Advantages of Personal Branding for Founders

Hasan Kubba: 0:00

Brands will still exist as companies and that's still valuable to build. We're not taking anything away from that, but there's something people would love to hear the story. So, even if you have a brand, people like to know the story of the founders. They like to connect to the people behind it.

‍Amardeep Parmar: 0:17

How to build a personal brand as a founder, why it's important, the first steps to take, how to determine your niche. Long form versus short form content and the power of writing the book. We've got an expert with us today Hasan Kubba, the author of the bestselling book, The Unfair Advantage. He's also now an author coach and a keynote speaker, after previously bootstrapping a successful marketing agency. Hope you enjoy this episode. I'm Amar from the BAE HQ and this podcast is powered by HSBC Innovation Banking. So, Hasan, why should founders even be thinking about personal brand? Because I know some founders are quite shy, for example.

Hasan Kubba: 0:58

Yeah, I think personal brand is just the thing that's going to keep growing and I think it's the natural way for people to solve. What is a brand? A brand is sort of a reputation or an association that people have. You know, hopefully it's a positive association, hopefully they have a good kind of. It is literally like having a reputation, but for something that's like a group of people, that's kind of faceless. A company is like. A company literally means a group of people, right, and the point of a company is that it exists. You can replace the people. The company will still exist. That's the idea of having um sort of a separate entity. But I think the personal brand thing is just huge and we've all seen it. We've all seen how the most like we're moving away.

Hasan Kubba: 1:44

I think there's this thing about the 20th century where it was about big brands because it was all about economies of scale. It was all about, like, factory and assembly line production, and so it was all about the brands. And I think we're moving away from that now to people. And you see that in that even, for example, Tim Cook has more followers on social media than apple, as the company has, and people are more interested in him, and this is Tim Cook, not the founder, not super charismatic guy, no one. I don't really hear people raving about Tim Cook right, because he, you know, I mean so but he still has more followers, let alone people like Elon Musk, you know more followers, followers than Tesla or SpaceX, let alone, I don't know, think of anybody else, any big kind of names. Nowadays, it's more about the people, and brands will still exist as companies and that's still valuable to build. We're not taking anything away from that.

Hasan Kubba: 2:39

But there's something people would love to hear the story. So, even if you have a brand, people like to know the story of the founders. They like to connect to the people behind it and oftentimes, the story of the company is the story of the founders. You know? That's. That's the key is like how did the company get here? Well, the founders had this idea, they were facing this problem, they had this insight and they decided to do this.

Hasan Kubba: 3:00

So, yeah, I really think that personal brand is just going to keep growing more and more based on the social media kind of world that we live in. That's only going to become stronger. Um, I think more people, more CEOs, are going to start to become more and more outspoken and develop and build their personal brands. Um, because it's just a very, very valuable way to get attention. It's a very, very valuable way to get attention for free, pretty much, yeah, like think of. The other example comes to mind is Richard Branson, who was very early into the personal branding game. He's much more well-known than Virginist right, and it's key, and he's always used it as a clever way to get media to get attention, even before you know social media and all of that.

Amardeep Parmar: 3:46

I think you've. You've built your own personal brand in many different ways, right? So you've obviously got your book, you've done a podcast in the past, you've got newsletters, you've got your writing, you've got guesting on other people's podcasts like this. There's so many different ways to go about it. I think that overwhelms a lot of people. And, let's say, somebody is now as a founder they're quite early stage in their business. What's maybe the first steps they should start thinking about before they start trying to build their personal brand?

Hasan Kubba: 4:12

The first steps to think about. I think personal brand is mostly about content marketing. Right, we call it content marketing, but it's about content. It's about writing stuff and sharing it, like a tweet is content, you know. A linkedin post is content, a book is content, a video everything is content, whether it whether it's just an interview you're doing and it's off the cuff, or whether you've pre-planned it and you had copywriters work on it or whatever. Ultimately it's going to come from content and content it.

Hasan Kubba: 4:40

When you're copywriting, what you have to think about is who is it for? What am I trying to say? What are the values here? One of the things, one of the lenses I like to use, is what is the transformation I'm helping people make? What's the transformation my company helps people make? You know it helps them get from A to B. My company helps people get from A to B. My startup. Okay, what is A and what is B, and who are they and why did I do that and did I face it?

Hasan Kubba: 5:09

Maybe it's like I was scratching my own itch. I was facing the problem and I decided to solve it. Or maybe it comes from another angle and I have to use other people's stories, but there's something linked to why am I the one who started this company? You know why me and I think that is the first thing to think about is to think about why is it that you've started this company, this startup, this organization? What's your story? You don't have to like go super in depth, it doesn't need to be like a therapy session, but when you're brainstorming, you should go deeper than you would probably publicly share and then think, okay, how much do I want to share publicly? How much of that do I want to show as the thing? What do I want to be known for? People naturally put you in like buckets in their head, like this is something that people have known so well in branding, positioning, um, and you have to think, okay, what bucket am I in? Am I just like in this? Can I stand out in some way? Can I define my own sort of bucket, in a way, the category that, what I'm known for? Am I the? You know the the what? How can we get to some specific examples? Am I like, oh, the the e-commerce guy who's like doing gym you know, shaping how gym clothes are. Or am I like the one who's trying to get humanity to Mars, you know, trying to get us to space.

Hasan Kubba: 6:33

My, the, is what do you want to be known for and what category is that? Is it, are you, or are you just another? You know, shampoo company, shampoo came to my mind, but essentially you want to think about is it just another SaaS business, right? Or is it something more specific to my target audience? Because it doesn't need to be to the? You know, branding isn't necessary to everyone, it's who you're targeting and so, or am I solving a particular problem they're facing? Am I saving them money? Am I getting them more sales? Am I, you know, whatever it might be, am I making them look good to their boss? And so you want to know what problem that is that you're solving and why it's you and how they can kind of get to know you as a personality, how, how you're faced. You know I always encourage like CEOs to be like yeah, why don't you go on that video? You know that explainer video, why isn't it you? It doesn't have to be, but it could really help and that's a well-known thing like a CEO, to kind of build that relationship and build that audience. So these are the sorts of things. I've thrown a few ideas out there, but it's all about starting kind of strategically of like what do I want to be known for? I like to think of it as reputation. Personal brand is like a reputation. What reputation do I want to build for myself? What do I want to be known for? What are people going to think of me as?

Hasan Kubba: 7:44

Quick example, just to wrap up this whole smorgasbord of ideas and thoughts, I was doing a marketing agency for local businesses, so I was working with like dentists and I don't know tile businesses, a catering company, et cetera. My first business is when I first started out, and in their minds this is like 10 years ago, their minds they thought of me as the internet guy, like they didn't care, like they didn't think I was just doing websites or I was just doing SEO or I was just doing a new logo for them, because branding just meant logo to them. Right, you have to think of what they think of it. And so to them I was just the internet guy and in fact sometimes they abstract it out to just the computer guy. And so one day I got a call from one of the managers of one of my clients to be like Hasan, the printer isn't working. What can we do? I'm like I've done your website. What have I got to do with the printer? Um, and that's the thing. It's because in the category, in their heads, the reputation is I'm the computer guy. Right, that that's just how they saw it, so it's that's

Hasan Kubba: 8:45

the key is to understand, not what you think of yourself, what do other people think of you, how they categorize you, because people probably think of you less than you might imagine and so they're just going to jump to quick judgments, quick um assumptions like oh yeah, he's, he's software, he does this software like this crm software, okay, cool, and that's it. And it's like no, but you're trying to nuance it or something. But it's tough, and that's what you want to get ahead of that and be strategic about it and get known for something. And basically that's what personal brand is for is to be strategic about the communications there and the reputation you want to build and the category or bucket you want to be put in.

Amardeep Parmar: 9:28

I think what's really interesting there is so many founders look at the people right at the very top as their examples. So a classic one, for example, is Stephen Bartlett right, where, when you look at Stephen Bartlett's journey, he started off Diary of a CEO was actually about his business, whereas now it's way more mainstream, right, and I see a lot of people.

Amardeep Parmar: 9:41

What mistake I think they make and you might agree or disagree is that they see that model and be like I've got to be everywhere and they're trying to get as many views as they possibly can. And it was almost like that fame element as opposed to, like you said, about what do you want to be known for and how should people be thinking about that in terms of how big of a niche should you be targeting? And one thing I'm quite lucky on, because I'm on my own LinkedIn content, is I'm basically targeting founders of any kind, which is quite useful for me because then I can do different types of advice that are going to impact founders. But that's because of what my business is, whereas if you're a business which is about sales software, then having every type of founder might not really be the best thing for you. So how do you think about how to determine how big your niche should be?

Hasan Kubba: 10:30

Yeah, I think the key is to think about what do you want out of this? What are the objectives? We start with why, you know, as Simon Sinek has popularized, but really we all know that everything starts with a goal. It starts with the objective. And why build a personal brand? Some of the reasons that people built personal brands or especially founders is of course, for sales, clients, customers, users. That's a piece of it, but also for there's a lot of other goals. There's a lot of other stakeholders, there's a lot of other challenges. So, for example, a big one is recruiting, is to attract talent, and that's always going to be a struggle, that's always going to be an ongoing thing. And how do you do that? Well, you can, you know, kind of showcase the values and the personality behind the business, to give an idea of what it's like to work there and that we're working on something meaningful and interesting and we have a great environment and we have a great camaraderie, we have a great kind of mentorship thing or whatever that might be, and that starts from the top. Other thing is to, you know, raise funding is to get investors to sort of trust and build confidence in them. You know that you're making progress, that there's momentum, that there's something happening. The other thing is media and PR. You might want to just get the attention of journalists. You might want to get some press. You might want to get some interviews. You might want to leverage media without having to pay for it directly in terms of ads. The other thing that you might be thinking about is you might be thinking longer term, even to build a personal brand for beyond the company, when you've exited one day, hopefully, or something like that. You might want to write a book one day, or you might want to teach other people, or you might want to help others. You might want to just have some impact. So that could be more about the meta journey that you've had as an entrepreneur. You might be talking about entrepreneurship or being a founder or doing a startup. That's a very common thing to talk about.

Hasan Kubba: 12:26

One of the things I talk about most now which I never expected that I'm going to be talking about a lot is becoming an author, is writing a book. Right, that's the meta journey. My book is about starting a startup. For the most part ostensibly it's about success in general, but for the most part, it's about starting a company or starting something like that. But really, what people come to me even more for is how did you get a publishing deal? How did your book do so well? How did you win awards? How did you win awards? How did you get so many amazing reviews? How did it go viral on youtube? All these kinds of topics has become more about more I talk about than startups and get. I get more coaching clients in that space than in the startup space, which and I also get the intersection when it's like the creator economy, startups and stuff like that, which is very interesting.

Hasan Kubba: 13:11

But yeah, um. So then there's the meta journey, like maybe that's the brand you want to build or maybe it's just a reputation thing. Maybe you just want to build a certain reputation about yourself or you just want to yeah it you. There's no wrong or right answer. But these are the common objectives and so, based on those objectives, the niche is dictated because it's like okay, okay, so who's this for right? Is this just for people in fintech or whatever in banking who want to kind of solve this really niche issue with our piece of software? And that's going to be a very small audience. Or is it going to be something like is it a B2C company and then it's going to be a much bigger brand that you want to build because it's just much more people, so that that kind of dictates the kind of the sheer numbers you touched on, Steven Bartlett. Yeah, like going mainstream.

Hasan Kubba: 14:02

A good counter example to this and just to to illustrate your point even further is I've worked with Tiktok creators. So Tiktok creators can have like millions of views, millions of followers, and they still might not I mean, this has become a well-known issue they still might not even be able to fill up a room if they're talking like not enough people are interested to even buy tickets or go to um, this is, uh, insights from vidcon, one of the youtuber conferences. They'll be like oh, there's a huge tiktoker and the room is not even getting filled up because no one really knows who they are, because it's like they're like. So views is not a good proxy. You know, like podcasts will have much fewer like views or listens, but people have a much deeper connection. Same with like people listen to an audiobook or read a book.

Hasan Kubba: 14:45

So, yeah, don't judge it purely on like numbers, because it's memorability and like depth of relationship is what matters. Um, not just how many people know you and uh, it's just yeah, based on your objective, like it might not be a huge audience that you want to get, you might just be the right people. You know, if you have the right people like having 100 views on a youtube video it could be like one of those people could be, like, you know, the game changer, the client that changes everything. You know who knows could be the investor that changes everything, or a journalist or something. So you never know and you have to bear that in mind.

Amardeep Parmar: 15:26

We hope you're enjoying the episode so far. We just want to give a quick shout out to our headline partners, HSBC Innovation Banking. One of the biggest challenges for so many startups is finding the right bank to support them, because you might start off and try to use a traditional bank, but they don't understand what you're doing. You're just talking to an AI assistant or you're talking to somebody who doesn't really understand what it is you've been trying to do. HSBC have got the team they've built out over years to make sure they understand what you're doing. They've got the the deep sector expertise and they can help connect you with the right people to make your dreams come true. So if you want to learn more, check out hsbcinnovation banking. com.

Amardeep Parmar: 16:01

It's really interesting what you said there as well about the. Once you start creating content, bring yourself out as a personal brand, where you then get people who want to reach out about how you built your personal brand, for example, about the book review, and I get the same thing about podcasting. It's like I didn't necessarily want to be the guy telling people how to create podcasts, but now we do offer that service because there's just so much demand for it that makes sense to do it. But obviously your book is about unfair advantages, right, and how have you leveraged your own unfair advantages in building your own personal brand and how could other people listening what advantages they might have that would enable them to put their personal brand effectively too?

Hasan Kubba: 16:40

Unfair advantages is the key. So the idea behind unfair advantages is success is not just about hard work, it's about identifying and leveraging unfair advantages. Unfair advantages are kind of strengths that you have internally, like talents, let's say, or things which you naturally could doubt, or things which people find difficult, which you find easy, but also your circumstances, and so it's constantly changing. So it's a dynamic thing. And so, starting out, I had very, very, very few unfair advantages, if you exclude the really important ones, like the fact that I moved. I grew up in the UK, you know, I had a good education here, um, etc. Etc. I was born in Baghdad, by the way. For context, just the biggest unfair advantage is location, um. So, other than those kinds of like foundational things, I didn't have many unfair advantages going into business or even into writing a book. But you have to just see what you can get, what you can leverage, what you can use, and maybe you can turn a disadvantage into an advantage. So for me I think it was the key to my success with the book is having a really solid, You know all the things I described about who your target audience is, what your goal is, all that stuff that I learned in marketing and copywriting. I applied that to the book. What is the transformation I want the reader to have in this case is the reader, who's the target audience? And uh, applied all of that, made it work, made the and, especially, to focus on what the concept is. What's the idea? You know this idea of unfair advantages. Everybody has unfair advantages. You just need to figure out what they are. That is what gave us the initial boost, because we put so much effort into the book quality. We had word of mouth and the, the idea was refreshing. The concept was good enough to go viral on YouTube and so from that, I was able to then leverage that to use my personal brand. So that was the thing. So it was almost like I was using that and also even having a co-author.

Hasan Kubba: 18:47

He was the first marketing director of Just Eat. Not a huge unfair advantage, not as big as that sounds. He wasn't famous. He didn't have a big following, and neither did I. That's why it's. That's why I say, like you know, most authors are like famous and that's how they get book deals. They have like huge followings. Uh, they're big like professors and academics, and they've already written books. They're usually repeat authors.

Hasan Kubba: 19:08

So for a first-time author, you have to really really nail a good concept. So I think it's really important to know the message you're trying to tell. What is a transformation, who are you trying to help? What's the unique perspective? That's compelling, and it was that that I was able to leverage into like okay, now I've got word of mouth, now I've got people talking about it, and then use that and then like use other people's audiences.

Hasan Kubba: 19:35

So, for example, Ali Abdaal, his video went viral, which was summarizing the book and interviewing me, and then. So when, then his audience got to know about the book and bought the book. So that's like leveraging other people's audiences. So you don't necessarily need to have your own huge following, you can use other people's. So that's the key. The key is to think like that is to think of how can I leverage this, what can I do? And to have a good starting point, to have the strategy in the right place, the right foundation, which is like something that I'm constantly helping people with, is like okay, who are you targeting, what's your messaging, etc.

Amardeep Parmar: 20:02

And we touched on this earlier as well. We said about the difference between different types of content, right, where you might get a million views on Tiktok, but then how much trust have you actually built with those million people? Whereas, let's say, you get 100 people listening to this podcast right now. Right, they're going to recognize my voice If they are watching this on YouTube and they've sat here for half an hour watching us, they're going to recognize us. It's going to look familiar, right, and it's a much bigger impact than, say, a short 10-second video, whereas a book, like I said, it's even bigger than that, right, if somebody's giving up, say, I don't know how long it takes to read the average book, paying how fast you are, but it's gonna be hours of their time, right, and they're gonna then recognize you really strongly.

Amardeep Parmar: 20:45

And for somebody who just think about starting out their personal brand, right, I think so many people have this idea they want to do a book one day. How can you think about, like, when's the right time to do that in your personal brand journey? Like, would you recommend starting off with the book first, or should they do other things first and ladder up to it? Or how does a book fit into somebody's personal brand and then think about from a founder perspective?

Hasan Kubba: 21:08

Yeah, good. So. So a book is a very, very powerful thing because it gives you, like, instant credibility in whatever the book is about. It's like this whole kind of phrase of like do I know this topic? Well, I wrote a book about it. And it's like this idea of like, if you wrote a book about it you would know and it's true, I mean, unless you put in no effort and just churn out something horrible, you are going to have to go so in-depth, you're going to have to think about it a lot, you're going to have to research a lot, you're going to have to touch in on your experiences, et cetera, et cetera, to actually know the topic inside and out to write a book on it. So there's that phrase. It's like what's the book that's going to most change your life? It's the book that you write, it's not the one that you read. And it's been so true in my experience.

Hasan Kubba: 21:57

And I've worked with a lot of like prospective authors who are trying to write their first books and then have gotten signed by literary agents by working with me, but go on publishing deals by working with me, even got a New York Times bestseller by working with me and this and really for them, it's's like been a huge game changer, even when they've already had a big audience, because it's a different level of credibility. It's a different level of like even in terms of attracting media attention, in terms of getting invited to speaking events, getting you know, just getting clients, getting inbound, just people, just like oh my god, I read your book and it changed my life and getting emails from all over the world. That's the cool thing about writing a book. So when to do that? I think if you have something interesting to say, if you have a message to share and I think more of us have a message to share than we think and I think if you have an idea worth sharing. It's the way I see it. If you have an idea worth sharing, a new perspective, it doesn't need to be something completely original. There is nothing really completely original. I think it's mostly having a new take on something familiar, and so it's important to really refine and hone the idea and work on that. So I would be thinking of it wherever, whatever stage you're at, I'd be thinking of what is the thing that I want to share, what's the thing I want to impart with the world, and that's the kind of perspective I take, because it takes time to develop. So people often ask us how long did it take us to write the book?

Hasan Kubba: 23:21

It was like two years of no actual writing and just thinking about and refining the concept. You know, part-time, of course, we had businesses and jobs and you know things that we were running, investments, but you know, here and there we'd be like, okay, what is this concept we're trying to say? What is this thing? There's this insight we want to share. How do we explain it? Okay, unfair advantages, or how do we define that? How? Okay, there's this thing called the miles framework and there's this whole thing about how to order.

Hasan Kubba: 23:47

Your unfair advantages took time to develop and then to stress, test and then and then to actually do like, basically, customer development. You know, we treated it like a startup, we tried to treat it like a product and we said we tested in front of people, we, we spoke it, we shared the idea on stage, we got feedback from people, we were mentoring startup founders and we saw where did they get stuck, where did they struggle, and that's how we developed the idea. So I think it's something to think about, because you don't look, people think that you have to have a huge audience to do it. Of course, that's a huge unfair advantage. If you do, it's your platform. They call it your author platform. If you have that, that's huge and that will definitely help you get a book deal and it'll definitely help you sell books.

Hasan Kubba: 24:31

But it's possible without one. I did it without one, you know, and there have been many others that have done it without one. One of my clients got got a book deal without having any audience. It's just about having an interesting thing to share and having such a unique take on it and showing that you're willing to promote it. Having an interesting take, willing to promote it, and you're gonna not just put a book out and just sit back and hope that they do all the marketing and sending for you, you're in with a chance of getting a book deal. It's not easy. It's like raising funding. It's not easy to raise funding, but it's possible and so that's the way I share it. So if you're thinking about it, then you should probably go deeper and thinking about it even more, because it's really life-changing.

Amardeep Parmar: 25:14

I like what you said as well about the most impactful book you ever can write is the one you write yourself. And I think even the stuff you said too about that two years of thinking is that clarity of thought. And that clarity of thought. Even if you don't end up writing the book, the fact that you've gone through that process to think about that, make your messaging and positioning more clear. And even just creating content, like on a daily basis, like I'm forced to think about what are my ideas, and sometimes you have the kind of rough thing in your head, but then when you know that somebody's going to read this and you've got to make articulate it clearly, it really solidifies the way you think, which is beneficial, like internally for yourself. When you're struggling with different problems, you have to articulate properly. Also, you said for like hiring for investors, where it's a way to almost train your brain in terms of like, what exactly do I mean when I say things, and we both have this experience.

Amardeep Parmar: 26:07

Probably we talk to a lot of people who don't really know what they mean and you can tap them for about an hour. I don't actually understand what they do, to be honest, and some of it is just they haven't been through that process of trying to make their thoughts clearer. But we are going to move to quickfire questions now because of timing and like, really enjoy this conversation. Obviously, we've known each other. You're episode two of the podcast or three of the podcast, so it's good to get you back on again as well. But quickfire questions is who's three people you'd love to shout out that you think are doing incredible work and you think the audience should pay attention to?

Hasan Kubba: 26:45

The three people that come to mind for me, I'm going to start with most famous to least famous, and so the first one that came to mind is just Ali Abdaal. He's such a good friend of mine now. He started off with being like a coaching client. Well, first he just summarized and reviewed the book and invited me on as an interview, then became a friend and coaching client. I was coaching on his business and then on his book and you know, we launched his online course, et cetera together. We strategized on that and then worked on his book together, which was really interesting to start from complete scratch, to hone and refine the idea.

Hasan Kubba: 27:19

Ali's really really gracious. He's gracious with people. He's gracious with time. He's humble, he wants to share. You'd think, you know, having five million plus YouTube subscribers would get to his head, or like half a million people on his newsletter. It really doesn't. He's just genuinely tries to make time for people. He genuinely tries to help people and so, yeah, I think like he's not like peaking, he's nowhere near that. I think he's just going to keep going on and on. So I'll start with Ali Abdaal, which some of your audience I'm sure will be familiar with already.

Hasan Kubba: 27:50

Um, the second one is a guest that you've had on who, who gave me a shout out as well, and that's not. I'm not just trying to reciprocate, I genuinely mean he's one of the most interesting, insightful people that I've worked with. He's just a brilliant founder. And this is Husayn Kassai, the founder of Quench. ai, and he was also the co-founder of Onfido. He was the CEO of Onfido, which has done extremely well. I think recently sold. They've just exited that now, which is amazing. Husayn is just again. I think I'm just drawn to people who are very humble. He's just a very humble guy. You've met him, Amar. I recommended him for the podcast. The way he thinks, he's so effective as a founder and a CEO but at the same time, he doesn't fit into that kind of um I don't know like let's stereotype as the toxic hustle, you know type of CEO he's so not that but at the same time he's so effective, which is incredible because, like, he can be kind, he can be thoughtful and at the same time, he's super effective. He's super clear, he's yeah. So Husayn is is awesome, Husayn Kassai.

Hasan Kubba: 29:07

And the third one is um Safa Alkateb. I can't remember if I mentioned him to you before, Amar. He's a really good friend of mine and I consider him almost as a mentor, but, like, I kind of got to know him more recently. He's not like a, like a mentor from ages ago. I've known him for like uh, I met him in 2019. I was speaking at a conference. He was in the audience and he really liked my talk.

Hasan Kubba: 29:26

This guy's is, again, super humble but like, super, super accomplished. He's like a serial founder. He was a brilliant developer when he was younger, like a CTO but also a CEO. He's done so many companies. He's the latest one is AutoCAD that he's done, that he's worked on for the last decade or so. That got acquired by Uber, so it actually is become an Uber company. It's like a 250 employees, something like that kind of the number, but like large number of employees, a good scale up and again super generous, super insightful, thoughtful, and I definitely recommend you have him on um. So yeah, so far, he's just a brilliant, you know, Asian entrepreneur.

Amardeep Parmar: 30:18

Obviously met the first two before, like, like I said, it's interesting sometimes people who've reached that kind of level, you sometimes expect them not to be as friendly as they are and then it's quite a nice surprise when they are. And like. Next question obviously is been great to have you on today and hopefully people have learned a lot. But if they want to learn more from you, if they want to find out more, where can they follow you? Where can they keep track of what you're up to?

Hasan Kubba: 30:43

sure, yeah, so, um, I have, uh, hasankubbasubstack. com is my new sub stack. Um, I'm writing, I'm sharing there, about how to build a personal brand and, in particular, how to think about becoming a published and best-selling author, how to think about that path and, as you said, that also that crystallization of ideas helps you to also come up with a content strategy. I've worked with a lot of founders and and people with companies who get so much clearer about who they're targeting just by going through the process with me in terms of like target readers, audience. What is this damn book about? What's the concept, what's the theme? So that is where I would recommend people.

Hasan Kubba: 31:22

There's also a quiz and maybe I'll share with you the link for what kind of author you might be, if that's what you're trying to build as an author, and, of course, I'm on social media as well. So, yeah, I'd love to share that quiz. You can take it for free. It gives you insights about yourself. There's another quiz I've got called you know what's your unfair advantage. If you're interested in that, you can probably, you know, find links for that. But, yeah, I'm Hasan Kubba on social medias and I'd love to connect. I love connecting with people, answering questions, etc. So please feel free to reach out.

Amardeep Parmar: 31:52

And then one more question is is there anything that you need help with, anything the audience listening right now might be able to help you with?

Hasan Kubba: 31:58

Nothing immediately comes to mind. I'm looking to just build that newsletter and I'm going to be launching another brand called Success Decoded. It's almost a redonk. It was like a lockdown project. And what do I need help with? Share my articles if you find them valuable. I'm going to be in content. You know, videos, et cetera, articles. Just use the share button. Share with people who would be interested. So I've done a big and, Amar, you actually even gave me feedback on this. I've done a huge case study on Ali Abdaal's book process. It's very in-depth. I've shared everything that I could squeeze in about the publishing world, what the misconceptions are, what people need to know if they're thinking about writing a book and yeah, so it's one of those. It took me a very long time to write, so if anybody gets value from them, please share, put a link to it and subscribe to the newsletter. So, yeah, nothing in particular, except to hopefully enjoy my content and share it with people if you find it valuable.

Amardeep Parmar: 32:51

So thanks so much for coming on today. It's been a pleasure. Any final words to the audience?

Hasan Kubba: 32:53

Yeah, I'd love to connect. I I know what it's like to to, you know, start a company. I know what it's like. I've worked with founders who've gone through so much trouble. I know you can't find the time to create content and build your own personal brand for yourself, but it's just key to have that strategy in place and to have that clarity in the beginning. So I just urge you to really think about it so that you can start to be a bit more mindful and a bit more purposeful about how you put yourself out there, because it's not about just putting in a ton of time and you've got no time for it. It could be as simple as just tweaking your LinkedIn profile, tweaking your twitter profile and then like, and then hopefully that's a foundation to start creating content from there.

Amardeep Parmar: 33:40

Thank you for watching. Don't forget to subscribe. See you next time.

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