What Does it Take To Succeed in Adversity EP#079 - Somi Arian

Hey guys, Dan here. And this week on the podcast I have an old friend Sami Arian on the show with me now. Sami is a tech philosopher, a change architect, an author and an award winning filmmaker. She's an entrepreneur and investor and a LinkedIn top voice in the UK. Her documentary the Millennial Disruption has won three international awards and her book on the future of work will be released very, very soon.

Today we're going to talk about change and disruption and the fact that in this current climate, if you don't pivot and change, you risk death in a commercial sense. Soumya is also the founder of Smart Cookie Media, a modern day digital marketing firm focused on developing thought leadership and profile building for purpose driven entrepreneurs and industry leaders. She's also the co founder of Career Drive, an online platform that uses entertainment to teach emotional intelligence. And she's an investor and an advisory board member of Neurocor Bioelectronics, an exciting wearable technology startup. She has a background in philosophy of science and technology and over a decade of experience in film and tv. And she says she applies an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the impact of technology on consumer behavior and the future of work. And why I wanted to get Somi on because Sami is fundamentally a filmmaker and you know, five, six years ago she had her five, she had some Cine primes and was very much a video production company. But she's got rid of all of that and now has completely transformed in the way she operates. So I think you're gonna really enjoy this episode. It's a two parter first part this week, so guys, dig in. Soumi, this has been an interview probably about a year and a bit in the making. I think we've had to reschedule probably about eight times because you are so busy and your life is so incredibly chaotic and yet exciting to follow. Lovely to finally catch up with you. Bring us up to speed in what's happening in your life right now. You're just about to publish a book. I believe you are the number one influencer on LinkedIn if I get that right. Two years in a row in the UK, only 68 million people, hey, you.

Know, and also it's a LinkedIn top voice. It's different from LinkedIn influencers because LinkedIn influencers are people like Richard Branson and Gary Vaynerchuk. LinkedIn top voices are content creators on LinkedIn that are, you know, that, that's why it's called top voices, you know, that have very good, I'd say traction. Right. So it's influences are people that are like Obama, you know, like that kind of people. But on LinkedIn. But yeah, LinkedIn top voice in the UK.

So this is, this is, this is your domain, isn't it? I mean the whole, when I was working with you back in 2015, 2016, you were very much a video production company.

Yes.

Move on four or five years and you're in a very different world now. You made this incredible documentary who interviewed people like Gary Vaynerchuk and went all over the world and self funded a documentary. I would love for you to share with the audience a little bit about your story and what has changed in the last four years, if that's possible to explain in a few minutes how you pivoted and how you've adapted and how you've really been change ambassador if you like.

I would say that probably my number one talent is reinventing myself, you know, to a point that I, as I said to you earlier.

You know, my bio pretty much changes on a monthly basis, you know, and for example, when I look at my bio Even now on LinkedIn, usually my latest bio is on LinkedIn. But at the moment my bio says I'm a tech philosopher, author, award winning filmmaker, entrepreneur and LinkedIn Top Boys in the UK. And then I explain about the things I do. But actually I would say that as of maybe this week I would update that bio because now we are trying to. Because I'm always trying to explain what it is exactly I do and.

You know, I can't put a name on it. I'd say that, you know, I was trying to explain it as a tech philosopher because I studied philosophy of science and technology and the whole documentary was about how technology is changing the business landscape. You know, I was looking at it from the viewpoint of the consumer behavior and marketing. And my goal initially with the documentary was to explain to people why you need content. But then it became something completely different because once I.

Immerse myself in something, I go in with the actual intention to learn and to discover the reality. You know, I don't go in with a, with an agenda, you know, of trying to explain this is what you should be doing. See, one of the things I've seen a lot of people when they create content about content is it almost sounds like trying to convince people why you need content. Whereas I didn't do that. I went in with the genuine.

Way of seeking what is going on in the market, how is the consumer behavior changing? And it's kind of like I always call it, it's kind of like doing a thesis or a PhD because you go in with a hypothesis, but you are open to your hypothesis proven wrong.

And in this case it wasn't. My hypothesis was not proven wrong. But it opened my horizon beyond what I initially thought I had in mind. So from there, so then I became known as a millennial expert. And then I thought, but that's not what I am. It's a lot more than that. You know, it's not just about one generation. This is about how technology is changing the society. And.

Consumer behavior, or millennials behavior for that matter, is just one aspect of it. And you know, as somebody who comes from an academic background, I felt like I had to dig deeper in that and it didn't feel satisfying. But I started getting people asking me to come and give talks. You know, I like. For example, last year I was invited to Japan to give a talk about millennials and consumer behavior. And they basically, they flew me to Japan for four days, you know, business class, you know, in best possible hotel and, and I was on stage for, for 24 minutes and only 8 minutes of it was my talk. So I was flown to Japan for four days for an eight minute talk, you know, and I thought, okay, so this shows that there is a real opportunity and there's a real, you know, but which all of that is now challenged by this. COVID 19 and I'm, I don't want to put, you know, I know that a lot of people, they have people who have been ill because of this COVID 19 they're in very difficult situations. And I am, I have lost tens of thousands of pounds of work.

In the past two weeks. You know, from my talks being cancelled to clients, you know, not being able to pay contracts. I've worked so hard to get contracts and all of the contracts are now on hold. So I've lost a lot of business. And.

So, so I know that it's very difficult for everybody and it's very difficult for me.

But I kind of, you know, you talked about earlier, I like pressure because I feel like when you are under pressure, you know, when you are taken out of your comfort zone, good things happen if you are able to deal with it, you know. And I just published an article about dealing with uncertainty through transition architecture. Now this transition architecture is a new.

Concept that I've developed in my book that I had not yet talked about it publicly, but I decided to publish this article about it. So I would say as of this week, if somebody says, what do you do? I would say I'm a transition architect. That's what I do, you know, so it's like it is so hard to put a name on what I do. And one of the things that I try to explain in the book about how the nature of work is changing is that you need to be extremely flexible, agile all the time, learning all the time. Like, look, I'm teaching myself machine learning, you know, just so that I understand the on a conceptual level, you know, like I had to write in my book, I had to explain about the difference between about programming and machine learning because I think a lot of people don't quite understand how machine learning is going to change the nature of work in the future. So.

The documentary then opened the door for a whole new set of opportunities. And I got approached by one of the MDs at Morgan Stanley to create a mini drama series about workplace behavior. And then that led to this book deal. I got contacted by Kogan Page and they said that they wanted me to write a book about the future of work for young professionals to explain how the career landscape is changing. And it took me a year to write that book. I think I told you earlier, I think over the past three years I've probably read about 200 books and gone through many, many courses. I work about 16, 17 hours a day. I go to bed reading books, I wake up reading books, you know, listening to audiobooks.

And I'm always learning and it's exciting. But also in order to stay sane, you know, I've also had to develop. I learned transcendental meditation many years ago, but I've taken it very seriously. So over the past two years I meditate two and a half years or so. Now I meditate twice a day, 20 minutes in the morning, 20 minutes in the evening. And I go for walks, you know, and I exercise and stuff. And I try to make sure that I give myself a break. But most of my break is in that form. I don't really have like holidays. I don't have holidays. Even if I go on outside, you know, somewhere on holiday, I'm still reading books and listening and you know, always developing new ideas.

I think when you read books, you know, they say readers are leaders and you're never alone when you're reading books because your brain is constantly being fueled. So there's some fascinating stuff. I'd love to just dial back a little bit, the documentary, because I think I'd love for the audience to understand just how much work went into that documentary and that you self funded it and you organized you know, you managed to set up meeting people like Gary Vaynerjak and you flew to New York for like 25 minutes to shoot a 25 minute interview with Gary Vaynerchuk. Can you just talk through the journey of the documentary and why you did that? Because I think it's, you know, I've known you a long time and I think it's very inspiring and you're a very driven human being, but you also work insanely hard to achieve these goals. And I would love for the filmmakers listening to this to understand what's required to achieve that level of impact with a film like that.

Yes.

In all honesty, if I had kids and, you know, like, you know, like, I wouldn't have been able to do that. You know, I sacrificed a lot. I sacrificed even my relationship of five years for the things that have mattered to me, even though my relationship matters mattered to me so much. And I went through a lot of.

Sadness and depression as a result of that breaking. But I had to be true to myself and I knew what my goal was and I felt that it was not. It was not fair to put people, to put anybody else, you know, through that level of. Because my conviction, it's just a bit insane. You know, it's like, you know, I was like, you know, like, like, you're talking about Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary in the Meet the. The interview with Gary took me five years to. Five, five months to. To get. And also actually for my book. Like, I've sent him my book and we've been back and forth in touch with Tyler. You know, they've been. Tyler really tried to push to get Gary to read my book and endorse it, but ultimately he said Gary is.

You know, would love to support the book when he's, when it's out. But the truth is Gary doesn't read books. And it would be, you know, it doesn't. It doesn't feel right for him to endorse it. But he did give me the time, you know, to. For the interview and I have been supporting him and I've been, you know, in touch and so. But it's not just Gary. Like, I've got people like the MD of Marie Claire, you know, the Mary Claire magazine, the CEO of Bentley USA who has also announced they both have endorsed my book. And like the global head of marketing of Jaguar Land Rover, you know, like, so Daniel Priestley. And so I got some really good people on there, or like the global digital head of digital marketing of the Economist magazine, you know, like, these are the MD of Steinway, who is also our client right now. Steinway is our biggest client right now. And, you know, I've been working on Stein for a very long time. Yeah, so. So they. They became our biggest client. And actually, so there's a whole other, by the way, side of my career since we met that I haven't even told you about yet that you don't know. I have invested in a. In a bio. Bioelectronic technology company as well. And that's my. Like, most of my time in the past, I'd say six months or so has been on that, which I will tell you about in the end. But essentially the documentary took me 18 months to make, and it's only half an hour now. I had enough interviews. I interviewed about 40 people, but I didn't use all of them. I used about 12 or so because a lot of them, even though they were people who were, you know, MDs and marketing directors of, you know, important companies, they didn't have enough to say, in a way, you know, that. That I would want to use. So. So that. So the ones that I did use there, they were the best ones. And.

And, you know, some of those people, it took me, like, for example, do you think it was easy to get an interview with Bentley, you know, or Jaguar Vandover? It was. It was not easy at all. So.

It was a lot of chasing people for their time. You know, I was so flexible. I was like, whatever it takes. I paid for my own crew. It cost me, I would say. I would say that from the very start of it to. And I never thought it would cost me this much, but because it happened over time, I just was like, okay, I've come this far. Another 10k, another 10k. So I think from the very start, roughly from the very start, to. To putting it through, you know, to making it, to advertising, you know, to putting it through film festivals. I just paid for somebody £4,000 to manage my film festival, you know, submission and things like that. It cost me about £100,000. I would say that's like the deposit. Well, more than the deposit of a house, you know, that's basically what I'm paying now for the deposit of the flat that I'm buying. Like 80,000, which is, like, less than that, you know, so. So it cost me a lot of money.

If you told me in the beginning it was gonna cost me that much, I would say, are you mad? I'm not gonna do it. But when you get into it, you Just like, you just take the plunge and you go. And then.

It took me a year, a year and a half pretty much to make it. So the impact has been.

I don't think there's anything I could have done to have that impact. You know, it's not about, it's not like I May, I spent £100,000 and I took say a million pound worth, work worth of work out of it within a year. It's not like that. It's not about monetary. The level of connections that it created for me, these are connections for life. These are, you know, like my best friend now is the lady who is the MD of Marie Claire. She is like, she's my best friend. Like, you know, when I was going through the breakup, you know, I had a very difficult episode where she helped me and she's like, and she's invested in this bioelectronic company with me. So like, or the CEO of Bentley or the MD of Steinway, you know, these are people that are now, I would say they are my close friends, you know, and this is the sort of thing, you know, like I can now, you know, pick up my phone and text Tyler from, you know, Gary Vaynerchuk and they will know, you know, if there is something that I want to, you know, that really means to me that I want to bring to Gary's attention, I can do that. So I think that's priceless. And through the documentary.

And the work that I did on LinkedIn, I got a very simple message from somebody on LinkedIn that just, that went into becoming £150,000 or so, a project for me with this gentleman from Morgan Stanley. And.

Now I have a share in his company as well. So I've invested in a few different businesses. So I think you need to look at long term. So I think I will see the real impact of that documentary and the.

The fire that it started in maybe 10 years, you know, so it's a long term view.

And do you think that had you not made the documentary, you would have gotten a book deal?

No, I wouldn't have because it always was consequential. So the book deal didn't come out of the documentary. The book deal came out of the work that I did with the gentleman from Morgan Stanley. But that work came out of.

I wouldn't say it came directly from the documentary, but it came from a combination of being visible, you know, like if people with part of it was a documentary, if people are thinking about, I'm gonna make this content and Post it on social media and it's gonna lead to X. It doesn't work like that. You have to think of it in a holistic, you know, holistic view of it, you know, you don't know what it will lead to. Like for example, the Japan thing, you know, I can't remember now whether I said the Japan thing before or after you press record, but that I was invited to Japan to give a talk for eight minutes and they paid for my business class travel and four days of travel to Japan for that eight minutes talk.

So because you've got a lot of social capital.

Yes.

That's what you're building, I think about this podcast, you know, I've produced 77 episodes and by the tenderness, because it'll be probably 75, nearly 80 episodes and it's completely self funded and I don't know the value of it to the business. I can predict that we reach a lot of people. And I know when I talk to clients who come and join our program, they've generally consumed a large part of the podcast. But there's many, many listeners who just listen. But I love creating it because I get to have great conversations with people like you and I love that we can have that conversation. And if that inspires one person to take a slightly different course, I think that's what it's all about. That's what drives me.

What is your driving force?

I don't know, it's just there. I don't know. I mean, you know, look, I can conceptualize it, I can tell you on a conceptual level, but I think that most of those driving forces that the way if somebody tells me what is your driving force? The truth is, I don't know. It's just there I was, I've always had it. It's like I was born with it. It's maybe genetic, you know, a combination of having had a very difficult background, upbringing, life, you know, but, but one of the things that I talk about in the book, I give the example of, I don't know if you've heard of the Black Swan, the book Black Swan by Nassim Taleb. Right. And he's an philosopher, behavioral economist, very, very interesting person. That is an incredible book. I highly recommend to people to read it. But I would say, you know, what, what he talks about is a, is that there are things that are Black Swan phenomena. You know, I would say that maybe I'm a Black Swan phenomenon. It's like, because, because one of the talks about in the book, for example, he says that in his book, he says that there is this professor, Italian professor, that comes to him one day in a. In a. In a conference and tells him, I think that the reason why you've been basically the guy saying, I wanted to write a book about what you did, you know, and he's saying that. I think that the reason why you've been able to articulate it the way that you did and, you know, that you became a success is because of your background. And he's. His original background is from Lebanon. But he says, actually that's not true, because I know many people who come from my background who didn't do that, you know, so likewise, I know many people who come from my kind of background. So I think that the background is not necessarily. It's a combination of so many different things. I mean, I have adhd. You know, it's a mental health condition. But I can see. I look at it as a gift, and I think, you know, it just gives me incredible energy.

You know, if I wanted to conceptualize it, I would say that I feel I'm in a point in history. I'm at the right place at the right time. I feel like I owe it. I owe it to other women, to other people who maybe come from difficult backgrounds, like I did, who may be thinking, there's no hope for me, that, you know, I wouldn't be able to do it, just want to. So on one level is to inspire them to say, you can. On another level, I'm genuinely interested in technology and understanding how technology is changing people, changing the society, changing the. What it means to be human.

I guess, is part of it, is my inquisitive nature. One thing I've found is that over the years, I've lost my ego more and more, you know, not like nowadays. One of the things, you know, it's like, it's not about my personal.

I enjoy the journey, but it used to be very much success driven in the sense that, you know, I am very competitive. I am. You know, I want to be successful, but I don't view success quite the same way that I used to. Especially since writing the book and thinking about it a lot more the way I see it now. You know, there is this Persian poet who says, I'm like the hole in a flute that the music comes through. That's how I see myself. So. So when I gain success, I don't think I did it. I think I'm just like that hole in the flute, you know, and the music is going through me and it's like. And I'm just. I'm trying to now. Well, I suppose trying is not the right word, because if you're trying, you're not in the flow. But I'm allowing myself to be in. In a flow, you know, and so we talked about stress earlier. I'm not stressed in a way that, you know, I think there's a difference between positive stress and negative stress. So I don't feel negative stress anymore. You know, I don't feel, like, worried and anxious because I think even if I lose everything and I end up on a, you know, homeless or whatever, life has been so interesting, you know, And I. You know, I think the likelihood of that happening is slim because of the level of conviction that I have. But one thing I've learned in life is that you could lose everything in a. In a, you know, in a blink of an eye, you could lose everything. Like, who would have thought this COVID 19 would change, you know, things into this level? So you could. You could build a structure, but you could lose it. You know, I felt that with my relationship, and, you know.

That'S why I just don't have any ego anymore. Like, sometimes it comes out a little bit. You know, it's there, but I'm very much aware of it, and I think. Yeah. So in terms of what drives me, what drives me is not the kind of ambition that maybe people think of ambition. It is an ambition. I want to be in the top 1%. I want to.

You know.

I've always said, like, I want to hang out with the. With the most.

Intelligent people, you know, with the most incredible people, because I just. I love that energy.

But. But the truth is, I don't know what drives me.

I love that. I'd love to just kind of circle back if we. If you're okay with this, to talk about filmmaking.

I have said to my audience a number of times, we cannot think that we are immune to technology changing our industry because it happened to taxi drivers, that happened to hotels. You're in an Airbnb that wouldn't have existed even five years ago, maybe. And so I say to filmmakers all the time, guys, we cannot assume that we'll always have a job, because my prediction is that video editing is the area where.

I'll call it machine learning. Maybe I call it the wrong thing, but machine learning. You know, there are. There are. There are software packages now where you can submit a podcast, it will transcribe it, you edit the transcription, and it edits the podcast. So I'd Love to get your insights as a, as a filmmaker or filmmaking heritage where you predict where there will be changes in the industry that. I mean, look, I think this whole Covid thing is actually a massive shock for the whole world. But it's also, I have an optimism accelerate. It's accelerating the fact that people that are unprepared, who have no assets or any cash will be dead on arrival. And I mean, I don't mean that kind of in a morbid way. I mean, as an. From a business sense, if you've been running month to month too close to the wind, you're probably not going to survive. And that's how business operates. But I'd love to get your insights on where you think the industry we both come from in the past will be.

I do. I still, I am still a filmmaker. I would say that. I would say that most of my money still comes from filmmaking, but it doesn't come from filmmaking in the sense of they tell me what to film and I film it. It's very different now. I tell them what to do. I even script it. You know, I like it. It's more like, okay, so in my book, I'll tell you the name of the book now, I have not said it publicly ever, anywhere. So I'll tell you. It's called Career Fear and How to Beat It. And I talk. The one example, I really think that it's a great book for filmmakers because in it I constantly talk about the fact that I'm a filmmaker and I talk about our industry constantly. Like, I give so many examples of how my industry has changed and why I changed my business model, you know, to.

You know, to be. You know, it's just so difficult to explain right now quite what my business model is because it changes all the time. It's like we are constantly evolving. But as of the latest model of it is that we have chosen a niche.

And the niche that we've chosen is not touched. Nobody has done it. And I don't think many people can do it because it requires level of.

Understanding.

Broad knowledge that not many people have. And I have it because I've read so many books and I have experienced so much. But before I tell you what that business model and niche is, I'm going to say one thing else. In my book, I talk about this concept of scalability.

Many people are looking for a scalable business. I don't necessarily recommend that. You know, I think, you know, we are going into. Well, we are. We are living already in a digital economy. And it, and this digital economy is becoming more and more powerful, which means that it's a digital economy, it's a winner take all economy. So.

When Adobe or one of these big corporations create that software, when their machine learning algorithms get to a point that it can do 80% of the edit so that the other 80%, 20% is done by editors, that means 80% of editing jobs are gone already. We are using things like rev and you know, so many little tricks that have cut down the.

Part of the production process which is the rough cuts and things like that. You know, I've already, either I outsource those to cheaper, you know, resources or I.

Use different software and things to smooth out that project process in within the next few years. Especially, you know, I mean this is like, this is already here. This is already here. It's like, you know, there are people that literally I hear people saying, oh, I have an iPhone 11 Pro, I don't need a camera person, you know, like that. They can do so much with their iPhone 11 Pro. And there are already things like you can add a little thing to your phone and get the best sound quality. When I went to Japan, they couldn't pay for, they didn't accept to pay for somebody for me to take somebody with me. So, so they only paid for me because they usually when I get invited to give talks, they pay for an extra person to go with me. But this time they didn't because it was, you know, very expensive and far. So I filmed myself and I'm gonna put that video out. I filmed myself with a selfie stick and with my camera, you know, with my iPhone. All of the footage is done, you know, all of my behind the scenes stuff is done by that. And, and it's like I survived without having somebody filming me, you know, and that means that increasingly. So let me tell you one big example. I have stopped using over the past maybe year or to 18 months or so. I have completely stopped paying for cameramen that charged me four or five hundred quid a day. I have stuck paying for it. I don't pay for that anymore. I have sold my Sony FS5, I sold all my cine lenses, you know, I have two GH5s, you know, with the Voigtlander lenses and I even sold my big tripod. I Now use a 12 pound tripod from Amazon, you know, which is so light and so easy. I've completely, you know, cut out, you know, I remember, you know, you remember that when I bought, I spent three and a Half thousand pounds, buying a movie, you know, sold that. Now I have a little stick that I can use with my phone and it's incredible. And I'm still making the same, if not more money, you know, so, so, so those people, those cameramen, camera crew that I've stopped using, I think about that, you know, I think about how. What happens to them. And that's what I wrote about in the book, you know, but the truth is that people are not paying me for production anymore. They're paying me for the bigger picture of what I bring to the table. So going back to the scalable, don't necessarily look for a scalable business. Because living in the digital economy, what that means is that whoever that comes up with the machine learning capability to be able to.

Do things better than humans, you know, or at least as good as humans, that person, that company, that corporation is going to own that market. And the chances of that being me or you is very little because there are already Facebooks and Instagrams and, you know, linkedins and Adobes and there are already tech giants out there who are doing that. So don't try to compete with them.

You know, one thing I talk about in the book is the concept of success and happiness and fulfillment. What does it take to be fulfilled, to be happy? You don't need to be, you know, multi. Multimillionaire to be happy. You know what you need? Because the research, you know, that I talk about in the book is that beyond a certain level, beyond a certain threshold, more money doesn't make you happier. So for me, what makes me happy is gaining more knowledge, being surrounded by the most intelligent people, you know, like hanging out with Yuval, Noah Harari, you know, like, those are the kind of people that I want to hang out with, you know, that that makes me happy.

You've been listening to the how to Scale a Video Business podcast with me, your host, Dan Lenny. If you're a video business owner who's hit a ceiling and we benefit from mentorship, support and coaching, then check out how you can work with me over@denlenny.com don't forget to subscribe and rate the show over on itunes. And we'd really appreciate you taking a few minutes to leave a review. And don't forget to share. Share. If you feel you've gotten value from this episode and you think it would be useful for other filmmakers, you know, then please do me a massive favor and share it on social media and in groups that you might be in. We'll see you next week.