Mohed Altrad is a self-made billionaire and the World Entrepreneur of the Year 2015, the world's best entrepreneur in that year if you want. I interviewed him in Montpellier, France for my book "The Billion Dollar Secret". In this video that I recorded during our two-day interview, he reveals some of his success secrets and gives advice to ambitious entrepreneurs around the world.
Mohed Altrad on Forbes List of Billionaires:
https://www.forbes.com/profile/mohed-altrad/#5908ca565057
Mohed Altrad on Forbes List of Billionaires:
https://www.forbes.com/profile/mohed-altrad/#92e209c5057e
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Buy the book "Ready, Set, Go!" that I have co-authored with Brian Tracy:
E-Book: https://www.amazon.com/Ready-Set-Special-Entrepreneurs-Professionals-ebook/dp/B078WZXJDW/
Hardcover: https://www.amazon.com/Ready-Set-Go-Nick-Nanton/dp/0999171402/
Get free chapter of my upcoming book about billionaire thinking: http://TheBillionDollarSecret.com
VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION
Hi again from Sicily, Italy. Today I want to share with you the interview I have recorded with Mohed Altrad.
Mohed is a french billionaire with Syrian origin and he is the Word Entrepreneur of the Year 2015.
Meaning the best entrepreneur in the world in that year, if you want. I also recorded a previous video about his 5 careers.
So, if you want to learn more about his background, watch this video. I will connect it here and also you will find the link in the description below this video
Now, I spent 2 days talking to Mohed about his success secrets, about his success methods, about his approach to life, to business
And during that video I recorded some of this questions on video and I want to share his answers with you now.
Stay with me till the other part. There will be a short introduction to who he is and then the interview. See you in the next part.
[Music]
Hi there from Montpellier in France. Behind me you can see the residence of mr. Mohed Altrad.
Mr. Altrad is an extraordinary business personality. He was born in Syria and the day he was born, his mother died.
Hi father disowned him. He was strikingly poor. His grandmother took care of him and forbid him to go to school.
And he actually was escaping every day from home in order to go to school. And he went there barefoot. He was so poor
He wasn't able... he couldn't even afford to buy pencils for school. But he became one of the best students in Syria and was granted a scholarship to go abroad
And he came to France with no money, no family, as an emigrant. And then he studied here and founded first company, a very successful company in tech industry
Which he sold, then he baught a scaffolding company, which he grew hundredfold. The revenues, the sales of the company he grew hundredfold in 30 years.
He took over 170 companies and he is world leader in the industry of equipement of services for the construction industry.
So, really amazing story. Really amazing story and actually last year he became The World Entrepreneur of the Year
Which is, so to say, the best entrepreneur in the world. He was chosen the best entrepreneur in the world.
So, really extraordinary personality, amazing life story and I will be talking to him in just several minutes about his success secrets
About what is it about him what made him so successful, his habits, his thaought patterns, his world view and his belief systems.
All of that I will write about in my upcoming book. See you later and talk to you later!
Hi from Montpellier in the sunny France. Please meet with me mr. Mohed Altrad, a french self-made billionaire, founder and chairman of Altrad Group.
Yes
Altrad Group is a global company offering services and equipement for construction industry. It operates in over 100 countries
And has close to 200 subsidiaries, I guess and is a world leader in its market.
And mr. Altrad was awarded Knight and Officer of the French Legion of Honor and last year was named the World Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst & Young
Wlcome, mr. Altrad!
Thank you.
Mohed, with 17 you were a stranger in a foreign country with no family and no money.
You belong to the group of people who actually built the National Oil Company in Abu Dhabi. So, you are one of the hanful pepole who created their wealth
Wealth of Abu Dhabi, you can say.
Then you built 2 very successful companies and in this company, which you took over in bankruptcy, you managed to grow its business 150 times.
And the growh of your company is still unbroken and last year you became The World Entrepreneur of the Year. So, the best entrepreneur in the world, if you will.
Yes.
It's really amazin and I am speechless about this success. Can you tell us, what decided about this success? What is your success secret?
Yes. The success secret I think is to a humanistic aspect.
One of them is to believe in cultural difference. Secondly also to be open-minded to other intelligence in the world.
And also maybe to be fair with your employees, fair with your supplier, fair with your client.
That is to offer to each party a fair offer with the price you are looking for.
For instance, if you want your employee to be happy I think you should give him a nice salary, nice perspective and then you will be good in what he is doing
Now, if you are disappointed, then you can discuss and change the philosophy of this... change the person, the employees
That's I think the basic philosophy to be fair in your life, to be fair with your employees, with your supplier, with your bank
Why not to give them a nice interest rate? These are I think the basics of this success
So, it's a humanistic. These are humanistic considerations, which we should aim at.
Now, also the philosophy.. the developement of communication, telecommunication. The fact that there are no more frontiers in the world
So, your market is the world and this implicates or dictate a general behavior. Your employee is Chinese, American, German, Australian, whatever.
You have to find fundamentals that could apply to the most number of people possible, of different cultures.
Now, the fact that that you said I am of this philosophy and this philosophy works in which country, it has to apply to another country
That is no longer valid according to me.
One of things that we should aim at also is a company is not living in isolation of the rest of the world. A company is linked to its employees
But behing the employee you have a family, children, wife, relatives and others we have to think about
This chain of people, it's the world and whatever you do in your company, you should never forget that man, a woman who is your employee is part of this world
That dictates our behavior. I take an example. I am the head of Altrad. I have one of our employees.
He is coming in the morning and I see on his/her face that there is something wrong because we have our own problems
We could have sicknesses, we could have problems with our children, with our wife, with our relatives, with our neighbours
We are a human being.
Then if the only thing which is really important, I don't want to interfere the life of this person.
I'm not saying that employer should interfere in their life. It's not that! Just a simple message saying I understand there is something wrong
So, they know you care.
I am available. If you want to discuss or want some help. That's the only thing.
Whereas I saw a lot of management books saying "The time you enter a company, you should forget your problems, personal problems"
But this is simply not true.
It's not human
That's not human. You tell me that why I should forget that my child is sick and failing at school, is not willing to do this or that
You can tell me that. I can say "Yes" but nevertheless this is in me, this is in my heart.
So, this is the several, few little things which are not difficult to find if we think about them because this is simply our life.
So, the major thing is to find a compromise between all these things and you have everything in your hands to succeed.
You are in different culture and in each culture there is something positive. In each culture you have something which is strong
But you are in 100 country, if you try to combine all these and make out of it, something which is stron, which fits in your philosophy
What's your philosophy? Your philosophy is to be a world leader, nothing less than that. To have a powerful company. To have people in it.
The key thing is to have people who are happy in your company. They are happy because they have perspective of career developement
They are happy because they have an incentive. They are happy because you have personal relationship like the one we just described
And then if you have all of that, believe me, you will have success
Ok.
And even on the top of that, if you are shareholder and your objective is just to develop the company,
It's not only to have the maximum profit to put in your pocket. It's not this, because this profit you are injecting, most of it, in the company to develop
So it's a common adventure, a human adventure you could explain to your employees and I'm sure they will work.
Ok. Great. Talking about the culture, Mohed. You were born as a Beduin nomad in desert of Syria. Your mother died and your father disowned you.
And you had really tough start in your life. You experienced poverty, you experienced hopelessness.
And you decided to leave your country and try your luck in another country and many emigrants, millions of millions of emigrants do it now worldwide
Many of them get poorely paid low-level jobs, they don't believe they have a chance to achieve much.
You also encountered scepticism, you encountered discrimination but you are somebody who really proved with your unbelievable success
How far you can get as an emigrant in a foreign country starting with nothing.
So tell me, are they only disadventages of being an emigrant or is there maybe something you can use to your adventage?
When you're in foreign lands, when you try to get along or maybe even to build a business? So, what advise would you give to all these emigrants in the world?
And what message would you send to them?
Yes, first of all, you explained my story in the beginning. If you look at it, it is a serie of adversity. Every time, a lot of adversity at each level
And in my case, starting from the beginning, the death of my mother, the fact that father didn't want to live with me so he casted me away, and so on...
Then coming back to France where you have another problem, which is language. You can't communicate with people, culturally different
And then later on to succeed at the University in education. Then the fact that you don't have money during your early years and the university
I used to have just something like 20 euro a month and have to live with that - to eat, to dress, and so on..
Then later on when I started doing business, I needed banks. No bank could accept to open a bank account because you are immigrant
You are Syrian, you are Arab, you are Beduin and you have this education and you are trying to do business in scaffolding or concrete mixer
It's a combination of disaster according to that.
So I think, back to your question, it's about what are the adversity, what is the stage of your life in which this happened
There is always one solution to get out of it. I'm not saying it's a good solution
When you are at this stage, it's not a matter of having a good life or a very good life. It's a matter of going to death or to life.
This is the thing you see...
Surviving
Yes, surviving! So the scale is not the same. And I went through this all my life. Now things improved,
But believe me this is still flowing in my blood, in my heart. I don't forget this.
So, back to your question again, what advise I get to immigrant? Just hope, just believe. Maybe you will not get a very good treatment
In a country you are trying to live in but you will survive and just keep hoping and then, it's not a guarantee that you will not be alive
Is there an adventages you could actually have as an emmigrant or you can use in a new country
Yes, the advise is to try the understand the culture of a country you are trying to live in
And also, another advise which is... yes I see immigrants in France, they come and they try to get something
But at some stage you have to give also something. You have rights, obviously because a country is hosting you, such as in Germany
But you have also duties, right?
But some time, maybe not the first day, you have to give back something, to work, to produce, to clean the streets, whatever
So, again... you are talking about success. Success is a relative thing. I could be a worker in a factory.
This is my success because I want to design my life like this.
It could be you want to be a head of whatever organization, this is another success.
So we have to be keen about what are the objectives we are setting for ourselves and for the people who are surrounding us
Okay. Last question. What was the most valuable advise for you in your life?
The most valuable advise is again, believe. You should have some faith in what you are doing.
Then again, you should have to produce. What's necessary to succed is effort.
Success is not something that will fall from the sky. It's not that you wake up in the morning and you have a success.
This is something to be built. This is the one thing.
The other thing is to build a successful organization it takes really long time. Successful, sustainable, brilliant organization
And this same organization could fall very quickly. So, that's the rule of the game.
Do you know anybody who you met or who gave you several wise words in your life?
No, not really but I can tell you a story. I met a lot of people who started business more or less in the same time as me
Their aim, their objective is to create an organization they could sell at high price at the given moment.
So, some of them failed immediately. Some of them reached a sort of success and they offer 1 million euro for their business.
This is not enough I carry on. i want to grow it again. And then, maybe few years afet - 100 million euro - not enough, I want billion euro
And then they worked hard to reach one billion euro, unfortunately they failed, they went bankrupt, they got zero.
That's to say... if your aim is to sell a company, an organization, a business that I created and the only objective is money, this is failure
So, what should be the objective?
The objective is to not consider money as an objective. Money is just a sign of success, one of signs of success
The sign of success is the organization to be successful, to be sustainable, in which people are happy
[...] That's the success.
And then tell me whether you have 1 billion euro in your pocket or 2 billion euro... Does it really make difference?
Right.
It doesn't accord to me, but somebody else might tell you this is rubbish what you are saying
Ok, So thank you for you insights, thank you for your wisdom. See you from Montpellier.
Thank you Rafael
Of course I learned much more of Mohed Altrad secrets during the interview. All of them you will find in my book The Billion Dollar Secret
I invite you to check out this book. If you like this video, give me a thumb up. If not, of course, thumb down.
Share it with your friends, with your loved ones, one day they will thank you for that.
I talk here a lot about how the best entrepreneurs in the world think and act. How the self-made billionaires of our times think and act.
I talk a lot about entrepreneurship, about business on the highest level, on the billionaire level.
So, if you liked this video, you will certainly like my other videos. I invite you to watch them. That's it for today from Sicily, Italy.
I wish you a fantastic day. Let's do something extraordinary today.
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