I'm with VISTAs UAE on the Top Shelf podcast today. Very happy to be joined by Sherad Argoal, the chief benefits officer of Cyber Gear. Welcome, Sherad, how are you? Yes, I'm good. Thank you, John, for having me on your show. Yeah, well, I'm excited to have you on, Sherad. I'd love to start off by asking you, what do you do? And what do you do? What is your company about Cyber Gear? What's your role in the company? Sure, so the backstory is that as you can guess, I'm originally from India. I majored in marketing and my first job was with the ex-IBM company in India. I worked there for four years and then decided to go abroad and work. So my first job was actually outside India and Saudi Arabia, where I worked for Apple computers for a year. And Saudi, back then, I'm talking like 35 years back was not happening, at least from the point of view of a family life. So my wife was very keen that I should look around and Dubai kind of suffers as the Guru place. And I made that decision to move to Dubai, like 35 years back. So it's been a long innings and when I came here, I worked for Apple, because that's something I was doing in Saudi Arabia. And then, as I got to know the place, I realized that trading was the mainstay of Dubai. So I somehow weak my way into trading of consumer products, work for Matsushita brand, the Panasonic brand, basically into some trading few years. And then, you know, that's the time internet started to happen. And I remember I was in the US on a holiday actually on vacation. And there was an internet world show happening in a hotel bank opposite where I was staying. So out of curiosity, I went to attend this exhibition. And lo and behold, I saw 300 companies participating in 95. This is just at the advent of the internet. It was early days. I was so taken in by this whole concept of connecting with people across the globe that I said, this is something I must get into. So I came back to Dubai, just resigned from what I was doing, which was trading. And then decided to start Cyber Gear. So yeah, those were early days. And the interesting story is that when I went to the Dubai Economic Department to register my company, and because it was called Cyber Gear, they showed me an automobile trade license, because they said you have gear in your company name. So, you know, it was, I had a hard time explaining to them what I was trying to do, which was to build websites for companies. And finally, they did understand my mission. And so I started the first digital agency in the Middle East. And, you know, that's our claim to fame. And that's how Cyber Gear was born. Yeah, so I'd love to know you've given us a slide in an insight there into the vision for Cyber Gear. But what was the landscape like back then? I mean, you started a digital agency. What were the services that you were providing? Yeah, so in the beginning, the low-hanging fruit was to, you know, develop websites for companies. And nobody back then understood whatever site was. So when I would go to them, they would think, you know, I'm bringing internet in some briefcase or something. They didn't understand the concept of a dialogue modem and connecting and then interacting with the world. So first three, four months were really tough because I was just educating the market. And believe it or not, I had to explain to the wide-duty free, which happened to be my first client, the importance of having a website. And I convinced them actually in one meeting by telling them that the car raffle that they used to have, but still have rather, they could put it on the internet and go global with it, which they did. So after three months of educating the market, I was lucky to get a good break. Starting off with a company like the wide-duty free hit, the news, and then one thing led to the other. And yeah, in the first year itself, I became very busy because I was the first internet services company in the region. I built the website for Enthusala, which was the first service provider. And then through them, whenever any company came for internet connection, they would refer me as the web developer. So that was a very strategic advance. And I think I became so busy after 18 months that I used to basically switch off my mobile phone because I couldn't handle any more calls and any more customers. So yeah, those were really big. Wow. I mean, the wide-duty free hit is fine. I mean, that they're two of the massive brands in Dubai and obviously huge success story. Both have grown massively with the success of Dubai at 28 years, a long time. So I'd love to know a little bit more about how the company has evolved over those 28 years. It started, as you say, when the world was very, very different. If you can elaborate and tell us a little bit about the journey and how you've had to reinvent the company or evolve the company over the last 20 years. Yeah, so it's quite straightforward. I'm a believer in technology and you have to have an open mindset and go with the flow. You cannot come into business with a predetermined business plan and mission vision like everybody else does. To that extent, I'm different. I just go with the flow and I change my business plan every six months because technology moves very fast. So you can't come with a three-year-old plan and follow that to the T. I don't think that works anymore. In today's times, it was good when, you know, when we were born. But now you have to be very agile. You have to be nimble. You have to be flexible. And so I'm basically a web one guy who's now into web three because that's how the technology is evolved. So if I had said, no, I'll do only websites. I would be irrelevant today. I would have zero business because that has got commoditized. So I kept building as the technology came, I got into. So first was the internet. I did websites. Then came the mobile. So I started doing mobile commerce, e-commerce, setting up people to sell online, their services, products, what have you, help local organizations go global because people used to think local back then. And I told them, no, the guy is very small. We used to have only two million people here. I said, you have to open up to a billion people who are in your neighborhood, like India, China, et cetera. And internet enables you to do that. So very quickly, I realized that internet meant that we had to think global and, you know, not have blinkers on, not just think, you know, this is my market. So I helped a lot of brands go global and did so myself in terms of building relationships that helped me get business from outside and rest of the continents. And today I'm happy to say that after 28 years, we have plans, we have more than 120 clients in five continents. So we are a global company. And today we offer everything under the internet umbrella, be it websites, mobile apps, social media, digital marketing, all the new Web3 stuff, which is metaverse tokenization, DAOs, community building, all of it. So we are a busy company now. We've moved on to Web3, even though Web3 is slow here. But then we found other markets where, you know, people are more aware and there's a demand. So yeah, follow technology wherever it takes you. And even today, if you were to ask me, where would I be two years hence? My answer is, I don't know. It will probably be in the AI realm, because clearly the world is gravitating towards artificial intelligence. We started doing AI 10 years back. So we are not newcomers in this space. We saw the trend early, and we started building stuff for clients in the region. And now, you know, all those early moves that we made are paying off because I do believe that being an early mover has its advantages. So you don't have to wait for the whole plan and everybody to come and be the first. It has its risk in that you end up just educating the market and then in the beginning, you don't get rewards. But then if you have a long-term vision, then you don't mind investing in growing the market. I would like to ask you, you mentioned there that this region is a little bit slow to adopt Web3.0. And does that include AI? I love, could you elaborate a little bit on that? Why is that the case? And how do you see that changing over the next period of time? So, you know, it's a no-brainer that all the new technology and innovation and R&D is happening more in the West and basically in the Silicon Valley, right? Because all the yuppies are there, all the AI guys are building stuff. They have an entrepreneurial mindset. I guess all funding is there as well, right? For them. Yeah, and they have the funding, you're right. I mean, without deep pockets, you cannot create anything. I mean, it's not only about ideas, it's about going to market with those ideas. So, yeah, I mean, technology has come from Silicon Valley and rest of the world is just playing a catch-up game. I mean, with due respect to Dubai and its leadership, they are now of course got, they were quite ahead of the game when they established the Dubai internet city, which is now more than 20 years old, then the Dubai media city, the knowledge village, these are great initiatives. And when they started, people were not sure whether Dubai knew what it was doing, but clearly they wanted to be ahead of the curve. And now with AI coming in, the AFC has got an AI campus that set out. There are free zones dedicated to AI. So clearly, Dubai wants to lead, but the limitation is that we don't have any local talent, which has created new stuff, you know, like there's no new technology that you can say came out of Dubai. It probably will five years later, because now they are building the ecosystem. But so far, we've had very few case studies of successful global.com businesses, very few. You can just, you know, cherry pick them, but most of the innovation in R&D has been happening elsewhere. So you mean more the incubation of ideas is certainly within the Web 3.0 space, not necessarily in Dubai, they had dubbed it and Dubai is doing everything, but there's probably some work to do to actually create that incubator effect. Yeah, and knowing Dubai, they've got plans to try and crack that. And I'm sure they will in time. But yeah, that's fascinating. What would you, what advice would you give to any leaders of businesses out there, any CEOs, with regard to adopting Web 3.0 and AI? I mean, what's the best way for them to go about? That's a good question. And I get asked that quite a few times. So my answer is very simple. You know, when you look at Web 3, you have to build a community first. You cannot go and build your presence in the metaverse and then expect people to come and do business with you. It doesn't happen that way. You have to have a community first approach. And that's a mindset, basically. So Web 3 is a mindset. Web 3 is not about technology. So mindset of collaboration, not competition, which is a very important thing. You know, you can't think my market share, my customer, my value systems, no, that is old school. Now you have to see how you can collaborate with your competition to grow the market and then take a larger share of the hate. So it's about building a community of like-minded people who believe in you, in your vision, in your purpose. And then when you launch with any product or service offering, they are more likely to gravitate towards you. So you cannot say, I'm the best buy from me. That is old school. That is Web 2. It doesn't work anymore. Now you need to build this community and you build this community in the metaverse. You don't have to build it offline. You can, there are a lot of platforms available where you can host meetups, where people can create their avatar. They can virtually meet you. So you create these experiences. And the other thing is talking of mindset, you have to realize that it's okay to fail. A lot of CEOs I talk to, they ask me, what is the ROI of metaverse? And I feel personally that's a wrong question to ask, because what you should be asking is, what is the return on engagement? How many people will I build in my community? Now that then makes sense only because ROI will follow, but it can't start with ROI. You can't first, you know, generate profits and then decide what you will do with your community. So start building a community and then slowly introduce certain products services. You can have loyalty programs in Web 3, which have their own reward system. We did an interesting project with a partner last year for the Abu Dhabi race. And it was gamifying the experience. So people could virtually participate. So we created like a digital twin of the race track of the GP circuit. And then people from across the world could create an avatar, participate in those races. And once they won, they were part of the reward system. And they scored points that you could actually redeem for real stuff like get discounts when you buy a beer or discounts when you buy a concert ticket. So you are relating the virtual with the real. And that I think is where you build the value proposition, because if you just give them NFTs, which is like a virtual thing, it's a pie in the sky. People don't get it. It's too complicated. But when you tell them, look, you'll get a 30% discount. If you buy these concert tickets, they see value. So I think what companies and brands need to do is tie the virtual with the real world. And then people start segment. So that's my advice to brands looking to get into the victory space. Right. Also, how many employees have you got? Yeah, so I work with a team of just 12 people. And we manage more than 120 clients, as I said. And we do that because I believe we work very smart. We train our clients to become independent. So once we set them up on the web, we train them on how they can manage their own content, how they can do their own campaigns. So they are not necessarily dependent on us going forward. And that's how we are able to achieve so much with a limited team. And what's unique about our businesses that we are totally virtual. We were basically virtual even before COVID happened. So, you know, so for me, it was a very smooth transition. And except for the secretary in our office, everybody works remotely. And we have a well-oiled machinery, good reporting system. We just have a 10-minute morning Zoom meeting every day with the team, and then they're on their own rest of the day. And that's how we built our business. Yeah, well, that brings me to my next question, which was I was going to ask, how do you, you know, what advice would you give to companies that are you buy based or in fact, anywhere based, but they want to have a global footprint. They want to have clients, they want to, you know, do BD across the world, and they want to have clients across the world. What advice would you give to them on how to successfully, you know, market themselves internationally, and then how to successfully manage clients in multiple territories? Yeah, sure. So I can give two, three different things that people should look at. So the first thing to recognize is that old ways of doing business don't work anymore. In other words, you can now rely on banner advertising or email campaigns. That's a thing of the past, right? Now you need to probably host webinars, organize, and that brings me to a business I created three years back called only webinars.com. We've hosted more than 70 webinars globally, and we've had about 1,000 to 2,000 people in the room. And it works very well for brands that want to go global because you can reach out to people across communities. Now I live with my LinkedIn community. I have 40,000 plus followers on LinkedIn. It's taken long, like I've been there for 20 plus years, building it systematically with a lot of C-suite people. So owners of businesses are part of my network. So it's very easy for me to reach out to my target audience, right? So it's up to people with social media, works for them, some are on Facebook, some on Insta. That's a personal choice. But for me, a good B2B network is LinkedIn. And the other thing I wanted to share with my audience is that in my company, I never had a single sales person in 28 years. And we are touched on in business. A lot of .com companies came and went. So I've seen so many companies over the years in Dubai and rest of the world come and go. We flourished. Why? Because we believed in the power of networking. And we believe that one happy camper will bring another. So we've been backwards to keep our customers extremely happy. So we have almost no attrition rate and we build loyalty. Like I have 20 year old customers that we still service. And that itself helps us grow because when they grow, we grow, right? And a lot of people don't realize the value of building legacies in the company. And we have focused on that. And like I said, then I can give you a very quick example. One of the brands we came with who came to us three years back had just one outlet. So then they have 20 plus outlets in five countries in GCC. So as they have grown, we have grown. We don't have to go farming or fishing every month on your business. We just kept providing new services to all customers and grew organically. I love that strategy or this philosophy you've just explained, Shara, because I'm a huge believer in success, creating success, right? And the receiving fan concept whereby if you can give exceptional service and provide greater value to your customers that they expect, they will sell your services to potential new customers. And there's no better BD strategy than referrals, right? Yes, absolutely. And it works very well in the way because, you know, the way is about, you know, knowing people, it's about so many events that are held in Dubai, not so many in summer, but there are so many networking events that are web tree communities. So I do encourage people to reach out and join some communities. I run a community called Metash shapers. It's a global web tree community, and we have a website, Metahifeandshapers.com. Anybody on the planet can go there, create their profile in a couple of minutes, and then start interacting with other thought leaders and industry leaders, network, set up meetings and grow and travel. I mean, I travel all the time to different international shows in the web tree space. I'm also a keynote speaker. And, you know, that helps you get new business. You don't have to necessarily shop from the rooftops and say I'm the best buy from me. Yeah. And look, I mean, Dubai is an amazing city. You are right. Dubai is a major city for networking. I think it's part of the DNA of Dubai. It's this melting pot of 200 nationalities. None of us were born here. So none of us have the family and friends we grew up with. So we have to go out, and we have to socialize for work and to create friendships as well. And for play, I play golf. And that's helped me a lot in business because every weekend I'm out there meeting new people, playing in different clubs. And then, you know, my first big customer was starboard hotels after Dubai duty free. And I got that on the golf course. I just happened to be playing with a person from Starwood. And on the 19th hole, when we hit the bar after the game, we got talking. And within a week, I signed up starboard hotels as a, you know, as a large international or multinational chain. And we did a lot of business with them in the subsequent years. So I think we are at the right place at the right time in Dubai. I will not be anywhere else on this planet, even if I had a choice. Dubai is the safest place. It's the fastest growing city. It lets you live life at your own pace. And you got it all. So we need to leverage and grow with Dubai. I mean, you don't have to really advertise your business when you are in Dubai. You just ride the wave, go with, you know, how Dubai is selling itself to the world. They all come here. Everybody wants to come to Dubai, regardless of where they are from. And that speaks volumes about the leadership here, about the vision of the people who run this country and entrepreneurs like us just need to figure out how we can ride that wave. And I think at Seiburgio, we did that quite well because we got a few strategic government clients and we sat in strategic meetings. So we knew what was coming and we were well prepared to take on business in those fields that Dubai was going to invest in. And the government itself is investing a lot in new technologies. So you don't have to you know, look that far. You just need a few good relationships and then you can be very busy. Yeah, I fully agree. Dubai is an incredibly exciting city to be living in. I've been here 23 years myself. I started off in Saudi like you as well before coming to Dubai. And honestly it's it never stops evolving. And it's fascinating to see where it's going to go because it just keeps growing. And Dubai definitely is the city or one of the cities that everybody wants to visit and many people want to come and live. And it's only going to keep growing that way. So I agree with you. It's great for business. It's great and it's great to live. So look, I'd like to delve into a little bit on the only webinars. I mean, what's what gave you the idea there for for that business? Because I'm fascinated by what you said whereby companies can now access hundreds of people because of this new technology. Previously, the Holy Conference was a very huge logistical effort and webinars have given given businesses a complete new opportunity. So I'd love to know the problem or the solution you're seeing solving there and how you went about setting up that business. Yeah, so like I said, I have a very open mind in terms of what possibilities exist out there. So when COVID happened, we were all locked, right? No way to go. And we were all running out of patience and ideas on how we can stay afloat. So I realized that I think Zoom have just launched at that time during COVID. And I was quite curious to understand the Zoom model. So I downloaded the Zoom app. I paid for it. And then I realized it's so easy to configure these webinars. I mean, within minutes, you can do that. So to test out, I created a webinar and I think only five or six people showed up. And I thought, okay, maybe there's something I'm not doing right. But those five, six people who came said they had a great experience. There were a lot of learnings and they interacted. So that got me excited. And I was a little digicted in that. I was expecting at least 50 people in the room. But something told me that if I persevered with this, it could become big. And then I found some good speakers globally through LinkedIn. I reached out to them. I started building panels and took a long story shot in the last two and a half years. I've organized 70 plus webinars globally. And the last one we did was a Web3 and AI Summit, which was over two days with 80 speakers and close to 2000 people attending it virtually. 80 speakers. So we had panel discussions. We had fireside chats. We had a lot of interactive sessions, breakout rooms, people from, I think, 170 plus countries registered to attend this two-day conference. It was huge. It was beyond. It was mind-boggling. And we've seen more and more of this concept, right? So you see, I mean, obviously, there is almost a place for large-scale conventions, et cetera. But do you see more and more of the webinars I giving? Absolutely. This is the way to go. It's cost effective. It really works well. And you can build your brand online. I mean, only webinars, I didn't spend a nickel on advertising. And today, if you Google it, we are top five globally in terms of organizing professional webinars. So now we have corporates who come to us. They could be selling technology. They could be FN CG products. It doesn't matter. So you can reach, you know, any industry in any geography, thanks to webinars. And you can be very interactive. So you can do a 30-minute presentation. You can open it up to the audience. You can create a lot of engagement through online polling, et cetera. So I think there is an appetite for this. And people are waking up to using webinars as the new marketing tool to build a brand. So we might see more and more of these. You know how we have the annual shows that come to the buy of the big shows. You might see more and more annual webinars and big brands being created in the webinar space. Yeah, absolutely. And they don't have to get rid of the physical shows they are doing. They can do these in tandem. So for people who could not travel, you can still engage with it. Yeah, fascinating. So look, I'd like to take away a little bit different now and talk a little bit about your leadership journey. What have been the biggest challenges that you've had? I mean, it's a 28-year journey. I'd love to know what the biggest challenges, one or two of them that you've had and how you've overcome them. Yeah, so of course, you know, it's been a roller coaster, right? 28 years is a long time to be in business and that too, you know, in the digital business, in a .com business. So I think the key is to keep your costs down. Even when you are doing very well, you don't have to have fancy offices and fancy cars. I think keep your feet on the ground. And Dubai is, let's face it, very expensive compared to what it was 25 years back. So cost of doing business is still high. Therefore, if companies are thinking of coming to Dubai and setting up businesses, they need to do their homework. And the important thing to remember is that three bad months can wipe out any SME, not only in Dubai in any part of the world. So you have to build a business model such that you have multiple revenue streams, because things can change very quickly. There could be a war in the neighborhood and then people will stop, you know, buying stuff, right? There could be another COVID for all, you know, and then again, your business could most die. So you have to build a full proof, weather proof, technology proof, business model with multiple revenue streams. You can't rely on one revenue stream. When I started Cyber Gear, it was only websites. And if I did only websites today, I'd be out of business, because that got commoditized and people don't pay that much for a website. But then when we added new services, like today, I offer AI chatbots to companies for their websites. It's something new. It helps reduce, you don't need huge call centers, which are expensive. You can use AI to answer any questions that people might have. And seamlessly, without any human cost, no human interaction. So you go to a website, you ask any question. It is in the backend powered by Chan GPD. So it's intelligent. You can populate your own website content into it, which is very specific and relevant to your brand. And Bingo, you increase engagement on your website. People spend more time because they get more information. You can collect demographics. Technology allows you to capture demographics in a very seamless way. So I know John Nolan came to my website. He stayed for five minutes. These are the questions he asked. It looks like he's interested in this, and then I can follow up through traditional means. And there's no human interaction. Cost is very low. It's just a one-time investment in the software. So I encourage people to build smart, web-based applications so they can generate leads on an ongoing basis. And I say this to young entrepreneurs, build a business that is 24 by 7. You should make money even when you are sleeping. And you can do that because some part of the world is always open. So build up global business. I really, I really like that advice. I'll take a few notes here. I'm going to summarize. First one you said it is really stay lean, especially as a startup, stay lean. If you are coming to Dubai as an entrepreneur, prepare yourself. It is expensive, but that's not to say that you can't enter the market as long as you do it in a lean way, but you can't be wasting any money. Three bad months. Three bad months can break any business, especially a startup business or an SME. And I think that last two points on diversification is really, really great advice because the world is changing at a faster, faster pace every day. And you cannot sit still where you are and think that when you're making your money is where you're going to be making your money in the future. So you're right. I think you always need to be looking for the next opportunity to diversify and make money when it's sleeping. And remember it's okay to fail. I think failing for entrepreneurs is part of the journey. It's learning from your failings, right? Yeah. And if you're not feeling, it means you're not training enough. Exactly. And make money while you're sleeping is a little bit like taking, yeah. It's a great suggestion. And especially the way the world is these days, there is plenty of opportunities for that, right? Absolutely. I mean, you can ask chat GPT, what are the three best opportunities to start a business in the way? And it'll give you very good answers. And that's a starting point. Right. I got to ask chat GPT straight after this call, what that is. Now, looking at the future, what are your aspirations for the business, for the future? Yeah. So I'm going to go with the technology. And I would bet on artificial intelligence. In my opinion, everything in life is going to become seamless. As in, mobile phones will be obsolete very soon, in my opinion, because you will get these very tiny little computers, which will be like earpods, right? You will talk to people through them, you will listen, and you won't have to carry any gadget in future. Is that because we can just voice control everything? And also because technology is going to become so sophisticated that everything will be in the cloud. And it'll get so miniaturized that we will just put a little pin on our depot in the jacket, on the jacket. And that's it. That's your computer. That's your phone. You don't have to carry anything today. You see people carrying laptops. You carry people carrying everybody's carrying one or two mobile sometimes. All that three to five years later will be history. Is that because AI is going to take over all of these? Yeah, it's going to take over. Robots are coming for our jobs and for us. So we have to smarten up and, you know, see how we will survive in that new world order. It's not far away. It's coming. If you follow the news, see what new video is doing and some other brands, even Elon Musk has recently stated that, you know, it's an eventuality. We need to be prepared now and not think that this is all in the future. The future is now. The future is now, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. So what about your personal life? What do you imagine, golf? What do you do in your downtime? So I meditate. I do yoga and I do all this because I was a victim of working long hours, 14 hours a day, had a total meltdown. I was a nervous wreck and ended up on a psychiatrist couch because all the doctors did all the tests and said nothing wrong with you. It's all in the mind. And then my awakening started, which is I stopped all my Zoom crazy calls. I was doing back to back to back. I started going for long walks, sitting in the park, meeting friends. So I think one has to, you know, look at things in the right perspective and not go nuts about trying to be busy and trying to make money. You have to have a good work life balance. And I especially recommend this to youngsters who I see are too addicted to their mobile phones. They go with friends for a pizza and they don't talk to each other. They're on their phones. And this is not good at all. There's a very interesting study done in the US, which I referenced a lot. It basically says that all these mobile phones and other devices are trying our brains. Our brains are getting fried. We don't know it, but it's happening. And the results will tell in the years to come. So this is like a wake-up call. We all have, I think, a responsibility to make sure our children, our neighbors' children, and whoever else we interact with, you know, knock off at a certain time. I mean, you can't live without technology, but then you have to, you know, segment your life and say between this time and this time, I'm not even going near a mobile phone or anything that has radiation. It could be television set. Too much of Netflix is bad for the brain. So just like our body needs rest, our brain needs rest, our brain needs downtime. And I didn't realize this till I went to the dark side. I got that root shock and this awakening that, hey, so now, after 6 p.m., I totally detox. Very, very, very urgent. I will attend to it, which is once a week, other than that, I'm off, off technology, off radiation. And it has been a game changer. It's like giving me a new lease of life. And I encourage people to follow this without having to experience it firsthand where you realize, oh, my God, where have I done to myself? And these things are for real. Technology is freeing our brains. So in case any of them wants to reference or read that study, do you have that study? This is by Ariana Huffington of Huffington Post fame. So just Google Ariana Huffington. Yes. And you will find the study. And yeah, she invested a lot of money. She put people in a room with eight hours of, you know, browsing stuff. She created heat maps to see what people were doing and finally came to the conclusion that, yeah, it's going to have long-term, very bad effects on health. We could lose eyesight. We could lose hearing. We could lose body-mind coordination. I mean, horrific stuff that you see in the movies. And this is all for real. And I can tell you, if you do a deep dive on the subject, mental health issues are the biggest challenge the world is going to be facing. And this is all because of technology, too much technology, too much information. TMI. TMI is the new buzzword, too much information. We need to be smart enough to sift through only what we need, only what is good for us. Yeah. Like I think this will resonate with a lot of people because there's been a huge shift in our generation towards people being physically healthier. I think people are exercising more that eating better, the sleeping better. But the next big thing is that mental health. And even what you're touching on there about the radiation, the radio waves that are floating around, I think that's the next big thing that's going to come out as is going to be. The next big business are going to be, in my opinion, gyms for the mind. Yeah. In a way, that is meditation. And you do see the well-being and these retreats, the spiritual retreats, I think they're already huge industry, but they're going to get bigger and bigger because people need to be taught how to be a mindful, how to actually switch off, and how to build that into their life as rituals and habits. Because you're right, people are addicted to an unhealthy lifestyle through technology at the moment. Absolutely. And you need to have a still mind. You need to introspect and you need to be by yourself. You don't necessarily have to be with family all the time because that also in some way is taxing. You have to be by yourself. And you're right, some kids don't know how to be by themselves. They actually get anxious when they're by themselves and they have to get online. And anxiety, you nailed it. Anxiety is one of the biggest issues. You're so anxious. You want to achieve more. You want to do more. You want to make more money. You want to be driven. Yeah, this is the gratification. Great. Also, any podcasts, books or influencers that you would recommend who've had a big influence on you? Yeah, in terms of books, I think it's important to be a little spiritual. So I read what is called the Bhagavad Gita, which is available off the shelf. It's on the internet. You can get a light version of it. So you don't have to read the whole 200 odd pages. I think there are a lot of life's lessons out there. Some that I already referenced, which was stillness and meditation and all of that. But it's a lot to do with discipline. Just like we take care of our cause, we don't want a single scratch there. We don't want dust on our cause. We need to think of our body and mind much the same way. We could be having cobwebs in our mind. And we don't do anything about that. We don't have to wait for the mind to blow up before we go see a doctor. So we need to be more mindful and we need to take a pause. Very important word in my dictionary now is to take a pause. Take a pause. It is very true. One of the things I'd say to myself a lot these days is slow down, slow down. And I think that is gold. That is the new gold. Pause is the new gold. Yeah. I think we just created something. Great advice. This is great. Now I love the spiritual aspect because frankly, you know, there's no doubt about it that getting the balance is key to success. There's no use being super successful in a material aspect. Fundamentally, you're driving yourself crazy. That's not what you're trying to do. You'll never burn out before you know. And I've experienced it. I'm telling you, I went to the dark side where I couldn't even drive on our care road. I used to have anxiety issues. And then I realized I have to just do what I wasn't doing all this well, which was take a break. Detox. So Shara, we're coming to the end of the podcast. I would like to finish off with the questions that I like to ask, which is if you were to go back to your 18 year old self knowing what you know now, what would you say to 18 year old boy from? I mean, what I realize now is that a lot of mishaps that happened or the missteps that happened were because I was not spiritual at that young age. And that I don't blame anybody, but I guess the family or the parents have a great responsibility to bring that into your curriculum. It's not about learning physics, chemistry and maths, right? That's how we grew up. And we were told if we didn't score 90%, we would not go to college. And if we didn't do well in college, we wouldn't get a good job. I think that is all old school that's out of the window. Now it is about the work life balance. It's about setting your priorities, having disciplined in life. And I wish I would have gone to the gym when I was 18, rather than now, when your body is not so ready to rough it out. So yeah, so bring in a lot of outdoor activity into people's lives when you are back young. There is enough time to learn. And the way technology is coming at us, the way knowledge is coming at us, trust me, you know, earlier we used to say learn coding if you want to succeed in life. Today, we are in a zero-code platform. You don't even have to know coding to succeed anymore. The world has changed. Everything now, computers you can talk to, I can tell the computer to write a letter to a business prospect. And it will write a letter because it knows what kind of letters I send out, what's my knowledge base, what am I trying to sell. So artificial intelligence will pretty much take over our day-to-day work, which will leave us with enough time to invest in ourselves, in our well-being. And that's what youngsters need to be told now, that you don't have to learn coding all the time that you save there, invest in your well-being. And stay curious, stay curious. Amazing advice. And I mean, we all know that the education system is light years behind being relevant. And unfortunately, it's teaching the kids the stuff that is not relevant. But you know, everything you're saying is so clever. I mean, they used to say healthy body healthy mind. And I think in the future they're going to say something like healthy mind, successful life. Yes, very important. Just and don't keep your mind cluttered, declutter every now and then. Yeah, because there's too much happening in our mind. We're overthinking stuff. And that is causing all the complications. So go for happiness and peace of mind. Everything else is a distraction. Brilliant. Look, I really enjoy talking to you throughout the day. Thank you very much for all of your insights. It's been a great conversation. Well done with the success of both your businesses, cyber gear and only webinar. And yeah, that's it. Thank you. It was a pleasure talking to you also and look forward to interacting with you in the future.
