Like 98% population of Pakistan, I was born in a middle-class family living with parents in a rented house in Lahore for years. I was also trained to hunt for jobs after my studies and failing repeatedly to land an opportunity to start my career with a very attractive salary as a fresh graduate. With the average salary of my father, I got admission in a very average private university for my Masters in Computer Science.
My Early Days
I started working as an independent website designer. The term Freelancer wasn’t popular back then. After completing my Masters in Computer Science in 2001, started hunting for jobs in the local market.
After failing to hunt for a job in my field, I was asked by my family to start working in an office of a relative so I learn to work in the office environment after a couple of arguments with my parents (since no one in the family has ever done a business before). I joined a brokerage firm on an internship without salary where they started my salary on the 6th month.
Fast forward. Resigned after 2.5 years at the position of Branch Manager.
The Next Few Years were my Learning phase about “Being Customer Service-Centric”
I restarted the Job Hunting and landed a job in WorldCall Telecom as Data Entry Operator in the Customer Operation Division and got promoted to Corporate Account Activation Supervisor on a Contract basis (Not a Permanent employee). Worked for 2 years but had to resign due to not getting a permanent status from HR due to HR policy.
Joined Pakistan’s First WiMAX Internet Service Provider in Customer Service Division – Call Center as Customer Service Representative. The company had a habit of downsizing the headcount. Somehow, I not only survived 5 years but got many performance awards and was promoted to QA Supervisor until they outsourced this department to another company to cut the cost. While working at this reputed firm, I worked out of the box used my technical skills to build a system that helped the whole team in getting information and launching complaints about the whole call center team.
Launching My First Online Business Selling Products
Alhamdulilah, I got married to a fashion graduate in 2010. She was already making handmade handbags and selling those in various exhibitions held at the college and university levels in Islamabad. Since I live in Lahore, she had to make a new audience for her creativity.
We made our presence online by the name of @Fatymah (on my wife’s name). Launched our collection, made advertising material for print media, explored the way how boosting works on Facebook by learning from YouTube.
This wasn’t just the launch of my online business but I was preparing to launch myself as Social Media Marketing Manager. Except for making the product, I did each process in growing this business myself in growing it. I spent real money on learning to boost my wife’s online business since there were not many experts at that time in the local industry to whom I could ask.
This was started with a little investment of PKR 35000 only in 2010 which included production, marketing material, photoshoot, and boosting the budget for the first time.
There were few Google Adwords experts in the market but not many Facebook Gurus. I had to face that Facebook ads can’t do anything for any business, you need to go for Google Ads to increase your business.
In 2012, I was hired by Corporate Sales Trainer Ashraf Chaudhry to manage his client’s page for Social Media (at a very nominal rate) from designing the posts to responding to each and every query effectively.
After a few weeks, he also offered me to become his business partner for his all businesses and he also asked me to manage his official Facebook page which was having only 37000 likes at that time. I worked day and night, from designing the posts to responding to each and every message/comment he was getting along with managing my own businesses. I was the 3rd person who opted to work in Ashraf Chaudhry’s team as a business partner in 2012 and left in mid-2017 when we were a team of more than 35 persons working remotely from the comfort of houses with monthly revenue increased to 7 figures (in rupees). Revenue-wise, I was performing as the best team player for several months just before we parted ways. This resulted in giving me the popularity I was craving to become known as Social Media Marketing Expert/Consultant.
Beginning of My Better Days
[Beginning of 2017] While working on my existing businesses, I was hired as a Consultant for my Social Media skills by a food group (which was backed by the owners of the famous fragrance business “Asghar Ali Perfumes” of Bahrain. I worked with them until we reached the agreed number of members.
A few months later, I made my own food group with the name of Foodies Family, which is now having more than 33000 members.
It was from the first few food groups of Pakistan and our USP was to add people having good family background only which got popular in a very short time span. We were approached by Food Delivery Apps like Cheetay and Foodpanda, Nestle, International Restaurants having outlets in Pakistan for Marketing purposes. We were also approached by a lot of local restaurants for paid marketing on our group. The actual purpose to build the community of food lovers was to target the local restaurant industry since there were only very few social media marketing agencies in Lahore at that time.
Expanding the Scope of Business
[March 2019] It was the time when I felt the need for Influencer Marketing in the local industry. There were few in our circle already. We launched our magazine “Folklore Magazine” and our logo with Green and White colors represented the identity of Pakistan through every niche.
We started onboarding the Instagram Influencers with our company. Within a very short span of time, my agency was able to register more than 250 Instagram Influencers who worked within Pakistan having a good number of followers with an estimated reach of over 20 million collectively.
We also held a panel talk event to teach the interested candidates to launch themselves as Instagram Influencer/bloggers.
Within these 2 plus years, we successfully hosted many launch events, meet & greets with celebrities, food tasting events at top-level restaurants along-with many campaigns for our clients. Luckily, we are the only business in this niche, who are successfully charging 100% advance payments from our clients just because of our reputation and out-of-the-box delivery for our clients.
My networking and client-centric approach helped me a lot in gaining a good number of clients and followers on my personal social media accounts (which has now crossed 50K) as well as on my company Instagram account (100K milestone achieved).
Today, I am being approached to do business with international brands working in Pakistan for Social Media Marketing, PR Campaigns, Consultancy, Events, Photoshoot, etc., etc. My agency has assisted in multiplying the revenues of more than 100 businesses in a very short span of 2 years.
I never stopped learning from the experts in the same field in the whole tenure which helped me gain more business.
Recently, I am included in the mentors’ panel with the career consulting platform “The Right Careers”.
With my customer-centric approach, I always believed in giving more than 100% to everyone doing business and that’s what I train my team for.
I have always focused on growing a business, settling it to a level where it can work on auto-pilot, and then adding another.
Currently, I am running the following businesses while working as a content creator and social media Influencer.
1. Fatymah Clothing
2. Folklore Magazine (Social Media Marketing Consultant and Influencer)
3. CV and Content Writing Service
(You can reach me at 03229805797)
A few things I understood in the very start of my professional career were:
Your network is your net worth
Always be helping your prospects instead of closing
Always have a mentor
Always have a customer centric approach (That adds value in Viral Marketing)
With a number of people are following me on Social Media accounts, my client also hires my social media space for promotional activities for respective businesses.
I was never a trainer but recently I launched a few groups where I will start training my followers on various things (I will not feel shame in saying I got inspired by Hisham Sarwar and Rehan Allahwala)
My Groups/Communities
Learn with Umar J. Qureshi!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/LearnWithUJQ
Social Media Influencers of Pakistan!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/337190487906303
Foodies Family Group
https://www.facebook.com/groups/FoodiesFamilyPk
PS. I have also created a group on Facebook where I am starting to teach “How to Become a Social Media Influencer?”.
“Learn With Umar J. Qureshi”
Few Achievements
In 5 years, I have grown Ashraf Chaudhry’s businesses from few thousand to 7 figures per month revenue
In 11 years, I have grown Fatymah Clothing to an established online clothing brand where I hardly run paid ads now and am still able to maintain comeback customers.
In 11 years, I have successfully signed up more than 200 clients from the Restaurant Industry (with a minimum contract duration of 3 months each).
In 2 years, my agency has successfully registered more than 1000 Instagram Influencers/Bloggers and Socialites.
My Client Base
- Restaurants
- Technology Companies
- Marketing Agencies
- Sales Trainers
- Master Life Coach
- Real Estate Companies
- Food Delivery Apps
- Clothing Brands
- Start-Ups
How To Reach Me?
My audience can reach me for business opportunities at umar@folkloremagazine.com or/and my social media links
Whatsapp: 03214496793
Personal Instagram: @umarjqofficial
Facebook Page: @UmarJQofficial
Facebook Profile: @UmarJQureshi
YouTube Channel: @UmarJQureshi
Pinterest Page: @UmarJQofficial
Company Page: Folklore Magazine (Online Magazine & Marketing Agency)
Online Website: Umar JQ Official
Anyone can approach me for a mentoring session on becoming the Social Media Manager at The Rights Career
Conclusion:
My key learning in 11 years of business: “Always meet people and find opportunities to work together!”
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