From Chaos to Clarity: Klippa CEO on Scaling, AI Innovation & Leadership

0:00 You always have to say what you do, do what you say. Never ask somebody to do something that you're not willing to do yourself. That's my style of leadership. So always I'm in the trenches. Being in the trenches. You're right, it's very important, you know, like to lead by example while I was at Peacock EC.

0:18 I had this partner. His name is Chandu Atelier game. Interestingly, he has been on this podcast. You know, I'm really grateful, you know, executives I've worked with, you know, honour me by being on the podcast as well. And there's something he used to say. What is important is not the example of your power, power of the example. That's what you just needed to.

0:38 That's a beautiful saying. What's important is the power of your example, and it's really essential to to me by example. Welcome to The Kingdom's podcast, where we share the stories of extraordinary people and dissect hot, relevant topics that shape our world. From visionary leaders to trailblazing creatives, we uncover the mindset, strategy, and grit behind greatness. Whether it's business, culture, or personal growth, we ask the real questions.

1:09 This isn't just conversation, it's transformation. The Kingdom's podcast, Your Next Breakthrough, starts here. Music licencing reimagined. Your life, ladies and gentlemen, you once again welcome to the Kingdom's podcast. And today I've got a very, very important guest fighting out. Of the Netherlands by Ray of Sudan and back welcome Yellin, the CEO of Keeper Connectorian. And when the action begins, the beautiful and brilliant Co host in the studio he is.

1:52 Noella, the world best Rook. How are you, Mr Yellin? Thank you very much for the for the nice introduction, ha. Ha ha. And you know, we really appreciate you comment about today. I always say this, any type of person who shares their time with you, they share their life with you because the air sign unit for merger and life this time.

2:17 So we have done our own work to craft and curate a beautiful introduction for you. So please sit back, relax. Our wife will be your introduction. So today on The Kingdom's podcast, I'm joined by a visionary who turned a simple idea that work can be more meaningful into available SARS success story from the Netherlands to over 35 countries.

2:43 Yelen Kinectarian, Co founder and CEO of Keeper, has been redefining automation and AI powered document processing. Under his leadership, Keeper has transformed administrative chaos into clarity, helping businesses save time, reduce fraud and operate smarter. Yelen, welcome to the show. It's an honour to have you on here.

3:09 Well, thank you very much for having me. You're honest, welcome and pressed. I'll pass you on to the safe hands of the world's best Noella. Group. Welcome. Just wanna wish you good. Welcome. We're so happy to have you here. I'm really excited to dive into Clippa and just how it's changing the world right now. I know earlier we got into a little bit of it, but for our audience, what was the actual spark that had you start Clippa? Was it just frustration, curiosity, a moment of inspiration?

3:45 I know we talked a little about a little bit about it earlier, but what was that spark of emotion that led to you kind of leaving your nine to five and saying, OK, I'm going to go all in on Clippa? Yeah. So I think frustration is always a really good fuel for an entrepreneur and at least from it has been for me and I've seen it for many other people. And maybe what defines an entrepreneur over a non entrepreneur is that both have frustration, but one of them turns the frustration into effort to solve it. And I think that's what differentiates an entrepreneur. And I was working as a consultant and as a freelancer, and I literally had a desk full of administrative work that I was procrastinating all the

4:31 time, pushing it forward, pushing it forward. We had to do text filings every three months in the Netherlands. And I was always stressed on the very last day, how do I get out of this administrative chaos? And then I thought, there must be a better way to do this. And that eventually led to my company, Clipper, because I pitched to my employer at the time that I would love to automate the expense process that we had there. They said, well, that's a great idea because we also want our consultants to spend their time on valuable tasks and not on repetitive tasks, but we have no idea how to do it. So together with more technical Co founders than me, we started the company.

5:07 My employer at the time became our first big customer and from there it got a little bit out of control. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, and you're completely right. When you say everyone feels frustration, but the entrepreneurs are really the ones that take that frustration and funnel it into a solved problem.

5:31 So that's amazing. Do you have a background in marketing? Is that what you're working in? That's amazing. Yeah. I actually also have a background in marketing, so super excited to talk to you. How did that background in marketing shape the way you approach building and scaling something in tech? I think it made a made a huge, huge difference in how we approach building a company.

5:56 Nowadays, bootstrapping a company is getting more and more popular again. So not having the fundraising 10 years ago, if we see funding was not really a thing yet, but then let's say 6-7 years ago that became a really, really big thing. So most companies were really burning through lots of money for growth.

6:18 But because I had a marketing background from day one, we are always talking about what we were doing, what pain points we were targeting in multiple languages and that led us to always have a good inbound elite stream and if you have a good lead engine and you also have a good engine for growth.

6:35 So we never needed super big financial investments to actually keep growing. And a lot of people I think make the mistake that they start selling the day that they finish the product, but they don't realise that when you start selling, whether that's fire marketing or sales, it will take you 12 months to learn the process of selling.

6:53 So that's why I always say you have to start selling on Day 1. And in our case, marketing was our our channel for sales. And now, of course, we have an entire sales team. But because I had a marketing background, I was able to build my own website, do all the SEO, do all the advertising myself. The website we have today is actually still built by me originally. And now of course a lot of people are working on it. But yeah, it made all the difference for us. Yeah, I love that, honestly.

7:21 And a lot of people, they don't realise how what an asset it is to have a background in marketing when they're trying to bootstrap because there are so many systems that need to be built through marketing. Like you said, even the website you have right now is what you were able to build. And like, if it's not broken, you don't have to fix it.

7:40 But Even so, lead generation, like you said, is the main funnel of what you need. So I just love hearing that insight from someone who like me, like myself has is all about branding and marketing. I think that helps so much too when you understand branding and marketing just on the forefront because you're able to maybe make a stronger impression or have a more clear visual aspect to your first customers and just makes it stronger. So that's awesome.

8:12 A lot of founders of entrepreneurs, I think, what is it? I think it's 60. It's probably higher now, at least 60% of startups. When I was in school, they said it was 60%. It's probably higher. A percent of founders quit early and when they start a company. What type of mindset helped you stay on the course when you were uncertain during your startup phase? Well, I think if you start becoming an entrepreneur, you have to start from the idea that it's going to take twice as long as you think a typical, because a lot of people think that it will be overnight success.

8:47 And I think the feeling of overnight success always comes from the fact that you see Google, you see NVIDIA, you see Facebook and you'd realise, well, there are huge successes. If you actually ask people how long do you think these companies exist, they will tell you sometimes, well, 10 years, but Google is from I think 98 or something.

9:04 So it's already like 27 years. So people extremely overestimates how fast these growths are going and still it's super, super impressive, but it's not one or two years. So building a real company takes multiple years. So if you believe in a dream of within two years you'll be extremely successful. That's the 0.0001%.

9:26 So then you're setting yourself up for failure. I think you should start from the idea like it's going to take five years at least to build a serious company. And then you have to go into it with the idea that it might be the first two or three years. You're at 0 and you come up so many, so many challenges and you have to take one challenge at a time, solve one challenge at a time, and you know that there will be 99 more. But if you solve one at a time, you will eventually get there. For some people, it's a little bit faster journey. For some people, it's a little bit slower journey. But I think the most important characteristic is that you just keep going.

10:00 You have to keep going and learning. And the combination of these two, I think will make you successful eventually. So if you stop, you will fail, right? And if you don't learn, you will also fail. So I think it's the combination. There's there's a quote that says success is moving from failure to failure to failure without losing momentum.

10:22 I think that's a perfect quote when describing entrepreneurship. And it's funny too, because a lot of people when they look at the most successful companies and they're like, OK, well, that's my track. You know, that's my dream. They also don't see the part where they're like in their garage for three years or they're in a basement, you know, and like it's they have nothing and they're sleeping on the floor.

10:47 Like Alex Armozi, he slept on the floor of his gym for at least maybe a year, maybe a year or so. But they don't think about all of those things. So yeah, I think that's really smart understanding. It's actually going to take at least twice as long as as you think it is. I'm going to give it back to my Co host to kind of move forward for you.

11:13 We're going to start talking about really your technological impact globally because it seems like right now you're operating in over 35 countries and that's amazing. So we're going to start talking about that with you. So you you you're leaving the tech part? For AII AM, absolutely. Amazing. Well, I don't know what my parents saw, but definitely they knew something the whole world did not know.

11:41 At the time when I was born, I was born 33 years ago and they coded my name as AII femaleized you and I'm like, why? They should have just let the cat out of the bag and called me artificial intelligence. Well, you know, I'll smile at you know, when you're talking about how you. Beat your property website yourself.

12:01 I built our corporate website myself, our podcast website as well. You know, I, I built myself, you know, even though I have a partner's background, I've always had this not for tech. And you know, God also blessed me with, you know, the world best in marketing. As well so. It's the dream team, you know, the teamwork makes the dream work and.

12:22 I I love how you're talking about. How people overestimate the the the speed or the acceleration in terms of success like? It's it's. Not overnight. It's not an overnight pain. I remember when I interviewed the president of the BKFC, that's our Fan Aqua Fighting Championship, that is the world's fastest growing combat sports organisation in the world. Recently they had like this 200 million investment by Conor McGregor, right?

12:54 So everybody that knows about the DPFC, the president is David Schalpen. And I asked him, oh, you guys started in 2009, right? That was your first sanction event. So how has the journey been? He said you did not start in 2009. It took us about 10 years to get our very first sanction event. We were pretty, you know, underground in basements, you know, organising events that were not sanctioned by the athletic commissions. So we took this guy close to 10 years to get his very first sanctioned events.

13:35 But the world thinks this started in 2009. I think this is a perfect example and I think the world wants to believe in overnight success stories because it's it's just it's a nice dream. I don't know if you guys are familiar with lovable, but that's one of the most high tech companies at the at the moment. I like lovable, they make website beauty very easy. You can keep keeper lovable.

14:03 But the interesting part, they sell the story that in eight months time they went from zero to €100 million in revenue. And we cannot verify it, but it's a great story of course. And even though technically it might be true that from the point that they made their first euro to 100 million was 8 months, they like to cut off part of the story, which basically means two years before that they started building the product, right? So this is market, right?

14:30 You can sell the story the way you want to sell it. So I always say 10 years from the very first date that we started the company. I could also say we are doing revenue for seven years. And it's both true. But what story do you want to sell? So people want to believe in nice stories. Marketeers sell good stories, but it doesn't make it real.

14:49 Yeah. So for me, I love to sell authentic stories. I paint painted as it is. Just tell the chief. Wow. Because you know. People need to really realise. How hard it is to succeed at anything. It is very, very, very hard. You know this podcast for example, you know the global top 2.5% started 2023 November.

15:16 But people look at me and say, oh wow. You you've reasoned so fast into the global rankings they don't know that when I was a teenager, I. Used to, you know, go take classes from my mentor in broadcasting who studied communication and language arts. The guy is a PhD in communication and language arts now. So people think, oh, you never learned anything media. But he's so good at this thing.

15:43 But I had to to do it. That is late since like 20/16/2017. The beauty myself. When I was in university, I used to be at MC, you know, MC events, MC conferences, you know, I used to be a lecturer at some point as well, right? I'd always just been on the path of communication. I used to do corporate trainings, right, facilitate seminars and now a podcaster.

16:12 But people don't know that all of that investment into building your confidence and speaking, you know, goes a long way into building you into somebody who's able to connect with the best in the world at whatever ease that they do. I've been able to interview PhD holders from elite level universities across the world, Harvard, Yale, Instance, Stanford, Oxford, Cambridge. And you know, somebody called me and said, did you go? Did you take a course on this thing that I laughed like how cool are you able to do these things so fast? I'm like, no, Did Johnny did not start in 2023. Johnny started 2016.

16:51 So I would love for people to always, you know, glorify that back story. It's very, very important so that the younger generation are able to understand that success is a painful pathway. It's a long road to feed up, a long walk to feed up, just like Nelson Mandela tied to the in his book. And you know, like Speaking of your own, you know, company, like what are the biggest things that have been associated with your growth and of course the milestones along that journey? Yeah.

17:27 So I think a company has to reinvent itself every year when you grow really fast. So if you stay the same size for a longer period of time, that might not be applicable. I don't have that experience. In my experience, the company doubled in size all the time. So you have to completely reinvent your company every time.

17:43 And the frustrating part about that is that at the beginning of the year you set a certain goals and a certain structure. Halfway during the year you already realise at the speed we're going, this is no, not going to work anymore next year. Then you start making new plans. From the beginning of the year you have your new plans and you already know that after six months those new plans will probably not be working ideally anymore. So you really have to stay on top of it, continuously come up with new ideas, try new things.

18:11 And you cannot lose that energy and that focus because what worked when you were with 20 people doesn't work when you're with 50 people and it doesn't work when you're with 100 people. You would want it to be that way because that's more convenient, of course, but the reality is it just doesn't. And you start to feel and notice it as a founder in your company that things are not moving as as fluently as before anymore. And then you have to step in and you have to make changes and you have to convince people of those changes and continuously finding that optimal flow for your company. I think that is the hardest part because when you go to new countries, it changes.

18:45 When you open new offices, it changes. And at a time that you're opening a second office, you might not realise that it will impact these things. But for example, keeping your company culture steady while you're not this one single location. Yeah, it's already a really big problem. Having people from 10 different cultures in your company is great, but also causes confusion sometimes in communication from them. So you have to see all these things. So of course it's defines your success if you do it right. But if you don't do it right, it also hinders your success. And success is never that straight line up. It's always it goes good.

19:21 Then it's a flat that you change and you go fast again and then it goes flat and you have to change again. So that's that idea of that it's a linearly line and that is only goes up. That is not how I experience it. It's it's, yeah, managing your emotions, your feelings, the feelings of people in your team about continuously changing.

19:42 And one of the things that I have always done, every new employee that starts gets a presentation at Clippa, a few actually, but the first one they get is from me. And I always explain to them, This is why we do what we do. This is our culture and this is what we expect from you. And one of the things I explained is that if you work at Clippa, you have to accept the fact that everything is going to change all the time. And you have to be a person that actually enjoys that and embraces that.

20:08 And if you would be the characteristic, I have the characteristics that you. Dislike. Change that this is not the right place for you because you're going to get a lot of frustration. So you also have to find the people that actually enjoy working for a new company every year. Basically because if you don't pick the right people for the right company, it doesn't work. Last time I checked, we have not published the episode we recorded yesterday.

20:35 You've not published the full name, but it feels like you probably hacked into our studio. Listen to the conversation that we had with Alexandra Lemanska, the leadership and HR business coach right and consultant yesterday that has. You are, would I say, just saying what she said, you know, in in a different. With different words.

21:02 A lot of yeah, you would say words actually, because, you know, there's a philosophy that I have. It's called the mindset skill set tool set framework. That is, if you are to hire the best feats for your organisation, the first thing you need to evaluate is not the skill set, it is a mindset. Right mindset is difficult to teach. Now if they have the right mindset, then you know, we can work on the skill set and give them the right tool sets and you will have the right feet.

21:35 You know, even me as Aceo, as an entrepreneur, as a founder, I had to learn that lesson. Very hardly, but very hardly, you know. So as you know, as a new, as the end of the game, I was thinking, oh, it's about the skills, better people with the best skills. Or sometimes you'd have people with, you know, the best fit skills. But the mindset is rubbish and it leads, it leads to frustrations.

22:02 You talked about frustration. You've lost your frustration if. You want. If you want to be frustrated, work with people with their own mindsets. You understand what frustration can really be. Yeah, and of course, you know. You, you've been in this game many. Years I I I know you understand what it feels like so like. What?

22:21 Strategies have actually helped you to stand out in like such a very competitive, you know, market SAS, AI, we have a lot of tools, but you guys have been able to support yourself from the park, right. So what's, what's the strategy behind that? Yeah, I think a lot of the answers are in culture. So making sure that you find the right people, like you said, have the right mindset, making sure that you never accept the status quo.

22:51 So what we have today is never good enough. Even if today we're the number one in in the field, it's not good enough. And continuously raising that bar, What are we not doing today that we should be doing? Because as soon as you become comfortable, you feel like, oh, we're winning, right? Then you're slowly starting to give away the leads to the other people that are trying to win and are eager to win. So it doesn't matter if you're #1 it even doesn't matter if you're far ahead of #2 you should create a culture internally of being continuously on and continuously thinking about what's the next step, what can we do more? What are we not doing that we should be doing? And if you create that mindset

23:28 and create also structures for that. So we have a few structures around that. For example, we have hackatones. So every three months we have hackatone. That basically means two days. Every team is working only on an innovative project and they have to build it completely, start to finish to make sure that we do things that we normally would never do because they don't fit in our regular schedules. And some of the things that came up during hackathon, for example, are now very successful projects, but at the time that you build them, they're just experiments. So you build 10 experiments and only one succeeds. If you only do experiments, then your chances of succeeding, of course, is very low.

24:05 So it's all part of a culture of trying things, coming up with new ideas, not accepting where we are today, continuously pushing A-Team to put the bar at a higher level. And of course, it's also tiring for people. So you have to do it at the right balance, right? It cannot always be panic in the company, but recreating urgency at a very regular interval I think is super, super important.

24:33 And yeah, create structures for that. Create structures in which people can innovate, work together. I think a lot of people want to believe that if you give everybody complete freedom, that everybody, everything will go perfectly. I am actually very different in that. So I don't believe in full remote workforces, giving people all the time to work where and whenever they want.

24:54 And I understand that it is very comfortable for people, but I actually do not believe that it works the best. And so I like to create structures and within that structures, I give a lot of freedom, but those structures at least allow that we do certain things in certain ways at certain intervals. And that keeps you enough of there, that keeps your hiring process the right way.

25:14 And a few essential cornerstones basically of your organisation are then always at the optimum level. And I think that's super, super important. People sometimes have to get used to the structure, but when when they are, they also realise that actually that structure helps you to innovate, for example.

25:31 I I love. The fact that you talk about structure, of course, you know, in order to drive organisational change, there are three factors involved, the people, the systems and the processes. So like how, how do you tweak, you know, those three factors in order to achieve your own organisational change? So I we have always one person owning the systems, so one person making sure that the systems are the right systems and that they operate in the right way. Then we have of course culture to basically manage the people side of things.

26:08 And then we have workflows or ways of working or processes. And those processes I think are mainly what you have to reinvent every year because a certain process works for 10 people. Well, it doesn't work with 50 and doesn't work with 100. So the processes are what you continuously change. The culture stays the same, but it's harder to remain.

26:26 It's the same the larger you grow because you have less direct influence. And the systems are basically what facilitates the other two things. So in my opinion, all the tools that you have in your organisation are there to make your people more successful and the processes are also there to make your people more successful. So the people are first in my philosophy, then the processes and then the systems.

26:47 Because systems are just tools, right? So I can use Slack and I can use Teams and people have preferences, but one is not per SE better than the other. So choose whatever works best for your type of organisation. In our case, isn't Slack for example, because we are of course a real die hard software company, I mean like APIs and integrations etcetera. But for another company that might be teams. But you have to pick tools that facilitate you to do the best things that you can do and not the other way around. Sometimes you come at companies where the IT infrastructure really limits the people to do their work and well, I would never want it to be that way.

27:23 The software cannot dictate how you work. You want to work in a certain way and you pick software that helps you to do that. So if you get it the wrong way right, I think it can be very expensive. Yeah, tool sets are very, very important, right? And you know, you talk a lot about the people, You're very passionate about the people. And the interesting thing is lately on the podcast, we've been having HR professionals, business are coaches. Later today, we're even interviewing another business coach.

27:57 And these people are very passionate about people and motivating the people. So I'd like to quickly pick your brain, you know, being a global CEO, how do you keep the people motivated, right? I do have a book on my table right now, right? Because, you know, leaders are readers. This book is tacked to national organisations, right? Even as a leader myself, I still, you know, keep reading on, you know, better ways to run your business. And you know, this book is about why we organisations are 10 times better, faster and cheaper than yours and what to do about it.

28:39 It's a book by Siling Ismail. So really it's a big, what I say and complex issue motivating human beings because the most difficult thing in this life is working with people. So how do you keep these people motivated? Yeah, that's a really good question. And I think it's super important, especially if you ask a lot from people. So if you work at a company like us, we ask a lot of you. So you have to work hard, you have to innovate, you have to try and be the best of the best.

29:13 And that allows you to grow a lot as a professional, but also asks a lot of commitment. And in my opinion, the only way to do something that is very hard for a long period of time is to make sure that you have fun while doing it. Because if you do something that is already very hard and you're not enjoying it, doing that consistently over a long time is super hard. So for me is the number one thing to how can you make what we do fun?

29:40 How can you celebrate success? How can you make sure that there's interconnections between teams and people by organising things. So your company should be a little bit like a community, I think, or teams should be a little bit like a community where of course people work together, but they also have fun together.

29:55 And that allows you to collaborate better and just makes it much easier to do something hard over a long period of time. So I think that that is super important. And on the personal level, you can look at the different motivators that a person has. And what you usually see is some people are focused on career development, for example, some people are really focused on financial goals. So people are really focused on just a fun aspect. So there's there's basically different reasons why people do what they do and why they work right at work. And you have to be able to identify what makes this person take because it is just different per person. And if a person is motivated by financial goals, then it's more likely that they work in sales,

30:37 for example. Then you have to create structures that allow them to work towards certain goals. If you. Sales. The sales experts the best in the world. Why? Why are you attacking my Co hosts? Why? Well, I'm not saying that 1 is better than the other, right? I'm just. Saying no, no, so, so give, give her the money. Give give you the phone right And I'll take the money for a. While what makes who tick and you have to make sure that you create incentives around whatever makes that person tick. Some people really enjoy challenges so you have to keep challenging them because as soon as soon as it becomes boring for them, they don't have fun anymore. And so you cannot take a one side. Andrew, I got you, now you.

31:21 Andrew, I got you. Why are you talking about me? I love challenges, but these days I think I need less challenges. I'm more money. I need to I need to be more motivated by money. So I I'm talking to two marketing. Experts, you see. Like I'm, I'm learning from the best in the world. That's all of you.

31:40 So please keep teaching me guys. So sorry to interrupt you, but you know, just on a lighter. On a lighter note, actually, yeah, you are actually support on the financial motivation, the what's the board, the forum? It's important to have fun while doing what you're doing. And that's why, for example, podcasting is something I really enjoy doing even when I wasn't making money from you. Like there are days when I'll do 6 episodes, I'll be so drained. But you know, we get we get to the spin from from the scratch. And, you know, it's a beautiful lead up to, to, to my next question, because my next question is actually like, at what moment did you realise that Clipper had actually truly gone global?

32:26 You know, for me, it was a shock for me when I realised that my quarters is now global. I just got a notification from these notes. And instead you're, you're now ranked global, top 10% in the world. That's that. Whoa. And then it keeps me down. Whoa. And you know, I'm top 10% and top 5%, top 3% now over top 2.5%. And then, you know, the Spotify back end showed me that the first podcast is listening to in seven to five countries across the world.

33:06 The second one is listening to you in 53 countries across the world. I just you I have. I have started something that has spiralled out of control. You cannot control this any longer. Some TV stations are not listened to in even up to 20 countries or 50 countries, A7 to five that is global so. Tell me at what point did he hit you that that you have due to beast that you cannot? Yeah, that's a good question.

33:35 I don't, I don't remember the exact moment, but what I do remember is we were first operating in the Netherlands and we realised that what we were doing was not country specific. So in the Netherlands you have administrative overhead, but you also have that in Germany and also in US and actually in some countries a lot more than in the Netherlands.

33:53 So when we realised like, why are we actually focusing on the Netherlands? Well, it's because we were born in the Netherlands and we lived there. And so then we said, OK, how can we experiment with going to other markets? And some people will start crazy market researches and stuff like that. But I'm very pragmatic. So I basically said let's not do that. And that's just get 3 marketeers on board that help us translate our content to German, English and French. With those languages, we basically have the biggest European languages.

34:24 And of course, with English, you have a global reach. We just translate our content and we do a little bit of marketing activities. Back in the time it was called link building. Now that's not really a thing anymore, but that was important at that time. And we'll just see what happens basically.

34:39 And we already had, of course, the assumption not everything will probably work, but if even one of the three would work, that would already be great. But then we saw, OK, we are getting German visitors to the Epsilon German leads. Hey, we're also getting French visitors and French leads. Hey, we're getting American visitors, English visitors.

34:58 And then at some point, because of course you, you're using the English language, they came from everywhere. And then was really the time where we said, OK, we have to double down on this. So we have to make sure that we get 2 German marketers and two French marketers and two English speaking marketers because I always believe it's a snowball.

35:16 So in the beginning, when you have a snowball and you roll it, it gets a little bit larger every cycle and it rolls quite slowly. But the bigger it gets in one cycle, it grows more and it grows faster. So I knew that online content is like real estate basically, right? You invest in creating it and it can help you for years and years.

35:38 So now we have way over a few 1000 pages on our website. We have 100 YouTube videos, etcetera. So now it looks easy, you guys have all of that, but that is because five or seven years ago we started going all in on this content game. And as soon as you see the traffic on your website and you see the leads coming in, you, you know, OK, apparently there's also demand here.

36:01 And then after that, opening an office day or starting a sales team or whatever is relatively easy. But I would never, for example, open an office in the US and then see if there is appetite for my products. Try it in the like least time and cost intensive way. In our case was just using some content.

36:18 And if you don't see appetite, you see people biting, then then you have ested it. So that's how we got to internationalisation. Content is keying. I'll pass you over to the best in the world in the marketing themselves. And that's honestly a really, really practical and smart approach to go global.

36:40 It's like kind of just put it, put the feelers out there and see what bites and then kind of dive in. I think that's really intelligent. Super smart. And obviously it worked for you. Now being in 35 countries right now, I know we're speaking a lot about your passion and how important it is for your teams to prioritise innovation to the point where you're running 10 different projects at one time just to see which one's going to go off for you. So other than sounds like it's a consistent topic and a consistent purpose in your business. When you're kind of setting these teams up, do you give them subjects to kind of expand on when it comes to innovation or do you build the teams, do they

37:30 make their own teams? Give us a little more information on how when it comes to innovation, you cultivate that and I'm kind of how it goes in your business. Yeah. So I think the answer to your question is that it should be a combination, a combination of ideas from leadership, ideas from the team, etcetera.

37:50 And the bigger you get, the more important it is that innovation is carried throughout the entire organisation. Because in the first years I could come up with all the ideas theoretically, but now it will be impossible for me to come up with all the ideas. I'm not a programmer, I'm not in the sales team, I'm not in the operations team.

38:06 So I don't have as details inside in what is limiting them most on a day-to-day basis, for example, as they do. So I think it always starts with leadership. So you have to come up with ideas and initiatives and structures, and then you have to get people motivated. And that starts with, for example, team leads.

38:24 And from there you have to motivate team members and you have to continuously put effort into that. And at some point you basically wanted all three parties from the different perspectives that bring in ideas and that you can have a conversation. OK, what are the ideas that make the most impact? So for me, it's not important who came up with the idea. I think it's great if somebody else comes up with a great idea actually, but we should always judge an idea based on what will make the most impact.

38:49 So then together you can decide, OK, these are the ideas that we think are most valuable, and then you pick those ideas to innovate on. But you cannot expect as a leader, I think that other people will ruin the innovation for you. Because if you're not part of it, then what example can people take from you?

39:06 And the other way around, as a leader, you can also not infinitely come up with everything yourself. So I think it has to be a combination. So I always come up with a few key areas in which I believe we should innovate. So to give like a direction, and I usually like to use the analogy of a train.

39:23 So I'm, I'm the, the train that is pulling basically. And I'm putting a train on on the track. And then I want people to put extra waggons on the train. So I want to kick start the idea and then I want people to latch on to it. Basically an expanded idea, make it better and make it perfect over time.

39:39 And then I want to open as many tracks as possible and have as many trains on the track as possible. And some will be real, right? And they will not work. OK, fine. And a few will be super successful and you cannot really predict which ones are successful. But what you can say, and it's just mathematics, is if you try more things, your chances of trying something that is successful is higher.

39:58 So you should try a lot of things. Yeah, that's true. And it makes sense how you kind of expand just as many products as you can at one time and just to keep that passion, have people working on different things and see which one's going to work. It's very obviously it's like you're an individual entrepreneur, entrepreneurial spirit on a larger scale just through the whole company. So that's really cool.

40:26 And I know that when you're hiring these people, their mindsets are very important. Their skill sets are pretty important as well. What lessons have you had to learn throughout hiring, leading, and empowering people through this innovative process? When you're move, they're kind of expanding at a fast rate. Yeah.

40:46 So I think I had to learn a lot of things. And I think one of the most important things is that all people are different, so that it's super hard to to get all people that are the same. So whatever structure you come up with has to work given the fact that people are different. And I think one of the lessons that I learned most is that you have to be super vocal about what your expectation is.

41:11 Because if you're not super focal about it, then both sides of the table might have slightly different expectations. And then a year from now, one or both parties are disappointed because I thought you were going to do this. You thought you didn't have to do that except, except that. So since the last few years, I almost speak to everybody in their hiring process. And I always tell them like, OK, if you work here, this is what I would expect from you.

41:36 And it means working hard, innovating, do it over a long period of time, et cetera, everything making it super, super tangible. So don't beat around the Bush. Say exactly how you feel and what you would expect. And then ask the person genuinely, is that something that you see yourself doing for a longer period of time?

41:52 Or would you think picking the company next door, which might be much more comfortable, might even pay you more, would be a better option for you? Because when people choose for Clipper, I want them to make a deliberate choice. And knowing the expectations and knowing that there are other options out there and that you choose this option because this is the one that you like most and you understand exactly what I expect from you. And that just prevents that you make too many MIS hires. And of course, still you make mistakes and mishires are super expensive, not not per SE from a financial aspect, but form a result aspect.

42:27 So you hire somebody, you train in for six months, they realise they're not what you're looking for. You have to restart the whole process and it just takes time. And time is the one thing that you can never recoup. So you have to kill that space. Yeah, absolutely. I think it brings such a level. It sounds like you're bringing such a level of transparency. And that's also what Alexandra are. She's an HR professional and she's incredible. She was actually speaking about the same thing. So we love to see, we love.

43:02 This mad hat into our studio, I think, yes, nothing you can tell me. Get it? I'm afraid of you. Now Clipper has Keep the Kingdom's podcast studio. I guess I just have all the battle scars so I learned from everything. Absolutely no. But that's honestly one that's what we love to see because, for example, she's from Poland, you know what I mean? And now we're taught we're able to really see where the truth is coming out of what works across industries, across countries, and really brings people the most success when they're building companies in tech, no matter what their background is, no matter where they're from.

43:45 So that's amazing. I think transparency 100% and making it kind of foolproof for whoever you're hiring on letting them know exactly what they're doing so there's no confusion and making sure it's the right fit. You definitely need a deep level of transparency for sure. So how do you, I guess my next question is how do you balance automation and human creativity? It sounds like, well, your product is based off of automation.

44:16 Sounds like that was the purpose of it because we had this whole mess in front of us and it can get unnecessary to a point, but obviously creativity is essential to anything that we're doing. How do you balance both in your leadership style and in your product design? Yeah, good question. I always see creativity as a means, not as a goal. So I don't strive to have a creative outcome. I see creativity as part of coming to a solution. So the solution doesn't have to be creative. And I think sometimes people try to reinvent the wheel and try to think like, oh, but our website has to be pink with stars because that's more creative than the competitor. But there might be a very valid reason why the competitors website is not pink.

45:03 It is actually black because XYZ. I'm not about reinventing the wheel. I don't try to push people to come up with super creative things. I actually always tell them reach 80% as fast as possible and do that as many as many times as possible. So sometimes you can get to. So let's talk about content. For example, you can get to a LinkedIn post in 10 minutes that is like 80% perfect.

45:26 If you want to get it to 100%, so you want to get the picture perfect on a video, it might take you two or three times more time, but the actual measurable impact of that additional 20% is usually quite low. So I prefer to make two or three pieces at 80% instead of one at 100% because the definition of 100% is not even universal. I might like this picture, you might like the other picture. And so I don't believe in operating speed, for example, over and striving for a certain outcome. So I would like people to use their creativity in how can we solve problems as efficient as possible Because I think problem solving is a super creative and analytical skill. But I don't strive for creative

46:07 outcomes. So if the best outcome is something that is super boring, that is fine with me, that works the best, then that works the best. So yeah, I think that is my vision on like automation, creativity. We've tried to automate everything as as good as possible. And coming up with good automations requires creativity because how do you come up with a something that does not exist?

46:29 You have to ideate together and talk and try things out. And that is I think what creativity is. But yeah, the end products might not be super creative. It might be an AI engine that can replicate human tasks, right? Yeah, yeah. And my Co host loves to use this creativity to automate things that would otherwise be boring. So that actually makes a lot of sense is sometimes the creativity isn't necessarily what the person is seeing at the end.

47:00 The result is actually quite boring, but there is creativity that goes into it just to solve the problem. And I also really like, I really like your stance. It's, it's kind of speaking into perfectionism in general. How if you take up a tonne of time worrying about that extra 10% or that extra 20%, your task could have been done already and you could have moved past it or done it so many times to where it kind of solves itself just by repetition.

47:33 You know, it just become that 5 percent, 10% comes in just by doing it 10 * 20 * 50 times, however many times we have to create the content or create the system or the output, whatever it is. So yeah, it's really good insight for sure. I know that clip of right now you have it rooted in to AI powered document processing, which the world is changing for sure when it comes to AI and using it to automate those boring tasks and even trying to expand creativity. How do you see AI transforming not just administrative tasks, but entire industries?

48:12 Well, I'm super bullish on AI. So I believe the impact is huge and that most people really underestimate it. Even when they think they don't underestimate it, they still underestimate it. And so I like to always compare it to the industrial revolution. So first we were building cars by hand, then we were using conveyor belts and our robots are doing it. And that's change the whole workforce that's used to work in factories into completely different roles. For the last, let's say 20 years, there's been a huge growth in office workers.

48:43 So there's a lot of people working in offices now. And what's going to happen with AI is the industrial revolution of office work. So a lot of the things that we were doing in offices were relatively simple, low added value tasks, but you had to do a lot of them and therefore you might need a lot of people. So when you're automating those things and AI is now then the tool to do it.

49:05 But it doesn't matter if it's AI or any other toolkit. There has been RPA and have been different types of technologies over time to do such things that changes where the added value of a personalise. And if you studied information science or computer science five years ago, you thought you would guarantee have a job because there was a high demand for developers. But I have a one year old son.

49:29 I am pretty sure that by the time he he will study, so 17 years from now, there will not be computer science studies. So I hope he will become a mechanic or something with physical schools because I think it's much more likely that future career paths will be more in the physical world because the physical world is much harder to automate.

49:50 And so when it's in healthcare or whether it's in construction or things like that, and of course, there's also robotization partially there, but that's much more complicated. A lot of office tasks, I think have been hidden behind screens and therefore not that clear to people how much time are is actually spent in those types of tasks. But a ICE is basically a devaluing network at a super, super rapid pace.

50:17 So we need to find a different value for people because it's not going to be in some of the things that we're doing today. Yeah, absolutely. I saw a post the other day and their theory was that because of advancements in AI and because we're taking, it's moving the value of people from these types of tasks that we're so used to that it's going to move towards that value of humans being more in Wellness.

50:49 And I thought that was really interesting. But I feel like right now it could go in so many different directions. So many directions for sure. But I think I also think that when it comes to physical labour, physical jobs, that's a really good point because we try so hard to automate those types of things as well, but they are a lot harder to automate. What type of ethical or strategic challenges do you see with rapid adaptation of AI?

51:17 I think there's a lot of conversation around people using AI for things that are unethical or things being tripped up in AI. They're already been several lawsuits in different industries. What have you been seeing with the rapid adaptation option, excuse me, of AI? Yeah. So this is always a very interesting topic because I have a little bit better than average understanding of AI, if I can say so. And the end of the day, everything that we teach AI comes from humanity, because humanity has created contents and documents and data and texts on Reddit, etcetera. And we're feeding that to AI.

51:55 So everything that an AI does, whether it's racist, whether it's discriminating, whether it's a good bad, comes from some part of human society. But somehow when the computer does it, we all have a strong opinion on it. And when people do it, of course, with discrimination things, luckily most people also have an opinion on it.

52:14 So maybe that's not the best example, but maybe self driving car is a good example. People kill other people all the time on the streets, right? Whether they're drunk, whether they're bad drivers or anything, when a self driving Tesla hits somebody, it's used news and it will be used lawsuits and liabilities. But if we really look at it from a logic perspective, it's all about what percentage of self driving Teslas make accidents and what percentage of people.

52:40 If that percentage is lower, then it's of course not nice to be hit by a self driving car. But if the chances of being hit are lower than by a person, it should be seen as an advancement basically. And I'm not saying that they are at that level now, but it's just an example. So I think people should not be surprised that AI makes exactly the same mistakes people also make and has behaviours that we don't like, because there's also people that have behaviours we don't like. That doesn't mean we should not try and enforce rules and regulations on it.

53:11 But now it's also illegal to steal something and still people steal things. So you can make it illegal to create fake content with AI engines, but still there will be people doing it. So we should definitely make regulations, but we should not fool ourselves that those regulations will actually prevent bad people from doing bad things. Because I think in the history of the world, there have always been people that don't follow the the law and order of that type.

53:39 And that's not going to change. Yeah, absolutely. It doesn't matter and it doesn't matter what it is. You know, different countries, they have different issues with different things. So when it comes to crime, you know, gun violence, I think the example of even the self driving car is really intelligent just because if we are comparing it to AI and I always say to to don't really use AI or they're scared of AI and things like that.

54:08 Just like a lot of our viewers, I think are people not utilising it. You're kind of on one side or the other where you're not even touching it because you're scared of it or you're going in. People will get scared because they think it's inaccurate, you know, or like, oh, it's not giving you right information in the same sense.

54:27 Well, it's about as accurate as a human is. So a humans not always going to give you the right information either. When you hire a person, they're not necessarily going to have the right skill set or mindset that you need. So I think that's really important to take into account. It is really smart to understand no matter what it is, whether we regulate it or not, at some point somebody is going to try and utilise it for their own benefit outside of that regulation because that's natural. So it really just depends on your alignment, whether you're in a company or you're using it for your own business or whatever you're using it for.

55:10 Just because we don't have control over what other people do to the extent and regulations really do only go so far in any stance, even when it comes to, you know, regulating alcohol or regulating marijuana use in America. It's not federally regulated. So but they're still trying to utilise it for the economy. So I think in the same way there's definitely going to be a gap when it comes to from country to country and government and government.

55:43 There's going to be a little bit of a grey area. And we also won't really know too. Like you said, even when people don't think they're underestimating it, they are underestimating it. So there's no way for us to really make accurate regulations on it because we don't know how far it's gonna go because of us underestimating it. Yeah.

56:08 And it's of course also really hard to predict something that you don't know because it didn't exist previously, right? You must like to look in history and say like, oh, we did this and that wrong, and that is a lot easier. But when the Internet came out, it was really hard to predict that we would now have smartphones when it came out.

56:25 It would be probably really hard to predict what we have 10 years from now that does not exist today. I didn't know it. There will be a lot of new things, but what they would be, if I would know that, then I will be building it right now. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, I would be investing in it right now.

56:43 Exactly I'd. Be I think no. No technology is good or bad by by definition. It's always how people use it and embrace it. In my personal opinion, you can be in favour of AI, you can be against it. But even if you're against it, not using it will not prevent the the wave of innovation from happening. So I think the best weapon, even if you don't like it, is get familiar with it and use it anyway. Because it will not stop if you don't use it. And then in a few years from now, you will live in a world that you do not understand because you didn't like the fact that it was going in that direction. But it is going in that direction whether you like it or not.

57:24 So it's better to familiarise yourself with it. And of course not everybody has to become an AI guru, but ignoring something that is going to change the whole society probably is not. In my opinion, it's not a really smart move for the future. Yeah, I agree. And another just to expand on that a little bit.

57:43 The thing is, is that when people are scared of it and so they're not utilising it, maybe even in their own business or things like that, they're going to get to a point where if they're not personally informed or familiar with it, all of the systems that they end up using are still going to be utilising it. So there's going to be a point where even when you're scrolling on your phone, you're using AI.

58:07 So there's really no avoiding it at all. Whether you personally are scared of it or won't adopt it, it'll still be integrated and all the things that will kind of be extended from them at some point if you cannot. Hide you can you can roll from AI and all this rebel I I am AI. I have been around for a while. It's only the large language models that is making people like very much.

58:38 Well, AIAI has actually been around for a while. Like, we've been using AI for a long time, but I think people are not like, very much more educated about AI, you know, And I tell people this, I said this, you know, we spoke to, what's his name? Yes, Meadow, the head of AI and machine learning at Ustek. It's a company based in Dubai.

59:02 And we're joking around about how people think AI is going to ruin the world. And I'm like, AI is still going to ruin the world. And that's why I love what you said. People are going to ruin the world. Using AI, right? And people who have that mentality of, oh, AI is going to ruin the world. I think they've seen too much.

59:21 Sci-fi like ex Pacino, right? Right. That I think that is a problem. I'm not a movie. Person so I think that's probably why I'm not in that, you know, train of thought. But the people do evil things and AI will only just, you know, it's an enabler, it's an assistant, it's a tool, right? So you can only blame the person, not a tool. Yeah, that's my submission.

59:49 People are doing horrible things today and they did it 10 years ago and they will keep doing it forever I believe. If you had to predict the next big leap in automation over the next five years, what would it be? Well, I would say is more a prediction for humanity maybe than for technology. But I would say that the biggest change that we will see is that all the practical jobs that were valued lowly in the past 20 years will be in the next 20 years the skills that will be valued very highly and the inverse. So a lot of people that sitting are sitting in offices today in very high valued jobs that are not able to change a light bulb when it is broken.

1:00:36 They will end up being in the inverse position of where they are right now and the other way around. So for a long time, everybody had to study and go to university and and learning certain whether it's skills or marketing or development or cognitive skills were seen as the most valuable apart. So the whole society has to flip on that, that we have to realise that the real valuable skills for the future are different skills.

1:01:00 So we have to change our education system, we have to change our reward system and we have to make sure that people that choose those career paths feel like they're making a good important decisions. Now people of course feel like if I study to be a lawyer, I will become somebody. But if they feel like I'm studying to be a Carpenter, most people would see that as less. And I personally do not.

1:01:21 I think everybody's equal. But in society it is usually seen that way. But if the lawyer has no value anymore in five years from now, because write your contract, but you still need someone to build your build your house, you can better be a Carpenter than a lawyer. So I think the whole society will flip.

1:01:40 I'm going to keep you with something about how controversial Jesus Christ was a Carpenter. Jesus Christ's father Joseph was also a Carpenter. I love carpenters. Carpentry is a high value profession. No slander or carpentry is allowed please. No, I think that's a really, I think that's really insightful. That's definitely a prediction that I haven't heard yet. So and I think it is pretty spot on because at some point even the leadership roles that a lot of people stay in, a lot of that can just be automated and like you said, contracts, people are using it for, you know, legal reasons. All the things that the higher ups have been doing for the past 20 years and things that you have to work your way up in a company to be at.

1:02:37 AIAI can assist and possibly helping build the house, but they're not the hands, they're not the feet, They're not in the mind of AI only go so far again, because it is just an extensive tool. So I think that's awesome. We're going to have AI kind of talk about some lessons and failures and growth that you've been going through, and then we're going to move into some quick fire questions.

1:03:05 So yeah, AI take it away. Wow. God bless my parent. I love the fact that I am AI. What a time to be alive, you know so. Speaking. Of. Visionaries. Yeah, visionaries. You know, there was this day. I I. Called, I called my mother and I was like what? What did you guys actually see like? You guys are not telling. People the truth, like you guys must have seen something. What are the odds you know, given birth to a child in 1992 and given them a government name AI, and then that child grows up to become an AI expert?

1:03:50 Like, what are the odds? I don't know like you, you're good master, right? So please have a cookie numbers and you know, get get the odds of bet 365. It's it's. Massive. It's massive odds. Speaking of battles cars, you talked about the fact that every founder has their battles cards. I have my battles cards, you know.

1:04:12 Some of them are old, some of them are seem very fresh, but. You know, if you look at this cast and it reminds you the journey so far, you know, and I remember growing up, I used to read a lot and there was this book I liked. The tattoo of the book is a set back, is a setup for comeback. It gives you the right mindset. So what has been one major set back that ended up teaching you something, you know, highly vulnerable. And it has been set up for comeback, really. Yeah, I think there's probably 100 different setbacks that have learned me something.

1:04:54 So it's every scar brings you a little bit closer to the end result. But I think the most important lesson that I learned and I probably made the mistakes multiple time, is that when you grow your company, there are areas that you enjoy more, that you enjoy less, that you are good at, that you're less good at.

1:05:12 And of course, you try to find people that fill in part of the gaps. But I think what is very easy to do as a founder is a, for example, you don't like sales as much. At some point you get a head of sales or VP of sales or whatever you want to call it, and you hope that they will do the work for you.

1:05:29 And that's why you basically step out and you let them step in. But it might change. It never works. It never works because you have something in your head. They have something in their head, you know everything about your company. They have maybe more experience but don't know those details. And if you expect somebody to come in, do better than you without you spending still a lot of time on it, I have learned multiple times that that just doesn't work that way.

1:05:54 So you want it to work that way. You want somebody to come in and magically solve everything for you, but it won't. So you find somebody and then you work together with that person for a longer period of time, maybe six months, maybe a year, and then that person can basically take over from you. So it takes a lot longer to get that main problems fixed.

1:06:11 Of course you want to have impact of that new person from the from the first month, that's for sure. You want to have that, but it doesn't mean that you can let that person do 100%. And that's what you want because you want to off board part of your responsibility and you want to be able to focus on other things.

1:06:26 But that transition takes a lot longer. You have to really select the right person to do it and it's not a magical overnight hire that will solve all your problems. I've, I think I had four or five times that I was really hoping for somebody to come in and fix A or B or C, and then always was disappointed until I realised, OK, you cannot step out yourself.

1:06:50 You have to keep doing it yourself until you reach that point and then you let go, basically. And yeah, that that hurt a lot because you hire people, you hope that they will do things for you. Then you get frustrations because it's not going there. Then you have to step in anyway. And it's much harder to step in later because you of course then also offend is not the right word. But when you step back in, you also take away part of somebody's responsibility that you've got in to do something for you.

1:07:19 While if you do it the other way around, you get somebody on board, you work on it together, and then you slowly transition out. That is much more natural. So I think that that cost me a lot of time and a lot of money. Wow, it feels like you are actually describing our company right. That's something I love to tell my Co founder. Teamwork makes you can complete it. The dream work.

1:07:47 Yeah, teamwork makes the dream work back, and that is something I'm happy that we implement. You know, in our company, we've worked together, you know, spending long hours, you know, take up responsibility, always willing to go above and beyond, you know, be supportive. And that's what founders need to be. You know, it's not easy if you did something and you know some people used to enjoy and some others enjoy to build. But in order to be a successful entropaedia, successful founders, Co founders, you need to balance the two. You need to find a way to you to enjoy and also enjoy the building process.

1:08:32 So I'll leave that Nuggets for our audience because we know we have an audience filled with a lot of aspiring Entropaedia as you know, the current entrepreneurs, bootstrapping founders. It's just never an easy process that I really appreciate you being authentic and also being vulnerable to to share the mistakes, the failures or to success. You know, I tell people something. I make mistakes when even.

1:09:03 I'm not shy about making mistakes. Like it's not. Stung you? You know how many mistakes I make in a day, right? It's called isolation. You keep, you know, try until you get the right way to do it. So I think, you know, people need to embrace the concept of failure, right? We live in an age and time where failure is frowned upon.

1:09:25 You know, people live down on you because you feel like, you know, how many times is successful people feel that's a hallmark of success, right? Success is failing continuously and consistently until you feel that feeling. You have to end up failing at failing and that is where you become successful. So Speaking of emerging markets, like what advice do you have with your elders that are trying to build tech companies in emerging markets?

1:09:59 I always believe that people should not look for like a golden egg. So I think there's a lot of people that try to find the perfect idea to start a company, something that nobody has ever thought of. But it's extremely, extremely rare to come up with something that nobody has ever thought of. So I always like to look at it from a much more pragmatic perspective.

1:10:17 What do you see around you that is not frictionless that could could work better and maybe in other regions that you also see solutions that are doing what you would envision, but they're not in your market for example. And then introduce a variation of that to your market that is set very well suited to your specific needs and has something that the other one does not have and of course needs to be defensible in a way.

1:10:46 But I think people really overestimate how unique something has to be. And I think you think about Revolutor and 26, those are great examples. There were already, I don't know, a few thousand banks in the world, in the Netherlands at least, those banks all had mobile apps. You could start an account from a mobile app, etcetera. And still they are growing really, really fast. Why?

1:11:07 Well, partially because they have a better user experience, partially because it's a marketing story. They just target a different audience. And now over time, they are of course also adding fictionality that some of the other banks do not have. But when these companies started, they were not that unique. They just did the same thing differently. So they operated faster.

1:11:26 They were more mobile oriented, but still bank account. I have a bank account to pay, right? I don't really care if it's IG bank or Revolute bank or whatever bank. I don't really don't care too much. Or Monzo. Yeah, Monzo Banks, it really doesn't matter that the idea is not that unique if you just execute it better or you target it at a better audience. I know there are, there are so few banks targeting kids, for example.

1:11:50 And then well, basically they're targeting the parents to have specific kids accounts. And the most important thing they do is make sure that they have good saving plans and education on how to manage your money, for example. All these things are not new. They're not new, but they're just executed better and people find their niche in a specific country or region or etcetera. And I'm not taking banks as an example, but you can find it in any industry.

1:12:14 And every time that I am in the US, for example, and I see the restaurant chain or fuel station chain, I don't know if you're familiar with it, but in Houston and the rest of Texas, I think also Arizona, you have Bucky's. Bucky's is a big fuel station chain. And in the Netherlands, we only have super boring fuel stations. They're all the same.

1:12:36 The fuel is the same, the food is the same, everything's the same. They are just different brands. But if you go to Bucky's, you get a whole experience with a mascot and crazy food. And when I'm in the US and my sister, listen, Houston, I go to Bucky's just for fun, right? But I have to fuel my car. So I think that's genius.

1:12:55 They're just selling fuel, but they're doing it in a more fun way. And you have to fuel your car anyway. So why don't you do it to the place? It's more fun. So they're much unique in a fuel station. They're unique in executing a fuel station in a way that is differentiating. So that's, I think how entrepreneurs should look at markets and ideas don't get stuck on. I need to find a billion dollar idea that nobody ever had. When I started this company.

1:13:19 I also couldn't find a lot of companies doing the same thing. And now I'm in the market for 10 years. I know there's probably 100 companies doing something similar, but still 100 companies in the entire world is not that many. If you start a bakery show will probably be 100 million companies doing the same thing.

1:13:36 So yeah, don't try to find something that is unique if nobody has ever done it. The question is, is there even a market for it or find something that you can do better than somebody else? I love that. I love that. You know I always say that. People don't relate to perfection, people relate to excellence. So aim to be excellent.

1:13:56 Don't aim at perfection. You know what you said about you know. Copying something from another market, another territory. That's this joke. We we make an account here, we call it copy and paste special. Don't just copy and paste. You know control C that control D, but you know control. Alt. D gives you the paste special so you can change the fonts or change the format. You know, yeah, be unique.

1:14:24 Yeah, it's, it's OK to copy. It's always OK to copy, but put your own torch on, on whatever ease that you are trying to copy. And of course I love the bank banking example. We've had a couple of fintech when I say icons on the platform. We had the Vice President of Fintech strategy Money 2020 recently on the podcast at first I don't know if you know the first digital bank and that is moving, Moving established by Brett King. Brett King is the number one ranked teen tech podcast in the world and versus observable top 10 features. He's been on this podcast as well. They have spoken about the creativity and innovation that is involved in making banking.

1:15:22 And you know, fintech basically has made banking a better experience in this Asian time, moving away from traditional banking. But fintech basically came to save us. If. You think about it because you know, and I feel like fintech is very much under appreciated, think about having to still cope with the traditional banks. Yeah.

1:15:48 In the decision time, it's not going to be funny at all. I remember growing up, you know, following my dad to the bank, right? And you know, because he used to process like large transactions, they'll take us to like a special office. And you know, it's, it's crazy like. I hate being in physical locations, right? And there's a lot of what I say, security issues regarding our cash transactions, but now being able to just stick my phone and make a transaction, it's, it's very, very beautiful. So my very last.

1:16:21 Question to you before the quick fire route is how do you personally define success beyond financial metrics? Yeah, I personally have never really cared about the financial side of things. So for me, success is doing so. Money makes the world go round. But money is the result, money is the outcomes, you know, the goal, I think.

1:16:45 So if you do something that you enjoy and for me that is something challenging that and that keeps being challenging and you're successful at doing that, money will come. But if you focus on money on the short term, then you probably make the wrong decision. So for me, success is can I continuously challenge myself to breakthrough the next step and having fun while doing so. And for me, that is what defines success. And a day that I don't enjoy it anymore, it's not success to me because doing something I don't like and making a lot of money out of it is not, is not what I strive for in life. Doing something that I enjoy and I can make money out of and I can learn from that is a good definition of success for me. And so I have to keep

1:17:28 challenging myself. And as long as I keep doing that and I keep having fun with it, that's my definition of success. I love that absolutely. I have a whole episode on that turning passion to profit and that's exactly what you have just described. So I'll hand over to my Co host, Co founder, the best in the world at sales and marketing.

1:17:51 Now I love you to kick off the quick fire round my brother are. You ready to rumble? I'm ready. All right, so try and answer as quickly as you can. For this, we've got about 5 questions for you. The first one is coffee or code. Code. Code OK. Who's your favourite, who's your favourite or what's your favourite tech?

1:18:19 Tool that you cannot live without. LinkedIn. Oh, that's a good one. And what is the last book or podcast that has shaped your thinking recently? Thinking in Bats. It's a really great book about how poker logic applies to business. That one's a really good one. Thinking in bats. Who? Who are the book? I don't know, top of minds I'm really. Bad.

1:18:48 I, I, I need to, I need to cut that book. I do have a what do you call a blinkist? I don't know if you think about blinkist. Yeah, probably it's in there. Yeah, they do a really, really good job. And of course, Blinkers has not started sponsoring this podcast part. I am glad to do a free A. Free start up for them right A free adverts for them. It's a really, really great.

1:19:10 So you guys out there, yeah, a lot of people don't have enough time to read books these days. But you know, get on blinkers. You can get any books of a rise, you know, as an audio in 20 minutes. Thirty minutes. Yeah, it's it's a really good one. I'll find it on. Because if you could automate one thing in your personal life, or what would that be?

1:19:35 All the household tasks, cooking, cleaning. And in one word, what? The yes, I didn't automate that one. Thank you. I don't know if you guys are familiar with leaders Eat lost or like leading by example of these types of things, but for me, that's absolutely what leadership is. You always have to say what you do, do what you say.

1:19:59 Never ask somebody to do something that you're not willing to do yourself. That's my style of leadership. So always I'm in the trenches. Being in the trenches. You're right, it's very important. You know, like to lead by example. While I was at PwC, I had this partner. His name is Chulu Atelici. Interestingly, he has been on this podcast. You know, I'm really grateful, you know, executives I've worked with, you know, honour me by being on the podcast as well. And there's something he used to say. What is important is not the example of your power, power of the example.

1:20:40 That's what you just needed to. That's a beautiful saying. What's important is the power of your example, and it's really essential to me by example. Remember, you know, he was a director when I was an associate, and when we got promoted to become senior associates, he had the style ball beaten and called us into, you know, the Hall said.

1:21:03 Make sure that you don't become that senior that you hated like you were an associate. Yeah, yeah, true. Glad to lead by. Example, you know, and of course by agreeing to lead management like it always rang into my head that you always have to be by example, you know, get in the trenches when I ask my team to work till 7:00 PM, I'm working till 9:00 PM so I ask my team to work till 9:00 PM, I'm working till 11 like I and of. Course how?

1:21:36 How are you ever going? To yeah. So yeah, leadership by example, very important. And of course, you know Yellen. Thank you very much for sharing such powerful insights today. Scaling AI innovation to be defining meaningful work. This story is a tree testament to purpose prevail leadership. So our listeners check out, keep his work and connect with Yellen on LinkedIn to follow their journey of transforming how the world handles news of nature.

1:22:09 That is all she wrote. To. For any closing remarks and of course, do you want to leave a shout out to anybody before you need? Yeah, I just want to say thank you so much for your time and your expertise. We love having you. We love hearing about your company. It sounds like there is definitely a reason that you have a global impact. That's really what we strive to represent on this podcast for our audience, just to expand that knowledge to people who are scared to jump in, who are scared of failure, who are scared to be in the trenches.

1:22:53 So I thank you so much for sharing your story, sharing your failure, sharing the whole journey with us. We really appreciate it. Well, thank you guys for your time, of course. And anybody that's still doubting it to start a company, you know, go for it. Go ahead thin. And yeah, it's a great journey.

1:23:15 I love that. Go for it. I always tell the audience, I always go. For something in your life, you know, conceive, believe, strive to thrive and achieve. That's the pathway guys go to it.