The Digital Marketing Mentor

096: Leading With Love: Mohammad Anwar on Redefining Marketing and Mentorship

• Danny Gavin • Episode 96

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Mohammad Anwar, President and CEO of Softway and Culture+, shares how embracing love, empathy, and honest, human-centric leadership transformed his approach to business and marketing. 

From early culture shocks in both Saudi Arabia and rural Kansas, to guiding executives through challenges today, his story highlights how trust, storytelling, and people-first communication drive organizational success and personal growth. 

This episode offers practical insights for leaders steering through change and technology-driven transformations, sharing conversation about themes discussed in his upcoming book, “Love as a Change Strategy,” which will be released later this month. 

Episode Highlights: 

  • Growing up between cultures shaped Mohammad’s empathy, perspective, and openness as a leader.
  • A Catholic boarding school experience in his younger days taught him to advocate for change and respect diverse traditions.
  • Near-bankruptcy forced a personal reckoning, leading him to adopt love as a business strategy.
  • The leadership philosophy of University of Houston’s Coach Tom Herman transformed Mohammad’s approach to culture and mentorship.
  • Love and vulnerability are not abstract ideals, but measurable, actionable tools for change management.

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Meeting Mohamed: Mentor and Advocate

Danny Gavin

Welcome to the Digital Marketing Mentor. I'm your host, Danny Gavin, and, together with industry leaders and marketing experts, we'll explore the meeting point of mentorship and marketing. We'll discover how these connections have affected careers, marketing strategies and lives. Now get ready to get human. Hello, I'm Danny Gavin, founder of Optige, a marketing professor and the host of the Digital Marketing Mentor. Now get ready to get human. I had the pleasure of working with Mohamed as both a client and business partner from 2011 to 2016, and it's a huge honor to have him on the show. Mohamed is a passionate advocate for bringing love and humanity into business, a philosophy at the heart of his Culture Rise training program and his book and podcast Love as a Business Strategy and I don't know if I'm supposed to say this, but part two, Love as a Change Strategy, which is coming out soon. Today, we'll explore love as a marketing strategy, focusing on internal communication and change management, and, of course, we'll dive into Mohamed's mentorship journey as well.

Mohammad Anwar

How are you? I'm doing good, danny. It's so great to be able to speak with you on this topic. I'm looking forward to it. Awesome, me too.

Danny Gavin

All right, so let's jump right in. So where did you go to school and what did you study?

Mohammad Anwar

So when you say school, you got to define. You mean elementary school, college, what do you mean?

Danny Gavin

Let's talk about where you grew up, because I think that is a kind of a different story than most would expect or know.

Mohammad Anwar

Yeah, so I was born and raised in Saudi Arabia to Indian parents and so I grew up there till I was 14. So majority of my schooling was in Saudi. But I went to an Indian embassy run school so I studied the Indian syllabus while living in Saudi. So I had the Indian education. Living abroad got to experience the Middle Eastern culture, the food, the environment, but was raised and educated in an Indian system. And then I moved to high school.

Mohammad Anwar

When I was 15, my dad shipped me off to a Catholic boarding school up in Kansas in a small town called Atchison, at a school called Marhill Prep School. And after finishing up high school I had been away from my family since I was 14. So I decided I wanted to move in with my sister, who was in Houston at the time doing her residency. So I moved in with her and then I commuted to U of H, university of Houston, and I got home cooked food every day and I loved it. And I went to college, did my computer science degree at University of Houston. So that's kind of my educational background.

Danny Gavin

That's really cool and I forgot that, like both of us, we actually left home at 14. I also went away to high school in Los Angeles, so I forgot that that is a common denominator between you and I.

Mohammad Anwar

And you both went to religious schools. I went to a Catholic school and you went to a seminary or something right.

Danny Gavin

Yes, so I was going to ask that. How was it? Being potentially the only person of the Islamic faith in a Catholic school? Was that strange for you? How was that whole experience?

Mohammad Anwar

You know I actually enjoyed it. There were 11 other Muslim students from Saudi Arabia who had moved to that school because they recruited kids from Saudi, but I actually enjoyed it. I got to learn a lot. It really opened up my mindset. It exposed me to you know, it's a culture shock, for sure, but at the same time I really appreciated we had, like monks and fathers and nuns who were, you know, ran the school. I got to go to mass. I wasn't required to kneel or take the communion or any of the stuff, but I did. I was an altar boy at one time. I got the opportunity to carry the wine and the bread to the father for the ceremony and the mass and everything. My father quite honestly encouraged me to go with a very open mindset and embrace all religions and perspectives and expose yourself to it. Go, experience it. Don't feel any sort of way. So my dad really influenced me in keeping a very open mindset.

Mohammad Anwar

The only downside of it all was the food, because I eat halal food and so the school did not have halal offerings. But I managed to change that. The story is I used to drink a lot of milk because I couldn't get a lot of protein in my diet and I was heavy into gym and bodybuilding at the time. So there was this one kid working the cafeteria and he didn't let me take two milk cartons, which is usually what I drink for dinner. I took it anyways, and then he went and complained to my dorm master and the dorm master called me in and said you're not allowed to take two milk cartons, you can only take one. And I told him hey, I have dietary restrictions. I'm not going to be able to survive if I don't have enough food. I need to have it. And he said that's not my problem. And he gave me work detail to clean the hallways of the dorm and clean the bathrooms as a punishment. Yep, and I got so upset I went back into my room, I punched the wall and broke my hand and all night I suffered.

Mohammad Anwar

And the next day I go into school and you know I was in in in mental pain and my hand was like swelled up and so they had to take me to a doctor and get a cast on and everything. And then the director of admissions, who had met my father in Saudi to recruit me, meets me in the hall and he's like what happened to you and I was like this is what happened. I was punished for taking an extra milk carton and you know, you promised my father you'd take care of me and here I can't even get enough food. He was like I am so sorry, I did not realize that you needed special diet.

Mohammad Anwar

He immediately called the cafeteria manager and said you need to make sure you have special meals for muhammad. And then I was like there are 11 more kids like me who don't eat. Can you please make it available for everybody? And so so he's like make that 12 special meals for all meals breakfast, lunch and dinner. And so that changed the whole school from there on, even till they have halal meals available for Muslim kids at the sacrifice of me breaking my hand. That was my story.

Danny Gavin

Oh, man, but that's such a beautiful story and the fact that you right, that you made that change and it's still today, and it really says a lot about the school, right, because they could say, oh, like, we don't care about some other religion, right, but the fact that they were so open and wanted to make everyone feel at home, it's just, it's very special.

Mohammad Anwar

They also, you know, the senior class had a joke in the book their future predictions for seniors and my prediction was Muhammad moves into a house with padded walls and then the joke of the school the whole time. Every time I walked around with the cast I was like, hey, I hear you should drink more milk. It'll help you with calcium deficiency and it was, you know, normal high school stuff. But yeah, it was fun. I enjoyed my time in the high school. I learned a lot, like I said, and I don't think I would switch it out for anything. I think that really, really changed my perspective of the world.

Danny Gavin

And it showed you that oftentimes people don't know how you're doing and therefore just by communicating you can actually make a difference, instead of being afraid and holding it all in.

Mohammad Anwar

That's correct. Yes, I would agree. And advocating for yourself and communicating for change. I think I started to learn that I wish I hadn't broken my hands for it. Yes, it was a good learning.

Danny Gavin

So now it makes sense why you ran to your sister to go get some home cooked food, right, yes, that's why I went to Houston.

Mohammad Anwar

I'm like I had offers at other universities but I was like I can't do this anymore, I just need to home with my sister. Two and a half years of my college life I commuted for my sister.

Danny Gavin

So, looking back at university in particular, are there any experiences that happened inside or outside the classroom that, when you look back, sort of directed your path to where you are today? I think?

Mohammad Anwar

the biggest learning I had in college was less about the actual topics that I went to study, which are with computer science and programming and so forth.

Mohammad Anwar

I mean they were very beneficial now that I was able to start a business because of it, but I think the biggest learning and takeaways I had through college was how to become disciplined, consistent, organized and be able to leverage my time and use my time to this maximum efficiency and effectiveness was something that I think I don't think I would have learned if I didn't get to college, because in high school we had a regimented schedule study, work, study, cafeteria, lunch, there, like all the things. I was spoiled and in college, all of a sudden, you had to make your own schedule and figure things out. I think that was a growth, moment of growth for me and I think if there's anything from college that I would say was, uh, something that I hold on to as the biggest learning and transformational experience would be learning to become independent and self-disciplined and consistent and managing the time and prioritizing my time. I would say something I wouldn't have learned if I was in front of the college.

Danny Gavin

I thought you were going to tell me about your wife, because you actually met her in college but it's okay. Hopefully she doesn't see this podcast. No, no, no, I'm just joking. So this is a question I often ask people, and I don't think I've ever discussed it with you before you yourself being at college. Now, when you hire people, is it important for you that they've gone through college, or for you is that not a requirement? And I don't even know if that's even something you think about.

Mohammad Anwar

Yeah, for us at Softway, I don't care if people have a degree or not. Like we hire people to demonstrate the right behaviors and skills and talent or educational degree or you know their degrees and so forth. I don't put a lot of weight on it. I mean, it is something that we look at, but we don't use that as a qualifier. That makes a lot of sense. Yes, why do you think that makes?

Danny Gavin

a lot of sense. Just knowing your organization and what you preach. It makes sense that it's more about the fit than maybe if they got an education or not, Because often just because you went through a four-year degree doesn't necessarily judge who you are or what you can accomplish. Cool yeah. So how would you define a mentor?

Educational Journey: Saudi to America

Mohammad Anwar

I experienced my first mentorship as a mentee, as someone who can really empathize with my situation and give me coaching and guidance not from their experience, as like like you know. This is how you should do it. This is what you should do, this is why you should do it. This is what I've learned, and it's more about through empathy and curiosity, from the lens of the mentee, and be able to truly walk in their shoes not what would I do if I were in your shoes which is what sometimes can get confusing between a true mentor and someone who's just trying to tell you what to do.

Mohammad Anwar

And so I would say a mentor needs to have that capacity to be empathetic and curious at the same time, to understand and appreciate the mentee situation, to then give advice and coaching on how they can approach the situation. And many of times that coaching and mentorship comes by actually helping the mentee figure it out and facilitating the introspection and the thinking and the why, rather than just telling what to do. So ultimately, the mentee learns to solve their own challenges and problems and they're just assisted with a mentor. And so I would say that's how I would define a mentor is someone who can help facilitate that for a mentee and help them find their way on their own, and coming beside them and showing them how to do it by asking the right questions from a place of empathetic curiosity.

Danny Gavin

So, to contrast that, you've shared that your most influential mentor was coach Tom Herman, yes, and that he might not even know his impact on you. So can you share what traits about him make for such an impactful mentor, and, especially in this case, right? Totally different than maybe what that typical definition would be?

Mohammad Anwar

Yeah. So for me, in order for me to introduce Tom Herman, I have to share a little bit of background about myself and my journey, because that had a lot to do with it. So as I started Softway, you know I had a lot of success. I started at 20 and by age 30, I had almost 300 employees working for Softway and I was living the American dream because I'm an immigrant to this country. I was living the American dream because I'm an immigrant to this country, but then all of a sudden in 2015, around 2015, I was actually near bankruptcy. I was losing employees left and right and our clients are firing us left and right and our company was near bankruptcy and I had to go through layoffs. And in a moment of deep introspection, I realized that this wasn't the economy, the market or employees or clients. It's actually my fault. I had become very arrogant, I had become power drunk and I became selfish and greedy and I started to only think of myself and my way or the highway kind of a mindset, and that was what was leading me to self-destruction and the companies near bankruptcy. So the just-in-time realization helped me recognize that I need to think and reconsider if I'm even suited to be the CEO. In fact, and when I was going through that contemplation and introspection, I actually attended a football game for our alma mater, university of Houston, and I witnessed a miraculous comeback victory. We raised a 20-point deficit in the fourth quarter and we ended up winning an unlikely, winnable football match. And after that I was very inspired and I felt reinvigorated and I was going to go back and not give up on SoftBay, and I was going to.

Mohammad Anwar

I imagined my own comeback for SoftBay as a result of the football game, and the cool thing about that season was that it was almost a Cinderella season. We were 10-0 after that game and we were under the leadership of a rookie head coach, tom Herman. That was his first year as a head coach and what he had done to take a mediocre, talented team and make them a zero-loss team really blew my mind and I was very inspired by him. So there was this one press conference that I watched right after that game, and in that press conference the reporter asked him what had led to the resiliency and comeback victory that night, and it's what he said was the pivotal moment in my journey. He attributed love to the success and the comeback and he went down to expand and say it's not the love you dog, love you bro kind of love, but it's a genuine love, where you hold the other person's hand in your heart kind of love. And it's that kind of love that this game prescribes as a culture that helps them not just win games like Saturday night but become championship level teams. It's because the players go on the field to fight not for themselves but for their teammates next to them, and that's how you become a high performing championship level team.

Mohammad Anwar

So as he was seeing all of this, my mind went into an introspective state where I asked myself do I love my team?

Mohammad Anwar

Do I care for my team? Do I have a culture as Tom Herman is describing? And the resounding answer that kept coming back was no, I didn't. And so that moment I committed to myself that I'm going to strive to become an empathetic, trusting and vulnerable leader that puts the needs of others before myself and create a circle of safety where people are empowered to learn, grow, make mistakes, forgive one another. Thereby there's an environment of resilience, belonging and success, and that's a journey that I'm still on but that really saved our business.

Mohammad Anwar

But since then I followed Tom Herman religiously, and every press conference, every video I could pull up, I pulled up and everything we said or would say or speak pulled up, and everything we said or would say or speak. I would act as though he is telling me those things and ask myself the questions Do I lead like that, do I operate like him, do I behave like him? Do I have a culture like his? And I was committed to take that philosophy that he prescribed and apply it to my own business and myself personally, and that's how instrumental he's been and how impactful he's been, and he just doesn't even know it.

Danny Gavin

So you haven't had a chance to speak with him in person, or even if you know how to get in touch with him, hook me up, Danny. Well, hopefully this podcast will bring you to him.

Mohammad Anwar

Yes, so yeah. No, I haven't been able to get in touch with him. I think I've got as close as one degree of separation, but I haven't been able to get a meeting with him yet.

Danny Gavin

So you mentioned your dad a little bit earlier. Love to know how he's a mentor in your life, whether it's spiritually, family business. How is he a mentor to you, my dad?

Mohammad Anwar

moved to Saudi Arabia to work as a machinist for an oil company out of necessity, to help with the poverty and the situation that he was faced with at home in India. And the thing is that I saw my dad get dehumanized every day at work, because at the time and even currently in the Middle East at least I can speak from my experience and my dad's experience is that you get paid salaries differently based on your nationality. Based on your nationality, so Indians, filipinos or Southeast Asian countries, they get paid the lowest salary for the same job role, job position. So if you're an American, you're the highest paid for the exact same job description, and if you're an Indian, you're like the lowest paid. And so your salaries are dictated not by your position or your job description, but by your nationality.

Mohammad Anwar

And so my father would work because he had to feed five children and put us through education and get us all college educated, and he did not have a college education himself. And so he worked hard, 26 years of his life there, putting up with humiliation every day. He worked hard, 26 years of his life there, putting up with humiliation every day, dehumanizing conditions, because he would go to work where he had people report to him that made three to four times his salary, but he was their boss and had peers who made more than him, took credit for his work, had to face all the politics, all the issues, all the challenges. But he had no choice because he would come home every day, see us and say I have no choice, I have to put up with this. But he made it a point to where he said I don't want any of your kids to ever face this, so I want you all to go get educated. I don't care if I have no savings, no retirement plans. You all are going to go to college.

Mohammad Anwar

And so he sent all five of us and the youngest to get college degrees, professional degrees, education, no matter what it costed, in the US or India. We all got shipped over and he said I want you all to bring value to this world with the work that you do and live in a society where you can contribute, no matter who you are, where you're from. And so he persuaded all of us to also move to America. And he was like don't come back to the Middle East, don't go to India, just go to the US, because it doesn't matter where you're from how you look, what religion you follow, what nationality you are, you will get treated fairly and equally. And so it was him who really prescribed this mindset for me to think differently, think about humans.

Mohammad Anwar

From a very young childhood he talked about, he used to have a saying, him and my mother used to say humanity before nationality. And whenever there were like problems in the Middle East oh, you're Filipino, you're Pakistan, you're Indian my parents would always say it's always humanity before nationality, let nationality not come in the way. And so from the very get-go he kind of instilled this in my mind. So I think I lost my pathway along the way, running softly.

Mohammad Anwar

But I think I came back to the roots where today I feel blessed that we can do work that is all about bringing humanity back to the workplace and I'm able to give homage to my dad for all of the things that he had to go through, being dehumanized every day.

Defining Mentorship Through Empathy

Mohammad Anwar

I feel like I'm able to. I can't go change that for my father, but I can do as much as I can to help do my part to make sure no other workplace, you know, treats human in a dehumanizing manner. And I, unfortunately, was that oppressor. I had become that oppressor. But thankfully I was able to find my way and I'm still on that journey and I want to try to help spread the message of love and how we can bring humanity back to the workplace through love. So that's kind of my mission and purpose and why I believe I exist. And if it wasn't for my dad's experiences and what I witnessed, what I saw him go through, I think that inner fire in me is like I want to do the best I can so nobody else experiences what my dad went through.

Danny Gavin

Thank you for sharing that very special story with us. Thank you, so this is a good segue for love as a marketing strategy. So how would you define love in the context of internal marketing and communication within organizations when we talk about love as a strategy in general.

Mohammad Anwar

We're not referring to the romantic type of love and so forth. We're talking in the context of business and workplace. It's essentially about putting people at the center of all your business decisions and your strategies and approaches. It's about starting with a people-first mindset. And so when you look at marketing and communications, especially when it comes to internal comms because when you really think about it, there is a lot of marketing that has to be done to internal employees, internal team members, to either embrace new processes, new systems, new approaches, new policies right, you have to be able to communicate and get them to buy into the concept of whatever it is that you're trying to do as a business.

Mohammad Anwar

And so many a times how we communicate to our employees and our team members can be sometimes not from an empathetic lens, and so we believe that empathic communications is loving communications.

Mohammad Anwar

So if we can try to cater our communication and marketing messages from you know all the way to the start line staff and what's in it for them and how does it impact them and how does it influence them, what, what's the case for them, for change, or to embrace these things, you're able to communicate in loving ways.

Mohammad Anwar

And there are also a lot of other principles that go with it which is essential to marketing and communicating to your internal staff. We call them the change principles and you use that to inform your communication and marketing plans internally. So cohesively together with that system is how I describe love as a marketing strategy, because it's from a people first lens, it's from an empathic perspective, it's tailored to every audience member for where they sit in the organization and not just from the top, which is usually calms our business perspective. They're like we need to hit xyz million dollar goals or billion dollar goals. We need to grow to this size and this is the business case. This isn't a business imperative and while those are important elements of communication, it falls on deaf ears if it doesn't address what's in it for me as an employee, if I sit in this box inside of this organization. So how do you tailor your marketing and comms to be able to reach that audience in a personalized approach to help drive the necessary change? Adoption is how I see it, holistically.

Danny Gavin

And I think what's really cool is that, because you have a foundation in software development, whether it's web or other sort of things, and which a lot of these are about changing in a positive way. But I'm sure there's plenty of times in your past where you've created the best piece of software but it's actually it wasn't successful because the way that it was rolled out, the way the communication happened, the way that that change was managed didn't work well. Do you have any examples around that?

Mohammad Anwar

Oh yeah, totally. I mean, I have several examples of my own initiatives that we've done. You know, where we've developed ERP type systems or point-of-sale systems for our clients and we didn't consider the people. We started off with the technology, the tool set, the code base, the infrastructure, and the last thing we ever thought about was the people who would actually use the system. And we built a system that was not usable or that didn't consider the true day-to-day experiences of the people. And so we've, we've, we failed. We built a beautiful software that was not used at all and, you know, lost a lot of money for the clients and the businesses, like not very proud of it. And then, on the contrary, when you actually start with people, first from a mindset perspective, strategy perspective you don't even think about your tools until the very last, or your technology.

Mohammad Anwar

That should be the last piece of the equation. The first piece should be who are the users? What is their personas, what is their day to day, what is important to them, what's meaningful to them? And then also what is the change them, what's meaningful to them, and then also what is the change going to require of them. Are they going to give up something that they're used to doing for the last decade. What's the loss that they're going to feel? What's the grieving process that they're going to have to go through to abandon an old way of working and embrace a new way of thinking and working? So how do we empathetically think about the person that is going to be impacted before we even start developing the solution? So that has changed how we even develop software today and solutions, but then also how we communicate.

Mohammad Anwar

And now, before we build a software and then say, oh, now comes the change management. So build a shitty software and then tell the change management people, it's your fault because you couldn't get them to adapt to it. So we blame it on change management. Right, that's how, even today, most organizations operate. Change management inherits shitty change decisions by leaders and they're expected to fix it. They say just make people follow. Why can they say just make people follow? Why can't they just do it? Why can't they use this? Why can't they embrace this? And they've tried to define the change management processes, and to no success. Even till date, 78 percent of change initiatives fail inside of organizations and 100 percent of the 78% of the failures are attributed to people issues, people resistance, lack of people, adaptation and adoption and the philosophies, the strategies that are followed today to embrace change is thou shall do this or you lose your job, right? So it's very fear-based, fear-oriented.

Mohammad Anwar

And so our philosophy is that if you actually consider the people from the get-go and we will still have the tough conversations and why they should embrace, but do make sure you have those conversations, make sure you consider their inputs, and here's a lot give them the time to grieve, give them the time to embrace this change, but also make sure you're building with them, with having a seat at the table.

Mohammad Anwar

Then you'll have higher chances of adoption and successfully rolling it out. And then here are the communications. That is not just business, oriented, right Tailored from their perspective, from their lens as a human. What does it do for them, what does it do for their family, what does it do for their job, their coworkers, their life? And then you'll have far more adoption than having, you know, just 22% success rate. So that's kind of the whole philosophy. You think about it. It all comes down to the strategy of how you even decide what you're changing, what the change strategy is, and then how do you communicate and market all of that to your audiences. So all of it has to be cohesively put together.

Danny Gavin

And I think this is like amplified, especially now with the biggest change that we're going through, which is AI, because it's very easy to push an AI initiative because of fear, right, it's like if you don't do this, we'll be out of business, or if you don't do this, you're gonna be out of a job. So the question is, how can you that's a good example how can you take AI and be like, yes, it really is important, but spread it with love and not out of scary, just scaring everyone. Love and not out of scary, just scaring everyone.

Near Bankruptcy to Love-Based Leadership

Mohammad Anwar

If you don't do it, we're going to be out. Yes, yes, totally so. In fact, as a part of love, as a strategy, we built this framework for AI transformation called the humane first approach to AI transformation, and humane spelled H-U-M-E-I, and, as a marketer, you'll appreciate that Totally. Yes, so, humane first approach to AI transformation, and the concept and the idea is that AI can actually help bring humanity back to the workplace, not take away the humans in the workplace, and the idea behind it is that today's workplace has become extremely transactional, extremely busy, busy type of work, with emails and reports and meetings which are very transactional in nature. If you ask any leader hey, do you have time for a one-on-one, do you have time for coaching and mentoring? Their number one excuse is I don't have time, I'm too busy, right? So we're losing a lot of human connection and everything is down to transactional reports, asynchronous communication, in the name of efficiency. We have lost humanity. But I believe AI, if inducted the right way into the organizations, it can actually help empower the humans and bring humanity back to the workplace, where we are not able to even have a one-on-one across from each other without being distracted and multitasking, to where AI can help us be present, be able to communicate, articulate, collaborate in a way, get through conflict, have the necessary conversations to transform through conflict, and so forth. To transform through conflict and so forth can only be possible if you don't have these busy things distracting us. And so the humane first approach has a three pillar approach. Number one is we enhance the human elements. So, basically, let's go ahead and make the humans enhance their skills to become good at being human, which is, let's give them the critical skills of how we should behave with each other, how we should communicate with each other, how we should collaborate with each other, how we should get to conflict with each other, and then re-skill them with the talent or this knowledge to use AI to aid them in their work. And so that's the first problem of the strategy. The second is evaluate and eliminate.

Mohammad Anwar

Just because we've been doing things for the last decade or two decades doesn't mean they need to be done the same way in the age of AI. An eight-stage workflow can look entirely different. In the age of AI, we shouldn't say we've been doing, we have to do this because that's how we've done it for two decades. Well, in the age of AI, instead of taking AI and slapping it on to an eight-stage workflow to augment it incrementally from a speed perspective. Instead, say what if, in an AI-first push, could I do it in two steps? Could I do it in three steps instead of eight steps?

Mohammad Anwar

Taking that perspective to evaluating your workflows, your process environments and re-imagining how it could look with an AI-first lens is the second drama of the strategy. And then the third is what are the current processes that can be automated with AI that will aid the humans in being able to make the decisions and get to the outcome of those processes faster? And automation would be the third step of the humane first approach. So with these three perspectives, but with the people first approach, you're able to bring about an AI transformation inside of your organization from a humane approach. And the reality is there's a lot of companies out there that have a tech first approach instead of a people first approach. And the reality is there's a lot of companies out there that have a tech-first approach instead of a people-first approach. In the tech-first approaches, resistance is your biggest enemy because it doesn't consider people. In ours, resistance is managed because we are coming with the people-first approach. So those are kind of the typical differences between a typical transformation tech oriented transformation for AI versus a people first transformation for AI.

Danny Gavin

So, moving to a little bit of a different topic, but I think really important and when I went to your seminar I thought was presented in a really good way was the theme of leading with love during tough conversations. So how do you recommend leaders communicate difficult messages or unpopular changes while maintaining authenticity and compassion? Because sometimes when you hear love it's like, oh, it's always going to be kind and rosy, but in truth, sometimes love is really about being honest and sometimes dealing with something that may not be so comfortable.

Mohammad Anwar

Totally, and I prescribe to love as the ability for us to have honest conversations, because you know I have the best intent for you, for your growth and your development. Right, and a lot of times people confuse love with kindness and niceness. The truth is that, like if I was to describe it, we have a saying that's honesty or harmony is the saying that we follow, which is we want to, we want to practice honesty over fake harmony, and so honesty without kindness is brutality, right, but kindness without honesty is manipulation. But honesty with kindness is love, and so we have to, we have to be able to be honest and kind, but in the name of love. If you're just trying to be kind and say I don't want to hurt your feelings, I don't want to say it because you might get offended or hurt, then you're just manipulating the person. That means you truly don't love them, because if you truly love someone, you will hold them accountable. You will have the tough conversation, because that's what people do for people they love and care about. Otherwise, we don't truly love them. So in communicating language and stuff and love as a marketing strategy, we have to bring that honesty with kindness into the equation, and that might not mean it's always rosy stuff and good stuff. It might mean that it is hard stuff.

Mohammad Anwar

And we have this other concept that in any change it results in discomfort. It's going to create discomfort. So there is no growth without discomfort. Change inherently creates discomfort, but when we run towards the discomfort in productive ways, it always leads to growth for us personally, collectively, organizationally. So we have to learn to embrace the discomfort.

Mohammad Anwar

And the last part that we, with tough love, we communicate is the ability to choose your heart. There is no concept as easy and hard when it comes to change. There's only hard and harder. There is no such concept as easy and hard when it comes to change. There's only hard and harder. There is no such concept as easy right, it's hard to save money, but it's harder to be broke. So choose your heart. Let's make sure we understand that there is no easy way out of change, right. So we have to embrace choosing the hard and doing the hard work so you may save yourself for harder work in the future. So avoiding the hard work today for something supposedly easier leads to only harder work later. So the key is you have to choose your hard now. So if it's hard for you to embrace this change. You might as well change, because while changing is hard, not changing is harder because you'll pay the price for it, for not changing later. So choose your heart. So that's the other F love type of conversations we have with those that we love.

Danny Gavin

So maybe it helps to be a parent a little bit, because we have to have these conversations with our kids all the time yes, another thing I will say.

Mohammad Anwar

There's something I just want to clarify. Right, like a lot of the times, people look at love and equate it to family. I know you brought it up in in a different context but, as I said, I address it. No, it's good we we purposefully have not in our book, our books that in the second book we do not ever refer to an organizational team as a family, because in a family you can't disown people right, like I can't disown my brother simply as partners or team members on my organization.

Mohammad Anwar

But in a sports team setting, when you practice the true culture of love, if you don't show up to practice regularly, you get benched. If you don't perform, you enter the transfer portal and there will be another team that will take you in for love and you will bring value there. That is needed. But true care and love and support for each other from a sports team concept demands high performance. We look at ourselves as a sports team that loves each other and supports each other and we will hold each other accountable. If you messed up on that play and we're going to call you for it and say what the hell did you do? You need to do better because we know you can do better, so don't. And then if you don't show up to practice, you're like you got to do those reps, because that's what's going to get us to win right and today's workplace environment.

Love as a Marketing Strategy

Mohammad Anwar

We're afraid to communicate in those ways. For whatever reason, we've lost our ability to be honest in loving ways. Either we're apathetic and extremely honest and brutal, or we're extremely nice, and then we try to be nice and nasty too. So it's like we're on these two opposite sides of the spectrum, and the hope is that as we spread the message and teach organizations and leaders how to lead from a place of love, we can recognize that accountability, high performance, results, support, empathy all of it can happen and coexist. At the same time, we can actually consider ourselves fully as a human and still demand and expect high performance and support them along the way.

Danny Gavin

If there's one key takeaway that you'd want marketers and leaders to remember about using love as a strategic marketing tool, what would that be?

Mohammad Anwar

I don't know if this is just my lack of passion for marketing or what, but I don't know. I feel like today's marketing has become a little bit more transactional in nature. It's about you know how do you get more views, how do you get more? You know, xyz, it's, it's very transactional, very much like to the point, to the elements of value proposition and so on and so forth.

Mohammad Anwar

And I'd say trying to change that paradigm and start thinking about relational approach to marketing should be a paradigm shift that could be important in thinking.

Mohammad Anwar

So, for example, I have to do marketing for my own business and for the longest time I used to prescribe to SEO and it worked and SEO and SEMEM I still believe in it. But what I've recognized over the last few years is that if I can start slowly approaching marketing from a true relationship perspective and build a relational approach to marketing where it is personalized, it is relationship oriented, where I'm doing things out of love and care for my clients, for my customers, for my audience that I have seen that business has grown tremendously when I brought that mindset and approach to my messaging, my communication, my emails and marketing and all of those stuff. So I don't know if that's helpful or not, but just having a different mindset to how would I treat every single person who is my potential customer on a relational aspect and start there could change how we even communicate and do marketing. So that would be my key takeaway, I guess.

Danny Gavin

All right. So it's time for our lightning round. Because you're a huge college sports fan, I want you to give me your top three college sports moments, and it could be personal, like when you were at school. It could be going to the game now, but like, if you look back, what are your top three? And it could be any sport.

Mohammad Anwar

Well, I know I shared one the miraculous comeback between November 14th 2015,. Houston Cougars versus Memphis Tigers 20-point deficit erased. So that was one. Another one would be the recent NCAA basketball tournament, the Final Four, houston Cougars versus Duke University. I did not expect that comeback.

Mohammad Anwar

We're curious that that was my I guess my second highest and then the best moment would be my son winning his kickboxing tournament. So my son has special needs and he's been going to martial arts for four years and he always saw his sister get accolades and medals and trophies and he was like Baba, when will I get my trophy and medal? So he finally got to compete in a tournament with typical kids and he won both his matches against typical kids in kickboxing and that was probably the proudest moment of her sports success. I would say and if I was to add a fourth one, it would be my wife winning five Olympic medals in three different Olympics, and the one in particular was her watching her in Beijing 2008 win two silver medals for diving. Would be the fourth one if I was to count that in.

Danny Gavin

Right, and you were actually at those games and you watched. I was.

Mohammad Anwar

And people looked at me really strange because they were like, wait, why are you sharing? There are no Indians in diving. And then, secondly, why do you have a Russian flag? What is going on? And I'm in China and I'd be like, yeah, that's why I feel like, yeah, right, I'm like no, that's my wife, and they're like yeah, right, I'm like no seriously, she's my wife.

Danny Gavin

It was awkward, I got a lot of stares, but it was still worth it. I love those examples. Yes, so I know you guys are working on your next book. You want to? Just a short intro on what it's about, how it's different than the first book.

AI and Humane Transformation

Mohammad Anwar

So the first book was Love of the Business Strategy. It's still available. I highly recommend anybody to go read it. It's all about how do you build business strategy with people at the center of it all, for better success. And the second book we're releasing on September 23rd it's already available for pre-order. Danny, I'd highly recommend you to pre-order it. It helps us with our care and marketing. It helps us with our best seller status if you get pre-orders.

Mohammad Anwar

It's called Love is a Change Strategy, and the whole premise for it is that the world is changing rapidly and it's only getting more and more rapid Every decade. The amount of change us as humans have to face is only increasing, and so how do we, in this environment of rapidly changing world, can use love as a change strategy to adapt change and make change that is adaptable by humans, and so the philosophy is to address today's outdated approaches that were built decades ago with how to do change management. We talk about how leaders need to build critical skills to lead change and how us, as humans, need to build the right mindsets to be adaptable to change, and that's what the book is all about. It's called Love as a Change Strategy, releasing September 23rd. Very, very excited about it. Awesome Well change has always very excited about it.

Danny Gavin

Awesome. Well, change has always been very hard for me. It's something I've had to work on my whole life, and so I'm going to look forward to reading the book. You'll enjoy it, I'm sure. Well, mohamed, thank you so much. So many awesome thoughts and ideas here. I know everyone's going to love this episode. So thank you for being a guest on the Digital Marketing Mentor and thank you, listeners, for tuning into the Digital Marketing Mentor. We'll speak with you next time. Thank you for listening to the Digital Marketing Mentor podcast. Be sure to check us out online at thedmmentorcom and at thedmmentor on Instagram, and don't forget to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts for more marketing mentor magic. See you next time.

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Danny Gavin

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