The Inside-Out Entrepreneur with Mohamed Ahmed

WEBVTT

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Most entrepreneurs, they infuse why they're doing with what they are doing.

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So at the beginning, yes, lots of entrepreneurs, they say, I'm gonna conquer the world with this technology and with my product idea.

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But at the end of the day, your product and technology, if you think of it, whatever you build right now, at a certain point it's gonna become irrelevant.

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This is gonna become boring, and everyone will move on from that.

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Welcome to the Wayfinder Show with Louis Hernandez, where guests discussed the why and how of making changes that led them down a more authentic path or allowed them to level up in some areas of their life.

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Our goal is to dig deep and provide not only knowledge, but actionable advice to help you get from where you are to where you want to be.

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Come join us and find a way to your dream life.

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Welcome back to the Wayfinder Show.

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Today's guest is Mohammed Ahmed.

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Also known as Mo.

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He is a PhD, AI innovator, startup founder and author of Inside Out Entrepreneur.

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With a background leading at Microsoft and Amazon and founding startups like Mega X Mo now helps founders build mental resilience and clarity through his company, boundless Founder.

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He's here to show to share how true success starts from the inside out.

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Mo, welcome to the Wayfinder Show.

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Hey Louis, thank you very much.

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It's a pleasure to be here with you.

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Yeah, likewise.

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A pleasure is mine.

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Before we get into it, can we talk a little bit about your origin story, your background, maybe how you got to where you are?

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I.

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Yeah, absolutely.

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So I'm an engineer by education and most of my experience I studied computer science.

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I got my PhD in computer science engineering.

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I was studying super computers and that brought me actually to Seattle to work at Microsoft.

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And then I worked at Amazon or AWS Amazon Web Services.

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They are, the biggest cloud provider now.

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And, and I worked at a couple of startups before founding my own startup a few years ago, and that definitely was a transformational experience where I switched from being an engineer product centric to how to build a business.

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And throughout that journey.

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I even learned how to elevate my thinking.

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And rather than only thinking about business, focusing on people and not only people at what I mean by people are not only customers, but also other entrepreneurs and helping them to go through their journey.

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With a different set of problems, if you will, than the one that I faced.

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So here I am right now still in Seattle.

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I would say rainy.

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Seattle is sunny today.

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Though working with entrepreneurs from the Bay Area and around the and around the world and helping them, how to move their mindset from just thinking about technology and being centered about what the technology can do to.

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What can they, how can they el elevate, others, and how can they improve or leave an impact in this world through their products and vision?

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Yeah, we're gonna talk a lot about that, but before we do I'm curious as to what your startup was.

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It was called Mega Ls, right?

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So what, yeah, what was that?

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What kind of company?

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Yeah, absolutely.

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We started with something and we ended up with another thing, gained because, the, you have as they say in the Bay Area, move fast and very fast.

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So we definitely.

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Did that and applied that in, in our startup.

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So we started with enabling cloud native applications to run more efficiently and faster on top of the cloud infrastructure.

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And we ended up incy Cyber Cybersecurity.

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Oh wow.

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And when we started, we thought that this is gonna be the idea.

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We pivoted multiple times and we realized our customers are more interested in securing their cloud native applications at that point in the market maturity.

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So we ended up in this area and we got lucky after five years.

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And again, loss of dark days, some really good sunny days.

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We were able to sell the company at the end to another, bigger startup or late stage startup that was able to take our product and put it in the hands of more users, more customers.

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So yeah.

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It's a, it is definitely it was a, I'll say very.

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Fulfilling journey in different ways.

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Yeah.

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Oh, that's interesting.

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I'm always curious with, in talking to founders who pivot to a point where I.

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The final product is so different than where they started, right?

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That it was your baby, right?

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You had a vision for this company of a product you were going to sell and create a big company around, right?

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And, but somehow you obviously short enough humility to pivot enough to have something that people actually wanted.

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And oftentimes we don't see that.

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We see some, sometimes people just stick with their product and they might pivot, like finding the right, product market fit, but keep with the product or something like that.

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But you actually shifted a product altogether, right?

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So how, talk a little bit about that process.

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Yeah, it was, I was, yeah, absolutely.

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It was definitely part of of the maturity that I had to go through.

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Sure.

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Most of, most entrepreneurs, they confuse why they're doing with what they are doing.

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So at the beginning, yes, lots of entrepreneurs, they say, I'm gonna conquer the world with this technology and with my product idea.

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But at the end of the day, your product and technology, if you think of it, whatever you build right now, at a certain point is gonna become irrelevant.

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This is gonna become boring.

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And everyone will move on from that.

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Okay.

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So why you're doing it?

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If you ask yourself, I'm a big fan of Simon Sinek and his books Start With Why.

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Yeah.

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And if you ask yourself why you're building a startup, why you're, building, something in this area or with that technology.

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I would say it's the wrong answer to say, you know what?

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I just want to bring that technology and make it available for, in the hands of as many others as possible.

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That's not, in my point of view, that's not the right way to look at it.

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Whatever you're building it, whether it's a technology, certain technology or a certain business model, it's a manifestation of your why.

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Why are you building a business and what kind of impact did the end you need to leave?

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With others more than anything else.

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And if you have that perspective and it's not easy to build, definitely the first pivot for me was not an easy decision because I was one of those entrepreneurs because I come from engineering background, I.

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Who are attached so much to the idea, to the extent that they feel the idea defines who they are.

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The idea is the one that defines, what's the startup is all about.

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But when you look at the, I would say the forces of nature and the market around you, and if you realize that the idea is not going to fly no matter what, then you take a step back and you start to think about, okay, why you're doing it?

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If it's all about, let's say.

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Enabling, certain users or empowering certain users that you empathize with, to do something faster, in my case, to build cloud services and applications faster and innovate faster then whether it's in performance engineering or in security, or in something else, I can still deliver, my why, but the technology is just an implementation of it.

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At the end of the de at the end of the day, and that's what I, been working with many entrepreneurs on is don't get, don't confuse the technology with who you are and what your startup is all about.

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And I, maybe I'll close with this, Simon Sinek said that in his famous first YouTube talk.

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People buy why you're doing something, not what you're building.

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And he has numerous examples.

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If, if the listeners go back to that specific talk, from Apple, from Dell and many others and why people prefer to buy certain products from Apple, but they wouldn't believe that Dell would do a good job with them because Apple has a different why.

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Ingrained in everything they do.

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So then what did your ultimate, why just became to serve certain customers and deliver them a product, or what was your ultimate why?

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I.

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Yeah, my why Actually at the end of the day, it definitely, your why is a discovery process and it's not set in stone and I and it develops and it changes based on what stage of life you are, your circumstances and so on.

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For me, when I had the start of my why evolve to be, how do I inspire?

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The community of developers building on the cloud to build something great, to reach their potential as they are, doing their job as they're get excited every day about what they're doing after setting the company.

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And now I'm serving a different set of.

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I would say customers or communities, the entrepreneurs.

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My why now is all about how do I inspire entrepreneurs and help them to be resilient, withstand all the challenges that they're going to face every day as they build their own startups.

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And not only withstand those, but even become stronger every day.

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They're, they, as they face those challenges, how do we, how do they handle the psychology of sales?

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Marketing, fundraising, the leadership within their companies.

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All of these has, each one of these has its own psychology, and we have our own doubts and fears that would cripple us if we are not tackling them, right?

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So the why evolves with you.

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But but the bottom line here is do not confuse it with.

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What you do.

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For example, right now I'm doing it by writing the book and I have that community that I'm building.

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Maybe later on I'll do it in a different way.

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My why is still continue to be the same, but maybe I would do it as an investor.

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Maybe I would do it as a speaker.

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Maybe I would do it as anything else.

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Sure it doesn't matter.

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But my why is there.

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So if, let's say my book did not work out well, that's fine.

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I tried it.

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I still love to work with entrepreneurs and find another way to work with them.

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Yeah.

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What is it about entrepreneurs that you like so much working with?

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I would say entrepreneurs are definitely I would say they're a special segment in the community and in this world.

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They're the ones who are, they're they do not accept the status quo.

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And they do not set it for for whatever we have right now.

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Now that makes them the nice thing about them that makes them really want to make a change.

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But a change has an art and also has its own I would say complexities that is.

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Connected not only with the mechanics of everyday activities that we do, it's not only connected to, is the market ready or do we have enough money, or, are your customers ready?

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Those are important factors, but the more important factors I.

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In my point of view, and that's why, my, my recent book, the Inside Out Entrepreneur is what's within that entrepreneur?

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Are those entrepreneurs really ready to make that change or not?

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Because a lot of entrepreneurs use the brute force way, you know what?

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I'm going to, what they say, I'm going to work as hard as possible.

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I'm going to raise as much money as I can, and I'm going to hire people.

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We're going to solve that problem.

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Things do not usually work this way.

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The way that I.

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Think of entrepreneurship as like climbing a mountain.

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If you go and ask any mountaineer before they climb, they start their big trip, they do a long conditioning, process.

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They condition themselves mentally.

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They condition themselves physically, emotionally.

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And so many other factors that they need to consider and even, and they have to do that no matter how experienced they are.

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And the reason is the journey is unforgiving.

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The journey is really hard by itself.

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So if you are not conditioned, get setting yourself for success.

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There, there all the temptations for you to turn back and, just stop your trip.

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Might, one of them might win and you may end up your journey prematurely, or you may continue the journey, but you may have permanent scars, you might, may have permanent, side effects on your character in your life that you may never be able to recover.

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That's why entrepreneurs, before they start their journey, or even within, if they already started their journey, they need to always consider how they are prepared for the journey, how they're going to endure the journey.

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How do they, how are they going to.

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Convert every, or turn every set back into an opportunity.

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And that's not gonna happen by, just you reading the markets or, trying to, be customer centric or trying to be, show some sort of leadership.

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You're not gonna be able to do any of these unless you are internally ready to actually.

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Work with those factors, work with those elements.

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So that's key in my point of view.

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That's why entrepreneurs.

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Are very special in nature, but at the same time, what they want to achieve or reach is it just requires a lot of preparation, a lot of work, and there this gap between what they want.

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And what is possible for them to achieve is not address, unfortunately, most of the time with the right perspective, which is the, the conditioning and the psychology part.

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And that's actually a piece that made me really fascinated about that.

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I went through this myself.

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I did not find someone to tell me, Hey, when you go and do the sales, this is what you're going to feel.

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This is the kind of rejection that you're going to have.

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And by the way, this rejection.

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Does not mean there is, there's something wrong with you or your product.

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That's the nature of the process, and by the way, that rejection is going to impact your psychology and mindset in different ways.

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So here's how you can handle that.

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I.

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If you go and look at all the literature in this area, in this space, there are very few books actually addressing that.

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Most of them will tell you, here's how you can sell fast, and they talk.

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They don't talk about how do you deal with yourself as you get in that process and you get the pain that you experience through that process.

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Others would tell you, this is how you go on fundraise, but they're not gonna tell you how do you deal when with a vc when they tell you no?

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And how do you convert the NO into a force or a power that will take you forward and even build a stronger relationship with that vc, even the, even though that VC told you no.

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Those are really, key here and, and that's missing unfortunately.

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And that's what actually motivated me to go, and you know what?

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I'm going to work with entrepreneurs because they can have a tremendous impact if they build that resiliency.

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Yeah.

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So you talk about the inner journey of building a business.

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Is that what this is basically, and I think you even refer to'em as invisible muscles.

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It's definitely part of that, and I'm breaking it down, the way that I think of it, if I use the same mountain climbing analogy, there are different dimensions that you need to work on.

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And I talk about these in detail in the book, but we can pick an example here.

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I pick one of them.

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There's one of one of them, and that's, I would say the most common is the mental conditioning.

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Now when we talk about mental conditioning, they, we always hear the terms of mental resiliency and mental robustness.

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We always hear that.

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But what does it mean?

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If we even give, our listeners here, just a few seconds to ask themselves, what does it mean to, to have a resilient mindset and what does it mean to have a a mind a mindset with proper robustness.

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Those are really not well defined in many cases.

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So in my book for example, I, because I come from engineering background, I try to get the true definition of those, mental robustness and resiliency from an engineering perspective and map that to our mindset.

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So for example, maybe let's take one of them.

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Resilience robustness in engineering.

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Sorry.

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Okay.

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Robustness.

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That's fine.

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Robustness in engineering means that, let's say if you're building a robust bridge, this means if that, as that bridge with, is facing pressure from cars, running on it, and the pressure from the elements and the environment, that bridge can still function as it is.

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It is not, it doesn't get deformed, it doesn't get broken.

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So that's a robust structure.

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Now let's map that to the mindset.

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Ideally, every day when you wake up, you should have, one or more mindsets that will may move you forward.

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Like for example, the growth mindset or the abundance mindset.

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There's so many of them.

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Now, you do not have the proper robustness in your mindset.

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If your mindset completely changes at the first negative event that you face, let's say a delayed invoice, or you get to notice that someone is suing you, and then all of a sudden you're just let go of those mindsets and you drown into negative thoughts and negative mindset.

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You're not robust enough.

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Your mindset is not Rob robust enough.

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So that's an example.

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I discuss in depth and I have stories around that and I provide strategies around how do you now nurture this and build, some sort of robustness in your mindset and your life in general as an entrepreneur.

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So that's what it means.

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Thinking from inside out.

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I'm just talking about one dimension.

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There is resiliency.

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There is also, there are also other dimensions that are relevant to.

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Even spirituality, even to how do you work with your family and friends?

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What kind of network do you need to build around you?

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All of these are going to impact you.

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So I'm let's stick on, stick with your the mental conditioning around robustness.

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What are, that was really good, how you put it.

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About, if you ba basically break at the first negative experience you're not robust enough.

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How can you build that muscle?

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How can you become more mentally robust?

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Yeah, that, that's a great question.

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Now there are there are definitely different exercises to do that in different strategies.

00:19:18.644 --> 00:19:22.423
The first thing I would say that there's a category of exercises.

00:19:23.009 --> 00:19:29.638
That you need to first exercise or at least be aware of, which is being aware of your mental state.

00:19:30.058 --> 00:19:32.189
And that's by the way, the hardest part of all of it.

00:19:33.509 --> 00:19:44.858
So when you are faced with an external event, like again a big one of your largest customers, for example, say, telling you that they're not going to renew their contract with you.

00:19:44.979 --> 00:19:48.848
This is a big event for you that might jeopardize your business.

00:19:50.784 --> 00:19:55.394
The first thing that happens is you get negative emotions.

00:19:55.513 --> 00:19:58.814
Your subconscious immediately reacts to that.

00:19:59.534 --> 00:19:59.683
Yeah.

00:20:00.134 --> 00:20:01.423
And then as a result of that.

00:20:02.699 --> 00:20:05.398
Your consciousness actually start generating negative thoughts.

00:20:05.429 --> 00:20:05.818
Oh, okay.

00:20:05.818 --> 00:20:08.098
I'm going to, my business is going to shut down.

00:20:08.729 --> 00:20:09.269
Okay.

00:20:09.269 --> 00:20:19.199
But probably we have lots of problems that beyond repair you, you start generating negative thoughts and then those negative thoughts by in, in turn, they also feed your negative emotions.

00:20:19.943 --> 00:20:26.034
And so you get into that neg negative spiral or down spiral of those emotions loop.

00:20:26.723 --> 00:20:39.513
So being aware of that is one exercise, for example, that entrepreneurs need to practice every day and they can basically be self-aware, as simple as just having a piece of paper.

00:20:40.653 --> 00:20:44.673
Write down on that piece of paper what you know, what do you feel right now?

00:20:45.249 --> 00:20:47.919
And then ask yourself, why do I feel this way?

00:20:48.368 --> 00:20:51.828
And then keep asking yourself why, ask yourself the five why's.

00:20:51.838 --> 00:20:56.429
The Toyota way of driving quality under assembly lines.

00:20:56.788 --> 00:21:01.019
You can do the same thing in driving quality of your, those and emotions.

00:21:01.288 --> 00:21:03.328
So ask yourself five whys.

00:21:04.138 --> 00:21:05.009
Why do you feel that?

00:21:05.009 --> 00:21:06.868
Why do have those tools and so on.

00:21:07.378 --> 00:21:08.759
That will give you the awareness.

00:21:09.778 --> 00:21:19.729
Once you have the awareness, now it's time for you to basically break down whether it's break it down and identify what is real and what is not real.

00:21:20.669 --> 00:21:30.608
You'll be surprised that what's real is a small subset of what is going on in your mind, and you'll be also surprised that you have.

00:21:32.048 --> 00:21:34.419
Lots of opportunities to turn this around.

00:21:35.108 --> 00:21:39.044
Maybe I'll, let me actually share a story from my own personal experience around that.

00:21:39.314 --> 00:21:39.913
Two stories.

00:21:39.913 --> 00:21:40.003
Sure.

00:21:40.874 --> 00:21:48.074
So the first story is six months after founding my company and I raised around a million dollar.

00:21:48.794 --> 00:21:53.144
We spend around$400,000 to develop the first version of our product.

00:21:53.773 --> 00:21:55.753
We pivoted from, by the way, later on.

00:21:55.844 --> 00:21:59.384
But six months in, we built our product.

00:21:59.953 --> 00:22:16.064
We're going to a convention center where we are going to present our product for the first time, meet prospects, meet potential customers, and I was, as I was entering the convention center, I checked my phone and I got an email from AWS or Amazon Web Services.

00:22:16.064 --> 00:22:18.913
We were building our product on top of their infrastructure.

00:22:20.953 --> 00:22:33.644
20 days prior, we had more than$40,000 credit with them, but they sent me an email that day telling me that we owe them$65,000.

00:22:34.663 --> 00:22:41.084
So we burned through a hundred thousand thou more than a hundred thousand dollars in just 20 days.

00:22:41.594 --> 00:22:43.483
That made me paralyzed.

00:22:44.443 --> 00:22:48.463
I wasn't able to think, I wasn't able to do anything because we did not have enough money in the bank.

00:22:48.763 --> 00:22:52.763
Yeah, we burned through a lot and and I didn't know what to do.

00:22:52.854 --> 00:23:01.973
I got into that loop that we talked about and it took me in that specific situation, took me more than four weeks.

00:23:02.648 --> 00:23:04.628
We need to actually recover from that.

00:23:05.199 --> 00:23:10.719
And what I'm, what I mean by recovery here is to pick up the phone, call AWS, negotiate with them.

00:23:11.058 --> 00:23:16.949
A potential payment plan, contest, those the burn of those credits, you do something about it.

00:23:17.219 --> 00:23:18.479
So it took me four weeks.

00:23:19.199 --> 00:23:26.548
This is, how I was not missing the robustness and resiliency that we had paralyzed, that we talked about it.

00:23:26.548 --> 00:23:29.398
Now, you became paralyzed for four weeks, essentially.

00:23:29.588 --> 00:23:30.398
Yeah, exactly.

00:23:30.828 --> 00:23:38.568
And I was just like a zombie trying to get things around and I, the first thing that came to my mind is, I'm going to shut down my company.

00:23:38.568 --> 00:23:43.699
I'm gonna become yet another number of those companies that turned a shutdown in the first year.

00:23:44.838 --> 00:23:47.088
Anyways, we were able to go through that.

00:23:47.419 --> 00:23:50.959
Things were fixed and we found a mitigation for all that problem.

00:23:52.429 --> 00:23:54.528
Fast forward four and a half years.

00:23:56.138 --> 00:23:57.939
The company was about to be AC acquired.

00:23:57.969 --> 00:24:00.159
My company was about to be acquired.

00:24:00.189 --> 00:24:03.699
Another company approached us and said, we are interested in you guys.

00:24:03.939 --> 00:24:17.038
We started to do all the due diligence and they looked at our source code, they interviewed our engineers, they looked at our bank accounts, everything, and just two hours before signing, they backed off.

00:24:19.304 --> 00:24:32.203
Now again, in a situation like this, usually startups are very vulnerable because you cannot fundraise and you basically, as you get closer to the finish line, you think we're done.

00:24:32.203 --> 00:24:33.223
We're almost done.

00:24:33.808 --> 00:24:35.848
But this is definitely another lesson that I learned.

00:24:35.848 --> 00:24:43.828
It's not done until it's done, but anyways, when they backed off, it took me two hours actually to just bring myself back again into balance.

00:24:44.489 --> 00:24:45.449
And I said, you know what?

00:24:45.868 --> 00:24:56.034
I'm gonna take the letter of intent that we had with them, and I'm going to shop around really quickly in the market before it's news that they're not buying us.

00:24:57.209 --> 00:24:59.128
And I talked to five CEOs.

00:25:00.088 --> 00:25:04.528
They backed off on Monday the same, the Friday of the same week.

00:25:05.068 --> 00:25:09.479
I had meetings with four CAOs who were interested in buying our company.

00:25:09.538 --> 00:25:10.798
I called each one of them.

00:25:11.189 --> 00:25:12.209
We have an offer.

00:25:12.808 --> 00:25:12.959
Wow.

00:25:12.959 --> 00:25:13.679
Are you interested?

00:25:14.969 --> 00:25:21.298
So we ended up having those four meetings on Fridays same week, and we had a company that acquired us at the end.

00:25:22.318 --> 00:25:24.749
You see the difference between the first one and the second one?

00:25:25.229 --> 00:25:25.439
Yeah.

00:25:25.499 --> 00:25:27.179
It just how you look.

00:25:28.169 --> 00:25:34.378
At your situation and how you start acting, how you break, how fast you can break that loop, be aware of it.

00:25:34.378 --> 00:25:41.919
First of all fast, you're able to break it and then act on top of that first.

00:25:41.919 --> 00:25:42.939
In the first story.

00:25:43.459 --> 00:25:47.769
Loss and loss of I, negative thoughts and negative emotions that paralyze me.

00:25:48.068 --> 00:25:48.338
Yeah.

00:25:49.344 --> 00:25:55.523
The second one, even though it's a more acute situation for us, at that specific point, I had more engineers.

00:25:55.523 --> 00:25:57.084
My burn rate was much bigger.

00:25:57.413 --> 00:26:03.354
So many things were happening in the company, and that's an external event that everyone would be able to see it later on.

00:26:03.923 --> 00:26:06.413
But we were able to turn it around in a shorter time.

00:26:07.104 --> 00:26:07.253
Yeah.

00:26:07.253 --> 00:26:08.903
You see that's a big difference.

00:26:08.953 --> 00:26:17.324
That's a big difference between the first one and the second one, and the only one is, you know how Rob, you know how robust and resilient my mindset is.

00:26:17.743 --> 00:26:17.834
Yeah.

00:26:17.834 --> 00:26:19.784
And it's also that you need to build over time.

00:26:20.473 --> 00:26:29.743
Is that something that you think you can only develop once you get in the trenches of building a startup or just taking on some greater challenge than what you were at?

00:26:30.959 --> 00:26:32.878
Look, there are different levels.

00:26:33.148 --> 00:26:34.229
It's not binary.

00:26:34.318 --> 00:26:36.898
It's not something that you either have it or you don't have it.

00:26:37.769 --> 00:26:38.669
You develop it.

00:26:38.699 --> 00:26:45.538
You can develop some of it before you get started, but absolutely, it's not like doing it.

00:26:45.568 --> 00:26:46.949
It's, think of it again.

00:26:47.048 --> 00:26:56.868
Going to the gym the, in the first few days, you're gonna just hold a few lightweights and then over time you're going to progress over your weights and your, the intensity of your exercise.

00:26:57.318 --> 00:26:58.429
It's the same thing.

00:26:58.919 --> 00:27:00.449
You need to start before I.

00:27:01.503 --> 00:27:05.403
Before you get started with your startup, you need to condition yourself.

00:27:05.673 --> 00:27:09.693
And I do this actually right now with a lot of wannabe entrepreneurs.

00:27:09.844 --> 00:27:19.273
They're professionals working in big companies like Microsoft, Google and Meta, and they want to be entrepreneurs, but they want to prepare themselves for that journey.

00:27:19.544 --> 00:27:23.384
Does that mean at the end of that, the say mentorship?

00:27:23.769 --> 00:27:25.419
Program, they're a hundred percent ready.

00:27:25.538 --> 00:27:37.999
No, they're ready to get started, but they're, and, but after that, they still have their own journey that they need to build build their, build on top of whatever they had at the beginning.

00:27:38.608 --> 00:27:39.808
So yes, absolutely.

00:27:39.868 --> 00:27:43.459
You have to, yeah, to do it to and keep doing it.

00:27:43.979 --> 00:27:44.729
And I like that.

00:27:44.778 --> 00:27:49.669
Again, I like that analogy or the way to think about business as an infinite game.

00:27:49.759 --> 00:27:54.469
You just keep yourself in that, in the game and keep doing business.

00:27:54.469 --> 00:27:57.078
Keep doing business every day, and you elevate yourself.

00:27:57.108 --> 00:28:00.108
You upgrade your mindset every single day.

00:28:00.608 --> 00:28:04.838
It is not, it's not something that you just a hundred percent ready before you start.

00:28:04.838 --> 00:28:05.138
No.

00:28:06.453 --> 00:28:14.733
Yeah, it reminds me of the quote by the great philosopher Mike Tyson, that everybody's gotta plan until they get punched in the face.

00:28:15.253 --> 00:28:15.493
Exactly.

00:28:15.493 --> 00:28:20.114
But you can't really, you can't really plan for it or anything, until you actually go through it.

00:28:20.114 --> 00:28:20.473
And.

00:28:20.509 --> 00:28:21.378
You get in the fight.

00:28:21.409 --> 00:28:22.159
And that's true.

00:28:22.209 --> 00:28:29.499
Prior to starting my company, I had actually an innovation and certificate and a, an entrepreneurship certificate from Stanford.

00:28:29.499 --> 00:28:35.888
And I talked with mentors, I talked with other entrepreneurs, and yet when I started, I made loss of mistakes.

00:28:35.989 --> 00:28:40.548
And the reason was not because I didn't know these, I knew these, but it was.

00:28:41.263 --> 00:28:43.003
Almost a self-fulfilling prophecy.

00:28:43.003 --> 00:28:45.614
I was just always telling myself every day, I'm going to fail.

00:28:45.614 --> 00:28:46.334
I'm going to fail.

00:28:46.338 --> 00:28:47.788
I'm gonna have big troubles.

00:28:47.838 --> 00:28:49.038
I'm gonna have big issues.

00:28:49.669 --> 00:28:50.358
Why is that?

00:28:50.358 --> 00:28:52.009
Because my mindset wasn't there.

00:28:52.429 --> 00:28:57.719
I wasn't ready for that, and I didn't have the right also mentors at the beginning to guide me through it.

00:28:57.878 --> 00:28:58.449
One of the.

00:29:00.114 --> 00:29:11.173
Main turning point for me is when I found a mentor midway in my journey, and that person started to challenge my mindset and help me to turn around, everything.

00:29:11.743 --> 00:29:11.834
Oh, wow.

00:29:11.874 --> 00:29:16.703
Yeah, that that's why I would recommend an entrepreneur, whether they want to, whether they already started or.

00:29:17.709 --> 00:29:18.939
One, to start their company.

00:29:18.939 --> 00:29:20.949
At a certain point, they must have a mentor.

00:29:21.249 --> 00:29:22.778
They must condition themselves.

00:29:23.169 --> 00:29:25.868
Otherwise it's just gonna be a continuous pain.

00:29:26.439 --> 00:29:28.328
And maybe they're gonna give up too early.

00:29:28.749 --> 00:29:29.078
Yeah.

00:29:29.838 --> 00:29:34.959
On that you talk about negative thought, emotion loops and how to break them.

00:29:35.528 --> 00:29:43.574
So how do you, you talked about one right now with finding a mentor, but are there other techniques to help break those negative emotion loops?

00:29:43.814 --> 00:29:44.114
Yeah.

00:29:44.114 --> 00:29:48.124
That you can that, as I said, the most important part of it is being aware.

00:29:48.193 --> 00:29:50.834
It goes back to and and the awareness can happen.

00:29:50.884 --> 00:29:52.354
It depends from one person to another.

00:29:52.403 --> 00:30:09.663
The most common one is just write it down for me, for example, I don't, always start by writing down when I get faced or hit by something like unexpected event like that, a negative event, I just go and have a walk, even if it's rain the outside, I just go and have a walk.

00:30:10.253 --> 00:30:14.374
Separate myself from the, place that I usually work.

00:30:14.423 --> 00:30:18.894
And just try to start asking myself, why am I feeling this way?

00:30:19.193 --> 00:30:20.243
So this is one tactic.

00:30:21.653 --> 00:30:35.753
The other tactic, of course, or the other thing, and I think this is way more important than anything else, is having someone that can show you from outside or see you from outside and show you.

00:30:36.419 --> 00:30:37.409
Your true state.

00:30:38.939 --> 00:30:41.449
And and actually I talk about this also in the book.

00:30:41.479 --> 00:30:49.189
You need three people to help you throughout that journey in general to help you overcome, build more resiliency and robustness.

00:30:49.878 --> 00:30:53.868
The first one is a mentor, but again, let's define what's a mentor.

00:30:54.798 --> 00:30:57.709
A mentor is not someone who's gonna talk with you about the business, by the way.

00:30:58.669 --> 00:31:00.199
That's not called a mentor.

00:31:00.499 --> 00:31:06.919
A mentor is someone who would challenge your point of view and your mindset about everything you do.

00:31:07.969 --> 00:31:11.598
So for example, one of, one of my mentors ask me that question.

00:31:11.989 --> 00:31:14.509
He told me, Mo, let me ask you this.

00:31:14.778 --> 00:31:18.858
Do you think you are helping your employees by giving them a job?

00:31:19.278 --> 00:31:25.608
Or they are the ones who are helping you by believing in you and your vision and executing on it.

00:31:27.378 --> 00:31:35.753
Just asking that question can just turn things upside down for you and can change how you practice your leadership.

00:31:37.729 --> 00:31:38.568
So that's a mentor.

00:31:39.108 --> 00:31:39.348
Yeah.

00:31:39.348 --> 00:31:41.328
That sounds to me a lot like a good coach.

00:31:41.848 --> 00:31:46.439
Like we talk a lot here about just having good, like business coaches, life coaches, all of that.

00:31:46.499 --> 00:31:48.568
And I've had some great ones here on the show.

00:31:48.588 --> 00:31:50.358
And that's exactly what they do, right?

00:31:50.358 --> 00:31:51.919
They just challenge your way of thinking.

00:31:52.398 --> 00:31:52.788
Exactly.

00:31:52.788 --> 00:31:53.479
Great question.

00:31:53.483 --> 00:31:54.534
You can definitely, yeah.

00:31:54.923 --> 00:32:02.183
Another name for them could be a coach, but what's important is not to confuse the mentor with that next role, which is an advisor.

00:32:02.814 --> 00:32:06.394
A lot of founders confuse advisor with the mentors.

00:32:06.394 --> 00:32:14.844
So an advisor in a few words, is someone who's ahead of you or was in your position and their main job is to tell you what's around the corner.

00:32:16.473 --> 00:32:20.673
An advisor would tell me no, if you're selling to enterprises.

00:32:21.348 --> 00:32:24.588
Then you need to develop the relationship with them in this way.

00:32:25.009 --> 00:32:30.439
And by the way, do not expect a deal before at least 12 months because they walk in this way.

00:32:30.499 --> 00:32:32.358
And you have to go through those hurdles.

00:32:32.848 --> 00:32:34.528
It's not about challenging my mindset.

00:32:34.618 --> 00:32:37.648
It's about here, how do I do business effectively?

00:32:38.939 --> 00:32:39.749
So that's an advisor.

00:32:39.749 --> 00:32:43.528
It will, he or she would throw you around the corner for your business.

00:32:44.429 --> 00:32:53.469
Now the last rule, and this is really important, and it's not like a, many others think of it is a friend or a family member, but then let's me focus on a friend.

00:32:54.729 --> 00:32:57.429
Now a friend is not like what you think?

00:32:57.429 --> 00:33:03.068
I can have my high school friend and talk with them about, my problems or issues.

00:33:04.148 --> 00:33:12.818
You need to find a friend who, again, went through some of what you're going through so that they can really empathize and connect with you.

00:33:13.179 --> 00:33:22.794
So for example, I have lots of friends from Microsoft and other companies and they never worked as entrepreneurs and they never had their own business.

00:33:23.634 --> 00:33:31.913
And then when I tell them that happened with while I was fundraising, they can see it's a negative event, but they cannot really.

00:33:32.574 --> 00:33:34.913
Understand what kind of emotions I'm going through.

00:33:34.973 --> 00:33:47.044
They cannot really understand fully what fears do I have unless I, I basically tell them explicitly I'm I'm having this and this and inside me, and that's not gonna happen most of the time.

00:33:47.644 --> 00:33:54.949
But when I talk to a friend who was an entrepreneur or who already an entrepreneur, even just doing the same kind of.

00:33:55.519 --> 00:34:11.329
Business, building a business in a startup form high, fast growing startup form, they can connect and they can tell me, look, you are not telling me that, but I see you are afraid of failure in front of your employees and that's why you are resisting.

00:34:11.329 --> 00:34:13.139
For example a pivot.

00:34:14.639 --> 00:34:31.798
See there, he would get into the crux of the issue very quickly and they would be able to advise you on what you need to do generally to make the right decision for your, that matches your moral system and matches your background and what you believe in.

00:34:32.579 --> 00:34:40.929
So these three are very important to, help you build that and you need to be very selective and be aware of.

00:34:41.603 --> 00:34:47.014
Each one of these and be vulnerable in front of each one of those roles in different ways.

00:34:47.403 --> 00:34:49.204
And again, I talk about it a lot in the book.

00:34:49.204 --> 00:34:53.463
There's a whole chapter dedicated to who should be with you in that journey.

00:34:54.253 --> 00:34:56.054
I'll have you share a little bit more about that.

00:34:56.744 --> 00:35:00.653
In a little bit, but this is probably a good place to transition into our world.

00:35:00.653 --> 00:35:02.273
Famous Wayfinder four.

00:35:03.173 --> 00:35:05.184
Mo, can you give us a hack?

00:35:05.213 --> 00:35:09.653
This is just like a life hack that you do every day or regularly.

00:35:10.054 --> 00:35:13.773
Absolutely document everything that you do.

00:35:13.773 --> 00:35:17.813
Doc, log everything in your, that you do in your day.

00:35:18.684 --> 00:35:31.514
Take all of that at the end of the week, at the end of the month, whatever the cadence that you have, feed it into chat, GPT or cloud and ask them, ask, any of those tools, how can I improve and become more productive?

00:35:31.514 --> 00:35:31.574
I.

00:35:33.074 --> 00:35:33.463
Right.

00:35:33.583 --> 00:35:38.563
It will give you insights on, oh, okay, you wasted some time in this activity took some time.

00:35:39.103 --> 00:35:45.733
You felt here this way, so probably because you did not know some background, I would suggest for you to do this.

00:35:46.063 --> 00:35:54.514
So it basically gave me that mirror about everything that I've, done the last, 30 days, one week and so on, and it would help me to become more efficient.

00:35:54.543 --> 00:35:55.324
I do that now.

00:35:55.474 --> 00:35:59.344
It just looks in it, it finds patterns that sometimes I could not see myself.

00:35:59.594 --> 00:36:00.224
I love that.

00:36:00.313 --> 00:36:02.684
I see this as a very valuable hack for a lots of entrepreneurs.

00:36:02.804 --> 00:36:04.003
That is excellent.

00:36:04.003 --> 00:36:06.193
I never thought about using AI that way.

00:36:06.193 --> 00:36:10.063
Do you document, like on just your notes on your phone or how do you document?

00:36:10.063 --> 00:36:17.023
So I just have a, a Google doc and sometimes I just dictate even while driving today I did this and this is what went 12 from my point of view.

00:36:17.023 --> 00:36:18.403
This is what did not go well.

00:36:18.748 --> 00:36:20.219
I plan to do this tomorrow.

00:36:20.429 --> 00:36:24.838
I think I need to spend more time on my marketing or my sales, and here's what I plan to do.

00:36:25.179 --> 00:36:30.518
But I don't know this I just as if you are, you're reflecting at the end of the day just journaling.

00:36:30.759 --> 00:36:31.028
Pretty much.

00:36:31.028 --> 00:36:33.554
Just journal it, and then just feed it into the ai.

00:36:33.764 --> 00:36:34.123
That's excellent.

00:36:34.123 --> 00:36:36.224
And give me a summary of the last month.

00:36:36.614 --> 00:36:42.273
It would, there are lots of prompts that you can actually think of to feed depending on what you really want to get out of it.

00:36:42.813 --> 00:36:43.384
I love that.

00:36:43.833 --> 00:36:44.043
Wow.

00:36:44.043 --> 00:36:44.463
Thank you.

00:36:44.463 --> 00:36:45.543
That is a great one.

00:36:46.114 --> 00:36:47.074
How about a favorite?

00:36:47.253 --> 00:36:52.384
This is, could be an activity, a book, a show, a whatever.

00:36:52.773 --> 00:36:54.123
Oh, there are lots of things.

00:36:54.173 --> 00:36:54.414
Okay.

00:36:55.373 --> 00:37:01.693
I would say the favorite, I the favorite set of books, and I would say the favorite author is Simon Sinek.

00:37:02.023 --> 00:37:02.233
Yeah.

00:37:02.623 --> 00:37:06.134
And for a very simple reason, Simon Sinek has a really nice quote.

00:37:06.134 --> 00:37:10.213
He's saying, if you don't know people you don't know business.

00:37:10.619 --> 00:37:22.378
Yeah, and a lot of people coming from engineering and technical background like myself, always think of objects and things and numbers and you know how to do that, but it's all about people at the end of the day.

00:37:22.438 --> 00:37:22.739
That's right.

00:37:23.443 --> 00:37:30.543
I highly recommend, anyone to even though that might take some time from them reading my book, but I still recommend start With Why.

00:37:30.844 --> 00:37:37.173
This is the first book and the second book, the about leadership is called Turning the Ship Around by again, Simon Sinek.

00:37:37.563 --> 00:37:39.574
And the last one is called The Infinite Game.

00:37:40.083 --> 00:37:40.324
Yeah.

00:37:40.414 --> 00:37:46.443
All these three books for me shaped a lot of my point of view about the world and entrepreneurship and business.

00:37:46.753 --> 00:37:48.103
That's my favorite so far.

00:37:48.704 --> 00:37:48.974
Yeah.

00:37:49.483 --> 00:37:49.873
Great.

00:37:50.474 --> 00:37:53.233
How about a piece of advice for your younger self?

00:37:56.083 --> 00:37:57.463
Technology is not everything.

00:37:58.634 --> 00:38:01.184
People really matter more than anything else.

00:38:01.213 --> 00:38:06.403
As you know from my again, academic history, that PhD and I focus too much on the technology.

00:38:06.853 --> 00:38:11.114
I still love technology, but what's going to change the world is.

00:38:11.534 --> 00:38:14.443
Is others not technology?

00:38:15.313 --> 00:38:15.673
Yes.

00:38:15.733 --> 00:38:20.474
A lot of time in, in a fast moving world where technology is everywhere.

00:38:20.893 --> 00:38:27.943
We think that true change come through technology, but no true change come through people you know by I.

00:38:28.753 --> 00:38:38.574
Implanting in their heads, the right ideas by helping them to reach their potential, by helping them to think, more positively about themselves and what they can do.

00:38:39.123 --> 00:38:43.103
I liked very much short story or the, or a short statement.

00:38:43.103 --> 00:38:51.509
Someone said, if you think that you're not important or you cannot make an impact, and of, in this world, think of a mosquito with two humans in a tent.

00:38:52.764 --> 00:38:55.134
What do you think that mosquito can do to these two humans?

00:38:55.134 --> 00:38:55.403
Yeah.

00:38:57.173 --> 00:38:57.414
Yeah.

00:38:58.003 --> 00:39:02.923
I'm not saying that you need to be as annoying as a mosquito, but I'm just telling you I've been known to do that.

00:39:04.213 --> 00:39:08.713
But you can do a lot since the mosquito can still do a lot to two humans or more.

00:39:09.494 --> 00:39:09.914
That's right.

00:39:10.574 --> 00:39:18.333
So last one, how about either just elaborate on either a big opportunity or a limiting belief that you see.

00:39:19.878 --> 00:39:21.259
We can talk about big opportunity.

00:39:21.409 --> 00:39:27.108
So ai, I know this is something that everyone talks about right now.

00:39:28.009 --> 00:39:31.938
First of all AI has some limiting beliefs and have some opportunities.

00:39:31.938 --> 00:39:35.838
Maybe I'll start with something that I want everyone to really be cautious of.

00:39:36.708 --> 00:39:38.268
AI is not going to replace jobs.

00:39:38.449 --> 00:39:43.668
AI is just gonna help us to re-skill and I think it's going to help us to re-skill much faster than before.

00:39:44.358 --> 00:39:46.878
So there, there is a lot of positivity around that.

00:39:47.268 --> 00:39:50.568
I have especially'cause I come from developer background, I write software.

00:39:50.599 --> 00:39:54.559
So I'm also interested to see the impact of AI on software development.

00:39:55.608 --> 00:40:04.458
My son is at Virginia Tech, he studies computer science and he actually called me one day and said that, AI is doing lots of coding stuff.

00:40:04.923 --> 00:40:08.164
Am I gonna get OB upset Even before, before I get graduated?

00:40:08.614 --> 00:40:09.333
I thought him, no.

00:40:09.813 --> 00:40:16.534
At the end of the day, it's just one abstraction layer added to how we build software.

00:40:16.954 --> 00:40:17.074
Yeah.

00:40:17.164 --> 00:40:18.273
You need just to think higher.

00:40:18.903 --> 00:40:25.443
So that's the limiting belief that I think a lot of people or trapped a lot, get fallen into now an opportunity.

00:40:25.443 --> 00:40:32.253
What's the opportunity then is to produce more with higher quality in a shorter time.

00:40:32.304 --> 00:40:39.623
A lot of people are not aware of this, but there is a nice economic theory called JA vin's theory or paradox.

00:40:40.704 --> 00:40:47.623
There are a few things in this world, the more we produce off and the cheaper they get the more we consume.

00:40:49.153 --> 00:40:49.454
Yeah.

00:40:49.574 --> 00:40:52.023
Think of think of actually PCs.

00:40:52.244 --> 00:40:52.664
Exactly.

00:40:52.664 --> 00:40:53.804
PCs are TVs.

00:40:54.208 --> 00:40:55.588
And they get cheaper.

00:40:55.708 --> 00:40:57.208
They're disposable pretty much now.

00:40:57.778 --> 00:40:58.228
So many.

00:40:58.289 --> 00:40:59.128
Yeah, exactly.

00:40:59.128 --> 00:41:08.009
They get cheaper and faster, they double their performance and 50% cheaper every 18 month and yet we cannot have enough of them.

00:41:08.188 --> 00:41:08.579
That's right.

00:41:08.969 --> 00:41:11.668
We use more storage, we use more processors.

00:41:11.668 --> 00:41:13.469
We always looking for what's faster.

00:41:14.188 --> 00:41:14.248
Yeah.

00:41:14.248 --> 00:41:18.268
The same thing when it comes to knowledge and what you can do with knowledge and ai.

00:41:19.719 --> 00:41:20.889
And software as well.

00:41:21.309 --> 00:41:24.929
When software engineers come and tell me, aI is gonna eat up our lunch.

00:41:25.048 --> 00:41:26.099
I'm thinking to them, no.

00:41:26.489 --> 00:41:30.659
Now you can produce rather than one app in three, six months, you can produce one app in a week.

00:41:30.989 --> 00:41:33.119
Do you think that people are gonna say, okay, we're done.

00:41:33.119 --> 00:41:34.128
One app is enough.

00:41:34.188 --> 00:41:35.179
See you in six month.

00:41:35.509 --> 00:41:40.398
They're gonna come the week after and they're gonna tell, you know what, I need another app because I have another idea to experiment with.

00:41:40.398 --> 00:41:42.798
Or I have another value that I can add to my users.

00:41:43.068 --> 00:41:43.219
Yeah.

00:41:43.878 --> 00:41:50.548
So looking at things from that lens is gonna give you, it's gonna show you the opportunities.

00:41:50.923 --> 00:41:55.579
Again for everyone and maybe we can include it in the show notes vin's paradox.

00:41:55.579 --> 00:41:59.869
If everyone on Wiki Yeah, on Wiki, Wikipedia, they'll find out.

00:41:59.869 --> 00:42:04.909
And it's a more than a more a hundred years old theory and it's been proven so it's not something new.

00:42:04.969 --> 00:42:05.478
We see it.

00:42:05.478 --> 00:42:05.809
Same.

00:42:05.838 --> 00:42:08.719
It applies also to oil and energy and so many other.

00:42:09.228 --> 00:42:14.099
Resources that humans you know, being, producing at the mass scale.

00:42:14.398 --> 00:42:14.759
That's right.

00:42:15.179 --> 00:42:17.159
And thank you for answering the question that way.

00:42:17.188 --> 00:42:24.898
'cause you actually identified the reason why I keep asking that question in a way I do that talk about an op big opportunity or limiting belief.

00:42:25.048 --> 00:42:28.858
Oftentimes people think it's one or the other, but they really are the same thing.

00:42:28.889 --> 00:42:29.608
Ai.

00:42:29.949 --> 00:42:31.418
We all feel threatened by it.

00:42:31.418 --> 00:42:34.509
We think it's gonna, take over the world and we're not gonna have jobs and all that.

00:42:34.509 --> 00:42:40.028
But at the same time, it's the biggest opportunity we have out there to become even more productive and everything like that.

00:42:40.028 --> 00:42:45.949
So it really is just a state of mind exactly whether we choose to look at anything in one way or the other.

00:42:45.949 --> 00:42:48.978
And you, so you correctly identified that in your answer.

00:42:48.978 --> 00:42:49.938
I appreciate that.

00:42:50.418 --> 00:42:52.099
So Mo, thank you.

00:42:52.099 --> 00:42:57.358
Time has really flown by people wanna know, excuse me, a little bit more about you.

00:42:58.338 --> 00:43:02.568
And and your program and your book and everything, how can they find you?

00:43:03.139 --> 00:43:03.798
Absolutely.

00:43:03.858 --> 00:43:07.168
So everything can start with boundless founder, the CEO.

00:43:07.228 --> 00:43:11.128
If they go to this website, they can know more about the book.

00:43:11.369 --> 00:43:14.309
There is actually a cool thing that I just created there.

00:43:14.684 --> 00:43:16.063
It's called Behind the Scenes.

00:43:16.304 --> 00:43:27.643
So I'm talking about why did I write the book and why I even wrote each of the book chapters, what triggered me to write that chapter so they can go and read the story of the book.

00:43:27.643 --> 00:43:28.813
That's not gonna be Oh, cool.

00:43:28.864 --> 00:43:29.434
Anywhere.

00:43:29.824 --> 00:43:31.414
And of course there's a link to the book.

00:43:31.443 --> 00:43:32.373
It at Amazon.

00:43:32.403 --> 00:43:34.264
The Inside Out Entrepreneur.

00:43:34.293 --> 00:43:35.583
Again, that's the name of the book.

00:43:36.094 --> 00:43:39.574
And I have a special offer for your audience and listeners.

00:43:39.574 --> 00:43:40.054
Oh, thank you.

00:43:40.083 --> 00:43:50.259
Yeah, that we, even though we our community has a free tier, but we're gonna give everyone here a 30% discount to the paid tier of our Wow.

00:43:50.309 --> 00:43:54.298
Boundless founder community and paid tier has lots of resources.

00:43:54.833 --> 00:44:07.784
Checklists, templates courses on how to get started with your journey, not only at the at the MI mindset and mental level, but even at the specifics of building your startup, how to do the fundraising.

00:44:08.054 --> 00:44:13.454
Get your first in customers, start your first marketing program, build your company brand, and all of that.

00:44:13.634 --> 00:44:18.043
These are all resources that also available for our paid users.

00:44:18.344 --> 00:44:20.954
We're gonna make that available with 30% discount here.

00:44:21.958 --> 00:44:22.438
Excellent.

00:44:22.438 --> 00:44:23.188
Thank you so much.

00:44:23.188 --> 00:44:24.239
That's very generous of you.

00:44:24.628 --> 00:44:33.248
And a lot of our listeners, I'd say most of our listeners are either entrepreneurs or aspire to become an entrepreneur in one way or the other.

00:44:33.498 --> 00:44:37.248
Whether it be in technology or real estate, or small business or what have you.

00:44:37.248 --> 00:44:41.679
And these are all the right principles to succeed in any of those.

00:44:41.708 --> 00:44:44.498
So I think we can all benefit from.

00:44:45.378 --> 00:44:48.798
The Boundless founder community and your book Mo.

00:44:48.798 --> 00:44:52.068
So thanks for sharing that with us and giving our listeners that discount.

00:44:52.518 --> 00:44:52.938
Absolutely.

00:44:52.938 --> 00:44:53.509
My pleasure.

00:44:53.809 --> 00:44:54.199
All right.

00:44:54.199 --> 00:44:55.878
Thank you very much for being here.

00:44:55.878 --> 00:44:56.028
All right.

00:44:56.509 --> 00:44:56.750
Thank you, Louis.

00:44:56.750 --> 00:44:57.259
Thank you very much.

00:44:57.409 --> 00:44:58.398
Great to be here with you.

00:44:58.728 --> 00:44:59.148
Likewise.

00:45:04.018 --> 00:45:05.789
We hope you've enjoyed the Wayfinder Show.

00:45:05.878 --> 00:45:10.108
If you've got value from this episode, please take a few seconds to leave us a five star rating and review.

00:45:10.409 --> 00:45:14.668
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00:45:15.358 --> 00:45:16.588
We'll catch you on the next episode.