In this episode, Terri welcomes Mohamed Sameh, Managing Director at SESCO Cement. Since its inception in Egypt in 1964, SESCO has grown to be a major player on the global scene, now making waves in over 70 countries and having a strong foothold in the Houston market. Mohamed shares his 25-year journey in the industry and the challenges of transplanting family business values into the competitive U.S. market.
Mohamed discusses SESCO’s unique workplace culture, emphasis on personal responsibility, and relentless dedication to customer service. He also discusses how they’ve embraced marketing and which strategies have helped propel their growth.
Terri and Mohamed also discuss the intricate dance between maintaining company culture and managing growth. Mohamad also shares his secrets to empowering marketing teams, fostering a family-like company atmosphere, and the importance of tangible marketing deliverables.
For more information on SESCO Cement, visit: https://sescocement.com/
To connect with Terri at Marketing Refresh, visit: https://MarketingRefresh.com
Key Topics:
- Introduction to SESCO’s background
- The keys to their expansion to over 70 countries
- Marketing strategies and target segments
- Why company culture has been so important to them
- Their passion about marketing, and why they’re expanding the role
- Why their marketing relies on accountability, reporting, and data
- Mohamed’s goals to expand their personal and company network
Full Episode Transcript
Terri Hoffman:
This is B2B Marketing Methods. I’m your host, Terri Hoffman, and I’m the CEO of Marketing Refresh. Let’s face it. Embracing digital marketing is daunting. This podcast was created to make it more approachable. Join us as we talk to CEOs, sales leaders, and revenue growth experts who will share lessons learned and tips from their own journeys. So, welcome to the podcast today. We’re very fortunate today to have a guest who is one of our clients on the show.
Terri Hoffman:
This is Mohamed Sameh. Mohamed, welcome. You’re the leader of SESCO Cement, and I would love it if you could start by introducing yourself, what your role at the company is, and tell us a little bit about SESCO.
Mohamed Sameh:
Right. Thank you, and thank you for this opportunity. So, SESCO is a family business that started back in Egypt in 1964. Since then, we have been growing very fast. We expanded to more than 70 countries in the world in different segments, mainly developed logistics, global trading, and manufacturing. 10 years ago, we decided to come to the US market. So we started first by cement importing and distribution. Then, we start to go further to other products that are related to the construction industry.
Mohamed Sameh:
Right now, we sell around, like, 100 miles. The main product that we sell, we sell it around 100 miles, around Houston. We have some other specialty products that we sell from Houston to more than 12 states in America.
Terri Hoffman:
Wow. Yeah. And I know we’ve been working with you for probably about the last year to year and a half. Yeah. And you guys have really, I guess, to use a more casual term, you’ve exploded. You’ve really started to take off in terms of your growth. You know, maybe you could tell us about the facilities that you have as I know you have a terminal and some other locations in the Houston market.
Mohamed Sameh:
So, in Houston, we mainly have the main terminal that we have in Port of Houston, it’s around 22 acres. We’re always proud with the facility, and, it is right now, according to, the size, the storage capacity that we have in the terminal, this is the biggest cement terminal in America. We are working right now in expanding it further. So right now we have a 150,000 ton of storage capacity. By the end of this year, we will add 100,000 tons more of storage capacity. So it will be the biggest cement terminal in the world, for a single owner. There is one in China that has, like, 6 companies that’s bigger but other than that, we would be the biggest terminal in the world, for cement.
Terri Hoffman:
Wow. That’s impressive. So talk to me about, you know, the journey that you personally took. I know that you had been in Egypt and did a lot of business with SESCO there and then, you know, talk about that transition to the US and how you helped that transition.
Mohamed Sameh:
I have been in the cement world for 25 years now since I was out of college. I worked in different countries, in Egypt, in Morocco, in Mexico, in Guinea, and then, 10 years now in America. It started by, I can say a funny conversation between me and the owner of the company, that my company was doing some project for him in the cement plant in Egypt. And then we were discussing that I’m thinking of going to America, and he thinking of starting a business to America. Next day, we were on a plane coming to Houston thinking what business we will do exactly related to cement in America. So I always tell every employee here in the company, I was the employee number 0 in the company. So I was the first one who started. And all the mess, all the mistakes, everything, I’m the one who did all that.
Mohamed Sameh:
So tell them I’m proud of my mistakes more than I’m proud of my accomplishments in this company.
Terri Hoffman:
You know, I know exactly what you mean by that. I can relate to that on a smaller scale. So talking about your successes at SESCO what are some of the things about the company culture and what you guys have created at SESCO that you’re really proud of?
Mohamed Sameh:
Yeah. This is, the main thing I think that is unique about our company is the company culture. It’s different than this industry. So we have more laid back, more flexible culture. We don’t have a dress code in the company. They can wear whatever they want. We don’t have, a specific, working hours. It’s not flexible working hours.
Mohamed Sameh:
Like, you come 1 hour late and then you leave 1 hour early or something like that. 1 hour late. No. It’s you come anytime. You leave anytime. You just need to get things done.
Terri Hoffman:
Mhmm.
Mohamed Sameh:
If you are able to get your work done while sleeping, this is great. If you are a salesperson, you have you know your objectives. You know what you need to do. You just need to get things done. So in reality, this created people, in our company that have more sense of ownership. So they know that they need to get things done. So it’s normal to find people sometimes here staying till 7, 8 PM. Sometimes they come 5 AM, 6 AM in the morning.
Mohamed Sameh:
Sometimes they come 10, 11 in the morning. Sometimes they work in the weekends. And they just do this willingly because they know that no one is forcing them to come and just show us their faces, stay in front of the screen for 8 hours, and then get the salary and leave. They just need to get things done.
Terri Hoffman:
That’s pretty impressive. I bet that that means there are certain personality characteristics that really kind of lead to a more successful employee at the company. Is that is that true? Is that right?
Mohamed Sameh:
That’s true. And the many people do not fit in this culture that we have. We don’t like people who are waiting for instructions that we need to tell them what to do. We get people with experience. We get people with, curiosity to learn and to research. So they tell us what should be done. We don’t we don’t just get people to follow our instructions. So, they have more accountability.
Mohamed Sameh:
They have they take the responsibility and the authority that help them to achieve the goals.
Terri Hoffman:
Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. That’s awesome. I think it probably helps you draw, like, really top performers too, right? Because you might think that means less accountability, but, really, you’re drawing people who feel more personal accountability, without all the guardrails around them, right?
Mohamed Sameh:
Yep. Yeah. Actually, we try always to reflect this on also, the the market and the cost the relation with the customers. So we always try to tell them we are different than others. We sell a commodity at the end. So selling a commodity, is a little bit tricky because sometimes you’re, you fall in this hole of, let me just reduce the price a little bit to penetrate the market. It doesn’t work like that. We always try to show them that we are different, you will get more value for money, maybe you pay a little bit more, but you will get more value. So we are the only cement terminal in Houston that works 24 hours, 7 days a week. It gives a good perception for customers that we are always available for them.
Mohamed Sameh:
Our phones, my phone and the sales team phone, customer service, all of them, 24 hours, 7 days a week available. Many times, we help customers in difficult situation. So, the nature of the family business and the flexibility that we have, it’s also reflected in how we deal with our customers and that’s why we retain our customers, we are very proud that we have very high customer retention, and we have very high employee retention as well.
Terri Hoffman:
Yeah. That’s those are two really important factors that not every bit not every business can claim. So, yeah, that’s definitely something you should be proud of. Let’s talk about the connection to marketing, you know, that you went through. See, you had operated for a while, as a business in the US and kinda started to build up your foot footprint and build your presence. Talk about when you started to really embrace marketing and kinda consider that as part of the equation to growth.
Mohamed Sameh:
So, personally, marketing is my passion, and I understand the value of marketing. For the company in the beginning, the role of marketing was less than it is right now, and every year, every day, actually, we start to increase the role of marketing. Our marketing is not only related to the marketing team. We have a lot of people. We have a big team here that work things straight to marketing. Some of them are related to the sales team, the PR team, people in the digital transformation team, people in the data analysis and market intelligence team, all these people, we consider them part of the marketing team. And of course, myself is the main person always in this.
Mohamed Sameh:
Maybe I’m not present every day, but I like to get to be involved. I like to sit in any brainstorming session or any important meeting related to marketing because it’s very important. And the not only marketing that’s directed to customers or to increase sales, in general, we have different objectives for marketing other than that.
Terri Hoffman:
Right. One of the things that was attractive for marketing refresh and working with your business is how you were emphasizing and prioritizing the digital transformation because, you know, that really feeds into the customer experience. Right? And, like you mentioned, you’re in a commodity business. But talk to me a little bit about the digital transformation and some of the things that you guys are prioritizing in that program.
Mohamed Sameh:
Yeah. So, for us, digital transformation, is about everything. It’s not only marketing, of course. It’s about everything in the company. And I think digital transformation is the thing that can get us into achieving high efficiency and high responsiveness in our business as well. So we wanna be very efficient. We don’t want to have ten people working for a job that needs only two or three. We always try to automate everything, digitize everything, less people, more processes and softwares, and things like that.
Mohamed Sameh:
Also, for the part for marketing, right now, we are getting a lot of data that we’re trying to take this data and make further analysis for it so we can get into some information that can help us to guide the business more. What we’re trying to do right now is a little bit difficult related to data governance and related to organizing the data and analyzing the data. So, with the marketing, of course, we get more data. More than actually, we can process sometimes. So, right now we’re in the 2nd phase. Okay. We collected a lot of data. We automated a lot of things.
Mohamed Sameh:
Now, how can we benefit from this? How can we make this more efficient?
Terri Hoffman:
I love that. I think that the, like, general outsider who’s not in your business every day would think, can a cement company, even at the scale and size and history that they have, be as innovative technologically as you guys are being? And I think that’s been a big part of your growth. And it’s definitely something that’s important to us as the marketing team to emphasize. You know, it all it all ties together. So, as it relates to kind of the salespeople that you have in the company and the relationships they’re building and how marketing ties in, how do you manage the relationship between those two functions and groups? How are you guys set up between those two groups?
Mohamed Sameh:
In our company also, we have few other things that are unique. So, I know that in most of the companies, you always have periodic meetings between some departments that work together. Actually, we always work as teams. So we always have open communication channels, different channels. We don’t have like that, much, just scheduled meeting that we have to set every Monday of every month to discuss this. We believe that, meetings are fine if we wanna share ideas or brainstorm or something like that. Anything that can be done through a report, through a message, through an email, even through a phone call, it doesn’t require a meeting. So we they always communicate on daily basis.
Mohamed Sameh:
There is no single day almost that there was no communication between sales and marketing, between myself and sales and myself and marketing. It’s everyday thing. So, we don’t have it a formal way of specific meetings. It’s mainly related to something. We had a big meeting related to all the the public relations and all the events and associations that we will have for 2024. This is one meeting that we have every year. We don’t have something. We have a calendar that we follow the calendar and we just we know the events that we are attending.
Mohamed Sameh:
So, we don’t do something like just regular meeting just to meet or meeting for updates. We don’t have something like that.
Terri Hoffman:
Right. Yeah. And I’m sure every employee there, because they’re high performers, really appreciates that, that they’re not bogged down with a lot of meetings. What are the types of things that you emphasize in the communication between your sales and marketing teams? Like, what are you looking for them? What are you holding them accountable to be communicating about?
Mohamed Sameh:
Yep. So, accountability for me is part of the authority and the responsibility that you give to people and, of course, the reward. So, they are accountable because they know first, they know the strategic goal of the company. They know that we are a growing company. We have been growing the last 4 years. Double-digit growth. So, they know that this is one of the main objectives for the company. So, they know the goal.
Mohamed Sameh:
It’s a common goal for everyone. The second thing after that is they have the authority enough for them to take decisions on their own. They don’t need to come to me or to anyone to get approval for everything. They know, what they can do by themselves. They have the authority. They have the responsibility, and they have the reward for it. So, and they know the the ultimate objective. So, this makes things very easy.
Terri Hoffman:
Yeah. No. I can see that. I also know just from working with your team that they really respect you. And so, even if they don’t have to go and specifically get, approval from you or from other stakeholders involved, I think that you can tell that there’s a lot of respect between different people and what they know. And so, sometimes it just seems to be about getting the right input and making sure that they have the right information to be making the best decision in their role. Would you say that that’s something you’d find to be true?
Mohamed Sameh:
I would rather say it that they like me than they respect me. So, I like the fact that we are here, like, really like a family. We talk about many personal things. I like the role of the my main role of the company actually is, like, sort of I’m the counselor of the company more than the manager or the director or anything. So, I like this more. And I like the fact that I learned in my previous, companies. I learned the hard way that the good manager is the one who gives good questions, not good answers. So, I don’t let people come to me with questions.
Mohamed Sameh:
When they come to me with a question, I tell them, “Okay, what do you think? How do you wanna do it?” I answer back with questions, and I want things to come from their mouth, not from my mouth. So by the time they get used to this and they know that I don’t approve things. I don’t answer questions. I just let them do it their own, and then you can come with your what you think should be done. Maybe sometimes you need to justify it but don’t expect that I will give you an answer for any question. I’ll give you questions for you to think more.
Terri Hoffman:
I can see that happening. Like, we’re not sitting in those direct conversations, but, you know, just our experience working with your team, we can I can definitely see that, how that’s working? And how you have communicated with us is definitely, you know, I can see that you’re a person who likes to work with experts in their area, people who have studied that area, and they know how they’re supposed to be managing it and how they’re supposed to hold themselves accountable. And then you’re just there to make sure, yes, I’m confirming that that’s all really happening. Right?
Mohamed Sameh:
Another point I think and maybe you you saw it in our relation from the beginning. I’m not shy, I’m not I’m not embarrassed to say, okay, we had bad experience with other companies before. So, I wanna see objectives. I wanna see deliverables. I wanna see details. Not because I don’t trust you because I had previous experience.
Mohamed Sameh:
I wanna see the value that you will give it give me, more tangible values, and we really saw it. And we were sure that we’ll see more in the coming years. So, it was for me, it was better than, just trying to see these things by myself. I wanted to tell you this in the beginning. So, we had that experience before. So, we wanna see, value deliverables, tangible things, and we really saw a lot of that.
Terri Hoffman:
Yeah. No. I think you did a really great job of setting expectations. And, unfortunately, that is a common practice in the marketing field is just empty promises. I think that, ultimately like, not having a solid way of showing accountability in the marketing field is, unfortunately, too common. Right? And so, our team relies very heavily on reporting and data and having very rigorous plans for things. And then it requires a lot of patience, I think, from our clients because there’s a lot of detail when we put together a plan, and we wanna make sure that our clients understand every line item very thoroughly and that we’re getting the right input at the right time.
Terri Hoffman:
And so, I’m not saying this to pat my team on the back, but I think I think more companies should operate that way, and, ultimately, that helps raise the level of what people should expect from marketing and from the marketing function. Because whether you work with us or work with another agency, this is how it should work. Yeah.
Mohamed Sameh:
I think one thing that is very important in marketing that we saw with your company, we didn’t see that much with some other companies, was that you were very interested to know more about our business so you can help us. The other thing is that you understand the difference between dealing with a company that’s B2B versus B2C. Or, so consumer product different than industrial products or especially in the commodities world, it’s different. So, you had this understanding so, you didn’t even offer us things that are not suitable for our type of business or our segment or anything. So, it made more sense to us, in addition, of course, to the benchmarking that we worked on with all the other competitors, which was very helpful.
Terri Hoffman:
Right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that’s great feedback. That’s good to hear. How did you, I know that you have one person in the company who has marketing in their title? Right?
Mohamed Sameh:
Mhmm.
Terri Hoffman:
So, how did you go about kind of defining that job role and the things that that job role would be responsible for?
Mohamed Sameh:
So, the good news is that now we have a second one responsible for the digital marketing, social media, just started with us a few weeks ago. The other thing is, we have a lot of people working in marketing behind the screen a little bit, supporting the contact person because we outsource, some of or most of our marketing services. So for us, the marketing person is more of a communicator, someone who speaks the marketing language that can deal with the external resources that we have and can communicate internally, collect the data needed internally, and communicate externally, and then do some tasks by himself as well. Right now, we start to see the need of expanding the team of the marketing in-house. So, that’s why we added the second one.
Terri Hoffman:
Got it. Yeah. See, I love what you just said, and I don’t, you may not realize how valuable everything you just said is. I think there are a lot of companies that haven’t hired that first marketing role, and they’re not even sure, like, how do I define that role? What should they be responsible for? And the very natural tendency is to want to put so many things on that person because you may need so many of them, and then you end up really overwhelming that person and expecting things out of one person that is very hard for one person to achieve.
Mohamed Sameh:
Yeah.
Terri Hoffman:
So, I like the way that that you guys approach that. Even if you hadn’t chosen to outsource the rest of it, you have to kind of start with somebody who can be that great communicator and prioritizer, and manager of relationships
Mohamed Sameh:
Yeah.
Terri Hoffman:
Inside and outside the company. Yeah. What do you view as kind of the the challenges next for you with, the growth of the company that’s happening and how you’re gonna keep up on the sales and marketing side with that growth. Yeah.
Mohamed Sameh:
So, yeah, the the growth effect, it’s, I had it on my wall, like, three years ago before we started this crazy fast growth. I was thinking, how the growth of the company, how the growth of the sales volumes and the revenues of the company will affect all the departments in the company. How it will how can we grow in a smart way without just, like doubling the revenues doesn’t mean that we need to double the resources from our financial resources, technological, logistical, human resources, which is the most important thing in my point of view in any company. How can we grow this also without affecting our unique culture in the company? If we are hiring double the number of people, this means that we may not find people who have the, culture fit for our company. So, this may affect the culture because in reality, the culture is created by the people that we select. We have criteria to select the people. And we had an experience this year.
Mohamed Sameh:
I wanna share it with you. It was very interesting. So, every year, normally, we have an event for the company. Can be an event where we share some information about the company or dinner or a party or something like that. So, this year, they asked me, what do you wanna do? So, I told them I wanna do something different this year. I want us to make a survey for everyone in the company, give them all the different options, all the different alternatives, and whatever thing that they the consensus will be, we will follow because this is the culture that we created. If they want it to be in the morning, we make it in the morning. If they want it to be at night, it would be at night.
Mohamed Sameh:
They wanna drink. They wanna dance. They wanna eat. They want, a stand up comedian. They want a band. Whatever they want, we will do. And this is what happened. We had the result of the survey, and then we start to see what’s the majority selected.
Mohamed Sameh:
And then we exactly did what they did. And it was the best company event we ever had because it was something that people wanted to do. Not me, not the HR, not the management, not anyone. Just the people.
Terri Hoffman:
That’s awesome. But, I mean, you guys really have a great culture. And it sounds like as you continue to grow, that is your main priority is making sure that you’re maybe you’re not main able to maintain that same culture as you grow, but you’re keeping your pulse on how that culture needs to evolve and grow. Right? And then, also, how that’s reflected in the messaging that you have outside of the company is really, really important. I mean, you guys are very involved in the community. You have so many community service events that you’re a part of that I know your PR team really covers pretty thoroughly for you. And I’m sure that that is gonna continue to be part of that culture. Right?
Mohamed Sameh:
Yeah. This started more the last 2, 3 years in the company. It wasn’t that much in the beginning. And this year, actually, we’re doubling the budget for all our PR activities. We’re focusing a lot on the community near us, sponsoring a lot of, soccer, football, baseball teams, back-to-school events, different events like that. Almost all the associations that are in the region, from the industry associations to the other publics. So, we’re trying to increase, our focus in this area because it’s very helpful, and it’s helpful not only in we think about marketing NPR and these similar activities.
Mohamed Sameh:
We think that these are not something only directed to customers. We think that we have three main segments that we are always targeting. The main the first segment is the business partners because we see that vendors are equally important to customers. Both of them may disrupt the business. So, these are the business partners. And then the second ones are the employees. We have the current employees, and we have the prospect employees or future employees. And then we have the public from the public, the small circle around us, and then the Houston and then Texas and then all over America.
Mohamed Sameh:
And then we have some special groups in this public that maybe are important in a way or another, decision makers, elected officials, or industry experts, or they are also important. So our marketing activities, our social media, our everything should be focused on these three different segments almost equally because for us, we will attract the right type of people when we talk more about ourselves about what we do. We will have people that want work with us more than working any other place.
Terri Hoffman:
Yeah. I love that. It all ties back to the image, you know, that you’re creating out there and not just thinking how do I push my message out to these people. You’re thinking, it all starts with your vision and the image and then how you’re using those platforms to kinda communicate that image to the to all those those three different segments that you talked about. So, I love that. Okay. So, I would love to have you talk about how you stay on top of marketing trends and how you keep yourself educated about marketing.
Mohamed Sameh:
So, recently, I read a quote that I liked, that, I think it was the the NBA champion coach, Pat Riley.
Terri Hoffman:
Mhmm.
Mohamed Sameh:
His coach is, like, was very inspiring for me. He said, if you’re not getting better, you’re getting worse. There’s no middle ground. Getting better in everything, educating yourself, it’s nonstop journey. You always need to learn new things. You always need to educate yourself about, not only about things related to your business or your industry. There are many things that are somehow interlocking together, that they are related. There are many things that we need to know.
Mohamed Sameh:
Not only me, many of the main people in the company. I always encourage them to learn more things, to develop more skills, to know more things. Marketing, for me, is something that everyone needs to know. Marketing and customer service are two things that every single person in the company needs to know. If they are in the accounting, if they are in the sales, if they are in the operation, doesn’t really matter. Getting better, knowing more things is something that everyone should do. We learn from the things that from our mistakes. We learn from, reading other people mistakes, so we don’t do these mistakes.
Mohamed Sameh:
So, this is something that’s very important for me. I have a daily routine of things that I need to read every day, like Houston Business Journal. I have, LinkedIn. I have a lot of things that I follow that I have to read on daily basis. I have to spend some good amount of time on LinkedIn every day. Like, always, reading new things, knowing what’s happening in the world, what’s changing in the world. Harvard Business Review also is one of the very nice resources that I read on daily base. So, this is the main thing that I do.
Mohamed Sameh:
I try always to read what’s happening in the world, what other people do. Not to do like them all the time. Sometimes I try to see what others do, to think how can we be different, how can we have an edge over others. So, in a good case, it’s useful.
Terri Hoffman:
Well, that’s interesting that you, I actually have noticed, because I’m on LinkedIn quite a bit, I’ve noticed that your activity has really picked up on LinkedIn probably over the last, like, three or four months.
Mohamed Sameh:
Yes. Yes.
Terri Hoffman:
Tell me about that. Like, how why did that become more important to you?
Mohamed Sameh:
Yeah. So, I start to actually focus also on inviting many people of my network to to follow, like, the SESCO page or company page. And for me, I start to put like a monthly and annual target of increasing my network, my personal network, at the end of represent myself and represent the company. So, I’m increasing my personal network within specific segments that I want more people to know. More geographical areas. I found that, again, we go back to marketing and analytics, and I start to look at, our, my personal LinkedIn account, who are my network, from Same thing for the company. Who follows the company page, from Houston, from Texas, from Florida, from America, and then from other countries. It was very important for me to see these numbers and then to set some objectives that these are the things that I want to achieve on the personal LinkedIn account and on the company LinkedIn account as well.
Mohamed Sameh:
This will be supported later with some more, maybe, advertising that’s will generate more followers in these specific segments. But for now, I start to do it on just inviting the people that I think that are important to know more about our company from my network, and, of course, I start to increase my network as well.
Terri Hoffman:
Yeah. That’s I think that’s great. I think it’s an under appreciated business-to-business tool. And the more you get on like, it’s amazing the things that you can learn every day. That’s one of the main reasons I go on there is just to try to see what our market is talking about and what are they what are the problems they’re encountering. Like, how can I do a better job of understanding that? So then we can be there to help them solve those problems and navigate them. Even if it’s not a service we can offer, then it’s maybe a reference I can make or, an introduction that I can make from my network that would help them, you know, in the longer term.
Terri Hoffman:
So, okay. I have some rapid fire questions to ask at the end. Brace yourself. This the first question is gonna be so interesting to ask you because you’ve been so many places around the world. What is your favorite trip that you have ever taken?
Mohamed Sameh:
So, I have to talk about 2 different trips. 1 on the personal side and 1 on the business side. So the personal trip was the trip that I had this year, to Cancun with my wife. First time to be able to leave the kids alone and go on a trip with my wife. It was great. It was very relaxing. It was very interesting. On the business side, China was very interesting.
Mohamed Sameh:
Hearing many things about China is completely different than seeing, how this country is growing that fast. Things are very different there. So, it was very interesting, especially that I had a tour with, like I was inspecting equipment for a cement plant. I had to go to seven different cities in China.
Terri Hoffman:
Wow.
Mohamed Sameh:
Use almost all different means of transportation. It was an very, very interesting trip, to know this culture from the business side and from the people culture as well.
Terri Hoffman:
Wow. Sounds like it. Seven cities in China. That’s, I mean, yeah. That must have been, a good amount of time, and also pretty exhausting to visit that many cities.
Mohamed Sameh:
Three weeks, actually.
Terri Hoffman:
Yeah. Wow. Okay.
Mohamed Sameh:
Yeah.
Terri Hoffman:
Well, hopefully, you’re a music fan. My next question is, is there any musical artist or group that even if they don’t exist anymore that you would like to see in concert?
Mohamed Sameh:
Yeah, so I’m 45, and, most of the music that I listened to was my teenage time. So, yeah, most of them are dead already. Actually, my wife, got me a very nice birthday present a few years ago for one of my favorite favorite singers, Celine Dion, Canadian singer. So, it was in Las Vegas. So, she got me the ticket and everything. I went to the concert by myself and then I came back. It was amazing gift.
Mohamed Sameh:
What I wanted to see, but I could I didn’t, of course, was, Michael Jackson, of course.
Terri Hoffman:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Have you ever gone to that Cirque du Soleil show that is-
Mohamed Sameh:
Yes! Yes. I did. That’s pretty good.
Mohamed Sameh:
It was great. Yeah.
Terri Hoffman:
Yeah.
Mohamed Sameh:
Yeah. Probably also Queen, Freddie Mercury. Also, I’m a big fan of Queen. So, yeah both of them are dead, unfortunately.
Terri Hoffman:
Yeah. Yeah. I just I love these questions because these aren’t things, you know, we get to know people in different ways that we don’t talk about when we’re in marketing meetings together. What’s the number one book that you find yourself recommending to people?
Mohamed Sameh:
So, for the last 10 years, almost or 15 years, I used to recommend the exact same book to everyone, which is the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Stephen Covey.
Terri Hoffman:
Yeah.
Mohamed Sameh:
This book changed many things in my life. Recently, I have two more books that I start to not only recommend, I like to explain to people things about these books. So, there is a book called The Secret Rhonda Byrne about the law of attract or law of attraction, which is something I believe in many things in life. And then most recent book I that I read that I really loved is called Principles by Ray Dalio. It’s a great book. It also start to change things in me after I read this book.
Terri Hoffman:
Interesting. Okay. That wow. Okay. I love I’m getting all these book ideas. And then my last question is what is the best job that you’ve ever had?
Mohamed Sameh:
It wasn’t a paid job. It was, honestly, it was a, like, a volunteer job, but, I like to teach people anything that I know. I like to help direct younger people a little bit about their career and how to enhance their skills. So, I joined an organization that does some free courses, soft skills courses, from presentation skills to communication skills, to mind mapping, to creative thinking, different things like that. So, I start to give some free lectures to some students and fresh grads for to learn all these soft skills. So, this wasn’t a paid job, but, actually, the appreciation that I got from this job was way bet way more important for me than any paid job that I ever had.
Terri Hoffman:
That’s so awesome. I bet it’s been fun to watch how those skills maybe got used and helped them kinda move along in their lives. Yeah. It sounds pretty gratifying.
Mohamed Sameh:
Yeah.
Terri Hoffman:
Sounds awesome.
Mohamed Sameh:
Yeah. It is.
Terri Hoffman:
Well, thank you so much, Mohammed, for joining us today. I really appreciate your time the generosity of the information you shared. You know, my goal would be that this really helps other people feel more comfortable, you know, embracing the digital marketing road that you guys have gone down and how we’ve kinda collaborated and worked together on that. So, I really appreciate it.
Mohamed Sameh:
Thank you. Thank you.
Terri Hoffman:
Thanks for listening. Please be sure to follow us on your favorite podcast channel and leave us a review. We’d love to hear from you. You can connect with me on LinkedIn or visit our website at marketingrefresh.com.
