Selim Bassoul, 63, has an enthusiasm that is both child-like and infectious. In the first two minutes of this interview, he got right down to business — his 4 rules for success.
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See more videos at https://gulfnews.com/videos
Read more Gulf News stories here: https://bit.ly/2HLJ2km
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NewsTranscript
00:00A lot of people can talk about charisma, intellectual stimulus, they can talk about motivation,
00:11inspiration, but I think the four that struck me the most, when I look back over 30 years
00:17of his amazing career, phenomenal success, is the fact that I'm curious.
00:21I like to seek out and act upon advice of others, listening to others, and seek the
00:28input and the feedback from different opinions and perspectives.
00:32I think the second one is my willingness to take tremendous risks.
00:37I think to innovate you have to experiment, and with experimentation there are failures.
00:46So that's number two.
00:47Number three is act with speed and agility.
00:51I think we need to be a cheetah in the world.
00:53The cheetah is the fastest animal on the planet, and they are rarely, rarely being
01:00caught.
01:03And the key of speed and agility is not only to think fast, but act fast.
01:09And finally, the most important of them all is say no often.
01:14People come up with ideas, customers ask you to do this, and say it's not my core competency.
01:19Saying no is the best thing that people can do, and co-focus and prioritize what's your
01:25core competency, and no to anything else that distracts and clouds your judgment.
01:31So go back to four.
01:33I would say being curiosity is number one, willing to take risks, speed and agility,
01:40and the word no in your vocabulary on daily usage.
01:43Well, after 41 years in the States, in the U.S., I had a choice to make.
01:52I could go back to U.S., or I can come and experiment and try again the experimentation
01:56and try something new.
01:58I decided to come to Dubai.
02:00I've heard about Dubai.
02:01I had visited Dubai, and I like it as a visitor, but never lived in Dubai or in the UAE.
02:07And I was very, very impressed by living here.
02:12Very minimum red tape, we're able to get our residency, the paperwork, online, others.
02:17The friendliness of the culture of Dubai, I love it.
02:22The diversity of this place.
02:25But the most interesting thing that struck me is the location of UAE and Dubai.
02:33I think I find it in the middle of the Silk Road, in a sense.
02:37Equidistant from Singapore, China, to U.S., to Europe, to the Middle East.
02:42The heart of doing business, very easy.
02:45The transportation, whether by sea or by air, makes it very easy.
02:48I can go anywhere around the world directly without having to transit somewhere else.
02:53I like the fact that there are a lot of great talent here.
02:57Dubai attracted some amazing people to come and work here, which makes it easy to hire
03:02people and work.
03:03And now I have basically joined a local company, a local manufacturing company, called Intercoil.
03:13I love the fact that it has very smart people, starting from the owner, CEO, to the manufacturing
03:21people, to their IT people.
03:23Very diverse background.
03:24It reminds me a lot of the U.S.
03:26It reminds me very similar to Middleby.
03:29Melting pot.
03:30And finally, what I like about Dubai is the fact that it's open for business.
03:37They managed the crisis of COVID amazingly well, and they are open for business.
03:44What do I tell a business today, a leader?
03:48Again, navigate the now.
03:50Now you have to basically build up your cash reserves, change your metric from profitability
03:57to cash, reallocate your resources, and eliminate underperforming programs and products, plan
04:08for the recovery, accelerate digital analytic data, refocus on innovation, rethink your
04:19operating model, meaning identify and prioritize, and finally, figure out how to create rapid
04:30revenue resources, such as rethink your pricing, your promotion, optimize your search engine,
04:41your demand planning, and the third, similar to the leaders of Dubai, lead the next normal,
04:49meaning segment your customers and say no to many of them that are no longer fitting
04:55your next process.
05:00I joined the board of Six Flags a year ago, and I just got elected as chairman of the
05:05board, and this is a pure example of transformation of the leadership and the management of Six
05:11Flags in terms of managing what you talked about post-COVID.
05:17This is a company that has, it's the largest regional amusement park company in the world.
05:24It's publicly traded.
05:25It's a multi-billion dollar company with over 100,000 employees, between full-time and seasonal
05:32employees, and suddenly when COVID came, all the parks were shut down.
05:37We're losing 60 to 70 million dollars a month's bleeding of cash because the parks are closed.
05:45And how do you reinvent yourself?
05:47Well, we went into several things.
05:50One, we changed our business model.
05:52Now, we went into what I call virtual queuing, contactless, able to come into the park and
05:59go, no contact with anything.
06:02We changed the way the rides are done to become totally sanitized and safety, to provide safety
06:08for our employees, for our customers, and our employees.
06:12So we disrupted our business model to creating a complete safe environment, by the way, not
06:18only to check when you come in, but to provide you a safety environment in terms of sanitation
06:23and how we provide sanitation inside the park.
06:25The park opened.
06:27So opened at 50% capacity.
06:30Now what do you do with pricing?
06:31How do you entice people to come and think it's safe?
06:34And that's when you disrupt your business model, and Six Flags is a huge example of
06:40navigating the next normal.
06:46There's something, inner, inner, inner bell in me that's saying I want to be there.
06:53So ultimately, I went up, I drove up to the refugee camp, and I went, walked into the
06:59refugee camp, and I didn't know what to expect.
07:04And I saw 80, 90% of them were women, children, and elderly.
07:13There was no men in those camps.
07:17And the women were spending time going fetching for wood.
07:20They would spend eight hours going outside the camp, being attacked by people, being
07:27maybe raped, maybe being abused.
07:31And then they come back to prepare an open fire to cook.
07:38And the girls were not going to school.
07:40Sometimes the girls would go help their mothers.
07:43And those people, when it's raining, they have no, they spend three, four, five, six,
07:48seven days without food because the wood is wet.
07:53So I said, I need to help those people.
07:56I need to help them not to go look for food.
07:58I need to do something with an innovative product where they can go in and use it for
08:03multi-use.
08:05So because there's no electricity, you know, the electricity in the camp is very expensive
08:09and most people could not afford it.
08:12So I said I'm going to create an oven that they can use inside the tent, not only to
08:17cook, but also to heat.
08:19That uses almost no wood, very little combustion.
08:25So they generate electricity from the heat of that oven so they can charge their phone
08:29or a lamp so that people can study and be connected or watch on a laptop, get a laptop
08:34and be able to study.
08:37And it could filter water.
08:38It can take water from a sewer and it will provide drinking water.
08:44So I went back to my team at Middleby, and that's the power of when you have an amazing
08:50innovative culture and disruptive culture and say we need to generate an oven that could
08:55be safe for small children, can be put in a tent and be able not to create carbon monoxide.
09:04And we created the refugee or relief oven that has been, it has 28 patents on it.
09:11And this is what creates my legacy at Middleby.
09:14That's why I'm proud of my engineers.
09:16I've asked Salim to advise us on how we can grow the business.
09:19So knowing how disruptive it is and knowing that how the expectations are way high and
09:26he expects things to be done in a very agile, very fast manner, you know, I still decided
09:33that I need Salim to help me disrupt and grow the business.
09:39Even though, and usually entrepreneurs, I mean it depends on how aggressive you are,
09:43but sometimes people tend to be defensive in such situations and not take the more of
09:49the aggressive route and when you have uncertain times like the COVID-19 times.
09:57Whereas I see this as an opportunity for us to, you know, change, transform, look to the
10:04future with a much more aggressive, much more bullish outlook.
10:10I think there's a lot of great success stories.
10:12And whether it's Hassan, whether it's Tariq, there are loads of manufacturers here that
10:17are world beaters.
10:20So it'd be nice actually to start a series of what we'll call, you know, say reigniting
10:24the economy, right?
10:25So it's after COVID, let's look forward.
10:28Let's not get stuck in the mud of negative thinking.
10:31Be positive, think big, move forward.
10:34So I think there's amazing amount of content here to share and I think when entrepreneurs
10:40share through this sort of means, I think people get inspired, like Salim was saying
10:45earlier about handicaps or whatever.
10:49Stories should be positive, good news stories.
10:52And I think that's the real series here.
10:53So pick up different entrepreneurs, tell their stories of how they're transforming to reignite
10:57the economy.