How to Sell as a Founder (Even If You Hate Sales) | ft. Naeem Parvez

 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝘀𝗸𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗺𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗮𝘃𝗼𝗶𝗱 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘄𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀? 🤔

In this episode, Rayhan Aleem  sits down with 𝗡𝗮𝗲𝗲𝗺 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘃𝗲𝘇, 𝗖𝗼-𝗳𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿 𝗮𝘁 𝗗𝗶𝗴𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗮 to talk about sales, founder mindset, and what it really takes to build a repeatable sales engine. Naeem shares his own story, how sales became the thread running through his whole career, and why founders who treat sales like an afterthought usually pay for it later in slow growth and random results.

This conversation gets practical fast. Naeem breaks down how technical founders can shift their sales mindset, what “sales” actually looks like beyond cold calling, and how to build a process that is simple enough to run and track. They also get into hiring, when to bring in your first sales hire, how to measure performance properly, and the six types of salespeople so you stop hiring the wrong profile. The episode closes with real talk on learning through failure, building with your partner, and what Naeem is working on next.

👉 Follow 𝗡𝗮𝗲𝗲𝗺 on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/3N2Dubd

👉 Learn more about Digitalina: http://digitalina.io/ 

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𝗪𝗵𝗼 𝗔𝗺 𝗜?

My name is  Rayhan Aleem, Founder and CEO of 𝗧𝗮𝘅 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿 and 𝗔𝗹𝗽𝗵𝗮 𝗣𝗿𝗼 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀. At  𝗔𝗹𝗽𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗲𝘂𝗿𝘀 podcast I sit with top industry leaders for in-depth conversations that dive deep into their success stories, market dynamics, and firsthand tips on entrepreneurship and profitability. Whether you're just starting out or already running your own business, 𝗔𝗹𝗽𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗲𝘂𝗿𝘀 offers something valuable for everyone.

👉 Follow 𝗥𝗮𝘆𝗵𝗮𝗻 𝗔𝗹𝗲𝗲𝗺 on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/49yyO4n
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𝟭-𝗔𝗹𝗽𝗵𝗮 𝗣𝗿𝗼 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀:
  -𝗪𝗲𝗯𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗲:  https://www.alphapartners.co
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𝗘𝗻𝗷𝗼𝘆𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗲𝗽𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗱𝗲? 𝗦𝘂𝗯𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗶𝗯𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗔𝗹𝗽𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗲𝘂𝗿𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗳𝗮𝘃𝗼𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗲 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗮 𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄 𝘁𝗼 𝗵𝗲𝗹𝗽 𝘂𝘀 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀! 

Transcript

0:00

I'll wrap that process piece up by saying this as sales is an engineering function, it's not a creative function. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Um, it, you need to look at it, uh, as pure nuts and bolts and screws and numbers and metrics and process this, that, if this, then that, if this, then that. That's how, that's how sales needs to be built. Welcome to the AlphaPreneurs podcast. I'm your host, Rayhan Aleem. I'm also the founder of Alpha Pro Partners, a bookkeeping business based in Dubai and Tax Star, a tax technology startup automating corporation tax returns. Join me on each episode as we talk to inspiring Dubai based entrepreneurs who share their stories, challenges, and secrets on building world-class businesses. I am pleased to welcome Naeem on our show today. Naeem has spent two decades building revenue engines across finance, tech, media, and marketing. Working with names like Visa, Microsoft, Emirates, MBD, Aldi, alpha Tame, and Western Union is also the co-founder of Digital Lean, a performance marketing agency for service-based businesses and Poddster, a studio that helps corporates produce branded podcasts. Naim, thank you very much for joining me today. Um, this is one of the episodes I've been looking forward to. Uh, I've worked with you for quite a number of years. I've known you for quite a number of years. I've known, you know, your, your misses as well. We work together and you kind of got me in this journey of, you know, you planted the seed to start the podcast, although you are an investor here, but you've done it in with good intentions. Um, and there's so much I want to unpack today. Uh, so I hope you are patient with me. Um. First thing I want to just talk about is a quick introduction about yourself. So, you know, we've spoken many times. You grew up in Abu Dhabi, um, you moved to Canada, uh, you studied, you worked there, you had a successful career. Then you did a full circle and came back to Dubai, where a lot of entrepreneurs are either come from overseas or they leave and they don't come back. But you've done the full circle. So tell us, uh, quickly about, um, your, in your background and, uh, why you made that full circle. Well, thanks, firstly, thanks for having me. I do remember that Zoom conversation two years ago, year and a half ago, and you're like, Hey, I'm thinking of starting a podcast. What's the first thing I should do? Uh, that was a fun call and I, and I knew in that call, I'm like, this guy's gonna do at least 20 to 50, 60 episodes easily. And that's, that's a win. So thanks for having me on. The journey has been a bit roundabout. So, as you said, grew up in Abu Dhabi. Um, started my first illegal business here. I was selling pirate CDs in high school, so not as illegal as going to jail for, but uh, yeah, I left basically small town Abu Dhabi at the age of 1718. When I made my first sales deck, it was to my father. Uh, it was titled Why I Should Go to Canada.'cause his plan was to send me to Pakistan or stay in the UAE to complete university. And, um, I made 18 page, it was it 18, 19 slides. Pie charts, graph charts, cost of living, demonizing the UK because it was too expensive, even though it was closer and shorter degree programs. Um, and my father hadn't ever thought about sending me abroad that far. After that presentation, he, uh, got up and he said, you're going. And he went into his room, opened his briefcase of things and wanted to see how you can make it happen. I would say, well, that was one of my biggest sales ever that I did. Um, went to Canada, studied and got my first, got my career started as a salesperson making 40 cold calls a day. If you ask any salesperson why they got into sales, they will tell you the real answer should be outta desperation. Nobody starts a sale, a sales career after studying in university in Canada because they have a passion for sales. You develop a passion later, uh, do it. To get a job and get a visa, uh, from there on out. Um, all I've done is sell. Um, it could be foreign exchange, it could be, um, online listings, it could have been accounting services, it could have been, um, technology, software, and, uh, now marketing. So my wife and I, we run a marketing agency together. And, um, yeah, that's, that's pretty much, that's pretty much the journey. I've done everything from Fortune 500 companies to startups and everything in between. I've been a sales manager, been a sales coach, been the strategist, and now being the co-founder, but still yet focused on sales. So, uh, the, the through line for everything in my career so far has been, has been sales. Um, coming back to the UAE was more of a, it was not a logical decision at all. Mm-hmm. It was an emotional decision. So my. Family is based around this side of the world. Yeah. Parents are getting old. Um, a flight from Toronto to Lahore is about 18 hours. So in case you get that dreary phone call that you'd never want to get, it would take a day and a half for me to reach and we just want to be closer. I also have nine nieces and nephews in and around this city and uh, and, and in Pakistan. So it just made sense to spend the last eight years and it's been super rewarding from that aspect, just being around family.'cause we were very isolated. Mm-hmm. In Canada. We built our own family there. So we had our friends. That became family. Funny thing is all our friends started marrying each other, um, started getting dogs, having kids. So we built, we left one family for, for the other to come back. So that's why we're here. Yes. That's a really nice story. I wanna kind of talk about your expertise, uh, or your, you know, what you're, what you're very good at and that is selling and I want to talk about. A lot of entrepreneurs when they set up businesses, they usually come from an employee kind of dynamic, and then they set, set up a business. Or what will happen is you have a subject matter expert. So for example, I'm an accountant outside the firm, or an IT person was a, you know, a, a developer and they start a tech company, uh, or a lawyer starts a law, a legal firm or an engineer starts an ENG engineering consultancy. And one of the common kind of things that I see is a lot of these, um, individuals or entrepreneurs, they are very good at what they do, but they're not good at selling. And one of the things that is important before you start selling is your mindset of selling and knowing that you're not just a, a used car dealer or a real estate broker, you are selling something and you need to be able to build the toolkits to be able to sell. Mm-hmm. So. In your experience as a, you know, an expert salesperson and a coach, what's the first thing that they should do to kind of change that mindset? To be able to be prepared to start going out there and selling? I've seen, um, this as a common recurring theme, uh, in my journey of doing my own business in the last five years when I've now started network more with entrepreneurs, hadn't done so much before. And I thought this would be the most obvious thing. Like if you're an entrepreneur, you gotta know how to sell. Like, that's just how it is. And I say this because when I got my first sales job right outta university, um, I started looking up, okay, where does sales take you? Yeah, right. And I was in finance, I was selling foreign exchange derivatives, uh, to large corporates. And so I was in the finance field. So I started looking at bankers. Uh, um, JP Morgan, bank of America. You look at all these CEOs and you look back to where they started. Yeah. Everyone was a salesperson. So the first thing that came to my mind when I was getting motivated to do sales, like, okay, this is a path to the CEO level, because back then I didn't want to be an entrepreneur. Think about being an entrepreneur. So I thought this is probably the most crucial skill, uh, to have. And then you get invested, and this is my personal story. So just all, um, EO style is that I started reading all the books, started getting all my mentors, and the way it was positioned to me, you know, when you're a, when you're a hammer, everything is a nail. So when, when it's, when it's when the sales was being positioned, to me it was the lifeblood of the business. This is why businesses make money. The rest of it, um, is a support function to sales. And that became kind of the attitude mm-hmm. Baked in. For a good decade or so. Um, so I was lucky to have like, you know, that kind of thing. And then I, when I meet technical founders and they have the, the motto of if we build it, they will come. Yeah. And when I say that statement, everyone's like, yeah, that's not true. Uh, everyone knows that, but they don't behave accordingly still. Mm-hmm. There's still, uh, an incentive for a technical founder, like if I build it, or they would say, like, they would say that if the product is crappy, then I need salespeople. Yeah. Where the product's good enough, it will sell itself. Rarely happens. Mm-hmm. Um, it's kind of like saying sales is for me, you know, in similar regards to marketing advertising. Why is McDonald's still putting up billboards all across the city? Product is great. Prices are great. Brand is there, everyone knows where they are.

That's where you go at 2: 9:41

00 AM when you really, you know, wanna snack. Um, why are they still having billboards? Why are they still selling? Right. So first thing to realize is that sales as a function, um, I would say that a mediocre product with good sales will beat any day a superior product with poor sales and marketing. Yeah, no, I agree. So that's the mindset part. Like you have, you have to learn that the difference between spending efforts on improving the product on the service versus improving your sales function. Mm-hmm. The second thing is to get your hands dirty and do the sales yourself. Uh, everyone has to learn to do sales themselves. Yeah. As a founder, basically. As a founder. Yeah. Um, as a founder, you gotta find your own style. You gotta find what makes you want to sell more, what makes you close the deals, what makes you open doors and what informs the product because of your sales. So you can do it two ways, right? Like when you start doing the selling, you then have so many more insights for improving your product. Versus just spending time improving the product themselves. Um, and sales in that, in that regard for founder, can look like anything. So it doesn't have to be sitting on a cold call and calling. Yeah. Um, it could be getting features tested with people. That for me is a part of sales because you're talking to a potential end user and you are judging their reaction to your product and their service, whether it's whiteboarding, demoing to them, having a coffee with them, it's all selling. Um, and it's finding out what makes them take versus what you want to see out in the world. It doesn't matter what you wanna see out in the world, if nobody wants, wants it except you. Um, if you want it for yourself, make it a hobby. If you want it for others, make a business out of it. But that's a few things I would say about the mindset. Yeah. And I know great, great insights. And, you know, my personal journey has been where I was an accountant by training and I had no idea about sales. And I had to, I had to go through that process of learning how to sell, um, basic things like, you know, making sure you follow up straight away and you respond to, you know, uh, inquiries. Very fast. You finish a conversation on a, you know, close a, b, c. Always be closing, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So always be closing. A friend of mine, he, um, he, uh, told me about that and I, I think it's also a journey as well where although you may learn some of the fundamentals, you're constantly learning and improving your craft when it comes to sales as well. And I think that's where it's a constant learning process, um, to make sure that you are always using the right techniques, um, and you're always doing the right things from a, from a sales point of view as well. I want to talk about some. More kind of, uh, aspects of sales. So you obviously, you know, you are working with your, with, with, with Alina, your wife, uh, on digital le Yeah. And, you know, she's a, a marketer and you are a sales, uh, person. And what kind of things have you done in your business to kind of improve, um, the sales? What kind of tips can you give to entrepreneurs? So, I'm an entrepreneur. I've just set my business. I have no idea what, what comes to sales. I have, as you said, the mindset where I'm gonna build and they'll come. What are the kind of key things they can do over the next three months to kind of get those early sales in, in, in your opinion? Yeah. I joke with Alina, my wife and my business partner that, um, she was my first client as, as a sales coach. Um, because she's of that profile, she's a founder. So she started the business as a freelance practice herself. Um, and it grew to a point where I joined probably. Six to 12 months in after she started as a solo, uh, venture. And, uh, over the years, um, she's out shown me now, like, uh, which is great for, for a coach to see when, when someone does it way better than you. But some of the things that a technical founder can keep in mind is, number one, sell the benefits and not the features. Mm-hmm. So if you've seen that famous iPod ad where it just says a thousand songs in your pocket. And then you compare that to like a Sony MP three player ad, and it says four GB ram and like 12 megabytes of this and this many pixels of that. And it's just a laundry list of like technical features. Which one do you say sold more Right. Thousand songs in your pocket. So as, as a marketing agency, um, you know, Alina could get lost in like the CPLs and then this, and like the automations. And then, and you know, as a accounting service, uh, firm, you'd be like, well, what, where am I making money? Right? Like, how am I making money? When am I gonna make my money back? And so those are the conversation that we started shifting. Yeah. Um, and you start adding color to those conversations. Yeah. More than the technical features thing. Um. Second thing, have a process in place because when you have a process, you can diagnose the leaks. Um, and a process can be, I'll give you an example, um, of a generic process, right? So that it can be valuable to as many people as possible. There's pre-sales, sales and post, uh, post-sales discovery, right? So like there's, you, you try to break down the steps as much as possible. So what happens, um, before a discovery call? What are the things that need to happen before the discovery call? If someone books, um, a discovery call with us on a Calendly, what ideally should happen is they get an instant, uh, confirmation. Like, Hey, we got you booked. Mm-hmm. Three hours later. Ideally there should be a call from one of us being like, Hey, looking forward to having Alina speak to you, um, in, in the date that you booked. I have three questions to qualify you. So qualify. Okay, you qualify. Then they get on the discovery from discovery. They go into proposal stage from proposal. They go into lingering, waiting to make a decision. I'll get back to you stage. And then they go to close stage, and then there's onboarding, right? Mm-hmm. You find out where the leads kind of start dropping, where your sales drop. But we have a lot of people that book but don't show up to the discovery call. That's so frustrating. Right? But there's, it's gonna be a percentage. It'll never be a hundred percent. Yeah. What percentage are you okay with? And then do you benchmark that? So if you get 20%, like your goal should be like, how do I get here? 25%? Mm. So what are the things I can nurture between them booking and them showing up for a demo? Yeah. Can I send them something? Can I call them? Can I make sure that they're coming? Okay, next is they've had the discovery call, but they're not taking that proposal call or pro. Okay. Something that you did on the discovery call wasn't great. Okay. So now they've come to the proposal stage, but they're not making up their mind. They're ghosting you. They're not closing, they're not even giving. So something broke there, your proposal wasn't good enough, or you haven't qualified them properly. Mm. So there's, if you build a process for all the things that you do, number of emails, number of calls, number of touch points, things you can send along the way, maybe, maybe more case studies, maybe a personalized video, maybe this or that. If you identify the leak, you can, you can fix it. And I think that's really important because a lot of people when they, of entrepreneurs, when they think about sales, they think about, you know, seat of the pants type, you know? Yeah. Like I call the guy, I'm waiting on him, and that's the kind of thing. That's it. And, uh. The first thing you think about is like the charismatic salesperson who mm-hmm. Co convinces you that your product's the best. That that's, a lot of people think about that. Yeah. And they, they also, you know, the two things that you kind of sold, the average person has been sold to by a mortgage person or a car dealer. Or a real estate person. Yeah. And so they kind of have that in their mindset. Yeah. But as you said, you know, it is, it is a lot more sophisticated than, than that. Um, and you don't need to be, you know, an extrovert or a, you know, a, a massive, you know. Kind of, uh, like a big personality. Exactly, yeah. You can still have a process and still close business and grow your business off the back of that. I, when, when we talk about it later, I know we discussed this off camera, but when we do the six types of salesperson, I'll, I'll define that particular person and five others that you can potentially face in your life. So yeah, that's, that's true that the process of, I'll, I'll wrap that process piece up by saying this, that sales is an engineering function. It's not a creative function. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Um, it, you need to look at it, uh, as pure nuts and bolts and screws and numbers and metrics and process this, that, if this, then that, if this, then that. That's how, that's how sales needs to be built versus very, oh, I got a note here about a few things. I took a note about this particular guy. Oh, when did I have to follow up with him? I don't have a fixed date. And yeah, it needs to be, um, if this and that. Our, our brains are computers. We need to use him as such in sales as well. The third thing I would say for sales is continuous learning. Sales is one of the most emotionally challenging things you can do in business. Closing off year end can be emotionally challenging as well when you don't find the number that balances a debit and the credit. But what other function are you getting slammed on? Rejected, um, disrespected on a daily basis as much as sales. Mm-hmm. Um, marketing is safe from that because, you know, the, the numbers don't yell at you. They, when you get the numbers back from your campaigns, they're, they're poor, but like, they don't yell at you. Sales is the only function where your ego takes a hit. Yeah. Um, you are put down to ground a lot. Um, you start wondering if you are worth anything. Um, it's a rollercoaster of emotions. The only way to get through that. It's just constant learning.'cause what happens, so apart from learning the tactics, which is um, I like. How a lot of sales trainers, sales books have this component in their teaching. They're just trying to lift you up. They already know, you know, the tactics, you can't learn the same thing a hundred times. But, um, inherent in their teaching is like, look, it's okay. You fell down. Let's get back up. Let's do this again. One more day, one more day and one more day. And that's what you get from learning. You go into learn the tactics, which you come out being like, you know what? Other people are going through this too. Yeah. This is an emotionally challenging thing. Let me separate the emotion out. There's rewards to the end, end, uh, end of this. And you gotta keep working on that particular piece.'cause it can burn you out like no other, no other function. Uh, sales can burn you out. The confidence can be shot.'cause you're not only getting yelled by your prospects, but then if you have, you know, other people responsible for the same numbers, then there's disagreements and it's, it can get really messy in there. So. Constant learning, especially the part where the trainers or the books are very good at picking you back up, um, and reminding you like, yes, this is tough, but we got this. Let's, let's keep going. Yeah, no, I, I I I love that. And I wanna segue to a lot of entrepreneurs when they set up a business, there's always a knee kneejerk reaction into, in increasing your top line, do you spend more money in marketing? Do you bring a sales person in? Do you go out there? Do you, are you as an entrepreneur? You need to, you are the face of the business. You need to go out there. You need to go to networking and events, or meet people who bring you business as well. And there comes a point where they need to bring in the salesperson. Um, but bringing in a salesperson is very, very difficult, uh, as an entrepreneur because you have to, as you said, you've gotta set up these processes and. There's a pull and push kind of dynamic where you need to be able to, you've gotta give them targets and they gotta hit the targets, but at the same time, you got also need to encourage them to get them wins to ensure that they're able to, you know, go through that journey and hit the targets at whichever target you know, you've given them, whether it's three months or one year or six months, or you've given them, you know, a million dollar target to hit within, within a year. So, first thing I want to kind of talk about is the average entrepreneur. You know, if they've set up a business and they've been around for a year, do they hire their first sales salesperson or should they hire a salesperson when they have exhausted all their efforts in sales? Or if they're busy working on something else, or they don't really wanna work in sales, they really want to. Build rather than sell. Mm-hmm. So at what point would you recommend, you know, an entrepreneur you've worked with lots of entrepreneurs as well. Mm-hmm. You know, they're, they've, they're not struggling. Mm-hmm. They've got a decent name for themselves. Obviously. I wouldn't recommend anyone to start, get salesperson from the very, very, very beginning. It should be you. But at what point, what are the metrics that they need to see to start thinking about hiring a team? I think to make this answer easy, um, I would say first million dollars, no salespeople. Mm-hmm. First million dollar year should be bound themselves. Um, albeit they can have support in the sales process. So someone to help them keep organized, for someone to like, organize their pipeline for them. Give reminders to them, but not doing the selling. Yeah. Someone to help them make the decks. Some them, someone to help them, um, like, uh, follow up and, and reach out and, and make sure the bookings are in place, but. A support person for sure, that's fine. But the selling activity up to the first million dollars found do themselves. Mm. Um, just to keep it easy. I think that is what I've seen, um, in the various, and we're talking mostly about service based businesses here. Yeah. Because that's where salespeople are more. Yeah. Likely needed. Um, not saying that they're not needed for some product, um, uh, services as well, product business as well. But yeah, easy answer first million dollars. Do it yourself. Because what you want is when you get your first salesperson, and you alluded to that they should come into a process. Your first salesperson should not be defining your process from scratch because you are gonna, you know, out of your own fear of like, maybe I'm not a good salesperson. Maybe they're a professional, they know more. I would rather have them come in and talk to Rehan and say like, okay, I got to my first million dollars doing X, Y, Z. Can you please do this as I do it right now, if you do it well, then you may make some changes or recommend how we can do things better. Yeah. But if, if they're coming in, uh, without a process, what happens is salespeople are really good at interviewing.'cause they're salespeople. They're really good at selling themselves, right? Um, they're really good at projecting confidence. They're really good at telling you they'll get there and they, they'll, they're telling you all the things you want to hear because. When someone's, when you're hiring someone for accounts payable Yeah. They're not gonna blow your mind. Yeah. Yeah. But a salesperson can because they're showing you growth in the business. Um, not saying account pay payables, people are not necessary for the business, but they don't, um, they don't put in the, the effort for growth of the business. So when your salesperson comes in and you're all dazzled and they're gonna, they're gonna take care of it, you'd, you'd ideally not want that. And you want to be, uh, telling them that, Hey, if I give you this process to follow, yeah. And if you, I've done well with this process for a million dollars, you will now have more confidence. You won't be dazzled too much by them. And they can follow your process. And then they can add improvements like, okay, do it, do it my way. Mm-hmm. And then tell me what's not working. What needs to be improved. Uh, I use the KISS method a lot. So keep improved. Stop, start. Then they can tell you what to keep, what to improve, what to stop, what to start. So that would be my. My answer. So get to first million dollars yourself first. Have some sort of a skeleton of process. Then bring a salesperson that is okay with following your process. Yeah, it's really great point. Um, mm-hmm. On that revenue target. Um, so I'm an entrepreneur. I hit my $1 million revenue, I bring my salesperson in month one, I think month two, I think month three, maybe a thousand dollars in, in sales, month four, 5,000. At what point do I say this is a common, um, problem that I've, a lot of entrepreneurs I speak to have, at what point do they say, okay, you are not hitting your targets. You're out because sales is a cutthroat business. Right? Your KPI, the reason why you are in that job is to bring in revenue. You may have a different opinion. I'm just, I, I'm, I'm, I'm. Telling you from the point of view of an, of, of an entrepreneur, right? And they, a lot of people get really frustrated, you know, after a month they're like, this guy's not doing, or this skill's not doing anything. They're out. Right? Yeah. What kind of advice would you give to entrepreneurs when they hire that first salesperson? There's a small flaw in how entrepreneurs think about this. Um, and not, not to shame them, it's just, it's just, it makes sense when you think about it that way. But the flaw is that their revenue is a measure or is a yardstick, um, of sales performance, which I think is a complete fallacy. Um, there are better ways to measure somebody in sales than revenue. In fact, revenue is one of the last things to measure. Not saying that, yes, I agree. Salesperson's job is to get revenue, not to clean the office. If the office is more sparkly from when they arrived, it doesn't help my business, right? They have to hit their numbers, but especially for the first six months to a year. It needs to be measured on their activity. And activity is very tied to their attitude. Yeah. But you can't measure attitude. So you'll measure the activity, uh, but you are looking for the attitude. So football example, right? You get a striker and not scoring goals, but it's got great touches done, a lot of assists, um, showing up at the right place at the right time. His midfield is crap. Their defenders are crap. The coach is crap. So you have to, again, going back to diagnose why they aren't working. Mm. How do you do that? If you look at only revenue numbers, they're obviously not working, but they're hitting the calls, they're getting the meetings booked, they're getting the proposals out. Yeah. Nothing's closing. Very few is closing, or it's not closing with the right person. So you as an entrepreneur need to have a conversation about, is my product good enough? Is my service good enough? Is my pricing right? Is, uh, am I better than the com than who I'm competing against? Uh, am I in the right place or right time? There's so many factors that go into the arsenal of what the salesperson is doing. They're taking everything you have. Yeah. And taking it to market. Right? So partially could be them. How you tell it's them? Is their activity, their activity and their attitude? Are they putting in their reps? Are they showing up to training? Are they improving themself in one way? Are they coming to you and being like, Hey, nothing's closing. Help me diagnose what's going on with me? Is it me? Is it us? What is it? And you, you notice that that's how you see the attitude coming through. Like, are they kind of hiding when they're not hitting their numbers and they're going into their own cave and they're not able to bounce back from that as an attitude problem? I would look at those things more than just the end number because I'd rather keep on a poor performer. And I say this with. An asterisk, a poor performer on revenue numbers. Yeah. Because someday they're gonna go up. And I tell you this from personal experience, I got hired first job at a university. I keep talking about cold calling 40 to 50 people a day. As a 23-year-old, I was selling to CFOs that were, you know, 50, 55, 60, 65 mid-size companies doing $10 million in revenue. And I was selling them foreign exchange derivative services. So there's this kid, fresh eye, university, thick accent back then asking them if they would take a meeting with me. Uh, no sales for three months, no sales for six months. Month nine, I hit my year's target. All done, gone. Uh, why was I kept on. I would say, uh, activity and attitude mm, was my saving grace. I was the youngest person they hired for that job, but I put in the reps, I did the calls, I did my own diagnose. I, I'd keep a CRM of all the notes that I'm having on the calls, what went well, what didn't went, uh, go well. And I'd take them to my one-on-one with my boss. So I'm reducing the load on the boss being like, instead of them diagnosing me, I've already diagnosed myself and now I'm looking for coaching. Next step I go around the room to more experienced salespeople in the organization that I've done this before, and I start finding out what's helped them when they were at my stage. So in the case of a business in the first salesperson, they would ideally wanting to be spent a lot of time with you. How did you do it? You know, is there something special about you? What can I take from you? What I'm, I'm obviously not a hundred percent copy of you, but what can I take? And if they're putting their reps, they're doing their own training, they're going home and learning more about the industry. Mm-hmm. Maybe they're talking. Uh, another thing I used to do is I used to go and talk to the ops people a lot.'cause what are ops people doing? They're looking at things that are happening in our customer's lives. Yeah. On a day-to-day basis. So I'm eavesdropping from eavesdropping. I'm like, why did you say that about this customer? Because they did this. I'm like, that's a selling point, right? No one's told me that. And you pick up those selling points and next time you get on the phone with a prospect, you sound more intelligent because you haven't sold yet, but you know what's going on in the lives of the customers right now. So I think if you look at their whole day, their eight hours, and if you do a time audit, how did you spend today? You would find out exactly which person to cut within a month, two months, three months, and which person to keep on and keep feeding them. Good stuff. Keep improving your organization for them as well. So I hope that kind of makes sense. Yeah, no, that was really good insight, and thank you for sharing your personal journey as well. I'm sure it'll be an inspiration to other salespeople who are listening. Yeah. So they get taught the right things to do. Um, I want to go into, um, the six types of salespeople. Mm-hmm. Um, or saleswoman or salesmen. Um, so. We, like, I've, I've been, I've got two businesses and I've hired different types of salespeople depending on what the challenge is or who you're selling to or what, you know, what the product is. Um, and as we mentioned earlier, you know, you have your charismatic salesperson who's gonna, you know, give you a poet poem and sing you a song and get you to sell. Right. Um, and then you've got the other types of salespeople who they hit the, the target, right? They just, they know exactly what you're looking for. They marry up your product with what you need, and they close you straight away because you, they're able to understand your psychology and they hit the right notes. Mm-hmm. To get you to, to close the deal. How, how does an entrepreneur be able to distinguish between these, in your opinion, based on this six different type of sales person? L Look, I'd start by saying that your buyers, um, is not a, I say buyers and not buyer because they're not singular. You're gonna encounter people who are gonna buy your stuff that come from various personalities. You could have, for example, when I was selling to accountants or CFOs, you have the motorbike riding cross country tripping accountants. And then you've got, you know, the Charlie Munger type of accountants who are just at home drinking tea and reading, uh, financial statements. Um, so depending the fact that there's so many different varieties of personality that you're selling to, you can't have one personality of salesperson that you hire. There's, there's a place for all of these six that I'm gonna, they're gonna mention which one comes first, is always. A bit of luck, but with a large enough sample size, I can potentially find the right, um, archetype for the first salesperson that I want. But okay, let's do this. So number one is the one that you've mentioned. Let's call him the, the charmer. They all come with goods. And the goods and the bads, the, the charmer. You know, he's, uh, sometimes we call him the schmoozer. Sometimes we call him like, let's go for golf. Uh, hey, your, your, your, your wife and I should meet my wife and I and like we should all hang out and like, let's go to this concert together. And that's how they, they win deals. I've had much success managing someone like that. And he's been one of my favorite employees in the past in Canada, where he'd show up to the office

maybe 11: 35:07

00 AM but I know that he's gonna come in with signed paperwork. Mm-hmm. And everyone else is supposed to be

at the office at 9: 35:14

00 AM not him.'cause I know what he's doing at night. He's, he's closing deals, um, over drinks. So that's, that's a charmer. The downside to the charmer is. That they don't know anything about your product or your service. So they might oversell or bring you stuff that, um, is hard to keep. Yeah. And, and probably high churn, but, um, the, the, the upside is they can get you into places, into seats where typical people don't have access to. Yeah. Because they can charm, charm their way into some good rooms. The second one is the second archetype of a salesperson, the builder. So this is a, a logical, more nerdy, more geeky person, all about the product and the service. They know everything. They can rattle off all the features. And we talked about the Samsung MP empathy player or the Sony MP three player. And they're really, and because we're trying to match them with the right buyer as well, right? What if the buyer is not willing to be charmed, but they're more about let's get down to business. That's where you employ the builder and the builder is going, uh, is talking. Their language. Yeah. Uh, from their perspective, and he's, he's happy to use, um, stay in that zone and not fully build a person relationship. They build it on trust. Mm-hmm. The downside of this person, again, is the thousand songs in your pocket will still sell more than, than this person, but you need this person on the team because they support the other salespeople too. Yeah. Yeah. They help win other deals, um, because of their, their knowledge. It's like almost like having an ops person in your sales team. The third one is, uh, I call it the whisperer or the empath. They're, they're the quieter people, but they're very in tune. Their emotional intelligence is through the roof. Mm-hmm. Um, they're not as outgoing or anything, but they are in that meeting. They can understand your pain points and they can push the right buttons to make that point even more visible Yeah. Than anyone else. They are. They know how to read the room. They know how the pro, when the prospect is backing out, when they're getting too excited, they know how to manage the emotions of the sale. Um, because buying and selling is an emotional process as well. Right. It's psychological and an emotional process. Um, it's not, it's not physics, right? It's not, gravity is always 9.8 meters. Uh, the acceleration is always the same. Um, so the empath is very, very good at that. The downside is they don't do as much volume, um, because it takes, it takes a lot out of them to do this. Yeah. They get burnt out a lot quicker, so they don't do a lot of volume, but they can help with, with situations where there is an emotional block and not a logical block like pricing and this and that. So logic, uh, an emotional block would be like, how would this look to my boss if I took on your project? Mm. Or, uh, something like that. We wanna make them the hero of their own journey. The the next one is the maverick. The next archetype, this, this guy or this gal, um, they are just, they're like a bulldogs. They just bulldoze through sales deal. They don't know what they're doing, but they've got the confidence that they like, like they do. Um, the great thing about these guys is they know how to improvise. So some of your innovative breakthroughs, uh, the most innovative breakthroughs come from the maverick because they sit outside the box the entire time. They never want to get inside the box, and they're always thinking of new offers, new pricing, new strategy on how to get this particular deal to close. The problem with that is you can't replicate that. Mm-hmm. And it's you, you can't, um, you can't tame it. The Maverick, uh, the maverick cannot be tamed, but they are, they're very necessary for the innovation because they would not sit in the box. Um, they're always, they're the most creative out of this, not because they want to, it's just they don't know how else to behave. Mm-hmm. Um, they like breaking rules. Um, they're, they're, if you ever get a pers, a salesperson that said, Hey, the client is okay to sign, but they want this terms and conditions to be changed, it typically came from the Maverick because they're the ones, somehow they went there. Like, if I get that change for you, will you sign on? The fifth one is my favorite one. It's me. It's, I call it the founder type because you talked segueing from your previous conversation. When should I get my first salesperson? Do it yourself for the first million dollars, which means who are you? You are the founder seller. Does a salesperson who's employed can, can they behave like that? Absolutely they can. So this is someone that owns the business in their mind, even though they don't own it on paper, they don't have equity, but in their mind it's their business. So they're very invested in the story of why this business got started, what problems it came to solve, who the best customers are, and what their testimonials are like, what the, what the roadmap for the ops team is. And the product team is. Um, when was the last time this industry had a big regulation change? They are thinking just like a founder is. Ironically, they're not spending a lot of time on the phones. They're spending a lot of time in the organization. Mm-hmm. They are networking within the organization to help the company move forward. They are respected in every department that they walk into because they're like, oh, this guy's here. He might know something about this particular situation that we're stuck in. So the founder type is, is really good. The hardest to find, uh, simply the hardest to find. I don't know if you can train them. I think there is a way to just figure out it's mindset thing, isn't it? It's a mindset thing. They've previously been a founder. Yeah. Uh, that's one, one check I have of someone who did a business, didn't decide it wasn't for them, and that's okay too. Like you can be an entrepreneur and decide it's not for you, and then you come into a more job life, more stable, make commissions and make way more money than you were making in your business, which has been true for a lot of my friends as well. But they would, they would also be the type that, um, you know, takes part in their work as well. Yeah. It's very, very difficult these days to find, uh, employees in any industry or any function that take pride in what they, what they do. Yeah. Usually they've come in and they've got like, um, a target or a career or a number that they want to hit, and then either they move, move, move on, or, yeah. You know, they, they do something else basically. Um. Yeah, very difficult. And I guess that's a type that you as an entrepreneur, when you hit the million dollar, you wanna get that type of salesperson in from, from day one, right? Yeah. Uh, that's what I ideally want. Will you get that right off the bat? Potentially. Let's, let's talk about the conditions that need to be true for that to happen is you become, do you as a founder, become the salesperson for the company to your salesperson, which means you have surrounded them, um, and really given them the attention, love, and care to attract them in the first place. Kept in touch with them. Um, and um, you give them at, in, you can annoy other people doing this, but you give them more attention even in the office time and off, off office time as well.'cause that's, if you know one thing about founders, we're always working. So the founder type is always working. Mm-hmm. Um, I used to as a 24-year-old, keep going back to that 'cause it was a lot of my good habits were luckily from my first, um, stab at this. Saturdays and Sundays were workdays for me, um, because that's when I'd have the time. Saturdays would be to like, how did the week go? Sunday was more like, here's, uh, four scripts I need to redo and practice. Mm-hmm. I treated it like Hollywood. So I'd come up with these scripts and I'd walk into my own one bedroom washroom and just like, repeat the stuff out loud, looking at the mirror, you're confident you can say this. And then I'd say the whole script out loud. So that's a founder type, right? Mm-hmm. Like you're the, the charmer is not gonna do that. The maverick's not gonna do that. The builder's not gonna do that. The founder type on a Sunday is gonna be looking into the mirror and repeating a script that they're gonna say, or a, a new, uh, new way to say, a script to you. Hard to find, but you can, you need to sell to them. Yeah. If that makes sense. Why you started the business, why you continue and where you're going needs to be super clear to them. I didn't much need. That much validation as I just had higher goals for myself. Yeah. Uh, so it made me want to behave, um, in that way. And you can also kind of ask them around the interview phase, right? Like, who do you look up to in life? Um, and if the answers are like people who do their own businesses, you know, you have something, uh, you have something there. Yeah. So that's the founder type. Then there's the last one, which is, is just a wild card. I don't have any description of this because there's, there's a hundred million different types of salespeople you can find, and sometimes the wild card is the best card. Like you don't, you don't know if they're a mix of the builder and the maverick. There. There could be a mix of this, or they could sit somewhere outside of this. So if anyone finds a wild card or another type of salesperson, happy to hear about it. But I always leave some, you know, when we're interviewing multiple salespeople, see if they fit in any of these. Yeah. If they don't, then they're a wild card and sometimes. It can work really well. I guess on the comments when we release the podcast, you can yeah. Put down who your world card is and tag them as well. Yeah. Tell, just describe, describe their strengths and their weaknesses when, when we'll go find some of them for ourselves. So you've shared your journey of being a salesperson, and we've talked, spoken about the type of advice we would give entrepreneurs on how to sell and what type of person to bring in. And I think it's gonna be super useful for a lot of entrepreneurs. But you are actually also an, an entrepreneur as well, and you've set up a business with, with your, with your wife as well. Um, how have you approached sales? And because this is a very marketing business, right? Mm-hmm. So how have you acquired your customer and, and what made you choose what? Collectively? Obviously, Alina's a an expert in marketing, but you could have gone down the route of. Creating a sales training agency as well. Mm-hmm. So what made you choose this business and how has the sales process changed while you've been in the business as well? Mm-hmm. So a lot of caveats, uh, before I answer this question, because the sales part of the business was not something that was top of mind for me when I started this business. So as, as, as I started business, as I started this business, the backstory is that, um, I was working corporate jobs for 10 years, um, through line sales, account management, partnerships, leading people, all of that. I did wanna step away from sales for a bit because it can be emotionally taxing. It's, it's a lot of, um, I'm also an introvert, so I was looking for space in my life from, from people. I love people. It's just that my energy drains a lot faster as I'm getting older. For some reason, I think that's true for a lot more people. So for, for this entrepreneurial journey, I wanted to do something different. I'm also on, uh, on the side of being a salesperson, a systems nerd. Um, I love systems. I love processes I like because it's just objective to me. Maybe my OCD brain likes things in nice, neat boxes. So when we, when we first started, Alina started this agency as a freelancer. Um, she had, uh, good success, um, by herself. Um, and all entrepreneurs should do this. If you're starting a service business, call your closest friends, get them to be your clients. It's the way to start. There's, there's no other way to start. And she was very natural. Um. Uh, as a mix of, of these two, she is a charmer and a builder together. Mm-hmm. She's very well networked and she's very easy to listen to and she's smart as a builder as well. So those things really worked. Um, so we said, why stop doing that? If so, first lesson in there is like, if something ain't broke, don't fix it. And, um, that function wasn't for her, uh, to manage. So what kind of leads she would attract, which events she would go to, which appearances she would make, um, which, uh, parties and socials and, and lunches and dinners to attend was all on her, because guess what? She'd be doing that anyway. Business or no business. She'd be doing that stuff anyway. Yeah. Uh, the next part was, um, to get them into a discovery call, uh, which she had, uh, with my coaching. Kind of just set it up, but then she does it better than I do. Because she knows a product a lot better than I do. So back to your point, actually, this is a marketing agency and my background's in sales not marketing. So I've always sold better when I'm a nerd about the products. I'm the founder type, right? It took me some time to learn my own service and my product, so I stayed away from that. And in the first few years, all I did was systems building. So I don't know if you've read this book, it's called the E Revisit. No. It's by Michael Gerber. Uh, and it BA basically is written for technical founders. Um, to, and it's, it's giving them the analogy that just because you like baking doesn't mean you should open a bakery, because running a business is different than just baking, uh, a cake. You gotta look payroll, you gotta look at bills. You have to look at shop timings, you have to look at leases, you have to look at legal stuff, you and building a business. When I read that book really early on, I decided to go and build all these entrepreneurial systems that the business needs to turn it from a freelance practice to a place where people can come and apply to work and customers can have a journey. So, versus a freelance client, you just have a phone call, you sign something, you come on, you pay, you get delivered. It's just, you know, you're doing it as, um. As a non repeatable service. So we set up, um, I took some time to set up our guides, our, our backend systems, our task management system built completely from scratch, from in notion project management system built completely from scratch. Um, team collaboration methods, our, the language that we will use, the SLAs that we will have, basically do all the boring COO stuff, um, because it allowed me to do deep work, right? You don't need to have a lot of communication when you're doing this work. Yeah. So I could be tucked away into a room for three, four hours at a time building these systems all by myself. So I, I really enjoyed that. I still do to, to this day. Um, and if there's any, like, I don't, I don't love sales. Um. I love what it does for me. I love that it helps me make my income, but as a thing to do, I am okay with it. You know, it's a means to an end. It's a means to an end. And, and I treat it like that and I take emotion out of it. I don't have to love everything that I do. You can't be passion, you can't absolutely be passionate about everything in your business. Right? But this was something I got passionate about, about building the systems, uh, the backend of that. So, but at the same time then there was two years, three years worth of data of how our sales are doing. So, which is AKA, how is Alina doing? And then we start taking that apart and start turning that into a process. And that's when my operational or the, the CEO of mine comes in with my chief sales officer mine. Like how do we supercharge this? Right? How do we like, um, take this into a process that if Alina and I were not to do this, can someone else just blindly copy this? And that's the stage we're at now. And it took five years to get there. I thought I'd be here in two, three years. But as any new entrepreneur that comes into the game, you're not gonna know anything for the first five years of when you do business. You think, you know, uh, but we're still learning. Uh, I'm still learning. And do I have the best sales process for our own agency? It's, I would say no. But then again, I set the bar too high because I know too much. Like when you've been inside Fortune five vendors and you've been in fast growing startups and you see all the potential things I could be doing, I would rate myself as six outta 10. But that, for me, that's exciting.'cause I like the climb from six to seven and seven to eight and eight to nine, and nine to 10. So we're in this V four version of digital sales that we're building right now. I'll tell you the biggest thing that we've changed as a part of our sales process, um, is, and this is a very important point for entrepreneurs too, your avatar, your target customer. Decides everything inside your business. It's one of my recent insights about what's the one thing that changes the entire business. If there's one thing I could pick, it's the avatar. If you have a certain avatar, then your pricing has to match that avatar. The people you hire has to match serving that avatar. Your branding has to match that avatar. Um, your income cap, uh, can be based on that avatar. The moment you change that, everything changes. So let's say you're going from selling SMEs that do less than a quarter million dollars in sales. You have a certain way of operating as a marketing agency. Um, you have your own caps and limits and strengths and weaknesses based because you're serving that. But if you wake up tomorrow and say, I only wanna serve businesses with a million dollars or less, you can't be the same agency anymore. You can't be the same company. You can't do that overnight. So the shift from going from one avatar to the second is massive. And that's where we are, where we're taking that avatar and rethinking it a lot and moving to a very different avatar. So it's, it's actually changing our journey, our onboarding, our sales decks, our discovery calls. It lit. It has changed every as. It, it's changing our pay structure for employees. It's changing our pricing. Um, it's changing whether we need to do this as a remote business or we need to get an office. Like all those different considerations are now coming into play because of the avatar. So I'm, I'm back in it now. After having taken a break from building sales processes because it wasn't broke, why fix it? Well, it started breaking, uh, at some point. And now we're, we're in this journey where. We're taking the next six months basically to redo the business based on a different avatar. I think one of the things that, um, I agree with is as a entrepreneur, you're constantly learning. Um, I think it's not just five years. I think it's lifelong because if you are, if you are growing a business, because if you are, your challenges in year one are completely different to year three and year five and year 10. Yeah. Um, and you need to constantly adapt. In the startup world, it's even more, um, it's a massive learning curve from day one because you have to, you've got one year or 18 months before your next funding round. So you have to be able to learn all the things you need to learn. To go from a business in that is one to, you know, 10 times its size as well. Um, and for me that requires a lot of learning. Um, and it requires a lot, a, a good support structure to kind of help you with that, whether it's mentors or being an accelerator or, you know, having a group of other entrepreneurs that you can kind of dive into to kind of learn, learn from as well. So I think that's something that, if this is one thing that entrepreneurs should take away from this podcast is learning is very, very important to constantly learn to help you, help you grow your business as well. I totally agree. And learning never stops. And I, I know you're saying that the, the nicer way to say it is like, learning never stops. But what I would, I would say in my, my words is, failing never stops. Because we're constantly failing at multiple different things. Um, and I'm not ashamed to admit it, but that's just a life of an entrepreneur that now that I've come to learn, it's not, um, all ro roses and, and rainbows and unicorns and butterflies, but it's just constant failing. And that learning for me, uh, particularly has been, you know, these kind of things that you've mentioned, the mentors. And if, if for someone that is listening that is more tuned like me, more introverted, doesn't like to go out that much, hard to have conversations all the time with people. Podcasts are your best friend. Mm-hmm. Like they go, do you, in your years, do your chores. Go out for a bike ride. Go for a walk. There's so much information out there. Yeah. I would suggest don't be so picky with what you're, just go and, and listen and watch stuff. Take what you can from it. There's always something to take what you want because no one knows your exact situation. So everyone's gonna be talking about their journey, their, their generality. For, if you're listening to this, if you walk away with one thing, you wanna change your business. That's ROI right there a hundred percent. It's, it's not like you need to take notes for the next one hour. What these guys start talking about and how many things I can implement. Just take, take that one line, circle it, put it on the wall. That's the only thing I'm focusing on and move from there. And that's, that's how we're finding, uh, feet through our failings and, and keep going. But we're here. We're still here. That's our, my, my main thing. Um, and I can admit this is my main aim in business. At one point in like year one was like just to survive another year when I got to two years just to survive five years. Now I'm at five years. Just to survive 10 years because the compounding results will come much later. Yeah. I think will come much later. We're still babies in the business world. You know, if you wanna feel old, uh, think about Facebook. It's 20 years old now, 20 years old. So things take time. Things always take longer than you think they will. And there's, uh, there's always more, um, failing to happen before the winds happen. So I say that with optimism. I don't say that as a, as a down thing, but this is a fun part of it and a challenging part of it. For sure. Yeah, no, a hundred percent. A hundred percent. I wanna also talk about husband and wife dynamics in your business. So there are entrepreneurs who solo entrepreneurs, they left their job, they're a technical expert, they set up a business, they're doing it on their own. Um, you have other entrepreneurs where. Group of friends, uh, they get together, they set up a business, and they have partners. Um, in my industry, you tend to have a lot of partners, a partnership model with accounting, um, because you need technical experts compounded to sell that to your, uh, to your customers. There are some structures where you have family businesses as well, and that's quite prevalent here. Mm-hmm. So it's not just national businesses. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So you'd have Ava, their children coming in, um, uncles, um, you know, brothers, sister businesses as well. Um, and they all have their kind of pluses and minuses. Um, sometimes the common theme for a solo founder is that they just wanna, you know, they want it to be their business. They want to grow it, but there could be some limit into how fast they can grow it. Whereas when you have a partnership. You know, one plus one is more than two, uh, as a partner, because there's more you can do as, uh, as partners. Obviously there's a higher chance of failure as well. Um, what's your for, for, for the entrepreneur who, you know, is married or has a partner and they both have a common interest in terms of what they can do, or they have complimentary skills in a business. Mm-hmm. What kind of advice could you give when you are setting up a business with your husband or your wife or your partner? Um, what kind of advice could you give? What, how, how has that been experience been for you? Um, and do you, you know, would you recommend it? You know, when you, when you, when you, when you wanna buy a red Honda, all you see on the street is, is Red Hondas, right? So when we started our business together, husband, wife, we're like, nobody does this. And then we look around like, everyone does this. So we're not the first ones. Um, I can only speak from my experience. Um, Alina and I have been, um, friends before we were married. Um, and we have the luck of trying our first few businesses before digitally, now before, before one actually kicked off as a way to test testing grounds, um, can we do this together? And none of them were. None of them were like grand plans to take over the world. They were just cute side hustles that we just wanted to see and do, because we both had an itch outside our jobs that we wanted to try something out. So one thing to note between her and I, um, she is a zero to one person. I'm a one to end person. So she's good at bringing things to life that don't exist. Uh, and she's the ideas girl, so she can go out there and really, uh, create something outta nothing. Um, I'm the one to end guy. I take something that exists and I improve it. I'm the improver. Um, so she's a idea. I'm the improver. Uh, and we have our lanes decided in everything that we do based on that, whether it's home or business, that's, that's what we do. So, life planning, Lena does it, but life optimizing based on the plan. I do that and the, and the execution, right? Like it's very hard for me to, uh, dream and, and set up goals. Uh, she, she finds it much easier. So I outsource my goals and dreams to, to my, my wife there and my business partner, but. Some of the funny businesses that we did. Like she had this idea, we were living in Canada, uh, and she looked at her a wardrobe and she had all these daisy wedding dresses, and she's like, what a shame, I'm never gonna wear them. And they keep moving from one wardrobe to another wardrobe in a storage, because you're in Canada and there's aren't that many weddings. And, and a girl like wears one dress, can't wear that this next wedding because she has pictures in it and videos in it, right? So she had this idea, she's like, Hey, what if we set, we just, just go and like, take everyone's wedding dresses and not wearing and resell them. We went around, uh, drove in like winter minus 40 to all our friends house. Like, show me your closet. Okay. I'll pay you $5 for that. I'll take that for free. You wanna give it to me? Do you wanna keep it? Do you really wanna keep it? Okay, I'll take it for free. We set up a gallery in our house, in our, uh, apartment. Uh, we invited everyone. All our friends said, yeah, if you set this up, we're totally calm. Yeah.$40. Yeah. I'll buy something. Crickets. Nobody came. All of that stock was lying there. We were like spending weekends, um, dry cleaning it and putting in tags and setting up Coke studio in the background. Nobody came. Uh, luckily there was like eat festival in the city that we went and like, kind of gave it all away and, and, and broke even on that. So we had a few stints like that, that we kind of tested out, like what would it be, uh, to work together. Like are we good at like, Hey, if you could do this, I can do that. And then keep rotating, rotating that roles. And you, if you wanna start with your significant other, start on something small, start on a side hustle, start on something non-consequential, non-big capital. I wouldn't say I, I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't jump into a thing together. Uh, the next thing I would say is when she decided to bring me on board, um, one of the reasons that we stated for ourselves is that, hey. Family businesses do really well in, in the ua. We look up to a lot of them, like, wouldn't it be nice to have a generational business? Um, but I can't do it on my own. You can't do it on your own. Maybe we can do it together. Uh, okay, what do we do about disagreements and this and that, that came up. The thing that we noticed about husband, wife businesses, that's different than a brother and brother or a friend or friend or a cousin or cousin, is that you eat from the same plate. So you could be two brothers, but you have your own wives and you go live in your own houses. You're eating from two different plates, which means your incentives can be different, which means your environment and your activity and your goals and everything can be different, which is what basically causes that rift in between. So step one, risk mitigation. How do you avoid the risk that was, wait, well if this messes up, it messes up both of us. So incentives are truly, truly, and truly aligned. So that's one thing, uh, that I would say. Um, and the other part is. One of you gotta know how to do sales. That's just the basic of it. Um, either the husband or the wife, one of one of them has to have a sales and marketing, um, mindset. Even if they don't have that job or if they don't have that career, they need to have that because two product-focused partners, whether husband or wife or not, it won't matter. The other thing that people ask us a lot about is like, Hey, don't you get tired of seeing each other? And the answer is no. It's, I don't know what to tell you. Like, it's, it's, no, I don't get tired of seeing her. Um, we did initiate some rules, like

after 9: 1:04:44

00 PM we can't talk business. Mm-hmm.'cause then you take it, you know, to your, until the lights are out, you're still talking about like, what about this and what about that?

So after 9: 1:04:52

00 PM no business talk and create clear lanes. So we had. Um, even though we were doing less than a hundred K at that moment, we gave each other roles. So you are CFI became CFO. Um, she became, uh, chief Client Officer. I became chief operations Officer. She became chief team manager, you know, uh, or HR and, and hiring. We set up those roles. We gave them job descriptions. We found stock images to represent those people and put them on our notion board as well. Like, so as you know, we were talking to each other. I was like, I, I'm talking to you as a CFO, and I need to talk to you about these things. So you need to delineate your personality outside the business to an in the business kind of person. Um, things you should also avoid hallway conversations. So it's so easy when you're like, if you're working remote and you're at home, you're passing by the hallway and you're like, Hey, remember to do this. Or, Hey, wouldn't it be great? Do not do that. Treat it like a normal corporate job where if you have an idea. Set up a time to meet and talk about that or send an email or send a, a slack message. It has. If it's not written, it didn't happen. That's one of our super one. No.'cause we missed a lot of this stuff'cause we'd just be around each other so much that you can't take all this verbal information and store it anywhere. Hmm. But if you have an email from a person about a certain thing with a clear subject line and the next steps align. So we were pretty good at systems ourselves, both of us and how we work. We set up those systems in place on how to communicate, when to communicate, how much to communicate. It's all gonna be set up. And, uh, the tough part about being, um, as, um, a couple in a business who's very, um, close to each other is that if you're both feeling down, there's a possibility for the whole thing to compound. So one of you's gotta take the responsibility that if the one person's feeling down about the business, about life in general, things happen, right? Mood swings happen, the other person's gotta maintain neutrality or optimism. And that's we, when every, every time we start seeing both of us going together, one of us kind of points to each other be like, I am sinking. Can you help? Or, you know what, I'm gonna pull myself out to pull you out as well.'cause that's one thing that we've, um, we've had to fight o over, um, this year, for example, when we've had our first child and we're both, congratulations. Thank you. And it's not that we were going down and compounding that we were just overjoyed with having a child that we're both kind of over spending time with our daughter.'cause it's our first and she's gonna get spoiled. And then some, some of one of us have gotta be serious about the business, right? So, so we, we luckily we, we caught ourselves. Right, right on, on time. But yeah, find, find a way to be the opposite energy when required, uh, for the two of you. Great, great advice. Yeah, great advice. I think we'll wrap it up now. Uh, you've been a great guest and thank you for your insights. I'm sure the, uh, listeners will really, uh, take a lot from this, uh, from this episode in terms of, uh, what things are you working on at the moment? What's the best way our listeners can, can get in touch with you? Cool. Yeah. If you are, uh, a business that wants more customers, talk to us digitally. Now that's what we do. We get you more customers, more lifetime customers. I think the, the thing that most of our clients love is that, um, you get a predictable inflow of leads based on strategies. So if you're looking for that, reach out to us. Also an investor in po. So if you're shooting your podcast somewhere else, please don't just, just come here. You'll see I've been a loyal customer. Yeah, you'll feel the difference. I don't need to tell you why. You just need to come here. Uh, you'll feel the difference. Um, and that's pretty much it. Ooh, I am potentially kickstarting my, my podcast. Can I nerd out about this for second? Of course. Yes, of course. So I've been playing with this idea of, uh, building a Disney style, um, entrepreneurial. Infotainment kind of thing. It's, it's a decade long, two decade long project. But the center of it is a podcast where, think of it from a Disney perspective. You've got the Disney movies, then you've got the Disney comics, then you've got the Disney TV shows, then you've got the di Disney magazines, then you've got Disneyland, then you've got like licensing deals, you've got Disney toys, and you've got, so Disney's done this really well, right? They're really spread out, um, and everything feeds into each other. So if you've done a comic book, likely to watch a movie, likely to get a toy, likely to go to Disneyland and everything kind of loosened into each other. So one of my visions, um, hopefully if it comes true, would be to build that for business content in the UAE, the Disney of business content. And some they have. A podcast on Netflix. I don't know, but I gotta take a step. I've done 50 ish episodes already of the podcast dormant for a year, so I need to bring it back to life next year and have more conversations like this. I look forward to it. Thank you very much for your insights, and we'll put all of these in. Uh, we'll, we'll put this all in the show notes so then our listeners can look, can, uh, look, look you up as well. I love it. Well, thanks for having me, man. This was really fun. Thanks. Thank you for joining us on The Alphapreneurs Podcast. I hope you enjoyed the show. Please subscribe and give us a five star rating and a review. Your feedback is appreciated. For show notes and more, check the link in the description and connect to me on LinkedIn and search for Rayhan Aleem. See you in the next episode.