234: Mental Resilience for Entrepreneurs: Lessons from Startup Highs and Lows
LISTEN AND SUBSCRIBE
Apple Podcasts | Google Play | Stitcher | Spotify
Welcome back to another episode of The Richer Geek. Today’s guest is Mohamed “Mo” Ahmed, a serial entrepreneur, product visionary, and author of Inside-Out Entrepreneurship. Mo has built and sold multiple companies in AI and cloud computing and now helps founders strengthen the mindset needed to survive and thrive. He shares hard-earned lessons from costly mistakes, near-failures, and unexpected wins, and why your mindset is your most valuable business asset.
In this episode, we chat about…
Mo’s shift from working at Microsoft and AWS to becoming an entrepreneur
Why most founders underestimate the mindset shift needed when leaving corporate life
The difference between mental robustness and mental resilience
Real stories of setbacks like a surprise $65,000 AWS bill and how mindset shaped the outcome
How separating your personal identity from your business identity helps you recover from failure
The role of daily discipline and having a “default calendar” to stay focused
Why financial conditioning matters before starting a company
How to turn setbacks into opportunities, sometimes even better ones than you planned
Key Takeaways:
Your business will only grow as much as your mindset grows.
Mental robustness means withstanding pressure without breaking; resilience means bouncing back when you bend.
Separate your identity from your company, you’re more than your business.
Discipline and structure keep you moving when motivation fades.
Prepare financially before launching a business to reduce stress during hard times.
Setbacks can be turned into better deals or opportunities if you respond quickly and with the right perspective.
Resources from Mo
LinkedIn | boundlessfounder.co | The Inside-Out Entrepreneur
Resources from Mike and Nichole
+ Read the transcript
Mike: Hey everybody, and welcome back to another episode of The Richer Geek Podcast. Today's guest is Mohamed "Mo" Ahmed. He's a serial entrepreneur, product visionary, and author of The Inside-Out Entrepreneur. We'll talk a little bit about that book. He has over 20 years of experience in AI and cloud computing. All of us know that most built and sold multiple successful companies. He now dedicates his expertise to empowering diverse founders. Through his entrepreneur conditioning framework, helping them raise millions and build resilience on their journeys. Get ready for insights on thriving in the startup world with one of the industry's most transformative mentors. Mo, how are you doing? Mo: Hey, Mike. Doing great. Thank you for having me with you here. Mike: Absolutely. I'd like to start our podcast with our listeners getting to know a little bit about who Mo is. What made you who you are and how did you get involved in what you're doing now? Mo: Yeah, absolutely. I'm an engineer by most of my experience and by education. And I worked in big tech companies like Microsoft, Amazon, or AWS and I thought that I learned enough about building companies or products or especially high tech products. Around eight years ago, or nine years ago when I decided to transition to become an entrepreneur, even though I studied a lot about entrepreneurship, prior to that, I dealt with business people. But when I made that switch, I did everything that the experts were telling me not to do. I made all the mistakes, even though I knew that those were mistakes. And I went through the typical lows and highs of\ building any new business. And I definitely got a lot of transformation that took place during that journey. I realized that there's a big piece in how you build a business that is missing in books and literature in general, which is the psychology of entrepreneurship. And how do you work on your mindset as an entrepreneur, so that you become much more successful than what you even would anticipate or think of yourself. And as I always say, your business is gonna grow as much as your mindset is growing as you, as well as with you. So I wrote that book and I'm working with entrepreneurs right now. I'm building the community called Boundless Founder Community, where I'm helping entrepreneurs, with those principles in mind to number one, help them do that transition. techies, product managers, engineers who decided to become founders and build their own companies, how do they do that shift? And then how do they grow from that point to become owners or builders of a billion dollar company? Mike: Yeah. It's so true. Being an entrepreneur myself and the struggles, it's like going, I'm going. Yep. Yep. But I know the mistakes that Mo made and I made them also. I think that mental aspect is probably the biggest aspect. You can have all the knowledge in the world. You can be a 30-year program or 30-year engineer, go and create your own engineering firm and fail because you don't know how to switch it. Because I have a lot of entrepreneurs telling me that, you know what, for so many years I had someone else. I had quotas, I had deadlines, these things that other people gave me. Now I have to create them for myself. So let's get into a little bit of that mental resilience and the difference of what it takes to actually make that switch. What are some of the cues? Mo: Yeah, absolutely. Let me maybe give a quick analogy or an example of what it means to move from the corporate world to become an entrepreneur. Think of yourself swimming in a pool, a warm pool with planes. There's a lifeguard beside you and you're just going back and forth. This is corporate life. Now, how does it feel when you work as an entrepreneur by yourself? It's exactly similar to someone throwing you in the middle of the night in a cold ocean and you do not know where the shore is, and now you need to figure it out, right? Now, you see there, the difference is huge, day and night. And the first one, your mindset is all about how do I go fast in that lane? And how do I make sure that I just can go back and forth, back and forth, and it's all about just spinning faster. When you switch to that other mode, you know you're in the middle of a cold ocean, you see that you get thrown into a completely different environment that is hostile, unforgiving, and you do not know where to go from that point. Now, what is the most important thing in that specific moment is what is cooling down. And start orienting yourself and understanding your environment, and now figuring out what you need or what needs to be done to reach the shore, or at least to survive and thrive in that journey. That's the difference in mindset that you need between the first one and the second one. There's a huge difference, and I'm not saying that one of them is better than the other, but each one of them has its own mindset and its own way to work. Now let's talk about the mindset that you need in, being an entrepreneur, giving that environment. Hopefully that gives everyone a vivid picture of what it means to do that jump or that switch. In my book, I talk about, you know, mental resiliency and mental robustness. Because I'm an engineer, I thought of these two terms. First, from an engineering perspective, when you think of robustness, if you're building a bridge, a robust bridge means that it's a bridge that can withstand the pressure and it does not get deformed or collapse. So you build it. There's the wind, there are small earthquakes, there is the pressure of the cars, driving on, on it. Then the bridge needs to and, right? Its form or need to continue performing its function despite all those pressures that's being a robust bridge. The same thing when you use that term or that definition on your mindset, the same thing happens to your mind. You want to make sure you're gonna be hit by unexpected events every day. And you wanna make sure that your mindset stays positive, stays oriented, you know, in the right way so that you can keep going. And maybe I'll share a quick story around that, from my personal experience. Six months after founding my first company, we were using AWS or Amazon Web Services, they gave us a hundred thousand dollars credit and we thought that credit is gonna kick in, keep us going for a year. After working six months, we were ready to demonstrate our product. And one day, as I was just getting to the conference to demonstrate my product, I got an email from AWS telling me that I owe them $65,000. I was just shocked. A few weeks ago when I was checking our credits, we had more than $50,000 with them. How could we burn through more than $110,000 in just a few weeks? You know, I got frozen and it took me four weeks actually to get out of the negative mindset and the paralysis mode and to start going back and negotiating that with them. You know, eventually I was able to do that, but it took me a significant amount of time to really recover. I wasn't robust back then. That event deformed, my way of thinking, it just changed it. And that's when I did not have the right mindset or have the robustness of my mind and mindset in general. There's another story. We're gonna talk about it, how actually the opposite of that. But let's talk about resiliency, for a bit. Again, from an engineering perspective, if you add a pressure on an object, a resilient object is, even if it gets deformed. When you release that pressure, it gets back to the original form, like a rubber ball. You can squeeze it and it can change its shape. But once you take off that pressure, it goes back to its original form when it happens to your mindset, let's say an event like the one that I just mentioned, that story. Once that pressure goes out, do I have, as we call it in business permanent scars, that would prevent me from going back again into business? Or you know what? No, I learned the lesson and now I'm back into the growth mindset and the challenge mindset, and I'm really willing to, you know, head the ground again and just go and challenge the whole world again or not. That's what it means to have a resilient mindset and they both work hand in hand together. You do not want to be robust as a brick. So that you're under any pressure that you get broken, but at the same time, you do not want to be, you know, so soft that the least, event or a minor event would just take you out of balance. You need to have that balance between these two. This is where you need a mentor, an advisor, and someone to really work with you, take you through that journey and basically show you yourself in the mirror. Just hold the mirror in front of you and tell you, "This is how you look right now, and this is how you need to change." The other story, as how building resilience or robustness can help you to really get your business to grow and turn it around. Four years into my journey, four and a half years, after I learned a lot, through all those events, I got hit by so many events similar to the AWS build that I mentioned. A company actually approached us and said, "We are interested in buying." Okay. We're happy. They're about to give us a good offer. Now, we went through all the due diligence. They interviewed my employees. They looked at our bank account. They looked in our source code, and only two hours before signing the LOI, they backed off. Now, we're just making ourselves ready for that acquisition. We did not fundraise, you know, the company was definitely running out of cash because this was a distraction, a big distraction for us. Mike: Yeah. Mo: In the original mindset that I had, if something like this happened, I would just say, "You know what? Let's throw the towel and we're done and we're gonna shut down the company. But in less than 24 hours, I took that LOI before anyone else knew that they backed off. Even my co-founder did not know about that. And I shop around with other companies that might be interested. I told them, "Hey, I have a company that is interested in buying us. Are you interested in taking a look at maybe buying us as well?" By the end of that week, I was already meeting with four CEOs and we got actually a three times better deal eventually because of that. You see the difference here is not because I got smarter or anything else, of course luck plays a role here, but it is just how you respond to the event. How do you turn the event from a big threat that could take your company down, giving you an opportunity to even gain more money. It's all in the mind, you know, in the mindset. Hopefully that explains what the difference is and why it is really critical for any entrepreneur to focus on mindset. I'll close maybe with this. The most important asset for any entrepreneur is their mind and their mindset. Period. Nothing else. Mike: Yeah. And that is so true. Let's talk about another thing. So I have the mindset, I want to do well, but the world has so many distractions and I know when I first started, it was like, "Oh yeah, you know, I don't feel like working today." "Well, you know what? I had a bad day yesterday and I'll just go play golf and think about it today." There's always excuses. And it took coaching. There's two different coaches that I had. One was a business coach, one was a mental coach. And you put those together and the outcome, if you do exactly what they say is a successful entrepreneur. But one of the things that I had to do, and maybe you can talk about this, I had to have what's called a default calendar that I couldn't break unless something really bad was happening. Eight o'clock on Monday morning, I do this, and nine o'clock I do this. So it kept me focused. So that you know what? I have appointments. It could be just a phone call, it could be cold calling, but you can't just go out and say, "Okay, what? Monday morning, nine o'clock, you're, I'm an entrepreneur. Okay, what am I going to do today?" And you have no idea. So talk about just the beginnings of being that entrepreneur. You have the mindset you really want to do it, but you have to have that focus. Mo: Yeah. You said that right? Yeah, absolutely. Mike. It's all about discipline, right? So what you are trying to maintain is a disciplined execution day after day. Now, that discipline execution, you cannot do it by or maintain it by just feeling that you need to do it every day. You have to do it regardless, as you said. Now, you can do it either with pain, you know, by just pushing yourself, or you can do it with the right perspective. And this is where your mindset also plays a role. One of the things that I always share with entrepreneurs and coach them around is, "Look, you need to reset your mindset every day." Because we know yet, as you said, maybe I had a difficult day yesterday, but the challenge here is how do you reset the next day or even before you go to bed as much as you can so that when you go next day is just a fresh day for you. That's really important and that only comes when you are able to put things in perspective. For example, one of the exercises that I encourage entrepreneurs to do usually is, around separating their own identity and their own life from the company. You know, we, as entrepreneurs, most of the time, we confuse our own identity with our business identity, until you get savvy enough, like you, Mike, you're been into many businesses and for long enough, you know how to separate that your personal life is one thing and your own identity. I wouldn't say personal life, identity. This is really important and it's easier to say, the work life balance and let's separate all of that. But that doesn't happen unless you do that fundamental thing, which is separating your identity from your business. And what I mean by that is, look, your business at the end of the day is one of your projects. And it is one of your life milestones. Your life is much bigger than that, right? If it did not work out in that business, you know what? You learned a lot. And as they say, " Failure is the best teacher, and success is a lousy teacher." If you think of it this way, even if your business is just now upside down. And you say, you know what? I know that I have a chance. You have that confidence and build that confidence that you have a chance to build another one even much better than the other one or the first one that makes you actually come in the next day saying, "Okay. Now, how do I maximize my learning and how do I make sure that I'm doing the best possible response to whatever is taking place around me?" You can find all the routines, figure out different systems and all of that. But if you're not looking from a right perspective, all of these, you can still grind your way through them, but it's gonna be painful. You do not want it to be painful. You want it to be rewarding, right? That's the most important thing. Mike: Yeah. And a lot of times those most painful times of the founder's life are some of the most important times. For me, trying to own hotels during COVID, very painful time, but I'm thankful for it 'cause I'm a much better entrepreneur now. ' cause it forces you, you know, and just like you said and ladies and gentlemen, when something drastic happens, you could say, "You know what? Oh, I throw in the towels, it's not worth it. I don't have the energy." Or you can say, "Dang it, you know what? I'm going to succeed. I'm going to do whatever it takes. I'm gonna think outside the box." And you just do it, and it just really, really helps. Everybody, it's Mohamed “Mo” Ahmed. You know, we don't have much time left, but let's get inside some of the other chapters. His book is the Inside-Out Entrepreneur, what else can we find inside that book? Mo: Yeah, absolutely. The book is basically using the analogy of climbing mountains, right? When any mountaineer goes to it and talks to any mountaineer, no matter how experienced they are, they will tell you that before you start, you need to condition yourself. And then they have a set of dimensions to do that. The physical, the mental, the emotional, and a few other things. Now, the book talks about the other different dimensions. Mindset is one of them. The other one is definitely the emotional conditioning, which basically how do you make sure that your emotions are not taking over your thought process. And that was so-called the thought emotion loop, you know? If you go down that spiral, if you get into it or if you get caught by it, you can easily confuse facts with what's in your head. It's not the fact that your company is gonna close, but because you've been thinking about it so much. So that's one dimension. The other dimension is definitely, I even believe in the spiritual dimension that all of us have. Regardless of what is your belief in general, but having in mind that, look, we do not have control over most of the things taking place around us. Mike: Yeah. Mo: We'll make you number one, relief. Number two, put things in perspective. And number three, focus on what you really can control and you probably know this, Mike. The only thing that you can control is you, your thoughts, your emotions, and how you respond. If we focus on that, I believe that things are going to be lined up. And there's also a bonus chapter that talks about financial wellbeing. And this is part of the conditioning. Actually, maybe I'll tell a quick personal story around that. When I wanted to build my first company, my wife really opposed that. Our family came from, they used to be employees and my wife also worked at Microsoft. And she said, "Well, what if it failed?" And I kept thinking about that and I gave him a promise. I told her, "Look, if I'm able to save, let's say, two years worth of spending, will you allow me to go and do that?" She said, "Yes, we have a deal." So, I actually did that, and that made a huge difference. This is part of the financial conditioning. You cannot just throw yourself without really planning. You know, all the possible failures. It's inevitable that you are gonna have low moments. You're not gonna have enough money. Your business is gonna consume a lot of your money. How do you go through that without really breaking your financial wellbeing? It's really important because otherwise, it's gonna be extra stressful, extra, extra stressful to the extent that it may actually contribute to your failure. So definitely that's one of them. The other dimension that talks about your personal branding as an entrepreneur and how you define yourself beyond the company or beyond the venture that you're doing right now. So that if it doesn't work, it's actually an advantage, for you or you can use it to your advantage. Before recording where we were talking about the techies and the ones who want to leave, you know, the Microsoft and Google and then their own company. I have an entrepreneur who was talking with me. He's in his late forties and he's saying, "Look, I feel that I'm old. If this one does not work out. I'm not gonna be employable. I'm not gonna work." Why are you saying that? Look, if it doesn't work, you learned a lot. You learned about business. Did you know about business before doing all of that? He said, "No." Okay. You know about that. Did you know how to raise money from VCs? He said, "No." Okay. You know all of that. And trust me, you are now 10 times faster than your peers getting things done. You're much sharper than them. If you decide to go and apply again, even though I would love for you to continue as a businessman, even if you decided to go back, it's gonna be a piece of cake for you. So don't worry about that. The most important thing is how do you take all of that and make sure that you're building on it. You're not seeing your company failure as a complete setback for your whole life. So this is also part of the book, and I use that book again, as a framework to work with entrepreneurs closely. And one of the things that I personally do is I help them with their sales and marketing and how to do their go-to market and how to fundraise. But what is different about how I work on these with them is the, what I call it, the psychology corner that I always include. When you go and do sales, for example. There is a certain psychology that takes space in your mind. How do you beat that? How do you make sure that you're doing this activity in a way that you are always on top of it. You do not feel that you're being beaten every day. No, you're growing. It's rewarding for you and I guess this is the piece that always is missing. I worked for a long time in Silicon Valley and you know, the mantra of fake it until you make it. That's destroying, as they call it, it's hustle porn. It's part of hustle porn. It's not gonna just take place automatically. You have to intentionally work on improving your mindset and improving your perspective. Mike: Yeah. And you know, Muhammad, I appreciate it. Everybody, boundlessfounder.co is the website. When we click on that, what are we going to find? Mo: So there are different things. You're gonna find definitely free downloadable resources, to assess your mindset. Go and check that. So, boundlessfounder.co/resources, you're gonna find a ton of free downloadable resources. There's also one chapter where we just talked about financial wellbeing. Also, we have different tiers of our community membership. You can start there for free. See some of the interesting discussions, some of the also free courses, again, assess and see how you can get started with your journey. Or you can upgrade to a paid membership and get even more resources and get to have a live discussion with the rest of the community and myself. Mike: And everybody, if you're thinking about being a founder, if you're struggling, I tell you, don't do it without mentors. Don't do it without some type of counseling. I would've failed 10 more times if it wasn't for just coaching and my mentors. I'm still best friends with my mentors and still reach out to them today. If you're interested, give Mohamed “Mo” Ahmed and you'll reach out at boundlessfounder.co. Mohamed, it's been an absolute pleasure, getting to know you and what you do. Thank you for coming on The Richer Geek. Mo: Absolutely. Thank you very much, Mike, for having me. Mike: Thank you.
The information, statements, comments, views, and opinions (collectively, “Information”) provided in this podcast are not intended to be and should not be construed as financial, economic, legal, accounting, tax or other advice. For our full disclosure, click here.
ABOUT MOHAMED “MO” AHMED
Mohamed “Mo” Ahmed is a serial entrepreneur and product visionary with more than 20 years in AI and cloud computing. He’s built and scaled multiple companies, achieving several successful exits with impressive returns. Mo is the author of Inside-Out Entrepreneurship, where he shares his approach to building resilience and mental endurance for founders. As an advisor with accelerator programs like 500 Startups and TechStars, he’s helped founders raise over $30 million. His entrepreneurial conditioning framework has become a go-to tool for diverse founders who want to overcome challenges and grow. Mo is committed to helping entrepreneurs develop a growth mindset and create lasting impact.