SCALING HUMAN CONNECTION

Skillionaires Podcast – Episode 6

Amirhossein Farzaneh

[Angela Thomas]

And very welcome to another episode of Skillin Air with stories that stick and strategies that scale. And today, I have somebody from far away from Iran, originally here in Dubai, Amir Hussein. Amir Far, I heard.

Yes, Harry, welcome here in Dubai and in the Skillin Air podcast. Very happy to have you here, as we got connected by a former friend that we have together. And she said you really have to interview him.

And I've been through all what you do and what you scale. And I was very astonished. And I wanted to dive in a little bit because here in Dubai, you don't have yet such a big community.

Is that right? But back in Iran, you are somebody very well known. Is that so?

[Amirhossein Farzaneh]

Yes, first, I would like to thank you because of this invitation. And I'm new here in Dubai. But I would like to tell you that I have maybe hundreds of friends here.

And it comes from my professional career because I've been involved in sports for more than 25 years. And through this all these years, I've found lots of valuable friends. And, you know, I have my own podcast.

And because of this podcast, I have lots of friends in different cities and everywhere. When I go to a city, I have lots of friends. And this is the biggest asset I have had in my life.

[Angela Thomas]

Very good. And this podcast you have in your mother language. And it is well known all over the world, right?

[Amirhossein Farzaneh]

I hope so. But you know, when I started my professional career, it was maybe 25 years ago, I hadn't planned for producing a podcast. But since I've started my professional career as a business owner and as a gym owner, through these all these years, I have met lots of valuable friends from different fields, professional athletes, entrepreneurs, artists, celebrities from different fields.

And I have monitored and I have seen their journeys. And we are close friends. And when we talk to each other, there is a friendly atmosphere among our conversations.

So this is why I made a decision to make a platform and preparing a situation for my friends and audience to share their knowledge, their wisdom with others. And this is why I started this podcast. And right now, this is my one of my biggest assets in my life.

And because of this podcast, even in this city, I'm new, but I have hundreds of friends.

[Angela Thomas]

That's so beautiful. And it brings me exactly, we have obviously the same passion, we wanted to share in our industry, what actually the industry offers and the full stories. Now, you mentioned that you are in the sport industry, give us a little bit of insight, what exactly you do.

I know, you have some good, good products that helps a lot of people. And also, you just mentioned you are gym owner. So tell us a little bit about your first steps.

How did it start? And why?

[Amirhossein Farzaneh]

I was really passionate about the sports. And I really wanted to be a to choose sports as a main and critical part of my life and my career. So I'm really happy that the most important thing in my life that which was sports was played a critical role in my career.

So 25, maybe 25 years ago, I started my business as a gym owner. And I established a gym called Oxygen. And at that period of time, the app, gyms approach wasn't like that.

We transformed the idea about going to the gyms because we made going to the gym as a life aside, we redesigned the concept about gyms. And since then, I've been involved in sports. And right now, I wanted to do something scalable, I know that you are interested in scalable businesses.

So it was very important to me also, it's not that easy to expand your gym business, because it's something related to properties and staffs. And there are lots of different elements, which is, which is really hard to scale up. So I made a decision to start my start a new business based on digital world scalable.

And right now, I have designed a platform called WeBean. And it's all about human connections with the core value of sports.

[Angela Thomas]

Wow. Wow. Because I was just wanted to say to scale a gym is not the easiest because the success of the gym comes actually with human connections.

Is that right?

[Amirhossein Farzaneh]

Exactly.

[Angela Thomas]

You had to be there to build the connections to keep the members to make new members. And that is obviously something that is not easy scalable, because you cannot duplicate yourself. And in scaling a business, it's always detaching time from your factor labor.

Is that right? So how did you make it to scale with the gym?

[Amirhossein Farzaneh]

You know, it was really hard because when you start your career, maybe 20 years ago, you organize your mindset, your profession based on these kinds of activities. And when you want to change it, you have to restructure everything. And restructuring everything is not that easy.

You should be open to learn, learn, you should be open about making lots of mistakes. And you should be open about getting advice from a professional in this because you may be good at your job. But this is something new.

This is another industry, you have to align yourself with this new situation. And you will learn through this journey. I really wanted to do something scalable.

And I did my, I put my energy and I tried to expand myself, I tried to learn lots of things. I hope to be able to implement something scalable. And I'm doing my best to implement this idea.

[Angela Thomas]

Amir, when you scale, especially in a gym, and I'm coming from the beauty industry, so I know exactly what it means to be attached to a person to trade actually time for money. And what role plays actually products that you sell to the scalability of your business, you have implemented products, you have also, as I know, invented own products, you put them on the market under your name. So what is actually the point of how big is the role that products or supplements or things that you place around a service that you have products that you sell, what is the factor and the role that this step of scaling a business plays?

[Amirhossein Farzaneh]

You know, you have to rely on this digital world. When we do something traditional, like beauty salons, like gyms, you can you have to rely on lots of properties, staff and different services which are related to this kind of assets. When you want to move forward, when you want to make something scalable, you have to rely on digital world, you have to prepare some infrastructure to to provide your service, your product, and you have to do something for you have to serve your service to a large amount of people.

And this is what digital world provides for us and we should get benefit from it.

[Angela Thomas]

I mean, you had now this sport industry business with products. Now you said something really important that you have to, especially nowadays, to get actually into the digital world to use the scalability or to actually bring in the scalability, especially here in Dubai, digital or digitalization is very important. For yourself, you chose the podcast, right?

That was your platform to reach out to a lot of people with your business or for your business. So what was actually the most important thing for you when you launched the podcast, when you did the podcast, who to invite, what to do and always bring in good guests but still bring also through your own message. How did you do this?

Now I can get some podcast tips here, I suppose.

[Amirhossein Farzaneh]

Okay, okay. You know, I want to confess something really important and interesting. When I wanted to start my podcast, do you know how many podcasts I had seen before?

[Angela Thomas]

No.

[Amirhossein Farzaneh]

Almost nothing. For the first time I recorded my own podcast, I just knew that it's really good to have a media. And I didn't want to watch any podcast because I wanted to keep myself or my podcast original.

I didn't want to imitate anyone else. For example, in our country or internationally, there are lots of icons in this industry. I just wanted to make something like myself.

I knew my capabilities. I knew that I have a very good network. I have good friends from different fields.

And I knew that we are friends, we are close to each other. And we, there is a potential for speaking and discussing with these valuable people in a friendly zone. So I relied on these privileges.

So on the other hand, I knew that having a podcast, having a media, how important is having a podcast or having a media. So I made my decision. And at the beginning, we were not good at all.

I knew that. And even right now, after more than two years, we are not good at all. You know, we took the first step and we try to improve myself.

And I, I'm really happy about that because when I take a look at this journey from the first step till now, we have learned lots of things. And I have interviewed and I have recorded more than 120 podcasts with more than 100 of most important people in our country. And I'm really happy that I have prepared a situation to share their knowledge and their wisdom and their experience, their story with our audience.

I'm really happy about it. I have and I have gotten lots of benefits from this kind of notion from this kind of conversations with these valuable people. And I'm really happy about it because it plays a significant role in my life right now.

I didn't want to be a podcaster. I didn't want to be a podcaster. But right now, this is one of the most important things that I have ever had in my life.

[Angela Thomas]

What a good mindset to call a podcast an asset. This is astonishing for me, especially because you, you say you are not good, which I doubt a little bit, but I understand that you are, and that is really entrepreneur mindset to start, even though you know you are not perfect, to become perfect. That is something that a lot of founders, I think, make a mistake.

They are trying to, and we had in the other podcast exactly also another person who know how to scale and show how to scale, basically the same thing that he said, that a lot of founders that wanted to start a business and wants to start to scale, they are just end up in the trap where they wanted to start perfect and then wait forever.

[Amirhossein Farzaneh]

This is a trap.

[Angela Thomas]

Yeah, it is.

[Amirhossein Farzaneh]

You know, because I prefer to know myself as an entrepreneur. I would like to be an entrepreneur. And I would like to have this podcast as a strong and powerful media.

And this is what I want to execute. This is what I want to implement in my life.

[Angela Thomas]

Yeah, very good. So, Amir, when you would have to give founders a tip of how to start to scale their first business, then to scale, and maybe then a podcast, what would you tell them to do?

[Amirhossein Farzaneh]

You know, we are living in a very different era, AI era, and everything is getting everything is changing with a high pace.

[Angela Thomas]

Yeah.

[Amirhossein Farzaneh]

And we should know how to deal with these new facilities, these new tools. AI is changing everything. We should get benefit from all these tools.

But something is unique. And I would prefer to be focused on human connections, good networks. And I want to expand my business based on the things that AI can provide those services.

We still need to hug each other, we still need to make eye contact, we still need to laugh to each other. And I really want to make meaningful friends, make meaningful business partnerships. Even on my project, We Win, we value these kinds of activities, human connections, sports, finding good friends, finding like minded people.

And this is the most important thing that I can say to my friends and your audience.

[Angela Thomas]

Yes. And that is something that you say very valuable that we are in a time that is changing with such a high speed. And I think it's so interesting for us to be witnessing actually those changes.

And I find it so important as entrepreneur to be as flexible to adapt to these changes, but still realize that these changes are not dreadful. A lot of people, they think this is a threat. AI is a threat.

It takes away my job. It takes away this and that. But you said it right.

AI never can replace the human connection. And that's what you build into or implement into a business, a business connection. That's something very valuable.

And I think you can set yourself so good apart having that. I wanted to know from you maybe where would you think is in this situation where AI comes in a good situation to scale, especially also over a podcast, when you implement things and focusing on that human connection that you would like to have or think it's so important, how you utilize AI for you and the podcast, for example.

[Amirhossein Farzaneh]

Let me give you some examples. Anytime I had a friend and I wanted to record a podcast, I used to talk to my guest and we used to determine a topic to each other. And there was a routine for me, reading two books, maybe two or three articles, watching two or three TED talks.

And it takes time. And right now, for example, I use AI to collect lots of information around that specific topic. And it saves hours for me, hours for me.

And I get benefit from AI. On the other hand, in editing and in recording podcast, increasing the quality of or video, audio, we are using AI. It's amazing.

It's beautiful. And on the other hand, I still want to rely on human connections, friendly conversations, sharing our stories, sharing our feelings. This is what AI cannot serve for others.

[Angela Thomas]

Yes. Yeah. And this is you have basically more time when you utilize AI to make these human connections.

[Amirhossein Farzaneh]

Exactly.

[Angela Thomas]

In the sport industry, Amir, is something, certainly, especially concerning human connections, that you do also some events or some little get togethers. I think I see you sometimes in the social media that you have a lot of people around you. So what is this all about?

How do you think this could help a person who wants to be in the sport industry to scale?

[Amirhossein Farzaneh]

The definition of our project is meet through sports. There are two different criteria for all of our activities. Our core value is sports and healthy activities.

The other thing is human connections. We want to value human connections, real life in this digital world. We are using digital to live real.

This is exactly what we want to achieve on this project. And based on this important notion and values, we try to empower every single person to find like minded people, growing your business, expanding your network, considering a healthy lifestyle, sports and keeping this core value for all of our activities.

[Angela Thomas]

Yes, it's like kind of creating a tribe, isn't it?

[Amirhossein Farzaneh]

Something like this for everyone, but for everyone, not just for influencers, not just for professional athletes or personal trainers, for everyone who's passionate about sports and healthy lifestyle.

[Angela Thomas]

I think this is such a good place to be for exactly that topic here in Dubai. And I think that is something so beautiful to leave a trace in the life because sports is something so important, I think, also for being an entrepreneur. Do you think for any entrepreneur is sport very important?

[Amirhossein Farzaneh]

Yes, of course, because when you are involved in sports, you send this message to your colleagues, to your partners that I'm someone committed, you can rely on me, you can trust me. I deny lots of bad things, I appreciate lots of good things. And this is what I leave.

And there are lots of good messages in living like an athlete, having a good lifestyle. And this is good for everyone as a boss, as an entrepreneur, as a person who's involved in business.

[Angela Thomas]

Amir, you just mentioned that podcast is the tool for you to scale or has been and you're utilizing and you're still perfectioning it. And can you just give our audience maybe an idea what is the most or the biggest learning so far with you and your podcast journey to scale?

[Amirhossein Farzaneh]

To scale? Storytelling.

[Angela Thomas]

Storytelling.

[Amirhossein Farzaneh]

Yes, exactly. Because when you are good at storytelling, and you can encourage every single person, when you can ask your friends, your guests to share their experience and knowledge and wisdom through a story, you would be successful because we are humankind and we love listening to stories. Maybe most of the people share something similar to each other, but I would like to learn your story.

I would like to learn your other guest's story. And it feels good.

[Angela Thomas]

Yeah.

[Amirhossein Farzaneh]

Because we love sharing our passion, sharing our stories with our friends and with loved ones. And even in this AI era, storytelling is the key.

[Angela Thomas]

Yeah, it is. It is. It just gives you the part of authenticity and authenticity is something that also cannot be replaced by AI.

So what is your story when you wanted to be in Dubai? Here you are in Dubai. And obviously you wanted to get into business over here and expand a little bit.

So what do you think in a year from now, we have to hear from Amir?

[Amirhossein Farzaneh]

You know, I wanted to attempt for international business and it's really hard to do something like this from Iran because of all sanctions and other problems and issues. But UAE has provided fabulous infrastructure for international businesses. And please preview our most important criteria in our business.

International approach, finding good friends, sports, networking, and you can find all these things in Dubai. It was the best option for us to expand our business. And I'm really happy about it.

Since day one, I wanted to make a unicorn and I will do my best and I will put all of my assets and energy to achieve this important goal for myself and I would like to go through this purpose.

[Angela Thomas]

You know what, I get goosebumps right now when I hear you want to become a unicorn and you're working on it and that on a crown of Dubai, it's something so beautiful, because I know exactly me growing up in East Germany, what it is all about to be in a political environment that's not supporting at all entrepreneurship. So Amir, would you just let us know as well, do you have still family in Iran and how do you still connect to them? I know family is something so important for you, isn't it?

[Amirhossein Farzaneh]

It's very important to me. I have lots of friends and they are my biggest asset. I don't want to leave them behind, but there is something good that it's just one and a half, it takes just one and a half, maybe two hours from Iran to fly to Iran.

I have planned to go to my country several times. I want to do lots of things for my own people, for my country and we are neighbors, UAE and Iran. It facilitates everything for us.

[Angela Thomas]

Yeah, yeah. It's so beautiful how you keep actually both of it together somehow and then don't put the bother in between, you know, that's also something I think this is in humanity's responsibility to keep things together and not let these sanctions and political frames to apart from each other. And I think that's something very, very warm-hearted.

[Amirhossein Farzaneh]

Thank you so much.

[Angela Thomas]

Amir, thank you for being here today. Just let our audience still know where we can find you and what we exactly can find with the product and maybe any events that you are planning. Just, yeah, give us a little bit of insight of where we can keep track on your unicorn journey.

[Amirhossein Farzaneh]

First, I would like to apologize to you and your audience because of the level of my English. I know that I'm not good at English, but I promise you I'm going to improve my English in future. I would like to record my podcast in English, but I know that I have to improve my speaking skills.

On the other hand, I'm going to make WeBean big and meaningful and I would like to ask you and your audience to download WeBean and share their passion of sports, finding like-minded people and participating in different athletic activities. And people can share their own passion. They can host their own events.

Very simple. For example, you can organize your own sports meet, like let's go out walking for a while and having a coffee together. And you can find lots of good friends.

You can expand your network and you can find lots of like-minded people. So your audience and your friends can follow us and they can join us through this application and we will be really happy to see your audience and your friends over there.

[Angela Thomas]

Very good. We are making sure that all of the information is in our info box and show notes and we like to connect. I also have to download what you have to offer there to be a part of your journey and of your community.

I'm very curious about that. Thank you for being here.

[Amirhossein Farzaneh]

Thank you for your invitation.

[Angela Thomas]

And on that note, that was Amir Hussein with stories that stick and strategies that scale. And that was a very beautiful podcast strategy. Thank you for being here.

[Amirhossein Farzaneh]

Thank you so much.