From aerospace engineer to entrepreneur, I help technical minds turn their expertise into thriving businesses. Each week, I share raw insights on transforming engineering mindsets into business success - from crafting memorable introductions to winning premium clients. No corporate jargon, no "fake it till you make it" - just real experiences and proven approaches for engineers ready to grow beyond their technical roots.
First, The Hardware Then The Software
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Unlike Professor X, we can't get into people's head and tell them what to do. But there's something else we can do. My first job as an avionics engineer was to update the embedded software of an Fighter's Electronic Warfare Equipment so it would store and manage data in FlashPROM instead of EEPROM. Sounds easy, just replace an electronic component with another, and boom it's done.
Well, that system was an existing and robust one, built more than a few decades back, and I could not use all the technological benefits of Moore's Law ... damn ! I was limited by an old programming language of the time, and other technical constraints. That's how the system was built, I had to respect those limitations or the upgrade wouldn't work. This happens with us engineer-minds when we go to business. We have access to so much more information and knowledge, languages and new concepts (our software), but our biology and our the primitive part of our brain responsible for decision making when exposed to novel ideas, the unknown, a new person or a new offer. That part (our hardware) didn't evolve much for at least the past 50.000 years . So, unless we fulfil the biological, emotional and psychological needs first of the person we are communicating to, all the amazing technology in the world won't make it past the first sensor. The brain will go "ignore", doesn't seem important to my survival. The one thing that shifted how people respond to me, my conversations and my offerings is : addressing the emotional ❤️ needs first (the problem), then go into the rational 🧠 (our solution). |
The Entrepreneurial Engineer
From aerospace engineer to entrepreneur, I help technical minds turn their expertise into thriving businesses. Each week, I share raw insights on transforming engineering mindsets into business success - from crafting memorable introductions to winning premium clients. No corporate jargon, no "fake it till you make it" - just real experiences and proven approaches for engineers ready to grow beyond their technical roots.
Pick one. Anyone, but pick one. I learned from our cousins the “creatives” that my biggest obstacle to build a profitable service business lays in “my creativity” what ?? Entrepreneurial engineers are a form of creative entrepreneurs. We are so “curious” we can’t help but when facing several doors, we want to open every single one of them. It’s almost compulsive. Which curious mind can live with themselves leaving one stone unturned ? We proud ourselves into being “solution-oriented”,...
We've created this amazing solution, how do we sell it ? As AI takes center stage, I’m seeing a flood of firms churning out “amazing solutions” for problems that might not even exist. 🤨 This made me think of Eric Ries's "The Lean Startup", when I read that book in my early years of avionics software development, and up to that point I lived under the impression that we were at the top technological advancement ... that's when it hit me. "No Othmane, you are working on a known solution, for a...
A few years back I had to return my credit card 💳 physically to my Bulgarian bank and get a replacement new one. I was travelling 2 days later abroad so I asked to the customer agent as I was returning the old one, to have the new one for tomorrow. To which he replied in a firm and convincing way “that’s not possible”. Surprised, I asked while pointing at a brochure on his desk - “Then why it says 24h express renewal?”. - “Aaah but that’s 20 Leva (10€)” he replied. At that point I didn’t...