Anas Bukhash on Harnessing the Dubai’s Potential as a Global Crossroads

0:04Hi, this is Imran Ahmed, founder and CEO of the Business of Fashion. Welcome to the BOFodcast. It's Friday, April 25th. Over the last few decades, Dubai has rapidly transformed from a humble trading port into a global hub for business, tourism and innovation. With favorable economic policies, a strategic location and an ambitious workforce, Dubai has become a vibrant destination at the intersection of Europe, Asia and Africa. Entrepreneur Anas Bukash has experienced and capitalized on this transformation firsthand. As a host of one of the Middle East's most-watched talk shows and founder of influencer marketing agency Bukash Brothers, Anas embodies the entrepreneurial spirit of Dubai.

0:53It's a 50-something-year-old country. It's younger than our fathers and our mothers. So imagine if you come up with an idea and you just move to Dubai, you could be the first one and then you have that edge of being the pioneer in that field. If you do that in London or you do it in New York, you're probably number 500. This week on the BOF podcast, I'm delighted to share this conversation with Anas from BOF Crossroads in Dubai to discuss how the city's openness and youthfulness have shaped a thriving, innovation-driven culture. Here's Anas Bukhash on the BOF podcast.

1:33I'm not sure how many of you have watched one of Anas's interviews before, but he always starts with his signature question, and I'm quite lucky today because I get to turn the tables on Anas. So, like, how are you really doing, Anas? Good attempt. It's a good attempt, and it's an important question. I'm lucky, you know? I like to remind myself how lucky I am When I start to complain about petty things, I zoom out and think how silly I look compared to so many other places where people are not as fortunate as we are and they just don't have the most basic things such as safety or next meal. I know it's maybe very cliche to say this but if you actually just remind yourself without even telling everybody just do it with yourself it puts things in perspective every time I get ahead of myself and I start to complain I think it's okay to complain but you don't linger in the complaint so I feel lucky and blessed to be in this city in this country amongst good people and I get to work with something I love So I'm quite lucky.

2:49That's the dream. Yeah. The dream for you, I want to go back to where it started. So just to give you a little bit of background, Anas and I met about one year ago. We were seated across from a dinner at the Salone del Mobile in Milan. I didn't know anything about him. Well, we got into a little conversation. And since then, I've been following your podcast, AB Talks, and your work. And what I found so interesting in our conversation that day is I had just come back from Dubai. I don't know if you remember. I had not been in Dubai for nine years. Okay. And if I'm honest, I had a bit of misgivings.

3:31Not misgivings, but maybe I was a bit judgmental about Dubai. And last year in March, I came here for about a week. And I spent some time with many of the people actually in this room. And I was just blown away. by the transformation that this city has gone through. I mean, of course, everyone knows about the architectural transformation and the landscape, and it was a port city. But the thing that really, really, for me, was the most impactful shift was just the incredible mix of people. And when you think about global cities in the world, you can probably count them on two hands, right? And I would definitely, based on my experience here, the generosity with which so many of you have spent time with me, I really count Dubai now as one of these global cities.

4:21Can you just talk to us about the change that you've seen here? I mean, I think you're 42? 43. 43? Yeah. I know you spent some time in the U.S., but you spent a lot of your life here watching this transformation happen. Talk to us about the transformation happening in Dubai, and what has that meant for the opportunities that people can find here? It's a good question and a broad, broad question. And the interesting thing is because I'm an 80s baby, I've seen a lot. You know, I mean, my childhood was, back then, it was like the place. Now it's not, but it was at the Afa Road. And that's where people flirt.

5:05And where you flirt is you flirt next to the cafeteria with the shawarma. Like that's kind of, that was it, you know. And on the weekend, you'd go to the cinema, and there's actually a shawarma in the cinema. That's my background. And you go and buy these cool mixtapes with R &B songs, and that's what you give a girl. And it was such, I think, simplistic and beautiful. And I think we're the last generation to be before social media, literally. Anybody who was born and had a childhood here that was before social media, we are literally the last generation to have both. And in terms of Dubai, I'm an entrepreneur at heart.

5:43And I think, of course, it's horses for courses. Dubai doesn't fit everybody. But if you're fast and you actually have a dream, I actually think Dubai is one of the few places in the world where you could be the first. And by coincidence, a lot of the start, I did six startups. I think most of them were the first. Just because UAE is young. It's a 50-something-year-old country. It's younger than our fathers and our mothers. So imagine if you come up with an idea and you just move to Dubai, you could be the first one, and then you have that edge of being the pioneer in that field. If you do that in London or you do it in New York, you're probably number 500 because so many people before you did it.

6:27So I think that's one of the beautiful things. The other point you mentioned I think is gorgeous is the diversity. And it's not only diverse, but people get along. Because you could have a diverse country that people don't like each other. You could have racism, you could have lack of teamwork and all of that. But just in our agency, I think we are around from the 40 people, the last time I counted, I think we're between 20 to 26 nationalities. Can you imagine? Yeah. 26 nationalities between 40 and they're all cool and they get along. Like sometimes I just watch them and I see that they go for walks together and they have fun.

7:02And I think it's beautiful to see. And I think that's very rare. I don't know if it's safe to say that we could be the most diverse city in the world. It's certainly one of the most diverse. I mean, you know, I think of cities like London and New York and Toronto and other places where you have like hundreds of languages spoken. But I think the point that you mentioned is a really important one, which is around civil cohesion. You know, even if, you know, I was talking to my friend Bandana about this over dinner last night. You know, we were at the beautiful Indonesian restaurant here in the one and only hotel in Daliman.

7:39And the young man serving us was from Bali. And Bandana lives in Bali. And, you know, he went off to get our order. And she said, you know, everyone here, whoever you interact, they just seem happy. You know, you interact with an Uber driver in New York. And they're like always stressed out. And you interact with an Uber driver in London. And they're polite, but they don't really want to talk to you. but everyone here just seems it feels like a safe place and no matter kind of which strata of society you might be in there's something about civil cohesion here that I don't observe in a lot of other places maybe also if we want to be fair I think it's an indirect but very direct cause when you have a really safe place and your basic needs are met as a human you have the luxury of enjoying and feeling good but if you again are insecure and the electricity is going off and there is a political issue or war and you have no and you go to Europe today I love Europe but you go to Europe today don't take your watch don't keep your phone out and like that's basic anxiety so imagine we multiply that of course people will be stressed and and unhappy, I would say, or no time to be happy or joyous.

9:01But on the topic of when you came and judged Dubai, I think a lot of people do that, and it's expected. And I think a lot of people come and say, you know, Dubai is fake. And I say, have you really seen all the aspects of Dubai? Because I could show you certain places, and then you can make the judgment, fake or not. But I can show you old-school Dubai. I can show you the best kebab place. I can show you the best shawarim place. He's like, I'm such a foodie, so I keep talking about food. But there are really nice things. And when I have friends that come here for the first time and I show them that, they're like, oh.

9:36I'm like, yeah, there are places other than the typical restaurants and in the IFC or anywhere. They're nice, but I wouldn't go there every week. There are places that you can just have a really good meal. Like Ravi's or Kabab Astadi. There is so much character in Al-Fahedi area. Then you can judge. Yeah. Okay. Well, we kind of set the context of the Petri dish within which your entrepreneurship has been nourished. I want to talk to you about AB Talks and how all that came up. Because as a fellow kind of entrepreneur whose business started kind of by accident on the internet, and look at this, you know, this started as a blog.

10:20Your business similarly started with conversations. How did you develop the skill for interviewing people? Because you've got, I mean, and I highly encourage everyone to watch one of Anna's, because it's a very different approach. I mean, you're quite intense, you know, like the chairs are kind of like this. No escape, and there's no table between. There's no table. I mean, and I saw you recently did an interview with, you know, one of the kind reputed to be the most cold people in our industry, Anna Wintour. And you tried your tactic with her. Didn't always work. I'll tell you where the challenge is.

10:59Yeah. When somebody tells me you only have 20 minutes or 30 minutes, I can't do magic. Yeah. I can do my best and I might get, and you could see, by the way, with Bill Gates and Anna Wintour, re-watch it, watch their body language the last 10 minutes. Yeah, it changed. Bill went like this then. and he was just, he was comfortable at one point. But then they have to finish. So it's, what people don't understand is we're dealing with humans. And in the beginning, they don't know what, and it's the first time they meet me. So they need to trust you. They need to know that you're not sneaky and you're not trying to make them look bad.

11:35And just when they warm up, if they have to leave, it's a shame, but we did our best with Anna, you know. I mean, your signature question, instead of answering kind of how she was, she talked about what she did that day because like you know but it's a it's a good technique but how did you because you're really good at it I mean I get to see a lot of interviewers I'm an interviewer myself I've been interviewed by a lot of different people but you have this really special way of getting people to open up how did you develop that I'm a mechanical engineer so So it has nothing to do with it. I think, look, I'll tell you what I think also is interesting.

12:17Apparently, some of the best CMOs in the world are engineers by background. And I don't think it's just, I'm not bragging about engineering. I didn't enjoy it. But I do think unorthodox approach to anything makes you stand out. Maybe because I didn't go to media school or psychology, which I love. but maybe that helped me just to ask questions the way I think I want to ask them and suddenly you look different you don't be that you don't you know like hey can I ask you like it's so boring when I watch these interviews it's so pretentious and the person who's asking is not even concerned about the answer I'm sure you've been there like while you're asking and sometimes they do this they're like hey how's the event and I'm like you just asked me the question at least stay with me.

13:05And it's these little things, I think, Amran, it developed the curiosity. So I did TV for a while and I found it so boring and not what I like. It was very surface level questions and short. You can swear. I like to swear. And I want people to laugh and I want to go raw. So I realized it's not for me. So then I had the agency, Bukhash Brothers. I'm like, the moment I have a production team, even if it's small, I'm going to start interviews. This was in 2014. I wrote, I have the paper. I wrote the concept of AB Talks. I think it was like a sit down with AB or some silly name. And then fast forward four years.

13:52We're in a storeroom in the agency. Put two chairs. and I get my first guest who was a footballer, Omar Abdurrahman, in my opinion, the best we've ever had in the region. And nobody has ever seen him speak at length because it's like after the game, how was the game? It was good, I scored, that's it. But who is this person? So I got him and for me, I don't, the slogan has never changed. It's the human behind the title. It was, Amran, who are you? Who are you? I don't care how many awards, good for you, great, but who's this person? And I wasn't a good interviewer in the beginning. A lot of people are like, you're a shitty listener.

14:30You're bad. You're not a good listener. And I see the comments. And I'm like, okay, if six people don't think I'm a good listener, then I'm not a good listener. And I think that's where sometimes our ego needs to be relaxed. If a lot of people tell you that you are hot-headed, you're probably hot-headed. If six random people told me I'm not a good listener, I have two ways to go about it. Be stubborn. I mean, like, yeah, haters or jealous. Or I say, NSC, you probably are not. Now, what can you do about it? And then I said, I have to be the best listener I could ever be. And I switched it. Some of the best feedback I ever had from BOF in the early days was by reading the comments.

15:10Because, you know, I didn't know what it would become. But based on the feedback I get, people would say, can you do more of this? Or can you answer this question? And that kind of dialogue with a community of people has become such an important part of media for any, whether you're a brand or a creator or whatever you are. But here you are now sitting in the hot seat of the creator economy too, right? Which, you know, the other reputation Dubai has, by the way, is that there's like an overwhelming disproportionate number of creators and influencers in this region. And I think the statistics show that people in this region are much higher users of social media than almost anywhere in the world.

15:52So why do you believe in the importance of the creator economy that you're a part of? And what do you think creators can bring to industries like fashion, beauty and luxury? And you're doing more and more within these industries. What's the intersection between those two things? I think having content creators is a blessing and a curse. Because everybody has a smartphone. Everybody can claim they are a life coach or a media personality or whatnot. And that's where the negative, because anybody can claim it. Before you had to go to get certain degrees to become something. Today I can literally change my bio and write dentist.

16:32Come to my office and I'll do something. And then suddenly you don't have teeth. So I think there's pros and cons. But the beauty, now let's go to the positive side. The direct journalism you get out of it, the direct reviews, when you have a really good content creator that has the ethics and the integrity, he's live. You see the situation in a certain country, in a certain place, or a certain movie, and it's quite a positive aspect. So I would say both of them are important, but on a bigger scale also, I think we really need to chill with our smartphones and not be so addicted to our phones.

17:09And I did something funny. I was with my family in Italy last week. So at night, we wanted to choose a movie. So I chose a movie. I had my two kids, my two brothers and me, and we're watching. And I noticed that one of them is, you know, chatting every literally two minutes. Another one is on the phone. And I'm like, my son, Majid, I'm like, Majid, take all the phones, put them upstairs. He took all the phones, kept them away. Because what happens to all of us, the moment it calms down, if you're in an elevator, just count to three. As soon as the door closes, everybody nobody wants awkward silence or boredom if you're watching a football match or a TV show suddenly as soon as the energy goes low on the scene and it's the two screen issue but when you know that mentally it's not at reach, you don't care and you really enjoy the experience and that's what maybe I went a bit off but with social media and content creation I think it's important to do it right but let's not also get too hooked to it because then we don't live and experience things properly in order to give better content also.

18:19Even you need to travel and see and interview people, have dinners and just feel creative. And then you'll write something that we're like, wow, okay. You know, he has such a different look at things. But if you're just reacting. Yeah. So we're almost out of time. You know, there's lots of people out there that would love to do what you do. So you've just given us one thing, which is like, be a good listener. But like, what advice do you have to entrepreneurs operating in markets that are perhaps sometimes overlooked by the West, that don't have the same ecosystems as Silicon Valley or London or, you know, other places?

18:57Like, what is your advice to people who are trying to build that? You've done six. What's the advice? It's tricky, Amran. I think my formula is quite simple. if you're good at something and you keep doing it consistently with discipline you only have one way you will succeed I don't think there's another option unless you die so I think that's a very simple formula of success however today you have social media you have friends and family and you can test things before actually launching a website before launching a business before you had to put all this capital in to open a little place in a shopping mall.

19:38And if you lose, you can lose big if you just your savings. Today, you have a product, you have this. You can literally put it online and say, okay, make a nice iPhone video and test it, promote it with$100. Suddenly, people like your glass. You're like, okay, make a plate. I think that's what people are, they're not realizing how easy it is to test. So test, and then you'll quickly know. There's one thing that comes up often in your interviews, which is about your interview subjects' relationship with their parents. The other thing that people from these kinds of regions, our kinds of cultures face is that there's a very specific, even now, definition of what a successful career looks like in medicine or engineering or some professional profession.

20:27What advice do you have to give to people who need to convince their parents that a career in media, in the creator economy, in creativity is a legitimate career with real value in culture and society. It was way less difficult than when we were young. Yes. It was unheard of before. I wanted to be a footballer and nobody understood what that is. Like, go kick a ball. No, you can actually. It was a very difficult thing. But today, let's go to the families that are actually against. I think once you zoom out, you understand first why. Why is my mom or dad upset with me or saying no? Because that's their definition of what stability is and success.

21:12So when we zoom out, we realize that the parent, all they want is stability for their child before they're gone, income, and happiness, hopefully. So that's what the parent is trying to tell you. Like, no, because in my time, a lawyer or an engineer or a doctor is what got you the bill. got you a good salary. They still, so once you empathize with that, you're not as resistant to your parents. What you can do is you can tell, listen, these are some examples of people in this field who have made a living out of this. I'm not the first one. Give me a year. If I don't do it, I'll go to whatever degree.

21:50And push yourself. Yeah. And some parents are willing because what happens is then, let's say this content creator that left home and went to Mexico and now he's trying and then he suddenly makes money and the parents are like, that's my son, because now he made money. That definitely happened to me. But that proves that all they wanted was Amran to be successful. They just didn't see it from the way you saw it. Well, they just defined it differently. And it came from a personal lived experience where security and success was defined very differently than the way I was very fortunate. I grew up privileged, right?

22:26So I could think about other things than what they were thinking. you. Okay, last question. Sure. You've interviewed some of the most amazing people in the world, some of the most successful people in the world. Is there something that you see in common across all of them that makes them successful? Makes them successful? Yeah, like makes them successful, happy, fulfilled human beings. Like what does Anna Wintour have in common with Bill gates basically workaholics workaholics yeah even i remember max verstappen the f1 driver every you'll notice every question i ask these individuals they go back to work like that's how their brain is it's you know that's where their value that's where they they see them that's the image they've painted of themselves it's work obsessed so you can tell them what's your horoscope they're like yeah and this article in my magazine like they'll go back to work all the time but um maybe to make it a more simple answer one of the i'll say one of one of the ways to be successful is to really have a purpose i think you really need and i think if you're just doing a job that doesn't feel true to your core or your your being i find it not sustainable or maybe you do a good job but you will never be great because you're just doing it because the salary is good or it's stable or or or but if you truly enjoy what you do and it really speaks to you it's your it's aligned you are so lucky and that's where you know you can because then you don't feel it's work you're always doing it you you travel you research you watch youtube videos you're listening to a podcast about it, it's your purpose.

24:14It's not work anymore. So maybe those that found it are the more successful ones. Thank you. And thank you for sharing that with us. Thank you.

24:28The BOF podcast is edited and produced by Olivia Davies and Eric Bria.