Gurmeet Judge
Encompass solutions founder and CEO Gurmeet Judge interview successful business leaders as he dives deeps into the world of business to help people like you become successful business leaders!
Gurmeet Judge
Ignore the Noise | Branding, AI Scaling & Real Business Growth
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The entrepreneur journey is difficult due to constant uncertainty, financial risk, long hours, frequent failures, and intense stress. It is rewarding through personal freedom, massive growth, and potential for life-changing wealth. For countries, entrepreneurs are vital: they create most new jobs, drive innovation, boost productivity, and build economic competitiveness.
In this episode, I sit down with Safeer Qureshi—serial entrepreneur, CEO and founder of award-winning SPG Media, angel investor, TEDx speaker, and business growth expert who builds profit-first companies across tech, media, AI, med-tech, and aviation. He’s spent nearly 20 years turning bold ideas into scalable, profitable businesses by simplifying complexity, breaking conventional rules, and coaching hundreds of leaders on sales and content strategy.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/safeerq/
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You're investing a lot of money into your business. You're a lot investing a lot of time into your business. Why aren't you investing time into the systems of your business? The only way to find out if that gap is legitimate is finding somebody who's been in the industry for so long that they have these pain points. If I'm to partner with you and you know this industry, I'll ask you questions so that I can better my knowledge on it. But I want to be able to look at the pain point through your lens. But I also want to, at the same time, not stand in the way of our profit and our revenue. A network is you have a bunch of friends and you help them, and in return, they help you. And she goes, Yeah, but friends help each other even if you don't if they don't help you.
SPEAKER_04And I was like, Hi there. Welcome to Business Leadership Podcast. In this podcast, I interview successful business leaders and industry experts to help you grow and scale your business. In this episode, I had a discussion with Safir Kureshi. He's a serial entrepreneur, CEO of SPG Media, Angel Investor, Silicon Valley-based strategies. Launching his first venture at just age 14, Safir has spent nearly two decades of building, scaling, and executed companies across tech media, aviation, Medtech, and AI. As a founder and a leader of SPG Media, he empowers founders with a profit first growth, content mastery, and sales system that delivers real results. An international TEDx speaker, delivering impactful tasks on our simplicity, momentum, and building lasting ventures. He is known for cutting through noise with the battle-tested, no-fluff advice on branding, AI-driven scaling, and turning ideas into thriving businesses. Now, this was a very interesting discussion. Safir started his journey as an entrepreneur at a very, very early age, at the age of 14. He talks about his journey, how he started building businesses and got involved as an investor in many companies. He talks about some of the lessons learned over the years and some of the obstacles he had to deal with. And if you are business owners, if you're looking to start a new business, don't miss this discussion. I think there's so many uh nuggets that he shared that you could use to avoid some of the mistakes that he's gone through or I gone through uh during our journey as a business owner as well. So if you find the value in this discussion, don't forget to share and subscribe to this channel and send us your feedback. Until next time, please welcome Safir Kureshi. Welcome to Business Leadership Podcast. Today our guest is Safir Kouraishi. Safir, thank you so much for time. Welcome to the podcast.
SPEAKER_00Thank you for having me, man.
SPEAKER_04Okay. You know, you've been working with a lot of different ventures. Uh, Safir, you have a you know uh involvement a lot of different companies. I'm looking forward to learning from you, looking forward to uh learning about your journey as well. So thank you so much for time, and I'm looking forward to our discussion. Yeah, I'm looking forward to talking about it. Okay. So let's talk about where is a lot of time and energy go uh, you know, you're spending these days. Like what's what's the main main ventures you are you up against?
SPEAKER_00Currently, I'm a part of 26 different companies jumping into the 27th venture now. We run a company called Codestack Capital. It's kind of like a private equity firm where we utilize capital to help entrepreneurs grow. And I have various different ventures that I'm a part of, some in Canada, some in the States, pretty much all over the world.
SPEAKER_04So that sounds like a software company, Codestack. Is that your expertise or or or uh is it is it just uh are you an investor in that company?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's a great question. I actually didn't start in software. We are heavily focused on software these days. I think everybody with AI and everyone's trying to get into software. We we've been in it for quite a while. I actually started off with a company called SPG Media. It's a media production company that was fairly well known in Toronto, Canada, got pretty big. And I thought, you know what? I'm a good entrepreneur. Let me start investing in different businesses. And so I started investing in different businesses, started just handing money to all my friends and like, hey, go start a business. I'm gonna fund it. And it just kind of went shh, you know, straight down. And I looked at it and I went, this can't be it. And I thought, okay, maybe it's the industries. All right. So food, fashion, software, I'm never gonna get into. By the way, today I mean all three. And so I realized slowly that it wasn't the industries, uh, it was the systems that I was building. And, you know, since 2018, we've had a really good run of the investments that I've done. Software is something that we really did heavily focus on since around 2018, 2019. I started a company called Data Fluent with a business partner of mine that was pretty high up there in Apple. And, you know, I told him I'm I'm never gonna do software. But he encouraged me to come down to Silicon Valley. He took me, showed me the Google headquarters, the Facebook, the Apple, and he goes, This is what software buys. And I went, okay, I'm interested. So we started and we started investing. But part of that was, you know, when we were building, we saw what people were utilizing the tech for. Some of them were using it very efficiently, some of them inefficiently. And a lot of customers or a lot of clients that we were getting were coming to us saying, like, we don't have the exact resources or we don't have 100% of the capital. And that's where the second part of our company kind of came in, what was like incubation, integration, helping these companies grow. And that's where Code Stack Capital was born. So Code Stack Capital was like, we're gonna take some capital that we've that we have, that we've accumulated, and we're gonna invest with you. Plus, we're gonna provide you with these high-end Silicon Valley developers that come from Google, Microsoft, TikTok, you know, you name it, Apple. And then so that's kind of where this idea was born since then. You know, we've invested in various different businesses. Me personally, I've noticed that, you know, with AI and everything, you have to sometimes hedge your bet because when you get into business, sometimes it's up, sometimes it's down. So I have various different industries and different ventures that I'm going into. For example, most recently, uh, we're opening up a series of dessert shops all across Canada, and that has nothing to do with software, although software will help.
SPEAKER_04Got it. But software, you know, my background is a software developer as well. So that's a little bit I keen mentioned. So a lot of upfront investment. You know, sometimes it takes long to even in you know get that software in the market. I think there's a lot of uh approaches to that. You want to get that product in the market as soon as possible so you can get some start revenue generating revenue from it. Yeah. But what's more appealing in a software side compared to other is it a is it a long-term return on an investment that you can multiply many times uh without without any uh a lot of work putting in, or is it the upfront side of things that that invention side of things, innovation side of things?
SPEAKER_00There are many upsides to software. My favorite thing is the profit margin.
SPEAKER_04Once you build, you can multiply something.
SPEAKER_00I'm really good at building cash cows, Gurmeet. And the one thing that I'm good at is okay, so you know, we started the incubation side of things, and I actually talked about this in my TED talk how I met my buddy Nate, and how we ended up really like working together and creating this crazy software that is now used everywhere for it's called Knock It Pro for sales guys all across the states. That's for door knocking, right? That's an app for the door knocking for sales guys, you know, guys in pest control, guys in insurance, you know, the guys that download their leads, input. And it's it's a routing door knocking CRM style app has been doing really well. And then, you know, from there I was like, oh my God, we can really do if we do it right. And we took that system and we copy and paste it multiple times. Now it wasn't just a software system. What we did is we started looking at entrepreneurs that have ideas that have just been sitting there, entrepreneurs that, you know, maybe have done five million plus or at least have spent four or five years in their industry, minimum of five years, I think it was our criteria at the time. Now it it's it changes depending on the entrepreneur, depending on the industry, depending on the business. And so we looked at that and we said, why don't we go get people who would be customers for this first that can have strong input on pain points and that can easily sell this to everybody in the industry? Then we said, why don't we try and sell this before we build it? And so we have a system where we'll actually go around, do surveys, do research, and actually go and talk to different people and bring the person who's been in the industry on board, make them the judge, jury, executioner of this whole thing, and just make them like, okay, how should we build it? And we don't just build the software, we build their system that's been successful over and over again, that's generating them revenue and profit, and then we multiply it by just selling that software. And it's been successful over and over and over again. That's been our little secret sauce.
SPEAKER_04What interesting? Yeah, so it's uh speed to get to the market. I think that that in it that solved that problem, right? So you don't have to wait till everything, all the bugs are worked out and all that stuff.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, the way we do it is we find enough customers to beta test it for us, right? We sell, we sell the thing, we make them dependent on the thing in a good way, right? Where their business is running very, very smoothly and they basically can't function without it. Everybody that's helped us basically, you know, build this thing out and beta test it, they get put on like a early adopters like price range that stays with them for a lifetime, and then we go sell the hell out of it. Got it, got it.
SPEAKER_04Okay. So what's the other one you just mentioned? That are you doing something in a food business, or was this uh second one you just mentioned you you getting into?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I mean, look, I've I've done, you know, I've been a part of various different businesses, and I realized that, you know, especially during COVID, that there's no such thing as like all industries or all businesses doing well at the same time, or at their peak rather, at the same time. And sometimes you just need to hedge your bet. And so there was a young entrepreneur who kind of invite reminded me of myself, and he came and he's like, Oh, I want to do this and I want to do that. And I saw him making the same mistakes that I was making, but you know, I kind of saw him being a little bit smarter than I would have been at his age. And so I said, you know what? You have the right idea. I think you're gonna need help with the approach. And I looked at what I was doing at the time. Everything was in software, everything. And you know, my parents, I love my parents, and they always were like, What is he doing? What does he do? We don't see it. And then eventually, when they saw some video production, like, you're doing video production? What is software? What kind of software? What do you do? Who's gonna buy this, et cetera, et cetera? So it was a fun little thing for them to see, like, okay, the they're you know, they're gonna be building out something tangible. And I have done stuff, you know, Limitless Tire, the largest rim and tire shop in Canada. We partnered off and we're also creating something that is is called fitted rims that helps people visualize wheels on their cars and helps them sell wheels by connecting, connecting them directly to suppliers and all of that. I've been a part of that and I've seen how helpful it can be. Obviously, those businesses are much harder to manage because there's a lot more physical labor involved, there's a lot more factors involved than there are with software. It's a different kind, but it's also just a good way of hedging your bet if you're like an entrepreneur that can't sleep and needs to do something, you know.
SPEAKER_04Well, kudos to you in that area. You know, I've seen a lot of business owners and I talked to a lot of them, Safiri. You know, that is generally approach that you build the first business. So when you get when you get stable in a business, you got enough capital, then you move on to other businesses, and then you start acquiring or whatever you got to do. But in your case, you know, not you didn't wait for that to to go very, very to the different level. You just moved on to many different industries. So kudos to you. A lot of people don't have that kind of bandwidth, or simply just don't have a that kind of uh drive to to get into a lot of business. Like for my example, I took so long. I'm still in my team looking to buy companies, but you moved on very, very early on. So kudos to you that you you looked at many different industries and find opportunities and start start helping people.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think it's my ADHD. I can't sit still, I have to be doing something. So, you know, business sometimes requires a lot of patience. And so sometimes when you're sitting and waiting and you're like, okay, well, if I take more business on, like, for example, if we're waiting for like a video contract to come through and it's like, you know, yes, we should be doing more sales, but like if I take certain things on, you know, the these guys, my team might not have the capacity. What do I do? So I think it's just a lot of like, you know, tripping and falling because I want to try this and I want to try that. And so it just trial and error.
SPEAKER_04Well, the trial and adder has a lot of lessons learned over the time as well, right? More trial and adder you have, more lessons you can have. So you can help a lot of younger people coming in the similar field because you just have too many lessons learned that you can share that with the with the people to help them out to avoid a lot of mistakes that you made.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm and that's what I'm saying. I think one of the things that has made me the most money is helping other entrepreneurs, taking their ideas and bringing them to market, right? And that's what code stack capital is kind of about. We take a look at the ideas that you have. You know, for example, Nate was in the insurance industry, and that's where it kind of came about. We have a close friend of mine now, started off as a business partner, Witt Hollis. He works for United Airlines. He is a he he's he flies a 757, huge aircraft, and he's got some pull, and his he had an idea. We partnered up, and you know, he's an expert, an absolute expert in his industry. And he took an idea that honestly, I don't think anybody really that I know would be able to pull it off in the aviation industry, right? And and pull something off that he's doing. The app's called rendezvous for pilots and flight attendants and air crew to connect. And I don't, I don't think I could have found any other partner. He's so, he's crazy. Wit's crazy, he's so about it, he's so locked in, and he's had this idea. And I love like I loved helping him bring his vision to life, and I love working with him because he's part of a he's part of that business which I'm not, which is like staying on top of things, making that everything is like good to go, keeping me in line, you know, just making sure that I have that accountability as well. And I love working with people like that.
SPEAKER_04It's uh I think uh in olden days, it used to be the finding new ideas, doing something totally new that nobody has done it. But these days, you know, working in an industry and finding new, you know, something, either new ways of doing something or finding something that whatever the gap is and filling the gap in. That seems to be innovation is these days. And I think that's what the idea is success instead of just looking for the totally brand new idea.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but you know, you're absolutely 100% correct. But the only way to find out if that gap is legitimate is finding somebody who's been in the industry for so long that they have these pain points and they go, Man, if I could solve it, and you'd be surprised. Sometimes you get into industries and we go, why hasn't anybody else done this? Why? And they just go, I don't know. I guess it's just like, you know, never sometimes sorry, go ahead. Never thought of it.
SPEAKER_04It's you know, people just never thought of it the same way.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, or if they did, they didn't have the resources to put it together. There are lots of times where we'll build something in an industry and we'll start selling it, like for example, fitted rims, Fitzy, we'll go and we'll sell it to auto shops and they go, Man, I had this idea so long ago, but I didn't have the resources to build it. So they're very grateful to have that be a part of the industry. Very interesting.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's it's uh, you know, I heard a lot of young people for an ongoing basis, that that skill set, the mindset you you you know you you're reflecting, that is a bigger gap in those people. And I'm trying to think, what are you doing differently? That that people who are listening to us, I heard a lot of young people because technology is is in, you know, as you know, a lot of young people, the biggest pushback I get is a mindset, uh, this growth mindset that listen, I want to do something new, I want to do I want to figure something out, I want to improve something. Yeah, and I'm trying, I'm trying to figure out what uh what have you done something differently? How did you develop that mindset? And how can I tell these people, hey, listen, follow this path. You you could you could achieve something similar.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so when Michael Jordan was playing in the Chicago Bulls, when he was on the Chicago Bulls, best time, best time for basketball. Yeah, exactly, right? Um so you know, people asked the coach, like, what was the strategy? He said the strategy was give the bold ball to Jordan, give the ball to Jordan and stay the F out of his way. Right? So I think in a in a in a manner of speaking, that's kind of what we do. We find entrepreneurs that are really, really good at what they do. We hand them the ball, build the software, and we stay out of their way. Right? We let them do the sales, we let them bring the pain points, we don't try to intervene where we're not needed. We do help, and sometimes, you know, we come in and we will take a piece of knowledge that we've taken from another industry to innovate and they'll go, ah, I didn't know about this, or maybe across industries. Exactly. Finding something that works across industry and bringing okay. Yeah, but if I'm to partner with you and you know this industry, I'll ask you questions so that I can better my knowledge on it. But I want to be able to look at the pain point through your lens. But I also want to, at the same time, not stand in the way of our profit and our revenue. The only way I can do that is to not tell you how to do your job.
SPEAKER_04I I've seen so many of these scenarios, you know, over six, seven hundred people probably have talked to over the years. That's the first thing you want to do that they want to do is tell you what to do what you know what to do, what way to which way to run. Because they know that worked in their business, they want to bring the same approach to your business as well, right? But you talking totally separate, you simply say, okay, get out of the way, let them, they know what they've been working on, let them let them excel at that.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. You know, all of the businesses that we work on, they require some sort of marketing or some sort of sales. And really good marketing teams fail when they don't know anything about your business. So you can be in the same industry, and if marketing teams come and they look into your business and they don't quite understand it from your lens, they're not going to be successful. Just that's just within your company alone. Now imagine going into a company, looking at something, not knowing and or like anything about that industry, or just knowing enough that you've read online or you kind of think that you know better than the person who's been in the industry for 10 years, and then just coming and go, no, no, no, no, no, no, we'd like to do it this way. No, no, no, we'd like to do it that way. I think that's where most companies have their point of failure.
SPEAKER_04I hired four of them over the last few uh few years. Uh Savir, you speaking to somebody who've gone through that. I hired four of them. They all have a proven way of doing things and say, okay, if you get a proven way of doing things, show me. And they fail. It's because they're not listening to what I'm simply telling them. Hey, listen, uh, this is my research of the market, this is my take on the market, this is my understanding of the market. If you go this way, you'll be successful. No, we have a proven way. All right. Yeah. But then you fail.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because they don't understand how you've been doing your business. The best type of marketing companies are not those who just market for you. The best type of companies that do marketing or marketing companies are those that act like a marketing department. When you have a marketing department, you're working in conjunction with sales, you're working in conjunction with customer service, you're working in conjunction with operations. And most marketing companies, unfortunately, just run ads. That's the best way of putting it. Like, oh, if this, let me try different ways of running ads. It's not really how it works. And that's why, even though I have a you know middle ground marketing team, I try my best to kind of individualize in each company. And even if we it is like the centralized marketing team, I'll take them off certain projects just so they can learn the company better, right? And then the industry better.
SPEAKER_04What are you interested? So is that what SPG is about? The SPG Media, the company, is is that or is it just a purely production and the video editing side of things?
SPEAKER_00No, SPG Media is a film and video production company. That's it. So we we've done a lot of cool stuff. We worked on lots of like interesting TV shows, and we've worked with Jordan Peterson, Daily Wire, done stuff with Netflix, etc. etc. So we we mainly just focus on film production. That's it. Got it.
SPEAKER_04That you Jordan Peterson, you mentioned that the new university he's setting up. Did you guys have any any uh anything to do with them or just as no no no?
SPEAKER_00We didn't. We actually did some of his specials with Daily Wire. We actually started off when he first joined Daily Wire to do a lot of his stuff. Spent about three and a half months with him, even traveling with him. We went to Newfoundland. It was a lot of fun, it was very interesting, lots of cool things. Uh, people asked me, like, how how is he? Is he any different? I'm like, he just speaks in quotes, but I but I did learn a lot of interesting things from him. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, he it seems to know his stuff. You know, the books were very interesting. He seems to be, you know, he's been teaching for a long time, so it looks like he knows his stuff very well. Yeah. Okay, good stuff. So let's talk about some of the lessons to learn now. You know, so you've been working with the entrepreneurs, some of them you know, definitely it's you know, not everybody's gonna be successful, you know, very small numbers gonna be successful, and sometimes that's all you need to make your money back. What do you see some of the failures in this area, like as somebody starts a business, or what do you what do you see some of the challenges people struggle with?
SPEAKER_00I think too many people get uh way too much in their head about how complicated business should be. That's the to me, people overcomplicate things, right? I always say you're you're you're to to get you you only need to do two things one get business and two keep the business. To get the business, you need to do sales. To keep the business, you need to do customer service. I've seen people that have really crappy products outperform by like 10, 12x companies that have really good products because they have good sales and good customer service, right? I think the two main areas that you need to focus on is selling the damn thing and keeping the damn customer. That's it. There's no you know, and I like to think of myself as somebody who's not very smart. I don't like to get into, you know, whenever there's a complicated process, I don't try to pretend to understand it. I just go, guys, I don't get it. It could be as simple as, you know, the car goes from point A to point B. And I and until I totally understand it. Sometimes I'll understand it, but I'll still start to you know ask them to dumb it down even more. So it's number one, don't pretend to understand things. Don't think you're smarter than you actually are. Don't pretend it like just don't pretend. And number two, focus on sales and customer service. Once you have that, that's going to be a big, big part of your business. And and number three, I'll say is don't confuse revenue with profit. I think way too many people do that. They want to get to their first million, first hundred thousand in revenue. I've seen companies that are doing multi, multi million in sales, and they're in they're either in debt because they didn't take into account certain things and not good kind of debt, really bad debt, or they're not. Making any profit, they're making maybe like 0.3, 0.4% profit before paying themselves. So yeah, I see that a lot.
SPEAKER_04I know it's especially in my industry. You know, I you know, yeah, I made that mistake earlier in business as well, you know, to be but I seen I would say 90s, 95, 96 percent companies in IT industries, they're all in the same same boat that you know, even though that uh that uh uh revenue is high, but profit margin is probably five or ten percent most, which is insane.
SPEAKER_00You can't that's why I love software because the the profit margin is like 85-90 percent. Yeah, you can sell uh you can sell something for like 30 bucks, even 10 bucks a month, and the profit on that would be like eight bucks. So now you just need volume.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, when when I looked at uh going into business for my my my corporate uh life, the first thing was because my background was software developer, I was J2E developer, so I thought about software. It just upfront the that hard work that you know the time it takes to get to the market. At those years it was very hard to to uh increase the speed. Uh, that's why I shied away and I got into service business. But uh I'm always you know very intrigued by the software development business. So all these the the uh development projects you guys are doing here in here in Canada, or are they doing some in the US as well?
SPEAKER_00So we're a little bit all over the world, but mostly in the US. We have some stuff in the Middle East, some stuff in Canada, but we all know where it's not called the Canadian dream, right? The American dream. So it's better to do business in the States always, and you know, their dollars are strong, and no matter what, the economy is is doing all right. And we try to focus heavily on businesses where, like I said, the entrepreneurs have you know immense expertise. And then we make the businesses, we become a crucial part of the business. So, unless you're gonna shut down your business, you can't really shy away from our product. So, yeah.
SPEAKER_04So, what the reason I ask, where's how's the talent pool compared to US? What's going on in the US at the moment with the talent pool guns? And especially we have a lot of technology entrepreneurs in uh in a in a Toronto area as well, Ontario. So our talent pool compared to their to find these resources.
SPEAKER_00Well, I'll tell you this much a lot of people from Canada go over, especially from Waterloo. You know, Silicon Valley likes to pick their talent from Canada. So I'm not saying we're smarter, I'm just saying some of the smartest people have come from Canada. That's all. But no, I think look, there's you know, 10 times more people, there's 10 times more variety. There's a lot smarter people, there's a lot dumber people. That's all I'll say. But I do think that a lot of talent that goes from Canada to the US stays in the US for a good reason, right? Even though, you know, we say we have universal healthcare and all of that, but you know, come on.
SPEAKER_04Money is not there. So so beside money, what are we doing wrong? You know, even the AI when before starting before it became a mainstream, it was it was from Waterloo Labs. That's where it started, the whole AI projects. Um so what are we doing? You know, what do we have to do to keep the talent here? You know, is not opportunities not there, or is it a money or you know, or exposure? What are we doing? What we're not doing in in our market that these people graduate and the first thing they do is run to US.
SPEAKER_00I think capital is definitely a part of it, right? And there is definitely, like I said, when there's more people, there's more opportunity. That's just like one-to-one, right? And every and you know, everybody that graduates from Waterloo wants to go work at, I think they're now called the Mango, they're called Fang at one point. The big companies, right? The Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia, OpenAI, right, Google, you name it, right? So they want that on their resume. You, you know, and then you want to go to Silicon Valley. It's just like the dream to go there, right? Yeah, it's like I'm I work for Google in California, and this is what I do. And trust me, I've worked with lots of people there. Some of them are very happy, but most of them, once they you know hit their six month or a year mark and they're starting to feel it, and they say, you know, either I miss my family, or even though I'm making$250,000, I'm barely making enough to survive here. So it's it's kind of like up and down. A lot of people are coming back. You know, I just got a place in Texas. People are starting to go to Austin and Dallas and Houston.
SPEAKER_04That's what I heard that people moving, companies moving out of California to Texas.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, because you know, there was a lot of this like like bubble, the unicorn bubble, right? Like, okay, let's just invest a bunch of money in a bunch of companies. One of them is going to hit a billion dollars. That's what really Y Combinator was all about. It's still all about. And I think that's why, like me, I'm not that smart. I'm not smart enough to be like, is this company gonna do this? Is it I'm dumb enough to know, like, I'm just gonna go where the cash comes from. I just want to build a cash cow. So I think people are starting to now move more towards revenue-based businesses. And where's the money? Let's follow the money, let's get the money now, not in 10 years. And I think that's what's kind of making the shift to a lot of companies. A lot of talent is being now let go, and people are starting to do their own thing, whether it's moving to Austin. So I don't think there's not like I don't think there's much that we really need to do. I think, you know, when it comes to talent and staying within Canada, I do definitely think that the government of Canada needs to provide certain incentives for people to stay here because I don't think that the private sector is going to take off on its own. I know there's certain leeways and there are certain grants that they've given, et cetera, et cetera. I do think that there might be a little bit more room there. But outside of that, and I'm not just talking about, by the way, to private companies, I'm talking to individuals, right? And I think that if the government supported the startup culture a bit more, talent would definitely because not only stay here, but they're gone to the states, they've taken their training from big tech, and now they might have an incentive to come here and and work.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it will create tons of opportunities for these people so they can come back to that, right? So yeah. So are you only involved in uh startups uh or early, early stages, uh uh Safir? Or I is it also that the business built for a long time and they may be you know somebody looking for exit, or they you know, there's a lot of MNA kind of process going on in Canada. Are you involved in that as well? Just simply startup?
SPEAKER_00I'm involved in all sorts of phases of different businesses. Me personally, me personally, I like the startup phase because number one, you get you can play around with more equity there. And there's not a dead set way of doing things. We get to learn more about the industry, we get to learn more about the entrepreneur, and it's more of a discussion rather than we're just building this for you as a project or like buying something that you've already built and going through all of that. But that being said, you know, our company, DataFluent, is divided into three parts. The first part is the sorry, the the first part is development and consult consultation. So the first part is consulting and development, the second part is the incubation and integration, and then the third part is like self-funded projects. So our developers might have an idea and we're like, okay, we'll put some capital behind it, we'll see if we can market it and kind of go from there. So we're kind of involved in all areas. Sometimes entrepreneurs will come up to us and the opportunity will be amazing, but their business is already built out and we, you know, and we'll take that. But me personally, I prefer the early stages.
SPEAKER_04Got it. And and it's all these companies are here in uh in in Ontario or Canada, or is it overseas as well? Are you involved in some projects overseas?
SPEAKER_00We are involved in certain projects overseas. You know, we've done stuff with governments. We in 2024 we did a project with the Dubai police. We are involved in doing stuff overseas for sure. Uh obviously that requires a little bit more digging into, but outside of that, we we're open to anything really.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, they're gonna be a lot of talent pools in India for these projects as well, right? Because there's tons of tons of schools and universities are creating a lot of talent there.
SPEAKER_00There is, and you know what, because of now like Claude and Lovable and all these, you know, the the quality of that talent is kind of improving as well. Before it was like if you go to India or somewhere else, you might not get the you know level of quality, or in you know, as the younger generation grows up, that communication barrier is dying down as well. Yeah, very interesting.
SPEAKER_04Okay. So what's what's so what's the opportunity looks like? You know, looking a couple of years ahead, you know, were you gonna be working on and and uh you know, even especially in uh in uh the early stages in a businesses, you know, it's gonna it's see there's a hope, there's opportunity is gonna get bigger and bigger, or is there we built enough software that AI is simply gonna integrate a bunch of softwares and there's no need to uh build a lot of new new softwares?
SPEAKER_00Oh, okay, that's kind of a loaded question. But I'll I'll I'll say this much. I, you know, it's like the internet, things are going to evolve, and those who evolve with it are going to stay, right? You still need somebody to make sure to monitor, to make sure that it's being utilized properly, and you still need somebody to run, sometimes build, especially now, monitor and make sure you improve. There's maintenance, there's growth. So, you know, there's lots of different ways that you can integrate. I don't think that there's ever going to be a need where that is completely fulfilled by AI and there's no human, you know, in need in involvement need whatsoever. I don't think that that's ever going to happen. But I do think that, you know, you have to learn to evolve with it. Companies are going to be transformed. They're not just going to disappear, you know, they're going to be transformed. Now, those that don't adapt, yes, they're going to disappear. But the like telecommunications, for example, to this day they still run. To this day, we still need human interaction. And this is my just this is just my personal belief, just because I've been around AI so much. I think that the closer that AI gets to being as human as possible, the more there's going to be need for human interaction in this world. I've just been around AI so much to see that, like, oh man, it's good to actually have a conversation with a human being, you know, that doesn't sound so perfect. That doesn't sound, you know. So I think the more of that happens, the more we're going to need to actually get back to our roots of human interaction.
SPEAKER_04Well, the two areas you mentioned, critical for business or business leaders, is us sales, you know, generative revenue and a customer service. Um, these are the two areas where human interactions are so required. You know, you know, you can use tools for customer service, same as you can use a bunch of tools for sales, but at the end of the day, people want to buy from people or customer service people want to be served by people, right? So that human, you know, emotional connection, you can't replace that with any technology, right? That's always gonna be required. Maybe different expectations, different levels of it, but that's gonna be part of it.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00Well, let me ask you something. You've been in sales, you know, you're you know, as an entrepreneur, when do you make the easiest sales on the phone over Zoom or in person?
SPEAKER_04I'm always preferred the person.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, everyone, people who are being sold to because that builds trust. In fact, there's going to be less trust, you know.
SPEAKER_04Like you can't replace that, that human connection that when we sit in front of each other and we we talk business, there that trust we build, that the connection we build, there's no such a technology can replace that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'm telling you, things are going to like scams are gonna grow, people are gonna trust less, and it's just gonna be a lot easier to deal with you in person than somebody on Zoom that kind of looks like you and is acting like a human being.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah. And in the same as customer service as well, right? So you can provide as as many solutions you want to over the over the in in over the internet, but at the end of the day, you know, if the issue comes, they want to know who they can call, and somebody can come on side and fix that issue.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. You you're on the phone with the with your telephone provider or your your bank, and he goes, I'm an automated system, I can help you. Press one for this, and you're like, customer service, customer zero, zero, right? So, like, yeah, exactly. Human interaction is is irreplaceable.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, a lot of our clients come to us, Safir, and I people write IT departments, so a lot of clients come to us because they tried overseas companies before. They tried, you know, Singapore, India, all those companies that try overseas, they can get a service, but they don't have a human connection to them, right? So nobody can come on site to the business and talk, sit and talk to them. And that is the biggest success been for uh for us. We're simply can go locally, simply, hey, let's let me sit down with you, let's let's figure it out together and find the best solution for you. I think that connection, that conversation, the trust, you cannot replace with the overseas or with the with the video calls or whatever you want to try.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I think Amazon had this really locked down. When I first started doing like software, I realized that any software that's built, if you're trying to, now they have like live chat with AI and all this other crap. But I whenever I tried to talk to somebody, it doesn't matter where it was, whether it was a bank, my telephone company, my internet company, whatever, they tried everything to avoid getting you to customer service as a human being because of how much it actually costs, right? But Amazon would do the opposite, they would get you to a human being as fast as possible. They give you a couple of options. If you said no, no, no, boom, straight to a human being, right? And I started looking at that and I said, guys, even if we're building an app, and if you go into Knock It Pro right now and you go into settings and you need help, you have a phone number that gets you directly to a human being, and you have a chat that gets you directly to a human being, right? And that's what people want because they feel like they're talking to a person, not a machine. And yes, AI, you know, makes it better. There's no way it can replace it.
SPEAKER_04You know, you can you can go to Google for for any, if you're doing uh I know advertisement or any of that, you can go to the chat and try to solve a problem. They have deployed AI solutions to to that that and worry smart. They will they will know exactly what account you're calling for. They they will have they will have a proper solutions. They they walk you through what the how many different kinds of problems you have. They can start worry smart. You know, it's it's uh it's uh you know, sometimes you can't believe you know they know exactly what you're trying to do, but still you're looking for that that that button. So listen, talk to us or a chat button, even that on during the conversation, whatever the type you're still looking for the button. Hey, where's the phone number I can call, and where's the chat button I can click and talk to somebody live?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's what I usually look for too. That's why I'm like, how can I talk to a human being now, right? And you know, it was the same thing with like when we first started doing stuff with SPG Media, and we were like higher ticket items, right? The average video was costing like, or the average video campaign was like$20,000,$25,000, right? And to build a commercial, people, you know, you see it for 30 seconds and you're like, okay, but you don't realize that somebody spent 100 grand on that commercial, right? So we what we realized is that human interaction, it didn't matter. Like when we first started, everybody, all my clients would have my cell phone number. They would call me at two o'clock in the morning. And they would, in fact, I have a funny story that I tell all the time. There was a client that would get so clingy, and they, if they saw me on WhatsApp online, they would just call me at three o'clock in the morning. Like, I saw you were online, so I just thought I'd call you. And I was like, okay, well, you're paying me a lot of money, so yes. Like, how can I help you? Yeah, I couldn't even say no. But that's that's what people look for, you know, as fast as I can. How can I get to a human being that can help me?
SPEAKER_04Why are you trusting somebody calling at three in the morning just because it's like you're online? I mean, that's that's oh yeah, that's challenging. You know, how do you deal with that stuff?
SPEAKER_00But tell you what, if you he went to any other video production company, in fact, the the the whether it's a media production company, film production company, nobody was going to answer his question at three o'clock in the morning. And he would have create these crazy ideas that I would wake up at four o'clock in the morning and be like, what if we did this? What if we did that? And anytime I I like, I I could have just locked him in at four o'clock in the morning. I'm gonna send it to you, sign it, let's go, right? And he would do it. Like there were times where we were like, I was like, can I send it to you? And in the morning, he'd talk to his team and have it signed, right? So nobody else was getting that business at four o'clock in the morning. I mean, maybe AI could now to a certain extent, but not exactly.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and not to to the level where humans can do the business. Interesting. So business leaders who are watching uh is Safiri, you work with a lot of businesses well uh here in Canada, or or simply just looking for for uh in uh investment opportunities. Do you help a lot of businesses?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, I'm I'm always down to help any business that you know I'm always I I love to connect with entrepreneurs because helping them a lot of times unlocks this like new level of knowledge that I never previously had. Sometimes it's super minor, but then it'll help me in a major way, right? It's like, what if we tried it, tried this this way, right? Or tried that that way. It's like this works in this industry, but it also works in this industry and it could change that industry. So always down to connect with different entrepreneurs, talk to entrepreneurs, see what kind of journey they've had, what kind of stories they have, and learn from that and help them along the way.
SPEAKER_04So, what is the what kind of problem people trying to solve when they connect with you from a business standpoint? Like, you know, people with the established, are they trying to solve a communication problem or is it a connection problem? What is it trying to solve?
SPEAKER_00Majority of the time it's like sales and marketing, right? Most people are like, how do I grow my sales and marketing? That's just kind of how that's where the question that everybody has, how can I make more money? But a lot of times it's operations. A lot of times it's like, hey, there's this one person that's essential to my company, but they're giving me a ton of trouble. What do I do? Right? Or hey, how do I I'm okay with the revenue that I'm making? Can I do something internally to maximize my profit? Or like, hey, you've grown this business in this industry. I'd like to know what they did right because it seems like I'm doing everything right, but I'm still not at the level where they are. So it's different problems for different entrepreneurs, different industries. And sometimes just a conversation, uh, just a conversation will help them, but a lot of times the conversation will help me in a way that they don't even realize.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, because well, the solving problem is the same in in a business, right? So it just could be different logic, different problems we're trying to solve, but it's usually the same approach. And we learn from each other as as when we solve those problems, right? Absolutely. So do you that become part of the strategy? You know, but large companies they they they definitely have a marketing heads, they have a marketing strategy people. So that those are the people you connect with, or you connect with the the top with the president, CEO of the company?
SPEAKER_00Usually it's the president and CEOs. Usually it's the CEOs that they come by and they'll connect me with their like, hey, this is what my marketing department's doing. Can you take a quick look at it? And uh, how do you guys do it, or have you done it in the past? And sometimes the the problem is so simple, it's staring at them in the face, but they're so deep into it that they don't realize. And a lot of times I'm like, Well, have you tried this? They'll go back and I won't hear from them for six to eight weeks, and they'll come back and they go, Holy crap, it was really this simple all along.
SPEAKER_04So, yeah, when we work in a business, and I'm guilty of that as well. You know, we work in a business, there's so many details to pay attention to. And uh, you know, when you're so much into it, and you're gonna miss a lot of blind spots, and that's why you need a people for somebody from looking from outside with expertise and say, Listen, you you're missing this blind spot. Let me help you cover those blind spots. I think that's where experts like you come in, simply say, listen, you know, you're not paying attention to this, let me let's solve this problem. It will help you with other ones as well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think one thing that I'm really good at is like people like to make things very, very complicated. I've tried this, I've tried that. They use, you know, acronyms like CTR and all of this. And so I just go in and I go, Well, what's the what's happening? Like, let's break the problem down as much as possible. Let's simplify it. Okay, so you were making sales, now you're not making sales, and it's died down. You tried all these different things and this didn't work. Okay, what did you try within these things? What happened? What were you doing before that was working? Oh, well, the industry changed. That can't be it. Let's let's take a look at a little bit deeper. And then it's almost always something that they didn't even realize they were doing right and they stopped doing it. And you know, so I'm really good at simplifying processes and making them so they're adaptable and that they work.
SPEAKER_03Hmm.
SPEAKER_04Interesting. One of the items I saw, Sophia, recently is especially with the COVID, is a lot of training side of things, uh, production in the training videos and all that stuff. So, because people have a high turnover, you know, people getting sick, you know. The how do you train people and how do you get the work out of them and how fast as you can? And I think a lot of business owners struggle with that. You know, what posters they have, what content they have built when they bring somebody from outside to train them to get a work out of them. And I think the gap was way too big in a COVID. I think a lot of companies struggle with that area, especially because they were not prepared for that. It happened all of a sudden. Do you help out business on this area as well? Because I know tons of people they try to build those training and product product and service videos so they can train their staff uh on their product and services ongoing basis.
SPEAKER_00It's very simple. Just have a good system, right? Your sales aren't doing good, let's take a look at your system. Your people are leaving you, let's take a look at your system, your compensation system. Let's, you know, if if people are coming in and they're not being trained as well and you're not getting the maximum value for your investment, let's take a look at your training system. And the best training system that I've found is to actually give them study material, whether it's videos. A lot of people they just go, here's a video, watch it, because they're more concerned about getting that person on whether it's the assembly line or just I want to get them to work as fast as possible rather than, like I said, marketing companies fail when they don't understand your business. Your goal should not be to train this person as fast as possible. It should be to train this person as well as possible in the fastest time.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_00There's a difference. Training somebody as fast as possible, they're gonna make a lot of mistakes. But as well as possible in the fastest time, it's like, okay, now let's focus on what is actually needed. And if you give them study material and you actually invest time, it doesn't take more than like two, three weeks, and you build a system and everybody that comes in, kind of like giving their driver's license exam, their written exam, they understand like the basics of it, and then they can spend, you know, a couple days actually training. That is a system that we found has never failed. So you help companies build that content as well, or what happened. Yeah, we actually have a company that that does that. Like we we have a, you know, and uh we've done some custom solutions as well. But we have companies that offer solutions that will actually build you these training systems based on not just the industry, but what your company actually requires.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. A lot of companies, I know they don't have a resource to build that. I think that's where they struggle, how to build the content, how to build that the material. So they simply just have a written notes here and there instead of uh, you know, and and these days, people less reading and they're watching more. So producing that content, I think that's very helpful for people.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, sometimes. But like, look, the guys here to get a job, right? Way too many. There's there's a couple of things. The first thing is you're investing a lot of money into your business. You're a lot investing a lot of time into your business. Why aren't you investing time into the systems of your business? Every single system, not just sales, not just HR, not just operations, but every single one of them, all three, all four, whatever the systems are that you have in place, those should be invested in with your time, your expertise, and your knowledge. Right. So invest in that. Make something that will actually satisfy you if somebody understands all of this. Take a week, two weeks, and you'll be surprised, right? At how fast you can build this thing. The second thing is that they're like, okay, I want to make it as easy as possible for them to learn and move on. It's like, no, you you hi you're paying this person. You know, you're doing your job, great, make it easy, but they should work for it as well. You want somebody that actually will read the material, that will watch the videos. It's easy to skip through videos, get to the end, and just kind of fill out what you need to fill out. You don't just need somebody to pass the test. You need somebody to understand your business. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Somebody can they can add some value to it instead of just trying to do the daily, daily job, whatever needs to be the minimum required.
SPEAKER_00Exactly, right? If somebody is, let's just say parking lot attendant and they're just like, okay, this is how many cars need to be filled. This is my job, a hundred cars, and they all fill them diagonally because they don't really care. They're technically done their job. But if you teach somebody the system and why it's important, maybe even incentivize them, that's part of another system. They're going to try and squeeze every single car they can in there as safely as possible and help you maximize your profit and revenue.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Very interesting. So let's talk about your Sophia. What's up? What's uh, you know, 2026, you know, uh next year's what's up for you? You know, what's what's a plan?
SPEAKER_002026 is going to be an interesting one. So 2025, I did things that I, you know, had planned out, and I just really, really focused hard on them. And I not only exceeded that, but I I learned so many different things that I couldn't implement them in 2025. I I I you know well surpassed what I intended, whether it was revenue, whether it was through my companies, whether it was growth. I think we hit and exceeded every single goal by at least 2x at the very least. And now I've learned things that I'm going to be implementing. We've had new businesses that we are now merging and acquiring and incubating and helping. So I think the best thing for me to say is more of 2025 and a lot of new stuff in 2026. It's hard for me to even sit and explain, but I think there's going to be a lot more interesting things. And I'm very open about my things. I share them on my Instagram. I sometimes will share them with the different entrepreneur groups that I'm a part of. People are always looking at, okay, what's he up to? Where can we help invest, etc., etc.? So I'm very open in terms of what I'm doing, how I'm doing it, and all of that, and it and you know, a few dessert shops.
SPEAKER_04They're all here in Terrier or they're all they're all over Canada.
SPEAKER_00Our first is gonna be in Calgary. Uh, it's called Choco Berry. It's a uh dessert franchise out of London, and they have uh locations in Dubai. They're gonna be opening locations all over the the world, but we acquired license to open in Canada. Our first location is opening in Calgary, hopefully within the next two weeks. And then uh after that, all over Ontario. Anything special about these desserts? You're gonna have to come and taste it for yourself. I think I'll wait for them to come in here. Yeah, I think it's it's it's it's definitely well, the one thing that's different, it's not just a dessert shop, it's also brunch. But I one thing, you know, like I said, the customer service, that's great. But when it comes to food, the taste has to be out of this world. You know, I I I'm very picky with my food, and you know, I only give every restaurant one chance.
SPEAKER_04But the customer service, even in a food, you know, definitely the food has to be there, but the customer service is key. I think if the customer service is not there, you know the restaurant.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. And I'll tell you a story for my brother's birthday in 2024. We went to a place in Dubai that made a steak that felt like it was boiled. It was horrible. And I called the lady over and I said, Come on, like this, this is horrible. You guys are fancy rooftop, like you know, place, and this is so bad. I'm so sorry, let me take it back. The manager comes in, you know, we're really sorry, we're gonna bring you a new one. They brought it again. I looked at it and I said, This is a rubbery and chewy. I I don't know what to do with this. I was frustrated. And I'm like, I like I I really don't know what to do here. The guy came, he said, Look, we just opened like a week and a half ago. We're trying different things. I'm I apologize. He was not only so uh extremely apologetic, he made conversation with us and he found out, you know, what my brother's favorite cake or dessert was. He went outside to a bakery, got a cake, right? And he just kept saying, I'm really sorry. You guys are always welcome. I'll take care of the meals, don't even worry about paying. His customer service was so good that I I never go back if if you know the food is that bad or even remotely. But it was so good that I was like, I like I thanked him. I as frustrated as I was, I was like, Thank you so much. You've been amazing. Because, you know, there's a there's a book by Will Guidera called Unreasonable Hospitality. I I read that a little bit, but I went back and read it again. And because that guy was, I don't know if he read the book or not, but he was uh yeah, well, he was the embodiment of that thing. He was so like, well, first of all, he he was Egyptian, and Egyptian people, they're already very, very like emotional people, you know. So he was already very like in a good way. He was just extremely apologetic, extremely, I'm sorry. Uh don't even worry about this, and I'm gonna go get you a cake, and I'm gonna do this, and I'm gonna do that. And anytime you guys come here, ask for me. And I was like, damn, like, you know, I walked away learning so much from that guy, and I thought, hey, I thought my emotional intelligence was high. This guy just rocked me out of the sea, like this is crazy. And so, you know, you're right, customer service can definitely turn like everything around.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, very interesting. Yeah, I gotta get the title of the book. I'll definitely uh look forward to reading the book.
SPEAKER_00You don't it's called Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Gudera. Will Gudera, okay, yeah, perfect.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, perfect, good stuff, good. Yeah, I want to thank you so much for your time. It was a great discussion. Any message you want to leave for entrepreneurs who's who looking to uh either look into investments or or or trying to uh build the multiple business or just trying to get into this uh Safir, anything, any word of wisdom you can leave for them?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, try different things always, right? If you're doing something that's not working, try different things, but don't get distracted. I think there's too many people out there selling courses on Instagram and you know, showing off their hypercars and all of that, and all of that will come. Trust me, it'll come. If you're 24, 25 years old and you feel like you're running out of time, I promise you you're not, right? I felt that way when I was young and I was, you know, I'm 32 now. And when I was 18, keep in mind I started business 14. From really like 14 to 16, I thought, okay, I'm young, I'm trying to figure it out. From 16 to 18, I thought, okay, that's it. Like I'm never gonna make it, right? Yeah. And but I kept trying different things because I live with my parents, I didn't have any crazy expenses. And then when I actually started making money, I was like, damn, like this is not bad, right? But then I failed, right? So two things is you know, try different things. And when you do succeed, that's not the only way to success. So if you're going to jump into different things, or if you're going to try and try to expand, you know, your just listen to other people that have experience in that field. And that's what I learned. And after that little bit of a dip in that failure, I started to learn that you're always going to be learning.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. But that is a biggest challenge, uh, your generation, right? There's so much distractions, whether it's a social media, whether it's uh, you know, news, there's so many distractions. How do you stay focused on a goals of what you're trying to do? And I think that's a biggest challenge a lot of people struggle with.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, look, the way that you stay focused on your goal is you have to actually find out what you're doing this for. Sure, the Ferraris, great.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00I got two of them, right? Sure. I get, you know, but my whole thing was not like ultimately, I wanted my parents to be happy and I want them to be taken care of. I want my family to never have to worry. You know, I want, and if that's your goal, stay focused on that. Do not worry about the distractions, the cars, the watches. I promise you, if you stay focused on that goal, everything else will be a byproduct. You'll be able to do whatever the heck you can. And you know, a lot of people they get$100,000 and they go buy that car and they go buy that watch. I'm guilty of it too, right? My first thing is like, okay, I made my first like 20 grand, 30 grand. Okay, if I buy a Rolex and I'll justify it by saying, like, oh yeah, when people see me wearing a Rolex, they're gonna want to give me more business. Maybe, maybe not, you know, like you know, but stay focused on your actual goal.
SPEAKER_04Most people think that that's a challenge, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, most people they want the cars, they want the watches, they want the private jets. Great, right? But they actually they're not evil, they're not there to just, oh yeah, I want to be because you do this because I want to be better than you. It's like I want I want the financial freedom. You know, I don't want to wake up and go to work and you know, just stay focused. And by the way, that that's also an unrealistic expectation. As an entrepreneur, you're always waking up to go to work. And whether it's three o'clock in the morning or eight o'clock in the morning, it doesn't matter, four o'clock in the afternoon or evening, whatever. But the reality of it is, is if you know you really stay focused on the goal, it will not only keep you motivated, but it will make sure that you don't get distracted. For me, it was my parents. For you, it might be your spouse and children, right? For you, it might be also your parents. For you, it might just be that look, I have to prove something to myself and nobody else. But find that core reason. It's not just to be rich. Like, I want to be rich because I want to do whatever the hell I want. Okay, why? Oh, because I don't want anybody to tell me what to do. Why? Do you have a chip on your shoulder? Do you think people are bad? Like, oh no, because I want to take care of my family. I never want my wife to worry, you know. And like sometimes I've had people say, I had a lot of issues with my marriage before because of the financial issues, and I never want to deal with that in this marriage again or whatever it may be. Okay, stay focused on that, right? Don't let these distractions come in your way because there will be a lot of them. And that little bit of success sometimes is the reason that you don't get all the takes you off the track.
SPEAKER_04But yeah, you need a higher motive than simply just buying those toys that you're gonna buy for yourself, whether it's a car or something like that.
SPEAKER_00By the way, yeah, nothing against that. Like have your fun, but stay focused on the goal.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, but that wasn't the goal, right? The goal was something else, and that's just a byproduct of it, right?
SPEAKER_00Exactly, exactly. And you know, a lot of people think that that is, you know, if I show success, if I fake it till I make it, you know, I'm gonna go ahead and and that's what it's going to be. Trust me, a lot of a lot more people, right, fall off before they're able to make it while they're faking it. So, you know, don't go crazy, don't go nuts and just be like, okay, I'm gonna burn all this, and I'm gonna, and it's not a bad habit to want those things. I keep saying that because a lot of people think that look, this is my only purpose. It's okay to want the nice watches, want the nice cars and all of that. It's okay. But you that's not the only reason you should be doing it. Because if that's the only reason you're doing it, I promise you you're gonna get distracted.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Yeah, I've I've listened to uh Grant Cardone. Um, I follow this guy quite quite a bit. You know, he was always talking about, you know, get to the passive income where you have investments working for you instead of you working the direct money you're making. So then you buy all the toys and all that stuff, right? So it's a different approach to it, but yeah, definitely you you want to buy all that stuff, but it's not that that was not the goal. Goal was something else. That's just a luxury that you achieved over the time.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I think too many people are focused on getting that passive income. First, get income.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Well, that's it. Don't be worried about working in your business. Yeah, I think too many people are like, okay, I don't want to work in my business. You haven't started the business. You have to work in your business before you can work on your business. That's just how it is. Like, but first and foremost, you have to understand the business from inside out. Because if you don't understand it, I promise you your team won't either.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that's where the hard work is. I think that's what the grind is, right? If you're afraid of the grind and the hard work working in your business, there's never gonna be other opportunities. You gotta master that for you to make the money.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I think here's another little piece of advice. I didn't know what it meant when people said work harder. What do I what am I supposed to do? Work harder on what operations? What do I do? Like, and to me, this is just my piece of advice. Work harder on getting sales, right? Build your product as you go, but work harder on getting customers, right? And then once you have those customers, work harder on keeping those customers. Build that team out. A lot of people are way too lost. They'll sit there, they'll watch more YouTube videos. They're like, okay, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do next. Just work harder on when people say building your business, building your business just means bringing in more customers.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Right. Well, hey, listen, look, what what are you and I are doing right now? We we're chatting, and definitely we want to get the word out and and you know, build that influence. That's part of the business, right? So, so we are working on a weekend. I mean, this is what it takes to build that, right? So, yeah, definitely, you know, if I meet somebody, you know, in our customer side, simply say, Listen, I'm trying to solve this communication problem or video problem. What do you think I'm gonna do? I'm gonna say, Listen, I had a great discussion with us here. Here's the link. Watch the video and reach out to him. What I did, I just saw I solved the problem, right? So I'm using that example, but I do that for all the time. You know, whether somebody, if I talk to somebody in an HR expert, and I go to a company and they have an HR issues, what do you think of what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna take that HR video link and I send it to the person and say, Listen, I had a great discussion, uh listen to this person and buy his book or or reach out to him. Maybe he can help. So you know, the back to your point to working on a sales, it's all all about the connection, human connections, and trying to add value to somebody and definitely grow your company on a daily basis.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and let me ask you something. How many times has that like helped you immensely? Where it's like out of nowhere, somebody refers somebody to you.
SPEAKER_04A lot of times, a lot of times. Maybe maybe we can do business together, but they know somebody else who can do business, right? So it just building connections and help adding value to each other and and helping out.
SPEAKER_00In business, they say there's ABC, which is always be closing, right? I look at that as always be connecting. Trust me. The I've made so much money with just connecting people. There are times where I just connected somebody and I got a check in the mail, like, what is this for? Oh, this is your cut. I didn't ask for a cut. It's like, no, no, no, you you helped us, we did this, we did that, and you know, we think you deserve something. And I'm not saying that that's what you'd expect what you should expect. I'm I think you should go into it with no expectations. In fact, it's funny because I had a business partner and his five-year-old daughter was the one that told me this. I was sitting down and I was going, like, hey, like, you know, I'm I've been working so hard and I've been helping people, but like, how do I further build my network? And this is a long, long time ago. And he just goes, Yeah, I don't know. And you know, we were talking and he goes, Yeah, you seem like you're doing the right thing. And and so his daughter started asking me questions. She's, you know, what is this, et cetera, et cetera. I told her, Well, a network is you you have a bunch of friends and you help them, and in return, they help you. And she goes, Yeah, but friends help each other even if you don't if they don't help you. And I was like, What? I was like, you better be quiet. But then I but then I thought about it, and I was like, she's right. Like my expectations, and I promise you, Gramid, when I stopped expecting, it's like things just started happening. Because I when I when I don't know if it was my perspective or if it was like, you know, I was genuinely surprised where it's like, oh hey, Safir, by the way, I got this guy for you. Oh, hey, I want you to hop on this call and connect with this guy. And if it didn't work out with this guy, then it was somebody that this guy who connected me to this guy who connected me to this guy. So, you know, always be connecting, not just with people, but always be connecting people with each other.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. I I tell you, my one, my um ritual I have, I learned from Jesse. I forgot his last name, the guy who has uh written a book on uh he spent 40 days with the seals, forgot his last name. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know what you're talking about. Yep. So he does this, and I learned that from him, and I did that for six months. I'm still doing it. So in the morning when you get up, you know, you you know the the people you connected the day before, just send them a handwritten card, just thank you card. Yeah, you know, I I spend about half an hour, takes you know, the right of cards, put a stamp on, put them in a boat, uh mail. You're gonna send us five. I could never it took a long time. I took it, it's not easy because you know you forget about it. You know, sometimes then you do a 10, and then the other day you do one. You know, it gone through that, and then I kind of came to the point that it becomes solid now, right? Half an hour I can get the cards out, uh handwritten, just thank you cards. Yeah, yeah, I think it's the little things that make a huge difference. I get so many phone calls back with that stuff. Simply say, Hey, thanks for you know sending me something. You know, I know we had a quick chat, so but it just you know, back to your point, just giving instead of expecting anything back, you just give it. You're sending your energy out, simply saying, Listen, thank you.
SPEAKER_00You know, thanks for doing something. And it's hard, man. It's hard when you first start that business, it's hard to just give, give, give, especially when you're like 40, 45 years old, and your time is a lot more valuable than when you're 18. So it's hard to, and I've seen entrepreneurs go, man, I think my time is worth too much for me to be doing this. And I always say, I promise you, it's not. It's not, it doesn't matter. Like, I I want to be making like so much more per hour, but this is where you need to start. Right now, you're not worth this, you know, and this is where you need to get to. And I can teach you how to not make the same mistakes that I did, or make the same mistakes that a 24-year-old would or an 18-year-old would, but you have to you have to do your time.
SPEAKER_04How many sales press how many sales presentations you did where you didn't close the deal? What money do you made out of those? Oh man, you know what I mean? So so probably like I'm not even kidding. Like how much if you talk about hourly, you know, how much money you should be making. So those presentations, you didn't make anything. No, you might have learned something. So salespeople know this, how to give without even expecting anything back out of those presentations, right? So you know, if you're thinking that I want to make more and my time is more worth it, if that if you have the mindset, you will never have those free presentations where you didn't close the deals.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely, absolutely, and it's gotta be a growth mindset in terms of how you want to grow not just your business but as a person, right? I think the best entrepreneurs that I've found are people that are always looking to learn somewhere, and and to give just to give back, and to implement that in their life, yeah, right? And a lot of that, yeah, you're right. Absolutely. A lot of that has to do with giving.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. What interesting. Hey, listen, it's an interesting discussion. You can I can go on forever. I can we can learn from each other. It's a great discussion. But where can people find you?
SPEAKER_00How can they connect with you, Sophia? They can connect with me on LinkedIn, Sophia Kureshi. They can also connect with me on Instagram, Safir Snaps, S-A-F-E-E-R, S N-A-P-S.
SPEAKER_04I'll put a link, all the links below the video as well, so they can click a link and just connect with you.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. And I'm always happy to answer any questions. I travel a lot, but I'm always happy to hop on a Zoom call or get on WhatsApp and talk to you. And, you know, I love helping entrepreneurs grow. It's just, I don't know. I've seen it, I've seen it happen over and over again. And it's just that little bit of dopamine hit when you see an entrepreneur that you've helped and they come back and go, Yeah, I did it. You were right, and this is what happened. And I go, damn right. You know, you did it.
SPEAKER_04Nice. Good. Hey, you know, uh business leaders were watching, either they're listening to us on a podcast or they're watching us on a video. But definitely, I know from our discussion, I learned a lot. I will definitely recommend everybody who's watching or listening to us. If you made it this far in our discussion, reach out to you for uh for our conversations. Who knows where the discussion is gonna take you? Click a link below and just reach out to you, connect with you, have a discussion. That's how we learn from each other, the way we learned from each other for the last uh hour, right? So definitely, you know, they're all gonna learn from you if they connect with you. So thank you so much for time, Sophia. Absolutely, man. It was a pleasure being here. Okay, likewise, thank you.