The Mental Resilience Every Social Entrepreneur Needs, with Mohamed (Mo) Ahmed

Dr. Tricia Bailey: Welcome to Avant Garde Entrepreneur. I am so glad you’re here today with me my friend. Around here we are all about helping global change makers like you build a sustainable social enterprise so that you can impact thousands, be profitable and have something left of yourself at the end of the day.

Today we are talking about building resilience and mental endurance in business and life. We just wrapped up a powerful four episode series on up leveling your impact business with all the hottest topics that you ask about.

Today’s guest is Mohamed or Mo Ahmed. He’s a serial entrepreneur, product visionary, and author of the new book Inside Out Entrepreneurship. With over 20 years experience in AI and cloud computing, Mo has built and sold several companies. He now dedicates his expertise to empowering diverse founders through his entrepreneurial conditioning framework, helping them raise millions and build resilience on their journeys.

Mo, thank you so much for being here today.

Mohamed Ahmed: Hi Tricia, thank you very much for having me. Pleasure to be here.

Dr. Tricia Bailey: So, Mo, tell us a little bit about yourself. I talked about some of your kind of the high level, your career, but can you tell us a little bit more personal details maybe about where you grew up and what your early career was like?

Mohamed Ahmed: Yes, absolutely. I started as an engineer. I started with technology. I fell in love with computer science early on. My dad actually brought me a computer when I was only five years old and I really fell in love with how it’s structured to write code and build applications.

I built my passion over time to be a software engineer. I got my bachelor degree in computer science. I’m originally from Egypt, so I grew up in Cairo, one of the biggest cities in the continent. And I decided to move on with my higher studies.

I came here to the United States around 20 years ago to do my PhD. I did my PhD at UConn again studying computer science. From that point I continued my journey with engineering.

But there’s a very influential story or situation that I came across during my PhD that made me actually think about entrepreneurship. The story is that one day I was taking one of the advanced computer science courses and we were taking it in our building of computer science. They were doing some renovations or fixes, so they moved us to the school of business. As I was entering that room, I found a very small piece of paper talking about something called the Innovation Accelerator. That’s a joint program between the state and the university to bring in some graduate students to work with entrepreneurs so that those graduate students would help them in their go to market and how they build their business.

It was a summer internship. I thought this was only for the business students. But anyway, I needed some money. That was my first year and I said, maybe if I land an internship, I’ll get some money to buy my first car. I talked to the professor, he told me, “Yes, you’re welcome to apply, but I’m a computer science student.” He said, “Yes, we need you, just come and apply.” And I applied. It was a tremendous program and I saw entrepreneurs working live end to end on their ideas, the challenges that they’re facing and we helped them.

Towards the end of the program, I was telling the professor who was sponsoring the program, his name was Luke. I said, “Luke, if I don’t work next year at Microsoft or Google for an internship, I will definitely come and work for you again and do the internship again.” And he looked at me and he said, “Why go and work at Microsoft and Google? Why don’t you just go and build your own company?” And that struck a chord and I said, “Yeah, why not?”

Since then I started reading about entrepreneurship and I got more and more fascinated by the idea of building something big just from a spark in your head. I even took courses during my PhD, I was auditing a couple of courses and it was definitely a great experience. That’s how I started with entrepreneurship, even though after my graduation I did some engineering related work.

But finally in 2016 I decided to build my own company and that was a transformative experience for me altogether. I was doing literally a career shift and everything around me was changing. Most of my friends were engineers. Now I needed to connect more with business people. My thinking was very structured around engineering and products. Business is completely different.

And what is more important than all of that is the mental conditioning that I went through, which we’re going to discuss in depth today. But that’s the major transformation that happened to me throughout that journey – how do you think of the world around you as a series of problems that you need to solve so that you enhance others’ lives and leave an impact?

Not necessarily all driven by products and engineering. It’s a mix of engineering and innovation in business and working with others in leadership. And you cannot do all of that as an entrepreneur unless you are personally balanced, you know who you are.

You know when it’s time for you to take a break or take a step back, rethink, readjust your perspective and then come back into that, as I call it, the infinite game of business. It’s interesting to see how business actually can transform you.

And to your intro of this episode, a lot of entrepreneurs want to do a lot and they want to get into how to really check all the boxes of their business every single day – do all the marketing, all the sales – and then they neglect how to actually make sure that they are ready to do all of that long term, to have the marathon kind of mentality rather than sprinting every single day and then finding yourself exhausted and not able to continue very quickly.

Dr. Tricia Bailey: I find it interesting that you came in from the engineering perspective and that everything in your mind was built around order and process. And then to shift to the entrepreneurial mindset. I can imagine that first of all, it had to be a huge challenge because it’s a totally different world. But I can see how your structure and perhaps the personal discipline that tends to be built into the mindset of an engineer helped you stay a bit more balanced than a lot of entrepreneurs who just have this idea and start.

Mohamed Ahmed: Well, sometimes it’s a blessing, sometimes it’s the other way around. Because at the end of the day, when you have the engineering mindset, you want everything almost to be perfect because you have control over the process, especially when it comes to software.

You have control over the code, where it runs, how it runs, and so on. And then when you try to map this to the business, sometimes it’s not possible to do that. And maybe I’ll share a story with everyone here.

When I was working on my business part time, obviously I wasn’t able to finish everything. And then the day I moved full time, I was happy. I was saying, “Okay, I’m going to do everything that I was not able to do before.” First day I created the to-do list, around 20 items. I did only seven or six of them. I said, “Okay, next day I’m gonna come and finish everything, yesterday’s items and today’s items as well.” And then the list keeps growing bigger and bigger, things that I’m not able to do.

And I realized that the more work or the more you think about what you can do and the more work you add to yourself, the harder it gets. It’s not about working harder, it’s about how you prioritize. And I realized that it’s not about listing everything that I need to do, it’s about listing things that must be done today and drawing a line and saying what you really want to ignore today.

Even if it’s just an email or a message that is calling you to respond to. You need to draw a line and say, “You know what, this is not the most important thing to do today.” I think the engineering mentality helped me to think this way in a more structured manner.

But again, engineering is going to give you the structure. But it’s not going to give you the mindset and how to prioritize in business. And this is the transformation that a lot of entrepreneurs need to go through.

Dr. Tricia Bailey: It’s managing the gray area and it’s the things that you can’t control.

Mohamed Ahmed: Exactly.

Dr. Tricia Bailey: You built and you sold your company, perhaps companies at the time. What inspired you to shift into more full time mentoring and coaching? Or are you still running businesses and mentoring and coaching?

Mohamed Ahmed: I’m doing them together. When I sold my last company, I took a step back and I said, “Okay, I can go and build another company or I need to make sure that maybe my impact can be much bigger if I help entrepreneurs now.”

Helping entrepreneurs can be done in so many different ways and there are a lot of people out there that can help them in sales and marketing. I still help entrepreneurs in sales and marketing and fundraising and all the aspects of the business.

But I decided to focus on what really matters for the entrepreneur. If you think of the entrepreneur, they’re like the hub that brings so many things together. They bring the idea with the resources, with people who are going to build it, and then they make them work in a way that would multiply each other.

So they raise $10 million and they make it a billion dollars. They bring in or hire 10 engineers and they make it an enterprise, a big enterprise. They have a product that was just an idea in their mind and they make it a product that is deployed to thousand customers.

So they are the multiplier to combine all those together. For them to do that, the technical details about building a business, how to do marketing and sales and all of that, there’s abundance of this. But how do you as an entrepreneur grow with your business and grow your mindset?

That’s the piece that I don’t think is addressed enough in the literature of entrepreneurship and business. A lot of people talk about resilience and robustness of your mindset, but what does it mean for you as an entrepreneur? And how can you really work with the challenges of every day and realize the impact of these on your psychology?

When I guide entrepreneurs, let’s say if I work with someone on how they fundraise, a fundamental part of my work with them is the psychology part. With every step that they do, I talk about the psychology of that step.

When you go and talk to a VC, expect to be rejected. What does it mean? I understand that this is how it’s going to impact your psychology. But by the way, a “no” right now does not mean “no” forever. And this is how you can tackle it, and this is how you can keep your mindset always in the right space.

So I wanted to increase the impact by working on the mindset, because once entrepreneurs master that piece, they become invincible. They can handle a lot of things, and bad events and unexpected events are going to happen no matter what.

This is the nature of business. Now, how do you deal with that and grow with it is something really important. Maybe I’ll close with this – one of the writers that I love their style and writing is Nassim Taleb.

And Nassim Taleb writes about different topics in business and politics, and he wrote a book called Antifragile. And the concept here is we have three kinds of systems or objects. There are systems that, when you add pressure to them, they get broken. Those are fragile systems.

There are systems that are resilient. When you add some pressure on them, they can withstand the pressure, but at a certain point, when the pressure is too much, they will be broken.

And the last kind of systems or people, when you add pressure on them, they become stronger. Now, how do you build that as an entrepreneur? The more pressure you get, you become stronger over time and you grow with your business. That, I believe, is the key to success, not only in business, but in life, because life is not easy and would never be easy.

You can make it rewarding, and that’s the key. You’re not going to make it easier, you’re going to make it more rewarding. And you grow exponentially and much faster than everyone else.

Dr. Tricia Bailey: That’s a brilliant distinction that it’s not going to be easy, but it is about making it rewarding. We have a global audience, many languages, with founders of all ages, and some as young as 16. And some also have decades of experience in helping others lift themselves out of poverty or to a better way of life. So resilience might mean something different depending on one’s native language or life experience. So you gave a great analogy about putting pressure on an object. But can you explain what resilience means to you?

Mohamed Ahmed: I go back actually to my engineering origins, and this is what I did in my book when I tried to explain what resilience is to everyone. So in engineering, when they say that this is a resilient structure, it means that when you add pressure on that structure, let’s say you’re building a bridge and it gets exposed to the elements and pressure by the cars running on it and so on.

A resilient bridge means that with that pressure, it will maintain its form. It does not get deformed into something that would make it broken or unusable. So that’s the meaning of resilience in engineering. Now let’s map this to our mindset in entrepreneurship.

What does it mean for an entrepreneur? First of all, an entrepreneur is a very special person, because this is a person who would have a mindset that we do not have abundance of in this world.

They’re challenging everything. He or she would challenge everything around them. They’re positive about their abilities. They also have the abundance mindset. There are a set of mindsets that they have as part of their character.

Those mindsets could be something that they’re born with or maybe something that they’ve acquired. I believe that anyone in this world is capable of being an entrepreneur. It’s a decision that they make. But some people are born with that.

If you think of that mindset as the form, the mental form of any entrepreneur, and then anything happening to us – unexpected events, you get an invoice that is not expected, or you get some sort of an event that is not favorable for you or your business.

Does that event shift your mindset from, let’s say, a positive mindset to becoming a negative person? Or are you resilient enough so that when that event happens, you’re still maintaining your positive mindset?

You still believe in your abilities as an entrepreneur. Now, we’re not talking about one event. We’re talking about so many events that you’re gonna come across throughout your journey. How do you make sure that those events do not deform your mindset?

The other word for it is having permanent scars. Does it leave permanent scars or not? If it leaves a permanent scar, then your resiliency needs to be improved. So that’s the definition of resiliency in entrepreneurship, or at least my own definition is how do you maintain a balanced mindset regardless of the elements around you impacting you?

That’s resiliency. Now, there is another word, if you allow me to extend that a bit, there’s robustness. Right? And this is also another word that is being used frequently. Again, I’ll define robustness from engineering and then map it to the mindset.

Robustness in engineering means that if you have an object and you apply tremendous pressure on it and it gets deformed one way or another because of that pressure, once you release that pressure, does it go back to the original form or not?

That’s the definition of robustness in engineering. Let’s map it to mindset. Probably everyone listening to us right now guessed it. If an event takes place and it just changed how I look at things, it made me not as balanced as I used to be before.

If we take out that event, let’s say you’re going through a series of unfortunate events in your startup and you had to shut down your company and then everything just went away and now you’re cooling down after the whole experience is done.

Does that bring you back to the right mindset or not? Or is your mindset now deformed, is your point of view negative forever or not? That’s a piece that is important. And also it happens in the day to day life. I have an event at the beginning of the day that made me feel bad. By the end of the day, how do I go back to the original mindset and just keep moving with my business?

These two are very important in my point of view when it comes to how you build a stronger entrepreneur. And it doesn’t matter how early you are in your journey, how big or small your business is – it’s key to your success.

Dr. Tricia Bailey: They say that you often coach or teach to the person that you used to be – your former version of yourself. And it’s common that when entrepreneurs get to me, they’re already overwhelmed and on the edge of burnout, probably because I have been there myself. So how can entrepreneurs who don’t necessarily have a strong baseline for resilience or robustness start building resilience if they already feel burned out or overwhelmed?

Mohamed Ahmed: Many entrepreneurs think that they can fix everything themselves. And I understand that all entrepreneurs are challengers and they believe that they have super abilities and they are special and they can do a lot more than the average. But when it comes to your mind, you need someone else to help you.

In my point of view, and I talk in depth about this in my book, building a support network is key. And in your support network, you need three roles in your life. The first one you need is a mentor. And a mentor is someone who would challenge your mindset.

Every time your mindset drifts into something negative or into an area that is not healthy for you and your business, they bring you back by challenging you why you’re feeling this way. And they keep challenging you until you build that internal voice inside you that would bring you automatically back into the right area or the green area.

The second role is an advisor. And the advisor is different from a mentor. A lot of entrepreneurs confuse that. An advisor is someone who would show you around the corner when you do business. Someone who is ahead of you in their journey. So let’s say I’m still fundraising for my startup and now I’m about to talk to certain kind of VCs.

The advisor would tell you, “Look, those are the things that they’re going to be looking for. This is how you should communicate, this is how you should be asking for money and so on.” So they’re showing you around the corner so that you’re more confident about your next step.

And then the last role that you need, and this is very important and I know that a lot of people would have it in their life, is a friend and family. But this is important when we talk about friend and family. It’s an abstract concept that a lot of people actually forget about. Why is it important? And how to best use it.

Now, the friends and family are the ones who are going to help you whenever you’re really low, when it comes to how you’re connecting the business to your personal life. But how can they do that without them knowing what does it mean to be an entrepreneur?

I give an example. When I was a first time entrepreneur and I was talking to my wife, she would automatically get into the same mode that I have and she would have the same expectations. When I raised my first VC fund, I thought that we made it, we’re going to be millionaires, we’re going to be rich. But it doesn’t mean anything in business. She didn’t know that, I didn’t know that. So we were both wrong.

Now if I have a friend who was an entrepreneur, went through this, he would bring me back to reality. And he would tell me, “Look, it means 1, 2, 3 and it doesn’t mean such and such. You need to be realistic about your expectations. Also go and talk to your wife about that.”

I always encourage entrepreneurs to educate their families about the entrepreneurial mindset and journey. The families of entrepreneurs are also as special as the entrepreneurs themselves. So they need to make sure that their family members who are supporting them throughout the journey are aware of the entrepreneurial journey, aware of the different stages.

What does it mean to have your first end customers? What does it mean to have your venture fund or your crowdfunding? With all of that knowledge, your friends and family will become true supporters to you throughout the journey.

But if you just have them around without them knowing what does it mean and when to support you and when to observe if you’re about to slip into a negative mindset, they’re not going to be as helpful.

Dr. Tricia Bailey: I can see tremendous value in that because most entrepreneurs are not like their friends or family. They’re wired differently, as you very well know. And it almost seems like that’s something that’s important, especially for young entrepreneurs to begin having conversations with their family about it.

Because it’s not easy. Especially in a lot of cultures. The expectation is that someone becomes an engineer or a doctor or a scientist or an attorney, something tangible that they can tell their friends about. They don’t understand this entrepreneurial thing.

So whenever – and I’m thinking about whenever I’ve been burned out, I’ll be straight with you – when I’ve been overwhelmed and burned out, that’s not the time for me to have a heart to heart conversation with someone. So it sounds like maybe get through the fog that you’re in and then when things settle down, start gradually bringing family members in and educating them – a few specific ones that might understand a little bit more.

Mohamed Ahmed: I would say there’s no one way to do it. It depends on the person. I know some entrepreneurs who would follow the same approach that you mentioned. And there are some entrepreneurs who just talk through their frustrations and sometimes talking through them would make them relieved.

And even though they’re still early on tackling that problem, some entrepreneurs, especially the extroverts of them, they think as they speak. So they want to speak with someone so that they solve the problem. Even if that person is just silent most of the time, but just feeling that they’re getting out whatever is inside makes them think and helps them figure out the solution.

I remember in one session with an entrepreneur, he was also having some issues with fundraising. And I knew about his tendency, he’s an extrovert. And I kept left him talking and talking and talking. And then actually as he is talking through his problems, he figured out the solution and he said, “I’m going to go and apply it.” And he said, “Thank you very much.” I said, “I did nothing other than just listening to you.”

And some other entrepreneurs, I could see when I look in their eyes, I can see that they have problems and they don’t want to talk about them. And what I do personally is I tell them, “Okay, I see that there is something here not working. Let me share a story with you” and just letting them know that they’re not alone, number one. And there are different ways to solve the problem.

Just trying to crack through the problem by giving them a possible solution through a story. The most important thing for entrepreneurs is just them feeling that they’re not the only ones facing those problems. They’re not the only ones who cause those problems for themselves because they feel that they believe in themselves.

But because of the problems that they face, they think that they are the ones who brought those problems. So it’s a very lonely business, I would say. But when you bring in the stories from others, “Look, there’s this other entrepreneur, he or she did such and such. And this is how they solved it.”

The first thing they think is, “Okay, I’m not as bad as I thought. I’m not a stupid person. I thought that I’m just bringing all of that to myself. It’s just a common thing.” Okay, now there is a way to solve it. I see others solved it in a really unconventional way, which I know that I can do.

Let me think through it. They do not tell me what they want to do, but they go back, think about it and they come to the next session and they say, “Okay, I think I solved it because of that story.”

Dr. Tricia Bailey: That’s amazing. That’s great advice. One of the things I talk a lot about in workshops and I talked about it kind of in the intro a little bit, is that sustainable social enterprise starts with the entrepreneur and the business model that they create can have massive impact, but it’s not going to last if it’s not personally sustainable for them.

And you talk about mentioning or balancing ambition with personal well-being. I’ve heard you mention that in the book. What are some practical tips entrepreneurs can take for avoiding sacrificing one for the other?

Mohamed Ahmed: The first thing that I would like everyone to have in their mind, entrepreneurship or becoming an entrepreneur is like climbing a mountain. If you talk to any mountaineer, no matter how experienced they are, they would tell you, “I have to do certain conditioning before I start climbing.”

And that conditioning is not physical only. That conditioning is physical, mental, emotional. And they even go back and they check with their family and make sure that everything is okay and everything is lined up for them to start that journey. It’s the same thing for entrepreneurs.

The number one thing, the number one advice that I would give anyone is make sure that your personal life is lined up for your journey. You will never have a perfect time to start a company. I’m not saying that you wait for that perfect time, but what I’m saying is think of all the elements in your life or all the dimensions of your life that will either impact your entrepreneurial journey or your entrepreneur journey is going to impact.

I’ll give one to three examples. So I wanted to build my company since that inspiring story that I had with the professor at the business school at UConn. And my wife kept telling me, “We have kids, if you do that, what if it doesn’t work?” And so on.

I agreed with her, but I told her, “Okay, how about we do the following? How about I save what is equivalent to how long that journey would take me? Your number one goal is you want to make sure that our lifestyle is not impacted, the kids can still do whatever they can do, we’re still in our house, everything is okay.

And I would do the following. I’ll save two years, two to three years worth of spending for the house. And if I have that, will you allow me to go ahead and start my company?” She said, “Yes, you have my word.” And that’s actually what I did. So that’s what I call the financial well-being.

You have to be financially ready. I know that I’m talking about when you have control. I know that sometimes that does not happen. I mean, do you have enough time to prepare for your financial well-being or be financially ready for that? I know that this sometimes does not happen.

You get maybe laid off and you have to figure out something. But that would tell you that even if you get laid off and you have to build a company or something happened, you have to build a company. Think of your financial well-being as one dimension. This is very, very important.

Now the other thing I touched on is your family. You need to educate them and tell them what does it mean to become an entrepreneur. How much time you’re going to spend with them, how much time you’re going to spend on the road, traveling and talking to customers and investors and so on.

This is very important. And then you need to think of your relationship with your family as a bank account or a savings account. Every time you sit with them and have quality time, you deposit $1, and every time you’re away from them, you’re withdrawing $1.

Your main goal is to make that account balance always positive. Don’t make it negative, because if you make it negative, then you’re in a red zone and you want to make sure that you bring it back very quickly into the green.

So that’s very important. Now, there are so many other things. There are many dimensions. Actually, there are six dimensions that entrepreneurs need to be ready for. There’s, of course, the spiritual one you mentioned at the beginning, and I don’t mean by that the specifics of what you believe in, but there are some universal laws that you’re going to realize throughout the journey, and maybe you should realize them early on, like the ability to control events around you.

It doesn’t matter what you believe in, but you realize over time that you have very little control over a lot of things that are taking place around you. Even your kids, you cannot have control over them. The only thing that you have control on, and that’s what you need to work on over time, is you, your ability to respond, your point of view, your mindset.

If you leave that and try to control everything else, it’s a losing proposition. In my point of view, the number one person that you need to have is that mentor who would be your oracle that would tell you, “Look, if you do this, this is going to happen to you.”

And that’s a person who’s ahead of you, usually in life or in their life experiences in general. That person doesn’t have to be super old, but someone who went through, who’s ahead of you, a few steps ahead of you, and they learn from that. You really look up to them and you’re ready to be vulnerable with them.

Because if you’re not ready to be vulnerable with them, you’re not going to share everything. And you’re not gonna get the value.

Dr. Tricia Bailey: How do you recommend someone begin finding mentors or let’s say they have mentors or people in their life, but there’s, they feel like they’re ready for some sort of next level type thing. How do you recommend finding mentors or building a support network or growing your support network when either you’re starting out or let’s say you’re kind of pivoting to the next stage of your business?

Mohamed Ahmed: So, the mentor – first of all, it’s not one mentor. You can have multiple mentors. You can have your mentor for business or entrepreneurship, you can have your mentor for something else that you’re doing in your life. So looking for a mentor that will make your journey the most effective and rewarding is where your business needs to be.

I found my mentor as I was fundraising and I was talking to entrepreneurs. It actually needs to work both ways. So I met a person and I saw him as a mentor and by that I mean that there was that personal connection that took place. And then he also saw something in me.

He saw me as an earlier version of himself. So we connected and he said, “Okay, I need to make sure that I help you in that journey.” So I would recommend entrepreneurs to look for a mentor in their journey as they are progressing in their journey.

We also have a way of connecting entrepreneurs with mentors. If they go to our website, https://stg-boundlessfounder-rpd-3buu.uw2.rapydapps.cloud and become a community member, they can connect with people who can become their mentors or they can become their friends that can support them throughout that entrepreneurial journey.

Dr. Tricia Bailey: That’s fantastic. That’s a great resource. We can link to that in the show notes as well. You talked about it a little earlier, I think. I wanted to ask if you could give us sort of a high level glimpse of your entrepreneurial conditioning framework.

Mohamed Ahmed: There’s also the spiritual one, there’s the personal branding also which is very important. And there’s the body-mind connection. Let’s start with the mind-body connection.

Your mind and body – there are different theories around the mind and body. Some are saying your mind and your body are disconnected. You can maybe become ill, but your mind can be positive. This is one theory, dualism as they call it.

And there’s also the other theory – they’re interconnected. Your mind is going to impact your body and your body is going to impact your mind or your mindset. I’m a personal believer of that theory. I think they’re very interconnected and they send messages to each other all day.

If your mindset is really not where you want it to be, one way to adjust it is to do something with your body. Just go and play sports, go and do some breathing exercises that will give some feedback to your mind and hopefully adjust you.

And by the way, it’s the other way around. And we see it a lot of time, if you’re depressed for a long time or if you’re having problems for a long time and working really long hours, your body actually can almost get into a shutdown mode because of that.

So they impact each other. So understanding that connection and working on that connection so that you make sure that they feed into each other in a positive way is key.

The other dimension is the personal branding for the entrepreneur, and that’s very important. Most entrepreneurs confuse their startup’s identity with themselves over time because they’ve been working on their company for a very long time. They just become one thing, or they think in their head that it’s just one thing.

So if their company is having trouble, they believe also that their life is just miserable. And of course, vice versa. You want to disconnect these from each other. You want to make sure that yes, there’s a company, it’s a major project that you’re building right now in your life, but it’s not everything in your life. It is not you. You’re much bigger than that.

And this is also one thing that I work on with entrepreneurs, is how do you position this startup, even though you’re so into it right now, as just one project? No matter how cool the technology that you’re building or the product that you’re doing, it doesn’t even matter how many people it’s impacting right now.

At a certain point, the technology is going to become obsolete. And the people that you’re helping right now, they’re going to move on to something else. And over time, what matters is you. Because you built this company, whether it failed or succeeded, you’re going to move on.

Even if it’s successful, at the end of the day, you have to move on in your life. So building your own personal brand away from the company, or separating your company from your own life and making sure that everyone sees you as an entrepreneur who built a company, but you have so many other things in life is very important.

And actually that’s one of the motivations for me writing the book. I said, “Okay, I want to extend my impact beyond the company. How about I take those learnings and those stories and share it with entrepreneurs.” I’m an entrepreneur and at the same time I’m an author and I like to share ideas and thoughts with others and make sure that they get the maximum benefit of it.

Now you do not need to follow the same path. There are so many other things that you can do as an entrepreneur. But having that right perspective so that you’re not so much engraved into your startup and you feel that you’re the ship captain that has to go down with the ship if it’s sinking, that’s not right.

You’re much bigger than that. You’re much more important than that as a person, as an entrepreneur.

Dr. Tricia Bailey: I can see that in my mind. I feel like talking about personal branding is a great way to reframe our personal identity. Because I think when we talk, we’re talking about our identity. It could feel a little self focused, but thinking about branding is more of a business concept.

And so I think for entrepreneurs that could be really helpful. Looking at separating ourselves from our business in the concept of personal branding versus feeling like it’s an identity thing because our work is often our identity. But when we shift the mindset to what is my personal brand that has a different energy to it.

Going back to a little bit of the mind body connection. What are some of the daily practices that you have that have been most helpful for maintaining mental clarity when we have our list? Maintaining our mental clarity under pressure.

Mohamed Ahmed: There are different things that I do. Number one, when I start my day, I start with something that is not business related at all. I either go and work out, interact with my family, do some breathing exercises or some meditation in general.

This is very important to start your day because that sets the tone for the rest of the day. It tells you that you’re not just an entrepreneur. This is very important. A lot of people, and I used to do that, they start their day by checking their work email. And they start their day with some sort of a business related activity. Don’t do that.

Just start with something that sets the tone that you’re not just a startup, you’re something else. So I start with those and then I also do some checkpoints throughout the day. During lunchtime, I also do something that is not related to work – if I’m meeting a friend – and sometimes I say as one of my to-do lists for the week, “I’m going to connect with two or three old friends this week, either by phone call or having a lunch or dinner with one of them.”

So also cutting your day with some sort of this activity is important. And then you do also the same thing when you close your day. You need to close your day with something that is just different and away from your business. Your business is an island in the middle of a lot of other things that you do, not the other way around.

Because a lot of people think of it the other way around. I do business and then there are a few islands or a few things that I do occasionally and I don’t plan for, then you get lost.

Dr. Tricia Bailey: That’s great advice to do things throughout the day. In the evening, I talk a lot about having quiet time and having been starting to develop the discipline of that in the morning or for some people, it’s the nighttime or the afternoon. But I can see so much value in doing all three and resetting.

I can see how that would be something that would really help people shift so that they don’t feel like their whole world revolves around their business, but instead that their business revolves around their world. It’s really important to them. Yeah, I like that. It’s great advice.

Mohamed Ahmed: And actually also another thing that I would tell entrepreneurs is when you start your year, plan your vacation first.

Dr. Tricia Bailey: Oh, I love that.

Mohamed Ahmed: So say those are my vacation times. And usually you need to take a break each quarter or every three months. Take just four days, five days. It doesn’t have to be something big, even if it’s something local. And then plan your business around it.

If someone is calling you for a meeting, make sure that it doesn’t intersect with that time. You need that time and again. A lot of people think of sleep as a waste of time. No, it’s a productivity tool. Your vacation is also another productivity tool. It’s going to help you to be more productive after that.

Dr. Tricia Bailey: That’s going to be a quote. Your vacation is a productivity tool. So what is the role for you? When we talk about entrepreneurs, especially social entrepreneurs, all of them are guided by a higher power because it’s too darn hard to do it without it, and because their heart is really for their beneficiaries.

And the whole reason for them to make money is so that they can help people or help more people more substantially. In your life, what is the role of faith for you and your connection with your higher power in accomplishing your mission?

Mohamed Ahmed: That’s a very good point. And that’s actually part also of the spiritual preparation. And that’s part again of knowing that you don’t have that much control. Connecting to a higher power means that there’s someone who is actually taking care of everything.

You do not need to act like God. A lot of entrepreneurs fall into that trap. They think, “Okay, I can do a lot of things.” And they are – again, because of their belief in themselves, they try to act like God. And that’s wrong.

That’s wrong. That’s going to drive you crazy at the end. It’s just an illusion. Control is just an illusion. So connecting to that higher power, higher authority, whatever you call it at the end of the day is canonical. It’s important because again, if you believe that you have control over everything and then you realize that you don’t, that’s going to drive you crazy and can drive you into some really dark thoughts.

You don’t want to be there.

Dr. Tricia Bailey: Thank you for sharing that. So I’ve gotta know this. You have your family, you have lots of colleagues, you’re mentoring people, you’re being mentored. What is your why, Mo? What keeps you going on the tough days?

Mohamed Ahmed: That’s a very good question. I follow actually the same framework that I’m teaching everyone because I believe in it. And that book is full of stories from my own experience. I still make sure that I continuously condition myself.

I still have mentors that I share with and become vulnerable in front of them. I share what I should do now. As I get older and get wiser, I know that I don’t have control over everything around me. So I keep reminding myself of that.

I keep reviewing my why – why I’m doing what I’m doing every day and what I’m trying to move forward and make that next move. Connecting with all of these is very important. And of course, I take care of educating my family.

Sometimes my wife would tell me, “This is too much. You don’t want to educate me more about that?” I say, “No, no, no. You need to know so that we both have realistic expectations about the business.”

And I keep doing that. Working out and disconnecting from work every day, building the identity and the brand beyond the business is important. And I don’t mean by that just go to social media and talk about something different. You truly and genuinely need to be interested in something else and do something different that will build your independent identity and character away from your business.

I do all of that most of the time. So I still apply my framework.

Dr. Tricia Bailey: I like it when people eat their own cooking. That’s fantastic. So we are going to link to the book in the show notes. It is a phenomenal book. So even if sometimes there are issues in other countries with shipping, Mo does have it available as a Kindle version so that you can read it electronically.

It’s fantastic. So we’re going to link to Mo’s website for the book. That way you’re not – this is not an Amazon link. You’re more likely to be able to find all the versions. Before I ask my last question, Mo, besides linking to your book, how do people connect with you?

Mohamed Ahmed: Absolutely. They can go to our website, https://stg-boundlessfounder-rpd-3buu.uw2.rapydapps.cloud, or they can find me on LinkedIn where we’ll definitely send this as part of the show notes. And I also have a very special offer for your audience.

We have a free membership for anyone to come over and check a lot of free material on our website and downloadable resources to help them with the framework that I mentioned in the book. But also we have a paid membership where they can get extra support. So we’re gonna give all your listeners a 30% discount and we’re gonna share with you in the show notes also how they can apply that discount to their shopping cart.

Dr. Tricia Bailey: Oh, Mo, that is so generous. Thank you so much. I have a few people in mind already that I know are really going to appreciate that. So thank you.

Mohamed Ahmed: I look forward to seeing them on the other side.

Dr. Tricia Bailey: Yeah. So last question – what is on the horizon for you? What are you most excited about now?

Mohamed Ahmed: Now I’m working on my second book actually.

Dr. Tricia Bailey: Oh my goodness.

Mohamed Ahmed: That’s one of the projects I’m really excited about. Hopefully in a few months from now it’s going to come out. But the first one was all about the mental resiliency and robustness and stories from my own journey.

I’ve been collecting stories from others’ journeys and what I learned throughout those discussions and talks and sometimes even tough discussions with some entrepreneurs. There are some universal rules that if you follow them and strategies if you follow them, you’re going to be successful as an entrepreneur no matter what.

I call it, how do you become a super entrepreneur? To become a super entrepreneur you need to be aware of those universal laws and apply them every day. No matter what stage you are – whether you’re just early stage or even just thinking about becoming an entrepreneur or a late stage startup.

If you keep those in mind, those are always going to keep you in a balanced state and also keep your business healthy. I’m now moving a bit more towards how do you really connect the business with your growth as a person?

Dr. Tricia Bailey: Well, we will be on the lookout for that and once it does come out we will go back and link that book in the show notes as well. So in case the podcast is designed to be evergreen so that people can watch it in two or three years and the episodes still be relevant. And this is certainly one of those episodes. So we will link to your new book when it comes out.

Mohamed Ahmed: Absolutely.

Dr. Tricia Bailey: Mo, you have been a wealth of information. Thank you so much for sharing from your heart. The guidance that you give is so heartfelt and it’s so practical and tangible and there are definitely quite a few takeaways of little mindset shifts that even I can make and certainly those are going to be helpful for listeners.

So we really appreciate your time and your wisdom today.

Mohamed Ahmed: Well, thank you very much Tricia for having me. It was a pleasure to talk with you.

Dr. Tricia Bailey: Thanks for listening to this episode of Avant Garde Entrepreneur. I hope you feel encouraged, equipped, empowered and unstoppable. If you enjoyed what you heard, share it with a friend. If you haven’t already, subscribe, rate and review it on your favorite podcast player.

Questions, comments or feedback, Connect with me directly at trishabaileyPhD.com or on social at triciabaileyPhD. Now you go and get back to changing the world. I’ll see you again soon.