Mahfuz speaks with Abdul Munim Sheikh, CEO of halal food company Al Safa Foods, about identifying market opportunities, assembling a team and the need for patience.
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.
Mahfuz Chowdhury: Welcome back to Grow Decoder, a podcast that digs into those pivotal moments that real entrepreneurs face every day to find out how they rose to those challenges. I'm your host, Mahfuz Chowdhury.
Abdul Munim Sheikh: I believe that strategy has its role for sure. But in most of the cases, 90 to 95 per cent of the weightlifting is done by the execution.
Mahfuz Chowdhury: Today on episode six, we're talking about what really makes a business successful: execution. Every business needs a plan and most entrepreneurs spend a good portion of their time on strategy, but more important is how the plan is executed.
How you implement your strategy is often the difference between success and failure. Someone who knows the importance of execution is Abdul Munim Sheikh, CEO of Alsafa Foods, a food producer that staged a remarkable turnaround. When Abdul purchased Alsafa Foods after exiting his early career as a financial manager for a large corporation, he faced the reality of a company that was losing money and on the verge of parting ways with its biggest client.
What happened next? Well, Abdul and his team got to work, developed a plan and executed it. Ten years later, Alsafa Foods has grown sevenfold and has even expanded into the U.S. Here is my conversation with Abdul.
Abdul, welcome to the podcast. It's an absolute pleasure to have you on the Growth Decoder today.
Abdul Munim Sheikh: It’s an absolute pleasure and honour to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
Mahfuz Chowdhury: I'm so excited to hear about your story. You've been an inspiration to many and I'm really excited to share it with all our listeners today. I want to start by explaining the concept of being a halal food producer for our listeners.
Abdul Munim Sheikh: Yeah. So, I will explain a little bit about halal and then the industry part. So halal is…for any meat or any food product, for Muslims, it needs to be halal for it to be consumed. So it is not only restricted to meat only. It can be yogurt, it can be dairy and it can be other products as well.
So halal literally means clean, permissible. That's what it is for Muslims. A layman’s definition is also: what is kosher to Jews, halal is to Muslims, and I think there is more awareness around kosher. So the halal industry in North America specifically, is growing quite aggressively.
So the way I sort of generally explain it, there are about 12 million Muslims in North America. Give and take there are 2 million Muslims in Canada and most conservative estimates are there are 10 million Muslims in the U.S. and most of them have come from South Asia or the Middle East. These are the bigger subsegments in the population, sub-ethnicities. But now there are more and more North Africans coming and there are more and more Turkish people coming in, but generally speaking, that is the population size and for all three meals, they need halal products to be served on their plates.
When I talk to people who immigrated to North America 30, 40 years back, it was a very difficult and huge task for them to find halal. And usually they would go over the weekends or they would do their monthly meat purchasing at one place. And they would only be able to sort of consume or use it in a certain way. That’s where companies like Alsafa are coming in, adding value.
Alsafa is delivering anything which a non-Muslim would consume as a product in a halal format. And, I have listened to so many touching stories from kids who used to be discriminated because of their food when they would take their choices to the school and everyone would be eating nuggets.
And there would be a lot of debate within the household that either you can gel in within the community or you can keep your faith. So it was a choice to be made at that time. And that is the value add of companies like Alsafa where they are providing their faith based product at a very convenience and something which is from a taste and quality perspective it is at par with any other product.
Mahfuz Chowdhury: Can you talk to me about what point in that corporate path, what year you started to feel like there's something more you could be doing and what stirred your way to going down a different direction that resulted in the business?
Abdul Munim Sheikh: So I was doing my MBA in 2003, 2004 and 2005, and if someone would have asked me then, entrepreneurship was nowhere in my top three choices. I was very focused on a corporate career, and that's what I pursued.
So I joined after my MBA, a big conglomerate in Pakistan. The name of the company was Anglo, which was ex-Exxon. So they had a lot of multinational procedures and systems. But the essential business was fertilizer and Pakistan being a big agricultural country.
So it was quite a big organization. So in 2005 June, I joined them. And from 2006 onwards, the company started expanding and diversifying into different businesses. And one of the businesses they went into was the food business. Pakistan being one of the most populous countries in the world.
So they picked up dairy and they went against Nestle. So Nestle at that time had 55 per cent market share. But long story short, from 2006 to 2010, the company kept growing. I was progressing in different sort of departments within the organization and different businesses. So the company had seven, eight different businesses.
So Exxon used to have a methodology of leadership training. So in the first two years, if they identify you as leadership potential, and they used the term “hypo,” which is high potential. So if you are “hypo,” then you do not work in your core competency, you work in all departments.
So my core competency was finance, but I worked in marketing. I worked in brand. I worked in supply chain. I worked a little bit in HR as well. So they rotated me in different positions, departments and also companies. So in 2011 they offered me a role in the food business and that was the CFO role.
And I was kind of reluctant to go for that role because, although it was the Engro’s baby within the same umbrella, but it was a much smaller project compared to what I was doing back then. And one of my close friends, I sort of bounced off the idea and he gave me the idea that so far, you have worked on fertilizer plants, you have worked on power production and all of those are multi-billion dollar projects you cannot replicate them on your own.
But this is a business, there is a chance that down the road, you would probably be able to replicate it or do something of your own as well. So this will be your first experience of entrepreneurship. But I mean, I heard that and I listened to it, but I did not pay much attention to it.
But when I came to Canada, I think that migration, I came as an expatriate, so that move and coming out of that corporate bubble, I started fostering that thinking that I can do something of my own. So I was transferred to the job in 2012 but for the first year I was working remotely. I was back home because my paperwork, visa and everything was getting done. And the second year when I came here after 12 months, the company decided that their strategic direction…Alsafa does not fit into their strategic direction but at that time I had decided that this fits into my strategic direction.
The company decided that they wanted to divest it and I resigned from the company. And when there was a bidding process and everything, and they were 25 participants, I gathered a private equity group with me and sort of went for it and we won the bidding and at that time it was probably not the wisest move.
It was a big transition. One of my bosses, previous bosses, I was very close to him and he called me, probably this is not the best decision that you're making and tell me exactly your strategy. I want to check if you have done your due diligence.
At that time I said that I don't know what the whole staircase looks like, but I know what are the first two steps I have to take. I'm taking a leap of faith, but I'm confident that the big macro macroeconomic or macro indicators are quite favorable, which is the population, this is a genuine need of the population.
Now I need to figure out how to successfully commercially do that. So that was the whole hypothesis at that time. And like any entrepreneurship journey, everything is not a straight line. There were a lot of learnings. There were a lot of bumps and a lot of stumbling blocks on the way.
But from then and now, as you mentioned, it's a sevenfold growth.
Mahfuz Chowdhury: Absolutely. And your willingness to walk away from that straight line has been very evident even before you got into entrepreneurship. Can you talk to me a little bit about that first day, you know, kind of like getting the keys to the Alsafa door for the first time and what the condition of the business was?
Abdul Munim Sheikh: Yeah so I think even before we sort of acquired it, we already started making a strategy for the business after acquisition. So we had jotted down a few steps. A lot was around cutting the business to the right size, at that time. It was not exactly the first day, but the first week was moving the office to a much smaller location.
Mahfuz Chowdhury: That must've been a bit of a change.
Abdul Munim Sheikh: Yeah, so that was a bit of a change. So I was moving boxes, packing boxes and moving boxes. That was the first order of business, moving to a smaller location and sort of bring our expenses in check. It was challenging, but it was always very exciting.
I remember in those days, I was working 12 to 15 hours a day, but I would be much more fulfilled than what I had in my corporate life. So I think that kept me going. And then we had to sort of assemble the right team for the business. So a lot of those things.
And I must sort of appreciate my wife Karen and, um, it's her birthday today as well. I think if I was working 14, 15 hours a day and I had a 6-year-old and 2-year-old at that time. So she was the one putting in almost equal hours, nurturing them and everything. So she was taking care of the family at that time.
But those first two, three months, or weeks were just reorganizing ourselves. To tell you an interesting story, so when we acquired and created a strategy with all these shareholders, so the input was that if we break even within the first year, by end of the first year, I think we will declare it a success.
And we broke even in the first quarter.
Mahfuz Chowdhury: Wow. Okay.
Abdul Munim Sheikh: So at that time and in the corporate life, I used to hear a lot about the leader just needs to give the strategy and everything. And I always had a difference of opinion on that. I'm more of an execution guy. So I always thought that we sort of downplay the power of execution.
I've seen in a lot of businesses, people have great ideas, but execution is poor. And that was my thinking going in that we need to perfect the execution. I believe that strategy has its role for sure. But in most of the cases, 90 to 95 percent of the weightlifting is done by the execution.
So what you think, what you strategize, implementing it to the dot. Sometimes I've seen, especially in the bigger organization, there's less value to that. But I value it a lot.
Mahfuz Chowdhury: I love that. And I think there's a lot to unpack in what you said. So I want to spend some extra time here. You talked about a couple of key things.
Number one, you talked about the team. And how important that was to assemble the right team to help you get there. And I really want to get to the point where we figure out and truly decode how you're able to achieve that goal and objective of your first year within a quarter of its time. Talk to me a little bit about when you were assembling the team, you know, based on your clear vision and anticipation for wanting to execute more than anything else.
What were those other areas that you needed support in to make sure that you felt like everything was covered in order to allow you to execute in the best way?
Abdul Munim Sheikh: Yeah. So when it comes to the team, I'm of the view that you hire for the attitude and you develop the skill. So I was not hiring for skills.
I was hiring for the attitude. And that's what I was looking for when I was sort of trying to assemble the team. The attitude that at that moment we needed was, and still, I think it holds true even today, that we want a lot of journalists with hands-on experience and who are not afraid of getting their hands dirty when the need arises.
The other thing, I actually feel that I’m not a big fan of being very sharp and very clever. I, myself, I'm very kind of…wants to keep things very straight and very straightforward. So that was another thing that I did not want people especially in sales, we don't want to do any gimmicks.
We want to work on nuts and bolts and fundamentals of the business. We do not want results right now. We want results in a due course. But right now we need to do whatever is the right thing for the business. So in short, I wanted people where we had long term alignment on the strategy.
So I did not want short term thinking. And that's the thinking that we still hold that even if we talk about our organizational values. It's agility, innovation and customer servicing. So these are our top sort of values and that's what I was looking for at that time. It took me a few years to finally sort of write down those values, but even in hindsight, that was the thing that we wanted.
So when I say that we wanted more hands on people, that was the agility we were looking for…customer servicing. Even if we have to take a loss right now, but customer is important. And innovation. In the very beginning, why innovation? There is an interesting sort of reason for that.
So in our strategy, we decided that there are so many other companies who are doing halal products. And most of them are in terms of their holding structure, they are much, much bigger than us. So how do we compete with them? So we said that agility and innovation is something it is very difficult to replicate for bigger organizations.
And that's what we want to master. And that's what we did. So, in our competition our rate of innovation is five times higher than theirs. So it is very difficult to replicate. So we zoomed in on the specific sort of characteristics which cannot be replicated by bigger organizations.
And that's how we survive.
Mahfuz Chowdhury: Yeah.
Abdul Munim Sheikh: And thrived.
Mahfuz Chowdhury: I love the fact that there's so many parts of your brand DNA, the values that you believed in day one. And, and like you said, you put it down on paper much later, but you always believed it. Um, another area that we talk a lot about is that common misconception and the romanticizing of entrepreneurship where, you know, you talked about something really interesting, where the excitement of putting in those long hours for a vision was much more fulfilling than the corporate life.
Can you talk, can you walk me through a little bit more of those internal feelings and maybe some challenges that have also occurred? You know, it sounds like you went in with a lot of optimism and confidence where there's some days where it wasn't the case. Where maybe there was a doubt, maybe there was some pessimist voice in the back of your head trying to talk you out of things.
What was that experience like as an entrepreneur?
Abdul Munim Sheikh: Yeah, I think there is an emotional curve you go through. So in the beginning there is a lot of excitement. And then when you sort of implement that idea, so that excitement goes down and I think it's called valley of death. So that's where a lot of people give up because after the first few attempts there is a lack of excitement. The goal is to survive that lack of excitement and that belly of death and sort of make it out on the other side. And in my own words, the way I sometimes mentor some upcoming entrepreneurs, or if someone asks me for advice that you have to taste a closer to death experience in your entrepreneurship journey.
You have to go through a tough time and if you come on the other side, if you stay steadfast, only then you become an entrepreneur. And that was the case. As you said, we started with a lot of optimism. We knew going in, it's a loss making entity. So it's a difficult…it is a Herculean task to turn it around.
So we knew going in, there was no sort of a fancy story about it. But 2014 November 1st, we acquired it. So 2015 was okay. And as I mentioned earlier, for that year, our success criteria was breaking even, and we achieved that. But the real struggle started after that, which was 2016 and 2017, where we had to, we did not buy the company to just break even.
We wanted to grow the business. And that's where the challenges came in. And that's where pessimism also creeped in, especially in 2016 growth was not easy. It was actually 2018 onwards where sort of we started getting traction and everything. But I think having faith in your hypothesis.
So my hypothesis at that time was, as part of our study, we made a major change in our business model. So Alsafa was predominantly a Canadian brand and business when we acquired it. I'm a very data oriented person. So when I saw the data that we have a lot more Muslim population across the border, but then that hypothesis was not strong enough because why other halal brands have not captured into that population?
So what is the missing part? So the missing part was that U.S. has a much bigger, Muslim population, but it is quite segregated all across. So from a distribution perspective, it is much more challenging to reach out to those populations. Whereas, generally the Canadian population and also the Muslim population is 70 per cent of the Muslim population is consolidated into Ontario, and then 20 per cent is in Quebec.
So it is a very, very consolidated and distribution wise. So we started to sort of demystify and decode that problem one by one. We set up the U.S. distribution and when I was saying that 2016 was not easy because that was the time when we were setting up the distribution in the U.S.
And it was a totally, blue ocean strategy. Nobody had done it before. So there were no footsteps to follow. There was no format to follow. That gave us edge over others. That heavy lifting we did in the first few years, that gave us the edge. But I think everything was not great. There were a lot of mistakes.
But the idea is that learn from them and move on. I think humility is very important for a leader. And it is very, very important for a leader to acknowledge what he lacks and admit it. And find the right people who have those skills. So knowing what you do not have or you do not excel in is more important than knowing what you excel in.
And finding the right people who excel in those areas where you do not excel in. So that was the case while assembling the team and while setting up the distribution. So that's what we did. But I think celebrating small milestones is important to keep the optimism.
Mahfuz Chowdhury: While we're on the difficult conversation of challenges and difficult days. When you think about a very difficult and one of the most detrimental days for your businesses, what comes to mind and how are you able to get out on the other side?
Abdul Munim Sheikh: I think if we look back, there are three days. One in 2016. So in Canada, our business is quite mainstream oriented from a retail site.
There was one retail banner where we had about one-third of our sales were coming from that retail banner and they decided overnight to delist us. And that was a big blow and that happened in 2016. And that was the time when we had to reconfigure our Canadian business altogether.
And that was a time when we decided and we sort of looked into the ethnic retail channel, which was overlooked by a lot of players. We started developing that, and now it has become a much, much bigger part of our sort of sales portfolio. Just to define what the ethnic retail channel is, these are mom and pop stores, which are ethnic.
And at that time, the challenge was that they did not have a lot of freezer space. So there was a lot of convincing that what we did with them, how this will improve their profitability. Also we started valuing them. We reconfigured our business model where we could afford to deliver smaller MOQs to those stores.
I think that was a big blessing in disguise for us. Second was when NAFTA renegotiation happened. So as I mentioned earlier, we were trying to build up our U.S. business and then NAFTA renegotiation started happening.
Ultimately the cost impact was not that great but the uncertainty around it was something which was bothering us a lot. And that was putting a lot of question marks on our business model that we had a strategy that we wanted to grow in the U.S. and we were pushing behind it. We had invested so much marketing behind it. And all of a sudden there is a government intervention in NAFTA. And so we were kind of in a limbo situation until that negotiation was going on. And the third one was obviously Covid, and especially the first days of Covid. First of all, my methodology is that in any given situation, no matter how worse or good it is, what is in my control?
What can I change? What can I do now? And focus on that. Lately that is one of the prayers I do a lot is that..things I can change, God give me skills to change those. Things I cannot change, give me patience to bear with those and give me wisdom to differentiate between these two.
So that is one of my regular prayers and that's what I do no matter how bad the situation is, even this year, economic slowdown and everything, although we are growing, but that growth is very, very painful. You plan your every day. What can I do today to improve things? And most of the time that improvement is very microscopic or it's very minuscule.
Most days you won't see the needle moving and that's where you need your faith. That's where you need to just keep going because that sum total of all those days and hours of work will ultimately pay off. And sometimes it takes months, sometimes years. But I think that patience is a big virtue, when it comes to entrepreneurship.
Mahfuz Chowdhury: This is incredibly inspiring. And is it just me or every time you have an external challenge, you get more and more confidence? You're like, “Hey, if we made it through that, you know, we made it through some of the hardest challenges.What's out there that can slow us down?” And I think it gets you more united and stronger as a team here with the next planning.
When you keep innovation in mind as one of your core values, Abdul, what's next for your business, with anticipation of maybe external factors, the beautiful focus on focusing on the things that you can control, what do you believe would be next in the direction that you're headed?
Abdul Munim Sheikh: So, I mean as far as North America is concerned, we have ambitions to go beyond North America as well. So Europe is one area where we are focusing on, but within North America, I think, as I touched upon earlier, that there are so many sub-ethnicities within Muslims and nobody is catering to them at a national scale.
There are some very small regional players who are sort of giving those ethnic products. So, for example, when we sort of started the business, so our focus was those mainstream products like nuggets, burgers, the hot dogs. Those were the categories we were going after. Then 2019, 2020, we went into the South Asian portfolio.
Next stage for us is the Mediterranean portfolio, then the Turkish portfolio, the North African portfolio. There are so many things that within the halal frozen space we can do within North America because the demographics are also changing. We are also changing according to that.
In Canada, the biggest chunk within the Muslim population is South Asian. In U.S., the biggest chunk is Mediterranean people. And we are already catering to both and we have a slightly different portfolio on both sides. But we are always looking into our target audience and consumers.
What are the changing taste preferences? Similarly, cleaner label, organic. More natural products. So that is the direction we want to take going forward. In the very beginning, I mentioned that Halal is not only about meat products, it is beyond that as well.
So that is also part of conversation, but we essentially believe that we are an ethnic company. We are providing the most authentic taste. Ultimately, we want to be at a level where, whether their intention is to consume halal or not. Someone who wants to taste an authentic kebab, Alsafa should come to their mind.
So that is the ultimate level where we want to go. Keeping our core intact, keeping our authenticity intact, keeping our faith intact.
Mahfuz Chowdhury: Well, I'm excited. And I know the viewers will be as well to keep up with your journey Abdul. If I could finish with a final question of the day, you think about a lot of businesses that are in the same situation and taking their next big step.
And the next big step is very different for different businesses, but it comes with its own set of external challenges and internal focus. If you had to give them advice on how to navigate and prepare themselves for that next big step as you took many times in your journey. What are some advices that you would give to them that they could apply to their business?
Abdul Munim Sheikh: I think for any strategy it needs to be rooted in data, and you need to not only in the beginning while you are making that strategy, you need to fact check yourself while executing that strategy as well. And no matter what idea you supported or what was your idea or what products you are standing behind, as long as data follow the data, not your sort of gut in most of the cases.
A couple of examples I sort of learned from our own experience that there were few products I was very confident about. And we launched them and I mean, we made a lot of sort of effort behind them, but the data or the market feedback was not as great as we thought. And we learned the hard way that at the end of the day the consumer is the king and whatever data that sort of comes in we need to sort of respect that and we need to sort of go that direction.
So, in my view, be very data oriented and keep testing your hypothesis. Even in the beginning of the strategy making, in the middle of the strategy making and while you are implementing it.
But at the same time, I think, it's totally off business, but one needs to have a very clear focus on their personal health as well. I strongly believe in that. Because a lot of people in the business, when they are setting up businesses, they let go of their health. I sort of went to the similar sort of situation, in the first few years and then I picked up on that.
And in many ways, I have seen that my business performance improved with that. So having that, and it's not only your sort of physical health, it's also your mental health, it's your family and everything. So while you are creating business, it is one part of your life.
It is not your entire life. So having that perspective is important so that you keep on grooming yourself outside that as well and sort of keep nurturing the environment, which is outside that business as well. Keep that balance that if one thing is down, there are so many other things to cherish about and be grateful for.
I'm a big fan of and I'm a big believer that health is wealth.
Mahfuz Chowdhury: Abdul, I don't know about you, but I'm going to be listening to this many times back because I think every minute of your journey and every lesson that you picked up along the way is incredible, incredibly valuable for any business owner in any space, whether they're taking the next big step or need to come back to the core values and what really matters to them. I want to thank you on behalf of the listeners for your time today. And, it's, it's been so fun to keep up with the journey and I can't wait to see what's next.
Abdul Munim Sheikh: Thank you so much for this opportunity.
And it was fun talking to you. I really enjoyed it. Thank you.
Mahfuz Chowdhury: That was a great conversation with Abdul Munim Sheikh of Alsafa Foods. My first big takeaway from today's episode is the importance of knowing your strengths and weaknesses, both as an individual and as an organization. As a leader, understanding your blind spots enables you to hire people who are strong where you are weak.
To find your competitive edge, lean into what you know you do better, and amplify those strengths. The second takeaway is to look for potential. Just because a company is losing money doesn't mean it's doomed to fail. Dig into the data, complete your due diligence, and when the indicators give you confidence, take the leap.
And finally, keep it simple. The best laid strategy is worthless without proper execution. Alsafa Foods sets aside gimmicks and instead focuses on the fundamentals of food processing, sale and distribution. So get creative. Some setbacks are blessings in disguise because they force you to explore new ways of operating.
After losing their biggest retailer, Alsafa Foods found ways to deliver their product through new channels, ultimately reaching more customers. In the next episode, we'll hear how Fiona Stevenson of the Idea Suite and Energy for Growth seized an opportunity that was born out of her first business to launch a second.
Fiona Stevenson: So it's almost starting with a bit of the experimentation and seeing, and that combination of, hey, as I put more of my time into this, do I enjoy it? Does it feel good? And then also is the market responding? Does it feel like there's a need or demand here?
Mahfuz Chowdhury: If you haven't already, make sure to subscribe to Growth Decoder wherever you get your podcasts. You can also visit www.cwbank.com slash podcast for more on the ins and outs of business expansion and other topics featured on Growth Decoder. I'm your host Mufus Chowdhury. Thank you for listening. Growth Decoder is brought to you by Canadian Western Bank with production by SJC.