1007 Christine Assouad:

Wings of Inspired Business Podcast EP1007 – Host Melinda Wittstock Interviews Christine Assouad

Melinda Wittstock: Coming up on Wings of Inspired Business:

Christine Assouad: I have 389 skydive jumps. I did skydiving over the North Pole and over a lot of crazy places. But I think what it taught me the most is to handle fear differently. And in entrepreneurship, you’re always hitting more walls. It’s ups and downs every day sometimes. And skydiving helps you expand your comfort zone. So, when I came back to Lebanon to open my first business, which was the Dunkin’ franchise in Lebanon, I just skydived over the North Pole. I just did something completely crazy. So, opening few stores, like it’s a piece of cake, like whatever it’s like it didn’t feel hard for me. So, it really helped me handle fear differently. And now my daughters think that I’m completely crazy, that I don’t know what fear is.

Melinda Wittstock: A month before she signed the Dunkin’ franchise for Lebanon, Christine Assouad skydived over the North Pole. After that, she says, opening a few stores felt like a piece of cake. Twenty-eight years, fifty Dunkin’ stores and several businesses later, Christine is a shark on Shark Tank Lebanon, the only woman among five, founder of a community that has worked with more than five thousand women, and author of The Power to Say Yes. Today she shares what fear taught her, the five-P framework she runs in the forty-five minutes a Shark gets to decide, why women pitch smaller problems than men and what to do about it, and why our non-linear lives are the superpower that matters most in the age of AI.

Melinda Wittstock: Hi, I’m Melinda Wittstock and welcome to Wings of Inspired Business, where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, (Start to fade music GRADUALLY under my voice – here) epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. I believe in paying it forward, so as a five-time serial entrepreneur, I started this podcast almost 10 years ago to catalyze an ecosystem where women entrepreneurs mentor, promote, buy from, and invest in each other. Because together we’re stronger, and we all soar higher when we fly together and lift as we climb. Please take a moment, hit subscribe so you never miss an episode, tell your friends and colleagues, and we appreciate it when you help this wisdom get discovered with a 5-star rating and review.

Melinda Wittstock: Today we meet an entrepreneur who runs three businesses on one principle: a purpose bigger than yourself. Christine Assouad has spent 28 years in food and beverage, including the Dunkin’ franchise for Lebanon, now fifty stores, and the Lebanese restaurant brand Semsom. She is a Shark on Shark Tank Lebanon, where she invests through the Tribe Fund, founder of the Empowering Tribe, a community that has worked with more than five thousand women, and author of The Power to Say Yes, written as a letter to her two daughters. She holds degrees from AUB, McGill, ESA and Harvard Business School, was the first Middle Eastern person to reach the North Pole, has three hundred and eighty-nine skydives, is a private pilot, and is on her way to one hundred countries. For Dunkin’ the purpose is spreading happiness; donuts and coffee are just the tools.

Melinda Wittstock: We talk about the two things Christine has learned from 500 one-to-one sessions with women founders: know what you want from your life, not just your business, and accept that a woman’s journey is not a straight line, and treat that as the superpower it is. We get into the pattern she sees from the Shark’s chair, women pitching lifestyle businesses with modest valuations while men pitch big problems with outrageous ones, and her five-P framework: person, problem, potential, performance, perspective. And we get into money: why women will write a philanthropy check but not an investment check, and why the trillions transferring to women will be handed to someone else to manage unless we start talking about investing. Plus, why the book is The Power to Say Yes and not the power to say no.

Melinda Wittstock: Let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Christine Assouad.

[INTERVIEW]

Melinda Wittstock: Christine, welcome to Wings.

Christine Assouad: I’m super happy to be here.

Melinda Wittstock: Okay, so I’ve got to start here. You’re a former skydiver, and I can see all kinds of parallels with entrepreneurship there. What did skydiving teach you about entrepreneurship or actually help you in your entrepreneurial career?

Christine Assouad: Yes. Absolutely. Actually, more than I thought. I love it. I have 389 skydive jumps. I did skydiving over the North Pole and over a lot of crazy places. But I think what it taught me the most is to handle fear differently. And in entrepreneurship, you’re always hitting more walls. It’s ups and downs every day sometimes. And skydiving helps you expand your comfort zone. So when I came back to Lebanon to open my first business, which was the Dunkin’ franchise in Lebanon, I just skydived over the North Pole. So like I just did something completely crazy. So opening few stores, like it’s a piece of cake, like whatever it’s like it didn’t feel hard for me. So it really helped me handle fear differently. And now my daughters think that I’m completely crazy, that I don’t know what fear is. And this is why I keep on building new businesses. But I absolutely love it. And actually, when I’m working or mentoring entrepreneurs, I always tell them when you have like a difficult decision or something you’re kind of afraid of in business, go and do something outside your comfort zone and something completely different. You don’t have to skydive, but you could do painting or scuba diving or something that is outside your comfort zone so that your brain understands that it’s okay. So doing things for the first time or doing things differently is okay. And this is what skydiving gave me.

Melinda Wittstock: It makes so much sense because as an entrepreneur, you’re constantly facing things that are outside your comfort zone. I mean, as your business grows, you’re growing. You have to learn new things. You’re dealing with all kinds of challenges. And so facing that fear and doing it anyway. Is vital. So I love what you say that like opening up a franchise seemed like nothing after skydiving in the North Pole.

Christine Assouad: Absolutely. Absolutely. And this is the way once you understand the way the brain works, our brain is here for us to survive. So it’s always showing us danger just to make sure that we survive. So the more you expand your comfort zone, the more your brain calms down and is not constantly triggering like fearful thought for you to survive.

Melinda Wittstock: You know, this reminds me of something before the pandemic, I was part of this entrepreneur group called Maverick. We used to gather once a quarter and do something like go swimming with sharks or, I don’t know, zipline or do like a canoeing race, learn how to play polo, just like weird things that you or like learn how to do stunt car driving. Or like there was a whole list of things that we did over the years. And it was the same principle and hugely important. I think the funniest thing about the shark thing was the sharks could care less about us. We were all nervous and the sharks were like, sort of behaved like golden retrievers in the water. They were like, yeah, I’m not really interested in you.

Christine Assouad: Absolutely. No, but it’s just to let your brain know that you’re going to be okay. No matter what happens in your life, you’re going to be okay. So these kind of experiences that you were sharing. Like they do exactly that. So once you’re faced with something in your life or in your business, like your brain feels that that’s okay. She can handle it. So she she’s been with sharks or she just jumped from a plane and she survived. So I don’t have to worry about her.

Melinda Wittstock: Great. Yeah, no, it’s it’s it’s very it’s it’s very true. So the skydiving experience, was that before you became an entrepreneur or like, yeah.

Christine Assouad: Yes, yes. It was just before actually. So I was at McGill in Montreal and I saw a sign in the metro. And I love to try new things. So I said, why not? And I thought I would do it once. And I ended up doing it more than 300 times. And literally, I just, it was in April 96 that I skydived over in the North Pole. And in May 96, we signed the franchise for Dunkin’. So it was just after. So nothing could stop me after something like this.

Melinda Wittstock: Well, yeah, and not only that, you’re the first person from the Middle East to ever get to the North Pole. That’s something.

Christine Assouad: Yes. Yes, it is something, but when you’re 22, you don’t think it’s something. You just want to live life fully. And I still, I’m 52 now. I still want to live life fully and just go with the flow and see where this absolutely amazing adventure called life is taking us.

Melinda Wittstock: So you’re a serial entrepreneur. You’ve built all these businesses in the food and beverage area. You mentioned starting Dunkin’ in Lebanon. Tell me more about that process. So you started with a franchise and then just take me through some of the things you’ve built in that area.

Christine Assouad: Yeah. So we started with the franchise of Dunkin’ in Lebanon. We have 50 stores now across the country. So I’ve been overseeing, like running the business and now overseeing the business for the past 30 years. And it’s been incredible. It’s an amazing brand. I love mostly what we did out of it because, for any brand, and this is for any entrepreneur listening to us, the most important thing is to have a clear purpose linked to your business, like a purpose that is bigger than you. So, for me, Dunkin’, for example, is spreading happiness. So, everything we do is because we want people to leave a little bit happier than when they came in. This is what the concept is all about. Then, donuts and coffee are tools to make people happy. Every single business I built, we always had a purpose bigger than us that myself and everyone in the team was so attached to that everything that was coming our way, and many of our businesses are in Lebanon, so lots of action happening in Lebanon in the past few years. So, everything that came our way. We wanted to survive and continue because of the purpose. Like for Dunkin’, it’s spreading happiness for Semsom, which is a Lebanese restaurant, it’s to create Lebanese cuisine differently. Then I have now I run three main verticals, so the FNB is one of them. We have the Woman Empowerment that is very close to my heart. So we have the Empowering Tribe. We do retreats, workshops, lots of things. My first book, The Power to Say Yes, is written for women to live a happy, meaningful life in their own way. So, for me, it’s pushing women to thrive. So, this is what is driving me on this particular business. And the third one is to support entrepreneurs. I’m a shark on Shark Tank Lebanon, so I raise the fund, we invest in startups, and it’s really seeing other people thrive is lauren-head

what is inspiring me at this stage in my life.

Melinda Wittstock: Oh, my goodness. That’s so exciting. You know, on this podcast, we talk a lot about what it’s going to take for women to really fulfill their full potential as entrepreneurs. And what’s interesting is the stats here in the United States are really interesting. Women on average return 72 cents more in revenue on every dollar invested compared to exclusively male teams at 31 cents. Like,

Christine Assouad: Oh, wow, I didn’t know that.

Melinda Wittstock: Yeah, we’re faster to exit. In 2024, 34% of all exits were from women-led teams with women’s CEOs on less than 2% of the venture money. And so we’re a good business bet, but there’s all these things that hold us back. So it’s so wonderful that you’re giving back and reinvesting in other women. So I just wanted to thank you for that because I think more of us have to do that. And also, as investors, when we come. At it, as people who’ve built businesses were better investors as well.

Christine Assouad: Yes, and actually, I have a lot to say on that front because whether it’s through writing the book or working with more than 5,000 women so far. I’ve done more than 500 one-to-one sessions with different entrepreneurs. So, and I’ve seen female entrepreneurs. And what I’ve seen is mostly two things. Like, first is women need to know what they want. So, understanding what you want out of your life, not out of your business, you know, taking a step back and deciding what you want to do out of your life is one of the biggest like links to success that I’ve seen. With the women I’ve worked with. And second, to accept the fact that our journey is very different than the journey of men. So men, their career is a straight line. They graduate, they start working, their work is their priority, and this is normal for them, their family, society, et cetera. But women, we have so many different options in terms of some people work, some women work, some women don’t. Then you have so many things happening in your personal life that affect your career. When you’re pregnant, when you have young kids, teenagers at home, per menopause and menopause, don’t get me started there. 

Melinda Wittstock: And our lives are more complex but the fact that they are… my theory is that’s the thing that makes us better at business because we think more holistically.

Christine Assouad: Absolutely, this is our superpower. This is what we need to embrace it as our superpower and be okay that maybe I want to slow down, maybe I want. Double down, maybe now is the time to do this, uh, this or that. So, understanding that our life is not linear and embracing it and making the best out of it, definitely a superpower. Men don’t have a choice, like, they have to keep working to keeplauren-head

Melinda Wittstock: They’re very linear. They’re very linear. It might just be an evolutionary thing or it might be societal, but our brains work a little bit differently. Like we tend to see the connections between things is why we know like a million things. Things can be going on. We can be spinning plates all over the place and juggling, but we still know where our like husband’s socks are, right? Like that kind of thing. And men are more linear, like they can only kind of, I don’t know, this is a generalization, right? Cause everyone’s on a spectrum, but… 

Christine Assouad: Of course, but this in general, this is what we’ve seen. And actually, there’s a lot of research: like the brain of a man is like the front closets, and everything is alone. The brain of a woman is like a big pot and everything is inside. So, this comes with advantages, as you said, being able to connect and see everything at the same time. But also, it helps, for example, men invest better in terms of their personal investment or. Deciding that, okay, if this is what I want to use my time for, I will only focus on one thing at a time while we are focusing on 12 things at a time. So each one has advantages and disadvantages. It’s only understanding you as a person, what is driving you, what is inspiring you, what do you want from your life, what is your happy, meaningful life on your own terms, and then just go and live it.

Melinda Wittstock: Right. I’ve seen a lot of women increasingly building businesses around this idea. So like focus is a really interesting thing because focus, obviously, most people think of it as very linear, like you’re just doing one thing at a time. I see it more like where is my maximum leverage so I can maximize my time. So, like, if I do which of all the things that I could do today, which one is gonna have a multiplier of impact? And that is my focus, right? And that could be impacts in different areas of my life. And so, seeing that leverage and understanding the concept of leverage. Which I see a lot of women not necessarily doing as much as they could, like thinking about that a little bit differently. But also we also have to think about not balance, but more like integration because we’ve got all these different things. So how do we prioritize, right?

Christine Assouad: Okay, absolutely, absolutely. And the whole purpose of the book. Uh, the power to say yes is to say yes to your happy, meaningful life. So, at the end, what do you take a step back, decide what do you want from your life on every aspect of your life in your career, with your family, your love life, your wealth, every aspect of your life. And then it’s much easier to say yes and to say no to things once you have clarity on what you want to accomplish. And what I’ve seen is, and I’ve been working with a lot of women to. To pause and take the step back, and then you see amazing things happen once people have clarity of what they want their life to look like, at least for the next, let’s say, 10 years.

Melinda Wittstock: Right. This is so important, being open to yes. And there’s a lot of things to unpack there because people generally are so conditioned to live the lives that they’ve been told they should live as opposed to what they actually want. So getting to the point where you actually even know what you want.

Christine Assouad: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, because also we don’t have time to take the step back. You know, you finish your, you graduate and then you probably meet someone. You get married. You start a career. Then you have young kids and you just follow a flow that was designed for you. And then just taking the step back. This is why you have so many midlife crisis kind of things. It’s some people waking up one day and saying, is this what I really want? Like it’s just what I always encourage is for people to take a step back and decide what you want because you have as many options as your imagination can give you. So there’s no straight line. There’s no one way to succeed. Like my success is different than yours, Melinda. My happy life is different than yours. So as long as you know what you want, it changes everything.

Melinda Wittstock: This is interesting too, because I see a lot of women, like over the years, mimicking or thinking they have to mimic. How men approach business, right? Because those were the rules, and they’re largely based on like Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, okay? And they’re very, you know, this is what you do, okay? And it’s not necessarily what women should do. Like, women do have the power to reinvent or think about business differently or structure businesses differently. So, there are some rules, like, right, about you know, revenue and profitability and you know, things like that that are sort of. Maybe a bit immutable, but generally, the way we organize, the way we organize a team, like how what we incentivize, how we organize our lives relative to our business, a whole bunch of different things. Like, do women get into trouble in a way when we try to be mini men? You know, we try to fit ourselves into patterns that don’t necessarily work for us?

Christine Assouad: Absolutely. And actually, I plead guilty because when I started, I was also very young. So I felt I needed to be very strict. I was always wearing black and you know, because I thought that this was the way business was supposed to happen. And then you realize that, no, you can be yourself, you can be feminine, you can be like dressing red, which is my favorite. Color and still being able to be respected and to work because, at the end, it’s also the results that are gonna decide if your way was a good way or not. And there’s not one way to do business. Of course, as you said, there are the fundamentals: looking at your profitability, focusing on your number, having clarity on your purpose, vision, mission, value, making sure you understand what’s the problem you’re solving, who is your market. Your go-to-market strategy, et cetera. So these are the same for everyone. But today, especially in an AI world, this feminine power, as I call it, is going to be a real superpower. Being able to have empathy, being able to connect so many dots at the same time, being able to juggle so many things at the same time, adapting to change, adapting to everything that’s coming our way. These are going to be very important. Especially in the future of work, because AI is disrupting everything, and everything that is creating a business plan or doing looking at numbers are gonna be accessible to everyone. But what we are left with is all these interpersonal skills that where I’ve seen that women are pretty good at.

Melinda Wittstock: That’s a really important point because in times of great disruption come times of creation. And what are women better at than creation? Actually, like, think about it, right? So, so we, it’s an opportunity in all of that. And I think you’re right that the interpersonal skills, but also if we think of business models, business models that create real human connection, I think will really flourish because the AI just increasingly like a general AI model can do everything. So, there’s a whole bunch of startups that are all these AI startups with these point solutions. That have been completely overrun by like you just hand it to Claude. It can do anything that any of these specialist AI companies can do. So, like, if you’re thinking about launching a business right now and you think of what’s my moat, right? What is it? And what is it specifically that women bring to the table that’s actually a competitive advantage?

Christine Assouad: Of course, we’re generalizing about men and women. We have some men that are super empathetic and have a very good interpersonal skill. But in general, it comes naturally for women much more than for men. And it’s going to become a real superpower because people are going to want more and more connection because of the fact that AI is removing everything that is like today, everyone has access for $20. To the most intelligent models that are available. So it’s like giving access to everyone to all the analytical skills, and it’s on us to really focus on our interpersonal skills and our soft skills and create these connections that are going to be even more important moving forward.

Melinda Wittstock: It’s interesting because I think with men, like to your point, that not all men are this way, but so it’s interesting generationally. So my son just turned 20. He has a startup. But it’s all about connecting people in real life through their dogs because the dogs, if you’ve ever watched people walking on the street, like with their dogs, they get into conversations with perfect strangers because of their dogs. Because if you just talked to what walked up to a complete stranger and started talking to them, he’d look like a crazy person. But like with a dog, you can do that. He’s putting a structure around that. So, connecting like compatible dog, you know, dogs and dog owners to each other around shared interest and such for curated walks, experiences, meetups, that kind of thing, right? And it’s interesting because he had this epiphany because his generation is so disconnected. They’re connected on social media, but they’re kind of warped by like all the algorithms, they’re like alienated. They don’t really know how to talk to each other. So, that was the impetus for him as a young man in a hoodie, like the typical pattern recognition for adventure. To have this idea that sort of to me seems a lot more in the more archetypal feminine kind of side of things, right?

Christine Assouad: Excellent. I love it. You know, I think also moving forward, and because of AI and social media and everything that we’ve been discussing. And they won’t, it’s gonna be very fluid. You know, it’s really tapping into your human side. That’s gonna be the main difference between us and AI. And it’s gonna be the same for men and women. And I love your son’s idea because it solves a real problem, multiple real problems, like loneliness, being able to connect with people over a shared interest, which is the dog. In this particular case, movement because we’re sitting in front of our screens all the time. So the fact that people are walking, it’s in nature, not on a phone. I really love the idea and I wish him all the best.

Melinda Wittstock: Oh, thank you. Yeah, no, he’s doing a good job. And I mean, actually, I think one of his better decisions is recruiting me as his COO. Like, you know, sort of quietly over the summer, I filed the patents for the really groundbreaking way to do the recommendation engines, you know, for dogs and humans and understanding them as a pair. Right. Because the type of dog we have, it turns out, says a lot about the human and such. Right. So it’s a lot of fun, but interesting building something with your son. So who’s mom? Like, when am I being mom when I’m at being COO? When is he being CEO and when is he being my son? Right. And like getting really clear about all those parameters, which I think we’re done pretty well. But it’s a lot of fun. Like business number six for me. So and that was just sort of like to the power of yes. He came to me one day and said, like, I’ve got this idea. So I went to work and I thought, ah, I’m just going to see what the market is for this. Could this work? And I approached it with my investor hat on of like really, really thoroughly diligent it, right? Doing due diligence on the market, the competition, you know, all the different things. Where was the gap? How would it differentiate the model and such? And I became convinced. I was like, yeah, I’m in, you know?

Christine Assouad: Well done. Well, being able to convince your mother is not easy, so well done.

Melinda Wittstock: He admits he was a little nervous, but anyway, I mean, you know, it’s interesting. I love this, the power of yes, because it connotes being open-minded at a…

Christine Assouad: Yeah. And actually, the question I’m getting the I got the most when I wrote the book is: why did you call it the power to say yes and not the power to say no? Because women are needs to say no more often, etc. And for me, it’s you need to say yes first, you need to be excited about your happy, meaningful life, you need to love what you’re doing, you need to know what you want to do first. So, this is the yes, and then it’s so much easier to say no, it’s so much easier to say no if this is not in line with your purpose. Or what you’re trying to accomplish. So, having this love of life first is so important, and it will drive a lot of decisions whether yes or no later on.

Melinda Wittstock: Exactly. So, in this whole idea of like, okay, women’s brains, men’s brains, you know, obviously spectrum, in your role on Shark Tank Lebanon, do you see a difference in terms of the types of businesses women come up with as opposed to men? Is there a real difference? Do you see any patterns there?

Christine Assouad: Yes, of course. And there are some things that are really depending on the person. But if I really want to focus on the main difference between men and women, women solve smaller problems. I was interviewing a fellow shark. I also started a podcast. A business podcast two weeks ago. So I’m interviewing sharks from all over the world, and it’s been a very interesting experience. And one of them told me that women need to solve bigger problems. And I could see that like a lot of the businesses that we saw women pitch for are more lifestyle, smaller businesses, like smaller valuation. And then you have men that are coming with. Uh, outrageous valuations, maybe a little bit too much, but like focusing on something on solving a big problem for a big audience or a big customer base. So, my advice, if you want to any woman, whether pitching on Shark Tank or on something else, is like dream big. Like, we don’t need to have a small dream with a small budget. And a small outlook, like it could be something huge that you can do anywhere, and focusing on solving the real problem. I think it’s a good starting point for a lot of women founders.

Melinda Wittstock: Yeah, so another question I always ask people who, serial entrepreneurs, women who’ve had exits and really successful such as yourself, who are actually investing. What’s it going to take to get more women, first of all, educated about investing that actually really Out of just exclusively, you know, women of wealth exclusively focused on philanthropy, which is great, wonderful that they’re doing that, but also investing in women entrepreneurs.

Christine Assouad: It’s finding the right, like we’re investing in men and women entrepreneurs. I always get excited when it’s a woman, my fellow sharks, I’m the only woman out of The five sharks on Shark Tank Lebanon. And every time a woman comes in, they are all looking at me because I get super excited and I want to support as much as possible. So, first, like being a cheerleader for other women is already a great start. Like, because women, there’s a confidence issue. This would be the second thing that I find the difference between men and women when they pitch. 

[PROMO CREDIT]

Wings of Inspired Business is brought to you by the podcast, Zero Limits Business Growth Secrets where Steve Little – serial entrepreneur, investor and mergers & acquisitions maestro – shares the little-known 24 value drivers that spell the difference between a $5m, a $50mm even $500 mm business. It always pays to understand what’s driving the underlying enterprise value of your business. So, check out Zero Limits Business Growth Secrets at zerolimitsradio.com – that’s zerolimitsradio.com and available wherever you get your podcasts. More information about valuation growth and how to exit your business for a much higher multiple at Zero Limits Ventures.com

Melinda Wittstock: And we’re back with Christine Assouad, serial entrepreneur, Shark on Shark Tank Lebanon and author of The Power to Say Yes.

[INTERVIEW CONTINUES]

Christine Assouad: Like men have, in general, much more confidence than women. And this is something the more you are surrounded by people that are cheering you up, the more this is why I love communities like the Empowering Tribes or other communities where it’s woman supporting women, like someone that is, if you have any challenge or something, you have a group of women that you can rely on. If you have a great news, you know that people are going to be genuinely Happy for you. So, I think the more we can be cheerleaders to other women, the more it will push more women to be founders, to solve bigger problems and to make a bigger impact on the world.

Melinda Wittstock: 100%. So you have something called the Tribe Fund and you’ve impacted thousands of female leaders. So tell me a little bit about how the Tribe Fund works and what the impact has been.

Christine Assouad: Yes. Okay, so. Yeah, so we have two things. First, the Empowering Tribe, which is our community of female leaders. We’ve worked with more than 5,000 women have done something with us, whether it’s attending an online Zoom call or a workshop or a retreat or just being part of our newsletter, etc. And it’s been an incredible experience. We started this a few years ago and There’s such an amazing energy when you bring women together in the main and the main objective is to empower and be empowered and to learn and to grow together. And this, I’ve seen women transform, whether it’s building their confidence, this is what I saw the biggest impact: building the confidence to go and do whatever they want to do, to be cheerleaders for each other, like someone. Is launching something, everybody will go to the launch or they will find a lot of support within the community. And it’s the learning. Like we had Harvard professor on our Zoom calls, Stanford LBS, you name it. We had some incredible entrepreneurs that have done amazing things. So it’s like this energy of growing and learning and supporting each other that have been phenomenal and I’m enjoying so much. And the second thing is the Tribe Fund, which is a fund that is investing in startups that I’m choosing through Shark Tank Lebanon. And this has been an amazing experience as well, because like you see someone with a dream and you’re fueling their dream and seeing them grow. And there’s nothing more inspiring and rewarding than that.

Melinda Wittstock: 100%. So it’s interesting because I see a lot of women doing amazing things, creating these communities for women. And, you know, and also creating venture funds or angel funds or just doing all these things. And at this point, I’m thinking, wow, how can we have real critical mass? Is there a way to do fund to fund? Funds, is there a way to combine some of these communities? Is there a way to really get leverage? I had a wonderful woman, a venture capitalist on my podcast a couple of weeks ago talking about, she did some back of the napkin math. She said, okay, so there’s this huge transfer of wealth to women, something like $40 trillion over the next decade, right? And women make a lot of the purchasing decisions. They will have money to invest. And so we started, she sort of said, well, okay, so of those, how many are accredited investors? You know, thinking about the SEC. So say if you had one, say 1% of all of those women are accredited and each wrote a check for $50,000 USD. That would be a $50 billion fund, right? It’s transformational, but it requires women to. Be very abundance-minded and really kind of work with each other. So, how do you see that over the next decade or so, like the catalyst for that, the catalyst for women genuinely really like supporting, really building these bigger communities that have real power?

Christine Assouad: Absolute well, it’s two things. First, having those communities, and there are more and more, as you said, like and we’re collaborating with a lot of communities, whether in Dubai or in Amman or in Beirut, and it’s A lot of collaboration is happening, and I’ve also worked with corporates. And you know, the myth that women are not supportive to other women, like I’ve never seen that. Like, most of the time, of course, there are exceptions, but the majority are really supporting other women. And I love that. So, first is being part of a community. So, if any woman listening to us that is not part of a community, I hope this will get her excited to go and check. What is a community near her that she could join? The second thing is for women to invest. And unfortunately, we don’t talk enough about money. And sometimes it’s considered, you know, you’re not supposed to talk about money, you’re not supposed to talk about investing. A lot of women would tell me, even when it comes to their business, like they are passionate, excited, have a clear purpose and mission. But now I don’t understand numbers or I don’t know about numbers. I have an accountant that works with my numbers. And this is one of the biggest challenges for women to be able to use all the money you’re talking about and investing because we need to talk more about investing. We need to be much more, you know, not only talking about money, but feeling comfortable investing. And okay, sometimes. Things are going to do well and some things are not. And it’s not a failure if you invested in something and it didn’t work as long as you learn from it. And but it’s, we are so afraid of making a mistake with money and women more than men that we don’t explore enough and test enough and invest enough. And it could start with small investment and then start to grow it. Like if you look at the number of women that are going to receive these Trillions of dollars that you’re talking about, but are going to give it to someone else to manage and take decisions about this money. And this is where, hopefully, talking about money would help more women be at ease with these discussions and taking over the management of their money and not giving it to someone else.

Melinda Wittstock: 100%. Couldn’t agree with you more. It’s one of the reasons I started this podcast. So a couple of things as we start to wrap up, Christine, I have so many more questions for you, actually, but I really want to zero in on, you know, you’ve built so many of your own businesses, you invest in other businesses, the Shark Tank experience, all of it. What makes an exceptional founder? Like what is the thing that makes someone really likely to succeed? Another way to be asking it would be, what do you look for in a founder when you’re investing in that founder?

Christine Assouad: Actually, it’s clarity and drive, if I want to put it in two words. It’s for them to have clarity of what they’re doing, why they are doing it, what’s the problem they’re solving, who are they solving it for, how are they doing it better than anyone else, like having like real clarity of the business, of the business model, of the purpose, vision, mission, values, business model, and everything in between. And second, their drive, because like they need it’s very hard to be an entrepreneur and you’re constantly gonna be tested along the way. And you’re gonna have days where you wake up and everything is great. Then at noon, everything falls apart. Then in the afternoon, it’s back great again. And it’s like you need to have this drive and this personal reason why you’re doing what you’re doing that is so strong that it will help you go through the hurdles and the setbacks. So, for me, it’s linking a business to a purpose that is bigger than you. This is something that helped me to go through the difficult things. So, what I’m looking when someone is coming and pitching on Shark Tank, we only have 30 to 45 minutes to take a decision, which is very, very short because we have absolutely no visibility on the businesses before they come and pitch. I have something I call the 5P framework. So, that I’m looking for. First, it’s the person. It’s what we were talking about: the clarity drive, everything that comes with it. The second is the problem they are solving. How aware are they of the problem and not the product? Because sometimes people are too attached to a product and not a problem, and this creates problems. The third is the potential. How big is the market? Is it a small, very cute niche market, or is it a scalable business? The fourth is the performance. Do they have some traction? Do they have some numbers to show that some people are interested in the solution they are providing to this problem and they are ready to pay for it? And the last P is perspective. Like, do they listen? Are they open to different perspectives and different ways of doing things? So this is, I have a checklist as someone is talking. So I’m checking this checklist and to try to see how many of the five P’s they have. And this is how I decide that to invest or not in the founder.

Melinda Wittstock: I love what you, I mean, I love that list, and I love what you said about having a mission bigger than yourself. Because it is what gets you through all those hour by hour ups and downs, which are just inevitable, right? And being focused on the problem that you’re solving. I see too many, yeah, the productitis thing getting too fixated on the product and not how the product is actually helping people and really daring to co-create with your customers and taking their feedback is gold. I could talk to you for hours more. You’re going to have to come back on the show.

Christine Assouad: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. We’ll have we’ll do it again.

Melinda Wittstock: Yes, a hundred percent. What’s the best way for people to find you, Christine, and work with you or like learn more what you’re up to?

Christine Assouad: So first is check the book. Like if you’re a woman, because I wrote this book, The Power to Say Yes for a Woman. A lot of men read it actually. I’m surprised, and I get amazing feedback because they also want to live a happy, meaningful life on their own terms. But it was written mostly as a letter to my daughters. I have two daughters, 22 and 21. So it’s on Amazon everywhere in the world. It’s called The Power to Say Yes. It’s very easy to read, two to three hours you’ll get through it, but most importantly, do the exercises. Take the step back and decide what your happy, meaningful life is all about. The second thing is on Instagram. My handle is the catalyst of growth. And it’s been an amazing journey on Instagram because this is how I stay connected. This is how people know about all our programs and what we do. A lot of the things we do are for free. So people can just join Zoom calls and then stay. Start getting more and more out of everything that we provide them. So, The Power to Say Yes book is on Amazon and the Catalyst of Growth on Instagram.

Melinda Wittstock: Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us today.

Christine Assouad: It was a real pleasure, Melinda. Thank you so much for having me.

[INTERVIEW ENDS]

Melinda Wittstock: Christine Assouad is a serial entrepreneur with 28 years in food and beverage, including Dunkin’ Lebanon and Semsom, a Shark on Shark Tank Lebanon, founder of the Empowering Tribe and the Tribe Fund, and author of The Power to Say Yes.

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