All right. Moby, thank you so much for being on my podcast here. Kind of the AKA not that Moby, right. So why don’t you start off and give us, you know, maybe a little background of who you are and what you do. Yeah, absolutely. So I, I like to say that I basically let’s talk on the internet immigrant to the U S since 2010. I started working at Dell in 2014. Mike hopes of being an entrepreneur, got crushed by the government in 2014, waited five years while building a podcast while doing stuff for free. And I’ve got my green card 2019. It started at capital factory as the accelerator manager got laid off in March, 2020 because of covert and now here we are the biggest themes I think that people correlate with being number one, being an immigrant in the U S and not being able to legally start a business while I was in college in the U S while working for Dell and then making a lot of content around podcasting, livestreaming, entrepreneurship, content creation in general.

This helped me take me where I am today, wherever the hell that is. That’s like, well I think it’s very interesting. So you were here for like nine years before you got your green card, is that correct? Is that the right math? That is the right man. That is insane. So you went to UT and even have your MBA from McCombs which is, which is at UT as well, worked at Dell and still no green card. So maybe give me the short overview of like what that process was like to get a green card. Yeah, so not so I was, but I came to the U S from Pakistan when I was 18, 19 and 2010 it was, I, you can’t get a green card when you were a student. You just can’t, I have to go, go from a student visa, which is usually four, four and a half years.

Then you would have a work visa and then that’s at least three and a half years until you can act. You get a green card. So mine was, I was student for four years, four and a half, join Dell. I took the first job I got, so I was like, they’re going to get me my visa. Hell yeah please. Oh my God. And then that was three and a half, four years of waiting on top of it just to get the green card because I went through two student visas to work these as I applied. And luckily before you know, immigration to the U S stopped, I was able to get my green card and it was this long process of waiting and applications and waiting and hoping that the world will not end. Man. That’s insane. So one of the reasons why I do have you on here and I just, it was kind of a side story cause I have no idea what that process is like.

So you’ve created this online for online first summit and I’m a part of it. I’m very excited to be a part of it by the way. So give us that, like the overview of why you did this summit and what’s it about? Absolutely. So I working as the accelerant manager for a capital factory, Mars 2020 happened in Austin, South by Southwest. Got canceled, poof. A lot of revenue for the company went away. Q two Q, three events, bullshit out the window. Coworker, a huge chunk of their revenue. No one wants to sit next to each other. The company’s revenue basically went down huge amounts and they let go of 50% of the of the workforce. Now, I was in this space where I was seven months after my green card that I could legally start something. I’d been doing things on the side.

I had a course, I had some coaching, I had a micro conference, had some paid workshops and I told myself one day I will have enough savings, have enough cards, Navidad know-how to go out on my own. When I got laid off after a day or two of processing, I realized what I really care about is digital content, digital businesses, digital products, and there’s a train right now, but that’s the only thing people can do. That’s the only revenue they can add on. And what if I match my desire, which was supposed to be in the future to the moment right now and help people build out distal revenue, get customers purely through online channels and build a business that has social distancing, comes back again, there won’t crumble. And we’re, yeah, I mean, right. So what I was going to interject there is not only just if that, you know, a covert like pandemic happens again, but for me like, look, we all need to get online anyway.

This has just expedited that and it has shown some weaknesses for some companies. And so there’s going to be a lot of winners and losers here and I don’t know about you, but I want to be on the winter side when this comes out. And I’m lucky that I am an online guy. I’ve always loved online ever since forever, ever since I could be online, I was, Hey, I could make money. I could sell this, I can sell it to somebody across the world. Right? Mmm. And so for me, and we do a lot of online consulting and as well as building websites, eCommerce stores, social media, all the online stuff for our clients, we were, we’re getting a surge of people even that’s been kind of doing it, wanting to go do a lot more of it or for people that are not doing it all, they’re like they’re freaking out but they’re, you know, they know that it’s not a well that’s a cool thing.

It’s like no, that’s how you could do business right now. Absolutely. I think that, you know there’s been, I wouldn’t say a trend but this move to online, whether you’re doing e-commerce and you’re selling products that you used to in retail online, whether you’re building a brand and using that to get clients outside of networking, whether you’re just posting it on Instagram. I see a lot of people doing their life coaching, their general coaching. They’re getting clients for services through online. But now it’s like we kind of have to, I’m not without this, that have to, might not have happened for a while, but now we kind of have to operate online. Cause there’s no other choice. And from our side we want to kind of help people with that gap. And honestly, dude, I don’t know everything at all. That’s where we’re having 60 70 people do it. And I think it’s an interesting time where there’s going to be some time-based trends which time-based surges. Oh, a virtual conferencing software. Yes, doing great, doing great. But the trends that will come out of this in three, four, five years that we can’t imagine. That’s interesting to me and I have no idea what those are going to be. Yeah, I love that. It’s like, Hey and I would like to, I would say some of the stuff that I don’t know about either. That’s what’s great that you have this, this massive of people, 60

70 speakers that are going to cover a wide range and that’s the great thing about the internet is the shared knowledge that could happen. And very quickly, walk me through, because I know you kind of have a plan on the setup of, I don’t know whether it’s database or whatever, but you kind of have this structure that you’ve talked about on some of the online videos. Maybe walk me through the structure of the summit, right?

Absolutely. We’ve broken it down into, well first off, our first name was horrible. It was called, Oh shit. Kobe 19 happen now. And I called a bunch of people and they said, that’s horrible. So I, we took in the Nisha, we are not going to solve this whole big problem. We’re going to go into digital and what do people really need to figure out when they’re going into a digital but digital business model and being like, what do I do now? So we had four days that we had planned and we broke down a day by each track. So it’s one track per day. Day one is all about deep diving into digital business models. How are people currently operating the back end of their businesses? How does a membership site work? How does a course business work? How does e-commerce work? How is the shift from retail to online going this deep diving into how these businesses operate so people can have a structure in their heads.

Day two was all about how do we get customers online where that’s social, that’s through ads. Community online. That’s what LinkedIn does. Subtle content, how to get customers and day three and four are day three is how are people currently pivoting so that I feel represented like, Oh, someone like me is kind of pivoting and doing this thing that stayed three and day four is kind of like our fun day, which is preparing for an unknown future. So we have a bunch of panels talking about is what happens if zillion listening comes back again. What’s the future going to be in three months, three years, six years, nobody knows. And that’s kind of our fun day to end it all.

Yeah, I love it. I think there’s so much to be taken away from there and I’ll be excited to listen to other people’s panels to see what they talk about. So, okay. What about you? What’s, what’s, what’s your, you’re going to have this great summit then what’s your plan like? What do you see yourself, you know, coming out of covert, like what are you think you’re going to be doing

Great questions. So what we’re building, I am fully aware of what we’re building is a product like online for our summit is a product and we have to make a business right? And this is just going to be one of the products that we make. I ha I, I started coaching two, three months ago about content because in college I was dot confident, had no self esteem, didn’t really want to put myself in places over time through like purposely putting myself out of my comfort zone, doing improv comedy, going out, being social, trying podcasting, trying live streaming, trying video and actually enjoying it. I build this process of okay this is how you kind of get over the fear of making content and putting a face out there. So I started coaching on that. Since the layoff I got a few more coaching clients. Somebody is talking to me about consulting and I’m trying to figure out if we should make a manage a professional services firm, professional service services firm, which helps people make content, whether it’s individuals or companies.

And I’m really trying to figure out what, how do I position it so that it’s a pain and not a want because it’s economic crisis right now a lot of people aren’t opening their wallets. How do I position that, those services and the ability to make content and talk to your customers in a way that’s valuable to people. Like yes, we cannot go without it. And then, and a lot of people ask to be questions like that cause I do a lot of consulting and usually my answer would be if you were actually asked that question, I know it’s rhetorical for yourself, but is your customers are going to tell you this? You just said keep doing it. You’re not going to probably have that answer by thinking in your room. You’re going to have to, you’re going to have the answers with more people you help and touch and you’re going to figure out where that sweet spot is the more you do.

Right? So anyway, that’s my 2 cents. What about that? Oh, the super useful. I hug. Agree like how this conference changed. It was me basically be on calls being on call to me like, is this good? Is this bad? And so you’re a hundred percent right. So I, I have a kind of question that you touched upon there. So a lot of people want to be more online as a personal brand even. So they want to maybe create some, let’s just say, let’s role play a little bit. Say that they’re a real estate agent, right? And they 100% I believe. And I have some real estate clients, but you gotta be like doing live streaming. You gotta be out there. Personal brand is everything. But a lot of them are just nervous or scared. How do you, how do you tell somebody like that to how to get, get them started right?

To create some video content? Yes. So the foundation of it is not too well. The foundation of it is not the first thing. I have to make the boring. Same. Sorry if I curse shit, which is I sold a house, look at this, look at this. A lot of people marketed as buy from me, buy from me, buy from me, buy from me. And what we’re trying to do when we do that is show that we’re valuable and that I as a real estate agent can help you. Cause I’m telling you, I don’t think it works like that because we see 5,000 ads a day and I see ads which promised the world by people who are making so much money, they’re respected. And I say BSBs, I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you. You’re not for me. You’re not for me. Yeah, for me.

But when I see any kind of vulnerability or a story or that person showing how they help somebody else, I’m like, Oh, that’s interesting. They’ve gotten me on a hook. So if it’s a real estate agent, I would be like show as you deliver value. So as you’re talking to clients, coordinate interaction and record an interaction of you walking them through a house and just find the camera herself and show, Hey, this is the kind of questions those people can’t answer cause you’re showing yourself showing value to other people. Record how you work. Like go and live stream something weird like you’re in your car driving up to the house. He’d be like, this is the kind of ways that I’m thinking about educate your people about what get into their head. Like what questions do people have? Not that question. What were the say agents do that go for it.

That’s not really the question they have. The question is how do I finance, how do I make sure that I find the right house for me? How can I make sure that I find something that I can afford and how do I not get how do I get the right house? Start answering those questions. Fear questions too. You know that a lot of people are scared right now, you know? Yeah. So I love that too. To break down. I think what you said there. So my takeaways were, you know, provide value, don’t just show off, nobody is paying attention. And then also I think record the process. It sounds like, you know, I think some of that, and I think that’s one of the things that people miss is they try to come up with this full amazing solution. They’re going to like, you know, write out a whole list of things to talk about.

And sometimes it’s like this, show me the behind the scenes a little bit. Show me what you’re doing, tell, tell me about what you’re thinking. You know, it doesn’t have to be a perfect presentation. Okay. So I want to dive a little deeper into this like literally. So I love that. So I think now that that’s the foundation of what you should be doing. What about actually like getting from the camera and turning it on? Like, cause you do a good job of just creating content on a regular basis. How does somebody get over that hump? Yes. I did not get over it super quickly. It took a long time. I bought my first lights in 2015 for 2016 it’s been long. I haven’t used them by the way in a video ever. But it’s taking the tiniest step possible that you can and repeating it until it comes very easily to, so if you are, if you want to actually make a teammate video showing something or talking about something specific, I would make it an Instagram story first and talk for 10 seconds.

Or if I’m scared to do that, to take a photo of yourself and write it out and do that so that it’s, it becomes a thing of photo. Taking a photo of yourself and posting that value is easy and be like, okay, I’m going to post a please second video or a ten second video. I’m just going to say, Hey guys, this is what I’m talking about and post it and over time inoculate yourself against that fear. I don’t want to say just go do it because that’s just weird advice. It is not helpful. I would say it’s take the smallest step and repeat until that step is so boring. You’re like, I want do something new. And from that you go to, you could take a time lapse, you could make a talking head, video, live streaming and over time become this thing where it doesn’t scare you as much.

I love it. I do think baby steps is a great way and just start, you know, whether it’s like you said, I think I love that takeaway of Hey look, take a picture, make a list, write it out. I then shorter, short video, little longer video, a little longer video because you will get more comfortable. One of the reasons why I did this podcast is literally just a one network and B to become a better listener. And three get myself more accustomed to be on the other side of the camera. I’ve had a, yeah, a photo and video company since 2009. So I’m really comfortable on the other side of the camera. But so okay. What about, all right, we have this foundation now we were finally comfortable of getting in front of the camera. How do we maximize that? Cause I see your videos.

I haven’t followed you for a very long period of time, but you’re kind of, you pop up a lot. So do you know any tips or tricks there? How to maximize the exposure? Actually after you’ve recorded that video, after you recorded the video? Yeah. Like posting it like, you know, like anything that you, that you see that actually works or any value that you have of somebody that like finally got over the hump of hitting record. But now how do they do it? Like where, where is it? Bet a bet. I, you know, I see some captions there. I see a lot of this stuff. You know, I don’t know, maybe I’ll let you take it from there. Awesome. Perfect. So after recording the video, the three things which are optional but you can slowly work yourself up to number one is just music which you can get for free on YouTube music library, so much great music.

Oh my God. I use hip hop music as a background and I love it. I can like jam out to it. Subtitles, which you can hire out if you want, but definitely not necessary. You can do that later. And number three is, which is comes on later is cuts, which is if I’m talking and there’s pauses, I should probably cut the pauses cause we have the attention spans of a hamster tick. Tock is going to kill everything, every social platform in a while. So I think we’re used to ten second videos and it’s gotta be fast. But when it comes to posting the video, I think it’s not outright saying it’s writing copy, which has some emotion. For example, I just promoted the summit today through a dramatic really dramatic ass video. And we’ve really talked about summit. But in the copy I shared the story of I didn’t live through the Mmm dot com bubble.

I wasn’t here when the OIC session happened. I was on the other side of the world when 2001 happened. And this is the first time I’m going through this and this is why doing it. So communicating why and a story of something in your caption, which is slightly irrelevant to the video hits two points. It allows somebody to read your stuff cause they’re going to do that a little bit before watching the video. It allows you to tell us two separate stories and also write down your test out your copy. Sometimes people don’t care what your video is and they’ll write or just reads your copy. And that’s what I’m testing out right now. Copy, which is story and vulnerability and just music edits, music cuts and subtitles for videos.

That’s great. So I do, do you see you have a two week content bootcamp, right? So you know the stuff we’re talking about right now, is that kind of similar to what you guys do or maybe give me a overview of what that is?

Yes. Two week content boot camp was I basically dumped everything I knew by making content into this course, which which is in 10 days and it goes through life streaming, live streaming Canva, timelapses what to share, how to share it, how to make a personal brand counter network, how to host events and dumped everything in our goal. My goal of course is great value, but it’s positioned badly. Hundred percent. I haven’t even tried to sell it three months after I made it, but that’s horrible marketing. But it’s true because it’s not the signature course that we’re doing. It was something we built and I think it’s an immense value and teaches people all the skills but it’s too white. It fits and it’s too broad. We’re trying to like nail it down, but I honestly, one of my biggest passions and right now is helping people make more stuff online and just beat president. Have fun with it. I mean, how was your, how has your journey been with podcasting? It’s, it’s been way above and beyond anything that I thought I would be. I write, I have like

22 countries listening to me, which is crazy. It’s not a massive number of people, which I never, I don’t care about the numbers here but most importantly like let’s just say that I had five listers. I’d be still happy if they were active listeners. But the biggest thing has been meeting interesting people that are doing interesting things. And that to me is like extremely exciting. And then I’ll get like these random people, right that will make a comment or send me a message that I probably haven’t liked a post ever or anything like that. And it’s very interesting to, to know that

You get the reach all these EV, everyone everywhere. I mean not everyone obviously, but I don’t know, it’s just been this, the negative thing is only time and it’s time well spent. Aye. Aye. Aye. And before Cova had a lot of a momentum and it did back me up a little bit.

But again, and it’s so funny cause it’s almost eat my own words with, you know, e-commerce wise, I’m T you know, yelling at people to get online. But I was not doing virtual

Podcasts.

And I think because I wanted to control I am somebody that has the problem with perfection a little bit. I wanted to control everything,

Have really good video, set up, multiple camera angles, the whole nine yards. But what’s great about this is eventually I was going to have to do it anyway to get a bigger and bigger guests. They’re not coming to you like it’s just not happening. So it’s forced me out of that that initial comfort zone that I built for myself. Right. but it, it’s fantastic. I highly recommend it doing anything that you have to do on a regular basis. This is released every Wednesday, so I’m forced to do it. Forced to line people up, forced to get in front of the cameras, turn the mics on and rock and roll. Mmm. So I guess my next question would be so actually let’s, let’s talk about the fire show. So we’ll go with that direction. So we’re talking about podcasting. So you’re like 60 episodes in something like that and started 2015 somewhere in that vicinity.

Is that, is that right? Yes. I started podcasting because the government gave me no choice and that means because you couldn’t, you couldn’t take revenue from a business. I could not generate revenue from a business and I did. The only thing I could content that. That’s awesome. So even back then you basically said, I know I can’t make money here, but I’m still going to do something. Yeah. I just, I worked at Dell and I enjoy it, but I just, it wasn’t enough. And why do you think that is that you still was going to do a podcast with no financial gains? Like literally no, that you can’t make money. Yeah, I had that idea. I didn’t, I didn’t even know the podcast made money or that I was like, that’s just some people did a big thing of it. Was I the inkling of the personal brand, what it could be and then the fact that I could actually use this time to learn from people and like be like, okay, this is how you start a business.

When I’m able to legally do it, I can take that and use it. And why not share it. And I’ve, one thing is when I build something, whether that’s a website or a summit, it’s just I’m this, you might feel this too in her a different way, but it drives this sense of accomplishment and honestly, esteem and competence, which we all strive for. I mean, if I do something and I get some good results, I feel competent and I do that more and more. It is building things for no money made me feel competent feely thing I could legally do. And I just chased that feeling to be honest. That’s, that’s great. So what about, so you moved here in 2010, right? Has your life turned out so far in the U S how you thought it would like what was your kind of perception and reality?

Yeah. Well the first thing is, it’s true that in America everybody has red solo cups. What the hell? I thought those was a movie thing. Wait, wait, wait til you get the Midwest. I’m from Kansas. There’s definitely a lot of red solo cups there. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I honestly didn’t think I would be in the U S so long, which my plan for the first three, three and a half years in college was I’m going to go back home and I’m going to work with my dad or do this. My mom was starting a business back home at that time was like, I can help her. My family was in politics. My brother wanted to go into politics. I was like, I’ll just go help this family structure. But it’s that stupid thing that comes when you build something and you feel good. I built a small website in college that was dope fundraising organization that was fun. Find a job at Dell that was fun and then built the podcast and that was fun. And that’s just kept like pulling me here at the fact that I can build things so easily. Get in the hands of people so fast and get feedback and I’m connected with these entrepreneurship people who care about building things. It just sucked me in man. And my life is, I had no expectations.

Yeah. Yeah. I can definitely see how that happens. And so an another segue kind of, you were at capital factory, which is a lot of startups are there. It’s a cool coworking space. You’ve done some kind of advisor to a bunch of I guess doing a pitch events and stuff like that maybe. Yeah. Pitch coaching. Excuse me. Walk. Well maybe give us some advice there. Like when, when you did some of the pitch coaching, what was some help that you would give somebody ready to pitch? Right?

Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things is I had to tell this because people feel really bad when I sit down with them. It’s okay for somebody who has an idea not to have the messaging clear, because when you have an idea, do you have a thousand ways? It could be. There’s a whole past of why it happened. There’s things going on right, right there. And it’s okay to be like, I don’t have the perfect pitch. It’s okay to have, have somebody help you out at. The real thing is there’s only three things that matter in any kind of pitch. I feel like number one, people don’t understand what you’re doing. Like they get it, which is who’s your market? Who’s your problem? What’s your solution? Number two, they believe that the problem you’re solving is big enough for that market and your solution can actually solve it, which is they get that there’s value in this and there’s a market opportunity and number three it’s they feel like you are the person or the team who can do it.

So if they understand who your problem, what’s your, the problem is your market, your solution and then Oh you’re solving it in a way that actually can be solved and people can make money as investors, as partners or they will be customers. Why are you like, I’m not the only one doing a summit. I don’t know. There’s probably 85 summits going on in Austin in may, but why would someone come to our summit? Why would someone bet on us if there were no less than us? And telling that story is the way we do it. I and I love pitch coaching. It’s been really the warning and like watching somebody win live on stage $360,000. Well when I helped them it was like Whoa, we screamed a lot that night. That was, I think we’re getting a common theme here. Like you know, and I, I feel like I’m quite so somewhat similar in this way, but the steam is as you get real excited about being involved and helping giving back and helping people and getting around them.

Mmm. So, okay, you had the summit that happening and it’s crazy cause you’re throwing this together in like a month. Walk me through a normal day in your life right now. Yeah. So today, Oh well so do you know the program called 75 hard? No, I did not. So that’s just quick context. 75 heart is a 75 day program made by Andy Facila and it’s a mental discipline challenge. It is five rules a day, two 45 minutes work at two 45 minute workouts. One of them has to be outside. So weights and walking, gallon of water a day, progress photo, no cheat meals. And then 10 pages of a nonfiction book. I did that twice. So I’m also kind of informally doing it right now. So currently my this week is wake up, shove a lot of food in my mouth. I think about what I have to get done, look at my email and an hour later their first interview starts.

I do that. I focused on somebody for a while and then go work out more interviews. I could do the second workout, which is basically walking, check my email, do this, talk with my team, go and interview somebody else, pop on this podcast and then hop on a call with somebody from Australia and then take an hour long break and then do the backend of this to make sure everything moves around. So it’s not ideal this week, but usually I feel as if this is, I’m just more creative in the mornings, so I’m looking forward to having my days back. And are you like an early morning riser or what time do you usually get up us? I was going to say seven, but right now it’s a lie for sure. Hey look, look man, I’m like eight 45, so don’t worry. So cause I, but I’m a, I’m a, I’ve definitely, I’m a night owl.

So like that sounds like my best work is yeah, like 9:00 PM till like one in the morning. Oh yeah. Nobody can bother you. I don’t have to answer any emails. No phone calls. I think it’s very common for the, a lot of high producers are the 4:30 AM people. It’s the same concept of really, and I just don’t have you know, I’m married but I don’t have a family, so I think I’m able to do that. That might switch when I have some kids or something. So obviously covert is probably might be the answer to this one, but why, how did this project begin? So I know you got laid off, so this, by the way, you have a crazy day for somebody who just got laid off. So if people, right just got laid off from their jobs, they have no excuse after listening to this, they should be rocking and rolling like you, but like you could do a million things.

Why, why you start the summit? Great question. So we got, I got laid off in as 95 person call where 45 people got laid off through an email while you guys were on a call. So boom goodbye. Mmm. And the first thing I did was I, I L I opened up my expenses and I was like cut, cut, cut, cut, cut. Because my first reaction was panic. I walked to my apartment leasing office and said, Hey, I got laid off. I don’t know when I can next pay rent. Right. Cause I was like I just want to put that in their heads. And I came back, I made a video about it. That was the first thing I did, made a video about it, did not post it cause I didn’t want my parents to know I got laid off on Facebook. That would be rude.

And then I just process it, talk to a few friends really and just thought about what to do. But when I posted that video because I had it, I wanted to post it to three hours later. But time difference in Pakistan. I couldn’t post it. My mom said, wait. So I was like, eh, posted the video and said, I’m laid off. People start hitting me up. Oh, Oh by the way, I have this contract work. Oh do you want to talk next week? Do you want to do this? One person said, Hey, do you want to help me with my online summit? And I was like, sure, send me the link. This is at 10:00 PM at night. I look at the link, I recognize the platform that it’s being made on. And I had wanted to do an online summit for a year, but never had the time to do it.

And I thought, Oh my God, I can do an online summit. Purely emotional, purely reactive and like this combination of the now and this idea before in a very like instant, like, Oh my God, we need to do an online summit. It’s the perfect time. And that was it. I wish I could tell you it was an epiphany, but it was like, I like that. I think it’s great. I mean, a lot of times you had a high energy and emotional deal and, and an opportunity like that, that, that that’s how all of our big stuff almost happens, right? Yeah. Us thinking in a corner and writing stuff down sometimes works, but typically, typically it’s not the way it works. Right. So what does for, you didn’t answer this for the summit or you can answer this any way you wish, but what does success look like for you? That’s it. That’s a great, the question.

I think success for me means that I get to do what I want and not have to worry about things that I don’t need to, for example, the success for, sometimes when I think about it, I’m like, Oh, have this fancy car, have this beautiful house on the Lake. But it’s honestly, if I can afford two, it’s a Tuesday and if I work at whatever company for myself, if nine to two I decide I’m not going to do, I’m not going to answer any calls. Who’s going to work on creative stuff and I can hang out with my family and I don’t have to worry about the bills and I know the revenue is still coming on from the business. I’m good. Like I, if I decide next week I want to go, what’s some planning? I want to go on a trip. I don’t have to worry about the company not being able to run because I have competent or somebody else who’s helping me.

And if I want to just take off and being boxed on for a month, I can be like, Oh, I work a digital business so I don’t have to worry about having to be in one place. Honestly like before this, it was dreams of, you know, the stupid articles, 28 year old raises 50,000,035 year old sells business for two 50 million. It’s all crap and it’s a lot of status seeking which Indian entrepreneurship world there. It can be in, in the content world, especially for making video. The a hundred percent can be and it’s hard to be honest with yourself, but I, that’s my definition and I’m hoping it doesn’t change. I hope I can still afford a Lamborghini, but I don’t, I hope I don’t buy it if, if I do. Yeah, the difference is the choice there. But I think you know, time is that resource that is not something that you can recreate like money.

So you know, it sounds to me that if you want to be able to be the owner of your time and create content at when you want to as opposed to being forced sometimes or you know, to me I’m very similar. So like if I, if I was at a spot career wise to where I could just do a ton of like make travel videos, you know, that’s one of my favorite things to do. Oh, my wife and I, we make some cool ones. That could be the problem. That’s like the best weeks. Right. You know, go do a cool place and making and being super creative. Like that’s an, I get my best ideas when I’m doing that. Because your mind frees up a little bit. It doesn’t worry about, you know, you’re 150 tasks you have to do. Yeah. You have space. Yeah. Space. Yeah. so what advice would you give your 16 year old self? Like you’re in Pakistan, you’re 16. What what, what advice would you give yourself now that you’re, you know, 10 years older, I guess it is. Oh God.

Oh my God. I wouldn’t give him much advice. I’d just be like, yeah, well, well, well one thing I would share with him, it wouldn’t be advice, but I would probably find him the right story to sure. This principal that it’s okay if you feel insecure, fear, doubt. Everyone feels that taking action, you can take action despite feeling that you are brave. When you feel fair, you take courage. You are courageous. When you feel fear. Like I’m afraid of making things like this summit has kept me up. I’m like, what if it fails? And we’re doing this very publicly, but I’m, and w I’m making this struck us about it. What if it feels when I was a teenager, this would stop me. Like the idea of failing, of failing from other people would stop me. And now it’s something that I’m like, I could still do it, but I can deal with that failure emotionally. So I would tell my 16 year old self to like, well, I would share a kind of story which would help him see that it’s okay to take action when were afraid because

That’s the definition of bravery. You dumb fuck. Oh, I love it. What about any mentors along the way? Books, videos, anything that’s kind of helped you along your journey?

Yes. Mmm. It’s been stoicism as really helpful. Such a douchey thing to say. Oh,

I know, right? But I’m you know, I’ve got markers. There really is something like Kendall, you know, I’m there, man. I think it’s, you know, one of the things is when we talk about kind of a hierarchy or needs, you know, when a lot of those needs are met, you start thinking about like, how can I call my brain? How can I calm my life? How can I take more control of my thoughts?

So it is so powerful.

So I still, I still agree with it.

I still agree with it too. Every tech dude has like a Vargas release on his Kindle. Like I do too. I probably have the daily story there, which is dope. Ryan holiday’s books. Ego’s the enemy. Obstacles the way daily stoic, some of his other stuff. Just his podcast. Super helpful in just figuring out you are D owner of your world. You can’t influence everything, but your choices are the biggest thing that’s really helped. Mmm. The book traction, which is not the operations book, but the marketing book, blue cover, he talks about all the different ways you can get traction. Super useful. And then Gary Vaynerchuk, loud mouth, asshole. This is fantastic. I love that guy. But I’ve always enjoyed him. Crush it, man. That was

W w. I. L I have that. I’ve read that book like four times and it’s all marked up. I mean, I just have like, that’s back before Kindle days, you know? And I got like, I got chicken scratch all over it.

Oh yeah. Yeah. I love that guy. But there’s so many local people who were amazing too. Honestly, so many fantastic mentors here.

So what about any regrets so far?

No, not really. It’s probably could have started working out more earlier. That’s really it. Probably this is going to sound super horrible. Probably been more confident with women before. I don’t regret my other choices because I feel as if I made them in and we’re here, I got laid off and I think it’s the best thing that happened to me this year. And I think I ha ha ha MYM just like you, because of the tough times that we’ve seen, the crisis is the pain, the triumphs, the punches in the gut. So I’m curious about your answer

To that question of, of regrets. So I got a couple of them. You know, I worked for a large company and I do regret so they, they, I worked for arrow electronics and I was their director e-commerce

And I stayed there too long cause it was really demoralizing, creative really for me. And I really wish I wouldn’t have done that. That’s my kind of go to answer, but it was only two years of my life. But you know, and it wasn’t terrible. I also regret, I think that I’ve spent a lot of effort and time on and worked really hard on probably small stuff, meaning it, it gave me great experience in in kind of knowing a lot of things about businesses. And so really to make that point nice and short is I did a lot of hard work on small business stuff. Mmm. I still get that way. So I need to broaden that out on a more consistent basis because here’s the thing, we’re all going to like, you’re the type of person to definitely, I just timed you here, but this is how I am.

I’m going to work extremely hard no matter what. So that energy could, should I wish that some of those years were placing a little bit more of a scalable, more impactful, more effect, more lives than I did. But then again, it gave me a great experience. So I don’t completely regret it, but I’m looking forward. Cause I think that question is more what should I do in the future? That’s my answer for my future, right? Is how can I impact way more people on a daily basis. Right. Oh yeah. So what about, what’s, what’s, what’s a favorite memory? You could take it from just the summit or the fire. The fire show is probably a great place to take it. Like a favorite memory that has happened or any place you want to take it. A great question. This is one of my, this is one of my personal realizations about content and marketing, especially when it comes to personal brand.

This was 20, 19. This is three years after the podcast where I was sharing my journey. I’m building a interviewing the mayor, director of South by Southwest doing this, this, this, this, this. And it was all like, Oh, I’m podcasting cause I can’t make money outside. When I got the green card, I posted about it. Right. I made it a whole dramatic thing. I post, I made a video with subtitles and dramatic music when the letter came when I was at the office. It was just fun. I got it. And I hosted it and I got a bunch of comments right from friends and family and just people I knew and one person commented, Oh thank God that’s soap opera is over. And this was a friend. No, no, no, no. And I know how he meant it because he had gone to the same exact team and it clicked in me that I was marketing my journey to obtain this one thing.

And if I build a business that I want to sell to people, all I have to do is make content about the journey of it and make it a soap opera, like our content marketing for the summit. Somebody else handling the Instagram, then just killing it. But my other content is just a soap opera about it. It’s dramatic. It’s a little exaggerated and it’s fun and it’s not that serious. And that’s the biggest, one of my best memories. I’m glad that person commented cause that just made it like, Oh, I’m going to make everything a soap opera. Yeah. I think documenting more than creating one, it’s easier. You don’t have to come up with this huge, you know, idea structure and also is, it’s almost what can make you have an advantage over like say a large company or a large you know, conference people that have been around for 10 years.

They can’t tell this story that you’re telling now. You know indocumented journey. I think people become the goal along with you and during the journey. Right. Which is a lot of fun. Mmm. So, alright, let’s, let’s, let’s talk about I still want to talk a little bit about startups and I don’t know how deep in the world that you’ve been, but, well, maybe, because I think this is something that maybe that you’re, you’re going to do in the future is what advice would you give with somebody that has maybe an idea and wants to run with it? Start creating, whether it’s creating a business, we started talking about online without it you start creating content. How can they network with people wherever you want to take it, but basically somebody has an idea and they want to, they want to do something with it whether it’s a startup or even just a personal thing, right?

Yes, so I got into the startup world through three day startup, which is a three day program surprise about entrepreneurship that they’ve done on for students. One of the things they do is they teach concepts but they kick students out of the building on Saturdays and be like, go talk to wherever the hell you think your customers are. Call them up, go meet them, ask them questions and it just kind of put it in my head like talk to customers. Same thing we did with the summit. First off, I would try to talk to as many people as I can about it. Be mindful that not everyone is your customer, not everyone. Some people are going to be nice, like your mom’s going to be like, that’s a great idea, but talk to somebody that you think would be honest and be open to feedback because that will shape whether you are building something which has value to people, especially if the people that you’re talking to are your customers.

Second, I would not be afraid to share what you’re doing because no one gives a shit about your idea. Like my idea for summit, not that nothing I’ve done is unique at all. This is just the fact I’m doing it and I make a ruckus about it. It’s you sharing it and showing your journey of doing it gives you opportunity. It gives you inbound and somebody might like, I like what you’re doing, let’s connect. I get that a few times a week easily. Somebody is like, Oh, I saw your stuff. Can we connect? And I think I can’t tell them how to build successful business. Not on top of it, but those two things create so much inbound and feedback that you overtime figure out this is what people want and actually learn how to build it. That’s great. What about you know, I have a pretty well-traveled person, but I have never been to Pakistan.

Maybe give us a little idea of, you know, what it’s like there, it can get hot that’s hotter than here in Texas. Same, same. Really a very different like, Oh my God, society, there is, I have been in Asia or like places where there’s a lot more family structure. So I’ve been to cold places. Yeah, so I actually say this Valley structure of most of the places that I’ve been at have been like central America that have amazing family structures that are quite different than here. I’ve been like guitar and stuff. And I’ve been to China, but you know, that’s, those are, I wouldn’t say that I got enough glimpse of the, in the life of a normal person there in those places. Yeah. What’s the, the starkest difference is the mindset of people. It goes from, in America it’s much more individualistic and in places like box nine it’s just more collective.

You don’t think just for yourself. It’s not just my dreams and ambitions, it’s like what I can do for the people around me. Not always in a I want to do it, but sometimes you kind of feel obliged to work with your cousins, supports your family cause that’s how everybody thinks. But outside of that I to an all boys cadet style school for 12 years we had houses like Harry Potter. Wait. And it was a one 50 year old school and I was prefect for time, but it was, it was dope growing up with the same, a hundred to one 50 dudes playing sports. Mmm. My school had an entrance exam which had swimming in it, which was weird. I got traumatized because of that. But I really enjoyed my time over there and I would go back if it had the societal permeability that USS, which is, I can connect with really anybody, any company CEO.

If I can get to them and pitch them, they’ll talk to me easily. And I could go from one place to another and like go up the, not the ranks, but just be a prominent figure in any industry back there. If that’s not the case, I feel society’s a little bit more closed off. People are more guarded and it’s just not as much fun. Yeah. I think it’s just interesting, you know, and one of the things is, is all over the world. It’s, it’s different, you know? And yeah, the U S I feel like we always know so much, there’s so much pride here, which is a good thing in most, most of the, most of the time. But one of the things that I, I think a lot of people forget that. Like, look, we do have a lot of opportunity here.

You can go do what you want to do. Now there’s could be a lot of limiting beliefs and there is still family structures there too. I think one of the big ones right now is the whole go to school thing where a lot of people probably shouldn’t go to college. That might not, that, you know, might be a really good welder or something. Right. But or maybe just a sales person, like if you’re just going to be a normal sales pitch and go to school might not be the best use of that money. But so there’s still societal pressures, but you know, you can change from what you do one year to the next pretty easily here. Might take some hard work. So a lot of it yeah. Or a lot of hard work, but, but the opportunities there, which to me is the most exciting thing about yes. Living in this time period because I think that the internet has given so many people that opportunity to do what what they want to do. So kind of a wrap up here, kind of the last question I asked everybody how would you like to be remembered?

You’ve got some serious ass live questions in there, man. I dunno, honestly, like I, I think like my family and friends, I just want them to know the people who come, who would want to come to my funeral. I hope that I can just be thought of like I had a positive impact in their life by showing them the, they could actually be and do things that they want and to give them the tools to actually do it. And like, of course that would be the customers to people that have helped through coaching. But that’s it. I don’t necessarily want my company to be this, who cares what the company does. Honestly, after I’m dead. The people that I helped, they’re like, Oh yeah, that person has had a positive where a change in a pivot in my life and that really helped and I am happy because of that change, not just because of me.

That would be too grandiose, but I don’t have a lot of grandiose shit. I ambitious. But when it comes to things like being great or having a huge legacy, I don’t know, maybe ask me in 20 years I might have a very different answer and I would tell my 29 year old self, you’re an idiot. Well, cue it up here in 10 years. So well Moby was a fantastic pleasure to have you on the podcast. Very excited to be on the online summit here and what we got like two weeks from now. Don’t tell me it’s coming up quick. I think we’ll have to have a check in to see where we’re at after after the summit. See if the, if your life is Scott, the positivity that still has right now I think it’s gotta be two X the amount, but that’s so I think it’s very exciting, but I really appreciate you being on the podcast.

Absolutely. I appreciate you inviting me on being a part of that summit. And I’ll put this on the record. You have some dope suits by the way. Sorry. Those are done. Yeah, man, it’s a, you know what’s so funny is that headshot that I have, this is for everyone out there that says, Oh my God, I can’t afford a suit that I bought at Goodwill. So it’s my favorite suit. Beautiful. Perfect. Did he need to have to tailor it? Got lucky, of course. But anyway, that’s amazing. You got a lucky subtypes. All right, man. Cheers. Cheers.