Imagine being 11 years old, crossing an international border on foot, carrying only two suitcases and a promise that education will be your way out.
That was Dr. Neri Kara Silliman's story.
Today she's a professor, a global speaker and one of the world's leading voices on immigrant entrepreneurship and purposeful business.
In this conversation, Neri shares how ambition, faith and resilience carried her from a refugee camp building an international fashion brand, and why the most powerful negotiators are the ones who never forget the human being across the table.
Her story will remind you that determination isn't about never failing.
It's about believing that every no can open another door.
Let's jump in.
How was it for you writing the book?
How was that process?
It was very emotional.
Actually, I didn't expect that because it's not a memoir.
But because of my own background and I remember in Chapter 2 already I'm writing about the history of immigration.
I'm writing about other immigrants.
And I'm married to an American whose grandmother also immigrated from Hungary.
And she came to Ellis Island as an 11-year-old.
So digging through pictures, my own personal pictures, pictures from my own husband's family.
It was a very emotional, very cathartic moment.
And that's something I didn't expect at all.
But at the same time, it was also a very fast moving process because that also surprised me.
I get the book deal with Wiley and it was end of May.
It was actually the night of my birthday, 24 May.
So I remember the day very well.
And then, once you get the green light, once you get the yes, I thought, oh my God, now I have to write the book.
And it took me by surprise, because I sit down And I think it's because I've already been researching immigrant entrepreneurship during my PhD thesis, which was almost 20 years ago at Cambridge.
I'm also an immigrant.
I'm an immigrant entrepreneur.
Of course, that's the personal side to it as well.
And the book just flew out of me.
I will sit down in the morning at about nine in the morning and then Until the evening.
I just wrote.
And without stopping.
And it was just incredible even for me.
And I really think that was a very honest and pure creativity.
Because I was almost not in charge of it.
And I'm very proud of the result, of course.
Because it is not only personal, but also personal.
There is a lot of storytelling in the book.
I wanted the reader to not only read a boring business book or yet another business book.
I wanted the reader to go on a journey with some of the impressive immigrant entrepreneurs I interviewed for the book.
And each chapter is preceded by a poem that is written by an immigrant or connects to the story of that time chapter that's about to come.
And I myself wrote two poems for the book.
I never thought there was a poet in me.
But again, everything just flew.
Everything just, I am very grateful.
It was, I can say some of it was just the happiest time of my life.
You know, other than my personal moments, professional moments.
It was incredible for me.
This is so refreshing to hear because a lot of times when I talk to authors about their books, it is toil.
It is hardship.
They don't enjoy the process of writing their books.
And so this is a breath of fresh air, because it sounds like you have a great relationship with the process of writing the book and the book itself.
And it's interesting that you said it was emotional, because Even it surprised you, because a lot of times when people are writing their book, it's just about problem solution.
This is the challenge.
This is how you solve the problem.
This is how you get to that end state.
And I want to dig into the to the emotionality of this a little bit more too, because why do you think it was so surprising to you that it was this emotional?
Because I wasn't writing a memoir.
I think, you know, I've always thought of writing a memoir one day.
I have you know because of my personal story and people always would tell me that you need to write a memoir.
This sounds like a movie.
And I thought, I'm not going to talk about anything personal.
This book is not about me.
But as I start to write it, the writing process, it was emotional.
I would have to take breaks and cry.
Even that happened.
Yes i, i like i had to take a whole day, two days off because um, and it's very interesting there is a reader.
She now became a friend who bought my book.
She is also an immigrant from bella bella, russia.
She lives in france, she lives between france and london.
But she said to me neri, i bought your book, I love it from the first chapter.
It grabbed me.
But I had to stop because it's making me too emotional.
It's touching on things in me.
And she's also a psychologist.
I forgot to mention that part.
She's a therapist.
And I said, which chapter?
She said chapter two.
But the chapter two is not about anything personal.
It's about the history of immigration, but told in a very engaging way, of course.
So she said I had to stop.
And it's interesting that the part that made me emotional, that also gave me that emotional block, is also what happened to her, to the reader.
I thought that's very interesting.
Yes.
Oh, that's fascinating.
And I think something that we need to cover, though, Neri, is talking about your story.
Because...
I think, as the person listening to this podcast is hearing about the book and how emotional it is, I want to make sure that they are connected with you through this process, because it sounds like even though you were sharing the stories of other people there was, there's a part of you that's in this.
So I want them to get to know you and your journey.
So can you tell them about your immigrant story, how you got to where you are and the business lessons you learned along the way, and life lessons too?
Absolutely.
So I will also go a little bit, you know, back.
And so I think the book writing was so fast.
And it was fast because I was writing about something that is very true to me, that is very personal to me.
And in previous writing processes, there was that toil that you are mentioning.
At least that's the case for me.
It took me two years of rejections from agents, from publisher in order to get the book accepted.
But it's because I was writing, trying to write about resilience.
But being an immigrant, I am an immigrant, I am an immigrant entrepreneur.
So my story starts in Bulgaria.
I was born in Bulgaria to Turkish ethnic minority and the communist government in the 1980s.
And I want to Emphasize here the government part because it's not Bulgarian people.
But the communist government at the time decided to carry out an ethnic assimilation process against Bulgarians of Turkish ethnicity.
So we were not allowed to practice our religion.
Our names had to be forcefully changed from Turkish names to Bulgarian names.
Even the dead were not spared.
They will go and basically destroy the tombstones or change or like carve out the names of my grandparents, for example.
Great-grandparents.
And many people who were against, who didn't want their names to be changed and opposed.
The government, opposed the police officers at the time, because they will come to your street, take you and take you to this, like they converted the schools to name changing stations.
So my elementary school is where they would change our names and if you oppose it, you will put into prison.
And it was called.
There is a very famous prison called Belene.
It's a concentration camp basically.
Unfortunately, this happened.
So And that's part of my story,
For many years.
I resisted for a long time to talk about my story because I didn't want people to misunderstand me.
And of course, I also remember at some point when people ask me, where are you from?
And if I said I'm Turkish Bulgarian, or if I very slightly mentioned that I was a refugee?
You know not everyone, but people will say oh, come on, can you not just give a simple answer?
So I resisted talking about it until I was named to the radar list of Thinkers 50, which selects every year 30 up-and-coming management thinkers in the world.
And the founders of Thinkers 50, Des and Stuart, were interviewing me separately for the podcast for LinkedIn Live and they would ask me about my background.
And I started to talk about it.
And that gave me permission almost to say, it's okay.
And that's a very interesting thing to even mention.
I was hiding that part of me.
And growing up in Bulgaria, I don't say my earliest memory is a feeling and it's shame.
It's being ashamed of who I was.
It's being ashamed of my name. because it was somehow wrong.
And I'm telling you this because at the time I was 7 8, 9 years old, 10 years old, when this whole process was going on.
That's a very foundational part of anyone's life.
And I felt this shame that I can't be myself, I have to hide who I am.
And I'm even surprised to say this to you, but wasn't until i'm 40, something that yes, i'm 47 now that i start to talk about this very openly and that results in a book.
Um, so my background is that at the age of 11 in 1989, the bulgarian president, i guess at the time uh, todor zivkov.
He came on tv and basically said Anyone who feels Turkish, who is Turkish, needs to leave the country.
There will be a limited number of days that the border will be open for the first time.
And you are allowed to only carry, only take with you what you can carry.
So you still have to have a passport, you have to apply because it's communism.
I didn't know if we are going to go, but everyone else, all my friends, neighbors, it was a mayhem.
People were leaving.
And you can only take what you can carry.
And we packed two suitcases, July of 1989.
And a police officer that my father paid to drove us as close to the border as possible.
From there, we followed train tracks. and on foot because we don't have a car.
We see the light and we pass the border.
We basically cross the border.
And I talk about it when I give public speaking.
And I remember my father screams like a wounded animal as he runs towards the border.
And he threw the suitcases, the two suitcases that he was carrying on the ground and kissed the the soil, saying this is mother, this is motherland and but, of course, growing up during the process of the name changing, running away from the police and have carrying this shame.
My grandmother will tell me once we get to turkey she, it's go, everything will be okay, and she will describe these streets made of marbles and she will describe these golden faucets that are on the streets and it's very clean and we are welcome with which.
We were welcome with open arms, but she described this heaven that obviously doesn't exist.
And I laugh now because I it's when you cross the border total of 360000 Bulgarians of Turkish ethnicity left Bulgaria that summer.
And we were.
We were put.
You know, some people had families to go to, but we didn't have a place to go to.
So we stayed in a refugee tent that was set up by Red Cross at the border.
And it's a very defining moment in my life, obviously, because I remember my mom was crying.
There's so much confusion and mayhem and fear all around me and I stood in that border and I said the only way out of this is if I get a good education.
And that changed my entire life, that decision right there.
But also it gave me hope because I thought, now I have something to hold on to.
It's my North Star.
And I talk about vision.
You know, sometimes people say oh, you don't always need to, But that's what saved me having that clarity, but clarity within myself.
And where I said, that's the way out.
It didn't look like I could get a good education, because we found out we don't really speak like the local Turkish people.
We have a dialect that is very special to my community in Bulgaria.
We had to learn the proper Turkish language.
Then I went to school eventually, several months later, and with 83 students in one class.
And yes, because we obviously didn't have any money, my parents tried to find any jobs they could.
My dad became an illegal cab driver.
He worked in construction.
We still didn't have our papers.
We had like a tiny little piece of papers.
We didn't have our passports yet from the Turkish government.
And we got those two years after we were refugees.
Wow.
There's so much in this.
First of all, thank you for sharing this.
It's so powerful, this story.
But I can also see how much it shaped who you are.
Forget the business side, just you as a person.
For you, what are the lessons that you carry from that time to today?
Well, I think it made me very determined.
And someone recently asked, how ambitious are you?
I think ambition is a word that gets misunderstood, in my opinion, because if I didn't have ambition, if I didn't have determination, I wouldn't be able to be where I am today.
I think ambition is very much linked to resilience.
It doesn't mean you don't say to yourself, I can't fail or I need to work very hard.
But once you have a setback in your life, you also say I know I can get back there because I believe in myself and I have determination, I have ambition.
So having that ambition and determination, I think it's also who I am.
And I wouldn't be without it where I am today.
Of course, I was very determined to get a good education.
But again, not something I talked about until I wrote the book.
I finished my high school as a valedictorian.
And then I get the call that basically changes everything.
And the call is...
My mom telling me I didn't get into the Turkish university that I worked so hard for.
And that's when my whole world collapses.
Because imagine that's my dream and that's like, boom, it's done.
It's gone.
You can't get a good education.
It's finished.
So I had to bring myself back to that hope, that resilience, that determination and ambition and say okay, I have to figure it out.
And if I don't have that choice right now, I have to find another way.
So I went to this agency in Turkey and I managed to get financial aid and I will go to University of Miami on financial aid and to the honors program at University of Miami.
And I left in January 96th.
Graduated in two and a half years, even though it's a bachelor degree, I was so determined to do it.
So determination ambition, believing that the detours that you experience in life are there for a reason, and not be afraid of them.
If you want to get to a certain place, but life suddenly tells you, hey, Neri, Hey Kwame, you can't.
There is a detour.
So there is a reason.
And I think faith, I believe in God.
I have this tremendous faith and this unseen power that guides our lives.
And knowing there is a reason when a no happens, but that doesn't mean you have to give up.
That doesn't mean you have to give up on your dream.
It means... there is a different, maybe a better thing awaiting you.
So in a nutshell, that's how I can say determination, faith, ambition.
And I would say, I hope that I became a lot more empathetic person, a lot more understanding person.
So when we set up our business, humanity is at the heart of our business.
People are in the heart of our business and I know your podcast is about negotiation and I was thinking about in our own life, in my own life I wouldn't even call it negotiation, it just, it was just some.
But you know, on the if you look at it it looks like negotiation, but in the heart of it there is humanity.
It wasn't what can I get, but it was about what can I give.
And that's something that also surprised me in my book when I was interviewing the immigrant entrepreneurs because I have this aha moment as I come to the end of the book, as I am like decoding all my interviews that almost all of them, all the immigrant entrepreneurs I interviewed for my book, who created these exceptional businesses, It was never about them.
It was about the other person.
So that was an eye-opener for me.
So yeah, I think, not just from my own life, but from the lives of other immigrant entrepreneurs.
It's about humanity and other people.
Yes.
Oh, there's so much to unpack here, Neri, because you're 100% right.
In business, we have to focus on the other person.
When you focus on yourself and make it about you, then it becomes this narcissistic, ego driven desire to inflate yourself and not help other people.
And it's the same with conversations too.
We have to see the humanity in others, focus on that.
And then if we have that as our guiding light, the conversation becomes easier.
But if we just focus on us, what we need and how this is a path for our end goals, then those conversations become much more difficult because we can't empathize with the other person.
They don't feel seen.
And then it becomes like a tug of war.
Everybody with that scarcity mentality is just focusing on what they need and there's no true connection.
And when I'm thinking about your approach, to the way that you're describing ambition and determination.
We can go on social media.
We can see influencers talking about this every day.
But the way that you're bringing this is completely different because it's something much deeper.
I think a lot of times, when you think about ambition, it is we mistake ambition for emotion, where we're saying I feel this, I want this, I desire this.
But then, like you said, there's no resilience behind it.
So you run into an obstacle or a detour and you say, well, you know what?
This is far harder than I ever thought.
And my life is decent enough anyway.
So let me just keep on doing this.
And the ambition kind of fades.
It's kind of like the people who go to motivational conferences and they're hyped up for like two weeks and then they just go back to normal.
And it sounds like, tell me what you think about this.
Because, when it comes to your perspective on ambition, it seems like what you do is you determine a non-negotiable end state.
So I will be highly educated.
And so I'm going to do what it takes to get there.
You checked every box, you were valedictorian, you did whatever it took.
And then something that was outside of your control said no.
And you said, okay, well, the end state has not changed.
So my pathway will change.
And so for you, the resilience comes from the fact that this is a non-negotiable end state.
So I'm going to get there no matter what it takes.
And I think a lot of other people with ambition.
They say I want this really badly, but I don't need it.
So once an obstacle comes up, they're okay with letting it go because it was a negotiable end state.
But for you, the outcome was non-negotiable.
You summarized it and described it perfectly.
It's exactly that.
It's exactly that.
Even with the book.
So I wanted to write a book.
And then this is a perfect example, actually.
I wanted to write a book.
I thought it was time.
I have written other books.
They are more academic books.
And I thought, yes, I need to write it.
But I was getting rejected all the time for two years from agents, from publishers, from almost anyone.
And one day I was giving myself a pity party and my husband sitting next to me and he said to me why are you trying to write about resilience?
And I've published articles that Fast Company, many articles on resilience.
And I was just like thinking I maybe already have said all I need to say.
But anyway, my husband said, why are you trying to write about resilience?
You are not a psychologist.
He's right.
Why don't you write about what you know?
You are an immigrant entrepreneur.
So the path to the book publishing wasn't through the resilience book.
It was a different publisher, a very different topic, but the end goal was there.
So for two years for someone to be rejected?
You will probably say at some point, maybe I need to give this up.
But yes, it's the ambition.
And I think again, I'm not a psychologist who studied ambition or researcher who studied ambition, but I'm very convinced it's connected to resilience.
It's connected to...
The fact that you know that you can get there, and that's the fire inside of you, that is that ambition.
Yes.
And let's go deeper into this, Nery, because there is the activity that's required.
You're going to do certain things.
You're going to run into obstacles.
You're going to overcome those obstacles.
But I want to focus a bit on the internal negotiation that you are having with yourself.
So, as you're going through this process, you're working exceptionally hard in any of these endeavors.
You're working hard.
You're reaching these detours or these roadblocks, but you're still pushing through.
What are the types of conversations you're having with yourself to keep yourself pushing forward and going?
Oh, that is such a good question.
The conversation is...
You know, I mentioned it.
If it's meant to be, it will be.
But I still keep going.
Like, I don't go back in the very first obstacle or even in the tenth obstacle.
And I always think the path will open up to show me something else.
So that's the conversation.
I know there is something important here.
I understand.
I also sometimes feel, what's my other option if I'm talking about education?
I have to do it.
I don't have another option.
As an 18-year-old at the time, I have to keep going.
And that's the negotiation.
I know I have to do it.
I know I can do it.
And I have to... There's a higher power... that's going to show me what is meant for me.
Yes.
So there's that constant reminder that you can do it.
And if it's going to happen, if it's meant to be right, there's going to be a higher power that pulls you there too.
So it sounds like it is a constant conversation, focusing yourself on not just the goal but the belief in your ability to achieve the goal.
Absolutely.
You know, it reminds me in the book I talk about Isaac Larian.
He's an immigrant entrepreneur.
He's the founder of MGA Entertainment.
You know, Brad Stolz, his company created those LOL surprise.
So he's a billionaire now.
And what surprised me is that he was 17 years old when he came to United States.
He's born in Iran.
He's Jewish Iranian.
And he decides that he's going to... There is not much in Iran.
And he says, I'm going to try my luck in US.
He gets on an airplane with a yellow blanket that his mother made for him, with very little amount of money, not knowing anyone.
He comes to Los Angeles.
And that money very quickly runs out.
Then he goes from...
You know, restaurant to cafe to gas stations, trying to find any kind of job so he can eat.
And he walks miles and miles every day, like to the point his shoes are falling apart.
And he sees a cafe restaurant called Spires.
It still exists, by the way, in L.A.
He goes inside and they tell him, we don't have any jobs here.
He sits outside of the restaurant and he's just desperate.
He's like, that's the end of it.
And when the chef comes out of the restaurant and says, Iranian, are you Iranian?
That's his first job.
He's a dishwasher during nighttime.
He starts after 11 o'clock.
That same chef actually made him a liver and onion dish.
That evening at 11 o'clock when he comes to wash the dishes and he's paid like 60 cents per hour something very little.
But connected to that, years later, Isaac Larian puts himself to school, graduates from university.
He's an engineering student.
He has an engineering degree.
And he sees that I think with his brother they start this electronics company selling these little electronic goods in the US.
And he notices that when he's in Japan, there are all the youth, especially the young people, on their little games, Nintendo games.
He says, there is an opportunity here.
I want to bring these games to U.S., But he goes to Nintendo.
They tell him, we are not interested.
We don't want basically any representation.
Every day he goes to the lobby attempting to talk to the CEO.
Every single day he just goes and sits there.
And he wants to bring Nintendo.
He wants to represent Nintendo.
They tell him, no, we are just simply not going to do it.
Like, please go home.
Every single day he goes there.
That's a very good example of negotiation.
There is almost no ego involved in this, you know.
When you ask him, like, didn't you feel embarrassed or didn't you feel like that's the end of it?
They told him no so many times.
And he says, no is the beginning of negotiation.
And I heard this from so many of the entrepreneurs that I interviewed.
And I write about it because their brain doesn't see rejection or failure, or even the word no doesn't equate to no.
It means the door has just opened.
A door has, and I went to tell you the story of Isaac Larian because my own internal negotiation is that there is a door that's going to open.
It's not this one, but I have to keep going.
And I know I can do it.
And if it's meant for me, the door that's meant for me will be there.
That's my own internal negotiation.
But then Isaac Larian goes back to US.
He opens a line of credit for 1 million and tells Nintendo please go back again to Nintendo.
And they are basically like every day.
He repeats the same thing until they say okay, we can start with one product.
And the negotiation happens, because he basically gives them money very little risk.
He thinks about the other company.
He thinks about Nintendo, what would get them to a yes and lowers their risk.
What is the shared value here for both of us?
What can they gain?
Not just what I can gain.
And there's a lot of nuggets.
As I did my interviews and I was writing the stories and listening to them I kept thinking about, first of all.
I hope I am able to do justice to all this wealth of information and the richness of stories.
But every single story that I came in contact with from these exceptional people has such wealth in it.
Yes.
I love that story for so many reasons.
First of all, It's the one of the things that holds people back the most in negotiation and difficult conversations is just the willingness number one to have the conversation and number two to ask for what it is that you want.
And the fear of rejection holds people back because it can register through your body like a physical pain.
And these are the things that kept our ancestors alive back in the day where we were tribal.
And if you were rejected from the community, that was an instant death sentence.
But we still carry that fear of death association with rejection today.
So we will avoid it like it is death because it can feel so scary and feel so bad.
But again, if you can learn to become a little bit desensitized to the sting of rejection, then it allows you to shoot more shots.
You think about any sport.
OK, if you, if you don't have a good shooting percentage, if you take more shots, you'll make more shots, you know.
And so if you don't have that sting of rejection, if it doesn't hold you back, then you're more willing to take more risks yourself and ask for more things.
And then, on the other side too, he was able to identify one of the biggest barriers that other people have to saying yes to us, which is the perception of risk.
If the status quo is okay for them and they can see potential risk with what you're offering, then the safest answer for them is no.
And so if you can understand the other side, empathize with them and understand the risk that they are seeing, then you can take those rejections as data gathering opportunities to figure out what risk they see and then de-risk the proposition in your next pitch to make it easier for them to say yes.
There are so many really great negotiation lessons in that one story.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
And let's talk more about the negotiation lessons from these immigrant entrepreneurs and your own life too.
Yeah.
And in order to take this journey, you're going to have a lot of tough conversations.
You're going to have to ask for what you want.
So, as it relates to negotiation and communication, what were some of those elements that consistently came through in these stories?
Well, I think you mentioned, and if it's okay, I want to.
As you were talking, I suddenly remembered from my own story.
When we started our business, when I was 22, I graduated from University of Miami.
I went back to Turkey and with my family, we start our own business.
But even when I was 15, 16 year old, my father starts to sell leather products in what we call the luggage trade area.
This is like communism just ended.
Many people from communist countries are coming to Turkey to buy whatever goods they can find and bring it back to their country to sell.
So when we started that little shop, which was a second floor in an apartment building, it was an apartment converted to become a store.
We put up a sign that said please come in for a homeland cup of coffee to tell people that we are from the same culture.
We know what you are going through.
You want to be an entrepreneur?
We want to be entrepreneurs too.
And we are honest.
We are not here to cheat you.
With that one sentence.
At the time I didn't realize what that sentence was because I wrote it in several languages.
In Bulgarian, in Russian, Romanian, where all the former communist countries.
And that was when my parents started to make some money, because they were making commission out of the products that they were selling.
Fast forward to 1999, 2000, we start our own business.
We create our first products and basically our distributor that we put all of our hopes in turned around and said I can't carry your products.
I don't know your brand.
I can't take such a risk.
And very much like Isaac Larian, we went to other, if he says no, we can go to other distributors.
And we almost had to beg them, take one wallet, take one mobile phone.
You don't have to pay me anything.
You can pay me when it sells.
And that's the risk that you reduce the risk to the other side.
And, I think, Another important element when it comes to negotiation, which I talk about, I call it homophilic ties and how immigrant entrepreneurs find commonality.
And they will use storytelling in a very strategic way.
So I don't have to come from the same culture as you necessarily, but I'm going to find commonality between me and you.
And I will emphasize that.
And that makes you trust me more.
But it won't be done in a way that's fake.
I won't do it just because I want to get somewhere with you.
It's done in a very natural way.
You know, I remember the story.
I mean, it's from our own story as well.
We work with Italian suppliers who today supply for Chanel, LVMH.
These are some of the biggest Italian suppliers.
I was 15 years old when I started to take Turkish companies to Italy, translate.
I've known these suppliers since I was 15.
My father, my whole family works with them.
And now we produce for Prada and Miu Miu.
We are their official producers for the last decade.
But even when we are engaging with Italian people who are not Bulgarian, we have commonality.
And even in the book, I think I mentioned, we have a lot more common.
We have more that unites us than divides us.
So finding that commonality that gets and using this strategic storytelling, whether that's I wrote this book and one of our main suppliers, Mastrotto.
This is a huge, huge Italian company, multinational.
It's a billion-dollar company.
It's the best manufacturer of Italian leather.
I didn't even know she saw I'm talking about the book.
She ordered the copy and she wrote this lengthy LinkedIn post about her grandparents, who were immigrants to Italy.
I didn't even know that.
During all this time that we were doing business, she never once said oh, my great-grandparents were also immigrants, or my grandfather was immigrant.
But there is that, you can say many things without being very explicit.
People will always feel your heart.
If you are honest, if you have good intentions and using finding that commonality and making sure that's there.
I remember also the story of Hamdi Ulukaya.
When he buys the old craft factory that's bankrupted, he goes to the town, to the hamlet in the outskirts of New York and he sees that all the people in that town he says actually it was almost like I walked into a funeral.
People have lost their jobs.
That entire town, dependent, on the craft factory.
And here I was coming and buying this factory.
And he needs to get people to trust him that he's going to give jobs.
Create jobs with his brand, Chobani.
Can he even do that?
This is like the start of Chobani.
And he earns the trust of the people who have worked in the craft factory that is now going to become Chobani.
And he starts with very little but he gets the entire community to join in to give him advice, to hear their ideas.
And that's also negotiation as well.
That's very much negotiation.
We both have the same intention.
We both want this to work.
And how can we make it work?
There is so much to explore here, Neri.
This is great.
So first let me talk about your story, where you talked about how you had to eliminate the risk for the distributors.
And what I'm recognizing is that a lot of times, as you are minimizing the risk for other people, you start to increase your personal risk.
And so it's almost like there's a risk distribution.
And so typically, if we have even power and leverage, we negotiate in a win-win type of way and there's an even distribution, more or less, of the risk.
But if there is a power dynamic where they have more power or they are okay with the status quo and you're trying to create change, then a lot of times we have to be the people absorbing the risk in the deal in order to get the person even comfortable with accepting the deal.
And then it's up to you to perform at a high level where you're saying, I'm betting on myself.
I'm taking on this risk because I believe so strongly.
And that in itself is a signal to the other side where they're saying this person wouldn't take on this type of risk unless they truly believe that they were good enough.
So it makes them feel a little bit more secure in that.
And then with the stories about finding commonalities.
This is so – it's so rich and real and human and also incredibly psychologically sound, because there is something in psychology called affinity bias, where essentially –
I like you because you are like me.
I can see some of myself in your story.
And what you're talking about is finding authentic connections between people who might not have immediate commonality on the surface level, where you are comfortable with telling your story and hearing the other person's story as well.
And it reminds me that we often focus in communication on storytelling as a skill, but we don't focus enough on story listening as a skill.
So as I'm listening to other people's stories, what are they telling me about themselves?
What are they telling me about their values and everything that they've been through?
And then how can I validate that, show that I care about that and also strategically weave in the fact that there are some elements of myself that are common with them?
And so again, what you're seeing is just an incredibly rich tapestry of The blend of storytelling, business strategy execution, but all together focused on the core humanity that ties us together.
This is beautiful.
Thank you.
And one way to do that on a very practical way.
In the early days we will have when I wrote there.
Please come in for a homeland cup of coffee.
People will only come in for coffee.
Nobody will buy anything.
They didn't have to.
And there was a lot of this shared history of having lived in communism, now having to rebuild our lives from zero.
All of those things were very real.
With our Italian partners, we go for lunch, we go for vacations together.
When our Italian partner is here in France, she will send me a message, we will meet up.
We have had distributors who have slept in our home in Turkey.
It goes to that level, that closeness, that bond.
That's why I talk about how can you create that bond?
Yes, it's the storytelling, but also something very practical, like having lunch together.
That reminds me, Kwame, Duolingo is also an immigrant entrepreneur.
He's from Guatemala.
And he grew up in Guatemala during the Civil War.
And he comes from a culture that is very collective.
To this day.
He wrote about it on LinkedIn as well, that he has lunch with his partners, with people who work in the company.
And how important it is to have that lunch that happens no matter how big the company gets.
And people will tell him things that...
They wouldn't necessarily say in a formal meeting.
You can create that closeness.
You can create those homophilic ties.
Again, you do not have to be immigrant.
You don't have to come from the same exact culture.
That's not what this is about.
But realizing that what unites us is much bigger than what divides us.
Well, let me pass the mic to Simon because this will be a good time to bring him in.
I really connect with this story, Nery, because I'm an immigrant too.
I know what it feels like to start over in a place where no one knows who you are.
Trust means something completely different when you are in that position.
And honestly, sometimes it feels impossible, right?
But I think that if you keep looking for opportunities, every now and then a door opens.
That's what happened with me and Kwame.
It was back in 2019.
And he posted a job offer and I decided to apply.
I was living in Argentina at the time.
And he didn't ask for a list of degrees or fancy credentials.
He just asked questions, listened to my answers and decided to trust me.
And here I am, six years later, Nelly.
So to every immigrant out there, keep knocking on doors because one of them will open.
Who knows?
I am very touched that you shared this with me.
I had no idea Kwame about the connection, what you've done.
This is incredible.
I understand and I know exactly what you mean.
I know exactly what you mean.
I didn't go into this much detail in the story, but my father kept the business card of a Turkish businessman that we met on the beach in Bulgaria long before we immigrated to Turkey.
And when we immigrated he went to him and said I'm not here to work in your factory, but I have an idea.
I know that people are coming from former Soviet countries and I know I can sell your product.
Just trust me.
And that's how it started.
That's actually the beginning of our business.
My father starting to make commission out of the products that he was selling, and it it takes one person, but it's not easy always to find that person.
This is exceptional.
What you shared, this is great, and you see why i always give simone an opportunity to talk.
Now he always elevates the episode.
But this is an incredible thing.
You did an incredible thing you did.
I didn't know this at all.
It's an incredible thing.
It's always funny.
We look back to what happened and at the moment, we don't understand what we are doing and what is happening.
We just do it.
And then afterwards we understand.
I wonder Kwame, I'm more curious.
You said you are a son of immigrants.
I wonder if the impact of that on you as a human being is who you are as a person.
Oh yeah, for sure, for sure.
I mean, i think within the company we were based in ohio and we have a few full-time folks in ohio, but we also have people all around the world working for the american negotiation institute.
That's, that's intentional, because it it takes an opportunity a lot of times.
And a lot of other folks aren't willing to give the opportunity.
And I mean Simone's story doesn't end there too, because coming in to Argentina with those circumstances that's really tough.
And now to see where he is now.
He's in Canada, in Ontario, and it's a completely different lifestyle too.
So I think I'm more willing to give folks that type of opportunity, because I know what type of talent, what types of skills, what types of values are out there outside of the United States.
And so I want to be able to kind of be a person who gives folks that opportunity, the same opportunity my parents had.
My mom came from more privilege in Guyana.
Her father was my grandfather was the first permanent secretary of Guyana once we achieved our liberation.
And so she was of means.
And so she came to the United States to get her master's and PhD.
And then, but my father, on the other hand, he was brought to the States by missionaries.
I don't think many people know that part.
Yeah.
And so for me, it's like, okay, those folks gave dad a chance.
And then he was able to become a surgeon here in the United States.
So I always want to try to find ways to give other people that type of opportunity, because I've seen what it can do for my family too.
And I love the podcast.
You are doing a great job.
It's true.
I've been listening to your podcast, Kwame, before we even started.
I told you.
Also on Instagram, I follow you.
Everything is so valuable.
From the guests to your own Instagram.
Because of this.
Because it has to be more than the awards and the PhDs and the shiny objects.
Yes.
And that's the thing too.
For me, my whole thing is, can you get the job done at the end of the day?
Whatever that job happens to be.
I asked my granddad one time about what it was that made him so successful.
What allowed people to trust him with such high levels of power?
He was one of the people leading the Guyanese army.
That was one of his jobs as permanent secretary.
It's like, how did he keep on getting these opportunities?
And he thought for a while, he's like, I just got the job done.
People just knew I could get the job done.
And so if I believe people can get the job done, I want to give them an opportunity to prove that to me.
And if you can forget the degrees, forget the papers, all that stuff, it's that's, that's what matters.
And Simone always gets the job done.
We're at 1600 episodes.
I don't know the exact number when Simone came in.
We were probably a couple hundred episodes in, but Simone has never missed.
Not one time, not one time.
So, I mean, like, 1,200 episodes straight.
I think once every three years, we find a mistake.
And he's been in Argentina, then to Portugal, and now to Canada.
Never missed an episode.
Can he get the job done?
Absolutely. you know?
And so for me, that's, that's what I try to look for in, in guests.
Can you get the job done?
Can you be, can you drive value and can you also be entertaining?
Then if you can, then that's it, regardless of what the accolades are or are not.
And so for me, when it comes to like bringing a full circle with the content it's like, can I provide some kind of value?
Everything is shared with a purpose, you know?
So is it helping people when it comes to the, the conversations with their kids.
It's interesting.
I think I'm turning into more of a parenting influencer on Instagram than anything else.
I think I started posting more fitness videos because I realized that a lot of folks, after they become parents, it's hard for them to continue with their fitness journey, to kind of let it go because of other reasonable priorities.
And so I'm like, hey, here are some things that you can do to keep that going.
A lot of, especially fathers, have been talking about how inspirational that was.
I wasn't sharing fitness stuff before.
And so it's just interesting to see what resonates most with people.
And it just comes down to that word value.
How can I just give as much value as possible?
Which is exactly what your family did too.
When you were regaining that trust within the community.
You just gave value without the intention of getting anything back.
And it's cool to see when those types of pro-social activities pay dividends down the road.
But I think we often lose track, lose sight of the fact that giving value and helping people is in itself an end goal.
There doesn't always need to be something coming back.
