How to Build a No Code Agency from Scratch - Zubair Lutfullah Kakakhel | EP 04

very early on when it was like a mad rush kind of like anybody raises your hand and you get projects and whatnot uh quickly hired to like six seven eight devs fresh Juniors who were training up learning bubble but and I was training up learning bubble and kind of like in the middle and then I hit a cap that I can't handle more I just like this not enough hours in the day and work-life balance is way crazy and that's when like it's basically okay I need to change the way everything works today I'm speaking with zubair kakahil zubair is the founder and CEO of a small no code agency called ASCII tech labs he started his agency in 2020 and has quickly grown it to a team of seven full-time Developers one thing I loved about speaking with zubair is that he's completely transparent about the challenges he's experienced as a business owner and also about the strategies he's using to grow his business today if you're thinking about getting started as a freelancer or if you have dreams of having your own agency one day this interview is for you together zubair and I discuss how to get your first paying client when you have no professional experience how to think about charging clients and how to Market yourself to attract more clients if you finish this interview and think hey that zubair guy is pretty cool I want him to build my app I've left the link to his agency in the description of this video and as always if you're enjoying these conversations make sure to like And subscribe without further Ado here's zubair I want to start with some advice that you would give to someone who is just getting started in this space who wants to go down the freelancing agency route that that you went down as far as I understand you're managing a team of seven developers now you're running your own agency and you started quite recently in 2020 so congrats on the success first of all that's amazing and I want to know what you would say to someone who maybe has the skills as a developer but they don't have this big portfolio they're just getting started they want to be their own boss they want to to build applications for clients what advice would you give them how do they get their first client okay so how to get clients uh there's many elements of this and sometimes uh what worked for somebody at a certain point in time may not work again for somebody later on I'll explain what I mean by that so uh there's the technical do you know can you deliver and the capability of the engineering and then there's actually finding somebody who has the need and then potentially convincing them of bubble or they may already know bubble okay so if I rewind back to March 2020 when I first started Bubble and everything the covert time the environment then was if you raise your hand i'm a bubble div there's like a swarm of people who are like we need a bubble left kind of happen now it's not the same so at the time like the the supply demands skew and the bubble Forum posts on like we need a bubble there we need a bubble level on the RFP mailing list we need a bubble left so you could respond and you would get it kind of response back and you would be able to manage to close it now it's uh not as straightforward I'd say there's there's still loads of work out there there's still loads of work out there I won't discourage anyone I think everybody should go into no code it's just like some of the advice out there may not be relevant now which is what I'm trying to get so uh if you have the developer skills if I look at myself I don't have sales or marketing skills all this now YouTube everything this is just like me trying to wing it okay so if you think it always depends like oh this got the YouTube channel and all this tweets going on I'm just winging it I have no idea what I'm doing okay so and this is just from one developer to another developer who's like everybody's winging it so don't be shy and try and keep winging it just keep doing something about it okay that's number one just do something and anything okay uh you have to be slightly go out of your comfort zone and going out of your comfort zone could mean go attend a local Meetup about startup accelerated incubator try and talk and just nurture conversations there going to a different community in slack or posting on Twitter but these will all be things outside your comfort zone which come under the umbrella of sales or marketing and with you may have the technical skills fine but you do need to do those at some point in life and especially for an agency or a freelancer and the traditional route of marketplace like upward Fiverr they all work as well and I I've worked there as well now I'm shy of them uh but they work there's loads of work there as well yeah so what I'm what I'm getting from what you're saying and I resonate with this too because when I started freelancing in in 2020 as well um back then you know I I found my first few clients I think just responding to Forum posts for people I got them as well with developers and yeah and from what I see too I'm not really uh freelancing at all anymore but from what I see just from the amount of of well just the amount of users in the space and the amount of people uh who are capable bubble developers now it is much more competitive so I think what you're saying what I hear you saying is if throw a bunch of darts and try a bunch of things get out of your comfort zone and and something will eventually hit yeah definitely get out of your comfort zone that's I think that's the if you had to kind of simplify in the one nutshell advice just get out of your comfort zone talk to people uh whether it's you're comfortable on Twitter fine whether it's you're comfortable on YouTube fine or LinkedIn fine so I'll be honest I'm on I've received clients from Twitter I've received clients from YouTube I've received clients from the RFP mailing list way back not that much anymore I've received clients from Bubble Forum I've received clients from linked I think LinkedIn I'm not 100 sure LinkedIn as well so it could be a YouTube video it could whichever medium and I've received clients like in person or slack as well okay so whichever medium works for you which is a bit outside of your comfort zone just deving won't work the bubble editor won't give you clients okay the profile editor won't give you clients unfortunately um and what are the common fears that I've heard it was certainly a kind of a thing that I was anxious about when I started freelancing is the lack of a portfolio right when you're on an interview with a client trying to win their business one of the questions that comes up rather quickly most of the time is hey what work have you done can I see some of your other work so how do you combat that question when you don't have a lot of experience to show potential clients definitely Catch 22 problem uh the first uh client the first bubble client uh I actually started building some of what they needed and actually like see this I can do CC it's so easy you could start seeing a shell of what was being built uh I did not have a portfolio at all so I I would say this is it depends on where the client came from if they're shopping around like from your like an upwork Marketplace or like some like if they know others then it's a different thing then it's you only have like price or your persuasion skills like that you have less leverage there because they're okay I have like x amount of money and I've got three four calls booked and if you're competing with zero portfolio and zero kind of thing it's a hard one because it depends and then you can just squeeze the I've lowered the price lever many times I'm like okay yeah I'll just keep lowering it keep lowering it until somebody says yes kind of thing uh but the first one I got from slack uh community and they didn't they weren't shopping around at least not bubble divs okay they were shopping around maybe WordPress solid it was a dashboard there's a dashboard repeating groups filters and that type of stuff and I started actually building the shell between and like we had like three calls and I'd like just way way over extend way over extend uh into it and it could have not closed which would have been a waste but learning so you keep learning and the other traditional advice works as well just build something like clone clone something uh that that totally works so clone if you're in like I I would recommend cloning local so if you are it depends if you're fishing for local clients so if you're in the US and you're fishing for us clients clone something us if you're in the UK and you're looking for the UK clients clone something UK same goes for other countries as well something they can just like instantly get or you can just go some Twitter LinkedIn Reddit something everybody knows clone oh there we go so let's uh rewind back to 2020 or maybe 2021 I don't know exactly when it was when you made the shift to start bringing on employees but how do you make that shift in your own business so for many people um I think the most common route that you see is you know things start working you start getting clients as a solo freelancer and then you just start getting overworked and you have more work that you can handle and again another kind of Catch-22 problems exactly um so how do you like extract yourself out from developer mode because most people who get into freelancing are good developers but what you'll quickly realize freelancing is that developing is one small aspect of the business so how do you take yourself out of that solo entrepreneur mode and bring on employees and start thinking about this thing more uh as a business and your how how your role what your role is in that business okay so I'll rewind before starting the agency as well because since I think two three years before that I had been meaning to do something now you don't necessarily need to be uh I'm gonna do X or I'm Gonna Change the World why but I was like okay I need to do something so keep it open-minded so I came from an iot electrical engineering background with zero web kind of experience kind of no code so just open mind and then there's like you can see Trends data science at the time was like I should just do a masters in data science and just a data scientist type thing or AI or virtual reality nfts and crypto I wasn't that into it but that was a rising Trend then as well no go jumped on it and it worked but if like the mindset there like it's more like reading business books that worked for me reading Hacker News reading articles in fact I was in uh y combinator startup School uh way back in I don't know 2018 they had a glitch they accidentally sent the no candidates yes so I got in so so oh okay so everyone who they rejected they sent the approval to yeah everyone they rejected they sent the approval too and three hours later they're like oops sorry not funny we'd already done the celebration and now I was like oh yeah we got in it's Y combinator and then three hours later no and then three hours later you know what everybody's in so that had happened what I'm trying to say it all builds up all knowledge all experience builds up so it's not like I started March 2020 and started hiring then and made that mindset transition the mindset transition was way back and it's more to do with here it's it of course it is the numbers and the cash flow and the kind of the real numbers itself which is definitely a lot to do with here and I still struggle with it as well it's like I I'll open the bubble editor myself still and I sometimes have to which is fine as well but sometimes it's like I'm tired I just like to Bubble a bit and not to management and emails and other stuff uh so I it and one thing I like as well that I think I got lucky in a sense that I went offshore so I'm from Pakistan and I hired in Pakistan and from the very beginning I was like I'm gonna hire devs in Pakistan this very joblessness there and it's hard to do and I can I have the unique USB that I can speak the language there I can listen to I I've been in the UK 10 years now I can listen to clients I can speak English maybe not with the same accent but I can communicate comfortably with them very easily and then I can switch languages and switch cultures and try and explain uh the concept there so a lot of my time is spent in situations that are common in the UK apps which developers in Pakistan or offshore will not have come across because they haven't used apps that way simple small example like ZIP code or postcode lookup that's not common in third world countries or offshore so they unless they've developed on such a system before so explaining things like booking systems card checkout and it's just different mechanics so because of the offshore factor I think I was able to hire quicker so I would definitely encourage people to consider that uh aspect uh but there are challenges as well you can get it wrong I I I've made a few mistakes I letting go is one of the hardest things I think letting people go during probation it's a hard call I clearly remember getting a migraine on the day before and after kind of thing when it's like I'm trying so hard to kind of make this guy work but he's like it's just not it's not gonna work and that's one of the hardest things on like any business owner any agency owner when you ask them they're like ah yeah letting go is not fun at all you have to be a really kind of strange person to enjoy that part of life so yeah um dive a little bit deeper into that for me though because I'm curious um to get into if there are any like specific hacks or things that you tell yourself to get out of developer mode when you do feel like let's just say that uh someone on your team is developing something and it's not quite in the way that you would do it if you were developing it yourself like do you still feel this tendency to want to go in and kind of micromanage is that you still feel that within yourself yeah yeah the quality yeah yeah no no it's not good enough kind of thing uh especially uh like look at like uh maybe less UI wise because clients pick that up and like that's a figma and everything and my my background's not design but when I see a a database structured the wrong way I get like kind of ticked why is this like here and the response I go oh because this this this this this this here and I'm like but you just had to put an option set here and that would have simplified the workflow and the ux and the database and the Privacy route so and it's like ah but uh the team's got trained now we are using a design system and we've got like internal kind of common patterns that we use for user privilege system and like how to set up SAS organization system and how the UI works so that across the team worked as well I think so it's just like yeah learning within team members across team members I'd say this like there's two styles of are you aware of the two styles of agencies running in like bubble agency how do agencies operate how much interaction have you had with agencies by the way um not too much a little bit but I've spent most of my time uh or when I was freelancing it was just me as a solo freelancer and then I kind of took on more um developer gigs at companies but what are the two types I'm curious okay you can call them three types actually three four types I've tried to explain them to clients as well like this is like the thresholds that you the types of agencies we're gonna come across uh there's the agencies which are powered by Freelancers so there's like you could do that just to today if you want like just start creating a pool of your Freelancers who you can trust and you're like okay close deals take like a 50 or something and just hand off to the freelancer who's like an expert in bubble and product and kind of like an all in one person uh but you've tried them a few times and they'll actually deliver the whole thing but you kind of sort of remain in the sidelines and loop and close the deal you'll go to with sales and some you have to pick up the slack if he just doesn't deliver it essentially but there's definitely the freelancer powered agencies okay and the one of the biggest ones you a Dev is also like they'll have they'll have a core team but they have a large pool of like uh ad hoc staff as well then there's agencies like mine which have like in-house full-time employees so for just today for example one of the staff members here is like I have to go on holiday end of October uh like a week off so it's just my my job to manage that workload kind of going up and down Somebody went on we've got we've had I've had staff go on maternity and come back from eternity so it's like okay long holidays short holidays sickness and family this employee powered ones then you have the variation between near shore and offshore so uh like you there's I think stations in Canada was like proudly all Canadian Developers so you can use that as a USB because client I just like I've had clients come to me because we just want to talk to somebody in the UK like straight up front and like why did you kind of fire fire me and kind of choose me we just wanted to speak with someone in the UK we're tired of dealing direct offshore kind of thing so there's offshore employees offshore Freelancers near shore employees near shore Freelancers so and you'll get the whole with there's a spectrum it's not a hard and fast rule uh but yeah there is there are differences in subtle difference so why did you make the choice for you to go down the uh yeah uh just initially as just wanted to hire in Pakistan uh and there's no Freelancers so not that many in part in fact I was like I in some aspects you could say introduced bubble uh more in Pakistan because there's just very few there were like the odd few people and then I was like uh okay I'll hire and train so I had to hire fresh and train them another long process which you could have this pros and cons either way so hmm um when I go to your website your agency's website there's a nice big call to action in the top right corner it says book a discovery call and I think that's you know that generally the approach that that most agencies take in terms of like the the top of the funnel so how do you think about a discovery call when you're getting on what kind of questions have you found to be really great questions for you take me through how you think about that part of the process so uh some of the most common questions we I still get and everybody I'm sure it gets is like will it scale will my local lab scale and can I take it and host it in some other kind of place and stuff uh the some of some are about no code in general just security few others concerned about security actually they're more like scale and what can I take my data and those types of questions then there's like how are you as a company uh as like what's your process like like so we have like a streamline kind of way of doing things we'll kind of have like a two-hour kickoff call we'll do figma wireframes then we'll have an internal kickoff call and then we'll have weekly check-ins and invite them to click up and then actually do so everybody every agency will have their way of working and clients are usually curious about that uh sometimes and definitely relevant experience comes up a lot as well have you kind of built something like a Marketplace common one or yeah we've built marketplaces before you can straightforward so this this this this Marketplace so uh it just varies I think the best questions uh I wouldn't say the best question I think it's it varies between who came on the call second time Founders are the easiest they ask the right questions they're like they know what to build okay the hardest are people who don't know what to build and I get them a lot as well as like I I've got this rough idea and that's why I wrote a proper guide on like five steps to flesh out your idea kind of thing and you start with a high level brief and then a bit of user stories a journey map and a wide frame and gave templates and kind of like mirror board kind of push because it was getting too much on my kind of like explaining it again and again and again so first time Founders who are non-technical may or may not have a strange perspective of like polished product or MVP or I just want to go live or they're like the quality bar may be too high for like a thousand dollar budget it's like oh come on be a piece I know it's no gold but it's not no work right right let me uh let me clarify though too because I I I've gotten all of those questions before myself too but part of the discovery process you look when you're starting out like we had talked about before I mean like just get your first few clients get get anyone and do the work but exactly but quickly once you get a few clients I learned myself part of the discovery call is disqualifying bad clients that come your way too so I when I when I was asking about questions curious what questions you ask clients to try to qualify them or disqualify them in that Discovery call yeah so there's alarm bells that go off in my head and like okay questions happen it's it's a bit hard to kind of pinpoint some of the easy facts so for example mobile apps we've done it once and we're like we don't want to do them again kind of thing so that's it one easy one it's just tedious with bubble and like the BDK native rapper amazing work by God of by the way but the making like it's amazing that it is possible but for us to do the work uh and get it approved on App Store work with them back and forth it's just a lot of back and forth and a different type of app all together compared to a web dashboard SAS kind of app and as a business it's uh retaining that skill uh in the team would have been hard so for example we started generic no code we did webflow we did bubble we did a little bit of our Dalo a little bit of apple or low code and then we kind of Niche down into bubble and the reason was we've got full-time staff they leave no new will join train hired it's hard to keep different skill sets in the team okay so it's easier to kind of be like bubble or like platform specific and keep platform specific knowledge and within platform you can Niche down to like the mobile app versus web app is an easy one and some of the mobile apps I can steer them towards that's why I still sometimes take the call I can steer them towards not doing a mobile app because it's there's no point just have a link go to market and some agree uh so that's one budget is another one kind of easy kind of like just like if somebody comes with their template we've now I've got like more qualifying questions on the booking itself on like you just like what type and what's like some sometimes the call will book and they'll they would have written something in the text brief and I'll just on email kind of say I'm sorry I can't do this so mobile app is one segment if the if the app is very mobile appy like I won't even bother trying to convince them you it is the mobile app the idea is a mobile app no point the other is budget related then it's the conversation just a Vibe kind of thing it's hard to pinpoint uh does he get me so I like I think you'll understand as well being a bubble developer has it's different than a coded freelancer or something a coded freelancer will not bounce back to the product owner and say don't do it because it's hard as bubble depths we are like oh what you want nah don't do it it's too hard in bubble in Bubble Land do this solve the user problem easier and shortcut and you don't want to kind of like have a special type of like button interaction which the plugin doesn't exist just so you have to kind of push back and if if people are receptive to push back that's a good sign some are like oh no no no we're like uh has to be this way so for example I've made I've made many mistakes I've made many mistakes if you want to go down that route so one guy wanted Pixel Perfect like literally he he actually told me on the first call that we're gonna I'm gonna use this Chrome extension it was like I'm OCD about it I'm going to use this Chrome extension to Overlay the the XD design on top of the Bubble app and I've been my knife stupidity said yeah sure yeah that sounds like like even just hearing that gives me anxiety thinking about that implementation with the old responsive engine so right oh God I know so and like I shouldn't that's just a warning sign so some of it comes with experience in making the mistakes so yeah so okay so um pre-qualifying them in first of all just in the form to book the discovery call sometimes they'll write something that I've had that too I also had a forum that people would fill out to book a discovery call when I was doing this and I remember seeing some things reading some submissions and thinking this is just not a good fit and I would do the same thing I'd respond right away and say hey I don't think we're a good fit for reasons x y and z to the budget talk so how soon into you know like I think it's common for agencies to have what's your budget for this project a question on the form that people fill out but people will put a whole bunch of different things on forms how soon into the discovery call do you breach that topic and start talking about budget so uh uh I follow an amazing guy on YouTube Alex hermosi I'd recommend him I follow him too I like him a lot everything amazing yeah he's great uh his approach to budget is a funny one is like if you tell somebody uh uh what was this uh can you come up with ten thousand pounds right now and I'll give you a Ferrari is the value mismatch is so high they'll kind of do anything to get the budget kind of thing so and some people just don't want to spend so it's just ahead of time try and see if they have socials look him up like if uh do a gut feel assessment there uh I've had uh business owners who don't want to spend and very kind of large Revenue business owners who spending may have streamlined their operations and reduce costs and whatnot but it's just they don't want to maybe they don't want to pay me or they're like okay I can get it cheaper elsewhere or something uh and I've had Founders who've uh reported a lot as well so it's a tricky one it's uh I think having the minimum sets a Baseline kind of think that okay you know what it's just no point kind of thing beyond that do you commute do you communicate that though on the minimum on the calendly form it's it's there okay yeah it's there it's like okay and some people kind of still kind of sneak in kind of some people still sneak in that's fine it's part of the trade uh it's linked with features as well I I think the the bigger problem is they may have the minimum but their expectation of what they'll get out of it because no gold is just too high so they'll want a full stripe connect marketplace with amazing ux and amazing kind of booking system and everything and then they'll have like three thousand dollars can't work come on it's too much uh kind of thing so that's where the budget discussion is a sensitive one it's hard to bring it very quickly in the call unless you have this pack as well so unless you have this very you have to build a bit a bit of a report as well as the first time you're talking uh to somebody and uh but you don't want to ignore it either it is like if it's if you just leave it and oh yeah I'll prep and send a proposal and then the proposals like kind of thing and then they're like oh it's you can't just work with them as to kind of the good clients are receptive to chopping features they'll be like okay you know what let's prioritize what can we get uh out of this kind of thing okay which is like okay let's for example easiest feature to chop sign in with LinkedIn and the question to ask is when have you signed in with LinkedIn and they're like I don't remember so why are you making an app with sign in with LinkedIn so just like wasted time so and just start chopping features so it's just it's a back and forth so I've had people who maybe I should have charged them more who are like uh how much and I'm like yeah around about X and you're like okay fine let's like move on oh man lost should have said a bit more kind of thing uh but yeah it's an art I'm not great at it it's it's a tricky one I think one of the things that's funny too so the last thing you mentioned in terms of qualifying or disqualifying clients was the some of the intangibles just the vibe that you get speaking with people and it's amazing um I remember there was one client that I had who was I was super busy at the time and I actually like didn't really want to take on more work because I was kind of going nuts with all that I had to do but I remember we we jumped on a call and his app was like super simple he seemed like a great dude we we got along really well um but I was still really busy and didn't really want to take on more work so I remembered getting off of that call um throwing a number at him that was much higher than I would have maybe normally quoted if I were in different circumstances and looking for work um just to see what happened and he actually ended up going with me um he said I was like the highest uh the highest bid that came through he was talking to other people but it was like like I think the reason he went with me and I was at that point too not as experienced by far as like a lot of these other people that he was probably speaking with but I think the reason he went with me is we just hit it off and we got along well and there was a good vibe there and it's amazing I think you can you the people who like you will be willing to pay more for your services I think yeah if they have the budget they're willing to they have the budget have the budget they're willing to pay more there's definitely a wipe Factor I've come off calls and like I I'll go tell my wife yeah no this kind of thing and I've come of course and I'm like okay amazing stuff uh I think it's gonna work uh it's still a stiff competition but the why Factor happens uh yeah and I've had people who are like uh we like you more but we went with X because of thousand dollars cheaper kind of thing which is fine I mean it's part of the somebody else was like under quoted I've done the same I'm sure when I was starting out somebody has undercoated and they were too budget conscious so they just went with it so uh it's all part of it yeah how do you think about um scoping a project I know that uh from every person that I've talked to and and my I was just a mess in this area um even when I'm just doing my my personal work and thinking in my head about how long a feature is going to take me to develop um I I still after years of experience wildly underestimate how long things are going to take me um so how do you think about scoping Project work do you have systems for that how do you approach that messy topic messy topic so I had a Twitter thread recently where everybody have a very strong opinion and everybody was crying about it as well that they were bad at it it was like pricing and estimation and kind of like scoping so there's two parts to it one is the fleshing out the idea the other is estimating the effort that's needed to do it like prioritizing and estimating just scoping I think there are tried and tested techniques to just flesh out and elaborate uh that's I think relatively easier to do it's surprisingly time consuming and people don't want to pay for it as well because they're like what's the point of all these like granular details uh but they're needed to track any type of project work or you'll just come up with new ideas during the call and just like unlimited Dev Works gonna happen there's no point there so in terms of fleshing out there's the user story which is like the text kind of just uses text text as a user I can do this as a user I can do this that works for many people there's the journey like cross-functional flowchart or Swim Lane diagram there's like how many users there are and how they interact so there's a flowchart so buy a seller sign up ad listing buyer view listing click contact message so that there's the user Journey diagram uh low Fidelity wireframes in pencil sketches in like Miro or balsamic even sticky note wireframes work and then you can flesh out more in High Fidelity wireframes uh so that's the scoping part then in terms of estimation as to how much time and effort this will take it's hard there's no shortcut I think one mistake I make is that I think in my time I should not think in my time thinking in like another Junior deaf time kind of varies uh there's like the recent Twitter thread I'll quickly fire off uh the output of that a T-shirt size it instead of uh hourly estimate it's like small medium large so if you're like okay if it's not a small a little bit just go medium if it's not like is when you go with a shirt like yeah it's a bit tight it'll just go one up you do not like it's a bit loose you don't like go down and kind of thing so you just T-shirt size things to keep it simple in terms of like and this is what a rough t-shirt kind of costs in terms of hours that's one mechanism uh then you have the standard like hour hour hour this many hours uh and uh many have suggested just whatever you think double it and somebody's even suggested like just triple it because so it varies on gut feel and level of your insight into the experience into similar features that you've worked on so I think the hardest would be API Integrations an unknown new API Integrations like stripe I can estimate but not no new ones we just don't know kind of thing uh UI when it's created is easier to estimate sometimes back-end logic can be hard to estimate so this it's it's a hard topic uh not doing it is not a good idea at all so up until now I'm not a good person to talk about this topic because I've been gut feeling it and and I've been very wrong many times now so I would say gut feel it to three weeks and it would end up taking five and it's not a sustainable way of doing business so I'm very bad at it so if if there's any consolation in that uh it's like even after doing it for two and a half years with so many projects I'm still bad at it and just accept it and then try and change the mechanism next time around it's just the hardest part of being I think a business owner is changing yourself the faster you can change yourself uh the faster you can probably grow uh kind of thing so first year day one first month first few months clearly remember I was telling my wife before leaving my job and like I think I'll be able to make minimum wage don't worry about it we still laugh at that one and we still remember kind of thing are you making minimum wage like and that's what my exact words to her trust me she had a job and I had a job and I was like okay do you want to quit and it's like yeah I couldn't do something and don't worry I think I can make minimum wage that's uh I'm sure that just just uh something that every woman loves to hear from their husbands [Laughter] it's uh that's amazing um tell me tell me more I want to dive deeper into that so you said the the hardest thing for a business owner is changing yourself um what was for you in your journey a moment where you really where that was Forefront and you you knew that you had to change there was something about the programming in your mind or your previous approach to whatever problem you were having that was not working that you had to change is there an example that comes to mind uh distinctly one example I'd say it's every day like just say it's marketing but two key examples come uh to mind one is when we hit the seven eight developer uh kind of this is the very early on when it was like a mad rush kind of like anybody raises your hand and you get projects and whatnot uh quickly hired to like six seven eight devs fresh Juniors who were training up learning bubble but and I was training up learning bubble and kind of like in the middle and then I hit a cap that I can't handle more I just like this not enough hours in the day and work-life balance is way crazy thing so it and that's when like it's basically okay I need to change the way everything works like so there's huge transition between freelancer and small agency and small agency to a medium agency which we have I have never I haven't done yet kind of thing so I can't talk but I know it's a huge kind of it's a step difference at the moment I'm still project managing and uh kind of like leading the team and being in the middle but this just can't scale so that's and I'm still there since like one and a half year one year at least kind of like just how do we structure it how do you do wireframe how do we kind of like try and operationalize something better kind of thing and trying to talk to others about it as well so that's one key point which is still with me kind of thing uh and I don't know I mean there is there are the standard answers like bring on maybe a senior partner type in the agency who's at the same level and I've had some discussions with others about it but nothing's matured there are the just hire somebody really expensive which again I need to change myself to kind of stomach that kind of thing to kind of like Hive somebody near it I have somebody in the UK uh and accept that kind of risk and reward kind of Delegation responsibility if I make a bad UK hire it's gonna be bad kind of thing so it's just and I still haven't crossed that the second distinct time about changing myself I'd say when the the mad rush of bubble developer like work kind of sort of dried up the RFP kind of channel forum just kind of dried up and as an agency with seven devs we need a bit more volume uh into like the deal flow coming through and that's like uh okay what worked up until now is not gonna work no amount of personalized RFP replies are gonna close this and no amount of like personalized proper Forum replies are gonna close this so have to do something very different and just kind of like change myself so I can't imagine two and a half years ago starting a YouTube channel and doing a responsive Workshop which was quite successful like as a first Workshop everybody kind of like I don't know who came on it and why but they it worked kind of thing and the I can't imagine tweeting uh or Twitter I didn't even have I had a dormant account with zero followers I didn't even know if hashtag no code like until like some months ago or maybe it's been a year now time flies so all marketing and salesy type kind of areas because previously it was just oh yeah just oh yeah just this inbound stuff coming through but now I have to be like kind of advertise and outbound and there was a point when I was trying Facebook ads Google ads kind of like uh everything email outbound campaign LinkedIn like everything you can just like scale that back a bit because it's like can't do everything at once I have to kind of focus on one channel like like Alex says like Alex or Moses like one product one channel one service and which Focus like it's we try and spread ourselves too much in oh I can do air table and I can do software and I can do bubble you can but expertise is hard in one uh and the people buying is are different uh in each of them so same goes with social media channels I think I was like more Twitter focused some than like a better YouTube a better YouTuber better Twitter and a bit of LinkedIn and it's just if I focused all energy in one may have gone further than that what uh of those three or of all the different marketing methods that you've tried which one feels most natural to you and comfortable that's a good one that's a good question uh because and it changes as well so you don't want to be wedded too much to it as well so Twitter initially felt a lot good but over time realized oh I just I'm speaking to fellow bubble deaths less kind of prospects kind of thing and it's like lots of clapping going on and amazing and kind of like that type of stuff whereas like it's it's more like a club here a fellow marvelous which is great which is like the vibe of the meeting you and boot camp and JJ and all that it's amazing stuff uh but at the moment I'm trying all three maybe I'm making a mistake which Alex or Mosey and Business Schools have dissuaded uh but the current pipeline is a YouTube video is which I will do and I'm gonna try and delegate all the rest to others that's the so that I can focus on one piece of kind of core content in a video and the rest should be copyrightable and blog postable and tweetable and linked enable and Linkedin kind of postable without my involvement the core piece has to have my involvement and that's where like it's again changed myself to improve delegation kind of give somebody else access to kind of post stuff or write stuff and accepting a little bit of a personality difference and style difference like I wouldn't write it that way but I'm gonna have to look elsewhere and let this just flow out kind of thing yeah um well it's it's an interesting decision that you've made too because like you know I went to your website and first of all I love the video ask in the bottom I think that's so cool I clicked on it immediately it popped up it's like what are you looking to do it's like this is so great um stole that from VR no code I'm gonna I'm gonna steal it from you I think I have nothing to sell people right now actually that's from Alex from Rosie too like I'm literally not trying to sell anything on this podcast so but I just love like it's just such a nice greeting at the website anyways my question um you've clearly made yourself the the face of your business which some agencies choose actually probably most agencies choose not to do there's no like clear personal brand behind it why did you decide to go down that route in particular and make yourself the face of your business uh Garfield is gonna be more oriented that way uh this this has been a frequent debate both internally uh with with it with the team with me and my wife and I've spoken to others about it as well uh people buy from people uh that's one recurring thing that comes back that people don't buy from businesses until they're very big uh so like air Dev is different people may have wondered like okay I want to go to air Dev but at our scale azky tech labs people can't even pronounce that kind of thing and they're like and that it doesn't make any sense because it's our family initials it's like it's like it and it's like you could try and be like amazing no code studios.com at the end of the day the brand it's I I I'd push it I'd say it's a transition so early on you probably need a bit more face to it when you grow bigger and bigger you can potentially reduce the face and turn more into a business brand so it's that would be my kind of response to it but even larger businesses can be powered a lot by personal brands uh so it's it's a tricky one it's a very tricky one it's linked with questions like can you sell it or are you building a sellable business or is this like a first business it's linked with questions like are you uh intending to so it's all sorts of things personal brand never hurts that that I'd say it'll never hurt a business brand also is a great thing it's a slower to build take it's slower to build definitely people just relate more to people like how many business Pages would you like who are very small or SME or in these small partner shops right so like yeah yeah this is um this is a topic that I'm thinking about a lot lately um one that I'm I'm obsessed about I was listening to this um this podcast you ever listen to the all in podcast no okay check it out I think you'd really like it um but anyways it's a group of four guys on there they're all majorly successful in business um and one of this was in a recent episode one of the guys was was making the argument that he thinks in in 30 years big brands are gonna just be killed by creators who are spinning off their own businesses um and just basically selling them to their audience an example he gave was like Mr Beast you know Mr Beast on YouTube it's chocolate and his Gatorade type thing so like I didn't even know that he had chocolate or Gatorade but he has like Mr Beast Mr Beast Burger which is like a franchise of of restaurants and I think they're doing like I think he spun it up like a year or two years ago I'd be shocked if it was more than two years ago but I think they're already doing like 100 million dollars in revenue or something insane now he has a hundred million followers on YouTube so like he's you know he's an outlier but do you think that the way the world is going that it's trending more towards the like like the importance of having a personal brand um even if it's not the founder of a company but just like associating faces with a company is becoming more important depends on who you ask so at the end I'll the simple principle will always timelessly remain people buy from people so even if you go to B2B and high-end corporates at the end it's like uh conferences trade shows talking networking going on dinner hanging out kind of squeezing in some kind of sales back and forth but it's people buying from people as well especially once things get commoditized which will eventually happen to everything so like a smartphone for example uh no I think smartphones not an easy good example I'll give an example one of my like University flatmates gave he was in uh chemical sales and he was like ethanol at 99 for medical chemistry is ethanol at 99 at because of medical chemistry so you can't like change the product and go with a spec list of here's how our 99 ethanol is different it's not supposed to be different it's supposed to be 99 ethanol okay so it's standard kind of like going talking knocking on doors do you need it do you need it and it's like kind of thing so people buy from people uh essentially so whether you're a freelancer or an employee uh or a business owner at the end of the day it's a people like people hire people so there is the vibe aspect that we were talking about so the wife happens in the employment interview as well so I my first not first the second interview the first one in the UK uh even though the introduction was through a referral network but the interview if there was no why but it's not like it was not some kind of like uh hire this guy kind of thing it was like oh just go meet kind of thing so I met and it's like okay the wife kind of thing happened and it's like okay interview interview and kind of like job thing happened so having a personal presence online just reinforces uh builds a little bit of social trust Social Capital uh I I would go so far as suggest something uh which may seem a bit outlandish but there is definitely a uh what's the politically correct term for that nowadays it's very hard uh I I I'll go with my skin color skin color effect okay or a name effect the name sounds like uh offshorey or skin color effect or just the look and feel this studies about this same c yeah with same specs different photo different name and different response rates okay and it's it happens now you can fight about it yes I will be the most like staunch Advocate that it shouldn't happen but the fact that it's reality happens so having some sort of Social Capital being a minority will give you a bit of a boost that you need as well uh it's n number of factors here so personal brand will help uh it's it's I've read about this as well it bugs me as well I one of the most famous stories I think calendly uh the his founder is like uh African-American or something it's not like and he their team page was blank and their founder presence like compared to other starter piece startupy where the founders were like kind of like talking and everything in the team page and has the values and everything now I think they've changed because he's a billionaire now kind of thing but even when fundraising uh people would naturally assume the CFO who was the CEO or the founder like when kind of like uh pitch text and meeting and they just naturally just meet the shake hands first oh yeah amazing calendly you found out like oh he's the founder and the CFO he's the founder wow wow it happens it it hurt it happens and I think personal brand can push a little bit of like uh personality and kind of just build a bit more trust or Social Capital that it maybe my just gut feel personal inclination but I kind of prefer video because of that as well uh that video instantly kind of breaks the ice a bit more even if it's just a picture with a piece of text but video can easily break the ice a bit more uh that's just me personally talking I'm not a social media expert either am I but what what I do like about it and I'll speak about this um video I mean what I do like about video and just and putting yourself out there when I watch other people who are whatever it is doesn't have to be in in business or anything we're just putting themselves out there and talking and being authentic there's so many ways to um be likable as a Creator I think if you just kind of embrace your weirdness and you're authentic there's you don't have to be like the funniest most entertaining person um you just have to kind of put yourself out there and people warm up to authenticity right away I've found so there's something nice about that yeah no definitely definitely it's it's a so me and my wife keep talking about business all the time and she's comes more from a corporate background and she keeps telling me you need a bit more polish and you know better headshots and better kind of backgrounds and better kind of sophisticated books in the back kind of thing and I'm like I'm just a plain engineer guy and I'm just talking kind of thing so there's this constant kind of like uh polish or not and one of the response I told her was that I think what you're saying is correct probably for the next stage in business but for that to happen I need to change myself I can't fake it so I can't fake wear a suit and start talking in like a londony accent and kind of like uh no it's it's not gonna work kind of thing yeah dude well like look at what happened I mean it's it's when we started recording this it's like 6 30 in the morning and you were more prepared in terms of your video set up and Mike than I was like I'm cat-sitting right now I had a new camera finally that I was excited about it didn't work it like blew up I don't know what's wrong with it so I'd love to have a nice and I will soon because I it's just something I want to do but like I don't know I mean people still I mean people still seem to watch the stuff and uh no it's the feedback so far has been great so yeah exactly authenticity Works uh easy example is Alex for MOSI look at backers and old videos they were in the west they were literally a guy in a West talking about and he's got like the Band-Aid across his node yeah his nose who is this guy and then when he says something it was like okay start with a hundred million dollars and people start listening uh but it's not just about 100 million dollar business uh that he has multiple of exits uh it's what he's saying works there's value in it this kind of concrete advice in it okay so if there's value in what you're saying from a creative perspective if you're providing value people will listen Okay I had this strange YouTube video that has many views on it which is like I threw it on a loom like just oh I was I was supposed to tell my devs a lot of my YouTube videos now are that like I just I need to explain something to my devs and I'm like and I've got loads in Urdu and the just raw internal ones with kind of client specific stuff which I can't share but page navigation using page URL parameters just option set page URL parameter next back in show hide conditional groups kind of thing just an onboarding sequence and it just made it on a one shot record Loom kind of thing and sent it to my Dev first and then just pushed it on YouTube it has more views because people finding more useful so yeah it's it's impossible to predict what will uh what people will resonate with yeah I think for sure but good value you can't hide it core value-added yeah you need to be there how far how big do you want to grow this agency how big do you want to be short term uh keep it Boutique uh that's like I had this phase of I want to hired hired hired good old big big big uh but the word life balance skewed too much so now I want to be structurally kind of sound in sales marketing and delegation before kind of hiring more uh it's helps that now my wife's more involved in marketing as well and she's left her job and kind of joined uh in the back in the back so that's good congrats that's uh that's amazing too convincing like I'll make sure I'd pay more than minimum wage you told her she'll make at least minimum wage if she joins the company uh but uh the original okay when starting out there's not a plan to be an agency or a big agency or a medium or stage and see the original plan was to build my own product so learn bubble why I think a lot of people start the other way people start by trying to make their product in bubble and then start selling bubble Services I went the other way I'm gonna I'm gonna sell bubble services to learn bubble and then make my own product and then stuck here kind of remained here kind of thing so at some point my eye is still on trying that out a Microsoft especially now with micro acquire and like Niche kind of uh we've got loads of experience and I'll be honest it's very easy for us to build anything now in bubble we worked on blockchain and MVP SAS business tooling all sorts of stuff so the dev side is extremely kind of bulky weighty now but sales and marketing man it's a whole different piece a whole different kind of skill set all together uh still learning it and I think it's a continuous process as with Dev as with like sales marketing continuous process but I think I'm gonna try uh 2023 hopefully let's see when I don't know uh but can it and we've tried before as well we created a product uh kind of threw it out there and then stopped wire story I don't know if you saw the Twitter it was like a low Fidelity wireframing Tool built using bubble and uh built it for today no I didn't see a lot of terminal pain uh but yeah then I was like okay obviously it's marketing too hard identifying customer Persona product Market fit all that work I know the terms I'm aware of it I advise clients on it about it and it's easier to advise others on it than do it yourself uh well this is a time thing so yeah it it is Boutique Agency for the short term but you never know I may change myself yeah I remember um when I started learning bubble I was building this product idea that I had that I was more and I think I was more just like Curious at the time about learning how to build on bubble and and amazed that oh I can actually like maybe build this this software product and I worked and worked and worked for like six months on it ignored every piece of advice in the book about talking to customers and making sure that the thing I was building is actually something people want and then I remember at the end of six months I was like at a point where okay I can it's good enough I can go and sell this thing now and then realizing the next day when I woke up like how do I sell like what do I other aspect like I have no idea um I'm sure it's a it's a common story for many people in this space uh but zubair I feel like I could talk to you for days um we should we should definitely do this again um and where where can people find you on socials I'll link to everything below but uh why don't you shout out your Twitter or wherever you want to shout out so I've got a link tree now so I'm so popular I've got a link with like all the socials and everything in one place so I think I'm gonna point to that but definitely Twitter LinkedIn YouTube email uh website so all the news but there's a link tree awesome and the links to all of those especially the link tree will be in the description of this video thank you so much for coming on and uh yeah I really enjoyed the conversation thank you for having me and it was a pleasure

Channel: Jacob Gershkovich

Views: 3,375

Keywords: no code apps, no code movement, bubble.io, no code, no code interviews, no code podcast, nocode talks, Professional Bubble Developer, Should developers have their own personal brand, No code freelancer, No code agency, How to start a no code agency, How to start a bubble agency, How to scope projects, how to start a business, Zubair Lutfullah Kakakhel

Id: wWLOrfn09cc

Length: 63min 54sec (3834 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 12 2022