Build a Brand, Not Just a Business ft. Maha Abouelenein | Coffeez for Closers with Joe Shalaby

0:00She's helped launch billion dollar brands, advised CEOs, world leaders, world leaders, and yeah, she was the head of comms at Google and Netflix in the Middle East. but Maha Abuelanen's real mission, teaching people how to turn reputation into currency. She's built personal brands for Gary Vee, launched campaigns across five continents, and helped shape narratives for everyone from Chase Bank to royal families. So yeah, when Maha talks storytelling, you take notes. Today on Coffees, we talk about the real power of personal branding, why it's not self-promotion, it's survival. We get into the art of storytelling, how to grow your brand even if your product isn't sexy, and why reputation is the new resume.

0:45It's not just about going viral, it's about building something that lasts. This episode, it's a masterclass. Welcome to Copies. You know, thank you for having me. This is the first time I've been on a podcast where people know how to pronounce my last name properly. I know. I can't imagine how difficult it is for an American to say Abu El-Ana 'in? Abu El-Ana 'in is what they say. But when I came to do my book tour and just promoting it, everyone would be like, so excited. Let's jump into the interview. Let's go. And then they would look at my name and they're like, wait a minute. How do I say this?

1:17And looking at you and speaking to you, you don't sound or look like an Abu El-Ana 'in. Yeah, that's the disconnect. And when I grew up in Minnesota, everyone's like, your name and you look Egyptian. But when you start talking, you're not Egyptian. And then when I moved to Egypt, everyone's like, oh, your name is Egyptian. You look Egyptian. But when the minute you open your mouth, they're like, so American. So American. Yeah. Sounds so American. Well, I grew up here. I lived here my whole life. So give the audience just a kind of a 10 ,000 foot overview of what you do. Yes. So I am a communications executive.

1:51I help companies and brands and people tell their stories. So I have a communications firm, consulting firm, where we help people build their personal brands, tell their stories. I used to be head of communications at Google and at Netflix, work with the ruler of Dubai. And now I work with some of the most prominent names in communications, helping them with their stories like a Gary Vee or we work with Chase Bank and different people to help them build their brands, tell their stories, connect with audiences and build their reputations. That's such an out-of-the-box position for number one in Egyptian, because that's not what our parents told us to do.

2:31Yes. First off, how did you even get into that space? Yeah, so I'm born and raised in Mankato, Minnesota, a very small town in Minnesota. I went to school, undergraduate, graduate degree in communications. And I always had a pulse and a love for the news industry and information in general. So when I was a little girl, I was like, oh, I want to be a reporter. I want to be telling stories. And when I was in college, I interned at a news station. And that's kind of when I got the buzz for the feel of like information coming in through the wire. We would sit and have to package it up before we broadcasted it and told it to the world.

3:05And that's what I liked, storytelling from a very young age. And so I was like, I want to do communications, but I didn't study mass comm in college. I started marketing or international business. And then when I became, you know, into the business and I graduated and started working, I worked actually my my career started in sports marketing for General Mills. I was like, I really want to learn more about PR and storytelling and how I can actually craft narratives and reputations. And that started when I got to Egypt in 1997, a long time ago. Wow. So what was storytelling like back then without like social media?

3:42and yeah I mean it changed so much and it's still changing that's the nature of PR and communications it's evolving a lot so in the beginning back in 1997 when I started working in communications it was like you had time to tell a story like you would craft a narrative write a press release put it out there it would be published the next day or would be air on the news the next evening new, like the news cycle was days in advance, right? Now, obviously with the social media and real time, everything, the news cycle is real time. Like you can post something, put out a news release or put out information, tell a story, do an interview and it immediately goes viral or global the minute you put it out there.

4:26So it's obviously you have to be able to manage rapid response. What's your message? How are you culturally relevant? How do you make sure you're thinking about what your audience, the value is for the audience, what the audience looks like. Our attention spans are shorter, much shorter. So people have options to get information from anywhere. They used to get their information from the evening news or the newspaper. Now their source is Tik TOK or Instagram or Reddit to find out anything that they want in a moment's notice. Yeah. It's, it's incredible what, you know, where people are getting their news from.

5:00I feel like sometimes I'm a news reporter. Yes. On my content. Like you see something and you share it. Yeah. Well, lately I've kind of repositioned some of my content strategy to be more on brand with market updates, which is not like, you know, viral, you know, because it's boring. I sell a boring product, which is actually something I wanted to ask you about. Yeah. Like how can you craft a message for a boring product? Okay. First of all, it's not boring. You're adding tremendous value to people in their markets and their homes and their needs and their financial security of knowing how to have a home and how to deal with a mortgage and how to pay for it.

5:38But I feel like the beauty of the Internet is everybody has the ability to build a personal brand and monetize their expertise. So for you to say you're sharing market industry insights, that's relevant. Like, I want to know your take on things. You have built your career doing this. So you have insights. You have experience. That's lived experience that matters. For anyone listening to this show who wants to build their business on their own names, they should. Because you have lived experience. You have expertise you can share. You can give your two cents worth or your thoughts and theories.

6:14Like if you were pulling articles that you see, you're curating information, that's valuable. Because you'll find things that I wouldn't think are relevant or necessary or important. And then you'll tell me why I should pay attention to this. what is this going to change for me how is this man you know bottom line my pocketbook how does this impact my home those are the reasons why you should share it because everybody has different experience that they can leverage and monetize based on their name and their expertise and their personal brands and like where do you you know what to you is the significance of building a personal brand because i've been on a quest to build my personal brand but you know you've been doing brand building for years?

6:56What really, you know, what really inspired you? I think it's just everybody has something to offer. And a lot of people think that personal branding is about self-promotion. I'm like, it's about idea promotion. It's about thought leadership. And it's right now we live in a world, AI, remote working environments. You are not just competing with people that live in your market or city. You're competing with anyone with the internet connection. How are you going to stand out? You need to build your personal brand. And I think about taking the term personal brand and throwing it out that window and replacing it with the word reputation.

7:32You need to build and protect your reputation. And I think you care about your reputation because your name is the only thing you actually have and own, right? And so when I think about why should people build their personal brands, because they can't afford not to. You can't afford not to build your personal brand. It is what opens doors. It's what builds relationships. It's how opportunities will come to you. If people know who you are and what you do, it's how you show up at work. If you work at a company and you don't have a strong personal brand, you might not get the projects you want or the promotions you want.

8:05So you have to know how do you show up at work? Are you a team player? Are you a collaborator? Are you a good listener? Are you resourceful? Are you a go-getter? Are you shy? Are you intimidated? Are you anxious? Like all of those are things that represent your personal brand. And so you want people to say, hey, no, she's someone I can rely on. She's a go-getter. She's helpful. She's somebody who I can depend on. If I ever need someone to help me in a crunch, she's going to stand up for me and show up for me. Those are all really relevant reasons why you need to build your personal brand. so like i told you before we spoke and even in this interview i've been on a quest to build personal brand for about a year and three months good and i've been teaching my uh loan officers and those that work for our organization how to build personal brand and what steps they need to take but it's all been primarily social focused now for me like what are some other attributes i I can tell our agents and those that are listening outside of social media some strategies that they can utilize to build their brand.

9:12Yeah, first of all, every one of your loan officers has to be investing in their personal brand. And so, first of all, I'd love to do a workshop and do training for them because I think it's going to 10x your business. I think it's that important. But I think if I'm a loan officer today or if I work in any referral business where my name and my reputation depends on how good a job I do for them to get other people to bring them into the business, I think about a couple things. One is, do you have a strong presence on social media that you can depend on to have people come to you? So a clear profile on LinkedIn, a way for people to contact you.

9:47Some people have great clear picture, clear understanding of your biography, but no way to reach out to you. So make sure you put your contact information because that's one of the reasons you're putting it out there so that you can get that inbound or people can reach out to you. So having a clear social media presence is key. Second, what's your event strategy? How are you meeting people? How are you meeting people in events that you don't normally go to so you can expand your circle of relationships, so you can expand the type of people you can network or interact with? So having a good social media strategy, having a good event strategy is key.

10:21Third, your current customers are your best referrals because those are the people that when people come to buy a home or get something, they ask, who did you use for your loan? Who did you use? So making sure that you take care and deliver for your current customers and leave them with a good taste in their mouth and having them feel good about you. So don't do the sale and then just ditch them. What is the service after the sale? How are you having those touch points with your customers afterwards to make sure that they can say, hey, this isn't someone who once I finished my mortgage, they just walked away and I never heard from them again.

10:55Actually, I bought a home a couple of years ago when I moved back to the States from Dubai. And my mortgage lender and officer is still in touch with me five years later. And she's like, I love that. I love that about having that service. What does she do from? Well, one, she has a newsletter that she sends me. She checks in on the value of my home. She checks to see if I want to recast or refinance or just anything that I have any questions about the value of my – like she's always following up with me to see if there's – Personally or is this automated? No, she's doing it personally and automated.

11:28Like she has a newsletter, which is automated obviously. Yeah. But like any changes in the market, if I want to stay tuned to what's happening. So I love that. Like I – Yeah. I encourage all of our loan officers to build a post-close ecosystem strategy. Yeah, I think that's a big part of building the personal brand is the post, whatever you just said. Post-closed ecosystem. Post-closed ecosystem. I think that's key. You know, a lot of people think building your personal brand only happens online. I feel like in person is even more important. What do you do to treat your customers? How do you treat everyone from the barista to your colleagues at work and to how you treat your customers?

12:02I think that's a big key component as well. Now you've launched billion dollar campaigns, not like individual personal brands. What are like some key strategies that you noticed that just work in any vertical? First of all, I think, you know, bringing yourself to any approach is just being as authentic as you can, right? Trying to make sure that your personal brand is like, is what you see is what you get, that people really do connect with you because you are who you are in person, you are in social media. So I feel like that matters. Like, how do you show up for people in that authenticity? Think of your own behavior.

12:38Who do you follow? Who do you look up to? who are personal brands or companies or CEOs that you really have worked with or connect with is because you really felt that they were who they are and that you didn't have to, you know, we live in a transparent world where we can tell someone is trying to pull a fast one on us. So I think the key is authenticity for that is really, really effective for building a strong personal brand. I think the second element is, and I've seen this with a lot of the big leaders that I've worked within my career or the people that are either clients or companies I've served.

13:10It's how do you treat your people? And I feel like that cascades like water everywhere you go. Like if you treat your people good and if you build a culture that people are excited to be a part of long after you leave that company or long after you finish that sale, I think that always resonates. Like, are you kind? Are you supportive? Are you there for people? I think how you treat your people, the culture you build is essential in your reputation and your personal brand for days, weeks, years to come. Yeah. That's something we really foster and embrace here. It's like one of our core pillars, one of our five pillars is community collaboration.

13:47So important. And it's imperative for growth here because if you're not collaborating, like where are you growing? How are you growing? Like for us, collaboration is one of the fundamental and key reasons why we continue to scale because this is a it's a decentralized platform that everyone feels like they're a part of something much greater you know in a decentralized model and it's becoming more and more important in a virtual world i agree um and and uh you know you you touch on so many things and it's almost like you're in the mortgage space you should be coaching mortgage professionals because i love it i love this industry so i think real estate finance industry no i don't know the industry that well but i just know the the principles of this industry that can 10x it is that relationship building that personal brand building the storytelling connecting with your audience service after the sale like all that stuff matters i'm on a quest like i said to build personal brand storytelling is something i feel like I need to drastically improve on.

14:48I wasn't a storyteller. Um, I was, you know, not a comm major. I was a sociologist. I, you know, I, I just, I feel like I feel that storytelling. I suck at telling stories to my kids. You know, like I need to be better at that. What are some, uh, what are some core principles or ideas I can, anyone can take away and listen to this podcast go, Oh, that's some good strategies to implement in storytelling. Yeah. So think about, um, You know, out of all the things that AI can do, it can't build and tell your story or build and protect your reputation, right? One of the most important skills that - Or maybe it can't.

15:24No, it can't. It really can't. One of the most important skills that everyone listening to this show needs to know how to do in any framework, even with AI, is to know how to communicate, is to talk to somebody, to tell your ideas, to tell stories. So if you want to be good at storytelling, think about yourself as a consumer first. What are the stories that resonate with me? Did it have an emotional connection? Did it make me smile? Did it make me laugh? Was it something I shared on my social media? You want to, you want to develop a story that's worth sharing, that you want to share it on your feed or share it with a friend or put it in the family chat, like something that's worth sharing.

16:01So what is it that's worth sharing? A story that connects or moves us, a story that resonates with us because it's super relatable or a story that inspires us to take action or educates us. So if you want to be good at storytelling, I want you to think of a couple of things, even with your personal brand or as a CEO of this company, because a lot of CEOs are awake now that they could be good at business and good at results. And if they're not good at storytelling and communicating, they've missed the mark. It is the most important skill that they have because you have to communicate down to employees.

16:35You have to communicate to shareholders. You have to communicate to the media. You have to communicate to partners. You have to communicate to investors. So understanding how to do that is key. So storytelling comes in many formats, just to answer your question, what you could be doing. So a couple of things, what's a day in life working like as a CEO of this company? What are some things that you noticed in the industry that are going to have a profound effect in the next profound effect in the next week, two years or months to come? What are ways that you run your business? What about the culture?

17:05What about your team? What do you look for when hiring people? Where do you think the mortgage industry is going? Like there's a whole vast variety of topics that you can be storytelling around from how you run the business to the industry, to the culture and the team of building your business and your journey as a CEO. All of those are effective stories that people want to hear. Just a lot of people don't take the time to do those. And like when you curate content, Are you curating it like a day in the life of or like, you know, because when I'm creating content, it's not like storytelling about anything.

17:41You know, like I'm not creating content around that. It's like some giveaway content or some, you know, market news content or some. Yeah, but I think it's all good. I think you just need to think about documenting versus creating. Right. What can you document? Like, oh, it's a good strategy. Documenting versus creating. And that's what I did. Like, I was like, oh, I just got here. I'm about to do a podcast. Like I'm, I'm bringing people on my trip. What am I doing today in California? What am I up to? Who am I meeting? I'm just sharing what it's like to be an author, to sell your book, to talk about your ideas, to tell people about the importance of communications.

18:16I think that's a key is a lot of people are overthinking and thinking they need to have a team and production is like, start documenting, just put up your phone, take a thing. If you don't want to be on video, you don't want to be on camera. You don't need to faceless is, is also working, write your ideas, write letter or write, um, uh, blog posts or write on LinkedIn or write a note, take a picture of it and post that. Like you don't have to be overthinking. And I think a lot of times when it comes to storytelling or being, uh, building your personal brand, a lot of people are just afraid of how people will judge them if they put themselves out there or fear.

18:53Well, people will say, well, who does she think she is? Why is she doing that? So I feel like it's really important that you spend time doing something that's authentic to you that you feel comfortable doing so that you can do it consistently. Now, with all the campaigns, like let's say we're going to launch a story. What's one campaign that you launched and it like just took off? I can't think of anything specific now because I'm trying to think of a client where we did a campaign. But I feel like the key to any successful campaign is did you build a community? Did you move an audience? Did people take action?

19:32And so I can think, I mean, you want me to give you a specific campaign? I'm like trying to think now. Of course, I launch a lot of books. I launch a lot of books for clients. I got a book launching soon. You do? Okay. Maybe we can help you with that. Rising from the Sand. Yes, that's cool. Yeah. What's it about? My story. so coming from like the poorest of the poor in cairo and then you know and now like the picture of the book it's like sand and then like the image of newport beach waterfront you know like i came from dirt poor and now i'm on the water in newport beach that's beautiful so it's it's kind of a crazy story to fathom that someone like you know can can like just rise from that economy that really didn't provide any real way out of there yeah you know there was there was no way Like, what are you going to do in Egypt?

20:18It doesn't matter if you became the highest ranked doctor. You were still going to live in Cairo in a poor part, maybe a middle class poor part, but you're not going to make much money. My dad grew up in Mansoura, a very, very small village on the outskirts of Mansoura. And really just was like, the only way I'm going to get out of where he was living was to get an education. And he was like, got a fight and crawl to get into Cairo University. And then he's like, there was a scholarship program to come study in America. Him and his buddies applied for it. They got in. And then the rest was history.

20:53He came to America. He built himself and my mother and had me and my sister and became the dean of the business school in Minnesota and, you know, had an incredible career focused on academics and built it in the academic, you know, academia world. But that's what Egyptians are good at, building academia. But the name Abul Aineen, how did it become prominent in Egypt? Was it because of your father? There's a very famous Abul Aineen family in Egypt. Mohammed Abul Aineen is Cleopatra Ceramica. It's like a ceramics company. It's a multi-billion dollar company. That's not you guys? That's not us, no.

21:33Okay. I'm not in the ceramics business. Yeah, because I was talking to my priest yesterday. He's like, oh, Abul Aineen. And the family is very well known. Yeah, that's not my family, though. I'm not part of that one. But still, your dad came to America, still lived the American dream, went back to Egypt and dominated there. That's what my parents wanted me to do. Just go study in academia, like telling them I'm going to do mortgage and start a company. That's not even like. Yeah, being an investor or startup, that was not it. It was like you go to like he told my sister, you either go to like medical school or engineering school or law school.

22:06Like it was like, you know, the parents was like, yeah. Yeah, it's just those three. Yeah, you can become a doctor and engineer. Your parents had these rules of what you could be when you grew up. Yeah. I still, in my mind, I still want my kids to go to med school, but then start their business. I still want them to go to med school. I'm sure they're like, Dad, we don't want to do that. What I see happening with failure in every vertical that we launch is execution, right? And execution is like beyond strategy. So what's your process for building a marketing plan and then making sure that it gets executed?

22:49Yeah, I think the key, like you said, is execution in anything that you're trying to approach. But you got to have the right team. The only way you can execute a plan is if you have the right team to do it and the resources to do it. So thinking things through, looking at the market, making sure you're culturally relevant. If you have a marketing plan, but you want to execute it during a time where the market's not ready for it or the environment isn't ready or you haven't done the homework to build the right strategy to talk to your audience and meet them where they are, that's a way that execution can fall flat.

23:17So are you thinking about your audience? Do you have the right team to execute against that strategy? Did you put in the proper planning and resources to do that? I think those are some of the key things that I think about when we think about executing anything for a client is like thinking it through, having the right team in place, looking at the market to make sure it's culturally relevant and then doing all the planning in advance. Yeah. But then how do you pick the proper team members to make sure that, you know, they can execute? Like I myself felt that. Yeah. So I have a consulting firm.

23:47So like I'm very careful about taking on projects that I know that we can really deliver against. Like I wouldn't set a self up to just take a client because I will bring in money or an opportunity where we can deliver and actually execute to the 10th degree. Like it's my reputation on the line, right? For every client that comes to us and we're in the reputation business, we have to make sure we can deliver that we bring them the results. And it's 30 years of my career. So like I know what works and what doesn't and what do we need to do to execute. And I won't let a client come to the door unless I was 100 % sure we could over deliver for them.

24:22So what's your vetting process for that? Team members, it's a process. Like I think about first and foremost, how good are they at writing? Because if you can write well and you can communicate your ideas written in a written format, you can probably articulate them verbally. So I always like give people writing tests so I can see how do they organize their thoughts? What are their ideas? Do they think in strategic form, like strategic elements? do I so I always give everyone a writing test and I feel like now with AI like are you watching them with the writing yeah I mean you can tell if something I think and I can tell if something is written by chat GBT I can tell on social media I can tell when people are using it versus copy and pasting I can tell I think you can too I think everyone's smart and adapt to that but I think the assignments we give them are very specific to our work so they would have to really do their own homework and thinking to get to a place where they would not be able to rely on that for their ideas, but maybe for their structure or their scaling or something like that.