Jazz Shaper: Sahar Hashemi OBE

Elliot Moss

Welcome to the Jazz Shapers Podcast from Mishcon de Reya.  What you are about to hear was originally broadcast on Jazz FM however the music has been cut due to rights issues    

Welcome to Jazz Shapers with me, Elliot Moss, bringing the pioneers of the business world together with the musicians shaping jazz, soul and blues.  My guest today is Sahar Hashemi OBE - I am very pleased to say we’ve tracked her down - Co-Founder of Coffee Republic, the UK’s first US style coffee bar chain, Founder of Skinny Candy, the low fat confectionary brand and, and importantly, recently Founder of the Buy Women Built movement.  Working as a lawyer and having fallen out of love with the profession, it was losing her father when she was 25 that drove Sahar to quit the industry and look for something new.  Discovering the coffee bar concept in New York and wishing the UK had similar experiences led Sahar and her brother, Bobby, to launch Coffee Republic in 1995 and open 110 stores in just five years.  After writing ‘Anyone Can Do It’, a bestselling book demystifying entrepreneurialism, Sahar launched Skinny Candy in 2005, meeting her own need for low calory sweets, not just her need either.  More recently, having helped many startups to scale and supporting larger companies to behave more like entrepreneurs, Sahar has switched efforts to fight the gender entrepreneurial gap.  Her movement, Buy Women Built, aims to encourage shoppers to purchase women built brands and boost female entrepreneurship.  Sahar Hashemi is my Business Shaper today and I said we’ve tracked her down, this is a very busy person, but you’re here in the flesh.

Sahar Hashemi

I’m also happy to be here. 

Elliot Moss

This is good.  What’s it all about, Sahar, after all these years, you make stuff, you keep making stuff, what’s the drive?  Where’s it from?

Sahar Hashemi

I don’t know where the drive’s from, I suppose maybe my parents’ whole idea of you know I find there’s so much time in the day, right, and you just want to use it properly so, you go to bed knackered.  I always get worried if I don’t go to bed knackered, it means I haven’t done enough really.

Elliot Moss

What time do you go to bed usually?

Sahar Hashemi

Oh god actually quite, quite early. 

Elliot Moss

You’re like before 10.00 o’clock, aren’t you?

Sahar Hashemi

Yeah.

Elliot Moss

Lights are out by 10.

Sahar Hashemi

Yeah, sort of generally I’m like at least in bed by 10, I love that and if I’m not in bed by 10 I get very anxious. 

Elliot Moss

And waking up in the morning?  I ask these questions for a reason which I’ll come onto but what time do you wake up?

Sahar Hashemi

Actually, I mean they’re not…

Elliot Moss

Not silly.

Sahar Hashemi

… not sort of, not silly but sort of 7 that kind of thing, 7’ish. 

Elliot Moss

And so therefore between 7.00am and 10.00am, Sahar is in do mode.

Sahar Hashemi

No, Sahar never, absolutely not but I mostly work from home, although that’s changed and so I have a sort of faux commute, if you’ve heard of the word of having a faux commute.  I’ve got a dog and basically, we actually drive up to Kensington Gardens together and I feel like I’m sort of commuting.  I leave the house, we go for a walk, just the two of us together, me and the Jack Russell, called Stewart actually, and we just…

Elliot Moss

I’ll remember that.  Thank you.  Stewart the Jack Russell, very important information here.

Sahar Hashemi

Exactly, and we, yeah, we just have a walk and it’s my time for the day to start and I sort of come back, make myself a nice latte and start but I kind of almost come back into the house and at that point…

Elliot Moss

And that’s your office as it were.

Sahar Hashemi

It’s an office, exactly.  My husband’s left, we’ve sort of, we’ve turned into office mode at that point. 

Elliot Moss

So, going, going back, listen, you’re from Iran originally, came over with many, many people at the end of the 1970s.  That’s hard.  People don’t often talk about, just like we talk about immigration, we talk about refugees, we’ve got all sorts of things.  At that point you land as someone from the outside.  If you can remember that feeling then.

Sahar Hashemi

Gosh.  People rarely ask me that, it’s a very interesting question.  I suppose I was just so, I was just so lucky with my parents, who I’ve actually lost, but they just somehow shielded me, it’s sort of weird, I was really blessed with having parents who made everything easier, they had such a positive attitude and we were, the one thing I remember was when we arrived into this sort of rented flat and there was a bag and it was a WH Smith bag but I never knew anything about England or English life and I remember I kept pronouncing it ‘Wu Smith’ not realising it was like ‘WH Smith’

Elliot Moss

I did the same.  And I didn’t have any excuse, I’d grown up with WH Smith but thought it was ‘Wusmiths’. 

Sahar Hashemi

I’m thinking of going to WuSmith and we had no friends here and you know we had a sort of, very sort of wonderful like in Iran surrounded by you know everyone at school was like a relation almost, so it was starting all over again but you know, I’d like to say it was hard but just having had the parents I had, they just made everything easy and cushioned and just made the positive of everything so, to that extent I just I can’t complain now looking back on it, what they did.

Elliot Moss

Was your family your community or was there a bigger community?  Because again now what I see with you is, the creation of many communities and we’ll come onto Buy Women Built specifically but how big was your world then before you then went to, you know, university and becoming a lawyer and all that. 

Sahar Hashemi

Yeah, do you know what’s interesting, my parents actually had this view which was they say, the sort of their word was, once you’ve come, once you move to England, you’ve got to burn all your bridges, so we did and didn’t have a community, we had, we’ve got a lovely family but they all went to America, whereas we went to UK, so we were very much alone and they made me sort of in a way build from the ground up and they didn’t keep us within that community, so which in a way I am so grateful now you know having lost both of them now, my mum sort of about fifteen years ago, my dad thirty years ago, and I just see how rooted I am in this country, how much my friends, everyone I love, you know how many contacts I have now, especially when you do something new, you are like ‘oh I know so and so from that place’ and I’m like, my god I’m grateful to my parents because I think the expression they always used is, ‘you have to leave the shore to find new oceans’ and it’s if you stick to the shore you’ll never take advantage and because we were sort of slightly cut off and they made us cut off, you know I came when I was 12 and I had to build here and that’s why I feel so British in a way, I feel like I really belong, this is my country, it is my daughter’s country but I absolutely love it and just my roots are here and that means a lot, right, like it’s the best legacy you can give to your children I think.

Elliot Moss

When I asked you the question about your routine and you said well I’ve just got so many hours in the day, I imagine that in your head you could create a hundred businesses, not three, if I just, I just listed three things out.  That appetite, does it come from wanting to create more roots?  Does it come from wanting to make more money?  What’s it about, if you think about why you keep creating these businesses because it isn’t just about filling the time is it?

Sahar Hashemi

I think what it is about, sort of meaning and purpose.  A lot of people say the reason why people become serial entrepreneurs is because once you’ve felt it once, you’ve felt how that feels like, you sort of want to do it again, you know what I mean, it’s almost you get sort of hooked on the excitement of it and for me very much I suppose it’s just knowing, discovering stuff about yourself, being your full self, like having a full channel.  I remember actually when I sold Coffee Republic after five years and you know it sort of made some money and something was like I made myself completely redundant, it was almost like the worst time in my life, I just literally remember suddenly I had nothing to do, you know I was financially comfortable and I actually remember like just walking in the afternoons feeling so lost and I think we always forget what sort of purpose means in life and purpose you know we sometimes associate purpose with some grandstanding, you’re kind of you know curing cancer or feeding the world but purpose is sort of meaning to what you do, knowing that every day when you’re there, you’re making a difference and somehow being you know creating something and everyone says it’s all about being creative, it’s just making a contribution. 

Elliot Moss

I get that to a point but there’s something else that I’m thinking about with you, which is that I think because, because and I speak to many people who weren’t born in the UK, who came here and who had to build something, I imagine that some of this is about security, you create a structure, it’s your structure and that structure keeps you safe, as much as it grows and then you’re, you know you leave it and you grieve a little bit.  There must be something in there that’s saying look, in a way there’s a blank canvas because there is no history, which almost frees you to then go and create things but actually, in the creation of the things it’s to give you those roots which then, as you said, this is your adopted country, this is your country.  Is that, is that possibly true as well?

Sahar Hashemi

Yes.  Yeah, it probably is as well, you know again, I’m kind of mentioning my parents a lot but I remember they used to always say you know we have to be 10% better than the best here because we’re not from here and I actually just found the first letter I wrote to a law firm actually, Frere Cholmeley, when I was applying and I remember just like I saw the letter from 1988 or whatever and I literally just put in the letter, you know, I kind of I was born in Iran and my parents always said I have to be 10% better than the best so I think, I think and that becomes a habit, you know I definitely think in terms of you know how your kind of brain works, you’re like doing your best, what’s been really ingrained in me is you’ve got to do your best, you’ve got to go to bed at the end of the day and just think I’ve done my best, you know because like I remember you know my dad always told me was ’Do your best and let God do the rest’ and it’s almost like there’s always sort of compulsion to kind of do your best, have I done my best, have I done enough?

Elliot Moss

And do you still hear them telling you that?

Sahar Hashemi

Yeah, very much so. 

Elliot Moss

You see, there you go, the power of parents and 10% better, I like that - Do your best - much more coming up from my guest, Sahar Hashemi, in a couple of minutes.  But right now we’re going to hear a taster from the Mishcon Innovation Series, they can be found on all the major podcast platforms.  Natasha Knight invites business founders to share their industry insights and practical advice for those of you thinking about getting into an industry and starting your very own thing.  In this clip, focussed on retail and the world of manufacturing, we hear from Julie Deane, the Founder of The Cambridge Satchel Company.    

All our former Business Shapers await you on the Jazz Shapers podcast and indeed you can hear this very programme again if you pop ‘Jazz Shapers’ into your podcast platform of choice, just in case you didn’t get that bit.  Or if you’ve got a smart speaker, do ask it to play Jazz Shapers and there you will find a taster of our recent shows.  But back to today’s guest, Sahar Hashemi OBE, Co-Founder of Coffee Republic, Founder of Skinny Candy – I feel like it’s just a list, Sahar, I’m going to stop, I’m going to stop there, just stop, enough, you’ve done a load. 

Sahara Hashemi

Yes stop there.

Elliot Moss

You’ve mentioned your parents and I’ve also read about when your father passed away that this was, this was a trigger to realise hold on a minute, I don’t want to be a lawyer, I’m not happy, I’m going to, I’m going to make the change, I’m going to do something new.  That newness is a big part of being a serial entrepreneur.  Where does newness come from now all these years later?

Sahar Hashemi

Gosh, well I think maybe in life sometimes and just to say, I mean when I was thinking ‘I don’t want to be a lawyer’ is, it’s not as sort of simple as that, I think actually I realised I was actually a pretty crap lawyer, I wasn’t a very good lawyer, so I could see everyone else was really thriving.

Elliot Moss

And why were you not a good lawyer, come on, I don’t believe…?

Sahar Hashemi

I just, it was not, it just doesn’t suit, you know I believe there are somewhere in the world that everyone’s a star at and our whole life is finding where we shine at and sticking to what we shine at and where we’re good at, which is what you do I think, is you know finding that right, like kind of opening all the doors and seeing ‘ooh this looks like this is my area’ whereby all my natural characteristics kind of join up with I’m trying to do and I’m kind of going to shine here and it’s very much for me as a lawyer, I remember I was still enthusiastic doing my articles, my kind of traineeship and then once I qualified I could just see everyone else thriving and I could just I wasn’t thriving, I was really rubbish, I mean they were just about to get rid of me had I not left anyway, so I’m not saying I just left because I was unhappy because it’s very difficult to decide whether or not you know, so I think it very much correlates is, if you’re enjoying it, it means you are great at it and if you’re hating it, it means you are probably rubbish at it anyway, so you’ve got to start reassessing your career.  So I was really looking for something to be honest, Elliot.  What am I going to be good at?  Where is it that I would naturally shine, where is that would play to my strengths rather than for it to be a struggle, so much hard work?  Where is it whereby I am in the flow, where work doesn’t feel like work?

Elliot Moss

And how did you work that out?  Was it just trial and error?

Sahar Hashemi

Yeah, I was just looking, I remember when I left I was, I applied to become an in-house lawyer, did so many applications, couldn’t get a job anywhere, like I’m not surprised they didn’t give me a bloody job, I would have been a rubbish in-house lawyer, sort of…

Elliot Moss

I’m very pleased they didn’t give you another job.

Sahar Hashemi

I mean it wouldn’t have been my great, you know I could just say again, it wouldn’t have played to my strengths, I couldn’t understand what I… and then eventually, you know the whole sort of story of going to New York and coming across skinny lattes but…

Elliot Moss

But that’s not about skills, that just about I’ve got an idea, I mean loads of people have those but it’s the…. But the strengths thing, did you write them down or something?  Do you know what?

Sahar Hashemi

No, not at all. 

Elliot Moss

Then how did it evolve?  Did you go…?

Sahar Hashemi

But do you know what I say, yeah, like I just think it’s all about saying what you want and then going out there and I don’t want to be all woo-hoo around the sort of universe so…

Elliot Moss

But you’re about to be.  You’re about to manifest, aren’t you?  I can feel a manifestation moment.  Oh oh, here we go.  Go woo-hoo on me, it’s okay. 

Sahar Hashemi

I’m going to go woo-hoo, but it’s almost like if you sort of, as Margo Marrone that you’ve got to get on the programme from Organic Pharmacy, she says, ‘you’ve got to ask the universe’ and Margo always says, ‘not a wishy-washy ask, you’ve got to really ask’ and it’s almost a question of putting yourself out there and going, ‘I want that.  I’m not sure how it is going to come to me.  I’m not sure exactly what it is’ because sometimes you look for something and what actually manifests is actually completely different than what you could have ever imagined because I think our brains are so limited but you kind of know, it’s almost little signs, right, like hotter, colder, hotter, colder. 

Elliot Moss

So okay, give me one or two of the signs that said, ‘I, Sahar Hashemi are going to be the Founder of Coffee Republic in the UK’.  What is, give me a sign.

Sahar Hashemi

So, so, you know, I kind of have a skinny latte in New York, come back, tell my brother, ‘I really miss skinny lattes’, he’s like, ‘this is an amazing business idea’ and then I’m like, ‘rubbish’, you know, ‘I don’t want to go into business’, like what am I doing, I’m a lawyer, why would I open a coffee bar.  And next thing he says, ‘Go and do research.  I’ll pay you’ and just like as he pays me like, I come back from that one day of research and I’m like ‘ooh, this seems quite interesting’, I kind of, I get some interesting facts and I’m like, ‘ooh let me just write up a little business plan, let me write up a two page summary of what this is.  Ooh, this is good, let me go to the next stage’, it sort of, it’s almost like life happens step by step, not in these enorm…, you know it’s not something enormous, it’s kind of something feels good, you follow it, it feels even better, it’s sort of almost like you’ve got momentum behind you, you know next thing you know it’s sort of I really believe in that kind of 1% every day, you know I don’t believe in big ideas, people go on about people having big ideas, I think the worst thing people should have is big ideas.   

Elliot Moss

Coffee Republic happens, 110 stores, five years, some people know the story, I know the story, you leave, the sense I get is that you love creating and that you get to a business and I’ve met lots of people like this who just, they’ve started from ground zero, they’ve built things up and then it gets a bit institutional, it gets boring, you get the big names coming in from industry and doing all that.  Do you think, if you had your time again right now, it would play out exactly the same way?  In other words, you know what, I’m done, I’m moving on. 

Sahar Hashemi

Actually, I hope not, I think leaving Coffee Republic was one of the biggest mistakes that I made, that both my brother and I made, because you know you start a company, it takes so long, you build everything, you know brick by brick and you know we were to an extent lucky that we happened to hit the zeitgeist of the whole sort of coffee movement in the UK and it was a successful brand and people loved it and just by kind of almost walking away and giving it to the professionals to run, I think it was incredibly naïve really and I think if I could do it again, from what I’ve learned, I would have stayed there and I would have looked after the company, it’s almost like you’re sort of abandoning a child, a sort of weird thing to say but…

Elliot Moss

Was it a confidence thing at the time, Sahar, weirdly, even though you’d done this thing from zero or was it a, this isn’t how I want to run this business?

Sahar Hashemi

Yeah.  Do you know what it, it was at that time very much the word was, everyone used to say Founders have an exit, people used to say Founders have the sell by date. There was always the story of you found the company and so you’re a startup and then you become a big company and when you become a big company, you’ve got to give it for the big boys to run, almost what Silicon Valley calls ‘the grown-ups’.  So we very much believed that it was almost like you’re the Founder, what are you still doing in this big company with 110 stores and thousands of employees?  And so we almost felt like we didn’t belong anymore and you’d overstayed your welcome and literally, you know I think as a Founder you love your company so much that we were like, ‘oh yeah, maybe we’ll give it over to these corporate people to run because they’re better, you know they say we don’t know how to run things, they say you can’t run a company on passion, on you know being just customer centric, it’s all about metrics’ and we sort of believed in that thinking and to professionalise it and I really believe, actually, you know I talk a lot about that, you know I think companies have souls and the soul is the connection of what you are selling with the customer, you know being incredibly customer centric and we just, you know I, we started it because I wanted to drink skinny lattes myself and we didn’t realise how precious that was, which is why a lot of my career at the moment is sort of the speaking I do through my book, Start Up Forever, talking to large companies about how to think more like an entrepreneur, so the sort of the point of Start Up Forever is you should never move out of the start up phase, you should always keep that start up phase and often the Founder is the one that keeps that start up thinking in the company. 

Elliot Moss

And it’s energy and it’s drive but it’s also I love your word ‘soul’, I think that’s the thing that is again back to our woo-woo moment, it’s much more woo-woo and zeitgeisty now to say businesses need to have soul because back into your point about purpose, we all want to feel like we’re buying things that have meaning beyond you know, that have businesses that have good morals, they have a good set of values, good compass if you like in terms of where they’re going.  That is true now but it sounds like it wasn’t true in the ‘90s.

Sahar Hashemi

Absolutely, it definitely wasn’t.  I was like, when you are going to exit and we got a bit carried away, it was during that whole dot com, I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember that sort of when everyone…

Elliot Moss

You’re very kind.

Sahar Hashemi

We were like, everyone was like, I forgot it was sort of almost like that Boohoo, that company and the sort of you know lots of companies getting big and selling and we just bought into that and it was a sort of huge mistake and I’ve learned a lot and you know that’s sort of in a way a lot of my career has been you know about what happened there and how important Founders are because they are the ones that imbue the company with a soul and sure you know Founders are not a great people manager so you bring someone else on but you make sure that person is very conscious of the contribution a Founder can make to the business because how much a Founder cares about the product but not just about the product, about the customer, no one can sometimes replace that.  The late Anita Roddick used to call it like the Founder has an umbilical cord, you know to the soul of the company, I think that’s very true. 

Elliot Moss

Stay with me for my final chat with my guest today, it’s Sahar Hashemi and we’ve got some Lonnie Liston Smith for you too.  That’s in just a moment, don’t go anywhere.

Sahar Hashemi is my Business Shaper just for a few more minutes and it’s gone by in a flash and you can never do justice to someone’s sort of thirty years of working hard and fast.  I’ve read a bit about you where you talk about just do it, literally just get on with it, start, don’t think about it too much, just start and it feels like that’s your mantra, that’s the, you wake up at 7 after Stewart’s gone for his walk, or you’ve gone for the walk with Stewart, as who’s walking who, you get going and you build again, you build again, and of course your latest iteration of building is the Buy Women Built idea, which is all about showcasing and celebrating women, female entrepreneurs but also their products.  Just where did that little idea come from?  Why are you doing this?

Sahar Hashemi

Well, you know how there was all this pressure on everyone during lockdown, you know who is going to be writing a book in lockdown and I used to always laugh at that, thinking oh god, you know like literally I kind of think I just baked for the first one, like entirely, yeah. 

Elliot Moss

What did you bake?

Sahar Hashemi

Pound cake.  Yeah, I really got the sort of Victoria sponge kind of pound cake down, yeah. 

Elliot Moss

Not my tempo.

Sahar Hashemi

But I just literally remember it was that November 2020, that circuit breaker we had and I just sort of sitting there looking at Twitter and the tweet was ‘not everyone can invest in women, not everyone can mentor women but we can all buy from them’ and literally, it was like a lightbulb, I remember where I was, literally like in my house and I remember just thinking we can all buy from them and I remember calling up the person that wrote the tweet, Jacqueline de Rojas who was President of techUK, so Jackie that was really powerful what you said because it’s amazing, you know, how incredible it is to support women by buying from women built businesses because I was always doing that in a way but not really realising it but then I sort of thought instantly as I put the phone down, I thought the great thing is great to say buy from women built businesses but people don’t know who they are.  I happen to know who they are because I’m in the ecosystem and I judge all these awards.  So then I remember I kind of called up Barny Macaulay who was, who was this sort of marketing guru I knew and I was trying to negotiate with him to be honest with you, to do my website because I thought he was so brilliant and we were sort of chatting he was always saying he wanted to do something with purpose, so I just literally called him up and I was like listen, what about doing a consumer movement to get people to buy women built, connecting all these incredible women built brands we have to consumers.  Took him about sort of a week I think to think about it, he was like I’m on, let’s do it and we basically together started Buy Women Built and buy being B.U.Y. as in sort of says what it says on the tin and it was just really to showcase to show people that you know we talk a lot about where 2p out of a pound goes to women built businesses, everything like that but it’s all been quite negative and it was really after the MeToo movement and a lot of stuff was not positive and yet I kind of thought I should look what they’ve achieved, look at these women you know they’ve all done it, they’ve all come from such different backgrounds, you know everyone’s got different circumstances.

Elliot Moss

And how did you get them to buy into the idea of being part of this because I know, I mean I’m juts thinking of the four people who’ve been on the programme over the past few years, Marcia Kilgore, Beauty Pie, Joanna Jensen, Childs Farm…

Sahar Hashemi

Harriet Hastings.

Elliot Moss

Harriet Hastings, Biscuiteers and I think there’s, and then Thea Green of course, Nails.INC.  How did you, did you just pick up the phone and say I’m doing this, do you want to be part of it?

Sahar Hashemi

It was terrifying, you know of course because I sort of sat on the idea for about, sort of just doing Zooms the whole time, about it and then I realised I’ve just got to take the, you know again because my motto is actually ‘leap and the net will appear’ and I really believe in the power of…

Elliot Moss

Hopefully.

Sahar Hashemi

But it does. 

Elliot Moss

It does, yes.

Sahar Hashemi

Because there’s no point overthinking and I remember actually with Harriet Hastings, who I’d never met before, we were on a panel and I was doing the panel as a favour to my nephew at this sort of wealth managing company and I remember I was like, ‘hey Harriet, I’m just starting a group and I’m just going to start a WhatsApp, will you come on the WhatsApp’ and it was an embarrassing moment in December 2021 when there were like literally three people on the WhatsApp and I remember Barny then messaged me something saying, ‘oh that looks like it’s going well’, by mistake on that same WhatsApp, thank god I had to screenshot it so people can see but you know it was pretty embarrassing, it was like three people on the WhatsApp with this idea and then I started cold calling people and literally I hounded them and they would ignore me because they were like what is this but eventually now I’ve got a hundred of the UK’s top brands on this one WhatsApp.

Elliot Moss

And is there a moment because here’s, you know people listening to this will go but she’s Sahar Hashemi, she’s the one that created that thing and they didn’t listen to her.  It’s kind of reassuring that whoever you are, there’s still this moment before the tipping point.  Do you remember the tipping point when you went hold on a minute, this is going to work, people start piling in.  What was it and do you remember what happened just before it?

Sahar Hashemi

It was actually, it’s interesting because exactly as you say, I think when you are anyone with an idea but your idea is new, your idea is unproven, you are like stinking like the worst rubbish, what is the expression, there must be some better English expression for that, you just…

Elliot Moss

No, I like that one, I like that one, it’s good.

Sahar Hashemi

So I mean you are like you are just no one wants to get…

Elliot Moss

Stinking like rubbish. 

Sahar Hashemi

Like a, I mean you’re just, no one wants to get near you, you’ve got no credibility and it was really awful because I used to tell people and a couple of Founders actually sort of quite, I remember telling them my idea and I got bad responses, quite discouraging and thank god actually, my husband was amazing, Barny was amazing, everyone like around me was, I had a couple of like real support because I’d come back and went that person just completely dissed it and thought why are you doing that, everyone else was doing that.  So just it sort of was realising you are at your most vulnerable, your most weak when it’s you and an idea and everyone’s going to be like rolling their eyes, dissing you, and it’s just about working your way through that stage until there’s something concrete happening.  So with the WhatsApp I remember it started December, I remember we had a coffee with about twelve people in February, I’m like okay, that’s good and then by April we had about forty people on the WhatsApp so, incrementally stuff starts kind of building but at the beginning, it’s just, it’s just mortifying really.  You know you put yourself in such a vulnerable position, then again it’s about confidence right, so I don’t believe people are naturally confident, I think the more you do it, the more you just don’t care, I just learned that you know I am going to be stinking like rubbish with a new idea and everyone’s going to say it’s rubbish but I just don’t think and I think one of the best, if anyone ever asks me for advice, the biggest advice I give is, just don’t overthink, just don’t think, just do, just do it and it will work out because the worst thing we can do is like plan A, plan B, is this the right route, you will never know if it’s the right route, you’ve just got to do it and then it’s sort of figures out along the way somehow.

Elliot Moss

Thank you for stinking like rubbish, it’s brilliant to chat to you and some brilliant advice too and reassuring genuinely for people who aren’t you, to know that even you are going to have to be vulnerable and go through that process before people go of course that’s a good idea and now they’re all asking if they can join, I am sure.  Just before I let you go, what’s your song choice and why have you chosen it?

Sahar Hashemi

My song choice is Nina Simone, Sinnerman, from one of my favourite films, Thomas Crown Affair, so nothing more imaginative than that.

Elliot Moss

Nina Simone with Sinnerman, the song choice of my Business Shaper today, Sahar Hashemi.  She talked about having to be 10% better than even the best, that’s the message from her parents, as someone who has come from another country to this country in order for you to achieve success.  She talked about companies having souls, what a lovely thought and it’s true isn’t it, those companies that have souls are the ones that touch us and the ones that do brilliantly.  And she talked about being at your most vulnerable when it’s just you and your idea.  And finally, just because I have to add one more thing because she said so many good things, just do, life happens step by step so take that step.  That’s it from Jazz Shapers, have a lovely weekend

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