The final straw was that the staff agreed with them. While the company hadn’t been great to them, they appreciated the power of the name. Din and I were persuaded.
AirAsia planes were blue. I wanted to change that and tried every colour combination I could except red. Red to me meant Virgin and there were already enough parallels and comparisons with Richard Branson for me to want to choose something different. We settled on orange and showed the pilots the designs.
‘It should be red. It’s your colour and it suits you. Don’t worry about Richard Branson. You’re your own man. Be confident.’
My own view of the comparison between me and Richard is clear, by the way. We have similar interests – planes, music, sports of all kinds – but his definition of adventure is a little different to mine. Richard’s idea of a thrill is to try to cross the Atlantic in a hot-air balloon or fly to the moon; mine certainly isn’t! What’s the point of going to the moon? What would you do once you got there? I’ve got too many things I want to do on Earth to go to the moon – where there are no party places anyway. We are good friends and always try to meet up if we’re in the same city, but I’m not the Asian Richard Branson as some in the media have tried to brand me. I’m very much my own man – just as the AirAsia captain put it all those years ago.
I changed the livery from blue to red and dropped the original bird device on the tail fin because I think branding is most effective when there is a single clear element: look at Nike, BP, Coca-Cola and Apple. The logo or symbol is instantly recognizable on its own, it doesn’t need extra facets. So we got rid of the bird and took a simple approach which has helped make us recognizable.
The Tune logo and branding follow these ideas. A simple red logo which makes an instant impact. We’ve explored different products using Tune but the business I keep coming back to is Tune Hotels because I think we can make this hugely successful globally. Conceptually, it’s simple: apply the AirAsia model to hotel rooms. We want to create a budget hotel that provides the basics to a high standard and make extras available at a cost. If you’re staying in a city I believe that you want to have excellent internet connection, get a good night’s sleep and have a good shower and then get out and explore or go to your meetings. I don’t think you need a huge room, a 40-inch television, a mini-bar. Stripping down the rooms to good quality essentials will reduce the cost to the customer.
When we originally launched the idea, I admit that we implemented it poorly. We tried to charge guests for towels, soap and other standard equipment, which was both off-putting financially and way too complicated. Those problems have been addressed and, with a new management team, Tune Hotels is starting to fulfil some of its promise. There’s quite a way still to go.
In theory Tune Money was another simple idea but it has been a real struggle. I was talking recently to my great friend Jay Razak who is chairman of CIMB, and he reminded me that we fleshed out the original concept for the business on the squash court. I had always wanted to get into financial services.
We agreed that we’d start out by selling unit trusts online with the aim that eventually we’d be offering credit cards, and then develop a range of financial products. Unfortunately, the joint venture we set up drained money. It was a disaster. We continued to plough cash in, and Jay started to ask me what the hell we were doing. It was a fair-enough question: he’s a banker after all and wasn’t used to losing money.
I asked him to give me another eighteen months and I’d turn it around. In the end I created an insurance product and promoted it through AirAsia. It worked. Once AirAsia was in line then we started to get business from other airlines’ passengers.
My whole play was that I thought insurance was way too complicated. Have you ever read an insurance contract? If you have, you’re part of a small club. Like a lot of established businesses, insurance is way too confusing for the customer. Our insurance business is profitable now but it could be so much more: the policy should be easy to understand, easy to get and easy to make a claim on; the insured period should be much more flexible and it should be possible for a group of people to club together to buy a policy if they’re going on holiday together. Flexible simplicity is what I’m after – that’s the kind of product I’d like to see Tune offering. Unless I’m the hands-on CEO it might not happen, but I’ll keep pushing.
A couple of things have been interesting to me as lessons from the whole Tune Money venture. The first was that when I create these businesses, I initially look for expertise in the field to help and guide me. But often the CEOs I put in place actually try to emulate me and my style. When that happens they end up struggling and failing to run the company effectively. As in all things in life, you need to be your own man (or woman).
The second lesson is about disruption. It’s something I come back to again and again. Whenever you move into a new market, you have to be offering something new and something disruptive. When we set up AirAsia we sought aviation industry expertise, of course, but the ones who were questioning everything, leading the company and taking on the competitors weren’t from the aviation business. Din and I didn’t know anything about it when we started. If you set up in a new market, employ people whose approach is to question, disrupt and create – when you hire people from within that industry, often you get people who think within the industry box; you need people who think outside it. Tune Money was led by good people but their experience was in insurance or financial services; we needed people who didn’t think like they were still running old companies in those old industries.
One logistical problem with the Tune companies that we’re gradually addressing is that they are separate to AirAsia. This can create conflict of interest and is in no one’s best interests. In the coming years AirAsia will buy them so they are brought into the fold and the AirAsia portfolio of linked companies will be stronger for it.
So the trouble with Tune management is that, in my view, we’ve never really had the right people leading. It’s difficult to stress just how important selection of people is – innovation and change are critical. Businesses should be disruptive and the businesses that I’ve been involved with that have been successful have been disruptive. That’s the model, whether it’s routes or insurance.
I’m more experienced now than when Din and I started these companies and we can see how we need to do things more clearly. But, just as I don’t ignore ideas from any source – email, WhatsApp message, a meeting in an airport terminal – I always want to learn new things about business and people. So I’m always up for new experiences.
13. Apprentice Adventures
Soundtrack: ‘Crack That Mould’ by Chris Rea
Say The Apprentice to someone in the US and they’ll immediately think of Donald Trump. In the UK, the name will be Alan Sugar. But if you travel more widely around the world, the names will change: in fact, there are now more than twenty national versions of the popular reality TV show, with a host of different business tycoons putting wannabe entrepreneurs through their paces.
Most versions of the show, with the exception of the UK, work on the basis that each episode is sponsored by a particular brand. So each task will be brought to the series by a company which then effectively pays for the episode. Even with that the costs are pretty high – too high for most companies in the South East Asian region to fund if the programme is only aired in one country. So, instead of having The Apprentice Thailand or The Apprentice Malaysia, the producers decided to expand the format to embrace the whole of Asia – which meant in effect that the programme could potentially reach half the world’s population.
However, there aren’t many businesses and business leaders who are recognizable in every country. But the producers decided that I seemed to get my face out there more than most. So when they approached me, through my friends at Phar, Marcus and Nick, I was flattered.
There were a few hurdles in my mind. The first was logistical: there wasn’t space in my calendar to take time out to throw mysel
f into the show. The second was more problematic: I wasn’t sure I could do it. In much of my life, I’ve initially underestimated what I can achieve – whether it’s to be head of house at school or to run an airline or a football club. I’ve wanted the challenge, but never been sure whether I could pull it off until I actually went for it.
Also, I never thought of myself as being like Donald Trump or Alan Sugar. In fact, I felt we were complete opposites in terms of both personality and approach to business. My instinct is always to give people a chance and to find a role that suits them within an organization; from what I know about them, both Trump’s and Sugar’s instincts seem to be that if your face doesn’t fit, you’re out. Added to which, I don’t do the limousines, the helicopters, the bodyguards and all the trappings of the tycoon’s lifestyle. Nor am I loud. People think I am, because I make a noise in the press, but as a boss I’m actually quieter. Would the show be a disappointment if I didn’t act in a brash, aggressive, in-your-face style?
I resisted the approach for a while. But my publicity people at AirAsia kept telling me that it would be a huge boost for the brand, and eventually I agreed to do it. A new adventure.
The producers asked me to pick two observers who would watch the teams and report back on each task. I chose Kathleen Tan, who is smart, experienced and tough. She’s a brilliant marketeer and highly social media savvy. Kat had worked with me at Warner and at AirAsia. My other pick was Mark Lankester, who I’ve known since primary school; he is astute, a softer character than Kat but just as insightful. I also worked with him at Warner and he now runs Tune Hotels.
The first series was intense; incredibly hard work for everyone involved, and a learning curve for me too. After Phar had managed to secure the sponsors with a little help from me, we moved to the audition stage where more than 30,000 people across Asia applied to appear in the programme. Those applications were whittled down to a hundred or so and then a final thirty. The twelve that appeared before me in the first episode were a good mix of nationalities and skill sets. I had nothing to do with them at all except for the interactions in the boardroom. Again, that was difficult for me because I love to hear people’s stories and get to know them. Being aloof was unusual and I tried to make up for it in the boardroom by establishing a rapport with some of the candidates in a way that other presenters of the show had not done. You can’t stop yourself being a bit of a bastard – that’s the role – but it wasn’t a role I particularly enjoyed.
One thing I found fascinating was how the Asian culture of taking the blame came through, especially in the early episodes. In the UK and the US, the contestants would happily stab each other in the back, trample over the bodies and present themselves confidently as the best candidate. In the first four episodes of The Apprentice Asia, two people fell on their swords because as team leaders they had lost the task. By Episode 4, I had to say in the boardroom, ‘I don’t want quitters any more,’ when it looked like one of the candidates, Ningku, would put her hand up and resign rather than be fired. As it turned out, I did fire her because she wanted to quit but it might not have been her had she fought her cause. As the series progressed I found it harder and harder to fire people because it became clearer how much people wanted to win.
The other key cultural difference was that the losing team leader would usually bring back the strong candidates for the final firing meeting, rather than the weaker ones. That meant I had less of a decision to make: I wasn’t going to fire team members who had performed well, so I was almost always forced into a corner to choose the losing team leader. By Episode 6, I’d had enough of that and told Jonathan, the losing team leader, that I’d overrule his selections if he brought the wrong candidates back into the boardroom.
Happily for the drama of the series, the candidates got tougher and more single-minded as the episodes progressed. I don’t mean they were cut-throat but they were more resilient, as you have to be when you’re an entrepreneur. This was part of my reason for taking on the role in the first place. I want to encourage people across Asia to have a go at starting businesses, but to be successful, you have to be resilient, you have to pick yourself up from setbacks and find solutions when you hit problems. And you have to persevere if you believe in your dream.
There are so many people in AirAsia who started out in one role but have now found their dream by never giving up, and it’s a quality I hugely admire. One story that really touched me was of Kugan Tangiisuran who from the age of eight wanted to be a pilot. His family couldn’t afford the pilot courses once he left school, so he studied hospitality management and worked in hotels. In 2006 an opportunity came up at AirAsia as a despatch rider and he took it, having heard that it was a company which allowed people to move between departments.
It took Kugan eleven attempts and seven years but eventually in 2013 he passed the exams to enter the Asia Pacific Flight Training programme. He spent fifteen months studying there and then transferred to AirAsia’s own flight academy for six months of intensive training. In June 2015, he qualified as a first officer. I couldn’t be prouder of Kugan. At his graduation, in front of newly qualified cabin crew, pilots, engineers, ground staff and their families, I held him up as a shining example of what you can achieve if you never give up:
‘There’s one boy here that I got very emotional about. He dreamed of being a pilot. It took him eleven times to pass the entrance exams but he never gave up and I never allowed him to give up. I kept saying, “I don’t want quitters; I want people who believe in their ability and go out there and be the best.” In my fourteen years, I’ve seen and heard of so many fantastic stories at AirAsia but nothing makes me prouder than to see a young man, like Kugan, who never gave up and from a despatch boy he has become a first officer. That’s fantastic. I’m very, very proud of you because you’ve shown Malaysia, you’ve shown the rest of the world that with determination and never giving up, you can achieve anything. I hope all of you can take a little bit of Kugan, be your best, live your dreams and never give up.’
As I spoke I cried. His story does inspire me every day and I wanted to bring some of that insight to the Apprentice Asia candidates. It’s too easy to give up; but if you want something, if you have a dream that won’t go away, you have to keep at it.
I loved making the series. It was fascinating both from the production point of view and a personal one. I loved seeing the ambition of the candidates, the competition between them and who would win out; I was as gripped by the process as any of the viewers.
Watching the candidates develop, I think the importance of resilience, self-belief and strength of will shone through. If more entrepreneurs launch new businesses in Asia and push through the problems they encounter instead of folding, I think the series will have been worth doing. We got ratings as high as CSI in the end, so I hope enough people got the message.
As I write this I’m in talks for a second series. I’m keen to do it, and to help grow the region’s awareness of what it takes to be an entrepreneur. As for the television side, when I finally retire, I’d love to do a talk show. Watch this space.
14. Now Everyone Can Fly
Soundtrack: ‘My Way’ by Calvin Harris
I’ve been fortunate. The dreams I stuck on my tuck box forty years ago have become my day-to-day realities.
Thirty years of determination and resilience, bouncing back from tragedy and disappointment, together with the odd slice of luck – it adds up to a life of no regrets. If I was to be run over by a bus tomorrow morning, there’s not a thing I’d change: I’ve taken every opportunity that life has presented and made the best I could of it. If I hadn’t taken Flavio Briatore seriously, I’d never have got QPR; if I’d laughed at Déj Mahoney, I’d not have had three Formula One seasons and would not be looking forward to developing Caterham Cars; and if I hadn’t listened to myself when I saw Stelios on the television, I’d not have had the privilege of setting up AirAsia and working with the thousands of Allstars I see every day.
I’ve been rewarded, of course. Not only financially but with honours and titles from the British, French and Malaysian governments. I’m grateful and proud of the awards – even if I can’t quite believe I’m worthy of them.
They are also nice to share. When I got my CBE (Commander of the British Empire) in 2011, my parents had long since gone, so I called my daughter, my mother’s sister and my old school friend Charlie Hunt’s mum and invited them to the investiture. As I wasn’t a British national, I was supposed to get the award at the Malaysian Embassy, but I was living in Chester Square, a fifteen-minute walk from Buckingham Palace. On 31 March 2011, I had the honour of taking my party there to receive my award. The Queen was ill so Princess Anne did the honours. I’m a republican, so it’s a little hypocritical to accept these awards, but I do enjoy the ceremony – and if it brings more recognition to Malaysia and the region then it doesn’t seem a bad thing.
I was made Commandeur de la Légion d’honneur in 2013 by the French goverment. François Hollande, then the French president, was in charge of the ceremony where six of us were to receive the award. As I sat there in my suit, looking around nervously, he started to read out the citation for a woman who had saved Jews from the Nazis in the Second World War, who was getting the award the same day. I sat there thinking, ‘This is embarrassing – what have I done in comparison to her?’ I bowed my head as he started to read out the description of my achievements. But it was incredible. He explained about how I’d changed travel in Asia, and how my work in Formula One and AirAsia had created lots of jobs for French people and provided massive amounts of work in the aviation and motor industries. I felt I could hold my head up.
What have I learned about starting and running a business? That’s not a past-tense question, as I learn something every day. But when I’m asked this I often use the music business to illustrate the fundamentals of my approach. At its most basic, my philosophy is that it’s all about maximizing the top line (revenue), minimizing the cost, maximizing the bottom line and having a healthy balance sheet. And for me a balance sheet is all about cash. Accountants can make the numbers appear however you like, but cash doesn’t lie. Those are the financial fundamentals.
Flying High, My Story Page 18