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00:00Good afternoon, I'm right here at a cafe in Jumeirah and I'm waiting for supermodel Tyra
00:13Banks.
00:14She's turning entrepreneur in Dubai and she's introducing her own brand of ice cream here
00:19in the UAE.
00:20In a few minutes, we will talk about how she launched her own empire perhaps, and can women
00:26have it all?
00:27These are the questions that I intend to ask the supermodel, who now is a super businesswoman
00:31we are told.
00:32Let's find out what her dreams are just like the title of her ice cream.
00:36Yes.
00:37My favorite ice cream memory is every Friday night when I was in elementary school, primary
00:41school with my mama, we would get in the car and drive to Hollywood Boulevard and get ice
00:48cream.
00:49And we would sit in the car and my mama would tell me all of her dreams.
00:52Sometimes she would cry, she was a single mom, you know, about like what she needs to
00:55do to make our life as our family, my brother and my life better.
00:59She dreamed that every year we would get another bedroom because she was sleeping in the living
01:03room.
01:04She was sleeping on the floor.
01:06She gave my brother and I the bedroom.
01:08And so these were these moments over ice cream, dreaming, crying, laughing.
01:13And so ice cream means so much more to me.
01:14It means dreams and it means nostalgia, it means family for women to be entrepreneurs
01:18at all.
01:19No, so many things are against us, you know, when it comes to market entry, when it comes
01:23to raising money.
01:24There are so many things.
01:26So when you see a woman entrepreneur and she's successful, just know that she went through
01:30hell to get there and it's not a destination that she has to continue to fight for her
01:35place and her right to be that entrepreneur.
01:38But my hope and my dream is that women entrepreneurs, even, you know, working women, that we're
01:44doing these things, you know, to open the doors for our children and our daughters so
01:47they don't have it as difficult as we do.
01:50My biggest cheerleader, hmm, I would love to say it was my mother because my mother
01:55has been my cheerleader for everything, but she hasn't been in this.
01:59She is like, you are working too damn hard.
02:01I don't ever see you.
02:03All I see you doing is eating ice cream all the time and you're not taking care of yourself.
02:07And what are you doing?
02:08So like it's the opposite.
02:09My mom feels like I'm actually too focused.
02:12And normally she's like, yes, go, go, go.
02:13This time she's like, slow down.
02:15But I think she doesn't understand that entrepreneurship is so much different than actually you being
02:21the model or the host.
02:23Like there's a whole separate nonstop work that I have to do to make sure that this business
02:29is successful.
02:30So it's R&D, it's traveling the world, it's strategy, it's marketing, it's finance.
02:36And my hands and feet and my whole body are in every single part of this because 90% of
02:41new businesses fail and Smize and Dream will not fail.
02:46I think that women can have it all.
02:48But the one thing that we have to realize is that we can have it all, but it's not going
02:50to be perfect.
02:51You know, when you are working hard and you're at work or you're an entrepreneur, you know,
02:57like you're not necessarily going to be there every single day, you know, to make dinner.
03:01You're not going to be there every single day to read to your baby.
03:04Or if you're a stay at home mom and you are, you know, because that is a full time job,
03:09a serious hardcore job, you're not going to really be able to be there and, you know,
03:13to do certain things.
03:14So it's like, we can't be perfect with everything, but having it all is also a mindset, a state
03:20of mind.
03:21So it's all about expectations, where are your expectations?
03:24And if you are meeting those expectations, you have it all.
03:27And if you're not, then you just have to dream harder.
03:29So I chose the UAE because there's many, many, many reasons.
03:34First of all, we have, we're flying on an airplane, we're flying on Qatar Airways.
03:37So that was like a natural thing, you know, like we're flying on Qatar Airways.
03:41We've been spending so much time here.
03:43I actually hadn't really spent a lot of time in the UAE.
03:45I had one trip to Dubai with one of my classmates.
03:49I went to Harvard Business School's owner president management program, friend of mine
03:53named Ashraf.
03:54What up Ashraf?
03:55He invited my friend Marie and I to Dubai, like totally treated us to like an amazing
04:00experience and I hadn't been back since.
04:02Then I started coming back for work and I was like, whoa, this place is all about family.
04:06Whoa, wait.
04:08You know, like there's women in these boardrooms, whoa, they're like in 50 years, they created
04:12this?
04:13Like, you know, so there was just, I felt like there was opportunity.
04:16I felt like there was, you know, even though I do see women doing the things in boardrooms,
04:19they still have a long way to go and I want to be a part of that.
04:22And I feel like, and Smize and Dream is a global company and we're starting here and
04:27then we will expand to other continents, to other countries.