Breaking Barriers and Building Brands with Maha Abouelenein
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This is, keep in mind, 1997. Yeah. There wasn't any female CEOs of companies. There weren't any CEO entrepreneurs or female founders of companies. So it was very early days in that whole trajectory. So I was always trying to... I was up against the current. Like, how do I try to push? Like, I can do more. I can be more. I can contribute more. And...

Eventually, I ended up being the CEO of my own company in the Middle East. In Egypt, I opened a PR firm and he was the business partner with me on it. And at the time, there was only one other woman that was running an ad agency. And that was new.

And now, Escaping the Drift, the show designed to get you from where you are to where you want to be. I'm Jon Gafford, and I have a knack for getting extraordinary achievers to drop their secrets to help you on a path to greatness. So stop drifting along, escape the drift, and it's time to start right now. Back again, back again for another episode of the podcast, like it says in the opening, man, that gets you from where you are to where you want to be. And today, kids...

We got a banger. And I know I say that all the time, but I'm just, the guests we're getting are just phenomenal. And this lady that's coming in here today, we're going to talk in detail about something that I think is in short order everywhere, which is self-reliance, how to be more reliant on yourself. And this lady, just to give you a little bit of her background, she's the CEO and founder of Digital and Savvy, a global communications firm. And she's been

She was honored as one of the most influential women in Dubai. She's named as one of the most impactful Egyptians. She is a Forbes Power Woman of the Middle East. She's the host of her own podcast, the Savvy Top Podcast, and more to the point, author of this awesome book, Seven Rules of Self-Reliance. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the program. This is...

It's Maha Abulalim. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Did I do it right that time? You did. You did. Okay, I did do it right. Okay, good. I'm always so worried about that. Good job, John. I love it. I'm so worried about that. I'm so glad you're here. I'm so happy to be here, honestly. I'm so glad. So-

You know, first of all, obviously you're a very successful person. So I like to start out with kind of the backstory, you know, what made you, you tell me about how you grew up where you, I know you grew up in Minnesota, but tell me about what that was like. I am a hundred percent Egyptian. I'm born and raised in Minnesota. I lived in a very small town called Mankato, grew up there, lived there my whole life.

And when I was 27 years old, you know, my parents, my mother had MS and my parents had been living in the U S their whole lives. And I only knew America. I was born here, raised here, high school, grad school, worked at general mills. Like I lived in the U S they said, we're going to move to Egypt. We're going to move back to Egypt. We overstayed our stay and it's time to go back. My mom was very sick. How old were you? I was 27.

My mom suffered from multiple sclerosis. So I moved back for personal reasons. I'm moving to Egypt. I don't know the language. I don't really have any friends because I'm 27. So it's a professional time. Like, you know, I don't have high school friends, college friends, any classmates, no mates whatsoever. And I'm moving essentially to a foreign country. It's like you moving to the...

Middle East and just plopping down to start a new life. And that's a real foreign country because it's a whole other language. Yeah, I don't speak Arabic. I don't know anything. There are cultural differences in how men and women get treated in that country. Everything, everything. It is very different. And I got to find a job because I worked at General Mills in the U.S. in Minneapolis. Like I worked for the biggest brands in the world, the Wheaties, the Betty Crocker's, the Pop Secrets.

I worked on the Super Bowl. I worked on cool projects and cool brands. And I find myself in Egypt, like I got to find a job. So I was going to go look at Pepsi, a P&G, a Coca-Cola, an American company there. Couldn't find a job. So I ended up getting offered to be an office manager for a billionaire.

And I thought, I'm too overqualified to be a secretary. Like I, is that the kind of jobs that women get in the Middle East? Like this doesn't seem right. And I couldn't find a job. So my dad's like, you just moved here. You don't have any friends. You don't have a network. This guy's a very powerful person. If I were you, I'd put your head down and take the job.

prove to him that you can do more, but put your head down and listen first and deliver value and deliver what he wants. And then you can ask for what you want. I did just that for four months, five months, just listening, learning, trying to add nuggets, trying to add value, trying to show him and demonstrate I can do more. How quickly did you pick the language up?

Total immersion goes a little faster. Yeah, really. It took me like a couple of years, to be honest with you, to be like, to speak without people saying you have an accent. Got it. So like now I can speak it really well and I'm fluent now, but it was hard. It was very hard. But that kind of experience just threw me in the deep end of the pool. Got to figure it out. Got to rely on myself. Got to figure out how to get a job, how to prove to this very powerful person I can do more. I ended up working.

working with him on the largest IPO in the history of Egypt, the largest acquisition in the history of Egypt. And we became business partners on a project and it took off from there. You saw your value pretty quickly. Well, I had to deliver it first and do it consistently. You can't just do it once. You know, you think about that and, you know, I've spent some time in Cairo, so I'm very familiar kind of with that culture. And it's like, you talk about trying to come up in a man's world.

Right. And you hear people bitch about inequality of work conditions and when equality pay in the United States, it's a whole nother level. Yeah. I mean, right today, it's so much, it's so much different and better in the Middle East. Women are entrepreneurs. Yeah. Women are leading on every sector in the world. But at the time,

This is, keep in mind, 1997. Yeah. There wasn't any female CEOs of companies. There weren't any CEO entrepreneurs or female founders of companies. So it was very early days in that whole trajectory. So I was always trying to... I was up against the current. Like, how do I try to push? Like, I can do more. I can be more. I can contribute more. And...

Eventually, I ended up being the CEO of my own company in the Middle East. In Egypt, I opened a PR firm and he was the business partner with me on it. And at the time, there was only one other woman that was running an ad agency. And that was new. And I wanted to have a seat at the table and explain what we can contribute. It's completely changed now. Now it's very progressive. Lots of CEO founders, lots of female, female entrepreneurs. So the market has changed in the last 30 years, obviously. But-

At the time, it was all new. So question though, because of course, we're going to get to the book shortly about rules of self-reliance. So that's one of those moments, man, when you look at this. And a lot of people would have folded right there. A lot of people would have been like, maybe I don't push this. Maybe I don't drive. So the two questions, I'm going to ask you two-parter. Do you think that that drive is innate in you or is that a skill that you learned? And if you did learn it, where did you learn it?

Honestly, I feel like I have always been a confident person, right? You have to have confidence in yourself. I always used to ask myself, if not me, who? Like, who's better than me? Like, what do they have that I don't? To kind of push and motivate myself to go deeper and to dig deeper. So it's not something I think I was taught. I feel like I kind of had that inner thing in me, this fire in my belly. Like, I want to be better and I want to push myself because I don't want other people to pass me. But I think...

Honestly, especially when it comes to something like self-reliance, it's not something we're born with, but it's certainly something everybody can master. Right.

This situation with your parents, you said they had lived in the United States on a visa for their whole time. What did they do? They weren't here on a visa. My parents didn't immigrate. They came here. No, my dad was basically a professor. My dad was a professor at university, worked up to be the Dean of the business school in Minnesota, Minnesota state university. My mom was working and then she got sick and she stopped working. But, um,

My dad was an educator. My whole family is uncles, aunts are all educators, professors, teachers. And I feel like that's where I kind of got also that bug for being a lifelong learner and like being curious about things and educating myself and trying to give myself the best cards, like invest in myself, learn things, try to be smarter and work harder by putting that effort into other people, into yourself. Yeah.

Did you, did you always know you wanted to kind of be like you said, you weren't ads like that's what you wanted to do. I, I, I actually, I wanted to be a television reporter. I wanted to report live from the pyramids for CBS news. I had a very specific vision. Like I used to practice my standup reporting live from the C from the pyramids in Cairo. Like I wanted to be a television anchor my whole life. I wanted to work

news. That was my ambition as a little girl. That's what I wanted to do. So it was college communications. At college, I did mass communications and I'm doing that now, but just the other side, like I'm the storyteller pitching to the media versus being telling the stories. But I feel like the process of communications is something that everyone needs to be good at. It's never going to go out of style, understanding how to tell your stories, connect with the audience,

get customers, serve your clients. All of those are skills that are just something that we're all going to need to know how to master. And AI is not going to change that. No, it's not. I love the people that say, because I mean, obviously you put your heart and soul into this, right? I have a book coming out very soon too. I put my heart and soul into. And I'm thinking to myself-

I love these people. Like we had a client, right? One of my agents walks in with this pamphlet. I'm going to call it a pamphlet. You slit loosely. And it says how AI impacts is impacting real estate. Right. And the guy in the guy that sent it to us is one of our new clients. And he goes, oh, I wrote this book for realtors and I wrote it with AI. And you're reading it and it's it's stereo instructions like there's no context whatsoever.

of storytelling and you're right. You know, good communications is so much about being able to gauge people with a story that makes sense. And if you can't tell a story, you're never going to be able to communicate anything else. Yeah. And just being able to articulate your ideas. Like what's the easiest way, the simplest way to tell this story. If you're trying to sell something, if you're trying to acquire a customer, if you're trying to acquire talent to hire them to work for your company or team, how do you tell it in the simplest form?

to get them to come in and to be who you authentically are. You know, my favorite piece of advice is for communications I give people. What is that? I'm like, if you're telling somebody a story or you're telling them anything and they start responding with this one word response, that's crazy.

They're bored. Just stop. They're done. They're out of it. They've turned you off. If anybody ever says to what you're saying, that's crazy, they're bored and stop. And now that you've heard that, if you've heard that. I'm going to listen to that now. If people are going to say that, they're going to be like, oh my God, I'm boring this person to death. Because if you think about it, we've all said that to somebody when we're bored to death. Okay, now I'm going to have to think about it. I'm going to see it now. I can't unhear that now. You can't unhear it. No, you can't. And you'll be like, oh my God, that just happened. So,

let's talk about telling stories first. Cause I think that's such a great cornerstone talk to all of this stuff and helps this. What are the keys to telling a great story?

One is, first of all, know your audience. Like, who are you trying to talk to? Like, really honing your message to the audience that you want to speak to. So, are we speaking to real estate agents? Are we speaking to other entrepreneurs that are in the finance industry? Like, know who your audience is and what is the most effective way that you can speak to them that's relevant.

So first of all is know your audience. Second, try to be relevant based on the context so that don't do one to many or same message to everybody. Cause that's not how it works. You don't speak to your mother the same way you speak to your wife, the same way you speak to your childhood friend, the way you speak to your, like you don't do that. So tailoring your message to the different people that you speak to is really, really essential. So,

- Do you think, like I love the context of when people say, you know, like when I do a talk, when I speak up from stage, there's a framework that I try to use and I stay within that framework. And I used to think it was so funny when I would go on stage, I would tell like the most interesting, cool story that I've done. Like for example, I was just telling you about the Egypt story where we went and got to go to Saqqara, right?

that's something that I would think is so cool. You would, you would lead with that from stage. And then I had a speaking coach. It was like, no, that's the worst thing you can do because you've got to tell a story that's relatable to who's in the audience that puts them in the same situation. Like that same thing has happened or is happening right now to me. And that's what makes them listen. Cause when you start out with the, you know, I'm the second guy to walk on the moon. That's really cool. But,

Oh, is that relevant to the audience? What's it got to do with me? Yeah. Like you want to put yourself in the customer's shoes. Yeah. Always. Like one time I got asked to write a speech for somebody and I'm like, what am I going to say? What am I going to say? What am I going to say? But then I thought, let me just visualize being in the audience. What would I want to hear? Yeah.

And that aha moment of understanding, what would you want to hear if you were the audience? If you were sitting in the audience, what would resonate the most? So being in their shoes is key. Yeah, that's a really, well, that's having a little high level of EQ. Yeah, EQ, understanding, like I have to make sure I'm not missing the mark. I'm not being tone deaf. I'm not speaking out something that they don't really care about that doesn't really resonate with them. So finding that is key. It's interesting you brought up tone deaf because I think

That's a problem a lot of people have. I think in the, I'll call it the social media look at me society that we live in now, I think a lot of people are tone deaf in the messaging that they put out and what they post. Yes, being tone deaf means you're putting stuff out regardless of the climate of the circumstances you're in. So if there's something somber happening in the news, you shouldn't be out posting something or sharing something that's off the mark. So be a little bit thoughtful.

thoughtful about how you post, what you share, when you share it, what's the tone, what's the style so that people don't think, oh, she doesn't get it or he doesn't understand. There's other things happening around us in the world. Lead with empathy, show empathy. If you are, you made a mistake, you

you know, get out there and apologize. Like try to find the right tone. So that doesn't look like, Oh gosh, they don't get it. Do they? I always tell the same story to explain to people what being tone deaf is like, what is it? So I'm like many, many, many years ago when I was in the nightclub business, many years ago, uh, we had a nightclub in Atlanta, cobalt lounge that I was, I was operating it. And, uh,

We had a problem during Super Bowl where a very famous NFL player came in and wound up in a murder trial in Atlanta because of our – but our bar got tied up in it. So it killed the business. Killed the business. So the weekend of Super Bowl, we did a huge, just ridiculous amount of sales. Yeah.

And then this happened and the place just fell completely off the planet. I mean, it was terrible. And so in between that time, the partners all got their bonuses and a guy, I won't name him, probably let that out if I kind of said his name to Arnie a bit because I don't want to out anybody. One of the partners took some of his money he got as his bonus from that and went and bought custom suits.

And I walk out one night and he's standing there talking to two bartenders that probably aren't going to be paid their rent this month because the place has just gone into the oblivion. And he should, he's explaining them the break on his pants on his new suit. Look out breaks on my shoe. That's what makes this suit so special. And I'm like, I'm like, dude, these guys can't pay their rent. You're talking about a $2,000 suit. You just bought, what are you doing? That's tone deaf. That's tone deaf. That is as tone deaf as he gets. And I always tell that story. Um,

When trying to connect with an audience, what do you think is the best or give me some keys to connecting with an audience? It can be an audience of one or it can be an audience of many. What are the best ways to connect? One thing I like to do is ask open-ended questions. Like ask people what they think or ask people what they want to hear. So a lot of people struggle with what they should post and how they should communicate with their audience. They don't know where to start.

So it's actually kind of simple. Ask them, what would you like to see from me? What are you curious about? And give them options so that you know what your audience wants. Social media is a perfect, perfect, perfect way to get research and get insights.

And a lot of people overlook asking that simple question to find out like, what should I be posting about? Like, would you like to see behind the scenes on this? Or do you want to hear more about industry stuff or market stuff? So I feel that's one way you can connect with your audience by asking them what they think. Ask for their opinion.

Bring them into the conversation. Do you want to see more of this? Yeah, bring them into the decision making. I think that is like a really, really important step. I think another thing too is try to diversify what you're sharing with your audience so they see more about who you are and what you do. So personal brand doesn't mean personal life. I'm not saying share your personal life. I'm just saying show them the elements of your personal brand. Your personal brand is made up of your skills, your experience, and your personality.

So when you're coming to share things with your audience, make sure you're showing them those three things consistently. Well, it's interesting because you did a lot of work with Gary Vee, didn't you? Yes, I still do. You still do. So you work with Gary Vee. And it's funny when you look at Gary Vee and I've seen this and it's hilarious because you're talking about that. It's like, what do you really know about Gary Vee?

And most people that follow him religiously couldn't name. I mean, I like to go to garage sales. Yep. I like jets. I like sports cards. I like sports cards. And my dad owned a wine place. Yep.

Outside of that, there's not a lot. You don't get a lot. You just don't because that's what he's honed in on. Yeah. And he talks a lot about his business and digital marketing and social media and being relevant. But I'm talking about him as a human being. That's the four things you get. That's the personal you get. Yeah. But you choose what you want to share. Like you choose the personal parts that you want to share, your hobbies or your interests. You choose that.

yeah this is a man who films himself all day every day every day so my question is with that is like the four or five things is that enough should you just should you let it just roll and just figure it out or should you just decide what you should do because that's that's who you are the key to building an effective personal brand is to be consistent with who you are in real life you're not going to be faking it till you make it so that's who he is sports cards wine

Wine library, garage sales. That's his real life. And so you want that to mirror what you're actually like, not something that you do for social versus what you do in real life. You know, one of the things I can't stand about social media is it just tends to spin off clones. Like somebody will see something that's working. And then just repeat it. I think we're starting to, it's fizzling now, but in my kind of world,

My wife calls them the entrepreneur bros is what she calls them. She's like, we're starting to see less and less of the entrepreneur bro. You know, the super alpha male. If you don't have abs, you can't be successful. And just, I mean, I think that is losing popularity. Hopefully everyone's cut out to be an entrepreneur. I get it, but I get it. But it just seems to me that hopefully some of that is waning away. All right.

You just said you spoke at Inman today. I didn't know that. Yeah, I spoke this morning at Inman. I did a keynote. Can I ask what you talked about? Yeah, I did an opening keynote. I talked about the seven rules, but I really focused on building your personal brand and networking and talking about creating value for other people. I feel like if you can create value for somebody else,

That's how you can win when it comes to your business and your personal life. Like listen to what they care about. Find out where you can deliver first before they ask. Anticipate needs. Figure out what's the thing that I will like when I'm meeting you and talking to you. What's the thing that you care about the most? And then how can I deliver that?

Be a value creator. So creating value for other people is something that I think a lot of people can invest in and understanding how to do that over the long term to get where they want to go. Yeah, I always say the best way to become a commodity within any circle

has become known as the guy that can connect the dots. Yeah. And be indispensable to others because you're that super connector. Like if you're looking to introduce A to B and you want something out of that, it's not really authentic or your intentions aren't good because you're like, you're doing it because you're trying to do a transaction and get something out of it. What I'm saying is do that with good intention, because if you deliver for A and you deliver for B. Expect nothing back. And expect nothing back. You're going to get it back 10th. I think that

See, I'm going to disagree a little bit there. Just a little bit. You have to be calculated about it. I'm not saying to do it to everybody and for everybody all the time, but I'm like, you have to know when to play the long game. You've got to know when to do it. I agree. And this is what I found out. Like, this is what I realized. If...

If I got piece A and I got piece C, and if I can put A and C together, a lot of money happens. Yep. I am very clear with whoever needs the other one more in that scenario that if I make this happen, I'm going to get X. Yep. Because too many times, you know,

When I say connect people, it's not always about money. Yes. Sometimes most, most of the time it's not a hundred. It's about like, like for example, you know, this morning I'm thinking to myself, I'm trying to do something nice for my daughter and her little cheer in her cheerleading squad. Cause you know, it's a freshman cheerleaders. We're trying to do something nice. So I'm like, who do I know at the Raiders that I can make a call? I know that person. I can probably put this together and I can probably get them that where they have a practice inside Allegiant stadium, which would be really cool.

for like a 15 year old girl. Amazing. But instead of thinking, who can I call to get that done? I'm thinking, okay, what can I do for that person I need to call? Yes, yes. And I always do that. I always think first about what am I going to, like, I don't go in for an ask. Like, for example, even for my book, like if I want someone to give me an endorsement or to be an appearance or something, read the book.

But if you love it, only if you love it that I want you to do, I don't want to always go in with an ask. I always try to what I call make deposits in the trust bank. Oh, I love that.

I love that. Make deposits in the trust bank. Speak in my language. Do good things. Do good deeds. Show up consistently. Don't always be asking. Always for help. Do something for them to show like, you know what? I really want to be worthy of your relationship. I want to make sure that you see I have good intentions and I want to support you. I'm not always asking. And sometimes you might never want to make a withdrawal. Mm-hmm.

You just want to keep deposits because they down the line might know somebody who knows somebody that you want to meet. Then you can make that ask. Dude, every like young guy that works here that gets married, like every young guy that's under like 30 that gets married. I'm like, okay, buddy, let me tell you about, I need to explain this to you.

Your marriage is a bank account. You need to be making more deposits than withdraws. And do not even dream of making a withdrawal unless you make a bunch of deposits. You have to. And you have to look at that way. And that's good business. It is. That's good business. Imagine if I have deposits with multiple people that I may or may not need to withdraw.

then that's good for my reputation. That's good for my business. That's good for me to get referrals or me to say, if somebody asks about me when I'm not in the room, they're like, do you know her? What is she like? Like she's always delivering. She's always trying to be helpful. My number one motto is how can I help? Like with my team, I do that all the time with my customers, with my clients, with my suppliers, my vendors, because I don't know what they need. So first of all, ask,

So I have intelligence. And then B, if I think of something a week, a month, a year later that I remembered they told me, I'll make sure to make it happen. I'll tell you a story. This woman told me a year ago in Canlion, she's like, I've always wanted to go to this event called Brilliant Minds. And it's in Sweden. It's a private event. They have this event by the foundation of the owner of Spotify. They do this private event.

And so she told me that like a year ago that she really wanted to go to that event. And then she happens to work with Halle Berry and Jack Harlow and a bunch of big names. And so I sold, I, you know, I was talking to people from building minds. They're like, we'd really like to get, um,

somebody to help like speakers do you recommend anyone I remember they wanted to go they really wanted to go so I don't work for Brilliant Minds I don't they don't pay me I'm not a speaker booker or anything like that but I knew that they cared about having someone of Hallie's stature and I remember that they had said that they would love to go to that event so I connected A to B I don't work

work with Hallie. She's not my client. I don't work with, but I was just connecting. I was a super connector for something that I knew would be valuable to them and valuable to this group. And, and they came and they went to the event and they spoke and it was great and all was well. And I, I didn't ask for anything from brilliant minds or from Hallie Berry, but I'm like, now I put deposits in two banks that if I ever need something, I can ask because I delivered first. Well, it's, it's like,

With a bank account, you deposit a bunch of money and the further you are or the bigger your credit lines are, the better your credit is. This is like building reputational credit. Yeah. You're right. This is how you want your reputational procedure. This is how you do it. Yeah. And the other thing too, I think a lot of times too, when you, especially in business thinking about, I've talked a lot about, and I talked about this this morning at Inman about treating your reputation like a currency. What's its worth? What's its value? How do you grow it? How do you protect it?

Your name is the only thing you have, John. The only thing you have is your name. And your business depends on it. Your livelihood with your relationships, even with your friends, depends on having a good relationship and a good reputation. So I feel like you need to really invest in your reputation. And reputation for me equals personal brand. They're the same word. So wouldn't you want to make sure you're building it, you're protecting it, you're investing it? I think it's essential. And a lot of people don't spend enough time thinking about, I have to

control how I show up in the world. What is it? Your mission statement is what you say about what you do and your brand is what other people say that you do when you're not there. When you're not in the room. Yeah. And Jeff Bezos is what people say when you're not in the room. Man. Cause I mean, obviously it was so cool that I'm going to add you there because of real estate and all the changes that we have. Yes. It's probably a lot of scared faces in that crowd. Yeah. I think they, I think they're all, um, first of all, it was wonderful. I really enjoyed it. Cause this is a sector that I'm really trying to really support more. Like,

when it comes to building your personal brand, like how do they do storytelling? Should you have a YouTube channel? Should you have your own LinkedIn newsletter? Should you do behind the scenes on your, what you're doing? Should you talk about industry trends? There's so much to do in real estate when it comes to building your personal brand. And then it's all about networking. How do you master that DM on LinkedIn and Instagram? How do you build your network? How do I get into your network, John?

You're doing it right now. It's why we're here. I know, but I'm just saying that's critical. Those are things that they had on their mind. How do you create value for your customers? How do you go to the nth degree to make sure you're not just there to close a sale like you told me about your services here? You do the whole move from where to get my pet groom to kids' school to all the things. All of it.

Yeah. It does. That's a, that's a cool event. There was a, it was an unfortunate circumstance that happened with me and several years ago. I don't know the story. I was on the main stage. And I may have said, this is when Zillow was getting into the iBuyer business and they were basically cutting us out as an industry. And they were buying homes directly from consumers through their website at a much discounted rate. And they were, you know,

When you become the go-to of telling people what their house is worth and then you're making them a direct offer where you can manipulate the data however you want, maybe that's not the best idea. Yeah, that might not be a message they were ready to hear. No, so I may have, from the main stage at Inman when they were the title sponsor of the event, I may have said they were perpetuating the greatest theft of wealth in American history ever.

by stealing equity, by equity stripping from people. That's very bold of you. It was the truth. I got a standing ovation, but I don't know. I mean, now that's when Brad owns it, so somebody else owns it. So maybe I'll be invited back. Maybe you'll be invited back. It's been a minute. I need, you know, I need to just start writing. Again, I literally have it on my to-do list. If you look at my to-do list, I have it written in here. I want to see. Where I say, start submitting articles to Edmund. Because I thought, nah, I probably need to mend that. Instead of calling them and saying that, I need to just start sending them good value articles. Yep.

right now and i have that on my to-do list i think that's important i do it's funny yeah because i was like book coming out might need to get back on that stage at some point i might need to go i want to talk to you about your book on my podcast yeah no for sure for sure for sure i just i'm obviously you're ahead of me i just went through this phase i don't know who who you're working with hey house publish my okay cool so did you do did you do focus group on this

No. You didn't get that? Okay. Yeah, I had 40 random people read mine and then the notes came back and now it's like, I don't know if I like it or not. Like, I mean, the feedback was overwhelmingly good. And the publisher said, man, this is great. This is like an eight out of 10, which is really, really good. That's great. You know, but all of a sudden you're like,

I hadn't planned on changing anything. I know, but I had my name in my book was a different name. So you have to be willing to let go of a few things to like change things up. But yeah, I wrote it. And then I got a lot of feedback once I finished. They hit it back to me and they're like, well, are we, do we need to change these things? And they're like, well, it's up to you. And I'm like, well, I've never done this. I don't just, I don't know what to do. Go with what you feels right. That's usually follow your gut. I've been frozen over this for three weeks.

Okay. Well, I'm going to help you and tell you that you need to just go with what you want. Okay. Go with what I want to do. Cause it's a book lasts forever. I know it does. It's a, you know, it's so funny. Um, yeah, it does. And I worked and I've been working on this for two years, man. I don't know how people rip these things out in like six months.

I don't know how to do it. It took me like 10 years to think about it. One year to write the book proposal and think about how I want to do it. And about two months to write it. Yeah. Really? That fast? Yeah. I was just like, I got to do this. I want it. It was in me. So I was like, okay, it was just coming out. Yeah. Mine is such a user's manual to my 25 year old self. Good. It's really what it is. And it goes back through stories of my life of doing dumb shit. So hopefully people won't repeat those mistakes and things that I should have done then and what I would do now and just...

I love reading books like that. Yeah. It just, there's, I just feel like there's this whole generation out there of folks. And you hear it when you talk to people that it may like to label themselves with a label, for example, like, Oh, the millennial, the millennial in me X, like,

Like, oh God, it just killed. Like, why would you put a label on yourself or anything to try to overcompensate for some deficiency that you believe that you inherited because of the year you were born is nonsense to me. Right. And there's so many people that are just kind of drifting along. Right. That's escaping the drift. That's the whole purpose of this podcast. People are just drifting along through life. And this is about taking control and doing that. So it's a nice, that's what we call in the biz a segue. Nice segue. Because now we're going to talk about

Something I think really is in short order, man. It's like one of my favorite quotes, and I say it all the time, is the movie Die Hard, which, yes, it's a Christmas movie. Thank you very much. It's a Christmas movie. When he's in the shaft and the guy's like, why don't you come out? No one is coming to help you.

That is the best piece of advice you can take in life, period. For example, I'll give you another example. Right now, right behind us in this room behind us, if you've heard loud noises come in this room, have you heard loud noises? I heard a bang and I thought, oh, the screens are going to fall. Okay, yeah, yeah. Let me tell you what the bang is. It's behind us. So that is my 16-year-old son in the kitchen.

next door, right? My kids own the vending machines in all of our businesses and have since they were little. That's their company. It's what they do. And he comes in my office earlier today and he's like, has a sign that says out of order. And I go, what are you doing? He goes, well, I got to put the sign on the machine. I go, why? He goes, the soda machine's not working right. And he goes, I don't want people to bother me. I go, okay, cool. What are you going to do? I don't know. What do you mean you don't know? It's your business. You're out of business. You're saying I'm out of business. What are you going to do? I guess call a repairman.

You're going to spend $200 on that. And he's like, $200. I go, yeah. Yeah. I don't have $200. And he's like, uh, and I said, okay, dude, if you're playing level 12 on a video game, what are you doing? What do you do when you get stuck? Well, look it up on YouTube.

Get in there and YouTube it, buddy. So that's him. Figure it out. Rely on yourself. It's him figuring out his drink machine, which is the loud thuds from the other room. And that's why when I saw this, I was like, yes. You know, because I get, we get pitches all day, every day, right? And when I saw this, I was like, hell yes. I want my on the show. This is great because this is,

This is the gospel, man. This is what everybody needs to be doing right now is understanding how to become more self-reliant. Take care of yourself. Yes. And you know what? We often wait for permission from others or we expect other people to save us or help us when in fact we have the answers. We just don't tap into them to pull them out. Honestly, it's about being resourceful. It's about being accountable to yourself. It's giving your permission to trust yourself to do the right thing.

You know what's best for you. Why do you listen to other people to do what's best for you? It drives me nuts. Like, obviously, take information from people, get help from other people. Self-reliance is not about being independent.

but it's about pursuing what you know what's best for you and what are the tools I need to rely on myself before I plug other people in. So how do I create value for other people is one of the rules. How to be a long-term player. Well, let's slow down. So let's start with rule number one, how to create value for other people. Yes. Give me some, I mean, obviously, it's kind of what we've been talking about for the last 30 minutes, but what specifically can you do? What's your technique? Anticipate needs.

ask questions, be a really good listener, deliver first, find out what somebody cares about. So learn about them, intently understand what is their problem or what's their business opportunity or what is it that they care about and then deliver value to them. And you should really be thinking about in every relationship that matters to you, that could be an unlock for you or your business. How do I create value for them first?

You take the first step. Don't wait for them to ask you to do something, which leads to the second one, which is don't be a waiter, be a creator. So often,

Uh, we're waiting for Mr. Right, waiting for the job manager to give us a promotion, waiting for the manager to give us the project that's going to make us a rock star to get that promotion, waiting for an opportunity to come along. That's going to change our life. There is no magic opportunity that's going to fall from the sky or drifting along with the current or drifting along with the current. You got to go create it yourself.

So what is it that you actually want to do? And then what are the steps you need to get there to actually do that? Instead of waiting for it to walk into your life, go out and get it. You know, you hear about matching and modeling, finding other models that you can model to get where you want to be. And I was literally in the shower this morning and I was thinking about, you know, it's for me, one of the biggest questions that you ask out there is this concept of,

the quality of opportunity versus a quality of outcome and i'm not going to get political because i'm not going to get political but one of the candidates for president i heard come out of this particular person's mouth they made the comment of we need to make sure we all end up in the same place i do not believe that yes i believe that's not what makes us great no i believe everybody should have the opportunity to get where they want to get so i'm constantly pounding like like into my kids heads that you know you're gonna have every opportunity which do with it is up to you

And the idea here becomes, I was thinking this morning in the shower, literally like I was thinking, and again with YouTube and him, there is nothing you kind of can't learn outside of like brain surgery and some great stuff. And it's free. Out of YouTube. It's the greatest, like you think about the Library of Alexandria, right? In Egypt. Nothing compared to the wealth of knowledge that is currently contained on YouTube. That's actually one of my rules in my book is to be investing in yourself by learning. Right.

YouTube is for free. Podcasts are for free. Everything on the internet is for free. Why wouldn't you learn? Why wouldn't you take advantage of what's out there and be the best? Whether it's you want to learn how much more protein you should eat or how to fix a bike or a vending machine or to get finance skills or how to use Photoshop.

It's out there for free people. Why aren't we taking advantage of it? You have the same opportunities of everybody else. You no longer have to wait until you get into that school or to get accepted by that university. Everybody has an equal playing field. Yes. Everybody.

So are you going to step up and take advantage to grab that? Or are you just going to wait for someone to anoint you with that learning that you're supposed to have? Yeah. I was thinking this morning, how many millionaires got made on the GameStop or on the AMC run the, excuse my French, but the shit coin run through, through crypto. And, and,

These are people that learned this on YouTube. They were not, these are not Morton Grants. Nobody woke up knowing how to do anything. These are not hedge fund guys, right? These are just, these are just, I mean, there's a group here in Vegas that I love and it's a bunch of young guys. I affectionately call them the crypto mafia. And the reason I call them crypto mafia is because they are super smart. They are deep in the discord. They know everything.

Every trend that is happening now. They, I mean, they're on the pulse of it. They are absolutely the ambassadors of now and they know everything that's going on in that world. And I don't know that any of them has a college degree. You don't need one. I've never even asked. I never even thought to ask. You don't need one. You know what you need to be? You need to be curious. Yeah. You need to be curious about the world around you. You need to be curious about the things that you don't know. So you have to have a high level of self-awareness. These are the things I know. These are all the things I don't know. How are you going to learn? How

Podcasts, books, YouTube, people. People overlook learning from people. Like how much time we can spend together can I learn from you? Enormous amount, right? So try to spend time with people that you think you can learn from. I feel like it's one of the most underrated tools that we all have access to that people don't use. But I think the biggest challenge with that is learning.

It is much like health in America. Why isn't everybody fit? Why are there? Why do we have an obesity crisis in this country? Because you are constantly surrounded by food and constantly served up things that are trying to kill you. And it's easy, fast, tastes good and blah, blah, blah, whatever. It's the same thing with what people consume with their head.

Way too more people are watching the Kardashians instead of watching Warren Buffett. Way too many people are just consuming the wrong stuff. They are literally not watching their diet with what they consume with their head. Yes. And they need to. And I think that if you are not learning enough, you're not going to be able to do it.

That's your challenge because you are making yourself the equivalent of head fat, I guess. Yeah. And what you want to expose yourself to try to expose your people who are people who are going to be inspire you, motivate you, educate you, support you, give you that learning. But I feel like it's being self-reliant, you, you know, like, okay, I have a mindset that I know I have to like invest in myself and I have to learn things because I don't want to not succeed because I don't know things. Yeah. No, no, I get it, dude. I catch myself every day. I caught myself this morning.

sitting outside this morning and I was reading the news and then I found, wound up on some TikToker goes to the Gaza strip to find out if they, I'm like, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, stop. Why am I watching this? Like it just went from here to there. And all of a sudden I'm watching cat videos. I don't know. It's just, it's really easy to do. So you've got to be, you got to be very cognizant. And I also love the fact that you talk about how important it is to educate yourself. Cause I generally feel when you stop learning,

Like, I think, I think that's what makes you old. Yeah. Yeah. When I'm not learning, I'm not growing. If I'm not growing, I'm, I feel like I'm dying. Like right now we are living longer. We're healthier. We're our, our money, our relationship with money has changed. Our relationship with time has changed. So like my sister is been working at the same company for 35 years and

same job, same industry. And there's a whole wealth of things that she has to learn that are gonna be coming up in the market that she's curious about, she wants to learn. You can be in one career for your whole life and still be curious about other things. - Well, you have to keep learning. - You have to keep up. And there's things, you don't need to do everything. Think about podcasts, you can do it in the car,

at the gym, at the airport, like wherever you are, learning is everywhere. And be intentional about like trying to pick something new up every week. Well, again, like if you look at our industry, real estate, you have the older guard. Oh, I don't understand technology. No, you choose not to learn it. You're making a choice. And one of my good friends, Kent Clothier, who I love, I don't know if you know Kent or not, Kent, who I love. Kent always says, stop, replace, if you want to change your life,

replace the word can't with choose not to. Oh, choose not to. I choose not to. Instead of I can't lose weight, it's I choose not to lose weight. Oh, wow. That's a different reframing. I can't understand this computer. No, I choose not to understand this computer. I thought you were going to say that I have to work out. Like I get to work out.

Oh, I know that we always do that. Yeah. It's really important. We always do that. Yeah. I get, we get to it. Everything. My agents believe me every day. They get to call the damn leads. They don't, they don't have to call. They get to, because there's a lot of people that would love to be in that chair and have the opportunity to call my stuff. Like much I could tell you what's the next rule. The next rule. Well, one was I skipped the first one, stay low, keep moving. So I, you know, it's kind of building off what we just talked about.

Stay low, keep moving is a military term where they want you to be like crouching on your stomach, just stay low so that you don't get hit by any arsenal. But I took it for a metaphor for life. Like stay low, stop, you know, don't be distracted by everything around me.

Put in the hard work, put in the effort. There is no overnight success. You know that, right? You got to put in the reps. You got to put in the, you got to put in the effort. You have to put in the effort. Stay low. That's the advice my dad gave me. Stay low. Put your head down, put your head down and let the work speak for itself. You don't need to say, look at me. I know things.

If you deliver good work, you stay low, you work hard, you put in effort, that's what matters. Keep moving because despite obstacles, I have them, you have them, everybody has setbacks, obstacles, problems in their lives. Everybody does. Nobody's immune to not having any issues in their lives. So just keep moving. Try to win the day and the next day and the next day. So that's one of the rules. Stay low and keep moving is the first rule because I feel like you really need to be focused on

There's a lot of distractions out there. So if you have goals and you want to achieve them, you have to learn how to like tune those out to keep going through what you want to get through. You know, I'm going to say something that's a little off topic, but I just want to point this out because I've noticed this since we've been sitting in here, which is this. This is a masterclass for how to be on a podcast. And I'm going to tell you why. I'm going to tell you why.

Anybody does a podcast, we're going to take this. Like you're going to listen. If you're listening to the whole thing, great. God bless you. It's fine. But to get you to listen to it, we have to cut this into little clips, right? And those little clips on average, the best ones we can make are 60 seconds long. And almost every single point she gets through, she gets through the whole point in less than 60 seconds, which is going to make this really easy to cut.

It's going to make it really good content going forward. So this is a masterclass. So just randomly, I want to point out how much I appreciate that as the person that's hosting this, because you're making great points concisely, which again, I think that's probably just part of your communications background. You're not droning on which I love. So thank you. That's great. Okay. I want to talk about one of the rules about being a long-term player. Yes.

So we live in a society where you just want to like instant gratification. Three seconds on that video. I got to see it. Tap to pay, get in and out, download the whole season. Everybody wants to work fast and everyone's impatient. I'd like people to think a little bit long-term.

Play the long game on things that matter to you. I can always tell people, if you want to know how I'm doing financially, you can just ask me how I feel about Uber Eats. The angrier I am about it, because I don't use it at all. To me, it's insane. It is insane that people would pay for that when they can get off their ass and go pick up their own food. Go pick up their own food. It's insane to me.

And it makes it like, I've tried to, like me and my wife will try to order Uber Eats maybe once a year and we'll get as far as like starting to ring. This is ridiculous how much I'm saying. Yeah, you can always tell how mad I am. That's how I'm doing financially. And I'm always mad, right? I'm always mad about it, but it just depends on how mad I get about it. So there you go. So how do you combat that? I mean, so I'm going to ask two part question with that. Number one, how do you combat that internally? Yep. And then how do you deliver that?

to clients that also have that expectation? - A couple different things. Like one way you can be a long-term player is like put people over profits, right? Put your team,

over any financial needs or put people over profit is something I always care about, like making sure you take care of them first. Think about things in terms of reputational risk versus financial reward. You're going to close a big deal. It's going to be a big financial windfall for your company. But the risk to your reputation for doing it might put you in a spot that you don't want to be in. So being a long-term player means you're thinking about those things. You have the mindset where I need to balance. Like if I do this short-term quick hit,

Client might come to me and say, Maha, we want you to do our PR. And it's a big crisis and it's a big check and it's something I really need financially. But working on it might risk my business in the future or with other people if I associate myself with that specific client that I don't do it. I have to think of the long term. It's so funny you say that. If you look at our core values out there on the wall.

Under integrity, it says, no one deal, no one agent is worth our reputation. - 100%. - And over the 14 years we've been doing this,

We have unfortunately had to let go of the number two. I mean, you're talking about 600 agents that work here. It's not a small shop. We've let the number two agent in the company go, probably the number four agent in the company go at the time, just because we didn't like what they were doing. Yeah. And it's your culture and your integrity that you need to keep intact. That's why I mean people over profit. Yes. Or think about that reputational risk versus financial reward. That stuff matters. Yeah, it absolutely does. And people come to work here because of that reputation, which I love. Yeah.

The other thing about being a long-term player is thinking about relationships, right? So we talked about this earlier about being a super connector and how do you network with people and how do you keep up with people? How do you keep up with all your relationships? One-to-many, one-to-one so that you can make sure that your network is not there. My network is not there to serve me. I think of it like I'm there to serve them. Is that a question you want me to answer? Yeah. Schedule it.

You schedule it. I have a spreadsheet with everybody I need to touch. And then the last time I touch them, not physically touch your weirdos. That's not what I mean. No, but that's so important because otherwise, how do you keep track of like people you care about? You want to make sure you're staying in touch. You're, you know, you're visible with them. You're helping them out. You're serving them. And you know what I find it, you know, so it's such a small percentage in the real estate business, such a small percentage of people use the same agent twice. It's because they have such a terrible job of staying with them.

They don't follow up with them. They don't touch them. They don't call them and ask them how it's going. They just don't bother to stay with them. And one of the things that I can tell you is everybody has this internal fear that if you haven't talked to somebody in some arbitrary amount of time, I don't care if it's a month, six months, a year, whatever, whatever that arbitrary number is you come up with in your head, like, I haven't talked to them in that long and they don't want to hear from me. They're always happy to hear from you. Always. Because all I'd say is I was thinking about you today.

And I just wanted to call and touch and see how it's going. I literally hit one of my clients that moved to Russia. And I was curious. I was at lunch with my wife the other day. I haven't talked to him in two years because he moved to Russia. There's a guy that I just, he's really out of mind. And then I was like, my wife goes, is Michael still in Russia? I said, I don't know. Let me find out. Hey, man, I was just, me and my wife were just talking about you. Are you still in Russia? Instantaneously got back to me on WhatsApp.

Yeah. Hey dude. So glad to blah, blah, blah. I mean, it was smart conversation. And they love that, that you thought of them. You messaged them. It's that personal connection. It's that intention. It's like, you're not calling because you want something. You're just checking in. Yeah. One of the things, my buddy, Steve Sims, I don't know if you know Steve or not. They call him the real life wizard of Oz, but he had a concierge business called blue fishing for a long time and his move, which I love. If you're talking about getting back in touch with people, I love this move.

It's a little dated now, so you'd have to get some sort of different version of this. But remember back the SkyMall magazines and the airplanes, right? They always had all the weird, they had like a bunch of normal stuff. And there was some, like the Bigfoot gnome animal for your front yard. They always had some weird stuff in there, right? He would, when he was getting off a plane, he would just grab like 20 of those old SkyMalls. He would ask the flight attendants, do you have old ones? They'd be like, yeah, you can take them all. Just take a stack of them.

And he would just take the most random stuff out of those magazines, rip the page out. And then just with a marker, right? Saw this and thought of you and then put it in the mail to his clients. And he goes, here's what would happen. This is what would happen. He goes, not only would I get a call. Of course. From the client like this, but like so many times they'd be at a dinner party at their house or whatever. And they would say, can I ask you guys something? I

I got this in the mail from this guy, Steve Sims, and he saw this and said, thought thinking of you, why would you think of me? And now they're talking about him with these other people. And I thought that was such a genius move. So credit Steve Sims for that. You can pick his book up.

efficient. There's great ways to do that on social media right now too. There's a whole process where you can just send nuggets to people about things that are interesting in the same way. I love that story. I love it. It's great. So, so moral story, stay connected to your people for the long game. It doesn't matter how long you talk to them. Just,

Reach out, however you do it. Reach out. It's so important. You need your own network. You can't wait for someone else to activate their network. That's what I mean about having all the cards in your hand, about being self-reliant. And those cards are skills, experiences, and relationships. Well, like they say, if you show me your network and I'll show you your net worth. 100%. It goes hand to hand. Yeah. So what's next? What else do we need to know to be self-resilient? Self-reliant. Self-reliant. Reliant.

Self-reliant. I think we've covered a lot of the rules, but I think the one thing that a lot of people ask me about the most is the part about building their personal brand to build their business. Love it. Let's talk about that. So if you think about your personal brand, like I said, it's not it's not about self-promotion. Personal branding is about idea promotion. It's about self. It's about thought leadership.

So not self-promotion, idea promotion. What are some of your ideas that you want to share with other people? How do you want to show up in the world? What do you want them to know about you? You should be putting that out. So if a lot of people think, well, I don't have time to make content on all the platforms. Nobody said you had to be in all the platforms. Your personal brand is not just what you do online. It's what you do offline. In fact, offline is more important.

How do you treat people? How do you treat your customers? How do you treat your team members? How do you treat your friends? How do you treat your family? Because a lot of people ask me, what do you do? What's your job? So like in social circles. So you need to know like how to represent yourself in a way that you want people to know

what you want them to know about you by putting it out there yourself. Love that. Yeah. What do they say? The true measure of a person is how they treat people that can do nothing for them. A hundred percent. I mean, those relationships matter. Like if you think about the way the world is working, where everything's on social media and everything is like,

we're not as social. We're not as in person. We're not as doing things as we used to. We rely on social media for our relationships. You got to go back to do things old school way. You got to really connect with people in person. No one's going to trust you if they don't have a relationship with you and they'll never build a relationship with you through social media. Eventually you got to get off social media and into real life and you need to be consistent on both. I am. That is the number one thing.

I'm, I'm overly concerned about developing in my kids is the ability to, to connect with a human being one-on-one face to face because the way that their generation is growing up is so weird. Yeah. They think friends are something you, you push a button, you unfriend somebody. That's a relationship is something you need to nurture and invest in and spend time with and ask how you can help them. But the connect, but the connection is so low. It's like, if they come over, it's like, Oh, you guys want to play video games? Yeah. Everybody goes home.

So they can get in their own little bubble, put on the headset, and that's it. And they're all just doing this all day. They'd rather text than talk, right? Always. So I tell my kids all the time, look, that is a skill that by the time you are 30 years old is going to be short-term.

short, and it's going to be hard to find, impossible to find, short order, hard to find. And if you have that skill, you will eat everybody else for lunch. There's no question. Because it doesn't matter what industry you're in. You have to connect with other people. You have to. And I feel like

Again, going back to the very first thing we talked about, having good communication skills, understanding how to talk to people, how to have that conversation, finding your narrative. What is it that you want to talk to people about that matters more than ever? Well, it's awesome. Well, the book is Seven Rules of Self-Reliance, How to Stay Low, Keep Moving, Invest in Yourself, Own Your Future. Where can they find it? Anywhere? When does it come out? It's available on Amazon right now. If you want to buy it on Amazon, it's available at Barnes & Noble, Target. All the booksellers sell it. All the booksellers. And how do they find it?

you? My website, mahaaboulinane.com. Okay. Or you can follow me on Instagram at maha gabber. Cool. Well, it was a pleasure to meet you. I'm glad you came through. This was awesome. I can't wait to read the book. Don't escape the drift. You guys.

No, you need to escape the drift. Don't escape the drift. Don't forget to be... Wait. Can we edit that? We'll do it again. No, no. We're authentic here. I messed up. We're authentic. We put it out there. It's what we do. Escape the drift. That's it. Rely on yourself. That's it. And that's what we're going to do. That's what we're going to do. All right, guys. Well, like she said, man, and like they said in Die Hard, nobody is coming to help you. So you might as well get busy on helping yourself. We'll see you next week. Bye. Bye. Bye.

What's up, everybody? Thanks for joining us for another episode of Escaping the Drift. Hope you got a bunch out of it, or at least as much as I did out of it. Anyway, if you want to learn more about the show, you can always go over to escapingthedrift.com. You can join our mailing list. But do me a favor, if you wouldn't mind, throw up that five-star review, give us a share, do something, man. We're here for you. Hopefully, you'll be here for us. But anyway, in the meantime, we will see you at the next episode.