Jahan Ali on Successfully Navigating the Entrepreneurial Journey

Starting a business or finding the right people to support your idea may not be that challenging, but growing your business is tricky as it requires many sacrifices. Because of this, many people either give up from a lack of motivation or lose it in the process of growing their business. 

It’s critical for everyone beginning their entrepreneurial journey – or looking at how they can grow their company – to find brilliant examples and talk to people who have overcome obstacles and never stopped believing in their goals.

In this episode of Behind the Growth, we welcome Jahan Ali, the Founder and CEO of mobileLIVE. Jahan has prolific entrepreneurial experience and is currently running three businesses! We asked him to join us on the show to share his professional path, how he overcame bumps on the road, and the lessons he learned that helped him achieve success.

Key Takeaways:
- Hard work and staying motivated always pay off
- If you are persistent, opportunities will come to you
- Hire people smarter than you, and then listen to their points of view
- Don’t be afraid to start from the bottom
- There is no single recipe for success—but humility will take you far

Visit mobilelive.ca/podcast to learn more about each guest and read key insights for every episode.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Jahan Ali: Entrepreneur journey is not easy, like, there are up and downs, it is literally nerve-wracking, but the only thing that can get you out of it is your hard work, and persistence is the name of the game.

[00:00:13] Welcome to Behind the Growth. I'm your host, Mudassar Malik, and today we're celebrating a serial entrepreneur and a super humble human being, Jahan Ali, Founder and CEO of mobileLIVE. Jahan, it's great to have you on the show today.

[00:01:00] Jahan Ali: Thank you, Mudassar, thank you so much for having me on the show.

[00:01:04] Mudassar Malik: John, I, I took the liberty to introduce you as the Founder and CEO of one company, but you have founded multiple, so would you please share us their names and specializations? 

[00:01:14] Jahan Ali: Sure. I am founder and co-founder of three businesses, so let's start in chronological order. My first company is mobileLIVE, uh, mobileLIVE is basically a full-service, digital transformation and IT consulting company. And then, we are serving Canadian Tier 1 enterprises, for example, telcos, banks, insurance, and retail verticals basically, and mobileLIVE specializes in full-scale, end-to-end consulting. 

[00:01:49] So, that means all the way from technology consulting, UI/UX design, product development, enterprise modernization, test automation, and process automation. The second company that I started was, uh, UXPLORE. So, that is a product company, and what UXPLORE does is that it provides a product that can create and train bots, we call them intelligent digital workers, 

[00:02:22] and they can basically help complement human workforce in their daily tasks. The third company that I'm currently working on is a XapCard, and that is, in my opinion, will revolutionize the digital business card space. So, I'll go into a bit deeper, maybe later if, if time permits, but those are the three companies I'm currently working on.

[00:02:48] Mudassar Malik: Fantastic. No, thank you, and I'll definitely, I think we'll have an opportunity to dig in a little more. I have a follow-up question, and I was wondering, while each business is unique, did one lead to the other?

[00:03:00] Jahan Ali: Uh, yes and no. So, let's talk about UXPLORE. As I said, uh, in mobileLIVE, we are basically doing test automation as one of the key ser, services that we are providing there. So, while we were doing test automation, we thought, "Can we develop a product that can help do user acceptance testing, which is platform agnostic."

[00:03:24] So, the way we did it is that we came up with an idea where we can pre-code all human gestures, and if we basically attach all human gestures or all the tasks one by one, we can test actually any system, whether it's mobile, web, or tablet. So, while we were doing that, we found out that maybe it can be used for automating processes, and, and then we realize that it's a product and product companies should be, uh, run differently, uh, they have different concerns.

[00:04:06] So, as soon as we realized that there is a gap in small to mid-size business space because there are giant companies who are focusing on RPA, but they are only focusing on big enterprises. So, we thought there is a business case, why not spin off this company as a separate company? So, that is how I was able to start a new company, basically, it was a span off from, uh, mobileLIVE, and the idea is, can we launch a digital staffing agency? So, just like any staffing agency provide human resources, maybe if we have a job description, we can provide digital workers or bots that can basically fulfill the job description, and then we monitor the performance of those bots. So, this is how UXPLORE was formed.

[00:05:03] Mudassar Malik: So, Jahan, on UXPLORE, there's this common thinking, and a lot of people misunderstand, and a lot of people just come up with this idea in their mind that automation or bots or AI will take over their jobs, and I'm sure you've kind of encountered that several times and while you're talking business with our enterprises.

[00:05:23] So, would you just quickly touch on that and just clarify what, what is the role of these bots in, in an enterprise of the other human beings, other workers there as well?

[00:05:34] Jahan Ali: Very good question, actually. I believe, and then especially, talking to the clients or the potential clients that we are serving, that bots are not there to replace the current human workforce, they are there to complement them. Right now, a lot of people are just sitting in front of computers and doing mundane, repetitive tasks. So, if we can free up their time from those tasks, maybe they can be repurposed for more value added tasks. 

[00:06:09] Mudassar Malik: Yeah, no, absolutely, and I think you make a great point, like, it's supposed to further complement the workforce, take away the mundane, repetitive, boring work, and actually give them a little more time to do more productive strategic thinking where there's more demand for their capabilities, rather than just doing basic repetitive stuff.

[00:06:26] Jahan Ali: Yeah. And then, I believe the future is of a hybrid workforce where humans and 

[00:06:31] Mudassar Malik: Oh, I like that. 

[00:06:31] Jahan Ali: bots will, will work side-by-side with each other. Bots are there to help them, not to replace them, it's all about productivity, efficiency. And if we can increase the productivity and efficiency, which is the bottom line of every small to mid-size business that is growing, 

[00:06:48] Mudassar Malik: Yep. 

[00:06:49] Jahan Ali: not? 

[00:06:50] So, so, it's all about perception. And then, just to give you a very quick data point is that most of the companies that we are working for, they actually did not buy it to replace their human workforce, they actually bought it to increase the morale of their workforce, where

[00:07:08] Mudassar Malik: Oh, I love that.

[00:07:08] Jahan Ali: their workforce or their human workforce can actually focus on sales or marketing or more, as I said, uh, value-added stuff rather than just wasting their time because they are too many, too many systems,

[00:07:25] they're not integrated, and they're just doing transfer of data from one system to the other systems. So, it did, it just does not make sense going forward, um, we have to have a more productive work environment, and I think bots are there to stay, not to replace. 

[00:07:42] Mudassar Malik: Let's make friends.

[00:07:44] Jahan Ali: Yes, let's make friends.

[00:07:46] Mudassar Malik: All right. Okay. Sorry, I didn't want to break your thought trail over there, but you were about to say something, I think, for a moment ago.

[00:07:51] Jahan Ali: And for the other company, XapCard, that was a bit of, not, I would say, natural evolution, one of the team member came up with that idea, and we have an incubation, kind of a center running within mobileLIVE, and then if someone comes up with their great idea, we want to support it, we want to invest in it.

[00:08:09] And we liked the idea, and then we formed another company and take the business, basically business card industry to the next level. Currently, most of the companies, the way they operate is that you have to take picture of your business card and then you share the business card. We thought, why not allow people to create their own business cards from the app, and they can create multiple business cards,

[00:08:37] it could be the same business card, but with multiple dimensions, I call it as micro profiles. So, for example, a person who's a real estate agent, who could be project manager, who could have one or two other gigs, so, so, they can use whatever micro profile they want to use. And when they meet other people, especially after Covid, all they have to do is to basically direct their mobile phones to each other, and the information will be shared across them.

[00:09:06] Not only that, the whole virtual business card concept where if a real estate agent goes to, let's say a property, they can virtually drop their business card and any other person coming in, they will see who has been in that event or who has been in that property, and then you can just virtually pick up the card.

[00:09:27] Not only that, you can actually track where those cards are, eh, for the lifetime and, and you can have all that data coming into a CRM where if a person leaves a company, the IP or the network is still there, and similarly, if I am in an event, I'm looking for Java developers, other people who have those micro profiles as a Java developers, I can, this application can tell me that there are, "On your left, there is another person who is a Java developer."

[00:10:02] Maybe I want to connect with them. So, there are a lot of new, I would say new evolution or new, new ideas around it. So, it's, it is still in an incubation state, we haven't have had a full fledge production launch, it's a soft launch, and then we are working on it.

[00:10:18] Mudassar Malik: Yeah, that's a, that's a very exciting category, and you mentioned kind of interesting use cases out there, I think those are really taking advantage of the digital universe and capabilities, I think that's really something that we look forward to. So, all the best in that adventure.

[00:10:32] I want to really dig into the, the life of an entrepreneur, the challenges, like, how is it beyond, was it, like, as you expected or was it, like, more challenges than you expected? So, bring it on. Let's, let's hear, I want to hear that side.

[00:10:46] Jahan Ali: And, and this is not to show off my accomplishments, but to show that my journey is not very different from many others.

[00:10:54] Mudassar Malik: Okay.

[00:10:55] Jahan Ali: Especially the people who are starting from zero, or they're new immigrants or working hard in early stages of their journeys, and to show that no one should be afraid of starting from the bottom. Having said that, I came to Canada in 1998, and that was our first international trip, we came as international students.

[00:11:19] We did not know anyone in Canada at that time, we did not have any funds, all the funds that we had, we paid our international tuition fees and, and then we are just here, uh, in a new country.

[00:11:33] Mudassar Malik: Who's, uh, who's, uh, we?

[00:11:35] Uh, myself and my wife. And then, she was expecting with our son at that time, six months expecting. We both are electrical and computer engineers, we were class fellows in, in UET, Lahore. And then, we got married there, and then when we arrived here, we both started in University of Toronto, doing our masters, basically, in electrical and computer engineering.

[00:11:58] Mudassar Malik: Wow. A, a brave leap.

[00:12:01] Jahan Ali: Yeah, bravely. And then, the next thing in our mind was, "Okay, how do we survive here?" So, luckily I was able to secure a teaching assistantship, which was paying me at that time $700,

[00:12:14] and we rented a basement, and it was a one-bedroom basement, and kitchen and furnace room was the, actually, the same room. So, you can imagine the kind of basement it was. And we did our all budgeting and exercise, and then we figured out, "Okay, $250 we can spend on our monthly expenses." So, you can see how $250 you, you can basically sur, survive. 

[00:12:42] Jahan Ali: So, uh, Anila, my wife, actually, she started working with Yellow Pages because she, she also wanted to he, help, help out, and then she was studying at the time also. But long story short, so those were the most difficult days, we were studying and, and then we were, we didn't have much funds, uh, I still remember that, uh, at that time we would go to McDonald's and buy a Happy Meal, and then Anila and I would share those Happy Meals because we didn't have enough

[00:13:11] funds or enough money to buy two meals. I would ride bike to university in literally minus 20 degrees because I didn't have money to buy the GTC, uh, ticket. So, anyways, fast forward, uh, we finished our masters, and I got a job in Motorola, Canada. At that time, Motorola was my dream company because I indirectly worked for an operator,

[00:13:37] basically, I worked for, for an operator in Pakistan that was a Motorola network. So, I always had a kind of a soft corner for Motorola, and I got a job in Motorola, and things started to get better. 

[00:13:49] Mudassar Malik: Jahan, sorry, I want to cut you here before we dive too much into Motorola, I want to just go back into, if you could just share something that, how were you, like, those are very humble beginnings and I would just want to understand how were you motivating yourself to get through those phase, that phase of life, and you knew it's a chapter, you knew there's another better future ahead, but how are you getting through the day? Like, if you could just share that with us.

[00:14:15] Jahan Ali: I think it's just desire to succeed and the support of my wife and my support to her, it's just the ambition, it's just the persistence. We had burned all our bridges, basically. This was the new life, Canada was the new home, and then we had to make it work for us. And again, no rocket science,

[00:14:39] it is just, we were starting in new chapter of our life and we wanted to make it the best for us, and we did not know where it would lead us, but all we knew that we will stay focus, and hopefully things will get aligned as a time passes.

[00:14:59] Mudassar Malik: Great. So, okay, so, then you land into your dream job, Motorola.

[00:15:03] Jahan Ali: Motorola, and then after that, obviously, we could afford apartment. So, we moved to a one-bedroom apartment, that was the first time we could see daylight during, during working hours. And I worked for Motorola for about nine years, I started there as a, a junior to intermediate software development, then obviously, I grew two different management roles,

[00:15:27] I became account manager for some operators in, in Canada, and Motorola trained me well, like, they trained me how to handle large accounts, they, they trained me on the processes, I got certified for Green Belt, so things all started to, like ,come, basically align towards our own goals and all things were looking really, really bright.

[00:15:53] And, but in the meantime, in around 2009, '08 or '09 timeframe, there was a major push of moving work to offshore, and Motorola started offshoring a lot of work, and now I started dealing with offshore centers. And at that time, I realized that on paper, maybe it is a good cost-cutting exercise, but when we take into account all the issues that come and the iterations, we have to go back and forth, back and forth, and lot of things were lost in translation.

[00:16:34] I figured out that there is a room for a maybe more cost-competitive alternative onshore where we more focus on white glove treatment and then we actually offset all those advantages by a different way, and that different way could be the response time, the velocity at which we work, and maybe at the end, the difference between offshoring work versus onshore with a higher velocity and higher responsiveness

[00:17:08] that difference might be not as much as people, people think. So, at that time, I decided to resign from Motorola and started mobileLIVE. I went to my first client and asked them that if they can gimme some pilot project and I will do for free, and then I will show that we can do some testing of devices here in Canada, where they don't have to ship devices offshore.

[00:17:36] And again, the time was right, I showed them that our output is really good, we were able to uncover a lot of issues that offshore centers were not finding, they, they started giving me more and more work. And then, there is an RFP that came, and then we bid on that RFP, and we won that RFP as a second or the alternate vendor for device testing.

[00:18:02] And we created the first ever, at that time, 3G lab in Canada, and that lab is still the only Canadian lab that can test 3G, LTE, 5G devices. And now, fast forward, we are 400 people, uh, right now, and then we have been actually Canada's best-managed companies for last, eh, six years.

[00:18:28] As I said before, that, not only device testing, we are a full-service IT consulting company now. We, we do software development, we do automation, we do UI/UX design, we do technology consulting, but anyways, the moral of the story is that you really have to stay focused, and if you are persistent, opportunities will come.

[00:18:57] Jahan Ali: And then, you have to grab those opportunities, and if you do not take that leap, those opportunities will never come. So, people say that lot of luck or, yes, I was lucky, uh, in many cases, but in my opinion, luck is only that if you are persistently doing something, opportunities come, you grab them, and later on, you can call it that it was because of the luck. So, you have to make this hard work as your best friend and, and be positive.

[00:19:30] Mudassar Malik: Lovely. I think you're kind of going, and I would want to expand more in this area because there's definitely some secret sauce that you have 'cause you've, you've done well, you've got a great momentum going for yourself. So, if you could, what would be your pick or general message on what is the recipe for success here for you?

[00:19:50] Jahan Ali: I don't believe I am smarter than others. So, rather than giving any advice, I can share what has worked for me throughout my journey. Uh, you can call it secret sauce, or you can call it luck, but that does not matter. So, if I have to summarize, there are only, I think, five or six things that has worked for me,

[00:20:13] and none of them is rocket science, those are basically foundational, fundamental things, and I think everybody if they follow those, they make them as their core values and make them as part of their behavior, I think, success will follow. The first thing I learned that you always have to surround yourself with positive people.

[00:20:37] Mudassar Malik: Oh, that's a big one.

[00:20:38] Jahan Ali: You will find plenty of people to drive your motivation down, but I, my message is stay away from them, everyone has their own journey at their own pace. And I'll give you an example, many times I would attend different gatherings and I will, I would find people having exactly the same background,

[00:21:03] and one will be just complaining about Canada does not offer many jobs, and then we are here and then, uh, I don't know what they were thinking about. And exactly the same skillset person, another person would just say they're so happy, we have been successful. And then, when we dig down, the only difference I see is the attitude and aptitude.

[00:21:28] One stayed positive, one did not have any, I would say they want, they wanted to get, get their hands dirty, they were not afraid of starting from the bottom. And the other people were always comparing them with the jobs that they had left back home. And you have to take a step down, go to the bottom, and if you are good, you will rise again. So the, my first message is that your company matters and it gives you motivation, it gives you positive energy, stay away from negative energy. 

[00:22:07] The other thing is, which I have touched upon before, which I call as drive-quotient, DQ, that means that have high ambition and be persistent, you have to have a drive and then drive to succeed, and nothing beats hard work. Entrepreneur journey is not easy, like, there are up and downs, it is literally nerve-wracking, but the only thing that can get you out of it is your hard work, and persistence is the name of the game.

[00:22:43] And, and as a CEO, maybe I, I, I can just give one message here, is that you do not want to benchmark your performance to the industry, you want to reinvent the industry, basically. So, and that goes back to high ambition, figure out how to, how to tackle the all the obstacle, and then you want to basically pave your own path and, and then you will succeed. But, again, focus and persistence are the recipe, or as you call, secret sauce.

[00:23:19] Mudassar Malik: The, the key ingredients in there.

[00:23:20] Jahan Ali: Ingredients. The third thing I want to mention is EQ, emotional quotient, basically, and I believe very, very strongly that high EQ is more important than the IQ because you are dealing with humans. So, humans first have empathy, be self-aware, especially as an entrepreneur, you need to hire people smarter than yourself, and those smarter peoples have their own very strong point of views,

[00:23:53] and as a CEO or entrepreneur, your job is to make all those smart people with diverse point of views work together, and you cannot do it until you listen, you have empathy to them, you listen their point of views, and if you understand their point of views, you will find a mechanism to manage them and direct them in one positive direction. So, that is why, for me, listening and EQ is extremely important. The third thing I want to touch upon is, uh, which is, like, indu, in industry you call, uh, adaptivity quotient or AQ.

[00:24:39] This is, I, I think, one of the most important one, and that means that you should be able to unlearn and relearn fast. Things are changing at lightning speed, we all know. So, have a learn it all attitude, the moment you know it, you have know it all attitude, decline will start. So, always keep learning. The next is, again, no rocket science, just build trust. People buy from people, you are only selling trust, and what does this trust mean, that all the stakeholders can rely on you.

[00:25:25] And if you say, as an, again, as an entrepreneur, when we were growing the company, if you say you will deliver, you have to deliver, I still believe that delivery is the biggest or the best marketing machine because word of mouth will give you more and more opportunities. And at early stages we as a company also had lot of, uh, obviously, issues, 

[00:25:50] Mudassar Malik: Hmm. Hm. 

[00:25:51] Jahan Ali: why I said trust is that, if I said that we will deliver, we will deliver.

[00:25:55] Like, I know I spent countless nights on the floors of couple of operators in Canada just to make sure that I am with the team and we deliver. There are always hiccups, how you get out of those hiccups or how you deal with those hiccups is the key.

[00:26:13] Mudassar Malik: Yeah. Deliver what you promised, I think that's a huge, and this is one of the most powerful ones out there.

[00:26:19] Jahan Ali: Definitely. And as you mentioned already, humble, and this humbleness actually ties with all the other things that I have mentioned because the moment you become arrogant, your adaptivity quotient goes down because you think that you know everything, so you stop unlearning and relearning.

[00:26:41] Mudassar Malik: Hmm.

[00:26:42] Jahan Ali: The moment you become arrogant, your EQ goes down because you're not listening to other people, 

[00:26:49] Mudassar Malik: Hmm, 

[00:26:49] Jahan Ali: you think you are always right, your decline starts. So, so, that is why all humbleness, I believe, ties everything together. And one last thing I want to mention is always be a giver and feedforward, as an employee, so, not everybody's entrepreneur, so the message for employees or the people who are working for other organizations I would give, that if you are giving back

[00:27:18] Mudassar Malik: Hmm.

[00:27:18] Jahan Ali: positively to the company, even though at that time you feel that you are not getting that gain, but your efforts will be recognized. And imagine when company takes a new initiative, who are they going to pick? You. Because they have seen you that you are no matter what giving to the company.

[00:27:43] So, they going back to, again, trust, they will trust you more, and they will pick you, and that will give you, again, lucky breaks. So, there are no such thing as luck, but lucky breaks come when you keep your attitude positive, and then you are giving, giving back, as in, and I'm going back to as an individual, when you are on a, uh, successful path, lot of people would've helped, your friends, your family, other stakeholders. 

[00:28:12] So, it is your responsibility to give back, and I can just very quickly give you an example that when, uh, I was living in a basement literally for, to write thesis, I did not have access to the computer at that time. My landlord gave me a Macintosh computer, which was, even though very old, but I was able to make it work for me, and that helped me big time writing my thesis,

[00:28:40] otherwise, it would've been too, too, too difficult. And it was a small gesture from him, but, but that taught me is that now when I see that anyone needs help in scholarships, in getting help for their education, I will be the first one to raise my hand and then give those scholarships because somebody helped me, now it's my responsibility to help others.

[00:29:04] Mudassar Malik: I love that, that's ingrained in you and so beautiful that, that little gesture, so timely, it's ingrained into you that you are even echoing it today. So that, that was really powerful.

[00:29:14] Jahan Ali: So, if I, if I summarizing, summarize everything up. So, basically, there is no rocket science, your attitude, your aptitude, your focus, your persistence, your humbleness that will give you lucky breaks.

[00:29:31] Mudassar Malik: That's a great message, and I, I love the collective that you've given, there are different aspects which come together as a strength and your recipe for success. So, I think that's, thank you so much for sharing that with all of us. If you would have a chance, like, I'm sure, like, all through this journey, there were realizations, there were things, um, you know, it's, no, no entrepreneur's journey is simple and easy, right? So, what would you tell yourself as, as your younger self, if you g, got a chance, what would you advise yourself, like, if you could go back?

[00:30:02] Jahan Ali: Uh, yes, nothing comes without sacrifice. So, obviously, I have sacrificed a lot, so if I have to tell my younger self something, I would say give more time to family, travel with the family as much as you can, kids grow so fast, so cherish as many movements with them as possible. And a bit of more focus on health

[00:30:29] because when you are just, like, in an overdrive mode, you tend to, I would say, overdo and then ignore a lot of, lot of things that are extremely, extremely important. So, so, having a more work-life family balance, uh, I know it's not easy, but, but I think that is one thing I would tell. 

[00:30:51] The last thing I would say is that maybe one thing that I would do from very beginning is maybe better on public speaking. But bottom line is that nothing comes easy, and just try every day to find the balance. 

[00:31:08] Mudassar Malik: So, the people who know you, like, um, I've been very fortunate to know you, I think these, these are great messages, and we know it's, it's just not about being on camera or somewhere, but it's actually the message and the humility you bring along with yourself and the kindness that you've always brought forward.

[00:31:24] So, I think there's, there's a lot to learn from those aspects as well. Jahan, we're coming up to honor our time, and would you please let our listeners know that if they want to connect with you, what's the best place to reach out to you?

[00:31:36] Jahan Ali: I think the best place would be LinkedIn, just search for my name and you, you will find the profile and just get connected. And then from there, like, I am always there to help anyone out, whatever time I can spare, I would spare. And that's it, and then, even on LinkedIn, I can share my email or phone number as a next step. But LinkedIn is, is the way to go.

[00:32:04] Mudassar Malik: Fantastic. Jahan, thanks again. I appreciate you spending some time with us today, it was absolutely fantastic to have you on Behind the Growth.

[00:32:13] Jahan Ali: Thank you so much, Mudassar, it was, it was pleasure speaking with you.

[00:32:17] Outro: Thanks for listening to Behind the Growth. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to follow along on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. This podcast is brought to you by mobileLIVE, a team of digital experts specializing in designing experiences, building products, and scaling technology. For more episodes of Behind the Growth, please visit mobilelive.ca/podcast.