Being a successful entrepreneur means more than starting new ventures every other day. It means the right attitude towards a business and the determination and grit to achieve success. Meet Heba El-Hakim, Founder of Heba El-Hakim Consulting. She offers business coaching services that are focused on developing customized online business solutions and marketing strategies for emerging entrepreneurs and established businesses who want to start or scale their online businesses. Her services also include coaching creative entrepreneurs who wish to shift their offerings from 1:1 to 1: many sustainably and profitably.
Heba aims to empower her clients with a clear focused direction, achieving quantifiable success in all areas of the business. She supports them to become more confident as business leaders and would like them to take ownership of their role, prosper, and be profitable while growing, learning, and developing into the people and organizations they would like to be.
The Leap of Faith
In the last 4 years, Heba was inspired to become an online business coach after seeing how much support and coaching small business owners needed to better market themselves in the online space. From 2013 to 2017, she built an essential oils business within a network marketing company and saw how many independent consultants struggled to get started in promoting their essential oils business online and how difficult it was for them to generate an ongoing stream of leads to build a downline of product users and business leaders beyond their immediate and warm contacts. Heba knew the importance of expanding reach outside the warm market and doing it online through a consistent list-building strategy. She mentions, “I took the leap of faith and became an online business coach once I started becoming serious about growing my email list when I launched my first website (www.hebaelhakim.com) in 2017. I grew my list to 2,500 in less than 2 months and this was because I had an irresistible free offer to the essential oils user market (www.hebaelhakim.com/emotions-library).”
Today, Heba is determined to further build her online business coaching business to a different niche market – that of established businesses and emerging entrepreneurs that already have a target audience but wish to start or grow their businesses online.
Challenges Make You Stronger
Challenges are a part of everyday life. For some, the challenge is doing well at work, for others, it is getting to grips with financial worries. But, regardless of the challenge, facing up to it is the key.
Heba loves observing how successful people approach problems. Where others see impenetrable barriers, successful people instead see challenges to embrace and obstacles to overcome. Their confidence in the face of hardship is driven by the ability to let go of the negativity that holds so many otherwise sensible people back. She opines, “Success isn’t the only thing determined by your mindset. I tend to treat failure as learning experiences and believe I can do better in the future.”
Heba recalls the time when she took a leap of faith and changed business markets from essential oils to business coaching. She was plagued by a chronic case of second-guessing herself, “shiny object syndrome” and a constant sense of feeling like she’s “not enough”. That all-too-familiar imposter syndrome that entrepreneurs often have didn’t escape her and often made everything 100 times harder than it should.
When she started to get a bit of traction in her business, she quickly realized that she is much better suited to target a different market: business owners, educators, creative entrepreneurs that are looking to start or scale their businesses online. Finding and choosing a profitable niche market that she was better able to serve was the single best lesson she learned in building a profitable business and making her first sale online.
Best Business Values are Transparency and Honesty
Heba considers that building a culture of integrity always starts with the leader. She adheres to the tenet that “honesty is the best policy” as it encourages open communications between client and consultant. She strives to demonstrate honesty, integrity, and professionalism at all times whether it be in her email replies, social media engagement, or her private coaching sessions with clients. In all her sessions, transparency is key. This sets a precedent and allows clients to feel safe and comfortable when allowing Heba to consult on a large part of their business.
Significance of innovative Ideas to Fight Competition
Business competition can be fierce, especially in fast-moving markets such as coaching where clients often rely on word-of-mouth or how prominent one is in the online space. Heba understands her audience and targets them in ways that bring her profitability. She also knows how to scale a business by knowing how much the business owner is willing to financially invest for the business growth. She stays abreast with the growing competition by knowing who the competitors are, what they are offering, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. Heba differentiates herself from the competitors by over-delivering to her audience and ensures she is the go-to expert on the topic of online business.
Experience that Ranges Multiple Sectors
Heba’s Life before she became an online business coach was immersed in learning and gaining experience. She has over 20 years of professional work experience that ranging from Business Development Manager to Continuing Medical Education Officer to Business Consultant for Community Language Schools. Her experience and business acumen are vast and varied. She has experience in 15+ different markets and understands how to serve in each. She is also a Course Advisor for The ASK Method Company where she spends time coaching thousands of entrepreneurs build quiz funnels for their businesses. Spending years in the corporate work environment has taught her a lot on how to build a business of her own, but also allowed her to learn the nuance of having great business relationships as her emotional intelligence was tested many times in all of her past experiences. She says, “Entrepreneurs meet a lot of people. There’s a glamorous vision of the entrepreneur as a lone ranger, creating a business out of thin air through gritty determination, scrappy skills, and sheer talent. The reality is different. Businesses are born from groups of people. There is often a single figurehead, but I drew from the collective talent of a team of passionate people throughout all of my past experiences. It is those connections that I formed that have made me who I am today: one of the most empowering women in business in 2021.”
An Integrator
“What marked the beginning of my career was a deep self-reflection. I reflected on my values, skills, and passions. I reflected on whom I want to truly serve and how I want to serve. I realized that I am a true integrator or an implementer.” says Heba. The Integrator role is the key role that all major roles of a business report to. An Integrator is the person who is the tie-breaker for the leadership team, the glue for the organization, the person that holds everything together, beats the drum (provides cadence), is accountable for the results, executes the implementation plan, and holds everyone else accountable.
Heba helps to create organizational clarity, communication, and consistency and that has been what marked each of her roles whether in her work experience or her business ownership experience. The best recognition she ever got for her remarkable work as a leader and business advisor, was being the Most Instrumental Female Business Consultant 2020 (Australia) in the Acquisition International Influential Businesswomen Awards.
Visions to Lead as an Expertise of the Sector
Heba’s plan for the future of Heba El-Hakim Consulting is to grow the business further. She asserts, “My vision for the company is that it continues to grow its sizeable niche market of clients that are seeking to start or scale their businesses online. I would like to establish a Gold Standard Coaching Program and eventually a Mastermind for those who have achieved certain milestones. I would like to draw a clear success path for business owners to follow without fail in growing their businesses online profitably doing the right steps at the right time.”
In the future, she visions helping 1,000 entrepreneurs and business owners start and grow their businesses online by 2025. Her personal goals as a businesswoman are to be known as the driver for change and innovation in her field of expertise. She says to aspire businesswomen to continue to be ingénue and hard-working and to out-care their competition by over-delivering the best service to their audience.
A View on Success
For Heba, a successful entrepreneur is someone who has a strong inner drive that helps him or her succeed. They have the courage and grit to overcome obstacles as they arise. She believes that success is having a strong sense of self-confidence and a healthy opinion of one’s skills and abilities. A successful personality is assertive and strong. Success isn’t about the amount of money being made nor is it about being famous or popular. It’s more about focused service to clients, commitment, and continuous improvement.
