JB2k-aaQ-xE_transcript_timestamped

Made & Lost $500K, Upwork Traps, RevOps — ft. Afroze Khan (English translation)

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JB2k-aaQ-xE Source: Urdu/Hindi audio → English via Sarvam AI (saaras:v4, translate mode, auto language)

[00:00:00-00:00:04] Revenue incarnation. Revenue incarnate. Incarnate. Yeah.

[00:00:04-00:00:41] What is this? Have you seen WWE? Yes. You remember Undertaker? Undertaker used to come back to life from the dead. That’s right. That’s what an In-Card is. What are you doing with revenue? Exactly. We come to your company and bring your revenue back to life. What are these revenue operations? Rev ops. I mean, at what time should you straighten out your rev ops? What kind of person comes to you, what will they talk to you about, and what will you sell to them? See, at the end of the day, my simple philosophy is that you do not need to sell to everyone. Let me tell you something interesting, if we get 1200 leads, we disqualify 850 of them. For scaling, disqualification is far more important than qualification because it’s a very lovely example, a quote that.

[00:00:41-00:00:54] A bad client just doesn’t come, you engineer. The Australian market is very good for someone who is starting out. But when you go towards scaling, it’s very difficult to scale in Australia. Its litmus test is very simple. I tell this to every founder.

[00:00:54-00:01:03] That you go on vacation for 30 days. If your business survives, then it’s not dependent on you. But if it doesn’t survive, and you throw your phone away, then you have a founder dependency problem.

[00:01:03-00:01:27] This thing that you’ve talked about, right, this is the problem of 80 to 90 percent of Pakistan’s IT, tech, and agencies at this time. I always say one thing, and I even have a post on this about how I made and lost $500,000.$500,000? $500,000 in my second business. Bro, half a million. Half a million dollars. You caused more loss than me, okay, let’s say Bismillah.

[00:01:27-00:01:40] So the story goes something like this that Before we start the podcast, let me tell you what the purpose of creating this community is. I want to bring to you all those frameworks that are hidden until today.

[00:01:40-00:01:59] No one has told you that besides AI. Why? Because many people have put gated paywalls around it. I want you to know these frameworks because when I was running my agency and my agency business, there was no one to guide me. There was no information source, no one to tell me a strategy, no one to listen to and understand my problem.

[00:01:59-00:02:14] That’s why I created this community, and I want you to see these podcasts as a framework. Here, there’s a candid conversation. This is my non-commercial, non-profit project. I will openly get all the information from the next person, the guest, for your agency, for your business.

[00:02:14-00:02:25] So that you learn from these things, implement them, and give growth to your agency, your tech business. Scale it. Implement those strategies that will help you in making a sustainable business.

[00:02:25-00:02:43] And for that, my request to you would also be that you go and join our group on Facebook, Founder Circle by Sync with Saad, and join the community on WhatsApp. We have put the link in their description, and please subscribe to this as well so that I also keep getting positivity that yes, you people are.

[00:02:43-00:03:04] are following and listening. So let’s move on to today’s podcast.

[00:03:04-00:03:16] Assalam Walekum. My name is Saad Munir and you are watching Sync with Saad. Today’s actual story is very interesting because in this I have brought to you a brother who is from Karachi, he is also a hero.

[00:03:16-00:03:36] And their hustle story is on one side, but their knowledge, acumen, and their approach towards sales and revenue operations, which if you are a tech founder, if you are a business founder, if you are an agency founder, then you will feel today’s podcast like a complete mastermind class.

[00:03:36-00:03:56] Afroz Khan. Yes. How are you? Alhamdulillah, you listen. Thank you very much, firstly you came from Karachi. You came to Lahore to meet us. And on top of that, you took out so much time. Huh? Thank you so much. How is Lahore now, how does it feel? No, it feels good, I’m enjoying it. The roads are very good. I might end up going somewhere else, I swear I’ll come back.

[00:03:56-00:04:14] Tell me your real story. Okay. I created three businesses. One burned out. One, I mean, completely sank into the ground. And after that, I realized how important these systems and all these things are. And that is the core philosophy of whatever I do now. I started at 18.

[00:04:14-00:04:33] At the age of 18, I started my first restaurant business. Okay. And I didn’t know anything, I mean, we started completely blindly. There were two or four partners, there used to be an entrepreneurship program in college, in which you had to go and pitch, like Shark Tank, you know, that kind of thing. And we went there and started pitching.

[00:04:33-00:04:52] From there, we got our first investment, which was approximately ₹30,000. It’s $100 today, according to me. We started that business. We kept learning from there. I used to handle operations there, dealing with suppliers, managing the things that are coming, inventory management, things like that.

[00:04:52-00:05:04] And from there we started, we scaled that business, we did it for quite some time. Ran it for 4 years, closed it after 4 years after COVID. After COVID, there was a little demand left.

[00:05:04-00:05:20] Second, I practiced law a little bit in between. I am from a law background, I had taken legal education. I practiced from there, sometimes got small events done, sometimes got something else done, we used to do such light things. One day.

[00:05:20-00:05:31] Me and a friend of mine, who was my uni friend, a very good one, he said that let’s just, let’s just do something. Now my brother is from a sales background, my big brother.

[00:05:31-00:05:49] So, from there, that thing used to entice me a lot, that people like sitting here and earning in dollars and things like that. So from there, we said let’s start something. Me and my partner who was made, we both used to sit, we both used to say we will do this work, we will work in tech, we will work in tech. We didn’t even know anything about tech.

[00:05:49-00:06:02] What will happen? You don’t know a thing? I didn’t know at all. So, my father had an office. We started going and sitting there. The partner told me to come and sit in the office.

[00:06:02-00:06:18] We start sitting, and something or the other will happen from there. I said, what are you talking about, brother? Why will something or the other happen? I mean, do you get ideas just by sitting in the air? So, well, we took his advice, and we started sitting inside the office. Now we are sitting in the office, and we are thinking that.

[00:06:18-00:06:28] What to do, where to start, what is business, I mean where will we go with this? I had business acumen but didn’t know the process of where to start.

[00:06:28-00:06:48] A very fun thing happened, my partner told me that let’s start doing interviews randomly. And I was like how can I even take an interview when I don’t even know what I’m going to take an interview for. So he told me one big thing that you know that you don’t know anything. I know that you don’t know anything.

[00:06:48-00:07:07] The person in front doesn’t know that you don’t know anything. Okay. And maybe if these people see it, then it will be a mistake. And he was a big cheetah of LinkedIn, he created a company page etc. from LinkedIn, he started reaching out to people, we are hiring, we are a technology company, BioTyph technology, that company is still there today.

[00:07:07-00:07:20] From there, we started conducting interviews. Salespeople would come for the interviews, marketing people would come, and we would ask the marketing people, “Okay, where do you bring the business from? Okay, what type of business is it?” We would bring the salespeople, “What service do you sell? Okay, do you sell a website? Okay, do you sell a logo? Okay.”

[00:07:20-00:07:37] You create and send apps. Okay, how does this process work? Okay, you were asking him a question. Yes. Okay, you tell me how it works. Exactly. When did you see this? Does an interviewer ever ask any questions? Never, never. Now from there, I think we must have done about 25, 20-25 interviews.

[00:07:37-00:07:51] From there, we essentially hired one to two people. And one of them told us that Bark is a platform. From Bark, you can, what do you say, choose leads because we were on a very tight budget. We started with a very low budget.

[00:07:51-00:08:06] Now we didn’t even have an idea about ads and all. So from there we hired a person, we started from Bark and then the journey went on from there. Interesting. And then that which you have now is revenue incarnation. Revenue incarnate. Incarnate. Yeah.

[00:08:06-00:08:19] What is this? Have you seen WWE, incarnate? Yes. Do you remember Undertaker? Undertaker would come back to life from the dead. That’s right. That’s what incarnate is. Okay, and you are doing revenue. Exactly, we come to your company.

[00:08:19-00:08:37] And they bring your revenue to life. What are these revenue operations? RevOps. Okay, RevOps is basically a business function of every company. Whether someone knows it or not, that part exists in their company. Even in small companies, those guys have it too. It exists in that too. But people don’t know what’s happening.

[00:08:37-00:08:47] I’ll give you a simple example that in your company there is marketing. In your company there is sales. In your company there are operations, fulfillment, processes, HR, everything happens.

[00:08:47-00:08:58] Anything which contributes to your revenue together, that is the process of revenue operations. Okay. So everyone has to work together. For example, if you go to a marketing company,

[00:08:58-00:09:10] And they create a good marketing campaign and your content strategy for you. Okay. Clients also start coming to you from there, prospects also start coming, and your pipeline also starts to grow. But you don’t have any sales process at all.

[00:09:10-00:09:25] So you won’t be able to close, the revenue will never increase. Or on the other hand, you might have the best salespeople in the world. But you have no content strategy, no marketing, and no campaigns are running well. So what will they do? They’ll just sit idle, the pipeline will never be built.

[00:09:25-00:09:45] So, the one that connects all these processes, we call it a RevOps, and that is what I, who I am, I am a RevOps consultant. Interesting, this is a very new concept for everyone. It’s an interesting thing, people don’t, 100% many people don’t know, especially the people I talk to in the community. They are stuck in sales and lead gen right now. They wouldn’t even be thinking about it up to this point.

[00:09:45-00:10:00] Is this RevOps implemented on those companies which already have a sales and marketing happening or at what time should you streamline your RevOps? Okay, I would say that the company

[00:10:00-00:10:17] Companies are at least doing a standard revenue, a minimum revenue where they already have some things in place. Like if you ask me when should someone like go for this external if they are not able to do it themselves. But this process happens in every company from the ground up.

[00:10:17-00:10:31] Okay. But if, let’s suppose, that company, let’s suppose, is doing $50,000 per month in revenue, in Pakistan, 50,000 is a good number. Maybe it’s not that much outside, but if it’s doing 50,000 per month, doing 30,000, doing 12,000. Yes. So.

[00:10:31-00:10:49] At that time, this thing is more important because at that time, because a founder gets into the problem of dependency. He is also looking after operations, also looking after fulfillment, he is also sitting on sales, he is looking at whether my sales people are closing or not. That is not even a process, when every person is bringing a new one.

[00:10:49-00:11:00] He is also manually training him, what is happening with him, they are working for 15-15 hours and glorifying that it is a hustle culture, grind culture, grind culture. That is not grind. You are just having a high stress job and that’s nothing else.

[00:11:00-00:11:12] So at that time we recommend, but essentially it’s a process that exists even in ground up. Initially you do it yourself. For example, when you started your own company, you must have manually built the processes yourself first. 100%.

[00:11:12-00:11:22] Then you must have documented those processes. True. And then you must have hired a person to run that process. Yes, like, catch this, brother. That is what Trevor says. Nice, nice.

[00:11:22-00:11:33] Reups happen in marketing and fulfillment, sales happens in all three. It happens in all three, your revenue operations. This is just a scenario, what kind of person comes to you, what will they talk to you about, and what will you sell them? Let’s go.

[00:11:33-00:11:53] Different different companies come to me. Okay. I’ll give you this example. Hmm. There are also companies that are doing everything right. Okay. Their processes are right, their creatives are good, they have campaigns, they know their why. Okay. Who they are selling to and why they are selling. Everything is laid out.

[00:11:53-00:12:07] But they are dependent on one platform or one channel. Upwork is done, let’s say. Upwork is done, let’s say. Let’s say there are also those who are making revenue of 60000, 70000 dollars. But they are doing it from Upwork. But they are doing it from Upwork. Okay. What happens one day is that Upwork gets suspended.

[00:12:07-00:12:27] Or they give it a shadow ban, etc. The world ends, life ends. The world ends, the business stops. Or there are also people who are running a business, the revenue is also okay. But there is no process. They feel like, man, the sales people are not closing at all. Leads are coming, they are not converting. Now why is all this happening?

[00:12:27-00:12:45] They process it, or the founder says, “Man, I used to do sales really well.” When I used to sit in sales, I used to do it really well. I used to win, I used to close so many deals. There was no salesman better than me. Yes, I built this company. Now that I’ve hired other people, they can’t do it, they don’t know how. The thing is, if your offer isn’t right.

[00:12:45-00:13:04] If your backend systems are not built, then even the best closure in the world, even Jeremy Minor, won’t be able to come and sit down and close it. Right. So you need to build systems first and then you execute this thing. I have an idea about this because I have gone through it.

[00:13:04-00:13:22] What my failure is, that is my biggest education, true. When a person comes to you, how do you identify them, like in their rev ops, I mean, what improvement we need to bring, is it a marketing issue, a sales issue? Because in my opinion,

[00:13:22-00:13:35] Many times, founders develop a wrong perception. Because of which, they are not even ready to accept it, and their friction is also high. Right? I mean, you will come to my company and say, “Saad bhai, I will do your marketing firm.”

[00:13:35-00:13:46] Like, a lot of people say to me, you are not active on LinkedIn. I say, no, I am not. But now I realize I should be. I haven’t registered my companies on LinkedIn yet, haven’t linked them at all. The team has LinkedIn.

[00:13:46-00:13:59] So, that friction and the thing that people overcome, how do they do it and how do you identify it? See, there’s a very simple framework for identifying it. Then your sales framework comes into play, consulting also comes into play.

[00:13:59-00:14:15] We haven’t even told them that your marketing is finished. We will never say that. That’s the first rule of high-ticket sales: you never like debunk or disrespect your prospect and never be like, ‘What are you doing?’ Simply just ask them clarifying questions. Let’s suppose you have marketing.

[00:14:15-00:14:35] I will ask you, Saad, what do you think, what challenges are you facing in marketing? Like what seems to be the challenge today? We don’t have the right leads. I mean, have you ever thought about why they are not right? I mean, the scrap that they do, the information, they don’t enrich it properly. That’s right. And why do you think it doesn’t get enriched properly?

[00:14:35-00:14:52] Because now, obviously, there are limited resources because of that. That’s right. Now, if I were to ask you what your goal is in the next 12 months regarding your marketing, what would you say? Like I want to, regarding marketing and regarding revenue.

[00:14:52-00:15:04] Regarding revenue, let’s say I want to bring an additional 100,000 per month, another million, million. That’s right. And the scrapping techniques that you also have that are going on, do you feel like that can achieve that?

[00:15:04-00:15:22] No, it’s difficult. So what do you think could be a better way to do it? Now, did you see what I did? I didn’t tell you what you did wrong. Exactly. And that is what we need to do in any kind of sales call. It’s just a very simple thing that you.

[00:15:22-00:15:41] You need to detach yourself from the selling outcome. If I’m sitting on a call with you on a deal, and if I need that deal more than you do, then you will never buy from me. 100%. But if I’ve detached in my mind that I don’t even need to sell to this guy, and I need to help the prospect.

[00:15:41-00:16:00] You’ve brought this mindset shift. So you can actually diagnose this. Okay. So this becomes a consultation and strategy approach, right? It will be the same, right? Exactly. In this, you go and build a kind of strategy, give it consultation, you’re not going to be pushy with them, it’s like that, right? Yeah. Now see, now we people.

[00:16:00-00:16:12] If we take the example of inbound ads, or people come to us through referrals as well. If we do it through ads, then we use a simple framework for ads. We first invoke the problem.

[00:16:12-00:16:32] We invoked the problem, then we show him a similar case study to show how we ended that friction. Okay. Like VSL is there, like that we have created VFL a framework. Okay. We call it Vision, Friction and Lift. Okay. First we showed him the vision. Okay. Then we showed his friction, why he is not able to do it till there. Okay. And then we showed him the lift through his process.

[00:16:32-00:16:46] how we will lift this. So that is how we VFL framework, I mean I coined the term myself. Vision, friction and left. Perfect. We brought the person through this process, invoked them, let’s suppose.

[00:16:46-00:17:05] You gave the example of Upwork, right? And I simply said, are you someone who is like tired of these Upwork jobs and are you tired of your Fiverr gigs getting de-rated? Randomness of jobs. Randomness of jobs. What happens if some day it just closes down? Or if you are dependent on ads.

[00:17:05-00:17:20] What happens if Meta suspends your account someday or has happened to your friend or someone like that? Now they will think this person is speaking to me rather than me running an ad that we’re the best marketing company in the world, we’ve been working for 10 years, we have top people. They don’t want to hear that.

[00:17:20-00:17:38] I’ll give you a simple example, when you are walking on the street, a child comes to sell something. Take it, take it, take it, take it, take it, do you ever feel like taking it? No, I don’t want it. Exactly. But you think about something, like, man, I’m having a problem with this, and suddenly an ad for that thing comes in front of you. Yes. You buy it immediately.

[00:17:38-00:17:51] So this is how psychology works. Tell me this, let’s say we talk about these agency owners, software agencies and tech agencies and digital agencies. Let’s create a group.

[00:17:51-00:18:09] When they approach their client, a white person, okay? They, let’s say, ran an ad. After seeing that ad, someone said, “Yeah man, I mean I need a few of these people and I need this solution.” And he clicks and books an appointment with them.

[00:18:09-00:18:26] In this approach versus the cold calling approach. Okay? Meaning we picked up the phone, took the data, made the call, we said you have this problem we know that. Let’s hop on a call and let’s talk about it. Do these two approaches seem to have the same framework or do you think they will be different?

[00:18:26-00:18:39] It’s a little similar and a little different too. Okay. In cold, you have to hook the prospect because cold is all the game of volume. That’s right. Many people come to me and tell me that you said to do a cold approach.

[00:18:39-00:18:57] And in cold approach, I advise him who is either starting. I don’t do it that much to established teams, I only do it additionally that when they already have a good sales channel and they just need an additional, like you said, I want to add another 100k and I felt that you are not doing cold calls. So.

[00:18:57-00:19:08] The framework is of this type, in a cold call now you are getting hundreds of calls every day. If you talk about Goro, how many cold calls would Goro be getting in a day? So you need to hook the prospect with something.

[00:19:08-00:19:21] So from there, once you bring him to the meeting from there, then the framework is the same. I think there isn’t much difference then. I mean, if we, the inbound person, when he comes to the meeting.

[00:19:21-00:19:39] So you can ask, so why did you book this call today? And in my opinion, if you ask the outbound person, he won’t say that your guy would have eaten my head, so I came to the meeting. Yes, so our process for that won’t be like why did you book this meeting? We’ll say, you know what, since we last spoke on call, I did a bit of research on your company.

[00:19:39-00:19:54] And I figured out that these are the couple of friction points that you guys might be having. I’m not exactly sure, but I’d love to talk about it and then from there I’ll ask questions. Because I don’t want to be over smart. I don’t want to be like I know everything about your company.

[00:19:54-00:20:00] Most cold call people try to do that, right? Try to do that, exactly. And they say after calling, man, you don’t have a website.

[00:20:00-00:20:14] You know how important a website is. If you ask me, it’s possible that a pet cleaning business might not need a website at all; they might be getting clients through referrals. I had a client who was doing $2.5 million a month, and it was a 25-year-old business with taxation.

[00:20:14-00:20:27] They had approximately, I think, more than 2000 clients and referrals. Okay. He didn’t even need it; he was saying, brother, the trust has been established for 25 years, they keep coming, keep coming, keep coming.

[00:20:27-00:20:45] His goal was something else. You have to understand every person’s goal. Let’s suppose I get on a call with a founder and that founder is doing $10,000 in the start. So somewhere in the call, my prospect, sorry, my consultant or if I am sometimes myself, then to him.

[00:20:45-00:20:59] After asking a few questions in the calls, he always asks about his goal. Like, what is your end goal with this? Like, where do you want to, where do you see this in the next 6 to 12 months? That question is very important, like where you are right now and where you want to be. Because.

[00:20:59-00:21:10] Not every person wants to build a company of 50 people. Not every person wants to make $10millioninrevenueeither.Theythinkaboutsomething,butwhattheyactuallyneedis$10,000 in profit only.

[00:21:10-00:21:28] And $100,000 in profit only. Everyone’s aspirations are different. When you get that answer, you can take your entire call in that direction. By quantifying it, putting it in a framework, and then mapping its friction. Now you come to me, you say, man, I have to set up two more campaigns, one in UAE and one I.

[00:21:28-00:21:46] Let’s suppose I want to do it on the Europe side. I already have an established business, I do 5 million dollars. I need to take it from 5 to 15. Now, the framework will be completely different for you. Different strategies will be used. We will go for a multi-channel approach. We might go for account-based marketing. We will go for different things.

[00:21:46-00:22:02] But there’s a client who, let’s suppose, is doing $10,000, and his goal is just that, man, somehow my margins increase by 75%. Hmm. My margins increase by 75%, and my revenue becomes so much that my take-home can be this much. Hmm. For that, I know that, man, I have to add one channel.

[00:22:02-00:22:15] On top of that, I can do a similar marketing. I need to set up a sales team and that thing will happen. So approaches are different and that’s why goal is very important. Once you understand the goal, you can help them reach that particular goal.

[00:22:15-00:22:30] We have understood this, now the sales framework that we will have, meaning what I am trying to understand now is that when I go on a call. Well, our company is almost like that, but many agency owners and tech founders, I think, become very pushy when they go on it.

[00:22:30-00:22:47] Okay, next question. Do you think like the leads coming from ads, from event, from let’s say social media, organic SEO, all have like different frameworks required to be done or does it not make any difference? No, it definitely makes a difference.

[00:22:47-00:23:00] If a person is coming from your ad, then the best thing you can do is you can pre-frame the prospect. Pre-framing is a concept. Pre-framing is that let’s suppose if you have a personal brand, then half the thing, half the work, he does it.

[00:23:00-00:23:19] But a pre-frame is such that it saw your short ad, in which ad I used the same VFL framework. And I didn’t, I just invoked problems, just made them curious. I need to make them curious enough to book the call. He clicked and came to my landing page. On the landing page, he saw my offer, my offer.

[00:23:19-00:23:36] She must be identifying the same friction that he is going through. Because I know my client type. We will talk about that in detail later. From there, I opened my VFL VSL framework and where I told him that, man, you are this, you are doing this.

[00:23:36-00:23:48] You know what, I had a client who had a similar issue. We solved it by implementing XYZ process and got him XYZ results. Are you someone having the same kind of problems?

[00:23:48-00:24:06] Below that, we explained our process a little bit, showed our outcome-based case studies, how we reached that outcome. It’s not that we created its app, its backend was this, its front end was this, nobody is interested in that. People are interested in whether they got the outcome or not. Then you showed the social proof. Now, before coming on the call.

[00:24:06-00:24:22] That’s already pre-framed. He understood. He understood who we are, what we do, and where we can help him. Yes. Similarly, if we are doing SEO together, he can also do this. Let’s suppose there is a founder, a Fortune 500 founder.

[00:24:22-00:24:36] He is running his own consulting company or some other tech company. Now he is facing a similar problem and he sees that Saad Munir’s articles are coming. Saad Munir solves these problems. He has written a big guide in it.

[00:24:36-00:24:55] Now, from that same framework, what will happen is that it will keep pre-framing. Cold is a completely different approach. In cold, if I somehow make him curious in my conversation, to bring him to my landing page, or to show him on some particular thing of mine, or to show the process.

[00:24:55-00:25:06] In my opinion, what I believe is that the process works the best for cold outreach. Like what people do is make cold calls or cold DMs. A very good thing is that you.

[00:25:06-00:25:18] You send something to someone like a process, you create a Loom video and you lay out a small process that this is the process of us. Or let’s suppose if you have a content agency.

[00:25:18-00:25:34] So you created content frameworks, you identified the niche of the particular person you’re targeting, and based on that, you created 10 hooks, 10 ideas, compiled them into a document, and sent it saying, “Hey, I just wanted to send this to you and just wanted to have a review or what do you think about it.”

[00:25:34-00:25:45] With nothing in return, thinking that I won’t get anything from here on out. Now what will be the benefit of that is that that person would be more interested rather than you get into his call, hey.

[00:25:45-00:26:01] I saw you doing this, would you be open for a call? Meaning, you’re giving it so much value that he’s on it, thinking, ‘Man, I should get value, so why not?’ That’s the concept of Harmoni, right? You give, give, give, and then you get. Then you get, true that. Like I saw something somewhere that.

[00:26:01-00:26:17] I think we had a discussion about this in the group that there should be 7 points of interaction before you pitch. 100%. Now, if I pitch in the beginning, it’s too early because it’s not like that prospect doesn’t know what we are doing, he knows, he is intelligent. He just wants to see how you work.

[00:26:17-00:26:33] Now I am a consultant, people cold outreach me too. Whenever they do cold outreach, they say, are you a consultant and you’re running this XYZ and you get tired. I just made a quick small video for this, do you want to have a look at it? It talks about XYZ.

[00:26:33-00:26:46] Now, it talks about XYZ, that’s very important. Those three or four lines that talk about it, that will hook me. So, the framework essentially, once you put them on your landing page, on your website, on your article.

[00:26:46-00:27:03] Or when you’re bringing it to any specific newsletter or anything, then the framework becomes the same. The approach is different. There’s one, right, that they show four pipes made, going to the same place. So, but the pipes are different. Right.

[00:27:03-00:27:16] So your SEO, your ads, your cold calling, these are all the pipes that go into one system. And that system of yours, that is your entire framework that you have to implement on VFL and above.

[00:27:16-00:27:33] If an agency owner wants to start in today’s date, should they inbound or outbound first? It depends on their budget and their offer. Let’s say someone is just starting out. I’ll ask everyone, I’ll ask about launch, I’ll ask about startup, and I’ll ask about scaling as well. That’s right.

[00:27:33-00:27:46] First, he has to identify what benefit his client can get from the service he is selling. Is it a digital agency or an automation digital agency? Exactly. It is doing it for roofers.

[00:27:46-00:27:58] The roofer, you know, he’s telling them that, brother, we will stop your revenue leakage. By implementing an AI automation system that will put your call bot responder speed to lead concept and we will also bring leads through.

[00:27:58-00:28:11] Meta ads, Google ads for you, Google guaranteed ads. And on top of that, if you really want to dominate, we will implement the SEO, we will do the website and we will do the social media. And if you really want to be the ultra.

[00:28:11-00:28:22] face of the roofing industry in your area, we will also help you with your content and everything. So this is all again. Now, I’ll tell you the biggest mistake. Do you think the roofer knows what SEO is? No.

[00:28:22-00:28:37] You might know him, you might have heard of him, but you might not know him. You wouldn’t know, right? You have to speak his language. Yes. You have to talk to him in his language, and people are confusing this thing, not in English, I’m saying in his language, the lingo, the lingo of that industry. He understands the lingo.

[00:28:37-00:28:49] Now, first of all, the work you have to do is, if you’re targeting roofers, targeting HVAC, you have to see where they get friction. You said, right, automation is speed to lead, speed to market. What does automation do?

[00:28:49-00:29:00] It mitigates one thing, time. It mitigates time, saves it. I have a simple concept that people always buy for two reasons. Either you show them some outcome, or you mitigate their loss.

[00:29:00-00:29:11] And with automation, we can mitigate their loss. We say that, you know what, you’re losing calls every day, you’re losing leads every day. You don’t even realize that. Now,

[00:29:11-00:29:23] The very first thing you have to do is, you have, you have found out that I target roofers, right? Now, for roofers, you have to narrow down your ICP a little bit. Okay, when I say narrow down, people get confused that I am a specific.

[00:29:23-00:29:41] I should go to a specific type of buyer, a specific type of audience, or an industry. It’s wrong for someone who is just starting out. They shouldn’t do it; they don’t know who their client will be. But they can niche down to a buyer type. For example, they could say that they target roofers, roofers in this particular area, roofers having these particular pain points.

[00:29:41-00:30:00] Having this particular budget, doing XYZ amount of money. From that, if it’s a completely startup roofer company, and we don’t know if it’s generating any revenue or not, its problems will be different. Yes, it will be, I just need a client right now, no matter how they come. Once it’s established, it will say.

[00:30:00-00:30:12] Dude, I want to take the residential one and the commercial one. Exactly. Got it. You understood the client, it’s a simple framework. You liked your ICP Ideal Customer Profile or you understood the buyer persona, who is my buyer persona, who do I have to sell to.

[00:30:12-00:30:28] The second step is very simple. You have to extract their pain points. We extracted his pain point that roofers are not always available on call because they are either on the job, either they don’t have a department, and because we are not targeting enterprise roofers, we are targeting mid-range, we are not targeting startups either, for example.

[00:30:28-00:30:45] Now we’ve seen that, man, the mid-range people need automation the most. True. Now we’re seeing, man, that he’s missing calls because of it, and potentially he’s losing revenue from those missed calls, but he’s not realizing this. This is our point, to make him realize it. We’ve caught that pain point, and from there, we have to create our offer.

[00:30:45-00:30:53] We have to create our offer, and along with the offer, we have to extend it in our positioning, that how can we solve that problem.

[00:30:53-00:31:13] You have to position yourself either through our case studies, if there are no case studies then through our process, you said it’s a startup, right? So through the process, you identified that we apply call bots to them, we apply AI. Nowadays people sell things by saying AI AI, right? Now you are going to a person who has a local service business and you are going to tell him that I will apply AI to you, he might not even be interested in that, he doesn’t want to hear about AI.

[00:31:13-00:31:33] I’ll tell you, I used to work with Mags Pass. If I went to Mags Pass and said that I would create an AI system for you, I wouldn’t even say it. I used to say, this is a revenue recovery system. Revenue recovery system. Meaning, put in a funny name. Exactly. And that connects to their problem. Even the name of our AI was Joy. We used to write Joy in our pitch deck.

[00:31:33-00:31:47] Joy will be handling all of this for you. What is joy? Happiness. It is happiness. And what, someone was asking in a lot of detail, yeah, we do it through artificial intelligence, but that’s not important. What’s important is what is the outcome you’re getting out of it.

[00:31:47-00:32:00] In not, you don’t need to take your calls. You are getting booked calls on your calendar. And we used to have a very simple approach. Nowadays people say this approach doesn’t work. But there was a strategy I developed with my partner.

[00:32:00-00:32:13] We had named it, you will like it. We used to call it a free media campaign. This was already working for a free media campaign because we had to market test it out. Now we used to do this physically and we also used to do it on calls.

[00:32:13-00:32:30] Because my partner lives in Vegas, so what he used to do was, he would take donuts, do a physical walk-in at different meth labs. And going to different meth labs, he would just say this much to them, hey I am from, I am a writer or I am an author.

[00:32:30-00:32:50] And I’m writing an article about the med spas in Las Vegas, and I just wanted to like talk about it for a few minutes. It is going to be posted in the Associated Press. You know what the Associated Press is, right? Benzinga and all that. Exactly. And of course, we used to use a tool, now we’ve brought it to the call. Or we booked a meeting with them physically.

[00:32:50-00:33:07] Now, when we booked the meeting, the 10 minutes interview that we used to have, we interviewed him first, talked to him, created a little cadence with him to warm him up a bit. We talked to him, controlled the intro, etc. We did the intro, interviewed him. Now, because they are local service business owners, they want that kind of publicity in the US. Why do they call it free, why do they call it free media?

[00:33:07-00:33:21] Because they used to hook them in this way that this is free media for you. Now, we are telling a local service business that we will take you to the Associated Press. He’ll be down for that for free publicity. Like either 50% will be down. I’m not saying 100%.

[00:33:21-00:33:40] Now when you bring him on a call, you have done question and answer with him, in the middle of that question, you have to throw a little bit, what do you call it, balls towards him. To test out. Here your sales framework comes in. Okay. You have to ask him, hey have you ever thought about like how many calls do you lose per day? You gave the example of roofers, right? You can use the same psychology.

[00:33:40-00:33:57] Yeah, I haven’t like ever thought about it, but there might be, I think, 10, 15 calls a day. So what’s the average ticket price how are you charging to them? Yeah, the average ticket price is around $500.Or$10,000. Yeah, $10,000forfullreplacementor$10,000 or whatever.

[00:33:57-00:34:17] Okay, so what’s the call to close ratio? Let’s suppose it’s a roofer, so he’ll say that out of 10 calls, 3 of mine close. Because it’s a bit high ticket. Or if it’s a meths pass, then meths pass will say that out of 10, 7 of mine close. 7 close at 500 something. Okay. So what happens to the leads that don’t close?

[00:34:17-00:34:33] Now, this question that I’ve embedded, when you call them back, what happens? Here, speed to market has come. When you call back, they might go to someone else because they just picked up the call. And how did we identify this problem? We used to call restaurants.

[00:34:33-00:34:44] This happens even in local Pakistan. We used to call restaurants, your father would call him, and you would sit in the waiting area. Your mood would change, and you would order from somewhere else. That’s right. What happened? Did you lose business? True. Here, your speed to market comes. True.

[00:34:44-00:34:56] From here, we used to tell him that, so you mean to say you’re losing almost three deals a day, which equates to XYZ amount, which means you’re losing this much money per month.

[00:34:56-00:35:12] So you lost ₹30000, ₹30 grand of it, Rufa. Exactly, here our tonality came. The sales framework came. Everything is connected. Jeremy, like you’re saying, he wasn’t the first one to implement it. I personally learned a lot of things from Michael Oliver, natural selling.

[00:35:12-00:35:28] Very few people would know about him. Michael Oliver. Michael Oliver, he’s known as the teacher of Jeremy Minor. Okay. Yeah. Nice. And Jeremy Minor was taught by Michael Oliver. Jeremy Minor, obviously he commercialized it, right? Specifically in B2C, but not in B2B. Yes, in B2C he’s.

[00:35:28-00:35:43] Yes, not B2B. Yes, yes. B2B frameworks is whatever we are talking about right now. Now, there we made him actualize the pain, right? We told him that this is the pain. And then the caveat that comes in is you give it away for free.

[00:35:43-00:35:56] Got it. Because you don’t pitch it right there. You only pitch it when they see ROI in it. Because you need to understand the culture of Americans. You sit with an American businessman, he looks at ROI, direct. They’re very direct.

[00:35:56-00:36:15] You have to understand the culture, right? Let’s suppose you’re dealing with the UAE, you’re dealing with the Saudi Arabes. They first build a relationship. That’s a very long and difficult process. They have to build a relationship, without that they won’t do business with you. That’s right. So you have to understand everyone’s culture. The US can close on one email. The US also closes on email if you if you.

[00:36:15-00:36:35] Make them see the ROI. Now, let’s say I tell a guy, you mentioned a startup agency, what’s its average ticket? He’s probably selling for $1500,$2000, right? I show him that you’re losing $300,000.WhatifIsetupaone-timesystemforyou?Whichwillhaveasetupfee,le{t}^{\prime }ssuppose,$5000, and you’ll give me $1000 monthly for it.

[00:36:35-00:36:53] And you’re potentially saving $300,000 in in the whole year. Don’t you think that’s an easy yes? It is. It is. And you show him the ROA, and when you’re giving it to him for free, what we used to do was we used to give it for free, and we used to use retail on the back end at that time. At that time, we didn’t have our own systems.

[00:36:53-00:37:03] We used to use retail. In retail, we put its chat dash on the front end. From the chat dash, we gave it a dashboard. Now in the dashboard, they are seeing real life.

[00:37:03-00:37:22] And one more thing you can do, we have also tried that you call him a day or two before. And show him that the calls didn’t go through, tell him you know what you might have gotten calls from these particular numbers. Yes, that was we trying to reach out to you. And nobody picked up the phone. That’s so strange as a business. Yes, now I, you noted that AI wasn’t even mentioned anywhere, I didn’t mention it.

[00:37:22-00:37:41] Because you don’t sell a service, you sell an outcome. Outcome. And that is how you differentiate. That is how I’m able to sell to much more people than a standard person who’s going like, hey, you know what, AI is the next big thing and you need AI in your business because it can do this for you, it can do that for you. He might also be saying a similar thing, but his way of talking will be different.

[00:37:41-00:37:56] So that is how it works. Lingo is very important, and within it, you have to connect it, quantify it, show its value loss, and then connect it to show how this system will retain and recover your value.

[00:37:56-00:38:10] Revenue recovery. Revenue recovery system. See, it’s very important to productize your service. Now I have productized this service. This is known as a revenue recovery system. We have created three tiers. You have created a package. You have created a package. Now I will tell it.

[00:38:10-00:38:25] I can go separately as well, and I have implemented and seen. We used to sell CRMs, we used to sell that we will manage your CRM, we will give you a website, we will give this, we will give that. Now in that, it used to become a pick and choose story. That I have come to the shop, I want this also, I want this also, I want this also. But if

[00:38:25-00:38:41] I am talking to a company about this thing, and as an expert, I am analyzing this thing. And I can see that it has these problems. Now, when I can package it and show it in the TS, that, man, this is the right one for you. So that’s a consulting approach.

[00:38:41-00:38:52] I’m telling him, okay, this is from the friction that we identified through our consultation or through our call. I feel like this is the best fit for you, and inside it, all those things are just written in one line each, that’s it.

[00:38:52-00:39:09] How many calls do you close in? Normally, does it happen in the first call itself? No, two calls close normally, but one call also closes. What happens in two calls? What is the difference between the first call and the second call? In the first call and second call, well, in B2B, it’s all about trust, it’s all about you making them feel that they need it more than you. Okay.

[00:39:09-00:39:29] Now, in the first call, because B2B is not pushy sales, right? Sometimes there are even three calls. Now, what typically happens in that is because in B2B there are multiple decision makers. If a decision maker has come to you on the call before, he has explained the whole process to you, and you have identified his pain points and you have made him realize how important his pain points are.

[00:39:29-00:39:40] So then all those things are reviewed, sometimes there are boards, the boards decide everything. If it’s a small company, there are partners, the partners decide, on the second call either the partner comes along.

[00:39:40-00:39:59] that they are making a decision together, so typically a two-call close is happening. Or sometimes such founders, what do they say, are also busy, sometimes they can’t even take a quick decision. I don’t get it, man, why did you have to come on the call, what’s the matter? No. How do you handle objections? See, objections are not a deal breaker. Objection is.

[00:40:00-00:40:12] Permission to have certainty, that’s what I believe. If you’re getting any objections, like I need to think about it, or I need to speak to my wife, or I need to do this or do that. It’s over budget. It’s over budget.

[00:40:12-00:40:33] Then they just want certainty. That’s what I believe. You can tell them, if they tell you, I need to think about it or the price is very high, you can be like, yeah, your discovery matters a lot. What is the rebuttal to the wife’s objection? The wife’s objection comes to you in B2C, it will rarely come to you in B2B. You’re right.

[00:40:33-00:40:44] Yes, it comes in B2C, not in B2B. And in B2C, I can tell you, it’s not difficult. If they do it in B2C, then you can question them normally on these kind of decisions, is your wife.

[00:40:44-00:41:00] Part of it, and it depends a lot on whether you can hurt it. We can do it in B2C. Right? In B2B. Okay, why do all these objections come up? All these objections come up because you haven’t done the discovery well.

[00:41:00-00:41:16] Oh yes. It all ties back to the discovery. If you have pre-handled all the objections in the discovery, then even if an objection comes to you, you’ll say, but didn’t you say that you’re losing this much calls which loses this much revenue?

[00:41:16-00:41:35] Then how is the price high? If you are enjoying the podcast and watching till here, then in the same way, you are going to get a lot of value in the next part as well. So I would request that you please subscribe so that I get positive signals. The algorithm should also know that you and I are watching this, and what I am telling, and what the guest is telling.

[00:41:35-00:41:54] You are benefiting from that. Let’s move towards the podcast. Now, however much discovery you have, discovery and deep discovery. And you are connecting it, getting its rebuttals from that itself. I sent you a call that day. Yes, yes. I showed you one thing in it. It was very lovely, that was a very lovely call. What did that guy say, that I really liked one thing.

[00:41:54-00:42:06] You have already answered all my objections and I know that when you tell me the price, I won’t have anything left to object. And that guy on the message.

[00:42:06-00:42:20] Moved forward. So literally I texted. And I was like, okay, if you need to think about it, take a day, take a month, but do you feel like that after a month this problem will automatically, magically get fixed? I just leave you with that.

[00:42:20-00:42:38] I said, just remember one thing. The cost of inaction is always highest than the cost of action. You’ll have to remember these things too, right? What to say to him at what time. See, at the end of the day, my very simple philosophy is that you do not need to sell to everyone. Right? I’ll tell you something interesting, if we have.

[00:42:38-00:42:49] If 1200 leads come, then we disqualify 850. Or if, because to scale, disqualification is far more important than qualification.

[00:42:49-00:43:01] And founders don’t understand that the relevant ICP that will come with you, that will be the revenue for you going forward. Because when we start, what is our problem in the beginning? We need, we want to serve to everyone. We want to serve every person.

[00:43:01-00:43:16] We are journalists, our heart desires that a client is coming, we have a belief that we shouldn’t say no to the client. We don’t say no to Aati Lakshmi, but that same Aati Lakshmi then stops you, she spoils it. You realize this when you realize that because it’s a very lovely example, a quote.

[00:43:16-00:43:37] That a bad client just doesn’t come, you engineer it. Where is this quote? This is a very lovely quote. I’ve heard it for the first time, but it’s very lovely. I’ve heard it somewhere too. A bad client. A bad client just doesn’t come. You engineer it. You engineer it. Like you are responsible for it. You are responsible for it, right? Now you.

[00:43:37-00:43:50] The setter, your closer, your sales process, whoever is bringing them in. And they’re not identifying its red flags. They’re saying, man, what is the guarantee that I’m getting? Hey, in how much time is revenue going to be double?

[00:43:50-00:44:03] You have to, in your process, you’re sure about your process, right? You can’t determine the external outcomes, like what might happen. If you bring it from the beginning with a false pretense that okay, I’ll do this for you and you’ll get this from it.

[00:44:03-00:44:13] Until unless you can’t back it up, don’t give a guarantee. Yes, if you can back it up, there are a lot of things that we can back. In the revenue recovery system, we can back it up. We know it’s getting volume.

[00:44:13-00:44:34] But if we go to a restaurant and it doesn’t have any volume. Then what will you do with it? What will we do with it for revenue recovery? You’ll take the world’s best system. Exactly, even Sam Altman will come. You said there’s a roofer who’s starting, I won’t sell it to him. He doesn’t have leads. He doesn’t have calls. I’ll sell him something else. So that’s why you need to like.

[00:44:34-00:44:48] Have a framework that, man, which client I have to go towards. And the bad clients that are coming to you, according to that, what do you say, you have to disqualify them on the site. Until your disqualification criteria is not good, you can never scale.

[00:44:48-00:44:57] Because you don’t need 100 clients. You just need 10 clients. The first time, there was a client. He was also paying, he was willing. But he was Australian.

[00:44:57-00:45:20] We decided we wanted to work with New Australians. I did a lot of work in Australia. Australians are like our fair version. Exactly. Right? Australians are exactly like us. Right? Exactly like us. They’ll be cringe about the price and these things, and they’ll think after seeing the money that we owe you and own you and everything. So I said I don’t want to do the work. Then a random guy filled out our form and came to the website.

[00:45:20-00:45:37] And on that call, in those days, I used to take closing calls, I’m done. I said, yeah, but you know what, we can’t work in your time zone. He said, no. I’m in your time zone. I said, man, how can I say no to this? I said, we are charging higher for, you know, it’s US dollars, this is not your Australian dollars.

[00:45:37-00:45:57] That’s fine, I’ll okay with that. But I knew that he was going to be toxic. I converted him. And that’s what happened that I was afraid of. After 3 months, he hit me with a chargeback. Chargeback. Oh man, I don’t know what the problem is with Australians. I haven’t had a chargeback in the US to this day. No Australian has ever let me go. I have had chargebacks in the US, but I have handled them too. They are handled if there is an issue with them.

[00:45:57-00:46:08] One, my big, simple rule is that a client never gets upset because of your service, they get upset because of your communication. True, true, true, true. If you stop responding to clients, which the majority of our companies do here in Pakistan.

[00:46:08-00:46:22] Sad to say that once you extracted as much as you had to, then you left the process. Now I understand these things because I come from a legal background. We are trained in a way that we are not just looking at the contract at that time.

[00:46:22-00:46:37] We are looking at how far this will go. We are determining its future. There will be an exit, there will be a departure, there will be a merger, there will be an acquisition, what benefit will we get from it. So, we have to understand the whole process. If I just leave, I just have to sell it.

[00:46:37-00:46:47] And I don’t even think about the matter. Then what will happen? The same will happen. Client communication will be bad, chargebacks will come. The Australian market is very good for the person who is starting.

[00:46:47-00:47:05] Yes, start with the desi market, fair version, good dollars. And the time zone too, if someone has an issue with the night routine, that’s also great. It’s the best time, you wake up at Fajr. Wake up at Fajr, make calls to them or book the leads. In the afternoon, you go and do calula, relax. Relax. In the evening, sit with your family, sleep at night, and wake up in the morning. It’s the best routine. It’s the best Fajr routine.

[00:47:05-00:47:18] But when you go towards scaling, it’s very difficult to scale in Australia. I’m not saying it’s not possible, it is, many people have done it. But they don’t have this thing. US is the best market to work with.

[00:47:18-00:47:30] US and Canada. US and Canada. The only reason is that their dreams and aspirations are very big. Sir, there are 33 million local businesses in the US. 33.3 million. Okay, and only your, you know, 30,000.

[00:47:30-00:47:41] There are agencies that are currently on account, okay? And people say that there is a lot of competition. There is a lot of competition. Do you understand? This is what I explain to people, that those who say there is a lot of competition, I say it’s good.

[00:47:41-00:47:54] Yes, if you feel that the competition is good, because if there is no competition, if you are going into a new market, then you won’t know what will happen. You can study a company, you can see what the company’s frictions are. Now, as an example, I’ll give you.

[00:47:54-00:48:04] A big, a simple example is that a marketing company, a big marketing company, and you are a startup. And you are saying, man, how do I compare myself to this marketing company?

[00:48:04-00:48:23] You analyzed the friction because, man, they have so many clients, they can’t give that much time to every client. You started highly personalized marketing. In your pitch, it will be that he will say why not I go with them if the price point is similar. ABM? No no no. ABM is different. You went to the companies.

[00:48:23-00:48:39] And when you pitched to them, they said, why should I go with you and not with them? They’re an established company. Yeah, they are an established company in the market, but do you feel like, how many clients do they have? Like, do you know about it? He’ll say there are 500 clients, 600, 1000.

[00:48:39-00:48:56] How much time you are going to get? Like have you ever thought about it? Because it’s a startup, right? It’s a normal company. If Coke is coming, then of course they will give time to Coke. Obviously, obviously. But if you are a normal company, then rather than you work with me who has XYZ experience, whatever it is. And I’ll work with you one on one till we reach to the outcome you want.

[00:48:56-00:49:08] I’ll tell you a funny thing here. Have you seen The Office season? Yes, yes, yes. In that, Dwight and Jim, who are salesmen, they go to a client call, meaning a client meeting, both together.

[00:49:08-00:49:26] So Dwight is like a very pushy salesman, a big experienced one, and Jim is like a sophisticated one. So he goes there, and Jim is delivering the pitch, like, we are the best, best. He says to the guy, to the client, can I do a quick call? He says yes, he picks up his phone, brings him into the call, and puts the phone down like that.

[00:49:26-00:49:44] He was delivering the pitch, and in the middle he says, “Do you know who I call? I call our competitor.” They, you are still on hold. Your number is still on hold. But if you come with us, this is my personal pager, this is my personal phone. I have my emergency number and I’ll give it to you. You can call me anytime. Meaning hyper personalized.

[00:49:44-00:50:00] So he did it from there, this exact strategy, this one that is, that I am more accessible, I did this and closed a deal with a person. Sir, in my company, I used to operate on this very motto. We used to tell them that why should we go with you, you are just a new company. So our very lovely.

[00:50:00-00:50:10] We used to say in the line that you will have a dedicated project manager who will be accessible to you all the times. One person directly told us that why shouldn’t I just go with the GoDaddy website builder?

[00:50:10-00:50:21] GoDaddy is offering support and everything. I said when you go to their support chat, it routes to a new agent every time, right? Every time. And you have to over explain the process.

[00:50:21-00:50:39] Each time, right? How much friction does that take? What if you had a dedicated account manager which is handling these things for you and he’s already, he or she already knows that last time what was the issue. Don’t you think you’re more accessible and it’s more easy and you can call them, text them anytime, email them anytime.

[00:50:39-00:50:53] That was my selling point. And I closed a lot of reels just because I didn’t sell them website, web app, mobile app, these things. I sold them accessibility, I sold them easiness.

[00:50:53-00:51:11] I used to send the outcome in the beginning. And this absolutely works, and you are not the only one, I am not the only one. Every person, I mean, they did it in a series. I didn’t even see this in any, I think I saw this thing in a movie too, in that also it says that as a startup you have this thing.

[00:51:11-00:51:26] You can sell your access because you trade your time for money at the time, right? When you’re starting, you trade your time for money. As you go up the stage, your process becomes different. Could you repeat that for the agency owners? Yes, whenever you’re starting out.

[00:51:26-00:51:39] Initially you’re trading time for money. Afterwards, when that process is done, when you’re going to the upper stages, then you stop trading time for money and you trade time, you trade money for outcomes.

[00:51:39-00:51:50] You show the clients the outcomes. You don’t give them time that, man, this, you tell them this is my process. This is how it works. Weekly we will have this many interactions and this is the outcome you will get.

[00:51:50-00:52:02] At the end of the day. Beautiful. So you stopped trading your time for mine. It all happened with me. It all happened with me as well. In the beginning, I used to think that the more accessible I am, the more I am spending my time and energy.

[00:52:02-00:52:14] An Australian company came to us, and it was a real estate company, and they said that they don’t understand SEO and these things. And in the same call, they said that they are having a little issue.

[00:52:14-00:52:26] Regarding the calendar and all, we wanted to move. I asked if you use Google Calendar. They said yes, okay, do it. At that very moment, I migrated 80 people to G Suite.

[00:52:26-00:52:44] His outlook used to save the old one. By connecting with TeamViewer, I gave them the entire tax board. CEO of a company, CEO of an agency, sitting in Pakistan, sitting inside, the team is understanding that my boss is probably busy, and I’m sitting and coming at 8 or 9 in the morning and doing that for them. Then when that was done, they moved, their agent said we are not understanding.

[00:52:44-00:52:54] Then I returned it. And I charged them nothing. But they said these guys are in excess, we can give them any work. They can literally thought that they can exploit us.

[00:52:54-00:53:08] Just because we had to save the MSCO contract, which has nothing to do with this thing. We call this thing the founder dependency problem. Founder dependency problem. Exactly. Now I’ll connect a very lovely story to this for you.

[00:53:08-00:53:26] Look, I always say one thing, and I even have a post about it, about how I made and lost $500,000.500,000?$500,000 in my first, in my second business. Bro, half a million. Half a million dollars. You made more profit than me, anyway. Okay, let’s say Bismillah.

[00:53:26-00:53:38] So the story goes something like this: we burned this business, I burned this business to the ground myself, and I, the wind taught me nothing, the collapse taught me everything.

[00:53:38-00:53:57] Because I understood this thing that I was not running the business, I was the business. I realized that I was the business, I was the bottleneck of scaling. There was no other problem in scaling, there was no issue in marketing, there was no issue in sales, the issue was in me. How? The issue was that I was working 15 hours a day.

[00:53:57-00:54:03] I had also tightly held the sales, thinking that sales would run according to my way. And this is very difficult for founders.

[00:54:03-00:54:18] Giving your power to someone else, right? It’s very difficult. To delegate. I used to work 15 hours, I used to look after sales, I used to look after production, I used to look after compliance, I used to look after account management, I was also HR, I used to take interviews, I used to do everything. But don’t you think in the start it is like it is.

[00:54:18-00:54:29] It happens in the start, but as soon as you start making money, I was making $40,000 a month, I was not in the start. Ah, okay. And you were having the issue with delegation.

[00:54:29-00:54:50] I didn’t understand the issue with delegation. I didn’t understand, right? I didn’t even know what delegation was. I had no idea. We used to think that it’s just grind, it’s hustle. How can what I’m doing be anything else? And that, it puts you on a wrong state. It puts you on a state where you, because it’s a new start, hustle is happening, it’s fun, it feels like, man, what, what is coming, right?

[00:54:50-00:55:07] So, but from that, we see that hustle doesn’t scale, systems do. You realize this thing then slowly, and what happened was that we were building that business, I was doing everything, and then my identity got attached to that business.

[00:55:07-00:55:19] What I am without that particular business, why should I give up my control? Psychologically, my identity is connected to it. All of this is that if I’m not there, this revenue won’t happen. But that is not a win.

[00:55:19-00:55:32] Its litmus test is very simple. I tell every founder this: that you go on vacation for 30 days. If your business survives, then it’s not dependent on you. But if it doesn’t survive, you’ll throw your phone away and leave.

[00:55:32-00:55:44] So you have a founder dependency problem. And that is how I learned what systems are. Because when our revenue collapsed, my business didn’t just shut down, my identity collapsed.

[00:55:44-00:56:03] I felt like I am nothing, I’m just a failure, what I have done. There was a buzz in the world that I had built such a big business. Why did it collapse? It collapsed because there weren’t any systems, right? There was no onboarding process, no SOPs. The person we hired, we used to train them from the beginning. I used to assess every person from scratch, I used to watch every person in the interview.

[00:56:03-00:56:21] There was no accountability, no check and balance. We had outsourced all the thinking. Right. We started like this, we hired sales people, I told you in the interview. Yes, yes. We hired sales people, the sales people brought in a little revenue, a little revenue, we reached $5000, and hired more people, hired the marketing department.

[00:56:21-00:56:37] Did a little more, hired this guy. You definitely have to delegate, but in the beginning I told you one thing, first you do the process yourself. Yes. It’s okay in the beginning. Then you documented and then you delegated. You delegated in the beginning.

[00:56:37-00:56:56] We will have the best people in the market and we will pick them up and we will do it. And why were you working so much yourself? It’s just that we were fond of learning, right, how we are doing it. Hustle also, it has to feel like we are doing business. It has to feel like it. I am coming, working 15 hours, brother, I am the founder. Founder. I have to write everything on LinkedIn too. Yes, founder, yes.

[00:56:56-00:57:14] Founders killed to this XYZ. So this whole process was happening. We noted that because we didn’t have any onboarding process, that’s the truth. We started their work by looking at these local software houses, we saw someone, he is doing this, he is doing that. There are many names, I won’t take names.

[00:57:14-00:57:32] who are running this same process. The client came, we just gave the client to the sales people because we, the market people, had kept them picked up, we had no check and balance on them. We are finding out later that they are just peeling the client. The client is coming, he’s holding his card, what do you call it, he’s sold something else, he doesn’t even know. 90% of people even today.

[00:57:32-00:57:51] I am talking about the global market. You don’t even know what a website is. That’s how it is. The white people don’t know. I, I will agree with you quite a bit on this. Okay, people will scold you a lot in the comments right now, but I will save you from that before that. I, a client came to me, so he told me I need a website that can be installed from the App Store. Exactly.

[00:57:51-00:58:08] I said what? He doesn’t even know what an app is. I said an app is a different thing. He says yeah but it should be like a website. Then he, no. He was trying to say that like we don’t download an app, and that UI UX, I mean technical term UI UX, the feel that comes, the app feel that comes.

[00:58:08-00:58:22] He was talking about a mobile-optimized website. So I repeatedly asked, what website do I need to download from my mobile? The problem is, Saad bhai, that we don’t think outside of our circle. If I tell someone this, they’ll say, what, does everyone know about AI? You can Google it.

[00:58:22-00:58:42] You don’t know. Look in your own city, in your own city, you go to a normal shop and you tell him, ask the taxi driver, you know what ChatGPT is, you know what Gemini is, you know what Claude is, he wouldn’t know. Broadly, everyone has heard that something has come, some genie has come. Yes, but many people haven’t even, now in the US there are 51 states.

[00:58:42-00:58:57] You call some state that is not so tech-first. I’m not saying you should call San Francisco. Sir, 5% have come, in the whole US, 5% will know, it’s over. Exactly, so people disagree with this thing. Now, that’s why I said that you have to talk in their language.

[00:58:57-00:59:10] If you call a tree trimming business in your Southern Texas, tell them I have AI-based software. They’ll say what? Why? Yes. I mean, he doesn’t understand. I had a client.

[00:59:10-00:59:29] His work was mowing tree removal, mowing and tree removal, and it’s a very high-paying market. I didn’t know it was a very high-paying market in Australia. It’s a very big market. People pay $10,000 to cut trees. Yes, because there’s a law there that the buyer shouldn’t become a resistance. Now, that guy literally didn’t know how to use a browser.

[00:59:29-00:59:50] I literally was on a video call with him. Screen, sir, where will he get it from? Screen, but sir, he was doing business, doing okay. No, he is doing it, understand my point that it’s not necessary that he understands tech on our side too. Yes, so for that, see, I understood that no matter how much I coach him, nothing is going to happen. I need to step in as a fractional sales consultant for him and do this whole process.

[00:59:50-01:00:00] Because I have consulted with many founders, I have taught many founders. But the problem is that the problem comes in implementation, not in teaching. No matter how many courses you do. You don’t implement it.

[01:00:00-01:00:17] will benefit. Some people, what do they do? They take a course, and later they curse the course provider, saying, “Man, we didn’t learn anything from this.” Brother, did you implement it? I’m not launching it for this very fear. No, no, I don’t want to do it at all. So, from that story, the essence of the story was very simple: when our churn rate was high.

[01:00:17-01:00:35] Have you ever heard of 90% churn in your life? 90% means you’ve set the company on fire. Set the company on fire. It’s finished, right? So one day we stopped marketing, and our business shut down. We were spending $10,000 a month on ads. There were Google Ads, there were Facebook Ads, cumulatively there was some budget. We didn’t even know how much money was being spent, it’s funny.

[01:00:35-01:00:49] Our bank accounts were connected. Money was coming in, there was an inflow, and there was an outflow too. There was an inflow, there was an outflow. No report, no account. No report. One day what happened, me and my partners sat down and we said, man, last month there was $25,000-30,000 in the account.

[01:00:49-01:01:05] Let’s go, man, let’s do some expenses. Now we opened our accounts report, and the partner used to do the accounting himself. Again, no systems. So we calculated, oh man, this money was wasted here, man, it was spent there. He hired a marketer, he wasted $10000. Literally.

[01:01:05-01:01:16] We had literally given him a free hand. He’s putting up ads, playing. He’s putting up ads, playing, walking around. Now I know a lot of people will make fun of him, asking what this guy was doing, but this actually happened. This actually happened.

[01:01:16-01:01:33] And then I realized that, man, it’s not worth it that I even work 12-13 hours. It’s a profit-first approach, right? And I’m not taking anything with me. I’m thinking that, man, I’m the founder. I will get paid the last. My people need to eat first. No, no, no, no, no, it shouldn’t be like that. And this approach, when I understood that, man, my.

[01:01:33-01:01:50] If I am not able to afford my own expenses and I am running a company, in the eyes of the world I will become something, but I am playing with the imposter syndrome with myself, right? This thing that you have said, at this time, Pakistan’s, look into the eyes and talk, 80 to 90 percent of Pakistan’s.

[01:01:50-01:02:03] IT, tech, and agencies, that’s their problem. And you know how I’m talking? When I created this community, not one, not two, not 10, but 20-25 people said this. And I was shocked.

[01:02:03-01:02:16] They say, Saad bhai, $80,000 is the expense, that’s the revenue. Believe me, I’m not understanding. What are the margins? What are the margins? We are stuck. AI has arrived, augmentation is decreasing, stress is being added.

[01:02:16-01:02:34] Afar had three accounts, one is closed, two are closed, they are stuck. I have these stories on repeat. I have Mike Tyson. Now, I am sorry, I am interrupting, when they sit together in groups and you see their pictures on social media, you say, ‘Man, like, Tycoons of Pakistan.’

[01:02:34-01:02:53] They have to take from 2 billion dollars to 20 billion dollars. They have taken awards. They have taken awards, everything is there. Everyone’s story is so dramatic, dangerous, and fragile, like a glass. They are walking on it, cracks have increased, they can fall at any time. You have talked to 25 people, right? I mean, I am telling my data. In the last 4 months, I have talked to 300 people.

[01:02:53-01:03:10] 300 people, 80% of them, this is the problem for 80% of the people. So these people who are becoming artists, they should stop becoming artists, hold on to reality and start fixing their revenue. See, Alex Hormozi had said a very lovely thing on Chris Williamson’s podcast, the very lovely thing he said was this.

[01:03:10-01:03:22] That if you think you’re not getting paid enough, that is exactly, it is exactly the reason where you are right now is because of that. Because of that. You’re not worthy enough to do that.

[01:03:22-01:03:42] So people forget the margins of this thing. I told you, right, I was doing 40000 in revenue. We were making zero profit. If there’s no profit, go and tell someone outside that you do like 40000 dollars in revenue and you’re saying it’s 1.25 crore, it’s excellent. It can’t happen, it can’t happen. So you need to accept yourself as a failure. You need to accept that what I’m doing is wrong.

[01:03:42-01:04:00] The British have a concept of reflecting, self-reflecting. We desi people should do that. Like, what am I doing to myself? Now, the number of people you consult, you are working with him, with Saddam as well, what is the scope of that? Okay, with Saddam bhai, we have collaborated on a couple of projects together.

[01:04:00-01:04:13] They also have similar work done for you systems with them. And there, I collaborated with them on a couple of projects that I met. It’s a long story how everything happened. And what we do is similar to this.

[01:04:13-01:04:30] It’s a bit similar where we basically come in businesses that are founder dependent or that are platform dependent. To create a systematized process for it, to create their offers, to create their pricing strategies, to create tiers, and to create a done-for-you system and give it to them in 3-4 months, and later came with them as a manager.

[01:04:30-01:04:47] They managed it, and ads appear in it. What problems did you notice, both from there and otherwise, from those you consult, software agencies or digital agencies? The problems that came up were that they over-rely on a single channel, and that’s mostly Upwork. Mostly Upwork. 90% is Upwork.

[01:04:47-01:05:07] They don’t have a creative strategy, they’re selling services, they’re not selling outcomes, they do not have an offer, they don’t even know what an offer is, they do not have a documented process. They don’t know that if we hire sales people, how will they perform? And it depends on how good the sales person will be.

[01:05:07-01:05:20] If your sales depend on how good your sales person is, then that means you do not have systems. Because in a good system, even an average sales person can perform very well.

[01:05:20-01:05:36] But in a useless system or a system that doesn’t exist, even the best sales person in the world won’t perform. Beautiful point. And I experienced this firsthand. You made very beautiful points today. I experienced it firsthand, right? I had a guy, I used to pay a Pakistani ₹9 lakh per month on sales.

[01:05:36-01:05:55] The guy was very good. I have learned a lot from him. I have learned 90% of my sales philosophies from him. Where is he? He is in Karachi. I know him. And but he also couldn’t perform that well because I didn’t have any offer. There was no offer. I used to run ads, get a website for ₹399.

[01:05:55-01:06:08] Now when you’re competing on price, what is your competition? Every guy with a laptop and a Fiverr account? Yes. And it’s the race to the bottom then, right? Through that. If you want to go to high ticket, then even in high ticket you can’t sell features.

[01:06:08-01:06:19] All these people who are on Upwork, all of them are basically freelancers turned into solopreneurs turned into agencies, but they never got a chance to change their or diversify their sales channel.

[01:06:19-01:06:29] They say, right, an accident is necessary for everyone. Yes. So until an accident happens, see, Mike Tyson has a very lovely quote. Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. That’s right.

[01:06:29-01:06:50] So until you face a setback, until you suffer a loss, you will never understand. You won’t understand, no matter how many plans you make. They say that if someone teaches you how to drive a car, they will explain the entire process from A to Z. I often give the example of swimming, that you know, you sit by the bank of a river and you say I will do this, I will move my hand like this, until you go into the water, you won’t know, you won’t know what’s happening.

[01:06:50-01:07:04] No, tell me this, all these agencies, software agencies, and they make such high-fi claims, the poor things, and everyone is listening, and if you are listening, if this is touching your heart, I know I’m talking to you, what are your circumstances?

[01:07:04-01:07:24] So, that’s why I created this community, that you guys are so fake sitting and saying that, brother, there’s a lot of money, it’s a big game, it’s a big show-off scene, it’s not like that. You’re sitting on Upwork, you’ve built a company on Fiverr, you say it’s a company, I don’t even consider it a company. I mean, you haven’t diversified yourself, you’ve made yourself a glorified freelancing company.

[01:07:24-01:07:43] You are a high-paying employee. High? High-paying employee. High-paying employee, beautiful. It’s not a company. Fiverr is your company. If Fiverr shuts down, then what will you do? Yes. Now my point is that they don’t diversify, they don’t do this. All these people have come, what solution can be given to them? How will these people do it? How will you do the transition? Look, it’s very easy. It has a simple framework.

[01:07:43-01:07:57] I charge for this. No, no, no, I have it. I’m just kidding, it’s a very simple framework. If you have an established company and you feel you’re doing a good amount of revenue, you should get your 10, 10, 15, 20 clients out of the last.

[01:07:57-01:08:08] Okay. You’ll see that if you provide multiple services, let’s say you sell websites, you sell mobile apps, you sell software, you sell automation, whatever you sell. You see what friction you’re solving for companies.

[01:08:08-01:08:28] Okay. You’ve noticed that I have 20, 25, 50 clients, they have this friction, and the majority is this particular service. Okay. The first step will be, again, you did the same thing, you found out the friction, according to that you have to create an offer. To productify your product, your service, to make it a complete product, someone will even give it a name. We are not taking a case study.

[01:08:28-01:08:42] Yes, let’s take it. That will be easier. Right. We’ll take a software agency that does web app development and these things. Right. It makes MVPs. It makes MVPs. Right. There’s an agency on Upwork that makes MVPs.

[01:08:42-01:08:57] And ₹1.25 lakh, ₹1.5 lakh dollars. It does ₹1.25 lakh, ₹1.5 lakh dollars, okay. From Upwork. From Upwork. Every time a one-time project comes. Okay, we won’t remove Upwork in the beginning. Okay. We won’t remove it in the beginning because that’s their cash cow. I think it shouldn’t be removed, just diversify. Yes, it should be diversified, right?

[01:08:57-01:09:09] Now that we are getting money from that, we will create a second channel, we will create a funnel. Let’s suppose we go towards inbound, if we go towards ads. Now we, we have realized that our target audience, you ask me a question, I will.

[01:09:09-01:09:21] That’s right. You are the founder. What kind of customers do you mostly work with? We work with startups who have an idea and they want to present an MVP to get funding.

[01:09:21-01:09:33] That’s right. And how do you market it? Like when you go on a call, what do you do? What’s the sales process behind it? So they most of the time, I mean, they come from the office, they have given us all the information that why they want to have this.

[01:09:33-01:10:00] What they want out of it. We give them a proposal and when they hop on a call we just show them that like these are our abilities, this is the kind of portfolio we have created and we can help you. Let’s dial back a bit. You said you have abilities. What are those abilities of yours that differentiate you a bit from the market? We make it quickly, we make it good, we make it scalable and in such a way that after the MVP when he actually post production or further extend it, he will not face challenges in full production.

[01:10:00-01:10:17] How much time does it take in the market for a standard MVP, and how much time do you take to build it? It will take in the market, if he picks up a company from the market, it will take him one to two weeks in its onboarding. While we in four weeks we can deliver it to him. That is your offer exactly.

[01:10:17-01:10:34] Turn your ID into an app within a month. Okay. And you don’t pay us anything. You’ve also put in risk reversal. Now risk reversal, okay. Risk reversal, that’s also a proper concept. That you, to save the buyer from buyer remorse, because it often happens, right, the client has signed up and the next second he’s asking for a refund.

[01:10:34-01:10:54] He was having buyer remorse, right, that I spent the money. You created an offer, what was their pain point, speed to market, for which they were coming to you. You said from your idea to an app within X Y G days, you created a specific time frame and then you said if we don’t do it this in this particular days, either we work for free or put any good risk reversal.

[01:10:54-01:11:14] It makes it easier to make decisions, which is basically guaranteed at the end of the day. You marketed this through a VFL framework. Again, Vision, Friction, Lift. I understand, ma’am, the rest is the same plan. The whole process is the same, landing pages, marketing, invoking the problem. Now, if you do this for a few months,

[01:11:14-01:11:29] Your sales processes should also be in the same way. And now, where will the leads that need to be brought to them come from? From ads? Most probably from ads. Who will put up the ad? The marketing team. And how will the ad, how will he know? I mean, look, he’s sitting on Upwork, in my opinion, he has become a zero, he doesn’t even know.

[01:11:29-01:11:41] That founder’s mind doesn’t work, like, what all should I put up, should I put up an ad, should I make a video in it, what should I make in it. He is stuck in that quagmire of Upwork. Upwork, what do they call it, I don’t use any words, but you understand.

[01:11:41-01:11:57] We have done it ourselves. No, for that, see, either if he is making 125,000 dollars, then he can hire the best people. He can hire a marketing person. Done, good point. What strategy will he be involved in? He will be absolutely involved in the strategy because he will tell, man, put up ads like this.

[01:11:57-01:12:11] No, if you are doing your strategy like you are doing like you are doing 125,000 dollars, then you can hire a credible person. Done, I have put 10,000 dollars on the site, I have 3 million, I am picking up good kids from Pakistan. You picked up the best marketer.

[01:12:11-01:12:31] But he comes to me and says, sir, not this, do this. Yes, absolutely listen to him. So I should listen to him. Absolutely listen, he is an expert, right? To what level do I need my involvement? I need this much involvement that I, remember I am a tech founder. I am not a digital agency owner. That’s right. Your involvement is such that you have to tell him, these are all the things you have to tell him. Either you need a marketer.

[01:12:31-01:12:48] But rather than hiring a marketer, what I would recommend is hire a RevOps consultant. Go to someone who understands the sales process on the backend. What do you need? What do you need? You need SEO, you need this, or. And then see what marketing is? Marketing is testing. You’ve sold yourself here.

[01:12:48-01:13:02] Nice. What is marketing? It’s market testing, right? Now, if a marketer runs an ad and a tech founder, who doesn’t even know what an ad is, says, “Man, you spent so much of my money.” The other day, someone called me and said, “Afroz bhai, you gave advice, free advice.”

[01:13:02-01:13:16] And we invested $100,butnothinghashappenedyet,man.Isaid{,}^{\prime }Alla{h}^{\prime }speople,whatwillhappenifyouinvest$100?’ Let’s do some testing. But he doesn’t even know, right? Should I give you the example of white people? You see white people’s businesses, 1000 ads are running.

[01:13:16-01:13:38] On one business. It’s like that. And that business is doing 10 million dollars. In products, it’s even more, like that, like that. Why is he running 1000 ads? He’s looking at multiple tests. Now so many AI tools have come. We run so many ads in the e-commerce store. Now so many AI tools have come that you put them in, it identified the hooks for you, you see what’s working, you go to Google’s ad library, you go to Meta’s ad library. From there, you can see what the winning hooks are, you put them in the cloud.

[01:13:38-01:13:52] Tell Claude to analyze it, now it has become so easy. Earlier, we had to do it manually, right? We had to sit and create the whole thing. You create that. See, there are two types of founders. One type of founder is genuinely curious. They wonder how all this will happen.

[01:13:52-01:14:12] Like me. Yes, there is a loss in that too. They become founder dependent. They have a bottleneck in everything. Yes, they have to understand there. And the second is that just do it. Now, in between this, we need that gap. It’s not that you don’t have to do both at once. If you have reached a certain revenue, then.

[01:14:12-01:14:28] Then you don’t need daily involvement either. You, you literally, you can hire the best people, you can hire a McKinsey consultant. Now do not hire me if you have like, let’s suppose you’re doing 10 million dollars. A McKinsey consultant will come, he will do everything, you don’t even need to think about anything. He will bring strategy, he will do revamps for you, he will fix your company too.

[01:14:28-01:14:46] So, the thing that McKinsey does on a very large level, on a large scale, we do a small part of it. Correct. Put it down below, the number is contacting, put it down. No, no. This is something unique and a new concept for me in Pakistan for these agencies. No, I’ll tell you what. Initially we

[01:14:46-01:14:58] We’re working with the US companies only, right? You made a very lovely point about RC. And Saddam Hasan, I consider him as a mentor as well. I have learned a lot from him, I look up to him a lot. So,

[01:14:58-01:15:10] When I used to talk to my friends, you know, who were owners of other software houses, agencies, and things like that, I used to feel that this problem is more prevalent here. This problem is here too, it’s outside too, it’s here too.

[01:15:10-01:15:24] But we have a mindset that until we migrate and go abroad, we won’t sell our service abroad, we won’t be able to make money. The problem is, if an agency is making $125,000,ca{n}^{\prime }tthatagencygiveme$5000, can’t it give me $10000 if I actually.

[01:15:24-01:15:39] This is the problem. These people give it to you in RC. They give it in RC because my awareness, or from RC and these coaches, I mean, I understood that this thing is in Pakistan, that these people are doing it. In Pakistan, there are 1000 businesses, you have to do digital marketing. Yes.

[01:15:39-01:15:58] Can you tell me a company in digital marketing that does proper marketing, that does marketing? No, no. People associate marketing with ads. Yes, they say, put up an ad, create a website, and that’s it. Can you show me an agency in Pakistan like Traffic Media? Show me one. That company runs on content, they don’t run ads at all. They don’t run ads at all, yes. They run on content, they sell content.

[01:15:58-01:16:13] You can pick up big marketing companies, pick up global ones. That Diary of the CEO one, I think he also has a marketing company. Yes, he has his own too. What’s his name? He also, what do you call it, works in a different way. If I tell you, if you learn marketing in Pakistan today.

[01:16:13-01:16:27] And you go to the doctors. You go to the constructions and you tell them we will bring you business. What is CPL in Pakistan? It’s very little, I think you will get a lead of $8 maximum. A person who is starting.

[01:16:27-01:16:43] For that, you tell me, is Pakistan a better market or Gora, who doesn’t know the values of Gora, doesn’t know the culture, doesn’t know how they will talk, doesn’t know what the approach will be, doesn’t know what the competition is. Here you can see everything, you can go and intern, learn from someone. 100%, 100%. Last question is mine.

[01:16:43-01:16:54] That in Pakistan, as of today, these agencies, let’s say they are doing like 10-15, we haven’t tapped into that. We have been at 125,000. We have been at the new one as well.

[01:16:54-01:17:12] This is the biggest segment, according to my understanding, that 80%, yes, the mid-market is the biggest, those under 30 grand, more than 5 grand, they are stuck. What advice would you give them, some short advice? How they can grow, how they can. The short advice is that first, self-reflect. First, see, stop trying to become a ‘fanne khan’.

[01:17:12-01:17:22] See where the actual leakage is coming from. Analyze your mistakes. Because we glorify our wins and we leave our losses.

[01:17:22-01:17:41] Gora, you’ll see, right? He’ll tell you that he used to work at McDonald’s and today he makes a billion dollars a year. Understand your failures. Once you understand your failures, you’ll get an idea of what the friction is, what the points are. And there, either if you’re trying to do it yourself.

[01:17:41-01:18:00] Don’t do it. If you’re in the mid-market, if your revenue is good. If you don’t have the budget to do this. Then analyze the friction yourself, look at the pain points, and try to strategize accordingly, try to build systems around it. Now people say system, system, system, everyone says system, it sounds very cool.

[01:18:00-01:18:17] But someone, I tell every person, system, strategy, process in Pakistan has gone to an abusive level. Now they don’t even know what systems are. What are systems? It’s a very simple solution. You hire someone, you have a hiring process, right? You go and question them. Just record it once, even if they do nothing.

[01:18:17-01:18:30] When you go on a sales call, record your calls, see what the person is talking about. If you are selling through pitch tech or if you are selling normally, then how do you do it? Document that process once.

[01:18:30-01:18:42] If you are running a sales process and you are using a pitch deck, you have created a separate process for it, record it. Keep recording everything, keep making Loom videos, basically. Now.

[01:18:42-01:18:53] Start getting that process implemented within your, what do you call them, team members. Right. And then when you reach a certain point where you feel that you don’t need my involvement anymore, get a person.

[01:18:53-01:19:03] Like a head of operations or, as they say, executive assistants managing things for people. Get someone to do that for you so you can actually focus on scaling.

[01:19:03-01:19:21] You shouldn’t have this tension that who will hire the sales person, who will do this, who will do that. People don’t keep profit first in mind and still aren’t earning profit. People, that’s how you actually do it. Exactly. And there are many things, see, now this session of ours, it’s a small session.

[01:19:21-01:19:41] I have had a very long and detailed conversation with you separately about this. So there are multiple factors. The advice I would give to Pakistani founders is to develop culture within their companies. We don’t have culture. What points would be in culture, ma’am? There are very simple points in culture that the majority of companies we have, the majority of companies, they do labor exploitation.

[01:19:41-01:19:59] What they say is, they just exploit this thing, that we are a very big company, even making millions of dollars, multi-million making many companies. But if you look at their culture, the person is stuck to the desk like this and just keeps working, his salary is 50,000, 60,000 rupees. So reduce your margins a little.

[01:20:01-01:20:12] Invest in your people. That’s the big thing. Build a team, right? Yes, I preach this a lot, yes, that you should invest in your team. Because no matter how many strategies you create,

[01:20:12-01:20:27] Nothing will happen. Connect with the team, give the team such a system process that they grow in that system. What was that code? Culture eats strategy for breakfast. Yes. So when you have your culture, why does everyone like Trifid? Why does Trifid look good? Have you seen its culture?

[01:20:27-01:20:41] He promotes it himself, he goes, he rings the bell when someone makes a big deal. Now, a guy is feeling that, man, my founder is doing so much for me. I’ll give you a simple example, I was a very unworthy student, a very unworthy student, I used to fail a lot. When I was doing law, you know,

[01:20:41-01:21:00] Why did I become serious? Because I used to see that my teacher used to give 12-12 hours in uni. And he would personally come to me and repeatedly say, “Hey Afroz, when my result came out bad, hey Afroz, hey.” What are you doing, man? I mean, don’t do that, man, come on, man, sit with me, you will sit with me even at night. At one point, I started feeling guilty.

[01:21:00-01:21:15] I started feeling guilty, like, what am I doing? I’m disappointing this guy. This is what we need to bring into companies, that when we are creating leaders, we have to look at their culture. I can do that in a very good quote.

[01:21:15-01:21:25] That, uh, the win, what would you say? You don’t have to be the best salesperson to win. You need to hire people.

[01:21:25-01:21:39] No, the goal, yes, sorry, sorry again. The goal is not to be the best salesperson in your company. The goal is to not be the best person and still win. That is the goal. Beautiful. Let’s end today’s podcast on this.

[01:21:39-01:21:52] We have golden quotes today, and golden things have come, and from Karachi, we have all the information coming out. That’s very good. You enjoyed the podcast. Now, let me tell you, you must have had a lot of questions in your mind.

[01:21:52-01:22:12] All these things that we have discussed are in the form of a framework. Now you have to squeeze out the information from it and implement it within your tech business and agency business. You, as a founder, don’t have to stop here. You go and join the Founder Circle by Sync with Saad on my Facebook community. Ask me questions. We will discuss the framework there on Facebook.

[01:22:12-01:22:27] Go join the WhatsApp community, I keep providing solutions there in the form of voice notes, in the form of written notes. I, along with other community members, experts, and other agencies that are ahead of you, behind you in terms of revenue, in terms of growth, they all add value there.

[01:22:27-01:22:46] Besides this, I want you to subscribe to it and share it with a founder who you know is a true hustler, who is exploring these things just like you, is curious, is going through anxiety, frustration, and stress, and he wants to know the answers to all those questions that will help him in taking his agency and tech business forward.

[01:22:46-01:23:05] So if you are getting value up to here, then my request is to deliver this value to that person as well who is entitled to listen to that entire conversation. Thank you very much, keep watching, every week we will bring such amazing podcasts for you and subscribe, share, like, and definitely comment, I will answer there as well. Thank you.