Saad Mohseni - CEO of the Moby Media Group | Radio Free Afghanistan

When you do something new, there are all sorts of risks. They're exhilarating and it's exciting to always do something new and I think that's feeling you want to recapture if you can again and again. Saad Mosaini, the Afghan Australian entrepreneur behind Moby Group, has done just that. From launching Afghanistan's first privately owned radio station, after the fall of the Taliban, to creating TV channels like Tolo TV that reach millions across South and Central Asia, Saad is redefining what's possible in media. It's just convenient for the Americans to give money to people who were quite rather cool, quite hardcore, were motivated by religion because religion is always going to be a strong motivation for me. But here's the real story. How did Saad turn a war-torn country into a thriving media landscape all while under constant threat? And what does it mean to preserve Afghan culture under the weight of political change? Afghanistan was a peaceful nation, hundreds of thousands of tourists visited Afghanistan in the 70s. You know, the hippie trail for the Americans, it was a sort of a trap of swords for the Soviet bear. In this episode, we dive deep into the extraordinary journey of a man who brought entertainment and independent news and to the forefront of Afghanistan and beyond. Get ready for a powerful conversation about resilience, vision and the future of media in frontier markets. You won't want to miss it. Never be afraid of doing too many things. Always bite more than you can chew them than chew like crazy. Welcome to Success Story. I'm your host, Scott Clary. The Success Story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network. I'm also a big user of HubSpot products. I've supported the show for over three years now and for all entrepreneurs out there. I need you to go back to a time in place when building businesses as tough as it is can be sometimes a little bit fun. 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It's quick to get your results. It's easy to use. It connects all your teams in your data. So put the fun back into your marketing funnel with HubSpot. Visit HubSpot.com to get started for free. Sad. I'm very excited to do this. You've had an incredible life, an incredible journey. Obviously, I mean, you wrote the book Radio Free Afghanistan. It sort of highlights everything. But we're going to go into some of the details at least on this show. And I think that a fun way to start it off, because again, you have had such an interesting life. If you look back, what was a major inflection point? A major inflection point that sort of pushed you on the path that you're on today? And there's been many, but try and think of one that really stood out. Well, in terms of this business that we established in 2002, was just to let go of the life we had in Australia and to get back to Afghanistan and to start to embark on this journey that at the time we had no idea what it would lead to. So that sense of excitement you get when you start something new. It wasn't the first time I had done it, but nonetheless, it was like a bandy job. It's like going off. But I think it's exhilarating. It's exciting to always do something new. And I think that's that feeling you want to recapture if you can again and again and again. And even talked to me about the like what was going through your head at that point when you decided to go back to Afghanistan and you wanted to build out, you wanted to build a Moby out. I guess in 2002, that was sort of the first iteration of that. What was what prompted you? Because that's I mean, outside of the fact that you have ties to that part of the world, that's not the the easiest entrepreneurial vision to pursue is like the best way to put it. If I was going to start a media company, I wouldn't think, okay, I'm going to move out of Australia. I'm going to go to Afghanistan. I'm going to figure out how to build this thing from scratch. So what's going on in your head? Well, I think well, of course, you have to be passionate about the place and the people. And you do want to make a difference. You know, there's there has to be a sense of, I don't know, duty or responsibility. You know, a lot of things we do are motivated by, you know, by things that which don't really move us. But I think you need to be moved by something you want to embark on. And in this, in our case, if you know, my background, my father was an Afghan diplomat. I was born in London. I went back to Afghanistan and I was three. We left again when I was seven. We went back to Afghanistan when I was nine. We left again when I was 12. And then we were living in Japan when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. So it became impossible for my father and the family to return to Afghanistan. So we immigrated to Australia. But the sense that, you know, we needed to get back to Afghanistan was always there. You know, unlike a lot of other immigrants, we never felt, well, this is it. We're going to move to Australia. And then for the next 25 generations, we'll be in Australia. So when the opportunity came up, so to speak, to go back and to have a look, we did. So there was, we were, we were really motivated by finding a way to contribute to the rebuilding of the country, so to speak. The country was happening another opportunity after many, many years of war. But like most things, the business was almost an accidental business. We set it up, not expecting it to do anything. We wanted to get a manager to run it. It was very controversial because it was music, it was radio, it was media, and it sort of sucked us all in. All four siblings eventually got involved in the business. But not knowing, you know, where was going to go? I mean, there was a lot of uncertainties at the time. So but those early years were very exciting at the same time. Yeah, I mean, I think it's important. So maybe paying to picture for listeners in 2002, what, what was the state of Afghanistan? Because you mentioned it was risky, it was a little bit new. So walk me through sort of like the political climate, cultural climate, what you're walking into when you have the idea, I would like to make some sort of media group media entity in Afghanistan in 2020 and 2002. So when you, when you do something new, there are all sorts of risks, right? There's the physical risk in a place like Afghanistan. There's a regulatory risk in terms of, you know, will we get a license? Can they take the license away from us? How risky is it from that person? There is the business risk. Is there a market, you know, whether we investing in, will it yield anything for us longer term? There's also issues like capacity building and infrastructure and so forth. But at every level we had, we had to deal with risk. So we had to get, we became the first company to get a license. So I literally had to with a dossier in my hand and folder and, you know, paperwork, I had to go from office to office to get people to sign on. You know, in terms of the documentation, we were required. And then we established a sort of a way to get a license. We were the first one to do it. And then there was the physical risk. People threatening you. Everyone had a gun and a machine gun. Lots of militias on the streets of Kabul. There was the business risk because there was, there was no advertising market at the time when we set up. Capacity was a major issue. No one had worked in media before. We had to like get people and train them up. And that's just to stop. But to do everything yourself, you get the sense of what you need to to do. And you know, when I say we, I mean myself and my siblings, whether it was editing a program ourselves or doing a new story or recording a, you know, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, for example, to fixing up a generator or a transmitter on the hilltop, we did all of those things ourselves. So you get a real sense of what that, what that business is about. And then you look under the bonnet. And that in itself is very good because, you know, going forward, there's nothing we have not done when dealing with people. Right. So you build a business from a, you know, from the ground up. And that is, is, is very important, I think. I mean, like most, most entrepreneurs don't worry about their physical safety got for bid when they're starting a business in, in SF. But a little bit, a little bit different. So in 2002, the Taliban was just removed. But you still have a lot of, a lot of danger. Like you said, there's a lot of militia, a lot of guns, probably a lot of fear and anxiety, it just permeates the, the climate of the country. And was, was there pushback about having, I would say, not government, it's not government funded, it's not government regulated. It's really just private industry media. Was there any pushback at all? Or was it, was it welcomed in 2002? Was it sort of like riding that tide of we're done with the Taliban? We want to adopt new and innovative and things that are going to create better culture and society. Well, it, it was mixed. So we, we thought about let's be methodical about this. We do the survey of a thousand households. What do you want to hear on this radio station? And surprisingly, most people said, we want religious programs, documentaries, we don't really want music, we want classical music, and that's it. So we literally thought, well, wow, you know, we were, we were totally wrong about this market. But then we took a risk. We threw out the, the research and this comprehensive survey. And we went with what we thought was, you know, I've got our instinct in terms of what people would want to hear. And, and, and the reason why it was successful was because people actually wanted to listen to pop music. They wanted light banter, they wanted some news, but not too much news. They wanted fun stuff. I mean, and, but at the same time, there were elements within our society, particularly that time in Kabul, who didn't appreciate the format, our format, that is, you know, format that you have today on your FM stations, for example. So there was this pushback from certain elements of society and certainly from the religious and political establishment. But we hung on. I mean, I think when you're pushing the envelope, you take it to the edge, but you've got to be careful not to go over it. But you're constantly pushing the envelope, which we're doing today, even with the Taliban. So, but, but you need to know where their lines are. Now, of course, we always overstep the mark and sometimes we pay the price. But nonetheless, that has to be the nature of the beast, particularly in the media sector. And when you say there's, I have so many questions, it's just fascinating. So, first of all, I'm going to talk about overstepping the market. I'm going to talk about sort of you pushing the envelope, which is just like a very, that's very entrepreneurial anyways. That's just something that I think all good entrepreneurs do. But when you look at a landscape like Afghanistan, where there is no infrastructure built, just even briefly just talk to me tactically, is it raising my, I mean, like the cost of infrastructure to build this business just seems insanely huge. So, did you have to raise a lot of money? Was it something that you self-funded? I don't know the actual, the origin build out for this because again, you didn't have all this existing media infrastructure in place to service a whole country. So, that means that you have to be the one building it while simultaneously offering the programming. So, it's not simple. It's very expensive. I'm assuming it's exceptionally expensive. So, how do you actually accomplish this? Well, I mean, we, the initial business was actually quite, well, relatively speaking cheap. I was in the country. I went to see the minister for information on the culture who happened to be an old colleague of my dad's from the 70s. It's very sort of eccentric man, very cultured. And he said, why don't you set up a fan radio station? And I said, what about the licensing issues? Well, you said, you know, we've had this meeting in Bond, international community came together and we formed this government, this sort of all-inclusive government that was, that's going to replace the Taliban. And we've agreed in principle to have free media. So, you can set up a radio station, and a TV station. But it was too early for television because no one had access to electricity. Radio is easy. You can put a battery in. So, we thought when we start with the radio station. But, you know, how much does it cost? How do we sustain this business? And at the time, there's quite a well-known author called Ahmed Rashid who had written a book called the Taliban. Six months before the Taliban was dislodged and became an international ambassador, was, you know, basically on the on the books to read on, you know, at every university that offered international relations. He became the celebrity, Pakistani national. He happened to be in Washington meeting with the head of USAID, this guy called Andrew Nazios. And he said to Andrew, yeah, I've got this young man in Afghanistan. He may do a radio station. And Nazios said, let's, let's, let's go and help him. So, I mean, there, there are folks back in Kabul reached out to me. And we did sort of back of the envelope numbers and it was going to cost like a half a million. And, and I think they said, well, we can only do 220,000 dollars or something around that. And they're actually quite reluctant. It's not bad at all. But they did it very reluctantly because a lot of USAID government folks don't like the private sector. They want to work with NGOs, they want to work with the UN. They don't like to deal with full profit business businesses. And lucky for us, Andrew Nazios, who's a Republican, was pro-business today. This is, you know, this is, this sounds like a good idea. And for us, it was, you know, help us buy some equipment. We'll figure out the way to sustain this business. So, we put up the three siblings, fourth, if you include my sister during this later, but we put together about $350,000. We set up this business. So, for just, you know, just under $600,000. And, you know, we grew up in Australia and Australians are sort of pioneers by nature. We find a bunch of Australian consultants. We came to Kabul, like, they didn't even do the research. They just showed up in Kabul. And next thing, we're building out this TV station with radio station, sorry. And then even on the training side, we got a bunch of Aussies to come in and help with training of our staff on the ground. So, it was not expensive, per se, but it was complicated, you know. You know, where do you put your antennas or mass and your transmitters and how do you service them? It's a very mountainous country. How does your signal reach the different parts of the city? How do you amplify your signal? Things like that. Those are things that we had to learn. And actually, we needed clever engineering to be able to achieve what we did. But it was relatively speaking quite cheap. And it literally paid for itself in less than a year. And then we expanded, we went beyond the cities. But how did it pay for itself if there was no advertising market? Because that's how radio stations media make money, right? It's advertisers. Well, I mean, as we were developing this business, this country of 20 million people, they started to consume, where there was SIM cards for their telephones or cooking oil or, you know, soft drinks. And there was a lot of advertising from the NGO community, you know, like the particular NGO does. Also, this is, you know, why is hygiene important? Let's put this ad on the radio. So, the advertising market grew quite organically as we grew so that the advertising market. Now, a large proportion of that was a portion of that was sort of do good public service announcements, but also a lot of commercial advertising. So while we were sitting up the business, there wasn't much advertising. But as we were building the business, it sort of it came. And then then you expanded to television in 2004. And was there was there the switch over to television? I mean, I don't know the state of Afghanistan in 2002. You said people had issues getting access to electricity. So in those two years, that seems like a, I mean, the country's moving along quick. If in 2004, all of a sudden you're able to move into TV and it can be a profitable part of the business. So walk me through sort of, I mean, again, people probably don't understand what was going on in the ground in Afghanistan in 2004. But it seems like the country moved very quick after the Taliban was dislodged to build infrastructure to build these markets. Well, what was interesting was, and again, you know, you sometimes have to ignore data. Firstly, radio listenership was very high always because if you recall, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. People needed to get proper information. So the BBC, Voice of America, various other outlets were always popular on the shortwave frequency. But it also meant that, you know, 90% of households had a radio set that they would listen to, you know, under their blankets or, you know, in a quiet room because they didn't want the communist officials to find out that they were listening to, you know, evil radio signals from the West because you know, Afghanistan was at mind in the war against the Soviets. So when you always television radio was going to be popular and we're going to be able to reach people, television was another issue and we looked at the data in, you know, like, for example, places in Bangladesh and there's usually a correlation in terms of electricity and television viewership. So if there's no electricity, no one buys TV sets, we looked at the data in Afghanistan, access to electricity in 2004 was still very low, it's like 20%, 25%. But we thought, well, people have embraced modern media, you know, for example, because on our radio network, we had music and chitchat and news and so forth, but we also had lots of like our own version of Dr. Ruth. And people could call in and talk about their personal problems, we had like radio drama series. So we felt, hold on, if we do a proper television network, people are going to find ways to watch these programs, electricity or no electricity. We also figured out that, you know, with the TV set, you don't need much electricity, you're going to be entrepreneurial, that there were these micro, let's call them hydro stations, you know, communities set up their own things. There's a stream going through the town and then they access this plant, so-called plant and they can, you know, provide electricity to say 20 households. So we're sort of hopeful, but again, there was a huge, you know, there was a huge, there was a huge element of risk in terms of launching those business, which we did again in 2004. And what was extraordinary was television viewership continued to go up and electricity remained constant for years. And what we discovered was that people became, people were actually even more entrepreneurial in terms of generating electricity. For example, they would use a car battery to power up a TV set. Or there was a communal television set that, you know, in a neighborhood that people would gather around and watch a particular program. So then, you know, so, but, but what made the difference was the content that we have. You can't just set up a TV station and expect people to watch it. We had to have like compulsive viewing type programs that we, we went around the world and we looked at different formats and we sort of chose the ones we thought would resonate with people. From Indian soap operas, which we dubbed into local languages, to our own version of the idle format, game shows and so forth. And for most people, if you look at the 2004, 2005, 2006, people just glued to their TV sets. A big shout out to HubSpot and the HubSpot podcast network for sponsoring success story. If you enjoy success story, you're going to enjoy a ton of podcasts brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network, including hustle and flow chart hosted by Joey Fierre. The hustle and flow chart podcast with Joey is all about how to build a business. So it gives you the freedom and fuel for your life. You're going to join Joey as you discuss his systems, mindset tweaks, reframes and strategies for entrepreneurs and really anyone to enjoy the process of being in business and having fun. This isn't for entrepreneurs looking to build a billion dollar business, it's for somebody who wants to build a lifestyle, somebody who is looking to build systems that work. Listen to hustle and flow chart wherever you get your podcasts. And this is so then it's so interesting. So people were not tapping into the grid. And was there was there a reason because of that was it just distrust? I'm just curious why people were trying to find all these entrepreneurial innovative ways to to to watch TV to live their life. Was it just massive distrust with the government? Was that something that was like prevalent in in 2004? Was that really the issue? Or is it just really they're waiting for the government to come build infrastructure they can tap into the grid, but they're just slow to rebuild. And this is the way to do it. I mean, Afghanistan was stuck in the dark ages in the 90s. The country just to give you some perspective, people assumed that Afghanistan was always mild and conflict, but for a century or so, there was no fighting in Afghanistan. And there was it was very brief. So my father's generation, who my father born in 1926, his father's generation, and his probably grandfather's generation didn't see conflict. And so Afghanistan was a peaceful nation. And as a matter of fact, hundreds of thousands of tourists visited Afghanistan in the 70s, you know, the hippie trail, all of that. It was very beautiful. It was very it was very beautiful. It was just it probably was it was probably if you were coming from the West, it wouldn't feel that different in terms of culture and what you could do and what you could go see and like your experiences compared to fast forward to 2000 or during Taliban rule. It's a very different Afghanistan. A lot of places in the Middle East were very different after Soviet intervention, right? Before Soviet intervention. And I mean, I've looked at the story of Iran when there's the Shah was still in power. Like some of these places were absolutely beautiful and very modern before or at least tolerant. You know, there's a very good friend of mine and there's a chapter about him in the book, Tom Preston, who lived in Afghanistan between Afghanistan and India in the 70s for five or six years. And then when the Soviets came, he was kicked out and he came to New York and he was one of one of the founding fathers of MTV. He then went on to become the CEO of MTV Networks and then Vycom Paramount. And he talks about the 70s as this wonderful period where people were very tolerant. I mean, they didn't didn't have to embrace a Western lifestyle. But when confronted by Westerners, they were happy. They were like, you do your thing, we do our thing. They were coming through the country. And what was extraordinary about the late 1970s, if you look at 1978-79, three or four really shocking things happened, shocking for the region that we really haven't recovered from. A, the Shah of Iran was toppled in 1979, which was significant because the Shah kept the balance in the entire region. He was a very dominant character. He was very close to the Americans. He was perhaps the closest of all the leaders you see in the Middle East over the last century. Secondly, there was a Russian coup d'état, sorry, a communist coup d'état in Afghanistan in 1978, which then led to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Three, the major mosque in Saudi Arabia and Baka, which is very important to Muslims, was occupied by a group of religious zealots, which although they were eventually killed, but it made the Saudi regime very cognizant of how powerful the religious establishment within Saudi was. And then they rolled back many reforms in the late 70s after the incident. Fourth, there was a deal between Sadat and Begin, which then allowed for the normalization of relations between Israel and Egypt. All these factors led to the region, and particularly Afghanistan, getting radicalized. And when the Soviets invaded for the Americans, it was sort of a trap of sorts for the Soviet bear. It was an opportunity to punish the Soviets for what they had essentially done to the Americans in Vietnam in the 70s. So then the Americans pumped a lot of money into the country to groups, opposed to the Soviet Soviets, but these groups were predominantly religious groups. And it was convenient to the Americans to give money to people who were quite radical, quite hardcore, were motivated by religion, because religion is always going to be a strong motivation for people. Throw a lot of money in, and then the the Saudis at that time, which we've had the regime, well, their form of Islam is called Wahhabism, which is quite extreme, quite dogmatic. Then there were Wahhabi institutions then set up thousands and thousands of religious schools across the Afghan Pakistan border to indoctrinate these young kids, these refugee kids, in that way of thinking, these kids would eventually become the foot soldiers that would fight the Soviets. And then they were effective. They were effective. It became the bear trap. The Soviets were stuck in this conflict. They were not going to win. It became very expensive for them. And by 1989, they wanted that. And they left. But what they also left behind was hundreds of thousands of these religious zealots with guns willing to fight. And the Americans also walked away from it all, saying, well, we thought, you know, this was this proxy war against the Soviets, we're out of this country. And then of course, Afghanistan was then my, in this civil war of sorts from the power vacuum, I guess, when they, when the power vacuum, these, you know, sort of power hungry religious leaders for each other until the Taliban came. And then they became the most dominant group in the country. They ruled Afghanistan from 1995 to about 2001. There was some opposition, but in significant. But in the five years they were in charge. Afghanistan suffered greatly. And the civil war that proceeded. So infrastructure was destroyed. People were made refugees to the vibrancy of a couple of million people was reduced about 700,000 people. So when we arrived in 2002, it was like a zombie town. You know, people had this blank look on their faces. And that's the reason why we felt it was so important for us to offer something, some hope. I mean, when you talk about music and entertainment and so forth, and people can be dismissive of these things. But, you know, I mean, we are, you know, even in the Middle East today, people say, well, you know, can we go and destroy these groups? And it's, you know, I always say, well, it's, you can destroy their infrastructure, you can destroy their leaders. But it's, it's much more difficult to destroy their, this, this idea of what they represent. We always have to work towards providing people with a better idea, with hope. And I think in a lot of ways, music, entertainment, soap operas does that. So that's sort of in a nutshell, in terms of what we were facing. And this scarred traumatized country. And for us to sort of, you know, provide something that was, you know, what satisfies, satisfy people's need for the things that, you know, many folks in the West take for granted. Definitely. I mean, we don't, we definitely take it for granted. I can't even imagine, because now it's generational trauma at this point in 2002. It's not like it's just even one generation. So there's children that have grown up in this relatively very oppressive environment. And you're bringing something so new to them. I mean, I'm curious if, I don't know if you did this purposefully. I guess you did to a degree, because you had such like personal ties to Afghanistan. But I think you really just wanted to make the country move in the right direction, make the country have hope, make the country have something to to live for that was not oppressive. That was not the way that had been since whatever the date you mentioned in like the like early 80s when kind of the country was a slowly devolves into a shell of its former self. Like talking about like, what did you, what did you notice happened in Afghanistan as Moby grew, as your influence grew, as programming grew, as more people watched television, watched radio. Like what was the, what was the, what was the, the, the result of all the work that you did? You're going to be very careful because a lot of times people say, wow, you, you sort of social change in the country is because of the media and so forth. I sort of, I think you can help facilitate a fast-track social change, but it's going to be done in an organic way. So you cannot, you're going to be careful in terms of not imposing your will basically, so to speak. I think it's going to be done in a very organic way. So you nudge things along as you're developing this business in terms of programming, but at the same time it has to feel organic and natural. But I think what, because you have to remember that in Afghanistan, in 2002, we had a really young population, median age was 17. The youngest country outside of Sub-Saharan Africa. Why was that? Why, why so young? As a curiosity? A conflict. So people just live long. There was older older, older, older men were dying. Older men were dying or disease. A lot of people had a lot of kids, because as Charles Mortality was high, and it's a natural phenomena that in conflict areas people have lots of kids, and it's sort of used the demographic of that country in terms of making the population much younger. If you look at the theory of those countries as well, where they had the famine in the 1980s, they also have very young populations, same with Somalia, like the Horn of Africa. So, but even today, Afghanistan's population is quite young. It's like 18 and a half, but so the country was very young, it was very impressionable, and we thought, well, if anyone's going to adopt these new things, it will be this younger population. So it was also taking a risk in terms of the younger Afghan population, and we're lucky to have this audience that was receptive. Now, for television, it was usually dealing with single TV households, so we had families gathering around the TV set, so we had to take a bit of a, like say, okay, it's going to appeal to like, at 35-year-old woman and her family, but she was going to determine us to what programs they would watch. And nowadays, of course, there are extra TV sets, and people can watch things on their devices, but at that time, so it was slightly female skewed mid-30s. But nonetheless, it was general viewing, it was for the entire family. But what was interesting was, because someone asked me the other day, like for example, having men and women in a studio, it was highly controversial, because people were saying, how the hell can you have a man and a woman in a studio laughing? And there was a cartoon of two individuals under the blanket in a bed with microphones, and it said arm on FM. And it was controversial, but it was quite extraordinary how quickly that became the format, and everyone else copied it. So you sort of facilitate social change by exposing people to something, and then within a very short space of time, they adopt that particular format, or a way of presenting. And that's because I think we were dealing with a much younger population. So it was, I mean, it was well received. People like to modernize if they have the opportunity to do so. And I mean, like fast forward a little bit. I mean, I want to touch on this because I think it's very interesting. You just wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post. And obviously, Afghanistan has gone in the opposite direction recently after the U.S. pulled out, and then halibens now in charge again. And maybe just talk a little bit about what you believe to be issues in Afghanistan, how you're navigating all this change. I mean, like, for example, I'm even curious as somebody who's built out pre-media, do you feel safe even going into Afghanistan with the Taliban there? Is that something that you feel comfortable doing? Or do you stay outside the country now? I stay outside the country not because of safety issues. I just think just the optics are not good. We're dealing with a movement that has banned goals from going to school. They've made it restrictive. These policies are fairly restrictive in terms of women working for private organizations or government organizations. It's just not a good look. Now, it's possible for this movement to change its ways, but until that happens, I think it's best for me to stay outside the country because I will also meet with me and I'll put my pictures and so forth from social media and so forth because I would like to show that people are coming back. Basically, in some ways, endorsing their rule over the country. So I'm careful, but I talked to them outside the country. I see them by people deal with them. The Taliban are a reality we have to accept, which is what I've explained in the op-ed. What's interesting is that three years on, the way that the West has approached the Taliban hasn't worked because their policies become even more restrictive. But the country is on the verge of a humanitarian catastrophe. So my argument is the world needs to engage, not recognize the Taliban, but needs to engage more with the Afghans with Afghanistan and needs to be underground to assess what's going on. But while they're there, they should also talk to the Taliban because I think that they can be more convincing in terms of encouraging the Taliban to change their ways by sitting across them in a room, then by abusing them from the UN 10,000 miles away. And engagement is always important. Talking to your enemy, talking to people you don't agree with, exchanging views and so forth. But being sort of a didactic and condescending and abusive is not going to work. I mean, these guys were living in caves for two decades. They're not going to care about sanctions. They've survived much harsher environment. So that's been in a nutshell, my sort of narrative of late encouraging folks in Washington, London, Brussels, and so forth to engage more with the people of Afghanistan. And then, of course, also the authorities in Kabul. Well, because I would assume, I mean, out of everything, the people in Afghanistan, not the Taliban, people in Afghanistan got the short end of the stick on this one. Like, now they have an oppressive government and an oppressive regime, whatever you want to call it. And I'm not an expert in geopolitics and international relations and foreign policy, but I would assume that, like you just mentioned, the humanitarian crisis because of the rest of the world kind of just abandoned Afghanistan after the Taliban took over. Yeah, I mean, if you take a step back, we first got, you know, if you look at conflict going back to late 1979, it was essentially because we were fighting the West's war against the Soviets. And if you look at the numbers, Afghanistan's population is 12 million in 1978. In the years that followed, the decade that followed, we had 7 million refugees, like almost half the country left. We had a million dead and a million handicapped. It was the most mined country on the planet. You know, you see more people with a missing limb than any other country on the planet. So that's a price the Afghans paid for it. And the conflict that followed the weapons and everything else was left over of the cold war. And then of course, in 2002, there was this hopeful period where the Afghan people, particularly the women were promised, you know, education, we will never abandon you again, lots of hope. And of course, the international community was very much involved in this sort of nation-building exercise, which we can talk about. It's a separate, I think it's a separate podcast whether it works or not. And it looked quite a lot of money spent, a lot of money wasted, of course. But the Afghans ended up with a very corrupt regime, pro-Western but corrupt in that on one side. And on the other side, you had the Taliban. And we did some surveys in like 2019, 2020, 2021. The Taliban's approval rating never exceeded 15 percent, one five. But the government's approval rating was also around 17 or 18 percent. So you had two really unpopular movements. The people were sort of really not really involved because of the corruption and everything else, even the elections were not fair. So, and then the Americans decided to leave in a very sort of, as you recall, it was announced in mid-April, 2021, they would leave. They left, they're leave by the end of August, 2021. And four months and two weeks, they're gone. And the government is basically handed over to the Taliban. So the Afghan population really hasn't had much say in terms of this transition from this pro-Western government, corrupt but still fairly liberal, to a hardcore religious group. And then all of a sudden sanctions are imposed. Well, there are old sanctions from the late 1990s, early 2000s. They saw the good grandfather then because the people who were sanctioned are in charge. So in a way, the West's continues to litigate against the Taliban, but in the process, hurting the people on the ground. I met to, you know, to add, you know, field to the far, hundreds of thousands of Afghans, the best that we have, are then helped to leave the country. So there's enormous loss of capacity, the best educated, best qualified Afghans, are then flown out of Kabul, 200,000 of them within like two weeks. And they're continuing to give people visas, believe the country. Now, I don't think there are any bad intentions. I don't think they want to create this vacuum, but nonetheless, probably a lot of governments feel compelled that, oh, this guy worked for us at some stage, or he was doing a project that was, you know, that related to US interests. So let's make this guy feel safe by getting him out, getting his family members out. But it also means that there's enormous loss of capacity within the country. So this punishment of sorts continues. And then it's so that people, you know, government officials have washed their hands off the nation and its population. It seems at least from where we stand. How do you, I mean, as a media company, how do you still operate, or what is your mandate post, post Taliban coming back into power? Are you still able to operate? You said to a degree, you know, you still have your team on the ground that communicates with the Taliban. So I'm assuming everything's still up and running. But there has to be some sort of censorship. Yes, no. What has changed? Well, they're now in charge, right? So they have decreed that there's no music. Wow. That there are no soap operas at all. But we have game shows, and we have, you know, talk shows. There's lots of children's programming. There's, you know, cooking shows and travel shows and so forth. So, you know, we have family food and things, shows like that. But, but, you know, it's, it's not like it used to be. So it's a sort of the business enough, got to send us ring fence. And we self-sensor obviously. But there's still enough entertainment to, you know, keep people watching television in the country. But also, people now have access to the internet or satellite television. So if they want to consume music and soap operas and things like that, they also have the option to do so. But what's also important for us? I mean, we talk about educating and informing our news operations continue to operate. We still have women working for us. As a matter of fact, we have more women in our news department than we did before 2021. We've gone from eight to 20 women and found out the camera behind the camera, research, you know, production and so forth. So news is important for us. It's very, it's a tight, it's a, it's a real tight road in terms of how we do the news. We run the news operation. Nonetheless, as I argue, there's probably no news story that we would not cover. We may not cover something with a great deal of fanfare, but we still cover cover the important news items of the day. But the other one, which I think is really important is education. Because girls cannot go to school. We've created these education programs in mathematics, physics, biology and chemistry for seventh, eighth and ninth graders. We're going to expand that to 10th, 11th and 12th grades and two languages. So we have enormous output in terms of education programming on television, on your sort of linear TV network, also available in our O2T platform on YouTube and so forth. But so the education undertaking, I think it's perhaps one of the most consequential things we've done over the last, you know, 25 years. And it's sort of, is it an alternative to going into a normal high school? Of course not. But it's a bridge between three bands and whenever that these bands are lifted, which I think they will be, whether it's by four or so, they volunteer to lift these bands. I think you cannot indefinitely silence half your population. So this is the work we're doing now. And it's sort of, we're sort of, I wouldn't want to use the word stuck, but it's, you know, you're damned if you leave and you're damned if you don't leave. It's one of those situations. And, and the Taliban have no issue with you doing this? Well, you know, it's a, the movement itself is, which we've discovered, which we saw the new, but we're discovering even more, is that it's not a monolithic movement in that there are different points of view, vis-a-vis education or even entertainment. There are people who are more pragmatic. I wouldn't say moderate, but more pragmatic than others. There are elements which are very conservative. And there are elements who are much more pragmatic in terms of day-to-day stuff. They've visited, you know, the Gulf, like as in Qatar or the UAE or Turkey, they've seen things. Their kids have been to school, whether it was in Pakistan or Doha and Qatar. So they have a much more pragmatic approach to things like education, compared to other elements who, you know, have never venture that they don't believe women should leave the house. They should get married, you know, as soon as they turn 15 or 16 and that should be the end of anything to do with girls or their education. So we have to sort of work with the more pragmatic types. But the question is, who's going to prevail at the end of the day? And I have, you know, I have no idea that what's going to happen in five years or three years or even five months. What do you, what do you, what do you hope, at least, mobile group? I mean, what do you hope you and your company and your group of companies can really accomplish with an ideal outcome? Because you have a place in this story now, just because media is so influential in terms of culture and society. So best possible outcome, what would you like to have happen in Afghanistan? Because you even mentioned before, it's very interesting. I didn't know that, that the government, that the US was supporting at a 17% approval rating. I mean, two points more than Taliban means that there hasn't been a good option in years. And since the dates you mentioned, whatever, the late 70s or early 80s, it's just been kind of shit repeatedly. So what do you hope? Well, I mean, this is a big debate now. And in terms of, you know, a lot, it was America's longest war, they spent a trillion dollars, you know, my friend Tom Fresson, I mentioned, he says, you know, the $220,000 grant to us was probably more consequential than a trillion dollars spent on like contractors and building roads that basically were in channels within six months. Because of the system is just corrupt, you know, whether it's the contracting business, that's sort of, you know, with the beltway band that's dominating in Washington, is just a very corrupt system, whether it's about arms manufacturing or building roads outside. Nonetheless, it was transformative for the country. So it actually transformed the people of Afghanistan. And so for us, it's, it's how to keep the hope going, how to sustain some of the gains. If there's a woman who, you know, speaks four languages, you know, you want her to continue to speak those languages to pass those, you know, skill sets to her kids, for example, if possible, to provide her with some hope that she can one day work again. And I think the thing that's important for us is, you know, how do we ensure we don't lose those gains? We will lose them in the next decade. I mean, this is not one or two year thing. This is a, we're looking at things a decade at a time. And for us, I think the other important thing is that if you look at the West, now it's about tolerance, intellectual humility, to continue to have an open mind about things, because there's no doubt that the current regime in Afghanistan is going to attempt to indoctrinate these especially young men to make the more religious, perhaps more intolerant, more ideological. And we have to provide them with the tools and skill sets to always take a step back to question and challenge things. And we have, you know, this mass media operation at our disposal that we can teach people these skill sets and to have respectful women and so forth. So it's, you know, maintaining this, you know, maintaining what we have is the ultimate goal. I mean, it's, you know, we are on our back foot, collectively speaking. But, you know, it's a, there are no good options. We have to go with what's the least bad option in a country like Afghanistan. But at the same time, we can't lose hope. I think I have a great deal of hope when I look at the people. We've done this series of programs on female entrepreneurs in the country. Ironically, the Taliban are allowing female entrepreneurs. So they're getting these licenses to whether it's operating a fish farm or a catering business. And these are inspirational. These women running these businesses, mostly out of necessity because they have to provide for their families. So this environment, this tough environment is also making people more entrepreneurial. More determined. And we're just to help where we can. I love that. I mean, it's so, it's very interesting. So it seems like, and this is not meant to paint the Taliban in a positive light. But it seems like there's leniency. Even though there's massive disregard for, for humanity, like for human life in some capacity and, and just respect for individuals and their freedoms, there seems to be at least, hopefully, like you mentioned, the pressure from the rest of the world is forcing them to be even a degree better than they used to be before. For example, they're allowing women to be entrepreneurs. That's, that's an amazing thing. Even in a very shitty circumstance, it's still an amazing thing. So there is some hope, like you mentioned, there is some hope. And I do believe that if, if I don't really understand why they wouldn't let them go to school, but they let them be entrepreneurs, but it doesn't really matter. The point is they should be doing everything. And at the bare minimum, if they're allowed to be entrepreneurs, that's, that's, I guess, a tiny bit of a silver lining in a really dark situation. But yeah. I mean, I mean, I mean, I see a lot of statements, you know, that's at the U.N., or whatever, you know, over the last 20 years, I've heard lots of platitudes, and people make notes of statements, but you know, where we deal with real world issues. And for us, it's, how do we deliver real results? You know, I can make a big statement, and it's not going to result in anything. But the important thing is to just focus on real changes. And a very prominent international head of an age agency told me that once the Taliban announced that they would ban women working for NGOs. So he went to Afghanistan and he went to Kandahar, which is the sort of the center of the leadership, basically, very conservative. He went to Kabul even to Iraq. And by the end of his trip, he had convinced the local authorities to allow 65, I think, or 70% of his female employees to return to work. Because he convinced them that their presence you know, would help Afghan women that they would help in those areas, you know, avoid a catastrophe, a humanitarian catastrophe. And they agreed to it. So that's again, it illustrates that engagement is important when you sit opposite someone drinking in the endless cups of tea, and you know, you present the facts, you can convince them, and you're dealing with individuals. So I think it's so important, you know, people, people in this world today, people don't talk to each other anymore. Even in your country, people are in their bubbles, and they'd like to paint the other side. They have this very black and white approach to things. A very binary views, a view of their oppositions of their speech. So talking, I mean, again, I don't want to be a accuser being naive. I just think that talking is better than not talking. That doesn't mean that you open the floodgates and give them everything they want, but dialogue is important. I fully agree, and it can make change. As you look at, as you look at sort of the current landscape right now, from a business perspective, what strategic moves do you have to make to, I mean, you're built, you have a business and a conflict zone that's currently run by a regime and an oppressive regime. So how do you, as a business owner, how do you navigate that? You don't want to close up shop. You're offering hope to the Afghani people, but obviously it's not easy. So as an entrepreneur, how do you navigate this situation? Well, you know this, because you know, you obviously, this is what you do, but I think for businesses, you need to be able to act very quickly. You have to be very nimble, no matter how big you are. I think you have to have this, you know, the spirit of, you know, you have to pretend almost like you have five employees. And you have to be that dramatic in terms of like cutting costs, for example, or giving rid of studios, or if you have to let go of individuals who work for you in order to survive. So I think in 2021, we realized that revenues are going to plummet, and that's exactly what we did. So we completely reassessed the way we were doing things. And the nature of the business completely was transformed in those months that became a very operationally speaking, a much cheaper business to run. And we've maintained that sort of thing. So we're like, I mean, I always tell people, we're like a startup. And for the last 20 something years, we have the startup approach, which can be very stressful, because every, you know, we have these existential threats on a weekly basis. But, you know, advertising revenues are down by 70%. But, you know, because obviously the economy has also been hammered. The cost of running a business in Afghanistan has also been reduced significantly. And nowadays, you know, you can produce things outside, and you can put them together in a third country. So we have smaller operations across the region that allow us to continue to maintain our operations within the country. But we still have 400-500 people working for us in Afghanistan across all platforms. That's a bit. And even with a 70% drop in advertising revenue, which is a huge drop that would destroy most entrepreneurs, after the restructuring, after sort of slimming things down, getting very lean, self-500 employees in Afghanistan, you've maintained profitability. It's still a successful business in 2024. Well, our approach now is break even. So for us, breaking even is the, you know, focus. Because now it's not just about profitability, it's about survival. But I think that if we can maintain, you know, or break even or fight loss, it's acceptable to us. Because the population, I mean, it's gone from 20 million to 40 million in 20 years. But the population is still growing at 3% per annum. And by 2060, 2070, there'll be like 100 million individuals in the country. So I think that even off a low base, things that picked up, some, for example, just give you an example, on one of the large beverage companies, there's something that year on year, sales of their products have gone up by 40%. But even, you know, the country gets lucky once in a while because of the sanctions against the Russians that a lot of products are being bought in Afghanistan for re-export to Russia, like Western products, you know, like beverage companies, you know, whether it's a, rather not name them, but you can guess, you know, fizzy drinks with Western brands are selling like crazy. They can't produce enough out of Afghanistan. So in some ways, things have picked up a little bit because of other factors. Very interesting. If you were, I mean, obviously, so the book, Radio Free Afghanistan, people can, I guess, get that now if they want to learn a little bit more about, actually, you tell me. So if somebody picks this up, what would be outside of your story, what would be one thing that you would really like them to take away from, from the book and your life and your learnings and your lessons in Afghanistan, and the history of the region? What would be the one thing? Well, I think in the book, I've tried to explain that it's not just my story, that a lot of people contribute to this, to this business, and they have their own stories, and the book is as much about their stories as much as, you know, it's about my story. So I think to build anything that's worthwhile, it's a collective effort. I think that's important. The other thing, of course, is that you know, people face many challenges, and I think you can come almost any of them. If you have the discipline and the commitment to move forward, but I think there's going to be, I think people are just too focused on bottom line and make money, and I think I discovered a lot of people are not passionate about what they do, and they don't care about the people they work with, or the environment they work in, or the line of business that are involved, and I think there's a lot to enjoy while building a business, and I have to have that passion about what you do, is I think it's also really important. I never be afraid of doing too many things. My brother used to say that, you know, always bite more than he can chew, and then chew like crazy. I like that. I like that. I mean, I think if I'm talking to an entrepreneur in the US, and the, I mean, the lessons that you give about why you built what you built, I think are phenomenal, and I think that you did it for all the right reasons, and I think that that's why you're successful, and I think that that's something that a lot of entrepreneurs can take away. Like you mentioned before, they're building for the wrong reasons, building to chase money, or fame, or influence, or notoriety. I actually don't even think it's a sustainable way to build, because I think the challenges that you're going to have to overcome are going to sideline you and take you out of the game way before you actually build anything significant. I mean, look at what you were up against, and it was love for love for Afghanistan, passion for what you were building. You're trying to not just build a company. You're trying to improve and better society of a people. Like that's not a selfish reason to build a business. So I think that that's a great lesson for any entrepreneur. Not everyone's going to build in a conflict zone, but the point is all the lessons as to why you were successful, and you were able to succeed in spite of all the circumstances that were against you. Those are lessons that apply to anyone. And the friends you make along the way, whether they're your employees or colleagues or partners, I think because obviously we confront death, whether it's threats or your employees getting killed or friends getting killed, I think you always think about what will I reflect on when I'm about to die on my deathbed. It's never going to be about financial gain or the size of the bank account. It's going to be about the relationships and the things that make you feel good about your life and what you've achieved and work with. So I think those are important things. I think people are very myopic in terms of building businesses in the West nowadays. It's very much about building something exiting building something else and doesn't matter if they burn their bridges or upset people or destroy relationships. I think it's always good to take that step back if you can. I love that. What did we what did we not talk about that you think is an important lesson or an important thought? Well, I think it's important to also remember that everything passes. If you're facing a major tragedy or if you fail, eventually it passes. Nothing is permanent, good or bad. Good. Very good. Very wise. Where should people connect with you? I mean, the book's going to be on Amazon. It's going to be wherever you can buy books. I'll put all the links in the show notes. Where else do you want to send people? Do you want to send people to your social website? You let me know and I'll put the links below, but just drop some handles or whatnot. Great. Now I'm on Instagram and Twitter and everywhere. And so forth. I'll put I'll find them. I'll put them all below. Last question. I always like to ask people because again, you've had an incredible life. Many seasons to your life. We spoke about really the one business that you've built, but I know that you've built a lot of other things in your life as well. So if you look back now and you want to tell your 20-year-old self some advice, what would that advice be? Well, I don't know if I want to do anything differently because I think in a failing or being involved in things which are not successful or just as important as being involved in successful ventures. I think what shapes us eventually are a sort of combination, a collection of everything along the way. I don't know. I think people are really hard on themselves nowadays and people should give themselves a break. I mean, you're allowed to fail. You're allowed to not do well. Not everyone's an entrepreneur. I mean, that's another lesson for people. It's sometimes better to be part of a good team and work for salary and maybe have some options. I think a lot of people try attempt to be with its podcast thing or creating an app. I think every person I meet wants to be involved in these businesses. What's success? How do you define success? It's about having friends around you, family, enjoying the things on a day-to-day basis. Sometimes being an entrepreneur is a lonely existence. You're out there on your own and making decisions and living with the stress. I don't know. I think so many years on, I still don't know to be honest with you. I actually like that advice. Black and white response. No, no, I don't need black and white responses. I like that answer a lot. I like the answer of I wouldn't change anything because the failures and the lessons made me who I am. At the same time, I tell that younger person, that younger sad or younger squad or whatever. It's okay to fail because that's really going to make you who you are. All that advice is good advice. I also try and tell people to not just jump into entrepreneurship just because. It's okay to figure out different paths that you have to know your North Star too. You have to know what you value. For a lot of people, entrepreneurship is high risk, high burnout, high stress. If they don't figure it out properly, then they're going to burn relationships with their friends or family. There's a listen, anybody can do whatever they want. I think that trying, failing, and being okay with that failure and trying different versions of life is very smart advice. No one has to, again, we don't have to be so myopic. We can do different things. We can be different people. That's smart advice. The journey is fun. The fun bit is the journey. We've exited a lot of companies. It was always sad actually when you get the check and that's it for that business. The stuff leading to that was always more gratifying. The stuff that we had to do that led to that exit or following that business. It should have been the most exciting day, but it was actually the most depressing in some ways. I think that's the reason why is because you're building for the right reasons. When you're not building for the right reasons, then sometimes people can't wait to get rid of the business. But if you build for the right reason, it should be sad because it's your baby. You poured your heart and soul into it. Correct. Yes.