The Best Advice For Entrepreneurs Just Starting Out | Maha Abouelenein

0:00I started as the office manager and then we became business partners. if you get a chance to be close to the sun, work with a CEO, a chairman, somebody in a senior position. What people don't see is you want to be the assistant of the assistant of the assistant. You have to be. Not the junior manager. Hell, I'd rather be his personal trainer. However close you can get. You should do it. You must do it. Like that was a big lesson for me and I just started to study every paper that went in the office, every paper that went out. Just listening, learning, creating a network with everyone coming to see him, learning how to build relationships.

0:30Like it was the best training I could have ever asked for. And by the end of my four years with him, we ended up being business partners. I don't think I've ever had such a close, intimate relationship with any of my authors as I do today. Maha and I have worked together for almost a decade at this point, right? Today, we are going to be talking about her new book. I'm super excited about talking about the seven rules of self-reliance. I'm excited that Maha is here. And I think now for the next two to three minutes, Maha, like always, I always like to say, like, comic book number one, origin story.

1:01Like, who are you and why did you write this book? Well, first of all, Gary, being here is extraordinarily special to me, not just because of our relationship, but because all the things I've learned from you. So I want to start by saying thank you. And there's a big piece of you in that book. And I know listeners will resonate with some of the stuff I write about in the book about Gary. OK, born and raised in Minnesota. I'm 100 percent Egyptian. Yes. I lived in a very small town in Minnesota where I was the poster child for diversity. It was a lot of like blonde hair and blue eyed people in Minnesota.

1:33I lived in Minnesota till I was 27. I worked at General Mills. I worked in sports marketing. I worked in the coolest brands. But my mother was sick. At 14, she had multiple sclerosis. And for a long time, my parents, who are both Egyptian, wanted to go back to Egypt. So at 27, I moved back to Egypt. And I wanted to didn't speak the language, didn't have any friends. At 27, you're a professional. So like you are working. I didn't have a network professionally or personally to lean on except for my family and I needed to find a job and I'm like okay I'm going to go work at a Pepsi a Coca-Cola a P &G an American company in Cairo right you and I grew up in that era where you know for everybody who's listening now there's being a creator now there's startups yeah now there's sports marketing now there's all these things but in our era if you were like somewhat creative like you are like I am like Like these consumer packaged good companies.

2:31Was the it job. Was an it job. The marketing. Especially when you go international. Yeah. So 1997, just to put everyone in context, it's 1997. I wanted to get a brand marketing job. Couldn't find one. But I got offered to be the office manager for a local billionaire. And I went home and I was devastated. I told my dad, like, I can't believe I'm going to be an office manager. I had this cool job at General Mills. I have my master's degree. I'm overqualified. This is the worst. Is that what women in the Middle East are? secretaries. And my dad had a vision that I didn't have. He said, listen, girl, you just moved here.

3:03You don't know anybody. The office manager in the Middle East is like the chief of staff in the U.S. You should go in, put your head down, prove to him that you can do more than this job, but you have to listen and learn first. And I didn't have his insight. I took his advice and it changed the trajectory of my life. You know, one of the things I always say is like, Like, get a, it's funny, you know my content inside out over this decade. You've heard, we've never actually, I know that story. We have never really actually in the backseat of a car or traveling together talked about this that I recall.

3:36I always tell kids, get as close to the sun as possible. You can't, you have to. I believe today, right this nanosecond, where kids have, with talent, have real optionality. Right? Last night, Jets win. I'm ecstatic. Yeah. It's 11.30 at night. The game's over. Yet, I go grab a water. A kid comes up to me. Gary Vee, can I get a selfie? Yes. Gary Vee, can I ask you a question? My brother and I are going to start a real estate company. This kid's like 19 to 23. My brother and I are starting a real estate company tomorrow. Like ASAP. Like, what's your advice? And I looked him dead in the face and said, get a job for a year.

4:13Yep. Because it was just so clear to me in a nanosecond. I'm like, what are these two characters going to do? Yeah, I mean. If that kid could go get coffee. For somebody important. For somebody at related real estate. Get coffee for one year. The next day, the likelihood of his business being good is one trillion percent better. I mean, I learned so much. Like, no job is beneath you. If you get a chance to be close to the sun, work with a CEO, a chairman, somebody in a senior position, you learn about the ins and outs of the business, what matters, how they tick, how they operate. Or you love nightlife and somebody just opened up a hot group and you just want to be a bartender.

4:53You just get there. Get in. And by the way, I was about to say bartender and I pulled it back. No, no. The assistant. The assistant to the assistant. Like the closer to the sun. Noah at Tao Group. Don't get a job at Tao at bartending, though I'm sure that's fine. If you have goals to be Noah, what people don't see is you want to be the assistant of the assistant of the assistant. You have to be. Not the junior manager. Like if I can be the junior manager at a company like that, or the assistant of the assistant, if I want to be the Noah, if I want to be the Eugene, if I want to be the Scott at Zero Bond, if I want to be the owner's private club and I want to work at Zero Bond, like one day I want to build a nightlife entertainment empire, I don't want to work at Zero Bond.

5:39I want to work for Scott, even if I'm very far away. Hell, I'd rather be his personal trainer. Yeah. How about that? His hitting coach at tennis. However close you can get. You should do it. You must do it. Like that was a big lesson for me. And I just started to study every paper that went in the office, every paper that went out. Just listening, learning, creating a network with everyone coming to see him, learning how to build relationships. Like it was the best training I could have ever asked for. And by the end of my four years with him, we ended up being business partners. I ended up working on the largest IPO in the history of Egypt, the largest acquisition in the history of Egypt.

6:14I started as the office manager and then we became business partners. And because I was willing to put my head down, put aside my ego, put in the hard work and let that what speaks for itself. And I didn't have that foresight. Then I stayed in the Middle East for 23 years. Can I interrupt you real quick? Team, I have a new acronym I want to make some content on. Literally because of this. I just have to do more of this because I need to make new content. I want to come out with something like how I would approach starting your career. The acronym is LOVE. work close to the sun during your time with the sun L, learn O, observe similar but different V, bring value so it's value and E, execute I'll break it down in a separate video that's incredible I'm excited about it, go ahead that's so true anyways, I ended up staying in the Middle East I had opened up Weber Shanwick's as a big PR firm opened 18 offices for them in the Middle East which I brokered that deal with Nagib and somebody else in the region actually McCann Erickson in the region.

7:13Then I went on to be the head of communications and public policy at Google, launched Netflix in the Middle East, worked for them for five years. I worked for the ruler of Dubai. Real quick, somewhere in there, isn't this correct? Somewhere in there you were thinking about doing your own thing, right? Yes. And then you did the Weber shit, right? Yes. There was that little moment. Yes, so I worked. Because I think that's an important moment for my listeners. There was a moment after you were crushing with Naguib that you thought, I'm ready to go do my own thing. Yep. And then when you were like tasting it, you ended up doing it more, not exactly that.

7:39You ended up, right? No, I did. So right after I left Naguib, we built Weber Shandwick together. And then after building a business for Naguib and building Weber Shandwick, I said I should do it for myself. And this was 2004. I had no idea how to run a company. I had managing director. I was doing it with Weber Shandwick, but I had a corporate structure supporting me. And I decided I wanted to be an entrepreneur. Can we talk about that for a second? What do you think I want to bring as much value? I mean, look, before I go any further, right this second, please go and type in seven rules of self-reliance into Amazon and pre-order the book.

8:17But that's the punchline for me because I'm selfish on this one. I want all of you to buy the book. In fact, buy many of them and give them to employees, friends, what have you. Now I want to be selfless and give as much value to the audience. You have something very valuable to give. I can't give this. You can. What are the biggest naivetes of a human when they have massive infrastructure around them and they're a winner like you are and many that have worked for me, but they're young and there's other things to be learned yet. What do you think are the cliche naivetes when someone thinks it's them, but it's the infrastructure and them?

8:55Yeah, I mean, I learned the lesson the hard way. Like when I joined, I started my own company. I knew the difference very quickly between having the infrastructure or not. Like you have to learn how to build culture. You have to learn how to foster and lead a team. You can't lead by, I was a very difficult manager back then. I was like, let's get shit done and results, results, results. And then I learned from you, actually, it's about kindness. It's about people. It's about nurturing your team. It's about putting them first, not the work first. And the results will come out, not just better, like even more valuable, not just for you, but your clients.

9:29But I think I thought I knew things and I didn't know things. I knew how to do PR and comms, but I didn't know how to run a business. and I didn't know legal, accounting, finance. I didn't know about HR and operations and empowering my teams and how to coach teams and how to get results from teams and how to train them and then trust them to do what you train them to do. I mean, I'm 20 years as an entrepreneur now, so it's a much different case now, but it only evolved in the last, I would say six, seven years. Like it wasn't like that working over there. It was, they led with like a stick kind of mentality, very like you had to be the loud boss.

10:04that is the culture there. And by the way, in America, and in other first world, you know, kind of powerhouses, China, Russia, Japan, London, the UK, there's just different versions of leading with fear. Yeah. Right, to your point, some is just loud, like, you better fucking get this. I mean, my father was the extreme of this. Yeah. I'm gonna fucking fire you if you ever do that again. Extreme fear. But then there's also, like, what a lot of people do, which is, like, Clever fear. They make it seem like kumbaya and be like, we're all in this together. It's all like kumbaya and then very sly at the end.

10:41But we do all know like, we'll all be out of jobs. Yeah, we're gonna get fired if we don't deliver. And so like, it's hard. It's just like, unfortunately, and then people are like, yeah, Gary, like fuck the companies. I'm like, no, no, no. Now let's talk about your accountability. Do you know why companies do that? I'll tell you why. We're recording this right now on Friday, September 20th. It is 1226. There's 30 people in my office. out of the 2 ,000 that could be. On my life, I promise you that 25 % of my staff right now is not actually working and I'm actually paying. Yeah. How about that? So people are like, yeah, Gary, you're awesome.

11:19You're always talking about kindness in companies. You're the man. I'm like, when I get those roses, I'm like, let's just, literally, anywhere. Parking lot of a Jets game, meeting, airport. I'm like, no, no. Do you know why companies do that? because employees are always, it's cat and mouse, subconsciously for so many employees. This is where the employees that don't act like this get triggered. When I'm like, many employees, they think I'm talking, no, there are many employees that treat a business as if it was their own when it's not. But they're the ones that are holding up the 50 to 70 % of employees that are looking for every angle.

11:54I did that in school. Do you know how many times I went and got a drink and went to the bathroom and went to the nurse in my K through 12 career? Let me give you the answer. More than anyone on earth. Why did you do that? Because I was looking for the angles. I didn't want to be in the classroom. So I had a headache. I was thirsty. I had to poop. I would do anything. To get out. I would use my charisma. One of the reasons I am me is I used to basically do stand up. I would distract the first five minutes of the class because I could charm the teacher. And I would try to entertain the class. I mean, I would try to chip away at two minutes.

12:32If I could get two minutes out of the 48 minute class in the beginning. You were winning. Where the teacher was distracted by me by being like, Mr. Hall, what about the Knicks game last night? If I, like literally every class in my entire high school life, I would try to eliminate as many minutes from it as possible. Both for the collective. Hey, Mr. Hall, what about the Jets Patriots game last night? Because I knew he was a Jets fan. I would get three minutes that way. Or if that didn't work, because many teachers knew what the fuck I was doing. It would be, I have to go to the bathroom. When I found out that he legally couldn't say no.

13:04You just used it all the time. Maha, when I found out in eighth grade that a teacher couldn't legally say no, it changed my life. I went to the bathroom every class every day. Every day. Every day. It worked. So what I'm saying is I hated it or I didn't have a relationship with the school education system as it was structured. Many don't have that with their jobs. thus all the things that are happening now are happening and that's why this is a tough game you know yeah and I even think when I was even running the business with Weber Shanderbroker on my own like you learn a lot about bringing in a rock star into the team that can disrupt the culture and then just so it gets everyone else upset so like I learned that the hard way I hired this great guy he was really smart had great credentials came in destroyed my business destroyed it and I'm like okay we're not doing that again we have to make sure that they are the culture fit that they can match with the team.

13:58Like I learned that the hard way. Another thing, even when I was at Google, I hired, I got into the job. I was very overwhelmed. I was four months into it and I hired somebody and it was a big mistake because by the time I actually learned what the role is and what the scope of the job was, I realized who I needed to hire as a team member and what skills and talents did they need. And I ended up having to fire her. It wasn't her fault, but I just, it's better to have an empty chair than have the wrong person in the chair. Great quote. you just need to be patient and like nobody understands is when the wrong person's in a chair and their huge financial impact nobody ever fires them but it's secretly killing you yeah and so those are the hard things i learned about managing and leading and hiring and firing and that type of thing let's take a massive step back what are the seven rules okay so let's talk a little bit about self-reliance first like as a general kind of concept so a lot of people ask me like why is it called self-reliance are you trying to teach people to be independent and it's It's actually the opposite, G.

14:55It's the opposite. What I'm trying to say is, what if you became valuable by knowing things, by having relationships, by having experience? If you relied on yourself to put yourself on the best foot forward, you can bring value to other people and be dispensable. And when I looked back at my 30 years in business, I said, it wasn't about what I did because I am good at communications and PR and strategies. It's how I do it. How do you create value for people? How do you become a long-term player? How do you build your personal brand? How do you not wait and be a creator? So those are some of the seven rules of self-reliance.

15:33Rely on yourself to become a superpower by investing in yourself. I don't want to be left behind in life because I don't know things. So why not invest in learning things? And guess what? It's for free. YouTube is for free. This podcast is for free. You can learn from people. You can learn from anywhere. So try to rely on yourself to invest in knowing things so you can be valuable for other people. I would argue that on that one, that is the punchline of my career. Like because I'm obsessed with the end consumer and there is nothing, not a politician, not a B2B concrete company, not a CPG. There's nothing on earth, not a someone running for mayor.

16:14there's not one thing on earth that can point to not caring if they can communicate to humans to make the thing they want to happen, happen, exactly. So I get value for sure. I agree. Yeah. It's the moat. Yeah. So the first, yeah, the first, the first rule of self-reliance is stay low, keep moving, which is a military term when like you're on your stomach and you're trying to like stay low to keep moving to avoid getting hit. And I, the reason I say stay low and not low profile is stay low and stay focused on your work and put in the hard work. There's so many distractions in life. People are trying to distract us from what's important for our goals.

16:49Stay low. Put your head down. Put in the effort. I'm not an overnight success. You're not an overnight success. You have to put in the time. You got to put in the reps and keep moving because you are going to have setbacks. You are going to have economic failures. You are going to have a fire from your job. It happens to all of us, including me. The first rule of being self-reliant is knowing, okay, I'm going to have to put in the effort and I'm going to have to know that there's going to be a journey that's going to include some bumps in the road. Love. Next. The second rule is be a value creator.

17:21So how do I create value for other people and not expect something in return? And so what I like to call making deposits in other people's trust banks, because I may or may not want to make a withdrawal. So for example, let's talk about how we met. I read your book. It was a long story, but I can tell I read your book and then I met you. And then I was like, Gary has a company. He has people at his disposal. He's got offices around the world. Where can I bring him value? What's the one thing I might be uniquely qualified to share with him and cut it into a shortcut for him? Maybe it's talking about Dubai.

17:56Maybe it's talking about the Middle East. So I try to listen to your business. Where do you have offices? How do I anticipate your needs? Where can I create value for you? And then deliver that. So that's a good example of being a value creator is try to listen and anticipate needs so that you can become indispensable for people by bringing them value time and again. It's consistency. You cannot be a one hit wonder. And you can be, but you're going to get one hit wonder results. Yes. Right. People that have had a one hit wonder song made some money, hopefully, like had a moment, probably enjoyed those years, but like could literally walk down the street right now.

18:32Yep. and you know, I'll give you a great example. And he's not a one-hit-wonder. He's actually amazing. But I had a funny moment the other day. Sunday, I had to fly somewhere. Yep, Charlotte. And I was walking in Newark and Jerome Bettis was walking. Football player. Yep, just walking. And it was funny. Because I'm such a big football fan and he has a very unique shape. He was a very specific football player. I kind of like recognized him from his modern silhouette. like from far away. I kind of like nailed it. As some of you know around me, I've lost my vision up front, but man, I could see way far out.

19:09So I just like see him and I watch him walking towards me and I see a ton of people walking by and not one person recognize him. And I say to myself, if he was actively playing, that wouldn't be the case. If he was in Pittsburgh or Notre Dame, it would definitely not be the case. And so his value sits in certain pockets. and that's how I think about one time value. Like there's different moments of value, there's different things of that nature. Your approach thing is huge. I tell people all the time, 99 % of people lose because when they want to approach someone, first 50 % of those people just ask for something.

19:48Yeah, they want something in return. Hey, I want something from you, very busy, like it's insane, devastating first step. You'll never get an A player to pay attention to you because that's what happens to them all day long. they don't have the bandwidth. B, the smarter move is I'm going to give you something in return like you were talking about. The problem is 95 % of people that do things do it the wrong way. Hey Gary, I'm going to give you something that I can give you but you have no value in. Right? Hey Gary, here's a lamp. Like you know, and a lamp is nice. Let me think of it. Hey Gary, I'd love to spend an hour with you and tell you how to do social media marketing because they think they have that to give.

20:28I'm like, I don't need that. Yeah. You need to find out what do they care about and then deliver that. But also, you have to bring value with good intentions, not that you want something in return. And I feel like if you do that purely with good intentions and you are actually an expert in that and can actually deliver it, that's priceless. 100%. I mean, most people, to your point, give with expectation and then they're let down and resentment and it's all over. Okay, next. Don't be a waiter. Be a creator. So this happened to me. I was in Egypt. It was a long time ago. I was talking to somebody and he's like, we were having tea and just talking about a lot of stuff in my life.

21:04And he was like, you're a waiter. And I was pissed. I was like, what? And he's like, you're a waiter. You're waiting for Mr. Right. You're waiting for to give you a promotion. You're waiting for a bigger opportunity to come out. You're waiting to see what happens with your parents. My parents are both very sick at that time. You're not actually living your potential. You're not doing what you're probably capable of doing. And I went back and I was really pissed. I got home and I'm like, you know what? I am waiting. I'm not that I'm unhappy. I'm just coasting through life, but I feel like I can, I can do more.

21:32I am capable of doing more. So how do you shift your mindset from being in the waiting mode to creating mode? Like, what if I want to do something? I actually tell the story in the book of going to the Superbowl with you. I'm like, how can I create, if I want to go to the Superbowl, how do I create something out of that? That's meaningful. There's brands, there's media, there's you, you go to the Superbowl every year, you're in the advertising industry. Where can I bring value and create something new? Okay. well, let's unlock what this radio row thing is. Let's unlock how we can bring press and bring media coverage.

22:00And I'll get to meet people and build relations because everyone's there at the same time. So how do you create those opportunities? And how do you think of them so that you can achieve them without waiting for you to ask me? You never asked me, Maha, can you go do some press for me at the Super Bowl? You never once asked me. I have no time to ask. You know this about me. Like, you know this because you're on the other side of this. I'm the greatest client ever. No seriously you never ask us for anything I'm not happy about it I'm talking about my life I am so busy In client term I'm like you know People Because a lot of you are not clients to many different people Let me give you the day to day comp Everybody listening right now Can understand what I'm about to say Do you know many of you right now are signed up To services that are banging you every month And you haven't cancelled it even though you're not using it, you know my favorite one, the streaming services.

22:57There's somebody right now listening that literally has Paramount Plus and hasn't gone on it in seven months and could actually use that 10 bucks or whatever back. I'm like that on big stuff. I'm so busy. To your point, the reason you and I still work together versus all the other people that eventually I get around to and I'm like, you know what? I don't want to do this. Hey Johnny, sorry. This is my favorite call by the way. Yeah. When you're doing the right thing and you hate firing there's always my favorite thing which is peace of mind. Hey Johnny, I don't want to work together anymore. I apologize but I'm giving you notice.

23:33Whoa, whoa, go Gary. I'm like Johnny, I've been paying you for nine months. I haven't even heard from you. What do you mean whoa, whoa, whoa? You know what though? And the meeting's over. Like literally immediately Johnny's like all right thank you Gary for so much for everything. So like people are so silly. They take advantage of good clients and then when they get caught they're like it's just the same old fucking but you know the funny thing is gary how it works with us though because you don't it causes us to like up the ante how can we bring value he's not asking let's think for him let's be strategic i see the agendas sometimes we work harder actually and it's also it's actually um rewarding for us because we're like okay we want to do this big thing let's code for this and so that's really kind of why i love working with you because i feel like we're not only be able to create value, we have unlimited like guardrails to try to do the best work that we can and deliver that.

24:28So don't be a waiter. It's kind of co-create your own thing. Treat your reputation as a currency. What's its worth? What's its value? How can you increase it? How do you protect it? So I feel like a lot of people, and you are the guru of this, talk about building your personal brand. Yes. And a lot of people think personal branding like I'm not a brand. I'm not a company. I don't need to build my personal brand. But I like to tell them, take out the word personal brand and replace it with the word reputation. It's been my go-to belief of all time. And then once you do, don't you want to care about your reputation?

24:59Yep. Don't you need to be intentional about your reputation? Because if you don't do it, I can guarantee you somebody else is doing it for you and it's not what you want. Always. Right? So building. It's been the great evolution of where media is now. Right? Like the biggest thing about social, and obviously we most see this in politics, but I think it's in business even more than it's in politics. like the days of letting what you grew up with in comms dictate the narrative are over. Are over. It's direct to consumer. People follow people. Why would you even let the Wall Street Journal or Fast Company or CBS or CNN or Fox News or anybody else even if you like them even if they're doing a good job by you even if you're the darling of the media right now it's still the wrong strategy.