit and figure out and you've got a limited time. It almost becomes like those game shows you see on TV with the buzzer and you've got to get the buzzer, you've got to get the answer before the time runs out and you're trying to figure out the questions. And you challenge yourself and that really put me in a position where I had to say, you know what, I have to suck up the last 25 years of my life and I've got to make this happen. I've taken on this role, I've made these commitments. I have to deliver. However, we do it between the shareholders and with this small team that we've inherited. And I must give credit to my small team, they were incredible. There was a lot of that which I think we'll probably talk about a little bit later in there but that was probably my hardest challenge. I would say, well, surprising challenge. I thought it would get easier the higher up I went but I found that it was actually the toughest challenge was right at the end. And when we'd done our Q review, I'd said to you just before we jumped on the call, we just got back from Thailand from our curivies to see us, to see where we were and where we are now. It's just incredible. You know, of course, the board's aggressive, they keep pushing, we want to keep going, you know, but you know, you look at it and you go, wow, you know, it's an amazing feeling. So it makes it all that worth it. So the challenge of turning around a comparatively unsuccessful company to the very successful company financially, you know, is there a specific example of success in that turnaround that you'd like to talk about? I think, yeah, I think cleaning up the house is like a saying I've always used when approaching a situation like this, you know, I've done that on small scale for single individual businesses or regions but doing it at such a large level at a joint venture level between two mega companies, you know, very strong educated shareholders that have both been in business for about 50 to 70 years, you know, you know, dealing with small fry, you know, both of them have have two big head offices that are super powered. So you've got to have your stuff together. But I had this little thing called cleaning up the house, which just, it just grew and all I said was, you know, cleaning up the house is, you know, it's a three-step process. Where are we today? And how did we get here? So we can, we can understand, you know, our position, except where we are and identify where these things went from, you know, where do we want to be and how do we get there? That obviously puts a bit of a roadmap together with the team and what needs to be done differently, you know, moving forward so we can get to where we want to be, you know, and those three, you know, the specific here and those three is I made the team bold this. I did not build a strategy, to be honest. I said, I led the strategy. I led the thought process. You know, obviously you want your team to be part of this whole process. There's there's no one man show superhero kind of story in these kind of turnarounds. And the team surprised me, you know, I learned a lot about them. And I think that was the beginning, the beginning parts of a beautiful relationship between myself and a management team that were able to achieve such a quick turn around in 24 months. For that was that somebody relationship because we sat on the table together every day and we dealt with the problems face to face. We took accountability and ownership. And we almost, you know, sometimes it was tough, you know, sometimes it's a bit of tough love. And, you know, and I think so, I don't know if it's giving you the answer. No, no, no, no, no, I want to explore that because, you know, you've talked about strategy change management and you keep repeating the key factor of having a great team around you. And I want to ask you a question. What do you believe are the most important qualities for an effective leader when it comes to building and managing a team? I definitely saying transparency, integrity, and just honesty, you know, being real, keeping it real, you know, being engaged with your team, making time for them. You know, it's, there's a lot of guys that like to dress in a 3P suit and I'm not, I'm not, I might be in a lot of trouble with a couple of guys from inmates in the airlines in this year. So sorry, Tyron and Tim and all the boys outside, but, you know, it's, you get the guys that dress for success, you know, and they just sit there and it becomes a hierarchy structure. And for me, it's, it's, I'm very unorthodox. I love to be engaged part of the problems. I want to be in there with my team, you know, I want to be driving that revolution, you know, that, that whole moment, you know, sharing as much of that, that energy as possible, you know, it puts you in the moment, gets you to understand what your teams are going through. And I think it's really important for CEOs to be grounded and be involved and engaged. And that sort of goes into my next question, which is, you know, how do you ensure your team remains motivated and aligned with your company's vision and goals? I'm just trying to see, I think not to make it long-winded, you know, I'm going to give you number one to five if that's fair. Because I'm at my minds all over, like, I want to start on something, but I know I'm just, I'm going to babble off on this because it's a very personal subject to me. I think just keep it simple. You know, I always say to my guys, don't overcomplicate it, especially when it comes to decision-making vision strategies, whatever you're doing in life, keep it simple. It's like, you know, if you're doing a masters or a dissertation in masters or you're doing a thesis in a doctorate, you start off with a very broad topic and it's so hard to write it because it's just too much, you know, and the same goes for a strategy and for a normal manager, you know, they don't have those research skills and those tools that a lot of people that have studied all these things have been given to make it simple. Keep it easy, you know, and once we keep it simple, we are able then to work through these small things as a team and put together simple goals that are achievable, you know, this little smart method. My team keeps bringing up smart and I said that if it works, go for it, you know, that's that specific measurable, you know, and it was a good refresher for me because I remember that from years ago, yeah, realistic and time-based, yeah. And I said, well, I'm glad you've got a system that works for you, but for me, keep it simple, keep it clear, keep it well communicated with your team, measure everything, all these objectives, there needs to be a measurement for it. You can't just speculate and put things out there, you know, I need to keep the guys going and growing, you know, we need to be moving forward. So we need to be able to measure, but at the same time, be engaged as a leader so you can coach to keep that progression, that timeline moving, otherwise it gets stagnant. And you also find if you're not there from a coaching perspective and measuring, you find that people stop moving off in different directions, you know, we're human, we have our own ways of thinking. And if you're not in control of that, as a leader, you'll find that all these strong characters and great minds around you start going off in different directions. So you need to almost, it's almost the, I want to say hurting, but that sounds so bad. You need to keep it directed. Well, you've got to bring them along with you. You've got to bring them along with you. And you know, the common denominator in actually executing on a strategy is that vision and the goals associated with achieving that vision. And that keeps that keeps the focus, because when people do off, do go off piece. Yeah, it's, it's, you know, the worst you could do is sort of say, stop. Yeah, you've got to get back on the track. When they actually might have a great idea, they do right now, it's time isn't, isn't that's not now the strategy and you can't devote a bit in that way. And, you know, one of the things that I, you know, I, I'm a great believer in, I love strategy. It's something that, you know, I was, I was exposed to in the military and I've already taken a lot of learning from that and applied it in business and guess what it does work, where people get it confused of where it starts to get full to bits is when they say, Oh, let's go and do strategic planning because strategy and planning are two separate things. They always have been and always will be. And I can go on for that. I'm not going to, but I just want to actually just my number five before you. I know you're going to hit me on the next question because this is the important one for the CEO's dinner there, rewards and recognition. It starts at the bottom and it grows and it keeps going to the top. It never stops. Take the time out to go. Be aware of that strategy or strategic planning, or objectives and smart, who's done what and do it publicly, do it privately, however, different cases, different scenarios. But don't forget that along that journey a strategy is long, you know, when they could be short, medium, long terms. But when you've set those in and you've got the team's buying, they become very personal with this to keep that personal level of accountability, you as the leader have to be continuously involved and engaged and go reward them and recognize them for it. You know, and go, I actually noticed the difference in ABCDE. What have you done to that and let them work through it with you and you go, well, thank you for the effort. You know, I'm actually seeing it. I'm feeling it. It gives me goosebumps when I actually see it go. You don't understand the difference that makes to that person when they walk out that office going, he actually noticed that small little detail, you know, and a lot of guys miss it. Your whole strategy falls apart and the buying falls apart, 30, 40% of the way through and gets diluted purely just because we're not adding that, I recognize you, you know, I see it, I feel it, I note the difference so well then, you know, keep it going. That's wonderful. Yeah, that's great stuff. So let's talk about strategic growth and partnerships very quickly. Given your extensive experience, Charles, in franchising and joint ventures, what do you think are the critical components of successful strategic partnership? And this is a lot easier than your previous question. The other one was like, yeah, I think, yeah, not to be textbook about this. I think just aligned values, you know, when you when you're looking at when you're looking at any form of franchisee franchise or partnership or joint ventures, you know, it's important to have common aligned values. For us as a business, you know, we need to understand our values and what we want to achieve when we select partners, we select partners with common values that obviously match that makes for a good partnership, right? That's I think just the grounding and remember it's a partnership. So you need to be aligned. If those values are not there, you you probably off to the wrong start from the beginning. I would definitely say devil's in the detail. That's a, I think I use that phrase too much sometimes with our legal team. But I think that definitely check your commercials. Do your due diligence on ever you doing partner partnership with whoever you want to grow with, who you're considering to potentially grow within different markets or if you're doing a merger or acquisition or whatever kind of partnership. I would say this strategy needs to be reciprocal. And I'll explain it in one sentence. I said reciprocal means both parties need to be part of that strategy. A lot of times you get people getting to business and they go, all right, so what are we doing? You know, it needs to be reciprocal because halfway through the journey, you'll end up finding a lot of conflict in that. So I think reciprocal strategies are always important when getting into strategic growth and partnerships and looking at how to grow and develop. You need to be an alliance, not just in values, but in the planning process going forward. And then I said to the guys, always cross your teeth and touch your eyes. It's an old saying, my grain taught me. It's an old saying I live by, which all your articles of associations, or your master franchise agreements, that there's so much content in there, you know, you need to be aware of it as a CEO. So your strategy and what you've signed up for, you know, you need to make sure you've double checked, you know. And I'd say when you get that, you start building a level of confidence, you know, and then you can start working more on the relationship with partners or, you know, working on other things. But you need to do some of those ground, that groundwork needs to be in place, in my opinion, for strategic growth and partnerships. I think that's sort of like a very summarized foundation, you know. I mean, that's absolutely key, you know. Make sure your values are aligned. Make sure you're both contributing to the strategy. Make sure that you've covered all the bases with a high degree of due diligence and tensions detail. Absolutely. I mean, these are simple messages that, you know, I've seen fail, because I've seen people haven't done one of one or all three of those items. And you still fail at them, for some reason, you know, we, why do I do that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, it's not like doing the oracle thing where, you know, three months time, we're all, you were all just completely paid an oracle and everything's changed. It's not as easy as that. I know. So I want to close by looking at some personal insights and advice to our listeners. I think we've already covered it, but it's a great, it's a great repeat question. You know, what keeps you grounded and continuously learning in your leadership journey? And so what keeps me grounded? I definitely need challenge. I loved your first question when you opened this. It got me so enthused. I landed up typing so much. I think I needed a three hour podcast, which you hit it on a topic. Sorry, 30 minutes, that's all. I know we have to do a couple of more of these challenges and problem solving, Simon. For me, personal insights and advice that keeps me grounded, I'm always looking for problems. You know, I have to find them. You know, if you get to that level of comfort, I start building a level of anxiety and actually get aggravated. You know, if I cannot find a problem, there's always something, you know, you have to be curious. You have to go find it and when things are too good to be true, the chances are there are, there's something else happening, right? So you need to be curious, but I mean, in a healthy manner, not be all disruptive and counterproductive. But you've got to continue to be hunting for the new challenge, you know, solving problems. But also, if you find that instead of driving yourself crazy like that, again, this is where work-life balance comes in. Sometimes things are at a pace where you need to give it a bit of space to know, to develop. You know, and this is where go out cycling, go out swimming, go spend time with your family. This is, goes back to that work-life balance. If you have checked it and you're feeling confident that things are fairly good, sometimes you also need to take a bit of time out. This could be that moment, you know, in your time management planning to step out, get a bit of a break, come back and then go and really look at things with a fresh set of eyes, you know. I think sometimes that helps. I'll give you, I'll give you, if you don't know how much, many minutes we've got. We've got a couple more minutes and then I've got one more question, but. So I'll keep it simple on this one. You know, like, so now things after two and a half years, from all Eureka we get in there, I am taking a little bit of time out. My team is ready. They, you know, they so aggressive, they're underground, they all over the place. Now they keep me running on and on my feet, you know, it's like, it just keeps going. So that means I need to find more projects for them to do now, you know. So to keep them busy, so they give me a bit of space. But I put my doctorate's on hold for this, for this position, but even though I've done that, you know, I take some time out of the family, but then I mix it up again, because two weeks of the family, there's only so much time I can do, nothing against my wife and kids. But there's only so much time I can, I can spend with them, and then I need some quite time. Yeah, they don't help with your studies. You don't spend two weeks saying, right, get the books out and test me. It's not that, is it? It is that. So I took on a couple of these little weekend courses. So I've got a few days with the kids, same with the wife. And then when they want to go do the activities, I don't want to do, I got to log on to the online courses for the 16th, my GMP. So, but nobody, that doesn't work for everyone. That's just, you know, the point is different strengths for different folks, you know, just keep them face. You're absolutely right. Everybody's going to find the way of decompressing. And actually, you know, whatever it is, I've got mine from two o'clock to five o'clock on a Saturday. I'll be doing art now. It used to be in the morning, now it's in the afternoon. So, you know, don't disturb me because you're not going to get anywhere. So I want to finish off. Last question. What's next for you? And leave a line of foods and beverages. I will see, you know, are there any exciting projects or initiatives on the horizon that you can share with us? This is a very good one. Yeah, this is a good one, an easy one. It just came out of my strategy deck now, but we're happy to report of the year. So we actually have tomorrow, I'm picking up our partners for a new continent signing. We're signing a new continental agreement. For one of our brands as a penetration brand. So it's very exciting. It's at quite quite on a lot of scale. It's across three countries as a start and then we all know that. So on that continent, so it's really exciting. We have new brand portfolios. We're busy looking at now to onboard. Obviously, there's quite a bit of demand for us to diversify our brand portfolio. Not just for us in our equity portfolio, but also in our franchising business for our franchisees out there. And then we have a new opening. Another one. I know we've just opened a waffy more one now, which was a fantastic opening for us in the local market. And now we have a new opening in September. I cannot tell you because my marketing, head of marketing, she will take me to the cleaners, but if I let things out before her media launch. So it's coming in September. Keep your eyes open. It's going to be there. We're going to be bringing another coffee club to Dubai. I can tell you that and then I can't tell you. What information you've already ruined it because it's going to be after you. Charles, it's been an absolute pleasure talking about your leadership journey, about your insights, the challenges, the successes you've had. I could talk for hours with you. It's been great. And thank you for sharing your time in such a busy schedule for you. I look forward to hopefully working with you in the future. And we'll certainly come back and give you another chat, perhaps, I'm at the end of the year when you can tell us all all those good things that are in the pipeline and how they've evolved. That's been great. Keep well, keep safe. Thank you again. Goldian, thank you so much for your time. Sam, and this was an absolute pleasure. Thank you. Okay. Bye now. Bye-bye.
