Courses and Coaching in Bahrain: An Interview with Dr Loay Al Khaja of Masters International

Interview with Dr Loay Al Khaja, CEO of Masters International

What is your overview of the courses and coaching services sector in Bahrain currently?

The courses and coaching services sector is really booming and increasing. I read a report a couple of months ago that said that in the United States, they made around $38 billion revenue in 2020 in this sector. So, that means there is a big demand. The world is rapidly changing and as much as it is changing, we need to innovate solutions. Our sector is really important to come in and start facilitating these solutions. Until we can accelerate, we can succeed, we can achieve more, those challenges are there. We need to have bright minded people educated with a new, different kind of perspective that can innovate solutions. That is where we come in. We empower business owners, individuals and leaders so they can achieve more. There is a big demand in this sector, especially in this part of the world. We are growing, the economy is increasing, new projects are coming in. So, it is very important to be part of it.

How has the sector changed since you started in 2007?

The demand is available all the time. The interesting part is that people are learning. Technology came in and started changing the world. We shifted from an economic revolution into an information revolution. People started accessing information in a different way. Part of what we do in our business is information business. We provide information through coaching, through mentoring, through training programs, through events and summits. We realized that, from 2007 to 2021, people started having a different perspective, more knowledge, different kinds of challenges, different kinds of mindsets, getting exposed to the world and sharing information through social media, through Google and search engines, etc. That is one of the great changes that we came up with. To succeed in the business, we need to be flexible and we need to cope. That is one of the ways that we started innovating new solutions, innovating new ways and new mindsets, new information products, new programs, so we could start adding more value to the people. What we do is all about value and to add value to people, we need to learn new things every day. We need to sit down and listen to them, listen to businesses, listen to individuals, and go through their problems so we can add more value to them. Every day, something new is popping up from technology, strategies, different business applications, even mindsets and principles. That is why we need to open up, we need to absorb, we need to be flexible, we need to elevate, and we need to be open for innovation all the time.

What kind of challenges have you seen being in the sector for so long and what kind of strategies have you implemented to be able to overcome these challenges?

Masters International provides online courses, exclusive coaching, live events, business and marketing development consultancy, etc., in order to empower business owners, entrepreneurs, individuals and leaders.

Each culture has a business structure. Sometimes, certain businesses structures limit some opportunities. That is one of the challenges that we face. Rather than competing and rather than marketing businesses, you have to do so much bureaucracy work so you can have and tackle these opportunities. Rather than focusing on marketing and doing sales or research and going out and doing pitches, we started focusing on doing certain bureaucracy procedures that we need to handle. That was an interesting shift that we started doing. Because of the opportunity, we started expanding more and focusing on different cultures, different opportunities around the world. Our strategy also changed. We came up with a different definition of a business. If you Google the definition of business, it is about trading and selling and buying, people pay because they trade a product or service. Our new definition is that business is fixing a problem. Rather than focusing on trading and providing something or marketing something, we started digging deeply into people’s needs, people’s problems, going down there, understanding what is going on. That is why we started accelerating ourselves and changing even our programs, changing even our products, customizing it in a way, especially once it comes to education because we are affiliated with international awarding bodies in certain fields. It is all about standards and methodologies and we need to keep on going through those standards. Because the world is changing, they need to keep on updating their curriculums and the standard itself. That was one of the challenges. Listening to the businesses, listening to individuals and entrepreneurs and even people, we started realizing their needs, realizing where they want to go. To help them in that journey, to help them to succeed more, we need to customize our solution in a different way, give them what really adds value to them. That is one of the shifts that we started doing: fixing problems rather than just marketing your products and services. Interestingly, what we saw when we started to focus on business as fixing a problem was that the world is full of problems. That means there are lots of business opportunities in the world. But it all depends on what value you can add, on how you will fix those problems, and what problems you want to focus on. That is the algorithm we started creating in the business and started working. The world is going online because online provided lots of solutions. It cuts money, it reduces finance, reduces labor work, reduces management, and so many things. The world is going there and it will be there. It brought the world into one place, made it one village. In 2009, I started investing in this sector, started studying, started finding solutions, and I started in our business, in our field, establishing something online. We came out with what we call digital information products, which is digitalizing our information. We do coaching and training through videos, through webinars, through audios, through eBooks online and we package them in a way which is like a product and then we sell it digitally. I am one of the first people who did this in this part of the world. The technology, the solution was limited at that time. We had only YouTube and a website and it was tough. Payment gateways were not familiar. Today, because of COVID, it has restricted so many things. People went online and they pushed online. We need to focus on that part. It provided us more opportunities to connect to the world, access people easily, communicate with them easily, manage even our clients easily.

What services and programs do you offer at Masters International? What is your business philosophy that makes you different or makes you stand out from all of those other competitors in the sector?

We believe in passion. We are passionate about what we are doing. There are three different behaviors in the market. We have mediocres who copy paste. If their friend opens a coffee shop or a restaurant or any kind of a business, because of their friends, because of the society, they keep on doing that. The majority of people go and do that. The second kind of behavior was wherever the money is you go in and structure your business and invest. These two would stop when any challenge comes in. Business is about entrepreneurship and it is about facing challenges and there is lots of psychology once it comes to marketing, sustainability, being productive, especially as a startup. They do not continue because they are not passionate about what they are doing. They are just following other people’s opinion. When any challenge happens in their business or any loss happens in their business, they stop, they do not continue. The third kind of behavior is people who are passionate about the things that they do and they keep on growing their business with the right business structure. I believe in passion. At the same time, I do not believe in business passion. Passion is one thing and having business structures is something else. That is why we need to combine these two together. You need to transfer your passion into value and that value into a business and there is a process to do that. At Masters International, we believe in passion. Through our programs, we empower leaders, we empower business owners, entrepreneurs, and we empower those who want to be professional in certain fields. In training and mentoring plus coaching, we have professional programs where we work with these individuals who want this as a career. We have worldwide research and methodologies that I have created with my international experts and mentors. We have great curriculums that will help them in their career. We train them, we empower them with these tools, we empower them with these skills, strategies, and solutions, so they can succeed in their business. I have been working with trainers and coaches for years and the first thing that I ask them is, are you passionate about this? Is this your passion? Their success is my success. I want to be sure that they are passionate about what they are doing. Then, they will succeed in their business. We need passion because passion will drive us. Passion is the energy that motivates us to wake up every day in the morning and do something. Then, we need this structure and the strategies to go on. The philosophy of Masters International is that we focus on passion, we are passionate about what we are doing, and we work with people who are passionate in their field.

What is one of your success stories that you are most proud of?

We have worked with companies, corporates, and even with individuals and startups helping them in their businesses. Some have reached five to six figure businesses, so I am very proud of them. I was speaking with one that is part of our Owners Academy. He is growing every day, he is established in Bahrain now, he has branches in Saudi, and he is into the sports business. He is one of the first people actually in this region in sports business and investments. I have worked with people who start up from nothing, from zero, and transfer their passion into their success business, and from their success business into five to six figures business. So, I am proud of them. I love working in Dubai. I have worked a lot in Dubai and the UAE. I have worked with most of the governmental organizations and sectors. One of the most beautiful experiences that I had was working in Dubai Airport, studying what is going on there. There are hundreds of thousands of people accessing the airport. I was working with the performance and working on training the employees on very important skills so they can handle this amazing flow that is going on there. There were different kinds of challenges, different kinds of cultures, ideologies, and skills that needed to be empowered there. Working with leaders, working with employees in different levels, designing curriculums and training programs for them was one of my favorite experiences. I have worked in different countries. I have worked with one of the greatest Singaporean companies and I did a training program for them for one year. One program was designing positivity in the employees’ attitudes. The question is, can we measure positivity? Can we see the impact of it in the performance and even the profit? We started designing these curriculums and implementing, training, and then seeing the feedback and seeing the results of it. I have worked in empowering more than 5,000 speakers and trainers and around 7,000 total trainers and coaches. Most of them had a shift in their life, personally. They had a shift in their career. I know these people. They started from nothing and then they have these great success stories. I even started with people who were normal people and now they are doing their PhD and their passion. There are lots of great success stories and actually, that is what is driving me every day. Once I sit down with any challenge that comes in front of me or I sit down and get disappointed, I remember these stories. I go and see these businesses that we work with and how valuable it was working with them and the changes and the results that we got. That thrills me. That makes me wake up every day and go again and give again. I believe that there are lots of opportunities and there are lots of people around the world that are waiting for that opportunity. It just keeps on driving me, doing more and more, figuring out solutions, and partnering as best as we can so we can add more value to the world.

What is your vision for the company in the next three to five years? What do you want to achieve?

We want to have an international experts network, a global expert network, which is the mastermind network of entrepreneurs, speakers, trainers, and coaches. They are doing business and we help them in empowering them in their skills, in their businesses, providing them solutions that they need, and having a great network of these people being all together in one platform and working together and sharing experience and having a bigger and bigger market. That is the vision and that is why we called ourselves Masters International.

For more information, please visit: www.mastersi.net.

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