How to Grow a Successful Business Without Having All The Answers - With Sadek El-Assaad

Tom Bailey, Founder of Succeed Through Speaking, Interviews Sadek El-Assaad

Sadek is a Business Consultant and the owner of Zeder Group. He has three international brands within his group and spends most of his time transforming struggling companies into high performing and profitable businesses.

Why you've got to check out Sadek's episode:

- Get access to the FREE book - Time is not infinite (see URL below)

- Learn how to prevent your business from reaching a plateau

- Discover the main reason business owners end up feeling overwhelmed

- Recognise the signs before your business falls into a downward spiral

- Discover the one piece of advice Sadek gives all his clients

- How to transition from employee to business owner and avoid the typically pitfalls most people make. 

Resources / Links

Connect with Sadek on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sadekelassaad/ 

Download the FREE Book - Time is not infinite: 12 principles to make the best use of your time - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Time-not-infinite-principles-make-ebook/dp/B07RLQZ6CH 

TRANSCRIPT

Tom Bailey: Hello and welcome to the Flow and Grow Expert Interviews. The place for experts and entrepreneurs who want high value ideas to boost business results.

Hello everyone. And welcome to another edition of Flow and Grow. I'm Tom Bailey and I'm joined today by the super successful Sadek El-Assad. Now Sadek, hello, and a very warm welcome. Whereabouts are you in the world right now?

Sadek El-Assaad: Hi, Tom. Thank you for having me first here. I'm in Dubai. I'm in sunny, Dubai with enjoying an nice weather. It's the perfect weather this time of year. It's not very hot. It's not very cold. 

Tom Bailey: Excellent. Perfect. And I've been to Dubai a few times and I think that's first on my list after COVID disappears.

Sadek El-Assaad: Yeah. We're expecting your man.

Tom Bailey: Excellent. I'll see you there. Okay. So off the subject of Dubai, although I could talk about it for hours and, and onto the subject of Sadek

So, Sadek is a business consultant and the owner of Zaida group. He has three international brands within his group and he spends most of his time transforming, struggling businesses into high-performing and profitable businesses. So definitely somebody to follow on LinkedIn, if you're looking to grow a business.

So thanks again for your time today.

Sadek El-Assaad: Thank you for having me again.

Tom Bailey: Great. And our title today is How To Grow Successful Business Without Having All The Answers and Sadek is going to show us how to do that in just seven minutes. So Sadek your time starts now!

Sadek El-Assaad:  Okay.

Tom Bailey: Okay. So question number one, who are your ideal clients?

Sadek El-Assaad: Well, basically I work with business owners who are professionals who started their own business because they like to do something. And then. They found themselves they're plateaued somewhere where they're unable to grow. So these would be my ideal clients. I sometimes work with CEOs also of, of bigger corporates, but yeah, it's mainly business owners who want to grow, who wants to achieve more, who have who know that they deserve more and they want to be able to take their business to another level.

Tom Bailey: Perfect. And, and on that trajectory to another level, what kind of the biggest challenges that they typically face?

Sadek El-Assaad: Well, basically, I've seen a lot of business owners really, when, when they stopped, they opened their business. There's something they like about their business, whatever it is, being consulting medicine production.

And once they start the business, they found out that there are a lot of other things that they need to deal with. There's finance, there's people that is moods of people, you know, of their employees. There. Isn't the motivation, the marketing, the sales, the strategy. So they end up overwhelmed, unable to juggle between everything, what they have.

So  they will either go into doing the things that they like doing and delegate everything else, or they they stopped doing the thing that they must do and they start working smarter. Yeah. And they, this is what they started doing.

Tom Bailey: Yeah. Makes sense. So we've got these businesses that are kind of overwhelmed, juggling lots of priorities and potentially plateauing.

What, what impact does this typically have on their business?

Sadek El-Assaad: When usually they start motivated, they want to grow their business. And with time they start compromising, they start blaming the market now covered with everything, you know the circumstances, everything else, and it becomes like a downward spiral.

Where they, they're not performing well, they're blaming. So it goes, it goes lower and then they blame again the market. So they end up working very hard for their business instead of that, their business is working for them. It's like running on a treadmill to nowhere.

Tom Bailey: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Not, not, not a good place to be in business.

You've got just over four and a half minutes left. And question number four is what's one valuable piece of advice that you'd give to somebody to help them solve this problem in business?

Sadek El-Assaad: Well, basically I would tell everyone that don't think you are alone. I mean, don't try to do figure things out alone on your own.

There is I'm yet to see a a problem faced by any business that was not faced by a business before. And someone somewhere has sorted out the problem. The issue is with the, with the, with all of this is that it's not the problem that we face. It's the approach that we adopt and adopt to resolve the problems that we face.

Tom Bailey: Got it.

Yeah. That makes complete sense. And I guess one thing we'd like to ask on this show is what is one valuable free resource that you can share with people to really help them solve these problems?

Sadek El-Assaad: When I'm sure you've seen that, Tom, that so many times you're calling people they're too busy, too busy.

You know, everyone is too busy including ourselves. And that's why I have created with that with my friend, Paula Ruggeri we have written a small booklet. It's not the book, so don't worry. It's not a lot of reads and say just like 20 minutes reads and it has 12 principles for effective time management.

It's called time is not infinite. This is it. Right. And it's available on Amazon. You can Google Google it on. Amazon should be available. It's available. It's for free. There is the control version. And if you, if anyone is interested, I can always they can contact me and I can always email them a copy.

Tom Bailey: Excellent. Perfect. So just to confirm, then get yourself over to Amazon. Whichever country you're in and type in time is not infinite. 12 principles to make the best use of your time and any problems just search for up our asset on LinkedIn. And he'll be able to send you a PDF as well with pleasure. Okay.

So we've got two and a half minutes left and we're on to question six, which is, what would you say is your greatest failure that you've ever made either in life or business? And what did you learn from it?

Sadek El-Assaad: One, I have much, most, just one, you know, what would be valuable for the listeners is that I've worked 20 years in corporates.

And during these 20 years, I have managed a lot of teams. I had always, I've always made sure that I had the cohesive team. When I started my own business. I started with a very strong team, very young and enthusiastic team. We were like, I had like four consultants. If I remember correctly. But as, as we started growing and we became nine or 11 consultants, I lost the team cohesiveness and that had slowed down our growth for the period of a year or so.

And the reason for that is that I thought I knew everything. I thought my ego was on my, on the way of, okay. Don't, don't go and search for help or don't ask anyone I've been there. I've done that. So I know everything and I wish I hadn't, I haven't done this mistake because it has slowed down, slowed us down for the, for a good year.

Tom Bailey: Yeah.

Yeah. Massive, massive impact. Yeah. And, and finally, you've got 70 seconds left. And so then in 65 seconds, what is the one question that I should have asked you? That would have given great value to this audience.

Sadek El-Assaad: Well, I would suggest if the one question would be, what is the difference? What happens when, when you're an employee and what happens when, if you move into to become a business owner.

And what type of advice I can give the audience when, when you're an employee, you have a boss. Okay. Even if you're an executive, you have a board of directors above you or something. So you're always, you have someone there is always a checks and balances are, are in place. Yeah. When you become your business owner, you become, you become the ultimate decision maker.

So you become the plaintiff. The judge, the jury and the prosecutor all at the same time. Yeah. So if you're going into the right direction, it's fine. You'll go fast. But if you're going into the wrong direction, or if you're struggling with something, you still go fast. Struggling downward. So try to find someone who can be your sounding board, someone who can be a wing man, who can act like I'm a consultant or a, a company that will help you stay on the right track and help you from and move from wherever, wherever you are to the next level, because every business has different levels and you need to go through each level.

Each level needs is a separate set of skillset. That you need to apply and a different approach. So, yeah, that would be my, my advice to every business owner.

Tom Bailey: Excellent. Great. Thank you so much again for your time. And I'm looking forward to sharing this one with our audience..

Sadek El-Assaad: Thank you, same here.

Tom Bailey: Speak soon.