Imran Amed ON: Rediscovering Your Passion & How to Know When Your Job is Holding You Back

Do you want to meditate daily with me? Go to go.calm.com/onpurpose to get 40% off a Calm Premium Membership. Experience the Daily Jay. Only on Calm Jay Shetty sits down with Imran Amed to talk about his journey in the fashion industry. With a love for business, his career had an illustrious start with Harvard Business school & later his job at McKinsey. Both of which nurtured his analytical skills, but left him unfulfilled and in some cases even encouraged to diminish or hide his true self to fit in. As a creative at heart, he was able to break through to create the leading platform connecting millions of people across the globe through fashion. As founder, editor-in-chief and CEO of The Business of Fashion, Imran Amed is considered one of the fashion industry’s leading writers, thinkers and commentators. Fascinated by the industry’s potent blend of creativity and business, he began BoF as a blog in 2007, which has since grown into the pre-eminent global fashion industry resource serving a 6 million strong community from over 200 countries. Amed has been named in Fast Company’s annual list of the Most Creative People in Business, British GQ’s list of the 100 Most Influential Men in Britain and Wired UK’s list of the 100 most influential figures in Britain’s digital economy. Want to be a Jay Shetty Certified Life Coach? Get the Digital Guide and Workbook from Jay Shetty https://jayshettypurpose.com/fb-getting-started-as-a-life-coach-podcast/ What We Discuss: 00:00 Intro 02:52 Bringing other voices inside the industry 05:38 Getting immersed in an international global environment 14:47 Finding business school to be a limiting space 22:32 Building a platform to connect people with the fashion industry 26:35 Feeling unhappy with where you are at now Episode Resources Imran Amed | LinkedIn Imran Amed | Twitter Imran Amed | Instagram Imran Amed | Biography Business of Fashion See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jay Shetty?

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• 1:27Jay Shetty?

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• 2:00Speaker 01

  I have this opportunity with my team to bring together people to give them.

• 2:07Speaker 01

  A platform to connect with one of the most influential, powerful, cultural industries that touches people all over the place. And as an industry, we have a responsibility and an opportunity to really change the world.

• 2:33Jay Shetty?

  Hey, everyone. Welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every single one of you that come back every week to listen, learn and grow. Now, today I get to host a very special episode. I'm seated in Oxford, London, at the Soho Farmhouse. If you haven't been here before, it's a magical venue. And especially what I'm here for is even more incredible. I've been invited to speak at the Voices Conference for the Business of Fashion. And beyond that, I get to sit down with the founder, the CEO and the editor in chief of the Business of Fashion, Imran Ahmed himself. Imran, thank you so much, first of all, for organizing such a beautiful event and for being here today on the podcast.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  Thank you. The organization of the event comes down to my brilliant team. I'm sure you've been meeting them in all of the little nooks and crannies around

• 3:24Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  what we call our campus. But we absolutely love putting this event together, especially this year, because it's been two years since we've done Voices. And we think of it as like the best way to bring our team together, because we face so many challenges in making Voices happen. There's a lot of people to manage, a lot of things to manage. And this year, of all years, we have something at BOF called the Voices Test, which is like resilience in the face of adversity and rapid changes. And 24 hours before we were arriving here this year, they changed all the COVID restrictions. So we had to adapt and be agile and my team is just awesome.

• 4:04Jay Shetty?

  It's incredible.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  So it's all because of them.

• 4:06Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, well, what's even more special is everyone's really positive, too. So they're doing all this hard work, but whenever they're with you or me or with an individual at the conference and the event, they've all been just so wonderful. So congratulations to you and the team. I want to start off because we are at Voices and I have been absolutely blown away by every speaker on stage since day one. The diversity of conversation, the depth of storytelling.

• 4:36Jay Shetty?

  You know, when I was first invited and you hear about the business of fashion, you're thinking, oh, well, everyone's gonna be a fashion speaker. And then you're like, no, we're talking about mushrooms. We're talking about Root Studios, which is incredibly looking at fashion from a completely different angle. We're talking about activism. Tell us about where the idea for Voices came from and what you wanted it to be when it first started and how it's evolved.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, you know, like most industries, there were already a series of other industry conferences. And, you know, at BOF, whenever we do something new, we wanna do it differently. We wanna add something to what's already there. We wanted it to be disruptive because my observation was that, you know, most of the fashion events that we have are just fashion people. And therefore, you have fashion people talking to fashion people about fashion, which is a bit of an echo chamber, right? And those kinds of conversations are absolutely important and they happen at Fashion Week and they happen in all sorts of, you know, industry events.

• 5:44Speaker 01

  But fashion doesn't live in a bubble. It doesn't exist outside, you know, the intersections of other things that are going on in the world. And especially now amid, you know, a once in a generation, you know, public health crisis, you know, economic dislocation, heightening global inequality, a global reckoning around inclusion, racial equity, diversity. You know, we are connected to everything that's going on in the world. So our idea was, we need to bring other voices into the room. And so it is a conference about fashion in some ways because we touch on all those topics.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  But we wanted to pierce that echo chamber. We wanted to bring other people inside the industry and help them kind of open, open the eyes of the industry. And also, To help people understand the power of fashion. So we have all these other people that come inside and kind of share their time and their expertise with us. And one of the things they always say to me when they leave is like, this is such a powerful industry, such a cultural force in the world, and fashion has the power to change things. So we set up voices originally with that vision, that idea, that we wanted to disrupt the existing trade conferences, and we don't call it a conference, we call it a gathering.

• 7:11Speaker 01

  And we wanted to bring other people in and just create the kind of conversations that weren't happening enough. And what happens is everyone, the non-fashion people go away, and they've learned so much about the industry, and they've met all these people. And the fashion people come in, they've also met the non-fashion people. And it just creates this incredible energy.

• 7:29Jay Shetty?

  Well, Imran, today, you're a, you know, you're a fashionable gentleman. You're always in the world of fashion, but I want to go back to what Imran was like growing up. I want to hear about what your passions were, what your interests were, what you were like as a teenager, you know, what is it that you thought you were gonna go out to do? What were your aspirations as a teenager?

• 7:49Speaker 01

  I think my aspirations as a teenager were in a way largely defined by what other people expected of me. I grew up in Canada, in Calgary. My parents moved from Kenya to Calgary in the middle of the cold winter in 1974, in December. They were both the first in their respective families to go to university. And my mom was already pregnant. And I guess they made a decision that they just wanted me to have the best life. And my parents, you know, even before I was born, I think they were already thinking about the future they wanted for me.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  And as immigrants to a new country with $500 and great education, they really believed in the power of education. And they came to Canada with a view to kind of setting up themselves for a new life. And you know, that was a massive risk and change for them.

• 8:51Jay Shetty?

  Wow.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  And four months later, I was born, so they moved from Kenya to Calgary. And I think the day I was born, someone told me, this kid will go to Harvard one day. And I was named Imran, after Imran Khan, because my dad was a cricket player. And so I think growing up, I always felt like these expectations. And I didn't turn out to be athletically gifted in any way.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  But I was always driven towards a specific path. You know, in many immigrant families, when they first moved to the West, you know, it's doctor, or lawyer, or engineer.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  And I think when I was a teenager, I felt like those were the only options. So at school, I was really, really nerdy. I used to get up at four or five in the morning to do my homework, or to study, or to prepare for tests. You know, my mom sometimes used to wake up in the morning to quiz me and to work with me. She was a teacher. My father was an architect. And, you know, they really just invested in my education. And I guess I felt this like pressure or expectation that I had to go down one of these paths. In the evenings, however, I was a really creative kid. And I started, my first foray into the performing arts was as a singer.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  I was in a boys' choir from the age of eight or nine. Yeah, all-boys choir, and we literally sang like this.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  And then I got into public speaking, into drama, into musical theater. And so my days were really, really nerdy and academic, and my evenings were filled with extracurricular activities that were rich with creativity. But when it came to making decisions about my education,

• 10:49Speaker 01

  I mean, maybe I kind of knew that there wasn't really an opportunity for me in the performing arts, you know, as a very small brown person. Like, you know, there weren't roles for me, and there weren't opportunities for me. You know, getting cast in things was very, very hard. You know, I was always cast as like the impish, mischievous puck, or mad hatter, you know, in like plays and stuff. But like, to have a real career in the performing arts was like just a risk that I couldn't afford to take. Honestly, so I was really interested in business and entrepreneurship. And so in a conversation with my father, I remember, we said, well, I should study business.

• 11:31Speaker 01

  So I studied, I moved to Montreal when I was 18 years old. And I studied at McGill University and I studied for a Bachelor of Commerce. And you know, I loved, I loved my time at McGill. In part because it was this global university. There were people from all over the world. And I'd spent my first 18 years only in Calgary, you know. And we didn't travel that much internationally. We did lots of road trips in North America. But McGill was my first time being really immersed in a truly international, global environment. And it found it so enriching. And Montreal as a city was hugely inspiring to me.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  It's a bilingual city and I really wanted to learn French. I'd, you know, I'd been learning French since like elementary school. Because in Canada, you get trained in English and French, but I didn't really speak French. So being in Montreal gave me this opportunity to immerse myself in one of the world's like truly bilingual cities, where the locals can switch from one language to another like this. And I remember sitting in a mall one day, the food court. And there were these two women sitting next to me. And they were going back and forth in a conversation and quoting. They were speaking in English and quoting in French. And you know, I just, I was like, I want to be able to do that. So when it came time to graduation, I actually decided to stay in Montreal.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  I worked in management consulting in a fully bilingual environment. All my friends left. It was great to be still in Montreal, but it was obviously not the same when all my college friends had left and gone to like New York and Paris and London and Toronto and other places. So after a couple of years, my dream was to work in Europe. And I asked my company for a transfer to Europe. I said, I want to live in Paris or London.

• 13:26Jay Shetty?

  And this is at McKinsey, right?

• 13:27Speaker 01

  This was at Deloitte.

• 13:28Jay Shetty?

  This was at Deloitte, okay, fine.

• 13:29Speaker 01

  I worked at a small strategy consulting group that they used to own called Braxton Associates.

• 13:35Jay Shetty?

  Yes, right.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  And they said, well, you know, you're 22 years old, like.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  We only transfer people if they have unique skills that you can't find in London. And you know, you're way too young. So at that point, I was thinking about applying for business school. And you know, I managed to get an internship slash fellowship with a microcredit organization in Bangladesh. And I started making plans to move to Bangladesh. And actually, the day I was planning to quit, the managing director of the office, Bob Leach was his name. He came up to my office, which was very unusual because I would usually go down to his office. And he said, Imran, I found a way to move you to London. And you know, it turned out that there was someone in the London office who wanted to

• 14:25Speaker 01

  move to North America and we were just going to swap. And it was the first time in my life I faced a real professional dilemma. I had kind of convinced myself that going to work in Bangladesh was going to be really enriching. It was going to be great for my business school application because it would show a different, you know, professional experience. But I'd always wanted to live in London. And by this point, my family, my parents had moved back to Kenya. And so I'd been traveling through London to visit them in Nairobi. And you know, I'd spend like three or four days in London, you know, stop offs on the way. And there was something about the city that I just, I remember the first time I was like driving down Pall Mall in London, I was in the back of the cab and I was like, oh my God.

• 15:09Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  You know, it's like one of these things you only see on TV. And I called one of my professors, Professor Anne Hale. And I told her, I don't know what to do. Like, I feel like it's, you know, I could go to Bangladesh or I could go to London. And she said, Imran, go where your heart is telling you to go. You have the rest of your career to give back. Because I really wanted to go, you know, and do this, you know, service in Bangladesh. She said, you have the rest of your life to do that. If your instinct, if your heart is telling you to go to London, just go to London.

• 15:45Speaker 01

  And so I slept on it and I was like agonizing over this decision. And I woke up one morning and Professor Hale was right. She said, you know, I just, my heart was saying, go to London. So that's, that's how I.

• 16:02Jay Shetty?

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• 16:45Jay Shetty?

  That's indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. This episode is brought to you by Amtrak. You know that feeling when you're already tired and you haven't even gotten there yet? That's where Amtrak comes in. Leave the driving behind and settle into a comfortable seat with plenty of room to stretch out. Catch up on work with wifi, grab a snack at the cafe car, or just sit back and enjoy your favorite podcast. Choose a cellar or northeast regional and get there without the stress of getting there. Visit amtrak.com to plan your next trip. This episode is brought to you by Whole Foods Market.

• 17:27Jay Shetty?

  If you're talking about quality food, you can't forget Whole Foods Market, who've been holding themselves to the highest standards since they opened in 1980.

• 17:37Jay Shetty?

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• 18:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I first moved here in 1999. And I ended up staying here for a year with Deloitte. And it was amazing because I got to work in Switzerland and Norway and Holland and all over the place, all these countries I'd never been to. But I was also applying for business school and I managed to get into business school about six or seven months after I moved to London. And I'd been traveling so much that I actually didn't end up spending much time in London. And at that point, I quit my job and started planning to go to business school. So yeah, that was here and then after business school I moved back.

• 18:40Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. What do you think were the biggest skills or gifts you took away from business school? I think that there's a lot of conversation today about education, higher education, graduations, postgraduate. But as someone who actually went to business school, what were the things that you felt you really took away in terms of skills that you wouldn't have got anywhere else?

• 19:02Speaker 01

  You know, honestly, it really wasn't about the skills. I had studied business in undergrad. And you know, HBS has a really different way of teaching. They have a case study method. I'd studied from textbooks in undergrad and you know, HBS was offering me a different way to study business. And it was great, you know, don't get me wrong. There were elements of it that were, you know, different and I learned stuff. But honestly, business school is not, for me, it wasn't about.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  The classroom, it was about, again, the people. You know, and I, I found it really hard there at first. You know, it's a really intense place. You know, if you do the Myers-Briggs test, familiar with it? Yes, very familiar. And, you know, I think like seventy percent of the, you know, incoming class the year I started were ENTJs, the so-called natural-born leaders. Yes. So you have a lot of like really similar driven people sitting in a classroom every day. It creates, you know, it creates in some ways a very interesting positive energy to drive you to be the best you can be. But it's also, in some ways, it's very limiting.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  And, um, you know, I, I found at times it was really hard. And, you know, while I was there, um, nine eleven happened. And as a, as a Muslim, you know, it was a really eye-opening experience because, you know, HBS is like a community. You know, it's a community of people and, you know, it happened in September, obviously. And I was in my second year. And I remember thinking about all of the first years I had just arrived from Algeria or Egypt or Saudi Arabia. You know, Muslims from all over the world and they were in the US. You know, for the, you know, the first three or four weeks of their business school career

• 21:03Speaker 01

  and this like horrible tragedy has happened. And so a bunch of us gathered, all the Muslims on campus together,

• 21:12Speaker 01

  to just say, you know, like this is a really supportive community. And by that point, there had already been some instances of extreme Islamophobia on campus. You know, people were saying really misjudged, ill-informed, ignorant.

• 21:30Speaker 01

  hateful things and you know you have to remember it was a really

• 21:36Speaker 01

  it's a really charged environment was really emotional time and so of course like everyone was feeling you know but there were it was Harvard Business School there were so many connections of people in those classrooms professors teaching in those classrooms and that and the trade World Trade Center and so like of course it was very emotional situation but you know for those of us who were Muslim it was also really really difficult because there was some really really unfortunate things that were said and you know I realized and we said to the incoming class that our responsibility is to educate people you know and you know there's one moment

• 22:17Speaker 01

  I was in a classroom and that we were taking this class called the moral leader

• 22:23Speaker 01

  and every week we would have a conversation about a significant moral dilemma faced by a protagonist in a you know fictional book or a situation that happened in the world and the professor on this particular Monday you know a week or so after the terrorist attacks decided to turn the focus into the current situation and what that unleashed in the classroom was you know really hateful things you know and one person in the classroom said you know my friend who's in my section you know I'm worried he's gonna blow up the school another person down the row from me was

• 23:09Speaker 01

  said you know Islam is a religion that teaches every teaches people to kill Jews now I could like I could feel myself really shaking because my instinct I got up and I just left you know and I remembered that conversation I had with that incoming class I was in the hallway and I left and I was like shaking

• 23:35Speaker 01

  so I went back into the classroom and everyone's hands were up

• 23:44Speaker 01

  and I realized I was the only Muslim person in that whole class

• 23:49Speaker 01

  So I raised my hand. And I just, you know, I just spoke really from the heart. I can't remember exactly what I said. But, you know, I just felt like it was my responsibility to talk. And so I came to this whole story just to say that, you know, even at a place like Harvard Business School, you have these like highly educated people, really well-traveled, worldly, you know, ultimately, the experiences of the community of people you're with. And after I spoke, the whole class erupted into applause. You know, and for the rest of the day, you know, people were just showing up at my house that I share with my classmates, classmates just to come.

• 24:34Speaker 01

  And like, it was very supportive in the end. But, you know, this, you know, business school was just really hard. You know, it's not, you know, it's not easy. I, I treasure the people that were there, that were, you know, there to support me. And to this day, you know, my friends from university and my friends from HBS, they're my community that, you know, that hold me up, that push me. And so it's really not about the classroom. It's about, you know, the community.

• 25:07Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. Amran, thank you so much for opening up about that and sharing that because as you were saying it, I can only imagine how hard that is to reconcile internally, not just the classroom or not just the conversations or the moral leader discussion, but to deal with it internally while you're in a place like that.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've never, I've never told that story before because I think one of the things that happens in our career, so like, you know, I went off to, after business school, you know, I joined McKinsey in London, I went back. And I think one of the things that I've realized over these last Eighteen months or so since we were all locked down is that I've just internalized a lot of this. I've never really understood how it has impacted me. And one of the commitments I made to myself over these last months is that I just need to be more open about it.

• 26:06Speaker 01

  Because these moments, like when you look back in your life, there's these certain defining moments that you're changed. And that moment that I just talked to you about, that was the moment that really shifted me, you know? But I never talked about it.

• 26:25Jay Shetty?

  What do you think changed about you behavior wise or attitude wise or approach wise from that day? What did you do internally? Now, as you're saying, you held on to it. It feels like something you didn't share, but how did you process it? Or did you not process it at all until more recently?

• 26:43Speaker 01

  I mean, I think it wasn't a moment of processing. It's been years. But really, I think a lot of that processing has happened in the most recent period because I was sitting at home. And like everybody, I was reflecting on my purpose, you know, my, why am I here? What am I doing? Why am I working so hard and what am I working towards? And one of the things that's really happened in my role here at the Business of Fashion is I've found myself in a position of influence.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  I found myself in a public position. And I've realized that as a gay person, as a Muslim person,

• 27:38Speaker 01

  As a brown person, as a Canadian with East African roots and Indian heritage, there's actually a lot of people who see themselves or part of themselves in me.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  And there's not that many of us in the fashion industry. Certainly not, you know, in a position that I'm so privileged to have now. So I've just been thinking a lot more about, well, what am I going to do with this position? And that's really a lot about what Voices is for, you know? And that's why we're here, because I have this opportunity with my team to bring together people, to give them a platform, to connect with one of the most influential, powerful, cultural industries that touches people all over the place.

• 28:33Speaker 01

  And as an industry, we have a responsibility and an opportunity to really change the world. You know, fashion imagery spreads everywhere now with social media. You know, fashion used to be this like really secretive little world. All of, everything was kind of contained. And as an outsider, you know, with a management consulting background,

• 29:00Speaker 01

  to come into this industry and be able to learn from everybody, you know, through, you know, all the interviews I've done all over the, over the years, like every person I've met has taught me something. And now I have an ability to use all of that and connect that with my curiosity and my interest in that, you know, being part of a global community. You know, the one that I had at McGill, the one I had at HBS, and the one that we've built here at BOF. Like, all of these things are threads through my life. And so the processing has happened over a very long period of time, but I think...

• 29:36Speaker 01

  In the last 12 months or so, it's really become much more sharpened. And that's the session that we're going to have this afternoon with you is like everyone's going to be talking about how their purpose has been either shifted or sharpened or focused because of this period that we've lived through.

• 29:56Jay Shetty?

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• 31:25Jay Shetty?

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• 32:05Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely. Thank you again for sharing that. It's truly beautiful being drawn into your personal experience. And I love that you described it as a thread, because it just shows how interconnected you feel it all is. Often, people feel their life is like a series of pivots. And you've had a lot of pivots in your life, but you don't see them as pivots, you're seeing them as a thread. I wonder, when you do make the transition from successful McKinsey consultant to starting the business of fashion, being the authoritative voice in the industry, tell us about what gave you the courage again. I feel like you're just one of these people that's constantly had. And I have a lot of these questions from my community, my audience. I have questions like this from private clients I work with

• 32:49Jay Shetty?

  and people that I've coached in the past. A lot of people struggle with transition. So whether it was your transition to McGill, your transition to London instead of Bangladesh, then London to HBS, then HBS to McKinsey, then McKinsey... You know, there's so many transitions here. And then you take the biggest one, which seems to be where you're feeling your purpose is being fulfilled. Tell us about what gave you the courage to make that transition from a phenomenal career, which most people would dream to have at a place like McKinsey, but then to be able to make that. I find that really fascinating.

• 33:23Speaker 01

  It's interesting to use the word courage, because I didn't feel courageous. I felt, I was really unhappy. And without denigrating McKinsey, because McKinsey is an incredible institution

• 33:45Speaker 01

  with deeply held values. It's flawed, like every organization. But walking into those doors every day,

• 33:53Speaker 01

  I felt like I was leaving a lot of myself at home.

• 34:00Speaker 01

  And, you know, it goes without saying, I was leaving all my creative side at home. You know, my PowerPoint slides, they were very pretty. That was my outlet.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  But there was some professional feedback. You know, McKinsey loves feedback. You get feedback after every meeting. You get feedback after every project. You get feedback every six months. And in some ways, that's really helpful. But some of the feedback I was getting

• 34:27Speaker 01

  was basically like, they said I didn't have gravitas.

• 34:32Speaker 01

  I've been thinking about this a lot recently. And they said, "Well, you don't have gray hair, so you need to be less expressive." I use my hands a lot. I'm a very expressive person.

• 34:45Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, animated.

• 34:46Speaker 01

  I'm an animated person.

• 34:47Jay Shetty?

  In a good way, yeah.

• 34:49Speaker 01

  That's my theater side coming out.

• 34:50Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  And then one day, someone said to me, "Wouldn't you feel more comfortable if you wore a tie and a blue shirt?" And there was one meeting I was in, and everyone was...

• 35:05Speaker 01

  It was all men who had gone to Oxford or Cambridge, and they were all wearing checked shirts. And they realized that the checks on their shirts were the same... Were kind of... The size of the checks on their shirt were commensurate with their tenure at McKinsey. And they all got up in a row, and they lined themselves up.

• 35:25Speaker 01

  And I was sitting down at the table. And I've been thinking about that moment.

• 35:32Speaker 01

  And if that's not a moment of othering... Because I was wearing an orange shirt. I was a brown, gay, Muslim guy at McKinsey. And these were all like, straight, white men. And basically, what I've learned over the last few months, what I've realized is it was a very coded language that was being given to me to tell me to not be myself. And I know that now.

• 36:01Speaker 01

  But back then, all I was feeling was pain. And so I wrote them a memo, and I asked for a sabbatical.

• 36:10Speaker 01

  And someone came up to me in the New Delhi airport.

• 36:15Speaker 01

  And he came up to me, and I was on my way to Bangladesh, actually, to go visit a friend of mine who was on that same program that I was thinking about doing many years back. And he came up to me, and he said, "I've been observing you."

• 36:29Speaker 01

  I have some things to tell you about your life.

• 36:33Speaker 01

  And I thought it was one of those quacks, right? I was like, I don't have any money.

• 36:39Speaker 01

  I'm leaving, my rupees are gone. He said, no, I don't want your money. Just sit down with me for five minutes. And he said to me, I want to talk to you. And a few minutes later, he said, you're not listening to me. I said, yes, I am.

• 36:57Speaker 01

  So he took a piece of paper and he wrote something down, crumpled it up, and he put it into my hand.

• 37:05Speaker 01

  He said, hold this in your hand. He said, I want you to tell me your favorite color.

• 37:13Speaker 01

  I was like, I don't have a favorite color. I was in such a negative place. I said, I don't have a favorite color, but McKinsey told me to wear blue shirts.

• 37:23Speaker 01

  Blue. He said, what's your favorite flower?

• 37:27Speaker 01

  I'm not really a flower person, or I wasn't back then.

• 37:31Speaker 01

  And my cousin's wife had calla lilies in her bouquet. So I said, lily. And then he wrote down my name, and he put, oh, one, two, three, four, five over the letters of my name. And he said, what's your favorite number? And I picked number three because it's right in the middle. And I like symmetry. He said, open your hand.

• 37:57Speaker 01

  And I opened my hand, and the little paper that he'd given me five minutes earlier said, blue, lily, three. And he said, now will you listen to me? And I spent an hour talking to that man. And he said a lot of

• 38:15Speaker 01

  really crazy things. But the one thing he said to me was, you need to practice meditation.

• 38:20Jay Shetty?

  Wow.

• 38:22Speaker 01

  And you know, in my culture, I'm in his smiley Muslim, we practice something called bandhagi. And my grandfather used to wake up every day at four in the morning, and he used to practice bandhagi. And whenever I tried to practice meditation, I could never do it. But it stuck with me. And then through a conversation with one friend and then another friend, everything pushed me towards something called vipassana meditation.

• 38:52Speaker 01

  So I wrote this memo to McKinsey explaining that I needed a sabbatical. I was feeling deeply unhappy. I wasn't sure I wanted a career in the firm. And I wasn't going to be able to think about this properly if I was working as hard as I was working. And everything at McKinsey was done with memos. So I had to make a business case for why they wanted me to take this time off. And they gave me the time off and I found myself in South Africa doing Vipassana meditation, which is 10 days of silence. And that's when everything changed. Because I learned how to meditate. And I mean, a whole other conversation that we can have one day is that experience. Because it's a... But I flew from Cape Town to Nairobi.

• 39:37Speaker 01

  And I sat down with my parents and I said, I have done everything that you thought I should do. And you've given me this amazing education. And you've given me everything you could possibly give me. But I'm so unhappy. I need to try something different. And they were really worried about me. Because obviously, I was this like overachieving kid. And all of a sudden, I was in, you know, South Africa, in the middle of a forest, meditating. I mean, they were worried that I was going to turn up in saffron robes or something. And like, and I know you were a monk, so you... I did that, yeah. And they said, okay, we just want you to be happy. Yeah. And that's when everything switched. And then one of the realizations I had as part of that whole sabbatical,

• 40:21Speaker 01

  I started talking to people in fashion, music and film. I wanted to work in a creative industry. And you know, when I was a young, young, young person, I used to watch this television show called Fashion File, which was hosted by this man named Tim Blanks. It was on every Saturday. And I just, there's something about that show that I always was so curious about. Because Tim used to be in Milan, in Paris, in London, all these places. All these interesting people. And like, there was a business, but it was also creative. And I was like, I just, I feel like drawn to this industry. And so a lot of time when young people say like, how do you know what you're passionate about?

• 41:03Speaker 01

  I always say like, what were you, what were you drawn to when you were a child? Before anyone told you what your path should be, before you understood the expectations of society or other pressures. What was, what were, like, it's inexplicable what we're drawn to as children because it's purely intuition.

• 41:28Speaker 01

  And so I quit my job at McKinsey and that's when my journey into the fashion industry began.

• 41:36Jay Shetty?

  Emran, that's spectacular. Honestly, that is so beautifully shared. And there's so many parts of it that I want to deep dive on. I also want to be respectful of your time. So it is exactly the time that we had promised to finish. And I'm going to ask you to promise me that we can do a part two another time because I feel like we just framed who you are and how you got there. But I want people to hear about what happens after that because we're at a really beautiful space. So I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking out the time, for opening up, for being so vulnerable with our community. You know, both of us had, I never have any idea when I'm about to do one of these, what I'm about to learn.

• 42:20Jay Shetty?

  And I can honestly say that, you know, everything you've shared with me today, not only has moved me, but I know it's going to move my community. So I want to thank you, appreciate you, but I know that you've got a busy schedule. So I'm going to be respectful of your time.

• 42:34Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 42:34Jay Shetty?

  And we're going to find another time to complete the conversation.

• 42:37Speaker 01

  Let's do that.

• 42:39Jay Shetty?

  Even after I'm back and we'll schedule it.

• 42:41Speaker 01

  We'll make it happen.

• 42:42Jay Shetty?

  Because it needs to, yeah, it was really special.

• 42:44Speaker 01

  Thank you, Jay. And thank you for, no one's really asked me those questions before. You know, like when you're, when you get in a position like this, what sometimes happens is like the media creates this narrative around who you are. And what I've realized over the last couple of years is there's a real gap in the way. The media has created the story of this overnight success and all this stuff and fashion.

• 43:14Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, just the names as well, like McKinsey, the business.

• 43:17Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, of course, everyone, you know, everyone thinks, oh, it must have been an absolute.

• 43:21Jay Shetty?

  Dream.

• 43:22Speaker 01

  Not, it has been a dream, but it's a, you know, dreams come, dreams like the experience that I've had, they come with a lot of challenge and struggle. And, you know, it's hard, you know, it's really hard. So I'm really grateful that you, I didn't know what we were going to talk about either.

• 43:43Jay Shetty?

  I know, I know.

• 43:44Speaker 01

  I just sat down and I had no idea what we're going to discuss, but I wasn't, yeah, thank you.

• 43:50Jay Shetty?

  That was beautiful. Thank you.

• 44:01Speaker 03

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• 44:27Speaker 04

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• 44:31Jay Shetty?

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all keep the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.

• 44:37Speaker 04

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• 44:43Speaker 05

  What would happen if I stopped going? You stop, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 44:48Speaker 04

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 44:51Speaker 05

  I'm not the first then.

• 44:52Speaker 04

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• 45:07Speaker 04

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