How to Set Boundaries in Business

Awais Ul Haq (00:00)

she said, I think we have lost the deal. I said, no, no, no, no. I was doubting myself as well. I just opened my LinkedIn. I messaged him. I said, hey man, if that is too difficult, would you want me to help you with it? And he says, no, no, no, no, no. You know, this has brought so much self-reflection into my business and I need one more day to fill it up and trust me, Angie, he came back, filled 50 questions and I asked him a ridiculous price. I said, this is the amount we want to take and we want to help you with this and he said, this is give me the Stripe link.

Ange Dove (00:40)

Yeah.

Awais Ul Haq (00:49)

Thank you for having me.

Ange Dove (00:50)

Welcome. ⁓ just tell us a little bit about yourself before we get into the conversation so that we've got some context on what we're talking about today.

Awais Ul Haq (01:01)

Right, so I basically started as a civil engineer, started working in a company, in a government job. And then I switched from there and started my own business. And from there, I have transitioned from owning a tutoring business to now a tech company that helps law firms in general.

Ange Dove (01:25)

Okay, all right. So we'll get into that journey and we'll talk a bit about your business as well later. So what I'd like to just go into at the moment is to talk about sort of your story and your transition and your experience at being a business owner. Has people listening to this might be just thinking about starting a business and haven't made the move yet?

Awais Ul Haq (01:32)

Yeah.

Hmm.

Ange Dove (01:52)

So you've done that you've worked for someone and then you've started your own business. And we might have people on that are in a transition. They already have a business, but they're transitioning to doing something else because most of the market has been spoiled by AI in some way or other. So we'll talk about your particular journey on that as well. So just to start off then, tell me about how you got into tutoring from engineering, because that was quite a big jump.

Awais Ul Haq (02:03)

Hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, so basically like everybody, know, in my country, especially, they study one study in a field and then take a job that's relevant to that, right? And it happens almost everywhere. So I was working as a civil engineer, but there were a lot of malpractices happening in the government at that time. Still does. And I did not agree with that. And with any job, when you try to resist anything,

Ange Dove (02:20)

Yeah.

Okay.

Awais Ul Haq (02:49)

What they do is they try to punish you. And my punishment was that they would send me to very far off remote areas to work. It was very difficult. So I thought maybe I could just quit. And this is not working for me. So I just quit. And then I started as a teacher and somebody asked me if I could teach physics. And I did it for like

free for one month and then I started earning like five dollars a month, not even an hour because I was not trained. But that basically helped me understand that when you have a goal, right, you have a fixated mind that you're going to build a business of yours. It doesn't matter how long it takes. It matters how much strength do you have to achieve that goal. So

Ange Dove (03:21)

Okay. Right.

Mm. Mm.

Right.

Awais Ul Haq (03:43)

That's what I did. I and I while I was working there in a tuition center, I was actually learning how to how would they get students? How will I be able to get students? How do they operate a tuition center? What are the requirements? How do they manage teachers? And a lot of stuff that I basically I just didn't keep my mind fixated on teaching, but I was actually observing how would

they do it and how I could do it later on if I run.

Ange Dove (04:14)

Nice.

Nice. I mean, that's a really good thing to do, I think. And I would advise people if they can, if they're just starting out with no business knowledge whatsoever, then to work somewhere where you've got firsthand, you'll get firsthand knowledge of how to run the business. You'll be very close to that. So you took all of the learnings from that business to be able to eventually start your own. Is that right?

Awais Ul Haq (04:41)

Yeah, yeah. And at that time, COVID wasn't there, right? So it was around 2016 and 17 when I started teaching. So one of my friends at that time told me that there is a writing pad, you know, and you could actually write on the screen with it. And that's how you can teach online.

Ange Dove (04:42)

Yeah.

Right.

Awais Ul Haq (05:05)

and I didn't really know how I would teach online. So I started, you know, I bought that from Qatar and then I got a student from my one of my family members and I started teaching there. Now, yeah, online. So now in 2019, late 2019-20 basically COVID hit and nobody was ready for going online.

Ange Dove (05:21)

Online.

Awais Ul Haq (05:34)

every school, every tuition center would bring in students to their place. that's how the education was going. But already I knew that how I could teach online. So people would literally put their cameras like this and then they would write on a piece of paper and then they would teach, right? While I was writing on the screen. So I was already technologically very ahead of their time.

Ange Dove (05:57)

Okay.

Right.

Awais Ul Haq (06:02)

And because

it stopped, so I had that opportunity where I could build a business from few hundred dollars to six figures. And that was the opportunity because I knew how to teach online. I knew my market was going fast. it was while everybody was procrastinating that they're losing jobs because of covid. I was actually it's ironic, but I was very happy about it because I was getting a lot of business at that time.

Ange Dove (06:30)

Yeah, you were taking advantage of the online education space.

Awais Ul Haq (06:31)

And that's the truth.

Yeah.

So when I see a lot of people today, say even AI is here, do not be scared. Look at the opportunities it is going to bring towards you. All right. And make sure that you know everything. Even if you're not using something, you should know everything because you don't know when something that other people might have ignored, but you have kept on, might help you build a business that nobody will ever have.

Ange Dove (07:01)

Right.

Awais Ul Haq (07:05)

So that's something I tell everybody.

Ange Dove (07:07)

Mm-hmm, yeah. Yeah, I totally agree with that as well. It's like, I mean, so many people have been affected by AI. And there's much more to come, right? It's gonna disrupt you even more as it gets even better and better. And so it's like, look now at what you can do and how you can take advantage of it, right? So with my business, I was one of the first hit because...

Chat GPT was primarily for writing at the very beginning. So I was running a copywriting agency and immediately we saw the downside of that in terms of demand. It's kind of righted itself a little bit now. There's people are beginning to realize that you still need a human to do this, but the demand is not anywhere near how it used to be. But then I started to look at, if I, if you can't beat them, join them.

Awais Ul Haq (07:32)

Bye.

Ange Dove (07:55)

So it's like, then I started teaching people how to write with AI. So that's my business that developed. Yeah. And then I've gone right down that rabbit hole in AI and I'm looking at other things as well. So I don't just teach writing, I teach other things as well. So how to run a whole business on AI, right? How these AI agents is your employees. So yeah, it's like with every business owner, it's like looking at the opportunities and, you know, trying to make

Awais Ul Haq (08:01)

Hmm, that's great.

Ange Dove (08:23)

make your lemonade from the lemons you've been given, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Awais Ul Haq (08:26)

That's true. That's true, Angie. In fact,

Angie, I would sort of, you know, I would share my side on this AI thing. So I was like I say, I always try to get the technology first because that's how I build my business. So I started using AI, but you know, I do a lot of marketing stuff and I do a lot of software development stuff for different businesses, specifically law firms. And

Ange Dove (08:33)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mm. Mm-hmm.

Mm. Mm. Mm.

Awais Ul Haq (08:50)

I have been using different models of AI since the beginning, right? When it was launched in 2021. And trust me, I don't see in the past year specifically, I don't see any gains, any significant gains, I would say, right? Neither in coding nor in writing. So I would, I would, a person like me, I have hired a human writer again, because I feel like that

Ange Dove (09:06)

Right.

Right.

Awais Ul Haq (09:20)

the quality has also dropped when you generate from AI. And also it doesn't give you a lot of leverage because your content doesn't get, it's not different. Even the tone and style gets a little bit similar with others. it really kind of is a disadvantageous to your SEO. And we have seen those results and at least

Ange Dove (09:24)

Right.

Hmm.

Right. Okay.

Awais Ul Haq (09:45)

As far as my company is, we are now bringing humans back ⁓ after thinking that AI might replace them, but it's happening again.

Ange Dove (09:49)

Okay, that's good to hear.

Yeah,

okay, that's good. That's good. So say the pendulum has swung back the other way, right? Yeah, that's good. So tell me now, so you were, so you went from being hired by someone to in a tutoring center, in a physical tutoring center to tutor, and you were talking about $5 an hour, right? And then you built your own then after that to six figures and taking advantage of

Awais Ul Haq (10:00)

Yeah.

Hmm. Hmm.

Ange Dove (10:24)

the pandemic as well because that's where people needed to be online and you already had, you were ahead of the curve, you had the solutions and stuff. So you were doing that then now you're doing something different, you're not in the tutoring line anymore. So tell me how that transition happened because that's quite an interesting story.

Awais Ul Haq (10:41)

Right.

So basically, when I was running my tutoring business, I have to basically mention one thing which might be very helpful to your audience, right? And that's what I learned in tutoring and now I apply in my tech business as well. So for all tutors, they make notes, right? They have notes, have question banks and stuff.

And you might have noticed that a lot of teachers try to hide them because they think like, okay, the other tutors might take it. These are my notes. They're my IP, right? So we need to, you know, keep them safe. We only need to give them students. We don't have to give them free. So at that time, what I would do is I started my own YouTube channel. And in that YouTube channel, I would teach for free everything for free, right? So every class I would take, I would just go live and start teaching. And I remember

Ange Dove (11:12)

Okay. Okay. All right.

Right.

Mm.

Okay.

Awais Ul Haq (11:34)

that all those people would ask me, do you have those notes? I would give them those notes, right? What happened was that those notes would go from one student to another, another student to another, and even teachers. And then people would call me and they say, oh, you teach physics and I really liked your notes. Could you also teach me live? And I was like, yeah, I could.

Definitely I have this pricing and this time I wouldn't even give them discounts because I was not approaching them. They were coming to me. So I learned that giving your stuff 90 % stuff free and then that 10 % which people cannot do is basically a winning strategy because that 90 % might be like be something like done by AI something like

Ange Dove (12:05)

Yeah, yeah. ⁓

Mm.

Mm.

Awais Ul Haq (12:26)

people might know from others, but then if you have that touch, they find your name on it, they'll come to you and that particular service you can sell for a lot of money because now that nobody else can do better. So that's that's a strategy. So I basically implemented the same in tech. Now I give a lot of, you know, legal hand guides. give SEO guides. I give Google ad guides, which people can

Ange Dove (12:40)

Right. Okay.

Mm.

Awais Ul Haq (12:53)

also get from AI but what I do is I put step by step pictures in it. I make sure that I have my touch. People can do the 90 % of stuff. They find it easy and then the last 10 % that they find really difficult to manage they come to me because they naturally know I've helped them and that's one of the strategies which I have implemented in teaching and now I'm implementing in tech and it's very very successful.

Ange Dove (12:58)

Okay.

Yeah. ⁓

Right,

nice. So that you've built the trust through being able to serve them already, right?

Awais Ul Haq (13:25)

Yeah, because you know, nobody would buy anything from you without looking. It's like you're running a store, right? So when people come into your store, they see stuff. So they touch stuff and when they decide, okay, this is something I want, then they buy. You can't tell them, I'm not going to show you anything. I'm not going to tell you anything and you have to pay me a thousand dollars to buy. That doesn't work. Right.

Ange Dove (13:32)

Mm. Mm.

It's a secret.

Yeah.

Awais Ul Haq (13:54)

It might work if you're scamming people. could say, okay, I'm going to make you like a billion dollars because I have a crypto agency and I've looked how many people are there. People might fall into it take money then you go. That's what all crypto bros do. But for real business, you have to give a lot of value before you want to, you know, let others, you know, want others to buy from you. And that's how the economic works. So this is why

Ange Dove (13:56)

Ha ha ha.

Yeah.

Awais Ul Haq (14:23)

Your question was how did I transition? ⁓ And basically I wanted to grow my business in a way because I was teaching online in GCC. So I had to manage a lot of teachers and parents and students and their payrolls, the fees and everything, right? So I wanted a learning management system for my business. So learning management system is a system which

Ange Dove (14:26)

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Awais Ul Haq (14:48)

basically helps you organize your classes and homeworks, everything reports. So I at that time went to a software house which was near me and I told them I need a software like this and they quoted me a ridiculous price for that and I agreed because I was earning enough and I wanted to grow quickly and they said we're gonna do it for you. What they did was they gave me unfinished open source platform and they just wrapped it up and then they submitted it.

Ange Dove (14:52)

Yeah.

Awais Ul Haq (15:16)

And when I asked them it doesn't work, they said basically it's a big software, you need to hire your own developer to manage it. It doesn't really work like this, you know. So, yeah, so and because in software world they take, you know, 10 % in advance and then you do that and then 10 % again, 25%. So the last milestone they let it go because it was only 10%. They didn't really care about it. And they said, OK, we have got a lot of money, so it's OK. Let's go to the next project.

Now here I had two choices. One, whether I leave the LMS software aside and buy something else or I could fix it. So I said, OK, I'll just hire a developer because I've invested a lot. And I did. And in six months, that developer helped me fix the software and I implemented it. And then obviously we started seeing the benefits out of it. But then I realized that I have invested a lot. Why don't I resell this? Why don't I sell it to other people because they might need it as well. So I started, you know, I picked up my call and this is where I say the biggest treasure is within your phone because if you look at your contacts, you might see a lot of people that you not even thought about selling. They know you and they want your services. So

Ange Dove (16:38)

Mm. Mm.

Awais Ul Haq (16:42)

you should absolutely see the contacts on your phone, write them down and call them. So I started calling. I called a lot of people, about 300 people, and I said, you know, I have this software that I made and I can give you this for free for next six months. And if you like it, then we're going to charge you XYZ amount. The people who took it basically spread the word. And then I got a deal with a very large network of schools who have like 300, 400 schools in Pakistan and they took the software and they implemented in all branches. So that's how I started building up my tech business because now I had to hire more developers to give up, you know, release features on that software, maintain that software. So then I realized that the tutoring business I need to sell. So

Ange Dove (17:17)

Right.

Mm.

Awais Ul Haq (17:36)

So then I sold it to a UAE investor and I started doing the tech.

Ange Dove (17:42)

Nice, nice. So none of this was planned, right? It's just one thing after the other just happened. You saw the opportunity and you went with that, right? So tell me about your business now then. So now you are a tech company, right? And what are you building specifically now?

Awais Ul Haq (17:44)

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, so basically ⁓ what we're doing is for law firms, there are two kinds of law firms. One is the new law firms. need a lot of business, right? So we try to help them grow, giving them, we will help them with SEO, with ads, with conversion optimization of their websites and stuff. Once they have leads, they get into a new problem. And that is basically people calling them and telling them we need your service, but they're not actually the right customers. Most of them are about 70 % in our experience are junk because they might have conflict with a before they or the law firm. They might not be able to afford the law firm. Their documentations are not correct. And there's so many things, right? So all this they have to manually qualify.

Ange Dove (18:40)

Mm. Mm.

Awais Ul Haq (18:52)

or use an AI to qualify which isn't really giving them the right value. So what we do is we do help them with AI but we layer them, layer AI and use forms. So when certain a person comes to their website and they fill a form or they call them, they get qualified reducing the load on the paralegal and the paralegals can then work on other stuff which is more important that gets built, right? So

So we are helping them qualify stuff, making their intake a bit smarter so they don't have to pay a lot or wasted amount on paralegal hourly rate because if a paralegal calls and qualifies like 15-20 minutes for a person actually a paralegal is costing them around like 30 US dollars an hour. So basically you're wasting like 16-17 on just

listening to calls which you shouldn't really do. Right. So we're helping them with that and other other software is which are connections with their SaaS offers. So this is what we do these days.

Ange Dove (19:52)

Then I'll call it. Yeah. OK.

So you mentioned earlier as well then you said you actually do Google Ads for them as well. So you do their marketing for them as well as the tech. So it's not just purely tech, it's marketing services as well. So you're an agency that helps your clients. But at the moment, you're focusing on purely law firms. Is that right?

Awais Ul Haq (20:08)

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

Yeah, yeah,

I am focusing on purely law firms, but I do take very few people on the other side of, know, other than law firms. if, you know, I have this mantra, I say, I would give you the best quality. And for me to give you the best quality, I need to hire the best people. And then I need to pay them the best pays. Right. So

Ange Dove (20:48)

Mm.

Awais Ul Haq (20:50)

If you're expecting great quality, then you have to make sure that you also pay that amount, right? So that's why I do help a lot of other businesses, but then I make sure that if I have an assessment form that I give them and if they the assessment form, I know they're serious. They are not really looking for a sixer in a go.

Ange Dove (20:57)

Yeah.

Awais Ul Haq (21:16)

and they're looking for a long term game, then I basically want to work with them. But people who are looking for shortcuts, I do try to assess them and I don't take those customers at all.

Ange Dove (21:19)

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Okay, so that's a really good point for people that are starting their business is you want to qualify your leads first. You want to make sure you're getting the right people that are going to get money in the business for you. And also you're not going to be wasting your time serving them when they're not the right fit for you. Right. So that's a really good strategy to advise people to do this.

Awais Ul Haq (21:33)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's true.

Ange Dove (21:49)

qualify your customers, make sure you're, you're working with the ones you want to work with, right? Yeah. Yeah. Cause if you're not, that can be, that could be hell on earth.

Awais Ul Haq (21:54)

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Yeah, and

it's basically a basic principle of any business. You should not always try to sell everything to everybody. You have to make sure that you are talking to the right person. And I've actually seen a lot of people go down this drain, you know. And that is once you start not valuing your own services and you

Ange Dove (22:06)

Yeah.

Yes. Yes.

Awais Ul Haq (22:27)

keep on giving discount, you go downhill, right? So let's suppose you say, okay, I'm gonna charge like $50 for a logo, right? And you do it. Next time, the people are going to think that you only charge $50, so they're gonna refer, when they refer, they're gonna refer to the people who afford $50. But then when you think about it in a different way, and you say, okay,

Ange Dove (22:27)

and your time. Yes.

Yeah.

Awais Ul Haq (22:53)

my services or my value is way better than somebody else and if somebody's charging 200, I can be charging 200 or even 300, right? So you start charging 300. You might initially get less customers, that's true. But then whenever you're going to get the first customer and his referrals, they will also give you 300. They're not going to give you 50 because that's a very important thing.

If you try to sell rich, their friends are also rich. If you try to sell poor, their friends are also poor. So you'd never get referrals. if you... and the business is built on referrals. So that's what I say. Do not downplay your services. Make sure you always upsell. And if you can't upsell, don't give discounts. Add something else to it. Like what we do is...

Ange Dove (23:33)

Bye.

Mmm.

Awais Ul Haq (23:48)

We have a lot of partnership with law firms as well, right? So what we do is we say, okay, we are helping you with your software. The next logical thing is that you got to start a business, right? You have to register in LLC or LTD. What you do is you're asking me like a thousand dollar discount. So what I'll do is I'll throw in an LLC formation. I won't give you a discount, right? So that's a way of downselling because now my partners earn as well.

But I did give him discount, but then my partners are in it So now obviously that builds their partnership way where they're gonna send me their clients as well So instead of giving like a thousand dollar discount what I'm selling is I'm giving them a referral and that builds my partnership and goodwill with Other businesses who can also give me business. So that's one of those things when you think in a higher order

Ange Dove (24:26)

Yeah.

Yes. Yeah.

Awais Ul Haq (24:44)

you can build those partnerships. So this is one

more advice for people who are thinking that my business isn't growing. What should I do? Go talk to the shop that's next to you that sells something different than you, but you can actually have something in common.

Ange Dove (24:50)

Yeah. ⁓

Yeah, you can actually

offer that. Yeah, yeah, that's a good one as well. And then also, I think with because this is something when I very first started my business, I was not used to bargaining, right? I would give my price thinking that's what they're to accept. That's my price is fair, right? And then I started getting people bargaining, they would bargain me down. So then it's the case of just knowing what you're not going to accept.

Awais Ul Haq (25:14)

Hm? Heh.

Ange Dove (25:23)

what you absolutely can't accept and what you want to accept. You've got to stand your ground. And I've had so many cases where I've said, no, I'm not putting my price down. And then they came back the next day and signed. So it's like, OK, so know your customer, know your value, know your value so that you're not bargaining on price. That's the worst position to be in.

Awais Ul Haq (25:24)

Hmm. Hmm. Hmm.

Yeah

Yeah, and

in fact, what I did initially, you know, I was also tired of this. A lot of people, when I started this business, so I would accept anybody, right? So I got so tired, people would, you know, call me, fill my form. I would call them back, say, you filled my form. Okay, let's book a consultation. And then they would talk for hours with me. And when I would say, okay, would you be transferring, you know, the initial amount?

They would say, we are going to talk to our partners. I'm going to talk to my wife. I'm going to talk to my mother and stuff like that. All the times you hear this, right? So what I did was then at that time, I remember it was like a year. It's been, I think, six months or nine. So I was so tired that one guy came up and he said, you know what? I need these services. I said, I only work with people who fill my assessment form.

Ange Dove (26:18)

Uh-huh.

Awais Ul Haq (26:44)

I don't want to work with anybody who doesn't do that and don't take consultation before that. And that guy was like, okay, what kind of assessment? said, I'm going to send it to you. Sorry. So my secretary was right there when I was talking to that guy and she said, we don't have an assessment form. Right. So what are you talking about? I said,

Exactly. Now you're going to build it. Right. So we put we put we put like 50 questions and we have reduced those questions, but we wrote 50 questions. So I was so annoyed. Right. So I put 50 questions and. Yeah. And literally, and these questions were very critical. They were like, what do you think about the ⁓ cost per acquisition of your current clients? What is the

Ange Dove (27:10)

Yeah.

Okay, wow.

gonna make it so hard for you to work with me.

Hmm.

Awais Ul Haq (27:34)

Total addressable market. ⁓ Who are you trying to sell? What is your ICP? And there are so many questions, right? Very difficult questions. And I said, write it down and we send that, you know, assessment form to that person. That person was like, wow, this is huge. Right. And then he did not reply to me for three days. Right. And my secretary, she said.

Ange Dove (27:36)

All

Yeah. Yeah.

Because he was finished in the hole!

Awais Ul Haq (28:00)

Yeah, it's a true story because she said, I think we have lost the deal. I said, no, no, no, no. I was doubting myself as well. I just opened my LinkedIn. I messaged him. I said, hey man, if that is too difficult, would you want me to help you with it? And he says, no, no, no, no, no. You know, this has brought so much self-reflection.

into my business and I need one more day to fill it up and trust me, Angie, he came back, filled 50 questions and I asked him a ridiculous price. I said, this is the amount we want to take and we want to help you with this and he said, this is give me the Stripe link.

Ange Dove (28:43)

Yeah.

Awais Ul Haq (28:45)

I'm going to transfer the money. He did not even ask for any sort of discount, any sort of favors. He said, I understand what you guys do and take my money.

Ange Dove (28:54)

Yeah,

and that is so important. is just, that's gold right there. That is absolute gold because you proved your value, right? And they were willing to pay the value because they could say, okay, you're serious. You made them think of that. Okay, then they knew you were serious about what you were doing. And that's the case is when you can show that and you can prove that.

That's when the bartering stops. They don't bother to put you down on price. So building your brand that way, positioning yourself so that you are at the high end is, you know, as I noticed the same with myself, as I said, when I started my copywriting agency, I was, they were always barking me down at the beginning and I didn't know how to handle that at the beginning. Then I built the brand for the business.

positioned myself as like really the number one copywriting agency in the country kind of thing. And then I got, then I got people that they would make assumptions. ⁓ I think you're too expensive for me. Right? So you get people coming saying, I don't think I can afford your services and we'll ask and we'll find out. But I never then the bargaining stopped.

Awais Ul Haq (29:57)

Hmm. Yeah.

Ange Dove (30:05)

When you position yourself at a certain level, you don't attract the customers that will bark in. So I think it's really, really important because that was something that was so difficult for me at the beginning. It really was.

Awais Ul Haq (30:12)

Yeah.

And also if you have to qualify people because then a lot of times they would start to be a scope creep as well because you see you would say, okay, I'm going to write you like two articles of 1500 words and they would say, you know what? I don't like the article. Could you just do it like 1600? And I think the headline is missing. It's too short. It's not that punchy, know, stuff like this. We hear it all the time. Right.

Ange Dove (30:26)

Yes. Yes.

Mm-hmm. Mm. ⁓

Yeah.

Awais Ul Haq (30:45)

And I don't want to work with those people because you you're paying me for doing something and then now you think that you can do a better job than me, then just do it yourself. I don't even need your money. Right. That's the problem. But people who value you, they would also put a lot of trust on you. for example, if I hire you for copywriting, I know that I have seen Angie. I've seen her work. Let her do her work because

Ange Dove (30:55)

Yeah. Yeah.

Mm.

Yeah.

Awais Ul Haq (31:14)

Ultimately,

that's going to benefit me and I don't want to, you know, just go inside and see, okay, I need to read every word and think, ⁓ I need to tell Angie this is not correct. Right. So that is why these people would never ever come to a certain conclusion. They would always ask you for more money or more work. So it is work you have to qualify at the end.

Ange Dove (31:29)

Yeah.

Yeah. And it's one of those things where what do they say? Something along the lines of like 80 % of your customers or 20 % of your customers can take away 80 % of your time if you're not careful. Right. Yeah. So you have to protect your time. That is for sure. um, and what another thing I noticed a lot as well was we would, we would give her like a fixed price for

Awais Ul Haq (31:45)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Ange Dove (31:58)

a project, right? We say, okay, for this, this is the scope for this amount of work. If it goes beyond that, then the price is this, right? And it's staggered. And you would, you would get customers that would say, ⁓ can you make this change? This is really important, really, really important, make this change. they would say, well, okay, you've, you've, you've used up your number of rounds now.

So if I make this change, this is going to be another, you add on the price. okay. Nevermind. So it went from really important to when they had let the money down. nevermind. It's okay. So it's, it's also understanding the psychology of people as well and what they, what they'll try and do. And if you don't, and I think another thing as well is setting those expectations upfront. Like you, do it with your form.

Awais Ul Haq (32:28)

Yeah.

I know

Exactly.

Ange Dove (32:45)

I usually, what I did in the past was I would always go and see customers. So they used to like that. I got trust immediately because I would spend time with them beforehand and I would go and see them personally in their office. And then I walk out, not just with one project, but...

Awais Ul Haq (32:55)

Hmm. Hmm.

Ange Dove (33:01)

two or three extra, because as I'm talking to them, then I would say, OK, well, actually, you need this. You don't need this. You need this instead. So that's something. But then in that initial conversation with them, I would walk them through, this is how you work with me. And this is the way it is. So from the years of experience of all the things you don't want to happen, I would nip that in the bud in that first meeting and say, this is the way you work with me. Yeah.

Awais Ul Haq (33:02)

Hmm, yeah.

Hmm, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, and

also there's one more thing that's very important because you talk about, you know, going to the clients. A lot of businesses like mine are obviously in different countries, right? So we can't have that opportunity to, you know, have a physical meeting. But then I realized that one of the greatest things that you can do when you are sitting in front of your client, just do not talk.

Ange Dove (33:33)

Yeah.

To go face to face. Yeah.

Awais Ul Haq (33:55)

too much.

Ange Dove (33:56)

Yes.

Awais Ul Haq (33:58)

and

let him exhaust himself. Right? Let him exhaust himself. Just keep on asking. You know, just ask him why, how, what. Keep on doing that. And in 30 minutes, he will be so exhausted. And when you start your pitch, he will probably be ready to buy. Because, you see, he would think that you're such a smart person.

You're telling him everything, but instead he's just listening to himself. And in those questions, when he's listening to himself, you'll find the pain that he's feeling. And then do not pitch everything. Do not say, I do copywriting, I do website, I do social media, I do everything, right? Just see what he wants at that time. And that is basically established from how he's answering your questions. And then

Just push him that. Even if it's a small thing. Because he needs that, he doesn't want anything else. Once you do that, you gain the trust, you do it obviously nicely, you provide him value. He's going to come back and he's going to buy something of a great value. So it's very important to just keep on asking till the person feels like, I'm done, I've told you everything.

Ange Dove (34:59)

Mm. Mm.

Nice. But then, yeah, that's so important as well. It's like then it's also getting to understand your customer, know your customer before you try to sell to them because you need to understand what is it that they really want. And as I say, give them what they want, right? Then later you can give them what they need, right? Yeah, yeah, right.

Awais Ul Haq (35:30)

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That's true.

Ange Dove (35:49)

Okay, so it's lovely speaking to you today. I think you've given the listeners and viewers so much value from what you've said today. Where can I send them for them to find out more about you?

Awais Ul Haq (36:04)

Right, so my LinkedIn is Awais Haq You can find it. And then I have my website time technology lc.com. And if you really, really want to get values, the value that I provide, you can join in my newsletter, because every month we try to curate one very deeply. And like I said, 90 % of that is something that you can do yourself. And even if

Ange Dove (36:12)

Okay.

much.

Hmm.

Yeah.

Awais Ul Haq (36:30)

you know, then use AI or you learn a little bit, you can also do it 100 % of that yourself. But newsletter is something that you should join.

Ange Dove (36:34)

Yeah.

Okay, nice. So I'll put the links for wherever you're listening or watching this. The links will be around this episode so that you can go and check that out and definitely join the newsletter so that you can get the value from there as well. Okay. So thank you so much for your time today. It's been really lovely to have you on the show.

Awais Ul Haq (36:59)

Thank you Angie for inviting me and I did have a great time talking to you.

Ange Dove (37:03)

Thank you.