I wish Karachi had an IKEA

About 99% of the places on rent that we saw in Karachi were all unfurnished and that was generally the idea here. So first and foremost we got a lot of help from my aunt, who gave us curtains, cutlery, pillows, rugs etc.

Here I would like to introduce our landlord. He is a retired colonel from the Pakistan army and has fought in 2 out of the 3 wars Pakistan had with India. A very nice and decent man. He lived with his wife and son when we moved in, he has another son who is married and has his own place and 2 daughters who are both married, one lives in Karachi and the other in Dubai. As his youngest son was getting married and they didn’t have the space, he offered us a double bed with 2 side tables and a small round table with chairs and we happily accepted.

The most costly things that we had to purchase were a fridge, Air conditioner (due to the heat), dining table, and a generator. “A generator” you may ask, in Pakistan the electricity has a tendency of disappearing for hours. Karachi has the biggest problem with a rapidly increasing population and heat. Due to the heat getting worse every summer more and more people are opting for Air Conditioners, even though the electricity bill for it amounts to about 60 quid a month, a lot of people working in Pakistan have a basic salary of 50 quid a month but the heat can get unbearable. Hence an increase load on the power station, hence the concept of Load Shedding. Load Shedding basically involves shutting down electricity in different areas at different times to even out the load on the power station. Hence the need for a generator to keep us going when the power station gives up on us.

2 weeks after we signed the lease, we moved in. Around the same time we hired a worker for the house who would take care of all the cooking and cleaning of the house except the bathrooms, for which we have a lady who comes and cleans the bathrooms on a daily basis.

Although it may all seem very easy, in reality it was a pain. My aunt had given us their Suzuki van to use to get around also famously known as the Suzuki dubba in Pakistan. Items were delivered and were not working, items were fitted and were leaking, and the list goes on and on. Then its not like London where u call up the company and they instantly deliver a new one, rather you have to call them at least 10 times to get any sort of response or they just leave the phone off the hook. Soon I started to realise why such a large percentage of the population were suffering from High Blood Pressure.

After a couple of weeks we realised that this was the norm of the country, so we got used to it and I started looking for an office.

The Search For A House in Karachi Begins

First and foremost we started to search for a place to live and although our aunt offered for us to stay at her sons house, which was next door and empty, we did not want to take the mick. So my cousin took me to a couple of estate agents they had previously used and we got started.

We decided to get a feel of all areas and types of living spaces. We must of seen well over 50 places before we made our decision. Our 2 main options were basically either a flat or a portion of a bungalow. After checking out all the different areas, we had come to the conclusion that we need to stick to the Defence area. Now Defence is where all of the embassies and big time business men are based and is considered one of the safest areas in the city. Although we did check out other areas, but to put it bluntly we just didn’t like them and on top of that my cousins had advised me not to look outside the Defence area.

The estate agents would take us out and show us all the different places available. Now that we had decided to stick to defence this gave us 2 options. All flats in defence are located in commercial areas; a commercial area is basically an area where there are a lot of shops and with shops come people and with people comes noise. Although we saw some OK flats, none of them had running water; all the tenants of that building had to chip in to fill up using a water tanker. I really didn’t like that option, you see I was thinking ahead if I had water tankers and God knows what to worry about, I would barely have time for the business.

This narrowed our options down to bungalow portions. A bungalow portion is basically half of a bungalow and for those of you who have visited the sub continent then you would know that the bungalows and HUGE. After a lot of running around we found our portion and we knew this was it as soon as we walked through the doors, you know you get that feeling sometimes and some things just feel right, well this was one of those times.

Although it was a bit steep, we wanted to be comfortable and it was also only 5 minutes from my cousin’s house so we went ahead with it. Ok just as a word of warning, the way the rent is paid in Pakistan is you generally pay a security deposit worth 2 months rent, which is kept up until the end of your contract, after which the landlord inspects the property and makes sure everything is in order, then the security deposit is returned, which is not a problem and is the usual practice in the UK as well. The bombshell hit when they wanted the whole years rent in advance, you heard it they wanted 12 months rent all in one go and this was the usual practice here.

After a lot of accounting and conferring we went ahead with the deal and finally signed the lease for the place on I think it was the 11^th of February 2007.

For those of you who are familiar with Karachi then I am located 5 minutes from the Saudi Arabian Embassy.

Arrival at Karachi

We arrived at Karachi on a Saturday morning. It was surprising, usually as soon as you leave the plane you feel the heat outside the airport almost immediately, but this time round there was a cool breeze and barely any heat, which was great. January being a part of Karachi’s winter months.

We were picked up by my cousin and their office driver. It’s about a 30 minute drive from the airport to my Aunt’s house, 20 minutes if you put your foot down.

My uncle is a partner in one of the largest private Civil Engineering firms in Pakistan. So they live in a nice house in Defence Karachi, it’s like the Knightsbridge of Karachi.

Every year we come to Karachi we stay at their house and are welcomed with open arms. This worked out a huge help for me financially as I saved on a lot of hotel and other related costs.

On the same evening I discussed my plans with my cousins and uncle and received a lot of great advice from them, if only I had listened.

19th January 2007

In December we had made a decision to get all shopping done and tie all loose ends well before the departure date. We tried our best but as was our family practice most jobs were left to the last week and then the last 3 days. Before we knew, it was the 18^th of January and chaos followed as usual. Our luggage was as USUAL overweight.

We managed to get through the baggage area and said our goodbyes to my 2 older brothers. We waited for 2 hours at the Gate because the flight had been delayed. Finally settled on the plane it was around a 6-7 hour journey to Dubai, where we were rushed straight into our connecting flight to Karachi.

Preparing For Pakistan

Since we were kids we have been coming to Pakistan nearly every year. That was a big help. My mother tongue being Pashto or Pushto, it was more important for me to be proficient in Urdu, but was lucky as my parents were also going with me and are both proficient in Urdu, Pakistan’s national language.

The most important thing we needed a lot of was capital or dosh. So I started working as a cabby in London, blinkin ell. I completed a course in Passenger Facilitation, courtesy of the Job Centre. Through which I also received my PCO licence. For those who don’t know what a PCO license is, it’s basically a relatively new initiative by the Public Carriage Office to have every single cabby (minicab driver) on record. Legally you are not allowed to work as a cabby without this license. So I got my license and started to work for a firm called Abbey Cars.

Before I go any further, now when it comes to cabbing the money is in Black cabs and Chauffeuring (driving BMW’s and Mercs). Black Cab drivers have to take a 3 year course to get started and have to learn and memorise their way all around London (Hats off to them). I was hoping to get into chauffeuring but little did I know that you have to be at least 25 years old to get into a chauffeuring job. The other option was for me to get my own car, which I just might of scraped and my own insurance for which I was getting quotes over a grand a year. Hence I went for Abbey Cars, they gave me a car, petrol and insurance, I thought what a good deal, until I received my first pay cheque.

To be honest they were really nice people, but the pay was, let’s say inadequate. I was working 12-14 hour shifts 6 days a week and didn’t earn more than 300 quid a week. I sort of didn’t have any other choice, the time it would take to get another job would just hinder my plans, and so I stuck to it.

After sleepless months and my body completely drained I decided to end the job in November 2006, kind of stupid actually when I think about it because the busiest season was just round the corner CHRISTMAS. But never the less I had enough money to get started.

Emirates Airlines were selling 1 year long tickets to Karachi. So tickets were booked for myself, my father, my mother and sister for the 19^th January 2007.

The decision to move to Pakistan is made

A lot of information and many opinions later, I finally knew what I had to do. The only thing was doing it.

Many Excuses later and a lot of push from my friend, my first website went live. I was a happy man, I couldn’t believe it. After a month I actually made some money from the site, not much but something. That’s when I realised all I have to do is multiply what I’m doing and the money should technically also multiply.

So in order to increase my presence on the World Wide Web, I had to put up pages of fresh content and articles. Now not being very good with English and Grammar as you can tell from my blog, I decided to outsource my Article writing work to (drum roll please) Pakistan. So I asked my cousin to put in add for me in the Karachi Dawn newspaper for article writers.

Believe it or not it actually worked; I received hundreds of applications and only 2 or 3 really stood out. So I got my first employee working on my articles.

As was my habit, I started to go OTT and tried to make the whole process of designing websites and creating articles easier on myself, Even after a lot of discouragement from my brothers both in IT, I decided to get my own software created which did all of this for me. The reason my brothers were discouraging me was they said I was wasting my time, I should instead spend this time creating more websites and later when the operation got to a very high level and I knew the whole process back to front should I even think about creating this piece of software.

But me being me, I contacting my cousin in Pakistan and asked if he could take on this project. He agreed and we got started. 6 months later the project was scrapped and my cousin was pissed. Why? Because I had no idea what I was talking about and what I was doing. This brought me back to square 1.

Soon after, I realised that if I really wanted to succeed in this industry, I needed a plan, and a good one. I knew I needed to put up more websites with more articles, although there is a lot more work involved, that was the gist of it. With the writers I had already, my dream could never be a reality as they were too few and were not very efficient. So the decision to move to Pakistan was made….

The trip to Abu Dhabi

In 2005 I was introduced to a book by a very good friend of mine; I think it was called Affiliate Marketing handbook by James Martell. This friend of mine explained to me about this new phenomenon known as Affiliate Marketing, which people were making millions from, I was so excited you could see the dollar signs in my eyes. The idea was simple and that was to put up websites and to advertise other people’s products on them and receive commission for every sale that is made through your websites.

I decided to go ahead and buy the book I think it cost me $197, alongside that I also bought a laser printer to print out the book with and had the book binded at my local printers. When I got the book home I read the first 20 pages or so and then did not touch the book for the next 3 or 4 months. It seemed that laziness had taken over. Every time I met my friend he would ask me how my sites were going I would grin and avoid the question.

I left the idea of making millions and started to be “more realistic” so I began looking for any work I could find, but wasn’t really comfortable anywhere.

I decided to take another look at the book and this time round read the whole thing. I was on a role, every time I would speak to my family about it, they thought it was just another of my lame ideas and I should just get a proper job or go back to my education. Times were hard.

It was then I got invited to work in Abu Dhabi (near Dubai) by my cousin who was in charge of a project there. I thought what have I got to loose. The idea was to go over for this project which was for two months and then stay on for a month to see if I could get another job. So in the beginning of September myself, my brother and our friend made our way to Abu Dhabi. It was the best experience and kick up the backside I could get. After 2 months of hard work, we started to realise how hard it was to find jobs in the UAE if you did not have any contacts there. My brother and his friend were finding it hard with their computer engineering degrees and that’s when I realised that without a degree I had no chance.

After our 3 months were up we decided to return home and I was at a cross roads. Do I complete my bachelors or get into this Internet marketing Phenomenon? Completing my degree did not seem like an option at the time due to my financial situation, so I decided to give it a go, I started very slow and started to research a lot more into Internet Marketing and started to realise the scope the industry had to offer…..

My business Mind.

I was never one for education. Up until my GCSE’s I got by, its when I got to my A levels that I realised I wanted to get into some sort of business. To please my parents I stayed on to complete my A levels (barely). I then applied for a foundation course in engineering with City University, which would go on to be a Bachelors s in Computer System Engineering if I passed. I moved to the city with my 2 brothers and 2 of their friends.

To be honest I wasn’t really happy with the whole idea of uni but tried to make the best of it, its not that the course was difficult because I ended the year with a 80 something percent average. I dunno maybe if I was in a course that was more business related and enjoyed more, maybe I would have been more attentive.

When I got to the first year of my bachelors then that’s when I really started to slip. Believe it or not there was a module for which I only attended one class all year and my friends are witnesses to this, other classes I attended now and then and just barely made the coursework dates. It was during my first year that I decided to make a try at business. So with using my student loan as capital I decided to buy a set of 20 used Irons from ebay, you heard it right, the stuff you use to straighten out the creases from your clothes. I had become an ebay addict at the time and would spend hours at a time cruising through all the deals and auctions (don’t laugh until you’ve tried it). The irons arrived, 1 month later I cleaned them up, and 1 year later they were sitting in my shed.

After the first year of my bachelors I made the stern decision to leave university, although my parents and extended family were not very happy with the idea they accepted the fact that education just wasn’t for me (how wrong was I, see how this comes to bite me in the backside later on)

I once heard a wise man does not get stung in the same place twice (or something like that), well I guess I am not very wise. After the Iron episode, which I am up until this day famous for amongst my family, I decided to chip in with my cousin and buy a couple of pallets of used electrical goods. I had repaired a few electrical items at home in the past and suddenly I thought I was an electrical repair man or sumfin. The idea was to fix up the stuff and resell it at the local Hounslow West weekend market.

So me and my cousin got ready, got into my brothers Toyota Corolla 1986 and drove down to Brighton where our fortune was awaiting us, we bought 2 pallets of used goods, shoved one of the pallets in our car and had one delivered. We thought we had grabbed a bargain, but its only when we started to unload the stuff at my cousins house from the car is when we realised we’d been had, but we didn’t let that get to us, we tried to do something with the stuff but nothing was working out, in the end I ended up selling the pallets on eBay for a small loss, we were just glad to see the back of the stuff.

After this I got involved in Mobile Phones, Japanese Imports, Dried food delivery, Park Security, and much more, but nothing was really working out, I was like a Pakistani Delboy trying to earn a quick buck. Then I was introduced to what would bring me to Pakistan.