Work Like: Careem’s Mohammed Nagaty

Work Like is a series of articles dedicated to interviewing star performers to find out what they do to stay on top of their game.

When I started my journey at Careem, I was the business development director, and now I’m the commercial and governmental relations director. Aside from that, I’m also a board member at SolarizEgypt.

I didn’t wait for graduation to start my professional life. I joined many activities and worked as a PR agent for restaurants and cafes while I was an AUC electronics engineering student. This experience taught me a lot about life, people and the food and beverage industry.

After graduation, I worked for several companies: Toshiba, Mubadala, and Eviko for short periods of time. Then I decided to start my own business in the food and beverage industry since I already had some experience. Shortly after that, I was invited to join Fawry. By then, it was just a small new startup trying to explore the fin-tech industry landscape in Egypt. We grew together, and I ended up being the business development cash manager. When Fawry got an exit, I left and joined Careem.

I am a closer; I close deals. And in sales, this is hard to find.

I keep being told that you should sleep early and wake up early to be successful, but I found out that that’s not how I function. I like to sleep after the Fajr prayer and wake up around 10:30 am; and I continue working till 1 or 2 am.

Every night before I go to sleep, I jot down everything I need to do the next day. That way I always know precisely what I need to get done, and I go on with my day efficiently. This saves me a lot of time and effort.

I love Audible; it helps me listen to books on the road. I also use Microsoft Access to organize and keep all my professional contracts.

I usually depend on my memory to manage my to-do tasks. It’s not the most ideal way, so I think I might start using a note-taking application soon.

I am listening to Brad Stone’s The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon for the second time now. It’s a fantastic book to read!

Also, if you are into sales and business development, I recommend The Art of War, it’s a perfect read especially because working in this field mainly depends on negotiation. I enjoy reading about human psychology to have a better understanding of people so that I can communicate more efficiently with them.

I prefer silence. I am either on the phone or in a meeting, and when I use my laptop to finish some work, I deal with excel sheets and numbers, so I have to be entirely focused with no distractions to avoid any errors.

I see myself as a risk-taker. I think most of my career decisions were significant risks. For example, when I decided to leave the comfort of managing my restaurant to join a small fin-tech startup called Fawry, when I left the favorable position I had to join Careem (which was at that time not in that big of a ridesharing business), and even SolarizEgypt, a company that specializes in the solar energy industry which is a hard sell in a country like Egypt. Which is the biggest? I don’t know, I guess they all are.

“Keep your work and personal life separate.”

If you have a problem at work, let it stay there and don’t take it back home. Likewise, don’t bring your personal issues to work. This has been life-changing advice for me, and I encourage everyone to do the same.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”‘Keep your work and personal life separate.'” quote=”‘Keep your work and personal life separate.'”]

I see a growing trend among millennials of wanting to take off and escape the country, instead of staying here and trying to build something. I understand the reasons, but if you ask for my advice, I’d say wait here, work hard and give it a try, and if it doesn’t work, leave, but at least try.