What can we learn about dealing with anxiety and building resilience from a successful entrepreneur and investor who started with nothing? Hello, I'm Chester Elton and this is my co-author and dear, dear friend, Adrian Gostick. Well, thanks, Ches. Yeah, today we have a fascinating guest who's going to help us understand how creating a kinder, gentler work culture can result in better returns for all stakeholders. As always, we hope the time you spend with us will help reduce the stigma of anxiety at work and in your personal lives. And with us is our new friend Payam Zamani, a founder, entrepreneur, angel investor, and CEO of One Planet group. Just 10 years after arriving in the US as teenage refugees, with just $75 between them, Payam and his brother were the founders of a billion dollar IPO called AutoWeb. Payam tells his incredible story of survival, grit, and development as a leader in his new book, Crossing the Desert, The Power of Embracing Life's Difficult Journeys. Welcome to the show, Payam. We are delighted to have you on our podcast. Thanks for finding the time. Thank you. I'm really excited about this. Well, as we've done a little research on you, Payam, it's interesting. You say as a young company founder, you could tell your company was doomed to fail if you didn't fix your leadership and culture. Most CEOs we work with are worrying more about bottom line and a lot more, you know, kind of hard issues, if you will, than leadership and culture. So tell us that story and how you came to believe in this people first culture. You know, it's interesting, I totally agree with you. Often when I talk about our culture and our approach to business, most CEOs that they view themselves like, you know, we are just focused on the fundamentals and what you're doing is kind of cute. But you know, the fact is that over the years I've learned, what changes here is that my horizon is no longer three months, but my horizon is like multi-year horizon. And at the end of the day, I beat competition because we do better in the long term when you focus on these fundamentals that keep your employees happy, vendors happy, the ecosystem at large that you're a part of happy. That improves your business fundamentals also. And the reason I focused on this, I decided to focus on, it really came about as a result of me wanting to get more out of my business, get more fulfillment, more joy. And I did not want to do the everyday grind that most CEOs are a part of. You know, it is interesting that, you know, as Adrian said, a lot of CEOs think of the people and the culture as those soft skills, the nice to have. And yet time and time again, we see people like you, Bayam, that say if you get the culture right, if you get your people right, if you bring meaning and joy into the workplace, you're going to do better. Now, you have six principles of people-first leadership and the culture that you and your employees and your partners have developed together. So I'm fascinated for you to walk us through some of those. Yeah, no, absolutely. You know, I think that the six principles that we have, they are ultimately all wrapped under one item, which is service. Meaning that if I feel that I'm serving, if I feel that I'm serving the community I'm a part of, the chances are I'm going to get more fulfillment out of my work. And so the first principle we have is unity. that a team that is not united will not achieve collective success. So, unity is a prerequisite, and without it, we're not going to be able to get there. And that is something that's really critical to us. At times, I'll give you a great example. Yesterday, I was on a call... Two days ago, I was on a call with a few members of my management team. There was something... I was really adamant, I really wanted to get done, but then I felt like there was no way I could create a unified front and go down that path. I decided I'm going to go with them. I'm going to accept what they are asking for because the chances of success will be much greater, even if that decision is probably not the best decision in my mind, but we're unified. So that is the intention behind our financial decisions because every decision we make within our business ultimately is a financial decision. What's the intention behind it? I'll give you an example. If I'm at Snapchat and I decide that I want my users to be able to rate their friends. What's the intention behind that? And the reason that's important is because your employees will see, will see through all the clutter that is your intention to make the world a better place, is your intention to do good in the world, or is your intention driven by nothing but greed? Love is a very, very important piece of it. I'm a spiritual man and I feel that we are created noble. How can I work with noble beings, whether they're my competitors or my employees or vendors or clients, but not treat them with love? Love is that ultimate thing that keeps us all together, whether it's the atom or the planet and so on. We have to be able to lead with love, and that's one of the core values that we measure all of our employees on. So, it doesn't matter where you are in the organization, love is at the center of it all. An example I would give is that I tell my employees, I love your competitors, and if our success will have to result in someone else's demise, we should be in a different business. If consumers choose to use our product, that's fine, but every day I'm not going to wake up thinking that company ABC, I hope that they'll suffer, because that will mean that I've gained some as a result. You know, I want to jump in on that, because it is so interesting, that relationship in a competitive market, right? I was reading some wonderful stuff by Arthur Brooks, and I don't know if you read Arthur C. Brooks, this idea of love your enemies, and to your point, he says, look, Pepsi doesn't want Coke to go out of business because Coke makes Pepsi better. You know, you don't want your competitors to disappear. You know, it's so funny as a kid, you know, Adrian and I grew up in Canada. And when I was a kid, there was this great Canada-Russia hockey series. And we had friends that actually traveled to Russia to watch the hockey games. And one of the things they said was, we actually got into a grocery store. And because there was no competition, there was only one brand of toothpaste. And we bought it, and it's horrible. We said to our kids, you know, you should be grateful the fact that there are 10 different kinds of toothpaste because they make each other better. Is that kind of what you mean around, you know, love and love your competition and love the ecosystem that is capitalism, that is the community? I would say yes, but also I would go a step further that as another, my competitors, as human beings, as noble beings, they deserve my love. Not like me thinking that I wish them bad. Why would I want to wish them bad? All I have to focus on to make my business a better business. I don't need to go beyond that. I don't need to worry about that, beyond just simply the fact that I want to make my product the best product I can, because I want to serve my consumers in the best way that I can. And hopefully, and I think you're right, in most cases, competitors will keep up. And that's OK. There's plenty of market to go after for all of us. The next one, and to me, this is incredibly important, truthfulness. I believe that truthfulness is the foundation of all human virtues. I believe that you cannot be truthful. If you're not truthful, I don't believe you can be kind. If you're not truthful, I don't think you can be loving. If you're not truthful, I don't think you can be just. So truthfulness to me is at the really, it has a paramount position in the values that we should keep in mind. One of the things that we do is to help and make sure that our employees are comfortable to be transparent, truthful at all time. We give them the opportunity to always communicate if they prefer in an anonymous fashion. But we allow them to communicate and provide comments. And our promise to them is that once a week that we all get together we have a global meeting, we will read your comments and questions anonymously and we will address them. So that takes away the need for gossip and also that takes away the need that if you're meeting with me, you're uncomfortable telling me the truth what you've said anonymously and I'm not going to put you in that difficult position. Another one is justice. Now, so a lot of people, I think, and justice, I think, has many different meanings. One meaning is, you know, you see a lot of companies worry about DEI these days, and DEI, its core, comes from justice. But I think they do that because they feel that they kind of have to, because they're forced, because that's politically correct, because that's a checkmark they've got to have. But I think you've got to go a step deeper than that, that you want to care about those things because you truly believe that will make your organization, your company, a better company. If I want to serve humanity, I've got to look like humanity. And you know, so there are a few things we do about justice. We make sure that, you know, we look at our statistics that, hey, you know, as a company, we want to serve humanity, we want to serve the entire market. Are 50% of our employees female? If they're not, how are we planning to represent this country if 50% of our employees are not? If you look at Apple, Google, less than 30% are. And even the 30% that are female, they're typically in their 20s, they're not moms. Well, does that really represent the market that you want to serve, is that just? Then okay, well now you have them, how do you make sure that you're paying them properly? So what we do is that every few months we review pays to make sure that our employees, male, female, black, white, and so on, they're getting paid a similar amount for similar jobs. And I think those are just examples, it doesn't end there, but it's important to take these principles and I think take them many, many steps deeper. The other thing that we did that I think that was very helpful and frankly I did not come up with it, I learned it from a guy named Julian McQueen. He founded Innisfree in Pensacola. He owns 30 some odd hotels and he documented his culture. I have not seen that before. That people actually documenting their culture. That there is a manual that says, here is our culture. Say if I'm opening up a new office in Armenia, in Ukraine, which we do have offices there, we know that people have the same culture, the documented culture. And we have study circle type sessions that people go through them before they're exposed to the business and they get to represent us. This way, there is a common denominator. Everybody knows that the culture that we wanna pursue, how does it look like in practice? And I think that's the best way for us to not leave anything to anyone's guesses. Yeah, no, there's, yeah, we've seen some, you know, just terrific examples of that you know people documenting their culture and netflix is famous uh... and you know culture deck you know couple hundred and pages long and it's it's very you know real language that helps us understand what we do versus what we don't do i love that he told me about the title of the book by him uh... crossing the desert is going to be a story behind that did and what are we going to learn if, yeah, he's holding up the book for those who can't see, what are we going to learn for those, the title of our podcast is Anxiety at Work, I'm guessing there's stories of resilience in a title like that. Yeah, the book is called Crossing the Desert, the Power of Embracing Life's Difficult Journeys, and so, you know, there are a few segments of my life that when I think about my life, I put them in those buckets. One is growing up a Bahá'í in Iran. Being a Bahá'í in Iran is not a walk in the park. Many Bahá'ís have been killed. As an 11-year-old, I was expelled from school by a mob of 50 who spit on me, beat me up, and so on. Their intention was to kill me. I survived it, but I was only 11 years old. And then escaping Iran ultimately at the age of 16, without having a passport, getting smuggled out of the country, I became stateless. Ultimately I came to the US as a refugee in 1988 with 75 bucks between me and my brother. And that experience, what was it like to be stateless? To be a refugee and have absolutely nothing? And I often tell people, imagine tomorrow you end up in Paris, you lose your documents, everything, you don't belong to a country. What do you do? Where do you go? There's no embassy you can go to. And then becoming an entrepreneur, and built a company within the first 10 years of being in the US that against all odds, made it and became very successful beyond my wildest imagination. But when I set all of that aside, I feel like there was a common denominator that was missing from that last piece, becoming an entrepreneur in the US, taking the company public. And that was a common denominator that was part of the rest of my life experience. And that was my spiritual beliefs and core values. And I feel like it was the Milton Friedman way of operating capitalism that made me and made so many to leave the core values, the values we want to teach our kids, to not bring them to work. And so for the last two decades, I've been really focused on how can I combine the two? Why is it that nonprofits should stand up for betterment of the world and for profits to agree? Why can't for profits make the world a better place? Why couldn't it be that when I die, 50 years from now, people look back and they say that it's good that one planet existed. Ever so slightly, it did contribute to the betterment of the world. I think as entrepreneurs, CEOs, and executives, we should consider that because no yoga retreat, no fasting retreat, no retreat of any kind will bring us the joy and the fulfillment that we will get if we make a life of service a part of our professional careers. You know, it's so refreshing, Paham. People often shy away from their spiritual lives, you know, as it's a third rail kind of thing, a dangerous conversation, and yet you so freely embrace the nobility of the greater good and the spiritual life. So thank you for that and thank you for your courage. Your story of being shunned and expelled because of your faith and yet you never abandoned your faith, which I'm sure would have been the easy path, right? Just say, yeah, okay, I'm going to join your team is very, very inspiring. Now, you touched on your deep commitment to making the world a better place. And I know that your company has a deep commitment to charitable giving, it contributes to employee satisfaction and engagement and all that kind of stuff. Tell us about some of the things that you're doing as a company, and then the ripple effect in getting your employees with that passion for your business because you are making the world a better place, right? Yeah, I believe that we should all be philanthropists. I believe in the concept of universal philanthropy. It doesn't matter how small my company is. It doesn't matter how small my amount of wealth is. I find giving, I'm a philanthropist. The question is am I giving sacrificially because that sacrificial aspect differs depending on how much I have. But every company has something. I may not have cash, but I have other resources. I have time, for example. So being a philanthropist is key and giving sacrificial to the point that we have less money for the rest of our financial decisions. So it becomes a bit painful. Now we can decide each how painful is painful enough, But I think 1% is not. That's one. The second thing is that I believe that companies should, and Simon Sinek says it really well in The Infinite Game, that we should have a just cause. And the reason I think that's important is because just because I'm good with software, just because I'm good with online marketing, doesn't make me also good at figuring out the problems of the world, whether it's hunger or wars and so on. I think many executives, many entrepreneurs who do well, that ego gets to us that, well, I can solve the problems in Africa also, maybe. But there are many grassroots organizations that are doing a great job. Can we find them? Can we adopt them? So I fundamentally believe in adopting nonprofits, so we combine the two. So, for example, we've adopted two organizations. One is LIDE in Haiti that provides after-school arts programs for girls. And the other one is Starfish International that is in The Gambia, and they provide after-school education for girls and women in general. And then the third thing that we care about, the third cause, is education. It is the plight of basically the situation with racism in America that we believe is something that deserves our attention. I personally believe that racism is America's most challenging issue. And I would like to see that we, you know, play a positive role in healing some of those racial matters. And also what we do is that we allow our employees service days, days that we pay them, but we allow them to go out there and serve the world however they see fit. There's one request we have on those days, that please, it's not by force, it's just by love, that please don't spend those days serving political parties, because by nature they're divisive. On those days, at least on those days, let's be unifying. I love that. How do people learn more about you and your work, Paeam, and the new book? Where would you send them? You can just go to the website for One Planet, oneplanetgroup.com. You can find me on social media. Luckily, I got my accounts early enough that they're all Paeams of money. No hyphen, no space, nothing. So they're easy to be found. Yeah, we did the same. You know, we had a counselor told us, get adriangostic.com, just rolling out. We thought, why? I'm so glad we did. Yeah, you're right. He, as we kind of wrap up here, this has been so enlightening and I wish we had even more time. Tell us about this concept. You mentioned about spiritual capitalism, putting those two together. You know, your Baha'i faith, and by the way, if anybody hasn't listened to Rainn Wilson's podcast, Rainn had Paimon, it's a fascinating discussion of your religion, the beautiful Baha'i religion, and combining those two. If you don't know Rainn Wilson from the office, of course, Dwight from the office. So, tell us a little bit about bringing these two together, spiritual capitalism, and why we should embrace that. I think that we should do it because at the end of the day it's good for our soul, it's good for who we are, it's good for fulfillment from life. We want to get more out of this life. This life is going to pass and we'll be done with. I don't want to spend 8, 10, 11 hours of my day and just say that business is just business. It's not business such as humans and humans are spiritual beings, noble spiritual beings. So I want to combine that aspect of humanity with where I spend most of my waking hours. We have a conference called One Planet Summit that focuses on that. How can we do that? There are many people that are doing a great job and I would like to put a spotlight on them. And they come from all walks of life. You know, before we started the recording, we talked a little bit about Angel Studios. Angel Studios, you know, was founded by a few amazing, you know, Mormon friends of mine and they want to make movies that bring light to the world. I mean, that's amazing. And I'm of a high, so what? I love their work. And you know, I love the fact that through content, they're gonna make the world a better place. And I think every business can figure out how they can contribute to the betterment of humanity. And when they do that, they're gonna be so much happier. And that's good for us as entrepreneurs, as CEOs first, and then frankly, everybody else that we serve. You know, you mentioned Angel Studios before we started recording. And I'm amazed that they get big stars. They get big name actors that want to do a movie that brings such a positive message. So good for you. Hey, a couple things really quick. They produce great movies. They do. I mean, and they're movies you can sit with your kids and grandkids and not worry about what's coming next. Hey, two things really quick. We've got overtime in a delightful way with you, Payam. So one, what are some of your personal practices that keep you in such a positive state? Reduce your anxiety. And then give us like one big takeaway that you'd like our listeners to walk away with from our conversation today. Yeah. By the way, I wanna tell people that I'm in a humble plethora of learning. I've got a lot of bad moments, a lot of bad days, a lot of bad hours. But at least there's a north star I'm trying to walk towards. Listen, I have to be grounded. So every day I start my day with meditation and prayer. And then I follow that with working out and paying attention to fitness. I think that even a bad day could be turned into a good day if you start by doing those two things. So, you know, I know that the days that I did not really get the most out of it, it probably did not start right. So, you know, somebody said that you want to know how a conversation ends, you know, pay attention to the beginning of it. That's kind of like a thing about the days too. You want to know how it's going to end, just, you know, think about how it started. So start your days well. Somebody said, the book about making your bed, absolutely. And what's one big thing you want people to take away from the conversation? I would say that embracing the spiritual side of ours. I think that, and you mentioned Rain, Rain has an amazing podcast that recently came out called Soul Boom, and he talks about a lot of these, and he has a book called Soul Boom. I think that humanity, we are in a need of a spiritual transformation. A well-known Fortune 500 CEO recently in front of Congress said, unethical is not illegal, make it illegal so I won't do it. That always stayed with me because I realized that the only thing that will stop us to do unethical things, to do things that are not good for humanity, are that spiritual connection that we have to each other. So that spiritual transformation I think is key to our success as a species. So, you know, I'm focused on business. I would like to to help influence people to Welcome that spiritual connection within their business Excellent. Well, listen, you've got to get the book. You've heard the author, Payam Zamani. His book is Crossing the Desert, The Power of Embracing Life's Difficult Journeys. This has been beyond delightful. You know, usually I have about a page full of notes, but I have like two and a half pages of notes today. So thank you so much for your time, your wisdom, and sharing your story. That was great. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time as well. Well, Chis, you say you have two and a half pages of notes. I better turn it over to you first. No, but I don't. I've got two pages, but I thought, you know, just terrific, Payam. It's so heartening for us to be preaching to the choir here. We had somebody on that this is the epitome of a CEO that we try to coach, that we try to, you know, develop because they are more successful. People want to work with them. You could just see the goodness that was emanating out of Payam. Yeah, how he embraced the spiritual side. Everyone is noble, you know, and should be treated with respect. You know, I don't wish ill on anyone. I don't want my competitors to fail, right? I want them to have good lives. I want communities. And the way he translates that, you know, he talked about those six virtues and so on. When was the last time you heard a company where one of their core values was love? You know? Justice, you know, unity and intention, truthfulness. The goodness just oozed out of Payam. It was just so refreshing. And then just to jump to near the end of our conversation, when he said, hey, look, I have good days and bad days, too. I am humble in knowing that I can, you know, be a better person. I can continually learn. I can defer to people that, you know, have more wisdom than I have. And then, of course, his personal story of being a Baha'i, of the Baha'i safe in Iran, the persecution he went through. Didn't abandon his safe and didn't lose his humanity, you know? Didn't become angry or vengeful or revengeful, right? So some of my takeaways, but what did you write, Doug? You know, some of these things were really powerful. You know, the idea of truthfulness, which, you know, it sounds like, yeah, it's Boy Scouts. It's so simple, but it's so important in today's culture where there's so much disinformation, so many people trying to get ahead by whatever means to be transparent, to allow people to communicate, to be honest, which also led him to his next sort of foundational principle of justice, which is so important, that people see this, and it's incredibly anxiety-inducing to have a lack of justice. As we were working on our motivators assessment, if you remember, that was one of the motivators that we were actually playing to see if that would be part of it. Because justice is so inherent to people and nothing will create discord more than feeling like, things aren't equal here. So how are you worrying about that in your life and in your culture? It's great. Yeah, my last big takeaway was this universal philanthropy. You know, can our business change the world? Well, you know, maybe, probably not. Adopt people that are changing the world and support them. You know, they've got the expertise, they've got the insights, they know what they're doing. You know, whether it's, you know, education in South America or fresh water in Africa or whatever your inclination is, what are you doing? And endorse that universal philanthropy. And then of course, you know, your employees feel great about coming to work, you're doing good things, you're making things happen. Just so refreshing, I am telling you, I feel a lot better about life in general after talking to the plant. Yeah, they're good people. And I don't know, we are, by the way, you know, Chester and I, our company, The Culture Works, we support One Tree Planted. We have other charities as well, but when we go out and do a speech, when we have somebody help us with something, we plant a tree somewhere in the world, four or several trees, for that. And that's how we give back. And so, but choose something that you're passionate about. And I love that idea that they have found things for girls, for afterschool, for in impoverished countries that were really making a difference. Find something that matters to you. Love that idea. Have a just cause, as Payam said. Yeah, yeah. You know, it is so interesting, just that gratitude that he exudes for his people, for his business, for his story, for his spiritual life was wonderful. And of course, whenever we express gratitude, we express gratitude for our wonderful producer, Brent Klein, and to Christy Lawrence, who helps us find all these amazing guests. If you liked our podcast, please share it with your friends and family. And we'd love you to visit thecultureworks.com for some free resources to help you and your team thrive and excel. And it is about culture. I love that he talked about it's people and it's culture first. Get that right, things go a lot better. We've got some wonderful free tools for you at thecultureworks.com. We certainly do of course pick up a copy if you haven't already of Anxiety at Work, our best-selling book. We also have a training now that ties into this which is just remarkable featuring leaders from around the world helping us talk about some of these most important subjects that will help you build a more resilient team. And just, you know, we love speaking to audiences around the world, virtually or in person, on the topics of resilience, culture, leadership, teamwork. So give us a call. We'd love to talk to you about your event. Yeah, we do. We've spoken to over 40 countries. Listen, it's been a delight to spend some time with you, Adrian. Of course, it was an amazing experience with Payam Zamani. Again, his book, Crossing the Desert, the Power of Embracing Life's Difficult Journeys. Pick up a copy for you and for a friend. But Adrian, I always give you the last word. Thanks everybody for joining us today. Until next time, we wish you the best of mental health.