Reflections as my business turns 2 next month

This is letter from me to me, that I am sharing with the world. Business is not glamorous, but it is rewarding. The NOSMO is the first time I have built something client-facing, that is built on a physical space. And some of these lessons were (read: are) brutal. I am still learning and evolving, and I hope I can build something meaningful and useful while building a great team doing it. Ameen. Happy reading.

Next month it’ll have been two years since one of my companies, The NOSMO came into being. By two years I mean, two years since I opened the doors to cutomers and started payroll. What I thought would happen to it vs. what has actually happened are two feelings so different, I don’t even feel like the same person anymore.

There is no purpose to this article except to just write. Because in the age of everything being machine learnt, writing an original thought is a win.

So here we go.

2024. January. I had an exciting idea, full of ambition and plans and LET’S BUILD THIS BABY! But 2 years later I have sort of mellowed down a bit in some ways, and intensified in others. I made mistakes and I got some things right. And now I’m sharing both.

THE WORKING

Okay. This is the one I got wrong. Everything else is secondary, you just need to figure out how to make money. And I understand what I mean by everything, and it includes EVERYTHING. The first and only things you need to worry about is fixing your sales. Customer acquisition. Not the interior, the financial projections, the anything else. I know there are a million ways to set up a company, but you acquire a customer and build the foundations around it. The branding, the experience, the feel, etc. are all secondary.

Ofcourse if the nature of your business requires you to have a product, you build it side-by-side, but still. You spend 70% of your time building a sales funnel/selling and 30% on admin work like finance, legal, system, etc.

All your projections are wrong. Trust me. You think you know but you don’t. And this may seem like a bad thing, but it’s actually amazing. Wanna know why? Because all your projections are wrong! You could be dreaming too big but you could be dreaming too small too. (writing this for myself).

THE TEAM

This is critical if you have a customer facing business. As in, it is your lifeline. Two things I realized over time is a young company needs GENERALISTS who are WILLING TO GROW with you. NOT lazy people who drag you down. Just like a high performing employee under a lazy manager is bad, similarly, a lazy employee under an ambitious but nice manager is also, really bad. The tone you set for the team from day 1 is the tone that will be adapted.

But another thing you need to realize is you are also a part of the team. As in, you should, initially have a “job”. Maybe your job is overseeing money. Or building a sales funnel that others then convert. Or maybe your job is making sure your company always wins. But either way, you need to define your job and the do it. (It’s okay if this changes over time). But since you have a job, you should also get PAID. I never withdrew any money from NOSMO and it is HARD. Even when the company is doing well, there is a sense of alienation that you could avoid if you just structured your own reasonable pay, (on the lower end), that you then withdrew.

The last thing about the team is a lesson I learnt way too harshly and way too late. Your team, does not care. This isn’t an attack on the employees or subordinates, it’s probably just human nature. When I was working a job, there was no one in the entire company who was honest with their work. I thought it was just a one-company thing. But staying in Pakistan, I’ve realized no. This is across the board. Your team doesn’t give a crap if the business is well, or not, if things are okay, if customers are happy, if the products are good. They are both alienated and selfish in their job. But that is okay. Your lesson is to not expect them to be anything more than they are and build a system that ensures the business does not suffer. And reducing the expectation from them helps you take things easy and allows the keen ones to rise automatically. It’s a VERY difficult thing to come to terms with this but your next hire will be done keeping multiple things in mind and would be much more different than your first one.

KINDNESS IS NOT NICENESS

Initially, I was very nice. I still am. And the entire team, the customers, the vendors, everyone took advantage of that. My staff would take several leaves in a month, and I would let them. No questions asked. Some would cite personal reasons, some would cite health reasons, and I accommodated. Every single time. Thinking that they would reciprocrate when the time comes, if we’re busy or if we need more hands on board. But boy is that wrong. The complete opposite happened. Every. Time.

I gave the team 10 days of paid vacations for Eid al-Fitr since no one has annual leaves in Pakistan and I wanted them to rest and spend time with their families. On Eid Al-Azha, every member of the team took 10 days off WITHOUT informing me. I had a business which was open with no employees. I gave a two-week paid leave to an employee for Umrah. She turned that into one month of paid leave. I gave another employee a paid + unpaid maternity leave but when they came back, their focus was off, and their vertical wasn’t working very well. Every single thing I told them to do to increase client incoming was ignored, repeating only what they thought was right to do. I then shifted this employee to a different department, but that didn’t work out either because they weren’t skilled in that department and ended up needing a week to do something that I could do in 30 mins.

Ultimately I had to let them go. What I wish I did instead was tell them they were not the right fit for the environment and given them a go ahead to look for opportunities elsewhere. Instead, I stayed “nice” to them, and then ultimately when I was making the hard decision to let them go, it was more painful for them and me, than needed.

CUSTOMER IS NOT ALWAYS RIGHT

Two parts to this too. The first is to do with knowledge. With the advancement of AI the illusion of knowing everything is at an all time high. But I have learnt from seeing customers interact with the doctors at NOSMO and realized that more than 80% of the time, the customer has no idea what they are saying. While medical science has advanced to regenerative therapies, majority of the customers don’t know what they need, but the come in asking for a very specific procedure. E.g. the client is looking to lift their face up and get a chiseled jawline, but they come in asking for fat dissolving injections (without knowing that they are not a suitable candidate for them). Similarly, not knowing the difference between the uses of botox or filler, asking the price of lip filler when you are looking for a lip flip. Bottom line is customers are most likely a victim of whatever company has dumped most money into marketing, while making them believe that the treatment they are getting is their own original thought.

The second part to this is about customer feedback. I scolded one of my staff members based on customer feedback but upon further investigation, I realized the customer was lying. This is the only instance we have had like this at NOSMO in 2 years. All our clients are amazing and we LOVE them. But this one time, the client lied about what happened when in reality the customer, despite being told not to sweat, went and played football, developed scars on their skin (which had been exfoliated), and blamed it on NOSMO’s staff in front of their mother. The mother then called me, texted me, and insulted all the doctors on board, my staff, and me, and then gave us a one star review on google. Unfortunately, I became super harsh to my staff girl, until a week later she said that if it really was her fault, xyz would also have happened. I realized then that that client was not only lying, but also a bad person in general as she had been threatening us with “going public”, while refusing all sorts of follow ups, free procedures, and a full responsibility on us to bear all their expenses too. The only thing we asked of them was to tell us how the bruise formed (we were trying to figure out whether it was a chemical bruise or a physical one) as both are treated differently. But this question really angered the client’s mother and she made several personal insults at me before moving on. I learnt that good customer service means I need to stand up for my team as well and I need to draw a line where I need to ensure their self-respect is not violated by me or by someone else.

PAPERWORK

A lot of running a business is just annoying, boring, but extremely high stakes paperwork. That’s it.

THEFT AND STEALING

Your ideas will be stolen. By people you know. Without any credit given to you. Toughen up. I used to get so upset at these things, but I realized one day that those who steal will always be one step behind me. So I took that as a compliment and started focusing on my own thing. Did I get a lot of money after this? No. But I did cut out a lot of unnecessary stress and that made my life so much easier. Also probably gave me a bit of an ego boost.

STRESS

Learn to manage it before it absolutely fks you up. I got super sick these last two years, periodically, without any underlying cause because of how stressed I was. Figure out why you are stressed and then fix the cause.

HEALTH > WEALTH

Your life is temporary. No hustle, grind, ambition is worth it. Figure out what you actually want and then do it. Do NOT make the mistake of chasing money at any cost. Fix your relationship with your body and your mind and more so with Allah and then see how your wealth multiplies.

PLAY INFINITE GAMES

My goal at NOSMO was to make money, support others while doing so, and create a wellness center. Now my goal is to just simply be the best and what we do. Learn, implement, learn more, implement more. Let’s see where that train takes me.

To a journey filled with curious finds, lessons, and building my caravan along the way!

P.S. grateful for the people around me, especially my parents who put up my rollercoaster emotions, my brother for being a rock, and especially my fiancé who is a unicorn and makes things inside my head happen in real life.