Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Mohamed Ahmed Author of Inside-Out Entrepreneurship

Episode Date: March 12, 2025

Mohamed “Mo” Ahmed is a dynamic serial entrepreneur and product visionary with over 20 years in AI and cloud computing. Known for his expertise in building and scaling companies, Mo has achieved multiple successful exits with 7x markups, a testament to his strategic insight and innovative approach. As the author of Inside-Out Entrepreneurship, he shares a unique perspective on building resilience and mental endurance for the entrepreneurial journey. Mo is also a dedicated startup advisor with leading accelerator programs like 500 Startups and TechStars, where he has helped founders secure over $30 million in funding. His entrepreneurial conditioning framework has become an invaluable tool for diverse founders, guiding them in overcoming challenges and sustaining growth. Mo’s commitment to empowering others makes him a transformative figure in the startup ecosystem, inspiring founders to approach entrepreneurship with a growth mindset and achieve lasting impact.Learn more: https://mohamedfahmed.com or https://boundlessfounder.co/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-mohamed-ahmed-author-of-inside-out-entrepreneurship

Welcome to influential entrepreneurs, bringing you interviews with elite business leaders and experts, sharing tips and strategies for elevating your business to the next level. Here's your host, Mike Saunders. Hello and welcome to this episode of Influential Entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach. Today we have with us, Muhammad Ahmed, who's the author of Inside Out entrepreneurship. Mo, welcome to the program. Hi, Mike. Thank you very much. for having me. Hey, so I am interested in learning all about your book and how you serve business owners and entrepreneurs, but get us started first with a little bit of your story and background and how did you decide to work with entrepreneurs? Yeah, absolutely. So I'm a

thinking guy. So I started as an engineer and then I worked as a product manager. And then I decided at a certain point to become an entrepreneur myself. And I had a really exciting journey, but I had lots of, you know, low moments. And I think many entrepreneurs are probably experiencing that. And, you know, midway, I asked myself, does it really have to be this way? Because it wasn't really an easy journey. Yes, it grew a lot, but also it had a toll on me. And when I actually talked with other entrepreneurs, I realize it's almost everyone is

going through that. And the journey definitely has its own challenges when it comes to the business side, but what is happening inside us is, you know, is really a lot. And that requires continuous maintenance, requires to be conscious about what is going on inside you so that you are able to grow as a person, as an entrepreneur, as a businessman or woman. And that's the reason actually, that's the main motivation for me of writing that book after finishing the whole journey.

I realize that there is some sort of conditioning any entrepreneur need to go through before they start their journey. And even if they're midway, they have to keep maintaining themselves. And think of it like mountain climbing, any mountaineer, no matter how experienced they are, they have to do some sort of a conditioning period.

and have a conditioning program before they start their journey climbing to the summit. It's the same thing when it comes to entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs need to make sure that they're ready mentally, emotionally, their family is also ready for that. Everything around them is likely to work in their favor. They're going to be always difficulties and challenges, but you want to make sure that you have all the preparations that would make you, you know, ready to seize the opportunities and when you get quote-unquote lucky, you're ready to jump on the opportunity and make best use of it. And there are lots of stories around that. You know, I'm sure there are and I know that you work with so many entrepreneurs and I love

your approach there that you're talking about because the inside out, you know, it's the out would be, here's what to do about launching and scaling and this tactic and this, you know, item to this by by this software to grow your business to scale your business what led you to focus on the mental aspects of entrepreneurship to begin with exactly that that's that's really important so there are two things that i personally like everyone to be aware of there's the resiliency part and there's the robustness part when you think of resiliency if i borrow the definition from engineering, if you have a resilient structure, this means that you have

a structure that is strong enough that it would resist external forces trying to impact it. So like building a bridge, when it gets let's say a hurricane, hitting it or the elements

are really harsh on the structure. The structure is not going to collapse and fall down because of that pressure. That's a resilient structure. Now, if you map this back to our minds, this is how you want an entrepreneur, you know, to be thinking of themselves and also to build this kind of resiliency. Every day you're going to be, you're going to face, you know, unusual events or something that is not expected. Now, how do you make sure that this does not really take your mindset out of balance? and, you know, instead of having a growth mindset, you start thinking in a limited mindset,

and you start actually to not able to really bring things together. So that's when it comes to resiliency. Now, given all of that, it's also inevitable that there are going to be events that are big enough that might impact our mindset and, you know, drift us into a state that we do not want to. And this is, you know, the role of robustness or mental robustness. And again, if I use the engineering, you know, analogy here, a robust structure is a structure that when it gets deformed, because there's a tremendous form of force being applied to it, it can go back to the original form. I mean, like, think of it like a rubber band, right? when you stretch it and you just release it,

it goes back to its original form. So the same thing, if you train yourself as an entrepreneur, you know, to have an optimistic mindset, a growth mindset, and you're always challenging yourself, you're going to have difficult times

where your mindset is not going to be where you wanted to be. Now, the question is, have you prepared yourself well enough so that you, can come back from those subbacks further quickly or not. And this is really important. Maybe I'll share a quick story from my own experience.

When I started my first startup, we had a credit from Amazon Web Services or AWS, a $1,000, $100,000 credit. And we thought that this is going to just keep us running for more than a year. three or four months after launching a company, we're still working on the demo of the product, I got an email just before doing my first or having my first product demonstration to one of our customers, that email from AWS telling us, you owe us $60,000. So we consumed all $100,000. And in addition to that, $60,000. And we had only $70,000 in the bank.

the first thing that came to my mind, we're going to go bankrupt and the company is going to shut down. And it took me four weeks actually to recover from that. And this is when I did not really have the proper robustness and resiliency back then. Now, fast forward to three years, my company was about to be acquired. And by the way, just so maybe before I'm leaving that first story, it took me four weeks to recover from that. And recovery means I started to go back and talk to AWS and negotiate with them and figuring out a payment plan. That took me four weeks. So this is just one snapshot of an entrepreneur who is not resilient enough.

Now, fast forward, three years going through lots of experiences, my company was about to be acquired. and the company that is supposed to acquire us, they backed off two hours before signing the LOI for reasons that outside of our hands and outside of their hands, actually. And, you know, if what happened is I looked at the situation in less than 24 hours, I took the LOI that is not signed yet and used it to shop around with other companies. Now, when I did that, less than one week after,

that company backed off, I was sitting with four CEOs interested in acquiring our company. Now, if you take a look at the, you know, and compare these two stories, in the first situation, I did not have the proper resiliency and perspective about the events that are going around me. And that took, that's why it took me a long time to recover. And I thought that it's going to be a disaster thing and it's going to destroy my company. in the other event, even though it was, I would say, much more serious when it comes to the impact on the business and everyone that works with me, but I was able to recover within 24 hours.

And we got lucky and we got, you know, the company sold out. That's the value. This is what would make a difference between someone who conditioned themselves and became, you know, resilient enough or they have that resilient. mindset and someone who are just leaving it to the chance, they just focus on the marketing and sales and how to, you know, how to, you know, land the first customer and second customer and so on. At the end of the day, if you ignore the insight factors, you're going to eventually, you know, lose your way and probably you're going to quit if you're a first time entrepreneur. Well, and also, even if you did not quit, but you got thrown for a loop, so to

speak, that two to four to six week time frame of being in that mental fog could impede you from moving forward or noticing a great opportunity or taking the business forward to setting up a new strategic alliance. So how do you help entrepreneurs build that mental resilience? Yeah, absolutely. So I usually take them through a conditioning framework, which I explain in detail in the book. But I work. with them looking to the different events from a different perspective. I usually ask them how do they feel. And I walk them through the Five Wise framework.

You know, why do you feel this way? And they give me an answer. And I tell them, okay, why is that answer you think is the logical answer? And then we keep digging into that until we get down deep into how they perceive events and how they perceive themselves. and everything around them. And then we try to fix that and correct that. Now, over time, as they build that muscle, any setback becomes actually an opportunity

for them to improve, an opportunity for them to move forward. If they fail to achieve a certain goal, this means that, okay, you have different ways to do it. And that actually requires from me to really get into almost all. the details of how they run their business and even sometimes how they juggle between their personal life and their business. And going through all of these helps them to basically take a look at themselves and change their perspective about their mindset and the business and how they should position that business in their life. Because at the end of the day, a lot of entrepreneurs

they confuse the identity of themselves with their business. And they, if their business is facing issues or problems or failing, they think that they're going to fail in life. And that has loss of pressure. We usually work with them to clarify that and make sure that they're not really falling the victim of, you know, the typical, I would say, misconceptions that we read about in the, in the media and also give them what what could it what it could what it could what's going to look like even if their business is is just poised to shut down yeah i mean it's it really it's really

interesting uh your approach because it's a very cerebral approach and like you you like you're talk about that that um that mindset that resilience it reminds me of you know don't make a knee-jerk reaction to anything because if you heard some news that you thought was, you know, the sky is falling, business is going under, and you made decisions based on that, and then you found out the rest of the story, which might not be accurate to begin with, and the rest of the story might be, oh, well, it's not that bad. It is whatever. Or maybe you could reinforce your approach or your mindset or get some advice from some peers or

counselors, all of a sudden now it's not as bad as it may have seemed. So what do you do to work with your clients to help them once they've kind of articulated this to be able to say, okay, this conditioning framework, like you mentioned, here's what we need to go through. When we hear this a piece of news such as this, the first step is, the second step is. Yeah, exactly. Now, you mentioned actually a couple of important things. You mentioned how did they respond. And also, you mentioned, how do they perceive different things? Now, I like what you mentioned, the word response, because most entrepreneurs, they react.

And there's a big difference between reacting and responding. And reacting is you just, you know, you just try to push away whatever that you feel that is actually basically, you feel that it's going to. going to cause you issues in your business or your personal life. Responding means that you're ruminating about the event first. You're thinking about it. And you have some sort of a framework around that. And what I usually do, I do not just take the framework and apply it in an abstract way.

I actually work with the entrepreneurs throughout their external, quote-unquote, external journey. So I still have them in their fundraising. I still have them in landing the first set of customers. But as we develop those, we actually take a different approach on how they think about those events. When they get a customer rejection, how they should be thinking about it. When they get a rejection from a VC or they've been trying to do it for three months, you know, how they should be thinking about it. And I usually, I'm a big believer in building really. If you don't know about people, then you don't know about business.

In the business, it's all about building relations with others, whether this is a VC or a customer. A VC, we usually hear that a VC is investing in the entrepreneur. Now, the question here is, why would they invest in you if they don't know you, if they're truly investing in you as an entrepreneur and as a human? The same thing when it comes to working with customers, customers first will work with you because they trust you and they trust that you're going to give them the best service. How do you do that? How do you build a relationship with people,

even though people are going to reject sometimes some of your thoughts or maybe reject your company or solution? You still need to build those relationships and you never know. The first time you talk with them, you may get to know. And then after you build a relationship, you may get actually a much bigger business than you even initially anticipated. And I think here's one thing that you probably have seen in your research. You can self-motivate yourself by noticing and reviewing your own positive results.

So when you see that framework and you take those steps and then you see what it did for you in this certain circumstance. When that comes up again in life and business because it will, when you can reflect back on that and go, oh, before I did it this way and a good result came, now it becomes easier and easier to do it because you're noticing and remembering what you did previously. Exactly. And that's the muscle that you want to build at the end of the day. Yeah. So when you work with clients that have put this into practice, what are some of the

results that they are seeing from this approach? Many things. First of all, they're moving much faster than before and they're learning much faster than before because they do not spend now a lot of time thinking about why did I get rejected and reflect this on themselves? So the first result that I see is that they're now able to move from one experiment to another and the start of world, especially in the early stage, it's all about iterating through experiments.

And you're trying different sets of customers, trying different set of features for your product, trying different approaches to do the marketing and do the messaging for your product. And that's why the most important asset, as I tell to many entrepreneur, is your speed. And your mind actually could be the biggest hurdle, actually, in your journey and to become fast enough. Because every time you face an event, an unexpected event or a rejection, you start thinking about it. And maybe you look inward and you ruminate about it too much. So that's the number one advantage that they get. And then as a result of that, they reach their results, their business results, much faster.

And they learn actually way more than anyone else. And this is also the second advantage of any startup company or any startup company would have. If I would compare a startup to an enterprise, the only advantage that they have, let's say the small team compared to an enterprise, is not the money, It's not the people. It's not even the knowledge, but speed and the ability to learn very quickly. If you're able to unlock that from within, it's going to make a huge difference for your business. And not only for you all as an entrepreneur or a CEO or a founder of the company, this is going to be a culture for your company.

So everyone else in your company would be moving even faster than you initially anticipated without you trying to really push them because they also start. looking at business and experimentation and trials and learning the same way that you look at it. So you see, that small investment in your mindset will make a huge difference in the projections not only of you, but also of your company. I love it. Well, I tell you, it feels like the analogy of if you want to chop down a tree, take the first hour sharpening the axe and then start getting to work because it'll be more effective.

So if you can work on that mindset and that resiliency, now all of the other things that you're going to do in business will be much more effective. So, Mo, great chatting with you today. If someone is interested in learning more and picking up a copy of your book and connecting with you, what is the best way that they can do that? Absolutely. So they can learn more about the book I have what I call it behind the scenes for the book. I'm explaining why I wrote each chapter and the story behind it. And there's also a link on our website to the Amazon store where you can buy the book, either through Kindle or the printed version. And our website is Boundless Founder.C.O.

Excellent. Well, thank you so much for coming on. It's been a real pleasure chatting with you today. Well, thank you very much again, Mike, for having me. You've been listening to Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes, visit www. Influential EntrepreneursRadio.com