#108: Hussein Wehbe Chief Executive Officer of fetchr

#108: Hussein Wehbe Chief Executive Officer of fetchr Featured Image

Hussein is a Public and Private sector leader with more than 20 years of experience in the service and logistics industry. In his experience includes UPS where he served as the Managing Director for the Middle East. Prior to joining UPS, Hussein served as a full-time Advisor to the Federal Government at the UAE’s Prime Minister’s Office, and before that he used to Lead Aramex International in the Gulf region, where he spent almost 17 years of his career.

Currently, Hussein is the CEO of Fetchr. Fetchr is an international express, mail delivery, and logistics services company. It helps local merchants and global brands build, launch, and grow profitable eCommerce businesses with an easy-to-use proprietary shipping and logistics solution.

Listen to the full discussion here:

  • Stream by clicking here.
  • Download as an MP3 here.

 

 

Connect with the Guest:

Hussein Wehbe: LinkedIn

Some of the highlights from the podcast:

  • Changing roles across private, government, and startups
  • The future of e-commerce, returns, and how to balance sustainability
  • Why he is active on social media and the impact it has on his company and his personal connections
  • How to get unintended celebrity status using LinkedIn

Show notes:

  • [01:00] Maybe tell us a little bit about yourself, walk us through your career a little bit.
  • [04:11] What triggered you to be active? Because you’re quite unique. There are so many CEOs out there and hardly any of them are properly active, right? So they might be active in sharing their corporate brochure or some sales pitch, but not like you do right in a very authentic and human nature. So tell us maybe a little bit about what drives that.
  • [05:43] A lot of people used to call me Mr. LinkedIn or some people were saying, “Oh, you will find him on LinkedIn.” 90% said positive things and 10% thought that I was wasting time. In fact, there’s no way on Earth you can waste time on LinkedIn, if you want to invest in your time you have to be socially active, especially as an executive and as a CEO.
  • [07:07] What do you get from this? What are the positive implications for you?
  • [09:56] When you are socially active this will allow people to connect with you even offline. We are not influencers, we are not actors, we are not famous, we are just simply people sharing our knowledge and being authentic, and we don’t really expect anything in return.
  • [12:44] It’s not a matter of having time, it’s a matter of finding time for 3D matters, and being socially active, and connecting with people.
  • [13:37] Let’s talk a bit about Fetchr. Tell us a little bit of what you’re building, what you’re developing there, and a little bit about the company as well.
  • [14:49] We are taking the company global now from the last mile operator and to an end-to-end global operator that facilitates and enables e-commerce, support B2C businesses across the world through two main things, the best tech ever and the best people in the industry.
  • [15:19] Can you give one or two tips from a CEO perspective when it comes to mindset and best practices?
  • [16:30] If you are the CEO and you encourage a perfect culture before enforcing then there is no way this is debatable. You should not allow politics or people to stop because of that. You can take different points of view, suggestions, but the base is if we want to make it let’s make it happen and let everybody suggests how to make it.
  • [19:58] What are some of the big picture things that you see happening in the next three to five years from an e-commerce and last-mile distribution perspective?
  • [24:09] So maybe tell us a little bit about some of these things that had the most ROI or the most impact on your operations.
  • [25:41] My purpose is not only to make money from the merchant and the delivery, my purpose is to save that merchant from the return fences so that they can trust me and give me more business.
  • [26:29] Is there a contradiction today between e-commerce delivery and sustainability? There are some significant problems that some startups are trying to fix, what’s your take on this?
  • [28:10] So I totally encourage anybody who wants to come to the industry, don’t open a courier company, instead come up with a technology that fixes a problem for the courier companies or come up with a technology that enables us to reduce our carbon footprint and to make us more efficient while taking care of the environment.
  • [29:04] What’s your view on the topic of returns?
  • [31:26] You offer free return, make sure to invest with your courier company on having a solid return process.
  • [34:03] You moved around a lot, how would these different jobs or careers different from one another? And what was the same?
  • [37:12] If you are to distill one or two principles in terms of making these transitions, private, public, and startup, what is key?
  • [39:35] What would be one piece of advice that you would share that would be helpful in the careers of our audience in many, many years to come?
  • [40:43] Work on yourself from day one, when you are a small flower, flourish quickly, and learn different things. Don’t be focused on one area of experience because the world is changing quickly. Whatever you learned today is going to be obsolete. So keep updating your skills and knowledge.

Soundbite from the Episode:

 

About the Host:

The host, Radu Palamariu is the co-author of “From Source to Sold – Stories of Leadership in Supply Chain”. He has been named one of the top 3 Global Supply Chain Influencers on LinkedIn and was featured in ForbesBloombergWEFBangkok Post, and MIT Supply Chain Talent magazine. Radu invites executives to share stories and perspectives around technology, logistics, e-commerce, supply chain, and manufacturing, and their views on how the future will look.

Alcott Global connects and upgrades the supply chain ecosystem by finding the right talent through executive search, developing talent through learning solutions, and meeting supply chain technology needs through a comprehensive crunch base marketplace.

The supply chain executive search has been our focus since the very beginning, offering recruitment services for top-tier supply chain roles at every level of the end-to-end supply chain: plan, source / procure, make, and deliver. Our consultants have years of experience in placing top talent, in North America, LATAM, Europe, the Middle East & Africa, and APAC, and besides speed, one of our biggest strengths is our network within the supply chain industry, and we capitalize on it to find the best solutions.

Through the years, we have grown as an organization and our offerings with it. One of our initiatives, the learning solutions- training and supply chain academy, is focused on transforming leadership- self-leadership, executive presence, influence capital, and business acumen. Through Supplify, we aim to match corporations with the top technology companies to solve their supply chain and logistics challenges with a focus on innovation and digital transformation.

We are in constant touch with the leaders in supply chain, inviting them to inspire the supply chain professionals in thought-provoking podcast episodes and events, and showcasing what is possible at the yearly Leaders in Supply Chain Awards.

Related Episodes:

#105: Colin Bryar Co-author of Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon

#106: Benjamin Gordon Founder and Managing Partner of Cambridge Capital

#107: Startups in Supply Chain from a Venture Capital Perspective

 

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