Speaker: 0:01

Welcome to The Heart-Led Business Show, where compassion meets commerce and leaders lead with love. Join your host, Tom Jackobs, as he delves into the insightful conversations with visionary business leaders who defy the status quo, putting humanity first and profit second. From heartfelt strategies to inspiring stories, this podcast is your compass in the world of conscious capitalism. So buckle up and let your heart guide your business journey.

Tom Jackobs: 0:36

Welcome to the Heart-Led Business Show where passion meets purpose for more profits. And today we have the phenomenal Mohamed Ahmed, a serial entrepreneur who turned near burnout into boundless breakthroughs from surviving sky high AWS bills to nurturing a thriving business ecosystem. Mo embodies the heart-led spirit. And join us as we explore his journey where success is built, not just on strategy, but on genuine resilience and heart-led wellbeing. So welcome to the show, Mo.

Mohamed "Mo" Ahmed: 1:10

Hey Tom, thank you very much. It's, it is great to be here with you.

Tom Jackobs: 1:13

It's awesome to be here with you as well. I'm really excited to dive in to our discussion today. And I was, we were discussing prior to the recording, but one of the quotes that you have on your website just really stuck out at me. And that's, that no idea should be too small for its enormous potential. And I just love that quote. I'm, I might have to use it and but we're gonna go get into how you got into that, how your businesses are heart-led and all that. So I'm really excited for this episode. But first of all, what's your definition of a heart-led business?

Mohamed "Mo" Ahmed: 1:52

That's a great question. A heart-led business is a business that, that matches your why. You know, that's the way that I see it. Each one of us has his or her own why? Why do we exist? You know, what's our mission in life and what really makes us happy and feel fulfilled about journey? And and your business at the end of the day, if it matches your why, if you look at it as a way or a vehicle to deliver your why, then I believe you lead this business with all your heart. You're gonna be all into it, and you're gonna feel that every second you spend in the business is truly fulfilling for you. And then the decisions and and the turns and how you execute on your business, it is going to be led by your core values and core principles as you develop and as you grow throughout that journey. Uh, so that's my definition of it. And this is actually. Was reflected in my journey and in my book and this is how my startup turned out from being a big pain for me. Or, you know, one failure after another to a chance or a stepping stone for me to grow and turn things around in my life just by looking at my why and aligning my business to my why and it became as we said, a hard led business. And I was using it as a way for me to positively impact others, even if it just one person, one of my employees or one of my customers. Even if it just inspiring my family to do, or you know, one of my kids to do something different in the future, that's more than enough for me.

Tom Jackobs: 3:32

Yeah. Oh, that's great. And that, that's a really nice definition where, you know, matches your why. Now, how long did it take you in your business life to figure that out, that the business needs to match your why?

Mohamed "Mo" Ahmed: 3:48

It took me actually two painful years, even though I worked in in large companies like Microsoft and Amazon prior to founding my company, and I thought that my job those companies match matched my why. It did to a certain extent. But when I jumped into the entrepreneurial world, I thought off, you know, how do I build that next technology I can impact others by, you know, that next great technology that would, you know, them in their business, help them in their life one way or another. And I focus at the beginning, at just building the technology. I'm a technologist and I wanted to build that company, and I always had in mind that image of That visionary entrepreneur who was able to change the world through, you know, that technology. Think of again, bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and others. But after two years, you know, paying for two years because I was only focused on the technology and that image that I had in mind that was portrayed by media or impacted me through you know, the media exposure as everyone else, I realized no, actually business is not like that. Or building a startup is not like that. At the end of the day, it's a tough journey. It's an unforgiving journey, and if it's led only by externalities or you know, external factors like the ones that I mentioned, this is you're not gonna be able to endure the journey. And it's going to become pain very quickly. So I turned back to the whiteboard, my own personal you know, whiteboard, and I started to think of, okay, why did I really co-found a startup. Why am I into that that space? And is it really about the technology? And when I thought about it, technology is gonna become boring after a while, it's gonna become irrelevant. So there's something more profound to that. And and I remember, you know, this as we speak right now, you know, one day we were pivoting from one product to another. And I was in I brought all my you know, all my employees into an all hands meeting to announce it and talk about it. And I got the question of that was the third pivot. How would we know if this one is going to work?

Tom Jackobs: 6:11

Wow.

Mohamed "Mo" Ahmed: 6:11

And and I stayed silent for a few seconds. And I told him, look, and that was actually a really turning point for me. Look, it, I cannot guarantee the business success here. And we do not have control over that.'cause there are so many factors would impact that in the market. The funding, there's so many things, but there's one thing that I can I have control on, or at least we, all of us here have control on and we need to make sure that it happens. We want to make sure that this is fulfilling. Job for every one of us. And what I mean by that is you learn something new every day. So my promise to you, to everyone in the company, is to give you a space to experiment, give you a space to learn, make mistakes, and learn from those mistakes in a safe environment. That's my promise. And back then, actually this was one of the, I would say, most fulfilling moments for me because at the end of the day, look I'm enabling, you know, my engineers and everyone on on that boat, the startup boat, to feel empowered and feel that they can start something different and learn. And I told them, look, I want you to look back two years from now and say those were, you know, this was one of my best experiences. I learned a lot and I felt you know, safe and empowered to, to innovate. So that, that was part of the journey of course there are so many dark moments that we went through, but I'm just trying to highlight how that transition took place from just being con constant pace, to something that you know, that we enjoy all and we feel fulfilled. By the way it's success. Business success back then was not really clear, even though we sold the company and we ended up in a very good position from a business perspective. But that particular moment I did not promise them that business success, I promise you something that I can control every day. And that turned out to have everyone on board and everyone really working hard to make it work. And it worked that way.

Tom Jackobs: 8:19

Yeah, no, that, that's what a great turnaround story too. So it, it begs the question because I've worked with a lot of heart-led business owners, and I and even for myself. I don't think, when I first started my business, if I really sat down and listed out my why, my core values, my core principles, it was just, and I feel this, that a lot of entrepreneurs. Kinda skip that step and go right into, this is my product, this is how I'm gonna serve the market. And there's so much excitement. And then like, what happens to you two years down the road, you're like, oh, this, there's a huge disconnect between my why and what I'm actually doing. So how do you think we could keep that from happening to ourselves if we were to build another business?

Mohamed "Mo" Ahmed: 9:09

Yeah, the, that's a great question and it's not easy to answer. I mean, the simple the simple way to answer it, or I would say the common way to answer it is, okay, you need to take a step back from time to time and review you know, just take a look at the big picture. But there's a really a nice quote that I I love very much, which is, you are what you do, right

Tom Jackobs: 9:31

Yep.

Mohamed "Mo" Ahmed: 9:32

it's all about what you do every day. So when you go every day and step into your office, whether it's a physical or virtual office, and think of your priorities. What's your priority for today? What really occupies your mind? Uh, at the beginning of the day, just write it down. What are the top three things that you would like to feel that, you know, when you step out of the office, at the end of the day, you did the right thing. That if you just take a look at these, write them every day at the end of the week, take a look at that see if your priorities are on only the what, or you still focus on, okay, am I really reaching the goals that I want to achieve for myself and everyone? And a very simple you know, another simple way to test it is ask yourself, are you focused on people or focus on things? Are you focused on the technology and shipping the product, or are you occupying your mind with, you know. What's going on with my employees? What's going on with my customers? And so on. And that's why I encourage each entrepreneur as they start their journey to start by figuring out their leadership principles. You know, one of the fascinating things that I learned throughout my journey and moving from one company to another, the most successful companies that are grounded or connected with their leadership principles, Amazon, for example. They're the ones who made customer obsession, you know, cool. Again, they're the one's who you know, have more than I think 10 now leadership principles, or 11 leadership principles a lot around, customer obsession, you know, have a backbone, disagree and commit. All of these are very high bar standards that they use every day in their decision making, and I experienced that firsthand myself. So also as a business owner or an entrepreneur, you need to make sure that you have those leadership principles properly, you know, written, properly reviewed, and you work by them every single day.

Tom Jackobs: 11:41

Yeah. Wow. I, and I feel like a lot of small businesses are missing that piece. Like they're going and delivering and doing their thing, but the deep work of connecting the why, the principles and all that is not happening. On a regular basis. And you can see that I think in some of these businesses as a struggle. And then once they do that, there's like, it's like a switch flips, right? And they, it really takes off.

Mohamed "Mo" Ahmed: 12:11

And that's what exactly happened with me actually. At the beginning I was always focused again on the, on things and for shipping product, and yet I was thinking, I'm going to fail. I'm going to fail. I'm going to run out of money. And it was almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. And then when I started not to look at those and focus more again on. My why, my core principles, things started to turn. I started to make the right decisions at the long term. I wanted to maintain my long-term values and not to sacrifice those with short-term gains. This is what you would you typically see business owners doing okay, there's this small project, or, you know, let me just do this short shortcut. And they lose their their sight of their long-term values that they need to maintain and build their business on. And then as a result, they, you know, you know, they're just in that negative spiral. Once you do that switch and be patient as well, because it's, yes, you switch it in your mind, but it takes a while for you to see the impact of that.

Tom Jackobs: 13:16

Yeah. Yeah,

Mohamed "Mo" Ahmed: 13:17

A few weeks to a few months. You need to be patient and truly believe in it. Gonna find yourself, you know, things are completely different. You're experiencing the business differently. People that look at you as a leader, they're gonna see all those differences as well, and as well, and they're going to believe in your business.

Tom Jackobs: 13:35

Yeah. And I can imagine that once you shift that and that light switch goes off. Yeah. The business will take a little bit of time to adjust, but I'm sure in your mind everything gets better once you've made that decision. Once you've committed to your leadership principles and your why, even the very next day, it's gonna be different for you, and it's gonna feel probably a lot better that now that it's connected, even though it's still in that kind of transition phase.

Mohamed "Mo" Ahmed: 14:07

Correct! Yes.

Tom Jackobs: 14:07

Alright, cool. Well, I wanted to go back to these journal prompts that you had just spoke about a little bit ago. In the morning, write down your, the, and this was just not really task for the day, right? It's how do you wanna feel by the end of the day? Is that what the prompt really is? It's very much different from writing out your tasks for the day, right? Or your goals for the day, but rather how you want to feel by the end of the day. Is that right?

Mohamed "Mo" Ahmed: 14:36

Yeah. It's like working backwards, right? It's the similar to thinking of your customers. So think of yourself as that person looking at the end of the day of what you did. And what would you like, what would you like to see that will make you fulfilled and and satisfied about your business and about your people. And then try to actually eliminate most of them. And keep the top three items. even sometimes one item that you, or one task, or one one thing that you wanna achieve that will make you feel that way.

Tom Jackobs: 15:13

Ah, okay.

Mohamed "Mo" Ahmed: 15:13

Get it done in the first you know, couple of hours or a few hours of the day, and then the rest of the day, just everything else. Um, and that's, that's, you know, how I would approach it and again, look backward from the results that you want to achieve at the end of the day and ask yourself, why does that matter to me? Or why does that matter for my business or for my people? And then work from that point, okay, how do I execute on that?

Tom Jackobs: 15:39

Yeah. Yeah, I like that too because it's it gives you a different perspective on tasks and the relevance and keeps you connected to that why and your purpose and principles. That's good.

Mohamed "Mo" Ahmed: 15:52

Exactly.

Tom Jackobs: 15:53

Yeah. Awesome. So I can imagine as you do this deep work and connecting the why with the business. There's gotta be sometimes employees that have a different why that don't necessarily connect with the business why, and even the owner could, their why might be changing from time to time. How do businesses kind combat those two potential problems?

Mohamed "Mo" Ahmed: 16:21

Yeah, that's I would say definitely that it's on the leadership. I usually, uh, sit with my employees and I and I talk with them about their aspirations and their goals and what they want to do. First of all, sometimes I even surprise them. By telling them what's going on in their head. I'm telling them, probably you're here with us for one, two years and you wanna grow for, you know, and go to your next role to another company. Look, nothing, you know, stays as is for forever. We're in a dynamic ward, everything changes. So we have to admit that. Now, a question here is how do I make sure that you are fulfilled and satisfied? Because even if you leave a company now, I may move on as an entrepreneur to another startup or another role in a big company, and you may move on also to another company as well. But you know what? What's gonna remain is, first of all, your memory is about that time, and we may have a much stronger relationship that just transcends or go beyond whatever we're doing right now. And then just explaining to them that, look, I understand how you think or I understand, you know, how you, you want to move from from one stage to another in your life. And I'm not thinking that, look, my company or my thought was gonna be here forever. I expect you here to be forever. I expect you to that. No, that's not realistic. You need to be realistic that, look, those are humans and they have their own goals and aspirations. And sometimes I meet employees, they're saying, or I get from them that they want to build their own startup. And then try to even expose them to more experiences within my company so that I can help them to become better entrepreneurs or, you know, founder engineers. So that's number one, understanding their live goals and the big, I would say picture that they have in their mind. And I tell'em, look, this is how, and I give them the options. This is how we can make your current experience match what you want to learn match your why if you are in it, to build a company yourself. Here's how I can help you, and here is how you can give us back or give the company back so that everyone, also feels the your contributions, without, you're feeling that you, you have just a hidden agenda. Alright. We are, we're gonna be clear about that. So that makes a huge difference. When I talk with when anyone in my team about that it makes a big difference in it. It gets them off guard and or other words, it makes them a bit more relaxed and, now they start opening up and I, you know, truly and sincerely try to help them out. You know, throughout that experience. And they still don't know what they really want to do, I'm telling them, okay, at least let's get the best of what you do right now and help you out to, to feel happy at least about the outcomes that you that you're creating every day. And then from that point we start, it's a negotiation process. Even though it's not an explicit negotiation process, but we go back and forth, okay, what do you think of that? What do you think of this? Until we make sure that why matches his role with us at the moment.

Tom Jackobs: 19:40

That's critical because if it doesn't, then they're just kind of doing their own thing and not necessarily going in the same direction.

Mohamed "Mo" Ahmed: 19:47

Exactly. And even the same thing when I go and work with someone I, the I share with them as, much as possible, the big picture. And the sharing the big picture does not mean that I'm not going to work with them with full dedication. But they need to know why I am, I'm, why am I doing what I'm doing with them right now? What's the goal, Right? So sometimes I, when I work with entrepreneurs and I mentor them, I tell them, look, I'm learning from you. And one of my main goals is maybe at the starting point to become an investor. And I would like to learn what does it mean to invest in good companies and versus others, and I might invest in you at the starting point. So, clear from the beginning what what I'm looking for and how that can help them and showing this to them in the, you know, showing them the big picture does not make them feel that they're being used or, you know, or always think, Hey, there's some sort of a hidden agenda. Well, no, I mean, there's something, yes, I would like to, for me to learn and reach after that. Here's what I'm trying to reach. If you're okay with that, I mean, let's work together. If you're not okay with that, you know, tell me why. And if it's if it's not a good match, this is fine. I will still help you with the best possible capacity that I have um, given what that entrepreneur is looking for. So that's, the transparency makes a huge difference. And that's what you want to do with everyone. Otherwise, you know, it's just. It's not sustainable. It's at the end of the day, people are not going to believe in what you do.

Tom Jackobs: 21:19

Yeah. And it's just talk at that point, you know, it's like that, the poster for the month and you know, I came out of corporate America and it was kind of a joke every once, you know, it's like, oh, another initiative. Some consultant came in and now we're doing this. And it just, it doesn't seem like, you know, and those companies obviously didn't have their stuff together, but the ones that do they're always on that purpose and their why. So I think you have a really, per, really interesting perspective being on kinda the both sides of that. So tell me, once you made that shift and really connected your why with the business, how soon did the profits follow?

Mohamed "Mo" Ahmed: 22:00

The change follows. It's all, it depends on what you're looking for. So if you're looking for how, for people and their engagement and reaction with you, that could be almost instant, immediate, right? You can see how your team members are, start to engage with you. And then after that, things will start. They will turn things around for you. Now, how fast you're gonna see this in the business? Well, it depends on so many factors, but at least you're gonna see immediate change in what they do every day or why they're doing it, and excitement about you know, about the business and about being close to you and learning from you and trying to add as much as possible to really serve you know, that bigger purpose. Because now they feel it's also their own purpose. It's not just that manager or entrepreneur who was dreaming big about something and, you know, we're just helping with that. And I remember actually one of my mentors was challenging me about this. He, one day we were talking about, you know, the the company and people who joined me, and he was asking me, no, let me ask you this, and is, are you, do you think that you are helping them by giving them a job and giving them a salary? Or do you think that they're helping you by, you know, executing on your vision and then if you think of it, well, it's, it's not either or, it's both of them. And it need, and that's why, you know, you need to have that kind of an agreement and that a matching between your why and their why. You know, to your point earlier and that's this is really critical. You need to look at the business and from a people's lens.

Tom Jackobs: 23:41

Yeah. Yep.

Mohamed "Mo" Ahmed: 23:42

And I love this quote from Simon Sinek. He was saying, if you don't know people. You don't know business and business at the end of the day is an exchange of value based on trust. It doesn't matter, you know, how, you know how much you're trying to protect yourself. But at the end of the day, there has to be good intentions and there has to be some sort of a trust between people, even between companies. At the end of the day, we see it as two business happening between a company A and company B, but people at both sides, they decided to trust each other and do business with each other.

Tom Jackobs: 24:16

Yeah. Because, well, at the end of the day, it's people running the business. And so, and just like Simon Sinek, it's like if you don't know the people, you don't know the business. Right. And that's, it's

Mohamed "Mo" Ahmed: 24:26

Exactly.

Tom Jackobs: 24:27

Wise quote. And really, I think the point that, that from what you were saying about connecting the why and the business, and I just want to connect this for the listeners, is that you weren't focused on the profit and being profit profitable at that point. You were focused on connecting the why and making sure that people were all connected and then the profits followed. And I think that's the key to really think about this, especially for heart-led business owners because they get, there's a lot of fear about, will I be actually be able to make money and what if I don't and or I don't wanna make money because I don't feel like I should be charging? And when you connect the why and your purpose and everybody's kind of rowing in the same direction, those profits will follow eventually.

Mohamed "Mo" Ahmed: 25:15

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean, money and profits are byproduct of your success at the end of the day, and your success at, you know, is how you match what you do with everyone's why, and make sure that everyone is onboard. But at the same time, of course, you still need to, it's a business at the end of the day, and you still want to make sure that you have a very well, well-oiled machine for all the employees. Look there's a really nice thing that I learned from my work at big companies. There's always a mental model about the world. How do you see the world? What are your beliefs about the world? And that mental model is not going to work much if you do not have the processes and the mechanisms to deliver that. So, so for example, if you believe that there's a certain problem that you need to solve and I need to solve it very quickly and very fast for people in a safe way. Then you must build the processes, business processes around that and connect this with your why. At the end of the day, you know, that's your mental model that is connected with your why naturally. And now you have those processes and you tell everyone why we're doing it this the way that we're doing it right now. So that way you're connecting your why with, you know, your execution. And connecting these together not an easy thing, but once you nail it, with a very few people, you can really conquer the world. You can make a big change in your industry.

Tom Jackobs: 26:43

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Well, this has been really amazing, uh, conversation Mo and I really appreciate the time. But tell us how and tell the listeners how they can get ahold of you and learn more about your process and the work that you're doing.

Mohamed "Mo" Ahmed: 26:58

Yeah, absolutely. So, so first of all I wrote a book about actually entrepreneurship, but the, my book is called The Inside Out Entrepreneur, and it takes the reader into the journey that I went through from, again, self-fulfilling prophecy or failure to how I, things change around. Then I talked about or I discussed the framework that I developed throughout the journey. So that any entrepreneur do not need to go through the same problems and values and dark days that I went through. And that's so anyone can find that book on Amazon. You know, The Inside Out Entrepreneur, and actually I'm building right now a community around that. We have a group of ambitious entrepreneurs who want to start their journey by building that strength. And the community is called boundlessfounder.co, that's our website, boundlessfounder.co. And as a token of gratitude being here with you today, Tom, I'm actually offering all your listeners 25% discount on our membership where they can access lots of courses, lots of resources, and also regular community meetups where we exchange ideas and thoughts on how can they accelerate their journey. So, Yeah, this is how everyone can connect with me and of course, I'm on social media. They can find me on LinkedIn and and Twitter or X easily by just searching my name.

Tom Jackobs: 28:19

Okay. Awesome. Well, we'll actually link all that up into the show notes along with the coupon code to get that 25% off and the link to join The Boundless Founder program as well. That sounds amazing. So, Mo, thank you so much for being on the show today. I really appreciate your time and definitely your wisdom that you shared with us as well. So thank you so much for being here.

Mohamed "Mo" Ahmed: 28:42

It is my pleasure. Thank you very much, Tom, for having me.

Tom Jackobs: 28:45

Absolutely. And thank you listeners for watching the show today and listening to the show today. We really do appreciate it and make sure you are catching everything that is doing. And we're gonna provide all that down in the show notes. So we'll have all the links to his book and also to the community as well. So make sure you're checking that out. And also while you're down there in the show note section, there's a little button for giving the show a review. I would really appreciate it and be really grateful if you would give us a review. That just helps the world of the podcast, uh, people get to find us and, and learn more about being a heart-led business. So if you could do that, I'd really appreciate it. And until next time, lead with your heart.

Speaker 2: 29:26

You've been listening to The Heart-Led Business Show, hosted by Tom Jackobs. Join us next time for another inspiring journey into the heart of business.