Ep565: Mohammed Aneez – Learn Leadership Qualities and Build the Right Team

Andrew Stotz 00:02
Hello fellow risk takers and welcome to my worst investment ever stories of loss to keep you winning. In our community. We know that to win in investing, you must take risk but to win big, you've got to reduce it. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm on a mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives to reduce risk in your life, go to my worst investment ever.com today and take the risk reduction assessment I created from a lessons I've learned from more than 500 guests. Fellow risk takers, this is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz, from a Stotz Academy, and I'm here with featured guests, Mohammed Denise, Mohammed, are you ready to join the mission?

Mohammed Aneez 00:43
Absolutely. Let's go.

Andrew Stotz 00:45
Let's do it. So I want to introduce you to the audience. Mohammed on a knees is a multidisciplinary designer and has been co founder and design director at Emerson designs. His expertise lies in product design for enterprise solutions, digital transformation, and usability designed for business to business, SAS products across domains, with cross domain experience and a veteran of design methodologies. And these leads multiple teams in house in at client locations. He also provides free design consultation for various startups from India. He believes that creativity and entrepreneurship are skills that are innate in every human being and must be embraced. He likes to indulge in design practices that are experimental. So Mohamed, take a minute and fill in and tell us a bit about the value that you bring to this world.

Mohammed Aneez 01:41
Awesome. Yeah, that is an amazing question. Because even when I approach a project, or any problem that needs to be solved, the first thing that I reflect on, is that I look for the impact and design for the passion. So it's mostly the impact that I'm trying to assess. And that's the success metric for me in any project that I've worked. So basically, every designer in the world are problem solvers. The bigger the problem, the better the solution that we can bring up. Most of the times what I've worked with as radius clients around the globe approached me telling that, hey, this is our business, we have been working so far, so and so this is the problem that we need to solve. Can you help us we have a team of researchers, we have a team of usability designers, product designers, developers, we come together, put our heads together, we have our design methodologies, that's been fine tuned for b2b SaaS based products. And we understand the problem first, the solution comes towards the 80% of you know, at the end of the cycle, and that's the value that we try to bring to every company that we work with. It's not the solution. It's not a solution driven process. It's a process that's problem for them. We understand the problem more closely, before we even take any assumptions. So yes, in short, my job is to help customers understand the problem more detail, and take a disciplined approach towards find the right solution to bring them to bring forth the right sort of problem and solve the right solution. Does that make sense? Yeah, that's pretty vague. And it is vague because we work across domains, we work in different domains. This knows not a single industry that we have checked out saying that no, you don't want to try that.

Andrew Stotz 03:36
I guess the point is, is that truly listening to the client's issues and understanding the problems and the pain is really the key to success in everything?

Mohammed Aneez 03:47
Yes. And I'd add to that a good listener always listens. For me, this is for, you know, like an interaction or a research, right? What we do we talk to clients, every time when human brain cannot understand information, they try to generalize it. They said so and so forth. Right? We have been facing multiple issues with respect to go to market strategies, right? So when you see multiple issues, right, what are those multiple issues? Can we just push on that? So we push on those generalization terms until the clients go mad and say, you're supposed to find it, not us. But then it's already there in your head? Just give us a brief so that we know what to go out and search for? Yeah, so our focus is to understand that key generalization terms and probe on it until they themselves realize what the actual problem the underlying problem is.

Andrew Stotz 04:42
It's good. I mean, I think life is so simple that actually most of us know the underlying problems in our lives. So it's just a matter of uncovering it, which it sounds like you're an expert on. Well, now it's time to share your worst investment ever and since no one goes into their worst invest Spin thinking it will be. Tell us a bit about the circumstances leading up to then tell us your story.

Mohammed Aneez 05:05
Absolutely, I'll start with the story because the background is very important to understand the kind of work that I do. And the biggest failure that I've faced is actually within my own company. And hence the background becomes more important. The story starts way back in 2005, when I was a kid, I knew that every day for me has to be different, I need to wake up every day and go to the office and do something not stuck in the same little circle of wild goose chase. But no. And that's why I reached design. And by no means a financial advisor or somebody with a financial background. But for us designers, at the end of the day, it's not about the money, it's about the solution impact. That's what I live for, as well. But slowly, I realized, as I started working with multiple startups, less money is a very big part of it. Right? So it's basically the concept of IKI. Guy, what are you good at? What can you take that what's good at and provide some value to people that are ready to pay. And the design part of it fit very nicely within my iki guy. So I did my bachelor's in engineering, actually. And it's during my engineering that I realized, there's a whole field of product design that I need to explore. I did my Master's in design, I went ahead two years I explored, I made a lot of friends and the design community. If you know the design community, you know that it's a very small closely knit group. It's the same concept that reed Hoffman had about LinkedIn, there's no person in the world. That who knows someone who knows someone who knows them. This is the third layer. And design, I'd say just two layers, it's not even three, it's just two. So we started with a close knit group. And I started to realize it's the network that can become my core skill if I'm becoming a business owner. And that also drove me to my interest of building a business of my own. Right from college, I've worked with multiple different startups, different design providers, and I tried to learn more about the network that helps the design community be closely knit together. And something that I realized is the core foundation of design is that it always evolves. Design always evolves with respect to the trends, the different technologies that are out there, the preferences of the people, the market, there are multiple reasons that evolves these design. And how it helps different companies is by self reflection, there's no set, you know, methodology like we have for, let's say, physics, right? If there are set protocols for doing an experiment, finding out its assessment, and then converting that into a learnable chapter for generations to come. That's not the case in design. So somebody try something, they learn something, and then they reflect on it, and then they pass it on to the other designers. And that's how it evolves. I want to do that. So I started my design company. It's all that innocent designs, it's a service design. And we do end to end service consultation for people. But that's where the first mistake happened. Experience. Right after college, I decided I'm gonna go and start a design company. But I knew I didn't have the experience to build a company. So I joined a design studio to learn the ins and outs, which was both good and bad. Because first I started doubting myself, am I capable of building a company of my own to use, I've worked for two companies, for other clients. And I learned the ins and outs of design trade, I was confident in my skills. But I have not been improving on my business skills. And I trusted my circle so much that I started my company with my friends. So we started with four designers. It was me and three other designers from the same classes. We did our masters together, right, so we thought everyone shared the same opinion design needs to evolve until we push a does not evolve. So let's push it. Design has been in the industry for about 4050 years. And still we do not have a methodology to build b2b, or SAS based products. of st simple example I can say is you use Uber, right. So the Uber app is very well designed. Have you seen the driver app or even the customer care app? There's no standards for that for iOS. For Android, it's easy to build a product because the standards have been designed for b2b SaaS, the standards are not defined yet. It depends upon the product. There are multiple companies trying to evolve it as well. And we want it to be in its forefront. That was my core isn't for starting and missing. So my first mistake was jumping in right from job to a design studio without having sufficient contacts. Second was doubting myself, will I be a good business owner? Still, my friends were really supportive. They said, Hey, let's try it. You don't know until you failed, right? Let's go ahead and build it. So I quit my job. Four years into the industry, I quit my job and started a design studio and decided, hey, I'm gonna just try it out. Started out really well, though. I'd say when he started out, my network was really supportive. And it was just through word of mouth, we started getting projects. And in under a year, we were cashflow positive, and they were projects coming in, they were really, the money also started coming. And we started hiring like anything. And in the end of the year, our problem was, we are not getting sufficient designers for the demand. So we had demand but no supply. And in my little brain, whatever popped up was an idea to start training. But are we the right people to train? was a question we weren't able to answer is it alright? We are anyway jumping down the cliff and building an aeroplane? Well, before let's try that as well. We just had too much things in my hand, at the end of the second year, we had a lot of things to do. We had to handle sales, we had to handle marketing, we had to handle training, we had to handle project deployment with zero structure. Because we have been just going by the gist of it, we had zero structure. But then the designers we had in our team were very close, we connected with them at a personal level that they were ready to, you know, like, push things around. So by the end of second year, I'd say we had achieved twice the growth than we had in the first year. From five designers, we were 10 designers of money also doubled. And there were more requests coming in, hey, can you help us with this? There's this and we actually, at the end of this year, which is our fourth year, at the end of fourth year, we had around seven clients waiting. They said that's fine. Interest Free. Let's go ahead and do it. The demand was fine. But looking back the entire four years, those are all I can see your scales. All I can see your scales because I started way early without having any background or any preparation. I just said let's try it. It seems all hunky dory, right. I mean, it's all beautiful in the first two years. But the end of the first year, one of my co founders fell off. It was like, Hey, I'm extremely sorry, my family has emergencies, I am not able to provide them with the life that I want. I think a job might suit me better. And he left was not into the entrepreneurial spirit. He felt a job might work. The second guy left at the end of second year. And for him the reason was, hey, I thought we were going to do a lot more research. We're going to drive the community forward. And we have just ended up being a design studio that provide services to different companies. Why is that? Then that's when it struck me you know, those are comfort level ones, it is chaotic. But if you're a person who embraces chaos, and I am, I tried to find the structure in chaos. We were very comfortable with the clients coming in. We had projects coming in, we had money coming in? No, all we need to do is the supply is demand, take the money be happy. That's not what we started for. The guy said okay, I'm going to do research. You know what, I'm going to take a PhD and maybe we'll try that and then he left. And that's where I started to feel you know, I'm a bad leader because as a leader, I should be motivating my team members, I should be keeping them driven that they can start their own initiatives. Well our strategy was very simple. There is a need for self research in design. I mean you have to spend money and time and research in different methodologies and you know, and improve design. Nobody has any idea how AR is going to be how we are going to be held Metaverse is going to be until and unless we try something off On, it's not going to push forward, it's just like our must fix. Change doesn't happen until you go ahead and do it. That was the core concept. But in order to find money to do those research, our strategy was let's start with consulting. Because consulting pays you a lot of money, let's use that money in decision research and then built up. But we were making money, we had to invest that money into training these new folks, is a new designers because our methodology was entirely different. We had our own small tweaks, we built a data driven company. So we had to train these designers to reflect on our processes, understand it, and then build it by the end of the year, we had zero time, and zero plan on how we can actually kick start our research plan. Two years, three years, it became frustrating, because people started leaving the new designers who come in who take the training, they can leave, right. I mean, they had the training, now they are being offered better jobs. There's no reason for them to stay with us, because we're just a team who is delivering projects. For them a career path that can help them build better relationships, and better resource possibilities. That's where the designers try to while we succeeded in the first part of a plan, the second phase was completely down the drain. And reflecting back on what I have done the last four years, it all comes down to three points. One is, I wasn't prepared to start a company back four years back. Because my background is engineering, and I did engineering, I did design, there are a lot of people out there who can build better companies, because it's not to Mba, but it's with their experiences, how they have grown, the kind of work that they have seen and done, that can help them be a natural leader. Before me, my dad was a government employee, my brother was an MP, I've grown up just seeing people going to offices and coming back, I have zero experience exposure to business. But I knew I wanted to do something of my own. That does not count as you know, experience or skills. I took the plunge, which was a good thing. I don't regret that. But I also failed to keep myself updated. And that's because lack of structures meant a lot of workload. We did not have the hiring plan, we do not have a sales plan. We did not have a marketing plan. Everything was word of mouth. That worked well for us because there was quality in deliverables. We focused a lot on the quality of deliverables that we forgot to keep ourselves trained to be a better leader every year. All it took was actually discipline and time. More importantly, I think, the ability to say no, when a client comes in and says, hey, it's a small project, can you help us is five weeks to help us? And they said no. They said, Yeah, I know, we'll definitely find some time. We'll squeeze it in, we'll work extra hours, we'll make it we'll make it possible

Andrew Stotz 18:27
to how did this is.

Mohammed Aneez 18:30
So the story ends. In a very sad note, actually. So I one day, I was so frustrated. Because I'm not able to work, I'm not able to set up my expectations, I'm not able to motivate my team members. But at one example, I'll just tell them, Hey, we are lacking in these, these, these areas. Let's go ahead and fix it. They have been working in the same pattern for about a year, it's very difficult for them to change it right now. And I get frustrated, because I expected them to come up with a strategy or probably a plan. That didn't happen because their plates are already full. Probably I didn't motivate them properly. I didn't have the right skill sets to plan a better delivery mechanism. Or I might not even have the right exposure to team leadership. Or how would you do them? I had a certain I sat down with my co founder, I talked to her face to face and said, Hey, what's going wrong? What's happening? We I know we have your cash poster, we have money. We have project. We're doing it but this is not what we set out to do. It's been four years. But looking back, you're basically where we just started. I mean, if you started design studio right now, six months, we'd still be here. So her concept of growth was entirely different. What she said is, I don't see what the problem is. You know, we are hiring designers, we are training them, we have projects coming in, we are developing amazing products and we are delivering it as it. Yeah. But we started this off as a two part solution. When are we going to do research? Yeah, we'll do it when it comes. And what I realized is we had become so comfortable with the ball rolling, we just had to go with the momentum will be probably one of the biggest design studios in India, by the end of 10 years. That did not make sense to me. That's not what I wanted to do. That's not what we agreed on. When we started somewhere down the line, we got lost. But hey, when do we do the course correction? Right? Now's the time, let's do it. But no. So we actually had different ideas of how the company should grow. And what I realized is, if I'm not able to convince my team, to, you know, guide them in the right direction, it's not that I might have done, you know, probably it's very small things I might have let go regularly, and it became a practice, what I decided is, I need to step down, I need to join a space, or I need to find a space where I can learn more about leadership, about how best to implement strategies, not just come up with strategies, because I've been coming up with strategy for different clients around the globe, have worked with amazing clients. You know, like Amdocs, Verizon, Zs, they're amazing clients, I've worked with them, and the products and the strategies that we have thought of, have been successful there and out in the market. And we have seen, we are seeing its success. By I know that it's not about building out strategy, it's more about implementing them. And it's that implementation where I lack skills.

Andrew Stotz 21:58
So how would you? What would you say is your number one goal now that you're moving into a different role or a different situation?

Mohammed Aneez 22:08
My number one goal is just learn more about leadership qualities and how to ensure that it's imbibed in the culture. It sounds very simple. It sounds very simple. But I really want to be in a space where the company is growing. Right? Not, not you, not the space where, how do I say this? All right, don't take this in a bad way. But you have seen a lot of layoffs right now. That's because of the structure is more about valuations. Because we focus on hiring hard, because when you go to the investors, you need to show that, hey, we have 1x 2x 3x, we are hiring 300 people, we are having so much signings, we are having a lot of customers, and that's how the valuation is marketed. And then once they reach the adequate valuation, they realize we need to now show the company profitable, that's when the investors get their money back. Investors are now pushing for profitability. So they start with cost cutting. Well, that's not how can you build a company that's profitable, and scale it in the right way? That's good leadership. Yeah, so I'm gonna be a space where I can observe and learn from the leaders, how they're able to keep the ball rolling, and slowly catch an avalanche and be become

Andrew Stotz 23:36
great. Yeah, scaling is so critical. When a small business I say you got to try to get to three to 5 million as fast as possible, because you need that covered revenue to cover the operating costs of a real business. So I think it's a good lesson that you're talking about. So is there anything else that you would share that you learned from this experience?

Mohammed Aneez 24:01
Well, the first thing that comes to my mind is, I'm going to definitely come back and start taking after I have received all the, you know, the right skill sets. But the most important mistake that I want to repeat, probably I'll walk down the same path, but the most important thing that I won't repeat is doing the right thing. Yeah, because the only reason why I started when I was doubting myself is my team support saying that, hey, let's do it. Let's do it. You can. And now it's just two of us instead of four. And the second person's concept of scaling or growth is entirely different. Well, I know a lot of people have talked about it. I the first few hires in the first few people that build the team's core. Culture is very important. Hmm, I sort of skipped over that and said, Hey, whoa, works. That's

Andrew Stotz 25:05
great. Well, listeners, there you have it. Another story of loss to keep you winning. If you haven't yet taken the risk reduction assessment, I challenge you to go to my worst investment ever.com Right now, and start building wealth the easy way by reducing risk. As we conclude, Muhammad, I want to thank you again for joining our mission. And on behalf of a Stotz Academy, I hereby award you alumni status for turning your worst investment ever into your best teaching moment. Do you have any parting words for the audience?

Mohammed Aneez 25:38
Thank you so much, Andrew, for that. The parting words for my audience? That's a tricky one. Yeah, the only thing that's keeping me going and I hope that I hope that will keep everybody else going is that to be able to keep a beat moment. Lowest time. That's what is going to rub off all the darkness and help you start with a small shine of light at the end of the tunnel. So yeah, you don't need a lot of people to trust and be around you. Just find that one person who is ready to listen and talk. And they will be happy to guide you through and keep you a beat to stand up and start walking.

Andrew Stotz 26:25
Right. Well, that's a wrap on another great story to help us create, grow and protect our wealth fellow risk takers, let's celebrate that. Today. We added one more person to our mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. This is your worst podcast hosts Andrew Stotz saying, I'll see you on the upside.