As we all go through our YouTube and Instagram pages looking for interesting content to watch, we sometimes end up on pages where every piece of content is interesting. Then, the game is on and we start binge watching every single piece of content there. That was my reaction when I landed on Stage Fright Egypt, a startup that aims to bring the Arab world’s rising musicians to the forefront and break down music theories to ambitious music learners.
It was a joyful moment indeed for me to find out that the founder is not only a personal friend, but someone I used to play music with in middle school. He is the embodiment of what a passionate entrepreneur should look like and a true depiction of Tim Ferris’s 4 Hour Week concept as he juggles between his actual full time job and his startup.
The Millennial Stage caught up with Mahmoud for an interview and I HOPE YOU ENJOY!
WN: is my personal comment
Q1) So Mahmoud as these interviews go we first would like you to tell us a little about yourself and what you studied?
My name is Mahmoud Ehab. I’m 27 year old and I founded Stage Fright. I studied Business Marketing at the British University in Egypt.
Q2) Your startup concept is magnificent, tell us a little about Stage Fright and how are you managing to create such epic content while holding a full time job?
Briefly put, Stage Fright is a brand that aims to empower Egypt’s music community through 2 main things:
1. Simplifying the world of music and instruments through creating content
2. Shedding light on Egypt’s amazing underground musicians
That’s the Instagram bio version hahaha. However, we do much more than that and there’s a lot more behind why. We actually aim to expand, improve and empower the music community of Egypt and the Middle East as a whole. The content we create focuses on doing two things. Primarily, it simplifies the world of music and instruments to the general public so that more people find it easy and approachable to learn an instrument and actually end up doing so. Ultimately, this will allow for the growth of the music community in numbers; that’s the expand part. Secondly, it aims to improve the level of music knowledge and caliber of musicians in our scene; which in return improves quantity as well as quality.
Now that covers the expand and improve part. But, what about the empowering part? Well, what good are great musicians if they remain unknown and they have to watch all the work and effort they’ve put into themselves and their work go largely unacknowledged? It goes without saying, good talent needs to be seen and heard. And that’s why we’ve created a segment called Spotlight Track, where every week, we feature an amazing musician or band from our local scene and let them perform a song, track or piece of their choosing and then post them on our various social media pages so they get exposure and potentially new fans and followers. You can find these videos on our Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram pages.
As for how I manage doing this alongside my job, well, it’s A LOT of work. I mean a lot! In the morning, I work in an advertising agency, which is super hectic and stressful on its own. After I finish that, I start working on Stage Fright. It could mean a color of things and it all depends on where I am on my tasks that day. Some of these tasks include: researching what my next video is gonna be, writing the script, shooting the video, editing the video, coloring the video, taking the audio to be mixed & mastering it professionally, dealing with the SEO material, answering people’s questions on the social media accounts, figuring out who to feature next on Spotlight Track, what topic we might discuss on our other segment, finding a suitable date that works for all parties involved (videographer, studio, the artist(s) and myself) and lots and lots more. I’m exhausted from just talking about it hahaha. Make no mistake, I’m no superhuman. I get burned out. a lot. But that’s ok. I never expected it to be easy. It’s a labor of love.
WN: He loves to use the word “a lot”, a lot as he truly has a lot to do. As someone who worked in a communication / advertising agency, I can tell you for a fact that the job on its own could burn you out. The quality of his branding is exceptional and that is where I think his day time job added value in what he does. Taking your passion and combining it with what your current job is plays a huge role in success.
Q3) What is your secret sauce to getting to where you are ?
Getting where I am today was actually the result of a bunch of things in my life. First, I was always a curious person. I liked to learn about things and figure out how they work. I also felt that this world is over complicated and for no good reason! I liked things to be clear and concise, so I would read a lot about a lot of things. Then, in university I took an interest in video production and started working in the media department of a lot of clubs making videos, which allowed me to hone my video making abilities. After graduation, I worked as an English teacher. Even though it was for a short period, but that taught me how to teach well, hahaha.
I was teaching English to complete beginners so I had to simplify content and ideas from complex and abstract to simple and tangible. After that short stint in teaching, I went on to work in advertising. That taught me how to be creative, how to manage tasks, how to deal with people, and how to be a problem solver. Not to bore you with any more details, but the combination of everything mentioned earlier gave me the skills to be able to start my project, and have the ability to get the required pieces together. The best thing you can do to yourself is look at everything that you go through as a learning opportunity. Ask yourself, what can I learn from this? Trust me, whatever it is, there’s ALWAYS a take away lesson. So look for those.
WN: I always meet people during coaching and non-coaching sessions who are very worried about the fact that they feel what they are doing now is pointless. As the great Steve Jobs once said during his Stanford speech in 2005, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. “ I think his advice on seeing what you can learn from the task you have at hand is a golden rule.
Q4) What would you advise people that want to follow their passion?
Get up and take your first step right now. Don’t wait for the perfect conditions. Just start. Just start. Just start. In a sentence, “You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great”. You’ll get better as you go, but if you never start you’ll never get anywhere.
Know right now that it’s not always gonna be easy. It’s gonna be hard. Maybe even VERY hard. But take this as a comfort “If it was easy everybody would do it”. But everybody isn’t doing it, so use that to your advantage.
Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do it. Ever. Most of the time, they just don’t see it the way you do, and they have no idea how you’re gonna do it. Don’t bother explaining it to them either, because they won’t see it. But trust me, they will see it when you make it.
Learn to do things yourself. Learn a lot of things. Learn as much as you can. You don’t have to do everything, and it’s ok to ask for help, but generally, just be ready to pick up when others can’t or don’t deliver things the way you want.
Your project, your rules. Always say please and thank you. But also, know when to say no, or where to draw the line. Execute YOUR vision. If people make suggestions or have opinions, listen, and listen carefully and try to understand what they’re saying and why they’re saying it Remember to always look for the lesson in whatever it is you do. But ultimately, it’s your call remember that as well.
Understand that making something for yourself will take sacrifices. Whether that’s working instead of going out with friends, spending most of your income on your project instead of that new phone, getting very little to no sleep on some days or whatever it might be in your situation, just know that there will be sacrifices that will need to be made.
Don’t confuse talking about working on something with actually working on it. Don’t spend all your time attending startup events, giving talks about your startup or getting an article written about you. Focus on actually what it is your project needs to do. Don’t let the other stuff trick you into believing you’re making it when actually all you’re doing is talking about it.
Network, network, network. People are everything. One person can make all the difference. Knowing who to call in a certain situation is a blessing so network whenever you can.
Dream big. Cliché? Trust me. You’ll be surprised at your own answers if you actually start dreaming big enough. Dream big, but set small, tiny achievable goals and start working towards them.
You don’t know what you don’t know. Learn new things constantly. The average CEO reads a book a week. For me, because I don’t have much time, I consume my books in audiobook format on my commute. I’d recommend subscribing to a service like Audible and opt for the monthly plan where you get 3 new books every month!
Don’t get discouraged. Don’t be upset if something doesn’t work the way you wanted it to. Learn why it didn’t and how you can improve your results the next time instead of blaming it on everything else.
Enjoy the journey, but focus on getting your goals done. Even if they’re small goals.
Be humble.
WN: This is my favorite part of the interview, I can’t ever say this enough reading and having such an optimistic outlook are essential.
Q5) Who is your biggest inspiration?
I’ll name 3. Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Steve Jobs.
Could you tell us what skills people need to have to be where you are?
Persistent / Determined
Curious
Have an open mind to new ideas
Accountable
Q6) If you would go back at high school & college today what would you do different that would help you in your career right now?
Nothing. Stage Fright is the result of everything that was, exactly the way it was. Changing any element would result in something different than what it is now. Whatever it is I need to learn now, I’ll start learning it now.
Visit Mahmoud’ Channels on
Instagram, YouTube and Facebook by typing in Stage Fright Egypt.
If you are an aspiring musician somewhere in the Arab world, feel free to email Mahmoud on his email: stagefrighteg@gmail.com
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