22-07-2024
Mastering the Art of Adaptation with Feras Alhlou
Building Success from Adversity: Feras Alhlou’s Insights
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Feras Alhlou is an inspiring entrepreneur whose journey from layoff to leadership will motivate you to take charge of your future. Discover how Feras turned a career setback into an opportunity, mastering new skills and persevering through challenges to build an eight-figure business. As the co-author of "Google Analytics Breakthrough" and a sought-after industry speaker, Feras shares invaluable insights on business growth, resilience, and the power of community service. We also explore how martial arts informs personal and professional success for both of us. Tune in to hear his story and learn how you too can transform obstacles into opportunities for success!
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Website: www.StartUpWithFeras.com/daily-advisorYouTube: www.youtube.com/@StartUpWithFerasLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/FerasAlhlouFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/StartUpFerasInstagram: instagram.com/StartUpFeras
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ferasa
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Transcript
The Creative Solutions podcast features interviews with innovative creative artists and entrepreneurs
>> Feras Alhlou: You'd be a better leader, you'd be a better business owner, a better manager if you have an appreciation of what's involved. If you are more hands on.
>> Izolda: Hi and welcome to the Creative Solutions podcast. I'm, your host, Isolde Trachtenberg. On the show, you'll hear interviews with innovative creative artists, entrepreneurs, business executives, and thought leaders. You'll have a front row seat as they explore their internal uncharted waters about what inspires them to grow, achieve, and innovation, innovate. Get their insights and realizations as I tease out answers to questions they've never pondered before. You'll also learn how to supercharge your innovative drive, mindfulness, and communication skills so you can succeed. This episode is brought to you by my favorite productivity hack, the Brain FM app. This podcast's host, Podbean, as well as my book, speak from within, Engage, inspire, and motivate any audience. Hello. Hello and welcome to the Creative Solutions podcast. I'm, your host, Isolde Trachtenberg. Thank you so much for taking the time to be here. I am super excited to bring you this week's guest. Let me tell you about Feras Alhlou. Feras is driven to support your success, and I love that it's right up front. He's, that's, that's the mission. And let me tell you why. A layoff in 2003 propelled him into entrepreneurship, where he acquired diverse skills really outside his comfort zone. He learned to persevere through challenges and adapted his vision when needed with dedication and learning. He became a top earner within a franchise, authored respected publications like Google Analytics Breakthrough, and spoke at tons of industry conferences. In 2019, he sold his own consultancy to Dentsu and committed to giving back. Feras mentors new businesses, engages in community service, and offers expert guidance through startup with Feras. Now, here's another thing that you don't know about him that is obviously very close to my heart. Feras is also an aikido player. He is a, third don, which means he's a third degree black belt. And that's something that's part of my own journey that I love to talk about. And don't be surprised if in this conversation, we touch a little bit on how aikido relates to business and, heck, to all of life. Feras, thank you so much for being here. Welcome.
>> Feras Alhlou: Izolda, thank you so much. I appreciate the kind introduction and really looking forward to our conversation.
>> Izolda: I'm, I'm thrilled that you're here.
Rena Friedman Watts talks about how she pivoted after being laid off
And as always, I need to shout out Rena Friedman Watts, who is the person who introduced us. I am so excited to talk to you because you're a real, I mean, it's one of those true to life success stories. I would love for you, if you don't mind, to talk a little bit about how you went from I'm laid off to I've built an eight figure business. What were the pivotal moments or the decisions that led to this kind of decision to, to go and do and make something of it after a layoff? How did you manage that? What are your thoughts? What are your tips? What are your routines? Let's just go.
>> Feras Alhlou: Sure, sure. A lot to cover there. But, you know, you're a martial artist. So this concept of pivoting, you avoid an attack. You pivot, you move m around, and it feels like after all these years, as we get older, you reflect on life, you reflect on business, and there were just a lot of pivots in my life, and I think in most people's lives, and some of them are intentional. Like, you want to get out of the way, and sometimes you have to pivot because something is coming at you like a ton of bricks. So the layoff, I mean, so we moved to the Bay area, to the Silicon Valley back in 1998. I got into, I moved with my employer at the time, got into the startup scene, and then I was a vp of a cutting edge tech company in 2003. We raised a lot of money. We raised $96 million as a company. And then, we could not sell, fast enough. We couldn't deploy. He run out of money. And then layoffs ensued. I was part of, I think, the one before last, before the company folded. So here I go. From a vp of a cutting edge tech company to a layoff husband, and a father of a young family. At the time, the job market was very dry, similar to what we're seeing today with the waves of layoffs around us. And I, you know, it took me, it took me. Sometimes I get emotional here. I mean, it took me a few days to recover, I m guess, emotionally, psychologically, you know, I'm this vp now I'm out of work. What is it that people are going to think about me? Why me? What did I do wrong? but, you know, two, three days into it, a couple of days into it, I gotta do something about it. So I updated my resume and I started to reach out. Six, seven weeks into this, trying to get an interview, nothing, zilch. so I ran across, I ran into a friend of mine who wanted to do his own business. We chatted for about a week, and we decided that, you know what? Let's join resources, let's join forces. Let's start a business. And that's how it all started.
Feras says layoffs make you question your sense of self
I'm happy to go into more details, but let me pause and see if you have a question on that or you want me to dive into a specific part of this, initial recovery, after the layoff.
>> Izolda: You know, it's funny that you paused where you did that moment of self doubt, really. It makes you question who you are. It, makes you question what you're capable of. And there are lots of people who would sort of let it bow them down and not really recover their sense of self. Can you talk a little bit about what had to happen inside you to be able to go, you know what? This is something I can recover from. This is something I can do something about.
>> Feras Alhlou: Yeah. So I remember, I mean, I remember till this day when the CEO walked, in to my office and he said, Feras, tomorrow we have layoffs. And I had anticipated that that was about to happen. What I did not anticipate is that what he said next. And Feras, you're part of it. You're impacted as well.
>> Feras Alhlou: And, my stomach dropped, my heart was racing. I felt like the blood's going to flow out of my skin and explode. All these feelings. And then, oh, my goodness, no way. How did I not see that? What did I do? We were about to deploy, like, go and do a major deployment for a major telco at the time, and I was part of this, so. But you know, at the end of this, in a way, like, business is business. When I went back home and I got home, I used to, you know, I was in a startup. This was one of those 1213 hours day startups. So I went home that afternoon and spoke with my amazing wife and she said, why are you here early? I said, well, let me share with you. I remember sitting on the couch there in the living room where at the time we rented. And, I said, yeah, that's what happened. I mean, she was extremely supportive. of course, we have three kids, young kids, and financials, the financial side of things. Always sort of top of mind. But that wasn't. I knew I'll figure something out. I knew that things will work out financially. But it was more to your point, like, oh, my goodness, like my self worth here, my reputation, like, it's the shame, all those feelings, all these emotions run through you.
David Frum: Layoffs are hard on everybody, even strong men
And I want to mention to if your listeners, some of your listeners or maybe someone in their family. If you're impacted by layoff today, it's hard. And I had to lay off people later when I was a manager and a business owner. Not a whole lot of times, but it's hard on everybody. So don't, I mean, take. It's okay to mourn. I always say that's okay. Even for strong men out there. It's okay to cry. If you can't cry in public, cry at night. get these emotions, let them flow. Let them go through these emotions. And I think the logical thing to do, which is really hard to do in the first few days, maybe the first couple of weeks. But at one point, you have to sit down and do an honest assessment of what led to this sometimes. And I always say there are two hard truths about layoffs. At times, top performers are let go because a whole branch is closed or a whole vertical or a whole product is discontinued, and everybody is let go. And a lot of times, and this is, maybe hard to say, and I say it with a lot of compassion, but a lot of time, and a lot of times, companies lay off the underperforming 5%, 10%, whatever it is. So I think after that emotional kind of struggle or those feelings that you go through, I think, do an objective assessment. Ask people. Look at your last performance review. This is going to be really hard. But if you're honest with yourself, if you want to move on and learn from that failure, if you want to call it as such, you got to do an assessment and see what is it that you could have done better. Not to dwell on the past, but to learn from it for the next time. Whether you go back into the work workforce for your next job and be better at it, or if you want to start your own business, you have to know your strength and your areas for improvement so you can build a solid business. So that all of that was sort of going on in my mind in the first couple of weeks.
>> Izolda: I love that. And it's so funny how I had almost an identical story, back in. This would be 19, I want to say, 1990, 1989, similar thing happened to me where my boss, who was the president of a company, said to me, he took me, it was 03:00 on a Thursday. I'll never forget it. And, David, I'm shouting out you if you're listening to this. Cause he. He held it together to say, the company's going under completely. I'm not even legally allowed to tell you this. It's gonna happen tomorrow. We're all out of jobs. And what's interesting to me about that is, you know, he, he did cry. It was his baby, and it was just terribly sad. But what was interesting for me is my mindset went to, okay, I'm going to take a week, and I'm just going to party. I'm just going to go and I'm going to have all the fun in the world because I'm going to give myself a week to, you know, you mentioned morning, and I went the exact opposite way. I celebrated. I went, okay, I have freedom for a week to do whatever I want. I traveled. I had fun with my friends. And then exactly at 03:00 p.m. the following Thursday, I got a to work.
You almost got fired for not working hard enough at a startup
And the question I asked myself, and I would like you touched on it, and I'm very curious to see your thoughts on this. I looked at it as a lesson. It wasn't my fault. It was, I was not the president. I was not the decision maker for the company. But I still asked myself, what do I want to do differently next time? And so this is the question that I have for you, and I'm going to relate it a little bit to aikido, because when I, when I'm working with my sensei, for example, and she's amazing, shout out to Roma. She's an incredible, she's an 8th don, she's incredible. And she'll throw you 10ft and not blink an eye. But one of the things that she says every time we do it is how do you want to behave differently next time? How do you want to behave differently the next time you attack me? How do you want to do things differently so that you see a different result? So that's my question to you. When you were going through this, how did you do things differently? What kind of, not just mindset, but what kind of actions did you take to allow yourself to, again, pick yourself up and start something new that was different than what you had done before?
>> Feras Alhlou: Yeah. And amazing example there with, you know, I think I might have been to that dojo. is it in Brooklyn or where's the dojo at?
>> Izolda: No, it's in college park, Maryland.
>> Feras Alhlou: Okay. Okay. I'm, maybe I'm confusing names, but no. So, I mean, one thing that I learned in that startup is I've always worked hard. I think after, well, the first couple years in my career, I almost got fired for not working hard enough. And I learned my lesson early on. But in that startup, it was true Silicon Valley. Again, I slept there a couple times. And so I learned that the value and the momentum and ah, the amazing things you can do with lower resources. So I learned that from that startup and then from the incident, from the layoff incident, I could have been a bit more hands on. So in your case, it sounded like the whole company folded. Right. And so everybody's gone. So they're not just picking on you. In my case there was told people I was let go and then the company was still around for I think like another six months or so. So it was me like what, why did they have not lay off this director and why it's me? And again, you go into, I don't want to, like, I never wanted to sort of blame others or say they're picking on me, not the other, but I was thinking in my mind which like, if had I been more hands on, because I started my career, career, being technical, and then I moved to people management, project management, account management, I love that stuff. But I stayed very, I think, very m far away from sort of the ins and outs of what my team that I manage was doing. And for me that was a very important lesson is that you'd be a better leader, you'd be a better business owner, a better manager, if you have an appreciation of what's involved. If you are a bit more hands on, at one point you have the delegate, you can't be doing the same thing over and over to grow your business. But if you don't have, I think, the hands on experience and you have some area where you really dig deep into and understand and be an expert at, in a way you could be replaceable.
>> Feras Alhlou: So that is, that was more of a, again, a, you know, just career, lesson, if you will, is no matter what, what, what you do, small company, big company, whatever department you work in, learning and staying close to your area of expertise and kind of mastering that domain, that was a very, very important lesson that I learned. again, not the mindset stuff, but on the technical field that I'm in.
>> Izolda: It's interesting to me, in listening to what you're saying that it, because I think to me, mindset is so much of even the technical aspects, because how you approach problem solving, how you approach the decisions you make, is going to have to come from whether or not you have a mindset that is ready for them.
You talk about being willing to learn about becoming an entrepreneur
And so I'd love to ask you a little bit about the challenges you face during those initial stages of becoming an entrepreneur. How did they, how did those challenges shape your approach and contribute to your eventual success?
>> Feras Alhlou: So this might sound as a cliche, but without that failure, without that layoff, that was sort of wake up call, that, hey, you gotta continue to learn and be an expert in something. I don't think I would have been able to succeed in that very first business because we got into that business and this is 2003, and you remember those days, that was sort of the dawn of the Internet.
>> Izolda: Oh, yes.
>> Feras Alhlou: And convincing a business owner, a small business owner to pay us money, so we built a website for them. That was hard. People might not relate to today, but, so learning, and I didn't know how to do websites, I don't know how to sell, I don't know how to market because I worked in a company for all those years, other people did that. I was good in terms of delivering a project once a project was sold. So, so I had to learn sales, I had to learn how to do online marketing, SEO, pay per click, all that Google stuff at the time and the Yahoo stuff at the time, and those skills or the habits that I learned from the previous, startup that I was laid off from exploring, learning on your own, having to wear multiple hats, all of those were very, very transferable to the new business that we started. So without that failure, without knowing that I have to learn and have that learning mindset and exploration and trying new things, there's no way that I would have been able to, sustain and grow that first business that we started.
>> Izolda: Ah, failure, you know, I mean, it's very true. We, without, without those previous experiences, you don't have as good a blueprint, but also, you talk about being willing to learn, right? You said you had to learn marketing, you had to learn how to do all of this stuff at the same time, though, you still have to have, it's not an eye on the bottom line, it's almost like an eye on the strategy, an eye on the long term. And I'm going to go back to Aikido because I usually do, when I am grappling with someone or when we're doing any kind of work together, there is a give and take. There is this knowing sort of where you are in space, but also knowing where the other person is in space and making those transitions successfully. Who's giving, who's taking, who's taking, who's balance, what's happening. So you were going through all of this in this timeframe, the early aughts and the mid aughts. When you're doing these transitions and you were starting to get more successful. Can you talk a little bit about how you implemented those transitions? How did you need to pivot, how did you need to change how you were doing things as you went from serving some of those smaller companies to catering to like, let's say, Fortune 1000 or Fortune 500 companies.
>> Feras Alhlou: Yes. In terms of mindset.
>> Izolda: No, no, no, it doesn't have to be mindset. No, no.
>> Feras Alhlou: I was saying in terms of mindset, like, adaptability is another thing, flexibility is another thing. Because in the startup that before I was laid off, we were selling to Fortune five, we were selling to Fortune 100 with major telcos, the AT and T's of the world. And it was an infrastructure system. So imagine leaving that pitching and speaking with c suite CEO's and chief marketing officers, and chief technology officers, and then going, and now selling to small business owners, the local restaurants, the local dentists, the local, I don't know, dry cleaning. And that's what we did. We were knocking door, we're going door to door, knocking on doors to tell them about all this amazing thing called Google. You can get leads through Google, right? So that was a huge mind shift in terms of being ready to accept that. Yes. I used to sell to c level, now got to humble myself and learn and understand the pains and the pain points of these small business owners and be able to relate to them. So that was like, that was a big shift for me. Now, you can always examine what you did in the past and see how you can maybe repurpose it, repackage it for the present. So one thing that these business owners, the small business owners, they consistently told us that when my partner, business partner, I would go and meet with them, said, you both are so professional. You show up on time, well dressed, you do a follow up, you always meet your deadlines. Like all those skills that we had, we couldn't have sold or even spoke with Fortune 500 if we were not very polished on time. All the professional things you do with Fortune 500. So those habits, I would say, and those business skills did actually give us an advantage when we were selling small business owners. So that was really positive. Of course, other things don't apply to small businesses. So we had to learn those and learn the hard way and through the rejections. I mean, I never sold a thing, Zelda, before, before we started our first business. So learning how to, you know, how to follow up, you email them. Well, you call them. At the time, we had to do a lot of, things in person and going to a restaurant and waiting for the business owner to be done with him or her taking care of their clients. I mean, a sales pitch could take 3 hours just waiting for them to be available. We had nothing else to do. We got to sell. So then, as we grew, back to your question, as we grew and we started to specialize and we niched down on analytics within digital marketing, we really got into this analytics thing, and there was a wave of all these, big companies, Google and Microsoft and others, they were acquiring small analytics firms and repackaging those products and then offering them to the masses. So we, in a way, rode that wave. And as we became Google certified partners and got listed on their portal, the bigger leads started to come our way. So yet another pivot, another sort of reorientation, because what used to work with the small and mid sized business owners and we had to figure out how to sell and how to deliver to them. Now we're getting these leads from Fortune 500. So I had this amazing sense of excitement. Oh, my God, look at this lead we got. And then, oh, my God, how do I pitch to them? How do I sell to them? and we fumbled the first couple of leads and then we figured out that we have to, you know, do things differently. But, yeah, it's, it's, it's sort of, you have to roll with the punches in a way, and, and learn, you know, like, learn, learn from these days. There's a lot of resources. In the old days, we had to go and attend courses and read books and, and kind of talk to peers and people in the industry. That was a bit, I think that we had less access to resources. So that was, that was one of the challenges.
>> Izolda: Yeah, it's, it is.
How did you change your approach to talking to smaller businesses when developing skills
I'm fascinated by this because I, in, in my own sales, I tend to want to ask all the, say, all the stuff early instead of asking questions. And so I want to ask you, when, you were doing this, when you were developing your skills, were there any creative ways that you implemented to talk to some of these smaller businesses as you were growing into the media business, how did you change your approach? How did you, what kind of innovations did you make in your own skillset in addition to, like, reading books, but on the fly, were there times or do you have a specific memory of something that you did that was just creative and out of the box in order to either make a connection or close a sale?
>> Feras Alhlou: You know, what's that saying? Good, artist borrow and great artists steal. I think it was Picasso said that. So maybe not the most creative person in that way, but I'm a sponge. and I think the sponge was the only species that survived, the massive mass distinction, way back then, because, it absorbs good things and fights off bacteria. But literally, I remember I would go to a networking event, which were very hard for me to do because I didn't know how to do that. But m, after you do a few, you get comfortable at it and tell people what you do. And then I would take notes, like on the back of the business card of, let's say I spoke with a lady who does x, y and z, and I would take notes. I'm like, oh, she's doing that. Let me, I can try it. I would talk to the other person and this gentleman is doing, this one guy told me that he would print a design, because we were selling graphic design and website design, and he would take two templates and show the business owner, because you're selling design, so you want to show them something visual. And he said, people really like that approach. So we implemented that the next day before we went and pitched. So, learning from others, people who are maybe in a similar phase in their journey, similar stage, people who, or maybe people who have been, I always say people who have been to where you want to go, learning from them, I think it's important. And then it's. I think learning, is education and application. So it's not about just reading books or talking to others. How do I take that and implement it in my business? And that stayed with me for the longest time. Even today, we hear a lot about AI. Some people are skeptical, others are using it. There are definitely ways for you to implement AI in the way you run your business, and there are ways to actually incorporate AI in the services that you're offering. So always I think that learning and applying what I learned, stayed with me till to this point is you don't have to figure things out on your own. Ah, tap into your network, into the resources, into even your competitors. I've had gracious competitors who had shared with me some amazing tips that helped a lot in our, in our business.
>> Izolda: Ah, that's great. And I love that you said that, because the informational interview is king as far as I'm concerned. This notion of communication, of being willing to share. But also, I say this to prospective, the perspective clients in that they're in the field, for example, of where I'm aiming my business. But, I've said these very words to people. I've said, I'm not trying to pitch you, I'm trying to figure out how to pitch you. And it just puts people at ease. And I'm not trying to pitch them. I'm not trying to get their business. I'm trying to figure out how people who are like them want to be pitched right. And so there's nothing wrong with that. And interestingly, it has gotten me business with some of those people, but that's not my intent. So communication, to me is very key in any form of business and coming up with those innovations that allow you to do that.
How do you ensure effective communication among team members when they're remote
But you have, sort of multiple locations for your business now. And so I would love to talk to you about that notion of communication. How do you work within the team members, especially if they're in different geographical locations? How do you ensure effective communication and collaboration with all these folks?
>> Feras Alhlou: Yeah. So I'll tell you one thing is that we, so after, when we started that first business, once we figured out sales again, it took us some time, not days, not weeks. I hear you. And then we started to use leverage contractors and, and part timers. And then we figured, you know what, we can also build a team, an offshore team who would support our businesses and then also potentially sell their services to, other companies. And we ended up, I think around 2008, 2009, building a company, offshore company. We grew it to 45 people.
>> Feras Alhlou: And in terms of communicating, this is way before Zoom, this is way before COVID and the whole remote culture. So we figure, again, we learned the hard way, you can't just build a team, even if they're an amazing team in a different geography. And if it's in a different country now, you have different culture, different business culture. You have to be close to the team. So we made a commitment, my business partners and I, we had four partners in that venture that we would commit this one year where we still maintained the business here in the US, and we had to sell and grow and deliver and also build that unit or that its own entity, overseas. And it took us, we know we got the go ahead from the folks at home, the bosses at home, and a lot of travel to stay with the team, especially in the formation phase. is still the values, the business culture that we wanted. and then we would work at night when we were there to catch up on us work. And then when we were back in the US, we were working early mornings and nice to communicate with the team over there. So constant. I think as a founder as a business owner, as a manager, you lead by example. You can give a lecture on whatever value, whether it's transparency or honesty or customer satisfaction. Yeah, you can preach on that all day long. But if you don't model it, if you don't show it, if you don't show your team how it's done by, your actions, then no one is going to really. It's not. It's just. It's just going to be, you know, like a slogan that no one really m applies. So. So I think what we've learned, from that first experience is that you have to be close to the team. It requires some sacrifices if they're in a different time zone. but that stayed with us. So. So even that analytics company that we ended up growing and selling to, Densu, the global media giant, we built a remote workforce by design. The whole entire company, the 40 plus people here in the US, we were hiring people remotely by design. This is 2013, 2014, way before this, thing became a commonplace. So we learned that you have to be intentional about it. You have to hire people on board them, have a whole lot of communication, have your one on ones with them on a weekly, bi weekly basis. You have to get together maybe once a year. We used to have an annual summit that everybody looked forward to attend. So you can't just hire people remotely and sort of leave them their own devices. You have to be very intentional about it.
>> Izolda: Intentionality is so important. And to me, and coming back to Aikido, intentionality is part of it, but also receptivity.
Roma says martial arts principles can apply to the business world
So I would love to ask you about that aspect of identifying potential partners, identifying potential clients, nurturing those fruitful collaborations. Can you talk a little bit about, your process for doing that?
>> Feras Alhlou: Yeah. And since you mentioned Aikido, we published a video on eight principles, eight martial arts principles for business. And one of them, I think the first one was, knowing, or know your opponent's mind. So, in aikido, and you train and you know that, you know, when someone is attacking, you know, you don't wait till you get hit, you react. You want.
>> Izolda: Hopefully not exactly.
>> Feras Alhlou: I mean, you want to. You want to be this. This concept of. Of alertness, right? You're alert. not in a stiff way, and I. And sort of mechanical way, but you want to focus on the attacker and be aware of the surroundings, because there might be another attacker behind you, or they might have a wall behind you. You can't move. So knowing your opponent's mind and knowing what's going on? Are they coming in fast? Are they coming in slow? Do they have something in their hand, maybe like a knife? why are they attacking you in the first place? So that I think also knowing in the business, if you translate that to the business world, people are not opponents. But you have team players, you have your team, you have vendors, partners, you have customers, you have competitors. So I think here, consider the confrontations or these interactions from the opponents, from the other person's perspective. If you have an unhappy customer, like, why are they unhappy? Is it something maybe you did? Are they reasonable? Are they, are they just, are they unreasonable? Did they, did we m m miss a major deliverable for them? Did we not? Maybe, maybe it was just a bad day, you know, that the client had a bad day at home, and they're just frustrated. And so I think what I learned from all these years in martial arts is what she called the receptivity, or, like, really understand what could be behind this without judging and then receive it, like in aikido, this concept of harmony. I'm not necessarily going to block something. I'm going to blend with it. I'm going to receive it and then redirect it, re channel it. And that, I think people talk about empathy, people talk about Stephen Covey, one of my favorite books, the seven habits of highly effective Paul, he talked about, seek to be, seek to understand before you seek to be understood. So those concepts apply really well, I think, in life, in your relationships, your marriage, with your children, at work. Just understand where people are coming from. There's just so much going on these days, and there are mental issues, mental health issues, a lot of pressure. People sometimes are having difficulties. You just make ends meet. So understand, where people are coming from and why they're behaving in a certain way, and then apply the proper proportionate response.
>> Izolda: Oh, that's beautiful. Understand where they're coming from, and then apply the proper proportionate response. I think that is a, an absolutely phenomenal way of looking at it. And what's interesting to me about that, again, I'll go back to my sensei. I'm talking a lot about Aikido with you. That's very interesting. but my sensei says, you know, meet them where they are.
>> Feras Alhlou: Yes.
>> Izolda: And then, and then join with them as they're going. Where they're going. And then help them go just a little further than they meant to. And that's, that's, that's how roman, spot on. The, that's how Roma does it. And so.
You say entrepreneurship is five times harder than you think
But you said something that struck me. You said that we're meeting all of these difficulties, and there are certainly challenges that we have from everything from mental health to the economy and all of that. But you work with entrepreneurs, you work with people who have decided, for whatever reason, that they want to strike out on their own. But you also talk about the fact that it's harder than you think. So can you talk a little bit about that? What are some specific aspects or challenges of being an entrepreneur that aspiring entrepreneurs kind of don't know about or underestimate?
>> Feras Alhlou: So I say, we have a bunch of black belt principles at startup with Feras that we use. and one of them is entrepreneurship is five times harder than you think. So don't quote me on the number. It could be four times, six times, it doesn't matter. But it is much harder.
>> Izolda: It's harder.
>> Feras Alhlou: I mean, if you think about it, you have to, let's say you've taken the leap and you started a business, so you've made that decision. So you have your domain. Let's say you want to do HR consulting or financial consultant or whatever the case might be. You know, that space. That's an assumption. But you haven't sold this thing. You haven't done marketing, you haven't done payroll or hr if you now are hiring people. So there's these other aspects of the business that you don't know. So there's a lot of learning going on, so you have to accommodate for it. Also, once you sell, you have to deliver. And if you're on your own, initially, most likely it's going to take you few times to really understand how to scope things properly, how to give the right estimate in terms of
