#103: Essa Al-Saleh Chairman of the Board of Volta Trucks

Essa Al-Saleh joined Volta Trucks as the Chairman of the Board in October 2020. Volta Trucks is an electric vehicle manufacturer. Volta has set out to create an all-electric truck specifically to be used in and around cities and urban areas.

In addition to Volta Trucks, Essa is the CEO of Agitero AG, an advisory and investment business based in Switzerland.  Prior to this, Essa was the President and CEO of Agility’s Global Integrated Logistics (GIL), based in Baar, Switzerland.  He had been with Agility since 1998 and assumed the CEO of Agility Global Integrated Logistics in 2007. During his time at Agility, Essa led the transformation of Agility GIL from a 300 person operation in one country into one of the top ten global logistics businesses, with over $4 billion in revenues operating in over 100 countries with more than 18,000 people.

Discover more details here.

Some of the highlights of the episode:

• From being an engineer to a CEO
• Growing Agility from 400 people to a global company and 18000 staff
• Learning from mistakes and being curious
• Books that influenced Essa’s career
• Finding the balance between strategy and execution
• Trends in automation and upskilling people

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello everybody. And welcome to the leaders in supply chain podcast. I am your host strata, calamari managing director of ELCA global. We have a new exciting episode today, and we have a very interesting guest with us SRL sallet. He is chairman of the board that Boulder trucks recently joined the altar, but also many of, you know, Sr I guess from his previous life let's let's call it like that. So he was the president and CEO of agility, global integrated logistics. For many, many years. He basically took the agility from a 300 person operation to a top 10 global logistics business with almost 4 billion in revenues operating in a hundred countries and 18,000 people. So quite a story there and very excited to have USL. We look forward to your sharing today and without further ado, thanks for joining us and a pleasure to have you.

Speaker 2: 0:51

Thank you. I do. It's a pleasure to connect with you and always enjoyed your, your, your platform. And I appreciate the opportunity to connect with you on this platform.

Speaker 1: 1:00

Our pleasure, and maybe let, let's start a little bit, and I've been looking into your, you know, your background and you were, you know, from an engineering background, but that's the way you start it. And then you kind of, you know, had a fantastic career and you ended up being the CEO and leading a global expansion for a company. So maybe just let's start there. Let's tell us a little bit about engineering to being an entrepreneurial business, you know, CEO different. So maybe walk us through a little bit, how much time do we have?

Speaker 2: 1:32

Yeah, I, I, I went to, I was in, I graduated as an electrical engineer, worked as an engineer for a few years and then went in, you know, thought that was good for a period of time, but it wasn't for me. I went back and got my education and an MBA in finance. And immediately after that had the opportunity unique opportunity to join a company called PWC public warehousing company in 98. That was on a mission to create a logistics platform in the middle East. And my first question on the interview was, you know, what logistics is all about? And I said, what is logistics? I had basically no clue, but I think that's part of, one of the things that in my journey, I guess to till today is not, not, not be afraid to get out of my comfort zone. So I jumped in with the company and we started this journey out of Kuwait and expanded the business throughout the middle East platform. I mean, from 98, till 2003 demand for our services grew exponentially. At that time, we faced explosive growth between 2003 to 2007 combination of organic and a whole bunch of acquisitions we did at the same time. I think we've completed about 40 plus acquisitions and deployed close to$2 billion of capital to, to build a global network, you know, starting from there, at least in and going out. And then since 2007, that's when I assumed the CEO position of the global integrated logistics. And my role is then to put it together, right, 40 plus companies integrate them onto a global platform system, process management, organized management and organization. And we are able to do that until crisis hit in 2009, as you know, the world economic, you know, the world economic crisis, I guess, hit plus some other challenges of growth that we have to face. And then you have to adjust right adjust to, as they used to say the new reality. And that was when we were able to do over a period of time. And thankfully, you know, through focus and the right teams and the right actions, we were able to stabilize the business and continue to grow up until end of last year, when I decided to step down and pursue other opportunities, I wouldn't have changed. I think over the past 22 years in my journey, it's been a journey of a lifetime that I think, you know, we wouldn't change a thing, but amongst the things that I learned the best through that process, right, was how to scale a business globally, how to bring on and develop people that we needed to support the business growth and be aligned to our values and our strategy and all that. And I felt that that's something I would love to do with other in other platforms. And that's why I shifted gears into more of a kind of helping startups in a private equity, private investment role. And that's what led me to Volta amongst other, other opportunities that I worked with. And another very exciting mission purpose-driven company with Volta trucks that I'm quite excited about.

Speaker 3: 4:31

Hmm. Yeah. And we're getting a lot of, uh, you know, a lot of people saying, hi, I'll pull just someone that's. So, you know, people from your agility time, I think that are saying hello. So online. So quite a few, quite a few people double click and stay a little bit bit with the topic of, well, there's two topics on my mind as I so first, and there's this whole discussion and it's not only in logistics, it's also in supply chain. We deal a lot with executives. And there's a, I guess there's a bit of a challenge in transitioning from a head of supply chain, chief supply chain, chief operations, to be CEO. The saying in my mind is a little bit from an engineering, very practical get stuff, dumped on the type of mindset, right. To a CEO. So I want to just go on that topic a little bit. And if you were to reflect back, obviously it's been quite a while, but what was some of the, maybe some sharings or lessons, or how do you step from one framework to the other that you might share with the audience that might be useful?

Speaker 2: 5:26

That's a very good question. Um, it's, uh, you know, there, there, there's a philosophical point and then there's a practical point. The philosophical point is you can't overthink it. You gotta just do it and proceed in terms of taking, you know, pushing yourself out of your comfort zone and try not to box yourself into any particular style or approach. So that's kind of a philosophical point that what does that mean on a practical basis is, you know, as you take steps, you have to be, uh, what I call agile iterate and learn and not, not to be afraid to make mistakes and believe me over the past 22 years, I made a ton of mistakes, but I think I've been blessed with the right team that I put in place together and willingness to be curious and accept what I know and what I don't know. And that curiosity has always helped me through my journey to evolve from, you know, an engineer to a sales person. My first job at agility was in sales and business development, MNA strategy to a CEO position. And through that process, you, you, you continuously seek to challenge yourself and grow and learn, uh, um, and apply that learning to yourself and to the people around you and what you learn, uh, amongst other things that at each stage of the journey, there's different skills. You, you have to, you have to develop from managing yourself to managing a small team, to managing a function, to ultimately managing a unit, to managing a company. And at each level you have to learn different skills and practices. Ultimately, when you get to, you know, when you're managing yourself, you control everything, you control the input and output. It's up to you. As you grow to become a CEO, you have to learn to influence and trust and put some parameters around and be clear in your communication and expectations as opposed to managing day-to-day the requirements of the work. So you have to be, you know, although you have the title, which evokes control, but in reality, you have less control. So you have to find the new kinds of tools and style and approaches to be able to influence and control indirectly. So I was kind of through that process. That's how I went through that journey. But also at the same time, I know I tend to read a lot of books. One of the things I do enjoy is reading, and there was a few books that helped influence some of the things that today you're going to meet your skin, your name some, yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, many, many books. So there's a book, one of the first books, and this is called leadership pipeline by Stephen dropped her and run her us. I liked the book so much that one of the authors, I actually engaged them as, as a, as a coach for a period of time in the early stages of my career. And he was very, very good and helpful. He did a three 60 with me and my team. And, you know, you have to be open to doing three sixties and getting, you know, the feedback that you like and you don't like. So that was one of one, one book amongst other books over time, especially these days in startups is a book I've read, we've read them. Actually, we read it at the time of agility. You had the whole management team read it. It was the hard things about hard things by Ben Horowitz. Fantastic work really tells you kind of the hard things about hard things. You know, how to deal with situations where you have no clear answers. So it's a fantastic book. Another book I like it's a strategy book. We also, that helped influence a lot of our strategy development and agility hold good strategy, bad strategy by Richard Rumbold fantastic book, highly recommend that book, especially if you're thinking about developing a strategy for your business, which covers three things, right? Having a clear diagnosis of any situation, any business context, to developing a guiding principle to the business and ultimately leading to a set of actions that you want to. So it's about strategy, not necessarily fully execution, but it's a good book about leadership and strategy development that I think is important. So I can go on

Speaker 3: 9:24

Very, very good examples. And now I'll probe because we're getting quite a few questions from the audience of the startups and you know how that will make the transition for you. But I want to stay with one other question and I've heard countless people speak a greatly about you as a great leader. That agility, that to me is a, is a great sign. I'm just curious from, you know, from all the lessons, the learnings of the 22 years that you spent with the company and you grow the company from a leadership or team development or whatever you want to call that, right from a people let's call it people simply, what are some of the principles that you followed? What are some of the, you know, I guess grains of wisdom that you found most useful, and I'm not expecting rocket science here, but what was most useful for you as a leader?

Speaker 2: 10:10

So I actually have a framework that I like I like to talk about. There's probably three or four pillars of things that I think define a good leader. One is what I like to call strategic orientation, the ability to kind of connect dots, filter a lot of information and provide some insight into the context of a situation. So this kind of strategic orientation is one of the, I think important skills a leader has to develop, you know, context, you know, taking action without context could be dangerous. So you have to be able to understand the context and understand the actions that you need to take articulate that well to the group. So that's kind of one big piece of leadership I think is important. And I think that people are motivated by it because they want to know what is the direction strategy, and they want to help contribute to that strategy. The second part pillar, I think also of any leader is what I call the ability to be a strong performance manager. And what does that mean? So a performance manager is ability to set goals and targets and ho you know, drive accountability in the business, make some tough calls when, when you have to sometimes, or you're faced with situations that you have to make some popular, unpopular, uh, calls, uh, or maybe take some risk in terms of investments that you want to make. So that's another kind of pillar of strong leader. And then the third pillar is kind of what values you bring in you exhibit as a leader. And I think in terms of values, in terms of obviously the obvious ones, integrity is very important, but I think curiosity is also very, very important values in terms of your teamwork, quality of work that you'd like to demonstrate. There's a whole bunch of values and beyond the skills that you also need to bring to the table. So these are the softer side of the skills, the values, and all that are elements of third. You know, the third pillar of a strong leader, strategic orientation, performance management values, and skills that you bring to the table. And I think over time, I've learned, you know, you find people that are strong on strategy, but not necessarily strong in execution, or you find people great on execution, but not great on strategy. And you have to recognize how to internalize that and assess that and give feedback to people around those framework to help them grow and also be willing to learn, understand yourself what you're good at and what you're not good at, and then how to compensate yourself, compensate with the people around you. So that that's kind of a framework. And thankfully my team that we built with I'm, you know, we're all complimentary in many, many aspects of running our business in developing our company from where it was$300 million to$4 billion business in very in with all the ups and downs along the way.

Speaker 3: 12:48

No, absolutely. I'll take a question from Yad. Who's joining us, and this is in relation to all the acquisitions, but also the subtleties that you've experienced right over time. And, you know, he's asking about obviously cultural understanding, respect, understanding the context that you just said, and how did you, or how are you currently in your private equity VC work that you're doing and the startups that you mentoring and advising and being on the boards using maybe that experience today

Speaker 2: 13:16

And, you know, look with in fact, thankfully, you know, we did 40 plus acquisitions at agility. Not all of them were great. Some were, I think we got more right than wrong. That's the good news, but in all, in all aspects, there, there's several things that you have to think about in any acquisition. And it's helping me apply in, in my current phase of my journey, my personal journey, the easiest to buy is the skill, you know, kind of the technical side of things and the physical, you know, the physical side. The hardest thing you need to look at is, is the, is the culture. And in the context of agility, we were buying and integrating the businesses we weren't buying and keeping them separate. We were integrating them from a management structure, from a systems perspective, from all aspects. The hardest part that took most time was integration from a cultural alignment perspective, you know, and that is the hardest. And that applies learning is applied in my current approach to the startups and investments that we're making today. And it's that, that's the fun part. That's the puzzle you would continuously trying to solve for. But what I'm doing is applying the same principles that you've learned, whether it's the leadership framework, what it takes to execute properly, define a good strategy. As we talked about, you know, what you look for in the people around you. These are all ingredients that we bring to bear in the, in the companies that we were supporting, but also in coaching and advising them as, as especially the CEOs as they manage the businesses going forward. And that's most, the funnest part of this is helping people become what's more successful than they already are. And I enjoy that. That's, that's the fun part,

Speaker 3: 14:49

But I guess the how to say the million dollar thing when it comes to culture, because culture, you don't touch it, right. You, it's not a tangible, it's intangible. It's, it's again, it's a softer, a softer nature. How do you, I don't know if quantifies the right word, but how do you figure out the culture? Because also when you look at acquiring, obviously that company may want to be acquired. Obviously there's some people that have money, they might want to position in a certain way. So I guess what's that reality check. How do you make sure that you have a correct assessment of what's going on on the inside, because that can be quite tricky to do, right? So maybe you can share some do's and don'ts,

Speaker 2: 15:26

Well, it's a good point. Maybe I'll say, just try to clarify a point you made, which I agree with. Maybe have a different perspective on it. Co culture is, is, you know, it's hard to touch and feel, but when you go into a setup or a company, you feel it, you know it, and, and, and today, if I give you a list of three or four or five top companies, I bet you, you can define their culture immediately. One, two or three, whether it is, you know, the Amazons of the world or the Microsoft or, or Apple, you can, you can kind of sense what their culture is all about. Even though it's very, it's, it's kind of intangible, but culture is an outcome rather than action. So what does that mean? There's a set of values that you bring to the table, et cetera, the behaviors and decisions you take in the company on top of the values and what you actually do versus what you say define ultimately leads to what you define as a culture of a company. So for example, if you say I value people, but you invest no money in developing people, then your co you know, the culture is you could become very cynical, right? W what the company is all about and agility, when we were running agility, we were very much about defining, you know, we were very clear what we wanted it to be. We, we, we used to say, we are an entrepreneurial company. We valued excellence and teamwork and our people, right? And we put programs and systems and compensation matters, support all of that. And I think over time, wasn't easy and it's never perfect. We were able to have a very distinct culture and people over time, either fit in or weren't able to fit in. And I think that's a strong culture, is that, you know, once you come in, when, if you come into a company, you are, you immediately start to feel, you know, what, what is exhibit, what are the right system, uh, steps to take and what is valued in terms of results. And it's all based on the actions you take in the company. And that's, I think kind of the definition of culture overtime, answer to your question, but I hope you get what you,

Speaker 3: 17:25

I do. And I'll tell you also what's and we're getting another question from Steven, I guess this is a, this is an interesting point as well, if you, if there's a way in which you can kind of pick and choose, right. So when you acquire a new company, if you can keep some of the things, but don't keep other things. So I guess that's, that's, that's one point.

Speaker 2: 17:45

No, that's good. I was, yeah, that's a good I've thought about this. I never have a great answer, but the way to think about it is if you were to cook a meal, right. Think of a stew you're making, and you could go and acquire all the best ingredients and put it in that stew, but you could over cook it or under cook it, right. So you have to have the right kind of mechanisms and recognize over time that all those ingredients that you acquire will contribute to a new, a new, uh, kind of an outcome, a meal, and a culture. But if you're true to what, you know, what you want in terms of how you define results, when you want results, because sometimes you could be short-term oriented or, or, or willing to be more patient and longer term term oriented. For example, at agility, when we overcoming the crisis in 2008, nine, we stated after that, we said to ourselves, we want to be a company that's built to last, as opposed to meeting targets at all costs. So, and we stated that, and then what did that mean? That means that if we're making some, we would be willing to invest in long-term investments. And that's why I think what would distinguish agility from others as we were willing to be willing to invest in, in, in areas and markets that gave us a distinct advantage, whether it was in Australia, the middle East Africa, parts of Southeast Asia, we were willing to put and define ourselves as an emerging market, a global network with an emerging market strength. So I think, and that's kind of the, you know, we stated that, but we also backed it up with actions and money and time willingness to wait to, to get the results. So that kind of defined the culture of, of, of, of the company, uh, as an example of, uh, a meal that people could eat.

Speaker 3: 19:36

I liked the analogy we were getting, uh, questions also, in terms of, in Europe, obviously involved in quite a few startups on the logistics, the supply chain transportation, let's define it as such. Do you see certain trends? I mean, there's always a lot of hype. There's always buzz words. I won't say any because I don't want to offend anybody, but do you see some, some of these technologies, let's say obviously Volta is riding on the sustainability and electric technologies, but are there certain things that will come into play in the next one to three years or shorter term, and which are those that you think would make the most impact?

Speaker 2: 20:09

Yeah, very good question. The way, I mean, there's, I mean, Volta trucks is fantastic and doing, I think some, you know, the company with purpose in terms of sustainability and the positioning of the product being kind of in the 16 ton, as opposed to the 22 ton or the three and a half ton, which is our crowded markets. So both as in a very distinct position developed in a very rapid pace and doing exceptionally well in, in many aspects, I'm quite excited about it. But beyond, in addition to, in terms of the landscape, the logistics there's many in my work with a company called Cambridge capital, as we're partnered up with them, we've done some work in terms of identifying the landscape of the logistics and where technology is being deployed and all that. And there's one thing to also, you know, one thing to remember there is no silver bullet, you know, kind of the one thing that will solve everything, but there are different parts of the value chain or technologists enabling different parts of the value chain that are doing some really interesting things, whether it's in the data analytics, visibility, kind of last mile technology in the last mile area, not necessarily the physical side of the last mile, but enabling last mile capabilities. E-commerce fulfillment is quite exciting as, as you can imagine. So there's many aspects that we're, that we're looking at that I think of the value chain, that's where technology, new business insights and approaches that are changing the, the logistics landscape, the supply chain management landscape, but it's, it's, it's an evolution, not a silver bullet, but that evolution obviously to the current situation has accelerated, as you can imagine. And I've seen it in many companies that we're looking at and have looked at and supporting companies have grown in the past year, you know, a hundred hundreds of percents because of demand. And they were able to rise up to the challenge companies like agility as a result of the pandemic, you know, figure out a way to operate under very difficult environment and control the 18,000 plus people control and managing aligned while they're working from home. And that, you know, I can't imagine how that would have been looked like it looked like 20 years ago, right? So this tells you that technology has had an tremendous impact. And some of it we take for granted and some of it is still evolving and will continue to evolve. I guess one more point to consider is as a company or as an individual, what skillset do you have to bring to bear? And this is in this environment is the willingness to test out new things, iterate and continuously improve partner and collaborate with within the company and outside are all ingredient. I think, elements of success and willing to take risks and not be stuck in the status quo. Otherwise you're gonna lose out.

Speaker 3: 22:44

And there's a lot of discussion. And there's another trend that is accelerating and has accelerated this year, which is on automation where displacement, I mean, whether it's worried, if you're talking about manufacturing, there's more and more robots. If you're talking about warehouses and logistics, there's automation in the warehouses, we're talking also about driverless vehicles. That might be a little bit further down the road, but how do you see that? And how do you see also there's not the type of skills that need to be maybe the upskilling let's say of the industry right then, and what new type of knowledge needs needs to be coming in. And how do we as logistics, executives, or splash and executives and professionals upscale also. Okay.

Speaker 2: 23:24

Yeah, no, so automation is essential. So, but automation, there's hard automation, machine automation, and then there's software automation, right? Where you avoid manual entry of data into the, into your, into your platforms. So automation is, is key and essential part of managing a glow, you know, more complex setups. So that's happening. I see you see it in, in many aspects of the supply chain, right? Whether in the freight forwarding your, how you process transaction, whether in the physical side of how you, you know, automation, autonomy, autonomous driving, there's many aspects of automation. What I do find is, and I don't know if this is my gut tells me that the trend that's going to come, it's not a change thing. It's not, it's going to change everything so there, but it's going to create new opportunities and markets. And therefore what we have to do as individuals is get, you know, learn about those trends and see how we can either be part of invest in, or, or build the skills. And some of the skills I give you all example at agility, where we introduced, you know, an RPA solution to our invoicing approach, in addition to some other inter other solutions. And that shifted, it took away work from the operator instead of them having to do a lot of manual work, it automated it, but it created a tremendous amount of new opportunities around how to develop those algorithms or those, those bots to support the robotic process automation. So it creates an allowed us to do handle more, more volume in the business while being much more smart, smarter about how to handle it

Speaker 3: 25:01

On, on, uh, still a little bit with the topic. And, um, and I guess another, another thing when it comes to skills is I let's call it the education component. So one, we, we forever keep learning, right. Especially in today's world. And I think it's a healthy mindset to have just in general, but there's not a lot when it comes to, uh, I keep hearing this. So I didn't come from a supply chain education background myself necessarily, but I don't even know if there is such a thing as supply chain education or a logistics education or a, you know, what I wanted to ask you and also with this crisis, and there's more and more online and resources, and, you know, you have VR, virtual reality enabled trainings. You have, you know, I've, I've been in touch with a platform that offers you to, you can literally learn to operate any machine in a factory, in a plant online and, you know, throw up mentored reality. And obviously if you break stuff, it's not gonna cost a bomb because you're, you're operating literally on a, you know, on a online, uh, similarly. So I guess my question is if I'm to frame, it is, you know, have you seen some new approaches or some new ways, and, and from your experience and where do you see also the future of how do we educate upskill and foster in a foster way that the people

Speaker 2: 26:12

That's a good question. I mean, I'm not the expert here, but I tell you what I know what we did. And we had a fantastic guy named Ford alarm who used to work at agility and a guy by the name of Steve Dichter, who were both champions of the new way of developing people at agility. And what, what did it, what it mean? It's a combination of putting together teams, pivotal, pivotal groups together, providing a giving them problem statement and some ingredients that help them work together and learn together. And I found that to be the best kind of training because it combines theory with real world problems and kind of an oversight process. And that creates so much energy, positive energy in any setup because you're, you're investing in the people, you know, in a very clear approach and they're, and they recognize that. And they're finding ways to help in a purposeful way, the company improve in a meaningful way, because you're giving them a problem that you have the company actually does have. And then you combining that with theoretical knowledge, whether it's different channels through different speakers to different. So it's kind of the framework we followed at agility to develop people. And therefore there are many tools, whether it's the, as you call out Roger, the YouTube, or, you know, there are things like there's many other, you know, in these days, you know, you could, you could register for different topics online, uh, from top universities and take a specific course in a specific, and these are all great. But if you combine it in the real world, practice and context with real real world problems supervised with other, you know, your team members, that's what I would call a winning formula for, for growth and development, meaningful, impactful way that serves the business's priorities. So we, you know, we had lots of things like that, and I thought it was, if I reflect back on my personal journey, you know, I went to undergraduate graduate school, but the biggest learning actually I got was actually from doing, working in the company at agility. I always, I always say this in universities, in my MBA, I never pulled an all-nighter. I was always willing to do my work. And then the day, you know, get, go to bed and go to the exam the next day, which is, you know, oddly enough unusual from for many people, but at the beginning stages and the explosive growth stages of agility, there were many all-nighters you had to pull to ensure that you're able to deliver on your promises. And that's part of education is actually doing things

Speaker 3: 28:44

Is the fast track. Yeah. Last, last question from ESL looking back right. In, in, in your career, and maybe this advice is more for the, for the younger professionals, but not necessarily what would be one or two pieces of advice that you found most useful that helped you the most in terms of, you know, what you feel to connect the dots backwards? Yeah.

Speaker 2: 29:08

I would say probably two or three things is one curiosity, be curious, be open-minded therefore be open-minded ask questions, never be afraid to seek clarity and associated with that, you know, internalize. What does that mean for you and, and how that information and insight that you gained or knowledge, what does it mean for you? That's I think a very important characteristic in any, any person, especially people young and starting in their, in their careers. And I think that curiosity leads to a better, better awareness and understanding of opportunities. Second is to not be afraid to take the first step, you know, take actions and start small. Don't don't think you don't need to, you know, if you think you, you know, you want to conquer the world day one, you may be afraid to take the first step, start small, take steps, small steps, and those small steps over time, as you build confidence and you, you see where what's succeeding and what's not succeeding you, those steps will become bigger and bigger over time. And I found that I found that's kind of the second important piece of what I find helpful. And especially if you're starting out early, never, never be afraid to make a mistake. I mean, if you're always afraid and that's another book that I liked is this kind of this mindset, the book called mindset, it talks about a growth mindset and a in, uh, I forget what the other set of mindset is the willingness to, to make mistakes and learn and grow and not be afraid of what people think about, but your mistakes that you make versus people who are always afraid to take the step or be judged and all that. And that's kind of a risky proposition. So that's kind of the second advice I would give after curiosity and learning and internalizing that information. Take, take the first step and iterate, uh, as, as you progress. And then the third, I guess, is be good, whatever that means for you, but, you know, be humble because you're never at the top all the time, there'll be ups and downs along the journey, and you'll always need people around you to support you in that journey. So be humble, be good, be supportive along the way. And you know, always be I'm being philosophical. You're always treat people the way you want to be treated. Right. And if you do that, if you follow those principles, I think that will lead to success over time.

Speaker 1: 31:14

No, very, very simply, but powerfully said, thanks a lot for your time. Thanks for the great case studies. So I also want to encourage everybody to follow as I am. Obviously, if you have some great startups and ideas pitching and you can find me on LinkedIn and thanks for joining us, it's been a pleasure and good luck and keep inspiring and keep creating great startups. Great ideas in advising does unlike younger entrepreneurs to make it big. Thank you.

Speaker 2: 31:41

Thank you for everything you do actually in your platform, which inspires me also to, to learn and grow and become better at what I do.

Speaker 1: 31:49

Silver. Thank you, Lisa. Thank you for listening. If you liked what you heard, be sure to go to www.ellicottglobal.com and click the podcast button for all the show notes of the interview. Also subscribe to our mailing list to get our latest updates. First, if you're listening to a streaming platform like iTunes, Spotify, or Stitcher, we would appreciate a kind of view. Five-star works best to keep us going and our production team happy. And of course share it with your friends. I'm most active on LinkedIn. So do feel free to follow me. And if you have any suggestions on what what to do and who to invite next, don't hesitate to drop me a note. And if you're looking to hire top executives in supply chain or transform your business, of course, contact us as well to find out how we can help.