Mazen Al-Angary: I heard you raised a lot of eyebrows when you lectured at Effat college on the career day.

Helmi Natto: The whole situation felt like a paradigm shift, I was angry at people talking about believing in yourself and the whole positivity thinking mumbo jumbo, which frankly I don’t think any of that works.

But what works from my perspective, is “show me the money” as they say, if you are looking for a job, the employer wants to know what you can do for them to show them the money. Even if it was a “non profit” organization, the way I see it, business is much simpler then what we learn and read in text books.

Mazen: Hold on for a second, you know a lot of people have read “The Secret”, now it sounds like you are not a big fan of the secret balderdash.

Helmi: The Secret does work, but accompanied with ACTION. Lots of it!

Mazen: What do you personally do to keep things moving and get the momentum on the go all the time, is it working harder? Or is it seizing the opportunity that crosses your path?

Helmi: You know this is a very complicated question, simply because the answer changes over time, you see if you had asked me last year the same question, I would have answered in a different way all together. I think life is all about trial and error. You see everyone knows about believing in ones self and all that jazz, yet never tend to do anything about it to improve our lives. I think that each one of us is so unique, so if something works for me it doesn’t mean it will work for you the same way or even at all.

So whether I am right or wrong about this, I think everyone should try all different ways to find the best way that works for them.

To tell you the truth I don’t believe that there is a secret to begin with, I don’t think that their are goals even. I believe in opportunities, you might get a job and have all these dreams and goals about reaching a certain position or level, and then one day you get a better chance that would change everything in one second.

Mazen: I think I can relate to that myself.

Helmi: We all should always pack our stuff and be ready to move on from one thing to the other through this journey we call life. Let me give you a quick example from my own experience. After finishing high school, I joined the engineering college here in Jeddah, and the reason was because most of my friends did that, so I wanted to be around them. So there was no goal there, when I graduated I applied for a job at Savola, and got it, why? Because most industrial engineers at the time joined Savola, again no goal.

Mazen: Sounds like you’re taking the next evolutionary step.

Helmi: Exactly, I gave them my CV, they said we will send you to London, where we have a new factory there, within a month I found myself alone in the middle of a megacity, I was a 23 year old guy who never thought things will progress in that way. But that was the turning point in my life.

Mazen: Interesting, how did things turn around?

Helmi: My mother once told me to try any opportunity that I get, and see where it takes me, what’s the worst thing that could happen, so I gave it a shot. After getting used to London, Savola decided to return us back to Jeddah. And coming from London right back here made Jeddah feel so boring, nothing to do, no activities. I had Saturdays and Sundays off while people worked so I had no one to hang out with. My shift was from 12  PM till 9 PM so life was upside down, wasn’t able to see my family. I was bored to death.

But when I was back in London, I used to take pictures of optical boutiques around the city, I was always fascinated by them and the eye for details they would put into any store they would open, and that’s how I got the whole idea behind my own boutique.

Mazen: Did you plan back then to open an optical boutique?

Helmi: Not really. But I did wear big ugly glasses since I was 12 years old !

Therefore I wanted to bring the most beautiful & unique eyewear to town. But I didn’t know how ! I opened my first store on Herra St. in Oct 97. It was a small store, I then moved to other locations and started to focus more on this business.

Mazen: Was all that a progressive expansion, I mean did things start to snowball as you opened your first store?

Helmi: Of course not, I had a lot of trial and errors over the years, made a lot of mistakes and closed a lot of stores, but what matters is learning through life as I said, and that is the whole concept. I remember at a certain stage I created a grand vision to do a lot of things, and that added a lot of pressure on me to move ahead even if that meant making mistakes on the way. You see after we opened a couple of successful stores in Jeddah we thought “Oh wow that was easy, we can do this anywhere in the world”, and the reality wasn’t the same. As soon as we expanded to Makkah, I realized I made the first major mistake, and had to retreat back to the drawing board as they say, another mistake was when I opened Loomy sunwear which was a big flop show.

Mazen: Well I must say this is courageous of you to admit mistakes.

Helmi: “Screw It, Let’s Do It!” As Sir Richard Branson would say, and I think that’s my motto in life. Of course as you grow older you become wiser, but you still need that edge to succeed in business.

Mazen: Do you think we should plan and forecast new projects or just simply roll-up our sleeves and get our hands dirty?

Helmi: You should of course do some planning and forecasting, but don’t over do it. I once read in a book that you either love it or leave it, I realized that with my brands, I noticed that it is not about the products, it was about the services, So back to the whole concept of life, I think people ask themselves the wrong questions, I don’t think we should ask what we want, we should ask what we love, to me it is not about eye glasses, it’s about business itself. Its the thrill of creating valuable & exciting businesses. And it’s not about the customers, it’s about the employees.

Mazen: But I always hear about customer satisfaction, isn’t that the most important thing?

Helmi: Yes it is but you don’t get there by satisfying them, but if you focus on improving your employees’ lives, they will take care of your customers for you.

On one occasion I wore the uniform and worked in one of the branches for a full month, just to understand the surrounding and how my employees handle customers and what they face on daily bases. Bottom line to me is happy employees equals happy customers.

Mazen: Are you breaking the rule and setting a goal?

Helmi: Well think of it this way, notice when you throw a small stone in a pond, the ripples will expand slow spreading all over the pond, and that is how we will expand.

Mazen: I heard from some of my sources that you are currently working on a new project that isn’t even related to the optical glasses business all together, can we get more info or is it still under wraps?

Helmi: This new project will help people understand the whole deal with corporate terms and jargons.

Mazen: In other words your trying to explain all this consultancy voodoo right?

Helmi: exactly, what I aim at is to explain things to people in layman terms so that they could understand how things work and operate around them, think of it as entrepreneurship for dummies. We are working on a new Tv show that would explain business and make it simple to do.

Mazen: Any last words or advise before we wrap this up?

Helmi: Well I will share something with What’s Up readers that works magic for me, and it is called adding value, and you should always try to add value to anyone you interact with or meet. and that will add up to your network that would grow and be very beneficial later on to you. So help others to help yourself. And the more you help others the more you help yourself.