Umber Ahmad of Mah Ze Dahr
How a pandemic tried to destroy her and why it failed.
"FEARLESS CREATIVE LEADERSHIP" PODCAST - TRANSCRIPT
Episode 332: Umber Ahmad
Hi. I’m Charles Day. I work with creative and innovative companies. I coach and advise their leaders to help them maximize their impact and grow their business. To help them succeed where leadership lives - at the intersection of strategy and humanity.
This week’s guest is Umber Ahmad - the founder of the rapidly growing bakery, Mah Ze Dahr. Her journey from banker to baker has been told before by everyone from Martha Stewart to BuzzFeed to TIME Magazine. Umber was a guest in the early days of this podcast in June of 2017.
Over the last few years, I’ve come to know Umber well and in full disclosure I’ve worked with her both formally and informally as she launched and began to grow her business.
When the pandemic hit us all like a tidal wave in March of 2020, I wondered how Umber would keep Mah Ze Dahr afloat.
A business that depended hugely on a single brick and mortar location in Greenwich Village didn’t seem to have much future as her customers fled New York and the city turned into a post apocalyptic landscape of deserted streets and shuttered storefronts.
Twenty months later, Mah Ze Dahr hasn’t just survived, it has thrived. That single location has turned into four, and her online business has doubled.
The leadership instincts on which the business is growing were honed in Umber at an early age.
“I learned to drive in the Italian Alps as we were children. So we had some old Italian race car driver teach me how to drive, which I mean, looking back, probably not the best parenting move, but it was great for me. And he would always tell me, because there was so many curves, right, there's so many turns and curves on the roads in the mountains, but the one thing I remember the most is he would say, "When you're going into a curve or into a turn, you decelerate. But the only way to come out of that curve is to accelerate part of the way through. If you wait to accelerate, by the time you've straightened out, it's too late." I keep thinking about that in my life. There was this curve and I have to accelerate while I'm still in it. Because if I don't, when it actually comes out of it, I won't be there.”
It is too easy to think of leadership as an abstract, intellectual, and even academic construct.
It is not.
Leadership is the most powerful change agent on the planet - this one or any of the others that we attempt to occupy in years and generations to come.
Leadership is most visible when we are confronted by the twists and turns that life brings us.
Coronavirus has been a series of hair-pin bends on the side of a mountain, and many so-called leaders have climbed into the back seat and clung on for dear life.
When faced with these moments, we quickly discover whether we are a leader in name only, or whether we are willing to confront the challenges of whatever lies ahead.
Whether we hit the brakes and stop, or whether we accelerate through the curve and head for the future.
Here’s Umber Ahmad.
Charles: (03:09)
Umber, welcome back to Fearless. Thanks so much for coming on the show.
Umber Ahmad: (03:14)
Thank you so much for having me back.
Charles: (03:16)
I don't think I asked you this question when we first, which is now unbelievably, I think, four years ago.
Umber Ahmad: (03:22)
No.
Charles: (03:23)
I know, isn't it crazy? How time has just flown by. Not much not much has happened, though, in the last-
Umber Ahmad: (03:29)
Well, the world is about the same as it was four years ago.
Charles: (03:32)
Very nearly the same. Very, very close to being the same.
When did creativity first show up in your life? When are you first conscious for creativity being a thing in your life?
Umber Ahmad: (03:41)
That's a really good question. I don't remember a time in my life where creativity wasn't playing a very significant, prominent role in my life. My mom did a lot of reading when we were children and she read all these articles about the way Japanese people raise their children to be very smart and thoughtful about mathematics and science and all those other things. And one of the common denominators around the success in those fields was music. And so she adopted the Suzuki method of violin playing with both my sister and myself, and I was just under three years old when I started. So, I don't remember a time when I didn't have a violin in my hand or a time when I was meant to think about things outside of just the normal structure and try to be creative about things.
Charles: (04:31)
You told me in the past that you'd played the violin really seriously for a long time. How else did you find you expressed yourself?
Umber Ahmad: (04:39)
I expressed myself in a lot of other ways. I think I expressed myself through story writing. I loved to read. And I loved to kind of, like, make up stories and live in this fantastical world. We grew up in a part of the country where we were the only people that didn't look like anyone else. We were the only non blond, non Swedish, Finnish, Polish, Catholic people. And so, as a result of that, we ound ourselves creating a world of our own. So, we were definitely very immersed in the world that we lived in. But we found these opportunities to create these stories and create these magical kingdoms that we wanted to live in. Where we weren't the only ones. Where we belonged in a very different way.
I remember my sister and I would travel a lot with our family and we would sit in airports. We'd sit for connections or we'd sit for layovers. And my sister and I would play these stories, these creative stories where we'd see somebody walking by and it would be a man holding flowers. And we would say, “You know, his wife is coming in from a business trip.” And then my sister would say, "And he's really sorry for what he did." And then I'd say, "Well, he's not really that sorry. Because she's still back at the apartment." And so we would just make these stories of anybody that we would see.
We would see this woman who was walking with a cane and we would say, “You know, gosh, but, you know, now if she had that accident the technology would be so different. She could actually not have a limp." Like, we would just try to live bigger than the world that we were in all the time. Which was so fun.
Charles: (06:08)
How did the fact that you were different change you, do you think? How did it influence you?
Umber Ahmad: (06:15)
I think the fact that I was different influenced everything that I did. from the foods that I could eat. You know, we were Muslim so there was no pork hot dogs. There was no pepperoni pizza. The kind of decisions that I would make about the friends that I would keep, and just really owning and recognizing who I was as a human being, more than just going along with something because it's what the rest of society did. So I think that that, it really allowed me to own my place on the planet in a way that I don't think I would have if I had been in Pakistan or been surrounded by a community of people.
It also really opened up my world. I think a lot of people who grow up in what I call "modern ghettos," you know, immigrants that come together and live together, out of security or safety or fear or comfort, they don't allow themselves to live in a world in which they inhabit, the space. They just stay in their own little small community. And we never had the opportunity to do that. Nor do I think we would have, even if we were growing up in a place where there were a lot of other people like us. But it really allowed us to really sort of figure out who we were and embrace all the other people around us.
I think cooking was one of the things that really allowed us to do that, as well. My mom and my dad has this… it was like a supper club. But they did it around countries, so my parents, and they had six couples, so there were 14 of them. And they would choose a country and choose a couple every month that would host the dinner and make food from that country. And it was just such an interesting thing to do. And just a way to continue to sort of welcome other ideas, other flavors, other mindsets in and that was just the way we grew up and we loved it.
Charles: (08:03)
Have you ever been conscious of a point in your life where you thought, "Hmm, I can't do that," about anything? Has that ever been part of your thinking?
Umber Ahmad: (08:12)
That I can't, like, I can't do something that I set out to do?
Charles: (08:16)
Or, here's an opportunity, "Oh, no, I couldn't do that." I shouldn't jump into that. I'm not able to do that.
Umber Ahmad: (08:24)
No. No. I think there were times in my life where I would stop and question whether I had the ability in that moment to achieve that particular objective or goal and it might be, "Hmm, I'll get there in six months. I'll get there in a year." But it was never, you know, “That's not something that I cannot do." It's just a, a matter of how and when.
Charles: (08:51)
Do you think that came from your upbringing? Was that parentally influenced?
Umber Ahmad: (08:54)
I think it was parentally influenced. My father was the ultimate entrepreneur. He left his family. He came into a country that he didn't know anything about in the sixties and just worked tirelessly to become the best in his field. He made it from a village in Pakistan to Harvard Medical School. People don't do that. And they don't take that lightly. And there was never a question of if he could do it, he just had to figure out the path to "yes”. Our family was always focused on the path to "yes”. It's not a "no", it's just a different path to "yes”.
And I try to instill that into the people with whom I work and the people who have joined me in this mission of Mah Ze Dahr that there's always an opportunity to find a way.
Charles: (09:37)
Yeah, it really resonates with me. I had a fantastic faculty advisor when I was at college. And he taught me that, "No, is just an invitation to start a different conversation."
Umber Ahmad: (09:47)
Oh, I love that. Oh, my gosh. I'm going to use that. That's fantastic.
Charles: (09:52)
Yeah. Jerry Gustafson gets credit for that.
Umber Ahmad: (09:54)
Okay, Jerry.
Charles: (09:55)
I want to bring you nearly into the present day. Let's roll back about 19 months ago, 19, 20 months. To the beginning-
Umber Ahmad: (10:02)
Uh.
Charles: (10:02)
... to the beginning of the pandemic. So, you became a professional baker, as a kind of… it was not the first thing you did professionally. I mean, you've done a lot of different things professionally. But you become a professional baker, I won't say "later in life," you're certainly not old, but it was not the first thing you focused on from a career standpoint.
Umber Ahmad: (10:20)
Correct.
Charles: (10:21)
When you were confronted by the pandemic, in this still relatively nascent business, you had one physical location, you had a developing online business, but it wasn't the foundation of your business.
How did you meet the challenges of that in the first few days and weeks, when you suddenly realized, "Oh my god, this business that I have built, that I have literally poured blood and sweat and tears and love into, suddenly might not even be physically possible anymore." How did you confront those first few days and weeks?
Umber Ahmad: (10:51)
So, I remember, it was the beginning of March and when the things shut down within about 48 hours. So, we didn't have a lot of time to make decisions. And I'm somebody who is good at military decision making, right? So, in the moment with the information that you have, you make the best decision possible. And then there's other people that have almost the level of analysis paralysis, where they're just going to keep thinking it over and mulling it over and thinking about different scenarios. I don't do that.
So, it's like, "Okay, what are we doing? What information do we have? What's the best decision we can make?" And I remember the beginning of the pandemic being the first time where I couldn't do that. Where I looked at the information and it was so spotty. And it was so unclear. And it was so panic inducing that I didn't think that I could make decisions based on that. And I remember sitting down in the back of the bakery, just listening to the news and looking at what was happening in Italy, what was happening in Europe, and realizing we had to shut the business down.
So, I pulled my two senior people in and I said, "We need to shut the business down. We need to do it in the next five days. We need to empty our freezers. We need to figure out what things we can sell. We need to start advertising to get people in here. And we need to let our entire team go, including both of you." And they just looked at me. And I said, "And we need to do it now." So, we just kind of mobilized around that. But with the idea that we were going to be re-open in three weeks, four weeks max. Really, honestly, I think everybody thought, “This is a temporary blip, it's going to be fine.”
And so I really approached it that way. We didn't even have an opportunity to reach out to each one of our team members in person to talk to them about the situation. Because we had to move so quickly. So, we had a string of phone calls with all of our team members and letting them know what was happening, what was going on. And that we would keep in touch. That we would have to actually let everyone go so that they could collect unemployment.
And then we went through this process of having this massive sale to get all the product out of our bakery so that we… I didn't really think much more than two or three weeks, but let's just be safe. And we had lines down the block, people coming in, a lot of sad faces, a lot of heads cocked to the side, like, "How are you?" And I was like, "I'm fine. We're going to be open in two or three weeks. We will see you guys soon." And then we shut everything down. And I remember turning the lights out and locking the door and walking away thinking, "This isn't going to be bad."
And within about 10 days the realization set in that this was not what we thought it was and there was no real end in sight. And I had a lot of conversations with other restaurateurs and other business people for the first few days of that period, and then I stopped speaking to anyone, because everybody was panicked and everybody was like, "That's it. We're done. Our lives are over. Everything we've ever worked for is gone. We've no idea what we're going to do." And then a lot of people saying, "I don't have any other skills. I don't have any other talents. This is it."
And then I decided to shut all that noise out because I said, "Wait, this isn't positive information. Let's just shut it out." I'd watch news for one hour a day and that's it. I cried a lot, more for my team, more for the feeling of responsibility of these 36 families that I had under me and not really knowing where we were going to go.
And then I allowed myself to do that for a few days and then I started to meditate a lot and started to really think about, if this were the new world, how would I pivot, how would I come through this, not unscathed, but stronger, and started really thinking about what people wanted. And I started spending a lot of time on social media, what people were posting about, what people were talking about missing, what people were trying, and everybody was baking. Everybody that we knew was baking. Everybody was making banana bread and everybody wanted to try sour dough and this was great projects for our kids to make cookies.
And I was like, "Wait a second. That's what I do." So, I started down the path of creating home baking kits and selling raw doughs frozen and croissants frozen and cinnamon buns that you could bake at home and started experimenting with shipping them. So I would ship them to my sister in Michigan just because I would go in the kitchen by myself, I'd make these things, I'd put them into a FedEx box, take them to FedEx, she would open them, we'd get on Zoom and we'd look at whether it worked or not.
And my sister's the perfect person to do that because she always says the best things she makes for dinner is reservations. So she was not a person who is at all interested in baking or cooking, so if she could do it, anybody could do it.
And then we started back in. I reached out to my chef, my sous chef and my general manager and said, "Listen, let's come in for a certain number of days a month. Let's build this. Let's work on this, and let's have pop ups so people know that we're here. I will make the deliveries. Let's do a flat rate of a delivery."
And so once a month we would have a pop up where we would sell to the people who were left, realizing that 80%, maybe more than that, of our customer base was gone. They had fled the city. And then I would just deliver. Would rent a car and I would spend 13 hours a day delivering pastry. And I would try to route the deliveries where I'd have a friend or people I knew along the way because I had to pee and there was no place to pee anymore because there was no restaurants open and there were no gas stations open. So I would just be like messaging people, "Hi, I'm delivering your pastries and I know we're not supposed to see each other and I know I'm completely covered in plastic and masks but I have to pee."
And I would do that. I'd do that for two days every month, 13 hours a day. And then once a week after that I would just start making food for first responders and take it to hospitals. And I think that's what kept me sane, that I could continue to nourish people and continue to make the business what it needed to be, which was accessible, available, and nourishing.
And I did that through pivoting into a much stronger online eCommerce business. So much so, that our holiday eCommerce business in 2020 was double what it was in 2019. So I had a full 99.9% growth rate for my online business. So I knew if I could survive that, I could survive anything.
Charles: (17:21)
I know this is a question you probably can't answer, but where do you think you get the determination from, that allows you to work your way through that and just plow through that? I mean, that's an extraordinary story. I mean, it was remarkable to witness it from the outside and in the conversations that we had with Chris, just hearing and seeing what you were doing. It was remarkable. But as you tell it now, just looking back on that time, where do you think you get that determination from?
Umber Ahmad: (17:54)
I think when you make a career decision so significant and massive the way that I did, and you go from being this high roller individual to walking the streets of New York with IKEA bags so that you can make this business work, there doesn't seem like anything's going to stop you. It's just there's something about owning who you are and the decisions you've made, where there just wasn't anything that was going to stop me. I didn't have a plan B. I didn't have a plan B. There wasn't a world where this wasn't going to work. And I just had to keep believing that and just keep believing that.
And some people would reach out and say, "Oh, have you thought about getting back into finance? Have you thought about this and that?" And I was like, I shut every conversation down and say, "No, but thank you. And have you thought about ordering some banana bread?"
We also had completed construction of our second New York City bakery, the first week of March of 2019, and… or 2020. Which was it? 2019. 2019.
2020. Gosh, isn't it crazy that we just can't figure out where we are anymore?
Charles: (19:11)
Yeah. I know.
Umber Ahmad: (19:14)
It's bananas.
Charles: (19:15)
We've all lost a year, right? We've lost a year.
Umber Ahmad: (19:15)
We've lost a year.
Charles: (19:17)
Yeah.
Umber Ahmad: (19:18)
And I think about that, you know, and sometimes I'll be like, "What day is it?" And Chris, our director of operations, he'll look at me and he's like, "Nobody really knows." And he says that to be funny, but it's actually true. Nobody really knows what day it is, ever, anymore.
But we had finished construction right before the shutdown and so I had a space that was completely made and ready to go that was sitting there. And we were also under construction for another space in DC, and we stopped everything. And then the idea was something that… I mentioned this to Chris at one point. I learned to drive in the Italian Alps as we were children and driving school very often happened in the summer. We happened to be in Italy during my teen years.
So we had some old Italian race car driver teach me how to drive, which I mean, looking back probably not the best parenting move, but it was great for me. And he would always tell me, because there was so many curves, right, there's so many turns and curves on the roads in the mountains. And he would always, the one thing, so many things I remember that summer, but the one thing I remember the most is he would say, "When you're going into a curve or into a turn, you decelerate. But the only way to come out of that curve is to accelerate part of the way through. If you wait to accelerate, by the time you've straightened out, it's too late."
I keep thinking about that in my life. There was this curve and I have to accelerate while I'm still in it, because if I don't, when it actually comes out of it, I won't be there.
Charles: (20:45)
And bizarrely, when you do that, you actually have more control of the car.
Umber Ahmad: (20:49)
Yes.
Charles: (20:49)
Right?
Umber Ahmad: (20:50)
Yes. That's absolutely right. And you're more in control of the situation.
Charles: (20:53)
Yeah.
Umber Ahmad: (20:53)
And then you feel this sense of empowerment because you're the one who sees what's coming around the curve. So that's how I approached the pandemic.
It was brutal.
Charles: (21:07)
You mentioned that you had finished the construction of a second New York bakery, which is now open.
Umber Ahmad: (21:13)
It is.
Charles: (21:13)
You also added two other physical locations.
Umber Ahmad: (21:18)
Yes.
Charles: (21:19)
So you have actually come out as we are, I don't know whether we're getting to the end or who knows, but we're least in some different version of this. You are now actually the owner of a business that has four physical locations. You started the pandemic with one and you now have four. Is that right?
Umber Ahmad: (21:34)
That's correct. Five, if you include a partnership that we're doing with a British company in DC. I think we're somewhat contrarian in the growth and the expansion of our business from a physical standpoint. A lot of people are of the belief that because everybody started shopping online, they would continue to shop online. I'm of the belief that, yes, people continue to shop online, but that need and that base desire for human connection, physical interaction and immediate gratification will never go away.
Actually, I believe because of the pandemic, because we have been isolated, we have an even more important obligation to ensure that people can connect in person, that there's that physical, emotional, just sensual time that we have together as humans. And one of the best ways to do that is to come together over food. So being able to do that, to say, "Look, yep, absolutely buy from us online, but come in, have an interaction. We want to be the best part of your day. We want there to be someone else on the planet that knows that you're here, and that cares that you've come in, and that cares that you've gotten up today." And that's really important to me.
Charles: (22:46)
How do you think about your relationship with the business? How does it feel to you?
Umber Ahmad: (22:56)
That's a really good question. What is my relationship with my business? It's evolving. My relationship with my business when we first started was me. It was all me. And one of the things, and I say this often, that you and Chris used to say to me at the beginning, is that you need to plan your own obsolescence. What does that last day look like when you're shutting out the lights? And that's a great way to think about it from a personal attachment standpoint but also from a growth projection standpoint.
So from a personal attachment standpoint, I never understood it because I said, "What do you mean? It is me. It is personal. My hands are in the food. I'm the one making the deliveries. I'm the person that writes the copy on the website. I'm the person that changes my voice three different times to make it seem like I have more people working for me.
“That's me. It is personal.” But there's something about it being personal and you being personally invested that I'm starting to recognize the difference between. And now I'm personally invested, but I recognize that Mah Ze Dahr has a life of its own, as well it should. And that I can teach it, I can nourish it, guide it, influence it, build it, but I have to be able to exist separate from it.
And I think the pandemic helped me with that as well. Because I was faced with the very real possibility that Mah Ze Dahr would no longer exist. And that couldn't mean that I would no longer exist. And so when building it though this unbelievable, hopefully once in a lifetime crisis, I found that I'm now in a relationship with my business and I'm not my business.
Charles: (24:40)
That's such a perfect expression of that whole evolution that I think the best entrepreneurs do go through. The difference between, this is a representation of me, to actually this is, exactly as you said, this is something that sits outside me that I care about and want to help and nature and support.
Umber Ahmad: (24:57)
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Charles: (24:58)
But you also recognize that you need other people to invest themselves into it as well, in order for it to fulfill its potential.
Umber Ahmad: (25:05)
Absolutely. Because if you don't give them the opportunity to throw their anchor into that water, they'll float away, because you just can't be everything. You can't take up all the oxygen in the room. And I used to take up all the oxygen in the room. I know I did. And I'm slowly starting to take shallower breaths when I walk in.
Charles: (25:25)
So based on that, how has your leadership changed from a practical standpoint?
Umber Ahmad: (25:30)
My leadership has changed in that I'm more hands off, granting more autonomy. One of the things that I have heard our general manager, Tim, say to someone else that one of the things that he likes, particularly about my management style, is that I allow people to own the business that they're running and managing. As opposed to executing orders or direction from me. We all have to believe in the same ethos. We all have to subscribe to the same ideologies and objectives and goals. I don't want people to go off the rails. But if you have a way in which you want to manage, and way in which you want to communicate and we can get to that objective, then you are empowered to do that.
The challenge with that is one of the things that I'm experiencing currently, recently in the past couple of days, that I'm now starting to understand that the history of the people who come into our team impact their reactions, their motivations, their actions, much more than what they're experiencing currently.
So it's like a childhood trauma will come back into people's relationships whether they want it to or not. And so I'm realizing now with one particular individual, that what he has experienced in his personal life and his professional life very much informs the way in which he goes forward. And so it's like when you're dating someone and you break up, the next person you date, you're focused on the things that you didn't like about that other person, or the mistakes that you made there you're not going to make again. But almost to the detriment of the situation in itself.
So as a leader, I need to be more thoughtful, insightful and understanding of where people are deriving their own leadership from. They're not deriving it from me. I used to say, "They're deriving it from me." But they're not. They're deriving it from their own lives and experiences and skillsets and all those other things.
Charles: (27:27)
Yeah. that's a very rare piece of recognition, I think. I think a lot of leaders never get to that point of understanding that. They think it's so much about them and that they can either help somebody, they can, in some cases, fix somebody, they can… they're ultimate responsible for making sure that the behavior of everybody around them is perfect.
And I think what you hit on and what you recognized is absolutely right. I'm reading a fascinating book, actually, called, The Man Who Mistook His Job for His Life. And it talks very much about this psychological dynamic that everybody brings to every situation.
Umber Ahmad: (28:01)
Right.
Charles: (28:01)
And that as a leader, if you can't understand that, if you can't see beyond your own interaction with them and understand that they have been in some cases, scarred, wounded, traumatized by things that happened in their lives, it makes it too easy for us from a leadership standpoint to see somebody through the lens of black and white. You know, either this person's good or bad. They're right or wrong. Almost all of us are, are gray.
Umber Ahmad: (28:25)
Exactly.
Charles: (28:26)
To a greater or lesser extent.
Umber Ahmad: (28:27)
Yeah. It's, yeah, almost all of us are gray. And that's really difficult for us to acknowledge. And to just recognize. We're all flawed human beings. And I think that that's where, very often, we lose vision on that.
Charles: (28:45)
As you are looking to the future, what are you conscious of that you need to evolve in your own leadership? I mean, you've got this business that has not just survived, but actually thrived through the pandemic. its reputations, capability, its success is expanding all the time. How do you look at the next couple years in terms of your own challenges? What do you have to do from a leadership standpoint?
Umber Ahmad: (29:06)
Next few years for me, I think really have to do with more visioning and less operating. One of the… I think I speak for myself, but I think I speak for a lot of entrepreneurs, one of the biggest challenges as an entrepreneur is to go from an operator to a visionary. Because you start as a visionary. Because you have a vision and you have this goal or this idea or this product, and you're all vision. And then you get to a place where you almost have to divorce yourself from a vision because you're just executing and it's all operational.
And then as you build, you have a combination of those two things. I need to get myself to a place where I'm not operating the business so that I can build the business. I'm bringing in, I think, the correct people who have the ability to operate the business. I have to be able to guide them and empower them for what they need in their capacities to operate the business in a way that I think is important for me to do.
And then be able to be the visionary to go back to day one to say, "This is what I saw. This where I want us to be. This is, this is how it feels." I want to go back to remembering how it feels to be in this business.
Charles: (30:19)
What's the biggest challenge for you from a leadership standpoint? What do you struggle with the most?
Umber Ahmad: (30:25)
I have two struggles as a leader with my leadership style and what I think of the efficacy of my leadership. One is being able to divorce the process from the outcome and really understanding the investment is in the outcome. And allowing people to find their own path or their own rhythm.
There's a film called A River Runs Through It, I don't know if you've ever seen it.
Charles: (30:51)
Yeah.
Umber Ahmad: (30:52)
And there's a scene where Tom Skerritt is with his sons and it's a very… it's the last scene, and he keeps trying to teach Brad Pitt to fish in a very specific way, that there's a very specific motion and then there's this rhythm that he has to adopt. And he just doesn't do it. And he finds his own rhythm and his own place in the river.
And there's this moment where you can see it in the father's face, where he acknowledges that he's achieved what he set out to do by also empowering his son to be the person that he always deserved to be and was born to be. And I need to be better at that.
The other piece is, as I become less operational and more vision-focused again, is not allowing myself to think small. I didn't start out thinking small. And then when you become an operationally-focused person, you become really detailed into the minutia and you start thinking smaller. Smaller increments, smaller outcomes, smaller benefits.
And when you become a visionary again, you have to allow yourself to open up. Your chest expands, your arms extend, and that's what I'm struggling a little bit right now. To really know and believe and have the conviction to convince other people that what I'm doing matters, it's sustainable, and, by God, we're doing it. So that's where I am now.
I'm just starting a new fundraise, starting in the next day or two. And being able to go out to people and to tell this story is quite remarkable. But it also requires an immense amount of conviction from my side to say, “This money will turn us into where I want us to be. Like, this is the last step.”
Taking that last step, when you've thought about it for so long is a little bit daunting, but it's also exactly where you were meant to be, where your feet were meant to be planted. And so that's kind of where I am at this point.
Charles: (32:52)
I'm conscious that, success can often change a leader's mindset in one of two ways. It either emboldens you and gives you confidence. And in some cases, I think what it does is it makes people suddenly conscious of the fact that I now have more to lose. If you dial the clock back 20 months to the beginning of the pandemic and you think, you know, "I was able, physically, through an extraordinary effort, but I was physically able to put this business on my back, literally, and carry it around the city and keep it going."
With one location, you could see how that's possible. With four, that approach wouldn't work again, right? You couldn't do that with this business. Are you more confident in the success of the business now that you've survived and thrived? Or are you conscious that you have more at risk and more to lose?
Umber Ahmad: (33:37)
Both. I think those two emotions and those two mindsets live side by side. They can't live exclusively from one another because then the business wouldn't thrive. Or it would get to a point where it was unsustainable or unreasonable. So I think it's a checks and balance in that. As we continue to build, and continue to have the confidence that this is something that is sustainable, and we can make this work. But also recognizing that it's increasingly difficult to control quality, to maintain individual relationships with each person that's part of this team. You open yourself up to a lot more criticism, a lot more challenges and risks. But at the same time, in doing that, you empower yourself to say, "We've done this, and we're going to continue to do this."
But I do remember just a couple days ago having this feeling. And it was a really strange emotion. It was almost a sense of nostalgia, of baking in my apartment and having no money and eating apples and peanut butter for days on end. And I missed it. I missed that feeling of it just being me.
But then I knew all along from day one it wasn't meant to just be me. It's meant to be something much bigger than that. And then I paid $45,000 (laughs) in weekly salaries and went on my way, where in previous days, I was unable to take a taxi all the way across town, where I was look in my hand at how many coins I had, and I would jump out in the pouring rain because I couldn't make it the last twelve blocks.
Charles: (35:14)
Hm.
Umber Ahmad: (35:15)
So that I wouldn't go back to that. But I would never want to forget the way it really feels to own your place on the planet.
Charles: (35:27)
And what are you afraid of?
Umber Ahmad: (35:32)
I used to be afraid of a lot of things. I remember actually you asking me this question in the last podcast. And I think I said I was afraid of everything. I'm not afraid of anything. The worst thing that ever happened to me happened three weeks before we opened the bakery. My mother died. And I remember asking my sister that day, I was laying on her body, and my sister walked into the room. And I said to her, I said, "Do you think the sun's going to come up tomorrow?"
Charles: (36:05)
Hm.
Umber Ahmad: (36:06)
And my sister said, "What do you mean?" And I said, "How does the world work without her? How does gravity even keep us grounded without her? And how can the universe even process her not being here?" I said, "I don't think the sun's going to come up tomorrow." And then my father, ever the scientist, who lost the love of his life, looked at me and he said, "There's a stasis in energy. Her energy will always be here. There can't be that immense of a loss," he said, "Otherwise we would implode. And we're not going to implode. Her energy is here." And that was the thing that I feared the most, that I would be without her.
So the thing I feared the most happened, and we made it through that. And it made us stronger and more thoughtful and more grateful, and more committed to building a life that mattered and not really afraid of anything anymore.
Charles: (37:12)
Hm. I completely understand that. Yours has always been an extraordinary story. I thought it was an extraordinary story four years ago when we first talked. I think to have witnessed and experienced a little bit, even, of what you have gone through over the last two years has just been remarkable. It is an extraordinary journey. And, I cannot tell you how much respect and admiration I have for you and the way that you have—
Umber Ahmad: (37:36)
Oh, my gosh.
Charles: (37:37)
... battled and fought and thought and cared and loved your way through this. And I can only believe that all of this will continue to be rewarded in business success, for sure. But I think on a much deeper, more significant level than that, in success in the journey of life. Thank you for sharing with us today.
Umber Ahmad: (37:56)
Well, thank you. And I say this very, very wholeheartedly. This is not a journey that I am on alone. I'm on this with my family and with my chosen family. And you and Chris are my chosen family. And I could not have done this without you.
The level of strength and insight and thoughtfulness and support, and just the questions that you ask, have forced me to think about leadership in so many different ways, to figure out, is that the perspective from where I need to build this business? And then get back up again. You've done that again and again for me. So thank you. Thank you very much.
Charles: (38:34)
It is genuinely our privilege. Thank you.
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