Key Takeaways:
[00:13:07] Transitioning from a corporate job to entrepreneurship can be challenging, but running your own business can be much more fulfilling. Munim Sheikh recalls working long days and grappling with the uncertainty of his future when he started up Al Safa Foods, yet he found the experience much more fulfilling than his former desk job.
[00:16:36] Don’t undervalue execution. Too many businesses prioritize developing strategy over flawlessly executing on that strategy. But Munim Sheikh believes that execution—based on painstaking attention to detail and the commitment to completing tasks well—is the key to success.
[00:24:58] Leaders must know their own limitations. Every leader probably excels at something, but no leader excels at everything. To Munim Sheikh, it’s more important for leaders to recognize their weaknesses than their strengths—and to be willing to build a team that fills the gaps.
[00:29:58] Perseverance matters. In every entrepreneur’s life, there will be times when they don’t seem to be making much headway as challenges pile up on every side. Munim Sheik’s advice: stick with it. Over the long run, hard work and perseverance will pay off.
“A leap of faith”
When Abdul Munim Sheikh decided to leave his job as a financial manager at a large, multinational corporation 10 years ago and take over one of the company’s money-losing food divisions as an entrepreneur, one of his old bosses thought he might be making a bad move. The ex-boss asked whether he had really performed thorough due diligence on the enterprise—a producer and distributor of halal foods, now based in Oakville, Ont.—and what his strategy was. “I said, ‘I don’t know what this whole staircase looks like, but I know what the first two steps I have to take are,’ ” recalls Munim Sheikh. “ ‘I’m taking a leap of faith.’ ”
That faith has certainly borne fruit. When Munim Sheikh started his company, Al Safa Foods, to provide certified halal foods to Canada’s rapidly growing but underserved Muslim consumers, his goal was to turn the money-losing operation around and break even by the end of the first year of operation. That was ambitious, but the company met the break-even milestone in its first quarter. Over the next decade, Al Safa has gone on to expand into the United States—and to grow sevenfold.
Seeing opportunity
Munim Sheikh didn’t start Al Safa solely on a wing and a prayer—he also saw an enormous opportunity. In Islam, any food product must be certified halal (which literally means “clean” or “permissible”) to be consumed. Yet for decades, Munim Sheikh says, North America’s population of roughly 12 million (and growing) Muslims struggled to conveniently find and purchase halal products. And many faced discrimination in wider social settings like schools because their food was considered different.
Al Safa’s approach aims to help bridge that food-culture gap while meeting the growing demand for halal. It offers traditional fare such as biryanis, kebabs and samosas, as well as more typically North American foods like hamburgers, chicken nuggets and pizza—all certified halal. Basically, “Al Safa is delivering [food] that many a non-Muslim would consume, in a halal format,” Munim Sheikh explains.
Sweat the details
When he left his corporate position to become CEO of Al Safa and run it as an independent business, Munim Sheikh had the vision—but the challenge was “to figure out how to successfully do that commercially.” Even before acquiring the company, he and his partners had developed a bare-bones strategy, but his early focus was on getting the small things done. For instance, a top priority was to get business expenses in check, and he moved the company to a smaller and more affordable location in the first week.
It’s a hands-on, details-oriented approach that Munim Sheikh believes has been key to Al Safa’s success. “In my corporate life, I used to hear a lot about how the leader needs to just give the strategy, but I always had a difference of opinion on that. I’m more of an execution guy,” he says. “I’ve seen in a lot of businesses, people have great ideas, but execution is poor. That was my thinking going in: that we need to perfect the execution.” Strategy, he adds, has an important role, but it doesn’t mean much unless you can “implement it to the dot.”
Assembling a team
One of the most important lessons Munim Sheikh has learned from his entrepreneurial journey is the value of humility, he says. A leader can’t do everything on their own, and especially in an organization that is laser-focused on execution, having the right team is essential.
“In all these years, I learned that humility is very important for a leader,” he says.
“And it’s very, very important for a leader to acknowledge what he lacks and admit it, then find the right people who have those skills. Knowing what you do not excel in is more important than knowing what you excel in.”
When it comes to finding those complementary parts, Munim Sheikh has a simple rule: “You hire for the attitude and you develop the skill.” He and his team look for candidates with hands-on experience who “are not afraid of getting their hands dirty when the need arises.” No short-term thinking wanted here, nor does he much care for staff who come across as too clever or gimmicky. “I want to keep things very straightforward,” he explains. “We want to work on the fundamentals of the business. We do not want results right now; we want results in due course. But right now we need to do whatever is the right thing for the business.”
Stick with it
Munim Sheikh acknowledges that there have been plenty of challenges during his entrepreneurial journey. After breaking even in 2015, the company had to meet the challenge of growth. That reality led to the decision to expand to the U.S. market, where the Muslim consumer demographic is different and more geographically dispersed than in Canada. And that required a rethink and retooling of Al Safa’s business model and its distribution channels.
It was hard work, and it took time to have an effect on the bottom line. Munim Sheikh says it wasn’t until 2018 that the new strategy began to show results. Those uncertain years in between were difficult. “In the beginning, there is a lot of excitement, and then you implement your idea and that excitement goes down. I think it’s called the Valley of Death, and that’s where a lot of people give up.”
Not surprisingly for “an execution guy,” Munim Sheikh’s response to challenges is straightforward: keep grinding. “You plan your every day [and ask], What I can do today to improve things?” he says. “And most of the time that improvement is very microscopic or it’s very minuscule. You won’t see the needle moving. And that’s where you need your faith. That’s where you need to just keep going.”