We recently had the privilege of interviewing Joe Tawfik, CEO and Founder of Kinetic Consulting Services. Moreover, he is also the Founder of Macky AI and the CEO of Kinetic CX. With a career journey of over 25 years of associating with several startups and profound expertise in all aspects of business services, Joe Tawfik is an industry leader and a true inspiration.
Intending to deliver practical and useful outputs based on data insights and experience to businesses, Joe Tawfik developed Kinetic Consulting Services. Being the founder and CEO of several companies, Joe brings exceptional expertise and visionary leadership to the table. In this insightful interview, Joe Tawfik shares about his career journey, developing unique services, and meeting the dynamic market demands, while offering words of wisdom for aspiring entrepreneurs.
Spark Behind The Organizations
We started the interview by asking, “What inspired you to develop the idea of your company?”
Joe responds, “I always tell my clients I am proud to have NOT come from a consulting background. Before founding Kinetic Consulting Services, I was a founder, business owner, and CEO of multiple companies. I have owned, operated, and exited from companies that I have developed. I have been involved with over 13 startups in the last 25 years and have learned a thing or two about what works and what doesn’t. About 10 years ago, I reached a stage where I wanted to do another startup and felt the knowledge and experience gained over the years could help some clients seeking to grow or transform their businesses.
Kinetic Consulting was established because, at the time, consultants had a reasonably poor reputation in the marketplace for delivering useful work that led to measurable value. I don’t think anyone can deny that even today, some business consultants are not delivering work that is useful from an implementation perspective and leads to the expected ROI. Kinetic Consulting was founded to be a boutique business growth consultancy that would deliver practical and useful outputs based on data insights and experience from one of our subject matter experts.”
Setting The Business Apart
To ensure a strong brand presence in the market, it is essential to offer unique services. So, we asked, “How does Kinetic Consulting Services differentiate itself from other consulting firms in the Middle East? What unique value do you bring to clients?”
He shared, “As mentioned before, we are interested in differentiating ourselves globally and not just in the Middle East. Kinetic Consulting is unique on several fronts. First, let me explain that we are not just one single brand. Kinetic Consulting has two additional sub-brands. We have a brand called Kinetic CX, a pure-play CX consultancy offering a wide range of CX services, from CX audits to CX roadmaps and CX activation. Customer experience is very dear to our hearts. Our team has deep expertise in this area, and this is why we felt we needed to package our services under a different brand.
Our other brand, which we are very excited about, is our AI business consulting platform. Mack AI. This is a Software as a Service (SaaS) offering that provides companies with a generative AI service specifically focused on key business requirements that are suitably answered by an AI. We have removed the complexity of determining the correct prompt to generate a useful business output on this platform.”
Joe continued, “Macky AI is designed to make consulting accessible to all organizations regardless of size. Our entry-level plan is very affordable for even the smallest organization. We introduced Mack AI because we know consulting, like every industry, will be impacted by AI. We want to be seen as enablers of this change rather than resisting it. Our platform is also unique in that it does not simply offer AI consultancy but allows clients to augment their AI consultant with human consulting directly from the same platform.
In essence, I would say we are differentiated on several levels: senior subject matter experts doing the actual consultancy projects, CX specialty, and the first global boutique consulting firm to introduce an AI business consulting platform.”
Major Focus Areas Of Kinetic
We were intrigued to learn about the major sectors that Joe Tawfik’s services focus on. So, we asked, “Could you share insights into the specific industries or sectors that Kinetic Consulting Services primarily focuses on?”
Joe shared, “Kinetic Consulting works across multiple different industries. However, we find most of the demand for our services comes from industries where product differentiation has diminished, leaving areas such as customer experience as a primary driver for future growth. For example, the banking sector, telecoms, and retail tend to rely on customer experience to give them an edge over their competitors because most of their product lines don’t offer sufficient differentiation to drive sustainable growth.
We have developed a unique methodology for identifying how to design and implement new customer experiences that will lead to measurable results. Most of our methodology came when I was researching my book called Experience My Brand – How Successful Companies Develop Loyal Customers and Increase Profits. I wrote this book to understand how some organizations broke into new sectors and dominated them from a standing start. Many of these companies, like Amazon and Uber, disrupted their industries by being fanatical about customer experience. When you look beyond the App and begin to understand its success story, you learn very quickly that there is a common formula for how any organization can achieve this success. We take these learnings and apply them to our consulting and advisory projects.”
He added, “Other industry sectors that tend to have a high demand for our services are the ones that offer a high-cost item, like real estate developers, luxury automotive and retail, and the airline industries. These sectors are going to be the future, so we work with them to help them understand how to differentiate themselves in the digital world.
As much as we would like to work with all sectors, we don’t work with many because we simply cannot add value to them. For example, we don’t know much about the oil and gas sectors, so we don’t do any work there.”
Success Stories
We further asked, “Can you provide examples of notable projects or success stories where Kinetic Consulting Services significantly contributed to transforming or enhancing a client’s business operations?”
Joe continued, “We are not able to discuss any specific client projects due to confidentiality. However, I can give an outline of a project we did without naming the client. About 5 years ago, we were asked to come and design a strategy for a department within the organization. We did the strategy, and because our strategies are designed and written so that they can be executed without our assistance, the client proceeded to execute the strategy.
As much as I would have liked to create future work for our firm for execution, we are very much focused on providing clients with a practical and executable strategy. The client called us 5 years later and told us they had been executing our strategy and achieved great success. They asked us to write a new strategy enabling this business unit to become a separate company. We are now working with this client to go to the next stage of evolution. We love partnerships like this where the client has received the value, they are happy, and they have now asked us to join them on their journey to the next stage of development.”
Meeting The Dynamic Needs
In the fast-paced market space, a business must stay adaptable and updated to meet the dynamic demands. So, we asked Joe Tawfik, “In a rapidly evolving business landscape, how does Kinetic Consulting Services stay agile and adaptable to meet the dynamic needs of clients?”
He responds, “As a boutique consulting firm, we are naturally more agile than the larger firms. Our approach with all our clients is to create a bespoke solution. We are open with our clients and let them know that if there is work they need that we do not do, we will still have a solution for them.
For example, clients may ask us for technology solutions. We pride ourselves on being technology agnostic, so we let them know that we will help them procure a system, and the advantage of doing it with us is that we do not have a bias towards any vendor. Of course, there are vendors we prefer to work with because of experience, but ultimately, we will procure a solution to meet the client’s precise needs.”
Joe added, “Another way we stay agile is that we don’t employ a large consultant workforce, but we tap into pools of independent consultants from across the globe to source subject matter experts for specific projects we cannot do with our local consultants. This enables us to still meet our mission of providing senior subject matter experts for our clients but without the high cost of having them on staff.
Lastly, we are unafraid of change and are even willing to disrupt our industry by introducing technology like Macky AI.”
Offering Top-Notch Solutions
“How does Kinetic Consulting Services leverage innovation and technology to provide cutting-edge solutions to clients?”
Joe Tawfik passionately responds, “Most of our innovation comes from systems and methodologies we have designed ourselves specifically for business growth. One of the examples I can provide is that many practitioners find it challenging when their clients ask them to explain the ROI of a customer experience program. However, when our clients ask us the same question, we have a methodology that explains the ROI and can quantify it in hard numbers for clients. Instead of shying away from this topic, we have innovated to make it one of our strengths.
We also use a range of technologies during our assignments, but the one we would like to flag here is Macky AI. Generative AI and AI in general, are the single most powerful new technologies for business. It will change every industry sector, and we want to be there to help companies create an AI strategy so they don’t get left behind.”
He added, “We see a future when there will be companies that have embraced AI as part of daily business operations, and then there will be companies that will slowly but surely become insignificant in the marketplace. AI in all aspects of business can give a company an edge over its competitors. When we developed Macky AI, we did it to help our clients and future ones stay ahead of the competition. That’s ultimately what our vision is all about. We want to help our clients grow and prosper sustainably.”
Effective Teamwork
Having the right team in the organization is paramount for the success of any business. So, we asked Joe Tawfik, “Could you tell us about the caliber and expertise of the team at Kinetic Consulting Services? How does the team contribute to the company’s success?”
He shared, “Our consultants are typically C-level executives from large private and government sectors. Our consultants are chosen based on their track record for success in their particular area of expertise. We value experience and track record over how many qualifications our consultants have.
Academic credentials are important, but in our firm, we want people who can add value for our clients, so they need to have already proven themselves in the real world. We rarely hire career consultants because we know they will not have work experience they can draw upon when designing a solution for a client.”
“A career consultant will largely base their solution on theory. Our ethos is that theory is great, but nothing trumps experience. The benefit you get when you deal with one of our consultants is that they have typically been in our clients’ shoes. They can relate to their challenges in a unique and personal way. Our consultants tap into their experiences to help our clients successfully navigate their challenges. The consultants working on projects are among the main differentiators we offer in the marketplace.” Joe added.
Contributing Towards Social Responsibility
We were curious to learn about the approaches adopted by Joe Tawfik’s businesses to ensure positive contributions toward society. So, we asked, “What initiatives or practices does Kinetic Consulting Services undertake to uphold corporate social responsibility and contribute positively to the community?”
Joe Tawfik replied, “We undertake several initiatives throughout the year to contribute to the community. We prefer not to talk specifically about our activities.”
Plans We Asked Joe Tawfik
To learn more about Joe Tawfik’s upcoming plans for his businesses, we asked, “What do you envision for the future of Kinetic Consulting Services? Are there any upcoming projects or expansions on the horizon?”
He shared, “We are focused on regional expansion and are actively working on this now. However, our main focus now is to make Macky AI a success. This consulting platform is global, so we hope to get a new customer base that we have never serviced before.”
Suggestions For Beginners
We ended the interview by asking, “What advice would you give to starting entrepreneurs?”
Joe Tawfik shared, “Starting a new venture is one of the hardest things any individual will ever do. Anyone who tells you otherwise is simply not being truthful. My advice is to make sure you are doing it for the right reasons and be prepared for pain, a lot of pain. If you are not prepared for the pain, you will fail because you will not endure when it is most needed.
Successful entrepreneurs pivot, beg, borrow, and do whatever it takes to make their venture successful. Failure is not an option, but at the same time, they don’t do unethical or illegal things to become successful.”
“There are three things I can advise entrepreneurs. The first one is always to remain 100% focused at each stage of the journey. What I mean is that many entrepreneurs get sidetracked and try to build something enormous before they have found product-market fit. Start small and prove you have something of value first before building further. Secondly, I would recommend entrepreneurs surround themselves with a-grade people. The success of your venture will come down to how good the team, advisors, and vendors are.
Lastly, I would advise entrepreneurs to fall in love with the business problem they are fixing. Any new venture’s relevance in the marketplace exists because a business problem has not been properly fixed. Entrepreneurs need to understand their audience and what they truly aspire to ensure they deliver a product or service that is going to be loved.” He concluded.
Connect with Joe Tawfik on LinkedIn.
Find Kinetic Consulting Services on LinkedIn or learn more here.
Visit Macky AI on LinkedIn or learn more on their website.
Find Kinetic CX on LinkedIn and learn more about the brand on their website.
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