Are you considering a career shift? Keep in mind that you don’t have to go far from your industry just to find the right one. Consulting is a great choice, and it can elevate your career to a completely different level. Nabeel Mahmood, Founding Partner at Mahmood Ventures, joins Michael Zipursky to talk about his journey from the realm of corporate to the world of consulting. He shares his stories of business success, advising various companies on effective technology adoption. Tune in as Nabeel sheds light on how to make your mark in your industry through consulting.
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I’m very excited to have Nabeel Mahmood join us. Nabeel, welcome.
Thank you very much for having me, Michael.
Nabeel, you are a technologist and futurist. You serve on boards and you’re a keynote speaker. You’re also the CEO of Mahmood, which is your IT consulting firm, in addition to other things that you also do. I thought we’d start off by exploring something that is written in your bio, whether it’s on your website, LinkedIn, and so forth. You say that your career is driven by one question. That question is, “What’s next?” Can you speak to what that question means to you? How has it played a role in your life? What do you think about that question of what’s next?
I get that asked quite a bit. It was not necessarily just a marketing play, but a very curious personality that keeps driving me. For instance, I was doing a keynote a few weeks ago, and I was asked a similar question. Back in the day, I remember when Bluetooth did not exist and you were driving across Highway 5 down in California. I’d be like, “Wouldn’t it be nice if you were to have a device that you can talk into versus putting it right next to your ear?” That was a good example of the first next.
With technology, for instance, security started becoming a concern. What’s next? It’s multifactor authentication. Technology started getting adopted and it was designed by engineers. We like things very simple, but that simplicity is from an engineering mindset. What’s next is basically the user experience and the user adoption. To answer that question, “What’s next” is how we make it better and how we grow and scale it.
When you say the word, “What’s next?” to me that’s a great prompt to pause and future cast a little bit or think about what this could mean, and how that might impact or influence the environment or the ecosystem that it’s in. It’s still a big question. Is there anything that you follow to help you to get clearer on the answer to what’s next or what things might look like?
I wish I had all those answers. It’s still a part of discovery and exploring what is next. The way I go about it is my mindset is what is achievable based on the knowledge that I’ve got and the people that I’m surrounded by. That defines that next phase and then you reverse engineer it from there on. The bigger question of what’s next, that’s still yet to be discovered. We are still trying to figure out if there is life on Mars. That is what’s next. How do we get there? What do we need to do to get there? There is a sequence of things that need to be accomplished to get us to that next phase and it’s a lot of steps.
I want to dig into how you got to where you are, your progression, and your journey into building a successful consulting business. Before we do that, I would love to dig a little bit deeper into this question and the concept of what’s next. You’ve given a couple of examples of how you applied this before Bluetooth was around. Wouldn’t it be nice if you didn’t have to hold your phone up to your ear, not to mention the danger of what that causes in terms of driving and so forth?
Consulting can help figure out what you want to do with your life and identify how to fix your challenges. Click To TweetCan you share an example of how you apply this question of what’s next either to your own consulting business or even to a client’s business directly? We can make it a little bit more tangible for people and help them to see an example of how they might be able to bring that into their own business.
I never thought of it that way. It’s probably muscle memory, but we’ll try with an example here. I was doing some consulting work for a company that was involved in discreet manufacturing. They had been building buildings the conventional way. They had been hiring human capital the conventional way. The what’s next proposition that popped up was, wouldn’t be nice to introduce machine learning and automation and robotics? Not necessarily reducing human reliance but increasing efficiencies.
I did not start thinking around the lines of Industry 4.0 or IoT, and whatnot. It was more about process improvement in leveraging technology. It’ll make life easy, and we can run 24/7, 365 without significant human capital investment. In doing so, we saw a lot of processes increase and process improvements. We saw a lot of technology adoption and efficiency. Where the shareholders and the owners were happy was the bottom line. We don’t have to have people working 24/7, 365. You eliminate a lot of the concerns as it entails benefits and security, and people making mistakes. The what’s next process was it would be nice to start thinking around the lines of automating and being more efficient, and then there were a lot of other things that came about from that experience.
It feels like this question of what’s next is an opportunity for all of us to challenge the conventional wisdom or the status quo, everything that we currently do, or the work that we do with clients. Instead of accepting the way that things are done now, it’s asking, “Is there a different way? Is there a better way? Is there an adjustment that nobody has even thought of before?” How do you approach that? I’m wondering if you think about it in the same way. Is there a different way that you approach this question when you’re doing work on your own business but also working with clients?
Being a Mathematics major, there’s more than one way of solving an equation. That’s the way I look at it. If we keep on doing the same thing, we shouldn’t be expecting different results. That quantifies or classifies what’s next mindset or approach. Why aren’t we sending out handwritten notes anymore? We live in an electronic world, so what’s next are text messages, collaboration tools, and emails. It’s a different experience altogether.
As far as collaboration tools are concerned, emails are gone. They will be gone pretty soon. What’s next is collaboration platforms such as Microsoft Teams, Slack, and others where you can unify that user experience and make it easy so you’re not jumping from the application layer to an application layer. You have them focused. Right now you might have ten applications running on the back end and trying to do the job of ten different people, while you can have one application running and do the job of ten people. That’s communication 4.0. That’s what I believe is what’s next.
I was smiling as you were saying that because for my generation, email is still such a big part of the day-to-day or a tool that we all use. I’m reminded of younger cousins or family members who grew up in a generation where they didn’t use email. Email is something that’s not foreign to them but it’s just that they don’t use it a lot. They’re much more text messages and social platforms. It’s very interesting to think about it in that way.
Let’s transition then to your journey. You were the Chief Information Officer at Maxco Supply until 2018. According to the research that we did, you were also starting to run your own consulting business or taking on client projects and work during that time. Can you talk about the transition that you were making from being an executive into starting your own consulting business?
That’s very interesting. When I was at Maxco, I’d been asked by a few friends and peers to help them with their businesses, whether it be organizational change management or information technology. That’s how I ended up starting a consulting firm. It’s going on for 8 or 9 years now. At that point in time, I was still trying to figure out what am I doing with my life.
The corner office sounds very good and it’s fun. It’s always fairly easy as well. You’re going to work at 7:30 AM or 8:00 AM, and you’re done at 6:00 PM or 7:00 PM, and that’s about it. I needed something that was more than that. I needed more excitement and identifying challenges, and not just that but also trying to fix those challenges. That came through that consulting engagement. I’ve been a corporate boy for a long time or most of my career until that opportunity came about. It came through people in the industry who encouraged me to start a consulting firm.
You were pulled towards consulting based on the people around you that knew you and what you had done or known for, and then your desire to have bigger challenges or not to do the same thing over and over again.
A part of it was also flexibility and staying in front of technology, or being on the leading edge is what I call it. It’s being the futurist and staying ahead of everybody. That’s the exciting part where you end up being in the defining stages versus being in the implementing or using a stage.
How did you manage the actual transition? I’m speaking to those that are also executives right now, working in an organization like you. They have their own reasons and thinking about transitioning into consulting. Maybe they’re already doing some or just want to begin consulting. Can you talk about how you decided to make that transition? Was it when you had enough income coming in from consulting clients to replace the executive income? Did you go about it some other way? Take us back to how you navigated that transition, and if there’s anything that you feel you would’ve done differently with the benefit of hindsight.
My situation was slightly different. I had a great job. I was doing the consulting for fun and helping friends or peers out in the industry. My reason for doing this full-time was primarily driven because of the fact that I flatlined. I had two heart attacks and I was dead on arrival. I needed a career change. As a matter of fact, where I was at my point in life, I was done working. I did not want to work for anyone. I died and had a second lease on life. I packed my bags and left California and relocated to Hawaii because of that. I needed a change. Long story short, I did not want to work. I was ready to sail away in the sunset.
As a matter of fact, I tried that for a week, and then one of my clients called me and said that they needed help. I was finding every possible excuse to get out of it because I wanted to take some serious time and be on a sabbatical, but the project seemed to be very interesting. I took that opportunity and I’ve not looked back at it. If it wasn’t for health reasons, I’ll still be sitting in a corner office somewhere right now, but it changed life in a lot of positive ways where it gives me the opportunity, freedom, and flexibility to be creative, and look ahead versus look behind.
One of the things that I’ve learned through this transition is that the typical corporate culture is training us, and even the executives to look behind us, not to look ahead. Being on this side of the space where we’re running a decent consulting firm, we are looking ahead. What’s done is done. It’s water under the bridge. Let’s figure out what’s tomorrow. How do we fix that, scale up, and develop sustainable infrastructures?
In corporate, you need to put on a happy face for PR purposes. You may have to say things you don’t actually believe in. Walking away from that and embrace your own voice is quite relieving. Click To TweetYou had a very significant health scare. I’m wondering if you could take us to that time. Just share whatever you’re comfortable sharing. Is there anything that you feel you could have done differently? Is it a genetic thing? I’m not a doctor but take us back to that time. What was going on in your life and work? You mentioned at one point that the corporate executive role was relatively easy. What was going on that you think contributed to having that health scare?
The job in itself was fairly easy. The complexity comes from the human element. I call it the emotional element where it was very much so stress-driven because of the politics and bureaucracy. You’re making sure that everybody is happy, and you’re saying the right thing, or at least what society tells us to tell everybody even though you might not believe in it being the right thing.
Genetics are a part of the issue, but they’re not the entire issue. It’s the lifestyle and the stress that we tend to live in. I’ve continued to learn a lot about myself. I think about the issue that I had and the health scare was caused by the fact that I lost my voice in corporate culture. I internalized everything. I then got to put on this happy face for PR purposes and say things that I probably did not believe in 100%, whether it be internal to the organization, the shareholders, or even front-acing with clients. Walking away from it and being myself, embracing my ways, and telling people the way I feel about something is much relieving. To answer your question, losing your voice and internalizing everything was the root cause, in my opinion. It was the stress and the lifestyle.
You mentioned that you had this plan to take a long sabbatical or a good reset for your mind and body, but then you got this call from a client who wanted to reel you back in. How did you think about that or how did you ensure that you wouldn’t end up in the same situation again? You went from a very serious health scare to saying, “I need time to recharge and refresh,” and then you get pulled right back into another potentially demanding client engagement. What was your thought process? Were there any guidelines or guardrails that you put up to ensure that you wouldn’t get pulled right back into a similar environment and experience so that your health would be at the forefront?
I’ve got some hard and fast rules that I’ve set. There is my me time. I’ve always been an early riser. Typically, the first hour of the day, which is roughly between 4:30 AM and 5:30 AM is my me time. That’s when I plan my day and have a one-on-one with me. That’s the way I look at it. What did you do yesterday? What are you going to do today? How are you going to contribute? How are you going to give back? It’s no longer about me as in how much money you’re going to make. It’s about me in a lot of ways. Are you going to be happy with the decisions that you’re going to make? Have you given back enough, or are you just in pursuit of money? As long as that’s addressed and I’ve got a good goal in front of me, then it’s a good day.
I’ve set some hard and fast rules. Some of them are I do not engage with people I do not like personally and professionally. I tell you the way it is. Call me Donald Trump or whatever the case might be, but I rather experience the pain now versus be in pain for the next decades of my life. Being honest and transparent is imperative. I don’t have to answer emails or phone calls all the time. I enjoy working and the people that I’m working with as long as it’s not work.
If you know that you’re contributing, you’re the change agent, and having fun, I can work 24/7, 365. The minute it becomes work, I’m out of there. It’s got to be fun and enjoyable. You want to come to work, hang out with people, and feel that you’re being appreciated and valuable for that project, job, or whatever you’re involved in.
I don’t answer phone calls after 6:00 PM. You’ve got to be in my favorites to be able to get through to me, but everything can wait. The world is going to operate with or without us. You got to take some time out for yourself, your family, and your friends. You got to live a little. Go out and have some fun. Go play golf, run, snorkel, dive, or whatever your passion is. Go do the things that you enjoy the most. That’s what’s going to make life a lot more fun. Also, you’re going to come across as true and passionate in what you do.
I love that. Many people in the show are likely thinking to themselves, “I also have those same beliefs or same desires.” Oftentimes, there’s a bit of a disconnect between that belief internally. I saw a lot of people who don’t necessarily communicate that to the client. It takes them only so far, and then the expectation from the client are not on the same page. The consultants or the business owner gets pulled into things that are now not in alignment with what they originally set out. How do you approach that? Is this a conversation that you have with your clients right up front in an agreement? Do you push it forward? If it goes off in a direction that you don’t want, do you try and get it back or do you just walk away? How do you navigate the setting of expectations?
It’s a combination of all of the things that you mentioned. As much as the client is qualifying you to be a consultant to them, you’ve got to do the same thing. Is it the right relationship to engage in? Once you get past that, what I typically do is set up a clear set of engagements in a document, and get that signed off. That gets translated into a binding agreement for whatever that engagement is or whatever the length of that engagement is where you’re explicitly clear on the rules of engagement.
People have a tendency of going back to what they did and how they did it, and that’s normal. You got to remind them, “This is where draw the line. This is where the boundary is. I’ll do anything legally, but there are limitations and there are boundaries. Don’t expect me to answer your call in the middle of the night unless it’s an emergency or depending on what the project is.” Those boundaries need to be established and practiced thoroughly.
Now, I go to the Mahmood Consulting website, I see that you have three other principal consultants or partners that are in the business. Could you talk a little bit about the team, how it’s structured, the different roles, how many people are a part of the team, and then why you set it up that way?
To give you an idea of what we do, we do a lot of stuff in information technology. From a physical site assessment like greenfield identification, making sure that’s the right place to design and build a physical data center or building, depending on what needs to be done to doing all the electrical, mechanical, structural, networking design, and build for the clients.
The unique identifier for us is that we can take from the physical layer of the design-build to the technology stack as well. All of your networking, computing, tech stack, voice, connectivity, application layer, and security are what we addressed. One of the cool things that we are proud to do is audits, assessments, certification compliance, SEC filing, and anything information technology related.
In doing so, we get to have the opportunity to touch everything. It’s what I call from grid to bit where the team is inclusive of people that are electrical engineers and mechanical structure engineers. We have auditors on the team as well. We do forensics, for instance, that nobody else does for insurance and legal reasons. The team is very diverse with a lot of skillsets from legal to real estate acquisition to financials.
Are most of the team contractors, aside from a smaller core team? Can you talk about how the business is structured?
The right content eliminates any marketing fluff. Get straight to your case and share just enough of a valuable story. Click To TweetThe core team is very small. It’s six of us in total. Everybody else, we contract out, depending on the opportunity. Those half a dozen people have a skillset that’s fairly diverse. They touch a lot of areas. We are able to communicate and speak the language of that particular vertical that might fall under our subdomain. I don’t have attorneys on hand, but between me and Dave Hutchison, the two of us reviewed enough legal contracts that we can get ourselves into trouble.
As things progress, we need to engage legal. We have a couple of partners that we work with that will come on a case-by-case basis. It’s the same thing with finance. I’m fairly decent. I sit on a board for a publicly traded bank and I’ve got a decent understanding of finance. I’m not a CPA or your CFO. We have associates that we work and collaborate with, and bring them on board as needed. The advantage here is we are speaking their language. When it needs to be translated into another vertical, we can do that versus it getting lost.
Part of the challenges that a lot of organizations have is that their language does not get translated or streamlined into business units within the organization. What we were able to do is break all those barriers because we were able to speak all those languages at a high enough level and technical and tactical level. We then can translate that for the average user base, and again engage resources as needed.
It sounds like you have this core team, which is rather quite small and tight intentionally. You bring in all these experts as contractors or on as needed basis. How do you think about that as opposed to what some larger consulting firms do, which is to build out a lot of full-time people and associates all under one roof? I could see some potential positives, but also some downsides to that. Why do the model and structure where you have a lot of contractors as opposed to building out a much larger firm?
For starters, I don’t have the headaches that a larger firm would have.
That’s a big one.
Secondly, you don’t have to have that high capital expense of human resources. In our case, our strategy has been that we want to be as bespoke and nimble as possible. We want to be able to pass the savings on to the client. I’m not going to charge what NY is going to charge. It’s a significant saving for the client. We then get to work with fun people as well. You get to know these people on a personal basis. There’s an opportunity. If I can bring them on board full-time and they can justify their job to ever look back, we will do that. That comes with time and I’m in no rush.
It all goes back to the guardrails or values that you’ve established that you bring into all the work that you do. That makes a lot of sense. You mentioned that when you first started the consulting business, it came from your own network. Let’s zoom forward to now. What are you doing as a company when it comes to your sales pipeline and client pipeline? What are your marketing activities? How are you bringing in new clients and making sure that that pipeline is always robust?
We are not a sales company. It’s probably sad to say that we are never going out and selling aggressively. We do not market at all either. How our engagements come forth is by market credibility. A part of it is being in front and relevant. The way we stay in front and relevant is by speaking engagements, making sure that we are representing the right content, and we are in front of the right people. Doing adverts, that’s not us. I’m of the old mindset where the strongest marketing ever is your word and experience. What we refer to it in America is the word of mouth.
If I am able to deliver a good product or service, or have my end user have a good experience, then we have contributed to their success. They’ll tell people. Even if I go with the 80-20 rule, those two are going to make the phone call and one of them is going to sign up. I’m content with that. We don’t need to be the biggest, but we need to be the best at what we do.
You mentioned that you are intentional in making sure that you deliver and communicate the right content to the right people. Can you walk me through what you think about that? Make it a little bit more tangible. I’d love to dive into your thought process around what does the right content and the right people mean to you.
The right content in my experience is eliminating any fluff that’s caused by marketing. I don’t want to read the short print. I want to understand what your use case is and share enough of the story that’s valuable to you. I’ve been in the C-Suite for a major part of my career. One of the things that I’ve learned about myself is that I’ve got the attention span of a bird. Give me five seconds and tell me what’s important and why I need it. Eliminate all the fluff.
The minute you’re going to start fluffing it up for me and putting all these ponies on top of a present that’s worthless, you’re going to lose me. I have zero interest in that. Tell me the way it is, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Give me real numbers, data, and live experiences. I’m going to give you an example here. We talk about carbon neutrality. There’s so much fluff with carbon neutrality that’s been shared in the mass market.
All that research is focused on the hyper-scalers or what the likes of Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Oracle are doing. They’re less than 1% of the enterprise base. What they’re doing does not apply to 99% of the computing user base. The number of resources these folks has, 99% of that enterprise does not. Let’s get into the real world. Let’s address what 99% of the enterprise space needs and what they need to do.
That concept itself to me is very powerful. It’s very compelling. Instantly, it feels like you’re sharing something that goes against what most people likely believe. I would imagine that most people would initially think that the hyper-scalers like Google, Amazon, and so forth are the majority. In this case, you’re saying that they’re the minority. That’d get people’s attention and then want to learn more. By sharing a very compelling data point like that, it also further demonstrates your authority and expertise because you know something that most people don’t know.
Going back to the right audience, we don’t want everybody and anybody. Are you a CEO or CTO that’s willing to make the changes? Are you the one that’s going to say, “Give me the automagic button?” Are you willing to sit down and work with me on identifying what the good, the bad, and the ugly are? Are you willing to make the change? If you have that personality, you are the right audience for us.
Life is about surrounding yourself with the right people and having the right conversations. It’s not just about money. It’s about pursuing happiness and giving back. Click To TweetI don’t want to be talking to you where I feel like I’m talking to the wall. The money is good, but is that a good reason for us to engage now? You can send me a check and I’ll take that, but I don’t want to waste my time or your time in trying to convince you if you don’t have the mindset of making that change. In finding the right audience, one of the first qualifiers that we’ve got is, “Are you, Mr. End User willing to be the change agent yourself? Do you want to change your company and your processes? Are you one to acknowledge that the change is you, not the rest of the company?”
How do you do that? Is this when you’re having an initial communication with somebody? Does this happen even before you have a conversation with someone? How do you try and shake the branch of the tree and see if the fruit falls or not?
The best way to put that is that 10% of my job is to play Dr. Phil or Tony Robbins. It’s psychological at the end of the day. You’re observing and following how they do things and what they do. If I ever get an opportunity to take somebody out for golf, those four hours spent will tell me if I want to be around them and do business with them or not.
That’s very interesting. I have a whole bunch of additional questions here, but I want to be respectful of the time that we have on the calendar for today. I typically ask people about some of the habits that they bring into their life that they feel contribute to their success, focus, or performance. You talked about your morning routine. Is there anything else that you would add that you feel in terms of a habit that is consistent and has a big impact? Any other information or anything else that you’d like to share about that?
At the end of the day, I do the same thing. That’s to question me, “What did I do? Was it worth it?” As far as routine is concerned, I practiced this quite a bit, “Are we taking more than we are giving back?” That’s nonstop in my mind and I’m questioning that nonstop every day.
How do you apply that question? Would you apply that from the perspective of the world or community? Is that even more granular in terms of clients and projects? What’s the context for that question?
I started more of a reverse engineering approach. Am I personally taking more than I deserve? My mindset is you can only put so much food on your plate and eat so much off of that plate. When is enough? Do I have the desire to give back the excess that I’ve consumed or gathered? That goes back to the number of projects that we are taking on, the amount of work that we are doing and putting ourselves into, and how much of my time is being spent in philanthropy.
One final question here. I’m very interested in all the different experiences that you have to this point in the journey you’re still on. What’s one book that you have either read or listened to in the last 6 to 12 months that had a big impact on you that you would recommend to others?
The book I would highly recommend is Three Cups of Tea.
Can you explain very briefly what that’s about? I haven’t heard that recommendation before.
This gentleman was a nurse in America. He was a mountaineer and ended up climbing Mount Everest. He got sick in the Himalayas. The thing that hit me hard was that when you’re invited to that culture, one cup of tea, you are an acquaintance. Two cups of tea, you’re a friend, and three cups of tea, you’re a family. I’ve learned to compartmentalize my relationships as well according to that. I also learn that it’s about surrounding yourself with the right people and engaging in the right conversations. It’s not just about money. It’s the pursuit of happiness and the ability to give back.
I’m on my third lease on life. We didn’t get to talk about that, but this is after a quadruple bypass and 48 hours of life support. It’s not about how much we’re going to gather. It’s about how much we’re going to give back. Are we helping others? Are we creating the leaders for tomorrow? Especially with our kids, are we going to give them a world that’s peaceful or the chaos that we are living in? That’s the premise of that book. It’s very softly written. It’s an easy read. It connected me and hit me at a very different point.
Nabeel, I want to thank you so much for coming on here, spending some time with us, and sharing a bit of your story. There’s so much more to unpack. I look forward to continuing the conversation. For those that want to learn more about you, you have a venture side of a business and you have a podcast, where would be the one website or the one place that people should go to learn more about you and your work?
The simplest one would be is Mahmood.one and follow me on social platforms. My handle is @NabeelMahmood.
Thanks so much for coming on.
Thank you for having me.
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