RAISING KIDPRENEURS - SCALING THE NEXT GENERATION

Skillionaires Podcast Episode 17

Angela Soudi

[Angela Thomas]

Welcome to another episode of Skillionaires where stories take and strategies scale. And today I have a very outstanding guest. I'm really looking forward to have this interview.

Today's guest is an entrepreneur, educator and an impact driver leader who has dedicated her work to empowering the next generation. With more than two decades of international experience across sales, marketing and business development, Angela Zuri is the co-founder of Gladiators Juniors Kidspreneurs and leads this platform with big passion for educating the next generation in financial aspects and leadership skills. Welcome Angela Zuri to our podcast.

We've been waiting and trying this for ages and I'm so glad to have you here. Angela, how are you?

[Angela Soudi]

I'm amazing and thank you finally for closing me down for today. I'm super happy to be here. I was not letting you off the hook.

[Angela Thomas]

I know, good for you. Persistence pays off.

[Angela Soudi]

Yes, that is.

[Angela Thomas]

Angela, why I wanted to have you here in this podcast of the Skillionaires where stories take and strategies scale is because you are educating a lot of kids, right? You are in the environment of Gladiator. I was on the summit and recognizing all of the work that is behind of this summit with your husband, Daorish Sodhi, and I recognized what deepness your work has because we always look at people that are basically scaling their business or have been scaling their business, but you look into the next generation that's much farther and with so much depth.

I adore this so much. So let me a little bit pick your brain. I can only guess that it comes from your own journey with your own kids to have such a big dedication towards the youth of society basically, but also from your personal perspective.

But I would like to pick your brain. Why are you doing this and build a platform for so many, not only your own children? Okay, wow, big question.

Thank you.

[Angela Soudi]

Yeah, it's funny because when I look at my whole career and my life, I actually started my career with kids. I trained after leaving education. I was a dancer and I danced from being the age of six right through to 16.

And at 16, I just didn't know what I wanted to do with my life apart from my passion, which was dance. So I trained as a teacher and I was the youngest certified ballroom dance teacher in the UK at that time. And then I was teaching for a few years with the children and I really, I loved seeing kids live through their passion.

I saw something that when they're doing something that they truly love and enjoy, it lights them up in a way that nothing else does. Academics or even time with friends doesn't have the same effect as when they're living with something that is truly meaningful for them. So fast forward a few years and my career has developed.

I got into sales and then I was in orthopedics for many years in the corporate world. I left teaching and when we moved to Dubai and we started running our own businesses, the Gladiator Summit events started as much smaller than the events that you see today. So we started these events, well, the first one that we did was called eight till late and it was from eight in the morning until 2am.

And it was really, my husband was delivering the majority of the content and it was basically all the skills that we'd learned and all the mistakes that we've made through our business journey and how to not make the same mistakes that we had. And then that workshop developed into Gladiator Mastery and then we rebranded into the Summit. So that's sort of taken on its own journey of education and knowledge and giving back and inspiration and the groups have grown and, you know, today you've seen the size of the that we have.

And through that journey, lots of parents came to us and said, you know, we're learning all these skills in the Summit from all these amazing speakers about sales and negotiation and mindset, meditation, manifestation. Why are we not learning these things at school? Why do we leave school at 18 and we have no idea how to manage our money?

We have no idea how to manage our mindset. We're lost in this world. We don't know how to fit in.

We're not even living our purpose because we've been so channeled into academics and education. But actually nobody asked me, what is it that I love to do? Exactly, yeah.

So really we started the first workshop for kids of the children of the adults that came to the Summit, just as a one-off. You know, we'll just help your kids to learn the things that we're teaching you. That was a success.

It led to another and then another. And then the Junior Gladiators is sort of, that's taken on its own life. And now we're doing workshops in schools and we have a whole program and we have activity books for kids.

And it's interesting looking at where I came from because I started with children.

[Angela Thomas]

Exactly there.

[Angela Soudi]

And now I've gone back to children, which is a beautiful journey.

[Angela Thomas]

How beautiful, yeah, how beautiful. When it comes to entrepreneurship, and I myself 30 years entrepreneur since the age of 18. And my children were born.

And in my own relationships, I always had the lack of taking partners or the ones who could not attend the meeting or the event that I learned so much from. I could not take them along or bring them on to the same level. It was always very hard to mind transmit what I have gained as a knowledge because it's not only about knowledge.

It's about the energy that's in the room often in these events. And when it comes to self-development, it's so much about feeling and experience. And this is so hard to transmit.

And I think this is such a beautiful thing to have a platform and give this and distribute this to the younger generation. I always hear, and I really can underline this, that children are only 20% of our society, but are they not 100% of our future? And that is something that we often don't look into.

And I'm so grateful, actually, about this environment here in Dubai, which encourages kids to experience such things and also have a totally different failure politic. I celebrate every red mark on an essay of my daughter because I always say this mistake, you don't have to do it again. And I find it such a relief that entrepreneurs, people who have an open mindset for development in any kind of position, they were given or they are given with your environment, a platform that they can take their kids and bring them to the same level.

Because in family, isn't this a very often a very crucial part where you drift apart because you are on a different scale of energy? And how do you experience that with the founders, the people, the kids that you're working with?

[Angela Soudi]

Great question. And you're absolutely right. And I think that this is one of the reasons why, why I love children so much getting into entrepreneurship, because it becomes a whole family activity.

So I'll give you an example. We have one young boy, he's really passionate, he's passionate about engineering, he's only 11. And he makes these products that he sells at the local right market and our kidpreneur markets, even at school markets, he sells them there.

And he is the creator of the product, but his mother is the marketing manager. So she manages the social media, the flyers, the logo, anything related to marketing. The father is the financial officer.

So he's looking at how much are these products costing us to make? Where are we getting our supplies from? Can we reduce our costs?

How much profits are we making? And then that his daughter, sorry, his sister is responsible for packaging. So she's online, searching, searching boxes and bags and ribbons.

And it's really beautiful. And this is just one example of so many, where the whole family suddenly has the same, you know, the sister's interested in netball, the son's interested in football, the father, his own things, the mother, her own things. But suddenly, as a family, we can all sit around the table and brainstorm ideas and bond together, exactly based on the same common goal.

So I see this every day that families are really enjoying this process of working together and not being so disconnected.

[Angela Thomas]

And that is something disconnected. That is a point that brings me into my next seeing the difference about this environment that you create. You strengthen actually the institution of family with your whole environment, where it is often in societies, especially throughout Europe, the institution of family is weakened on purpose.

Sometimes I think I don't want it to get too political. But this is the strongest institution that a government would have to fight an institution of the family, which is so supported here on the backside. And I find this so beautiful on this region that kids get actually a good direction.

They know who they are, they are not lost in space, because they have been given to this and XYZ kindergarten, where they get educated by others with different values. And that is such a good thing for out of the perspective of an entrepreneur mom to find a place like that. I wish I would have found you earlier with my kids.

Angela, this podcast is about scaling and this environment and the ethical momentum that you create for the business per se, Gladiators juniors is without any question such a big value. When it comes to scaling, it is in the value chain and the value proposition of Gladiators. Another step which I found so beautiful because you have this whole environment of Gladiators, this whole people, a tribe that follows you with the same values and you bring to this platform something so good.

When was actually the moment where your husband and you decided of having this environment together? I'm very keen to pick your brain on that. You had let us a little look into it started out with that.

But what was actually the initial moment where you realized, OK, we wanted to scale and make this a big environment, a big platform?

[Angela Soudi]

Great question. We are my husband and I are incredibly heart led. So when you meet us and you get to know who we are and what we stand for, we operate from here.

We've always been anything that we've done. We've always done on the basis of does it bring us joy? Does it bring us happiness?

Does it bring happiness and joy to other people? And if the answer is no, then we don't vibrate with that frequency. It doesn't work for us.

So with the Gladiator, with the summits, it really it really scaled itself based on the energy in the room, the people in the room, the followers that we had. We could have done one and stopped. But then the feedback that we've got from people that have been through this journey and then seeing the way that it's improved their life and their businesses and their families and their personal accomplishments.

I mean, that's a testament to what we're doing. So it's almost we almost can't stop because then we're doing an injustice. Yes.

To people that have already bought into the brand.

[Angela Thomas]

Oh, is this something so nice? Unjustice. And I really fancy and adore the operation from your heart and this whole environment as I can only see how much you put into it.

And I think that you are actually reflecting what you get and the energy kind of way back and that it scales by itself. It's something so nice. And I think to have a platform for children is so wise to do and pays justice to the first initial summit structure that you have.

Angela, when it comes to scaling, you are talking about hard led business and energy. What you think is the most incredible advice that you would give other people who want to scale? And sometimes they have it on the paper, but they cannot receive a scaling moment out of whatever reason.

How do you advise them to search for the scaling moment or that feeling that you naturally received? How can they find something like that?

[Angela Soudi]

Well, I think, first of all, what's really important is when you're looking at scaling any business, you have to have the right systems in place. Systems, systems, systems, because you can't scale chaos.

[Angela Thomas]

Yes.

[Angela Soudi]

So if we don't have everything in place in even in a small business before we're looking at scaling, the moment you scale, then any issue in your current business will be amplified. So I always say that, okay, even with us, with our journey, with the summit, the first one was a little bit haphazard. We didn't quite know what we were doing.

We made mistakes. We were late for certain things. We paid too much for venues and suppliers were paid too much for suppliers.

So we very much learned along the way how to improve our own internal systems. And the last summit that we did a couple of weeks ago, this was by far the best one for me because we'd, we'd made our mistakes along the way. We'd failed first attempt in learning.

We embrace failures. You said before, where did we fail? Where can we improve?

And how can we put systems in place so that when we replicate this model, we don't have the same problems that we have then. And that applies to any business. So before you even consider any kind of scaling, look at the systems, look at your data analytics, what's working, what's not working.

Where am I making revenue? Where am I losing revenue? How can I fill those holes if they need filling?

And what processes can I put in place to make sure that I have a really functioning, good working engine before I look at scaling it? Because if you don't do that and you scale too soon, then you'll sink very quickly.

[Angela Thomas]

Yes. Yeah. You have leaking moments and leaking channels.

And you just said you cannot scale chaos, but I think you can scale chaos if you don't have the systems in place.

[Angela Soudi]

Then you sink very quickly.

[Angela Thomas]

Yes. You scale the chaos with it. And the small mistakes are becoming even bigger if that the harm is actually done then.

Very good. I'm a very strong believer in systems, in processes, and that even only keeps your momentum into the scaling moment slows the new expensive, as I always say, then that is also something that you can really save money or get your margin higher when you have systems in place and know where to shift and leverage the point and detach actually time for money. And as we are talking a little bit on the theoretical side of scaling, I would like to learn from you where and how do you lead the adult clients of Gladiators towards the encouragement of sending their children into your environment of Gladiators Juniors, as this is on the value proposition, something I don't see from the outside yet.

And my children are left the nest so far. I would like to learn also for our listeners, maybe where is the touch point and where you get the transaction, the transition basically. Yeah, where you have this in place.

[Angela Soudi]

Okay, great question. I think the sweet spot with children is very much between the ages of nine to 12. This is when we can really start planting little seeds in their minds that can then grow into something incredible.

And what we found is that initially we started running our own workshops, but now we've been approached by schools and we are blessed that we live in such an entrepreneurial city as Dubai or the UAE rather, because schools here are very open to expanding children's knowledge. We're living in a world of AI and digital and schools are aware of that here. So they are open to children learning new skills and new ways.

Whereas in Europe, there can be a little bit stuck in their ways, especially in the UK, very much in the dark ages. So I think we are blessed for us as a business. Yes, that we're in such a beautiful environment where they embrace and encourage things like this.

I would say as a parent, if you want your child to start looking at other ways, just ask them simple questions. What do you dream about when you're in class? What are you daydreaming about before you go to sleep at night?

What do you think about? Because these are answers that the child can give you. You start thinking, OK, they're into creative things or they're into physical things or they're really into engineering.

They're trying to figure out how things come apart and go back together again. And when you understand these mechanisms inside the child's brain, then you can start looking at external programs to enhance those. It doesn't have to be junior gladiators.

It could be a sports program or it could be they're passionate about public speaking, find a public speaking or a theater they can go to. So just as parents ask the questions, let's sit down and let's talk about and let the children ask you. We developed this cute little product.

It's a family conversation cards. Really? So it's just a box of cards.

Yeah, we we really sat down and put together 80 questions that will help. These are open questions that help facilitate a conversation in the house. So every night before I go to bed, I do these with my eight year old.

We pick a couple of cards each and often he'll pick a card and he'll say, hmm, I don't know this about you. Who are you most like? Grandma or grandad?

You know, things like this. Just give space and time to have a conversation with our kids. We're so busy running that often we forget that these are also little people.

Yes. With their own dreams, their own ambitions, their own ideas. So just yeah.

[Angela Thomas]

That's so cool. Yeah. I want to have these cards.

I'm going to facilitate my Zooms with my children.

[Angela Soudi]

I'll gift you a pack.

[Angela Thomas]

Really good. So Angela, I'm asking always entrepreneurs and I have this question from an inspiration here in Dubai. There is a real estate course Aiva.

I in this real estate there is a library and in this library there are books from entrepreneurs all over the world. 1000 books who have been actually recommended by entrepreneurs and they have been asked if you would go to the moon and you was not taking anything with you but this one book. Which book you would rate as so valuable to take with you?

Because in this library are 1000 books from 1000 entrepreneurs that have been rated this and I would like to share your recommendation of a book that you would take up to the moon with you. Oh, good question.

[Angela Soudi]

Okay. So my one of my favorite books is by it's actually Oprah Winfrey and Bruce, I forget his surname, but the book is called What Happened to You? And it's a conversation.

So Bruce is a psychologist and he looks at past trauma and childhood issues and what really happened in our life to develop us into the person that we are today and how we can overcome those traumas. And he's talking to Oprah about her journey of abuse and sexual abuse and all these, you know, horrific things that happened to her. But it really explores in such detail how the human I'm fascinated with neuroscience, fascinated with how the brain works.

So anything that allows me to understand who I am on a deep level, what makes me tick? Why do I do the things that I do? What parts of my personality and conditioning are serving me and what parts are not and how can I change those?

This for me is such an interesting topic because I think we really can't master anything in life before we master ourself.

[Angela Thomas]

Yes.

[Angela Soudi]

It has to start here.

[Angela Thomas]

It does.

[Angela Soudi]

If we can fix this, then everything else will fall into place. Yeah. So for me, it's anything related to the mind and self-mastery.

[Angela Thomas]

Interesting. Everything is within us. We only need to discover.

And that leads me to the next question. In entrepreneurship, partnership is also very important. And I personally, I'm twice divorced, as my audience knows, and one time widowed.

I did never had the luck of basically taking my partner a long time along of my entrepreneurship. I would like to know, and I'm collecting all of the knowledge from my podcast guests. What is partnership in business?

And you're doing business with your partner together. What is the special chance in it? And how do you master working on the same environment, the same project, basically the same business, being in the same family?

For me, this is like kind of a dream, you know, like kind of a very big achievement to master on all and everything. So I would like to pick your brain. What is your secret on having that in place?

[Angela Soudi]

You have to be careful because you might listen to this. Patience is a big thing. And also appreciating each other's differences and strengths.

So there's certain things that my husband is amazing at that I'm not so good at. And there's things that I shine in that he doesn't really enjoy. So I think in the beginning, really discovering what are your strengths and weaknesses, and how can I counteract those and what are mine?

Where do you shine? So I allow you to go into that space and be authentically who you are, without trying to take anything from you or control. And you do the same for me.

So it's been very much a journey for us, of course, working together and then being married, we find it very difficult. I think our biggest downfall is switching off. We talk about business all the time, good or bad.

And I guess one of the benefits is our children are all entrepreneurs, right from our 11 year old, he has his own business to our 32 year old. So everybody in our family is entrepreneurs. So they're always listening to conversations that we have around the table about business challenges, or staff challenges or scaling.

So I think, yeah, being patient with each other for sure. And really understanding what each other's dreams are and how we want to be authentically who we are without.

[Angela Thomas]

That is so beautiful, because I think it's such a big chance of, you know, growing with each other, because you have such a strong reflection to be a better human and get actually this reflection from the outside, and be of better service to society. I think this is such a great way of seeing that not, you know, going into an offensive point of view and build up your border to say no, no, no, no, just to take this on and respect also the strengths and weaknesses of others and bring it all together. Very good.

Thank you. Shukran Azadzana for this deep insight. And I know that is always a challenging question that I'm asking and everybody's like, answer this one with caution.

But no, really, thank you so much. Angela, for entrepreneurs, it doesn't matter what kind of journey they are at this very moment. Whether they are in the beginning and the later stage, or maybe also on the exit, on the exit stage where they wanted to retire.

Entrepreneurship per se, what would you say is the most important thing to look after yourself and your life and your lifestyle to actually manage business and private, private life and your private goals? Never stop learning.

[Angela Soudi]

I believe I am a seeker of knowledge. So in the morning before I came to this podcast, I'm driving here and I'm watching a podcast on menopause because now I'm in this beautiful, you know, strange place of perimenopause. So I'm learning how to balance my health.

Yesterday I was listening to a podcast with Michael Gerber about how to scale business and how to expand your systems. So I think we can get very, it's very easy to get stuck in the world that we're in and be consumed with what's happening around us. But there's a great beauty in always learning and always discovering and we never have all the answers.

So I would say for an entrepreneur, it doesn't matter whether you're at the beginning or you're at the end, constant learning, find really good mentors for where you are at that time in your business and ask for advice, ask for help.

[Angela Thomas]

Yeah.

[Angela Soudi]

We forget to ask.

[Angela Thomas]

Finding mentors, it's such a good, good advice because we sometimes we don't see our own shadows and being alone on your journey, it's sometimes very stagnating, as I say, and a mentor on the side is something very good. And your husband and you are some great mentors, I believe, to society and I'm very happy to have you in my network and here in the podcast. Thank you.

Thank you so much.

[Angela Soudi]

It's been a pleasure.

[Angela Thomas]

Thank you. Okay. That was the podcast with Angela Zoli.