#333 The Privacy Pro: Jamal Ahmed on Navigating Data Security, AI Challenges, and the Art of Storytelling

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Mehmet: Hello and welcome back to a new episode of the CTO show with Mehmet. Today I'm very pleased joining me Jamal Ahmed. Jamal, the way I love to introduce people is I keep it to themselves to introduce themselves. I have a theory no one can tell about [00:01:00] someone else better than themselves. So this is why I would say the floor is yours.

Mehmet: Of course I know like many people knows you, you are a very known figure in the field of data privacy, but again, I would leave it to you to introduce. Uh, yourself to us and tell us, uh, more about what you do.

Jamal: Thank you, Mehmet my might be the one that prove your theory wrong today, though. Um, so Hi everyone,

Jamal: Um, I'm privileged to be here. Uh, thank you very much Mo for having me. My name is Jamal Ahmed, and I'm, I do lots of things actually. So my first role is I'm the global privacy and ai, uh, expert at Kazient Privacy experts and at privacy experts. We work with. Medium and large size companies and enterprise and governments.

Jamal: And we really support them to build the reputation further, to support the trust and to make sure that they make a bigger impact by making sure they get one of the things that they need to get right when it comes to data, privacy and protection, I'm also the founder of the Privacy Pros Academy and started that into [00:02:00] 2021 and the reason I started that is because I have this vision.

Jamal: I want to create a world where every woman, every man and every child enjoys freedom over their personal information. And I realized that it doesn't matter what I do with the consultancy. I, it's just a drop in the ocean if that, um, but what I can do to achieve that goal is if I can create a community of world class privacy professionals around me, if I can empower them to be world class, uh, and get enough people in our community so that we have somebody in every company, every government organization, every public organization around the world, then eventually at some point we will achieve our dream of making sure that every woman, every man and every child has freedom over their personal information.

Jamal: So I started the privacy pros Academy, and that's where I help people to get the practical skills, the knowledge and the know how they need to really have a thriving privacy career. I'm also the founder of the privacy pros podcast, number one data privacy podcast. It goes out to 137 countries now in the world and [00:03:00] I'm looking forward to having more of you join us there.

Jamal: So that's what I do professionally in terms of achievements. Um, you can see this book behind me. I'm the international bestselling author of the easy peasy guide to GDPR number one in India, number one in Canada and number one in the UK. Um, bestsellers list for eight months now since release. So I'll handle that.

Jamal: I'm very grateful for that. And as you can see behind me, I've won multiple awards, fellow of information privacy. Um, I was awarded best business awards. Um, I've also been awarded the freedom of the city of London by the city of London in recognition of the, um, authorship and of the actual contribution I've made.

Jamal: to the city of London when it comes to helping their phones protect data privacy. So lots of fun stuff going on there. Um, lots of achievements, also accolades and awards. And I'm very grateful to God first and foremost for all of those. But it just shows that when you put the effort, you can achieve whatever you want.

Jamal: Like when you look at my background, there's nothing amazing. There's nothing that stands out. In fact, I probably [00:04:00] shouldn't be where I am right now. But If you put the effort in, if you figure out what the 80 twenties of anything, then you can get better results like me because you've got better achievements.

Jamal: I mean, you stand and you start somewhere where I couldn't start. And I had to find my way there to begin with. So that's me. I don't know how I did, but you can tell me.

Mehmet: Wow, you did fantastic, Jamal. You shouldn't said like, you would prove me wrong. You proved me right once again, I would say. Of course, there are multiple, I would say, perspective I would love to discuss with you today.

Mehmet: But let's start, uh, you know, from, from your main area of expertise, which is like data privacy. Um, so people, you know, sometimes they know that this, you know, Issue of privacy exists, you know whether on the personal side on the business side But let's focus on the business side today, of course Um, so given your experience with various various sized organizations.

Mehmet: What do you think that the biggest challenges? [00:05:00] Um, you know, these organizations they face regarding data privacy compliance today,

Jamal: the biggest challenge beyond any doubt is the fact that the cultural awareness of the cultural buy in for privacy isn't there. The CEO, the CTO, the chief privacy officer, whoever you want, can care as much as they want about privacy, but unless you empower and you educate and you get every single person in your team, your organization across every single country that you're operating in, to also understand why this is important and why this matters.

Jamal: You're always going to struggle and you're going to be up against it. So I think in my experience, what I found is the number one biggest challenge is making sure that the culture is there. And if the culture is not there, then actually educating and empowering people and making them understand why this is important and what things they should be thinking about when they're dealing with people's information is probably the key, um, to getting things right.

Mehmet: 100 percent on that Jamal, like I have some experience in [00:06:00] cyber security and of course privacy comes in total cyber security and indeed, but now one thing that we know is, you know, these privacy regulations, they can change very fast, right? So how do you advise usually companies to stay ahead of the curve, you know, and ensure like.

Mehmet: Okay. You know, they, they, they always following these regulations, like sometimes I speak with people, they tell me, but you know, like, it's very hard. Like they, they change the rules always, all the time. Is there any ticks or techniques I would say they can, you know, implement so they can stay, can stay ahead of the curve?

Mehmet: That's a,

Jamal: that's a great question. Um, and it's also a challenge that I hear a lot, especially on LinkedIn and people that networking events and industry events is, oh, but always changing and new laws are coming in, like, especially if you're a multinational company, can you imagine being a multinational company, you've got the GDPR in Europe, in America, you've got different states coming up with different things.

Jamal: And then in the Middle East, now we have the PDPL as well. Uh, India's got their [00:07:00] own laws, Africa's bringing laws. I think just yesterday, Ethiopia, um, had the vote on their new data. protection laws, which has just got passed as well. So yes, it's a rapidly evolving sector. Everything is changing all the time, but it's only mediocre.

Jamal: A previous professional with mediocre programs that have a challenge of actually confronting change. If you have a world class privacy program, what you will do is you will map everything to the highest requirements. OECD guidelines, right? Go back to the OECD guidelines, map that, and then build your privacy program based on those principles.

Jamal: Now, if you build a privacy program based on those principles, 80 to 90 percent of every single requirement that comes out in every data privacy law, you'll already be compliant with it. There might be some tweaks that you need to make. So, for example, let's say, um, the OECD guidelines, they talk about the need for transparency.

Jamal: So, we know that if we have privacy notice that covers, um, Where you collect information from, who you share it with, what you do with it, how long you store, what rights are, [00:08:00] blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Then that's gonna be compliant. And every other privacy law that comes in pretty much asks you to do the same thing.

Jamal: The only challenges I've found is if I'm dealing with the jurisdiction of Australia, there's one other thing that we need to add. And if we're dealing with California residents, and obviously we need to have that do not sell. What do you know? Share my information button as well. But if you build a world class privacy program and you identify all of the different jurisdictions, a lot of different requirements and you map it all back to the most stringent requirements.

Jamal: And for me, that's the OECD guidelines and you're based on those principles. And it doesn't matter what happens, what changes your program is going to be fit for purpose. You just have to make one or two slight tweaks. You won't lose any sleep over it. There's nothing to stress about, but you have to be a world class privacy professional and you've got to think big picture from the beginning.

Jamal: And I think that's where the challenge lies is most people. They don't go and find the right mentors. They don't have the right people in their networks And they just rely on what they know and what people around them know which [00:09:00] might not be The best practice when it comes to global programs or even programs that are multi jurisdiction

Mehmet: Absolutely jamal now.

Mehmet: I know that you interact with some clients here in uh uae um So you mentioned that there are some cultural issues and, you know, these can be some, you know, present some challenges, but at the same time, the region is changing very fast, especially the UAE. So what do you think the key steps and here we talk about both, like even maybe startups up to the enterprise level.

Mehmet: Companies, uh, so how they, they, they can ensure also they, they, they are like compliant on the local and international level at the same time, like from, from data protection standard perspective.

Jamal: That's a very good question, because when you come to Dubai, you see how multicultural, how diverse it is. And one of the things that you'll see is there's lots of people there [00:10:00] from Europe.

Jamal: Now, if you're dealing with data from European residents, um, whether they're there for a short time of the day, they're on holiday, then you might find that you're also in scope of the GDPR. And that means it's Europeans can actually exercise those rights, but they have certain expectations about what you will do as a company in the Middle East with their information, which they're used to.

Jamal: Um, for the rest of their lives. So the challenge comes is okay on in Europe. They see privacy as a basic human, right? They've had the data protection Um laws around for a long time now So they're very mature and then when you come to somebody like dubai and you see the workforce Um, a lot of the work force is actually for from countries like India from countries like the Philippines, where they haven't had this level of maturity with the data protection laws at home.

Jamal: And now you're bringing them into a region where there is an existing data protection laws. It can be challenging. The other thing is when we spoke to people in the in the Middle East. One of the things they said is, look, we believe that we are being monitored most [00:11:00] of the time by our governments. Anyway, it's just the way things are here.

Jamal: And so if we was to invest in our privacy or our security or our privacy, let's say we're more likely to spend money building a tall fence than we are about what's happening technology wise or with our phones, for example, because we know all of those things are being observed. So you've got to have kind of appreciate all of the different challenges and different mindsets that people have and where they come from and what's important to them or what they perceive.

Jamal: To be important to them, but that doesn't mean that we forget about the people that we're trying to deal with. We forget what people are trying to say, because it's also research that's sold. If you're, especially if you're a startup, that people now value their privacy more than most other things. In fact, data is the most valuable commodity at the moment.

Jamal: If data is the most valuable commodity, that means privacy is the most valuable currency that we have right now. And what you need to think about is, What's the currency that you're trading with? And how much of the privacy currency do you actually have in your wallet? [00:12:00] If you don't have enough of that privacy currency, it's time to take a look and say, what are the things that I can do to make sure that when people are interacting with me, they understand that we take their privacy seriously.

Jamal: But don't take my word for it. Go and look at companies that spend Billions of pounds on researching what matters to individuals like Apple, like Amazon and see why are they taking out advertising space? Why are they buying spaces and advertising the message that they care about your privacy? How are they selling so many cell phones without talking about the features of the phone, without talking about the value, without talking about the battery life, but just saying we care about your privacy.

Jamal: And when you go and you do your research and you realize, hang on a minute, There's so much to gain. We can actually get a competitive advantage by looking at these things. It becomes amazing, um, what you can actually achieve just by showing to your customers that you care so that they have more of a reason to trust you over your competition.[00:13:00]

Mehmet: Now you mentioned, you know, the example of Apple and of course, you know, I've seen a lot of ads, you know, about, um, companies that they tell their audience that you should care also about privacy for many reasons. But. If you want to think about it from, I would say a little bit business perspective, do you agree with me Jamal that when me as a company, whether I'm a startup and let's say startup, right?

Mehmet: And I like to focus on startup because, uh, young entrepreneurs, sometimes they are in rush to do many things. So they forget, forget about some important stuff, um, protecting privacy. And I want to hear your opinion on this. To me, if a company is trying its best to protect my identity from being leaked into the hands of the wrong guys, that means they care about me.

Mehmet: So here, like I mean, data privacy and implementing data protection is not only for the sake of protecting the company itself, [00:14:00] it's actually A way to establish kind of a trustworthy relationship between them as a company and their Um, you know vast majority of the customers that they will be dealing with can I put it in this?

Mehmet: Perspective jamal. Do you agree with me on on that aspect?

Jamal: I I agree with you 100 percent I mean, that's essentially what it comes down to so look we're talking about the middle east here, right? Um, the the most dominant faith around the middle east is islam and if you look at You Data protection laws.

Jamal: The earliest data protection law you probably come across is the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, 1950s, and that came as a result of the atrocities that Europeans committed against other Europeans. Right. But if you go back 1400 years, more than 1400 years ago in the deserts of Saudi Arabia, and you go back to the beginning of the time of the Prophet, what you find is privacy was established.

Jamal: That's the first time we see privacy established. And actually, if you go into the Quran and you look at surah light, [00:15:00] you can see that's when privacy, physical privacy, all of those boundaries are established. And so we can see Islam gave us privacy. And so if Islam has given us privacy and is part of the fabric of society, what does that actually mean?

Jamal: It means that when someone trusts you with something, the amanah, you have a duty to look after it. So if they're trusting you with their personal information, they're their phone number, their email address, their medical history, their habits, their bad habits, whatever information they're trusting you with, you have a duty to keep that trust and honor that trust.

Jamal: And the moment you stop focusing on your responsibility to uphold that trust, that's the moment that you've actually violated their right to privacy and you've not held that trust. Now, the thing is, As a young startup business, the most important thing that you can figure out or the most important thing that you have is your reputation, right?

Jamal: Your staff will come and go. Your assets will come and go. You can create them. The one thing that you can't [00:16:00] control and the one thing that you work so hard for is your reputation. But if something happens where one of your employees And makes a mistake where you're working with a company and you haven't done your research and something happens when you share information with them That is going to ruin your reputation And that's something that you're going to work so hard to build and you can never ever do anything about it For example, if you look at british airways They had a massive data breach here in the UK, but guess what?

Jamal: It wasn't British Airways fault. It was one of the companies that they were working with. In fact, it was the baggage handling company. One of their employees had their password violated, but because British Airways didn't actually have segregation, once you're in their system, you have access to everything.

Jamal: They had responsibility to make sure that they damaged and mitigate against that limit. They hadn't, they hadn't thought about it. And you can see just by working with a company, another big company that they thought knew their stuff that they thought wouldn't cause them any problems has ruined their reputation and it's cost them billions.

Jamal: Um, in, well, it was undisclosed [00:17:00] what the settlement was, but we can see on the share prices, it affected them significantly. Now, obviously as a startup, you're not a listed company yet, but that's what you're trying to get to us. Who is going to want to invest their money and back a company that Who has a poor reputation, who the public don't trust, who stakeholders won't trust, investors are going to trust you.

Jamal: And at the same time, to get a startup off the ground and to really start scaling up, you need to have the best talent around you. Who's going to want to work for a company that's got a tight, tainted reputation? So it all comes down to the reputation that you have and what you're saying about the trust that's placing you.

Jamal: If someone can't trust you with their data, why should they trust you with their money?

Mehmet: 100%. You know, I can't agree more with you, Jamal. And again, uh, two things, you know, I can, from my humble experience share. So you mentioned something very important about what we call it in, in like the cybersecurity, uh, jargon, the supply chain effect.

Mehmet: So, because sometimes to, to the example you gave about British Airways. [00:18:00] So it's like, you know, when, when my father told me to drive, he said like, you should be, You know, taking care of yourself and taking care of the others because you need to assume that they might do mistake, not only you. So it's the same.

Mehmet: So it's the same thing, right? So when you drive on the road, of course, you should be 100 percent taking attention of your acts and you should take attention of other people's acts. So this is exactly applies, I think, in the privacy. And cybersecurity in general, because of course you might protect your data, whatever measurements you take to, to make sure the privacy is, is, is protected, but you need to take, take care and ensure that the partners you work with, they also do the same measures.

Mehmet: So, so this is a hundred percent, you know, I agree with you on this one. And regarding, you know, some people I used to discuss with them, they said, okay, so what we know that they hear us on, on, on the mobile phones. We know that they do this. I said, yes, see, like, that's fine. But I tried [00:19:00] Jamal always to give people an example.

Mehmet: I say, for example, for any reasons I'm dealing with a FinTech company, so I'm giving them my ID. So they have the, every single detail about me, they have my date of birth, they have everything. So someone, you know, if, Get this information. He might go and impersonate me. So this is this is the real challenge.

Mehmet: Actually, it's a problem. And this is why we have these very big penalties on companies that they don't comply with the privacy because they are All Putting high risk. So it's it's good that you shed the slide, Jamal, because it's not something small. And I've seen companies that they've vanished because they had some privacy issues.

Mehmet: Their data was leaked somewhere on the dark web, whatever. And, you know, they were out of business. So thank you for sharing that, Jamal, with us. Now, another topic, which is also top of mind, I would say, related to data privacy and data protection in general, is the rise of AI, of course. [00:20:00] And we start to see a lot of stories about, you know, how we can actually prevent data privacy issues when people start to interact with with these AI tools, whether it's a chat GPT or chat GPT or other tools from your perspective and with your experience, Jamal, how do you see the rise of AI impacting the way data is collected, stored and used?

Mehmet: What you can tell us about that?

Jamal: That's a great question, and um, there's so much, there's so many different areas and aspects to it, but last year I spoke um, at the International Data Protection Conference in Lithuania, and the topic I had to speak about was balancing AI and data privacy, and so when I was speaking about balancing AI and data privacy one of the things that became very clear is regardless of what I think, regardless of what anyone else thinks, AI is going to be the key.

Jamal: Changing the way we know and we do everything. So the question now is, let's accept that change is going to happen, but let's get excited [00:21:00] about how we can use AI to make our lives better, to improve our lifestyle, to detect an accident before it's about to happen, to detect a medical condition before it becomes a problem, to make your life much more smoother, to make doing anything much, much more easier to make things more cheaper for us to be able to get a hands on because we can automate processes and have a robot doing it instead of paying humans to do it.

Jamal: So there's so many benefits to come across it. But at the same time, as it's fascinating, it's also equally frightening when you look at the dark side and what people can do with that. Now, the specific question you asked me was about When it comes to actual data privacy and AI, what's happening there?

Jamal: And the way AI and machine learning works is you take, it sucks in all of this information, then it tries to look for patterns in that information, and then it tries to make predictions based on whatever prompt or whatever instruction that's been given. The challenge we have here is we have no idea what's happening with our personal information that's being [00:22:00] fed into these AI systems for the machine learning.

Jamal: We also have no idea where they're collecting this information from. And I don't know if you recall the interview with, um, open AI CTO, where she was squirming, she couldn't, if things were taking off things like YouTube and Facebook, she just wouldn't answer the question. How can you be the CTO of a company?

Jamal: That's producing all of this stuff and not know what information that you're collecting. And don't you think that people like me and you, we have a right to know, Hey, if I publish something on Facebook, is somebody going to come and script that? If I'm publishing something on LinkedIn, if I'm writing a blog, if I'm publishing an article, if I'm going to give an interview on this podcast, if I'm going to give an interview in a newspaper or a TV show.

Jamal: Is somebody going to take that and use it to train their AI system? And if they are, what are they actually training it to do? And how can I make sure that I'm comfortable with that and that I can trust them to do the right thing? Because it could be that they could be taking this information, um, of mine and yours, Mehmet, uh, right now [00:23:00] and feeding it to pretend to be us to go and do fake business with fake companies or convince them to do stuff using our authority and your reputation.

Jamal: Right. So there's so many different things that people can do. And, um, I think it was, I can't remember, remember, was it earlier this month or was it last month? Um, it was published that a company or a chief financial director was duped into handing over pounds because he thought he was having meetings with his company and they wanted him to make a payment outside the process.

Jamal: And that was in

Mehmet: Singapore, I believe.

Jamal: Yeah, yeah, they have all these fake Zoom meetings with AI, um, staff and all that. Yeah. So, I mean, it's crazy. What's possible?

Mehmet: Jamal, Jamal, you mentioned something, actually, this, this question I didn't prepare before, but you know, you, you triggered something in my mind. Do you think previous events that happened regarding data privacy, because you mentioned Facebook and you know, this is the, the interview with the OpenAI CTO and of [00:24:00] course everyone was saying, Oh my God.

Mehmet: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That cannot be true. That must be a deep fake of her talking to a journalist. But nevertheless, do you think that these guys, or maybe some other AI companies, they assume everyone remembers, I hope, what happened a couple of years back with the big scandal of Cambridge Analytica and, and Facebook, right?

Mehmet: So do you think like these AI companies, they assumed, okay, the data is already there. It's our right to go and, you know, do whatever we want with it. And that includes maybe, which is, here is a dangerous part, and this is why we always, and I'm sure like Jamal, you advise also people to do the same, don't put everything on, on, on the public social media, which is anything which you think that in, in the future might be a risk for you.

Mehmet: So, I think these guys, They assume because of previous event that they can do Whatever they want. Do you think that is a a logical, uh, maybe explanation to the way she she answered that question?

Jamal: Well, [00:25:00] I find the way she answered the question quite embarrassing Um, if I was working for a company or if she was one of my friends I would find that professionally very embarrassing like you're the cto you should know You should be able to give clarity on what's going on.

Jamal: If I was the CEO of the company, I'd be very annoyed that, Hey, people are not gonna trust us now. Like you haven't given clarity. If there's no clarity, there's no nothing we can do to trust you because we have no confidence in what you're saying and what you're doing. And even her body language, you could see it was like, oh, she didn't wanna answer.

Jamal: It's like she knew the question, but she didn't wanna answer because she was worried about the repercussions, but not answering, actually probably was worse. And saying, yeah, we do. Okay. Then people are going to have a problem with that. You actually do that. But saying, you know, neither confirming nor denying is just opening up more questions and getting people to attack you and the company more.

Jamal: So pushing that to one side, um, let's just assume she did the best with the knowledge and resources and the legally what she was allowed to say without getting in trouble, uh, at the time. Like I have no idea what's going on for her behind the scenes. So, um, I hope [00:26:00] she's okay. Um, the interview. Anyway, um, mammoth coming back to the question, what did you ask me is about

Mehmet: measures we can take, measure the measurements we can.

Jamal: Yeah. So one of the things you should, should we put everything out there? So I always say to people here in the UK, at least anyway, if I, if he was to be standing in Oxford Circus train station, um, you, you know, , you remember, I don't know when the last time you was here was, but if it was standing Oxford Circus and you was to hand information out to people on a piece of paper about yourself.

Jamal: What information would you include on that? If you wouldn't include information on that piece of paper that you're handing out to strangers that are working for us, then don't post that online. Because, like this, you can see who you're giving this information to, but online you don't know who's taking it.

Jamal: You don't know how long you're going to have it for, you don't know what they're going to do with it. So if you're not comfortable handing this information over to a stranger, Then you should not be comfortable publishing that online either.

Mehmet: Yeah. And I, I know like some companies, but there are a lot of debates, [00:27:00] honestly, Jamal, like, you know, one of the things that happened once ChatGPT went out, uh, everyone tried to say, Hey, like, don't share company information, um, with ChatGPT.

Mehmet: I told people, you know, I said, it's hard to monitor that because how do you know What information they are putting there, there is no easy mechanism to do it. Now, some other people, they started to say, okay, we cannot control the people. Let's try to control the AI companies. And now here, there's another debate that if we, and you know, like Europe is blamed that they are very strict, you know, this, uh, and here's the voices that started to appear here and there.

Mehmet: Oh, if you put a lot of regulations. You're going to kill creativity and you're going to like, um, you know, make AI development much slower. What's your take on that Jamal? Very interesting question.

Jamal: And there's so many different aspects that we can answer. We can answer from a philosophical point of view.

Jamal: We can answer from a legal point of view. We can also answer [00:28:00] from a very pragmatic and operational point of view. So let's start off with the operational point of view first. Operational point of view is if you have good data governance in place, if you have good classification, if you have good culture, And everyone will know what information they're dealing with, what the classification of that is and whether they can or can't do something with that information.

Jamal: That's, that's like hoping that everyone gets it and you have good data governance and good classification. And everyone understands that, which isn't always the case. Then you have the legal concerns. So yes, I think governments have a duty, they have a responsibility towards the citizens, towards society to protect them from the harms that could come about from innovation.

Jamal: I mean, we have laws in place when you go on the road, it's not like, hey, we're stifling innovation, we're stifling, um, how fast the cars can go or how innovative they can be. We have to balance that with safety. So governments have a responsibility and they need to make sure that they take care of those responsibilities to protect the citizens wellbeing for the greater good of society.

Jamal: So I [00:29:00] think it is appropriate to have stuff in place. I prefer when those laws are in is more like the GDPR. It's more, um, principle based. So it's very generic and tells you, So you can think about these in this way, rather than you must do this. You must do this. You can't do that. You can't do that. So I don't like prescriptive laws.

Jamal: I prefer the generic principles. As long as it's within this, then it's tolerable. If it goes beyond that, then we think it's not good for our citizens. So that's what I like, um, from a governmental legal point of view and from a philosophical point of view, look, there's good and bad people. That there's always going to be good and bad people.

Mehmet: Absolutely.

Jamal: You find people that it's AI is a tool. Right. AI is a tool. So if the tool gets into the hands of good people, they would amplify that with good energy, and you will see some amazing innovation, things that are going to, um, you know, really be life changing things that will help people's lives, uh, come into place.

Jamal: But at the same time, when those AI tools go into the hands of bad people, then the bad energy that they use to [00:30:00] amplify that is going to be horrible. So for example, um, if you look at money, money can be, it's a tool. It's neither good nor bad. It can be used for great things. Um, it can be used. Also for bad things, it can be used to fund genocides, guns, it can be used to liberate people, or it can be used to oppress and commit genocide at the same time.

Jamal: So these are the things that we need to think about is when you have tools, the tools are neither good nor bad, the energy that somebody amplifies into the tool, that's what we need to think about. What are we going to do? Are we just going to let human nature do that? Or are we going to say, as a government, we're going to step in and we're going to try to regulate that as much as possible to stop the people that have bad intentions and who are pure evil, um, to try and put some controls in place or some protections in place or some, um, deterrence in place to protect the good, honest, ordinary citizens of our countries.

Mehmet: Absolutely. And this is, you know, last year, especially when still they are, I mean, Yeah, I mean, I when I say I just to [00:31:00] clarify, I mean, chat GPT is there since 50 plus years. So just for the sake of the audience to understand. So when the debate start to heat up, you know, I was telling people the same thing, like if you think about the knife, the knife is a tool.

Mehmet: So you can, You know, cut the food with it. It makes it easy for you to eat. And you can, like, God forbid, go and kill someone with it. Right? So, so these tools and, you know, I try always to show the positive side of the tool. So this is why I was lucky enough to have a lot of guests who did fantastic things with AI.

Mehmet: Just like a couple of months back, I had a guest from the UK, Dev, who's doing the AI in education, which is fantastic tool. The idea is to bring teacher to every single place on earth. Uh, I had Dr. Harvey, the, you know, two weeks ago. And again, he's trying to bring doctor to every patient across the globe, which is fantastic.

Mehmet: So, you know, of course we have the privacy issues to your point here, where the [00:32:00] regulations, the government, you know, should step in and make sure that we are not using these tools in the wrong direction. Now, Jamal, I want to shift gear a little bit because this is a topic close to my heart, honestly. It took me years to understand how important it is, which is storytelling.

Mehmet: And I know like you have built a brand, um, you know, around the data privacy actually, and you use this approach to, you describe it as easy peasy, right? Uh, I'm interested to know, you know, how, how do you, storytelling play their role in developing your personal brand and making such a complex topic like all the things we were talking about easy and accessible to your audience.

Mehmet: What's the secret source here? What is the

Jamal: secret source here? That's a really good question. Um, so for me, when I want, when I do something, I want to make sure that it's effective. And if clients are paying me to do something, if people are coming and they're training, then I want to make sure that they [00:33:00] leave with something tangible, but something that stays with them beyond just that session, beyond that week.

Jamal: I want it to have a lasting impression of them. And what I found was the more you tell people stuff, the less the retention period is. But the more you bake that stuff in, in a way that they remember it, They're more likely to remember that for years to come, and some of the things my students say is, Hey, I just passed my exam.

Jamal: It was great. You know what? I was sitting there and I could hear all of the stories that you're telling us about how to answer the question, all of those things. So what we need to understand is people are emotional beings. Right. Um, so logic. Yes, there is a logical side of things, but emotion and those emotional triggers actually drive us because we're emotive beings.

Jamal: It's the emotional pull that we have to make decisions and we'll just justify it with the logic. So if we want people to have deep, meaningful shifts, belief shifts, if you want them to pay attention to what we're talking about, if we want to make a lasting impact and we want to persuade and influence and empower people, then we [00:34:00] need to go and tap in to the emotional side of the brain.

Jamal: How do we do that? Well, we can evoke those things by telling stories, because when you tell stories, people start imagining things, people start feeling things. And if you can breathe vitality into the things that you're doing, even if it's something as, uh, what could be dull or dry as cyber security and data privacy, you can add flair and vitality and breathe that fun and energy into it by telling stories.

Jamal: Remember. Facts tell stories sell and people are likely to remember those stories for years to come because they will associate some kind of feeling with the character or with the problem or with whatever's going in and it makes them, it makes it easier for them to recall those things when they have a situation and they have to either answer a question or they have to deal with the challenge.

Mehmet: Storytelling as I was telling you Jamal is something I learned the hard way and it was a wake up call when someone a couple of years back [00:35:00] asked me this, he asked me Do you remember your lessons in, in, in the class? I said, okay, barely. I remember, of course there are like the things that I use on daily basis.

Mehmet: Yeah. I remember that. And then he asked me, do you remember the cartoons that you were watching when you were, I said, yeah, of course. He said, do you know why? I said, I said, why? He said, because it was a story. Touching your emotions. It stayed in your head, even after all these years. While to your point, when you were going to your math class, they were giving you just facts without any rationale, right?

Mehmet: So, so we are just grabbing information. Probably you have used it, but there was no story behind it. He said this is why you would remember the cartoon, or maybe you would remember a song from your childhood, but you would not remember, um, You know, like your lessons from from school and college even so that's 100 percent and you know I learned Jamal and especially when I start to interact more with like tech leaders who they want [00:36:00] to You know grab the attention of their team They want to start like initially I said you should tell them in story way not not in a fact way Of course facts are important same.

Mehmet: I tell to the founders Tell me your story. Like, if you don't have a story, you might have the perfect product, but no one will understand what you're trying to do. So this is why it's very, very important. Now, another thing, Jamal, which is also attracted to My attention, uh, while preparing and you are like a Kind of someone who who joined multiple thing at the same time like it's a talent honestly Um, so I don't think you are also an nlp practitioner And the nlp is something very frankly if you ask me 10 years back I would say, no, what is an NLP?

Mehmet: But of course, when I start to read and I sit down, I find, you know, it's something important. So tell me, as I'm a practitioner of NLP, uh, how the power of reframing limiting belief, you know, uh, [00:37:00] can give us like, Completely new ways of thinking and if you can share like maybe a Anecdote or a story that can enlighten us about about the importance of NLP

Jamal: Wow, that's uh, that's a big question Um, so, you know, i'm very fortunate that I actually came across NLP when I was very very young And it's something that fascinated me and for those of you who don't know what NLP is NLP stands for Not natural language programming, but neuro linguistic programming, right?

Jamal: So what does neuro linguistic programming mean? So neuro is brain, linguistic is language, and programming is obviously how we do a pattern or how we run something. So it's how we use language to program our minds. And what most people don't understand is you just think the way you think is the way you think.

Jamal: Well, no. There's a program that you're running. There's a CD that's stuck in your mind and it's on loop. Like, why do you keep getting the same results? Why are you still running the same patterns? It's because you've got a CD in there that's on loop. And what we do with neural linguistic programming is we say, [00:38:00] Hey, you know what?

Jamal: You can actually take that CD out and you can put a CD in that's actually more appropriate to where you are in your life right now. That might help you get better results that might drive the kind of changes in your habits and your behaviors that you want to get the results that you need. And so neuro linguistic programming is all about how do I use language to change the results that I'm getting to think differently.

Jamal: And the truth is, when you look at my history, you see that my parents, they both are immigrants, um, uneducated. They came, um, without any education from their home countries to this country. And they did whatever they could. My mom was a homemaker. My dad was a worker. Uh, he was doing Very low paid jobs, manual labor jobs.

Jamal: So I'm not someone that had parents that guided me with education. And in fact, when you look at where I was born and where I grew up, you will see that I grew up in the heart of East London and I actually grew up in an estate called Ocean Estate. The estate was so bad that the [00:39:00] government was given 50, the 54 million pounds was given as a national lottery grant to demolish the estate and to build it back up again.

Jamal: Where I grew up. On my staircase would be junkies stealing, uh, junkies taking needles, um, at night, smoking heroin. My neighbors were getting raided by the police every other day. It was normal. Um, that was, that was the reality of my life. And the only thing I could see at the time Was the people that were successful were the people who were selling drugs or who were involved in other crime?

Jamal: Like that was my reality So had I not come across neural linguistic programming? I would have been a product of my environment and I should have been ended up in prison Most of the people I grew up with now, they're either in prison taking drugs or selling drugs, right? And it's very sad There's a few people that actually managed to break out of that But it was only because I found neural linguistic programming that I could actually think hang on a minute You I am limited myself to what I'm thinking is [00:40:00] possible for me based on my perceptions.

Jamal: But what if I could change my mind and ask more powerful questions? What if I could actually go to university? What if I could actually, um, be a world leader? What if I could actually help people? What if I could do these things, right? And listen to the choice of my language. I'm always asking, what if this?

Jamal: Most people. What we do or what we used to do or what you probably find you're doing is you have an idea you think of doing something you think, ah, but what if someone says this? What if that happens? You just stop. But the moment you change that what if to wouldn't it be great if the whole reframe changes and suddenly you get excited.

Jamal: Now Henry Ford. He actually said whether you believe you can or whether you believe you can't is always going to be right. And for those people in Dubai, I know you love accumulating wealth. There's a guy called Robert Kiyosaki and he wrote a book. I also came across Rich Dad Poor Dad and in Rich Dad Poor Dad he also talks about how we use language [00:41:00] and he talks about NLP without talking about NLP to condition how wealthy or how poor we become.

Jamal: And it all comes down to let's say you want to One person would say, I can't afford it. And the brain says, okay, you're right. You can't afford it. The other person would say, how can I afford it? And now the brain gets creative and innovative about how you can actually go and do those things. And based in Dubai, the center of innovation, you could have sat there and said, Hey, we can't do anything here because there is no vegetation.

Jamal: There is no water. There is nothing that you can do. They went and said, Well, forget about all that. We're going to say, how can we do these things? How can we make this possible? Wouldn't it be great if we could build this amazing city in the middle of nowhere and create this artificial Island and attract all of the richest people in the world to it.

Jamal: Somebody had to think that it's easy for 80 percent of people to explain why that wouldn't work and why it could be wrong. But NLP gives you the ability to scratch those poor patterns that you have. Get rid of the habits and become the person [00:42:00] that you need to become by asking yourself the right questions and using language powerfully in a way that's going to help you to get the results that you deserve.

Mehmet: You know, this is very, for me, and I hope it will, it will provoke, um, the audience to think about it this way, because this is the first step questioning is the first step to do this reprogramming. And this is actually what I did, because, you know, I was actually talking to someone before we, we start, uh, recording this podcast.

Mehmet: And I don't know why the topic came and I said, you know, I asked myself, should I stay behind a cubicle? You know, doing the thing that I'm doing for the rest of my life, or is it worth to go and try to see if there's a better opportunity. And I was sure that there's a better opportunity somewhere else.

Mehmet: And this is one of the main examples, like that it happened to me where I, because before I was saying, no, no, no, like things stay as the way they are. You know, we cannot change, you know, this, but when, [00:43:00] of course, reading books helped me a lot. So, uh, and of course the Rich Dad Poor Dad is one of the books that, of course, not because of the money concept itself, but the, you know, the, actually it's the art of free, the art of reframing, you know, like, of course, when he, he was mentioning, he didn't have two dads, of course he had one dad, but I mean, he tried to make and use that kind of storytelling in a very perfect way to.

Mehmet: Get the, you know, the message to us. So absolutely Jamal, Jamal, I really enjoyed, I really, you know, uh, love to, to talk more and more. And I think we got, they're going to be part two, part three of this series with you. But if today you want to leave a final message to fellow startup entrepreneurs and technology leaders, what would be the final thoughts and where people can find more about you?

Jamal: Yeah. So my final thoughts, I would say, listen. You can have, you can [00:44:00] do, you can be whatever it is that you can imagine yourself to be. That's all that's limiting you is how wide your imagination can be. And just take me as living proof. I have no right to be where I am. In fact, if you wrote a story and you base it on it, you'd lose all your bets about how my life trajectory has.

Jamal: But it's all because I imagined it and I believed and I allowed myself to ask myself the right questions. So I show up powerfully every day. And focus on the things that matter. So believe in yourself, have confidence and always ask yourself the right questions because the quality of your life, the outcome of your life is going to come down to the quality of the question that you ask yourself and your team.

Jamal: So ask powerful questions to connect with me. The best place to connect with me, I would say is on LinkedIn. Um, I'm sure Mehmet will. Put me into the show notes, but come on LinkedIn, connect with me. And if there is anything I can do to help you or your consultancy from a data privacy point of view, from a coaching point of view, then please feel free to get in touch and we can have a conversation and if it's just a coffee chat that you want to jump on my podcast and talk about how great your product is to my privacy videos, then let's do that.[00:45:00]

Mehmet: Sure, uh, I will make sure that of course this is I I do it all the time. I will put the Links in the show notes so you can find Jamal easily Jamal again one more time Uh, thank you for your very valuable insights today. I really appreciate Um, you know you you took the time to speak with me. Um, and I'm sure that the audience will benefit a lot, whether from data privacy perspective or whether, you know, the storytelling and, and, uh, uh, NLP perspective that, and the belief system that we talked about.

Mehmet: And this is for the audience. This is how usually I end my episodes. So if you just discovered this podcast and I am grateful that you are discovering it more and more by luck, thank you for passing by. If you like it, please subscribe and. Share it with your friend and colleague who are available on all podcasting platform And of course, we are available on youtube and if you are one of the loyal followers who keep coming keep sending me their suggestions and [00:46:00] Questions, please keep doing so I love to read all of them.

Mehmet: I'm always looking to enhance myself and enhance the podcast So, please keep your suggestion coming and if you are interested to be on the podcast, don't hesitate again to reach out to me You know how to find me also as well. Thank you very much for tuning in and we'll meet again very soon. Thank you Bye