Natasha Litvinov, Managing Partner, Orchestra Media, Akanksha Goel, Founder & Creative Director, Unlocked Studio, Dr. Parul Thakur, Co- founder and Specialist Dermatologist, Athena Dermatology Clinic and Dr. Ludmila Vassiliev, Cardiologist, Homeopath, Holistic Healing Medical Center LLC.
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00:00Hello again. Again, I will briefly introduce our panel members so we can
00:04get straight into their wisdom and insights. Akanksha Goel, the founder of
00:09Unlock Studio, co-founder of Athena Dermatology, Dr. Parul Thakur, the founder
00:15of the Holistic Healing Medical Center, Dr. Lyudmila Vasilyev and Natasha
00:19Litvinov, managing partner of Orchestra Media. So I wanted to start this one with
00:24a quick fire round of answering what is the biggest challenge for a woman's
00:29CEO? So first of all, thank you for having me in Gulf News and being she. This is my
00:37first time actually been talking at a panel, so I'm really excited to be here,
00:42especially on International Women's Day. So when it comes to facing challenges as
00:49a woman CEO, I think the first thing to remember is that even though we're
00:55making developments daily and minutely and we're very, very fortunate to be in
01:00the UAE where women are very included and encouraged and celebrated, I do feel
01:07a big challenge is just remembering who we are because society has quite deep
01:16embedded norms on what women should not do or cannot do or it's not appropriate
01:22for them to be doing even now. Slowly we're getting out of that, but I feel
01:29like definitely education plays a big role in that. We're very fortunately
01:35being able to start a lot of us as the same line as men. We come from a good
01:41education system, we're able to study with them, we're able to see them and
01:46then we're able to have the same starting line. Because of that, we don't
01:52think what we're doing is any more special, we don't think what we're doing
01:57is any more harder, we're just doing what we're doing the same way they're doing
02:01what they're doing. But a lot of the times I feel like as women entrepreneurs
02:07we need to believe in ourselves and focus on building a company, a viable
02:14successful company full of people that will contribute to our growth in
02:18whatever capacity that may be, rather than looking at societal norms and the
02:24pressure that externally puts on us. So I think definitely half of the challenge
02:30is challenging societal norms and what has been already set for us and then a
02:36lot of that is also challenging yourself and looking inwards and thinking okay
02:41this is what society tells us or okay this is what the precedent is, which is
02:46slowly changing now I must emphasize. But it's also I know I'm capable or I know I
02:54have a dream and I'm able to pursue it. So that that's a big challenge, yeah.
02:59Thank you. Dr. Parul. Well for me personally the biggest challenge has
03:07been balancing the demands of entrepreneurship with my clinical
03:13responsibilities. There are a lot of female dermatologists in UAE, I think
03:18everybody knows that, but there are very few females who are owners of their
03:23clinics and that comes with its special set of problems. I feel we have to be
03:30more assertive, we have to be more forceful to be able to you know build a
03:37relationships with the distributors, the contractors, the million other
03:43people that we have to work with. I do feel that there is a little bit of an
03:48unconscious bias against female owners. We did have a little bit of difficulty
03:56you know trying to get through to secure fundings, however it worked out in the
04:01end because we bootstrapped and decided to go ahead ourselves. So it really is
04:05important to believe in yourselves regardless of whatever biases you might
04:09be facing. I'm a new mom so for me it was also a little bit of a challenge trying
04:17to balance you know the societal expectations, managing a baby, managing
04:20the clinic which is also a baby for me. So yeah that's the main things that I've
04:26faced on a daily basis. Quite a lot of juggling there, congratulations. Thank you.
04:31Dr. Ludmila. First of all thank you so much to invite me on Gulf News and
04:38BNC. I'm actually a big fan of Gulf News, 30 years I subscribe to Gulf News.
04:46And every single patient I suggest to avoid the stress, subscribe to Gulf News.
04:53At least you know the news but you don't see it and you don't get affected
04:59emotionally, but you know all of them. At least you cannot see it and you don't
05:04dramatize a lot of pictures. But it is Gulf News, it is play a lot of role in
05:09society of Emirates and as far as you know in every man, in every woman it is
05:18masculine energy and feminine energy. It's not a man or woman, it is energy
05:24exists as masculine as feminine. And all the world in 21st century exists actually
05:31because men built up such a technology and energy of men to catch, to grasp, to
05:39fight, to kill. But the feminine energy to create, to embrace, to develop, to grow
05:48and to care and to love. But it depends of what type of energy in human, masculine
05:56or feminine. You know so many men is feminine by energy, but they're so
06:04creative. And so many women is masculine and they're not as feminine. As far as
06:16we in 21st century and technology allowed the life to actually to live
06:24much easier because all of them we are for bottom. We no need to milk the cow
06:29anymore, we no need to cut the wood, we no need to ride the horse. Actually
06:35everything belong to bottom. This is why feminine International Woman Day became
06:42rise. Because life became much easier for women. And women have start to have
06:49possibility to create activity out of the home, out of the life. But actually
06:56you know the man is a head of anything, but woman is a neck. Whatever neck Tony
07:03had is followed. In every activity and actually the woman is the one who
07:11create life. Not even one, three, five, ten and care about husband. And at home the boss
07:20is a woman as far as I. Thank you Dr. Lyudmila, thank you. And at business
07:27activity it depends of how you love what you're doing. You don't see challenge, you
07:33see only next step what you need to do. But if you don't love what you're doing
07:39definitely you have challenge which you need to overcome and you need to use
07:43masculine power. 21st century we celebrate International Woman Day, but
07:49actually we not celebrate International Man Day. But it is we are in privileged
07:53woman and not in there. The only point because the previous evolution both
07:59belong to masculine energy, masculine energy. And actually this is why the
08:05feminine energy need to now to prove they are capable to do so much. Thank you.
08:10But the biggest challenge, I like to finalize now, the biggest challenge for
08:14me was established holistic healing medical center as rule and regulation in
08:21this country. And it's take for me seven years to develop it, to initiate it and I
08:28became first time a part. And now back 25 years we celebrate now 25 years of
08:34holistic healing medicine. And holistic actually it is whole, home, hotel,
08:40hospitality. It is whole. When you unite this universal energy and if you know
08:47how to create life and woman can create life, woman can create a new business.
08:52Thank you. Thanks.
08:57Natasha, there's another one there if you want to just over there.
09:08Hello, hello. Yes, this is still me. New year, new color. Both are great. Biggest
09:21challenge. The biggest challenge. Very quickly, I'll try to be as quick as
09:27possible. I became, I become a business owner because I've been, I've cut myself
09:35too many times against the so-called glass ceiling. I was too stubborn, I was
09:41not politically correct, I was never fitting in so to say. And so for me
09:48starting a business 17 years ago was a survival strategy. And then it became an
09:54immense growth strategy. So I encourage women to do it. I've encouraged a lot of
10:01women start to start their own businesses. Some of them are present in
10:04this room to support me. The biggest challenge, it's a book. I think we can
10:11write the book on challenges. But I think the biggest challenge of a CEO is to
10:16find the right balance between intuitive decisions and logical decisions. And over
10:23the years of making multiple mistakes and doing all the crazy things that I
10:28should have never done and entertaining crazy projects and taking out the
10:32customers that I had no business of taking on, I have discovered that
10:36intuitive decisions, the one that really really resonate with your gut or the
10:42source, are the correct ones. And the ones that you think about for too long and too
10:50hard end up not to be the right decision. So to stick with your intuition
10:55throughout the years and learning to act as quickly as possible on your intuitive
11:00decisions, this is like building a muscle in your body. This is the challenge but
11:06once you overcome it, everything becomes easier. The flow of the business starts
11:12and you actually become quite successful when you're when you're intuitive.
11:16I love that advice but I just wanted a quick follow-up there. What happens if
11:21someone comes along and says stop being so impulsive? Stop being so impulsive.
11:30I had a great... Or the voice in your head. It doesn't need to be someone else but
11:36what is this like intuition versus being impulsive? I think over time you
11:44will learn the difference between impulsivity and intuition. The voice is
11:48very different. I had a mentor, Clay Mathieu. Clay Mathieu was a founder of
11:54Yalms and it was a big American company, one of the largest pet food companies in
11:59the world. And he was one of my mentors and he was an amazing mentor. He sold
12:05Yalms to Procter & Gamble for 2.3 billion dollars and he gave me one of the
12:12biggest advice that any mentor has ever given me. He told me, Natasha, the most
12:18important thing in business is to decide what not to do because everything else
12:25will organically follow. So the intuitive decisions of not to do are the first
12:33ones because we all want to do everything and we want to be everything
12:36to everyone and we want to have one service and then all of a sudden we want
12:40to have 25 services because it seems like a good idea at the time. But it's
12:45never the right strategy. The right strategy is to become the best at
12:50absolutely one thing and one thing only and to beat the world in that one thing.
12:55And once you do that, you know the difference between impulse and intuition.
13:00You will know it. You will make a few mistakes here and there and you will
13:03know that your intuition never lies.
13:07Thank you. Dr. Parul, do you have any go-to... I'm asking you because you're
13:14juggling the most at the moment, I think. This is just a quick assumption here.
13:18Any go-to coping strategies when it all goes pear-shaped?
13:23I have a lot of them. So I think to begin with on a daily basis for me, because
13:30there's a lot that goes on in business and in life, practicing mindfulness has
13:37been really, really helpful. No matter how busy the day is, I always start with a
13:41few breathing techniques, planning the day, a little bit of a gratitude journal.
13:47I feel it's also very important to take some short breaks in between, you know,
13:52the humdrums of the daily activities at the clinic, just to sort of get yourself
13:57together, take a deep breath, look back at what's happening, appreciate what's
14:01happening and then restart, sort of reboot yourself.
14:07It's not easy to have a work-life balance with a new clinic, with a new child, with
14:13all of those things together, but it is important that we have some amount of
14:19work-life balance. And that is something that we, me and my co-founder, Dr. Akriti,
14:24have been very, very careful about starting from the get-go. Whether it's
14:29for us, whether it's for our employees, we have always, always emphasised on
14:35having a little bit of work-life balance, no matter how hard things get.
14:40I'm just in awe. I'm just in awe.
14:43Akanksha, I'm interested in knowing how easy it is for you to ask for help. Do
14:49you, when you're at the top, do you worry about perceived weakness?
14:55Yes. To put it in short, yes. Because I feel like when you talk about challenges, like
15:02you did previously, I think perceived weakness and I think work-life balance
15:08are actually the biggest challenges. Especially when you're young and you're
15:16seen, or you should have a very aggressive social life, and instead you
15:21start to work and have a start-up. Definitely, I don't know if weakness is
15:28the right word. I think misunderstanding or misperception would be better words
15:35to describe it. So as amateur as it sounds, it might be very relatable to say,
15:43a few months ago, I was on a flight and I watched this movie called Gran Turismo.
15:48And it was a racing car movie. And there was one challenge when the people were
15:55racing on the track to win the race. Their coach kept telling them,
15:59commit to the curve. And I think for me, committing to that curve is committing
16:05to my business. And in my mind, I'm like a horse right now. I'm just seeing
16:11straight. So definitely, your work-life balance will suffer when you have
16:17such a straight vision. But I think, again, coming back to it,
16:22it's about how you perceive yourself, how you have positive self-talk at times
16:28when people are not talking so positive. And also, when you have the determination
16:35and the courage to achieve your dream. So that's what I have to say about that.
16:40Yeah. Thank you so much. Dr. Lyudmila, work-life balance,
16:46what does that mean in practice for a CEO?
16:50You know, for me, it doesn't exist, work and life balance. Because if you love
16:54what you're doing, it's not a work anymore.
17:00Yes? Okay. For me, a work and life, it's not a balance. Because if you love what
17:06you're doing, it's not a work anymore for you. It is your life, and you don't
17:11have boundary between life and work. It is always with you, and if...
17:19Sorry to say to even you cooking, you create something. But in case if it is,
17:23you don't love what you're doing, it is really hard and really stressful.
17:28But it is my suggestion from doctor point of view, from holistic,
17:32when you know this, everybody can see that stress exists. Can I just disappoint you?
17:42You know, darkness does not exist. It's only lack of light. Turn light on,
17:46where is darkness? It doesn't exist. Stress doesn't exist. It's only lack
17:54of awareness. When you drive first time, can you imagine how was you was in stress?
18:02And what about now? You drive, you eat, you talk, you think, you navigate,
18:07you look at the telephone. If you do first time and you don't know how to do,
18:12definitely it's stressful. But if you know how to do it, and you experience in that,
18:16and you love it, it's not a stress anymore. Actually, it is speed what the people
18:22absolutely misunderstand because life hour is so speedy. And the idea is in 21st century,
18:30all the university teaching you how to manage another life to be profitable.
18:36But actually, no one university teach you how to manage this life.
18:40And this is biological vehicle. This is biological car. We need on time to be
18:46on service. You need every day and eat and sleep and go to bathroom and start again
18:51from the beginning. But if you don't know how to manage your own life,
18:56definitely it's stressful. But it is holistic healing 25 years already in Dubai.
19:02And I design holistic lifestyle, not a diet because we are only 12% food,
19:0870%, 90% we are water. And if you close the nose, this is why breathing is so good
19:15for stress relief. If you close the nose, your life set, four minutes, you cannot survive.
19:23But without food, you can survive 45 days. Without water, only 10. Without air,
19:28even four minutes. Life need everything, all the five elements. And intuition,
19:34actually, it is when you sense life by five senses and life function by sensitivity.
19:43And at the end, you made your own because we need to function now.
19:49But we, as human, live by our social activity, by logic. This is what the parents
19:57and parents of grandparents talk to us. And actually, it doesn't work in 21st century.
20:01Isn't it just only upgrade software of logic? And after that intuition,
20:08talk to you non-stop what you need to do because it's orient with you for five senses.
20:13But it is a lot of interesting and UAE, it is one of the biggest and greatest place
20:20which allowed an innovation and feminine to blossom absolutely. And this is 21st century.
20:26We belong to feminine energy, not woman only. Feminine energy, which is create,
20:35innovate, and develop because technology already developed and life has become much easier,
20:39not stressful.
20:40We're very lucky.
20:45Natasha, I'm going to ask you the biggest question that could probably be asked here.
20:49The age-old question. Can we have it all? Do we want it all?
20:57Wow, how did I get the biggest question? Yes and no. First of all, to be really,
21:08really good at what we do in business, you have to be somewhat obsessed.
21:13Look at all the biggest leaders that you have ever heard of or read about or follow.
21:19They are obsessed. They are obsessed about what they do.
21:23And it seems neurodivergent as well.
21:26Yes, exactly. So do they have it all? I don't think so.
21:30And at the beginning of the business, you will not have it all.
21:34I slept on the floor of my office for the first six months.
21:38I was definitely neglecting my child who is somehow turned out to be great in the end.
21:44I don't know how that happened. I was not balancing it well.
21:48And I was obsessed about what I started and I was crazy and still am about what I do.
21:57So there would be times where you won't have it all.
22:00It will have impact on your relationships. It will have impact on your friendships.
22:04It will have impact on your health. And it's a choice.
22:09It's a choice you make at the beginning.
22:12If you're lucky enough and if you do it right, progressing through the journey of your business,
22:18you will find, you will build something that you can live with in a more balanced manner.
22:25You will hire people to do the job that you used to do overnight.
22:28You will grow. You'll be able to take trips to Spain and sit in the clinic in detox and strategize,
22:35which I do every six months, by the way.
22:36I check myself in the clinic every six months, literally in the detox clinic.
22:42And I just meditate. I eat completely vegan or raw. I fast.
22:48And this is where the best strategy comes to my mind is when I'm in this place.
22:58So the answer is yes and no. At the beginning, I would say no.
23:02But throughout the journey, yes, it's achievable.
23:06So the balance is there in the end.
23:07In the end, yes. It can be achieved.
23:11Thanks so much. Unfortunately, we've come to the end of our time again.
23:15What I'm hearing is that self-care, self-care is the way forward.
23:22Thank you, everyone. Please join me in a round of applause for our panellists,
23:25Akanksha Goel, Dr. Parul Thakur, Dr. Lyudmila Vasilyeva and Natasha Litminov. Thank you.