Ashish Tulsian:

Hi, welcome to Restrocast. Today my guest is Samer Hamadeh, CEO of Big Mouth Concepts. Samer is somebody who I will call a creative entrepreneur, man of many talents.

I still feel that in almost like one hour plus conversation, I could only scratch the surface of what all Samer packs. But in this conversation, we talked about him starting as early as age of 15, throwing a music festival back in Beirut, to he starting some of the most loved nightclubs early in UAE, to creating Akiba Dori, which is not your usual Japanese restaurant, but still as Samer calls it, it’s the local Japanese restaurant in Dubai. Samer’s conversation made me reflect on, you know, a lot of tenants of entrepreneurship, you know, somebody who broke the doors to really create what he wanted to build, somebody who’s not shy of hustling or asking for what he thinks he can, you know, bring to table. Very, very high ownership, talks about not getting paid a fixed income or salary from the age of 22, and believing in delivering the value before you take something, you know, off the table. I think Samer is on a roll, and somebody who is really, really inspiring, because he’s living a life where he’s not only building concepts that he think, you know, can be great for the world to experience. I think there is so much that he’s doing for his own creative expression, and turning that into business, which is most sought after, but extremely rare to find. Do watch. Welcome to RESTROCAST. Samer, welcome to RESTROCAST. Thanks for agreeing to do this. 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Thank you for having me.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

We know about Akiba Dori, we know about, you know, some of your businesses, and as we were chatting behind the scenes, you are into other things as well. I am going to explore all of it. But I want to start from where it all started. Tell me about your early years.

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Where it all started. Wow, if I want to go really far back, I’d say my first real conversation about setting up a business or doing my own thing. I was probably 15. Bored one summer in my hometown in Lebanon, and had a lot of friends used to come up and visit me from Beirut, because it was summer, everyone was off school. And I wanted to do something to make some money. So I asked my dad for like $1,000. I’m like, what do you need $1,000 for? Like, what are you doing? I’m like, I want to throw a music festival. So, called up a couple of friends, my buddy Sam, who lives in London now. He had a band called Negative. They’re an amazing, amazing rock band. Like come up, a guy called Mad Jam, who became one of the most famous DJs in the Middle East now, he’s based in Lebanon still, he lived here for a while. Called a bunch of people, a band called Scrambled Eggs, like the first Lebanese indie rock band. Brought all the people together, rented a sound system from a guy called Milad. I’ll never forget this guy in my life, because his depot where he had all the sound systems, smelled like za’atar. So it smelled like thyme. So every time you switch on those speakers, it was literally an explosion of thyme, which was the most hilarious smell ever coming out of a speaker. Ironically, I got into that business here in the future, but we’ll get to that later if we do. So I threw a music festival. And I had a hip hop crew, I had a bunch of DJs, I had a bunch of rock bands, and obviously didn’t make any money.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

You managed that in a thousand dollars?

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Yeah, Yeah, because, and I even arranged, like it was crazy. I mean, when I’m 15, I arranged like transportation from like two locations with buses, and sold tickets, sold mixtapes, sold merchandise. It didn’t make money, obviously, but it was a nice little, it was cool, like organizing events and putting that together. So

 

Ashish Tulsian:

And you’re organizing this as an independent guy? Or was it like part of the school?

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

No, no, this is just me bored in the summer. This wasn’t like a it was called rap, rock and rave. I still have the poster somewhere.

So we made these flyers. Rap, rock and rave. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Rap, roce, and rave. 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

So yeah, I mean, I had help from my friends, obviously, but we were a bunch of kids.

Like we weren’t, we weren’t, you know, this wasn’t meant to be professional. I even remember my dad going up on stage at one point, and ripping the microphone out of one of the hip hop crews hands because he was saying something obscene to the police. So yeah, it was one of those things. Obviously, I didn’t know anything about production. I don’t know how, you know, why things need to be set up the way they are. Lebanon has an incredible still does an incredible live music scene, like all independent bands, local, local artists, something I always wish we had more of in Dubai. We do have but Lebanon was like next level. And so they used to do their own thing. These kids pack their drum kits and their guitars and their amplifiers drive up to the mountains. You know, rig everything we didn’t we didn’t have like we had a sound engineer, but this was the Zata time speaker guy. So yeah, and I had a band eventually I used to sing in my band as well in college I was more for just to get out of, you know, doing other things because I needed extra credit. 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

Were, you were playing something?

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

I used to sing actually, I had no talent to play an instrument. I tried but I failed miserably. So that’s how it started. And again, I remember having a chat with my dad when I was after that event, and trying to figure out you know what I’m going to major in in college. And I was 15 but I was turning 16 that year. So college was the year after for me. It’s like, you know, business school, I’m like, I don’t want to go to business school. Okay, so what do you want to do? I don’t know what I want to do. And I ended up doing English literature after dropping out of two different majors. Totally different conversation. But yeah, so back then, I’d say I knew that I wanted whatever I do, I just wanted to do my own thing. 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

English literature. 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Yeah, I started off in graphic design. But ironically, I know way more about graphic design now than I ever did back then or had any interest in I still do a lot of design work myself now just for the heck of it. And I then I dropped out of that after like the first class because I’m like, I can’t draw anything. I have literally no skill in sketching or drawing or whatever. So ended up in business school, and dropped out of business school, just a semester of each. So I spent I wasted a year doing just figuring out what I wanted to do. And I dropped out of business school, because I thought in the future, if I wanted to get my master’s, none of these teachers are full timers. They’re all part time professors, if I want to get to a good university in the US or the UK, or whatever, I need to get a recommendation, can’t get a recommendation from guy who left three years ago, and he just taught one class for a semester. So I’ve taken an elective in English, and I met the chairman of the English department, had a chat with him. I love this attitude, his energy, like whatever. And then I said, I just said this to myself, I’m like, it doesn’t really matter what I study. I mean, I’m not in engineering or medicine, like, who’s gonna get hurt if I study literature? I mean, nobody. So I studied literature. And I remember arguing with my dad about it. He’s like, what the hell do you think you’re gonna do? Like, you’re gonna go teach? I’m like, no, what does that have to do with anything? Like, the degree has nothing to do with it anymore. And he’s like, what do you think you’re gonna be CEO the first year you graduate? I said, and so what? What’s wrong with that?

Like, why is that such a crazy thing? And I, again, five years in college, I did half a master’s and I left, I didn’t finish it, because I felt like I was wasting my time. My brother had just moved to Dubai, if I’m rambling, stop me. 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

Sure sure. 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

My brother had just moved to Sharjah, actually, to work for Air Arabia, to fly for Air Arabia, my younger brother Basim. And my dad’s like, you know, I had two options, either move to the US, go to NYU, because I applied to NYU, and I got into NYU, but I ended up moving to Dubai. And my dad made me move here. He said, you know, and he came here a couple of times, he lived in Saudi, they lived, my parents lived in Saudi, we grew up in Saudi. And… You grew up in Saudi? Grew up in Saudi, went to Lebanon when I was 14. Yeah, so 14 until I left when I was 23.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

That’s why you’re saying that when you were doing this music festival, that was summer.

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

I was living, yeah, I was living, I was living in Lebanon that year. That was the first, that was the second year I was there. Yeah, so we moved at 14. And I was 15. So he’s like, Dubai is the future for the region. He’s like, there’s no doubt in my mind. And I trust my dad when it comes to this stuff, because he’s traveled everywhere. And he chose Saudi at a time when no one was choosing Saudi. And it was one of the best things he did. He’s like, you know, give it a shot. So I moved out here. And I immediately fell in love with it. But I didn’t want to work for anybody. So I worked on a movie, Siriana, the movie with Matt Damon, George Clooney. Yeah, so I worked on that movie, I was a third assistant director, I had no experience in filmmaking, except for the home movies I used to make.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

So how did you land that? And that to here.  

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Well, I know they were they were looking for production assistants, you know, go get coffee, go push people. So I’m like, sure, why the hell not? I mean, 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

80s are like, glorified busboys. 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Yeah, 100%. I mean, I mean, maybe third, third ideas, but like second 80s. And I mean, obviously, 80s or not. But so I went for a for a production assistant job. Effectively, I didn’t care what it was, I wanted to see if I could do something in film. I’m like, maybe I’ll like it. And I said no to a job that would have paid me three times what I ended up making just to do this movie because I wanted to get out of my system and see, I’m not like some trust fund kid, just to be clear, like I wasn’t getting other than like my car rent. That’s all I was getting from my dad. So it wasn’t like I was, you know, living on on his allowances. So did the movie, loved every second of it. But just Dubai is not the place for me to do move. I mean, it’s not the place for anyone really.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

But how come? How come you landed this movie here? Like they’re shooting here?

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

They were shooting here. They shot here. They shot in Qatar. They shot in Morocco, I think. 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

And how long was that?

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Just three weeks. Met some amazing people through that. Some people I’m still in touch with today from 18, 19 years ago, like directors, the, you know, the head of PR publicity for Warner Brothers, who retired a couple of years ago, we stayed in touch as well. It was a great experience. I mean, I got to, you know, meet some really awesome people. But then I got into advertising, at Impact BBDO. BBDO is one of the biggest American ad agencies on the planet. And the first interview I did, second interview I did, I had come straight from the from the production set. So I was in cargo shorts, which I never wore after that, because I hated them, but you have to because you need a lot of space. And I just came back from the desert. And a guy called Alex looks at me and goes, what are you wearing? It’s like, well, I’m on this film set. And they told me today to come for the second interview, so I don’t want to miss it. He’s like, you didn’t have time to go change? I’m like, no. I’m like, Oh, he’s like, okay. Why do you want to get into advertising? Like, I don’t really, I don’t know if I want to get into advertising. I think I’d be very good at it. But I don’t know if I want to eventually keep doing it. It’s like this very odd thing to say in an interview in a second interview. But that was the truth. I mean, that was the reality of it. And then the third interview or the final interview with it with a CEO.

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

You mean after this?

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Of course, yeah. I mean, yeah, I mean, so um, because I mean, I think

 

Ashish Tulsian?

the guy impressed was just intrigued,

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

I think more intrigued than anything else. It’s like, and then the CEO says to me, Alex was the head of client servicing, awesome guy lives in Canada now, originally from India. He said he told me you won’t stick around. I’m like, okay, but I’m saying like, what you want, like, who’s going to guarantee that they will, right? You might not want me around. So it’s two way street. So we got to see what happens. I quit six months into it. I had the biggest account in the country, probably Dubai holding at the time. So I was an account executive making like 6k a month, promoted me half a time and another half a time in those six months just to keep me interested. Just me and one guy running the whole all four accounts. I hated dealing with like the industry, I hated it. Like, I love the people, but I didn’t like the industry. I know. I don’t know if that makes sense. Like, you can like the people you’re working with, but you don’t like the industry.

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

You mean, you mean

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

just the way the way the industry functions, like the client supplier relationship, the, you know, the restrictions, the, like, I didn’t have a day off for six months, which didn’t bother me. But then I thought, and that’s the realization I had is, if I’m willing to do this for someone else, why wouldn’t I do this for myself? That was the only simple realization. And also realize that whenever I did have my own time to myself, those rare occasions, I mean, New Year’s Eve, I was working like, you know, shipping things to the, to the,

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

But did that really bother you?

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

It did bother me. It bothered me to a point where six months in making very little money, but no backup. I’m like, I’m not, I’d rather do anything than do this. So yeah, that’s how that ended and other stuff started, but it wasn’t F&B in the beginning.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

And then what happened? Six months, we quit.

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Six. So they wouldn’t let me go right away. They’re like, can’t just leave, dude. Like you’ve, you’re handling so many different things. Um, I had to stay for another three months or four months until they found two people to replace me, not one person. So they found two more people. I have to do handovers for them. But then they realized during the handovers, I had never taken a single note in six months, but somehow the work got done. Like I didn’t do like all those reports they were expecting in me. And they only found this out later. It’s like, you go to a restaurant for a meal and you get the check. You’re like, who the hell ordered this? And you’re like, you did when you first sat down. I was on the phone. I wasn’t paying attention. But in those six, seven, eight months, I’d say I saw a lot of opportunities in Dubai, you know, going out, going to events for our clients, like going to an event for our client, um, going for lunch and seeing setups and what I’m like, maybe I should get into events like corporate events. Cause they’re all very boring. No one’s doing anything interesting. They’re all hotel ballrooms, same setup, same MC, same music, same lighting. Like, wow, this can’t be it. Like this cannot be the standard in the market. So I set up a company. I didn’t set up a company. Actually. I went to the guys that own the Dubai jazz festival. And I said, give me, set up a company for me. Just give me a division in your company. I don’t even need a trade license.

Get me a visa and an office, small office, like a desk or whatever. They’re like, sure. But what do you want for that? I’m like 50%. I would’ve been fine with 10%, but I said 50. They said, sure. Like, what is this kid going to do? So that set up,

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

Like really?

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

yeah, yeah. That that’s how it started. I was 24 at the time. And I keep making the joke that I haven’t had a salary since I was 24. Cause that’s the truth. I haven’t had a fixed income since I was 24 years old and I’m 43 now. So it’s a long time. Um, company did incredibly well. Um, obviously my event, 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

like what did you do that you have to, you have to elaborate for me. Yeah. So when you say that you just walked in and asked them for like, what, what, what exactly happened? What was your proposition and why somebody gave in?

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

I still have the presentation I gave them and it was hilarious. When I look at it now, I’m like, what the hell, how did they go for this? Like it was mostly jokes. There’s nothing really serious about it. It was talking about myself and what I, what I can do, what I think I can do. And what I think the size of the market was and the time figuring out the size of the market, I literally would cold call, um, production agencies and ask them, you know, we’re doing a, I’m doing a survey for college or something. And I need to know, like, are you billing this to this every year? Do you have this many employees? How long have you been open just to figure out like, what, how big is this market? And then the number was insane. I mean, I came to the conclusion, 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

Events? Events? 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

the corporate event space, I came to the conclusion that again, maybe I was way off, could have been much more, but there’s at least a hundred, it’s a hundred million dollars plus a year on just corporate events, a hundred million. And half of that was real estate because every real estate launch was a million dirhams. Just do the math in those days, 2005, 2006 in Dubai. I mean, everything was real estate, right? So, um, yeah, so I left, I set up, we, they agreed, we set up the company, I think in the first six months.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

No, so you, you found this guy at Dubai Jazz Festival, which, who you didn’t know, right?

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

No, so I, I knew who they were because I went there before and, um, they’re four partners. I knew one of the partners because of my dad, but I didn’t, I hadn’t seen him in like, since I was a kid, so I had no expectations. Right. Um, and, uh, yeah, so the other guys, I didn’t know the main, the managing partner, I didn’t know. I had no idea. I’ve never met him before Anthony, um, then Gilbert and Joe and Raja is my dad’s actually technically cousin, but in a weird relation way, but awesome guy, one of the best guys ever. They’re still here. He’s the guy who owned a company that developed like Ammar’s identity in the beginning. Yeah. So they’re, you know, proper guys. So this was an investment for him. And then I had nothing to do with the jazz festival personally. I helped out of course, but it wasn’t like a business for me or I wasn’t like a shareholder in the jazz festival for me to, 

 

Ashish T0ulsian:

and you basically pitched that you’re going to run the corporate events, 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

corporate events and new events. Exactly. So I’d be the managing partner of the corporate events company. Their cost was my visa. So what, two, 3,000 dirhams, office was already there. The team was already there.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

And he said, whatever you are going to make, you’d take 50% of the profits.

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Yeah. So I think in the first six months I made more than some of the bigger events would make in a year or two years in the first six months.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Oh yeah.

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

I remember taking my, my page, my checks to go to the bank and people like the person at the bank. I’m like, are you buying a house? I’m like, yeah, sure. Are you buying a fleet? Like, are you buying some cars for your company? Yes, sure. That’s how much money I was making. So

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

Wow

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

It was an insane business for a couple of years. But while I was doing that, I didn’t believe in, you know, a single source of income. I wanted to do other stuff. So I invested with a couple of friends who were doing different things all over the world. I mean, not all over some in Lebanon, some in Canada specifically. Maybe two or three sizable investments for my age, I’d say at the time, probably more than I do now. I mean, actually not more,

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

But what did you do?

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

A friend of mine had an idea for like a retrofitted, um, uh, regulator plug for like old equipment that consumed too much electricity. So it kind of like, just, it’s like an early on smart device ended up selling for all the money we put into it over two years to a Samsung or something. I forgot who he sold it to, but I just made my money back my, the same money back like two or three years later. Another thing in Beirut was, um, most random thing ever. Um, I don’t really call it an investment because it was more like, uh, like my investment would be like buying things or renting out the field was a rugby team. 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

Like a professional team. 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Yeah. The, the wolves, RLFC, like, uh, Lebanon had a rugby league. So we had, uh, my buddy, Michael, my college friend founded a club called the wolves still exists, still competes professionally. Yeah. 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

Local club

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Um, so yeah, competing in Lebanon, like top three club in Lebanon. Okay. So I’m still on the board somehow, but, um, so that happened as well. Um, you know, I’d say 

 

Ashsih Tulsian: 

you’re invested in the team. 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Yeah. I mean, again, there’s no real investment. It’s more like we need uniforms. I’ll pay for the uniforms this year. We need to book the field for this many months. I’ll book this. I did the same thing with a team in Boston called the Boston thirteens, also a rugby league team that also Michael, my buddy was involved in, um, and did the same thing. So I was like, you know, I was, I was kind of the sponsor slash. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

What was the, what was your age then? It was 20, 27, probably 28.

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Um, yeah, 27, 28 was probably my peak for that, for my twenties. Um, because the events business was doing incredibly well. I’d work, I do six events a year and the numbers were crazy. I didn’t have to do more. Um, but then 2008 started happening, 2009 happened and 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

you mean the global, 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

yeah. Uh, wall street’s gift to all of us. Um, after that happened, I remember I was in Beirut and my office manager messages me saying, you know, one, two, three, four events were canceled that were happening in January. They sent us like faxes at the time, or, you know, they still have to fax you legally to cancel something. to cancel. These are mega clients, these are mega mega companies.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

December 2008.

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Yes, December 2008 and then by all of 2009 was just terrible and that’s when I decided, but again, that’s how I got into F&B actually. 2009 is when I started.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

I remember that time because December of 2008 I got engaged and two weeks after everything, everything started falling. Like a lot of free fall. .

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Thanks man, appreciate that. It’s always one guy, right?

 

Ashish Tulsian:

It’s always one guy who ruins it for all of us.

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Yeah, so that actually triggered the getting out of the events business and the realization there was when things went bad, it was really bad because you were chasing clients for months and months and months and months for money and then at the end I’m like, I’m just doing collections for a bank basically. I don’t want to be in this business anymore. Obviously, I didn’t, you know, I wasn’t stupid with money so I’d saved up a lot. Still traveled, still did what I wanted to do but I was still very comfortable financially so I didn’t really care about working for a couple of years. I didn’t care about working, I just wanted to see what’s the next big thing for me. So in the nature of, you know, living in Dubai you go out a lot because the hospitality scene is incredible. I mean, it’s much more varied now and much more impressive than it ever was but when those days like the 06, 07, 08, 09 even was a different world for me in terms of nightlife. Fewer options, you know, fewer options, less commercial, less international. When I say, when I mean international is there were less, there was less competition between nightclubs and restaurants and bars with like tying up with international names because nobody really cared.

Dubai was super self-sufficient at the time. Yes, you had musical festivals, music festivals, mega DJs but I think the first time people like, you know, David Guetta and I might be wrong but this is my assumption and like Tiesto made more than $100,000 a gig was because of Dubai. I know it sounds insane but I know what some of these promoters used to pay and I know also that they were paying three, four times more than some of these artists got paid somewhere else.

So, Dubai definitely helped from that perspective. So, I wanted to get into a business where my customer has a service that pays and leaves like a supermarket but I don’t know anything about supermarkets. I’m not getting into logistics so that’s not, I thought about everything.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Your framework was how can we connect up front?

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

I thought of everything. I’m like, I want to open a car wash. I love cars, always loved my cars.

I love all cars but just specifically like, you know, the ones I’ve owned over the years. I’m like I love the car wash. I’m like, I want to open a really cool car wash. Just a really cool freaking car wash that’s quick, efficient, super high-end but also like an experience and but nobody would give me money for that because it was a huge investment. I’m like, no, like obviously I don’t mind putting my own money into things but, you know, I do so much else for nothing. So, that’s how I justify having to raise. Nobody wanted to do a car wash. I thought of doing, again, before delivery was a thing. I thought, you know, what if you could just deliver one thing or two things, nothing else. Like, make it like a subscription-based thing. Subscription-based models were starting to grow back then. I’m like, maybe we could do that for food. Logistics, nightmare. You couldn’t just get people on bikes like you can now. So, that didn’t happen. I used to go out a lot, spend a lot of money on nightlife and me and my friends, me and my group, travel a lot, same thing. So, you know, I’m like, I know music more than most people and I still do. I think I know my musical knowledge in general is one of my few things that I’m very confident about. I’m like, maybe I should open a bar or a nightclub, but something small just to figure it out. So, with my partner Amir, who lives in Iran now, he’s Iranian-Swedish, but he lived in Sweden his whole life. I ended up opening a bar called One on One.

It was more like a bar club than a bar. And we opened in 2010. So, I can’t remember the exact day, probably around this time, maybe February, January, February, beginning of the year. And at the Monarch Hotel, now it’s the H Hotel, which I drove. So, this is where I learned the importance of lawyers, this project. I ended up, we ended up signing a lease for a year. It wasn’t really a lease, it was a management agreement, because they weren’t allowed to lease the space, because the owner didn’t want anyone to lease the space. I thought we were protected with a management agreement. We were, until the owner of the hotel kicked out the operating company and brought in another one. So, when they brought in the other one, our deposits, everything disappeared with it. So, we were barely open for four months. But in those four months, we had queues, and the queues were so bad in the lobby of the hotel, they had to move like reception desks. They had to get security. They had to organize traffic. It was a disaster. The place fit maybe 100 people. Sometimes we’d have 100 people outside waiting to get in. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Wow

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

And there was nothing special about this place. It was a cigar bar. I bought a sound system for 70,000 dirhams. I rented a DJ set every weekend from one of my suppliers from my event days, Godfrey Ernest, who has Artez still. I bought a couple of moving heads from like Karama somewhere, like some random cheap ass lights. And that was it. And the sofas that they had, I removed the sofa itself, and I built these, just I put wooden planks under them, so people could remove the sofa and dance on their seat instead of dancing on the sofa. Because I don’t want to damage the furniture. The hotel owns it, right? 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Nice

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

And I couldn’t find a DJ to play the music that I wanted. So, everyone’s like, no, we play house. I’m like, I don’t want to play house. It’s look at this place. I mean, it looks like a little cigar lounge. Why would you play house here? So I want to play old school R&B and hip hop. I want to play 80s music, 90s music. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Primarily, this was a cigar lounge? 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Yeah

 

Ashish Tulsian:

With great music?

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

No, no, there was no cigar. It was for the hotel. I flipped it from what it was to more like a bar, like a college bar.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Got it. Got it. 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

And I learned how to DJ.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

But why was this place so popular within four months?

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Within the first weekend? Well, it was popular. Obviously, I have a huge network because of, so leading up to that, I skipped a lot of things that I did, like we used to produce the Dubai Film Festival. So I got that contract. So we said everything that was plugged in at the film festival, we had to do, we did it. So we had the product, we headed the, I headed the production for the Dubai Film Festival. I produced a major comedy festival, the first in the Middle East ever in history called the Dubai Comedy Convention 2009. Convention. Everybody, I mean, I brought everybody that’s anybody. I used to bring a lot of comedians. I’m not even gonna get into that because that’s a whole other life for me. I used to bring every comic you can imagine to Dubai in those years. Everybody. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Really?

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Yeah, mega, mega, who are mega comedians now. Like Sebastian Maniscalco was a good, you know, we became very good friends. That was like $30 million a year touring now in the US. Like Sebastian was my boy, he used to come out for like minimal fees and a flight and a hotel, like a trip to Dubai. Whitney Cummings, who has shows on the air now and has, you know, they do mega, mega shows. Omid Jalili, Maz Gebrani, Ahmed Ahmed, Eric Griffin, Tommy Davidson from In Living Color. I mean, I brought so many comedians out.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

So this is 2009

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

This is, well, even before that, 2007, it started. 2009, we did a couple of big shows. 2008, we did the Axis of Evil show in Media City with Jameel Abouwerdi, who was working at Orbit Showtime at the time. So he’s producing it. So anyway, so I had a huge network. I knew I can get people in. I just said, listen, it’s gonna be an 80s and 90s night, you know, just come check it out. And I had, I’ll never forget this in my life. I’d call my DJ friend, Jean B, who still DJs in Dubai. We used to DJ at a place called the 400. I’m like, I had my Serato set up. Serato is like a digital interface for CD players. So you load your music on your laptop, but you mix from the thing, from the decks. And I’m like, it’s going backwards. What should I do? He’s like, just flip the forward switch. I’m like, okay. So this is the first night. So I had my iTunes opened. I had my iPod plugged in.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

You were DJing. 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Yeah. Nobody wanted to play my music. So obviously, I don’t know how to DJ. I spent like two, three hours just figuring it out. And I don’t know if anyone listening to this would have been there that first night, but I’m not exaggerating when I say every other song, people would scream because they haven’t heard that music in such a long time. They haven’t heard it in a club or a bar because everything was about pop and commercial. So it was an incredible, it got me addicted to like nightlife because I’m like, this is the feeling that I want every weekend. So that became like my Thursday night. I would come.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Yeah, big dope haan. 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

People would come up to me and request songs. They had no idea it was my place. I mean, again, it wasn’t really my place because we’re under a management agreement. But I mean, this dinky little place with 100 people would make like 80 grand in revenue a night. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Ohh wow. 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

I mean, I know clubs in Dubai that don’t make 80 grand in revenue today. So we were printing cash from that for four months, me and my partner Amir. So we were printing cash. I mean, literally making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month off of one, this little project. But then when we got kicked out because of the change of ownership, we had to find a new place, which we did. Amir actually found both of these places because he’s very good like that. He’ll just walk into a hotel. He’s one of those guys. Walk into a hotel. Where’s the GM? For what? I’m going to ask him something. I’m looking for a club. Do you have space for me? And yeah, so then we went on to Republic.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

I love those kind of guys. 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Yeah. Yeah. He’s a hustler. Yeah. Yeah. So that’s how it started.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

So, one-on-one, you said, right? 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Was the first bar, yeah?

 

Ashish Tulsian:

And then what happened? Like, how did you fall into the rabbit hole of F&B? 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Then a club called Gold, which was downstairs in the same building for like, I think less than a year, sold it. We sold out of it eventually. Then Republic, which was a more mature, sexier version of one-on-one. So it was also 80s and 90s, 2000s music, dance, hip-hop and R&B, the whole thing. No house music was ever played in that club. Had an upstairs floor that had live music. I love, I’m obsessed with live music still. So put a band up there. So a couple of nights a week, we had live music upstairs. Downstairs was the club. Used to open only Thursday and Friday. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

What building is this?

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

The Address Dubai Mall Hotel, which is now a Kempinski. So, but through doing that, I met a guy called Stephan Viard, who was a GM of the hotel at the time. Became a super close friend of mine. I mean, I just saw him last week. When he comes to Dubai, he’ll see like five people. I’m probably one of them. If not less. So, and we go to Paris, we see him. My wife and I, my kids stayed at his hotel, the Esso, twice in the last two years. And became very good friends with him. And that also, so the first thing I told you about one-on-one was you learn that you need lawyers. Because sometimes agreements can mess things up for you in the future. Meeting Stephan, the GM of the hotel, working for MR Hospitality. And MR are notoriously tough with stuff. I remember negotiating with a lawyer, thinking I don’t want to deal with these people. But then he made it work. He’s an example of what a hotel leader, or GM, or managing director, or CEO, even of a group should be like. So, not a stickler for the rules and by the book, just about problem solving to an extreme, I would say. So, he made it fun for me. He made nightlife amazing for me. Because that’s the kind of person you want to be dealing with. Because you’re not just paying rent to this hotel, right? They can kill you if they want. Hotels have so much power in Dubai, when it comes to nightclubs that operate within them, that if the GM of the hotel decides they don’t like you, they could do so many things and you can’t do anything about it. You can’t go sue them. You can’t go, you know, it’s very complicated. So, that’s why I say it’s very crucial to ask people about a GM of the hotel. Before you go and sign anything. I know it sounds insane. But if I’m going to open another nightclub, and I did actually. But the first thing I’m going to look at is who is the GM? Who’s leading this place? Because I had an experience with a GM, and I won’t say who or which property, which mega international brand. But who destroyed our business. Purposely almost. Like almost to the point where, you know, they would work against everything we were trying to do.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

And then that’s….

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Yeah, like close off entrances or delay things or just find excuses. Because they were not happy that, that venue was more popular than the hotel in terms of PR, you know. So, but you have these characters. That’s why it’s really important, I think, to know the people you’re working with. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Because I think the first thing that you said about, you know, the GM that you’re talking about. Sorry, I missed the name.

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Stefan.

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

Stefan. Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s.. Yeah, that’s amazing to have such people in life in general. I mean, in hospitality is like just one example, right? When you said that not the Strict Law for Rules by the book, but at the same time, look at the problem and then like go to every limit to just make it happen. 100 percent. 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

You need those people, especially when you’re in a position of weakness. When you’re in a position of power and authority, you don’t need those people. They need you. But when you’re in a position of weakness… 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

And you want to be that person for somebody if you’re in power. 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Of course. Of course, you have to. I mean, that’s just the way it works. And sometimes, you know, power changes and weakness changes and struggles change and successes and failures. It’s not one road and that’s it. It’s not even a roller coaster. I don’t even know how to explain it. It’s a rainbow road on Super Mario Kart. So yeah, having him as a… Also, I’d say a bit of a mentor, although we’re the same age, but he was so much more mature than I was. I mean, I was living in the hotel at the time. I lived in the hotel. So living in the hotel… Yeah, it was, I mean, great for me, but he’s like, you don’t want to get your own place? Like, you made so much money. Why don’t you go buy a place? I’m like, yeah, real estate’s not for me. It’s still not for me, by the way. I’m still, you know, 43, so I haven’t bought a place here or anywhere for that matter. So… 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

Plus one to that. 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Huh? 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

Plus one to that. I mean, I still am not able to wrap my head around real estate as an investment in general. 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

I mean… Yeah, it’d be an investment just being locked into one place for me. And I moved around a lot. So anyway, so I think, you know, that helped me be a bit more aggressive in my future in terms of expansion, in terms of, you know, building something new. And then we opened a place that people still miss till this day. And this was not with Amir. Amir had left Mufti Sweden at the time, but with one of my good friends from Beirut, Ziad Kamil, who owns Kukle, who founded Kukle in Lebanon. And he founded Go Brands as well here. It’s like this… He was like the first person to do delivery-only properly.. Like did delivery-only brands, like someone who’s been doing it for 50 years, but he did it in two years and ended up exiting as well.

Ending up selling the business as well. So he’s got two branches of Kukle, which is a French bistro born in Beirut that he developed while he was still working at Leo Burnett. It’s an ad agency in Beirut. And he has a very similar story to mine as well, by the way. You should have him over at some point because he started off like the same thing, throwing parties when he was, you know, late teen and opened a bar and opened… Did so many things in Lebanon before moving out. So he moved out so we can open a business together here, which we did. So I co-founded Kukle with him, then I sold out later. And we opened a place called Stereo Arcade. So Stereo Arcade. Stereo Arcade was exactly what it sounds like, like stereo sound. So you have a bar, rock bar on the right, nightclub on the left and an arcade in the middle. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Wow.

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

So it was a pretty cool space. Old school games on very modern machines. A rock bar playing live music seven nights a week, some nights two bands on. So, you know, to put things into perspective, I don’t know if you know this about Dubai, but you have to get licenses for musicians here. So if you’re performing, it costs the venue like a thousand dirhams a month for your permit to perform as a musician, as a DJ, as a speaker. So…

 

Ashish Tulsian:

As a DJ as well?

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Anybody, anybody performing.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Any artist.

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

It’s just to, you know, to have some kind of regulation, right? We would spend around 40 to 50,000 dirhams a month on licenses. That’s how big this place was. It’s 8,000 square feet, but that’s how big it was. 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

You mean like almost like 1.8, 1.8 into 30. Like it’s like every night two of us.

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

So basically $10,000 a month we’d spend just on licenses. That means that’s how many musicians we have. So we have 40 musicians on any given month, 40 people on our license.

So it was an incredible experience. It’s one of the most popular places. I think in the history of Dubai, in terms of like a homegrown brand.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Where was it?

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

At the DoubleTree and JBR, DoubleTree Hilton Hotel, which is a great hotel, amazing location. But JBR is notoriously difficult with traffic. We still made it work. We used to get a thousand people plus a night in and out. If you weren’t at your table by 1030 PM, we’d give away the table. People were partying by 11 PM, which was very weird for Dubai back then because people used to go out at 1 AM. So we changed that mindset. And you don’t understand how difficult it is to change the mentality of an entire industry in the sense that other clubs were letting people show up at 12, third tables, no problem. 1 AM, you still get your table. I put a cutoff of 10:30. You get in or you’re out? If you’re not at your table by 10:30, you’re not getting your table. I’m giving it away. And it was insane to do that, to be honest with you, because people are like, you’re never gonna survive. You’re gonna get killed in the first month. By 11 PM on any given weekend night, we had a party going on in there. It was a nice freaking great.

It was a great event. It was like a great fun night. If you go to a club at midnight, by the time you get into the mood, it’s 12:30. And you’re leaving by 2 anyway, 2:30 anyway. So you get two hours of partying. You’re not creating a vibe for anybody. I’m not saying other clubs didn’t do it successfully. I’m just saying it’s more compressed. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Yeah

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

With me, I wanted people to come, have a great time. Don’t wanna leave early, leave early. That place was financially a huge home run in the first couple of years. Obviously, eventually it died.

It died because that’s what happens with nightlife. But I mean, not what happens, but it happens when you don’t rejuvenate or refresh or change a little bit. 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

But isn’t that tough? Like if we go a little deeper in that, I think the problem with nightlife and especially clubs is that there is a shelf life. And shelf life is short. Like very few clubs actually live through the test of time. So what’s the economy? 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

I can’t think of a lot of places in Dubai that are more than 10 years old. 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

Yeah. I mean, for example, I don’t know how popular it is now, but for example, Lockstock Barrel, I think that lived through the time. 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

I think Lockstock and Barrel, I think they opened a year or two before stereo. So I’d say 10 years now, probably. But they’re not really a club, right? They’re more like a bar. They have clubby elements, but I mean, I don’t know if they’ve changed recently. I will, yeah. They’re more clubby now. I mean, when they opened, it was more live music. That’s what I used to go for. Live music and their nachos. So, but you’ve got places like Rock Bottom. It’s been around for, I don’t know, 15, 20 years. Show Chose and Dubai Marine’s been around as long as I’ve been here and before. So 20 years, maybe. But those are not nightclubs. Nightclubs are a lot more sophisticated in terms of setup and I think lifespan. White, the AdMind, Tony’s project that’s existed in Lebanon for two decades, probably, maybe longer. Yeah, it’s been around forever in Lebanon.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Oh, yeah.

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

The one in Dubai has probably been here 15 years or 14 years or 13 years. So, but again, they are an exception to the rule, that group, in terms of nightlife. Sunset Hospitality, exception to the rule in terms of hospitality in general. You have a lot of groups that I believe have broken the molds a little bit in terms of, forget success. Success is completely relative. Like what people view as success is very different to what I view as success. So I’m not gonna get into that. But I’m saying in terms of longevity and keeping a concept going for a long time. 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

No, but as an owner, my question is that, how do you look at the economics of it? Like do you, given that there is a short span, shelf life is there anyway, what’s your- 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

You gotta make your money back fast. 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

How fast? Like what’s the timeline?

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

If you’re lucky, three years. In that form, right? If you change it up, like I wanted to do, I wanted to completely rechange. Stereo Arcade did something else four years later. Couldn’t get the support for us. We didn’t end up doing it. Ended up just closing it down. We didn’t renew our contract. And luckily we didn’t because COVID was around the corner. So we ended up just leaving that space and it stayed empty. That unit stayed empty until somebody took it like a couple of months ago and opened. Imagine, it stayed empty for four years. 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

Oh, wow. What’s, who took that place now? 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

I don’t know what it’s called. Some ax throwing bar. Yes, 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

in Doubletree. 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Yes, Doubletree. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:
So this was not the TraderVix place, right? 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

TraderVix is the Hilton JBR. This is the Doubletree. It’s next to the Sheraton. It’s all the way on the other side. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Oh okay. 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Next to the address. 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

Okay, I thought Hilton, sorry.

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

No,. no, no. It’s a Hilton. It’s a Hilton. Obviously, you know, dealing with the Hilton, for example. First time I deal with like a multinational American company. They do things very differently to the local operators. So, you know, ordering something is like a contract with them. Which you respect, right? Because more often than not, you get into an agreement with a local landlord that is more relaxed. But when things go bad, they go bad for all of you. With an international group, you get a contract with a company, not a person. It’s crucial to know what you’re getting into, you know? So totally unrelated, but. 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

So when you say that you make your money three years, you mean what? Your return on investment. By operations? 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Yes. 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

And then you exit? 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

You can’t exit. Either you stay and you keep refreshing it. If it’s a nightclub. Or you, I mean, very few people here sell nightclub brands. I mean, exit nightclub brands, because it’s not really very easy to replicate. Very few nightclub brands around the world were franchised. I mean, just look at it. Historically speaking, there’s three or four mega brands like Pacha and Space Ibiza maybe went to a couple of places. Cafe Del Mar, but not very successfully. Yeah, so there aren’t really, it’s not an easy thing to franchise because, you know, if you’re a local operator with a good network, what do you need a brand for? You know, Iris and White, these places that came here from Beirut, they’re Lebanese brands. They came here with their owners and they targeted the same audience they targeted in Lebanon. So you had that already.

But with most nightclubs, they’re mostly homegrown brands. 

 

Ashidh Tulsian: 

Anywhere you go. 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Very rarely will you see a franchise in a city that doesn’t need a franchise, you know? 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

So you got out of it just shy of COVID. 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Yeah, just like a year before. 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

And then what happened? 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

I had opened Akiba Dori. I had opened Kukle with Ziad and then sold out. I had opened Akiba Dori right before COVID, I think two years before.So 2018, I had opened Akiba and it was going really well. Obviously, it was a great brand. And in those two years, I’ll try not to. 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

What’s the story with Akiba Dori? 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

I wanted to explore food rather than just nightlife because all I had done is nightlife. Was Akiba Dori the first food food? No, Kukle was the first, but it wasn’t my brand. It was a brand from Beirut, but I was a co-founder here. But the main guy behind it was running the show. I mean, I had other than PR. I mean, people still message me when they go there. They still think I’m involved. Other than my PR in Dubai, which was and still continues to be, I hope, pretty effective and decent. I didn’t really get involved in any. I’m not an operator. I don’t actually get into the operations. I have zero interest in that part of the business. I like to create.So Akiba Dori for me was, I wanted a casual, but quality casual Japanese. Everything here was either fast food or fine dining. There’s nothing really in the middle. And I wanted something affordable, approachable, where you read the menu and you don’t need to have been to Japan or need to Google what something is. I don’t like those restaurants. Like I go, I mean, I travel a lot. So a different language I understand, but you can name things more creatively. I think you don’t have to be so philosophical about naming food. Like I always feel like when you’re trying that, you’re just trying to justify your prices more than anything else. Simplicity is always going to be king. I think it makes people want to be more comfortable in their dining. So I wanted that experience in Japanese. And I wanted a Japanese restaurant that doesn’t look like every damn Japanese restaurant that was open at the time or every Japanese restaurant that I’ve ever been to looked exactly the same. And most of them continue to look exactly the same. Everything’s wood, everything’s dark. I didn’t want to deal with, I don’t want to do wood and darkness and more zen. I wanted a fun Japanese concept. And I’ve never been to Japan.

For people that have never been to Japan, that always were curious or watched enough manga or enough anime or played enough video games like me to imagine what Japan would look like for them. So I was inspired by Akihabara, which is a district in Tokyo, which is called the Electric City or Electric Town, where like all the manga cafes are, all the video game cafes are, all the otaku hangout, all the maid cafes, but that’s not a conversation for a podcast. It was like the weirder part of Tokyo. And it’s also very colorful and very bright and lots of neon signs everywhere. So I just imagined this fake indoor alleyway. And you walk into this fake indoor alleyway and you’ve got different things on your right or on your left and you can order something from anywhere. Kind of like a food hall. I mean, there wasn’t really a food hall in Dubai. When we first launched it, I positioned it as an indoor alleyway housing a kind of a fake food hall. And then I do genuinely believe it was a perfect timing for it because we also did Tokyo style Neapolitan pizza there, which was the first time anyone’s ever tried it. And it was a huge hit in the market. Like, you know, just like a lot of brands and a lot of places were inspired by Stereo Arcade and there were a lot that were, which is normal, right?

We get inspired by other people. A lot of places were inspired by Akihabara. I mean, when I go to some places now and I think, I mean, this is 100% me. Like, I like that that’s happened, you know? I feel like if you’re able to break the typical design language in an industry just for a little bit and make people think, you know what, why don’t we just freaking try this? Like, why does everything have to be so monotone and classic? Like, why can’t we do it, be a bit, you know, weirder with design? You know, I put a Japanese lantern, a typical classic looking Japanese lantern above the bar in Akihabara. So everyone that walked in were like, okay, so you did do something traditional. Then I’m like, have you looked at it? Then you look at it and it’s Godzilla, which they would never put on a lantern, like destroying a city, these girls running, geishas running around. It’s a very weird, odd, awkward. I mean, Japan is weird and awkward in the best possible way in terms of, you know, design culture. But this was me taking something very traditional and making it whatever, making it more, like just doing little quirky things. And obviously, I don’t do this alone. I have an amazing designer I work with. He’s like my guy, you know. I developed the concept first, like the concept in my head. It’s not him doing the concept. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Has he been to Japan? 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

He’s been to Japan. But Akihabara looks like nothing out of Japan. It would work in Japan, but it would be weird for Japan. Not weird, but it wouldn’t be what people would expect because it’s not only Japanese food. We don’t have Japanese customers. It’s not meant to be traditional Japanese. It’s more my version or Billy, the guy, our ops director, who created the menu.

It was his vision of what we wanted to do. So yeah, it’s been an interesting experience. 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

So that was 2018? 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

That was 2018. 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

All right. 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

And after that, opened a few more. Closed one. Didn’t work out. Opened in Saudi, franchised to Saudi. 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

Akihabara? 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Akihabara. Opened two. One of them was just for the Riyadh season. So we didn’t do it a second season. We just did it for one season. And we opened in Jeddah. 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

That was a pop-up. 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

And we did it in Jeddah. Jeddah was a very difficult experience in general, just dealing with the local market and not fully understanding the local market. It’s a lot more price sensitive than Dubai, Saudi, a lot more, infinitely more. 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

Actually, that was my discovery as well.

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Yeah, it’s super price sensitive.

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

Saudi is extremely price sensitive food market. 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

I’ll tell you why. I lived there for 15 years, 14 years. And when McDonald’s opened, there were queues for like two highways, right? For us to go to a family, we used to do a family brunch every Friday or I forget if it was a Friday or Saturday, but Friday, a Friday. To Al-Khuzama Hotel, which is like the equivalent of a Four Seasons. That was like, that was like, and it was a brunch. That’s what, that’s all you had for high end in Saudi, was brunches at hotels. That was, that was it. So what I always say is, you know, Saudi Arabia went very quickly from, again, fast food. But I mean, everyone loves fast food. But it was mostly fast food, mostly franchises to suddenly having homegrown concepts.  So when the homegrown concepts came up, and they’re doing incredibly well in Saudi, there was a tectonic shift in mentality of people. They’re like, if the homegrown brand can open and charge lower prices, why would I pay this high end brand more? It doesn’t make sense. So if you’re getting quality from a homegrown brand, you’re more likely to support the homegrown brand. And if the homegrown brand is not charging crazy numbers, that becomes a standard. So Saudi, Riyadh specifically, went very quickly from fast food and a very low check price to like Roka and LPM, like very quickly, in a couple of years.

Took Dubai a long time. I mean, LPM is like 13, 14 years old now, 12 years old, whatever it is. I mean, I’ve been going there since then. And it wasn’t always as popular as it is now. Everyone started slow and built their way up. So, but it’s a natural evolution. 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

But my shock was that when I went to Riyadh for the first time and I was looking at some popular restaurants, and when I looked at the Google reviews and ratings and- 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

All the complaints are about the pricing. 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

Yes, exactly, right? So some were like absolutely crushed and decimated, like 3.2, 3.4. And I was like, what’s wrong with them? All the reviews talk about price. And then I went to a couple of these restaurants and then I almost, across the board, realized that that was fantastic food. 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Yeah, yeah, it’s just the price.

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

And I was like, oh, wow, this market is- 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

We made Akiba Jeddah cheaper than Akiba Dubai. Although the VAT there is triple. So with the VAT, still cheaper than Dubai. People still complained. Every day, every single day. 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

And it continues right now. I mean, you can see that. 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Look, Saudi Arabia is a mega market for everybody. I mean, there’s no doubt about it at all. Maybe short term, Dubai won’t feel it as much. But I think long term, there’s no escaping that we’re going to feel it for sure. Because it’s a beautiful country. You’ve got so many things to do there. It’s humongous. Local Saudi tourism is huge. But Dubai still has way more benefits than any- I’m not trying to compare. I don’t like to compare it. 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

Yeah, I don’t think it’s even- It’s not a comparison, right? Even Beirut, right? 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Beirut’s an incredible city for food and nightlife. Incredible.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

 I want to visit, man

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Would I ever live there?. I’d never live there. Would I go set up a business there? No, a lot of friends of mine have. And they’re fine. But I wouldn’t do it. The same way I wouldn’t set up a business most places other than Dubai. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

So how quickly did you close Akiba Dori in Jeddah or Riyadh? 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

No, Riyadh was just for the Riyadh season. So it was those couple of months. Jeddah, we had a dispute with the franchisee, which is still kind of ongoing. So we took the brand away because we owned the brand there until we figured out what we’re going to do with it. But I still think I could take it back to Riyadh and open a full place with the right operator. I just wasn’t interested in making the move myself or us investing more into Saudi. It didn’t make sense. We didn’t feel like it was the right time for us also with everything that was going on in Dubai. There’s too many things, too many opportunities here. So yeah, that was- 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

I think, do you think about Saudi opportunity? Do you think about it now? 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

No, no, no, not necessarily. I mean, I always say I’m not an entrepreneur, I’m an opportunist, but it’s quality of life, standard of living, then business. So it’s those two things first for me and they will always be first for me. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

So Samer, there’s definitely a pattern that I can see you- 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

You’re analyzing me now, perfect. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Yeah, perfect, yeah. We did this setup too. 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

So there’s a psychologist in the other room. By the way, you suffer from these things. Here’s some pills on the way out. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

All right, let’s start talking about ADD.

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Yeah, yeah. Oh, for sure. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

That’s a weapon, no? 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Yeah, of course.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

But what’s this curve of- I can see a lot of zero to one creation. You said yourself that you’re not a one to 10 guy or are not interested in operations or that’s not a thing for a very long time. What have been your learnings about yourself that have grounded you as an entrepreneur in the last 20 years, let’s say? Are there any grounding understanding? 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Of course, I mean, it’s not even about grounding. I don’t think I have any real success so far with what I’ve done. When I say I don’t have real success with what I’ve done is because my idea of me being successful in general is being left alone, if that makes any sense. I don’t want to have to answer questions. I don’t want to have to solve problems anymore. For me, doing whatever I want with my time is the most important thing. So I’d say I’m 90% or 80% of the way there in the sense that I could do whatever I want. Well, of course I could do that, but I’m saying from a business perspective as well. The last part of it would be building a sustainable business, which I think, I mean, I may appear to have done it on the surface, but business is meant to fail. It’s meant to succeed. It’s meant to exchange hands. It’s meant to change regularly. So I don’t have my legacy business yet, if that makes any sense. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

But are you even trying to do that? 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Yes, of course.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Isn’t that boring? 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

It is boring, yes. I mean, I am in a business or two that are super boring. And I’ve invested slightly, very, very slightly into some very boring businesses as well, which could be legacy businesses in the future. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

You want to give me an example?

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

I mean, it’s mostly tech stuff, nothing, innovation in tech, let’s put it that way. I mean, they’re both not, both these big bets I have, small but big bets, let’s put it that way, are both in the US and both could be game changers in their respective industries. But it’s not going to, you know, it won’t retire me anytime soon. Eventually, my legacy project will be a hotel, will be a boutique hotel somewhere in Italy, somewhere in France, where I could open a kick-ass bar on the roof and a really nice coffee shop, breakfast place on the ground floor, 25 or 30 rooms. And I would just live there, like me and the family would just live in the hotel. That would be my legacy project, but not yet. Yeah, that’s the legacy project, where I could just live there. I don’t care, but like money’s irrelevant at that point. It’s more about the quality of life than anything else.

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

Are there, I mean, I can see that, you know, when you were talking about like too many things from music festivals to nightlife to, you know, has the volatility in what you want to create decreased, has it increased? Are you doing things that you’re more sure about today or are you taking more risks today? Like what’s, where are you right now? 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

I’ve definitely taken a lot more risks the last decade, let’s say versus the first couple of years, because my, you know, I used to joke and say, like I have a half a million dollars a month in liabilities. Like not many people can say that. I’m just saying like, it’s one thing that that wakes you up, that humbles you, that makes you grounded. You’re like, okay, the businesses have to make this money. It’s not like, it’s not a joke, right? So I think in terms of volatility, in terms of risk, I’ve always been, I’ve had no aversion to risk whatsoever. In fact, I might be the complete opposite. I don’t gamble though, although I did get into crypto early on. I still am in some projects, not tokens, just to be clear. So I’ve invested in startups that are in the space, Web3 and crypto, and which you’d have to be an insane person to do, or people thought it was an insane last year, but you know, 52K for Bitcoin today. So that’s not too bad. I’m not upset about that, but it’s about forgetting things easily. That’s what I always say helps me a lot. So if I’m gonna invest in something and I’m not a nickel and dime guy, I’m gonna keep chasing the founder away. Where’s this? Where’s that? You have to be able to forget about something for a year or two, let the people do their work, which is where I feel now. I’m like, I’d rather be the advisor right now than anything else. Like I know that somebody has a business idea or has a project and they need advice. I’d rather be that person than someone who’s just gonna go do it myself. You know, if that makes any sense. I feel like, especially now with my experience with Sultan and Kenda Shatila, my partners in 11Green, which is a burger joint that we opened together May of 2023, which is an incredible product. We already have two branches now. Sultan is a super corporate guy. He’s the chief commercial officer for Honeywell, so a Fortune 500 company. Wanted to set up a burger joint, won a huge competition, went to the US, competed, came in third at the World Food Championship with his burger. So huge, crazy story. Put on a supper club for five years, called Tano’s at Eight, which was super.

We’re successful you sell out in like half an hour like he put it on Instagram at like 9 a.m And by 930, there’s no more places for like the month. It was crazy It was crazy and he was a super corporate guy got you know, master’s degree went to Tufts went keep talking about Tufts Oh, I can’t believe I just said it again. I keep making fun of him for it So super corporate guys wife kind of Dow Chemicals super corporate so that he came to me for just advice Like what do you think? You know, you know work on it with me. I was like, you know what? I mean, I’ve known it for a very long time We were never very close or as close as we are now now he’s like a brother to me But I’m talking about like 10 years ago or 12 years ago When I met him through his cousin Ahmed who’s a college friend of mine who I still obviously still very close to I was like sure I mean Let me see what happens people have come to me in the past for advice all the time and a lot of them have offered Me equity in their businesses and most time I’d said no with him I had a gut instinct that this kid knows what he’s talking about and He’s want to quit his job Making a fortune every month to come and do this full-time Like what kind of a guy quits a fortune 500 company chief commercial officer level like CEO like c-suite To go like open a burger joint No, this kid obviously has a lot of confidence in what he’s doing a very a lot of confidence. 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

Ans no plan B 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Like this is yeah, I mean so So yes, we quit his job. We Launched the place Doing incredibly well and the biggest learning for me By dealing with him and dealing with Kinda his wife was our partner Who’s a dessert genius and bakery and stuff? So there’s a lot of passion and a lot of love that goes into the food is that I might be better Supporting other people and thing and not money. He didn’t need money from me. He didn’t any money from me He didn’t need zero money for me, right? but supporting in the sense that You know just giving advice that may or may not be the right advice Sometimes it’s a little bit further away from correct to more like borderline wrong, but it still works But I feel like I’d rather be that guy than be the guy opening more businesses personally I mean like if I have the money to invest I will definitely invest if somebody needs help I’ll definitely give them help if somebody needs Somebody on a project for six months just to make sure they launch it properly. They’ve never done it before That for me is a lot more exciting now than doing my own thing doing like creating my own Products don’t get me wrong I have a folder of concepts that I’ve developed over the years that I’ve never done anything with but after this experience and you know Speaking a lot of conferences and people coming up to me after not knowing how to scale and not knowing how to do certain things That’s why I set up big mouth concepts. So big mouth concept is effectively my I Call it my creative consultancy for F&B. So Hospitality, so it’s it’s not I’m not a consultant. I’m not booze and I’m not Ey, I could never I would never spend an hour writing a report That’s it would never happen for any amount of money in the world 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

or jargon’z your concept. 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

No chance. No chance So yeah, exactly So I think with what I’m trying to do with big mouth concepts is help people who want to get into the industry Get into the industry open the right doors for them and either develop a concept for them if that’s what they want or help them fine-tune theirs or Just give them free advice. I have no problem. Somebody calling me up. Listen, I want to do one, two, three What do you think doesn’t cost me any time anything? It’s my time, right? I’m gonna do whatever I want with it So that’s why I set up BMC So that’s the objective behind this is to help other people that want to get into the business without being a typical Stuffy consultancy with a guy in a suit and his PA reaching out to set up appointments. I don’t want to be that guy I can afford a PA.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Oh, you know Who are you as a as a as a partner or as a leader? When people walk with you according to you, what kind of experience do they have with you?

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

I Don’t think I’m a very good Leader per se because I don’t necessarily like to lead people. I want them to be next to me rather than behind me So if someone looks at me for leadership that I’m not the guy I’m not saying I can’t do it Like if I need to do it, of course, I will but I don’t enjoy that role Like, you know, somebody wants to look up to me. That’s on them. That’s their draw. That’s their mistake. It’s not mine If somebody’s like, oh, I’m really inspired about you. I mean, I don’t know why but that’s on you my friend I didn’t ask you to be but in terms of business, I don’t want someone who is behind me I want people to feel empowered I want people to feel like they need to make decisions and stick to those decisions because if I’m gonna lead everything I Wouldn’t do anything in FMV hospitality

 

Ashish Tulsian:

But the fact is that people need a leader all the time, right because they’re not able to take the decisions And so, you know, and then and I know that you know that right?

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

So this is where my non-belief in democracy comes in I think having Leaders within the group or within the community is a lot more effective than having a single leader I think one person saying look at Dubai Yeah, look at Dubai. We have we have the you know, we have the royal family obviously that Effectively leads that strategy of Dubai leads the vision of Dubai But can you imagine his highness actually Muhammad telling people what to do all the time? There’s not enough hours in a day He’d need to clone himself 16 times the way Dubai Dubai was developed in the way The reason it’s successful is Dubai runs like a company. 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

Hmm. Yeah, totally 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

I don’t know. Why would I run my company like like a democracy or like a dictatorship? No, it’s if the government here is running their business Or their company their country or their city like a business Abu Dhabi does the same all the Emirates more or less do the same Right, it’s we’re giving you all the tools to succeed if you have to keep coming back to me I’m doing something wrong. That’s why we have all these changes all the time in Dubai Why do we have all these regulation changes because you try something it doesn’t work Do you wanna fail fail fast, right? They don’t let something drag on So if I can’t even learn from them, then I’ve it’s terrible like I’m not paying attention So I want my business to be the same thing. I want the people Running the business to run the business 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

So when you when you look at partnering with people today in any capacity like meet an employee or your partner or anybody. What have you like what what pisses you off the most like what is an absolute no-go for you as soon as you see that Sign you start running in the other direction.

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

I have zero expectations of people personally. This is how I choose to live my life I don’t expect anything from anyone. I don’t I will never get upset at someone because I expected something from them Same thing in my partners. I’m not partnering with someone because I have expectations of them I’m partnering with them because I know they won’t need me to have expectations of them. That makes sense. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

So I know this person how do you how do you create that alignment early on is it? Oh, this is a gut feel or is it alignment. 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Gut feel is for f1 racers for f1 drivers? this is research and honest conversations and contracts and agreements, but honest conversations I Know what I can do and I know what I can’t do if you’re expecting me to something I told you I can’t do That’s on you a hundred percent So I know what I’m willing to do and I what I’m not willing to do if you want me to do something I’m not willing to do that’s also on you. So I look at it the same way. So if I’m not going to be involved in most elements of the business I need people or I need to have a team again, if I’m not going to be involved in most elements or most Nitty gritties. I need a team that Take ownership So partners are the same so I Haven’t really had that many partners per se And businesses most of have been either shareholders, but not someone that I’m not dedicating time for me

 

Ashish Tulsian:

But I’m not only talking about partners I’m talking about let’s say your key employees or people who are working in the business alongside Ownership I can see is the operating board here, right? Yeah, how do you do the conflict resolution? I don’t yeah conflict like if there’s conflict within the organization or just solution means like for example You know the expectation, although there’s an honest conversation, but not met How do you deal with that?

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

I haven’t really had to deal with that so far. Mm-hmm, because if both parties feel like it’s no longer working More often than not doesn’t come from me. It comes with the other party It says this is not for me. I mean that hasn’t really happened. But if it were to happen, that’s how I would see it happening Because I give full autonomy to people Screw it up. No problem, but fix it. Don’t screw it up again. No problem. It’s just I’m not gonna fire someone because they messed up because I would have nothing today’s every time I messed up I have never given another chance. I’d be like, I don’t even know what I’d be doing So as long as people are responsible for their actions and take responsibility and don’t say what’s not my problem We’ll never have a problem. Even if there’s a mistake even there’s screw-ups along the way The idea of that never happening is beyond ridiculous for me.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

So How how do you how do you keep yourself nurtured? Do you read books listen to podcasts 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Video games a lot video games for me. It’s been something that has been a constant in my life since I was a kid It’s and I don’t mean like playing FIFA on fortnight I mean like single-player games adventure action role-playing games where you you bet you dig deep into the storytelling and For me that’s like watching movies So instead of watching a movie or a TV show or a series and spending like, you know Most people people most people will criticize me for video games. We’ll binge a show for like two months I’m like, how’s that any different? I’m playing my show and I’m in my own thoughts Finding solutions.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

What’s your what’s your jam? Like what which game is like really sucks you in.

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Any of the Zelda games from that. Nintendo’s ever made Because you know, it’s such a vivid world secret of mana all the square Enix ones I played Japanese RPGs JRPGs Like some of my friends who I game with we play like online games together It’s like how do you even have the energy for this? You know, I think well, this is how I disconnect right some people drink I go to the gym as well So that that’s my morning thing. But at night instead of watching Instead of putting on something on TV and getting on my phone Like I’m sure most people do I get on my PlayStation 5 or my Xbox or my Nintendo switch I’m downloading a game now for my flight. I’m a very nervous flyer. So I’ve downloaded a new game play it for hours I disconnect it’s I know it sounds insane but I attribute 90% of my creative process to video games 90% of it 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Superbbbbb

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

not school not education nothing because It made problem-solving fun and interesting so that’s my connection with video games and Again, I’m not talking about roblox. But if your kid likes video games like my parent my dad got me my first Atari You know because he read somewhere that Surgeons, you know, you never want me to be a doctor like surgeons play video games good for dexterity hand-eye coordination I was a mega athlete when I was a kid. I was in four varsities in college, you know, I was super athlete I didn’t really play a lot of video games in college, but I still did because I mean to some extent But that’s what that’s where I that’s my self-care and I go to the gym Which is another self-care thing for me and listen to music. I mean, it’s simple thing..

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Samer, this was 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

You know one side of conversation, but it’s all it’s your fault for inviting me here. 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

Yeah, that’s Exactly 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

I told you it’s on you 

 

Ashish Tulsian: 

when I invited you over my fondest hope was that you had to do all the Thank you for that. 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

It’s okay 

 

Ashsih Tulsian:

But Samer this was this is quite Quite interesting. 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Thanks man. 

 

Ashsih Tulsian:

Phenomenal conversation and I can apart from judging you a lot. 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Yeah, of course, and you know, I hate talking about myself I hate it so much. I don’t know what to say, 

 

Ashsih Tulsian:

But that is phenomenal I can clearly see that you have a lot lot lot more in the store in coming years than what you have done so far But whatever whatever you have done so far that sounds so fun that post this I would like to know You know, how do I explore your side of the world? Oh, you know personally would love to yeah Thank you for being on Restrocast. 

 

Samer S. Hamadeh:

Thank you for having me. Thank you so much.