Hi there, my name is John Nolan from VISTAGE UAE and today we're on the Top Shelf Podcast and I'm joined by Pierre Archam, the founder and CEO of Proto21 3D Printing. Very great to see you today, how you doing? Good, how are you John? Very good, thank you. So Pierre, I'd like to start off by asking you if you could just give me a little bit of background on your company and on your role in the company. Sure, so Proto21 is a 3D printing service bureau which provides services to the local market. We started from supplying it to Dubai UAE but now we have expanded throughout the Middle East in Africa. At times we also supply our services all the way to Europe. Our range of services are making us as one stop solution. So we start from reverse engineering to 3D scanning to 3D designing, improving your product, 3D printing, then finishing, then packaging, installation. So we do entire process of your product and the products could be from any industry. It could be from aviation. It could be from automotive. It can be from defense, medical. You name it. We don't focus on industry or product or service. We focus on capability and capacity. That is a motto of my company. So we always think what 3D printing can do for the market? What we can achieve rather than having a set of services or products that we can just offer a client. It is other way around. It's a custom based requirement and we are in the perfect market which is UAE which is growing so fast and it's just the best place to be at with the company. My role in there is I'm the founder and CEO so I started the company from my bedroom space literally from one 3D printer from my bedroom space where I used to share a bedroom with a couple of people and then I found a partner which is a prestigious company, Joseph Group, who invested in my idea and the company and today we are the one of the largest leading 3D printing company in the Middle East in Africa. With having over more than 150 machines we have robotic arms. We have a robotic arm. We are going to have one more in the future. We have a state-of-the-art industrial manufacturing. We have automotive grid finishing. We are a team of 40 people now and so far nobody is very kind to us. I know there is going to be a fascinating conversation today because 3D printing I think a lot of people are fascinated by this but before we get more we go on about the business I'd love to know the story of how Pierre Ockham, a boy from Pakistan, ended up in the UAE. How did your journey take you to UAE? So as a young child I was always into arts okay and in our culture I mean it's not the same as arts is not much reputed. It's more like you have to be an engineer or a doctor like Indian Pakistan. Maybe people know that. So I ended up being an engineer because of my parents' choice. I joined a telecommunication bachelor's degree which I don't know anything about until today, how this telecommunication works. I'm more like a mechatronics guy anyway. So yeah so during my bachelor's I was always looking up to everything else rather than engineering so I was looking into electronics engineering and I was looking into arts. I was doing photography, I was making websites, I was doing logos, I was doing Photoshop, Illustrator, I was doing everything else and not much of engineering actually. So I used to study well yeah I used to pass exams and everything and then I got a chance to United States as a scholar. So we got to exchange a scholarship to United States in my seventh semester. Over there is the first time I saw a 3D printer in my life that's back in 2012. It was more like a something from out of a Star Wars right at this time and I said I want to make that back in Pakistan. When I came back to a country after this scholarship I was surprised to know there's no 3D printer in the whole country. People even don't know what is 3D printer. When I started talking about 3D printer they started laughing that he's just joking. There's nothing like that you know what I mean. So I said I want to make that as my final project. I made it as my final project. I got a lot of rejections. At times it was like this corporation is not going to work. Somebody said it to me in my university because it was a bunch of electronics and a bunch of wires coming out and you're wasting your degree. You're going to lose, you're going to fail. Better just take some master's procedure or telecommunication but I just avoided everything and I kept going and I was able to produce a whistle which did not blow because I could not program it right how to have a cavity in there so the air couldn't go in. Anyway so from there I realized that I need a master's end mechatronics because 3D printer is a product of mechatronics with a mechanical electronics coding and automation right. So I first I got a job in Pakistan in Karachi Robotic Labs. Then I went abroad. I went to Turkey to pursue my master's in Bachelorette University in Istanbul. I lived one and a half years. Then I got a scholarship to Germany, Heinrich Heine University and after that I finished my bachelor's and I said I want to go back to my home country and start Per 21. I mean the name wasn't decided by then but I wanted to start a 3D printing company. I was exposed to a lot of business and sales in Turkey. I did some sales calls. I learned how to do sales, how to do marketing. I always joined a job because I was very technically sound right. So what was missing in me to be an entrepreneur is to how to sell. How to market your product. That was a key factor and I knew this in my university core times that I must learn them so I can I can sell my product. The most important is to to sell the technology not to build one. So I did that. I learned a lot of experience. Then I was ready to like take on board. I was very good at the marketing, collaterals and the sales calls. I took very like odd experiences in there. I worked in Abercrombie and Fitch as associate. Imagine like I was a store guy when you walk in. I'm the one who's interacting because I wanted to learn how to interact with the customer towards customer service. I worked in McDonald's in Germany just for the sake of you know for a job to to survive as a student. I worked as a sales guy in Brew London. It was a company in in Turkey for one and a half years. I was just calling people regularly calling people like 100 calls a day. You learn how you convince a guy on a phone and it improves English and a lot of things. When I came back to the country I started 3D printing and I tried but I realized 3D printing was not really welcome there. You got to have nine NOCs to import a 3D printer in Pakistan. It wasn't the same and I was devastated. Then my brother was living in UAE. He said why don't you come over for vacation here. I mean I left everything with my passport with the Pakistani passport coming back to the home country and I can't go again back there without a student visa and I didn't want to pursue my PhD. I wanted to do business. So I went to UAE. I just fell in love with the country. How cannot you fall in love with UAE when you visited? My brother was living there. I landed in Sharjah. I still remember I had 1,600 rooms in the pocket that is 2017. This was a visit. I was just going for the visit and I slept in a friend's office. His name is Mansoor Ujan and Imran Ali Basi. I always take the names whenever I speak to anyone because I always remember them. They picked me up from the airport and I had no money to pay for the hotel. I lived in the office. I bought a mattress of 60 Columns and I stayed in their office on the floor for three nights. In the morning I would wake up John and I go to a restaurant just to see a restaurant on the right side. To see how many numbers are there and how many breakfast I can afford for the next two months until I find a job. Isn't it funny? So yeah, so that's where I started. I then ended up studying a job because I didn't had money in funds to start a company in UAE. It's not as cheap as you start a company in Pakistan or Europe or UK or the United States. Starting a company in UAE costs a minimum of 50k with your visas and everything, the trade license. I couldn't afford that at that time. So I started with a job to learn the market. Mr. Eduardo, Mr. Sunil Kashab from three invincurations. They were really kind enough to get me a job as a sales technical sales engineer where I worked eight months and then I was like, I mean they knew always. I always started my own company. So I said, now it's time to start my own company. I started from a bedroom space. My ex boss from Pakistan, he helped me actually with my website and logo and everything. So I mean, there were good people in my life, right, who helped me where I'm today. Then I started the company, then I met Joseph Group and then that's how I built up today. So tell me, how many people are in the company now? Can you give me a little bit of perspective on the scale of the business now? And what year did you start the business? So we started in 2018. That is a four third quarter. The first day I came to Joseph, I came with a small machine and I was given a smallest office space and I said, I don't need an office space. I need an industrial lab. So I can do my 3D printing. And we started at $100,000. So there was a capital of the company where we started. I was given a whole resources of Joseph Group. So the whole, we have like 800,000 square feet of facility in Jubbler, industrial area where we had paint finishes, we had metal, we had carpentry, we had so many other auxilaries that you need when you want to start a company that were on my fingertips. This was the biggest interest of mine when I wanted to partner with Joseph. And I had a strong leader who taught me what is business, Mr. Ashik. He's the executive director of Joseph Group, Mr. Ashik Kander. So he made me a business man. He taught me, I've worked very close to him for three years. Now we speak, but not much, because he knows I'm doing well. And in the first three years, I've worked really close to him. He taught me everything. What is HR? What is accounts? What is finance? So the missing points, which were in my profile, I was good in sales. I was good in marketing. I was good engineer. I was a good team leader. I was good. I'm a workaholic guy. But the things that you need business intelligence that I have adopted from him. So that is finance. How you handle cash flows? How you do projection? How you do budgeting? How you do all of those things? So those were, I mean, I learned from one of the best persons I met. And yeah, so the business now, we are the leading company in the Middle East and Africa. We are the largest in terms of operations of the 3D printing service bureau. We have a print farm of 120 machines. We have a print farm, which can produce 120 parts per day. We've got a robotic farm that can print three meters in one go. We're making automotive parts. We're making defense parts from very high confidential products, which are not on the market yet. And very prestigious customers like Minister of Defense, Dubai Police, Adknock. So the Ministry, Dubai Ministry, municipality, you name it. Like most, I mean, Lamborghini. I made one model for that it was still in the Sheikh Zayed Road in Lamborghini museum Lamborghini main showroom. We have made a very sophisticated art piece for them. We've done car parts. We've done parts that actually fit in a gun in the shoot for Jubilee Palace. So we've done some crazy, one of the most iconic projects in 3D printing. So yeah, the business is scaled up. How many employees have we got? We have now, as of today, we would have 38, but we are still hiring. So we're hiring really fast because, you know, we're growing, we're scaling up regularly. I mean, in terms of revenue, profits, capabilities, capacities, experience, people, clients. So we are scaling up every single day on the line by the grace of God. So how many players are in the market here? I mean, just to give us some perspective. Yeah, what stage is the market? Is the 3D market even? Sure. So 3D printing market, as of I see, as of today, I still see it as a raw market. There's still a lot to achieve in there. Like metals, metal 3D printing is not so adopted much in the UAE region. It is complex. It will take its time. It will have its own curve growing up there. As a major players, it's product 21. There's one more very good company, Emanza. Then we have other companies which are more interested in model making and generation 3D. There are many 3D printing companies in the market today. We're prominent ones, I've just mentioned. Many, many of product 21 employees have left and started their companies. So 3D vintage creations, from 3D vintage creations, I was born, like, prototyping their start of my company. The sales manager in 3D vintage is also Sunil Kashap, who started a layer X 3D printing company. So yes, it's a raw market and it's like early birds right now, but it's a very complex business. So it's not a business that everybody can handle. It requires a lot of time. A lot of patience. It requires a lot of R&D. People just think that you can buy a printer and you can start a company. It's not the same. You hardly would be able to earn your salary out of it. So it's running a business and being an employee, sometimes I think, I know it has its perks. Being an entrepreneur, being a business man, it has its perks. But you have no place to fall on when you're on the top, right? The buck stops at your corner every single time. If something goes wrong in business, you're the one who's going to be questioned. You have to make sure the salaries are paid. Yours are going to make sure that the projects are delivered on time. You have to make sure everything, right? So companies that start, they fail, they start and fail, but there's some that sustain, which is a very difficult industry, very difficult business, very demanding industry. People don't trust really printing that easy. They trust the traditional manufacturing and they're happy with it. But now it's changing also by time. So I'd say it's a beautiful industry and if somebody has a passion in it, should surely get into it. Yeah, and it's obviously an industry, as you say, in early stages, it's growing quickly and the potential is massive, right? Massive, 100%. 100%. I'm a 3D printing investor, John. No, I mean, I think it's an industry for the future, right? 100%. 1000%. So, look, what I'd love to know is what are the biggest challenges you've overcome on the journey? Hmm. Of course, there's so many challenges on that way. But you know, it's like, if you love something, what you do, you don't find a challenge. You find it fun. I mean, the biggest was Corona, yes. The biggest was to understand how to build an ecosystem in a company, how to build a good culture in the company. That was a challenge. That was something very new to me. It was very difficult for me to like separate my passion and business. There's so many things I want to do in my company because I love to do. So when a client comes in and he says, "Can you make a one to one one to five scale vehicle?" And I'm like a kid in my mind, a child in my mind says, "Oh, can we just rotate the wheels too?" But it's like, client wouldn't pay for that, right? So I'm passionate doing crazy stuff. And it's still like it happens in times that clients just come into product anyone and they place an order. And I just go full throttle, so high quality that they did not expected or paid for. And then it just doesn't work with the cost, right? So it was difficult for me because producing is like my baby. So I started as it was, it's my passion. I love to do it. I love what we make every day. We go on Instagram to see cool stuff there. So it was difficult for me to separate my passion to business. I have two heads to where I'm outcome. And at the same time, I'm an employer for a 21, which where I'm founder and CEO, which I take salary from. So I'm going to make sure that I take decisions right. Apart from that, Corona was a really big, big challenge because it was a catastrophe. It was a situation where your hands are tight and you have to look after your people. You have to look after your family. You have to, you have to handle business flow because when Corona came, we were just two years old company. We were very, very starting stage of the company. And if you just get a call from government and say, or you get a message from the government and say that you cannot offer tomorrow, you have to shut down your operations. I mean, I am on family to feed. I have my people there, which are in different countries coming from Philippines, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and the UAE who have to feed their families back home, which are going through the same issues. So then that then my sales calls technique is started. And I said, I'm not going to sit down because I'm a workaholic. I work 18 hours a day. I work 15 hours a day. I can't sit down for three days and do nothing. So better what like search online and see what people are doing out there and 3D printing with this Corona times. So I ended up watching on LinkedIn, a post from Italy that they're making 3D printed face shields for the Corona fighters and they're making ventilators, splitters so that one ventilator can be used for three patients. So I said, this is cool. I think UAE would love to have that. And there's no any shipment coming from China. So I just like intrigued in my mind. Like let me call a few friends and ask them. And I called few friends in in business and generally clients. And it just started having more momentum. And I ended up for somehow getting in touch with the debate police. And that was a there was a life-changing moment for me. So the gentleman said, Arkham, can you produce four samples of different face shields and bring it to us in next six hours? I said, I can't do it next six hours. I can do my morning. He said, okay, done. Can you bring them? I said, I need a permit to go out of my home. They said, we will be giving it to you. I was given in a very special permit that I can drive to my factory and pick up my friends. I mean pick up my team members. And so we did that at 8 p.m. I drove out and I picked up my team members, one engineer, one project project engineer, and one skillful handyman. And we reached to the factory and we like worked on the face shields. And in the morning, I gave him four face shields. He said, when you can deliver 15,000 face shields. I said, I need to open up my factory to do that. And the people was very, very generous. Okay. And they just didn't ask for discount. They just placed an order because they needed it. And at the same time, they understood that if I start functioning, my team members, I would be able to pay the salaries, right? So that happened. And I got a full list of my people signed by Dubipolis. Everybody got a message in their phones that they allowed to drive to the factory because we are now producing for UAE's frontliners. So we all started Moshela working in two days. So we were off in the corona time for two days. Rest entire year, we are fully, fully functional. We expanded business. We paid salaries. We paid bonuses. We paid over times. We hired people in corona. We bought machines. We bought materials from the suppliers. We imported the stuff. It just, it was a different time for me instead. But the one thing that during when we were open for the corona works, like for the face shields, we also got a lot of opportunities like crazy stuff. People were unable to find those products in the market because of the shipping were off from China. And they needed a lot of things which were not being able to be supplied otherwise. So we are producing them locally. So it just built up and we survived the wave very, very nicely. So it really corona, corona was an amazing time for your company, for your team, for you. It seems like 3D printing was a perfect solution for a lot of the challenges of corona. So what have you learned about yourself on this journey? And what have you learned about yourself as a leader on this journey? One thing is very clear. It's very lonely up there. If you have any problems, you're the one who's going to find a solution. You can't ask someone for a solution. You become a very strong man. Sometimes I can say the emotions wash away when you're growing up as a business person. You have to be very highly disciplined to be able to perform because you are a responsibility of so many families. So I have become much more responsible than before. I have become very much disciplined than before. And it just tells me how strong I am now because to be able to survive the things I've survived in the past years, I mean, I didn't know I could do that. So it was just a crazy passion inside that I wanted to make it success. And that I think would never stop. I think it's nothing to do with the perks of the business. It has to do with the passion. It's about the drive inside you. I want to do automations. I want to do nice marketing. I want to make nice posts. I want to make nice projects. I want to do that project. I want to hire a nice team. I want to take them out, have a good time with them. There's so many things and you enjoy the process. So I love what I do and I've become a very strong version of myself now, I think. So what are the biggest opportunities for 3D printing over the next five years or so? I see personally that what 3D printing can do in medical, what 3D printing can do in construction industry, what 3D printing can do in aerospace industry is something huge. And we as a production unit are not looking into any of them for a reason because that those industry has to evolve by time and it requires changes on a higher level. So those industries could adopt the need. I'm pretty sure in the United States, aerospace is taking, 3D printing is done very well in aerospace. In medical, I'm very sure it is there. So it's in construction. But in UAE, I think it's about priorities. UAE is still developing the economy and they have their own, of course, they're really open to technologies. But they have priorities as a country because UAE is much younger in terms of age than the United States. Most of it. So now they're going to the next level. So they can invest, they have money to invest. But in UAE, it's about they have much more things to look after to let these technologies come up. And then UAE also have about one main main situation is that UAE also has a very, very less population. We always have to consider in this regards 9 million population. If you compare that, it's going to be one city of the United States, one big city of the United States. So geographically, UAE has a capacity to grow and have more people. But at the same time in terms of technology, and it has to grow much, much forward and much more way. Because you can invest in technology, but the returns that would come would be dependent on how much uses there. But I don't see much of that users of now. And it's just also personal vision of a company to where you want to go at. But that's what I really genuinely think. So you mentioned that Proto 21 is the largest 3D printing company across Middle East and Africa. So what are your aspirations for Proto 21 then over the next five years? Because it sounds to me based on what you just said about the potential for the industry, that 3D printing will start becoming a bit more mainstream within the manufacturing industry across different sectors. But you're operating more on the demand of what's there now for the UAE. We're in a period of exponential change. And change is really rapid these days. So where are you going to concentrate from Proto 21 itself? What I see so far, I never considered Proto 21 to just end to 3D. We use smart manufacturing company. We provide 3D printing services. So we leverage on 3D printing technology rather than subtractive manufacturing technologies. We use more of additive manufacturing technology. If in my, from 100% of my technologies, I'm having 80% 3D printing. But there is a limit to every technology. Right? So there's one big problem in the market, which I would like to address in this podcast. People think 3D printing is an answer for every problem, which is completely wrong. 3D printing is a technology for certain purpose. It cannot be used for everything out there. Like the many, many times I see blog posts, people comparing 3D printing with injection molding. It's like comparing apples with bananas. They have their own use. 3D printing is good for low volume production, customized products, and complex geometries. If I, if this is a perfume bottle, right? If I want to make this cap and I want to make 1 million pieces, I would not use 3D printing for this. And I would not sit down comparing 3D printing and injection molding. It's going to lose bad. Injection molding will be using a mold to produce it. Right? But if I'm talking about a country who has a specific 110 F16s, right? And among the 110 customized F16s in tiers, they need one specific button that is broken. Now they cannot make a mold because the mold is going to cost more than producing those 16 pieces. So what I'm trying to say is, I never considered product 21 as a 3D printing company. It never says somewhere. My company name is product 23B LLC because I want to have operations of 3D printing in the license. Then my tagline is to the future. Now I want to be smart manufacturing where we have sheet, as of now today, we have sheet fabrication. We have paint and finishes techniques. We have robotic arm, which does large format additive manufacturing. We have injection molding in house now. So we don't want to stop at 3D printing. 3D printing will grow at its own pace. But if the 3D printing is slowing down in terms of what new technology are coming up, my company shouldn't slow down there. So I should be able to produce everything that you want to many walk into the my office. I should be able to offer you every service that you're looking for in terms of smart manufacturing. So our company goal, my inspiration if you ask is proto labs, proto labs.com. They started as a CNC manufacturing where the tooling, they added in the additive manufacturing. I did other way around. So I started with 3D printing and I will add in the future, I want to manufacture car parts. I want to manufacture and use daily use parts. So I want to do manufacturing. I want to go into more industrial industrialization. But considering faster timelines, better quality and better price. So I don't want to stop at 3D printing. We will have there are some technologies which can complement 3D printing such as injection molding. If we want to make a mold and spend like $6,000 for a small part, you want to do a prototype and I can do it in house. So that's my goal ahead of my company. And I always say this in every interview that one day it's my vision that one day when we go to the Mars, we want to make something and Elon Musk is my inspiration. So if I get a chance to make something for them, so for the sake of their mission to Mars, I would die happy. Yeah, look, I mean, that's actually how you explain that was really helpful for me. So now I have a better understanding of the optimum use for 3D printing. It really is more for bespoke and lower volume, niche requirements. But anything that becomes large volume, because there's a moving fails, 3D fails, it doesn't become commercially viable, right? There is other alternatives. Absolutely. Yeah. And I also, you know, when you were explaining that, I actually suddenly had a light bulb moment where I figured out how you came up with the name prototype. So I get it. Cool. So look, what I love to know for our listeners of this podcast is have you got any favorite business books or audio books that you've listened to that, you know, were game changing for you? Any particular business authors you follow, influencers, you mention Elon Musk. So, you know, it doesn't have to be a book as much as maybe you follow. I have, I have a couple of hooks, which I consider them bibles for startups. Okay, what are they? I don't know if you're saying the word Bible was right. But anyway, so what I'm saying is, what I'm saying is, I have, I have a book that I really believe it's a, it's a holy grail for, for startup companies, right? The book name is rework. reword. Yes, reword. And I will just find out the book author for you. Is that R E W O R? David Heinemaier and Justin Fried. R E W O R K. Oh, okay. Oh rework. I have read that book more than three times now. I read over again and again, and I make my notes out of that book, really. And I've applied, that book is so logical that I've applied it in my business, and I have seen drastic changes. So we'll have, right? Give me some, can you give me a one minute synopsis? Sure. Sure. So the biggest takeaway of that book says, meetings are toxic. Okay. How he explains that. You know, I used to have in my, in my company, I used to have a morning meeting every day, right? Every day, all my managers, we sit down and plan for the day and say that today, what are we going to do? So we sit down and say, hey, today we're going to print this. We're going to have designed this. And how many people are sitting in that meeting? Sometimes that meeting would be stretched for half an hour, sometimes 40 minutes, sometimes 25 minutes. And how many people are sitting in that meeting? Minimum of 10 guys. Supervisors, managers, me, everybody accounts and everything, right? I said, how to get, so this book says meeting the toxic. Why? Because you're not wasting 40 minutes of the company. You're actually wasting 400 minutes. How? Because each person's 40 minutes, you're wasting. Why would you send an email? And then they could read what's a plan. Usually this comes from the top, like me, right? Because I am not disciplined in my work. And I am not having proper strategy of the day. And I'm not either having giving them authorities to take right decisions or they're not remote to work. Because I'm going to sit down and tell them every day what to do. This is nonsense, right? You got to have a system where people, people know when they come in the morning, they know what they have to do. And they just keep, keep moving with it. So if you say four minutes of that, they imagine how much 400 minutes of a company a day, how many minutes are, how many, how much more productive your company is in that 40 minutes, they can sit down, have a coffee, have a brighter mind instead. Then just like wasting that time. So that was my biggest takeaway from New World. Another was, I don't remember the titles and the paragraph, but the concept, which says, do not. If a customer's come down and tells you that I'm on this way, you don't follow it. If you don't give solution to the customer, for example, the difference between designer and artist, right? So if you go to a designer, he's going to give you one, two, three options and let you choose. But artists will tell you, this is my design, this is best for you, right? Yeah, well, you sound like Steve Jobs. I mean, it sounds like we rework book, it takes some of the ideas from different entrepreneurs because Bezos is another one. And I know Elon Musk as well, he doesn't like meetings. But really, I didn't know this personally. Yeah, I think you want to listen. Great extra word, John. I love meetings, but I just don't want to make them meetings like wasting. So I always, now when I raise a meeting request on calendar, I write down agenda, I put a 15 minutes meeting because I realized that I have a meeting with two guys, which is from my company, my managers, I'm going to waste 45 minutes, 50 minutes for me or them, two is 30 minutes. So rather than I have shortest meeting time, just talk about the meeting and go away. Don't sit down and talk about crazy stuff, what's going on around the office and stuff. Just just work and focus on your work. And that'll just increase the productivity. Yeah, that's like the meetings that definitely can be a huge time way to have to agree with you that. But look, I probably will probably will look into rework myself and have a read of it, or I'll find a abbreviated version because one of the messages. The other thing is Steve Jobs used to say customers don't know what they want. We know what they want and we know better than what they want. And we want to keep making them because we know what we can do. They don't even know what's possible. He turned traditional thinking on his head. And let's be honest, he was a genius in many ways to create the iPhone. He's on record for challenging saying customers don't know what they want. 100%. How can they know what they want when they don't even know what's available? His book's amazing. The same guy that just wrote the book about Elon Musk, the biography wrote the book about Steve Jobs. So that's a great book. But look, what about podcasts? Any particular podcasts you could do? The diary of CEO. I watched that podcast often. It's my favorite. The most favorite is, I forget the name, I'm so sorry, podcast. I watch this all the time. I just slipped out of my head. Joe Rogan. I love him. Yeah, every single morning, I watched like how they built Paramount of Joe Rogan, or I just see how they did, how they didn't exist, or how American government is messing around, or, you know, like how beings are there. If a book, Bigfoot is real. And this, like, my entertainment is this. So I don't watch movies. I don't play games. I don't listen much songs. But I listen to Joe Rogan and his suspicious activities, AF-51, and just be happy about it that, you know, one day we're going to find another alien. It's just conspiracy theories. I love conspiracy theories. Yeah, well, Rogan gets, you know, he gets, he gets so many interesting people on his podcast, and he asks great questions, right? Yeah, rabbit hole of so many different things that if he's not asking those questions, then, you know, the world would not know a lot about. Yeah, a lot. And most interestingly, he stays non-biased, right? So he would never take a, he would just be factual. He will just open up Google right there and read it out instead of somebody bullshitting. And that's the best part of him. I think it's my favorite podcast. Like, I think in my YouTube, in my, in my TikTok reels everywhere, he comes up because the algorithms know now that I like him. So, you know, he, he's amazing. Like, I, I learned so many things from him. Something great, really crazy. Like, somebody went to Africa to meet a tribe and how they live. You would never know this from National Geographic. You would never know that from, from any new TV channels. He has original real people sitting down with him, talking about facts, no nonsense. And you can get really uncensored information. Yeah, well, that's why he's number one, right? He's number one in the world. Yeah. One final question, which would be, what would you say to your 18 year old self if you were to go back now with the wisdom you have, what advice, what wisdom would you, would you give your 18 year old self? Leave your house, go sleep on the floor, go sleep on a training station, earn yourself, start a lemonade stand, come out of your comfort zone, go live a life, just, just come out of your comfort zone, just travel abroad, go to a new culture, learn what is out there, just want to stick to your place, just travel a lot and do crazy jobs. Don't look in the, so when you, when you want to choose a job, if I was 18, when you want to choose a job, don't look at what is going to give you. So there are two type of people in this world, John, givers and takers. So when I'm interviewing today, and some down, somebody comes down on my at my desk and we have a conversation. And if he says, how much is the salary so that I can have to work? And the other guy said, I can do this, this, this, so I can get paid, you know what I mean? The two mentalities in this world. And remember successful people that are givers, not takers. So you want to have that in the early stage in your life, right? So in early stage of your life, you should think of when you're joining a company, what you can give, not what salary you're getting. That one change will make you successful. Because when you, when you think about what I'm going to give, it's actually you're going to talk about yourself, reciprocal, how? Because when you give something, you experience more, you learn more things, right? Because more your work is good for you, not for them. They would find another guy who would work far, far better than you, always. You know, there's market open. Yeah, yeah. I fully agree with you. And I think the concept I have is what value can you create? And I all, you know, I love saying to people who want pay rises. It's like, give me a reason to give you salary. You create greater value to the company. So the company's getting greater value. If you add a view, it's a win-win, the company will give you greater value back. But you know, if you have to pay to get into a good company in the beginning, I'm saying, forget the salary you're going to get. If you're going to have to pay out of your pocket, which means that your expenses are not met, just reduce your cap. I mean, you know, there are people out there who want to be successful, but not ready to compromise the time, compromise the sleep, compromise the, those people are scary. I get scared literally, John, from such people, because they're dangerous, because they want to be successful, but they're not ready to compromise. They are comfort, they're in detainment, their parties, their sleep. If you're not ready to do those things, you can never be successful. That's where it starts, you know? That's where, I mean, you can be one of many, but you cannot be special out there. It starts from struggle. You have to embrace struggle. You have to welcome it with a smile on your face. And if you think about, okay, I mean, that's what I say, when my child, I'm a baby girl, I think I'm very productive of her. But if I, and shall I get a baby boy, I will, when he races to 18, I'll tell him to learn how to swim, how to how to play a gun, how to ride a horse, how to sail, how to catch a fish. I mean, you know, and just be confident how to go in a different country, like Zambia, spend one week and come back all alone, how to protect yourself, how to, you know, how to go in another country like UK, do a masters and come back. This will make him furious. This will make him confident. He'll be a strong man, you know what I mean? So I look for that. And I think I'll be very, I will, I will give him a lot of challenges in life. And I will, that's the good thing. That's a good part. And the more you get grilled, the testier the chicken is. Say the last one again, the more you get. It's my thing. The more you grill, the more you grill, the more time it takes you to grill the chicken, the more tasty it gets. Very good. Okay. Well, look, we'll, we'll, we'll finish with that one. I think it's been an amazing conversation. Really enjoyed it. I want to say congratulations to you on an amazing journey. Congratulations on Proto21. And just by talking to you today, it looks like you've had great success, but it looks like you're still, you're still in the early stages of what should be an amazing journey. So good luck with the future. Thank you so much. So this is my first podcast and thank you for the opportunity because I've never been asked some questions that you've asked me today. So it was such a pleasure to speak to John. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity. Great. Thank you. Well done. Thank you. Take care.
