Endgame with Gita Wirjawan - Life Has No Rewind Button | #Endgame ft. Tony Fernandes (Part 2)

Episode Date: September 18, 2020

Storytime with "one ringgit man" continues. From being public enemy number one in a record label company to being disliked by the Singapore government. From discovering Indonesian superstar Krisdayanti through Asia Bagus, to bringing Southeast Asians closer together by urging open skies policy. Tony thought he had seen it all, but the rest of his legacy book with ASEAN is still unwritten.

I think this piece will be an inspiration for a lot of people, at least in Indonesia, what you've just described about what you've gone through. Yeah, I mean, I think the thing is to go out there and believe you can do anything. And it's your life. Too many Asian parents try to live their life through their kids. And that's a mistake. This is Endgame. Talk about what was making the report so game changing. It just made sense.

And I put it into pictorial formats and I predicted, you know, I was doing predictions on the music trends. And it was just that the report that was done was sales is bigger than last month by 30,000. Boring stuff. CD sold more than cassettes. Right. And I kind of dug deeper into the report to kind of say there's a trend going here. Wow. And this music genre is happening.

and this is dying and we should get out of this. And so they said they'd never seen a finance guy talk about the A&R. And I said, well, you've got to get behind the numbers, right? Otherwise, it's just numbers. And so there they saw that I had a natural flair. They hadn't met an account who loved music so much. They thought this was a unique specimen of a human being, right?

So I think they wanted to experiment. This was a good thing or a bad thing. So they suddenly come up and say, you're young, why don't you go back to Malaysia and be general manager of warning music Malaysia? Now, I had literally, I'm kind of semi-white because I've lived in England all my life, right? They call me a bounty bar brown on the outside and white on the inside. Your partner, Nazirazak, is 100% white, by the way. I'm going to have to cut that out, man. You shouldn't.

It's fact. You know, in some countries, they call themselves Oreos. Yeah, I know, I know. In my time, it's called Bounty Bar, brown on the outside, white, the inside. Coconut, coconut. Yeah. So I never thought of living in Malaysia, right?

I was like, but I didn't think, you know, as Asians, we analyze, talk to our grandmother, grandfather, friends before we make a decision, right? I just was like, I'm there. This was a great opportunity. And that's one thing I always tell people. If you get a chance, grab it.

Yeah. I agree. Don't ever look back twice. I agree. As Asians procrastinate too frigging long, right? Yeah. You're the complete manifestation of guts. Yeah.

I mean, that's what you got to tell the Asian boys and girls. It's all about guts, man. Sorry, go on. Go on take some risk. Go to take some risks. So I, you know, I didn't ask my salary. I didn't ask anything. And then in a month's time, I was on a plane, back to Malaysia.

And the Malaysian company were like, who is this young asshole coming back, right? They were like, organizing a boycott of me. They were like, who is this 27-year-old kid from London? Who's going to be our boss? You know, and then there was an Austrian dude. was a very nice guy. He was the CEO of the company

but he was on a holiday camp right he was just doing nothing didn't know what he was doing. And the boys below were doing something and Warner Music had a good reputation it had some good artists but I joined it at the bottom. It just lost the biggest artists

you know by forgetting to extend the contract literally the secretary forgot to extend ended. Oh my God. And she walked into EMI. Her name was Ella. And so the company was a very low morale. And I came in, the CEO let me do whatever I want. And within, you know, six months, we had cleaned up the company. We signed a lot of artists. And it had record profitability. And then the Americans being the Americans came down and said, boy, you're running this company. You might as well be CEO. It's for the exact.

the Austrian guy who was a decent guy and of course I landed on my feet I became CEO at 27 years old. Well done. Well done. And then I had you know 12 years of developing local music. You know, I signed Chris Dayanti. Here's a good Indonesian story, right? Here's a good Indonesian story. So I'm coming out to set out warning music Indonesia. It was Suharto's time. Yeah. Not easy for a foreign company to come in right. So I'm working with a great bunch of guys, Musica, PTA Musica. Yeah, Musica. They're still around, not as big.

And I'm sitting in my, yeah, I'm sitting in my hotel room in Grand Hyatt, right? And, you know, I'm watching TV and I see this girl on TV. And I call out Achu, Sanjaya. Sure. Indonesia, you always had two names for everybody. and he I said hey chew there's this amazing singer on TV can we go sign her up he says I don't know who she is I said well come up come up the room and watch her she's amazing and he was just in the room next door and came in and watched it it was Asia of August

and he said like I'll go check out who she is this was in the 90s right yeah yeah her name is Chris Dianti. And I said, wow, let's go sign her up now. And she is amazing. Yeah. And then he comes back and he says, hey, she lives. So I said, so what? He said, that take a long time to get there.

I said, I don't care. And I was a call a Lumpo boy, right? I mean, how big could you thought I'd be? Three hours later, we arrived in South Jakarta. At that point, I realized how big your country was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I met Anang, who was the boyfriend at the time. Yep, yep, yep.

And it was a buy one, get one free. I had to sign. So you signed two singers. Oh, my. Oh, my. I had to sign Anon as well. Okay. So that was, that was a condition.

That was a condition from them. Okay. That was a condition. Which would have been the right decision anyway? Yeah. So Anam was writing all those songs anyway. Yeah. And then, you know, we signed Project P and I tried to sign a club project. I had a great run in Indonesia actually. And I got into Dundu. I discovered Dundu in Indonesia, right?

Yeah. And I was like, wow, this is great music. And so I upmarket Dundit. I took all the Indonesian music back to KL and I was the Dunduk king. I see. I created something out of nothing. And then I found Nashid music and, you know, kind of weird, right? The time one, it was half Jewish. And here I am producing Nassid music and making the biggest album ever, Reihon, 1.4 million. So I had a great, great career, and I signed Sheila and Zino. So I had all kinds of music. And I loved it.

It was probably my most... You know, Warner music got spun off. Warner music got spun off from Time Warner. Yeah. What do you think? Before that, so my whole career, The whole Ayracian story came out. I always thought I was going to die in the music business.

And I wanted to be president of Warner Music. That was my goal in life. I'll be the first Asian to run an American record. And so one day, I'd been through three mergers, right? It started with... The first merger was Time. Time Warner. Right.

Which is a crazy merger. And then CNN came along. N came along. Yeah. And then the craziest merger of all, I think the deal in the history, AOL. With the benefit of mindset.

I'm sitting in 75 Rock, listening to Steve Case and Bob Pittman and thinking, what drugs are these guys taking? You know, please give me some of it. And I think these guys are going to destroy this company. And we're all talking about $500 stock prices. And this was the first dot-com boom.

And, you know, I sat there and I thought, that's it. You know, my whole life is like that. I suddenly realized, that's it, time to get out. And my whole career was made on one thing. Steve Kay says to me, Tony, what do you reckon our stock price should be in a year's time? Now, in my heart, it was $80 at that time, 2001. I thought, wow, listening to you. It's still $80 of doing well.

but I knew I couldn't say that. So I said $90. You were a polite Asian boy. Yeah. I said $90 and you went wrong boy. $500. And then my famous mouth opened. And I said, please give me some of the drugs you are taking.

And at that point, I knew my career was over at one music. So I walked out of the room. I sold my stock option at $78. dollars. Did okay. The price never came anywhere near that. It came down to $20 at one stage. Yep.

And I went to my boss and I said I quit. He was thrilled because he always wanted to get rid of me. He thought I was after his job, which I was. And so before I could change my mind, he wrote me a check and I said goodbye. And I left New York and I arrived in London. thinking, what am I going to do for the rest of my life? And I went to a bar, hub, contemplating what I'm going to do. And this is absolutely true.

There's no exaggeration here. I saw Stelios of EasyJet on TV. And I thought, wow, what a great idea. And I always love planes. Five years old, I always said to my dad, I was going to own an airline. No kidding. I never said I want to be a pilot only from my lap. You said that before you got on the Qantas flight to go to London?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No kidding. Me and my dad were plane spotters. I'm even at school. I see. My best friend Charlie, we used to go to Queens building at Heathrow Airport and just watch planes. Wow. And maybe I like the crew in the planes as well.

So we, you know, I thought this is it. This is my destiny. And so I grabbed the bus very appropriately, a green line. bus as well that took me to Luton Airport and I saw everything in Orange and people find the Barcelona for eight pounds Paris for six pounds and I thought this is amazing and at that moment I said I'm gonna do this and there's a very fine line between brilliance and stupidity it's really very narrow but I thought hey I'm 30 plus if I fail you know I fail but I don't want to I don't want

to think at 50 that I wish I did it And that's my second moral as a moral in this podcast is that don't be afraid of failure. You've got to just go out and do it. If you fail, you fail. You can't press that rewind button. You can't say, I wish I did it.

This is too late. So my whole life has been taking those chances. Some have been disastrous. Some have been great. But I've never had any regrets. I've never sat there and said, I wish I did it because I did it. I get knocked down by a bus tomorrow.

and then many people would like to drive that bus, you know, I would have lived a great life. I've had no regrets. I'd live my life to the full. Yeah. So, yeah, at that point I decided, I called my wife, who's my ex-wife now, and said, I'm going to start an airline after she stopped laughing. She said, why don't you start a bread shop?

You know, you've got the stomach for it. And I said, no, no, I got this vision. And that was it. It was no stopping me. It was that moment in Hampstead You know, what do you think that you might have gone through

that was different from the typical Asian who didn't want to take as much risk as you did? I mean, there's this element of nurture versus nature, right? Which I like to talk about with some people lately. Yeah,

yeah, it was my, that great movie, right? I don't know if you ever watched it with Eddie Murphy, trading places. Yeah, sure. Great movie. I watched it a few times. All about environment. Yeah. I definitely, England gave me a different perspective of life.

Branson gave me that you can do anything you want to do, right? Right. And you go out there, say you want to start an airline. Yeah. You want to go do Virgin Brides or whatever. And then I think a couple of my mother, who really did anything she wanted to do and did it very well. Yeah.

So I think it's all those factors that led me. to believe that, you know, I could achieve anything I want to do if I put my mind to it. And, you know, it's a boy's own story. It hasn't been incredibly successful. But, you know, I loved Formula One from the very early age. I loved football. Many agents have had that ability to do what I've done. Not successful, but, hey, I did it, you know, and that's kind of what I've always been. And, you know, people talk about how much more wealthy I could have been if I wasn't in football and F1 and all these things. But I don't measure my life through how much wealth I can.

That's a strange concept from Malaysians and Indonesians and ties. For most Asians. Yeah, because they're all there about how many billions do I have. And I'm richard and the next billion. For me, I think my life has been meaningful. I've built something that's created a 25,000 jobs. and built a industry and we've inspired lots of people. And so I'm a builder more than, wealth is a nice product, let's be real.

But it doesn't motivate me that much to be honest. I think this piece will be an inspiration for a lot of people, at least in Indonesia, which you've just described about what you've gone through. Yeah, I mean, I think the thing is to go out there and believe you can do anything. And it's your life. Too many Asian parents try to live their life through their kids. And that's a mistake. Yeah.

There are too many doctors out there who really shouldn't be doctors. Yeah. I didn't tell you, but, you know, from the moment I was born, I had a stethoscope around me, right? My first toy, my first toy was a doctor's kid, right? I, you know, I was like, and that wasn't sexual, by the way, either. I had a doctor's coat. So. I want to ask you.

I want to ask you this, though. If you were the director of the crazy rich Asians movie, how would you have narrated it differently? Oh, wow. You know, I didn't watch the movie. Sorry, wrong question. It's kind of tough.

But it's really funny. It's another funny story there, right? So I'm in Singapore, and someone sends me a message and says, hey, Michelle, you're always upstairs, and she's looking for you. Oh, okay, yeah, great. and she said she hasn't seen you for a while,

come up and say hello. So I went upstairs to speak to her. And then I said, hey, how come you know in that movie Crazy Rich Asians? Because you're a real bitch. You fit that part really well. She said,

but you're such an asshole, Tony. I am in that movie. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I said, it didn't look like you. No, I think you would have, you would have directed it very differently.

You would have told a very different story. Yeah, a very different story. And, um, I mean Americanized right there's lots of Singaporean bits of your sure sure sure you know what way really is crazy it should have been crazy rich Indonesians because uh crazy rich oh crazy rich ties man oh no no Malaysians and Thai Malaysians cannot keep up with Indonesians you're in another lead you're just very good at hiding it there we go I want to push you on this uh I know you didn't like the merger

between AOL and Time Warner. But what you think of the merger between Time Warner and AT&T, wireless? Don't you think that was the right thing? Combining contents with the pipe? Yeah, but a bit late, you know? A bit late. Okay.

If they'd done it like, I mean, the whole concept of AOL was the right concept. Yeah. But they were too pioneering, right? At the time, and like the music guys didn't want to subscribe to digital music. There was no Netflix platform. So it was still born, right?

Right idea, marrying content with platform, which is what we've got in super apps, you know, its content, etc. And AT&T was right, but they've missed the boat, right? Movies have gone to Netflix and all the channels and the, you know, the relevance of the mobile phone is purely a platform now, as opposed to controlling revenue because when you're going to, because when you have them all off, when you're downloading everyone else's apps, right?

Whether it's Netflix or Spotify, et cetera. So right time, you know, even HBO was the leader in content. They've got the biggest library. They were the kings, but they missed the boat, right? And only now they've launched HBO Maps, which is, you know. Yeah, a few years late. The trains left the station, right? Yeah.

You've got Amazon in there. You've got Netflix, Apple. I mean, Apple's got like a trillion dollars, and they're so far away as well, right? Yeah. You know? You think they'll pull it off? You think they'll be able to pull it off in the next few years, or it's just too big to figure it out? AT&T and Time Warner?

Yeah. I think it's too late. Okay. And I mean, they're losing a lot of great talent, a lot of great HBO guys have gone. And that's one of the problem with mergers. Mergers look great. at Harvard Business School. But the reality is it's about culture.

Yeah, I agree. Eurasian, MAS, on paper in Harvard would look like, oh, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. But, you know, and all you Harvard guys would say, yeah, let's do it. And you have all the binomial distributions and the creation of wealth. But the realities of cultures don't get on, it's going to be a weapon of mass destruction, right?

Yeah. So that's, you know, that's why you're happening. with AT&T, which is really a traditional kind of FMCG telecom company. Right. Mixing with creative guys. Yeah. It ain't going to happen, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Hey. I was talking, you know, Mike Severt, who's the CEO of TIR Mobile, who's really the brains behind, you know, John Lajor got a lot of the credit. He's an incredible guy. Yeah, yeah. I love them to death. Yeah.

And, but they realize they're still a mobile operator. Yeah. And they've just become number one man in the States. Yep. They've done an incredible job, incredible branding and customer service job. Yep. Yeah. Hey, let's talk about the airline.

You started it in 2001. And you've gotten, what, more than 600 million people to travel all over the world or mostly Southeast Asia. That's an incredible achievement. Talk a little bit more about Air Asia and your journey. Yeah. Wow. my journey is rock and roll man yeah it's more it's more rolling though than rock yeah yeah it's been it's been a great it's been you know if you've seen this in the movies you'd say it

only it only happens in the movies right a music exec a banker another music exec and a retired called a retired civil servant right who used to wear a bowtie go out there and say we're going to start an airline it's like you know the tom cruise movie right um you know it ain't going to happen or an adam sandler movie playing golf yeah um so yeah talking about jerry mcguier i'm talking about jerry mcguyen okay that was a great movie yeah that one how you recreate yourself how you repurpose yourself correct yeah so you know you know And yeah, it's been an incredible ride to go from two planes to 265 planes. We're back to two planes, by the way.

So, you know, it's like that. It's like that people say to me, Tony, how can you make jokes about this? I said, you've got to laugh, right? Right. So I said it's like that snakes and ladders game, right? You get up to square 98. And then there's a snake that takes you all back down to three. So I'm back down there, man.

but it's a great chance to, it's a second chance to rebuild. You know, I disagree. I think you've created, you've created such a big brand. I mean, your brand equity is up there. You're not at level three. I think you're moving from 98 to 97.

Yeah, no, no, you're right. I mean, you know, while it's wonderful to hear it in such a positive way. Right. We are really also starting from ground zero as well, but we have a great brand. Yeah. And we have great people. So that's a big plus from setting it up in 2001.

But the very nature of our airline in 2001 was born out of a travesty, right, or calamity, which was 9-11. Yeah. You know, so while I've experienced everything from, you know, SARS to bird flu to terrorism in Indonesia, to airports closed in Thailand, to tsunamis, earthquakes. I mean, COVID is something else. I thought I'd seen it all. Yeah.

But you know, we're very resilient. Yeah. And we've got a product that people want. We just got to be patient and wait for the borders to open. But from a domestic standpoint, we're doing all right. And yeah, the journey's been incredible. I mean, you know, if you told me 18 years ago, I'm going to be interviewed by Gita, you know, I would laugh. I was looking up to you, man, back then.

I still look up to you now. And if, you know, we created so many jobs, which is the biggest thing, it's the biggest thrill in my life. And the fact that I've taken kids who left school at 13 and made them pilots and stuff, it's incredible. It's amazing.

And made ASEAN a smaller place. You know, people going to Bandung. I started Ban D. Bandung, Gita, no one flew to Bandung, no one. No Indonesian airline, only the Indonesian Air Force, right? And I knew Bandung was I used to record Damdud music there. Remember I was the Dunduk king. And by the way, we're going to get a, we're going to get a Deng Dutt singer in this studio in the next few days.

Yeah, who's that? Romai Rama? No, no, no. Okay. Talk about Bandung. I mean, you know, that was, I don't think it was just gut. I think it was intuition, which a lot of people don't have like you do. Yeah, so I used to drive to Bandung, you know, from Jakarta,

would stop in that hill resort on the way. Yeah, Punchapas. And yeah, correct, Gunchamas. Yeah. Many stories that can't be repeated on your podcast. But I said to my team, hey, why don't we fly the Bandung? And they looked at me and said, oh, no airline flies there. So I said, so what?

We're going to be the first airline. There is ITB. There's a great music scene. The people there are awesome. There's a great textile industry. F&B. The food and beverage scene. I said, I don't care.

We're going to fly that. I'll make the recommendation for them to give you an award. Yeah. Actually, yeah, they should give me one. Yeah. Yeah. But we, it wasn't an Indonesian airline. At that time, we only had a Malaysian airline.

It was Malaysia or Air Asia to food to Bandung. and it wasn't Singapore Airlines, it wasn't any of these big guys. We saw Bandung before anybody. And I saw it because of the people. I thought the people was special. Yeah. You know, there was a Dundot singer that I knew well there, Chi Faramida. And, you know, she was awesome and all her friends and everything.

So the spirit of Bandung was something that I didn't see anywhere else in the world. And I wanted people to see it. And those are the kind of stories that no one can take away from you, right? That Asia went out there and created the market and created jobs for people that just never thought. And I mean, the airport is now a big airport with 24 airlines. Yeah. Hey, look, you're one of the very few people that basically pushed for the open sky policy in ASEAN, right? A lot of people don't know that, you know?

Talk a little bit about your struggles, you know, earlier on, how you. push the governments to open up, you know, their skies. Because you lit up the fire on tourism for ASEAN. Yeah, I think you deserve that credit. Yeah, I had made a lot of enemies in that process. But I remember one famous story during Singapore, the Asian transport meeting. I made myself famous over there. You don't need to mention names. Singapore and Ministers said something about open. skies and I said how much sky do you have actually in Singapore which kind of banned me from Singapore about seven years I think but but all the Assyan ministers

suddenly care up to and said hey you know wow we really like your comment we would like to have said that ourselves and then they started getting into it and I that's how I what kind of my breakthrough in many ways and then I started kind of pushing it and it was it's very tough because let me tell you one thing Gita airlines are almost like the national flag of the country. Right, right. They have enormous, enormous power. Sure.

You know, it's like Singapore Airlines. Singapore Airlines is probably more famous than anything in Singapore. Yeah. Right. And it carries the Singapore flag. All of us carry our country's flag. Air Asia, Indonesia has an Indonesia flag. But it's like the national airline.

It's almost like your flag, right? I mean, even in Korea, it's owned by a private company, but Korean Airlines like, well, it's Korean. This is our flight carrier. It's not owned by the government. It's owned by some shipping dudes. So that was the hardest thing, but I had, you know, unlike UK, which had deregulated

and British Airways was owned by the public and all this kind of stuff. I was dealing with national carriers. Oh, my God. Invariably, all their mates were in the Ministry of Transport as well, right? Yeah. Malaysian Airlines, Garuda International. high international, Singapore Airlines. You know, this is like Nightmare Elm Street, part four, right?

And then you have Philippine Airlines. So it was real tough, real, real tough. But you know how I got it? I got it by firstly going to places that none of these guys wanted to go to and then delivering. And then people were my biggest attitude. People wanted Air Asia to come to the town. Yeah.

Yeah. And so. And the government can't say no to the people. No, that's right. Many politicians said to me, you know, your greatest success in winning us was that you were so popular with the people. Yeah. That we couldn't take you on.

I told you about politics. So, so we, we were the, you know, we were the, maybe we live a lot of people's lives that they liked to see that the small guy was fighting the big guy. Yeah. It was tough because I only had the media. And many, many government officials to this day dislike me because they think I'm arrogant or I'm pushy. I'm not. I'm the simplest guy in the world.

But my job is to open up skies, right? So I pushed very hard. Right. You know, we painted ASEAN on our plane. We were pushing ASEAN like anywhere. And I think, yeah, it's worth. We've got this ASEAN thing happening. Well, even I fly your airline, very frequently.

I know. You can check on your computers. We do. We love you flying. Except I don't get a discount. But here's a thing. You know, you know what I like about how you spearheaded this thing on tourism? Because it's the only sector where you can create jobs a lot more easily than any other sector, right?

And I think it's very important for Southeast Asian countries. Yeah, it takes a lot more money for a manufacturing job as opposed to a tourism job and and I think you've done a lot for Southeast Asia Yeah, I mean I think I think when of course and the beauty is when someone like this comes along It's going to be emulated which is not a bad thing. Yeah, you know, so you have every animal airline now and you've got lions you've got tigers You've got flies and all kinds of things, but tons of birds all over the place So you know, I don't know why Anna I don't know We haven't seen a grasshopper. No, in Malaysia, we have firefly.

That's a really dumb name for an airline, by the way. It's the shortest living insect in the insect kingdom. But, you know, I don't know why airlines, by the way, you should do an interview on this, why airlines are obsessed with animal names. But there you go. Most of them are birds. You think Garuda, you think not air, etc. But going back, Eurasia started that.

And, of course, many joined it, which is good. because competition is good and it opened up the markets more and travel became a commodity and create a lot of jobs and this is now our challenge now because Asia is so Southeast Asia so dependent on tourism right yet people are so scared of COVID and I think we've got we've got to balance that out you know we can't live in a cave for the rest of our lives yeah and you know we've lived with the flu we've lived with HIV we've lived in lots of things So we're just going to have to live with COVID because it is what it is. Yeah.

And but you know, Southeast Asian governments have done too good a scare job. Yeah. And right now doctors are in control and my dad was a doctor. So that's a scary thought. But we need to balance that out. People need to live and people need to go on. And you know, Sweden's done a pretty good job with the herd mentality. Yeah, I think, I think it's a very different world now because we know COVID, we can

contact trace we can isolate people and isolate places and we need no we've been very good at locking down we haven't been so good at unlocking and so that's got to be how we move out the tourism is an important part of our industry of our economy of our GDP we need to find ways to unlock that and I've always said Indonesia is you know being one of the most underrated tourism spots it's only Bali no kidding God there's Rajah umpat there's you know know there's so many places yeah man and and I think that you know hopefully we can get people comfortable yeah and restart this amazing journey that we had started

with along with a lot of other airlines I've been talking a lot about this you know there is no reason for Indonesia not to expect 150 million tourists a year as opposed to what the last number would have been 15 million last year yeah I I mean, you know, and the connectivity is getting built, you know, a lot faster and a lot more than ever. So we're going to get there. Saw that a long time ago. Yeah. And you have a lot of regional airports.

I hope you don't lose that. You know, there's some talk about making airports, a lot of airports just domestic and making big hubs. No, they got to, they got to internationalize. Yeah. Yeah, direct connectivity is still the best way. Yeah. Inilat endgame. The episode endgame brikudny.

Dude, I can see you as a big technology player in the next few years. I think you're morphing from a music guy to an airline guy and sort of like doing sports in between and morphing into a tech guy. I think you're going to be big if you do this. We always were a tech company. If you think about it, we were the first airline to use the internet. No one used the internet before Air Asia.