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Harnessing AI and Mindset: Mohamed Ahmed on Transforming Entrepreneurship · Authentic Living

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Welcome to Authentic Living with Roxanne, a place where we have conscious conversations
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about things that really matter in our lives.
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And now here's your host, Roxanne Durhaj.
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Hi, everyone.
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It's Roxanne Durhodch.
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It's Authentic Living with Roxanne, and thanks so much for hanging out with us again today.
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Today, have an interesting guest, Mohamed Ahmed.
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Mohamed brings a fascinating background with lots of things that he's done.
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Mohamed, welcome to the podcast.
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Well, thank you very much, Huxane, for having me.
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Yeah, it's a pleasure to be here.
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Okay.
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So let me tell you a little bit about him.
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And obviously his entire bio will be in the show notes.
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He is the author of a book that was released in December called Inside Out Entrepreneurs.
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He guides founders to build mental resilience to navigate high growth, having founded,
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scaled, and exiting multiple AI driven businesses.
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And he understands the intersection of technology, business, and execution.
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He's done amazing things and worked with huge companies.
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Some of the highlights is 30,000,000 in AI driven sales enablement at Intel with four
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months by accelerating enterprise AI adoption.
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That's one of the many things he's done.
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And he complies his experience with technology leadership from and dealt with places like
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Intel, Amazon, Microsoft, and kind of deep insight into entrepreneurial psychology.
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So, Mohammad, tell us what got you on this path.
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Now I know AI, we're all trying to kind of figure things out.
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You've obviously kind of been on a path with the amount of work that you've done.
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I would say when you were a little boy, did you want to be at AI?
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But I would say that probably didn't happen.
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Yeah.
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I'm older than that than anyone that started hearing about AI.
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But just maybe quickly about my background and what brought me to what I'm doing right now.
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So I started my career as an engineer and I worked extensively on advanced products with
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big companies like Microsoft, Amazon.
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I joined also a couple of startup companies.
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And I thought back then that I'm ready to build a startup and jump from the big corporate being
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focused on product engineering to become a businessman and build a company, a billion
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dollar company.
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That was my dream.
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And I thought, okay, I learned that complex technology.
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What would prevent me from learning how to build a business?
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I can learn it.
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I can do it.
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And a few years ago, I did the job and I decided to build my own startup.
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Before that, as many others in our field, I studied a lot.
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I even took a certificate in entrepreneurship from Stanford.
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I talked with lots of entrepreneurs and VCs.
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And I started the journey and then gradually I started to notice that I'm making all the
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mistakes that everyone told me not to do.
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And not because I did not know about the situation because it was, I was out of balance.
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It was some sort of a self fulfilling prophecy.
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I was always saying to myself in my head, I'm going to fail.
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I'm going to lose the funding.
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I'm going to, my product is not going to make it.
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And actually I was doing all those mistakes.
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Midway, two years after founding the company and going through loss and loss of setbacks, I
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decided to pause and just to look back and see why is that happening?
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And I almost had a panic attack at that point.
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And with the help of some mentors, I started to look at things differently.
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I started to focus more on what's inside me rather than focusing on the business KPIs and
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the numbers and so on.
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And things started to turn around from that point.
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I learned about what does it mean to be resilient?
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What does it mean to have a balanced point of view about your business and yourself?
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What does it mean to separate your identity from your business so that you're able to work
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on the problem properly with the right mindset?
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Also the definition of mindset.
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All of these were taken for granted.
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Though I realized, no, actually I still have a lot to learn.
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I still have a lot also to build in myself to become a successful entrepreneur.
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So, two years after or five years total after founding the company, I was lucky to sell the
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company and then spend some time to really think again and ruminate about that experience.
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And that what made me write the book.
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I said, look, all those experiences, all those setbacks, they're painful.
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Many others go through many other entrepreneurs go through, but that need to stop.
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They do not need to face the same problems.
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They need to be educated about what really matters.
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Marketing and sales and fundraising are important.
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No doubt about that.
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But if you're as an entrepreneur not approaching it the right way, especially that
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entrepreneurs are the most important element in all of that, they bring everything together.
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It's not going to work.
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And that's why until now we have more than ninety five percent failure rate in the startup
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world, not because of just only the products do not work, but there is that the human element
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in the entrepreneurs that need to be fixed.
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And that I made it actually my mission since then, that I need to make sure that any
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entrepreneur that I work with or I touch one way or another, they their problems are an
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upgrade of mine.
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They're not facing the same problems that I had before.
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Because you're the same person that had the same technical skill going from working with
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these huge companies to going on your own.
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So there definitely was a shift in mindset that had to occur working with bigger companies than
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starting your own.
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So what was the biggest shift that you realized?
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You'd go in and, like you said, you'd work with some huge companies like Amazon and Microsoft.
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Like, you're working with these huge companies and they're having you in to help them with
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strategy around is it generally around AI that you are working in in those companies?
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Yep.
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Yeah.
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Absolutely.
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And we'll come definitely to the AI and how that can Yeah.
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Make a big difference in the journey of the entrepreneurs.
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But working in big companies is like you're swimming in a warmed up pool.
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You have your own lane.
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You have a bodyguard sitting aside, or sorry, a guard sitting aside.
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Yeah.
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Just watching after you making sure that you're okay.
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That's pretty much like working in big companies.
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Working in a startup is pretty much like someone threw you in the middle of the ocean,
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in the middle of the night, cold water, and you do not know where is the shore, where to go
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from that point.
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So it's just a free form of everything.
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You have the danger of running out of resources every day.
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You have the danger of failing.
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You do not have the guidance as you would have it in big companies through your manager and
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the rest of the system.
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And your goal is to just to go and make money, which is similar to finding a shore or just
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going, getting yourself out of that cold water in the middle of the night.
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So that's actually the difference between working on those big corporates into and moving
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into startups.
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That's, if you think of it, just think even of that analogy that I gave or that visualization,
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the first thing when someone throws you in the middle of the ocean at night, if you panic and
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start moving very fast, you're going to exhaust yourself.
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You're gonna run out of energy and eventually drown.
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But if you cool down, start forming a perspective and okay, what do I need to do
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right now?
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How much time do I have?
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How much energy do I have?
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Where do I need to go and just cool down a bit?
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Maybe the shortage just a few yards away from where you are or what you need to just cool
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down, orient yourself, take a look around and then just move in the right direction.
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As opposed to I want to move fast.
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The hustle culture that we always, you know, fall, fall victims off, just work day and
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night.
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If you need to wake up, wake up 4AM in the morning and you need to do this, you need to do
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that.
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Just move fast, move fast.
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And in the middle of all of that, you get you lose your sense of direction.
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And big companies, they definitely tell you to work fast and move more.
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But they have the lane set up for you.
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They have everything set up for you to move fast safely.
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But in the startup world, this is not the case.
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And that definitely can cause lots of issues.
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Absolutely.
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And I transitioned from corporate as well, Mohamed, into my own fourteen years ago.
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And you're so right.
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You're thinking you need to do it all yesterday.
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You can't take a day off.
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Your family suffers because in the interim, you're on all the time.
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I like that analogy.
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And the shore could be right there.
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It's like diving.
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I dive, right?
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And if you're too panicked and shallow, you use all the air in your tank.
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But if you just slow down, you just adjust the time based on your perceived length of your
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dive versus if you're in panic, you're having to ascend a little bit earlier.
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So I love I love that whole concept of just this now you're it, but you have to really kind
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of parse out what's step one and what's step two and things like that.
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And and a lot of entrepreneurs and startups go through, I think, a lot of different things.
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So what was one of the most valuable things you learned about mindsets early on?
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Yes.
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Maybe now the first year, but maybe into the second year that really you started to apply
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them made a difference.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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First of all, the definition of mindset, this is one thing that I started to learn.
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What's the mindset?
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When I started asking myself, what does it mean to have a certain mindset?
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And a mindset in very simple terms is your tendency to think in a certain way towards
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external event.
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And I can give an example.
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If you believe that everyone around you do not have bad intentions, they're good, they really
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want the good for you, and you just walk down the street in New York City and someone tells
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you good morning, what's the first thing they're gonna say?
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You're gonna smile and say good morning.
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Right?
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But if you believe otherwise that everyone is trying to get something out of you, they're
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just trying to use you one way or another, and someone says, does you just stranger tells you
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good morning in the same situation.
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What would be the first thing that you think of?
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Oh, he needs something.
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He or she would need something.
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There's something fishy there.
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Something not right there.
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That's the definition of a mindset.
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The first one is positive.
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The second one is negative.
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So, that's the first thing.
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That's the foundation of just what does it mean to have a mindset?
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Again, in simple terms, you're a psychology expert, so you definitely have more deeper
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definition of that.
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But I was just trying to resonate and make find a definition that makes sense to me.
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Now, okay, the second thing, the biggest learning for me or second biggest learning for
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me is that you do not run with a single mindset as an entrepreneur.
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You have to have multiple mindsets, definitely a positive mindset, growth mindset, a challenge
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mindset.
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All of these, you need to have them inside you and you use each one of them at the right
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situation.
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If for example, if you have one of your biggest customers about to, let's say, cancel the big
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contract with you, in that case, you have to have a, I would say a growth mindset.
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Use that as a way to build deeper relationship with the customer because they're probably
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going to want to cancel the contract because there's a problem that they're facing.
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Okay, now I have a chance to help them fix that problem, whether it's a budgeting problem or a
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problem with my product.
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So the mindset, the right mindset, reusing that right mindset, that specific situation would
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make you progress further.
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And so on.
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That's something that I learned a lot throughout the journey that first of all, check
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your tendency and check what kind of mindset you have.
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Second, just have some sort of a list of mindsets.
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And I talk in my book about six, the top six mindset that any entrepreneur should have in
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their journey.
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And then from that point, you always check yourself.
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Do I have the right mindset?
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Am I calling the right mindset in the right situation or not?
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And then you move on from that point.
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Those are just the foundations.
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And then the book actually talks about different strategies, how to check yourself,
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how to call the right mindset and so on.
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But those, I would say this is the core of my overall learning about building a balance as an
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entrepreneur.
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And then everything starts from that point because now you start to orient yourself as a
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human and the whole thing and being an entrepreneur, being a dad, being whatever your
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position in the society and in this world.
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Absolutely.
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Because with my book, ROR, I talk about the leader being mentally aware of the radius,
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mentally, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually of the space of that force field
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that he or she has around them.
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So if you're kind like to your point, if they're so absorbed and you're depleted and
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you're burnt out, then you're less likely to recognize what's happening to Roxanne who's on
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your R and D team or James that's on your sales team because you're so self absorbed because
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you're trying to kind of do everything like it's going to be critical.
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So I try to teach them about that space within themselves, which is ultimately what I hear you
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saying, Mohamed.
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Because if you're part of a a bigger a system, like, to your point, you have sales, you have
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marketing, you have PR, you have all those people, and then they give you when I was in
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corporate, it would be like, okay, Roxanne.
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Here's the marketing report based on that new product.
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So you're meeting with this client.
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Here's the trending analysis.
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Here are the concerns that have come up.
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Here's how we've rectified it.
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And then I would just go off, have the quarterly meetings and things like that until I
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got to my own, and then I was it, Mohammed.
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And then I was like, oh my goodness.
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With a skinny little team around me.
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So I get what you're saying.
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In reference to, you said there were six kind of mindsets.
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So there's mindsets that people need to figure out.
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And if they maybe they know it, maybe they don't realize, maybe they're better at some and
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they have to learn some ways to adapt if they don't have a particular mindset.
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What are some of the other things that you teach in the book that might be helpful for
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someone that has a basic business, but is scaling up and looking at a trajectory of a
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three to five or ten year growth strategy?
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Absolutely.
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One other thing that I talk about a lot is the concept of conditioning yourself for the
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business.
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Think of building a startup pretty much like climbing a mountain.
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And if you talk to any mountaineer, any professional mountaineer, they would tell you
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before we start our journey, we would do certain conditioning before a few months before
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it, mentally, emotionally, physically, of course.
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And even they need to make sure that their life, their personal life is ready for that.
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So the same thing when it comes to building a business or a company, you're changing your is
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a is a challenging, non forgiving journey.
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And you need to make sure that you're ready for it.
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Based on that, then you need to condition yourself.
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There are different dimensions that you need to also condition yourself on.
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I talk about five dimensions in the book.
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One of them, for example, is definitely the mental.
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And we talked about the mindset and you need how to build the resiliency and robustness in
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your mindset so that you keep yourself always in the right mindset or bring yourself back if
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imbalance took place.
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Another one, for example, is your network, your support system.
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How do you build a good enough support system that would help you when you're not ready to
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support them, but they would be ready to support you.
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For example, at that specific dimension, I always say the family of the entrepreneur are
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as special as the entrepreneur him or herself.
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And they need to be also conditioned for that journey.
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So as an entrepreneur before that, you need to tell them what to expect, what's going to
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happen.
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A quick story.
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I was working with an entrepreneur and he raised $5,000,000 his wife because he did not
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really she did not really know about what does it mean to raise $5,000,000 She thought that
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they became millionaires.
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She thought that the company, because they basically raised for a company valuation that
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worth 15 or $20,000,000 and he owns 50%.
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She thought, okay, now we have that a million dollars.
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But in reality, in business, it's just something on paper.
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You're not done until you're done, let's say selling the company or going IPO and sell your
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stock in the public market.
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So that expectations, if it's not right, it can exhaust people, can cause you know, a lot of
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stress in relationship.
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So educating them would set the right expectations, and would make them also support
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you.
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Also having the right people around you in the journey, like a mentor, an advisor and a
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friend, and how do you really interact with all those roles in different ways, and have the
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right mentor, have the right friend and so on.
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So the whole idea of conditioning, in my point of view is also very important.
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Because again, you cannot just jump or decide to do the journey.
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Think of you saw a mountain, you're just walking by a mountain, you're wearing jeans,
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maybe flip flops, and you say, you know what, I'm going to just start climbing the mountain
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right now.
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What do you expect?
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A whole lot of blisters.
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So it's not going to work, right?
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Not only for at the physical level, but also, you know, as you go and it becomes harder,
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darker, colder, less oxygen, How are you going to face all of that?
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It's the same thing.
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When you go and do your build your company, less of everything is going to take place with
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you.
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Are you ready for that?
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That's something that you need to be ready for.
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And the book talks about those dimensions and how to prepare yourself for that.
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And I would think that the strategy for year one to two is different from a growth, like,
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say, to five years out.
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So is there a shift that, like, when you and I'm gonna assume that you coach these
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entrepreneurs with this book.
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So what's the difference in some of the tools?
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Right?
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We're mountaineers again.
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We've kind of gotten to the first level, but we have a couple of levels to go up to be able to
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ascend.
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So what are some of the things like once they've kind of know, okay, I've survived two
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years, my family's still intact, we're making a bit of money maybe, we now have an entity and
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now we can start to scale a bit.
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What kind of things do you start to kind of project forward with people say in the three
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to, you say five years, ten years?
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That's a great question.
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I love the question.
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Now, at the beginning, it's all about you making that shift in the first one or two years
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from being whatever the identity that you had to becoming an entrepreneur and businessman or
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woman.
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After that is how do you scale your mindset and scale your set so that your company scales with
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you?
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For example, if you insist on doing the marketing yourself, you're never gonna hire
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your VP of marketing or head of marketing.
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You're not gonna be even if you hire them because you have to, or give them the day to
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day, but you're not gonna give them the space to do.
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For example, one of the things that I started to learn as my team grew is how do I have
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tolerance for mistakes, for others making mistakes?
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How do I have tolerance for different ways of doing things than me?
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Those are things that entrepreneurs as they now get from just a small company of a few people
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that they know very well to a bigger company.
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They need to scale themselves into Because I have a rule as your company is going to scale
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as fast as your mindset is scaling with you.
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Right?
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If you're not able to, you're going to suffocate your business.
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You're going to slow it down.
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You're going to become a roadblocks for your company.
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And this is something that will make a big difference now, year two, three, four, assuming
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that your company is growing.
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If you pass the first stage, you're gonna definitely graduate into the second one, which
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is how do you grow?
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How do you accept others?
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How do we now even project this to others?
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Because you're going to see people around you also facing the same issues and problems.
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They think that they're going to fail.
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So how you're going to share your story with them and inspire them?
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You think that your company, some of your co founder might also be facing the same issues
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and challenges that you faced one or two years ago.
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How are you going to help them overcoming those challenges?
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Because it's not unique only to you, it's going to happen to others.
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So, if you do not have the foundation to solve that, fix that yourself, for yourself, it's
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going to be very hard to fix it for others as well.
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Really, that whole element of the microscopic, you have to shift away from that.
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And I often, in speaking to others that have kind of accelerated, they recognize that you
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hire the right experts.
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But to your point, it's that relatability to know, Mohamed does this completely different
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from Roxanne, but let's see what Roxanne's capacity is.
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It may not be exactly the way Mohammed works, but ultimately, if you've hired them or brought
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them on, you're bringing them on because they've demonstrated some capacity somewhere
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else, but you have to nurture that.
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And that's why I often say with CEOs or leaders, you have to be aware of your internal
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space and recognize when you're depleted.
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Right?
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If it's your season where you're having to burn the midnight oil a little bit more, that you
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may be off, your thinking may be a bit skewed, you might be a little bit less engaging, those
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types of things that you have to really tap into that and think, What do I need to do?
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Because if you're not 100 there as the person that's in the middle of the hub, then people
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are going to get that energy off you, which is what I think you hear you saying.
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Just allow them to evolve.
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That's why you peed them and brought them on.
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But if you it's like giving up the first having the firstborn and trying to give up the
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firstborn to evolve into the second.
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Right?
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You have to create a different strategy in that way.
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Absolutely.
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Absolutely.
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So let's talk a little bit about you had said there's different strategies and when people
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are going out, say, for funding or they're going to look at things like VCs and stuff like
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that.
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Is that another thing that you talk about with expansion in your book?
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Like, then, like you said, this particular entrepreneur you were talking to got the
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$5,000,000 funding.
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Again, it's a mindset thing, right?
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Like I've expanded, I've done we've grown the business, but now we recognize we want to scale
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up more.
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Is there a different mindset at that point where if they're wanting bigger funding that
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they have to get into?
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Yeah, the principles are the same, but it's now you're doing things more and more through
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people around you.
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And that's why the people leadership becomes more and more important.
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I remember in the early days of my startup, I used to look at codes.
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And then after one year when I had the engineers and the product manager, I started to
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look at tickets.
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And then after that, I started to read documents.
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And then after that, it was all email, just reading email and coordinating things together.
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So that progression is all about that tells you that I'm more and more dependent on people to
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do the work.
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And also another thing that I encourage lots of entrepreneurs as they grow is to develop their
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patience.
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Because one of the big, I would say, issues that many entrepreneurs fall into as the
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company grow, they still insist to run the company with the same speed that they when they
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had two or three engineers only.
24:43
When you have more people, they need to sync up with more with each other more.
24:47
It takes more time to finish things.
24:49
It takes more time for all of these to move together.
24:52
You're not only now it's not only yourself.
24:54
So developing that patience and the right expectations from people is very important.
25:00
And we have lots of cases that we hear off right now.
25:04
Even seasoned entrepreneurs, they try to rush things very fast, too fast, and they end up
25:10
screwing things up because they thought, okay, I'm the fastest.
25:14
I know everything.
25:16
And they forget about others experiences, do not respect them anymore because their
25:21
successes, previous success sometimes make them think that their way is the right way.
25:26
Let's just keep doing it.
25:28
And that's also another trap that many entrepreneurs fall into.
25:31
They become the victims of their success.
25:34
They eventually
25:34
Because the autonomy that's needed at the beginning, you have to technically, what you're
25:39
saying, you have to shift you are the one that had that original idea or had the pro like you
25:45
said, the product, but you have to almost shift from autonomy to collaboration in order for the
25:52
growth to occur.
25:54
Exactly.
25:54
Now it doesn't mean that you do not make decisions.
25:56
You're still the ultimate decision maker of the company and so on, but you need to make sure
26:00
that your decision will involve others.
26:04
And if you believe, and it's all about coaching others and moving them forward with you.
26:08
I'm a big fan of Simon Sinek.
26:10
He has three books, Start With Why and others.
26:13
And it's all about providing that safety for everyone in your company to critique you,
26:19
critique the way, feel that they're safe.
26:21
They're not going to be fired because they're not moving the same way that you wanted.
26:26
They have they still going to achieve the goal, but because it's just your perception.
26:30
So all of these are really important.
26:32
And Simon Sinek has a really nice quote.
26:34
He says, if you do not know people, you do not know business, you're going to eventually fail.
26:40
So business is all about people working together.
26:42
Whether this is your own employees or your customers or your partners or your VCs, anyone
26:47
in a human that you deal with.
26:49
If you know that if you really mastered the key to dealing with others, that would make you
26:55
eventually successful, Maybe not in the current business, but then maybe in the next one.
27:01
And in life in general, people are going to remember about what you stand and you stood for
27:06
and who you are.
27:07
They're not going to say he was a great person because he was, I don't know, dollars
27:10
100,000,000,000 worth of person.
27:12
That's not what people are going to remember you for.
27:16
Absolutely.
27:17
To your point, that element of innovation and psychological safety, I think, goes hand in
27:24
hand.
27:25
Because if people are not safe enough to bring forward a different idea or a different
27:31
approach, or even if people make mistakes in the company and the approach that comes from
27:37
senior leadership or from the CEO and how his or her approach is to those concerns, Rainey
27:44
makes people think, okay.
27:45
I can risk potentially fail or fall over a bit, but I can I can we can learn from that as a
27:52
different perspective versus, oh, here comes the CEO walking down the hall and you see like
27:57
a mass kind of exodus of everybody, right?
28:00
That's And unfortunately, Valley has famous stories around that.
28:05
Yeah, you've been there so you've probably lived it.
28:09
Now with your expertise and all that you've done with AI taking us, you know, the kind of
28:16
what you hear about the frenzy about it's going to take us over, tell us the perspective about
28:22
augmentation and application and things like that.
28:26
And I know we had talked about a couple of things that we could talk about maybe starting
28:30
with kind of with startups using AI and some guidance that you could might be able to give
28:35
entrepreneurs listening or leaders that may be starting to embrace AI a bit more.
28:41
Yeah, absolutely.
28:42
Now, first of all, I would like to encourage all the entrepreneurs not to fall into the trap
28:47
of, okay, I'm gonna just have the AI, I'm gonna make only one person billion dollar company and
28:52
I do not need people.
28:53
That's definitely not gonna happen or I don't see it happening.
28:57
AI definitely is just helping us to do things better and faster than before, but you still
29:03
need the human intelligence.
29:04
If you think of the AI and how it works, it looks backward.
29:08
It basically learned from whatever we produce in the past as humans, but it doesn't look
29:14
forward.
29:15
It does not create new ideas.
29:18
It may give you the illusion of new ideas, but they're not.
29:21
So the original ideas and creative ideas will still come from humans.
29:28
Because again, humans are way more complex than whatever we think of at the moment.
29:33
That's just a fundamental point.
29:36
But definitely AI is going to make a big difference in how we work and how we perceive
29:43
things in the future.
29:44
I have a hypothesis or theory.
29:46
I think we're going to have an explosion of startup companies in the next five to ten years
29:52
because now it's becoming much cheaper, much faster than before for you to try a new
29:57
business idea.
29:58
Think of it when after the year 2000 around 2010, cloud computing came in and lots of other
30:06
technologies came in.
30:07
They became very cheap, very unavailable for anyone.
30:11
And we had many companies coming up.
30:13
Uber came up because of the cell phones.
30:16
Airbnb is the same.
30:17
All those companies came because of the new technology that came in.
30:21
I believe that we're going to have a new breed of startups with much bigger numbers, way more
30:26
startups, way more people are going to try to build their own companies.
30:30
So that's number one.
30:31
This is a major trend that is going to take place.
30:35
Now, the question here is how can I make use of AI in all of that as an entrepreneur, as a
30:41
leader?
30:42
As I said, do not think of AI as replacement of humans.
30:45
AI is gonna make humans able to do more.
30:49
There's a really nice economic theory or low in other words, right now it's called Javen's low.
30:56
And it talks about a few things in economy, the cheaper they get or the more accessible they
31:03
get, the more we consume of them.
31:07
And think of energy, the cheaper it gets, the more available it gets or excited, the more we
31:13
use it.
31:13
Think of compute.
31:14
We know that microprocessors gets cheaper by half and double their performance every 18.
31:20
And yet we cannot have enough of it.
31:23
So the same thing to human production and human work is gonna get, if AI is going to make us
31:31
finish things in half time, this means that we need to do, we want to do more because it gives
31:37
us that satisfaction.
31:39
So you need to think as a leader is okay, if you're, it's a limited mindset.
31:45
If you think, okay, I can now make the AI do the job of five engineers, let me fire them.
31:51
That's wrong in my point of view.
31:54
What you need to do is, okay, let the AI do what they used to do and make them do something
32:00
really creative that would truly differentiate you.
32:03
Because probably what you're doing with the AI right now, thousands and thousands of others
32:07
are thinking or already doing it the same way that you're thinking of.
32:10
So you're going to differentiate yourself with people, not with AI.
32:15
So that's one thing.
32:17
Now let's get a bit more tactical.
32:20
How can you use AI as a leader, as an engineer, as an entrepreneur to make your life easier?
32:26
I see it in three main things or three main areas.
32:29
Number one, definitely AI.
32:30
You can use AI as a catalyst for new ideas.
32:33
If I'm writing a new paper or even thinking of my next book to write and share it with the
32:39
outside world, the AI is not going to write it for me, but the AI can collect the research for
32:44
me.
32:44
It can critique some points of view based on some background that I give give it as I do the
32:50
research or write my draft.
32:52
So using it as a companion, not as a tool would help a lot.
32:57
So that's hack number one.
32:59
And then having that conversation and feeding your companion with as much as possible.
33:04
Some details is really important.
33:12
So companionship versus completely replacing, which is what I think the biggest fear is
33:19
oftentimes.
33:20
Correct.
33:21
People are petrified versus seeing it as a creative element.
33:26
What I love about what what you said is, it's freeing up the time to get more innovation and
33:32
creativity to the engineers that you have that maybe could so not thinking that get rid of
33:38
them altogether because what's the value.
33:41
I often say that out of something new, there's innovation.
33:45
If they think of the things that we can do now, if I'm writing a speech, I'm like you, I'm
33:50
thinking, okay, what are the main points of my book?
33:52
Who is my audience?
33:54
What kind of things might, you know, engage them.
33:58
But ultimately, I'm writing my own speech and but trying to think if it's a health care
34:02
sector versus banking, it's gonna be a different thing.
34:05
So it's it helps me be more creative and the same as, like you said, with this team.
34:10
So we're gonna see probably more creativity because of the augmentation.
34:15
Exactly.
34:16
That's what I'm thinking just overall.
34:18
Exactly.
34:19
And, again, think of it as a companion where you can have that conversation back and forth,
34:23
and that companion will never replace you.
34:25
It will never basically be able to produce the same points that you have in mind.
34:29
Pretty much when you have an assistant in your work, even though they're doing a lot of
34:33
crucial stuff for you, but they're not going to replace you as an exec or a manager or whatever
34:39
your role.
34:40
Now, the second perspective or aspect is use AI to condense knowledge for you.
34:48
This is also very important.
34:51
Everyone now produces ton of content and information and ideas.
34:57
And AI can get you the gist of it very quickly.
35:00
This is a this is something I usually do and also help you to consume it in in different
35:05
ways.
35:05
So if there's a really long article, I just feed it into chat GPT, for example, and give me
35:11
the summary of it.
35:12
And then I start interacting with it.
35:14
This is also a really nice thing.
35:15
Even if it's a long email, long report, I basically feed it into the AI and I start
35:21
interacting with the report and I even ask the AI questions that I would ask the report
35:26
writer.
35:27
And if there are no answers, now those questions to be addressed by the human.
35:31
So it saves a lot of time.
35:34
So that's the hack number two.
35:36
The third one that I would recommend anyone to use AI for is.
35:42
Use AI to do some simple, I would say, hacks and planning for your life.
35:47
I'll give you an example.
35:49
I write a log every day of what I did or I journal every day what I did today and what I
35:53
think went well, went wrong, something that I missed, something that I had planned to do
35:57
tomorrow or maybe next weekend, this kind of stuff.
36:00
And then at the end of the month, I get that whole document.
36:03
I feed it into the AI and I start asking questions.
36:07
What did I miss?
36:08
What's wrong in my pattern?
36:09
Right.
36:10
How can I make the next month more productive?
36:14
I may, I felt that I felt that those stresses because I've missed such and such.
36:18
What do you think realistically I should go?
36:20
Do you think I'm going, I'm basically expecting too much and I need to tune down myself or
36:25
lower my expectations or not.
36:27
And I start it's as if I'm having that inner dialogue, but there's more structured way.
36:33
And then it starts extracting some insights from all those journals.
36:37
So as if you're going back to your journal and reading it again, but in a different way.
36:42
With a different perspective on the unconscious, because Exactly.
36:46
Coming other than your own to say, you see this pattern or this pattern?
36:51
And potentially when you don't get that much sleep, you seem to be a bit more frustrated or
36:55
whatever.
36:56
That's amazing.
36:57
Yeah.
36:58
So those are the three ways I would recommend anyone to use AI and a fast moving forward,
37:02
especially in the business.
37:03
And if you're a leader in a business or an organization, those are three different ways.
37:09
If you use it, have the right perspective, I guess you're gonna, have a more fulfilling
37:13
life.
37:14
I wouldn't say you're gonna be ahead of everyone else because it's not a race, it's a
37:17
marathon.
37:17
We're all in it together.
37:19
So if you have entrepreneurs listening and they're starting off, what are one or two of
37:24
the biggest tips that you think you could give them about the journey or the success of the
37:32
journey?
37:32
Yeah, absolutely.
37:34
First of all, you need to know whether entrepreneurship is the right thing for you or
37:38
not, because it's not necessarily something that everyone would be able to do it.
37:43
And I'm not saying that entrepreneurs are better than others.
37:45
Being an entrepreneur is better than working on a corporate.
37:49
This is one thing.
37:49
This is the other thing.
37:50
If everyone is entrepreneur, we're not going to be able to do anything because you need all the
37:54
roles.
37:55
Yes.
37:55
So that's the first thing.
37:57
And I have a community called Boundless Founder.
37:59
We offer worksheets and free courses where you can go and assess yourself whether this is the
38:05
right journey for you or not.
38:06
So that's the step number one.
38:09
Know your position, know who you are, know what you really want out of this life.
38:14
And the second thing, think of entrepreneurship as just a manifestation of your why, why you're
38:20
doing things.
38:21
Let's say for example, if it's all about, if you really care about inspiring others around a
38:27
certain idea that you believe in, that can be done in so many different ways rather than
38:31
building a product or a company.
38:33
It could be by writing books, it could be by in academia.
38:36
It could be in so many different or being a leader in a big organization or being a
38:41
journalist.
38:42
Many ways.
38:42
So what you do is just a manifestation of what you believe in and it can change.
38:48
Yeah.
38:49
All right.
38:49
One day it's a startup.
38:51
Another day could be a book.
38:53
And actually, that's how I realized myself.
38:56
I thought that the startup is really the way for me to do that.
38:59
And I still a big believer in the startups.
39:01
But I thought, Okay, if I really want to impact, who do I really believe more in their
39:07
journey?
39:07
And I really wanted to impact that.
39:09
You know what?
39:09
Entrepreneurs are really very important persons in this society.
39:13
They're the ones who are take the society, move it forward.
39:16
So inspiring them is really important.
39:19
And I can do that with a book.
39:21
So don't think as as a startup is the only way.
39:25
And the problem is that unfortunately, media plays a big role in the misconceptions about
39:31
business and startups.
39:32
In the news, three young founders, they look bright.
39:36
They look happy sitting on a couch.
39:39
The headline is they just with a 10 slice presentation, they landed $10,000,000 And
39:45
everyone thinks, you know what, they just woke up in that one day, decided to do those slides
39:49
and they got the $10,000,000 And that's, of course, abnormal.
39:52
This is not the typical case.
39:54
And media loves to show you the abnormal as normals to catch your attention and keep you in
40:00
the loop with them.
40:01
That's not right.
40:02
That's also another advice I would usually give to the entrepreneurs.
40:06
Do not really go and do startups because you fell to school.
40:09
I saw that person in the media and I'm more qualified than him and he got $10,000,000
40:14
Probably I'd be able to get it like that.
40:16
That's not the case.
40:17
Not seeing that all the things that failed and all the maybe potentially things that they had
40:24
to do to get there.
40:25
But of course, you're right.
40:26
Media is about selling time and getting eyes on the story, so they're doing their job really
40:31
well.
40:32
What mindset are you working on now, Mohammad?
40:38
As you look at your trajectory, what is your goal, let's say, in the next year to three
40:43
years?
40:44
And what mindset are you using?
40:46
Is there something that you want to adapt based on where you're going?
40:49
Yeah, absolutely.
40:51
It's definitely the abundance mindset is one of the things that I personally keep working on
40:57
these days every day.
40:58
And I encourage a lot of people around me to do that for two reasons.
41:03
With the with the news and everyone saying we're heading towards a recession, there are
41:07
layoffs every day.
41:08
Everyone thinks that there's scarcity in resources.
41:11
We're not going to be able to make it.
41:12
I'm going to be laid off, etcetera, etcetera.
41:15
But in reality, no, we have abundance of resources.
41:19
It just those resources just waiting for people to extract them and provide the value to
41:24
everyone else.
41:25
So living that abundance mindset that there is abundance of resources and opportunities out
41:31
there that you can go and seize and find your your why or your basically calling in this life
41:38
as you do that is is something that is really important.
41:42
This again, think of what is happening with the crowd.
41:46
You need to go the opposite direction.
41:48
If they're negative saying everything is gonna go down, you need to go to the opposite
41:52
direction.
41:53
It's hard.
41:53
It's not easy because everything around you every day calling for negative thoughts.
41:59
But if you just move strong enough towards, again, the opposite in a positive way that
42:06
definitely make you different first of all, you're and going to eventually make it.
42:10
I have 100% confidence in that.
42:13
Being stable enough to recognize that this too will pass, even though we are going through a
42:18
lot, I think, between our countries and globally, to recognize, like you said, what's
42:24
my why?
42:25
You know, what is the I often say in my book, what is the legacy piece that you want to leave
42:30
behind?
42:31
And we will continually go through a lot of things in life.
42:34
That's life.
42:35
But how much real estate are you going to rent out in your head until this stage passes?
42:40
Because it will at some point.
42:42
Mohammad, tell everybody the name of the book again and where they can get ahold of the book
42:47
and also where they can get ahold of you and the community you were talking about.
42:50
Absolutely.
42:51
So then again, the name of the book is the the Inside Out.
42:54
So here's actually a copy of it.
42:55
So the Inside Out Entrepreneur and and they can find it definitely on Amazon.
43:01
There's a big community we're building also around it where you can interact or anyone can
43:06
interact with other entrepreneurs, share their concerns.
43:09
And also we have have courses there, free courses, free resources where they can just go
43:15
and make use of them again to check whether the journey is the right one for them or not, or
43:20
also to check, learn a bit about marketing and sales in early stages.
43:24
So the community named isboundlessfounder.co.
43:28
That's the website where they can definitely also reach out to me through the website.
43:33
And I'm available on social media as well.
43:35
Just search me up, Mohamed, F, F for Frank, Ahmed.
43:40
And you're going to find me on different social media networks.
43:43
Awesome.
43:44
Well, has been I've learned a lot as I usually do with a lot of my guests.
43:48
Talking about things that scare a lot of people, you really made it seem, you broke it
43:53
down into little bites.
43:54
So I hope that people listening can recognize that we're all on this journey of being leaders
44:00
in some, be it in a big company or small, but ultimately that there's things that you can do
44:06
to manage, whether you're a startup or you're managing other people under fear that we can
44:12
tap into.
44:13
Are the people around you are only as mentally well as you are to recognize the value of what
44:19
you need to project out there so that people can follow in that space.
44:23
So work on yourself, and ultimately, the business will take care of itself and people
44:28
around you in turn will work their hardest because we all want to do really good work at
44:34
the end of the day.
44:35
So for everyone, thanks again.
44:36
Mohamed, thanks so much for giving us all the wisdom that you've gained.
44:42
And for everyone, you know that with the ROR, I'm just about to launch the course on the ROR
44:48
plus program for virtual leaders.
44:50
That's going to be starting in June with live coaching.
44:53
So reach out to me and I can give you more information.
44:56
Again, Mohammad, thanks so much.
44:57
Everyone, take care and we'll talk to you soon.
45:00
Bye bye.
45:01
Thank you,
45:23
you next time on Authentic Living with Roxanne.