Leila Muhaizen Podcast Transcript
Leila Muhaizen joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive Podcast.
[00:00:12] Brian Thomas: Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Leila Muhaizen. Leila Muhaizen is the founder and CEO of Baklava App. Leila was born in Lebanon, but now she’s based in the Los Angeles area, where she founded the Baklava app, a dating and friendship app connecting Arabs and those interested in the Arab community in LA and beyond.
Born of her own challenges within dating in the Arab world, which used to include frequent international travel to Arab countries to meet other Arab people, the Baklava app now connects Arabs from all different backgrounds and locations. Leila’s vision and commitment to fostering meaningful connections within this diverse and vibrant culture have driven Baclava’s development and success.
Well, good afternoon, Leila. Welcome to the show.
[00:00:59] Leila Muhaizen: Thank you for having me.
[00:01:00] Brian Thomas: Absolutely. I appreciate you making the time. I know you’re based out of LA. We just talked about that, but you’re currently in Paris doing some travel and so forth. So, making a time adjustment sometimes can be a little bit crazy, but we tend to make it work no matter where we are in the world. So thank you again.
[00:01:15] Leila Muhaizen: No problem. I take my laptop with me wherever I go.
[00:01:18] Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. In this technology enabled world. We can’t live without it. So, I totally get it. But yes, laptops work great as well as smartphones. So, Leila, let’s jump in here. You’ve got quite a career in marketing business development, you’re a project manager and entrepreneur and now the founder and CEO of Baklava app. Could you share with our audience the secret to your career growth and what inspires you?
[00:01:43] Leila Muhaizen: You know the secret to my career growth is my team. You have to pick your team very carefully when you start a company. And what nobody tells you is that it’s almost like getting married, where you fight, you support each other, but you also argue, but then all the decisions come together.
And so, I think I chose very well. I have a strong team of app developers and designers. And in combination with my marketing and business expertise, we were able to create a very strong, solid startup. What inspires me is the connections that we create through Baklava, the success stories that we hear of, we get many emails every week, every month of soulmates finding each other, people who are once strangers are now lovers, people who would have never met in a million years are now best friends, and I think this is the profound impact that Baklava has on our world.
[00:02:38] Brian Thomas: Awesome. Thank you, Leila, for sharing. At the crux of everything is people, right? Relationships and what you’ve developed here based on your experience and what you’ve seen in the world is awesome and I appreciate you contributing back to make the world a better place. Thank you. Leila we’re excited to learn more about the app.
We’re going to dive in here a little bit. There’s a lot of matchmaking apps out there. What made you decide to jump in such a competitive market?
[00:03:05] Leila Muhaizen: Even though it is competitive in general for the mainstream apps like Hinge, Tinder, Bumble, Baklava is very niche, which makes it very special. So, we’re not really even competing with the big names because they target the entire world.
No exceptions, no particular filters, just everybody. What’s special about Baklava is that it targets the Arab population. It’s not meant to be for the entire world. And so, our target market is very niche. It’s very unique. It has a set of characters that we can easily study and track and develop into features that are attractive to that target market.
And so, we’re not really competing with them per se, but we’re being more present in the Arab community. We’re more attractive to them. We cater directly to their interests. And another observation that I have is. One person does not necessarily just have one dating app on their phones.
Most people have all four of them or all 10 of them. So you’ll have the Bumble and the Hinge and the Tinder, but you also have Baklava. So everybody gets enough airtime. That makes sense when it comes to a person’s attention. But I think what makes Baklava different is that it captures more intention with somebody.
If you’re Arab and you’re looking for a significant other who’s from the same background. then Baklava is going to be more your go to. Tinder has more of a reputation for being more of like casual relationships. So that’s more your intentions, that’s where you go. So, I think here the subject is important.
What are you looking for? And that dictates what app you use. Baklava is designed more for finding soulmates, going on dates, strong friendships. And if that’s spawns within your criteria, then the app is for you.
[00:04:55] Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. Thank you for jumping in and sharing some of the things that make or differentiate your platform from the others.
I think that’s awesome. Leila we are a technology platform and publication. We focus on emerging tech. We like to ask all our guests, if you’re leveraging any of that new or emerging tech in your business or your app. And if you can share anything with us today, or if not, maybe if it’s proprietary, you can share an app that might gives you a lot of productivity and efficiency, maybe in your day.
[00:05:25] Leila Muhaizen: So, we use a lot of AI when it comes to safety procedures on the app, we have a set of algorithms and detection tools that can easily identify a fake account, scamming behavior, somebody who’s not being very authentic and automatically bound them or wait list them from the app until they’re reviewed by our system or by some experts.
And I think that has contributed significantly to the authenticity of Baklava and the quality of users that we have. And I’m very happy with the results of the new emerging technology that the world finally has access to. I think before it was a little bit more challenging to keep.
A lot of dating apps safe and that’s why they have this reputation where oh, I’m too scared to get on this dating app. I don’t know who these people are. I’m scared of strangers. It’s too risky. I’d rather meet somebody in person. But now that AI is able to eliminate all these risks, I would say most of them, I’m sure there’s always a margin of error, but it has made the dating app scene so much safer.
People are willing to put themselves out there. Participate, be active in the online dating scene. And I think that’s wonderful for not just baklava, but all social interactions that happen online. I think for my daily life, I like to use a pretty popular app. It’s called notion. It helps me organize my personal goals.
My career goals even delve deeper into things like organizing our influencer program tasks and deliverables and payment methods. It just puts everything into columns. You can put them according to progress, whether they’re in review or published or accomplished. So I think it’s a very nice organizational tool that helped me a lot, especially working with so many social media influencers that help us promote the app and support it because they give us so much content that needs to be organized in reviews and submitted.
So I recommend Notion. I’ve been happy with it, and I think it’s a very nice well done tool.
[00:07:28] Brian Thomas: Thank you, Leila appreciate that. Diving in a little bit into the technology in your app and then, of course, a, as I call them productivity app for your everyday life. So, thanks again for sharing. Leila last question of the day.
Could you share something from your career that would be helpful for those listening today looking to grow their career in marketing or entrepreneurship?
[00:07:48] Leila Muhaizen: I think the best advice I can give you is Don’t always try to be the trendsetter by creating something new when it comes to social media. I think the better way to do it is find something that’s already successful, that’s already performing very well on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, , and replicate it. Sometimes we put so much weight on creating new things that we get lost. It’s too much work. Sometimes all you have to do is walk in the footsteps of the giants that came before you, right? Follow what’s already working. So if you see that a trend is already booming on social media, it has everybody, the world’s attention to it, then just jump on it, give it your own personality, add the tweaks that to need to be added so that it personifies your product or your project or whatever you’re working on and just publish it the way it is.
There’s no need to continually be creating new things when originally, when there are nice original things out there.
[00:08:47] Brian Thomas: Awesome. Thank you. I love your perspective on that. Obviously, there’s a lot of noise out there, but bringing some authenticity and bringing your own version or flavor of your persona is absolutely something that people get attracted to. So, thank you again. Leila, it was a pleasure having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
[00:08:56] Leila Muhaizen: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:08:57] Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Leila Muhaizen Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s podcast page.
