He Bought an Airline for $0.30 (and made BILLIONS) | Tony Fernandes

Hey guys, welcome back to the show. Imagine buying an airline for just 30 cents and $10 million in debt, three days before 9-11, and then somehow turning it into one of the largest carriers in Asia. Today, I'm joined by Tony Fernandez, the visionary founder who transformed AirAsia into a powerhouse brand, serving nearly 100 million passionates a year. From a background in music and media to reinventing air travel across Southeast Asia, Tony's story is one of bold bets, resilience, and relentless focus on culture and growth. So in this episode, you're gonna learn how Tony spotted opportunities others overlooked, the unconventional growth strategies he used to scale fast without outside capital, and how he thinks about branding and focus and leadership in a way very few entrepreneurs ever do. Hear the stories, learn the proven methods, and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to the Founder Podcast with Nathan Chan. The first question that I ask everyone that comes on is how did you get your job? Wow. Well, I was in the music business for 12 years. I was an accountant before that. And I was in 2001. It was the beginning of this digital age. And Napster had come along and Spotify was just starting. And I thought, wow, this is super exciting for the music industry. But I was a lone voice. No one at Morning Music or Time Warner, which became AOL, which was an internet company, thought it was a good idea. They thought the internet would destroy music. My premise, which was that you can't hold technology back and that this was a fantastic distribution model to create more revenue. I was a lone voice, as I said earlier. So I decided that, cutting a long story short, I also was very against the AOL merger and I just quit in New York. I flew to London, singing in a bar, having some alcohol, thinking what am I gonna do for the rest of my life? Shall I set up Founder Magazine or shall I become an accountant again or shall I start my own record label? And while I was there, I saw Stelios, who owns an airline called EasyJet in the UK. I didn't see him. I saw him on TV. And I always liked planes. I always, from a very, very young age, I told my dad I'm gonna own an airline one day. That's one of those things you say that you're not entirely convinced you're gonna do, but I said it. And so I thought, well, this could be the time that I told my father I was five years old, I'm gonna start an airline. So I took a bus from, I was in a pub in Hampstead up to Luton Airport and was blown away. People were flying to Barcelona for eight pounds, to Paris for six pounds. Everything was orange. And I had never heard of a low-cost airline. And I thought, what an amazing concept. And so there's a very fine line between brilliance and stupidity. It's very narrow. And I thought, I'm gonna do this. You only live once. If I fail, I fail. It's okay. I'll go get a job doing something else. But I didn't want to sit there at 55 and say, I wish I did it. So I came back to Malaysia, got a meeting to see the Prime Minister along with a couple of my other partners, and he gave his blessing. But he said, no new license, you gotta go buy an airline, which was the best thing ever because we had no money to start an airline anyway. So we ended up buying AirAsia three days before 9-11 for one ringgit, which is about 30 Australian cents, and about 10 million of debt. And on December the 8th, 2001, we took over AirAsia with 265 terrified staff because they'd only seen me on music TV shows and now as the owner of their airline. I'd taken over from a very large company in Malaysia, which made cars and all kinds of things. So I think there was a lot of nerves of, who is this character? You know, we're going from a very solid base. We're not doing anything. We're not making any money, but we're getting paid every month. To some guy who's got no experience in the airline business, no money. And I think they were very nervous, but you know, we've had a great run since then. Yeah, so talk to me around, like, what has been kind of some of the fundamental growth strategies that you've been able to apply to, you know, in 2017, you flew over 70 million passengers. Yeah, actually we'll do 90 as a group, which to me, I mean, the fourth largest airline in Asia, only the Chinese airlines are bigger, but they have an inherent advantage of 1.3 billion people in their country. So that's a slight advantage. But yeah, I mean, I think two bits to growth, which I think may be useful to your listeners, which is not directly answering your question. But the first thing is growth is critical in a startup because ideas are never exclusive and you can't patent everything, right? Anyway, this is not my idea. It came from Southwest and Ryanair and EasyJet. So it was very clear to me once we started moving that this wasn't something I was going to pussyfoot around. I had to put the foot in the accelerator because there were some big mamas around me in SIA and Malaysia and all who could replicate this model and put us out of business. So while it's not answering your question directly, I think it's useful for your viewers that when you have something, scaling up is important. Where did I see the growth? There was one figure that hit me when I started this airline, only 6% of Malaysians flew. So I had a market of 94% apart from the 6% who may have flown once a year or once every two years, right? Second was I saw a fantastic market, which no one else saw, which was Southeast Asia, ASEAN. Everyone was fixated about China and India. And I was like, well, we got like 700 million people here. So that's where I predicated my story, Ryanair, from very early days. I talked about ASEAN, ASEAN, ASEAN, and a lot of our growth has come from destinations that no one did before. So when you took over the company, you didn't know anything about? Zero. Only stewardesses. So did you look at companies like Southwest? Yeah, 100%. And you're like, this is a good model. Yeah, well, EasyJet was the first start. Yeah. And then I flew my music contacts. Yeah. You know, I know you two very well. And they mentioned Ryanair to me. Edge mentioned Ryanair to me. And I went over to Dublin, stayed in their hotel, the Clarence Hotel, and flew Ryanair. And I thought this was even better model. Yeah. I had bought Herb Kelleher's book. So those were the kind of three inspirations. I never read books. This was the only book I ever had read since Wilbur Smith and Geoffrey Archer when I was 15. And coupled with flying on Ryanair, which I thought was an incredible model and obviously EasyJet. And how'd you learn? Like, did you have mentors or anyone that- Yeah, well, I had, well, you learn, the ability to learn is the ability for you to want to learn. So I really threw myself in, right? I mean, I was sitting with engineers, I was sitting with pilots, I went to simulators, I learned how to change a wheel, I, you know, hang out with cabin crew. So I was a sponge. Yeah. I took everything in. But look, I had a great mentor in Conor McCarthy, who was a CEO of Ryanair and had left to set up his consultancy and GE Capital had introduced me to him. And he was a fantastic teacher, mentor, less a mentor, more a teacher in terms of giving me the model and a fantastic partner. He became a shareholder in AirAsia. Yeah. And, hey, Founder Fam, I want to take a quick break from the conversation to talk to you about something super exciting. We're officially partnered with OmniSend, the email marketing and SMS platform built specifically for e-commerce founders. We've been recommending OmniSend to founder students for a while now, because it just works. Whether you're launching your first store or you're scaling to seven figures, it really helps you automate your marketing and get real results. Did you know on average, OmniSend customers make $68 for every $1 they spend, which is an insanely good return on investment. And because you're part of the founder community, you get 50% off your first three months with the code Founder50. Just head to OmniSend.com forward slash founder without the E to get started. All right, now let's jump back into the show. To fuel growth, you talked about when you're first starting and you're building this startup, you've got to grow and you've got to scale this thing. Have you guys accepted outside capital funding to scale? No, we didn't. I mean, when you look at today and you see some of these business models, I mean, let's be real, right? You three guys from the music business coming in to start an airline, it's not the most convincing business case, right? So, I was involved with Ruard and Wendy Matthews and Inexcess and Crowded House and suddenly I'm talking about airline. So, no bank gave me a cup of coffee. Did we want capital? Of course, but we didn't have it. But again, that should be a motivational to any of your listeners that we built a massive airline with very little capital. Right now, when I look at all these unicorns now, look at Grab, I was with Anthony Tan yesterday. It's raised 6.8 billion. I mean, that's more than my market cap right now. We did one $30 million after about three years and then we did the IPO. That's it. We've never raised capital since then. And do you think that startup should look more to self-fund and just sacrifice profit for growth? Yeah, I'm old fashioned in that aspect. This new business model is subsidized growth, right? You give away things to build up the customers and we're going into that model with some of our digital ventures, but we have customers from AirAsia. So that, but I'm an old fashioned guy. I believe in cash. I believe in making some profits, right? Yeah. I don't understand some of these tech models. Obviously, a lot of them have gone on to great things like Amazon, et cetera. But I sit there and look at some of these food delivery services and look at their valuations and I think, wow, it's scary because where's the profitability going to come from? And yet people are throwing money at it. Crazy. So if you have a model that you can make money, make money. And of course, reinvest some of that money, which we did. We could have been, you know, we were invested in building an academy because you can have all the metal you want, but if you don't have the right people, then forget it. We reinvested in, you know, sponsoring to make our brand bigger, et cetera. But it's not always about outside capital, but build a business that's robust and can stand on its own two feet without outside funding. So talking about the digital side, you guys are starting to kind of go vertical and, you know, look at your existing customer base and how can you further serve them? Yeah. I mean, there's two parts to this digital strategy. One is digitizing everything that's in our company, right? So we make processes and make it more efficient to work here and digitize it so our passengers have a better experience. The third part of this digital strategy is to develop new businesses using the data and creating a travel ecosystem that people will use us for things that they may have used other people for, whether it's booking train tickets when you arrive in Melbourne or a concert ticket or having financial services, you know, foreign exchange, et cetera. So we're using and building platforms that will provide more value to my customer, not lessor a link to the airline, but link to the travel ecosystem. And it's exciting vision implementation is, you know, it's easy to talk an idea. So I rather do it and then talk about it, but there's a huge potential if we can execute well. So you guys are spending a significant amount of improving and digitizing internally here and then turning that cost center into a profit center by using that. Correct, correct. So I think, yeah, we've, the first thing is to get the data right. So we've spent over the last two years with Palantir and Google getting all the data right. And then we start using that data now. You know, it's a phenomenal time to start a business and be in business, but the cost of entering a business has come down so radically with digital tools. Even in my old business in music, you know, you can record an album at home now with pro tools and your own, a very simple board. And if you think of AirAsia, what was the key differentiator from us and all the other airlines, we use the internet. Back in 2001, most people didn't even have internet here, but I said, trust me, when I put a fare at two Australian dollars, people are gonna find their way to the internet. I created the demand, right? And everyone said to me, oh, no one's gonna use the internet. You know, you put the right offer, people will find a way there. And so, and I was very religious about keeping our data. And I didn't have the foresight that we're gonna have this huge data revolution, but I wanted to keep the contact with my customer. I didn't wanna be a middleman. I didn't wanna have the travel agent have the relationship. I wanted to have the relationship. And that's good and bad. If you look at our Facebook, we'll have, I don't think it's bad by the way, but we have thousands of complaints there because we're very accessible. And I tell my staff, why are you complaining? Because that's free market research. That's telling you what's wrong with our airline and you should be fixing those issues. And my TV screen, which is down at the moment, is the complaints board because I keep telling my staff that's free market research. So we were early into the game with data through the internet. Why I say it's a great thing is we were seven generations ahead of Qantas and MAS and SIA who had huge legacy systems. So we could be very nimble. And so again, for entrepreneurs now, the tech world has given a huge opportunity to start doing some great things. And coupled with, I'm going away from your question, but kind of relating to your audience, great ideas are great ideas only, and they stay as great ideas until people know about them. And too many great businesses don't spend enough time on marketing and branding, right? And I think keep a budget for that. Keep, you know, because the world, there's a lot of things happening right now and a lot of distraction points where last time you could just go and advertise on TV or do a newspaper interview and everyone would know about you, it's dispersed. And I see too many great companies who don't put enough into branding and marketing. In the early days, what kind of percentage or split could you say, like just an estimate? Well, we didn't have much money, but it's not always about money. I mean, you know, where this came from was, it wasn't my idea, but our head of marketing then said, look, Tony, you know, wear this cap everywhere and say controversial things, and then the press will take pictures of you, right? I said, okay, that was quite easy. It came natural to me. I'm good at pissing off people. So that's how the hat came, right? I don't wear it often now because everywhere I walk, someone says, can I have it? So it's become costly now. But that was the simplicity of marketing. And, you know, when we saw social media, we leaped on it before anyone knew what it was. You know, we saw Facebook as enormous opportunity. And, you know, I have 1.3 million followers on Twitter. And I started that very early on. I thought social media was immensely popular. So it's not always about dollars and cents, but invariably you do have to spend. And we sponsored Manchester United, you know, when we were a tiny little brand, you know, which was painful was I hate that football club, but you gotta be a prostitute once in a while. So, you know, you, they're very, I think PR is a great way of getting efficient brand spend, right? So I can't remember the exact percentage, but we were always from a revenue standpoint, 5, 6%, but the PR value and the sponsorship value was much greater. Yeah, I see. One thing that I've seen, and this is a common one across our audience is, you get one product out, it's doing well, right? But then how do you know when to take focus and add on another product? Because focus is so key. And, you know, with the way that you guys are expanding and doing all these different things, and so many opportunities to grow in Asia, how do you know which is the right one to pursue? That is, you don't, ultimately. So let me take, so we have so many products now, but let's take, when I first started, we had four destinations, right? That was our product, flying to these four places. And so the first big decision is adding another frequency. I mean, that was a big decision, right? Kota Kinabalu, we fly twice a week, twice a day. And we were like, oh, third time, can we do it, right? And you can do all the market research you want, but you just got to go with your heart sometimes and do it, right? Now we have 20 flights a day now, but, you know, sometimes you can be paralysis by analysis and do too much research. So you got to go with your gut sometimes, but you got to keep reinventing yourself, right? So we couldn't stand still. We kept adding routes and adding new destinations. And the product for us was going to places that no one else wanted to go. Now we're doing it in Australia. We're going to go to Avalon, right? And most people, I don't understand people in Melbourne because it's like, they say it's far away. I'm like, come to Jakarta. I've never flown through Avalon. I know, I know, you guys are spoiled. You can walk everywhere. You don't know what traffic is like, right? So by Avalon, it's like, wow, the way someone in Melbourne says it, it's like it's in another universe, right? And I went there, like, it's like 25 minutes. So, okay, you go for a few farm fields, but we're doing that. We're doing that. We're not worried about it. We're excited about it. I know some of the guys in Australia are a bit nervous, but I think it's going to be a big hit. And so product is about doing things differently as well. It's about reinventing yourselves. So we had a product going to Melbourne, you know, and we decided, well, we're going to take that product and be more adventurous and have the ability to lower the fares and hopefully grow the market even more by going to Avalon. So, but you have to keep renewing yourself. The world is littered with products that didn't reinvent themselves, right? Blackberry. I mean, that was the king. Yeah. Nokia, who can believe a world without Nokia phones, right? They were it. So, you know, I think it's important that you keep looking and it's hard. It's hard to, you're making good money today. It's like, whoa, why do I want to take that money and reinvest? But if you don't, you die. Because you're only as good as tomorrow. Talk to me about culture. Sorry, going back. It's important. I'm also not saying that do 25,000 products, right? Focus is key. And my life has been anything but focused in some ways. And I failed miserably. You know, go start a football team, go do Formula One. And, you know, when you try to do it yourself, it fails. The football club's doing better now because there are other people running it as opposed to me trying to do an airline and a football club. So focus is important. Yeah. It is important. You have to live within your means and live within your resources. But you also can't stand still. It's a balance. Life is a balance. Everything you do is a balance, right? So coming back, just talk to me about culture and team. Like, what are the things you guys are doing? It's the most important thing in AirAsia. It is. You know, and everyone's going to talk about it. And when I say it, people are going to say, I'm going to sound like Miss World, right? Nelson Mandela or something. But it is what it is. The culture, we have 24,000 people. You know, Alan Joyce or Robert Milton came to visit me once. And they were walking around the office and pilots were coming up to me and shaking my hands and taking my pictures. And they were like, wow, this is a new experience. And I said, what do you mean? He said, your pilots actually like you. They want to kill us. So I was like, oh, really? And so culture is really important to me. We have, as I said, 24,000 staff, no unions, there's transparency, there's trust. It is by complete choice that we're open plan. Because when you have an office, you create all these invisible walls. People say, I have an open door policy, but the door's closed, right? And some guy will say, oh, his office is bigger, this is wider, and this faces the sun. So one day I just came in and smashed all the offices. I brought a contractor in and just tore them all down. And then we've been open plan ever since. So culture is, I think, the single most important thing in the success of AirAsia. Yes. What is culture in AirAsia? Transparency, openness, 20,000 brains working for us as opposed to 10. Chris told me nothing about this interview. I was just commanded to come here. You're an important magazine. They like you, they think it's great. I came, right? I mean, I see other CEOs, we get briefing, this, that. I mean, he's basically telling me, hurry up with your interview. They're waiting, he's pointing time. He said, so we're a fairly flat structure in that aspect. And I think most Asian companies, the top 10 decides everything and the rest are implementers. I like to think that we utilize everyone's brain. Teamwork is critical. It's a problem in AirAsia because we've got big and politics and bureaucracy creeps in. There's 20 camps in Australia and there are only 20 people. Trying to keep everyone together is a problem. But it's not something I want to run away from. I confront it because bureaucracy and politics is the cancer of any organization. So we confront it, we deal with it. We have a culture department, we have lots of parties because alcohol is a great leveler in bringing everyone together. We put everyone in the same office, right? I don't think there are many airlines. When you walk around, you've got pilots, cabin crew, accountants, everyone's in the same building. Everyone eats in the same place. Everyone goes to the same gym. I want people who believe they can do a lot more and grow and develop in this company. We have boys who've carried bags for us who are now pilots. We have the largest percentage of female pilots of any airline in the world. When I joined, there were no female pilots. And I said, why are there no female pilots? And it can never be repeated what my chief pilot said. And I said, if a woman can run a country, she can certainly fly a plane, right? And so we have many, we embrace diversity. We don't care what race, creed, color, sexual preference you are. And I think that's a strength because that gives us a huge diversity in our workplace and a huge ability to attract great talent and great ideas. So the culture is the single most important. I could spend 20 episodes on it from turning raw diamonds into diamonds, from going outside of the box in terms of recruiting and giving people the ability to find talent in themselves that they didn't even know themselves, just to really grow that whole talent pool that we have. That's actually a good one because for a lot of our audience, they're just getting started. They're starting to build their founding team. Like what advice would you have to a founder or CEO watching this and wanting to help their team do their best work in the early days? Because that's critical, right? Yeah. I think the number one advice is you as a founder or CEO don't know everything and you've got to surround yourself with good people and you've got to be prepared to listen. Too many founder CEOs think they know it all and that's where they lose good people or they just have yes men because they're passionate about what they do. I'm super passionate about everything I do but I also know I don't know everything and so I surround myself with good people. People is, you can have all the ideas you want in the world but execution is what it's about and you need a good team. So the advice, and this is very, I hate advising people because everyone has their own ideas but I can only tell you my own experience is that I have hired people who add value, who are good communicators, who are team players and give them the platform to be the very best and don't feel intimidated and don't hold them back. I think most of the people who started AirAsia with me are still here and a lot have developed into bigger and greater things. And with your personal brand, you have the Apprentice, can you tell me about that? Yeah, that was done by the commercial department. For many years I turned it down because I didn't think I was Donald Trump, right? By the way, he stole my red cap. He saw it when I was wearing it. And we all had an Apprentice get together and I came in with my AirAsia cap so I think he took the idea from me. The make America great one. And where was I? I lost my mind when you mentioned Donald Trump. Apprentice, yeah, so the guys wanted me to do it. I said two, three years I kind of turned it down and then they said it was great for AirAsia, great for marketing. So I did it and I told the producers, look, I can't be Donald Trump and I can't be Alan Sugar. So they said, just be yourself. But you do become a little bit of an asshole when you're in that room. You know, people say, wow, you're really scary in there. And I said, really? I watch myself and you are a bit of an asshole. So yeah, I did it, it was fun. They wanted me to do it again and I've kind of stalled a little bit on it. But yeah, maybe. 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All right, now let's jump back into the show. And one thing that I've noticed as well within today's day and age is consumers are much more interested and concerned with the people and the leadership team or the CEO or founder behind the company. And you see a massive rise in personal brands and all that side of things. Do you think this is something that founders should be focused on in the early days? Or were you, because you had a bit of a personal brand beforehand, like? Each their own, right? Some people can carry it, some people can't, some people feel comfortable with it. Some people can't. So it's definitely worked in our favor. They may not agree, but it's helped, I think. It's dangerous because sometimes you come too synonymous with a brand and when you go, it's like there's a big void, right? So I'm very conscious of succession management. And like we had a press conference today and I made sure I didn't speak and other guys speak and I tried to do less on that front now. But I think it's important. There's never ever a press release in AirAsia that I'm aware of, which doesn't put a name there. I think you have, people wanna know who's behind it, right? You wanna know the captain flying the plane. You wanna know who is behind this, right? So when we had the worst day of my life when we lost the plane, the lawyer said, I don't have to go there. And I said, are you crazy? I have to go, I have to go for my staff and I have to go for the families because I'm the leader of the company and I can't hide behind it. And I can't just say the good things. So I think it's important that people know who you are and you stand behind your brand. I think it's better, but it really depends on the individual, whether they can carry it. But I think if you stand behind your brand, you give it a little bit more confidence, right? You stand behind your brand, good or bad, you're there. And I've had a lot of bad as well, right? So, but people know that I'm there. Have you ever failed? Oh yeah, loads of times, loads of times. But failure doesn't worry me because I'd rather fail than not try at all. Many people are too worried about failure so they don't do anything, right? How many women did you regret not going up and approaching? Thinking, damn, I should have done that, right? But at least if you approached and she said, go to hell, you knew, right? So I think there's, I have had many failures too long for this program. But two things about me in that I don't have any regrets because if I didn't try, I wouldn't know. And to, as soon as I know it's wrong, stick your hand up and admit it and say you screwed up and move on. Too many guys hang in there and don't want to, their ego doesn't allow them, guys and girls, don't allow them to make that mistake. And then they carry on and add more to that error, right? It's an interesting one like persistence versus giving up and moving on. There's a lot of people. Oh yeah, I'm not saying give up straight away but realize when you need to give up. I always say, never say no for an answer and dare to dream and go for it and all those kinds of things. So no, I'm not saying give up straight away but know when you should give up and stick your hand up and say, I give up. How do you know though when to keep going and when to give up? You know in your heart. Yeah, that's not difficult for me. Well, look, we have to work towards wrapping up. I'm curious, what's exciting for you right now? Everything that's going on with AirAsia and. Yeah, this whole digital side is exciting. It's a challenge. We're up against big guys, Fintech, you've got Alipay and I'm like, I don't mind, I'll take them on. Everyone thinks I'm mad, right? I mean, they got a billion users and I got 500,000. But hey, I started an airline with two planes against Singapore Airlines and Malaysian Airlines and all these other big guys. So I'm not worried about that. That's exciting. I love that challenge, right? I could fail, but hey, we'll give it a shot. So that side's exciting. The digital side is really exciting for me. And, you know, a strange way, we've had a tough time in Australia. Tough time, you know. Qantas and all these guys have not made it easy for us. Of course, they'll say, no, we had nothing to do with anything, but everything gets blown out of proportion when it's AirAsia. I mean, really blown out of proportion. And that's because we're good. And so people don't really want us to come in. So I love that challenge. I love the fact we're doing Avalon. That's a big thing for me to do that. And we'd like to do more in Australia. We've hired some Australian crew. We hired some Australian pilots. It's a natural part to be in. So that's exciting for me. You know, doing the tie-out with the surfers in Gold Coast was fantastic. So, but if you push me, this whole digital revolution in AirAsia is exciting. It's irritating some of my guys, because I suddenly say, we're not going to use Microsoft anymore. We're doing Google tomorrow. And they all stab my doll and say he's an asshole. But that's part of the advantage of being the owner that you can do it. And you know, ASEANization, creating one airline. I'm a, I hate race and religion and cultures. And I want to create a multi-ethnic company that, you know, if you look at Emirates and you see they have all kinds of nationalities, but they all gang up together, right? You'll see the Bulgarians on one side and the Australians on another side, et cetera, et cetera. So I want to have a fantastic multi-ethnic diverse company. And I think we're not far from that. And that's exciting to me to show the world what we can do as an Asian company. Amazing. And when it comes to your vision, has it changed since the early days? No. Or it's still? Still the same. It was all about, I thought in the shower, my tagline was now everyone can fly. So it's still that. I wanted to build a brand that was as big as Coca-Cola, which is a huge lofty ambition. I think we've succeeded in parts of Asia that were as well known as Coca-Cola. And my vision was to create a great place to work, a fair place to work, a place where it didn't matter where you went to university, you'd be given a chance. Didn't matter whether you had money and didn't get a great education. But if you had a great brain and you had the will and belief you could achieve anything in this airline. To turn a raw diamond into a diamond is, and we have so many of those. That is, if you ask me, what I'll be remembered for is building a great working environment that created a lot of people's dreams come true, coupled with the other two things. And make sure we have fun, right? That was a fun place to work. We do crazy things like build slides and rooftops with running tracks up there and all kinds of crazy things. So we've got to have fun coming to work. But I think if you were to really push me, it is allowing a lot of my staff here to live their dreams. That would be something that I'd be most proud about. To see Coogan, who is a dispatch boy, who's now a first officer and about to be a captain. Money can't buy that kind of satisfaction when you see that. Wow. I changed his life. That's worth more than all the dollars anyone can give me. Amazing. Well, look, thank you so much for your time, Tony. Pleasure. Last question, what advice would you, well, two more. What advice would you love to just give to finish off to our audience, anyone that wants to start a business, doesn't know where to start, or anyone's just launched, or just found product market fit? And then the last one is, where can people find out more about yourself and NetAsia? Oh, wow. There's enough articles out there, both good and bad. Search Google. Buy my book. I think advice I'd give to any budding entrepreneur is follow your heart. Advice from Tony Fernandez, yourself, or anyone is useful. I got advice from books, et cetera, et cetera, but 90% is just you got to do what you want to do. And if anyone wants to advise you, then they would have done it themselves. You've got to follow your heart and do it, and you've got to be determined to do it. And make that difference. As Nike says, just do it. Second, I reemphasize, keep some money for branding. It's really important. And surround yourself with great people. And have fun. Because it's fun coming to work, right? You don't want to get up in the morning and be, oh my God, you know, I got to see Chris. Have fun, yeah, great, Chris is here. And he's going to drive me mad and say, you're late, come here, be on time. I've got very important PR contact here. So, you know, I think too many business leaders take life too seriously. Too many entrepreneurs get too stressed. And have a balance. You don't have to work 18 hours a day. You know, make sure you give time to your family and your kids and your friends. You haven't worked 18 hours a day to get here? Yeah, I have, I have. But not every day. I had fun. Maybe too much. All right, so if you love this episode, make sure to check out my interview with Alex Hormozy on how he scales companies from zero straight to $2 million a month in less than a year. You were like, how have you achieved what you achieved? But like, there's five years of my life that disappeared. In fact, I lost all the money, which I talk about in the book. I had all the gems, I did the turnarounds, and then I had $0 five years later because of mistakes that I made. But the things that I was gaining was not the money, it was the skills, it was the character traits, and the beliefs.