Episode’s transcript

Julio Martinez: 0:01

Welcome to the Latin MedTech Leaders podcast, a conversation with MedTech leaders who have succeeded or plan to succeed in Latin America. Please subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform. Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast. Amazon Music is teacher Tune in iHeart Radio, Pandora o Deser . Welcome to the La MedTech Leaders Podcast. Today our guest is Camille Farra . I hope I'm pronouncing your name correctly, Camille

Kameel Farag: 0:28

Perfectly.

Julio Martinez: 0:29

Very good. All right . So Camille is a principle of KDF Ventures, a venture capital and private equity firm. He's a leader in global finance with over 20 years of experience and established and emerging markets within the biopharmaceutical industry. Prior to KDF Ventures, Camille was a senior vice president of finance at Ionis Pharmaceuticals, the world leader in developing RNA based human therapies. Very relevant today, I guess, right? <laugh>. He also worked at Amgen, one of the world's leading biotech companies for 16 years. While at Amgen, Camille had multiple leadership positions, including international operations and regional CFO roles of Latin America, Canada, Australia, middle East, and Africa. So Camille , it is really great to have you here today. Welcome to the show,

Kameel Farag: 1:25

<laugh> . Thank you, Julio. It's good to be here.

Julio Martinez: 1:27

Awesome. To be honest with you, I don't even know where to start with you. You have such a fascinating background, <laugh> and experience in Latin America that I'm sure we're gonna have a fun conversation here. But let's get started with , um, your involvement with Latin America. Camille , how do you get involved with Latin America on a personal and old professional level?

Kameel Farag: 1:48

Thanks, Julio. I think , uh, and first of all, thank you for the very flattering introduction. I think it sound makes me sound much more exotic than I really am. Alright , <laugh> . Um, I've been lucky in my career. I mean, a little bit of luck and I think a little bit of, you know, your own desire, you know, they'll tend to converge given the right opportunities. So I'm gonna actually answer your question. I'm gonna back up. I grew up , uh, always loving international, you know, from a US perspective, anything international. My father's not from the United States. Um, I love to travel, you know, when I was young. And so that was always something in me. I'm a des a desire in me , um, anyways. And so I think that sort of found its path within my career somehow with the right opportunities. So as far as skipping forward to Latin America , uh, when I was at Amgen for many years, Amgen was, and still is to a degree, largely a US company. It's an American company, but largely a US revenue based company. Huge percentage of revenue. If you look at the pharmaceutical industry, about 50% of the pharma industry comes from the United States, and about 50% comes from outside of the United States. And that's obviously sounds, even that sounds lopsided, but that's sort of pricing, et cetera. Uh, Amgen at the time was something more like 90% United States and 10% outside of the United States. We had a very relatively small commercial operation in Europe, and a handful of distributors outside of Europe, wasa while I was there. Um, they moved me to Europe to , um, help , uh, the international operations. I eventually became the head of fp and a internationally financial planning and analysis. We made a big push and it became a company strategic objective in terms of top line growth, where we realized organically, yes, we'll have new drugs coming from the pipe, but there's this large untapped opportunity globally that we as a company have very little experience with, but we're missing out. Um, either we're giving away , uh, value to distributors or, or there are patients who have no access because no one's there. And so Latin America fell into that bucket of areas where Amgen had almost little zero presence. So we made a a , a concerted effort to start to do operations there. We, you know, established a subsidiary in Mexico. We contracted with a distributor across the rest of Latin America, with the exception of Brazil. We had a specific distributor in Brazil. And then the biggest, you know, sometimes when you are getting into a swimming pool, you kind of dip your toe and then you put your foot, well, eventually you jump. And the jump for Amgen was, at the time we purchased a private pharmaceutical company in Brazil, manufacturing, selling distribution company that actually had a little bit of , uh, exports out of Brazil. It's one of the largest privately owned pharma companies in Brazil. And that was really Amgen's foothold into the country. And I'm sure we'll talk about this later today, but Brazil can be a very complicated place to do business and to try and start out as a company that has no experience there could be very challenging. So we saw acquisition as a good way to start and then basically bring Amgen biologic products in there. So that caused our Latin America region to be very significant for Amgen for two reasons. One, obviously we grew in size immediately overnight grew in complexity. No one at the company at this very Amer centric California based company, nobody knew what to do with Brazil. Wow. Hot potato <laugh>. Yeah, it was a hot potato. Not to mention it was its own manufacturing of products that, you know, we would manufacture three or four highly technical biologic products in any facility. And here's a place that was, you know, had thousands of skews, was doing everything from small molecule to biologics and, you know, different stuff. So it was complicated and um, the rules were complicated and, you know, hardly anyone understood it. So it was constantly, it was often a thorn in the flesh for the corporate because they didn't really know what was happening. And so we managed that all from Switzerland. We had managed everything globally outside of the United States, basically from Switzerland, that was the head of international operations at some point, Latin America, emerging markets in the East. And AF and North Africa and Australasia. These areas became big enough that we decided as a company that it made more sense to really break up into global regions. And when they did that, I'm skipping a couple of steps, but they basically asked me to move back to the United States in Thousand Oaks, California, which is their headquarters, to manage a region that they call Intercontinental, which is not the us it's not Europe, and it's not Asia, it's everything else.

Julio Martinez: 7:02

Oh , it's a term that I never heard before. I saw that in your bio, but usually companies have different names, but I've never heard intercontinental. Okay,

Kameel Farag: 7:10

Latam is a popular one if it's large enough, and it wasn't large enough to be its own thing at the time. So basically they wanted a team that was dedicated to these unique type of markets. And so what does Latin America have in common with the Middle East or Turkey? Uh , not much if you think about it . Certainly not culturally, but what it has in common from a business perspective. For a new company, it's all different and it's unique and you have to be a little scrappy and , and you can't do the things the way that you did it before. And it doesn't always follow the strict rules of the EMA or the FDA , not, I don't, by that I don't mean strict. It means it made you be very different rules. So that was my beginning of my foray into business in Latin America. I mean, I traveled there before casually. And , um, I was very excited because like I said, I , I'm very drawn to Latin culture , uh, middle Eastern culture as well. Um, some of these warmer climate cultures, I guess you could say. And la Latin culture in particular. So I got to spend a lot of time in , uh, you know, central and South America. And , uh, some of it was very difficult, challenging, you know, turning around businesses that weren't doing well, starting new businesses in countries we hadn't been before, which was new for me. So fantastic experience and I still maintain many relationships there.

Julio Martinez: 8:27

Excellent. All right , Camille , so let's talk about trends in Latin America. What do you see happening in the region that are beneficial to the commercialization of , of medical technologies or clinical research, if that's something that you wanna address?

Kameel Farag: 8:41

Yeah, I think those are falling two separate paths. Obviously they're linked, but , um, maybe I'll start with research for a second. And let me put the caveat out there that the last couple of years with the global pandemic , uh, it's challenging to say exactly how things are working. It's a little different when we're all navigating it differently. And I'm not currently involved in a project in Latin America, so I can't speak much to that. But assuming there's some sort of normal that things return to, I, the way I look at sort of on the research side, many countries in Latin America are poised and ready for external investment, you know, and think about the countries that 10 or 15 years ago would've been considered nuclear for the United States as an example. We're not gonna touch 'em, you know, and the three that come to mind for me are Venezuela and Argentina. Um, just currency. You didn't know what to do in Venezuela and Argentina, Columbia , we had just had this sort of, you know, are we stable? Are we at peace? From an American perspective, it was very scary. So there , you know, established pharma companies had been there forever and they knew what they were. Do , you know, they built facilities, but coming new was tough. And some of those places , um, you know, Venezuela still has a long way to go, but if you think about Colombia and Argentina, they did a lot of work. And, you know, there are certain, obviously I'll say , uh, regime changes along the way and movements towards pro business, pro investment. And they really were looking for how do we attract investment. And so when it comes to research and development, it's more of a , a pull, I'd say, than a push, which is great for businesses, especially in our industry, to have any drug efficacy tested truly globally, you need global patients population in your trials, right? That's just natural. You want many different ethnicities and, you know, physiology. So having arms in your study or sites in your studies that are in Latin America, it's just, it's better than just trying to run 'em all in Eastern Europe. Not to mention that from a regulatory perspective, that's somewhat required in many Latin American countries. So I think it's attractive in that regard , um, and growing. And what you see, or what I've seen is some of the large CROs, you know, in many cases have subcontracted out or, but they've basically grown quite a clinical, and you , you probably know this better than I do, Julio, quite a clinical research organization capability in Latin America. So it's there, the infrastructure is there, the physicians are there, and with the benefit to , um, we're talking about Latin America as if it's one country, of course it's not, you know, we're generalizing quite a bit, but if you think of many of the countries down there, they have some version of, you know, social healthcare where what you have is quite a number of physicians that are in place set up, ready to do, you know, clinical trials. And there's quite a bit of data, right? There's a lot of public health data. So it's attractive from that perspective. Time permitting. I'll answer your first question. No,

Julio Martinez: 11:46

No, no, that's good. We're doing great. That's research. What about commercialization? What do you think about , um,

Kameel Farag: 11:50

Yeah, so commercialization, again, it's a different path because I , I feel like they may not have any relationship to each other. I know some, you know, some countries it's easy to do clinical trials, but you never want to commercialize there or vice versa. But I'd say from a commercialization perspective, it's similar. Again, I'll kind of go to the places I've mentioned already. You know , I'll mentioned Columbia and Argentina. These were places that were, you know, from a Colombian perspective, let's go back 20 years or so for a US company to enter with a high price drug, for example. It's one thing if you're coming in with generics, it's, you know, it's a different story. These countries are not the richest in the world per se, but they have guaranteed healthcare . And so they're very cautious and careful about, okay, what medicines will we let in here and at what price? Because we have to guarantee that everybody can have them. And that's good. But it's a challenge for pharma companies that are trying to balance access across the globe. And I think what you've seen as economies are growing. And Columbia I think is a great example where they've really done a fantastic job of reaching out, strengthening their balance sheet, investing in education, and, and basically growing a talent pool that has made it a very attractive market for local operations. And that basically means it's much more accessible for foreign companies to come in and set up operations and then navigate those complexities on the ground rather than, you know, back from somewhere else. My experience is that anywhere in the world, when you as a company are operating through some sort of distributor, you're always missing something. You don't know exactly what's happening. It's not done your way. Uh , you don't know how the data, you don't see the sales report right away, nine times out of 10. And it's not because the distributor isn't skilled, but if you get to a certain critical mass, you want to do it yourself. And I think , um, the , the Latin America has come in many places, has come to a place where as long as the market supports the type of medication that you're , you know, has enough of that patient population and has the budget, you'd be silly not to try and go and do business there one way or the other . Argentina was always a large market. They basically struggled with , um, stabilizing currency. And a lot of that had to do with how does the rest of the world view the government of Argentina? And they reached a , a point several years ago where that seemed to at least change drastically from years prior. And so I think they're in a much better spot now for foreign companies to operate there. Before, where before it was like you couldn't even exchange dollars, you know, if you did, you know , what you got back is not what you got back on the street, you know, it's exactly,

Julio Martinez: 14:30

Even if you use a credit card, <laugh> to buy something on Amazon, you can get penalized. Even if you go on vacation and use your credit card to buy something in the us , you're gonna get penalized. I mean, it's just silly. Alright , Camille , so let's talk about fun and culture and people in Latin America. What do you think about the way people do business in the region?

Kameel Farag: 14:51

You know, that's a fantastic question, Julio. And again, it's very hard to answer simply because Latin America is a two continents, right? If we were to compare to the United States or Western Europe, you know, then there's definitely, you know, something about Latin America that you could say is unique to Latin America. But at the same time, so many differences between the different countries and cultures. I mean, one thing that comes to mind for me is it's obviously a more relaxed atmosphere than what you might find in, for example, I was worked in Switzerland or in Asia, a business meeting in , um, Sao Paulo will not look like one in Seoul, Korea. But what I think that, what that doesn't mean, and this can be a misconception for many Americans in particular, or western Europeans, north Americans are western Europeans. It has nothing to do with the work ethic of your labor force there. And so it can be a misconception, Hey, we , everyone's sort of casual, we're kissing on cheeks, we're all friends here, but I've in some of these places where we had very challenging operations or you know, we were just starting up. I mean, I've never seen teams work so hard, so tirelessly and from thousands of miles away from the people giving orders to them and just, you know, trying to fix this, you know, implementing a new system, launching a new product to rebuild a building that collapsed because of, you know, caught fire, whatever it is, right? All these things. And what you also get, and I'm, I'm gonna guess a little bit here. One thing, as you know, and this is not only Latin America, but particularly so they love football like passionately. And I remember I learned , uh, to pick the football team that no one liked in town. So I could say that was my football team just to, you know, get people mad. Anyways, I think about it like that, where that culture of wanting to cheer and be a part of something special, I saw that so many times with my teams in Latin America, where if they accomplish some big goal, a simple email saying thank you and congratulations, and here's a bonus, they care less about that than let's all shout and scream and have a party and watch a show and have some cake and champagne. You know, that, that's what matters so much more than anything else. So the relationships matter more, and I think that is something that you need to learn as a westerner or, you know, north American relationships matter. Can that person trust you? Like in the United States, for example, you could, you know, you may never see your office colleagues, you say goodbye to them at work and you have no idea where they live, and yet you can work fine together. I think that would be a little strange for many people in Latin American cultures. Do you agree is , I mean, yeah,

Julio Martinez: 17:44

Yeah. Totally. Totally. I was just gonna tell you a story. I was visiting a clinical research site yesterday, and I had a meeting at eight in the morning with the owner , uh, of the director , uh, doctor . And , uh, I sat in the waiting area and I waited for an hour and the guy never showed up, but I noticed something strange. I noticed that the pace of the place was very slow. I noticed that people were , I mean, employees wear their uniforms and they were talking to each other like in a sad way, and they were moving from little groups from one place to another, one place to another. It was kind of a , a , a weird mood in the ambience, A sad mood in the ambience. And then they have like a yard that you can see from the waiting area used to be an old house. So you , it , it was actually the , the patio, the , the backyard of the house. And then I start seeing people going to the yard. Everybody, all the employees, they gather there like 20 people. And then they start playing sad music, like religious sad music. And then I realized, I finally understood what was going on. One of their coworkers just died of Covid the day before, and they were, I mean, all holding hands, hugging each other, praying together. I was almost in tears, <laugh> . I like , oh man. And then the owner of the clinic, I texted the owner of the clinic, I said, Hey, I'm sorry, I , it looks like today's not the right day for us to meet. I do you mind if we reschedule this for Wednesday? He's like, oh, no worries, no worries. I'll be there in five minutes. It's just that I couldn't do anything today, work later because of this situation that you already noticed <laugh> and , um, was dealing with all the, the consequences of this, right ? With my wife. And , uh, yeah,

Kameel Farag: 19:47

That is a perfect anecdote. It's a sad one, but you know, these, a corporate team in many of these countries and cultures is a family. It's an automatic family, right? When you take a job, that's how you're thinking about it. And it's not that everybody stays in their job forever, but that's sort of the, the commitment and the feeling you have. Like, this is my new family. And , um, which is special

Julio Martinez: 20:11

Now that you bring it up. Uh , Camille, people in Latin America desperately need jobs, you know, that. So a job is such an accomplishment. Any job, even if you are just the water person, the person or the , the lady that cleans the office or the person makes coffee, because every office has a , a lady, by the way, I don't know if you notice that, but , uh, every office has a lady that cleans the office, she makes a coffee, she goes and does errands, cookies, <laugh> , past trees . Yes, they're lovely. They , they become mothers. They become mothers of everybody in the office. And psychology, she's a psychologist of everybody in the office. Exactly. <laugh> . Anyway , so it's just different dynamics. Yeah,

Kameel Farag: 20:59

It is. Well , it's , and it's funny you mention that , uh, this is a little off topic , but obviously with the , the labor rates being different and you know, the job situation, what it is in, in Latin America, I've had to recruit folks from the countries like Mexico, Columbia , um, Brazil to the United States. You know, I promote them and put them in a big job in the US and they're shocked when they get there because they can't afford a housekeeper anymore. You know, live-in nanny, forget about it, you know, you gotta drive yourself to the grocery store and

Julio Martinez: 21:32

You have to go to Home Depot and buy a hammer and nails and do whatever you need to do.

Kameel Farag: 21:36

There's not a guy downstairs, you know, with the thing to come up and no, it's not gonna happen. So , um, you know, it's interesting, you, when you see things through other people's perspectives, we like to think United States, Americans in general, and maybe all countries feel like this, but we tend to be very Amer centric. We think this is the center of the world. Everybody must think this is the best place on earth and blah, blah , blah, but you really need to see it from someone else's eyes. We're , you know, every country has something unique to offer and something amazing, and every country has problems. And I think we have quite a few here. And it , it's interesting when you see that from someone else's perspective.

Julio Martinez: 22:11

Alright , Camille, let's talk about , um, specific countries where you've had experience. Uh, give us some highlights about every country. What stands the most in your mind? And for every country? For Brazil, for Columbia , for Argentina.

Kameel Farag: 22:26

Yeah. So I think you've named the ones that I would list , um, and have, have already. So I did some business in Brazil for both Amgen and Ionis . But when I , I was at Amgen for longer, and I don't know how many trips I did to Brazil. I , I felt like I lived there for a while . And it was simply because part of it was, again, it was very challenging for a company like Amgen to understand what's happening on the ground there. It like didn't make sense. You know, we , we , we used SAP as a ERP system. Why do we have to set it up differently in Brazil? Are you sure they're not making this up? Like there's a tax law, for example, when you fire taxes, you have to, you can't just have inventory and say it's in the warehouse at location. If you cross the street, just cross the street to a different building, you have to , that's a different address. And you have to register that for like a tax perspective, a municipal tax perspective. Those are things that in the US you would just never bother with. Right? And this seems very strange. Taxes on just bank transactions. Okay. You know, so part of my traveling down there was frankly to be a bit of the ambassador. I was a trusted, known quantity at Amgen. I'd worked there for many years. And so being able to kind of advocate, if I understood what was happening, I could advocate back at corporate, Hey, this is what's happening. We have these problems are real. These other ones we're fixing, you know, we're on it. So I spent a lot of time there. And , um, what I discovered some similar to what you and I were talking about, I think it was number one, it was very complicated to do business. Everything was hard. Importation was hard. And what's hard is it's hard to do it the exact way it's written on the paper, you know, because the laws are changing, which is very strange, you know, like, so I think in the United States and , and in Europe, like primarily laws are made by the legislature, right? And then the executive branch might, you know, execute them. But I find that in Brazil and some other places, like the department basically is making laws the equivalent of laws, right? So, you know, it can change the

Julio Martinez: 24:31

Department. You mean the entity, the government entity. Okay .

Kameel Farag: 24:34

Whichever entity. So ministry of health or, you know , uh, you know, it's probably not that extreme what I'm saying, but it seems to be the case that the regulations are more than just a regulation and they can change frequently. So you're always watching the, you know, every morning you need to watch the newspaper. Okay, what happened? <laugh> ? So importation is difficult. Um, and so we had supply problems. We had the largest product end up being one that we would import from Korea and, you know, package and distribute in Brazil. And it was a large product. And so, and then Brazilian , uh, you know, the <inaudible> the , the currency devalued significantly. So then it was a big fight to kind of fight with the Koreans to renegotiate the price they wanted in dollar . So that was a challenge. And I had to learn some of these things that you and I talked about, which was I had to learn a different way of operating. Um, I had to slow down a little bit with everything that was happening. When I went down there and saw what my local CFO was actually doing, what he actually spent his time on, it was like collections. Amgen is a cash rich company. I never had to worry about collections. Okay? He had to worry about collections because it was his , the government was his customer, and they don't want to pay you. So, you know, the biggest customers in the state of Sao Paulo . And then they'll be like, eh , we don't really have budget, or we're waiting till the next , uh, you know, governor of Sao Paulo, he comes in November, you know, nine months late 12, and you can't do anything, right? This is the government. So that could be millions of dollars, you know, that you need in your bank account to pay your employees. And it's not there. Not

Julio Martinez: 26:11

To mention corruption, not to mention the possibility of corruption because

Kameel Farag: 26:15

Of that. And so that was the other thing I wanted to mention. And this is a tricky one to say 'cause so I don't want to be misunderstood, but you probably know there's a saying in Brazil. Brazil, and to a foreigner, it can kind of sound like, eh , we're gonna break the rules. But it doesn't quite mean that it means something like, we'll find a way, there's a way to do it. So as a Brazilian, when some law changes or it seems like the government is saying no, they don't panic as much. 'cause they say, we'll, find a way. Now that can be very scary because as a multinational, you don't want to do anything unethical. You don't wanna break any rules. But learning that, okay, yeah, maybe there's another guy in the ministry we can talk to who's the boss of the other guy. And he says, Hey, come on, you're giving him a hard time, or whatever. Or you find out that , um, your stuff is sitting at port because you know, the sticker was upside down and you just ask them, can I please change the sticker? Things like that. I , maybe I'm exaggerating. The Tino de Brazil is a really interesting concept, and I think it applies other places, which is calm down, find a way, don't panic, you know, let's find another way. We'll figure it out. And that I learned from working in Brazil and I fell in love with the culture in the country there. And then some of my best friends that I worked with are still my , my CFO that I first had when I was there. I promoted him to manage Turkey, middle East and Africa. And then I, I assisted him getting another job. He was the director, finance director of Japan, which is a huge pharma market. And it was just starting out for Amgen. And apparently , um, more recently he took my old job. So , uh, I'm very proud to have been a part of that journey. You know, we still talk every now and then reaches out to me, and thank you for giving me this opportunity. His daughter, like, I have a picture of his daughter at graduation from a Dutch university just thanking me for giving them opportunities. And there's nothing more special than that, than building these relationships and , and, you know, investing in people. And you don't think you get the chance to do that in this foreign country. How would I have ever met him and, and been friends with him? So the opportunity to do business internationally is just,

Julio Martinez: 28:26

It's , and to transform somebody's life because , uh, having a , an opportunity like that is very, very unique in Latin America. Very few people are lucky enough to have that.

Kameel Farag: 28:38

Absolutely. And for me to appreciate that, it's very humbling, right? I had to be humbled for sure. You know, I think I was, I was relatively young when I took some of these jobs and, you know, I'm ready to take, you know, let's get business, let's grow this business. And first, you know, a lot of folks were, especially in, in Latin America, in the Middle East, were kind of like, whoa, what's wrong with this guy? And I had to slow down over time. I took on the role of many of the country teams trusted me as the person back at headquarters that they could talk to, you know, if the general manager was giving them a hard time. So he was like the CEOI was like the CFO of the region. Uh, he or she, some of the general managers would call me saying , I'm not understanding what is, what's my boss trying to do? And I'd say, okay, I think you gotta do this and that, whatever, which was a very flattering to me. It meant to me that I had succeeded in learning and being humbled enough that folks trusted me. And that's golden.

Julio Martinez: 29:35

A couple comments, quick comments before we end , uh, Camille. One is, is hard for Americans or for probably Western Europeans to understand that a meeting in Brazil and Columbia , uh, in Argentina, probably 95% of the meeting is just personal talk. Just getting to know each other. We're not here to do business. As soon as you walk into the room, we're here just to meet each other. So we talk about soccer, we talk about family, we talk about vacation, we talk about life. And then at the end of the meeting when , okay, what is it that we are here for? What do we have to sign? What's the deal? So in five minutes you kinda finish your meeting, I mean, or do the objective of the meeting. And sometimes when I bring clients to Columbia and other places and they sit with me in the meeting and they're like, like looking everywhere, what's , and , and sometimes you have to speak in Spanish to establish that report, right? And they're like lost because they're not moving their agenda forward. But I am moving the agenda forward, but he doesn't know I am moving the agenda forward. <laugh>.

Kameel Farag: 30:47

No, it's absolutely true. I , we , when I remember going to Brazil again on my , one of my first meetings I , it was a budget review. And so at Amgen, you know, the budget, many companies like the budget is a big deal. And I think culturally in many countries that, you know, have a foreign, you know, European or American corporate headquarters, like it's a big deal when corporate comes. And so the budget review, it's like a dog and pony show, right? It's a big thing, <laugh> . So, you know, we're all dressed in suits and I mean , I dressed in a suit anyways, but then they're all, you know, they're coming, it's their big presentation. So, you know, we could, in other places, like when I present the budget to the global CFO, you know, would be me and him in a room with like five slides in a conversation. When I would fly to, you know, Mexico or Morocco or wherever, then you know, everybody of the company comes out and they're , you know, and the high potential people have to present their, they need to go through their presentation. I remember one time we were in the middle of a , a meeting and it was going well. We really liked the performance of the company. And at some point my colleague, he was the general manager of the region, said, you know what? It's okay, we got it. You're approved, whatever the thing is that they were presenting, and it was a young lady trying to present some new marketing project. He's like, you're approved, Camille, let's fund them. I was like, okay, good. And she said, well, I have more presentation. I'm not done <laugh>. She really wanted to go through her presentation. She had been preparing forever, you know, and I just, I was like, you know, I spoke to my , my colleague. I was like, well , you know, you don't wanna crush her. It's part of the experience. But , and same. And so I remember we would sometimes leave the room, you started meeting at two o'clock and we're there at nine 30, 10:00 PM we're still sitting in the room and by the end of the meeting it's like everybody's sleeves are rolled up and we're kind of like on top of each other and papers every , isn't it at the beginning of the meeting, it was formal and you had your coffee cup and your cookie and my name sitting in front of me by the end of the meeting. It's like, you know, shoulders and Whoa . Yeah . Which is fun for me. And I think one of the things that drew me to Latin American culture and other places is I'm a mutt of sorts. I'm my father's from Egypt. My mother is , uh, American, you know, white heritage. Yeah , excuse me, European heritage. Okay . So I grew up around a lot of Middle Eastern culture, which has some similarities. Very expressive was gonna mention that . Very relational. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> more , more relationship oriented than time. So there's something very refreshing to me when I am back in these places that feels a little more like home for me. Home. Mm-Hmm,

Julio Martinez: 33:35

<affirmative> . Beautiful. Well said. I love that <laugh>. So Camille, it looks like we can talk about this for years. <laugh>.

Kameel Farag: 33:42

I , I think so. So you better have a very long podcast. Episode 13, right? So yeah,

Julio Martinez: 33:47

<laugh>. So, well I have a question I usually ask , uh, all my guests towards the end of the show, which is, what would you say if you had the president of a US company just exploring Latin America as a place to do research or business? What would be your words of wisdom, your muscles of wisdom? Get

Kameel Farag: 34:10

A couple of folks on the ground that you trust and let the locals find good local talent? I think a mistake many people make is they think they have to import, you know, implant a lot of expats because they don't trust the local talent. And so you may need to bring one or two people that know the company, they know how it works. And of course you want to know, you know, so one or two people potentially, and it's a good opportunity for training for an American company or a European company to send them to smaller markets, but hire the locals and trust them that they know what they're doing and encourage them . And I would say it's more than people. It's not just , uh, be open to doing business in a different way. That's the whole point. Don't try and stamp out, you know, your company in each country. You know, you kind of have to paint it. And uh , that's maybe too long for the speech. But something along those lines.

Julio Martinez: 35:09

I loved our show. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you, sir. And anytime I look forward to being in touch, Camille. Absolutely. Bye-Bye <laugh> . Alright ,

Kameel Farag: 35:18

Thanks. Bye .