EventNewsDXB
EventNewsDXB is your weekly podcast focussing on the business of events in Dubai, the UAE and across MENA. Powered by -45dB, it features candid conversations, practical insights and and on-the-ground perspectives from the people behind the region’s most exciting live experiences.
I host it - I'm Ian Carless and I've worked in both the event and television production industry for over 25 years.
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EventNewsDXB
Nadim Jamal: Balancing Talent, Clients & Budgets - The Reality of Building A Sustainable Event Company
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
When a teenage musician in Beirut realised he loved organising the gig as much as playing it, that spark eventually became eventlab, one of the region’s leading event recruitment businesses.
In this week’s episode of EventNewsDXB, eventlab co-founder, Nadim Jamal shares how freelancing turned into entrepreneurship, how Expo and ‘Riyadh season’ accelerated growth and why trust, systems and pacing, not hype, are what actually build sustainable event companies.
He talks honestly about the pressures facing our industry right now: shrinking budgets, rising living costs, late payments and the reality of being stuck between client expectations and freelancer welfare. Nadim also makes a compelling case for one simple industry fix... pay on time!
Production Credits:
Presented by: Ian Carless
Studio Engineer & Editor: Manny Penamora
Executive Producers: Ian Carless & Joe Morrison
Produced by: EventNewsDXB & Poddworx Dubai
Support us!
It takes time and effort to put the EventNewsDXB podcast together and we hope it's worth something to you. If it is, please consider sponsoring the podcast to enable us to keep them coming. Contact us for details.
From Bands To Backstage
SPEAKER_02Nadeem, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me. Oh, you're welcome. I'm gonna jump straight in. Okay. Everybody's got a story, an origin story. How did you end up in events?
SPEAKER_00I I started in bands. Well, I used to sing in bands in high school and university. And in university, I started organizing concerts for my own band and then parties to make some extra cash. And I always said, I want to be on that stage, or maybe I want to organize that show, or maybe I want to do both. I probably want to do both. So I went into AUB and went to the guys that were running the music club. Yeah. It's a student club.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And said, I want to, I want to be a part of this. I want to be a part of this. And they didn't give it, they didn't give a crap. They were just, they were seniors, they were about to graduate, they're having a good time. They said, Yeah, sure, come, come do all our work for us. So that's exactly what I did as a freshman. So I I kind of knew from a very young age that I wanted to organize specifically live music shows. Graduated, got a job as a stage manager, an assistant stage manager at the Daha Asian Games. And from there, uh I after that I got a job with Action Impact for two years and just wasn't. I realized very quickly, it was, you know, corporate events, uh, activations. I was I was doing this the kind of events that I didn't particularly enjoy doing. Yeah. I also didn't make the greatest employee. That was my only full-time job in my life. And I was junior, and I didn't make the greatest junior. I just wanted to, you know, I was like early, early Gen Z. I wanted to be a manager as quickly as possible.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Went freelance. And that is when I started to really fall in love with what I did.
SPEAKER_02It's really interesting to hear that you you you sort of wanted to go down that organizational route from an early age because many of the people that we have on the podcast um come in and they've come into events in a somewhat of a roundabout manner. They've started off doing something else and then fallen into So I think for yeah, I think for you to sort of, you know, and again to sort of recognize actually I'm interested in the organizational side. That that's quite interesting.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I just loved it. And it was especially, I was especially excited about the live music
First Jobs And Freelance Breakthrough
SPEAKER_00aspect of it, you know, that that feeling of of of putting it all together. And, you know, and from that very early age, as I said, the it was all I cared about. I got decent grades, but I didn't care about those. Those are just I was ticking boxes. And I was actually my my plan was to stay in Lebanon and and and open a live music venue in Lebanon and start doing concerts and and and so on. I was I was well on my way. One of my projects was actually how to open a live music venue and and putting a business plan together. And I was about to execute that university project upon graduation. Right. Uh, and then the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict conflict happened. Uh and I went, nah, I don't know if I want to stick around here. You know, I love my country, but uh, you know, there's a lot of interruptions. That's been that absolutely.
SPEAKER_02Now I know you're very active on LinkedIn because obviously we're connected and I follow your posts, and I'll come on to talk about that later. But um fast forward now, you're obvious you've got Event Labs and you've got Mystica.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02How did that transition come about? Was the firing the impetus that you needed to then go out and start uh Event Lab?
SPEAKER_00No, so I was first I was just working as a freelancer in the industry for about four or five years, just purely freelancing. And towards uh they started to become a bit of a pattern of Nadim, can you can you bring on some people? Can you find me a stage manager? Can you find, you know, I'd be hired as a production manager or be hired as a project director or whatever, whatever it was. I was actually being hired into senior positions quite young because again, you know, I workaholic, very few freelancers in the market, etc. So I had the opportunity to rise very quickly. And I I would get a lot of can you help me find this or that or that or this? And I had a knack of finding good people that were fun to work with who were also very good at what they did.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00So when we launched Event
Founding Event Lab
SPEAKER_00Lab, I my my my business partner and I were on two different projects in Abu Dhabi at the time. He was a friend.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And uh I we met at the Belgian beer cafe in in Abu Dhabi, and and I said, you know, and we we started talking about this idea. Let's create a company that helps people find freelance resources in the market. Great. I I didn't even, I mean, it's not it the the early days were were actually quite a blur. I I remember it was very much a basement operation, it was self-funded. We liquidated some savings, we didn't have that much, and we really grew it organically, but we had both established a lot of trust and we both had that in common. That every project we'd go to, we'd build teams, and those teams were amazing, and the clients would always say, Wow, these people that you're finding are so cool. And the market, and I remember there was a bit of resistance at the beginning. There were there was a lot of, but we we already find our own freelancers, we don't need another company to find it. I said, But are you a recruiter? Or are you supposed to be organizing the 40th National Day opening ceremony? Why don't you open, you create the best ceremony possible and let me build your team? And when clients tried us, they stuck to us.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you mentioned you you spent two years freelancing and not taking a salary. At what point then did you kind of realize, okay, actually, we we've turned a corner here? I am actually now able to sort of stop the the freelancing roles and focus on primarily building the company.
SPEAKER_00It was probably uh yeah, year two. Um, and we realized this is serious now. This is an actual business. We actually we understand what we're doing now to a certain extent. We're still figuring it out, obviously, but you know, this is the more I realize that the more I dedicate to it, while Murad, my business partner, continued to freelance for a bit longer than me, the more I dedicate myself to it, the better the the outcome for for us will be, obviously.
SPEAKER_02And it's a tricky balancing out though, isn't it? Because you know, we all have to live at the end of the month. We've all got bills to pay. And unless you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth and you've got a trust fund, which uh uh you know you don't have, I don't have, then it's a different, it's a it's a really hard task, isn't it? Particularly as you know, Dubai in the UAE has never been particularly a great place to get loans from banks or things like that, or short-term business loans and where they were. Especially if we're not an employee. Especially if you're not an employee. So how did you how did you get around those obstacles? Because obviously, you know, Event Lab now is is obviously huge, but uh it wasn't always that way.
SPEAKER_00The growth happened very, very organically. And there were particular years that that where we had spurts. Yeah. Um, obviously Expo was one right after the dark days of of COVID. Um, we won huge chunks of work. I the biggest chunk, the the biggest piece of work on a single project that we've ever had volume-wise, was Expo, obviously. Yeah, and that came at just the right time. But there were, you know, there was the 2019 Riyadh season, which was a woof, you know, um,
Growing Through Mega Projects
SPEAKER_00where Scylla came to us and effectively said we need 150 people for between four and six months, depending on the person, three and six months, depending on on the role. That was big. Um, they wanted the best of the best from all over the world. We worked very closely with them at the time to build the to deliver that first Riyadh season. And and these mega projects that came along gave us these spurts that obviously we had our Saudi growth. But, you know, we never moved faster than we should, in my opinion. And that's be due to the dynamic between myself and Murad, my business partner. Murad is much more risk-averse than I am. The the dynamic of me pushing forward and him pulling back allowed us to really pace ourselves so that we would perfect the service before moving on to the next.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Moving forward a little bit, we're in we're just in the in the Q1 of 2026. Safe to say, over the last uh, let's say two to three years, Dubai has grown exponentially. I mean, we're we see it every day, don't we, when we get on the road and the traffic. How has the growth affected your business? Because, you know, I wouldn't be lying if I said the cost of living in Dubai has just risen to be almost to the point where it's unmanageable now. And I'm certainly seeing from conversations with recruit recruiters that uh, you know, as fast as they can bring people in these days, people are realizing it's not the land of milk and honey and they're leaving. How does that affect, how does the cost of living at the moment affect a business like yours, which is so obviously dependent on freelance labor?
SPEAKER_00This is a tricky one because end client, i.e., source of money, initiator of project, be it a brand, a governmental entity or whatever, has whatever budget they have.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00In many cases, the budgets are being um spread out to multiple projects across a brand or a country or whatever it may be. And when you have that coupled with inflation, you know, or or rising prices of living, it puts pressure, you know, you're kind of squeezing on both ends. But also, when the project X was had a budget of 100 million in year one and is now 65 million in year two, but they want to produce the same, if the staffing component of that was
Budgets, Inflation And Freelancer Pay
SPEAKER_00500,000, it's now 350,000, let's say. So we then, unfortunately, us and all our competitors have no choice but to say Mark the graphic designer, yeah, uh Sarah the usher, yeah. It's less now, right? So we have to put the downward pressure to a certain extent to match what the market is willing to pay for whatever the role may be, but we also do everything we can because we're kind of stuck in the middle. We actually care about the freelancer, we also care about the client. We don't want to underpay the freelancer, we need to make our something something in the middle, you know.
SPEAKER_02It's it's that's it's a business after all.
SPEAKER_00It's a business with very high overheads, yeah, unfortunately. And it it it is tough, it's very tough, and it's tough on everybody. And I I do expect that these last year was tough for uh for many reasons, but thankfully we we pulled through and we we ended up having a good year, you know.
SPEAKER_02Is this a is this something that you're hearing across you know other industries as well, besides just the event industry, you know, because one of the things I hear is that you know the cost of living is going up, and again, we'll probably refrain from using the word inflation, but the cost of living is definitely going up. But wages are not going up, you know, at all. And to your point as well, you know, budgets are not going up in some cases, budgets are being reduced, yet clients still want this the same pound of flesh. That's not sustainable, is it?
SPEAKER_00It'll but it'll balance itself out. We've seen this, you know. We saw this after 200 and eight. We we saw this after COVID, we've seen the market do that and then that and then that and then that. And and it does balance out, you know, it's not all gloomy. No, it does balance out when you have to balance out. People survived COVID, you know, no in financially survived COVID. Everybody figured it out. And it's tough to put that pressure for for a company that cares, it's tough to put that pressure on the freelancer.
SPEAKER_02Do you think the clients understand that pressure? Do you think they're aware of the the cost pressures you're you know you're facing at the moment and freelancers are facing?
SPEAKER_00I think they they do, but you know, they they have to survive as well, you know, and and and the they have to they have their targets. And you know, nobody's nobody's being malicious here, you know? Budgets are set from the top, whether it's the whether it's the marketing budget of uh, you know, uh an automobile brand or or it's the or it's the end the you know the events and entertainment budget of a governmental entity, they have certain things that they need to achieve, and they are appointed certain amounts of budget and they have to work with it. There's so there's nothing malicious being done here, but it's very hard in our industry to stop and do anything except for move forward. You just have to get it done. Get it done. Because it was just confirmed yesterday and it should have been confirmed three months ago. Yeah. Now, three weeks to go, launch
Market Maturity In UAE And Saudi
SPEAKER_00that fan zone.
SPEAKER_02Moving on a little bit, you've been obviously in the region in Dubai for uh a number of years now. How would you say the event landscape has changed since you arrived, and particularly over the last sort of five years post-COVID? What are some of the biggest changes you've noticed?
SPEAKER_00It's nice to see uh governmental clients, especially uh awarding multi-year contracts. That's something that that is a huge positive step, I think. It's nice to see anti-corruption being enforced. In Saudi we see it a lot. You know, it's it's it's the talk of the town in Saudi. Yeah, it's one of one of the biggest challenges is dealing with getting business and being a company that doesn't put money under the table. Right. You know, so yeah, it happens, yeah. It happens. Yeah, so um it's nice to see pro steps like that being taken. I think Dubai and the UAE uh has very much matured and has had enough time and experience to learn what works and what doesn't work and how they want to do things, and there's a confidence, I would say, in uh how things are done. Saudi is extremely exciting, as we all know. There's the scale of everything is just ginormous. It's it the number of tickets that you can sell for for an event in Saudi is, you know, uh the number of anything that you can sell in Saudi is is is huge. And and that makes it a very exciting industry. But we've seen that the the initial wave of excitement has washed over and now they're starting, now it's starting to mature. Yes, the budgets are getting tighter, yes, it's a tough year, yes, but that is a healthy sign, in my opinion, in the long run. Because gone are the days where they're throwing significantly more money than they should throw. Uh gone are the days where uh procurement practices are um by are obliged to be haphazard because they have such little time. Not gone are the days, but it's getting significantly better. And as it gets more mature, it gets easier to operate, it gets easier for things to be done the right way. Obviously, it takes time to learn for it for it to be you know an intrinsic industry knowledge of how things should be done. I think that both
Launching Mystica
SPEAKER_00markets have matured in their own ways and in their own rights. And I I, you know, this is the best place in the world to be.
SPEAKER_02Now you mentioned that you uh as you've got a you know a little bit older and wiser, you're you're managing your workload a little more, but that's not entirely true, is it? Because not content with having event labs, you you have not you have also found at Mystica. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that? What where where did that come from?
SPEAKER_00So Mystica is um the product of a few things. First of all, myself, my business partner, and our our partner in Mystica, Jimmy, uh all came from a performing arts background. Jimmy and I in music, Murad in cultural dance. Uh and in our freelance career, we tended to be pulled into several sort of cultural shows, ceremonies, live shows. And we and and especially Murad and Jimmy learned how to be experts in cultural entertainment, traditional cultural entertainment, Emirati, Saudi, quintessentially, you know, authentic and entertaining representation of these cultures, as well as modernizing of them while still being on point from an authenticity perspective, respectful to the culture and entertaining. And we sort of said, hey, well, we're quite good at this. Why don't we, you know, why don't we do something that actually the market doesn't have at the moment, which is specifically cultural entertainment.
SPEAKER_02Fantastic. What challenges have you faced then with with setting up that company?
SPEAKER_00Mystica's been very well received because it is a niche. You know, it is and and the the the other thing about Mystica is that everybody knows. Well, most of our clients know that we know how to also produce the show. It's not we're not just coming saying this show would look nice and we'll bring this artist and bring that. Okay, now you deliver it. No. This show
Competing On Quality, Not Price
SPEAKER_00is like this. Here's the creative approved. Okay, now we're gonna deliver it. And we deliver it to an international standard. We understand how to operate with with the best of the best when it comes to AV, when it comes to staging, and so on and so forth. So it's been very, very well received. It's four years in, three years and a half in. Um, it's not matured, you know, in in its full sense. I don't I think it's it still has uh a very bright future ahead.
SPEAKER_02What learnings were you able to take from uh Event Lab?
SPEAKER_00Many, many. And and the beauty of Mystica is it's it's being incubated by Event Lab. So so we have the finance, we have the you know, we have the office space, we have the SOPs and the procedures, and you know, we have all that. So from an from a plug and play perspective, obviously it was a lot easier than figuring it out as we went with Event Lab. We had no, and there was with Event Lab, there was nobody to copy. Yeah, you know, of course. So we had to everything, you know, the reason why I highlight this whole our contract clauses were you know, we had to create them from scratch. There was nobody nobody nowhere to borrow it from.
SPEAKER_02Now, Mystica, you say, is it is a bit is a bit more niche, and I imagine you don't have a huge amount of competition, probably not very much at all, in the marketplace. But with event labs, obviously, I think you do have competition. So how do you stay ahead of the competition?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, there's a lot of, especially when it comes to the staffing world, there's a dime a dozen, especially in Saudi. Um, there are a lot of competitors. Uh when it comes to the recruitment, there are there are much less, but it's one of the only businesses in the world that I know of where you're actually competing recruitment, where you're actually competing against your own client.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00So they'll brief you on, I need a graphic designer. While they're doing that, they're on LinkedIn themselves and they're talking to their own network. Looking for a graphic designer than for the graphic designer. So you how do we it's just we just have to stay, we just have to continue doing what we do well. You know, competition is competition, it does drive us. Um, we did not have competition in the recruitment space when we first started, and then competition appeared around the expo time. Okay, it was it was a readjustment because we were spoiled being you know the sole providers of this, the of them you know, the only. We have to earn the title of a market leader as opposed to just being a market leader because we're the only ones, and that drives us to continue to want to do things better. And and you know, there's a we have a there's a lot of duty of care in what we do. We it's easy, you know, it's easy for me to sit here and say this, but this is true. We we care so much about how things are done and how you know a client will brief us on I need a project manager starting whatever Tuesday and it's a Friday night. It's usually Monday, actually, that they won't they will call for that. But you know, and and but when we when
Systems, Data And A No‑Asshole Policy
SPEAKER_00we go out and we find that candidate, we're actually spearfishing, we're not casting nets, we're not our first point of call is not social media, it's tried and tested individuals first who are on our database that we know are gonna do a fantastic job. We have a no-asshole policy. So we'll we'll it if if you're racist, sexist, whatever maybe you're you're not in. It's um, you know, and and because it's it's about it's about getting good people, good work, and and that is very important. So, you know, the staying ahead of the competition from a financial sense, that's less important to us than staying in front of the competition from a uh a quality sense.
SPEAKER_02How much of staying ahead though just comes from from your own, from within versus, I mean, there's there are many companies out there whilst they keep an eye on the competition, uh that and I mean the competition will do what the competition does. So I don't have any any control over that. Correct. Really, your strength is comes from within. Absolutely. I think one of the things that's come across from what you've said so far is is the honesty thing. I think that's one of the most refreshing things uh that I've I think you can hear in any conversation when it comes to business. Because, you know, not it not everybody is on is as honest as they should be. But I I particularly relate to the fact that you know that you're honest enough to say when you can't do jobs.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So how much of that would you say has been part of your success?
SPEAKER_00A lot. I mean, when sort of from the the you know, your the first part of the question, we're lucky enough to have an incredibly systematic and intelligent CEO, Shoba, uh, who joined us ages ago as a recruiter. She was way overqualified from uh from you know, she didn't know the events industry, but as Professional, she was massively overqualified. She's a lawyer, she's an HR guru, she's you know, yeah, uh and understands business fundamentally, yeah. Uh, and she happens to be great with numbers, which is excellent. Helps, it helps a lot. And and Shoba now has been able to start to implement the systems and the procedures and the tweaking that we've been dreaming of for years. I mean, we don't we don't admit this. We actually I've never admitted this publicly, but we didn't even have a database, an actual database, until just around expo time.
unknownWow.
SPEAKER_00And it was all CVs in a folder and Excel sheets.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
SPEAKER_00Because we could not find a software that was specialized in event recruitment, etc. There are some softwares that can you can manipulate that do staffing and crewing and that kind of thing, but they don't do it, it's not, it's not
Late Payments And Cash Flow Reality
SPEAKER_00the same.
SPEAKER_02God forbid you ever lose that all.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and yeah, well, it's been it's been deleted now. But yeah, I mean, you know, it so so just having the software, having it takes time to to to you know to implement softwares, it takes time to create new SOPs, it takes time to yeah, so we we're constantly actually competing with our previous self to be better and better and better year in, year out. And the market knows that. The market knows that we care. Clients know that when we send CVs, when they brief us, they get high quality CVs, and they know that that's because we give a damn right. And as a result, we get more business. And if that means that we quote unquote beat the competition, yeah, fantastic. If they have some sort of edge or or or whatever it is that gives them a better year than us, good for them.
SPEAKER_02Now you're very active on LinkedIn. I see lots of posts from you. Um, you talk about all kinds of things, leadership, burnout, you know, obviously most of them related to the industry, some not. But um, how much of that comes from personal lessons versus uh observation?
SPEAKER_00Most of it, actually. I mean, you know, it's it's uh our our marketing manager came to Murad and I and said, You guys both spend your time giving advice to people, always. Sometimes when they don't even ask, even when it's unsolicited. Exactly. Um, but we um you know, we we we have we have a lot to say. We've we've you know, we've we've there are a lot of lessons that have come from living our lives, and and and and there's a lot of things, a lot of lessons that I learned. I I learned very young in my career to be a sponge of the the traits of people that I like, and that's one of the beautiful things about being a freelancer, you're always with different teams, yeah, and you always say, I like I like how he reacts when somebody says something you know that shoots down his idea. Yeah, I liked how he reacted there, and I don't like how that other guy or whatever handled that situation. Yeah. So I'm gonna take all that in, I'm gonna take a mental note of that, and I'm gonna try and be a better person as myself.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And a better professional, a better whatever. Obviously, it's it's very easy to write things, it's a lot more difficult to apply them consistently in your own life, but there was a lot to say. And so we we started this brain dump of topics, each of us. Yeah, he has his style and I have my style. Um, he's uh he's a lot more uh uh blunt, I would say, you know, do I really need to receive a WhatsApp message at 1 p.m. at 1 a.m. about this, or couldn't it have waited for our meeting tomorrow morning at 8 a.m.? Yeah, you know, for example, um, which is is 100% correct. Um where uh but both of us, the what we're trying to put out there is something that somehow benefits the readers. Uh and it's the same kind of conversation that we'll have, or we've had hundreds of times with freelancers,
Risks, Caution And The Next Two Years
SPEAKER_00our employees, clients, colleagues that tended to come to us and confide and say, I have a problem, what do you think I should do?
SPEAKER_02How easy do you find that? Well, I mean, because you know, a lot of people don't like putting their their thoughts out there, do you? For for the, you know, if for nothing else, for fear of being shot down. And then the other side of that is, you know, I think we all have a little bit of imposter syndrome in in us as well. So how difficult of a of an ask was that for you to actually put yourself out?
SPEAKER_00It feels very natural, honestly. It wasn't it it felt very, very natural and it felt uh it feels good because you have uh an outlet, you know. I mean, I used to have music and outright lyrics that most people couldn't uh understand what the hell I was talking about. But you know, um, but since then I've not had any output. Uh and it felt very natural, and especially that the topics, you know, I like I like doing things that benefit people. The beauty of a LinkedIn post is if it's it's all unsolicited, but you don't have to read it. Um I've been getting a lot of really like actually specifically clients coming to me and saying, So a couple of people said, You're my favorite person to read on LinkedIn. That's amazing. Brilliant, you know, and uh it's because uh everything is very relatable, a lot of things are very relatable, and it's quality advice. I'm saying read books, guys, instead of doom instead of doom scrolling while not watching Netflix and vaping on the couch at 1 a.m. Yeah, you know, it's actually better. Yeah, it's you know, if you feel good about yourself, you know, go to the gym. Go to the gym. Yeah do you want to live your golden years, you know, struggling to get out of every chair you sit in and having somebody else clean you and shower you? Or do you want to increase the probability of being one of those 80-year-olds that everybody thinks is 60, you know, and and and having a high quality of life? So, you know, some sometimes people need a familiar voice to say that. If that voice happens to be somebody else from the
Honest Leadership And LinkedIn Voice
SPEAKER_00events industry, I'm happy to contribute to anybody who's actually interested in listening. If they're not interested, just don't read it.
SPEAKER_02What's one of the biggest misconceptions that people have about what you do and about what uh event labs do? It's that old question, isn't it? Like you go to a dinner party and there's people say, What do you do?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, I mean, first of all, everybody thinks that we organize events. I mean, that's the until they know that we we don't. Right. I mean, it's been amazing to, you know, on the 14th year of our existence, most meetings or most times that we meet people, they've heard about us and oh, you guys are the recruiters, right? Oh, yeah, we're the recruiters. So that's good. But in the early years, we were an event agency. Right. The second one uh is it's genuine distrust of not just us, but of anybody who does what we do. And and in some cases, competition causes that distrust. Um, a misconception is that we're rolling in the Benjamins. It is very, very expensive to run a recruitment agency, and it's very cash expensive to run a staffing and recruitment agency. You have to pay people on time, you make little margins. If you care, you're not gonna make too much of a markup. You're gonna make a fair markup, but not a ridiculous, I'm gonna retire at 50 markup, right? There seems to be the perception that we're rolling in the Benjamins, us and any of our competitors, they don't understand the back-end business cost is immensely high if you want to do things right and not burn out your team and service every client on every project with the same quality as you did all the previous projects while handling multiple projects at the same time. That's another misconception. And there's a bit of a distrust, I think, in that because there are companies out there that put ridiculous markups like 30% markups on placing a graphic designer. And I'm not going to name names again, but it's it it and and people find out because guess what? When we were in the field and launching Event Lab, we understood the coffee side conversations. We understood what it meant to be a freelancer and how we would want to be treated as a freelancer if we were represented by an agency. You know, we don't always get it right. Sometimes we've we've we've we've made mistakes, we've, you know, unintentionally done something, not supported people in the way that they would have wanted to be supported on a job that was immensely difficult, right? And and and we've always, whenever we found out about it, we've always made sure that we people that they understand that we're genuinely apologetic. But this is a business, it's a people's business, and you have to be good to people. And guess what? Those people are going to be your clients. Yeah. The minute you place a freelancer with a client, they're your client.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Immediately. So now your supplier, which is the freelancer technically, becomes your client.
Autonomy, Expansion And What’s Next
SPEAKER_00Well, that's interesting, you know. And now if you have mistreated them, you're, you know, you're not, you're not doing the best for your own relationship with them.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. You raise a really important point there, and one we should probably should have covered earlier. I mean, you mentioned about being it very cash intensive. I mean, we live in a region which is notoriously known for being uh late payment. Then how how do you reconcile those two? Then that must be a really tricky balancing app for you in uh in your business.
SPEAKER_00We've always managed. We we we there have been other cases where we've limited uh our the amount of business that we take in uh to so that we make sure that we pay people on time. Yeah. And it's still a huge volume, it's still a giant amount of of outflow per year. Yeah. Um we are always handling so many projects at the same time that there's always money coming in from one project or another. As I mentioned earlier, Showbar CEO is uh a numbers whiz and she's excellent at cash flow management and budgeting. Um, it has been challenging. We faced challenges in the past. Last year was a difficult year because uh there were many, many late payments uh from many clients, large volumes, delayed for several months. But we we managed. We managed to still continue to pay people on time and we we took some, we we we created new systems and and and so on that allowed us to do so. Again, going back to the we're not greedy, you know, part. Uh we're not greedy, but we're we're certainly we don't lack ambition, but we we like to do things in to the right pace. We are able to pace ourselves to match the macroeconomic climate that we find ourselves in. And it's those who take too big of risks or are tone-deaf to the fact that every single person is saying, Well, clients are paying late, clients are paying late, clients are paying late, well then don't take on that 15 million project and then go bankrupt.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Because you might, you know, and there's nothing you can do about it if the client, if the source of the funds at the top has temporarily, you know, not closed, but it's it's
Playlists, Gyms And Goodbye
SPEAKER_00slowed down. Yeah, it's it's it's is that coming out of trickle? Yeah, it starts to trickle, and there's not much you can do about it, you know, and so it's better to to pace than it is to try to take over the world and burn out trying, and we've seen and you know, we've and we've seen so many do that.
SPEAKER_02You mentioned last year was a was a tough year. What concerns do you have for the next two or three years?
SPEAKER_00You know, there's a lot of I'm not gonna I'm not gonna say I'm gonna say what I've heard, okay, rather than saying what I think. What I've heard is there are a lot of challenges yet to come. Some of the markets are readjusting to new budgets, and when that happens, money gets allocated to different pots from a macro level. What I just said now is very relevant for uh next year. Yeah, you know, be be cautious on an individual level, on a corporate level, uh tread carefully, be selective about who you work with. Um you may get dragged down with the best intended from the best intended agency, for example, because they are overdue 150 million whatever currency, and they're taking on that next job just because in hopes of keeping the lights on with the money from that next job. But what it what it might be doing if they get that next job late is taking them further down and down the spiral. And we have to be very cautious. We've seen a lot of this happen in 2008, 2009. That doesn't mean stop working, that doesn't mean that the market is it's it's a catastrophe. And no, on the contrary, there are opportunities, you can still have a very good year, just be smart, be cautious, and don't take risks that could end you and your business.
SPEAKER_02I'm gonna ask a leading question here, uh, given what you've just said. If you could influence one change in the industry tomorrow, what would that be?
SPEAKER_00Oh, timely payments. That's why I said it was a leading question. Yeah, timely payments. Hands down, without a doubt, timely payments. That is that is everything for everybody. I I it's like if there was an audience here, there might be a standing ovation for that answer. And it's probably the same, the same exact answer that any of your guests would give, I think. Yeah, is probably the toughest part of of being in in this industry.
SPEAKER_02Before we wrap up, because I'm I'm conscious of time, on a on a personal and professional level, what are you looking forward to then? What what goals do you still have left to achieve?
SPEAKER_00I love where we are now. I love where we've reached now as a business. Um, I'm excited to see where Mystica is going. Yep. You know, it's it's a new baby and and baby's walking and you know.
SPEAKER_02Do you still have the same passion for it that you that you had, perhaps? With with the Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I I mean I don't I don't need to do the same things that I used to do. I don't operate anymore. I have, you know, I've had to step out to allow Shoba to do her thing and and to allow our HODs to do their things. Yeah. I am able to contribute in this way. I do a lot of uh client meetings, which I love. You know, I love going around and catching up, and many of many clients have become friends, you know. We the the actual business part of our conversation is often 25% of our sit-down, you know. I'm already excited that I'm seeing the business operating more or less autonomously. If I disappeared, it could still go. And and that's a beautiful thing. Yeah, that's a really, really beautiful thing. That's a mission accomplished. Yeah. So we're not fully there yet. You know, Murad and I can't just disappear. And the idea is not to fully disappear, but it's to allow it's to allow the business to continue to grow as an autonomous entity. I'm excited to s to to add services. I'm excited to expand geographically. When how that happens and how that happens, I'm not sure. And with what that happens, right? You know, to where.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. But uh there's a lot to look forward to. And finally, I know you're a music fan because we've just talked about that. Um, I am too. My vinyl collection is growing once again, having thrown it all out 25 years earlier. I'm now rebuying everything that I'm I used to have, but you know quadruple the plays. First world problems, but that's okay. What's on your playlist at the moment? What do you enjoy this series?
SPEAKER_00Oh man, it's a huge variety. Um I am a rocker metal head prog rocker by heart.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00It it it's in it's in the DNA.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00Um, I'm a big uh tesseract, opeth.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00Uh tesseract, hello. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they're great.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, my music taste has gotten a bit heavier ever since I entered the gym again. Okay. I like to listen to angry white people screaming into microphones at the gym, but it goes all the way from reggae to ska to Pink Floyd to classical music, some jazz, trip hop, you know, more Chiba, 07, massive attack, yeah, etc., to angry white people screaming into a microphone and everything in between.
SPEAKER_02Fantastic. Nadem, thanks very much for joining me on the podcast. Thank you. Pleasure.