Business Upside [BU]: Did you ever have a backup plan if entrepreneurship didn’t work out?
Adam Azim [AA]: In truth, there was never a backup plan because I had no idea what I was doing in the first place. As soon as I finished grad school almost twelve years ago, I was in no man’s land, without a single clue as to what to do next. So the first thing I did was that I immersed myself into the likes of Sartre, Bertrand Russell, and of course the classics such as Plato and Aristotle and then the medieval works such as Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas and of course Islamic philosophy and then Renaissance and modern philosophy and then postmodern philosophy. I had no idea what I was doing, so there was neither a Plan A per se nor a Plan B. It was simply an immersion into an intellectual and spiritual journey which has persisted to this day. Everything else is secondary or tangential to this intellectual and spiritual and often times musical journey.
[BU]: What was the first business idea you ever thought of?
[AA]: The first business idea which popped up into my head was when I was in college, which was when the whole Afghanistan charade was at a fever pitch. I wanted my parents to enable my entry into it, given their connections, but they could never be talked into it. Not just by me, but by anyone. Lots of businessmen and entrepreneurs approached them with the hopes of talking them into a joint venture of sorts as it pertained to the whole Afghanistan charade. And when you look back at it all, my parents were on the mark. They stuck to their business and profession, regardless of how modest it was at that time, and they kept me in school. And that was the best and safest outcome that could have emerged from all that corruption and madness and insanity. We are as a matter of fact paying the price for all of that corruption and madness and insanity right now with all this ‘DOGE’ business. But we fail to connect the dots and we deny basic history and how a theory of history explains everything for one nefarious reason after another.
[BU]: What’s the biggest challenge you faced in your entrepreneurial journey?
[AA]: The lack of direction and the lack of purpose at the very beginning. But once it became clear that this is a never-ending intellectual and spiritual journey above all else and that everything else is secondary and tangential to this particular intellectual and spiritual journey, I was able to overcome the very acute challenge that was felt from the lack of direction and purpose at the very beginning.
[BU]: What was your biggest mistake that became your biggest lesson?
[AA]: For believing that the grass was greener on the other side. It wasn’t. For instance, immigrants from all over the world have this misconception in their heads that if they come to America, dollars will be hanging from trees like leaves and ready for easy pickins per se. Likewise, as a young person from a minority community and a community of color who basically lived in a cultural or ethnic enclave all his life, I couldn’t tell the difference between what was true and what was not in terms of what was coming out of the mainstream. Now I know it is all one big distortion of reality. And time revealed everything. The grass is far from being greener on the other side. Don’t believe in the propaganda and rhetoric from any side. Don’t believe what anyone says for that matter. Behind all the propaganda and rhetoric is nothing but disgusting and sickening puritanism and provincialism. If there is any culture or color involved, it is used as a prop. Nothing else really. And it is eviscerated of any real essence or substance once it is used as a prop. Simply put, don’t fall for appearances. There’s a huge discrepancy between appearance on one hand and reality on the other hand.
[BU]: How do you keep your ideas fresh and unique in a competitive market?
[AA]: There is nothing new, believe it or not. Anything that is said has been said before. What has long been known in terms of knowledge and ideas often times has to go through a revival. What keeps it all fresh, perhaps, is art and creativity. Complexity and creativity can make a society, and the lack of it will break it. If there is an aesthetic and ethical dimension to the discourse, then it becomes unique. Because in reality, the whole structure is a structure of genocide. And the structure determines everything, including individual personalities in the public sphere. The path dependency and the inability to break out of it all, even though it is now obvious that none of it has worked and it will continue to fail, is genocidal in character and nature. It is a genocidal atrophy and stagnation and laziness and complacency. And when we use the term ‘genocide’ in this case, we do not necessarily mean the literal annihilation or massacre of human beings. At the heart of it all is actually a cultural and epistemological genocide. More than anything else, genocide is actually cultural and epistemological in essence and nature. Hence, the idea or notion of ‘cancel culture’ in recent times. ‘Cancel culture’ is actually nothing new. It is as old as Western colonialism itself, and Western colonialism is at least five centuries old. Behind the overall structure and system is actually a peculiar and specific epistemological scope and status. As Foucault called it, an episteme. Or an “epistemological regime.” Everything is in fact determined and governed by the episteme or “epistemological regime” of one’s time. All the empires of the past had an episteme or “epistemological regime” at the heart of their empire. America has one too, and it has either been lost on America that it has one, or they have been hoodwinked out of knowing they have one.
[BU]: How do you motivate your team during tough times?
[AA]: All of it is overcome by pedagogy and learning, believe it or not. It is about finding the answer to your questions above all else, as one of my grad school professors once told me. It was a valuable lesson. The after-class conversations were often times more valuable than the classes and lectures themselves. As Eleanor Roosevelt said, love is an education in and of itself.
[BU]: What are the three core values that define your business?
[AA]: Culture and faith like we said before, but last but not least, lawfulness. There is a lot of lawlessness now. It is almost as if we are in the midst of a “Hobbesian state of nature” and the breaking of whatever little is left of any notion of a ‘social contract’ or we are on the brink of descending into such a condition and state. And if we do in fact descend into such a state, don’t expect to survive for long. We will all be drawn into it one way or another. No one will be left unscathed by it. Everyone will be impacted it. Unless you are in Afghanistan maybe. Afghanistan is now the safest place on earth. We all used to make a mockery out of Afghanistan because we thought Afghanistan was nothing but war. But now it is perhaps the safest place on the planet. Safer than Europe at least.
[BU]: What’s your ultimate dream project?
[AA]: As I have told certain folks, my favorite modern celebrity of all time was the late great Anthony Bourdain. I have perused the whole subject of ‘art of living’ and bon vivant-ism and epicureanism and all the rest. I have studied it all quite a bit, and I have immersed myself into it quite a bit. I consider myself an amateur or rookie connoisseur of all sorts of stuff. I dabble in a lot of things. And as I have said before, I would never be good enough to fill such shoes, but of course, that would be the ultimate dream project. I believe that would be the dream project for anyone. With the exception of the all-too common nutcases and neurotics and hysterics and warmongers out there, anyone who is capable of at least a little bit of dreaming and imagination would consider that to be the ultimate dream project.
[BU]: How has entrepreneurship changed your personal life?
[AA]: It has made life quite boring and quiet, believe it or not. But boring and quiet is not necessarily such a bad thing. Life is not always entertaining or fun. As Bertrand Russell said, everyone should get used to a little bit of boredom and quiet. The world would be a better place if all the professional and elite murderers and thieves and con artists and propagandists and spinsters of our time who commit their crimes under the guise of prime ministers and cabinet ministers and journalists and podcasters and all the rest would acquaint themselves with a little bit of boredom and quiet. They should learn to sit at home and be quiet. None of them are essential or are required for our survival. We can survive without them. We can do away with power if power can no longer justify itself, which it can’t. It can no longer justify itself. Power was once intended to bring us out of our misery. Now, it is the number one contributor to our misery. We can do away with power. Learn to become acquainted with a little bit of boredom and quiet for once.
[BU]: What’s one failure that taught you the most valuable lesson?
[AA]: The inability to actually make good on a conventional and traditional job application since I finished grad school catapulted me all the way to the top because I had nothing to do except read and write and gain rich and meaningful life experiences which can never be bought or purchased by money. As one law professor said to me and some other students, if you make it all the way to the top, then you can do whatever you want. She never explained what that meant, by the way. She never expanded on it or elaborated on it. Or as Donald Trump said, he who saves his country does not break any laws. But how do you even get to the top? There is a formula behind it. Some people have the formula down. Some are in search of it. But there is a formula to it all nonetheless.
More Information
Company URL: www.adam-azim.com
LinkedIn URL: http://linkedin.com/in/adam-a-azim-94bb111b2
