Maddy N   0:38
Hello, everyone. Welcome to another podcast of Worxmate.
Today we would be discussing on very exciting topic I’m sure, which is, you know, a lot of people, you know, those who are thinking about coming up with a new startup’s new ideas, those who are already in the stage of, you know, growth, those who are already in the stage of growing those which are in enterprise are making. So today we have, you know, a leader who has been helping.
Leaders, mentors in the marketing space.
I mean this one statement would describe him like anything. He has been the kind of strategist that says he has defined in the marketing space, has helped organisation generate more than $800 million. Right. So Needless to say that today’s conversation will be more exciting. We’ll get to know. We’ll learn a lot. So today we have Asim Khaliq
Who has been mentoring has been acted as a, you know, he’s a also acted as a professor. He mentored various leaders, you know, across the globe.
So hi, Asim, welcome to podcast. 

Asim Khaliq   1:49
Thanks for having me. 

Maddy N   1:52
Great ,so Asim, we’ll you know, we would to begin with a quick introduction of yours. You know before we jump out to, you know, learning more from you. 

Asim Khaliq   2:02
So again, thanks for having me and my name is Asim Kaliq and.
I live in Canada and.
I started my journey of digital, you know, space very early in 1997, I graduated 1996 December and 1997 I started this digital journey.
And because at that time there was lack of resources and support available, so I learned probably everything by myself. But in 1999 I got introduced to e-commerce.
And I love that idea of the, you know, buying everything digitally. 

Maddy N   2:48
Right. 

Asim Khaliq   2:48
And from there on, I just, you know, got into this ecommerce, I build my businesses, I help many businesses.
And during this course, you know, I have learned probably everything you can imagine because as an entrepreneur you need to do everything but but later in my stage life I , I decided that you know. 

Maddy N   3:09
Absolutely. 

Asim Khaliq   3:16
If I’m doing everything for myself, it not gonna work because.
It has to be, you know, giving as well. So I started consulting because I was consulting mentoring anyways. You know, when I was running my business and actually I was using my pseudo name. So then people cannot track me.
And because sometimes you know there is a conflict of business interest in these kind of stuff anyway. So I help many businesses. 

Maddy N   3:40
Right, right. 

Asim Khaliq   3:43
And this is an evolution, you know, so each.
Key challenges bringing in on a new opportunity for me to learn new things and explore new things, and here I am. You know, I have probably mentored and coached more than 300 and 5400 people. I have worked with hundreds of brands I have built, you know several business of myself and successfully exit from those business. And today I’m talking to you. 

Maddy N   4:15
Great. Great. No, I’m sorry. I’m, you know, the way I’m excited for our conversation. And I’m sure once you know, this goes out on different platforms, people would be learning lots from you.
Asim right. So I mean, let’s begin with this question, right. So generally very often, right, we would find that lot of you know those organizations who are in existence for more than a decade, but all of a sudden one you know startup would come in the market maybe like less than two years and they’ll break the record.
Right. And they’ll make themselves a big space out in the market. So what is that one big shift that organisation do not see coming and you know ideally if they get some sort of a sense of an understanding, it can help their team to adapt it and apply it right in their organisation. What do you think about it? 

Asim Khaliq   5:06
Yeah. So that’s a very good question. Actually. I think many organisation with the great ideas, they fail after some time and if you see you know there is a pattern. The pattern is you know is entrepreneurship. So most of the businesses start by an entrepreneur, an entrepreneur are are the people who are always in constructive conflict with the things they see around. 

Maddy N   5:14
Yeah. 

Asim Khaliq   5:32
And they start their business. But what happened is after sometimes the
Indulge themselves into business operations so they’re entrepreneurial thing is gone now they somehow become, you know, CEO or founders and these kind of thing.
And they lost their and someone else, you know who’s entrepreneur they’re gonna come with their idea. So in my opinion, you know, you need to run your company. If you’re entrepreneur, you need to run your company as an entrepreneur.
And you need to always have this constructive conflict with the things around and keep evolving with the time and be a futuristic think about you know what going to happen after two years, three years, four years and try to, you know, build your business based on the future scenarios. Do not get too much involved in the business managers because you can hire business managers easily.
But you cannot hire entrepreneurs. 

Asim Khaliq   5:32
And they start their business. But what happened is after sometimes the
Indulge themselves into business operations so they’re entrepreneurial thing is gone now they somehow become, you know, CEO or founders and these kind of thing.
And they lost their and someone else, you know who’s entrepreneur they’re gonna come with their idea. So in my opinion, you know, you need to run your company. If you’re entrepreneur, you need to run your company as an entrepreneur.
And you need to always have this constructive conflict with the things around and keep evolving with the time and be a futuristic think about you know what going to happen after two years, three years, four years and try to, you know, build your business based on the future scenarios. Do not get too much involved in the business managers because you can hire business managers easily.
But you cannot hire entrepreneurs. 

Maddy N   6:36
Right. 

Asim Khaliq   6:39
And that is where you know me, many people fail. They need to think about if they can duplicate themself then you know, they can. They can be a no sustainable business. But if they cannot duplicate themselves that they need to hire other people who are good in other stuff of business.
And you know, keep evolving with the time with the technology as well and society overall. You know, this is how businesses are built. 

Maddy N   7:07
Absolutely. I  completely agree here. Right. I mean, I mean moving on the same note, right, a lot of times what happens organisation do not realise those early indicators, right? That may end up impacting their business or probably they may end up getting early sign from the customers that their businesses are not aligned or maybe meeting with customers requirement or need. I won’t say requirement more of need right when customer says hey, you know what I’m looking out for this and I’m not kind of getting it but you know what are those early signs?
It is that, you know, ideally
Organisations should focus on while they are trying to, you know, promote their product out in a either they establish in one market thinking about in launching the product services in Newmarket or it could be any, at least those who are you know, coming up with the new ideas and you know probably tried out their hands for 2-3 years and they’re getting those early signs and what they can learn so that they can pivot fast. I’m sure, right. I mean you have mentored so many people, right and you must be having some you know.
A lot of success stories to talk about. 

Asim Khaliq   8:12
Yeah. So I’ll tell you in a couple of couple of people I consulted. So then you know it gonna make more sense.
So I was consulting, you know, a business and they were pets, you know, pets store.
And they were little innovative about, you know, their product. I cannot go deep into their product. But what happened is, you know, they started with a very amazing idea and somehow they disconnected. Now they were making money. 

Maddy N   8:34
Yeah.
 

Asim Khaliq   8:42
They have good revenue. So when I started coaching, you know, the ceo I found that, you know, he is totally disconnected with with the customers. 

Maddy N   8:42
Right. 

Asim Khaliq   8:52
And he started with that thing, understanding the market, understanding the customer understanding. You know, the problem of the target market. But somehow in business management, he lost track and he become the CEO. He was talking to his team and this customer service is all about no closing tickets, losing successful ticket, no getting reviews. When I said you know.
Do you talk to your customer? And he said no. I have a customer service team.
I said that’s fine. Customer service team is is operations, you know, but as an entrepreneur, do you really talk to your customer? And he said, why should I talk to your customer? I said think about it. You started the thing by observing customer, talking to customer, validating your ideas. But now you’re not talking to the customers. This means you are disconnected and. 

Maddy N   9:28
Right.
Yeah. 

Asim Khaliq   9:49
Things evolve with the time.
So the yesterday’s problem today is not valid.
What is valid today is not going to be valid, you know? So he understood, he said. So what should I do? I said, OK, you can start talking to your customers. 

Maddy N   9:55
Absolutely. 

Asim Khaliq   10:03
And and you have better opportunity than before because before you were looking for, you know, people now you have, you know, hundreds and thousands of people and literally you can have, you know, some, you know, insight for, you know, discussion with the customer understand their behaviours, take your data and see you know if you can find some gaps and support some opportunities or maybe you know something evolved you know in your industry.
So I said this is what you need to do and this is I think in the core of of the problem that you know.
Management, they are totally disconnected. The customer, they did not talk to customers and when I was running  my business, I always have time for the customers every day religiously. I was investing one to two hours talking to customer and out of one business we build you know five businesses just because we’re talking to customers because The thing is you know customers were coming up with the problem and we were thinking about. 

Maddy N   10:42
Right.
Oh, fantastic. 

Asim Khaliq   11:05
This is a problem, can we?
Who automate this problem? Can we start something new? Can we start? So for example, we started our made to order uniforms just because we were getting calls from customers that they cannot find something in whole USA and they have, you know, different body types and they have struggle. And then we said, OK, I think this is a huge market. We validated it, we launched it and we were The Pioneers. You know, you made your made to order uniforms in USA. 

Maddy N   11:16
OK.
Right. Right. No, I think very valid point, right. Even today when I speak to customers it I, I mean I generally get involved myself in the early conversation with the customer because I really what I have noticed here is that when you are pitching your services or product to the customer that is when customer is actually talking about their problems with you because once they buy the programme or once they buy the product or services.
I mean that is there is a lot of buying already, right? So the opportunity to learn from them is probably lost later on you are just busy with implementation, right? And you are absolutely right. Because when you speak to them, they come up with those challenges and problem statements. Sometimes you feel oh you are you know it’s a very good idea. I mean, yeah, so that gives you a lot of understanding and lot of ideas and potential to mould your product. You know absolutely right. You know you need to stay connected with the customers. 

Asim Khaliq   12:05
Yep, Yep.
Yeah. 

Maddy N   12:27
But as you you know, I’m going to take more clue from the statement that the way you just mentioned that you know you came up with five ideas from the customers after learning more from the customers, right. So what is that one I-1 unexpected strategy that you’ve applied that has given you a great river, right, great amount of reserve probably you might not even have expected any thought. Oh wow. This is amazing. Right. And how does you know kind of worked out for you, which probably people might have thought, hey, you know what? Oh, this is not going to work or probably hey, I seen you know.
Maybe it may not have that potential, but you believed in it and you said no. I see a gap, a huge gap, right. And I think we need to work on it. 

Asim Khaliq   13:04
Yeah. Yeah. So that’s a very good question. And I would say in the first of first of all, you need to have a mindset, a mindset of growth. 

Maddy N   13:14
Yeah. 

Asim Khaliq   13:14
That you need to have growth and what growth means is you need to understand that and talk to your yourself every day and say that you don’t know everything.
The problem with many people you know in the industry, they think they they because they are in industry and they know everything. 

Maddy N   13:29
Yeah. 

Asim Khaliq   13:36
The thing is, first of all, you do have no idea. Everything. Second, you need to have, you know, a skill of listening to others and listening with empathy. 

Maddy N   13:46
Yeah. 

Asim Khaliq   13:47
Understand their problem, not try to, you know, solve things too quickly, but try to understand from where they are coming. So I’ll give you very specific example and you know about this made to order stuff, you know uniform. So I got a call from from from someone. 

Maddy N   14:02
Yeah. 

Asim Khaliq   14:06
And she said, my my husband, he always wanted to become a nurse, and now she got into private nursing school. But he’s a big super sized guy and I cannot find any uniform in USA. Can you do you have the size? I said no. If you’re thinking about ready to wear, we do not have it. However, if you give me some time, I can I can.
You know, find a solution. So I talked to my partner and.
Fortunately, he was from production, so he said, yeah, if we have fabric, we can, we can do it. You know? So I called in a couple of companies. We got the fabric. I called her. I said OK, we can do it, you know? And this would be the price she, she agreed. And we did, you know, first first run. It was just, you know, couple of scrub sets.
And if you’re thinking of we lost money on that thing because you know too much time and too much production time, you know everything patron making and everything. But during that process, I started doing some research that do we have enough market? And I was amazed that, you know we yes, we do have market you know, so  I called her a few times. I was talking to her because now you know. 

Maddy N   15:19
Yeah. 

Asim Khaliq   15:29
She knows you know the community. She knows in the struggle of, you know, the people with. 

Maddy N   15:33
Yeah. 

Asim Khaliq   15:33
Different, you know size and length and we started very small and we put on our website and we started getting order. So. So the whole story is you know first I was listening to her. I did not say we did not have anything. Thank you. I said OK, let me find a solution. 

Maddy N   15:55
Yeah, yeah. 

Asim Khaliq   15:57
We give give her the solution. We got the connection with her. We I started talking to her. I was doing another validation. It’s kind of, you know, building a business.
Just one call. 

Maddy N   16:08
Yeah. 

Asim Khaliq   16:09
And I guess you know, we hit million$ in one year, you know and and I’m talking about 2000, 2004, 2005. 

Maddy N   16:14
Amazing.
Or maybe. 

Asim Khaliq   16:20
And and we validated everything. So the whole idea is, you know, it’s not just, you know.
Provide the customer service in a way that you know, sorry, we do not have it. Sorry. Yes, we have it. You know, and that is the point I was making because if that call was taken by. 

Maddy N   16:38
Yeah. 

Asim Khaliq   16:38
You know and associate their answer would be scripted. No, sorry, Sir. We do not sell or. Sorry, Madam, we do not sell this right. But my answer was different. I my answer was what? So do we have that market ready? Like people are struggling with this thing and this become the whole business. And similarly, you know, I can give other examples as well. But this is this is a very good example. And I always take pride of that thing. You know it’s not the business. You know I take pride actually. 

Maddy N   16:43
Yeah.
Yeah. 

Asim Khaliq   17:08
Take the pride of conversation I had with her. It was so emotional, you know that. You know, he was almost, almost crying. You know, once once she got the item, she was. So you know, you save my husband life because this is what, you know his dream. You know profession is and you know, thank you so much. And I said this is this is the thing. You know, I could have just say sorry but here I am you know build a business and you know here I am. 

Maddy N   17:14
Yeah.
Yeah. 

Asim Khaliq   17:36
And it is. 

Maddy N   17:36
Yeah, absolutely, Asim. I think I what I really liked here is, you know sometimes sometimes we don’t realise the value, right? I mean it’s just not about building the product, but it is beyond the product, right. People may be having dreams as you mentioned, right. So you know and because you have that and as you rightly stated, in fact, you know people need to have more of an opportunity minds mindset rather than just looking at the product and saying yes or no. 

Asim Khaliq   17:52
Yeah. 

Maddy N   18:03
And you know, I mean, I’m sure right. I mean, a lot of, if I look at on the other ground, it’s more of a humanity as well that has come out. Hey, you know what? Let’s not always talk about product. But let’s look at one. Let’s take one step extra and try and see what can we do. And that brought to another opportunity for you, you know, knocking on the door and you capitalise it. But at the same time, you ensure that, you know, you also help the person fulfil the dream. Amazing story. Asim, right? I mean, and it’s a very small thing as you’re writing. It’s just a very small thing, you know, anyone could have easily said. 

Asim Khaliq   18:32
Yeah. 

Maddy N   18:33
What? I’m sorry, we don’t do that.
Right. And keeping that in mind, right, I mean, Asim, right? And I’m sure right, you might have done had a lot of post corrections throughout your mentorship programme. So generally, even I have seen during the consultant programme, I’ve seen right, people, when people send goals, they are mostly aspirational, right? 

Asim Khaliq   18:53
Yeah, yeah. 

Maddy N   18:55
And they are so ambitious. Sometimes the team is at, you know, team is on on the ground and you know, it’s like a pretty common statement. People say moon shot, right.
So they are on the ground, but they are thinking the team is on the ground, but the management thing on moon shot and there’s a huge gap that exists between the team and the, you know, the management expectations. So in such cases, how do you see, you know, some in, in cases like you know the framework like OKRs ask you know that can basically help them bridge the gap because eventually they have to have an alignment between, you know, the management sorts to the execution when people are actually doing a lot of ground work. So how do you see this? 

Asim Khaliq   19:10
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. 

Maddy N   19:32
Basically helping you know organisations thinking in the right directions and at the same time ensuring that the team is quite agile. 

Asim Khaliq   19:38
Yeah, so this is, this is again great point because if you do not have a process or a system, most probably you’re gonna fail like you could be lucky first time, but you cannot be lucky repeatedly. And OkR is a very good system, but the difference between you know, think big or dream big, it’s a vision, but sometimes just the motivation, the motivation and the goals are two different things. 

Maddy N   19:51
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. 

Asim Khaliq   20:06
Goal has to be financial goal because you are in business.
And it has to be a specific number now, in my opinion, goal is a one time discussion. You know you just set up the goal, but the real thing is how to achieve the goal and that’s the process. And for the process you need to have the system either you are, if you’re genius, you can create your own system, but you can take, you know, adopt some other system. So OkR is a very simple system actually. You know, there are other systems as well. 

Maddy N   20:23
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. 

Asim Khaliq   20:39
But OkR is a very small it’s very, very smart and easy to implement system. So when I implement as a as a consultant OKR
I, you know, do OKR in a different way. I said, OK, we have some cross departmental task as well. Let’s suppose if I’m consulting in marketing, we always have cross departmental you know interaction meaning you know with merchandising, with product, UX team maybe with customer service. 

Maddy N   21:04
Yeah. 

Asim Khaliq   21:10
Maybe with finance. So we need to define, you know, that where we overlap first of all, then we go onto the team level. So let’s suppose if I’m working with the marketing, I going to go with the team level and I going to say OK, here is the thing content marketing team, can you define your, OKRs you know and you don’t need to know in the whole framework you can just start writing the simple thing because this is my objective. These are the key responsibilities and these are the results. 

Maddy N   21:29
Yeah. 

Asim Khaliq   21:38
I can fine tune it. You don’t need to worry about it. Just write what you think is right.
And what happened is each team two 3-4 or five member team, they start writing their OKRs social media. OKR e-mail marketing. OKR you know content marketing. OK, R performance marketing. OKR so now they are making this OK RI so and then you know the merchandising. OKR and the other UX kind of thing. You know what we do, you know with other teams sometimes with the customer service operations as well. So we combine those OKR and then we become you know the departmental OKR. 

Maddy N   22:04
Yeah. 

Asim Khaliq   22:14
And then from other department, OKR we become the organisation. OKR and from the organisation OKR you set up the goal. 

Maddy N   22:14
Yeah. 

Asim Khaliq   22:21
So easy.
It’s not just, you know, to have the understanding of the OKR, but also the implementation, because at the team level they don’t care about, you know, what is their goal at the management level, don’t need to worry about it. You know, for content marketing, they have their OKRs, they just work on their OKRs and they are updating it. You know we are talking about you know, OKRs or what are the, you know, progress and everything and this is how we maintain it so. 

Maddy N   22:33
Yeah. 

Asim Khaliq   22:51
My point is, you know you need to simplify things.
What happened? I what happened? I realised that many times management, they talk in a management language at the very low level and they do not understand the what they are talking about. You know like these dream, dream big kind of thing. You know they do not understand. They said OK I am a content writer. I do not understand. 

Maddy N   23:04
Yeah. 

Asim Khaliq   23:20
How I can make you know $20 million extra in next three years or one year, you know, like I’m just writing content. 

Maddy N   23:29
Yeah. 

Asim Khaliq   23:29
So what you need to do is you need to simplify things at the team level and and the whole role of manager. 

Maddy N   23:33
Yeah. 

Asim Khaliq   23:38
Is not to, you know, overwhelm your team members with the complexities of the businesses. You need to simplify things, make things easy, make things which which can be achievable by individual or small teams, and take those pieces and you know, build the puzzle. This is how you need you need. You need to have the approach you know. So this is how we implement, you know, these kind of things. 

Maddy N   23:48
Yeah.
No, I think I really like the the moment you say you know don’t bring business complexities to the team, right? Probably they have no clue on that. But if you make it simple and easy for them to really relate to what they do and how they can contribute, I think that makes you know that makes organisations executing at a different level and probably help them in achieving that non short goals or what not they are thinking. 

Asim Khaliq   24:12
Yeah.
Yep. 

Maddy N   24:25
I think that in mind, right, Needless to say, you know, people would be, you know, kind of very excited, right? Because when Jyoti came and said, hey, you know what, I’m in this discussion with Asim and she shared the profile of yours. And I looked at, you know, what, $800 million? And I said, hey, you know what? I’m really excited to speak to Asim because, you know, this is one of my favourite question for you. So I would be more interested in learning from you that you know how you have heard, you know, organisations. I mean, I’m sure right throughout your career.
Many organisations you have them generate in, you know in a consolidated way or we can say $800 million. It’s a big number, big, big sum, right. And Needless to say, you know that proves your agility. That proves your creativity. That also proves your ability to think beyond all right and out-of-the-box that we say.
And I’m sure it is something which not only personally I like to learn, but I’m sure there are many other viewers who would also like to learn. So what is that? You know how it has worked and you know what? How you help the organisation wherever you have mentored where you have run your business, how it has worked out for you. 

Asim Khaliq   25:23
Yeah.
Yeah. So I think you know it, I need to update this $8 million. Probably it’s more now.
Because you know the in e-commerce.
You know, it’s a recurring business, right? So people have revenue.
Coming and they are growing the businesses. I can give you a couple of examples of you know how I can achieve you know, so I don’t need to over complicate this 800 million, this is just you know for me it’s a it’s it’s just a heading. 

Maddy N   25:53
Yeah. 

Asim Khaliq   26:02
The main point is you know when you go into an any business.
And how you grow that business, that is the most important thing and the growth means that each year the business is growing, business is adding more revenue and more profitability. 

Maddy N   26:10
Yeah. 

Asim Khaliq   26:20
And collectively, if you see, you know if someone is making 50 million, it’s very simple formula. If you have worked with 10 businesses and everyone is making 50 million, think about it, it’s become you know 500 million.
But probably my calculations are wrong. Probably it’s it’s more than 800 million, but I thought you know probably five years ago that probably I I helped 8,000,000. So I just put is this 8 million. So what is the important point is you need to bring a revenue to the businesses and revenue is not just one time you know event revenue is recurring #1.
And revenue with the profitability is the main thing.
Some businesses, they focus on the revenue only you need to have a balance of revenue versus you know how much margins you have. So if you want, I can elaborate you know, some examples that that’s gonna solve the puzzle that how you know people can really build your portfolio of you know this big numbers. So I’ll give you an example of supplement store and they were you know doing around. 

Maddy N   27:17
Absolutely.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. 

Asim Khaliq   27:30
Eight $8.5 million they have a good revenue, but.
Somehow their Road was stagnant.
And they wanted to grow, but their customer acquisition cost was getting high because they have just one model which is acquire customers and build this numbers.
So I I joined them as a consultant, as a fractional CMO and I said, you know, first of all. You need to change your mindset.
You don’t need to focus on the growth as a number. You know you need to think about growth.
In a balance of profit, customer acquisition cost, customer retention and then you know your revenue overall.
And fortunately for me, it was easy product relatively because this was vitamin supplement store. 

And what people do not understand, you know, when they have business that what kind of relationship people have with their products or the customers and the product relationship. So for example, if you’re selling a digital camera versus selling vitamins, that’s a two different product you have. 

Maddy N   28:46
Yeah. 

Asim Khaliq   28:46
Total different relationship between one customer and the product and the other. So in digital camera you going to have so many cross sell and upsell.
You know you cannot sell digital camera again and again and again, and you cannot sell, you know, 35 MMM lens 10 times to one customer. However, in this business, which is a supplement, you can literally do, you know, one supplement and you can sell this supplement again and again and again plus you can sell other type of supplements and the other type of you know.
Things as well to the customers. So you see the understanding of that thing. So I said first of all.
Try to understand from the customer point of view.
What kind of relationship they have with the product? Once you have that relationship understanding in e-commerce business, everything becomes so easy. So what happened is many customers, many businesses, they just go into checklist that we should have multi programme. We should have this programme. I said no, you need to think about your, you know, customer product relationship, your business model and then you go. So what I did is. 

Maddy N   29:42
Yeah. 

Asim Khaliq   30:00
Overall the strategy, I said ok , we need to work on customer retention more, so we need to have more frequency from the same customers that they need to buy more. We need to have recency, which means you know, we need to, we need to retain those customers as well. And then we need to have the loyalty from the customer so they can not only order.
For themselves, but they can also refer to us, and they can also build a community who can support us when even we are sleeping. So, like, suppose Reddits community and these kind of things. So what I did I I changed the whole mindset. I said yes, we’re going to have customer acquisition, but we cannot just acquire more than 20%.
Each time, so our ad spend is this much. Now we need to have other means of growth. Meaning you know customer loyalty programme, e-mail marketing, we change the whole merchandising you know.
On the website upselling cross selling, we started learning the data that how customer buy, what customer buy, what kind of things they buy, what kind of things we can bundle things up, what is cross selling. But what is up selling. So we you know see everything from the customer point of view and we change everything in just 3 1/2 years.
Their revenue was around 43-44 million$ and the profit was so high because The thing is they were not spending money on. 

Maddy N   31:29
Amazing. 

Asim Khaliq   31:36
On add spend anymore, they are. They are. But what happened also during all these things is they change their mindset as well. Now they are looking for solutions you know before they were not solution oriented they were just thinking about ads can grow their business and now they were thinking about no no, there could be other means to grow the business as well. 

Maddy N   31:38
Yeah. 

Asim Khaliq   32:02
So this is this is one of the case study. I always talk about because it is very cool.
And basic problem with most e-commerce businesses. They try to, you know, do checklist like I don’t I going to have everything you don’t need to have everything you need to understand your business your customer your product 1st and then you need to customise the strategy. 

Maddy N   32:19
Yeah.
Great point. I think you know that also brings a different perspective to look at. And then again as you rightly mentioned, you know people don’t need to go after some you know complex theory, but they need to look at something which is very missing and what is missing there, right. Keeping that in mind, you know I have last question for you, which is now a lot of you know if you see here lot of startups are coming up, people are coming up with new ideas, a lot of entrepreneur  are you know kind of getting born every day.
What would be your suggestions you know for them specifically, those who are aspiring to build their career in marketing field? 

Asim Khaliq   33:00
Yeah. So for the marketing, you need to have is a lot lifelong learning learning. You know, so first of all, you need to understand that marketing is not a clerical job. It is not something you got the degree or certification and then you’re going to sustain for next 30 years, 40 years. 

Maddy N   33:19
Yeah. 

Asim Khaliq   33:20
In some fields you could but marketing know even you know people like myself. 

Maddy N   33:23
Yeah. 

Asim Khaliq   33:26
Who have probably so many case studies when I go into any business.
I go with the curiosity of a child that you know, I don’t know anything and all the solutions are my achievements are irrelevant now.
But that is the first thing you need to have in marketing that it is how customer gonna behave.
You don’t know you can come up with with with the solutions, but this is first thing. 

Maddy N   33:51
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Asim Khaliq   33:57
Yeah, it lost you somehow.
I cannot see you.
Can you? Can you hear me? 

Maddy N   34:04
Just.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can hear you. Yeah. Hey, I’m sorry that I think my camera got switched off. Yeah, I’m sorry. 

Asim Khaliq   34:10
OK.
OK, you you want me to restart again or? 

Maddy N   34:15
Yeah, it’s OK. Please go ahead. 

Asim Khaliq   34:17
So in marketing, the second thing in marketing, which is most important.
That you need to have a mindset of.
Of a researcher, kind of. You know, you always looking for.
Some.
Win winners. You know, in, in, in, in your strategy. So for example, if I’m going into any business instead of creating you know the whole strategy.
And running, you know, one campaign. I’m always going to create, you know, 10 hypothesis. And I going to run, you know, small campaigns and try try to validate and invalidate things.
Otherwise, you know I cannot just put everything in one campaign and risk, you know, the whole budget and finance. So this is the second thing which is very important for any marketers that you know, they need to have experimentation mindset, that everything is hypothesis. 

Maddy N   35:08
Yeah.
Yeah. 

Asim Khaliq   35:19
Everything I need to validate, improve and iterate with the time this is second thing. The third thing is the learning. You need to learn every day. You need to learn something every day. You need to learn from data from customers, from outside. You need to have you know this thing and the marketing now is. 

Maddy N   35:25
Yeah. 

Asim Khaliq   35:41
Is very much dependent on technology. Now you need to have better understanding of technology because technology can shape your operations, your strategy, your vision, everything because.
Yes, conceptually you can create any scenario, but at the execution operation level you need to know you know what kind of text stack you have, what kind of technology you need to use these kind of things. So 3-4 things for marketers is very important. But overall marketing is very rewarding. No1 No#2 marketing is also very exciting because every day you go with the challenge and you try to solve it. 

Maddy N   36:19
Yeah. 

Asim Khaliq   36:20
It is not like some other fields where you know you just open your.
Tutor and start working on it. You know everything. Every day is a new challenge, so if you have this challenging personality, if you like excitement in your life and something you know, you can have the sense of achievement and the purpose. Marketing is great. You’re going to feel so good. You know, when you help people, you know. 

Maddy N   36:39
Yeah.
Absolutely, absolutely. I think I generally say this right, I mean I say that you know, if you’re in a marketing, one thing that you always need to keep in mind is you need to be a very good observer, right? Because marketing guy, you know, he is a great observer, right? So you go outside, you know, and your mind is constantly figuring out so many things that you say, you know what, this is really exciting. Yeah. You went to a mall and you have seen something which is very exciting. You want to apply that next day, you know, in your organisations. 

Asim Khaliq   36:59
Yeah. 

Maddy N   37:10
You have seen something you know when a guy is wearing a Tshirt and say, oh, wow, this is amazing. The marketing rate. So your your eye is going to catch so many things, but when it is catching, are you really observing right?
And as you rightly mentioned, I’m gonna link it to one of your important point that you mentioned. We need to be constantly learning and when you do that, I’m sure you’ll continue to grow great. Asim, so you know, on this note, I’d really like to thank you so much for sharing your, you know, learning for sharing your experience with us. And I’m sure who, those who’s going to learn our podcast is going to learn a lot of things. In fact, they’re going to, you know, probably just going to also clarify a lot of things that they might not have thought of here.
Right Asim, so thank you so much for your time today with us. 

Asim Khaliq   37:52
Yeah, you’re right. Yep. Thanks. Thanks again. Thank you. Take care. 

Maddy N   37:55
Thank you. Bye bye.