I’ve met many people in my life who’ve done well for themselves despite not having the top skill. And I’ve met many people in my life who are struggling despite being very good at what they do. I think this is because of the phenomenon that I term as “will over skill”.
I’m a a staunch believer that most businesses just need to be run long enough for them to succeed. There’s no short cut to compounding. Most skills can not outrun what compounding growth does to your business. If you grow your business on a very small scale but do it year after year, you’ll have a very large business at some point.
And so if you’re losing will despite having skill, you’re not going to make it. But if you have will despite not having skill, you’re more likely to get somewhere.
The skills would either be acquired at some point, or hired if they can’t be acquired.
I achieved many of my goals by the time I turned 24, and most by the time I turned 28. Of course, my goals weren’t as big as many others have. They were rather small.
I tried to find happiness in things outside of work accomplishments and financial success and also tried to live a modest lifestyle. I also slowed down at 28 because I felt burnt out by working really hard in the past 10+ years. I felt that I don’t have the same kind of energy anymore that I used to have before, and I turned lazy.
I understand this could be a controversial opinion, and others may disagree. But I think laziness isn’t as bad as it sounds. In fact it can be good. Initially I didn’t like the fact that I’ve turned lazy. Even now, sometimes, I don’t like it especially when I FOMO about interesting opportunities. But I’m in a transition to becoming what I call the lazy entrepreneur. I haven’t achieved the status properly, but I wish to.
Lazy entrepreneurs wish to move from being CEO of 1 company to having CEOs for multiple companies. Unfortunately, I have already achieved being lazy but haven’t yet mastered the art of being a lazy entrepreneur. Although, it’s a journey I’m excited about.
I’ve often worried thinking about this. What do you do with all newfound time if you’re going to retire early. How are you going to spend decades with no productive way to spend your time. What is early retirement and should one aim for it or not?
Since recently, I think I’ve started to get answers for this. Early retirement doesn’t mean that you have to stop working. It just means you don’t work for money anymore. You only work for happiness. You only work to get your adrenaline fix. And you only work because certain work milestones make you incredibly happy.
There’s a huge difference between getting to choose what to work on and going to work early in the morning everyday, even if you’re sick, to work on things that you don’t want to spend 1 second on.
I also feel, it is only after you’re mentally and financially free, you’re going to deliver your best work. You’re going to unleash your true self and potential. You need this kind of freedom to do your best thinking.
So by all means, plan your early retirement. And then set on a journey to do what matters the most to you.
When I started this blog, I decided to write about all things positive. I wanted to encourage others to start their e-businesses and I wanted to motivate them and give them optimism. But it’d be unfair not to write about the other side. Because while running a startup, there’s no way you won’t go through the dark side.
Honestly, I didn’t want to write about this for as long as possible. At the same time, I knew I will write about this someday as it continues to bother me 6+ years later. But mainly, I decided to write about it as I spoke to someone yesterday, who is also a victim of these criminal digital agencies of Pakistan. And it’s just a reminder that nothing has changed in over 6 years.
Koolmuzone’s Closure
In 2013, I closed my first ever commercial project ‘Koolmuzone’. Since closure of operations, it has continued to serve content accumulating 15 million+ pageviews causing me ad revenue loss in the range of 10s of thousands of dollars. I did it because I was put into a difficult situation where I had to choose whether I will continue to conduct business with criminals, or move the heck on. I moved the heck on, and I’m happy that I did it. I was able to put my time into better projects where my business could flourish without having to deal with these agencies.
Why It Happened
Till 2013, I worked with one of the digital agencies that frequently advertised on my blog and represented clients from telecoms, consumer-goods, food & beverage etc. Delayed and unpaid dues was routine. The promised payment time was net-90 after the conclusion of campaign, which was already 60 days longer than the industry standard net-30. But unfortunately, they didn’t ever honor that either. The average delay was 18 months after the net-90.
Startups are often cash-strapped & cash is everything to a startup. And a delay of 18 months translates into a slow death for a company. One of the days, after following up with them for months, I had an argument with the then manager of the company. After exchange of hot words, I was given the ultimatum that forget delayed payments, I will never get paid.
On hearing this, I was left with no option but to reach out directly to the client that advertised on my blog. After speaking to the designated employees in the company, I was told that I’ve no business speaking to the client. Because client doesn’t work with me. They work with the agency, and agency works with me.
I don’t want to get into details of what happened next, but after reaching out senior executives in the company, I got paid at one condition: no future business. I said my goodbyes and moved on.
Other Instances
It wasn’t just one digital agency. There are others that contributed to this criminal cause. Another agency that represented an ISP, declined to respond or make payments altogether. After speaking to client, I was offered a dinner to make up for it which I declined.
Yet another agency that represented a multi-national restaurant brand declined to make payment and stopped responding altogether.
Another agency that represented a local snack brand did the same. I was neither paid, nor given a response.
I fought for the larger payments and was able to get those by reaching out to clients. But small clients and small campaigns stayed unpaid forever.
It Affects Everyone
I’m not the only one affected by these agencies. Almost every independent publishing company in Pakistan has to go through the same process. If you’re not big enough to have legal teams to challenge big agencies and even bigger clients, just keep your head low and move on.
Yesterday, I spoke to someone who has not been paid over 5 million Rs in ad revenue for months by these same agencies.
The Bigger Picture
While it may sound like a story of only bad business practice, there’s a much larger impact happening. Just like traditional employment “brain drain”, where talent exits the country in order to find better employment opportunities, similar thing is happening for entrepreneurs too.
It’s already less profitable to choose to work in a singular market like Pakistan instead of reaching global markets, and that coupled with these practices make business nearly impossible in Pakistan. As a result, entrepreneurs exit local markets and make products that serve global audience where the revenues are higher, and payments are instant.
Even for e-commerce, those serving global markets have a 3-day payment cycle. While those working in Pakistan on cash-on-delivery and local gateways, have to wait for weeks if not months to get their cash.
Conclusion
These agencies are startup killers. They killed my startup and will continue to damage and destroy many other indie publishing companies in Pakistan. I want to conclude this with a popular quote by the founder of Seagate who said
It is important to remember when starting and growing a new company that cashflow is more important than your mother
Alan Shugart
and everyone knows mothers are really reallyreally important.
I love internet. I have always loved it and I’ve always thought of it as a friend of a common man. It is an equalizer for sure. It makes the boundaries thinner, reduces some of those “visa restrictions” we have to participate in a global world. But internet is still far from perfect. And that’s okay. But I feel it’s also not moving in the right direction. And that isn’t okay.
Internet was meant to be decentralized. It put the power in everyone’s hands. Until we started to see a few corporations taking more and more control making it centralized again.
As a marketer, I was always told by other better marketers that email lock-in with your customer is everything. I was told that Facebook will lure you into buying likes and then change algorithms. Twitter will do the same and Google will mess with your SERPs too. But email is forever. You reach out to your users on 1-1 basis with nothing between you and your users.
Unfortunately, with Gmail powering roughly 50% of all email addresses in the world, that is changing too. Emails are now controlled the same way Facebook controls your pages, and Google controls your SERPs.
Gmail categorizing emails as Primary, Social, Promotions & Updates reducing distribution, readership and snoozing notifications.
Think of it like this; email address is no different than your physical address. Imagine if the post office decided for you which mail should reach you, and which should they keep. It’s messed up, isn’t it? I think it is. And I’m against centralized control like that, especially on lower level protocols.
Other email providers are also categorizing emails, snoozing notifications and reducing readership in the similar manner as Google.
From the user’s point of view, may be it helps reduce the noise. But as a business owner, the inability to communicate 1-1 with the customers, who opt in for this communication, is not just unfortunate, its unethical on Google’s part.
If you’ve read a few posts on this blog before, you’ve probably already heard of my co-founder multiple times. I have worked with him for about a decade now and while sometimes it has been a challenging and bumpy ride, it has been rewarding in the end.
I’ve mentioned him quite a few times here because my stories would be incomplete without mentioning him. Because he had a role to play in every one of those stories and in building each one of those businesses with me.
Startups are hard and exhausting. Sometimes you’re gonna hate yourself for even wanting to try to run one and you’re always going to need someone who can take control while you’re going through the burn-out phase.
Each individual founder also brings unique skills and vision to the company which can be great.
YC funds less than 10% companies with solo-founders. They encourage you to have co-founders and even often offer matchmaking. I believe in the power of co-founders.
That said, there are many successful companies built by solo founders. One of the largest companies in the world, Amazon, was founded by solo founder Jeff Bezos. It’s also how he became the richest man in the world by having higher equity in the business. So going solo can make you really wealthy if you’re smart like Jeff.
But to be Jeff, or any other solo founder like him, you need to have super powers, which if you believe you don’t have, I encourage you to find a co-founder.
Just make sure your co-founder has these three attributes
Intelligence, energy, and integrity. And if they don’t have the last one, don’t even bother with the first two.
I have spent a lot of time on the internet experimenting hundreds of different ideas and trying to convert them into businesses. During the process, I’ve met and known many people from each one of those areas of experiment. Most experiments didn’t last more than a few days. Some lasted a few weeks and a few in the end became businesses.
I’ve been lucky to have found many mentors in many of those areas and I wanted to thank them publicly as it is because of them I was able to achieve many of my goals. I think chronologically it would be my father who introduced me to tech. Followed by Zeeshan Shafquat, who I believe is one of the greatest internet marketers in this country. Aamir Atta who helped me make my business profitable for the first time and gave me the vision to see through. Ehtisham Khan who introduced me to Viral Marketing and opened endless opportunities. And Saad Bassi who showed me the power of scaling and helped me reach where I stand today. I recommend each one of you to follow these people and learn from them. I also recommend you to look around and find mentors among your peers.
I also feel mentorship is the second best way to learn, after experience. Traditional education, while important, comes way down in the list.
One of the major downsides of Pakistan is lack of mentorship and knowledge-sharing. The very best don’t come out in the limelight making space for fake influencers.
I’ve been rejected so many times in my life. For a very long time I actually thought that I’m gonna have to struggle with food as soon as my parents stop paying my bills. I thought that because I was constantly getting rejected.
After finishing my high school (FSc in my case), I was rejected twice from joining the military in Pakistan. I’m not even sure today why I applied, and glad that it didn’t work out. I appeared on the NUST Business School merit list, but later turned down by them after the interview. They decided I didn’t deserve to study business in their prestigious school after meeting me in person. My provisional admissions in some other universities were also cancelled after the 2nd year (12th grade) results came in. My parents had even paid the admission fee. Pakistani kids can imagine that I was in real deep shit.
I joined the first university I could after that. I think spending 4 years there was a good experience. It helped me become who I am today. Bahria produced a ton of entrepreneurs from my peers. I got to know many people who are today massively popular musicians, movie stars, film-makers, photographers, bloggers, product creators etc.
If you’re in the digital space chances are you already know about Saad Hamid. Taimur Asad came out to be one of the most popular tech bloggers, not just in Pakistan but pretty much in the world. Ghaus Nakodari, the kick-ass founder of Jumpshare. Adnan Shafi, who recently raised $450,000 for his startup PriceOye. These are just the people I was friends with at college. There could actually be countless more.
I don’t think Bahria was doing anything special with education. I just think they weren’t punishing students hard enough, like other top Pakistani educational institutes. And I think that let the natural talent come out of all these people. Which is everything that matters in the end. So if you’re struggling with university right now, don’t sweat about it, everything can and will work out.
Anyway, back to rejections again. It took me 6 years to make a profit at Koolmuzone. And in the end I had to close that profitable business for very external circumstances. I’ll write about it someday.
When I finally got a break, I was turned down by the most prestigious accelerator in US. Some rejections taught me great lessons about myself and I got great value from them (accelerator rejection). Other rejections helped me learn about the sad state of affairs of so many institutions (Pakistan’s education system in general). And some rejections helped me realize how misfit I was and they were nature’s way of putting me away from the course not intended for me (military).
But none of them let me down, or stopped me from my ultimate destiny. Rejections will either add value in your life, or will be net-neutral, but in the bigger scheme of things, I don’t see rejections ever taking away value from your life. You have to keep trying and never give up. And this is mainly for younger folks, stop sweating about rejections. It all works out in the end. Not just for me, but for everyone. Everyone is someone in the end.
This blog post isn’t about Fiverr in general. It’s about freelancing, which I think is a great place to kick-start your internet journey from. I mentioned Fiverr over other platforms because it starts as low as $5 and that’s a great point to start from. But I’ll get back to this later.
Back Story
As already mentioned many times over, I started in 2002 with a homepage, a music site and a web-forum. Given that I didn’t have $50 as a teen to buy a domain or a hosting, it was difficult to get started. Many other young Pakistanis and people from other emerging countries face the same problem even today; investment. They don’t have money as little as $50 to start their internet business. Which is why I love Fiverr. As a kid, I didn’t know you could earn a living on the internet by providing services. I only knew about the display ads and running a website needed investment. That has changed drastically over the past many years.
Why I Love It
You can basically get started today if you know anything at all. If you know a certain language, you can translate. If you are a fluent speaker, you can provide voice-over services. If you can click, I think you’ll find a job for that too. For clicking thousands of times everyday. And I love all of this because it is the simplest way to get started. It requires no money, little skill, and you can start selling. This is why I love Fiverr.
I also love Fiverr because selling services is not just about having a skill. It’s also about marketing, sales, customer service and more. And running a gig prepares you for all of that. You learn everything about selling end to end. Along the way you can make some mistakes, and it’s all going to be fine. Your customer only pays very little and expects a few mistakes. He’s gonna be some-what patient with you. Fiverr teaches you a lot. I think the hardest part is making the first $100 online and Fiverr makes that easier. $1,000, $10,000 and beyond comes fairly easily compared to the first $100.
So if you don’t work online at the moment, go ahead and sign up at Fiverr straight away. But if you’re already working as a freelancer, keep reading.
Why I Hate It
As mentioned already, I think Fiverr is a nice starting point, but just that; a nice starting point. I believe in value creation over the long-term, passively or actively, but over the long-term. None of that happens on Fiverr, or any other freelancing platform unless of course you’re running an entire company or agency over the freelancing platform.
One of the greatest investors ever, Warren Buffett, says
If you don’t find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die.
I believe in that. In making money while you sleep and it’s just not possible if you are only trading time against money. Time is limited and it is going to only make limited money for you and of course only while you’re awake and working.
Blogs, on the other hand, could provide long-term value. You could keep making money for many years even if you stop updating, or leave altogether. You could also sell it in the end for at least 20X your monthly profits. Software as a Service would also build long term value for you. Instead of providing your service individually and only once, you could be offering it to everyone again and again building not only nice monthly recurring revenue but a great value asset at the same time. Youtube channel, Instagram, Facebook Page; all of these can create long-term value. It doesn’t just have to be one of these things, but I highly encourage you to build a product or a user-base, no matter what kind.
Because I feel freelancing is great, but products are the shit!
Where does Bitcoin get its value from? It is an ever confusing question with no single correct answer because Bitcoin means different things to different people. Some say the scarce fixed supply which makes it rather rare to own is what gives it value. Some say the value comes from the event of halving of mining reward every 4 years making it even harder to obtain. And then there is bitcoin mining cost incurred due to computational power and electricity bills to keep the bitcoin network secure, which sets the floor selling price for the trading market. The average cost to mine 1 bitcoin at the time of this writing is $5,200. I think the value comes from all of above, and more.
In 2013, we had a large scale influencer marketing business running. We worked with 300 influencers and used their social media’s influence to drive traffic to content websites and e-commerce stores. The problem was it was difficult to run this business from Pakistan. Influencers were spread in different parts of the world. We had to make weekly payments (300 x 4 = 1200 transactions a month) to stay competitive in business and the banking infrastructure in Pakistan wasn’t just easy to run this kind of business at least in an automated manner.
While speaking of these issues at a conference in Mountain View, CA , I got advised by someone who had come from Germany to attend the conference. He asked me why do I not use Bitcoin to solve this payment crisis. That was the first time I heard of Bitcoin and had no clue what it meant. After looking it up on Google, I was blown away by the value this new invention offered.
Although we never used Bitcoin to solve that payment crisis, it made me believe that the value of Bitcoin also comes from utility like the one mentioned above. It solves a problem and that’s also Bitcoin’s value proposition.
Will Bitcoin trade above $100,000? I think so. Can I be wrong about this? Absolutely. I think there is a higher chance of me being wrong than right. Despite that, it still makes it an interesting risk/reward play.
Disclaimer: This is not an investment advice and should not be taken as one. I accept no responsibility for any loss, damage, cost or expense incurred by you as a result of any error, omission or misrepresentation on this site.
