May 20, 2025 • 45 mins
Mohammed "Mo" Ahmed, PhD, is an AI innovator, startup founder, and author of 'Inside Out Entrepreneur.' Mo shares his journey from leading roles at Microsoft and Amazon to founding his startups, including Magalix, and his current venture where he helps entrepreneurs build mental resilience and clarity through Boundless Founder. Mo emphasizes the importance of understanding the 'why' behind entrepreneurship and the value of mental conditioning, mentorship, and a robust support system for achieving true success. Mo also offers a special discount for the Boundless Founder community to the show's audience.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Most entrepreneurs, they infusewhy they're doing with what they
(00:05):
are doing.
So at the beginning, yes, lotsof entrepreneurs, they say, I'm
gonna conquer the world withthis technology and with my
product idea.
But at the end of the day, yourproduct and technology, if you
think of it, whatever you buildright now, at a certain point
it's gonna become irrelevant.
This is gonna become boring, andeveryone will move on from that.
(00:35):
Welcome to the Wayfinder Showwith Louis Hernandez, where
guests discussed the why and howof making changes that led them
down a more authentic path orallowed them to level up in some
areas of their life.
Our goal is to dig deep andprovide not only knowledge, but
actionable advice to help youget from where you are to where
you want to be.
(00:57):
Come join us and find a way toyour dream life.
Welcome back to the WayfinderShow.
Today's guest is Mohammed Ahmed.
(01:17):
Also known as Mo.
He is a PhD, AI innovator,startup founder and author of
Inside Out Entrepreneur.
With a background leading atMicrosoft and Amazon and
founding startups like Mega X Monow helps founders build mental
resilience and clarity throughhis company, boundless Founder.
(01:38):
He's here to show to share howtrue success starts from the
inside out.
Mo, welcome to the WayfinderShow.
Hey Louis, thank you very much.
It's a pleasure to be here withyou.
Yeah, likewise.
A pleasure is mine.
Before we get into it, can wetalk a little bit about your
origin story, your background,maybe how you got to where you
are?
I.
(01:59):
Yeah, absolutely.
So I'm an engineer by educationand most of my experience I
studied computer science.
I got my PhD in computer scienceengineering.
I was studying super computersand that brought me actually to
Seattle to work at Microsoft.
And then I worked at Amazon orAWS Amazon Web Services.
They are, the biggest cloudprovider now.
And, and I worked at a couple ofstartups before founding my own
(02:23):
startup a few years ago, andthat definitely was a
transformational experiencewhere I switched from being an
engineer product centric to howto build a business.
And throughout that journey.
I even learned how to elevate mythinking.
And rather than only thinkingabout business, focusing on
(02:43):
people and not only people atwhat I mean by people are not
only customers, but also otherentrepreneurs and helping them
to go through their journey.
With a different set ofproblems, if you will, than the
one that I faced.
So here I am right now still inSeattle.
I would say rainy.
Seattle is sunny today.
Though working withentrepreneurs from the Bay Area
(03:05):
and around the and around theworld and helping them, how to
move their mindset from justthinking about technology and
being centered about what thetechnology can do to.
What can they, how can they elelevate, others, and how can
they improve or leave an impactin this world through their
products and vision?
(03:27):
Yeah, we're gonna talk a lotabout that, but before we do I'm
curious as to what your startupwas.
It was called Mega Ls, right?
So what, yeah, what was that?
What kind of company?
Yeah, absolutely.
We started with something and weended up with another thing,
gained because, the, you have asthey say in the Bay Area, move
fast and very fast.
So we definitely.
Did that and applied that in, inour startup.
(03:49):
So we started with enablingcloud native applications to run
more efficiently and faster ontop of the cloud infrastructure.
And we ended up incy CyberCybersecurity.
Oh wow.
And when we started, we thoughtthat this is gonna be the idea.
We pivoted multiple times and werealized our customers are more
interested in securing theircloud native applications at
(04:10):
that point in the marketmaturity.
So we ended up in this area andwe got lucky after five years.
And again, loss of dark days,some really good sunny days.
We were able to sell the companyat the end to another, bigger
startup or late stage startupthat was able to take our
product and put it in the handsof more users, more customers.
(04:30):
So yeah.
It's a, it is definitely it wasa, I'll say very.
Fulfilling journey in differentways.
Yeah.
Oh, that's interesting.
I'm always curious with, intalking to founders who pivot to
a point where I.
The final product is sodifferent than where they
started, right?
(04:50):
That it was your baby, right?
You had a vision for thiscompany of a product you were
going to sell and create a bigcompany around, right?
And, but somehow you obviouslyshort enough humility to pivot
enough to have something thatpeople actually wanted.
And oftentimes we don't seethat.
We see some, sometimes peoplejust stick with their product
and they might pivot, likefinding the right, product
(05:13):
market fit, but keep with theproduct or something like that.
But you actually shifted aproduct altogether, right?
So how, talk a little bit aboutthat process.
Yeah, it was, I was, yeah,absolutely.
It was definitely part of of thematurity that I had to go
through.
Sure.
Most of, most entrepreneurs,they confuse why they're doing
(05:34):
with what they are doing.
So at the beginning, yes, lotsof entrepreneurs, they say, I'm
gonna conquer the world withthis technology and with my
product idea.
But at the end of the day, yourproduct and technology, if you
think of it, whatever you buildright now, at a certain point is
gonna become irrelevant.
This is gonna become boring.
And everyone will move on fromthat.
(05:55):
Okay.
So why you're doing it?
If you ask yourself, I'm a bigfan of Simon Sinek and his books
Start With Why.
Yeah.
And if you ask yourself whyyou're building a startup, why
you're, building, something inthis area or with that
technology.
I would say it's the wronganswer to say, you know what?
I just want to bring thattechnology and make it available
(06:16):
for, in the hands of as manyothers as possible.
That's not, in my point of view,that's not the right way to look
at it.
Whatever you're building it,whether it's a technology,
certain technology or a certainbusiness model, it's a
manifestation of your why.
Why are you building a businessand what kind of impact did the
(06:36):
end you need to leave?
With others more than anythingelse.
And if you have that perspectiveand it's not easy to build,
definitely the first pivot forme was not an easy decision
because I was one of thoseentrepreneurs because I come
from engineering background, I.
Who are attached so much to theidea, to the extent that they
(06:57):
feel the idea defines who theyare.
The idea is the one thatdefines, what's the startup is
all about.
But when you look at the, Iwould say the forces of nature
and the market around you, andif you realize that the idea is
not going to fly no matter what,then you take a step back and
you start to think about, okay,why you're doing it?
(07:18):
If it's all about, let's say.
Enabling, certain users orempowering certain users that
you empathize with, to dosomething faster, in my case, to
build cloud services andapplications faster and innovate
faster then whether it's inperformance engineering or in
security, or in something else,I can still deliver, my why, but
(07:42):
the technology is just animplementation of it.
At the end of the de at the endof the day, and that's what I,
been working with manyentrepreneurs on is don't get,
don't confuse the technologywith who you are and what your
startup is all about.
And I, maybe I'll close withthis, Simon Sinek said that in
(08:03):
his famous first YouTube talk.
People buy why you're doingsomething, not what you're
building.
And he has numerous examples.
If, if the listeners go back tothat specific talk, from Apple,
from Dell and many others andwhy people prefer to buy certain
products from Apple, but theywouldn't believe that Dell would
(08:24):
do a good job with them becauseApple has a different why.
Ingrained in everything they do.
So then what did your ultimate,why just became to serve certain
customers and deliver them aproduct, or what was your
ultimate why?
I.
Yeah, my why Actually at the endof the day, it definitely, your
why is a discovery process andit's not set in stone and I and
(08:47):
it develops and it changes basedon what stage of life you are,
your circumstances and so on.
For me, when I had the start ofmy why evolve to be, how do I
inspire?
The community of developersbuilding on the cloud to build
something great, to reach theirpotential as they are, doing
(09:09):
their job as they're get excitedevery day about what they're
doing after setting the company.
And now I'm serving a differentset of.
I would say customers orcommunities, the entrepreneurs.
My why now is all about how do Iinspire entrepreneurs and help
them to be resilient, withstandall the challenges that they're
(09:31):
going to face every day as theybuild their own startups.
And not only withstand those,but even become stronger every
day.
They're, they, as they facethose challenges, how do we, how
do they handle the psychology ofsales?
Marketing, fundraising, theleadership within their
companies.
All of these has, each one ofthese has its own psychology,
(09:53):
and we have our own doubts andfears that would cripple us if
we are not tackling them, right?
So the why evolves with you.
But but the bottom line here isdo not confuse it with.
What you do.
For example, right now I'm doingit by writing the book and I
have that community that I'mbuilding.
Maybe later on I'll do it in adifferent way.
(10:14):
My why is still continue to bethe same, but maybe I would do
it as an investor.
Maybe I would do it as aspeaker.
Maybe I would do it as anythingelse.
Sure it doesn't matter.
But my why is there.
So if, let's say my book did notwork out well, that's fine.
I tried it.
(10:35):
I still love to work withentrepreneurs and find another
way to work with them.
Yeah.
What is it about entrepreneursthat you like so much working
with?
I would say entrepreneurs aredefinitely I would say they're a
special segment in the communityand in this world.
They're the ones who are,they're they do not accept the
(10:56):
status quo.
And they do not set it for forwhatever we have right now.
Now that makes them the nicething about them that makes them
really want to make a change.
But a change has an art and alsohas its own I would say
complexities that is.
(11:16):
Connected not only with themechanics of everyday activities
that we do, it's not onlyconnected to, is the market
ready or do we have enoughmoney, or, are your customers
ready?
Those are important factors, butthe more important factors I.
In my point of view, and that'swhy, my, my recent book, the
Inside Out Entrepreneur iswhat's within that entrepreneur?
(11:38):
Are those entrepreneurs reallyready to make that change or
not?
Because a lot of entrepreneursuse the brute force way, you
know what?
I'm going to, what they say, I'mgoing to work as hard as
possible.
I'm going to raise as much moneyas I can, and I'm going to hire
people.
We're going to solve thatproblem.
Things do not usually work thisway.
The way that I.
(11:59):
Think of entrepreneurship aslike climbing a mountain.
If you go and ask anymountaineer before they climb,
they start their big trip, theydo a long conditioning, process.
They condition themselvesmentally.
They condition themselvesphysically, emotionally.
And so many other factors thatthey need to consider and even,
(12:21):
and they have to do that nomatter how experienced they are.
And the reason is the journey isunforgiving.
The journey is really hard byitself.
So if you are not conditioned,get setting yourself for
success.
There, there all the temptationsfor you to turn back and, just
(12:43):
stop your trip.
Might, one of them might win andyou may end up your journey
prematurely, or you may continuethe journey, but you may have
permanent scars, you might, mayhave permanent, side effects on
your character in your life thatyou may never be able to
recover.
That's why entrepreneurs, beforethey start their journey, or
(13:05):
even within, if they alreadystarted their journey, they need
to always consider how they areprepared for the journey, how
they're going to endure thejourney.
How do they, how are they goingto.
Convert every, or turn every setback into an opportunity.
And that's not gonna happen by,just you reading the markets or,
(13:27):
trying to, be customer centricor trying to be, show some sort
of leadership.
You're not gonna be able to doany of these unless you are
internally ready to actually.
Work with those factors, workwith those elements.
So that's key in my point ofview.
That's why entrepreneurs.
(13:48):
Are very special in nature, butat the same time, what they want
to achieve or reach is it justrequires a lot of preparation, a
lot of work, and there this gapbetween what they want.
And what is possible for them toachieve is not address,
unfortunately, most of the timewith the right perspective,
(14:10):
which is the, the conditioningand the psychology part.
And that's actually a piece thatmade me really fascinated about
that.
I went through this myself.
I did not find someone to tellme, Hey, when you go and do the
sales, this is what you're goingto feel.
This is the kind of rejectionthat you're going to have.
And by the way, this rejection.
Does not mean there is, there'ssomething wrong with you or your
(14:31):
product.
That's the nature of theprocess, and by the way, that
rejection is going to impactyour psychology and mindset in
different ways.
So here's how you can handlethat.
I.
If you go and look at all theliterature in this area, in this
space, there are very few booksactually addressing that.
Most of them will tell you,here's how you can sell fast,
and they talk.
They don't talk about how do youdeal with yourself as you get in
(14:55):
that process and you get thepain that you experience through
that process.
Others would tell you, this ishow you go on fundraise, but
they're not gonna tell you howdo you deal when with a vc when
they tell you no?
And how do you convert the NOinto a force or a power that
will take you forward and evenbuild a stronger relationship
with that vc, even the, eventhough that VC told you no.
(15:17):
Those are really, key here and,and that's missing
unfortunately.
And that's what actuallymotivated me to go, and you know
what?
I'm going to work withentrepreneurs because they can
have a tremendous impact if theybuild that resiliency.
Yeah.
So you talk about the innerjourney of building a business.
Is that what this is basically,and I think you even refer to'em
(15:39):
as invisible muscles.
It's definitely part of that,and I'm breaking it down, the
way that I think of it, if I usethe same mountain climbing
analogy, there are differentdimensions that you need to work
on.
And I talk about these in detailin the book, but we can pick an
example here.
I pick one of them.
(15:59):
There's one of one of them, andthat's, I would say the most
common is the mentalconditioning.
Now when we talk about mentalconditioning, they, we always
hear the terms of mentalresiliency and mental
robustness.
We always hear that.
But what does it mean?
If we even give, our listenershere, just a few seconds to ask
themselves, what does it meanto, to have a resilient mindset
(16:23):
and what does it mean to have aa mind a mindset with proper
robustness.
Those are really not welldefined in many cases.
So in my book for example, I,because I come from engineering
background, I try to get thetrue definition of those, mental
robustness and resiliency froman engineering perspective and
(16:49):
map that to our mindset.
So for example, maybe let's takeone of them.
Resilience robustness inengineering.
Sorry.
Okay.
Robustness.
That's fine.
Robustness in engineering meansthat, let's say if you're
building a robust bridge, thismeans if that, as that bridge
(17:09):
with, is facing pressure fromcars, running on it, and the
pressure from the elements andthe environment, that bridge can
still function as it is.
It is not, it doesn't getdeformed, it doesn't get broken.
So that's a robust structure.
Now let's map that to themindset.
(17:29):
Ideally, every day when you wakeup, you should have, one or more
mindsets that will may move youforward.
Like for example, the growthmindset or the abundance
mindset.
There's so many of them.
Now, you do not have the properrobustness in your mindset.
If your mindset completelychanges at the first negative
(17:52):
event that you face, let's say adelayed invoice, or you get to
notice that someone is suingyou, and then all of a sudden
you're just let go of thosemindsets and you drown into
negative thoughts and negativemindset.
You're not robust enough.
Your mindset is not Rob robustenough.
So that's an example.
(18:12):
I discuss in depth and I havestories around that and I
provide strategies around how doyou now nurture this and build,
some sort of robustness in yourmindset and your life in general
as an entrepreneur.
So that's what it means.
Thinking from inside out.
I'm just talking about onedimension.
There is resiliency.
(18:33):
There is also, there are alsoother dimensions that are
relevant to.
Even spirituality, even to howdo you work with your family and
friends?
What kind of network do you needto build around you?
All of these are going to impactyou.
So I'm let's stick on, stickwith your the mental
(18:57):
conditioning around robustness.
What are, that was really good,how you put it.
About, if you ba basically breakat the first negative experience
you're not robust enough.
How can you build that muscle?
How can you become more mentallyrobust?
Yeah, that, that's a greatquestion.
Now there are there aredefinitely different exercises
to do that in differentstrategies.
(19:18):
The first thing I would say thatthere's a category of exercises.
That you need to first exerciseor at least be aware of, which
is being aware of your mentalstate.
And that's by the way, thehardest part of all of it.
So when you are faced with anexternal event, like again a big
(19:40):
one of your largest customers,for example, say, telling you
that they're not going to renewtheir contract with you.
This is a big event for you thatmight jeopardize your business.
The first thing that happens isyou get negative emotions.
Your subconscious immediatelyreacts to that.
Yeah.
And then as a result of that.
(20:02):
Your consciousness actuallystart generating negative
thoughts.
Oh, okay.
I'm going to, my business isgoing to shut down.
Okay.
But probably we have lots ofproblems that beyond repair you,
you start generating negativethoughts and then those negative
thoughts by in, in turn, theyalso feed your negative
emotions.
And so you get into that negnegative spiral or down spiral
(20:24):
of those emotions loop.
So being aware of that is oneexercise, for example, that
entrepreneurs need to practiceevery day and they can basically
be self-aware, as simple as justhaving a piece of paper.
Write down on that piece ofpaper what you know, what do you
feel right now?
(20:45):
And then ask yourself, why do Ifeel this way?
And then keep asking yourselfwhy, ask yourself the five
why's.
The Toyota way of drivingquality under assembly lines.
You can do the same thing indriving quality of your, those
and emotions.
So ask yourself five whys.
Why do you feel that?
Why do have those tools and soon.
(21:07):
That will give you theawareness.
Once you have the awareness, nowit's time for you to basically
break down whether it's break itdown and identify what is real
and what is not real.
You'll be surprised that what'sreal is a small subset of what
is going on in your mind, andyou'll be also surprised that
(21:30):
you have.
Lots of opportunities to turnthis around.
Maybe I'll, let me actuallyshare a story from my own
personal experience around that.
Two stories.
Sure.
So the first story is six monthsafter founding my company and I
raised around a million dollar.
We spend around$400,000 todevelop the first version of our
(21:52):
product.
We pivoted from, by the way,later on.
But six months in, we built ourproduct.
We're going to a conventioncenter where we are going to
present our product for thefirst time, meet prospects, meet
potential customers, and I was,as I was entering the convention
center, I checked my phone and Igot an email from AWS or Amazon
(22:15):
Web Services.
We were building our product ontop of their infrastructure.
20 days prior, we had more than$40,000 credit with them, but
they sent me an email that daytelling me that we owe them
$65,000.
So we burned through a hundredthousand thou more than a
(22:38):
hundred thousand dollars in just20 days.
That made me paralyzed.
I wasn't able to think, I wasn'table to do anything because we
did not have enough money in thebank.
Yeah, we burned through a lotand and I didn't know what to
do.
I got into that loop that wetalked about and it took me in
(22:58):
that specific situation, took memore than four weeks.
We need to actually recover fromthat.
And what I'm, what I mean byrecovery here is to pick up the
phone, call AWS, negotiate withthem.
A potential payment plan,contest, those the burn of those
credits, you do something aboutit.
So it took me four weeks.
(23:19):
This is, how I was not missingthe robustness and resiliency
that we had paralyzed, that wetalked about it.
Now, you became paralyzed forfour weeks, essentially.
Yeah, exactly.
And I was just like a zombietrying to get things around and
I, the first thing that came tomy mind is, I'm going to shut
down my company.
I'm gonna become yet anothernumber of those companies that
(23:41):
turned a shutdown in the firstyear.
Anyways, we were able to gothrough that.
Things were fixed and we found amitigation for all that problem.
Fast forward four and a halfyears.
The company was about to be ACacquired.
My company was about to beacquired.
Another company approached usand said, we are interested in
(24:03):
you guys.
We started to do all the duediligence and they looked at our
source code, they interviewedour engineers, they looked at
our bank accounts, everything,and just two hours before
signing, they backed off.
Now again, in a situation likethis, usually startups are very
(24:24):
vulnerable because you cannotfundraise and you basically, as
you get closer to the finishline, you think we're done.
We're almost done.
But this is definitely anotherlesson that I learned.
It's not done until it's done,but anyways, when they backed
off, it took me two hoursactually to just bring myself
back again into balance.
(24:44):
And I said, you know what?
I'm gonna take the letter ofintent that we had with them,
and I'm going to shop aroundreally quickly in the market
before it's news that they'renot buying us.
And I talked to five CEOs.
They backed off on Monday thesame, the Friday of the same
week.
(25:05):
I had meetings with four CAOswho were interested in buying
our company.
I called each one of them.
We have an offer.
Wow.
Are you interested?
So we ended up having those fourmeetings on Fridays same week,
and we had a company thatacquired us at the end.
You see the difference betweenthe first one and the second
one?
(25:25):
Yeah.
It just how you look.
At your situation and how youstart acting, how you break, how
fast you can break that loop, beaware of it.
First of all fast, you're ableto break it and then act on top
of that first.
In the first story.
Loss and loss of I, negativethoughts and negative emotions
(25:46):
that paralyze me.
Yeah.
The second one, even though it'sa more acute situation for us,
at that specific point, I hadmore engineers.
My burn rate was much bigger.
So many things were happening inthe company, and that's an
external event that everyonewould be able to see it later
on.
But we were able to turn itaround in a shorter time.
(26:07):
Yeah.
You see that's a big difference.
That's a big difference betweenthe first one and the second
one, and the only one is, youknow how Rob, you know how
robust and resilient my mindsetis.
Yeah.
And it's also that you need tobuild over time.
Is that something that you thinkyou can only develop once you
get in the trenches of buildinga startup or just taking on some
(26:27):
greater challenge than what youwere at?
Look, there are differentlevels.
It's not binary.
It's not something that youeither have it or you don't have
it.
You develop it.
You can develop some of itbefore you get started, but
absolutely, it's not like doingit.
It's, think of it again.
Going to the gym the, in thefirst few days, you're gonna
(26:49):
just hold a few lightweights andthen over time you're going to
progress over your weights andyour, the intensity of your
exercise.
It's the same thing.
You need to start before I.
Before you get started with yourstartup, you need to condition
yourself.
And I do this actually right nowwith a lot of wannabe
entrepreneurs.
(27:09):
They're professionals working inbig companies like Microsoft,
Google and Meta, and they wantto be entrepreneurs, but they
want to prepare themselves forthat journey.
Does that mean at the end ofthat, the say mentorship?
Program, they're a hundredpercent ready.
No, they're ready to getstarted, but they're, and, but
(27:30):
after that, they still havetheir own journey that they need
to build build their, build ontop of whatever they had at the
beginning.
So yes, absolutely.
You have to, yeah, to do it toand keep doing it.
And I like that.
Again, I like that analogy orthe way to think about business
as an infinite game.
You just keep yourself in that,in the game and keep doing
(27:53):
business.
Keep doing business every day,and you elevate yourself.
You upgrade your mindset everysingle day.
It is not, it's not somethingthat you just a hundred percent
ready before you start.
No.
Yeah, it reminds me of the quoteby the great philosopher Mike
Tyson, that everybody's gottaplan until they get punched in
(28:14):
the face.
Exactly.
But you can't really, you can'treally plan for it or anything,
until you actually go throughit.
And.
You get in the fight.
And that's true.
Prior to starting my company, Ihad actually an innovation and
certificate and a, anentrepreneurship certificate
from Stanford.
And I talked with mentors, Italked with other entrepreneurs,
and yet when I started, I madeloss of mistakes.
(28:35):
And the reason was not because Ididn't know these, I knew these,
but it was.
Almost a self-fulfillingprophecy.
I was just always telling myselfevery day, I'm going to fail.
I'm going to fail.
I'm gonna have big troubles.
I'm gonna have big issues.
Why is that?
Because my mindset wasn't there.
I wasn't ready for that, and Ididn't have the right also
mentors at the beginning toguide me through it.
(28:57):
One of the.
Main turning point for me iswhen I found a mentor midway in
my journey, and that personstarted to challenge my mindset
and help me to turn around,everything.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, that that's why I wouldrecommend an entrepreneur,
whether they want to, whetherthey already started or.
One, to start their company.
(29:18):
At a certain point, they musthave a mentor.
They must condition themselves.
Otherwise it's just gonna be acontinuous pain.
And maybe they're gonna give uptoo early.
Yeah.
On that you talk about negativethought, emotion loops and how
to break them.
So how do you, you talked aboutone right now with finding a
mentor, but are there othertechniques to help break those
(29:42):
negative emotion loops?
Yeah.
That you can that, as I said,the most important part of it is
being aware.
It goes back to and and theawareness can happen.
It depends from one person toanother.
The most common one is justwrite it down for me, for
example, I don't, always startby writing down when I get faced
or hit by something likeunexpected event like that, a
(30:03):
negative event, I just go andhave a walk, even if it's rain
the outside, I just go and havea walk.
Separate myself from the, placethat I usually work.
And just try to start askingmyself, why am I feeling this
way?
So this is one tactic.
The other tactic, of course, orthe other thing, and I think
(30:25):
this is way more important thananything else, is having someone
that can show you from outsideor see you from outside and show
you.
Your true state.
And and actually I talk aboutthis also in the book.
You need three people to helpyou throughout that journey in
(30:45):
general to help you overcome,build more resiliency and
robustness.
The first one is a mentor, butagain, let's define what's a
mentor.
A mentor is not someone who'sgonna talk with you about the
business, by the way.
That's not called a mentor.
A mentor is someone who wouldchallenge your point of view and
your mindset about everythingyou do.
(31:07):
So for example, one of, one ofmy mentors ask me that question.
He told me, Mo, let me ask youthis.
Do you think you are helpingyour employees by giving them a
job?
Or they are the ones who arehelping you by believing in you
and your vision and executing onit.
Just asking that question canjust turn things upside down for
(31:30):
you and can change how youpractice your leadership.
So that's a mentor.
Yeah.
That sounds to me a lot like agood coach.
Like we talk a lot here aboutjust having good, like business
coaches, life coaches, all ofthat.
And I've had some great oneshere on the show.
And that's exactly what they do,right?
They just challenge your way ofthinking.
(31:52):
Exactly.
Great question.
You can definitely, yeah.
Another name for them could be acoach, but what's important is
not to confuse the mentor withthat next role, which is an
advisor.
A lot of founders confuseadvisor with the mentors.
So an advisor in a few words, issomeone who's ahead of you or
was in your position and theirmain job is to tell you what's
(32:14):
around the corner.
An advisor would tell me no, ifyou're selling to enterprises.
Then you need to develop therelationship with them in this
way.
And by the way, do not expect adeal before at least 12 months
because they walk in this way.
And you have to go through thosehurdles.
It's not about challenging mymindset.
(32:34):
It's about here, how do I dobusiness effectively?
So that's an advisor.
It will, he or she would throwyou around the corner for your
business.
Now the last rule, and this isreally important, and it's not
like a, many others think of itis a friend or a family member,
but then let's me focus on afriend.
(32:54):
Now a friend is not like whatyou think?
I can have my high school friendand talk with them about, my
problems or issues.
You need to find a friend who,again, went through some of what
you're going through so thatthey can really empathize and
connect with you.
So for example, I have lots offriends from Microsoft and other
(33:18):
companies and they never workedas entrepreneurs and they never
had their own business.
And then when I tell them thathappened with while I was
fundraising, they can see it's anegative event, but they cannot
really.
Understand what kind of emotionsI'm going through.
They cannot really understandfully what fears do I have
(33:40):
unless I, I basically tell themexplicitly I'm I'm having this
and this and inside me, andthat's not gonna happen most of
the time.
But when I talk to a friend whowas an entrepreneur or who
already an entrepreneur, evenjust doing the same kind of.
Business, building a business ina startup form high, fast
growing startup form, they canconnect and they can tell me,
(34:03):
look, you are not telling methat, but I see you are afraid
of failure in front of youremployees and that's why you are
resisting.
For example a pivot.
See there, he would get into thecrux of the issue very quickly
and they would be able to adviseyou on what you need to do
(34:23):
generally to make the rightdecision for your, that matches
your moral system and matchesyour background and what you
believe in.
So these three are veryimportant to, help you build
that and you need to be veryselective and be aware of.
Each one of these and bevulnerable in front of each one
(34:45):
of those roles in differentways.
And again, I talk about it a lotin the book.
There's a whole chapterdedicated to who should be with
you in that journey.
I'll have you share a little bitmore about that.
In a little bit, but this isprobably a good place to
transition into our world.
Famous Wayfinder four.
Mo, can you give us a hack?
This is just like a life hackthat you do every day or
(35:09):
regularly.
Absolutely document everythingthat you do.
Doc, log everything in your,that you do in your day.
Take all of that at the end ofthe week, at the end of the
month, whatever the cadence thatyou have, feed it into chat, GPT
or cloud and ask them, ask, anyof those tools, how can I
(35:29):
improve and become moreproductive?
I.
Right.
It will give you insights on,oh, okay, you wasted some time
in this activity took some time.
You felt here this way, soprobably because you did not
know some background, I wouldsuggest for you to do this.
So it basically gave me thatmirror about everything that
I've, done the last, 30 days,one week and so on, and it would
(35:52):
help me to become moreefficient.
I do that now.
It just looks in it, it findspatterns that sometimes I could
not see myself.
I love that.
I see this as a very valuablehack for a lots of
entrepreneurs.
That is excellent.
I never thought about using AIthat way.
Do you document, like on justyour notes on your phone or how
do you document?
So I just have a, a Google docand sometimes I just dictate
(36:13):
even while driving today I didthis and this is what went 12
from my point of view.
This is what did not go well.
I plan to do this tomorrow.
I think I need to spend moretime on my marketing or my
sales, and here's what I plan todo.
But I don't know this I just asif you are, you're reflecting at
the end of the day justjournaling.
Pretty much.
Just journal it, and then justfeed it into the ai.
(36:33):
That's excellent.
And give me a summary of thelast month.
It would, there are lots ofprompts that you can actually
think of to feed depending onwhat you really want to get out
of it.
I love that.
Wow.
Thank you.
That is a great one.
How about a favorite?
This is, could be an activity, abook, a show, a whatever.
Oh, there are lots of things.
(36:54):
Okay.
I would say the favorite, I thefavorite set of books, and I
would say the favorite author isSimon Sinek.
Yeah.
And for a very simple reason,Simon Sinek has a really nice
quote.
He's saying, if you don't knowpeople you don't know business.
Yeah, and a lot of people comingfrom engineering and technical
background like myself, alwaysthink of objects and things and
(37:18):
numbers and you know how to dothat, but it's all about people
at the end of the day.
That's right.
I highly recommend, anyone toeven though that might take some
time from them reading my book,but I still recommend start With
Why.
This is the first book and thesecond book, the about
leadership is called Turning theShip Around by again, Simon
Sinek.
And the last one is called TheInfinite Game.
(37:40):
Yeah.
All these three books for meshaped a lot of my point of view
about the world andentrepreneurship and business.
That's my favorite so far.
Yeah.
Great.
How about a piece of advice foryour younger self?
Technology is not everything.
People really matter more thananything else.
(38:01):
As you know from my again,academic history, that PhD and I
focus too much on thetechnology.
I still love technology, butwhat's going to change the world
is.
Is others not technology?
Yes.
A lot of time in, in a fastmoving world where technology is
everywhere.
We think that true change comethrough technology, but no true
(38:24):
change come through people youknow by I.
Implanting in their heads, theright ideas by helping them to
reach their potential, byhelping them to think, more
positively about themselves andwhat they can do.
I liked very much short story orthe, or a short statement.
Someone said, if you think thatyou're not important or you
(38:45):
cannot make an impact, and of,in this world, think of a
mosquito with two humans in atent.
What do you think that mosquitocan do to these two humans?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm not saying that you need tobe as annoying as a mosquito,
but I'm just telling you I'vebeen known to do that.
But you can do a lot since themosquito can still do a lot to
(39:07):
two humans or more.
That's right.
So last one, how about eitherjust elaborate on either a big
opportunity or a limiting beliefthat you see.
We can talk about bigopportunity.
So ai, I know this is somethingthat everyone talks about right
now.
(39:28):
First of all AI has somelimiting beliefs and have some
opportunities.
Maybe I'll start with somethingthat I want everyone to really
be cautious of.
AI is not going to replace jobs.
AI is just gonna help us tore-skill and I think it's going
to help us to re-skill muchfaster than before.
So there, there is a lot ofpositivity around that.
I have especially'cause I comefrom developer background, I
(39:49):
write software.
So I'm also interested to seethe impact of AI on software
development.
My son is at Virginia Tech, hestudies computer science and he
actually called me one day andsaid that, AI is doing lots of
coding stuff.
Am I gonna get OB upset Evenbefore, before I get graduated?
I thought him, no.
(40:09):
At the end of the day, it's justone abstraction layer added to
how we build software.
Yeah.
You need just to think higher.
So that's the limiting beliefthat I think a lot of people or
trapped a lot, get fallen intonow an opportunity.
What's the opportunity then isto produce more with higher
(40:30):
quality in a shorter time.
A lot of people are not aware ofthis, but there is a nice
economic theory called JA vin'stheory or paradox.
There are a few things in thisworld, the more we produce off
and the cheaper they get themore we consume.
Yeah.
Think of think of actually PCs.
(40:52):
Exactly.
PCs are TVs.
And they get cheaper.
They're disposable pretty muchnow.
So many.
Yeah, exactly.
They get cheaper and faster,they double their performance
and 50% cheaper every 18 monthand yet we cannot have enough of
them.
That's right.
We use more storage, we use moreprocessors.
We always looking for what'sfaster.
(41:14):
Yeah.
The same thing when it comes toknowledge and what you can do
with knowledge and ai.
And software as well.
When software engineers come andtell me, aI is gonna eat up our
lunch.
I'm thinking to them, no.
Now you can produce rather thanone app in three, six months,
you can produce one app in aweek.
Do you think that people aregonna say, okay, we're done.
One app is enough.
See you in six month.
(41:35):
They're gonna come the weekafter and they're gonna tell,
you know what, I need anotherapp because I have another idea
to experiment with.
Or I have another value that Ican add to my users.
Yeah.
So looking at things from thatlens is gonna give you, it's
gonna show you theopportunities.
Again for everyone and maybe wecan include it in the show notes
vin's paradox.
(41:55):
If everyone on Wiki Yeah, onWiki, Wikipedia, they'll find
out.
And it's a more than a more ahundred years old theory and
it's been proven so it's notsomething new.
We see it.
Same.
It applies also to oil andenergy and so many other.
Resources that humans you know,being, producing at the mass
scale.
That's right.
And thank you for answering thequestion that way.
(42:17):
'cause you actually identifiedthe reason why I keep asking
that question in a way I do thattalk about an op big opportunity
or limiting belief.
Oftentimes people think it's oneor the other, but they really
are the same thing.
Ai.
We all feel threatened by it.
We think it's gonna, take overthe world and we're not gonna
have jobs and all that.
But at the same time, it's thebiggest opportunity we have out
there to become even moreproductive and everything like
(42:39):
that.
So it really is just a state ofmind exactly whether we choose
to look at anything in one wayor the other.
And you, so you correctlyidentified that in your answer.
I appreciate that.
So Mo, thank you.
Time has really flown by peoplewanna know, excuse me, a little
bit more about you.
And and your program and yourbook and everything, how can
(43:02):
they find you?
Absolutely.
So everything can start withboundless founder, the CEO.
If they go to this website, theycan know more about the book.
There is actually a cool thingthat I just created there.
It's called Behind the Scenes.
So I'm talking about why did Iwrite the book and why I even
wrote each of the book chapters,what triggered me to write that
(43:25):
chapter so they can go and readthe story of the book.
That's not gonna be Oh, cool.
Anywhere.
And of course there's a link tothe book.
It at Amazon.
The Inside Out Entrepreneur.
Again, that's the name of thebook.
And I have a special offer foryour audience and listeners.
Oh, thank you.
Yeah, that we, even though weour community has a free tier,
(43:45):
but we're gonna give everyonehere a 30% discount to the paid
tier of our Wow.
Boundless founder community andpaid tier has lots of resources.
Checklists, templates courses onhow to get started with your
journey, not only at the at theMI mindset and mental level, but
even at the specifics ofbuilding your startup, how to do
(44:06):
the fundraising.
Get your first in customers,start your first marketing
program, build your companybrand, and all of that.
These are all resources thatalso available for our paid
users.
We're gonna make that availablewith 30% discount here.
Excellent.
Thank you so much.
That's very generous of you.
And a lot of our listeners, I'dsay most of our listeners are
(44:28):
either entrepreneurs or aspireto become an entrepreneur in one
way or the other.
Whether it be in technology orreal estate, or small business
or what have you.
And these are all the rightprinciples to succeed in any of
those.
So I think we can all benefitfrom.
The Boundless founder communityand your book Mo.
(44:48):
So thanks for sharing that withus and giving our listeners that
discount.
Absolutely.
My pleasure.
All right.
Thank you very much for beinghere.
All right.
Thank you, Louis.
Thank you very much.
Great to be here with you.
Likewise.
We hope you've enjoyed theWayfinder Show.
If you've got value from thisepisode, please take a few
seconds to leave us a five starrating and review.
(45:10):
This will allow us to help morepeople find their way to live
more authentic and excitinglives.
We'll catch you on the nextepisode.
Most entrepreneurs, they infusewhy they're doing with what they
(00:05):
are doing.
So at the beginning, yes, lotsof entrepreneurs, they say, I'm
gonna conquer the world withthis technology and with my
product idea.
But at the end of the day, yourproduct and technology, if you
think of it, whatever you buildright now, at a certain point
it's gonna become irrelevant.
This is gonna become boring, andeveryone will move on from that.
(00:35):
Welcome to the Wayfinder Showwith Louis Hernandez, where
guests discussed the why and howof making changes that led them
down a more authentic path orallowed them to level up in some
areas of their life.
Our goal is to dig deep andprovide not only knowledge, but
actionable advice to help youget from where you are to where
you want to be.
(00:57):
Come join us and find a way toyour dream life.
Welcome back to the WayfinderShow.
Today's guest is Mohammed Ahmed.
(01:17):
Also known as Mo.
He is a PhD, AI innovator,startup founder and author of
Inside Out Entrepreneur.
With a background leading atMicrosoft and Amazon and
founding startups like Mega X Monow helps founders build mental
resilience and clarity throughhis company, boundless Founder.
(01:38):
He's here to show to share howtrue success starts from the
inside out.
Mo, welcome to the WayfinderShow.
Hey Louis, thank you very much.
It's a pleasure to be here withyou.
Yeah, likewise.
A pleasure is mine.
Before we get into it, can wetalk a little bit about your
origin story, your background,maybe how you got to where you
are?
I.
(01:59):
Yeah, absolutely.
So I'm an engineer by educationand most of my experience I
studied computer science.
I got my PhD in computer scienceengineering.
I was studying super computersand that brought me actually to
Seattle to work at Microsoft.
And then I worked at Amazon orAWS Amazon Web Services.
They are, the biggest cloudprovider now.
And, and I worked at a couple ofstartups before founding my own
(02:23):
startup a few years ago, andthat definitely was a
transformational experiencewhere I switched from being an
engineer product centric to howto build a business.
And throughout that journey.
I even learned how to elevate mythinking.
And rather than only thinkingabout business, focusing on
(02:43):
people and not only people atwhat I mean by people are not
only customers, but also otherentrepreneurs and helping them
to go through their journey.
With a different set ofproblems, if you will, than the
one that I faced.
So here I am right now still inSeattle.
I would say rainy.
Seattle is sunny today.
Though working withentrepreneurs from the Bay Area
(03:05):
and around the and around theworld and helping them, how to
move their mindset from justthinking about technology and
being centered about what thetechnology can do to.
What can they, how can they elelevate, others, and how can
they improve or leave an impactin this world through their
products and vision?
(03:27):
Yeah, we're gonna talk a lotabout that, but before we do I'm
curious as to what your startupwas.
It was called Mega Ls, right?
So what, yeah, what was that?
What kind of company?
Yeah, absolutely.
We started with something and weended up with another thing,
gained because, the, you have asthey say in the Bay Area, move
fast and very fast.
So we definitely.
Did that and applied that in, inour startup.
(03:49):
So we started with enablingcloud native applications to run
more efficiently and faster ontop of the cloud infrastructure.
And we ended up incy CyberCybersecurity.
Oh wow.
And when we started, we thoughtthat this is gonna be the idea.
We pivoted multiple times and werealized our customers are more
interested in securing theircloud native applications at
(04:10):
that point in the marketmaturity.
So we ended up in this area andwe got lucky after five years.
And again, loss of dark days,some really good sunny days.
We were able to sell the companyat the end to another, bigger
startup or late stage startupthat was able to take our
product and put it in the handsof more users, more customers.
(04:30):
So yeah.
It's a, it is definitely it wasa, I'll say very.
Fulfilling journey in differentways.
Yeah.
Oh, that's interesting.
I'm always curious with, intalking to founders who pivot to
a point where I.
The final product is sodifferent than where they
started, right?
(04:50):
That it was your baby, right?
You had a vision for thiscompany of a product you were
going to sell and create a bigcompany around, right?
And, but somehow you obviouslyshort enough humility to pivot
enough to have something thatpeople actually wanted.
And oftentimes we don't seethat.
We see some, sometimes peoplejust stick with their product
and they might pivot, likefinding the right, product
(05:13):
market fit, but keep with theproduct or something like that.
But you actually shifted aproduct altogether, right?
So how, talk a little bit aboutthat process.
Yeah, it was, I was, yeah,absolutely.
It was definitely part of of thematurity that I had to go
through.
Sure.
Most of, most entrepreneurs,they confuse why they're doing
(05:34):
with what they are doing.
So at the beginning, yes, lotsof entrepreneurs, they say, I'm
gonna conquer the world withthis technology and with my
product idea.
But at the end of the day, yourproduct and technology, if you
think of it, whatever you buildright now, at a certain point is
gonna become irrelevant.
This is gonna become boring.
And everyone will move on fromthat.
(05:55):
Okay.
So why you're doing it?
If you ask yourself, I'm a bigfan of Simon Sinek and his books
Start With Why.
Yeah.
And if you ask yourself whyyou're building a startup, why
you're, building, something inthis area or with that
technology.
I would say it's the wronganswer to say, you know what?
I just want to bring thattechnology and make it available
(06:16):
for, in the hands of as manyothers as possible.
That's not, in my point of view,that's not the right way to look
at it.
Whatever you're building it,whether it's a technology,
certain technology or a certainbusiness model, it's a
manifestation of your why.
Why are you building a businessand what kind of impact did the
(06:36):
end you need to leave?
With others more than anythingelse.
And if you have that perspectiveand it's not easy to build,
definitely the first pivot forme was not an easy decision
because I was one of thoseentrepreneurs because I come
from engineering background, I.
Who are attached so much to theidea, to the extent that they
(06:57):
feel the idea defines who theyare.
The idea is the one thatdefines, what's the startup is
all about.
But when you look at the, Iwould say the forces of nature
and the market around you, andif you realize that the idea is
not going to fly no matter what,then you take a step back and
you start to think about, okay,why you're doing it?
(07:18):
If it's all about, let's say.
Enabling, certain users orempowering certain users that
you empathize with, to dosomething faster, in my case, to
build cloud services andapplications faster and innovate
faster then whether it's inperformance engineering or in
security, or in something else,I can still deliver, my why, but
(07:42):
the technology is just animplementation of it.
At the end of the de at the endof the day, and that's what I,
been working with manyentrepreneurs on is don't get,
don't confuse the technologywith who you are and what your
startup is all about.
And I, maybe I'll close withthis, Simon Sinek said that in
(08:03):
his famous first YouTube talk.
People buy why you're doingsomething, not what you're
building.
And he has numerous examples.
If, if the listeners go back tothat specific talk, from Apple,
from Dell and many others andwhy people prefer to buy certain
products from Apple, but theywouldn't believe that Dell would
(08:24):
do a good job with them becauseApple has a different why.
Ingrained in everything they do.
So then what did your ultimate,why just became to serve certain
customers and deliver them aproduct, or what was your
ultimate why?
I.
Yeah, my why Actually at the endof the day, it definitely, your
why is a discovery process andit's not set in stone and I and
(08:47):
it develops and it changes basedon what stage of life you are,
your circumstances and so on.
For me, when I had the start ofmy why evolve to be, how do I
inspire?
The community of developersbuilding on the cloud to build
something great, to reach theirpotential as they are, doing
(09:09):
their job as they're get excitedevery day about what they're
doing after setting the company.
And now I'm serving a differentset of.
I would say customers orcommunities, the entrepreneurs.
My why now is all about how do Iinspire entrepreneurs and help
them to be resilient, withstandall the challenges that they're
(09:31):
going to face every day as theybuild their own startups.
And not only withstand those,but even become stronger every
day.
They're, they, as they facethose challenges, how do we, how
do they handle the psychology ofsales?
Marketing, fundraising, theleadership within their
companies.
All of these has, each one ofthese has its own psychology,
(09:53):
and we have our own doubts andfears that would cripple us if
we are not tackling them, right?
So the why evolves with you.
But but the bottom line here isdo not confuse it with.
What you do.
For example, right now I'm doingit by writing the book and I
have that community that I'mbuilding.
Maybe later on I'll do it in adifferent way.
(10:14):
My why is still continue to bethe same, but maybe I would do
it as an investor.
Maybe I would do it as aspeaker.
Maybe I would do it as anythingelse.
Sure it doesn't matter.
But my why is there.
So if, let's say my book did notwork out well, that's fine.
I tried it.
(10:35):
I still love to work withentrepreneurs and find another
way to work with them.
Yeah.
What is it about entrepreneursthat you like so much working
with?
I would say entrepreneurs aredefinitely I would say they're a
special segment in the communityand in this world.
They're the ones who are,they're they do not accept the
(10:56):
status quo.
And they do not set it for forwhatever we have right now.
Now that makes them the nicething about them that makes them
really want to make a change.
But a change has an art and alsohas its own I would say
complexities that is.
(11:16):
Connected not only with themechanics of everyday activities
that we do, it's not onlyconnected to, is the market
ready or do we have enoughmoney, or, are your customers
ready?
Those are important factors, butthe more important factors I.
In my point of view, and that'swhy, my, my recent book, the
Inside Out Entrepreneur iswhat's within that entrepreneur?
(11:38):
Are those entrepreneurs reallyready to make that change or
not?
Because a lot of entrepreneursuse the brute force way, you
know what?
I'm going to, what they say, I'mgoing to work as hard as
possible.
I'm going to raise as much moneyas I can, and I'm going to hire
people.
We're going to solve thatproblem.
Things do not usually work thisway.
The way that I.
(11:59):
Think of entrepreneurship aslike climbing a mountain.
If you go and ask anymountaineer before they climb,
they start their big trip, theydo a long conditioning, process.
They condition themselvesmentally.
They condition themselvesphysically, emotionally.
And so many other factors thatthey need to consider and even,
(12:21):
and they have to do that nomatter how experienced they are.
And the reason is the journey isunforgiving.
The journey is really hard byitself.
So if you are not conditioned,get setting yourself for
success.
There, there all the temptationsfor you to turn back and, just
(12:43):
stop your trip.
Might, one of them might win andyou may end up your journey
prematurely, or you may continuethe journey, but you may have
permanent scars, you might, mayhave permanent, side effects on
your character in your life thatyou may never be able to
recover.
That's why entrepreneurs, beforethey start their journey, or
(13:05):
even within, if they alreadystarted their journey, they need
to always consider how they areprepared for the journey, how
they're going to endure thejourney.
How do they, how are they goingto.
Convert every, or turn every setback into an opportunity.
And that's not gonna happen by,just you reading the markets or,
(13:27):
trying to, be customer centricor trying to be, show some sort
of leadership.
You're not gonna be able to doany of these unless you are
internally ready to actually.
Work with those factors, workwith those elements.
So that's key in my point ofview.
That's why entrepreneurs.
(13:48):
Are very special in nature, butat the same time, what they want
to achieve or reach is it justrequires a lot of preparation, a
lot of work, and there this gapbetween what they want.
And what is possible for them toachieve is not address,
unfortunately, most of the timewith the right perspective,
(14:10):
which is the, the conditioningand the psychology part.
And that's actually a piece thatmade me really fascinated about
that.
I went through this myself.
I did not find someone to tellme, Hey, when you go and do the
sales, this is what you're goingto feel.
This is the kind of rejectionthat you're going to have.
And by the way, this rejection.
Does not mean there is, there'ssomething wrong with you or your
(14:31):
product.
That's the nature of theprocess, and by the way, that
rejection is going to impactyour psychology and mindset in
different ways.
So here's how you can handlethat.
I.
If you go and look at all theliterature in this area, in this
space, there are very few booksactually addressing that.
Most of them will tell you,here's how you can sell fast,
and they talk.
They don't talk about how do youdeal with yourself as you get in
(14:55):
that process and you get thepain that you experience through
that process.
Others would tell you, this ishow you go on fundraise, but
they're not gonna tell you howdo you deal when with a vc when
they tell you no?
And how do you convert the NOinto a force or a power that
will take you forward and evenbuild a stronger relationship
with that vc, even the, eventhough that VC told you no.
(15:17):
Those are really, key here and,and that's missing
unfortunately.
And that's what actuallymotivated me to go, and you know
what?
I'm going to work withentrepreneurs because they can
have a tremendous impact if theybuild that resiliency.
Yeah.
So you talk about the innerjourney of building a business.
Is that what this is basically,and I think you even refer to'em
(15:39):
as invisible muscles.
It's definitely part of that,and I'm breaking it down, the
way that I think of it, if I usethe same mountain climbing
analogy, there are differentdimensions that you need to work
on.
And I talk about these in detailin the book, but we can pick an
example here.
I pick one of them.
(15:59):
There's one of one of them, andthat's, I would say the most
common is the mentalconditioning.
Now when we talk about mentalconditioning, they, we always
hear the terms of mentalresiliency and mental
robustness.
We always hear that.
But what does it mean?
If we even give, our listenershere, just a few seconds to ask
themselves, what does it meanto, to have a resilient mindset
(16:23):
and what does it mean to have aa mind a mindset with proper
robustness.
Those are really not welldefined in many cases.
So in my book for example, I,because I come from engineering
background, I try to get thetrue definition of those, mental
robustness and resiliency froman engineering perspective and
(16:49):
map that to our mindset.
So for example, maybe let's takeone of them.
Resilience robustness inengineering.
Sorry.
Okay.
Robustness.
That's fine.
Robustness in engineering meansthat, let's say if you're
building a robust bridge, thismeans if that, as that bridge
(17:09):
with, is facing pressure fromcars, running on it, and the
pressure from the elements andthe environment, that bridge can
still function as it is.
It is not, it doesn't getdeformed, it doesn't get broken.
So that's a robust structure.
Now let's map that to themindset.
(17:29):
Ideally, every day when you wakeup, you should have, one or more
mindsets that will may move youforward.
Like for example, the growthmindset or the abundance
mindset.
There's so many of them.
Now, you do not have the properrobustness in your mindset.
If your mindset completelychanges at the first negative
(17:52):
event that you face, let's say adelayed invoice, or you get to
notice that someone is suingyou, and then all of a sudden
you're just let go of thosemindsets and you drown into
negative thoughts and negativemindset.
You're not robust enough.
Your mindset is not Rob robustenough.
So that's an example.
(18:12):
I discuss in depth and I havestories around that and I
provide strategies around how doyou now nurture this and build,
some sort of robustness in yourmindset and your life in general
as an entrepreneur.
So that's what it means.
Thinking from inside out.
I'm just talking about onedimension.
There is resiliency.
(18:33):
There is also, there are alsoother dimensions that are
relevant to.
Even spirituality, even to howdo you work with your family and
friends?
What kind of network do you needto build around you?
All of these are going to impactyou.
So I'm let's stick on, stickwith your the mental
(18:57):
conditioning around robustness.
What are, that was really good,how you put it.
About, if you ba basically breakat the first negative experience
you're not robust enough.
How can you build that muscle?
How can you become more mentallyrobust?
Yeah, that, that's a greatquestion.
Now there are there aredefinitely different exercises
to do that in differentstrategies.
(19:18):
The first thing I would say thatthere's a category of exercises.
That you need to first exerciseor at least be aware of, which
is being aware of your mentalstate.
And that's by the way, thehardest part of all of it.
So when you are faced with anexternal event, like again a big
(19:40):
one of your largest customers,for example, say, telling you
that they're not going to renewtheir contract with you.
This is a big event for you thatmight jeopardize your business.
The first thing that happens isyou get negative emotions.
Your subconscious immediatelyreacts to that.
Yeah.
And then as a result of that.
(20:02):
Your consciousness actuallystart generating negative
thoughts.
Oh, okay.
I'm going to, my business isgoing to shut down.
Okay.
But probably we have lots ofproblems that beyond repair you,
you start generating negativethoughts and then those negative
thoughts by in, in turn, theyalso feed your negative
emotions.
And so you get into that negnegative spiral or down spiral
(20:24):
of those emotions loop.
So being aware of that is oneexercise, for example, that
entrepreneurs need to practiceevery day and they can basically
be self-aware, as simple as justhaving a piece of paper.
Write down on that piece ofpaper what you know, what do you
feel right now?
(20:45):
And then ask yourself, why do Ifeel this way?
And then keep asking yourselfwhy, ask yourself the five
why's.
The Toyota way of drivingquality under assembly lines.
You can do the same thing indriving quality of your, those
and emotions.
So ask yourself five whys.
Why do you feel that?
Why do have those tools and soon.
(21:07):
That will give you theawareness.
Once you have the awareness, nowit's time for you to basically
break down whether it's break itdown and identify what is real
and what is not real.
You'll be surprised that what'sreal is a small subset of what
is going on in your mind, andyou'll be also surprised that
(21:30):
you have.
Lots of opportunities to turnthis around.
Maybe I'll, let me actuallyshare a story from my own
personal experience around that.
Two stories.
Sure.
So the first story is six monthsafter founding my company and I
raised around a million dollar.
We spend around$400,000 todevelop the first version of our
(21:52):
product.
We pivoted from, by the way,later on.
But six months in, we built ourproduct.
We're going to a conventioncenter where we are going to
present our product for thefirst time, meet prospects, meet
potential customers, and I was,as I was entering the convention
center, I checked my phone and Igot an email from AWS or Amazon
(22:15):
Web Services.
We were building our product ontop of their infrastructure.
20 days prior, we had more than$40,000 credit with them, but
they sent me an email that daytelling me that we owe them
$65,000.
So we burned through a hundredthousand thou more than a
(22:38):
hundred thousand dollars in just20 days.
That made me paralyzed.
I wasn't able to think, I wasn'table to do anything because we
did not have enough money in thebank.
Yeah, we burned through a lotand and I didn't know what to
do.
I got into that loop that wetalked about and it took me in
(22:58):
that specific situation, took memore than four weeks.
We need to actually recover fromthat.
And what I'm, what I mean byrecovery here is to pick up the
phone, call AWS, negotiate withthem.
A potential payment plan,contest, those the burn of those
credits, you do something aboutit.
So it took me four weeks.
(23:19):
This is, how I was not missingthe robustness and resiliency
that we had paralyzed, that wetalked about it.
Now, you became paralyzed forfour weeks, essentially.
Yeah, exactly.
And I was just like a zombietrying to get things around and
I, the first thing that came tomy mind is, I'm going to shut
down my company.
I'm gonna become yet anothernumber of those companies that
(23:41):
turned a shutdown in the firstyear.
Anyways, we were able to gothrough that.
Things were fixed and we found amitigation for all that problem.
Fast forward four and a halfyears.
The company was about to be ACacquired.
My company was about to beacquired.
Another company approached usand said, we are interested in
(24:03):
you guys.
We started to do all the duediligence and they looked at our
source code, they interviewedour engineers, they looked at
our bank accounts, everything,and just two hours before
signing, they backed off.
Now again, in a situation likethis, usually startups are very
(24:24):
vulnerable because you cannotfundraise and you basically, as
you get closer to the finishline, you think we're done.
We're almost done.
But this is definitely anotherlesson that I learned.
It's not done until it's done,but anyways, when they backed
off, it took me two hoursactually to just bring myself
back again into balance.
(24:44):
And I said, you know what?
I'm gonna take the letter ofintent that we had with them,
and I'm going to shop aroundreally quickly in the market
before it's news that they'renot buying us.
And I talked to five CEOs.
They backed off on Monday thesame, the Friday of the same
week.
(25:05):
I had meetings with four CAOswho were interested in buying
our company.
I called each one of them.
We have an offer.
Wow.
Are you interested?
So we ended up having those fourmeetings on Fridays same week,
and we had a company thatacquired us at the end.
You see the difference betweenthe first one and the second
one?
(25:25):
Yeah.
It just how you look.
At your situation and how youstart acting, how you break, how
fast you can break that loop, beaware of it.
First of all fast, you're ableto break it and then act on top
of that first.
In the first story.
Loss and loss of I, negativethoughts and negative emotions
(25:46):
that paralyze me.
Yeah.
The second one, even though it'sa more acute situation for us,
at that specific point, I hadmore engineers.
My burn rate was much bigger.
So many things were happening inthe company, and that's an
external event that everyonewould be able to see it later
on.
But we were able to turn itaround in a shorter time.
(26:07):
Yeah.
You see that's a big difference.
That's a big difference betweenthe first one and the second
one, and the only one is, youknow how Rob, you know how
robust and resilient my mindsetis.
Yeah.
And it's also that you need tobuild over time.
Is that something that you thinkyou can only develop once you
get in the trenches of buildinga startup or just taking on some
(26:27):
greater challenge than what youwere at?
Look, there are differentlevels.
It's not binary.
It's not something that youeither have it or you don't have
it.
You develop it.
You can develop some of itbefore you get started, but
absolutely, it's not like doingit.
It's, think of it again.
Going to the gym the, in thefirst few days, you're gonna
(26:49):
just hold a few lightweights andthen over time you're going to
progress over your weights andyour, the intensity of your
exercise.
It's the same thing.
You need to start before I.
Before you get started with yourstartup, you need to condition
yourself.
And I do this actually right nowwith a lot of wannabe
entrepreneurs.
(27:09):
They're professionals working inbig companies like Microsoft,
Google and Meta, and they wantto be entrepreneurs, but they
want to prepare themselves forthat journey.
Does that mean at the end ofthat, the say mentorship?
Program, they're a hundredpercent ready.
No, they're ready to getstarted, but they're, and, but
(27:30):
after that, they still havetheir own journey that they need
to build build their, build ontop of whatever they had at the
beginning.
So yes, absolutely.
You have to, yeah, to do it toand keep doing it.
And I like that.
Again, I like that analogy orthe way to think about business
as an infinite game.
You just keep yourself in that,in the game and keep doing
(27:53):
business.
Keep doing business every day,and you elevate yourself.
You upgrade your mindset everysingle day.
It is not, it's not somethingthat you just a hundred percent
ready before you start.
No.
Yeah, it reminds me of the quoteby the great philosopher Mike
Tyson, that everybody's gottaplan until they get punched in
(28:14):
the face.
Exactly.
But you can't really, you can'treally plan for it or anything,
until you actually go throughit.
And.
You get in the fight.
And that's true.
Prior to starting my company, Ihad actually an innovation and
certificate and a, anentrepreneurship certificate
from Stanford.
And I talked with mentors, Italked with other entrepreneurs,
and yet when I started, I madeloss of mistakes.
(28:35):
And the reason was not because Ididn't know these, I knew these,
but it was.
Almost a self-fulfillingprophecy.
I was just always telling myselfevery day, I'm going to fail.
I'm going to fail.
I'm gonna have big troubles.
I'm gonna have big issues.
Why is that?
Because my mindset wasn't there.
I wasn't ready for that, and Ididn't have the right also
mentors at the beginning toguide me through it.
(28:57):
One of the.
Main turning point for me iswhen I found a mentor midway in
my journey, and that personstarted to challenge my mindset
and help me to turn around,everything.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, that that's why I wouldrecommend an entrepreneur,
whether they want to, whetherthey already started or.
One, to start their company.
(29:18):
At a certain point, they musthave a mentor.
They must condition themselves.
Otherwise it's just gonna be acontinuous pain.
And maybe they're gonna give uptoo early.
Yeah.
On that you talk about negativethought, emotion loops and how
to break them.
So how do you, you talked aboutone right now with finding a
mentor, but are there othertechniques to help break those
(29:42):
negative emotion loops?
Yeah.
That you can that, as I said,the most important part of it is
being aware.
It goes back to and and theawareness can happen.
It depends from one person toanother.
The most common one is justwrite it down for me, for
example, I don't, always startby writing down when I get faced
or hit by something likeunexpected event like that, a
(30:03):
negative event, I just go andhave a walk, even if it's rain
the outside, I just go and havea walk.
Separate myself from the, placethat I usually work.
And just try to start askingmyself, why am I feeling this
way?
So this is one tactic.
The other tactic, of course, orthe other thing, and I think
(30:25):
this is way more important thananything else, is having someone
that can show you from outsideor see you from outside and show
you.
Your true state.
And and actually I talk aboutthis also in the book.
You need three people to helpyou throughout that journey in
(30:45):
general to help you overcome,build more resiliency and
robustness.
The first one is a mentor, butagain, let's define what's a
mentor.
A mentor is not someone who'sgonna talk with you about the
business, by the way.
That's not called a mentor.
A mentor is someone who wouldchallenge your point of view and
your mindset about everythingyou do.
(31:07):
So for example, one of, one ofmy mentors ask me that question.
He told me, Mo, let me ask youthis.
Do you think you are helpingyour employees by giving them a
job?
Or they are the ones who arehelping you by believing in you
and your vision and executing onit.
Just asking that question canjust turn things upside down for
(31:30):
you and can change how youpractice your leadership.
So that's a mentor.
Yeah.
That sounds to me a lot like agood coach.
Like we talk a lot here aboutjust having good, like business
coaches, life coaches, all ofthat.
And I've had some great oneshere on the show.
And that's exactly what they do,right?
They just challenge your way ofthinking.
(31:52):
Exactly.
Great question.
You can definitely, yeah.
Another name for them could be acoach, but what's important is
not to confuse the mentor withthat next role, which is an
advisor.
A lot of founders confuseadvisor with the mentors.
So an advisor in a few words, issomeone who's ahead of you or
was in your position and theirmain job is to tell you what's
(32:14):
around the corner.
An advisor would tell me no, ifyou're selling to enterprises.
Then you need to develop therelationship with them in this
way.
And by the way, do not expect adeal before at least 12 months
because they walk in this way.
And you have to go through thosehurdles.
It's not about challenging mymindset.
(32:34):
It's about here, how do I dobusiness effectively?
So that's an advisor.
It will, he or she would throwyou around the corner for your
business.
Now the last rule, and this isreally important, and it's not
like a, many others think of itis a friend or a family member,
but then let's me focus on afriend.
(32:54):
Now a friend is not like whatyou think?
I can have my high school friendand talk with them about, my
problems or issues.
You need to find a friend who,again, went through some of what
you're going through so thatthey can really empathize and
connect with you.
So for example, I have lots offriends from Microsoft and other
(33:18):
companies and they never workedas entrepreneurs and they never
had their own business.
And then when I tell them thathappened with while I was
fundraising, they can see it's anegative event, but they cannot
really.
Understand what kind of emotionsI'm going through.
They cannot really understandfully what fears do I have
(33:40):
unless I, I basically tell themexplicitly I'm I'm having this
and this and inside me, andthat's not gonna happen most of
the time.
But when I talk to a friend whowas an entrepreneur or who
already an entrepreneur, evenjust doing the same kind of.
Business, building a business ina startup form high, fast
growing startup form, they canconnect and they can tell me,
(34:03):
look, you are not telling methat, but I see you are afraid
of failure in front of youremployees and that's why you are
resisting.
For example a pivot.
See there, he would get into thecrux of the issue very quickly
and they would be able to adviseyou on what you need to do
(34:23):
generally to make the rightdecision for your, that matches
your moral system and matchesyour background and what you
believe in.
So these three are veryimportant to, help you build
that and you need to be veryselective and be aware of.
Each one of these and bevulnerable in front of each one
(34:45):
of those roles in differentways.
And again, I talk about it a lotin the book.
There's a whole chapterdedicated to who should be with
you in that journey.
I'll have you share a little bitmore about that.
In a little bit, but this isprobably a good place to
transition into our world.
Famous Wayfinder four.
Mo, can you give us a hack?
This is just like a life hackthat you do every day or
(35:09):
regularly.
Absolutely document everythingthat you do.
Doc, log everything in your,that you do in your day.
Take all of that at the end ofthe week, at the end of the
month, whatever the cadence thatyou have, feed it into chat, GPT
or cloud and ask them, ask, anyof those tools, how can I
(35:29):
improve and become moreproductive?
I.
Right.
It will give you insights on,oh, okay, you wasted some time
in this activity took some time.
You felt here this way, soprobably because you did not
know some background, I wouldsuggest for you to do this.
So it basically gave me thatmirror about everything that
I've, done the last, 30 days,one week and so on, and it would
(35:52):
help me to become moreefficient.
I do that now.
It just looks in it, it findspatterns that sometimes I could
not see myself.
I love that.
I see this as a very valuablehack for a lots of
entrepreneurs.
That is excellent.
I never thought about using AIthat way.
Do you document, like on justyour notes on your phone or how
do you document?
So I just have a, a Google docand sometimes I just dictate
(36:13):
even while driving today I didthis and this is what went 12
from my point of view.
This is what did not go well.
I plan to do this tomorrow.
I think I need to spend moretime on my marketing or my
sales, and here's what I plan todo.
But I don't know this I just asif you are, you're reflecting at
the end of the day justjournaling.
Pretty much.
Just journal it, and then justfeed it into the ai.
(36:33):
That's excellent.
And give me a summary of thelast month.
It would, there are lots ofprompts that you can actually
think of to feed depending onwhat you really want to get out
of it.
I love that.
Wow.
Thank you.
That is a great one.
How about a favorite?
This is, could be an activity, abook, a show, a whatever.
Oh, there are lots of things.
(36:54):
Okay.
I would say the favorite, I thefavorite set of books, and I
would say the favorite author isSimon Sinek.
Yeah.
And for a very simple reason,Simon Sinek has a really nice
quote.
He's saying, if you don't knowpeople you don't know business.
Yeah, and a lot of people comingfrom engineering and technical
background like myself, alwaysthink of objects and things and
(37:18):
numbers and you know how to dothat, but it's all about people
at the end of the day.
That's right.
I highly recommend, anyone toeven though that might take some
time from them reading my book,but I still recommend start With
Why.
This is the first book and thesecond book, the about
leadership is called Turning theShip Around by again, Simon
Sinek.
And the last one is called TheInfinite Game.
(37:40):
Yeah.
All these three books for meshaped a lot of my point of view
about the world andentrepreneurship and business.
That's my favorite so far.
Yeah.
Great.
How about a piece of advice foryour younger self?
Technology is not everything.
People really matter more thananything else.
(38:01):
As you know from my again,academic history, that PhD and I
focus too much on thetechnology.
I still love technology, butwhat's going to change the world
is.
Is others not technology?
Yes.
A lot of time in, in a fastmoving world where technology is
everywhere.
We think that true change comethrough technology, but no true
(38:24):
change come through people youknow by I.
Implanting in their heads, theright ideas by helping them to
reach their potential, byhelping them to think, more
positively about themselves andwhat they can do.
I liked very much short story orthe, or a short statement.
Someone said, if you think thatyou're not important or you
(38:45):
cannot make an impact, and of,in this world, think of a
mosquito with two humans in atent.
What do you think that mosquitocan do to these two humans?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm not saying that you need tobe as annoying as a mosquito,
but I'm just telling you I'vebeen known to do that.
But you can do a lot since themosquito can still do a lot to
(39:07):
two humans or more.
That's right.
So last one, how about eitherjust elaborate on either a big
opportunity or a limiting beliefthat you see.
We can talk about bigopportunity.
So ai, I know this is somethingthat everyone talks about right
now.
(39:28):
First of all AI has somelimiting beliefs and have some
opportunities.
Maybe I'll start with somethingthat I want everyone to really
be cautious of.
AI is not going to replace jobs.
AI is just gonna help us tore-skill and I think it's going
to help us to re-skill muchfaster than before.
So there, there is a lot ofpositivity around that.
I have especially'cause I comefrom developer background, I
(39:49):
write software.
So I'm also interested to seethe impact of AI on software
development.
My son is at Virginia Tech, hestudies computer science and he
actually called me one day andsaid that, AI is doing lots of
coding stuff.
Am I gonna get OB upset Evenbefore, before I get graduated?
I thought him, no.
(40:09):
At the end of the day, it's justone abstraction layer added to
how we build software.
Yeah.
You need just to think higher.
So that's the limiting beliefthat I think a lot of people or
trapped a lot, get fallen intonow an opportunity.
What's the opportunity then isto produce more with higher
(40:30):
quality in a shorter time.
A lot of people are not aware ofthis, but there is a nice
economic theory called JA vin'stheory or paradox.
There are a few things in thisworld, the more we produce off
and the cheaper they get themore we consume.
Yeah.
Think of think of actually PCs.
(40:52):
Exactly.
PCs are TVs.
And they get cheaper.
They're disposable pretty muchnow.
So many.
Yeah, exactly.
They get cheaper and faster,they double their performance
and 50% cheaper every 18 monthand yet we cannot have enough of
them.
That's right.
We use more storage, we use moreprocessors.
We always looking for what'sfaster.
(41:14):
Yeah.
The same thing when it comes toknowledge and what you can do
with knowledge and ai.
And software as well.
When software engineers come andtell me, aI is gonna eat up our
lunch.
I'm thinking to them, no.
Now you can produce rather thanone app in three, six months,
you can produce one app in aweek.
Do you think that people aregonna say, okay, we're done.
One app is enough.
See you in six month.
(41:35):
They're gonna come the weekafter and they're gonna tell,
you know what, I need anotherapp because I have another idea
to experiment with.
Or I have another value that Ican add to my users.
Yeah.
So looking at things from thatlens is gonna give you, it's
gonna show you theopportunities.
Again for everyone and maybe wecan include it in the show notes
vin's paradox.
(41:55):
If everyone on Wiki Yeah, onWiki, Wikipedia, they'll find
out.
And it's a more than a more ahundred years old theory and
it's been proven so it's notsomething new.
We see it.
Same.
It applies also to oil andenergy and so many other.
Resources that humans you know,being, producing at the mass
scale.
That's right.
And thank you for answering thequestion that way.
(42:17):
'cause you actually identifiedthe reason why I keep asking
that question in a way I do thattalk about an op big opportunity
or limiting belief.
Oftentimes people think it's oneor the other, but they really
are the same thing.
Ai.
We all feel threatened by it.
We think it's gonna, take overthe world and we're not gonna
have jobs and all that.
But at the same time, it's thebiggest opportunity we have out
there to become even moreproductive and everything like
(42:39):
that.
So it really is just a state ofmind exactly whether we choose
to look at anything in one wayor the other.
And you, so you correctlyidentified that in your answer.
I appreciate that.
So Mo, thank you.
Time has really flown by peoplewanna know, excuse me, a little
bit more about you.
And and your program and yourbook and everything, how can
(43:02):
they find you?
Absolutely.
So everything can start withboundless founder, the CEO.
If they go to this website, theycan know more about the book.
There is actually a cool thingthat I just created there.
It's called Behind the Scenes.
So I'm talking about why did Iwrite the book and why I even
wrote each of the book chapters,what triggered me to write that
(43:25):
chapter so they can go and readthe story of the book.
That's not gonna be Oh, cool.
Anywhere.
And of course there's a link tothe book.
It at Amazon.
The Inside Out Entrepreneur.
Again, that's the name of thebook.
And I have a special offer foryour audience and listeners.
Oh, thank you.
Yeah, that we, even though weour community has a free tier,
(43:45):
but we're gonna give everyonehere a 30% discount to the paid
tier of our Wow.
Boundless founder community andpaid tier has lots of resources.
Checklists, templates courses onhow to get started with your
journey, not only at the at theMI mindset and mental level, but
even at the specifics ofbuilding your startup, how to do
(44:06):
the fundraising.
Get your first in customers,start your first marketing
program, build your companybrand, and all of that.
These are all resources thatalso available for our paid
users.
We're gonna make that availablewith 30% discount here.
Excellent.
Thank you so much.
That's very generous of you.
And a lot of our listeners, I'dsay most of our listeners are
(44:28):
either entrepreneurs or aspireto become an entrepreneur in one
way or the other.
Whether it be in technology orreal estate, or small business
or what have you.
And these are all the rightprinciples to succeed in any of
those.
So I think we can all benefitfrom.
The Boundless founder communityand your book Mo.
(44:48):
So thanks for sharing that withus and giving our listeners that
discount.
Absolutely.
My pleasure.
All right.
Thank you very much for beinghere.
All right.
Thank you, Louis.
Thank you very much.
Great to be here with you.
Likewise.
We hope you've enjoyed theWayfinder Show.
If you've got value from thisepisode, please take a few
seconds to leave us a five starrating and review.
(45:10):
This will allow us to help morepeople find their way to live
more authentic and excitinglives.
We'll catch you on the nextepisode.
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