Sherif M.: 

It is simply a beautiful industry and I think anybody who walks into it never goes out of it. I come from a school of taking care of your people, never let them down. They grow with you, you cherish them more.

We are in the Arab world, everybody eats the Lebanese cheese on bread. Why would people eat pizza? Let me tell you why Americana is called Americana.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Wow, 

 

Sherif M.: 

I’ll have to tell you the story that I always tell to everybody. I had a wake-up call to be like this. The first sentence that I heard from my son was, who is this?

 

Ashish Tulsian:

The decision of who do you marry, where do you live and who are the people you work with. These three decisions just take you on a roller coaster of life in a good or a bad way.

 

Sherif M.: 

We had a few challenges, big type of challenges. We need to turn it around. I believe on my scale, we did quite well in the first nine months. Then we were hit by the boycott that took us. Listen, every day we’re discovering something in this journey now. Every single day, I’m just in the beginning of the journey.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Hi, welcome to Restrocast. Today, my guest is Sherif El Sherif, Managing Director, Olan Group. A group that manages Burger King, Texas Chicken and Buffalo Wild Wings across various countries and markets in the Middle East.

Sherif’s journey is inspirational on many fronts, apart from being a great human being that will come through very, very clearly in this conversation. He’s also one of those rare people who can be called veterans in global restaurant space. Spent 25 years at Americana Kuwait Food Company, that is the largest operator of some of the most iconic global brands in the Middle East, like Pizza Hut, KFC, Wimpy’s, Hardee’s and many more.

In his own admission, he left to join an oil and gas company for a couple of years. While the business was good, those were the most miserable years for him, not because of oil and gas, but because his heart lies in the restaurants. So a true blue restaurant operator at heart, somebody who, you know, tells me that he works nine to six in the office and after 6 p.m. he goes to the restaurants on the round to meet his team and that’s where the real action begins. Sherif’s conversation is a lot to learn on many fronts of how to be loyal to both your employers and your employees, your colleagues, how to treat people, how to look at life and humans in general, how to take care of the family as well as how to treat your work. This is an inspirational conversation, I’m sure you’ll enjoy. Welcome to Restrocast.

 

Sherif, welcome to Restrocast. 

 

Sherif M.: 

Thank you, it’s a pleasure to be here. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

You are somebody, I mean, when you’re a true veteran in the restaurant industry, I mean, very few people there are in the world, from a world population perspective, very few who can be really called veteran, you know, in the industry who have spanned career of decades purely, you know, working with, in and scaling some of the most iconic brands and, you know, that’s your career. So, congratulations on that but I want to start with the start. Tell me about your growing up years, you know, where you’re from and how did you land in the restaurant industry earliest time?

 

Sherif M.: 

Yeah, that’s a very long time ago. First, thank you for the intro. I’m a very normal person, let’s agree on this. I guess there are a lot of people who are like me or even better than me in this part of the world or globally. It is simply a beautiful industry and I think anybody who walks into it never goes out of it. And while we are in the from where did I come and how did I go, there is a part of my life actually that I left the industry and I worked in oil and gas for four years and I promise you I wasn’t as happy as I was working in here.

So, I started I’m Egyptian. I grew up all my life in Egypt, went to a French school, studied French all my life, then walked into the American University in Cairo, studied mechanical engineering. I enjoyed myself very much in this university. So, I did two minors in order to make sure that I stay longer in the university. So, I did business administration and I did computer science. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Oh really?

 

Sherif M.: 

Yes. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

That was back in what year? 

 

Sherif M.: 

This was in 87 until 93.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

No way. 

 

Sherif M.: 

Yes. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

There was a course on computer science? Like a major? 

 

Sherif M.: 

Actually, while I was in the university, we discovered the computers and we started buying them, started having this internet that used to do this.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Yes, I remember that.

 

Sherif M.: 

I did all of this. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Two kbps or four kbps?

 

Sherif M.: 

I remember in 1994 when I joined my first company where I worked for food, I asked for a laptop and I remember in a company with like 40-50 thousand employees, I was the first ever to get a laptop.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Wow. 

 

Sherif M.: 

Yeah, it was a compact. I don’t know.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

I was about to ask you, was it a compact? Because I’ve seen a compact, I don’t know what. I’ve seen that compact and I remember how bulky it was on both ends.

 

Sherif M.: 

Yes, and then a few years later, moved to a Sony Vaio if you remember this device as well. Small and big, red and blue.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Sony Vaio, I think came much late, 98, 99.

 

Sherif M.: 

So, this was the normal evolution at that time. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Correct, correct, correct. 

 

Sherif M.: 

And then I started, I walked into Americana at that time as a management trainee for one and a half year.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Was it called Americana or was it called Kuwait Food Company? 

 

Sherif M.: 

The name is Kuwait Food Company, the logo is Americana. So, both of them are there all the time. It is famous by being named Americana, but the original name on licenses and everything, it is Kuwait Food Company. It differs in some countries where we had to change the names. So, in Egypt, I don’t know, it was called Egypt Touristic Company for I don’t know what, but Kuwait, it was Kuwait Food Company.

UAE and Oman were Kuwait Food Company. In Saudi, it was National Company for Touristic Projects, something like this. Anyway, so I started there as a management trainee.

And to be honest, it wasn’t like leaving Egypt and going to Kuwait, wasn’t that something like you would be like looking forward very much in Egypt at those times, especially when you graduate from a good university with a strong language. I got the first job actually in IBM World Trade Corporation.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Oh.

 

Sherif M.: 

Yes. My mom was the assistant vice president of AOC. She was quite a strong and influential lady in Egypt. And through her, I got my first job in the sales and marketing of IBM World Trade Corporation in Egypt. But I only stayed there for six months, then got headhunted, don’t ask me how, at this age got headhunted by Americana, and then went to Kuwait. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Why? What were they trying to hunt for? 

 

Sherif M.: 

Until today, they never told me. The HR manager never told me. But I’ll tell you what, we had a very senior Americana personnel living in our building where I lived in Egypt. And this building was like in 10 apartments. And everybody was so busy, nobody ever took care of this building. And they went into making an owner’s association and this and that. Nobody was free to do anything. So once my dad was going to those meetings, and he said, why don’t you come with me?

It’s fun. Come, you will enjoy it. So I went and I sat there listening to all of those grown-ups speaking left, right and center. And then I was like, you guys are wasting your time and you’re wasting everybody’s time and you’re wasting a lot of money. I decided that I will lead this for you. If you agree, then I’ll take over this building. You do nothing, I’ll take care of it. And I actually did and everybody was happy and we never had any meetings after that. And the building was run perfectly, efficiently, maintenance, everything.

And I think that man is the one who told to HR that there is this kid on the block who is super confident of himself and thinks he can do miracles. This is the only thing I can associate. But every time I approached our HR, corporate HR manager, I asked him, he said, we’ll never let you know, with a big smile on his face. So I went to Kuwait, started my career as the assistant for the deputy general manager of the group. So this was the second ranking in the company. I started this management training and then after a year and a half, he came and looked at me and he said, so what next? I said, what next? There is nothing next. I need to go back down there and discover what the hell is happening. He said, are you sure? I said, yeah. He said, okay. Next day, I found myself an area manager for six stores in KFC. And this was the start. Six months of training. I remember Kuwait is very cold, by the way, in winter, super cold. And I remember they used to let me go.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Colder than Riyadh.

 

Sherif M.: 

Colder than Riyadh.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Wow, that’s cool. 

 

Sherif M.: 

And at those times, we used to defrost the chicken overnight in the sinks, in the water. And I remember I had to go at 5am, open the store alone, to cut 1000 chicken from a whole bird to nine piece on an electric saw. And the water was freezing, taking the chicken from the water. And you have these huge- 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Why were you doing that alone? You were the area manager of six stores?

 

Sherif M.: 

No, no, no, no, no. This was the 90 days of training first.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Okay, okay. The grind.

 

Sherif M.: 

Yeah. So moving to an area manager, I had to take the technical training. So I had to do stuff, clean toilets, carry deliveries, cut chicken, cook chicken, cashier, cashier drive-thru. And remind me to tell you the story of the cashier drive-thru. Until assistant manager, then restaurant manager. This took six months. 90 days of hard work, 90 days of store management, total of 180 days. Brilliant. The best job ever was the drive-thru cashier. You meet a lot of people, you go out with a lot of people. I was a bachelor and singular at that time. But it was so much fun. This is the job I like the most, actually. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Why? Because like, like general banter?

 

Sherif M.: 

No, I just got to know a lot of girls my age. I started going out and I was having fun and quit. But those, I guess, those 180 days, this is what made what I am today.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

So you turned drive-thru cashier into literally a pick-up. 

 

Sherif M.: 

This was a little time, the 90 days of the operations. It was a pick-up window for real. It was a pick-up window for real. By selling chicken. Who knew? Who knew where the girls were hanging out? So now you know a secret about the drive-thru that nobody ever told you about.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Just 20 years too late.

 

Sherif M.: 

Yeah. Anyway, then I took the career from there, from area manager to, I was country manager of Kuwait by the age of 28. Then moved to UAE in 2000. Had a special project in Abu Dhabi for a year and a half. Then took over UAE until 2010. 2010, I took a regional role. Until 2015, I became the chief operating officer of the group, World Brands. So at that time, we had like 12 brands, international franchising, eight brands, local, 42,000 employees. Wow. Then I became, on the way, I took over.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

That is a 21 year long career?

 

Sherif M.: 

Yeah. No, no, no. That’s 25, 26 years of career. You said 80s. Then you add to this the four, five years of oil and gas. Then it becomes a 31 career, 32 career.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

What’s the oil and gas story?

 

Sherif M.: 

I’ll tell you. So when the acquisition of Americana happened, I stayed for one year working with His Excellency Muhammad Al Abbar and the new management. And I learned a lot. But I guess we disagreed conceptually on how to manage people. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

What year was that? 

 

Sherif M.: 

This was 2-16, 2-17. Sorry, 2016, 2017. I guess everybody has a different way to manage, and it is right. I totally believe in this. If you get 10 managers, you give them one task. They can do it 10 different ways, but they can all achieve the task. I come from a school of taking care of your people, never let them down. They grow with you, you cherish them more. And you take care of them and their families forever. I think some other people would think, no, get young people, cut costs down, get rid of the old, get rid of the expensive people and bring young people with half the price. This is right and this is right. This is proven to be very successful. This has proven to be very successful.

Just for me, this was, for me, a very ethical thing. So I decided to quit. And I think that I quit at one of my highest peaks in life. And until today, I don’t know if this was a smart decision or not, but I don’t regret it. I don’t regret it, but I don’t know whether it was smart or not. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

You were the group COO Americana.

 

Sherif M.: 

I was the group, I was acting CEO and this, okay, I was the COO. Then when the acquisition happened, all the C-suite level left and I was kept there. So I acted as CEO. I was given targets. If I achieved those targets by the end of the year, I become the KFC Middle East and North Africa GM. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

And this was pre-IPO Americana?

 

Sherif M.: 

This is after the IPO. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

This was post-IPO, okay. 

 

Sherif M.: 

Yeah. And then 

 

Sherif M.: 

I actually achieved all the targets, new management was very happy. I became the KFC general manager. Five months later, I resigned. Okay, let’s skip this part. And then when I left, I was approached on the same day by the old management of Americana, who developed starting 1997, another company in Egypt called EG holding, Egypt Quit Holding. This was working in oil and gas and petrochemicals and fertilizers. It was totally different. That was, at that time, it was like $1.5 billion company in Egypt operating on those fields. They said, we want to open in the Gulf area. So why don’t you join us? Let’s establish for us a company there. Come, get the training, understand what we do, go replicate in the GCC.

So went, did the training in oil and gas and water chilling systems. At least I was happy I was using my engineering degree. Finally, finally.

And I actually acquired a gas company in Dubai and opened another company in Saudi and bid for a huge contract in Saudi. And after I left the company, went to Al Ain, they called me to celebrate. They said, we want you to celebrate because we actually won the bid of Saudi Arabia, that you are the one who did.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Wow, beautiful. 

 

Sherif M.: 

So yeah, so of course, a huge team was working with me. I was not the only person, but we never thought that we’re going to take this bid. It was really good. And then I left the company, and the minute I got the offer for Al Ain, 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

We’ll talk about that, we’ll take a step back. Two things. One, how, I mean, the dynamic world of restaurants is too dynamic, too, you get the best of both worlds. You’re at the back end, as well as you’re at the front end. Your eyes are everywhere. Four years, how did you pass four years in oil and gas and whatever you were doing there?

 

Sherif M.: 

It was the most boring thing in my life. Actually, don’t talk to me, talk to my wife. You talk to my wife, my wife was like, when the hell are you going back to the restaurant business?

 

Ashish Tulsian:

I mean, you were so bored that you made her life miserable.

 

Sherif M.: 

It was having a job from nine to six. Can you imagine that? And being home at six o’clock, looking to everybody in the house, don’t know what to do with them. I remember in COVID, I was working in this and I was very lucky because I was working in gas. So we were those vital lines.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

You’re on the positive side of crisis.

 

Sherif M.: 

So I was in our company, office was working. We had permits to drive 24 seven in Dubai. So I didn’t sit one day at home. And then, and we used to operate six. The first thing I did when I joined this company is that I shifted everything to six days of operations per week. I’m not used to work five days only. I don’t know how. So I shifted it. And then during COVID, there was one Saturday I decided to sit home.

So we had my wife, my younger kids, my two sons who are studying in the UK, but we’re back home. And we had a visitor, one of my, the daughter of my friend of mine from Kuwait. She was flying back from Canada to Kuwait via Dubai, and she got blocked in Dubai. She actually stayed with us for eight months or nine months. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Eight, nine months?  

 

Sherif M.: 

Yeah. Kuwait was locked for a very, very long time. Even after everybody opened, Kuwait didn’t open. Oh, wow. So they were all there having finals, studying, doing, and I decided out of boredom, of course, to increase the speed of the internet in the house. I messed up the entire internet. Everybody wanted me out that day. It only stayed for four hours. And after that was fixed. And they have to admit it was double the speed.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

I think it’s funny because, but yeah, it’s, at times people will tell me, you know, about work-life balance. And then I’ll ask them, okay, if you get that balance, what will you do? So, okay, I’ll spend a lot of time with family. I generally always ask them, have you asked family? Because while you want to spend time with family, you should at least once check with them. Maybe they would want to see you much less because you are going to fiddle with stuff.

 

Sherif M.: 

Yeah. And I start asking all the wrong questions and giving her time in the wrong time. And yeah, you do everything wrong. But I believe in life-work balance, but I don’t believe, okay, I work six and a half days a week. I go to the office at around 8.30 to 9, stay in the office until 6 to 7, then the action starts. Then the job starts.

The 6.30 to 7:00, I go restaurant touring until midnight, then sleep for five hours, then start again. Do I know my family? Yes. Have I taken care of my kids? I guess so. Is my wife a happy wife? I believe so. At least this is what she’s telling me. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

And I admit you never ask.

 

Sherif M.: 

So I don’t think that the life-work balance comes based on how many hours you sit at home, but rather the quality of the things you do with them when you are around. Beautiful. So we travel annually. One of the things that me and Rania take pride of is that both my elder sons have graduated and they’re working. Last year, we were traveling, well, the year before to Greece. And they said, we’re going to pass by you for five days. I was like, our kids want to come and spend time with us. Yeah. We definitely did something right.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

And that’s true. That’s absolutely right.

 

Sherif M.: 

Yeah. I think while I was growing and working Fridays and Saturdays, I think also my wife was a very kind person to me. If it wasn’t her and her understanding and her support, I don’t think I would have made it there. So it is the whole thing to be managed right with the right people. If nobody’s complaining, everybody’s happy, everybody’s giving the right time for the right cause, work-life balance happens. So it’s not the amount of days or hours you spend there.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Beautiful. Thanks for saying that. Not only I totally believe in it. I think you just summed it up too well and not theoretically because you were talking about your life. 

 

Sherif M.: 

Yeah, I’ve seen it. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Yeah, that’s just a better definition.

 

Sherif M.: 

So yes, I’ll have to tell you the story that I always tell to everybody. I had a wake-up call to be like this. So when Omar is 15 now, when he was two and a half to three, so this would be like 12 years ago. I arrived from a business trip on Thursday night. I had my cousin, his wife and kids visiting us in Dubai, staying with us at home. I woke up at nine, was walking down the stairs and everybody was preparing breakfast. And then I saw Omar, my elder son, while I was walking and he was standing at the door of the kitchen. I said, hey, Omar, I’m back. And he ran away to the kitchen. So I walked into the kitchen. I found him hugging his mom’s leg, looking at me, looking at her, look at me again. And the first sentence that I heard from my son was, who is this?

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Ouch. 

 

Sherif M.: 

Yes. Yeah, this was a wake-up call. At that time, I used to travel between 250 to 270 days per year. So I always say that the two elder sons are Rania’s kids. They’re not my kids. They are her children, just to make myself young as well. And then, yeah, I remember on that Friday, I took a decision to bring down my traveling to 180 days. It was a decision taken, communicated to my company management, everybody. It was done. And then on the same morning, I saw a cat moving in the house and I was like, look, there’s a cat in the house. And everybody looked at me and said, that’s Sam. And I said, who is Sam? Do we have a cat? I never knew that. They said, no, no, Sam, he’s the cat of the neighbors. It’s like, OK, I need to be in this house more. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Yeah, Sam has the same feelings about you.

 

Sherif M.: 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sam also was worried, who is this? So yeah, you sometimes need a wake-up call as well. It is not that everything is rosy. I was the perfect man and the perfect family. No, we learned as we go. But I think we learned and we talked. And I think talking is very important, whether at work or at home. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Alignment and communication.

 

Sherif M.: 

Yes, communication mainly. Forget about alignment, but we need to talk about things that bother us. We need to talk about things that we want to improve. We need to talk about things that make us sad, make us happy. And then everybody takes this away and come back the next morning thinking on how to fix things and make everybody else happy and content. So this, you add this to the statement that I gave before. And I think this is what makes a happy or even at work, a group of people working together happy. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Amazing. I want to take you back to Americana days. You worked with them for 25 years. 

 

Sherif M.: 

Yes, 25 beautiful years.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

25 beautiful years. Yes. And you know, exactly. The fact that you use beautiful there, even when I said 25 years, I want to know more. How was Americana of those days? I’ve heard a lot of good stories, you know, about Americana from very few handful of people that I have met in last few years who worked with Americana. But one common thing that I saw in almost all of them, all of them were lifers. I think the youngest guy I know was in Americana for 18 years or 17 years, irrespective of the ranks. They all found it very difficult to work for another company right after. So all of them had a very similar trajectory, left Americana and then hopped two or three companies in one year. But that was not because they were hoppers. It was because they just couldn’t adjust to the culture.

And in their own admittance, they said, well, you know, we were taken care of too well. So I know that Americana took care of its people way too well. And people like you who are smart, who are, you know, who had the potential, who delivered, you know, keeping that, keeping your talented people is even more harder. It’s not only about just treating them well. What was your, what was the Americana that held you for 25 years? And what was that thing about taking care of people?

 

Sherif M.: 

Let’s agree that Americana before and Americana now, both are both great companies.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

I’m still talking about the previous operators.

 

Sherif M.: 

No, because I always hear people saying, ah, the old Americana was amazing. Now it’s, I don’t know what, I totally disagree.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Yeah, no, no. I don’t think I’m alluding to that for sure.

 

Sherif M.: 

For clarification, even for those people who say that, I always like to say the statement. It’s just, as you said, it’s a different company management and it’s a different culture. I think the people who lived, the generation who lived with the first company, that got spoiled. And they got so attached that it was very difficult for every single one of them to change and shift, including myself. Rightfully said, this is not an industry of food or restaurants. This is what we call, it’s a people business.

It’s people when it comes to customers and it’s people when it comes to employees. The company that we’re talking about is a company that put its employees on the top of the head, even above shareholders. The shareholders themselves promoted that. So, very successful company that literally took care of every single need of its employees. And I’m going to give you examples of this. To the extent that those employees started acting and believing that this is their own company. And that they are willing to work nonstop 24 seven until they resolve any problem out of disbelief. You get sick, the company takes care of you. Insurance is not going to cover, company will take care of you. You need to travel because your medical needs are not available with a good perfection in your area. Company will take care of that. Company will go the extra mile to find the doctors globally, to book the appointments, to put you on a plane, send somebody with you, make sure that you get treated and come back. This was the company I’m talking about.

Company, I’ll tell you one example, when I started realizing this, it was, I was in my KFC training, so maybe 95 or 96. I was doing a training in another brand and a restaurant manager came to me and he said, my daughter needs a kidney transplant and I don’t need anything. I just need somebody to guarantee me in the bank, the bank agreed to do, to give me the money, loan, everything. And I said, okay, I sincerely, I was very young and I sincerely believed him without asking for any documentation. And I requested to give him this bank letter. So I requested the admin and then I found the group CEO calling me. I went, hi, how are you? How was the training? Blah, blah, blah. Then he said, I have here a letter from you going to NBK in Kuwait, National Bank of Kuwait, to guarantee somebody for something. What is this? I said, the story is 123. He said, did you investigate that? I said, no, I didn’t. He said, are you willing to put your neck on such a big amount?

I said, I believe the guy. I might be very wrong. I don’t have experience, but I might be wrong, but I believe them. I promised him I’m going to do it. So it’s totally on me. It has nothing to do with the company. And I just need this letter. He said, okay, we’ll give you the letter. You can pick it up tomorrow. Then the next morning I got again a call from his office and they say, he wants to see you. So I went back and I said, yeah, okay, how can I help? I’m not getting the letter.

He said, no, no, no, you’re getting the letter if you want to be fine. But we spoke internally and we spoke with the CEO and we’ve agreed to give him 50% and to loan him 50% with no interest from the company. So he doesn’t need you anymore.

And I said, yeah, but this is something good that I wanted to do. And he said, well, there is a lot of good in this world that you can do. So don’t worry about this one. And whenever you have cases like this, come back to us. So this was me starting the company in the first two years. And you can imagine. And I actually looked at it and said, did you investigate? So he laughed and he said, no, we’re going to take your word for it. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

That’s beautiful. That’s beautiful. 

 

Sherif M.: 

So this was the level of the company that we’re talking about. And you can measure this. I give you a little bit of an extreme examples, but you can measure this across the board. It’s just a company that took care of its people. 100%. It’s a company where you worked for, you know that you are safe.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

How do you maintain that at a 40,000 plus people pyramid? Doing it at the top isn’t easy, but it’s plausible. Doing it at probably a couple layers down is also plausible. But how do you percolate that culture? What did Americana do to percolate that culture down to the bottom?

 

Sherif M.: 

They were just there for every single person. They had the insurance. These cases were like, not every day you have cases like this. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Yeah, of course. I understand that. 

 

Sherif M.: 

But they took care of every single case that was raised. Some of them were investigated, some of them were not investigated, but they took care of every case. They never said no. They didn’t do it in a crazy, unorganized way. No, it was very organized. It had people that were monitoring it, people who are accountable for such things. So, yeah, it was very well articulated and managed, even though it was not on a piece of paper with a policy. It wasn’t. Don’t ask me how, but in this part of the world, what we call the blessings or the barakah. So, I think it was so blessed that it just went very well, very nicely, perfectly. So, it was good.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

And I think that speaks volumes of the size and the scale they achieved in the region.

 

Sherif M.: 

I don’t know if you know the start, but this company in 1964 started, and then in 1967.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

64?

 

Sherif M.: 

Yes. And then in 1967, it was a butcher house. It was a butcher shop in the street in Kuwait. And then Nasser al-Kharafi got dressed, he sold the owner, the Kuwaiti owner. In 1969, he was in England and saw Wimpy. So, he said, I want to bring Wimpy to this part of the world. 

And his entourage at that time, they said, we eat meat. Who would mince meat and eat it and put it in a sandwich? We eat rice and meat. And he said, I want to get it. And then he got it. And then…

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Was Wimpy the first brand? 

 

Sherif M.: 

Yep. The first shop, the first brand, the first everything. And Nasser al-Kharafi himself and Mu’taz al-Alfi, the founder with Nasser al-Kharafi and the president until the day of the acquisition. They used to sit in the factory under the offices in a place in Kuwait. And they used to do the burgers with their hands.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Nice. Wow. 

 

Sherif M.: 

And then in 1970, let me tell you why Americana is called Americana.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Yeah, I’ve always thought about it.

 

Sherif M.: 

Yeah. And then in 1971, again, Nasser al-Kharafi was in the US, saw KFC, said, let’s bring KFC. They traveled, they did it. And the first restaurant of KFC opened in Kuwait in 1973. If I’m not mistaken, September 26. Why Americana is called? Because they were negotiating the KFC and they were sitting in a motel called Americana next to the offices of KFC International at that time. And when they signed the deal, they thought that it would be a good omen to take the name of the motel where they were sitting. So this is where the name came from. Nice. A lot of stories came up after that, but this is the true story, though. Then in 1981, they started building all the factories to support. And this is how it became in the 90s, it became a huge company.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Wow. Oh, wow. That’s that. But that’s a strong legacy. Yes. Like 64, 67, 73, the milestones that you’re talking about.

 

Sherif M.: 

Yeah.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

And I mean, Wimpy’s in 73. I mean, I was just.

 

Sherif M.: 

No, Wimpy’s was in 69. KFC started in 73.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

So I’ll tell you, I was just remembering my childhood. I’m a 90s kid. And I think I remember in India, McDonald’s came in 93. And Wimpy’s was already, Wimpy’s also came at the same time. And I think I, growing up, more than McDonald’s, my favorite burger was Wimpy’s. Like, I can tell you that a lot of 90s kids in India, and especially in north of India, New Delhi, they still miss Wimpy’s. And never, nobody ever understood why it did not scale. 

 

Sherif M.: 

It’s a legacy. It’s a legacy. It’s a beacon. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Yeah, that bean, that sesame seed bean bun was actually iconic Wimpy’s for us, not McDonald’s.

 

Sherif M.: 

When McDonald’s came to the Middle East, I remember they opened their first store in Kuwait in 1994. Americana already had Hardee’s, KFC, Wimpy’s, Pizza Hut. All of this was there.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

I’m surprised. Wow.

 

Sherif M.: 

And big volumes, because they started in the 80s and the 70s.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Yeah, no, I’m really surprised. And it makes sense. Like, it’s surprising and it kind of makes sense. Yeah. The legacy is so strong.

 

Sherif M.: 

I’ll tell you why they sold, why Americana didn’t have for a very long time, Pizza Hut. So they got Pizza Hut. And then somebody who was smart, looked to the owners and the founders and said, we are in the Arab world. Everybody eats the Lebanese cheese on bread. Why would people eat pizza? And in 1987, Americana turned down Pizza Hut and they sold it left, right and center and they only kept Egypt and UAE. Then later on, they discovered the mistake. They acquired Jordan and Bahrain. And then the new management, they acquired Saudi.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

That’s why they don’t.

 

Sherif M.: 

They took Saudi from Mawarid. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Did they? 

 

Sherif M.: 

Yeah, Mawarid they bankrupt two years back or three years back.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Oh, yeah.

 

Sherif M.: 

Americana just got this. They got another market as well. I don’t remember where, but they got another market as well.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

I used to wonder when I got to know for the first time a couple years back, when Mawarid was still running it, when I got to know that Pizza Hut Saudi is not with Americana. I was like, why will Americana leave Saudi? Yeah, well, thank you for answering. Now, you know, i

 

Sherif M.: 

t was people here eat man’oushe. Yeah. Why would they eat this? 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Well, that’s a fair success stories 

 

Sherif M.: 

and you have the great learning stories.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Yeah, but it’s a fair assessment.

 

Sherif M.: 

It’s a fair assessment. Yeah. So yeah, this is the story behind Pizza Hut.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

I think companies like Americana and such stories of taking care of people speak to me a lot because I kind of come from the same school of thought and same practice. So they speak to me a lot because I, you know, you can feel that what’s the end outcome, because in the short term, you know, taking care of your people and being human while building business, being conscious while building business can be difficult in the short term.

 

Sherif M.: 

Yes.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

You know, very difficult actually at times. And there are good things that happen. And there are very, very stupid things that people do. So, but in the long term, I think such stories are very inspirational for anybody who thinks long term and who believes in people. It is.

 

Sherif M.: 

I think it is the only among many, but the only main pillar that I would attribute success to for a person like myself or for a company. Straightforward, nothing else.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

And then Olayan rescued you from oil and gas. Oh, yes. God bless Burger King.

 

Sherif M.: 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. When I got this job, I was very excited. And I spoke to my wife about it. And she looked at me and said, Are you thinking? Move. You weren’t happy for four years. Move, please. We need you to be a citizen Saudi. I’m going to leave you guys and go.

She said, Just go do whatever you love. Do whatever you like. We’ll be here. We’ll come to you. Don’t worry about this. Olayan is a great company. I’m very proud working for it. I hope that I’ll be in it until I decide to retire. It’s a company that takes care of its people.

It’s a company that don’t talk too much about itself. And this is something that I like. It is a company that is successful in so many domains. You will be shocked to know. And the shareholders and owners are very down to earth, normal people. Which makes them in my opinion, great people. I recently heard the definition of greatness that I love. And I keep spreading it everywhere I go. There are it is very nice if you become famous in your life. And it is also very nice if you become great in your life. But not a lot of people will become famous, unfortunately. Very little people will become celebrities. But everybody can be great. Because greatness is defined by doing something good to others. And this is one thing that all of us can do every single day. And I believe that Olayan is a company that lives with this definition. And I believe that the more people we can have like this in our communities, in our companies and around the world, this place can become a much better place.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

That’s a big thing to say. And congratulations on landing that then. Because finding another place which lives by the principles, especially in the professional world, it’s very difficult.

 

Sherif M.: 

Well, it isn’t. I think humans are making it difficult, to be honest. But other than that, no, I don’t think it is.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

No, finding a place like this is difficult. I mean, I personally believe that, you know, the decision of who do you marry? I was lucky.

 

Sherif M.: 

I was very lucky.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Where do you live? And who are the people you work with? These three decisions just, you know, take you on a roller coaster of life in a good or a bad way. Yeah. And you will not have much control over what’s coming after these three decisions. You can have a lot of control, more control than people, you know, think you can have, you know, in these three decisions. You can be wrong, but you still have your choices in this. But what happens after you make these choices is rarely, you know, in your control. So I think that’s, to me, that’s personally very, very important.

I mean, if you work with wrong people in any capacity, your investors, your partners, your customers, your vendors, your employees, no matter what relationship that is, if you work with people who are not aligned with your ethos, good or bad is subjective. You can be bad in somebody else’s books. But if they don’t align with your ethos, you’re basically signing up for a very poor life for no reason. I mean, you can justify it, but to me, it’s crazy.

 

Sherif M.: 

I actually thank you for saying this, because I was wondering how to put it in one sentence, but you actually did. So where I lived, I lived with a very, very strong working mother who shaped me big time until today. She gives me a hard time until today.

Hi, mom. My dad, God rest his soul, was one of the kindest people I have met in my life, even though he had a very good governmental position. He was very kind, super sweet, never seen something like this in my life. And then there are what I call five plus three. There are five executives that I worked for in Americana who made me who I am today. And I owe them the entire thing. I owe it to them. If it wasn’t the five of them, I wouldn’t have been here talking to you. You wouldn’t have thought that I’m a veteran. I wouldn’t have achieved what I have achieved today. And the other three are three others that I worked with outside of Americana, who also helped me shaped in a very different way. So yes, five plus three plus mom and dad is why I am here today.

And you add to this the house or who you decide to marry, a very supportive and loving wife, who literally took care of me in every single step of the way. Then my friends, I love my friends. But yeah, if you look, 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

I believe I covered that in all the three aspects.

 

Sherif M.: 

Yeah, this is why I said thank you for bringing it.  

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Because your friendships are a function of where do you live and where do you work? You know, that’s how it happens to you, right?

 

Sherif M.: 

So life is end of the day, I hate to say it. It is indeed experiences, but I think it is more interactions. I always like to put interactions before experiences. And this is what formulate a human being.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

What’s been, how different is the business that you’re doing from your lens? What you were doing up until 2016, let’s say, 16, 17. And what you started doing, let’s say, after 2021 at Olayan. What’s the difference in the work or what’s the difference in the way? Did you change? You want to throw some light at that?

 

Sherif M.: 

I changed drastically. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Tell me more.That’s me too.

 

Sherif M.: 

I changed drastically. So I was very soft, nice people, caring, the culture of Americana.And I thought that this is the end of the world. It is just perfect. Then I left Americana. Then I worked with the next, sorry, management of Americana. And I learned a lot from those people, I have to admit. I left, but I learned. I learned to be a little bit more tough, which I think is a good thing. I learned that KPIs sometimes is extremely important. Not only the love of people and the caring for people. I learned so much about acquisitions in the oil and gas company, which is something I only knew how to sub-franchise. Oh. But I learned a lot about merger acquisitions.

So I went from a person who knows how to manage a portfolio of restaurants from a manual to a person who manages much better, strategically look into things much better. I definitely became tougher on people. But I still think that the Americana culture is the perfect culture.

And now I discovered that there are similar cultures around the world. Because when we were in Americana, we thought when we left Americana, that Americana was the only company like this. No, there are a lot of companies who are like this. And there are a lot of owners who are like this. But end of the day, you need to have the balance as well. You need to see the business growing.

You need to make sure that people are running with you and sharing the same dreams and goals. And when they share, they share the execution as well, not share the vision and go along with you. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Otherwise, business will go down, and you won’t be able to take care of the same people anyway.

 

Sherif M.: 

And this is what happens in a lot of cases. What is right is right, I would put it this way. What is right is right. What is wrong is wrong. And it’s very clear. So from a management that I resigned and left, I today take pride of saying I learned from them this and that. A gas company that I was very happy to leave, I owe them a lot of learnings about mergers and acquisitions. And as well, the great people I met that we talked earlier about. So yes, I changed. I’m no longer as soft as I thought I was. I am much more strategically driven at the moment. And I guess I learned a little bit about creativity. So I can sit and dream and think of things that are totally outside of the box. And this is because of doing so many things in my career. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Give me an example. Unless it’s a secret. 

 

Sherif M.: 

No, no, no secrets. I just don’t like to talk about myself much. But I can go. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Sherif. This is this podcast is about you. 

 

Sherif M.: 

I know, I know. We can talk about all what we talked about. But yeah, I like the fact. I like it that I am 55 years old. And I can. One of my kids is a graduate of the UK from a computer science distinguished company. And when he gets stuck in his IT problems, he comes to me and I actually resolve them.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Come on.

 

Sherif M.: 

Yes.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Then we’ll talk. That’s a flex. That’s a great flex. 

 

Sherif M.: 

But I love IT and I read a lot about it and I’m so into it. So when I sit with the marketing team, yeah, I talk social media and I talk. We do this and we don’t do that. And we go here and we go there. And I acknowledge while I am a dinosaur, but I don’t believe I’m a dinosaur. But I acknowledge what Gen Z is talking about. Through research and through talking to people. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

And how much are you chatting with ChatGPT?

 

Sherif M.: 

I, oh my God. It’s my best friend. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

I heard that. I figured. 

 

Sherif M.: 

And I don’t use ChatGPT to write email or make visitations. But we have conversation going back and forth.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

I figured. I figured. 

 

Sherif M.: 

And by the way, I don’t know if you know this or not. I’m a life coach. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Did you do a certification on that? 

 

Sherif M.: 

Yes

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Nice. Which one? 

 

Sherif M.: 

I got my certification. Don’t ask me. I’m just a life coach. I did it like 12 years ago or something. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Oh, OK.

 

Sherif M.: 

But I do it until today. I do life coaching and I do executive coaching. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Oh, you do that professionally?

 

Sherif M.: 

I practice, yeah. But predominantly 90% of my clients are non-paying clients from within my organization. But we make it professional. It’s like 45 minutes. It’s a coaching session out of the company in a Starbucks or wherever we go. And it has nothing to do with our work. It’s part of me learning from the team and developing the team. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

And helping them build a life. 

 

Sherif M.: 

Yes. And helping me understand a lot of what they are doing. So I do this with a lot of young people. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Awesome.

 

Sherif M.: 

So yeah. So and when I go to the restaurants, I talk to customers, kids, everybody. Sometimes I sit on the ground to talk to a six years old about what he likes and what he doesn’t like about the kids’ meals. And yeah. So I am told that I’m a dinosaur by all my kids. But I don’t think I’m a dinosaur.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

But that’s amazing. 

 

Sherif M.: 

And we practice this every day at work. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

That is beautiful.

 

Sherif M.: 

We do all of those sessions about ideation and creativity. And I walk into the room, say we’re going to sit here for two hours. And we’re not going to talk about work. I need somebody to tell me an idea that nobody ever thought of. And most probably half of the people in this room are going to say it’s crazy. And it will never work. And this is the idea that we’re going to try to work that out.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

That I think is the freshest, the fresh most thing that I’ve heard in a while. And especially in that, you know, it’s a curiosity that I have for brands like Burger King. And I will include McDonald’s and Domino’s and KFC and Pizza Hut in the same league.

Which is, I actually wonder that most of these brands that I just named have a lot of millennial nostalgia. We grew up watching it, you know, both boomers and millennials. There’s a lot of nostalgia around these brands. We still relate to them as, you know, the food item that they represent. And that’s why I feel that there is business. But Gen Z and Gen Alpha have no nostalgic feelings around these brands. 

 

Sherif M.: 

They don’t have feelings. They don’t have feelings. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

That grew up in a different world. And I feel that all of these brands, and which includes, you know, Burger King in this conversation. They really, you know, need to do something about this. Because it’s not about your top line today or tomorrow. I mean, even not next year or next three years. I think all these brands should be worried about next 10 years. Because if you’re not doing something to catch Gen Alpha in this decade, by wooing Gen Z equally successfully, next 10 years, I mean, life post 10 years is going to be very difficult for all these brands. They’ll become real dinosaurs. What do you think?

 

Sherif M.: 

So yes, it is something to be worried about. I guess all companies are researching and trying to discover how to manage marketing through social media. It doesn’t mean that you sometimes have a trend or something on social media that you become the guru of social media.

We’re promoting those brands, their food. I was just reading an article last week, and they were saying in the US, the consciousness and usage of healthy food for teens has grown from 13 to 16% in one year. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

13 to 16?

 

Sherif M.: 

16. 3% in one year is a big number. In this industry.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Absolutely. 

 

Sherif M.: 

So while a lot of people are saying that healthy food is not really growing as people would have thought, I think it is. And the industry of healthy food is doing whatever it takes for them to compete with anybody else. And the awareness on healthy foods and in healthy life in general, would be in sports and medical care and food and everything is growing. And at a certain point, healthy food will be good and affordable. And this will be the time where we will have to figure it out. We need to figure it out from now, actually. But this will be the health section.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

My question is, yeah, I hear you. And I think my question, I will still expand it. I think it’s really about how do you build that relationship with them? I think marketing is one facet of it. You know, food that speaks to them. Baked instead of fried can be another dimension of that. I don’t know what other dimensions are. 

 

Sherif M.: The dimension of delivery. Those are people who sit in the room.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Correct. 

 

Sherif M.: 

They don’t want to come out. They don’t talk to a lot of people. They only talk through computers and through chat boxes and through games that they play together. But now it’s becoming global. It’s not even their friends from home. And they order food. We actually are running a few campaigns. We have a series of campaigns targeting gamers that started in Saudi Arabia for Burger King. So we did a lot of research with gamers. And they prefer to eat specific food in a specific way. Because they eat when they are playing.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Correct. One hand. 

 

Sherif M.: 

Yeah. So we discovered a lot of things. And if you don’t have… We thought that finger foods is important for them. They said, no, we like sandwiches. We are okay with sandwiches. But sandwiches, they have to be messy. And they have to have a lot of sauces. And sauces have to have a lot of variety. And I would say 50% of what we thought as human beings was wrong. They have their own thing. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

How did you do the survey? 

 

Sherif M.: 

We did marketing research. We did research. Hired companies, we got gamers, we talked to them and had, usually do research, but better than the research is to do the focus groups. So we have six people in a room in different ages.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Did you call them to your to your center?

 

Sherif M.: 

No, no, in the agency. The agency is the one who recruit all of them, but we attend everything. So you sit with them and you discuss, so you have six females, six males, 16, six young adults. Gamers are up to my age are gamers. 70% of the population of Saudi Arabia are gamers. This is huge. Gaming is that big here. 70% of the population play games on a decent level. Wow. And the other 70% is below 35 years old. But the gamers they have above 35 years old. Last year they had the World Cup.

Nobody understood that, but this was a massive event. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Which games are they playing? First person shooting?

 

Sherif M.: 

Everything. They play everything. I’ll tell you, we have a colleague of ours in the office. She’s a younger, young Saudi. And I discovered once upon a time that she actually developed a game and sold it and became rich. She’s still working with us and everything. But they do a lot of things here. They develop games, they play games, they compete in games. It’s massive.

When I heard two years back that they’re going to host the World Cup in gaming, I was like, what is this? And then after that, we discovered that this was as good as a World Cup of soccer. But it’s a world that we are not aware of.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

But that is amazing. I mean, if you’re doing something for gamers, that’s a great… 

 

Sherif M.: 

Everybody’s doing. If you look in the market, all our competitors, the majority of our competitors… Actually, we are following. We’re not the leaders in this. A lot of people start doing great stuff. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Are you going ahead and doing some in-game advertising? 

 

Sherif M.: 

We are. We are going very heavy over the coming three years. We’re going to be super heavy on that. Merch and in-game and associating ourselves with gamers and with the sports athletes. When I was in KFC, we did two promotions in two different years, one with Messi, one with Ronaldo, for example. Now, when you look for a celebrity, they have to be associated with social media. They have to be associated with something related to technology.

So now we are choosing a famous player in the arena of Saudi Arabia. The agency came back and said, he has to be a gamer. You cannot just take him because he’s famous playing his own sports. He has to do the sport and has to be a gamer as well. And we actually found one. And we discovered that there are so many. It’s like it was not a difficult thing to find someone. Just finding their time is the difficult part. But identifying the right candidates, there are so many.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Wow. 

 

Sherif M.: 

So you can be a famous football player. And at the same time, you discover that he’s also famous in gaming on FIFA 2025 or whatever.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

But that’s a pressure on real sports people. That’s a crazy pressure on…

 

Sherif M.: 

Listen, every day we’re discovering something in this journey now. Every single day. I’m just in the beginning of the journey. But yes, we are discovering a lot of things. And the world is changing slowly but surely.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

That’s awesome. That’s really amazing. What are you doing to keep yourself enriched apart from being friends with ChatGPT? Do you read? Do you listen to podcasts?

 

Sherif M.: 

I love reading. And I guess moving to Saudi Arabia and living on my own when I’m here gave me a lot of time to do two things that I love. I love reading. And I love going into the restaurants by night, talking to people, talking to our staff. I actually hold a lot of meetings in restaurants, talking to our customers, understanding. It’s just amazing to sit and talk to people.

And people like to talk when they know who you are. It’s like I’m a manager in Burger King or a manager or whatever. People just like to sit.

They’re willing to give you at least 15 to 20 minutes of their time to talk to you about what the competitors are doing and what you are doing and their ideas of how great you can be and how to make you great. And you will be surprised if you take 10, 20 percent of what you’re being told, it can literally make you great. Those people are really good at what they say. They know exactly what they’re saying. You just need to listen carefully. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Correct. Correct. 

 

Sherif M.: 

So yeah, two things. Reading, talking to people in the restaurants, including my staff, my team, my colleagues, my family. I call them my family. We’re one family. We’re one big, I call them Daulayanis. We’re all Daulayanis. So I’m very soon going to give them passports.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Give me a story on something that you discovered or learned or figured after talking to your staff through these on-ground visits, unplanned or unannounced. And that brought a change, like some insight where you could actually also bring like a material change or tangible change to your process or your company or something.

 

Sherif M.: 

Let’s choose one. So I’ll give you from recent stuff. So I was in a restaurant and we were having a promotion, an LTO, a new LTO. And usual problems with an LTO is the training. If it flies well in the beginning, you run out of stock and these are the common fix. Quality, do we do it right or not? Is every customer getting the right experience? And then I was with one of our staff and he said, you don’t get it. Said, I don’t get what? He said, we keep launching great sandwiches that you keep getting from Burger King International. He was a local guy. He said, if you want something to fly with you, bring us something local. I said, what local?

You want me to do shawarma in Burger King? He said, yeah, I want you to do shawarma in Burger King. Do something like this. This would resonate better. So the next day I met the team and I said, this guy told me this yesterday. What can we do? Three weeks down the road, somebody came and he said, the marketing team, actually, said, we’re going to do a Tannour Whopper. You know Tannour? Tannour is a Lebanese sandwich. And we literally did that. We launched a chicken with garlic mayo and fries in Arabic bread. And we launched a meat sandwich with the full constituents of a shawarma meat product with tahina in an Arabic bread sandwich.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

In Burger King?

 

Sherif M.: 

In Burger King. And we launched them in November 2023 after one month of the boycott started. They were great. They did very well. We removed them because it was an LTO, limited time offer. People are still asking for it. Some of our competitors launched it last month. So it was a learning for everybody. This was an idea that was initiated by somebody who didn’t even know the idea, but insinuated something around it.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

That is very, very cool. And for you guys to actually formulate that. 

 

Sherif M.: 

It took six months after that.

Yeah, that was after agreeing on the concept between approvals and finding the material and the shelf life. It’s a nightmare. Especially the tahina is a product that maximum shelf life, you can get 3 months and we can never operate with such a thing. But we launched it. We tried it. It was great. Now we are rethinking it again. Shelf life are now went up from three months to nine months. The new product development team have done miracles the last year on actually developing the right way.

So yeah, this is one thing among so many because again, you hear a lot, but I promise you, 20% of what you get is amazing. You just need to take it seriously and not to dismiss it. And this is why I’m telling you, I walk into the room and say, give me an idea that half of the room will think it’s a crazy idea and will never be done. This will be the idea that we should work on.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Sherif, this was an absolute pleasure to not only know your story, to know your story from your eyes, from your lens. And one word that I’m taking away from this entire conversation is massive gratitude that you carry for all the people in your past life, in your current life. And now I know that you are giving back in more than one ways by being a life coach and helping people build a life. These are the conversations that make this entire effort worth it. Thank you. 

 

Sherif M.: 

Thank you. You’re giving me more than I deserve. But yeah, this is, I guess, what it ends up for. We need to make this planet a better place to live for our kids and the generations after. And we need to make sure that everybody around us are living a good life as much as we can. 

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Absolutely. With you on it.

 

Sherif M.: 

Thank you, sir. It was a pleasure. I enjoyed discussing it with you very much. And thank you for completing all the sentences that I was unable to complete. You helped me a lot. But it was great. Thank you so much. I truly appreciate it.

 

Ashish Tulsian:

Awesome. Thank you.