Default Description
Category
🎵
MusicTranscript
00:00I'm with the man himself, Ewan Smith joined as Group Chief Operating Officer and Chief Executive Officer.
00:08He has been instrumental in building the new ASTRO, including the aggregation of multiple screening services.
00:20Maybe a challenge right, I think in your years of working that significantly shaped your leadership style.
00:26Here's the rule, once is unlucky, twice would be incompetent. If you're making great content, yeah, sports or local content,
00:34or you're bringing great content, the best of the content from overseas, people watch you wherever you are.
00:44Hello, this is Freda Liu and you're watching Live Confessions Season 3, I'm with the man himself.
00:50Ewan Smith joined as Group Chief Operating Officer and Chief Executive Officer TV in 2020,
00:56and in 2023 assumed the role of Group Chief Executive Officer.
01:00He has been instrumental in building the new ASTRO, including the aggregation of multiple screening services,
01:07development of the hybrid connected Ultra 4K UHD and ULTI HD boxes,
01:12entry into the internet service provider market with ASTRO Fibre,
01:16the launch of Challenger OTT platform Suka and delivery of Malaysia's only holistic addressable advertising service.
01:22A little bit about him, he's established media executive with a unique skill set spanning both business and technology,
01:28media operations and in transformation.
01:30In his early career, Ewan held roles in Unilever and KPMG before moving into senior leadership positions
01:36with Sky UK, Sky Germany and Fox in the US and also in Australia.
01:41So moving from KPMG and then a little bit more towards media.
01:47And I do want to know a little bit about the man himself.
01:50I won't go into where, what was like growing up, but I do want to come in halfway.
01:56Before you start with your first job, you were in Greece.
01:59So this is, this is, well, 20 plus years ago, I guess.
02:03What were you thinking going into Greenland?
02:06So thank you for having me on this thing.
02:09This is amazing.
02:10So I'd done two years in a real 40 hours a week sweatbox mechanical engineering course at Birmingham.
02:19And my mentor said, there's this thing going on in Denmark where they do a transfer of students between here and Denmark.
02:27So at that point in time, I met a girl.
02:30There's always a girl.
02:31So I met a girl.
02:32Her name was Maria.
02:33We're still talking.
02:36And when I finished my year, I came back for a year.
02:41But she wanted to do, to follow me and do psychology.
02:45And she got a place in Lancaster.
02:47But for Danes at the time, they had to pay themselves.
02:51I mean, it's like that for everybody now, but I was lucky the government paid for my degree.
02:56So the best way for a Dane to get money to go to university is to go and work in Greenland because Greenland's under home rule for Denmark.
03:05And they waive your tax and base rate of tax in Denmark.
03:09No clue what it is now.
03:10But at the time, it was 40 percent.
03:12So effectively, she could go up there and she could work one year and get two years pay.
03:17So she had headed up there to do exactly that.
03:20So I went up there and then went all the way up the West Coast and eventually met her and then worked for the worst job I've ever had.
03:28What did you do?
03:30I was unloading prawn trawlers at 67.3 degrees north.
03:36But OK, so Greenland. And after that, you went to Unilever.
03:40And just before this, you said you've never applied for a job ever.
03:44I've never applied for a job.
03:46How did Unilever come about?
03:48So there were these Christmas courses that were offered.
03:52I think they still exist.
03:54So again, university Christmas courses and you just basically you just sign up for one of these courses.
04:00And I signed up for two.
04:02One was with Mars and one was with Unilever.
04:05And they take you to what was their training, like a Jacobean, beautiful Tudor mansion, both of them.
04:13And they're teaching you kind of leadership skills.
04:15And the idea was to prepare you for your first job.
04:18Unbeknownst to me, because I'm naive as heck, they actually were talent spotting.
04:23So after the course, both courses, I was surprised to find I got called by the HR team.
04:29And then I get a phone call saying, can you come in?
04:32We want to introduce you to some people.
04:34And I had the Mars job first week of January.
04:37Right.
04:38And the Unilever job because they want to do this thing called the milk.
04:42They call it a milk round sort of thing.
04:44It's basically you all sit and discuss for a day in a group of eight of you.
04:49And they have all of the various great and good from the operating companies come and circle you.
04:54And then there's a psychologist and blah, blah, blah.
04:56They couldn't get that scheduled until, I remember it was on my birthday, 22nd of April.
05:00Right.
05:01So I had to hold Mars off until the 22nd of April for Unilever.
05:05And then Unilever said, we'd like to give you a job at the end of that.
05:08And I went from there and I've never applied for a job since.
05:13So this is all the corporate gigs.
05:14I mean, corporate, corporate gigs from Unilever to KPMG.
05:18Right. What led to that career in media?
05:22So I was making ice cream.
05:24I was in Unilever making ice cream, which I've got to say is the second best thing to do in the world.
05:30So I'm making Magnum and Cornetto and all this stuff.
05:34And I had this amazing boss, amazing boss, Wim Hoogstaad.
05:41And he left the food division of Unilever and went to personal care.
05:45And I got a new boss.
05:47I won't tell his name.
05:49It's terrible.
05:50OK.
05:51Terrible.
05:52I mean, the first meeting with me, I've been like flying all the way up the Unilever ranks.
05:55Doing lots of different interesting jobs.
05:57And the first meeting where he said, well, you haven't ever been graded.
06:00And I said, no, because I'm never in a job long enough to get properly graded.
06:03He said, well, I'm going to sort that out.
06:04You will do the same job that you're doing now for at least three years.
06:07And I'm like, no, that's not who I am.
06:11So then I'm chatting to a friend, Martin.
06:16And Martin says, I've just joined KPMG.
06:19Why don't you have a coffee?
06:21So we came in and had a coffee.
06:23And the guy walks in the room.
06:25And the guy turns out to be the partner.
06:28He's just left Andersen's.
06:30He's trying to build a supply chain practicing KPMG.
06:34We went for dinner.
06:35At midnight, as I'm climbing into the cab in London, he shakes my hand and says,
06:39I'll send you the paperwork in the morning.
06:42So that's how I got to KPMG.
06:44And then I went from KPMG into a white goods company called Hepworth.
06:50And I went there because the CEO, who is the best French guy ever,
06:54just an incredibly great guy.
06:57I did a project for him.
06:58And at the end of the project, he said, you earn.
07:00I have tried to find somebody else who can run this procurement thing for me.
07:05I cannot find anyone I like.
07:07You will have to do it.
07:09And that was how I got there.
07:11But then we've been doing it for two years.
07:13And I'm living in Paris now.
07:15You enjoy procurement?
07:16I did.
07:17I did.
07:18It's a long distant past memory.
07:20So we're in Paris.
07:21We've rationalized some companies.
07:24We've done a bunch of M&A.
07:25It's been super exciting.
07:27And Jean-Francois, who got lung cancer, left very, very quickly.
07:33And the family of the business, it's a family-run business,
07:36decided to move headquarters back to Germany, where they were from.
07:41So I had a wife and a one-year-old in Paris,
07:43and suddenly I'm commuting to Dusseldorf all the time.
07:46And I was miserable doing that for maybe three months,
07:50thinking, what shall I do?
07:51And the phone rang.
07:53And it was a guy, my partner in KPMG, who I'd still stayed in contact with,
07:57who said, Ewan, what are you doing?
07:59And I said, being miserable in Dusseldorf.
08:02And he said, good, because I've just joined Sky.
08:04And I've got to tell you, it's like the bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep, bleep,
08:07Wild West here.
08:08Come and join me.
08:10And that's how I went to Sky.
08:12And that was 23 years ago now.
08:14Okay.
08:15Just something you said, you know, like good bosses and terrible bosses, right?
08:19You know, what have you learned, like, I guess, leading people as well?
08:24I've never left a company.
08:27I've always left a bad boss or been drawn towards a great boss.
08:33Right.
08:34And I think you'll see it.
08:35It's all over LinkedIn, all the places.
08:37They say it all the time, but I think it's so true.
08:40I think that the quality of the boss that you have,
08:43it almost doesn't matter what the role or what the –
08:45Right.
08:46If you've got a great boss who actually is looking out for you,
08:49and it's a two-way street on your development.
08:52Right.
08:53Yeah, then you just – and I've always just, when I've had a great boss,
08:58after a while you put your hand up and go, I'm bored now.
09:01I think this is good.
09:02I think I can do something else.
09:04And that boss will always make it happen for me.
09:06Right.
09:07And so I guess that's what we try and do here in Astro, I think,
09:11is that we try, as a leadership team, to get our team to a stage
09:16where they can step up.
09:18I think if you – sometimes you have to go out standing higher for certain reasons.
09:23You need a certain skill set, blah, blah, blah.
09:25But if you can just promote people and move people up through the structure
09:29and give them a career, I think that's one of the key things.
09:32And then the other thing that I need from a boss is that he needs to draw me
09:35an envelope and tell me to color it in.
09:37If I've got a boss that's micromanaging me, it lasts about half an hour.
09:40Right.
09:41So then from – this was Sky, and then you can tell it's Sky UK, Sky Germany,
09:47and Fox, and then you can share some of the highlights there.
09:50But then, you know, it's just interesting how you end up here in Malaysia,
09:53which is what I'm trying to get at.
09:54How did that journey happen?
09:56So when I joined Sky, the partner, Gary, who is now running Sky Supply Chain,
10:05he worked for a guy called Richard Frudenstein,
10:08who was the COO at Sky in the UK at the time.
10:12And a little forward four years, Gary leaves.
10:17They promote me to be Gary.
10:19Richard leaves and goes to Foxtel down in Australia.
10:25I then start working for a new guy, a guy called Brian,
10:28who's another dear friend now.
10:30Brian and I were together in the UK for five years,
10:33and then Brian went to be CEO of Germany.
10:35Right.
10:36And we had that same kind of phone call, which is,
10:39what are you doing now?
10:41Well, I've kind of run the – time in the UK has run its course,
10:45and Brian said, could you come and give me nine months in Sky Germany?
10:50Well, nine months turned into five years.
10:52Wow.
10:53Yeah, and I was COO for Brian a long time then.
10:55And then the company was sold.
10:58We did a turnaround, did great numbers.
11:04But the band, the team that did that were all disbanding sort of thing,
11:08and Brian went off to Fox in the US.
11:10Right.
11:11And I went away and just decided I'd have a bit of a break.
11:15And then I was traveling through LAX.
11:18I'd been in Portland, Oregon, hiking.
11:21And I was traveling through LAX, the four-hour layover,
11:24and I rang Brian and said, I'm in LAX
11:27and I can come out of the airport if you fancy a beer.
11:30And four hours later I got back on the plane with a job,
11:33which was for six weeks, which became six months,
11:36which became how long can you stay.
11:39And then Richard Frudenstein had popped up again
11:42because Richard and I had kept in touch the whole time.
11:45And Richard knew AK.
11:47And Richard had been on the board here at Astro.
11:50And when AK was looking around for somebody to come and help,
11:53they needed a CEO, COO,
11:55kind of somebody that had all the tech experience.
11:59Richard recommended AK, recommended me to AK.
12:04So I had a couple of conversations with a great guy who's still on our board,
12:08Simon Cathcart.
12:09He lives down in Australia.
12:11And then Simon put me on a plane and I went to Marley Bow
12:14and then I met AK for the first time
12:16in what I thought was going to be a one-hour chat, chat, chat.
12:19And I had no clue who this man was at the time,
12:22because I'm spectacularly naive.
12:24I expected I was going for a one-hour chat
12:26and we were six hours together.
12:28Six hours, yeah.
12:30When AK did a meeting, he really did a meeting.
12:33And what intrigued you to join?
12:36AK's vision was one that was super important.
12:40Secondly, I knew that I could add some value
12:44because in terms of where the pay TV world has been transitioning to,
12:50some of the things that we've done.
12:52Broadly, I think you could say that the Comcast,
12:55the Sky's maybe five years ahead of what's happening in this region.
13:00MultiChoices in South Africa, Sky New Zealand,
13:04the Foxtel's in Australia.
13:05They're maybe two to three years ahead.
13:07But you could see what was coming, so I felt like I had a good plan.
13:11And then they brought me to KL and I just loved the weather.
13:16And I think they sat me down in the Four Seasons
13:18and pushed Nasi Lemak into me and I was like,
13:20this is a done deal.
13:22You're a changed man, you're a convert.
13:24Done deal.
13:25Okay, I want to talk a little bit about,
13:27a little later about Astro's plans and with you on board,
13:31but a little bit about your leadership style.
13:34Maybe a challenge, right?
13:35I think in your years of working,
13:37that significantly shaped your leadership style.
13:41Wow.
13:42There's been a lot.
13:43Okay.
13:44There's been a lot.
13:45Let me tell you about my, I fail all the time.
13:48Yeah.
13:49You just have to get back up and start again.
13:52So it is, I am maybe 33, 34 years old.
13:59I am cocky.
14:00I think that I know the world.
14:03I've just arrived in Sky in the UK.
14:06We are rationalizing.
14:08We had this strange setup.
14:10I was in supply chain.
14:12And we had one company running a warehouse,
14:15another company running the distribution for the engineers,
14:18another company running the pallets,
14:19another company doing parcels.
14:21And they were all competitors, you know,
14:23Securicore and Excel and Hayes at the time.
14:26It was adversarial and it was broken.
14:29And it took us 72 hours to get something from warehouse
14:32into an engineer's hand to go and install it in the field.
14:36So we decided that we would do this big RFP.
14:39And we did that.
14:42A company won.
14:43A company was called Hagemeyer.
14:45At the time still exists, but they're not in this business anymore.
14:47So I hope I can talk about them.
14:50And I got on really well with this UK team from Hagemeyer.
14:53And we built this plan and design, et cetera, et cetera.
14:56And then about two months,
14:58so I then went to all of these adversarial for suppliers
15:01and basically went beep, beep, you.
15:03Yeah.
15:04I'm out of here because you're just too hard to work with kind of thing.
15:07Went to Hagemeyer.
15:09We're two months away from launch, putting the whole system in.
15:13And the entire UK team gets sacked by the Dutch parent.
15:18Yeah.
15:19And at that time I should have swallowed my pride and swallowed my ego
15:23and gone back cap in hand to the various forums
15:26and said I'm in a bit of a mess
15:28because I no longer have anybody that's kind of like in my tent
15:31to do the thing we need to do.
15:34But I was too bravado and wanting to show that, prove that I was.
15:39So I didn't do that.
15:40I didn't do that.
15:41So we went and launched with nobody interested in that business,
15:46in looking after the Sky business.
15:48It was a shambles.
15:49And so I found myself in a room about four months in
15:54and we'd had all sorts of problems getting stock to engineers.
15:57We had engineers turning up at warehouses crying
16:00because they couldn't get set to boxes, et cetera.
16:03And four months later I find myself back in the theatre of fear,
16:07third floor, Sky, Athena.
16:10Richard Frutenstein is my COO.
16:13And I'm there with my 12-page deck
16:16explaining why even though I've just burnt the best part of half a million pounds,
16:20I now need another half a million pounds to move again
16:23to another supplier that we found, a company called Unipart,
16:26who, by the way, Sky is still with today.
16:29So that worked.
16:30But I'm there trembling like I'm expecting to get sacked, right,
16:33because I've just blown half a million.
16:35It's been a terrible four months.
16:37We've really struggled to get stuff done.
16:39And so I'm on page 3 of 12 and everyone's like shaking around the table
16:43and I'm going to get sacked, I'm going to get sacked, I'm going to get sacked.
16:47And Richard was outstanding.
16:50Richard was on page 12 by the time I was on page 3.
16:53The meeting had gone on for about eight minutes by now.
16:56And Richard basically went, so let me get this right.
16:59You've messed.
17:02He didn't say that.
17:03You've messed this up.
17:04You've messed this up.
17:06I said, yeah.
17:08And he said, but you've got a plan to fix it.
17:11I said, yeah.
17:12He said, all right, here's the rule.
17:15Once is unlucky, twice would be incompetent.
17:19Okay, so don't screw it up.
17:21So I left and we did it and it was fine.
17:24And I tell that story all the time because it's easy to be a manager
17:31and manage somebody when everything is going well and it's going fine.
17:35It's those moments when he could have just screwed it.
17:40And Richard was a tough guy, right?
17:42He was a really tough guy.
17:43One year I saved 30 million sterling on the set-top box deal.
17:49And I wrote this two-page email to him saying, look how good I am sort of thing.
17:53I got an okay back.
17:55Not even a capital O, just okay.
17:57And it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
17:59I deserve even more than that.
18:02Brevity was his watchword.
18:03But when it was real on it, the trust that he showed, he didn't get upset.
18:10He's just like, okay, we've created a learning experience here.
18:15And I think that's what I try and give my people.
18:18It's great when it's success and you've had all the fantastic stuff,
18:21but as long as somebody's going and as long as people put their hand up and say,
18:25this is my mess and I'm going to clean it up.
18:28As the boss, just go, okay, what do you need?
18:30How can I help?
18:31What was that line again?
18:32Once is?
18:34Once is unlucky, twice is incompetence.
18:39All right.
18:40Okay.
18:41You know, you talked about how you're intrigued with meeting with AK
18:44and seeing his vision, right?
18:46So how has it evolved since you've become a group CEO?
18:51And a little bit about that vision for Astro.
18:54So pay TV, global transformation, turmoil, chaos, call it what you will.
19:02If you look at pay TV, it's extremely heavy fixed cost.
19:06Set up boxes, satellites, contact centers, engineers in the field.
19:11But it's a fixed cost.
19:13So it's almost whether you have one customer or 10 million customers,
19:18the amount of money you're paying is largely the same.
19:22So in the good days, you know, we were in Sky Germany.
19:25We worked out that once we got to 3.2 million, we were 2.5 million customers.
19:29We worked out that once you got to 3.2 million customers,
19:32it's kind of like cost covered.
19:34From there on, we're in fields of clover.
19:37And, you know, when we sold, we were up near five.
19:40So in the good days, it was great.
19:43Now the world's changed.
19:45So now we're in this IP OTT, and we're not playing in country anymore.
19:50We're playing with people that can build content and make it global.
19:54And so for a local player, scooping out the cost of the legacy machine,
20:01getting all that cost off at the same time as bridging ourselves
20:05into the new world so that we've got an IP structure and a framework
20:10and creating other lines of revenue that will augment that
20:14as the cost comes down for consumers is a really difficult journey
20:20for any company to go on.
20:22And, you know, everyone's on the Germany, you know, Comcast, Rogers in Canada.
20:27I talk to all these guys, yeah.
20:29They're all on exactly the same journey that we're on,
20:32the true digital guys up in Thailand, you know.
20:35Guys, Emtek and guys in Indonesia, we're all on the same journey.
20:38And it's about how do you drive down the cost and get the cost base down,
20:43still make the content thing that differentiates you.
20:46That's the thing that we do best than anybody else.
20:49But then be able to take the cost that you've done
20:52and put it back to the customer as increased value.
20:55That is the curve that we are on.
20:58And, you know, we've launched Sucre.
21:00We've launched addressable advertising.
21:02We've launched Astro Fiber.
21:04These are the things together with studios, et cetera,
21:07that will generate and make the revenues for the future.
21:11So it's really interesting for me to go from a transformation
21:14from a single rain fade repeats channels business
21:19to go to this business that has five or six different revenue.
21:22But I won't kid you, it's tough.
21:25Transforming and pivoting a business is not an easy thing to do.
21:29I mean, I'm super lucky.
21:30I've got a great bunch of people around me that kind of like get it
21:34and they are prepared to roll up their sleeves.
21:37And we're doing, it's so exciting because we're doing so much.
21:40If I look at, compared to Pay TV I've been in before,
21:45here I've got a radio brand which has 80% of all the ears of Malaysia.
21:5311 brands, 13 if you include the splinters.
21:59That's just fantastic.
22:00I'm learning radio on site, which is great.
22:04We make over 74%, I think we're at at the moment,
22:08of the local box office movies.
22:12And it's kind of like the, I say it a lot to the team,
22:17Astro is really such a part of the fabric of society here
22:21that it's a privilege.
22:23But without Astro, a lot of what Malaysians take for granted
22:28simply wouldn't be.
22:29Example for you, the local box office wouldn't exist
22:33were it not for us doing that movie.
22:35So how are the cinema chains and things surviving without us?
22:39Most of the viewing from, I mean Media Prima makes some great stuff,
22:42RTM too, but most of their viewing is because we have a distribution platform
22:47to get them the eyeballs that they need.
22:50So it's kind of like a, I don't know, a privilege and a duty
22:55that we feel to be, because we're so embedded,
22:58compared to most of the places, most of the pay TV places
23:01that I've worked.
23:02You go to the UK, even though Sky is an incredibly good company
23:06and dominates the landscape now, people still, it's BBC, right?
23:09BBC is the main thing.
23:11Right, okay.
23:12So of all the things that you're talking about,
23:14what's happening around the world,
23:16but what excites you the most, though, if you were to...?
23:20Are we talking about Astro now?
23:22Yes, still Astro.
23:23Okay, we're still Astro.
23:24Still Astro.
23:25So I get excited by the way that we're driving our content slate the most.
23:32So the top three most watched dramas this year are all Astro.
23:36That's a first for, like, decades, yeah?
23:40Last year?
23:41Decades.
23:42This year, year to date, the most watched top three dramas.
23:46So when you look at that and you look at how we're building other,
23:50say, Tepat Takraw, which we've built from nothing,
23:53the Malaysian Football League, which we're growing engagement in ground,
23:57we're growing engagement on screen, et cetera,
23:59we're really helping build it.
24:01Those things, building content that resonates with the whole country,
24:06is super interesting to me.
24:08The next thing that we need to do is, if you ask anybody in this business,
24:14hopefully they'll tell you that Ewan only wants to spend money on three things,
24:17content, products, and marketing.
24:20So the next thing that we have to do is make all the back end even more efficient.
24:24We're on a journey to do that, and we've already done some really good stuff,
24:27but we're on a journey to basically get all of the back end cost
24:31as low as we possibly can so that we can just focus on those three things.
24:35And that means the next step for us is,
24:37because we've done the usual efficiency thing and some automation machine,
24:41but the next thing is AI.
24:43So when I play around with things like VO2,
24:46which is the new Google AI video creator,
24:50when I play around with some of the other tools that are out there,
24:52you can see so much opportunity and possibility
24:56to be able to do things quicker, faster, better, more,
25:01using those tools than we do today,
25:03whether that's in the content space or the marketing space.
25:06Is this the scariest?
25:07I mean, we've seen and been in the industry for a long time, right?
25:10Yeah.
25:11This seems like, I mean, scariest or the most exciting,
25:14but do you think we're just like...
25:17I think this is the scariest thing for a pay TV operator since Netflix.
25:24Right.
25:25Because Netflix went from, who are these jokers
25:27that are just giving us a bit of extra money to, oh my God,
25:30Orange is the New Black and House of Cards,
25:32and suddenly, whoa, whoa, these people have a business model.
25:35Their cost to operate is like a fraction, a fraction of ours.
25:39So I think it's scary from that point of view,
25:42but we're kind of riding that wave, ridden that wave sort of thing now,
25:47and now the OTT that we're doing and the content that we're making,
25:51content that we make goes up on our platform,
25:54it gets the top tens on our platform sort of thing,
25:57and then we've sold some of it off to,
25:59so Project High Council and things like that,
26:01we've sold it off to Netflix, guess what?
26:03It gets on the Netflix top tens as well.
26:05It's really strong, really good content.
26:07So the storytelling element, I think, will always be human,
26:12and if you don't eat your own lunch,
26:17if you're not prepared to cannibalise,
26:20someone's going to do that for you.
26:22Back in the early days of Sooka, I heard it's going to cannibalise,
26:26it's going to cannibalise, it's going to cannibalise,
26:28and the answer is either we can do it to ourselves
26:31and then we can try and drive new markets and drive new eyeballs
26:34that for whatever reason don't engage with Astro,
26:37either we can try and do that for ourselves
26:39or someone's going to come and do it for us.
26:41Which would you prefer?
26:42And I think that's the same with the whole AI thing,
26:44is either we embrace AI or we're going to become irrelevant,
26:47so we'd better get after it.
26:49Right.
26:50You know, you've worked with different companies all around the world,
26:54from Greenland to Australia.
26:57What's it like?
26:58Do you think culture makes a difference
27:01or some things still are the same, human nature,
27:05in the way you lead?
27:07Everything's different and everything's the same.
27:09Okay.
27:10So, super lucky, this is the ninth country I've worked in.
27:16I remember saying I wanted to work abroad and that was maybe...
27:19Inclusive of Greenland.
27:21Including Greenland, it's nine countries.
27:25I'm not sure that you could call prod trawler emptying a career,
27:29but there you go.
27:31I think, having been in many pay TV markets,
27:37everybody tells you how special and unique their particular market is
27:42and it won't work here, rubbish.
27:45It's the same absolutely everywhere.
27:48There are the occasional twists with, you know,
27:51vernacular languages and those kinds of things,
27:53but fundamentally people want to watch great content
27:57and I don't think the consumer is very different wherever it happens to be.
28:01The amount of money they have in their pocket differs for sure
28:05and their priorities sometimes different in terms of their spend,
28:08but fundamentally if you're making great content,
28:11yeah, sports or local content, or you're bringing great content,
28:15the best of the content from overseas,
28:17people watch you wherever you are.
28:20And in terms of my leadership style,
28:23I don't think I could be anybody other than who I am.
28:26Because, you know, what's the famous saying?
28:29Everyone else is taken, so you might as well be yourself.
28:32For me to try and change my leadership style and approach,
28:37so, you know, there's people that have come with me,
28:40that have been with me in Germany and been with me in Australia.
28:42My CTO has been with me, poor guy.
28:45I think it's Stockholm syndrome.
28:47He's been with me since 2010 now,
28:49dragged him with me around the world.
28:51But he'll tell you that the stories that I tell,
28:53because I always, when I'm building a team,
28:55I try to get, the team has to have a language.
28:58Okay.
28:59So that they can kind of empathize.
29:02It's how we grow as a society and grow as humans, yeah, is stories.
29:06So the team needs to get a bunch of stories and language together.
29:09Well, the stories that I tell in Astro,
29:11whether it's the 72nd monkey, or it's Dave, or it's the 100 monkeys,
29:15or it's any of these things, or it's the kick,
29:18those stories are the same stories that I was telling in Unilever.
29:22And then when I got some more,
29:24when I was telling when I was in Sky Germany,
29:27because you're making universal points about anybody.
29:33The Dave story is about a guy who drives a truck for Jordan,
29:38the racing company.
29:41Story short, his actions win the race.
29:45Right.
29:46Yeah, but he's a truck driver.
29:47So you go, well, how can that possibly be?
29:49The point of the story is,
29:50it doesn't matter where you are in this organization.
29:52Yeah.
29:53You can be the guy that puts the gold medal around the driver's neck.
29:56Yeah.
29:57And so then that's a universal story.
29:59Yeah.
30:00That story works in Malaysia and it works in Australia and it works in Germany
30:03and it works in France and it works in Denmark.
30:06Now, okay.
30:07You sit on several boards, right?
30:09One of which is Equinox Kombucha UK.
30:11Yeah.
30:12What interests you about this company?
30:14Go buy Kombucha right now.
30:16Go buy it, go buy it.
30:17Oh, this is amazing.
30:19So this is kind of like in part this is my give back.
30:24Okay.
30:25So I was dragged up in a pretty depressed part of Yorkshire for quite a lot of time,
30:30Huddersfield and Halifax.
30:32It is the UK.
30:33It is the UK.
30:34And it's Yorkshire, right?
30:36So this is a deep valley full of mills.
30:39There's quite a lot of drugs there.
30:41There's quite a lot of unemployment.
30:43Yeah.
30:45And in the middle of it is a Kombucha factory.
30:50Right.
30:51So the story short is, oh, story long, story short.
30:54Let me try and get the short version.
30:57A guy called Dan goes to find himself in Brazil doing all the plant medicine stuff in 2016,
31:03meets two people, Joanna and Andrew, who are cooking Kombucha.
31:08They're hippies and they're cooking Kombucha in their home,
31:12which is in a place called Mythenroyd in Yorkshire.
31:15He goes back, realises, because he's looking at Kombucha in Whole Foods in the US
31:21and he's looked at it in Australia, and he's like, why is there no Kombucha in the UK?
31:26So he takes a lot of the money that he made from Barclays investment, yeah,
31:30and puts it in.
31:32Well, the clock forward two years and he's won the Waitrose account, you know,
31:36the supermarket.
31:37So he's won the Waitrose account.
31:39So now we have a proper business on our hands.
31:41So a couple of people come in to invest, and those people demand that.
31:48There's more professionalism and there's more policies and procedures and things,
31:52and they want quality awards and they want sustainability.
31:55So Dan suddenly is looking at, I'd better stop this being a kitchen business
31:59and I'd better man up.
32:00So his best friend is a lady called Genevieve, my wife.
32:07So he asks Gen, who she knows, and Gen has a background in sustainability.
32:12So Gen joins the company.
32:15So at that point in time when she joined, I invested into the company,
32:19the first investment.
32:21Roll the clock forward now.
32:23Business has grown like crazy.
32:25We've just won Sainsbury's.
32:28We did about 2.5 million in revenue, sterling revenue, two years ago.
32:32We did three, three-ish this year.
32:35We're set to do five in the coming next year.
32:38We employ 40 people in this factory.
32:41It's a cracking little operation.
32:43The product is, it's a third of the sugar of pop or soda,
32:47and yet it's so good for you.
32:49And it's got a great taste.
32:51We genuinely, we're in all the best taste in the market.
32:54We're number two in the market at the moment by sales volume.
32:57And the beautiful thing about Equinox is that from where I used to live
33:01on a hill in Yorkshire, if I just took the handbrake off in my car,
33:06500 meters later I would hit the factory, down the hill and hit the factory.
33:10So it feels like it's kind of like give back.
33:13And it was in 2022 when we did the last raise,
33:18and I was putting money in all the time.
33:20I got over the threshold, got up to 10%, and so they put me on the board.
33:24Right, okay, so a far cry from the Astro activities.
33:27Massive far cry.
33:29It's a huge, it's a far cry, yeah.
33:31What keeps you grounded?
33:32What do you do on a daily basis?
33:35On a daily basis?
33:37You know, like a routine.
33:40So I will always try, I try and do some kind of exercise every single day.
33:46So I have an amazing PT that comes and hurts me twice a week.
33:51I run, so I run twice a week.
33:54I've been doing half marathons the course of the last year.
33:58And I go to hot yoga every Sunday morning whenever I can.
34:03Yeah, it depends where I am in the world,
34:05because not everywhere has a hot yoga studio,
34:07but there's a fabulous place down in Bangsar that I go to.
34:10Those things are all to get me into the present and out of my head,
34:16because there's so much churn goes on,
34:18you know, not just you, Inter, but everyone's head.
34:20There's so much churn goes on.
34:22I find meditation I'm terrible at, hopeless at meditation.
34:27I've tried it a number of times.
34:29I find the best thing for me is get exercise,
34:32get your heart rate above 150, get sweaty,
34:36and the problems, they just disappear for a while, which is great.
34:41So that's what I try to do.
34:43Totally agree with you.
34:45A book or a movie that you've watched or that's resonated with you?
34:51The thing that I watched most recently,
34:53I re-watched the entirety of The Trip.
34:56The Trip and then The Trip to Italy and The Trip to Spain and The Trip to Greece,
34:59because I find it both profound and incredibly funny.
35:03It's Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon.
35:06The last book I read, well, there's a couple of books that I've read.
35:12When I'm not doing this, I'm rewilding a patch of land by me in the UK,
35:18and there's a book called Feral by a guy called George Monbiot
35:23who just describes the process and why we need to do this so beautifully well.
35:28I am a massive Tim Ferriss fan,
35:31so I will devour pretty much anything that Tim does.
35:34I try to do the Andrew Huberman and people like that,
35:37but Tim's been doing it for so long.
35:39I read his four-hour work week in 2010, I think,
35:42and I've read just everything he has to say I think is fantastic.
35:46Him and his sidekick, not sidekick,
35:48but the guy he has regularly on called Kevin Rose.
35:51I think they're both absolute rock stars.
35:53And the other thing that I would say, which I've started gifting a lot,
35:58is a little bit more spiritual, is Illusions by Richard Bach,
36:02which is the book he wrote after Jonathan Livingston Segal.
36:06I go back to that all the time.
36:09I've probably read that book a hundred times.
36:11I just find that there's a story about beings clinging to rocks
36:16and there's a story about this guy that he doesn't want to be the messiah,
36:20but they're making the messiah.
36:22I think there's so much profound wisdom in that book.
36:27And you see something new in it every time?
36:30Every single time.
36:32They have in the book these little epithets and stuff.
36:35It's a bit like a fortune cookie thing.
36:38And every single one that he opens, each time I open,
36:41there's something new there,
36:43because there's probably about 40 or 50 different ones of them.
36:46So I always, always go back to that.
36:49Final question, Ewan.
36:50What legacy do you hope to leave behind at Astro and in the industry?
36:57I would like...
36:59No, we're going to make sure that...
37:01Let's change the language, Ewan.
37:03We're going to make sure that Astro is a thriving business
37:06and continues to be the fabric of Malaysia.
37:10But I want to go bigger than that.
37:12Before I arrived in-country,
37:15I've been in the business 20-odd years.
37:18Nobody had ever said Malaysia was a place to make great content.
37:21Right.
37:23And having got here,
37:25the creativity and the innovation is as good as anywhere.
37:28I would hold 1 Cent Thief,
37:30and I'd hold things like Kaha and Sheriff.
37:32Both in storytelling and in production quality,
37:34they're as good as anything.
37:36And you can see that, because when you put them on Netflix,
37:38they do incredibly well.
37:40So it's not good enough, I think,
37:43that Astro just looks after Malaysia.
37:45I'd like Astro to be the flag carrier
37:47to take Malaysian content.
37:49I'd like us to become the next Korea.
37:52Right.
37:53Now, that requires an absolutely huge effort.
37:56Everyone nods politely when you're in the room.
37:58All the regulatory and the governmental bodies,
38:00they nod politely when you're in the room.
38:02But if you want to be Korea,
38:04you have to have a plan.
38:06And you have to have kind of like a decade's worth of investment
38:09and just going at it and giving all the grants
38:11and making sure that things happen
38:13and having milestones like Parasite and Squid Game for Korea.
38:16You have to develop that overall plan.
38:19But if I could put the Malaysian content industry on the road
38:23to becoming the next Korea,
38:25that would be immense.
38:26Right.
38:27Back to your point earlier on,
38:28content, product, and marketing.
38:30Absolutely.
38:31We need to get good at that.
38:32Thanks.
38:33I've really enjoyed the conversation and learning from you.
38:35Lovely to talk to you.
38:36Of course.
38:37Well, to talk at you, sorry.
38:38Of course.
38:39You've been watching Live Confessions Season 3.
38:46See you next time.
38:47Bye.
38:48Bye.
38:49Bye.
38:50Bye.
38:51Bye.
38:52Bye.
38:53Bye.
38:54Bye.
38:55Bye.
38:56Bye.
38:57Bye.
38:58Bye.
38:59Bye.
39:00Bye.
39:01Bye.
39:02Bye.
39:03Bye.
39:04Bye.
39:05Bye.
39:06Bye.
39:07Bye.
39:08Bye.
39:09Bye.
39:10Bye.
39:11Bye.
39:12Bye.
39:13Bye.
39:14Bye.