#201 Unraveling the Intersection of Technology and Leadership with CTO Joseph Azar

0:00:02 - Mehmet
Hello and welcome back to any episode of the CTO show with Mehmed. Today I'm very pleased to have Joseph joining me from Sydney, australia, like I'm very pleased that we are starting to get more guests from that part of the world. Joseph, thank you very much for being on the show with me today. Can you please introduce yourself and what you do? 

0:00:23 - Joseph
Yeah. So first, thank you for having me on the show my pleasure. Yeah. So I'm Joe, for short Joseph Azar. I've been in the tech industry for professionally for 23 years, which makes me a bit seem a bit older and unprofessionally I've been, you know, since I was 12 years old, involved in the tech industry computers and programming and all of that I've been well, I guess. Since I've moved to Sydney I've been the CTO for a company called Foresight Helmets. We mass produced the first ECE certified smart motorcycle helmet in the world. I've been with them for five years now and I've moved on Well. I'm still consulting with them, but I've opened my own company, which is Azar Consulting, because you know, I want to help other tech startups and companies with their tech products and scaling up and yeah, it's been an exciting journey. 

0:01:41 - Mehmet
It's indeed an exciting journey, joseph. You know like what you have done. I mean with the Foresight. So it's like the first, as you mentioned, smart motorcycle helmet. Can you walk us through the initial stages of developing? You know the product and what were the main challenges and how did you overcome them? 

0:02:07 - Joseph
Yeah, so just to clarify something it's not the first smart helmet in the world. It's the first mass produced smart helmet in the world, in the sense that there's a lot of companies that try to create their own smart helmets. Some of them had heads up displays, some of them had, you know, just comms integrated. Unfortunately, all of them failed and the reason for that, I think, in my opinion, is because they overshot the features. So they've promised the customers so many features that they weren't able to actually, you know, get into the market. And, with Foresight, we were always grounded and we were always, you know, we always had our feet on the ground, in the sense that we never over promised customers things that we couldn't deliver and we didn't think that were technically possible. And, you know, we all were in the office, we're all motorcycle riders. This is a passion, more than a product that we wanted to get into the market. We wanted to get it ourselves first and then, hopefully, because of our passion, then we can get customers involved in the journey. And this has been, you know, I guess, our goal, since they want to get our customers involved in the journey. So the product was kind of developed with customers feedback. So since the inception of the idea and since we came up with the idea, it was always, you know, hey guys, what do you think of this? Or hey, what do you think of including that feature in the product? So it grew from just an idea on a napkin to a 6,000, you know a member group on Facebook which then evolved into us asking the customers what they wanted and them coming back to us saying, yes, we think this feature is a good one and this one we wouldn't be using. And yeah, I guess here we are now, five years later, with 6,000 products sold in the market. 

We cover USA, canada, australia, new Zealand and parts of Europe. That's great, joseph, to hear. To go back to your question, the hurdles. Well, besides pandemic, two years in lockdown in Sydney I don't know if you guys had the same issue on your end, but we were locked in our houses for two years, which means you know it makes it difficult for us to work together and collaborate, especially if it's a hardware product. And then we had so many delays on components because you know, it's a product that's created in Australia, developed in Australia, but it's manufactured in Taiwan. So, trying to organize the shipment of components, you know the delays from lockdowns, delays from, I guess you know, shipping and freight forwarding issues because of the pandemic and, yeah, that was our main, I guess our main hurdles with technology. 

0:06:03 - Mehmet
Yeah, that's great to hear the story and how you overcame it. We were lucky here in Dubai because we just sit in the houses for two months, I believe that time. This was from mid-April up to and in May. Everything started not to become normal, of course, but you know, we were allowed to move at least. So and this is something I have to give the credit they handled here, you know, from government perspective, very, very well. We didn't, we didn't face this at all. So you mentioned something, joseph, which you know like. Immediately something came to my mind. Yeah, you go ahead. 

You talked about how was important not to put all the features and then slowly, slowly build the product, and I want to hear you know from you about why this is important in startups in general, because what we see, you know sometimes, founders, they became so excited about their ideas and they want to build the whole thing from day one. So if you can shed some light on this part from your experience as well, why this is very crucial and important in startups, yeah. 

0:07:19 - Joseph
So I guess it's not based on I would say it's not just based on not including all of the features from day one, right, because it's a balance between, you know, your vision, your imagination and what can and can't be achieved. So, with Foresight, it was to be honest. We all want the Iron man experience, right, we want to put on a helmet and then be able to see things the way Iron man does, and that's one of the reasons we actually went into the project, because we wanted that experience. But you know, first of all, iron man is a Marvel comic and then the technology is not there, right? So everyone wants to put AR in a helmet or AR in a glass, in glasses, or, you know, now Apple's new product is out in the market. I think the technology is not there yet, because we expect it to achieve more than what it can like technologically. If I can say so, it's both. It's you trying to gauge the expectation, because you want customers to actually buy the product, try it out and actually have a fun and interesting experience, right, because that's the whole point of, you know, putting the product out there. 

At the same time, you don't want to overpromise things that you can't achieve. So it was always a balance between our passion, our vision, our imagination and what we can and can't achieve. And I think, from day one, if you think of any product that's going out in the market, you want the customer to actually enjoy it and use it and it providing some kind of value. So if you go to the customer and say we're going to do this, we're going to do that, we're going to, you know, put a rocket on the moon and then you end up giving them something that's I wouldn't say 90%, it's always 20% of what you promised, right? 

So if you manage to not put all of the promises from day one and say, okay, this is what we're going to achieve, this is what the product is going to do, and we're going to try to push the boundaries, but if we can't, we can't, but we're going to try, right. And then, from day one, when you launch a product, you need to keep something in the back burner, right? If you give them all of the features in one go, then why would anyone, you know, keep coming back? Right? Because you want them to keep coming back with new ideas, new features, new things that your product can deliver, and that's why we try to stop at an MVP, as you call it in the startup world, and the MVP is always what can be achieved with whatever technology you're using, and then later on go for the next phase and give more features and give, I guess, more upgrades. 

0:10:55 - Mehmet
Yeah, that's correct and I agree with you, joseph, and my way and not even in like four startups is usually set expectation with the customer that you are sure you can do and actually try to overachieve it. So like under promise instead of over promise. 

0:11:13 - Joseph
That's my approach to everything Always under promise, overachieve. 

0:11:19 - Mehmet
Yeah, and the customers love it because you know, when someone expects from you, let's say this pen, and then you give them. You know the nice, you know style, you know yeah definitely. You know, with a brand or something, they will appreciate it much and because this is also I'm mentioning this for fellow startup founders and this will give you also, guys, authority and give you authenticity and will give you also, like people will give trust in you and in your startup in the future. 

0:11:49 - Joseph
Now, joseph, one thing, and it also depends on integrity and honesty, you know, being very transparent to the customer because unfortunately, once you lose that trust you can't gain it back right. 

So you always need to have this two way trust between you and your customers, because you don't want to get to a point where they say, oh, but yeah, they've always, you know, said we're going to release this and they never did like, look at and I don't mean to, you know, I guess talk negatively about Tesla, but look at the whole Tesla approach about, you know, having a automated self driving car. Right, this was the whole point of having a Tesla, and now, like a few years later, we don't even have you know, a decent self driving car. So the over promising customers to get them to buy in is not a good thing, because it eventually, you know, gets you to a point where nobody believes what you say 100%, 100%, joseph. 

0:13:02 - Mehmet
Now, one thing also you mentioned, and I want to ask you also, how this was crucial for you at Forsyth, and you know in general, you were listening to your customers and you mentioned like you had a Facebook group, like how important to keep listening to your customers down the down the road and for you, for example, you know how you are handling, you know the demand, or maybe sometimes you know some customers might give negative feedback as well. So how do you prepare yourself also to be humble, let's say when, when, when dealing in, listening or talking directly to your customers? 

0:13:40 - Joseph
Yeah well, it's difficult, I would say. You know, I've been in the industry for quite some time and it's never easy to listen to bad feedback, you know, especially if you have an emotional investment in the product that you've made, because you know it's kind of like somebody coming and saying bad things about your kids. No matter how bad your kids are, you still love them and you still care for them and you feel insulted and offended if somebody talks negatively about them. So I would say, try to approach it in a mature, distant way but still kind of have a balance between your emotional involvement in it but at the same time, you know, see it from their perspective. I think the thing that that most founders may be lack because of their visionary personality, it's empathy, right. So because you need to feel how your customers feel about your product so that you can then understand where they're coming from and be able to use the this feedback in enhancing your product. 

And I would say another I would say advice would be don't implement everything that customers ask for right, because you have customers asking for, you know, things that you can't achieve. Some of them ask for features that may or may not be worth including in your product. You need to filter that information and use analytics to determine what can and can't be included in the future release, right? So I'll give you an example. The way we did it in foresight is we take all of the requests of our customers, we filter them down, we pick the top 10, and then we post in the group a poll saying what do you guys think we pick based on the features that you like and rate the ones you know, starting from 10 to 1. 

And then take that feedback and then pick the top three and work on those top three. So I think that's a very, very good way. This way you can kind of gauge what brings in benefit and what doesn't, and what the majority of your customers do, not just one person asking for one feature. 

0:16:34 - Mehmet
you want the majority of the customers to weigh in options 100%, joseph, and I can give my experience from also consulting perspective. You know, especially when you work with startups, that you are trying to, you know, get their products in front of clients. You know one way, you know, for founders, actually, the way you mentioned is very straightforward and it will give them even some metrics. But other way, on the long run, maybe you start to ask okay, is it like something have to have or is it good to have? 

0:17:15 - Joseph
Yeah, exactly yeah. 

0:17:16 - Mehmet
Yeah, because because you know, sometimes we need and it depends, of course, on which type of startup you are in, but sometimes and this is on the founders and their team we need to educate also our you know, to be customer or prospect about you know the technology and whether you know, is it something really? 

Because we are trying, at the end of the day, you know, to either offer something which let their life be better or maybe reduce a pain. So all startups, like they, are all about that, even if it's entertainment, by the way, you are trying to make their guys' lives you know more, you know like happy. So you need to see, like, the degree you need to measure and ask them okay, do you really want this or is it good to have? So I think this is a good hack that I used to and I still ask and I still, you know, always use it and it works because when you ask it in a question format, you know the prospect or you to be customer or existing customer will think one moment okay, really, you know, maybe really I don't need this feature. It's like something just fancy on the product or whatever. 

0:18:23 - Joseph
Now, yeah, go ahead. We had one customer ask for if we can integrate an air conditioning system into one of our helmets. So you know it's a bit wild, but you know you get these customers asking for things that you can't achieve or wouldn't even be, you know, interesting to have. So you have to filter them down and decide what goes in the product. Yeah, 100%. 

0:18:59 - Mehmet
Now I want to ask you, joseph, about you know some key leadership principles, especially like for someone who's going to be a city of a company, about helping driving innovation, like how important is to put this culture of innovation and foster this culture. Can you provide you know your opinion on this and some you know examples from what you have done with Foresight? 

0:19:27 - Joseph
Yeah. So I would say there, it's not. It's not principles, it's more of personality traits, and something that I keep like to keep focusing on is emotional intelligence, which is, you know, everybody out there is trying to focus on IQ Right, how smart you are, how good with numbers you are and sometimes they neglect to focus on EQ, which is, you know, having empathy, having this passion for your product, having maturity. I guess, in all of the companies that I've worked in or been a part of, founders not specifically founders, but people in leadership roles they tend to forget looking at things from two perspectives. Right, it's not from the business perspective, it's also from the employee perspective. 

And I guess in one of the events, somebody asked about a question and they focused on how all these big tech companies talk about families and I say families in double quotes because they reference their employees as families but then you look at the news and you see thousands and thousands of people getting laid off and you think, okay, why are you calling them family? When you turn around and as soon as your bottom line is at risk, you start laying off these people, and it's such a sad thing in the tech world because it affected so many people. I was looking at some articles saying 86,000 employees lost their jobs because of these tech companies. I understand, you know it's business at the end of the day. 

But, at the same time, just why label them as your family when you wanna turn around and lay them off? And something that I guess sorry, I'm cutting you off there, Mehmet, no, no, no, yeah. So something that I think we managed to do well in Forsyth is focus on our team as much as focusing on VCs and customers. Right, so it's a three pillar approach. You have your VCs on one side, which is you know where the money is coming from. You have your customers, which you need to make happy, but you also have your employees, which you need to take care of, Because if you can't take care of your employees, your employees can't take care of you. So I guess my one advice, regardless of what business you're in, focus on all of them at the same time. Don't neglect any side of your business, because it might come back and bite you in the ass. 

0:23:10 - Mehmet
Yeah, joseph, just out of curiosity, forsyth were backed by VCs, or was it like a bootstrap business? 

0:23:21 - Joseph
No, it's actually backed by VCs well, multiple VCs. 

0:23:25 - Mehmet
Okay, okay Now, just on the topic you mentioned and you saw me get excited where you were talking because I can now I can write, I'm not exaggerating, but I can write maybe not one book, I can write books about this and it touched me emotionally because I had a lot of friends working for companies, tech companies, and they were let off and I liked when you said don't call them family. And, honestly speaking, one of the things that I wanted to do different in this podcast is it's not like just to point on them and say you are guys all together, fake or all wrong, but really I could not anymore accept seeing these posts and I know maybe if someone is watching or listening, maybe some guys will be pissed off of me. That's fine, I accept that. But what I don't like, or I feel it like, it's like a theater or a cinema, whatever you want to call it, when everything is okay, we see these guys, the same guys, taking photos. I work for X hashtag. X is the best company in the world, best technology. I have no doubt you have the good technology, and then the day comes right and then you know what you discover that you were, that you know as a one famous guy, james Well, justin Well, she meant he's very active on LinkedIn. 

He pointed out you are in a cell in an Excel sheet because when things start to go bad and as you said, it's business 100%. But yeah, don't call them family. I'm 100% with you, joseph, on this. Not only that, and you guys, you know, maybe one day I will go back to corporate work. I don't know, no one can predict his future. But if even I come back to corporate world, one thing no, the company is not my family. It's a place where I'm offering my service. I'm offering, I'm selling my time to offer my service to them. This is the way how I see it, because I had a lot of friends who lost their jobs. I had a lot of friends who became in depression and what's happened, and they are still doing it, because at the time of pandemic and sorry, joseph, it should be about you, not about me, but you know, you know you know, of course I agree 100%, yeah, yeah. 

And one thing that and this is the last thing I want to mention, because someone during you know the pandemic when, all you know, like some companies, they saw very high growth, they started to hire these people without doing any planning, and then what they call it a depression, you know, a recession, sorry, which is no one even sure is it a recession or not. 

Predictably, and just not to be in trouble, let's lay off these people. Okay, Again, without planning. So this is where you know, I have to stand and I have to say, with all your respect to the CEOs, the founders, to the executives, to the chief of staff in these companies guys, you need to be more, I would say better at planning, because and you know you don't, and you don't need to write these, you know, you know, I'm very sorry like we consider them part of the family. No, you don't consider them part of the family, you, they are just for you a number and as. 

Joseph said don't. Don't do it, and this is for for founders guys, if you like, don't put big I would say big goals for yourself if it's going to hurt people. What I mean? If you want to do IPO, but in order to do the IPO you have to fire people and you, you know you need to put these things in the future. Don't do it, because people will not work for you anymore. Sorry, joseph like I took this but I needed to highlight this. 

0:27:42 - Joseph
I wanted to add to that, though I don't know if you saw a post that I had, I think it was last week. 

So something that that also pissed me off was it's not just the fact that you know, they they specify, or they they mentioned family when they're talking about their employees. It's the fact that I think, what was it? Facebook fired about 6, 20,000 or 22,000 employees and then last week I saw somebody posting on LinkedIn saying and that person works in in Meta, talking about the year on year growth of 11% this quarter, just by, you know, focusing on their ads, ad content on Meta and I was like you guys are are boasting about your year on year growth after you've laid off 22,000 people. How does that look, you know when, when you you've been part of that layoff and you look at that and think, well, I just lost my job, I've been out of you know, out of a job for six months and now Meta is talking about year on year growth of 11%. You know, that's something that also pissed me off and I couldn't. I couldn't hold it, so I had to, I had to make a post about it. 

0:29:14 - Mehmet
No for me, Joseph, like what I can say about myself, I cannot accept, I cannot see something which is not in, in in line with justice, especially for companies that they claim you know like they are human, you know they are like, you know they consider everyone as part of the family. 

Yeah. So yeah, it's not like to shame them or it's not like to directly criticize, but honestly, like I got very annoyed by first hearing these news and second, I'm telling you know, like I'm maybe some of my friends know they think like kind of my rebel. And I'm telling them it's not like about being a rebel, it's about, like you understanding that when you are working for a company, this company might lay you off any time. It might not, but you have to put this into mind and you need to understand, especially if it's a company backed by VCs and as well you were mentioned. 

This is why I asked you, joseph, like VCs, they need money and then they will put their pressure on the founders and the founders will have to put pressure on their sales teams and then their sales team will put pressure on you as an employee. And it's like an endless loop of pressure and stress. And you see people, you know, like getting mental health issues. Do you see people under stress all the time? For what? Guys? For what? Because a couple of VCs. They are not happy with the performance. 

0:30:46 - Joseph
Anyway, like it was a good yeah, it was. 

0:30:51 - Mehmet
It was a good. You know like I felt I you know also like yes, yes. 

0:31:01 - Joseph
Now let's shift gears. 

0:31:02 - Mehmet
Yeah, let's shift gears, like with Joseph like and talk about your own consulting company and you know you're tailored. You are offering what's called virtual CTO services to suit different startups? 

0:31:13 - Joseph
Yeah, I think it's. You know they've labeled it so many in so many ways. You've got fractional CTO, you've got virtual CTO, you've got CTO as a service. So I didn't know what to choose, so I went with the first option available, which is a virtual CTO. But it's actually it's not a it's, it's one of the services that I'm providing. It's not the main service, but it's something to to kind of cater to all of the tech startups or the startups that are, you know, launching a product. 

And the thing is I'm sorry, I can't do it. I can't just get involved in the tech, I get involved in everything. So every company that brings me in, you know, I end up advising them on sales, end up advising them on marketing, even though it's not my area of expertise. But and I and I make sure that they understand that I tell them based on my Experience. This is what I've seen in the market and this is what I've seen work and not work, yeah. So it's very difficult to For me, it's very difficult to separate myself from the, from the product and from that customer when I'm talking to them, right, because it's not about getting paid and then going home and you know, whatever happens happens. 

For me, it's more about the partnership, in the sense that I'd like to see them succeed, because Then I can I can, you know feel Better about myself. I can sleep better at night knowing that I've helped somebody. If I get paid for it, great. If I don't get paid for it Sometimes I do it for free just because I have this, you know, passion for the product and what this company is doing, that's great. I think, joseph, I think we are seeing more of this. 

0:33:15 - Mehmet
By the way, like having you know a fractional, not only CTOs. I Started the fractional, every section of them, yeah. Do you think there's a reason for that, and is it related to what we were discussing just couple of minutes back? 

0:33:32 - Joseph
I? I don't actually know. You know, I thought about it, but I think it's more about how More startups are trying to bootstrap their business instead of relying heavily on ECs, like you said. So you know, bootstrapping a business is not an easy thing. Like you have to have a high risk tolerance and a somehow Bit of a deep pocket to be able to, you know, launch a business and believe in your business enough to invest your own money into it. And the root, you know, the reason more fractional C level is is popping up, is because then they can hire you for a small period of time, you know, benefit from your experience and whatever you can bring to the business, and then turn that tap off whenever you know Cash is tight. 

Yeah, yeah and I think that's. It's a good thing because you know more companies can, can use C level employees with large experience without having to, you know, hire them for a year or two years or, you know, a long period of time. 

0:34:57 - Mehmet
That's true, and this is exactly the same feedback and actually it's a win-win for both the reaction, I would say, or for both Stakeholders, because for startup founders, they don't have to put a lot of, maybe salaries and maybe give some, you know, some shares and some equity maybe to to these co-founders exactly, and On the other side. 

It gives people and, by the way, I do the same, joseph, as well so it gives us like an opportunity to be working with multiple technologies at the same time, multiple startups at the same time, which is like a nice experience, like you know. Like now it's good to be on the kind of a consultant when you help them in, you become their CMO as a service, your CTO as a service, or CRO as a service, as chief revenue officer. So all this I think it's a win-win situation. 

But, as usual, I'm not saying this will be mainstream because you know what no one can predict the the future and Pandemic, as you mentioned at the beginning like was the the first, the main thing that let us know not everything can be predictable, but it's a mainstream and I believe it has to do also With all these people who were led off and they know they can offer their services. So maybe, if it's also like igniting, I would say this now yeah, joseph, like services do you provide. 

So so for me it's like a virtual or fractional CTO Okay so I'm yeah, so I don't call it fractional, you know, I call it like co-founder, as a service, like and because you know I I have I have experienced in both business and tech. So it's whether they want to build an MVP. So I don't build the MVP myself, but can I advise them. You know which route they can go if they want to go and Expending a new market. So maybe they are in Europe and they want to start in the Middle East, so they don't know anything about the market. So this is where I can advise these startups. There will be mainly like, not startups anymore, maybe they start to become a scale up, then they are looking for new markets to to join. So, yeah, I put them, you know, like go-to-market strategies, like the distribution Channel and all these details. 

So yeah, so this is yeah, I don't I. 

0:37:16 - Joseph
Thank you for asking. I know All of the information I'm Discussing with you is now. You know you're gonna take it and use it as your own. Is that is that how it is, because you know both competing towards the same customers. 

0:37:34 - Mehmet
No, no, not necessarily. 

0:37:38 - Joseph
Are you sure? Yeah, yeah, just making sure yeah, I don't, I'd. 

0:37:44 - Mehmet
Oh okay, so this is good to mention. So, when it comes to the CTO and service, I go for the local startups. I, you know, the only the only place where I go, and I have geographically, you know, set up myself in Middle East, north Africa region, so this is where I play. So I'm not after your clients, joseph, don't worry. 

0:38:04 - Joseph
No, I don't actually believe that there's competition. 

0:38:08 - Mehmet
I mean, you know it's a big market, everybody gets their own chair and if, if you know, we can benefit from each other's knowledge and experience, that everybody, it's a win-win situation 100% and, joseph, because you're working with multiple companies now and multiple startups, like it's like maybe a traditional question, but again, I'm, you know, interested to see what are, some of you know, the Upcoming innovative technologies that you, you think it will be, can become the next trend or can't become, become the next high. Like, what are you seeing in that space? 

0:38:51 - Joseph
Wow, okay, that's. That's a difficult question to answer. You know, I would say that the default one would be AI, any any. Now it's so funny that you know, we're like being in this industry for so long you kind of start to see the pattern just happen. It was, first of all, it was, let's say, in in the early 90s or the early 2000s. It was Websites with flash or action script, then it was called cloud. You know, back then it was just website back and front-end text, the full stack. Now it's called cloud. 

Then you see the emergence of Smart technology, which is, you know, connected devices or connected Internet of things. And now I think the latest hype, or the latest rage, is AI. So you see so many tech startups, you know, having products that have nothing to do with AI, but then they put the AI label, you know, at the beginning of the name and it's like VCs Is coming poor money into it. Do you guys have AI? No, okay, why did you put AI In the name? Oh, because you know VCs can then give us more money. So it's you know, I think AI has a lot of potential. It's the way that it's being used is is amazing and I would say it's not a hype in the sense that it's at the beginning of the hype, but there's so many things that you can do with it and it's only getting started. So, hopefully, I think we would probably, and I'm guessing we started seeing, you know, ai on the edge, ai in devices, ai in the cloud. 

You know everybody wants to include artificial intelligence or LLMs in their technology, so I would say that's one of them. Anything else that comes to mind? Yeah, I think I think that's the latest range now and Web3, I guess. But Web3, I never actually or from that's. That's a personal perspective. I guess I never saw it materializing into something that could be, you know, like like a trend setting. I saw it as maybe like a novel way of doing things, but it's not that, you know, it's not like a new technology to be used, even though it is, but it's not. I don't know if that makes sense. 

0:42:00 - Mehmet
Yeah, 100% yeah. 

0:42:06 - Joseph
And also blockchain. I guess was was piping up but never achieved anything important, unfortunately, except. I think cryptocurrency and Bitcoin. 

0:42:19 - Mehmet
I think this is exactly why nothing happened because people started to tie blockchain to cryptocurrency, and I think this is where they, you know, in my opinion, the biggest challenge for the technology is people. They start to think that anytime the world blockchain is included in a product or circuit. Yes, oh my God. They would say that means it's a cryptocurrency and you know it will not be good to do it, blah, blah, blah, blah. 

0:42:54 - Joseph
So, which is not the case, but anyway yeah, but I agree with you on the other ones. 

0:43:01 - Mehmet
I will agree with you on the other ones, joseph, and I think there will be kind of blending between technologies, sometimes so mixing AI with something else to take it to another level. I can see this, joseph, like you've been like same. I think we shared the same thing. We've been in the market for a long time, so how do you keep yourself updated with all the new trends? And you know the news and technologies Well what's your? Secret sauce. Let's say Secret sauce. 

0:43:37 - Joseph
Well, I sleep very little, yeah, so I wake up at five o'clock in the morning. 

I work out about an hour and hour and a half. While working out I read, you know. Basically, I think if you're involved in technology you need to read a lot and process a lot of information. And I guess one of the reasons I joined the tech industry and computers back then it wasn't tech, it was, you know, computer science from my perspective is because it was my passion, since, you know, I can remember, and some, some people you know, join it because they, you know, wanted to find sorry, sorry about the background noise. 

Yeah, the reason I joined computer science was because I had passion for it and I wanted to get involved in that side of the business or that side of technology, and the way I keep myself updated is get my hands dirty. You know this term hands on, hands off. I'm very hands on everything that I was a part of. I built, or I started building in the beginning and then handed off work to somebody else. It wasn't, it's not a theoretical thing for me, it's more of you know, actually working and implementing something myself. And, yeah, I subscribed to so many news outlets. I read a lot of tech summaries, tech documentaries, tech documents and something that I like to keep saying. It's a saying for me if you're not up to date, you're out of date. So, yeah, that's how it is for me. Great. 

0:45:57 - Mehmet
Yeah, I can say more or less we, you know, this is also my way of getting updates. So recently I started even to try to leverage AI because I was subscribing to a lot of feeds. So now I you know, I can give some of these feeds and ask AI to summarize them to me. So, instead of me going all of them because you know, with with the start of the podcast, so I need to prepare, I need to so, but I need to keep up to date also as well about what's happening around me so I start to leverage. 

0:46:32 - Joseph
AI, yeah, I was. I was reading your last post. What was it? 11 podcasts in one week. How did you manage that? 

0:46:47 - Mehmet
Yeah, I can say hopefully, yeah, I get that, at least, I get that least, I get that least. Like let's go like minimum six hours, I would say six to seven. That's the maximum. Yeah, and also I am, you know, the early birds club. So except on the weekend, I wake up 430. So because you know, I do also like kind of 45 that as you, but it's like a bike or a jogging. 

And then you know I would be doing. You know I would be reading a book and then I would be preparing for the podcast or releasing a podcast. 

Yeah so yeah, but. But. But you know, by by by noon time I'm done and I have the whole afternoon. So either I will be doing meetings with clients or you know like. You know, like people think that you know a lot of tasks you do, but believe me, you can achieve a lot. Maybe you are a night guy if someone is listening, I can understand you as well and you might be doing it in the opposite way. So you finish a lot of tasks and a lot of projects at night. So, yeah, 100%, joseph. Like as, as we coming to an end, I have a very famous question. Anything you wish I had asked you and how you would answer it. 

0:48:17 - Joseph
Wow, okay, um is should it? Should that be a philosophical question, or can it be anything? 

0:48:28 - Mehmet
It can be anything. 

0:48:38 - Joseph
I haven't thought of it, but I would say If I'm going to the Middle East anytime soon, and I would answer it by saying yes, oh good, yeah, yeah. 

0:48:54 - Mehmet
When we get, when we get, when we get to see you here in Dubai. 

0:48:58 - Joseph
Oh, I've been planning, yeah, I've been planning to come to Dubai for a while now, but you know, everybody keeps telling me, wait, wait until November, september, november, until the weather gets better. Is that true? Is it November? 

0:49:17 - Mehmet
You know, like of course now some people, it depends on how I would say, your body resistance to the weather conditions, right? So if you can handle in degrees Celsius, like for people who are listening from North America, if you can, if you can handle 40, 42 with a high humidity, like up to, I would say, sometimes 80, 90 percent, by the way that sounds harsh. 

Yeah, but you know what I hear from some people, especially you know Westerns, who have been living in Southeast Asia, and they tell me about the weather conditions. So it's not like more bad than they're like Singapore or or Malaysia or any other place in Southeast Asia. Yeah, it can become hot. Yeah, of course, like the weather is amazing between, I would say, mid October up to end of April. So from weather perspective, but from business perspective, you know the country is open for business I would say all the year. 

You know, like now it was July and you know, and I did some some, you know you know visits, and I was roaming around the city and I saw, you know, it's buzzing actually. So yeah, so, so yeah. That's that's good to hear, joseph, like you would be here. 

0:50:45 - Joseph
I thought about a question that you know, that I think maybe you should have asked, but didn't. 

Yeah, so there's. 

There's something that all startups or all businesses ask about and it's been a topic of discussion for a while, for me at least, is that they wonder, or they think that the cost of automating their business is high so they never invest, or never anyone to you know, look into it. 

And and then I've been asked this question so many times, like how much would it cost to automate our business? And they think, you know, it's a very big or very large investment. And my answer has always been the same and is and it's what is the cost of not automating your business? Right, because you know doing, doing, because startups don't have a lot of money to invest in hiring people, so they end up doing the work themselves, like business owners or founders, and they, they end up, you know, struggling to find time to have a work-life balance and eventually miss out on some of the things that they couldn't do because of the lack of time. And that's that's why I always say you know, think about what you could lose if you don't automate your business, and you'll find out the cost then, right 100%. 

0:52:29 - Mehmet
And thank you for bringing this, joseph, because, also, I'm maybe maybe you have seen this as well I'm very big fan of automating and, for me, anything that I repeat more than two times the first thing I start to think about how I can automate. 

Yeah, and I tell, I tell businesses, like guys, you know, you, you might be sitting on a gem because if you automate, you know these tasks and I'm talking here not about only startups, I'm talking even about small, medium businesses telling them guys like, if, if we automate, you know, like these three steps, um, you know this guy who's doing these repetitive tasks, he might be so talented that he can, for example, help you in your marketing instead of doing data entry just exactly per se. Or, for example, you know, like if, if you are losing your time on you know following up in spreadsheets who you should call next, like you could have automated all this and you don't need to be there. You can automate your calendar. You can automate your email complications. Of course, you need to be super vision and, by the way, this is not the AI. I'm not doing any hype and Joseph is not doing any hype, it's just automation. You can do a lot of automations over there. 

0:53:50 - Joseph
So I'm actually. It doesn't have to always be a custom made automation. It could be. You know you, using some kind of system that's online, you can subscribe to it, pay 10 bucks a month and get it done right 100%. If you don't look at your business and how repetitive tasks are wasting your time, then you never look into how you can automate these things and make your business faster. 

0:54:20 - Mehmet
Right, right, 100%, 100%, joseph, and this is one part of also like what I tried to convey to start our founders and to small medium businesses, and I start to see some traction because the concept, they know about it, but they needed guidance, and this is where people like yourself me comes into the picture so we can put a lot of effort into it. Joseph, where can people find more about you. 

0:54:48 - Joseph
First of all, I guess, the website, which is azarkonsultingcom. They can hit me up on LinkedIn. Just look me up, I'm the big guy with black t-shirt and, yeah, these are the easiest ways of finding me, I guess. 

0:55:10 - Mehmet
That's great. I think that I include all these links in the episode description, thank you. Thank you very much for being on the show today, and I hope what we discussed today. 

It will resonate with some of our audience and, as usual, this is how I end my episodes. Guys, if you're listening to us watching this, don't hesitate to Tell me your feedback. I'm always open to hear your feedback If you are interested to be a guest on the show as well. You have an inspiring story you want to tell us. It doesn't have to be always technology, but it should be related to startup and entrepreneurship. Don't be shy. Hit me with an email also as well, or on LinkedIn, and I would be more than happy to arrange it. I have guests from all around the world. I'm blessed by having this mix and also, as I said, keep the feedbacks coming. I'm enjoying reading them and, until we meet in the next episode, thank you very much. Bye-bye. 

Transcribed by https://hello.podium.page/?via=mehmet