Courageous Minds: Middle East’s Launch Pad fostering business growth and success!
Courageous Minds is all about inspiring people and organizations. They help you achieve high-performance results in your business and life, by unleashing your potential.
The success of any business majorly lies in focusing on value creation. This combined with a culture of possibilities, intelligent risk-taking, and courage makes it unbeatable.
Most businesses falter and lose money when their focus moves away from holistic value creation (consumer, customer & company) for all key stakeholders in the business ecosystem.
Waqi Munim, CEO and founder wants to help businesses and individuals grow by accelerating value creation and by raising intellectual and emotional capabilities.
Tell our readers about Courageous Minds and how it works?
Courageous Minds is a leadership consultancy with a mission to unleash the potential in businesses and people by accelerating value creation on the foundation of a courageous mindset. A mindset that is free of fears, limiting paradigms, negativity, and complacency.
What I do is, provide coaching and mentoring to businesses, entrepreneurs and individuals who want to bring about a transformation in their business and life.
I, therefore, work with them to identify the value blockages in their businesses and life. I help them to develop plans so that they can eliminate blockages and focus on growth by accelerating value creation. It requires work on the mindset along with a holistic strategy and action plans that have value creation at the core.
Can you please give us a little background information about you?
I am the founder and CEO of Courageous Minds. Prior to starting my own consultancy, I worked for Procter & Gamble, the biggest consumer products company in the world for 25 years in senior leadership positions.
I have also worked at ProsiebenSat1, which is the biggest media company in Germany for a year. I was the Managing Director for Digital and Adjacent businesses and member of the executive board.
What tools and techniques do you use to help in startup growth and success?
There is “no one size fits all” approach in business. What I do is work with the businesses in order to identify the challenges by peeling the onion on the symptoms, to get to the root cause of the value blockages.
Once the real reason for lack of growth is identified, I work with the leadership in embedding value creation in the key areas of the business:
1) Goal Setting,
2) Strategy
3) Operations
4) Measurements.
In parallel, I work to bring about a positive change in the culture of the business in order to make it more conducive for innovation.
I also do coaching and mentoring to enable individuals, achieve their goals.
At the core of any success is the willingness to succeed, the ability to see possibilities and the courage to go after your dreams despite the fears and failures.
I’ve looked into your website and your training library includes storytelling, animated videos, multimedia apps… etc, how did you come up with these and in what ways are these adding values to businesses and startup growth?
Good question. We as humans like stories and have grown up by listening to stories through family, friends, etc. The stories help us to develop a narrative of our life. The stories create our paradigms or the belief system.
A positive story playing in the mind will make the individual positive and more willing to look at possibilities despite the challenges. Whereas, an individual who has a negative story playing in his mind will be fearful, negative and less likely to take risks or pursue his goals.
I use stories as tools to convey important messages which helps break the monotony of talks as we focus on multimedia apps. I have received loads of positive feedback on my animation movie, The story of Courage, ‘Inspire in a minute videos’ and my apps.
Each of the videos have a purpose and help in nurturing a courageous mind and the apps also help in value creation.
How has been your company’s growth since it’s launch?
It has been 1.5 years, and the company has been doing reasonably well. The key challenge is visibility and marketing for which I’m still working on.
I relocated to UAE from Switzerland and started my consultancy from scratch. I am new to UAE and it takes time to settle into any new country, though settling in UAE has been fast and the systems are very efficient.
My focus is on developing the mentoring platform so I can help new businesses with my experience and contribute positively to the businesses in this region.
How do you make sure to provide better service to organizations that come to you?
By giving quality time to understanding the challenges, sensing the culture, knowing what drives the people, assessing their capabilities. Also, looking at their day to day operations to see how focused the business is on value creation.
The problem in today’s time is that everyone acts to be an expert! and has a panadol solution to all pains.
I have enough experience and credentials to know that, in order to treat a problem a quality diagnosis is a must. Irrespective of how time-consuming it can get! This is exactly what separates me from others along with my track record of building businesses and organizations.
What were the challenges you faced to get “Courageous Minds” to where it is today?
I see myself in a start-up mode and facing challenges in this phase is normal. In other words, to have challenges means that you are moving in the right direction.
The biggest challenge has been creating a service brand that offers the value that is difficult to assess, especially if the tenure of my engagement is short.
How have you evolved as a CEO since your first company?
I am still evolving, I don’t believe in titles rather I believe in passion and courage. Titles are simply there to assign a delegation of responsibility. In today’s time, everyone has a big title, it makes people feel good.
I am in a start-up and hence my position of being a CEO can’t be compared to a CEO of a bigger corporation.
I see myself as a passionate individual working diligently to create a beautiful business in addition to focusing on improving the performance of other businesses and individuals. To me the value I create and an acknowledgment of a job well done is more important than a title.
What advice do you have for other business leaders looking to grow and succeed?
Success grows on the foundation of courage. Have the courage to pursue your goals and do not allow fears, negativity, and complacency to put you in a box of limitations.
The below two quotes from the guru’s of leadership may serve as a piece of great advice:
- “Our net worth is directly proportional to the value we create for others (real or perceived)”
- “If you want to attract wealth and fame, become an attractive person. Invest in your capabilities and you’ll see a transformation in your life.”
What is your work culture like?
I have a strong belief that ‘structures should follow growth.’
Never invest in big structures up front. Because the bigger the fixed costs, the more difficult it is to make the business profitable. Keep it lean, stretch to work more till a critical business mass is reached and then invest!
In today’s time, it is important to develop different business models. My business model is to outsource all non-core back office activities and collaborate with marketing companies in building my brand.
What is your vision for ‘Courageous Minds’ for the next 3-5 years?
My vision for Courageous Minds is that it becomes a recognized ‘go to’ consultancy for value creation in the startups sector, for both small and mid-sized businesses in the region.
And a mentoring platform for the talent that wants to grow and compete on an international level while keeping an inner balance.
