Visionary Ventures Podcast - Ramy Al

welcome back to Visionary Ventures the K bani podcast today I'm thrilled to welcome Ramy Al a Visionary Financial Services lawyer whose career spans pre prestigious roles from CAD in New York New York City to servicing as a legal council at the United Nations Ramy is the founder of lexium the first AI powered digital low firm and the co-founder of traum and AI power collective learning app for trading additionally ramy's Venture AK recently launched a free nft called eulers which impressively generated 1.2 million in traded volume he also established aorus uh advisors a startup Law Firm that helps entrepreneurs navigate the complexities of legal Frameworks today we'll dive into his Innovative contributions to low and technology and we're going to explore the Synergy between his entrepreneurial Endeavors and discuss how his Venture impact the evolving landscape of digital finance and web three Technologies as well so Ramy first of all I'm delighted to have you here today thank you so so much for taking the time and be on the podcast before we delve into your various professional Pursuit s just could you share a bit about your journey from traditional finance and law to your current Innovative ventures in technology and web 3 so uh first of all thank you so much for having me thank you for the intro um and thank you for the podcast um so I started so like I think I think the to answer this question in the most kind of um simple way for for for everyone uh I think that when you go into Innovation when you try to create things uh it happens along the way so whoever is going to try to tell you that this this was like planned all along this is I mean this is a huge die because you cannot you cannot plan the things that you you go through I started off as a as a lawyer I studied law uh I studied Finance I did my masters in financial services law and then I started a regular career as a financial services lawyer in New York at kadw which is a a renowned Law Firm that catered For one of the biggest banks Goldman Sachs at the time uh so I was like literally going on as a as a lawyer uh wearing my suit going to the office uh you know just just living the the lawyer life and then things happen I mean um I saw I saw an opportunity to go back to to come back back to the region first of all uh that was coupled with some family problems that led to me having to go back so it wasn't really decided in a sense like hey I'm gonna build something Innovative it wasn't like that I'm noticing that it will never be exactly exactly and and at the same time while I was a cadwalader I was working under and that's something I've uh I think I've never shared I think I'm going to be sharing it with you uh so that that's I I was working under a partner called Steven lchi at gader he was the partner in charge of in charge of me in the in the hierarchy and he was thinking about how can we create that q and system for and that's something we're going to talk about in the like I think on the business level but he was kind of starting to think about the Innovation so I was grasping all that content and then I had to leave abruptly and then when I left all these things came together so that's that's kind of how I shifted from one place to another amazing super inspiring uh by the way and really what I'm noticing that you cannot predict these shifts it happens it's just happens okay so thank you for uh for that intro as well let's dig a little bit deeper into that transition and you you basically went from the big institutions like cadwalader and the UN to the dynamic world of startups and Tech that must have been really mentally challenging for you how did you manage this transition and what were the key mental shifts that you had to make so yeah totally I mean when you're moving from from one side of the aisle to the other basically trying to understand how to launch a business and again uh uh going back to to the idea of launching a business I think no one knows how to really launch a business it just also happens so you're faced with chaos so the mental shift is extremely brutal because you're you're used to a certain framework you're used to basically going to the office having some kind of kpis some kind of targets uh okrs ex and then suddenly you have to create those those those rules and those boundaries and you have to limit yourself uh to be able to to achieve them with that you still have to keep that Vision that again keeps on evolving as you build your business so you start with an idea and then suddenly you realize that this idea hey it doesn't really work so I need to maybe kind of transition it a bit shift it a bit so it starts becoming more challenging and you have to keep up with the tasks in the meantime and when it comes to the third part which is the business model the business model also keeps changing and is is an interactive concept and so the yeah the I was I remember literally I remember when I started I was um so I had I had an air mattress at the office so I used to sleep at the office and I had literally gotten a subscription at the gym which was that was where that was in downtown Beirut so I came back to Beirut for family reasons I started up off Aurora's advice ERS in Beirut as a as a kind of startup law firm uh and so I remember I took an office literally without any windows and I specifically took it without any Windows because I wanted to detach from the concept of time that's something in in Vegas that I have experience I had experience in in Vegas actually when you go to Vegas all the casinos have no windows so so that you don't realize it's day night so you keep on obviously spending uh so I I Ed this concept to get the off office and to to basically convince myself that there was no day and night and I got my air mattress and so I remember at some point I said like who asked for this I mean I was I was living in New York I had a penthouse I I was I I started off like with really a high a high salary as a lawyer and so I I literally thought to myself like am I doing this right and I had no answer no one could answer me whether it was right or wrong so yeah it was very challenging to keep on moving when you are hesitating on whether you should just go back to what you were and you could or actually keep building exactly and talking about that in the face of the business uncertainties and in the fast pace of technological change as well how do you maintain that mental Clarity and resilience to keep on going you just I mean I I would love to I mean I would love to share like a secret formula or something but at the same time I mean if you ask it's not exactly no secret formulas exactly I mean spoiler alert exactly I mean at at at the at the pace that you're you're moving at usually like you just do this like you just do it right it if you can if you ask literally any entrepreneur out there any any entrepreneur who really went through the building process uh how do you maintain the resilience because you basically convince yourself that you have no other option and the the the example I gave you earlier where I I said like who asked for this that was one moment and then you just look around you and you say okay no I'm far from going back to where I was for so many reasons and you start creating those reasons in your head that convince you more and more that your only option is to actually move forward your only option is to wake up or go up go to the office or sit at the office and then open up your laptop start sending out emails send out uh LinkedIn invites uh send out stuff so you just dive into the details so that's how you maintain the resilience by just going back into the details and stop thinking about the main big Vision because a lot of people get lost at that like they think about okay I'm going to build this1 billion doll company great but you have to start with answering an email uh sending out an invite sending out a message reaching out and very important uh basically having things move forward and that's something we're going to talk about later again uh move forward while you are thinking and that's um we'll detail that later in the business 100% 100% And uh I really I really don't know how much we can uh tackle this subject uh in depth but would you call it obsession is what kept you yeah moving forward totally totally or is it really like a vision or or for in my case it was an obsession in my case it was a total Obsession I mean I wanted to I wanted to build I wanted I saw the vision I was excited each and every time we had we had a small success we had a small breakout um it was an obsession for me it's still an obsession up until today I mean uh sometimes sometimes like people do not believe how much time I allocate in kind of doing stuff and how can I basically tackle things it's I know I know a portion of it and it's crazy I don't know how you do it I have no clue literally like like again like the thing is when it becomes an obsession you start finding Solutions so you become the most efficient person possible so you start really taking out taking out all the the secondary stuff like even the sometimes the outings sometimes uh like from from the closing to the outings to the distances that you move from like I have literally my office that's two minutes away from my home that's two minutes away from my gym so I choose this to kind of be as efficient as possible so we're going to get to uh to also the physical aspects and all the the trainings that goes with it but mental Clarity is really key and I do believe that Obsession and believing in yourself and obsessing about what you want to achieve in life is your main and primary drive forward and it really blocks everything else so it's like I don't know if you wanna take it like the race horses you're blocking everything else and you're just focusing on the track that you're putting in front of you and you're just running towards your goals one goal at a time yeah that's true amazing that's true and and and you will get a lot of distractions I mean if you're this is where your your willpower comes into play because you will be distracted there is no way that you would not be distracted by things around you by maybe Friends by contacts by sometimes Relationships by a lot of things there are things that will distract you and it's up to you to decide and that's the cool thing about life I mean the journey uh like it gives you choices it gives you choices it tells you like okay what do you want to do like you have to decide okay no I'm going to continue because that's my priority that's my obsession or I'm going to stop a bit and it's not wrong stop a bit and then look at this distraction and then realize oh no my main goal is that so I'll go back to it so yeah so what I'm understanding as well is you have the possibility of taking any choice that you would like and it's all in your hands at the end of the day and you decide if you want to do that or or this and you will have to eventually compromise on a lot of stuff right totally totally I mean you have to compromise on on a lot of a lot of things that are that are basically in a sense pre-programmed in your head as if they were priorities so for example uh a lot of people kind of reach a certain age like 30 40 even 50 sometimes and they kind of categorize themselves as potentially maybe old or uh grown-ups at the same time if you just detach from that concept that was that's just a social concept it's not a concept that that that basically defines what you want to do because you could start just like the the KFC guy obviously the famous example guy found exactly founded KFC at at North of 60 and and and became a conglomerate the guy from Zara started at 38 I think 39 created one of the biggest uh retails in the world the point is if you detach from those those Concepts and those distractions and you realize what you want what you feel comfortable with you will be able to feel comfortable with that Obsession and that's that's the main point lovely thank you for that Ramy uh let me move a bit to some let's call them spiritual aspects of your life how how do you uh like how do your personal beliefs and values influence your professional decisions and leadership styles leadership style yeah how do you how do you do that um so I'm someone who's very practical and I was brought up basically in a very pragmatic way practical way so for me for me I mean I do believe that there there's something there's some kind of power uh some kind of force that created everything that we're living in uh I have this theory that we are sitting in a simulation and that simulation is just like when you look at uh for example GT if you if anyone is playing GTA for example uh when you're in you're when you're playing GTA you're you're walking down the street and you have this this idea that you're walking in a city and all this city is is actually active and everyone's walking on the street there are cars coming in coming out uh there's a mission that you're you're heading to and someone is waiting for you there but in fact from a software perspective and those who are in software would understand in gaming uh everything around you is black there's nothing happening there's just the street that you are in that's actually U functioning and you can see the activities while the other parts in order to save on data to save on on computing power to save on on basically consumption everything is blacked out until you reach that point and then it activates so I think that we are living in in a similar situation whereby uh the simulation does give you challenges and I believe that like the the Practical approach when it comes to belief is to really realize that first of all there are two main uh factors that you need to abide by because these are unchangeable which is time for now we are not able to create any Arbitrage uh sorry any lack of Arbitrage related to time so one of the main arbitrages that Still Remains and will still remain is his time and uh that end point which is which we call death uh in different religions you can call it different things but it's the end of the current kind of Journey that you're going into and so if you realize that time and and death are the main components that would Jud that would basically uh in a way impact or be the dependency to any decision that you take uh you would be able to manage things in a much more efficient way and so this is what fuels my decisions okay what's the best time efficient way to do things first of all and then second is it that important is it is this fight that I'm going into or this argument or this complication is it more important than the end which is death and it's never it's it's never it's never more important so that's how you can first of all be more efficient in the things you do and in your management style and second kind of make things more relative and realize that hey it's not maybe it's not that important because there's anend point and it's fine so things are going to flow you don't have to fight with that person just because they didn't show up one day or just because they did the bad they did the mistake will they be repeating that mistake let's see let's put kpis let's put control uh control aspects let's put potentially reports Etc but we don't have to be stuck on something so that's kind of what guides me from a belief perspective it's like time and most importantly the end point which makes things more relative and smaller in scale than they are I really love the the way you're uh you're you're going at it actually so it's it simplified the the matter for me personally so yeah I don't know if we C can you give them uh updates and upgrades like uh sending them new skins in the game or something I I think I think you could I think at some point we're going to be able to I think we're with the with the evolution with AI I think we're going to be able to ar ar and AI I think will will enable that feature exactly and uh they started with having like board members that are basically an AI model exactly and it's a it's a it's a board member at a company registered in Abu d right that's true that's true amazing that's true amazing that's true you could hire a board member who's a n soon to be a humanoid so they're going to even create a physical kind of uh cop CRA it's crazy uh Ramy has there been a moment when your spiritual or ethical principles significantly impacted a business decision or the direction of one of your Ventures uh yes I mean um so I had um I had an something that went on in one of my Ventures where I had kind of a downfall with with the co-founder at at this Venture and um that involved a lot of kind of going back and forth arguments Etc um that's that's where kind the way I explained things before like with the time and time and relativeness of things that helped me a lot in really saying to myself uh listen you don't have to continue this fight simply because you are wasting time from uh from the time that you're going to allocate in building more things and impacting more people although a lot of people around me basically everyone around me wanted me to continue the fight wanted me to continue basically there was literally it was a strategic fight it was it was like for for everyone it was something that I should have done for me I was the only one who said listen I'm going to drop it I'm gonna drop it I'm not going to continue this fight because I have more important things to do at the time trust me it it's one of the most difficult things you could do because you're filled with emotions you're filled with a lot of uh reactiveness when it comes to fighting when you're fighting you're very reactive and especially when someone is trying to take away something that you've built from the start trying trying to kind of put you to the ground and it requires a lot of thought to say listen I'm not going to continue this fight and sometimes the biggest win you can have is not continuing a fight and so so uh yeah so that that's where my belief kicked in my beliefs kicked in um and kind of I started really moving away and then with time I realized that was the the best decision I've made I can 100% relate to what you're saying because I really was in a kind of similar uh situation maybe not as big as yours but it was like a direct conflict with uh uh someone that I had uh a business relationship with a couple of years ago and the way the conversation shifted from a bus business relationship to a direct threat and you know uh kind of dragging it to another uh level I chose not to be reactive in that way because I knew that I could and anyone can be reactive anyone can be violent anyone can be anything but I don't want to play that game you know I have something else to do and it's going to bring me so a better return I have a question for you so what now now let me let me let me ask a question did you so so do you remember that moment where you were torn between between being reactive and not being reactive being saying to yourself I'm gonna I'm just gonna like be as reactive as possible and then saying no yeah yeah that was that was an intense moment I can imagine right it's very intense and you feel like there's a revelation yeah there's something in it like it's a it's like a I don't know there's a gift inside of it I'm not going to say anything okay you turn and you take another toally get that feeling it's unexplainable like if you don't go through it you really cannot explain that moment where as you said like there's a gift inside of it so that's that's and the problem that I faced was everyone around me was like why did you do that why you didn't react why you didn't defend yourself I was there you go I don't I I don't have to there you go there you go that's it that's it so we I have a clear conscience and uh I move on we went through similar experiences P yeah that's a nice one uh any any practices I don't know from meditation to Solitude to I don't know what can you do in order for you to enhance the mental and spiritual aspects of yourself um I'm me I'm I'm going to be super honest um so for me I tried I tried meditation but I mean I it can be reading it can be walking in nature it can be drawing it can be anything like for me for me it's like I your I am I am I am I am obsessed with the things I do so I don't really feel and it's weird but I don't really feel pressured okay because I'm detached from in my in my head um I know and coming back to the two factors that I told you about like death and time for me I know I'm going out with basically nothing right except the experience that I went through so I kind of keep on convincing myself that there's nothing to lose and so I don't really get pressured I do get pressured in moments so for example when we're rolling out a feature or a service or I'm closing a client or I'm having a conversation I'm negotiating something of course I do get stressed about it or pressured about it but overall when it when this moment ends I don't feel the need to detach in the sense because I'm already detached in my head I do I do play some uh some video games I'm I'm a lot into video games so that that helps me kind of distract but when it comes to Med meditation I I really don't I mean I do walk I do think to myself I listen to some music and I use that maybe as a meditation process but I'm not I don't have a specific kind of format where I would sit or I don't do you read a lot or yeah I do read a lot yeah I do read a lot I do read a lot I do watch a lot of YouTubes I'm addicted to YouTube videos uh as well just like video games so I'm usually either playing video games and then watching YouTube videos in parallel on some kind of documentary or podcast going live or going live exactly exactly when when when I want to be more proactive I'm going live but I do listen to a lot of podcasts I do listen to a lot of uh people kind of whom I really appreciate uh talk about certain top ICS mainly investment and stuff so yeah that keeps me going cool so let me go to another segment which is basically around the physical health or the movement that goes in into your daily routine as someone who juggles multiple high demand roles and how important is physical health to your overall performance you can't imagine like to the point that I I reached level where I first so I went through the process I started off I used to exercise a lot I don't I don't kind of want to Target something I exercise just to kind of also detach in a sense uh but I there was a period where I was overloaded with things I stopped exercising and it was one of the worst moments I went through because your health deteriorates in such a way where you you like you you really cannot can no longer feel this Clarity in what you're doing you're not feeling the passion you're not feeling the excitement you're just tired and nothing is enjoyable when you're tired and that's that's that's a that's one of the M biggest problems that got me back to training and now I train literally every day I go to the gym I make sure to have the closest possible gym to me uh to where I'm it's always the closest yeah exactly because I don't understand the people that will have to really Drive half an hour to go to the gym and have a full bag of clothes and show exact I personally cannot do that me neither me neither so that's that's so it it keeps me it keeps me going so on a daily basis I lock in a time to train now sometimes you got to push yourself sometimes just going down to the gym and just walking or or going on the treadmill or or doing some kind of pull-ups or something can help you a lot but as long as you actually take the step to go down and exercise so yeah it's it's it's really crucial in in in the things I do amazing yeah I do believe that uh it's it's really crucial and uh it's not only a distraction it's like a reboot for your whole system basically where you feel good and once you feel good in your own body in your own skin you're now ready to that's true to do something from a fren fresh mind perspective so now just just just to be to be clear also to the people watching because like it's very important also to to put things into perspective I mean we sometimes I mean whoever tells you that they're training all the time do does sometime in a way go through periods where you're not where you're struggling with this so if if anyone is struggling with this it's normal as well so because we have this social media kind of um franzy where like all the people that are going on podcasts and talking they're like just perfect like they're doing things correctly you know they're going to the gym they're working their stuff and our every day and the cold lunges EXA yeah we discussed that exactly exactly from where do they have all that time to do all of these things on a daily basis exactly exactly I have no idea yeah no we're we're regular people we're human beings at the end of the day and we have responsibilities and I do believe that balance is key exactly I wish I can go back to uh doing more uh physical training uh I used to do powerlifting I have a back injury I used to do a lot of bodybuilding and I really stopped I I gained some weight but I'm I'm fine as is I'm moving myself walking swimming when I have the time but but mostly let's not overdo it but let's stay active that's the essential part exactly for me at least exactly so any uh would you would you say that uh physical health proved crucial to your professional success or decision making do you have any instance or example um the main basically the main the main thing is you feel fit you feel uh in your element you feel um you feel happy because like when you exercise there there are basically chem chemical reactions and kind of hormones that get triggered in your body so it's a fact scientifically proven that you do feel happier you do feel more energetic and so yes whenever I train actually on a daily basis I do feel whenever I'm going out of the training especially sometimes in trainings where I'm pushing myself to the limit when I'm feeling like the pain that that I'm like I'm I'm I'm going through when I'm exercising you get that feeling of kind of satisfaction you get that yes like I'm I'm I'm feeling good about it you know and so that that pushes you in your work definitely yeah and for you it's mostly after work or before work after work after work okay for sure so it's a way to yeah like yeah yeah just stress out let them go out let things out uh just just relax and then push things out cool yeah I I I love both of them by the way I I moved my trainings till the morning which I really loved oh and I did it for quite some time and it was really powerful to start the day that fresh and that active you're you're ready for anything you know you could you could interch yeah you could interchange like between this and that it's cool I find it quite challenging and it's really nice if you can keep on changing that's true don't let don't let it be your new comfort zone that's that's true I'm used to train at 5:00 pm and that's for life no wow exactly I thought it was I thought it was the case try it tomorrow morning Grammy I really invite you for a a morning session I got you I got you you're going to feel something new I'll try it out try it out for sure for sure yeah so now getting uh a bit into the business aspect and the ventures and everything that happened so far with you since you ventured into the startup and the uh uh entrepreneurial Journey that you started uh we're going to start by talking about a lot of your Ventures and Technologies and how you went from regular startups to web 3 and Innovations but before going into all of these I know you have an interesting story to to tell us what happened with you in 2020 oh yeah I know that's that's something uh heavy to start with um yes yes um so basically when you're building a startup you always have this dream that the startup is going to be at the top of the industry that you're trying to disrupt and you're you have this idea that you have like all founders have this idea that your startup is worth much more than whatever could be offered and you get quote unquote you get greedy when it comes to to your startup because you're possessive and it's something that you built from the start you start seeing attention uh people interested in your startup and then suddenly it goes into your head and it went into my head uh I like August August uh literally August 2020 we got we got um proposal on one one of my startups basically my main startup to basically be bought out so we got um an acquisition deal and that acquisition deal was on the table we were at the top of our performance our team was was was quite big quite sizable our operations were growing everything was was really going really well and literally we decided in like in a few seconds said let's not take this deal we can I don't want it we can we deserve more we can we can do much better this is a joke it was literally like uh like several million millions of dollars so it was like was it a reaction or it was a really calculated answer no no it was not calculated at all in retrospect it was far from being calculated it was just us considering that we were unbeatable unbreakable and we've been going on and that's also very important to mention we had been going on with the startup for about about three years and a half so nearly four years and we didn't realize the impact of those four years on our basically mental state so we felt that we were still fresh we were still going like going on like we had the energy we had the passion we had the excitement and especially for me I did didn't even consider that someone could be tired while other team members at the time who did not tell me uh were tired were exhausted wanted that kind of stop in a sense so it was not calculated at all six months later we had a fight between co-founders we were nearly on the brink of collapse we had our operations just just our clients just just leave uh our yeah we had an with our our Dev team we had an issue uh with like with the with the business model with the core business model that was changing because of covid and the postco uh internet adoption and and move towards things so it was it was catastrophic so we said we just looked back like six months earlier we had that offer we could not get maybe 20% of that offer six months later so so it was it was yeah it was pretty it was pretty abrupt it was a roller coaster so that thought what happened after it so after it we we had the choice basically to either continue or basically close down uh we continued and I'm super happy that we continued at a cost because the cost was the mental uh part which was very challenging the health part that got me more into training uh so L learned lesson learned for sure for sure a startup a startup is if you get an offer for your startup especially in this period definitely do consider it much more seriously than I did that that's that's for sure oh yeah yeah now we're laughing at it but I know back then it was catastrophic it wasn't that funny it was it was it was uh no I I used to cry about it literally I cried about it like I literally cried about it I would literally yeah I can imagine just sit down and say I mean I could have built built so many things and just moved on and the idea is sometimes we we we lose ourselves in a in a tunnel where we think that if I'm going to sell my my business or my startup I cannot do anything else it's wrong I mean you could build so many things you could just enjoy time with family with friends Etc so I think that startups are are a Sprint they're they're they're very intense but there needs to be a Target if there is no target what you want to do with that startup you would get tired and when you get tired you start making bad decisions and when you start making bad decisions you start fighting with people and then it just becomes uh a roller coaster that basically never ends until either you wind up or you really have to put so much effort to put things back on track I I agree with what you said but uh mentioning startup is a print why why is that are we talking about uh new new Innovative startups or okay yeah so Tech startups I mean I mean Tech startups where you're building a SAS model for example or you're um and again SAS SAS models are want to be the next unicorn and exactly exactly raise funds and exactly if you're going through that process of kind of raising capitals preed seeds series a series B and then going through building one of the business models of assas because also very important is that SAS is not a business model on its own so that's very important because there are SAS models that are SNES so basically you can build the SAS model while being anme and building your business while when you're building a startup specifically a tax startup it has to be fast it has to be fast it has to grow at exponential levels so it's tiring it's yeah yeah it is it is it is of course and uh I agree on that but as a whole a business or a brand uh for me at least it's more a marathon it has a lot of it's It's lengthy and you need to have really the endurance to to survive all that time that's true that's true if you're building a regular business that's definitely it I mean you have to give it time you have to go go back to the drawing board at points definitely but when it comes to literally when it comes to building something that that scales that like at scale uh you You' find yourself like one day with with two team members and then two months later with 20 so how do you you know like how do you really grasp all of this when you have all the things around you that are happening maybe family maybe friends maybe things that are happening in life and so it becomes overwhelming at point and you at a point so you are basically in need of a goal you you are in need of to say like listen I'm going to reach that objective and so that's why I called it a Sprint uh when it comes to Tex TS so with your diverse Ventures from lexium to uh AK what key business strategies have you found most effective in navigating the complex Landscapes of law finance and Tech because you blend them all and you're really uh uh diversifying your uh Ventures yeah I mean what the main the main kind of approach is to really Sol try to solve a problem try to solve a real problem and again it's not easy because sometimes you think you're solving a problem when it's not a problem it's not really a problem people do not want it and you have to have the courage to say listen and people are not asking for the things I'm I'm offering so there must be something wrong I need to fix it all right cuz uh we tend to think that if we put a patch on things they just heal they they don't heal it's not the patch that heals them the patch just protects the the wound but it's the body that heals itself so the body is Reinventing the cells right when it's when it's healing that's the same thing for for business the the business has to create new cells that are healing the wound or the lack of efficiency of whatever you're doing it's not the patch sometimes people push on marketing for example they say listen I was spending a thousand I'm G to spend 10,000 on marketing and then try to sell but guess what it's not the way it's not the way the marketing for example only accelerates your your sales it does not bring you the sales and so my main my main thing is really trying to go back to the drawing board and think about okay what is the Innovation that's happening and how can I recalibrate in a sense the problem I'm solving towards the Innovation that is happening in the market that brings me to another complication which is which is sometimes sometimes you over recalibrate so you change a lot and that's also something that you have to limit so you have to really think about okay am I changing just because it's cool it's hyped it's a new thing or am I changing because there's a fundamental reason or a fundamental change that is happening in the market AI is yeah yeah yeah yeah which which leads me actually to to my next question how have you approached marketing and scaling these high-tech Ventures particularly in in the Innovative projects like a Killers nft let's say um by understanding the market so first of all for example in in web 3 the idea of of web 3 is a lot of people do not understand web 3 because they're coming from a web two perspective to the web3 world web3 is a community-based uh world so everything is reliant on the community if you're not part of the community if you're not part of the the various communities that are there if you don't understand the language the Linguistics you cannot launch anything if you're not providing value and if you're not being straight up honest with the people that are there people will just know who you are and whatever you're going to do you're not going to be able to actually sell anything or provide any kind of product or service so how did I approach it in web 3 by really understanding and I think that helped because I was in gaming a lot because gaming is also very Community Based and gaming basically got me to the various communities I'm into anime to Dragon Ball I watch Dragon Ball a lot so I'm into various anime communities and so that got me as well into the community aspect I'm into trading so that got me into communities as well because a lot of people trade in communities um so so you're building a lot of communities Ramy I can I can I can see and you're being part of different communities and you're building other communities and I can I know that you you have uh various projects from Web Two to web 3 and specifically in web 3 you're building a lot and uh you're you're being with the people helping them providing tips uh creating YouTube videos that are free tutorials and classes for trading for uh a lot of stuff how do you find the time to do all of that I think I think it's it's again it goes back to to connecting things together and being efficient and most importantly uh having people to work with if you're not able to to build a team around you if you're not able to work with people and give them reward them for what they do and have them part of the projects that you're building it's so whenever I'm trying to build I want people who are working with me to feel that it's their project as well because it's theirs it's theirs from a from a percentage perspective from a share perspective from a revenue perspective from a lot of perspectives I do not believe that we are at a time where we can keep on bringing people as simple employees into a business and expect them to give their utmost effort to that business because they know everyone knows that listen I'm coming in at nine doing a 9 to5 but at the end of the day you're the guy making the millions and I'm the guy making the salary and so we can no longer do that if we want to really build things if want to scale things if want to grow things if you want to create things we can no longer do that and that's why I try to include people who work with me uh on a plan on a in a plan in a in a process how can you become part of what we're doing how can you get your shares how can you get how can you do more and how you exactly get a better outcome exactly income from it exactly exactly so that helps you how do you do that well you create vesting schedules that's from a legal perspective you create uh you give a certain percentage to the people joining the team uh of course that's no legal advice because like if you depending on your business we're only hearing what you are doing for exactly so I create I create a I keep a percentage of the business for the people joining and whoever is joining at different positions at different timings get to get gets access basically to these shares that's for the web3 and the web two everything I do in everything I do literally wow in literally in every little thing I do because I do not believe uh again going back to the idea of the two concepts I told you about that keep on repeating time and death if you understand that you're not taking things with you you might as well build with people reward them we worked on the on the equity incentive plan for Karim you know Karim the the the yeah the right hailing business so that's what they acquired by Uber yeah it created it it's was the startup that created the most millionaires ever ever Kim was the was the startup that created the most millionaires in history of start in the history of startups I did not know that in the history of startups like it created the most millionaires and why is that because the founders decided from day one listen those early joiners ERS are going to be part of the team are going to get the shares that are going to make them millionaires if we're going to sell uh above $1 billion if we're going to become a unicorn these guys that joined in are going to become millionaires that's it and so they actually did become billionaires so that was that was amazing I should have joined Karim yeah early on early on yeah early early on yeah that was too early yeah okay so uh I believe we we we tackled a bit the the Strategic approach and how how you are agile and in your strategy approach and how you shift directly and you're being uh uh responsive to the market needs and technological advancements but do you have anything to say in that any specific uh example to add or something because I I I believe that you are exposed to a lot of innovation and combining law with uh uh the new ways of doing uh Ventures which which are basically the web 3 with the tokenomics and uh being blockchain based how do you translate that in your regular business I think that there are four four Concepts that that will determine each and every business moving forward and that's where I try to centralize my ideas over around these four Concepts basically artificial intelligence is going to be driving everything that I do moving forward and I think that everything business does moving forward is going to be determined by by AI augmented reality so we're going to have a layer of virtual on top of the real and that's something that will determine a lot of business models moving forward uh Community also that's something that will uh really kind of create that that dynamic between Brands and people uh I believe that the next Alpha are are Villages which is extremely I think I think Villages around the world and small cities are going to be the next Alpha people are going to move away from major cities so I'm not really bullish on real estate it's already happening exactly and they're going to build modern small cities I mean I would I would it started since Co yeah yeah and I would love to be be living in a city in a small village for example where I know people around me we have a modern lifestyle we we are doing things but we're in the middle of nature while instead of living in a major city where no one knows no one knows no one basically and so it's it's too crowded so I think that's go back to community exactly exactly so I think that's that goes back to community and then the last part is microtransactions so everything is moving towards smaller transactions and smaller ticket prices the bigger ticket prices are will no longer be available simply because the PE people are not making big tickets anymore everything is being kind of brought back to microtransactions to small transactions to small payments to different different or various or a multitude of revenue streams for each person so you make money from Trading you make money from uh from investment you make money from your startup you make money from your e-commerce you make money from your socials you make money from a freelance job that you do and that's kind of how things are being built before like 20 30 years ago a lawyer would reach the age of 40 45 they would be making tens of millions of dollars they're part of a niche in society where they're buying real estate they're buying stuff big cars luxury cars Etc if you realize now if you're seeing the data uh major houses are basically going down in prices except for a small Niche uh cars are going down in prices they're cutting prices because no one can afford it or else it's going to be leased so smaller transactions and even when you create business models it's the more it's based on microtransactions the more you'll have sales and the more you have tickets that are like maybe $2,000 $33,000 the less you're going to get the sales so yeah that's how I function amazing approach and uh thank you for that Ramy it really uh resonates with me and it it highlights basically uh really the four elements of uh how we should move forward and in in which direction and how to go at it uh talking about trading and a multitude of revenue streams and channels and how to do all of that uh any advice that you can give to any solopreneur or or or someone that is really shifting from being an employee to starting their own uh businesses and they want to have a kind of a stable income and they really they really cannot do it on their own and they're creating a multi ude of revenue streams what can you tell them a bit about trading uh I don't know you you you tell me I mean first of all I would tell them don't trade um the first thing that you need to do is to build your business the first thing you need to do is to actually sorry the first thing you need to do is to learn a skill uh if you're already working then you probably have a skill so the second thing to do is to build a business a revenue stream and or partner up and that's very important and very underrated by the way um people want to build their businesses but no one wants to partner up to build a business again we go back to Greed that's that's very bad that's very bad because you cannot build on your own and you might as well there are business ideas out there that are extremely well done uh and there are teams that are building if you join a startup that gives you uh an opportunity to get ownership in that startup then it's definitely a better option in most of the cases than building your own startup and and a lot of people kind of go for ego and say I want to be the founder I want to build I want to do that I want to do this and this is this is extremely wrong in my opinion uh so the the first thing I would say is definitely don't trade because you're already under a lot of stress so you don't want to add another layer of stress uh on your on your shoulders uh definitely invest so open up an investment account or a trading account and definitely do invest with guidance of course uh but for example if you would have invested in the S&P for example 20 to 30 years ago that's a that's an easy I mean considering last year that's an easy uh north of 10% in in return over your on on your money so there's definitely that aspect of investing on the long run uh as for trading I think you can do it when you start having a decent Revenue stream that's where you can start trading because trading without pressure knowing that at the end of the month you do have the returns and the revenue to keep the same lifestyle that you're that you're in uh helps you trade much better helps you trade much more efficiently and make much more money so yeah I think first learn a skill second open up a business or partner up on a business and then and only then you can trade exactly that because nowadays everyone is it's it's it it's trendy it's in hype and everyone wants to really jump in and start trading and they want to install two screens in front of them and live and live the life of a Trader and it's it's not that simple guys there's no easy money in life they don't grow on trees nor on screens that's true so either you do it professionally and you go at it fulltime almost or please don't that's true you're going to lose your money that's true that's true any final thoughts anything to conclude with Ramy all yours um we are in definitely very very challenging times I think focusing on the most important four Concepts AI AR community and microtransactions uh if you have your businesses lined up to these four elements uh I think you can you can you can build a strong business we still have time uh AI is here uh humanoids are going to be here robotics robots basically are going to be here uh we still have time as humans to build things uh however in a few years I think if you're going into education right now if you're learning if you're becoming uh kind of a university student uh I think going for creatives going for uh the creative kind of Majors uh even exploring singing dancing uh all the creative aspects uh DJing whatever it is uh is is definitely more of a priority than exploring the analytical stuff that potentially can be easily automated or basically kind of replaced yeah exactly so so yeah I would definitely go for the creatives thank you for the advice it's it's really spot on thank you uh just to clarify one thing it's not replacing old jobs with the new jobs only but it's it's creating new ways of doing things and even I really I really uh wish that uh all the entrepreneurs and the business owners and the people that are shifting towards the entrepreneurship uh Journey Journey don't miss out on AI yeah under understand AI understand its functionality the how can you really use it because it's there for you to use it it's not here to replace you it's here to make your life easier that's true that's true that's true Ram Al thanks a lot for being here I really enjoyed this episode and thank you so much for sharing all your ins sites and your journey with us it was really uh Illuminating thanks a lot again I really appreciate you and uh see you soon thank you so much thank you so much

welcome back to Visionary Ventures the K bani podcast today I&#39;m thrilled to welcome Ramy Al a Visionary Financial Services lawyer whose career spans pre prestigious roles from CAD in New York New York City to servicing as a legal council at the United Nations Ramy is the founder of lexium the first AI powered digital low firm and the co-founder of traum and AI power collective learning app for trading additionally ramy&#39;s Venture AK recently launched a free nft called eulers which impressively generated 1.2 million in traded volume he also established aorus uh advisors a startup Law Firm that helps entrepreneurs navigate the complexities of legal Frameworks today we&#39;ll dive into his Innovative contributions to low and technology and we&#39;re going to explore the Synergy between his entrepreneurial Endeavors and discuss how his Venture impact the evolving landscape of digital finance and web three Technologies as well so Ramy first of all I&#39;m delighted to have you here today thank you so so much for taking the time and be on the podcast before we delve into your various professional Pursuit s just could you share a bit about your journey from traditional finance and law to your current Innovative ventures in technology and web 3 so uh first of all thank you so much for having me thank you for the intro um and thank you for the podcast um so I started so like I think I think the to answer this question in the most kind of um simple way for for for everyone uh I think that when you go into Innovation when you try to create things uh it happens along the way so whoever is going to try to tell you that this this was like planned all along this is I mean this is a huge die because you cannot you cannot plan the things that you you go through I started off as a as a lawyer I studied law uh I studied Finance I did my masters in financial services law and then I started a regular career as a financial services lawyer in New York at kadw which is a a renowned Law Firm that catered For one of the biggest banks Goldman Sachs at the time uh so I was like literally going on as a as a lawyer uh wearing my suit going to the office uh you know just just living the the lawyer life and then things happen I mean um I saw I saw an opportunity to go back to to come back back to the region first of all uh that was coupled with some family problems that led to me having to go back so it wasn&#39;t really decided in a sense like hey I&#39;m gonna build something Innovative it wasn&#39;t like that I&#39;m noticing that it will never be exactly exactly and and at the same time while I was a cadwalader I was working under and that&#39;s something I&#39;ve uh I think I&#39;ve never shared I think I&#39;m going to be sharing it with you uh so that that&#39;s I I was working under a partner called Steven lchi at gader he was the partner in charge of in charge of me in the in the hierarchy and he was thinking about how can we create that q and system for and that&#39;s something we&#39;re going to talk about in the like I think on the business level but he was kind of starting to think about the Innovation so I was grasping all that content and then I had to leave abruptly and then when I left all these things came together so that&#39;s that&#39;s kind of how I shifted from one place to another amazing super inspiring uh by the way and really what I&#39;m noticing that you cannot predict these shifts it happens it&#39;s just happens okay so thank you for uh for that intro as well let&#39;s dig a little bit deeper into that transition and you you basically went from the big institutions like cadwalader and the UN to the dynamic world of startups and Tech that must have been really mentally challenging for you how did you manage this transition and what were the key mental shifts that you had to make so yeah totally I mean when you&#39;re moving from from one side of the aisle to the other basically trying to understand how to launch a business and again uh uh going back to to the idea of launching a business I think no one knows how to really launch a business it just also happens so you&#39;re faced with chaos so the mental shift is extremely brutal because you&#39;re you&#39;re used to a certain framework you&#39;re used to basically going to the office having some kind of kpis some kind of targets uh okrs ex and then suddenly you have to create those those those rules and those boundaries and you have to limit yourself uh to be able to to achieve them with that you still have to keep that Vision that again keeps on evolving as you build your business so you start with an idea and then suddenly you realize that this idea hey it doesn&#39;t really work so I need to maybe kind of transition it a bit shift it a bit so it starts becoming more challenging and you have to keep up with the tasks in the meantime and when it comes to the third part which is the business model the business model also keeps changing and is is an interactive concept and so the yeah the I was I remember literally I remember when I started I was um so I had I had an air mattress at the office so I used to sleep at the office and I had literally gotten a subscription at the gym which was that was where that was in downtown Beirut so I came back to Beirut for family reasons I started up off Aurora&#39;s advice ERS in Beirut as a as a kind of startup law firm uh and so I remember I took an office literally without any windows and I specifically took it without any Windows because I wanted to detach from the concept of time that&#39;s something in in Vegas that I have experience I had experience in in Vegas actually when you go to Vegas all the casinos have no windows so so that you don&#39;t realize it&#39;s day night so you keep on obviously spending uh so I I Ed this concept to get the off office and to to basically convince myself that there was no day and night and I got my air mattress and so I remember at some point I said like who asked for this I mean I was I was living in New York I had a penthouse I I was I I started off like with really a high a high salary as a lawyer and so I I literally thought to myself like am I doing this right and I had no answer no one could answer me whether it was right or wrong so yeah it was very challenging to keep on moving when you are hesitating on whether you should just go back to what you were and you could or actually keep building exactly and talking about that in the face of the business uncertainties and in the fast pace of technological change as well how do you maintain that mental Clarity and resilience to keep on going you just I mean I I would love to I mean I would love to share like a secret formula or something but at the same time I mean if you ask it&#39;s not exactly no secret formulas exactly I mean spoiler alert exactly I mean at at at the at the pace that you&#39;re you&#39;re moving at usually like you just do this like you just do it right it if you can if you ask literally any entrepreneur out there any any entrepreneur who really went through the building process uh how do you maintain the resilience because you basically convince yourself that you have no other option and the the the example I gave you earlier where I I said like who asked for this that was one moment and then you just look around you and you say okay no I&#39;m far from going back to where I was for so many reasons and you start creating those reasons in your head that convince you more and more that your only option is to actually move forward your only option is to wake up or go up go to the office or sit at the office and then open up your laptop start sending out emails send out uh LinkedIn invites uh send out stuff so you just dive into the details so that&#39;s how you maintain the resilience by just going back into the details and stop thinking about the main big Vision because a lot of people get lost at that like they think about okay I&#39;m going to build this1 billion doll company great but you have to start with answering an email uh sending out an invite sending out a message reaching out and very important uh basically having things move forward and that&#39;s something we&#39;re going to talk about later again uh move forward while you are thinking and that&#39;s um we&#39;ll detail that later in the business 100% 100% And uh I really I really don&#39;t know how much we can uh tackle this subject uh in depth but would you call it obsession is what kept you yeah moving forward totally totally or is it really like a vision or or for in my case it was an obsession in my case it was a total Obsession I mean I wanted to I wanted to build I wanted I saw the vision I was excited each and every time we had we had a small success we had a small breakout um it was an obsession for me it&#39;s still an obsession up until today I mean uh sometimes sometimes like people do not believe how much time I allocate in kind of doing stuff and how can I basically tackle things it&#39;s I know I know a portion of it and it&#39;s crazy I don&#39;t know how you do it I have no clue literally like like again like the thing is when it becomes an obsession you start finding Solutions so you become the most efficient person possible so you start really taking out taking out all the the secondary stuff like even the sometimes the outings sometimes uh like from from the closing to the outings to the distances that you move from like I have literally my office that&#39;s two minutes away from my home that&#39;s two minutes away from my gym so I choose this to kind of be as efficient as possible so we&#39;re going to get to uh to also the physical aspects and all the the trainings that goes with it but mental Clarity is really key and I do believe that Obsession and believing in yourself and obsessing about what you want to achieve in life is your main and primary drive forward and it really blocks everything else so it&#39;s like I don&#39;t know if you wanna take it like the race horses you&#39;re blocking everything else and you&#39;re just focusing on the track that you&#39;re putting in front of you and you&#39;re just running towards your goals one goal at a time yeah that&#39;s true amazing that&#39;s true and and and you will get a lot of distractions I mean if you&#39;re this is where your your willpower comes into play because you will be distracted there is no way that you would not be distracted by things around you by maybe Friends by contacts by sometimes Relationships by a lot of things there are things that will distract you and it&#39;s up to you to decide and that&#39;s the cool thing about life I mean the journey uh like it gives you choices it gives you choices it tells you like okay what do you want to do like you have to decide okay no I&#39;m going to continue because that&#39;s my priority that&#39;s my obsession or I&#39;m going to stop a bit and it&#39;s not wrong stop a bit and then look at this distraction and then realize oh no my main goal is that so I&#39;ll go back to it so yeah so what I&#39;m understanding as well is you have the possibility of taking any choice that you would like and it&#39;s all in your hands at the end of the day and you decide if you want to do that or or this and you will have to eventually compromise on a lot of stuff right totally totally I mean you have to compromise on on a lot of a lot of things that are that are basically in a sense pre-programmed in your head as if they were priorities so for example uh a lot of people kind of reach a certain age like 30 40 even 50 sometimes and they kind of categorize themselves as potentially maybe old or uh grown-ups at the same time if you just detach from that concept that was that&#39;s just a social concept it&#39;s not a concept that that that basically defines what you want to do because you could start just like the the KFC guy obviously the famous example guy found exactly founded KFC at at North of 60 and and and became a conglomerate the guy from Zara started at 38 I think 39 created one of the biggest uh retails in the world the point is if you detach from those those Concepts and those distractions and you realize what you want what you feel comfortable with you will be able to feel comfortable with that Obsession and that&#39;s that&#39;s the main point lovely thank you for that Ramy uh let me move a bit to some let&#39;s call them spiritual aspects of your life how how do you uh like how do your personal beliefs and values influence your professional decisions and leadership styles leadership style yeah how do you how do you do that um so I&#39;m someone who&#39;s very practical and I was brought up basically in a very pragmatic way practical way so for me for me I mean I do believe that there there&#39;s something there&#39;s some kind of power uh some kind of force that created everything that we&#39;re living in uh I have this theory that we are sitting in a simulation and that simulation is just like when you look at uh for example GT if you if anyone is playing GTA for example uh when you&#39;re in you&#39;re when you&#39;re playing GTA you&#39;re you&#39;re walking down the street and you have this this idea that you&#39;re walking in a city and all this city is is actually active and everyone&#39;s walking on the street there are cars coming in coming out uh there&#39;s a mission that you&#39;re you&#39;re heading to and someone is waiting for you there but in fact from a software perspective and those who are in software would understand in gaming uh everything around you is black there&#39;s nothing happening there&#39;s just the street that you are in that&#39;s actually U functioning and you can see the activities while the other parts in order to save on data to save on on computing power to save on on basically consumption everything is blacked out until you reach that point and then it activates so I think that we are living in in a similar situation whereby uh the simulation does give you challenges and I believe that like the the Practical approach when it comes to belief is to really realize that first of all there are two main uh factors that you need to abide by because these are unchangeable which is time for now we are not able to create any Arbitrage uh sorry any lack of Arbitrage related to time so one of the main arbitrages that Still Remains and will still remain is his time and uh that end point which is which we call death uh in different religions you can call it different things but it&#39;s the end of the current kind of Journey that you&#39;re going into and so if you realize that time and and death are the main components that would Jud that would basically uh in a way impact or be the dependency to any decision that you take uh you would be able to manage things in a much more efficient way and so this is what fuels my decisions okay what&#39;s the best time efficient way to do things first of all and then second is it that important is it is this fight that I&#39;m going into or this argument or this complication is it more important than the end which is death and it&#39;s never it&#39;s it&#39;s never it&#39;s never more important so that&#39;s how you can first of all be more efficient in the things you do and in your management style and second kind of make things more relative and realize that hey it&#39;s not maybe it&#39;s not that important because there&#39;s anend point and it&#39;s fine so things are going to flow you don&#39;t have to fight with that person just because they didn&#39;t show up one day or just because they did the bad they did the mistake will they be repeating that mistake let&#39;s see let&#39;s put kpis let&#39;s put control uh control aspects let&#39;s put potentially reports Etc but we don&#39;t have to be stuck on something so that&#39;s kind of what guides me from a belief perspective it&#39;s like time and most importantly the end point which makes things more relative and smaller in scale than they are I really love the the way you&#39;re uh you&#39;re you&#39;re going at it actually so it&#39;s it simplified the the matter for me personally so yeah I don&#39;t know if we C can you give them uh updates and upgrades like uh sending them new skins in the game or something I I think I think you could I think at some point we&#39;re going to be able to I think we&#39;re with the with the evolution with AI I think we&#39;re going to be able to ar ar and AI I think will will enable that feature exactly and uh they started with having like board members that are basically an AI model exactly and it&#39;s a it&#39;s a it&#39;s a board member at a company registered in Abu d right that&#39;s true that&#39;s true amazing that&#39;s true amazing that&#39;s true you could hire a board member who&#39;s a n soon to be a humanoid so they&#39;re going to even create a physical kind of uh cop CRA it&#39;s crazy uh Ramy has there been a moment when your spiritual or ethical principles significantly impacted a business decision or the direction of one of your Ventures uh yes I mean um so I had um I had an something that went on in one of my Ventures where I had kind of a downfall with with the co-founder at at this Venture and um that involved a lot of kind of going back and forth arguments Etc um that&#39;s that&#39;s where kind the way I explained things before like with the time and time and relativeness of things that helped me a lot in really saying to myself uh listen you don&#39;t have to continue this fight simply because you are wasting time from uh from the time that you&#39;re going to allocate in building more things and impacting more people although a lot of people around me basically everyone around me wanted me to continue the fight wanted me to continue basically there was literally it was a strategic fight it was it was like for for everyone it was something that I should have done for me I was the only one who said listen I&#39;m going to drop it I&#39;m gonna drop it I&#39;m not going to continue this fight because I have more important things to do at the time trust me it it&#39;s one of the most difficult things you could do because you&#39;re filled with emotions you&#39;re filled with a lot of uh reactiveness when it comes to fighting when you&#39;re fighting you&#39;re very reactive and especially when someone is trying to take away something that you&#39;ve built from the start trying trying to kind of put you to the ground and it requires a lot of thought to say listen I&#39;m not going to continue this fight and sometimes the biggest win you can have is not continuing a fight and so so uh yeah so that that&#39;s where my belief kicked in my beliefs kicked in um and kind of I started really moving away and then with time I realized that was the the best decision I&#39;ve made I can 100% relate to what you&#39;re saying because I really was in a kind of similar uh situation maybe not as big as yours but it was like a direct conflict with uh uh someone that I had uh a business relationship with a couple of years ago and the way the conversation shifted from a bus business relationship to a direct threat and you know uh kind of dragging it to another uh level I chose not to be reactive in that way because I knew that I could and anyone can be reactive anyone can be violent anyone can be anything but I don&#39;t want to play that game you know I have something else to do and it&#39;s going to bring me so a better return I have a question for you so what now now let me let me let me ask a question did you so so do you remember that moment where you were torn between between being reactive and not being reactive being saying to yourself I&#39;m gonna I&#39;m just gonna like be as reactive as possible and then saying no yeah yeah that was that was an intense moment I can imagine right it&#39;s very intense and you feel like there&#39;s a revelation yeah there&#39;s something in it like it&#39;s a it&#39;s like a I don&#39;t know there&#39;s a gift inside of it I&#39;m not going to say anything okay you turn and you take another toally get that feeling it&#39;s unexplainable like if you don&#39;t go through it you really cannot explain that moment where as you said like there&#39;s a gift inside of it so that&#39;s that&#39;s and the problem that I faced was everyone around me was like why did you do that why you didn&#39;t react why you didn&#39;t defend yourself I was there you go I don&#39;t I I don&#39;t have to there you go there you go that&#39;s it that&#39;s it so we I have a clear conscience and uh I move on we went through similar experiences P yeah that&#39;s a nice one uh any any practices I don&#39;t know from meditation to Solitude to I don&#39;t know what can you do in order for you to enhance the mental and spiritual aspects of yourself um I&#39;m me I&#39;m I&#39;m going to be super honest um so for me I tried I tried meditation but I mean I it can be reading it can be walking in nature it can be drawing it can be anything like for me for me it&#39;s like I your I am I am I am I am obsessed with the things I do so I don&#39;t really feel and it&#39;s weird but I don&#39;t really feel pressured okay because I&#39;m detached from in my in my head um I know and coming back to the two factors that I told you about like death and time for me I know I&#39;m going out with basically nothing right except the experience that I went through so I kind of keep on convincing myself that there&#39;s nothing to lose and so I don&#39;t really get pressured I do get pressured in moments so for example when we&#39;re rolling out a feature or a service or I&#39;m closing a client or I&#39;m having a conversation I&#39;m negotiating something of course I do get stressed about it or pressured about it but overall when it when this moment ends I don&#39;t feel the need to detach in the sense because I&#39;m already detached in my head I do I do play some uh some video games I&#39;m I&#39;m a lot into video games so that that helps me kind of distract but when it comes to Med meditation I I really don&#39;t I mean I do walk I do think to myself I listen to some music and I use that maybe as a meditation process but I&#39;m not I don&#39;t have a specific kind of format where I would sit or I don&#39;t do you read a lot or yeah I do read a lot yeah I do read a lot I do read a lot I do watch a lot of YouTubes I&#39;m addicted to YouTube videos uh as well just like video games so I&#39;m usually either playing video games and then watching YouTube videos in parallel on some kind of documentary or podcast going live or going live exactly exactly when when when I want to be more proactive I&#39;m going live but I do listen to a lot of podcasts I do listen to a lot of uh people kind of whom I really appreciate uh talk about certain top ICS mainly investment and stuff so yeah that keeps me going cool so let me go to another segment which is basically around the physical health or the movement that goes in into your daily routine as someone who juggles multiple high demand roles and how important is physical health to your overall performance you can&#39;t imagine like to the point that I I reached level where I first so I went through the process I started off I used to exercise a lot I don&#39;t I don&#39;t kind of want to Target something I exercise just to kind of also detach in a sense uh but I there was a period where I was overloaded with things I stopped exercising and it was one of the worst moments I went through because your health deteriorates in such a way where you you like you you really cannot can no longer feel this Clarity in what you&#39;re doing you&#39;re not feeling the passion you&#39;re not feeling the excitement you&#39;re just tired and nothing is enjoyable when you&#39;re tired and that&#39;s that&#39;s that&#39;s a that&#39;s one of the M biggest problems that got me back to training and now I train literally every day I go to the gym I make sure to have the closest possible gym to me uh to where I&#39;m it&#39;s always the closest yeah exactly because I don&#39;t understand the people that will have to really Drive half an hour to go to the gym and have a full bag of clothes and show exact I personally cannot do that me neither me neither so that&#39;s that&#39;s so it it keeps me it keeps me going so on a daily basis I lock in a time to train now sometimes you got to push yourself sometimes just going down to the gym and just walking or or going on the treadmill or or doing some kind of pull-ups or something can help you a lot but as long as you actually take the step to go down and exercise so yeah it&#39;s it&#39;s it&#39;s really crucial in in in the things I do amazing yeah I do believe that uh it&#39;s it&#39;s really crucial and uh it&#39;s not only a distraction it&#39;s like a reboot for your whole system basically where you feel good and once you feel good in your own body in your own skin you&#39;re now ready to that&#39;s true to do something from a fren fresh mind perspective so now just just just to be to be clear also to the people watching because like it&#39;s very important also to to put things into perspective I mean we sometimes I mean whoever tells you that they&#39;re training all the time do does sometime in a way go through periods where you&#39;re not where you&#39;re struggling with this so if if anyone is struggling with this it&#39;s normal as well so because we have this social media kind of um franzy where like all the people that are going on podcasts and talking they&#39;re like just perfect like they&#39;re doing things correctly you know they&#39;re going to the gym they&#39;re working their stuff and our every day and the cold lunges EXA yeah we discussed that exactly exactly from where do they have all that time to do all of these things on a daily basis exactly exactly I have no idea yeah no we&#39;re we&#39;re regular people we&#39;re human beings at the end of the day and we have responsibilities and I do believe that balance is key exactly I wish I can go back to uh doing more uh physical training uh I used to do powerlifting I have a back injury I used to do a lot of bodybuilding and I really stopped I I gained some weight but I&#39;m I&#39;m fine as is I&#39;m moving myself walking swimming when I have the time but but mostly let&#39;s not overdo it but let&#39;s stay active that&#39;s the essential part exactly for me at least exactly so any uh would you would you say that uh physical health proved crucial to your professional success or decision making do you have any instance or example um the main basically the main the main thing is you feel fit you feel uh in your element you feel um you feel happy because like when you exercise there there are basically chem chemical reactions and kind of hormones that get triggered in your body so it&#39;s a fact scientifically proven that you do feel happier you do feel more energetic and so yes whenever I train actually on a daily basis I do feel whenever I&#39;m going out of the training especially sometimes in trainings where I&#39;m pushing myself to the limit when I&#39;m feeling like the pain that that I&#39;m like I&#39;m I&#39;m I&#39;m going through when I&#39;m exercising you get that feeling of kind of satisfaction you get that yes like I&#39;m I&#39;m I&#39;m feeling good about it you know and so that that pushes you in your work definitely yeah and for you it&#39;s mostly after work or before work after work after work okay for sure so it&#39;s a way to yeah like yeah yeah just stress out let them go out let things out uh just just relax and then push things out cool yeah I I I love both of them by the way I I moved my trainings till the morning which I really loved oh and I did it for quite some time and it was really powerful to start the day that fresh and that active you&#39;re you&#39;re ready for anything you know you could you could interch yeah you could interchange like between this and that it&#39;s cool I find it quite challenging and it&#39;s really nice if you can keep on changing that&#39;s true don&#39;t let don&#39;t let it be your new comfort zone that&#39;s that&#39;s true I&#39;m used to train at 5:00 pm and that&#39;s for life no wow exactly I thought it was I thought it was the case try it tomorrow morning Grammy I really invite you for a a morning session I got you I got you you&#39;re going to feel something new I&#39;ll try it out try it out for sure for sure yeah so now getting uh a bit into the business aspect and the ventures and everything that happened so far with you since you ventured into the startup and the uh uh entrepreneurial Journey that you started uh we&#39;re going to start by talking about a lot of your Ventures and Technologies and how you went from regular startups to web 3 and Innovations but before going into all of these I know you have an interesting story to to tell us what happened with you in 2020 oh yeah I know that&#39;s that&#39;s something uh heavy to start with um yes yes um so basically when you&#39;re building a startup you always have this dream that the startup is going to be at the top of the industry that you&#39;re trying to disrupt and you&#39;re you have this idea that you have like all founders have this idea that your startup is worth much more than whatever could be offered and you get quote unquote you get greedy when it comes to to your startup because you&#39;re possessive and it&#39;s something that you built from the start you start seeing attention uh people interested in your startup and then suddenly it goes into your head and it went into my head uh I like August August uh literally August 2020 we got we got um proposal on one one of my startups basically my main startup to basically be bought out so we got um an acquisition deal and that acquisition deal was on the table we were at the top of our performance our team was was was quite big quite sizable our operations were growing everything was was really going really well and literally we decided in like in a few seconds said let&#39;s not take this deal we can I don&#39;t want it we can we deserve more we can we can do much better this is a joke it was literally like uh like several million millions of dollars so it was like was it a reaction or it was a really calculated answer no no it was not calculated at all in retrospect it was far from being calculated it was just us considering that we were unbeatable unbreakable and we&#39;ve been going on and that&#39;s also very important to mention we had been going on with the startup for about about three years and a half so nearly four years and we didn&#39;t realize the impact of those four years on our basically mental state so we felt that we were still fresh we were still going like going on like we had the energy we had the passion we had the excitement and especially for me I did didn&#39;t even consider that someone could be tired while other team members at the time who did not tell me uh were tired were exhausted wanted that kind of stop in a sense so it was not calculated at all six months later we had a fight between co-founders we were nearly on the brink of collapse we had our operations just just our clients just just leave uh our yeah we had an with our our Dev team we had an issue uh with like with the with the business model with the core business model that was changing because of covid and the postco uh internet adoption and and move towards things so it was it was catastrophic so we said we just looked back like six months earlier we had that offer we could not get maybe 20% of that offer six months later so so it was it was yeah it was pretty it was pretty abrupt it was a roller coaster so that thought what happened after it so after it we we had the choice basically to either continue or basically close down uh we continued and I&#39;m super happy that we continued at a cost because the cost was the mental uh part which was very challenging the health part that got me more into training uh so L learned lesson learned for sure for sure a startup a startup is if you get an offer for your startup especially in this period definitely do consider it much more seriously than I did that that&#39;s that&#39;s for sure oh yeah yeah now we&#39;re laughing at it but I know back then it was catastrophic it wasn&#39;t that funny it was it was it was uh no I I used to cry about it literally I cried about it like I literally cried about it I would literally yeah I can imagine just sit down and say I mean I could have built built so many things and just moved on and the idea is sometimes we we we lose ourselves in a in a tunnel where we think that if I&#39;m going to sell my my business or my startup I cannot do anything else it&#39;s wrong I mean you could build so many things you could just enjoy time with family with friends Etc so I think that startups are are a Sprint they&#39;re they&#39;re they&#39;re very intense but there needs to be a Target if there is no target what you want to do with that startup you would get tired and when you get tired you start making bad decisions and when you start making bad decisions you start fighting with people and then it just becomes uh a roller coaster that basically never ends until either you wind up or you really have to put so much effort to put things back on track I I agree with what you said but uh mentioning startup is a print why why is that are we talking about uh new new Innovative startups or okay yeah so Tech startups I mean I mean Tech startups where you&#39;re building a SAS model for example or you&#39;re um and again SAS SAS models are want to be the next unicorn and exactly exactly raise funds and exactly if you&#39;re going through that process of kind of raising capitals preed seeds series a series B and then going through building one of the business models of assas because also very important is that SAS is not a business model on its own so that&#39;s very important because there are SAS models that are SNES so basically you can build the SAS model while being anme and building your business while when you&#39;re building a startup specifically a tax startup it has to be fast it has to be fast it has to grow at exponential levels so it&#39;s tiring it&#39;s yeah yeah it is it is it is of course and uh I agree on that but as a whole a business or a brand uh for me at least it&#39;s more a marathon it has a lot of it&#39;s It&#39;s lengthy and you need to have really the endurance to to survive all that time that&#39;s true that&#39;s true if you&#39;re building a regular business that&#39;s definitely it I mean you have to give it time you have to go go back to the drawing board at points definitely but when it comes to literally when it comes to building something that that scales that like at scale uh you You&#39; find yourself like one day with with two team members and then two months later with 20 so how do you you know like how do you really grasp all of this when you have all the things around you that are happening maybe family maybe friends maybe things that are happening in life and so it becomes overwhelming at point and you at a point so you are basically in need of a goal you you are in need of to say like listen I&#39;m going to reach that objective and so that&#39;s why I called it a Sprint uh when it comes to Tex TS so with your diverse Ventures from lexium to uh AK what key business strategies have you found most effective in navigating the complex Landscapes of law finance and Tech because you blend them all and you&#39;re really uh uh diversifying your uh Ventures yeah I mean what the main the main kind of approach is to really Sol try to solve a problem try to solve a real problem and again it&#39;s not easy because sometimes you think you&#39;re solving a problem when it&#39;s not a problem it&#39;s not really a problem people do not want it and you have to have the courage to say listen and people are not asking for the things I&#39;m I&#39;m offering so there must be something wrong I need to fix it all right cuz uh we tend to think that if we put a patch on things they just heal they they don&#39;t heal it&#39;s not the patch that heals them the patch just protects the the wound but it&#39;s the body that heals itself so the body is Reinventing the cells right when it&#39;s when it&#39;s healing that&#39;s the same thing for for business the the business has to create new cells that are healing the wound or the lack of efficiency of whatever you&#39;re doing it&#39;s not the patch sometimes people push on marketing for example they say listen I was spending a thousand I&#39;m G to spend 10,000 on marketing and then try to sell but guess what it&#39;s not the way it&#39;s not the way the marketing for example only accelerates your your sales it does not bring you the sales and so my main my main thing is really trying to go back to the drawing board and think about okay what is the Innovation that&#39;s happening and how can I recalibrate in a sense the problem I&#39;m solving towards the Innovation that is happening in the market that brings me to another complication which is which is sometimes sometimes you over recalibrate so you change a lot and that&#39;s also something that you have to limit so you have to really think about okay am I changing just because it&#39;s cool it&#39;s hyped it&#39;s a new thing or am I changing because there&#39;s a fundamental reason or a fundamental change that is happening in the market AI is yeah yeah yeah yeah which which leads me actually to to my next question how have you approached marketing and scaling these high-tech Ventures particularly in in the Innovative projects like a Killers nft let&#39;s say um by understanding the market so first of all for example in in web 3 the idea of of web 3 is a lot of people do not understand web 3 because they&#39;re coming from a web two perspective to the web3 world web3 is a community-based uh world so everything is reliant on the community if you&#39;re not part of the community if you&#39;re not part of the the various communities that are there if you don&#39;t understand the language the Linguistics you cannot launch anything if you&#39;re not providing value and if you&#39;re not being straight up honest with the people that are there people will just know who you are and whatever you&#39;re going to do you&#39;re not going to be able to actually sell anything or provide any kind of product or service so how did I approach it in web 3 by really understanding and I think that helped because I was in gaming a lot because gaming is also very Community Based and gaming basically got me to the various communities I&#39;m into anime to Dragon Ball I watch Dragon Ball a lot so I&#39;m into various anime communities and so that got me as well into the community aspect I&#39;m into trading so that got me into communities as well because a lot of people trade in communities um so so you&#39;re building a lot of communities Ramy I can I can I can see and you&#39;re being part of different communities and you&#39;re building other communities and I can I know that you you have uh various projects from Web Two to web 3 and specifically in web 3 you&#39;re building a lot and uh you&#39;re you&#39;re being with the people helping them providing tips uh creating YouTube videos that are free tutorials and classes for trading for uh a lot of stuff how do you find the time to do all of that I think I think it&#39;s it&#39;s again it goes back to to connecting things together and being efficient and most importantly uh having people to work with if you&#39;re not able to to build a team around you if you&#39;re not able to work with people and give them reward them for what they do and have them part of the projects that you&#39;re building it&#39;s so whenever I&#39;m trying to build I want people who are working with me to feel that it&#39;s their project as well because it&#39;s theirs it&#39;s theirs from a from a percentage perspective from a share perspective from a revenue perspective from a lot of perspectives I do not believe that we are at a time where we can keep on bringing people as simple employees into a business and expect them to give their utmost effort to that business because they know everyone knows that listen I&#39;m coming in at nine doing a 9 to5 but at the end of the day you&#39;re the guy making the millions and I&#39;m the guy making the salary and so we can no longer do that if we want to really build things if want to scale things if want to grow things if you want to create things we can no longer do that and that&#39;s why I try to include people who work with me uh on a plan on a in a plan in a in a process how can you become part of what we&#39;re doing how can you get your shares how can you get how can you do more and how you exactly get a better outcome exactly income from it exactly exactly so that helps you how do you do that well you create vesting schedules that&#39;s from a legal perspective you create uh you give a certain percentage to the people joining the team uh of course that&#39;s no legal advice because like if you depending on your business we&#39;re only hearing what you are doing for exactly so I create I create a I keep a percentage of the business for the people joining and whoever is joining at different positions at different timings get to get gets access basically to these shares that&#39;s for the web3 and the web two everything I do in everything I do literally wow in literally in every little thing I do because I do not believe uh again going back to the idea of the two concepts I told you about that keep on repeating time and death if you understand that you&#39;re not taking things with you you might as well build with people reward them we worked on the on the equity incentive plan for Karim you know Karim the the the yeah the right hailing business so that&#39;s what they acquired by Uber yeah it created it it&#39;s was the startup that created the most millionaires ever ever Kim was the was the startup that created the most millionaires in history of start in the history of startups I did not know that in the history of startups like it created the most millionaires and why is that because the founders decided from day one listen those early joiners ERS are going to be part of the team are going to get the shares that are going to make them millionaires if we&#39;re going to sell uh above $1 billion if we&#39;re going to become a unicorn these guys that joined in are going to become millionaires that&#39;s it and so they actually did become billionaires so that was that was amazing I should have joined Karim yeah early on early on yeah early early on yeah that was too early yeah okay so uh I believe we we we tackled a bit the the Strategic approach and how how you are agile and in your strategy approach and how you shift directly and you&#39;re being uh uh responsive to the market needs and technological advancements but do you have anything to say in that any specific uh example to add or something because I I I believe that you are exposed to a lot of innovation and combining law with uh uh the new ways of doing uh Ventures which which are basically the web 3 with the tokenomics and uh being blockchain based how do you translate that in your regular business I think that there are four four Concepts that that will determine each and every business moving forward and that&#39;s where I try to centralize my ideas over around these four Concepts basically artificial intelligence is going to be driving everything that I do moving forward and I think that everything business does moving forward is going to be determined by by AI augmented reality so we&#39;re going to have a layer of virtual on top of the real and that&#39;s something that will determine a lot of business models moving forward uh Community also that&#39;s something that will uh really kind of create that that dynamic between Brands and people uh I believe that the next Alpha are are Villages which is extremely I think I think Villages around the world and small cities are going to be the next Alpha people are going to move away from major cities so I&#39;m not really bullish on real estate it&#39;s already happening exactly and they&#39;re going to build modern small cities I mean I would I would it started since Co yeah yeah and I would love to be be living in a city in a small village for example where I know people around me we have a modern lifestyle we we are doing things but we&#39;re in the middle of nature while instead of living in a major city where no one knows no one knows no one basically and so it&#39;s it&#39;s too crowded so I think that&#39;s go back to community exactly exactly so I think that&#39;s that goes back to community and then the last part is microtransactions so everything is moving towards smaller transactions and smaller ticket prices the bigger ticket prices are will no longer be available simply because the PE people are not making big tickets anymore everything is being kind of brought back to microtransactions to small transactions to small payments to different different or various or a multitude of revenue streams for each person so you make money from Trading you make money from uh from investment you make money from your startup you make money from your e-commerce you make money from your socials you make money from a freelance job that you do and that&#39;s kind of how things are being built before like 20 30 years ago a lawyer would reach the age of 40 45 they would be making tens of millions of dollars they&#39;re part of a niche in society where they&#39;re buying real estate they&#39;re buying stuff big cars luxury cars Etc if you realize now if you&#39;re seeing the data uh major houses are basically going down in prices except for a small Niche uh cars are going down in prices they&#39;re cutting prices because no one can afford it or else it&#39;s going to be leased so smaller transactions and even when you create business models it&#39;s the more it&#39;s based on microtransactions the more you&#39;ll have sales and the more you have tickets that are like maybe $2,000 $33,000 the less you&#39;re going to get the sales so yeah that&#39;s how I function amazing approach and uh thank you for that Ramy it really uh resonates with me and it it highlights basically uh really the four elements of uh how we should move forward and in in which direction and how to go at it uh talking about trading and a multitude of revenue streams and channels and how to do all of that uh any advice that you can give to any solopreneur or or or someone that is really shifting from being an employee to starting their own uh businesses and they want to have a kind of a stable income and they really they really cannot do it on their own and they&#39;re creating a multi ude of revenue streams what can you tell them a bit about trading uh I don&#39;t know you you you tell me I mean first of all I would tell them don&#39;t trade um the first thing that you need to do is to build your business the first thing you need to do is to actually sorry the first thing you need to do is to learn a skill uh if you&#39;re already working then you probably have a skill so the second thing to do is to build a business a revenue stream and or partner up and that&#39;s very important and very underrated by the way um people want to build their businesses but no one wants to partner up to build a business again we go back to Greed that&#39;s that&#39;s very bad that&#39;s very bad because you cannot build on your own and you might as well there are business ideas out there that are extremely well done uh and there are teams that are building if you join a startup that gives you uh an opportunity to get ownership in that startup then it&#39;s definitely a better option in most of the cases than building your own startup and and a lot of people kind of go for ego and say I want to be the founder I want to build I want to do that I want to do this and this is this is extremely wrong in my opinion uh so the the first thing I would say is definitely don&#39;t trade because you&#39;re already under a lot of stress so you don&#39;t want to add another layer of stress uh on your on your shoulders uh definitely invest so open up an investment account or a trading account and definitely do invest with guidance of course uh but for example if you would have invested in the S&amp;P for example 20 to 30 years ago that&#39;s a that&#39;s an easy I mean considering last year that&#39;s an easy uh north of 10% in in return over your on on your money so there&#39;s definitely that aspect of investing on the long run uh as for trading I think you can do it when you start having a decent Revenue stream that&#39;s where you can start trading because trading without pressure knowing that at the end of the month you do have the returns and the revenue to keep the same lifestyle that you&#39;re that you&#39;re in uh helps you trade much better helps you trade much more efficiently and make much more money so yeah I think first learn a skill second open up a business or partner up on a business and then and only then you can trade exactly that because nowadays everyone is it&#39;s it&#39;s it it&#39;s trendy it&#39;s in hype and everyone wants to really jump in and start trading and they want to install two screens in front of them and live and live the life of a Trader and it&#39;s it&#39;s not that simple guys there&#39;s no easy money in life they don&#39;t grow on trees nor on screens that&#39;s true so either you do it professionally and you go at it fulltime almost or please don&#39;t that&#39;s true you&#39;re going to lose your money that&#39;s true that&#39;s true any final thoughts anything to conclude with Ramy all yours um we are in definitely very very challenging times I think focusing on the most important four Concepts AI AR community and microtransactions uh if you have your businesses lined up to these four elements uh I think you can you can you can build a strong business we still have time uh AI is here uh humanoids are going to be here robotics robots basically are going to be here uh we still have time as humans to build things uh however in a few years I think if you&#39;re going into education right now if you&#39;re learning if you&#39;re becoming uh kind of a university student uh I think going for creatives going for uh the creative kind of Majors uh even exploring singing dancing uh all the creative aspects uh DJing whatever it is uh is is definitely more of a priority than exploring the analytical stuff that potentially can be easily automated or basically kind of replaced yeah exactly so so yeah I would definitely go for the creatives thank you for the advice it&#39;s it&#39;s really spot on thank you uh just to clarify one thing it&#39;s not replacing old jobs with the new jobs only but it&#39;s it&#39;s creating new ways of doing things and even I really I really uh wish that uh all the entrepreneurs and the business owners and the people that are shifting towards the entrepreneurship uh Journey Journey don&#39;t miss out on AI yeah under understand AI understand its functionality the how can you really use it because it&#39;s there for you to use it it&#39;s not here to replace you it&#39;s here to make your life easier that&#39;s true that&#39;s true that&#39;s true Ram Al thanks a lot for being here I really enjoyed this episode and thank you so much for sharing all your ins sites and your journey with us it was really uh Illuminating thanks a lot again I really appreciate you and uh see you soon thank you so much thank you so much

Transcript for:Visionary Ventures Podcast - Ramy Al

Transcript for:
Visionary Ventures Podcast - Ramy Al