Unleashing Innovation With Babar Arshad

Join us as we delve into the dynamic world of tech and entrepreneurship with Babar Arshad, a trailblazing tech entrepreneur and visionary leader. With over a decade of experience in successfully launching multiple products and teams, Babar is dedicated to helping others achieve their entrepreneurial dreams. Through authentic and engaging conversations, Babar shares his expertise, challenges, and successes, offering invaluable insights into embracing technology as a powerful tool for growth. Prepare to be inspired as he discusses the simplicity, beauty, and leverageability of technology, emphasizing the importance of a return on investment, particularly for young startup founders.

Alongside his passion for technology, Babar recognizes the value of sports in personal development and finds inspiration in exploring new cultures through travel. His experience and dedication to helping others resonate with our mission to uncover authentic stories that inspire and resonate with our audience. Join us as we dig deep into Babar's captivating journey, offering valuable lessons and inspiring tales of resilience and triumph in the tech and entrepreneurial landscape.

Join us at "The Tech Innovators' Platform" and gain unique insights from Babar Arshad's remarkable journey, as he shares his experiences and wisdom, inspiring us all to embrace innovation and the power of technology for transformative growth

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What's up guys, Chris Bowen here with Level Up the Podcast. I am joined today by Babar. Babar, would love you to introduce yourself, man. Tell us what you do, kind of how you got started doing that. Lovely. Thank you, Grace. Thank you for having me. So I am a tech entrepreneur. I've been in this industry for the past decade. five years for other people and the last five years for myself. And it's been quite interesting, right, the last five years. I identify as somebody who loves to build. My tagline that my team came up with is, I love to build products and teams, brands and dreams. You know, it's a lot of rhymes. I have done this for myself. I've created products, I've created teams, I've created brands, I'm working on my dreams. I don't want to help others do the same. So right now, my main focus, a couple of tech companies that I have and then you know I help people in setting up their own business technology you know iTitans which is my main gig we go by the tagline you do the business we do the tech you know so my goal is to Help people focus on business so I can take care of the tech part for them and they focus on doing what they do best Which is you know the business side? So yeah, man, that's that's a little bit about myself No, that's really cool. So in your IT company, what do you guys typically focus on? I know every IT company kind of focuses on something a little different. So when you're saying that you're setting them up with tech, what does that kind of entail? Yeah, we do customized tech solutions. So we don't work on any third party platforms like WordPress, Shopify. We do more comprehensive technology. And, you know, as I tell a lot of my clients on the first call, Why do you need technology? So, you know, that is the question that I help people, you know, understand. A lot of times people come to me thinking that it's going to be a huge solution and a huge problem, but in the end, it's a small solution which takes much less time, effort and money for them. So my goal is to give people the right amount of tech. the right amount that is needed. It's like creatine before working out, if you're a professional. If you take too much, it can hurt you. If you take too little, it's gonna be not efficient. So that's how I describe our services. Our main focus is mobile apps. and web portals, mostly mobile apps because I think mobile apps are the most extreme form of customer loyalty. If somebody is downloading your mobile app, they're really loyal to you as a customer. So we focus on that mostly. Okay, very cool man. And then, so you're from Pakistan originally. What brought you over to the US? It's a funny story man. I didn't want to come. I didn't want to come because I was a patriotic Pakistani living in my homeland and not huge dreams and just doing what I do. I used to play cricket growing up. It's a British sport and now it's become popular in the US also. I grew up playing cricket. After I graduated from college, I did a corporate job which was well -paying and then suddenly I had the urge to play cricket again. So when I started playing cricket, cricket again, I had a promise to my mom that okay I'll play cricket for a year but then I'll do my masters after that. So to fulfill that promise is what you know brought me to the US. Also luckily in that time my family had, we got the immigration visa, my dad had applied it like I don't know two decades ago or something. So my family got that you know immigrant visa. So timing matched out. So I came as an immigrant to the States and did my masters from Florida. Okay? And you decided to stay, apparently. Yeah man, the US is a land of opportunities. There's so much opportunity for everybody over here. So yeah, my eyes opened about the tech field, the business technology involved over here, how much people know and how much more they need to do and know. So that's what honestly made me stay and of course your efforts are much more rewarded in this part of the world compared to a developing place like Pakistan. No, I totally get that. I mean, I do think that the U .S. is the land of opportunity in a lot of ways. You know, anybody can be an entrepreneur here, in my opinion. You know, it just takes a little bit of effort and stumbling upon the right idea and anybody can make it happen any day. So... One of the things that you kind of talked about in your bio is that you like to travel. So why don't you tell us a little bit about that experiences and how that's kind of, you know, shaped you as a person and shaped you as a business owner. Yeah, yeah, it's very funny. I was at lunch right now with a friend and I was telling her when I was 16, I randomly stumbled upon a palmist, you know, people who read palms and try to tell the future. So he told me that, hey, for the first, for the first. 20 something years of your life, you will never sit in a plane or travel and then after that you'll always be on a plane and traveling. So I just ignored that I was very young, I was random, you know, random ass palmist and from there it sort of turned out to be true, you know, for the first 23 years of my life I never got a chance to travel and after that, you know, I've been everywhere. I've been to, I don't know, more than 20 countries. I've traveled, you know, for work, I've traveled for fun, I've traveled with family, without family, by myself, you know, all sorts. And I think it's just been good luck because I've learned a lot. It's given me so much exposure, so much learning, so many connections. And it's made me realize that, you know, a lot of the problems that we face as humans are very common everywhere. You know, any part of the world, personal, professional, my biggest learning I think. Personal, professional, any part of the world, any age group, any income group, whatever. 90 % be going through similar stuff and then 10 -20 % is probably what's different to each person. Yeah, I definitely agree with that. As somebody who didn't grow up traveling a lot, I'm kind of very similar in that regard of I didn't even see the ocean until my honeymoon when I was 22. That was the first time I'd been to the ocean was when I got married. And so, you know, we try to travel as much as we possibly can. You know, we've been out of the country a few times. I wish a lot more than we have been, but, you know. Easier said than done sometimes, especially, you know, now that we've got kids. But I would absolutely agree with you, man. I mean, the connections that you can make and really just to see that everybody has the same struggles, you know, like, like you said, we're all kind of going through the same things as humans. Whether you're from, you know, Dallas, Texas or Pakistan, you know, 10 to 20 % may be different, but that 80 % is probably. the same daily struggles that everybody's going through. Yeah, and also it makes you realize, makes you grateful for what God has given you and what problems people have, honestly, just because they're born in the wrong place. They're very smart, very motivated, very hungry, but they don't have the opportunities that sometimes we have, for example. So that's a big blessing that also your eyes open up when you see stuff like that. Yeah, absolutely. So tell us about your IT company a little bit. How did this kind of come about? How did it get founded? And what kind of is your background that was able to lead you into starting this business? Lovely. So I don't come from a tech background. I'm not a developer, coder, computer science, IT student by education. I started business. I did my bachelor's in accounting and finance. I absolutely hated it because it was so dry. So I did not end up going in that field. I went in a sales field for my first job and I really liked that. You know, I liked selling. You know, I liked the relationship part of it that, you know, the small interesting things that come along every day. a sales job is what I liked and from there I moved to the US I worked again a sales job I was selling high ticket items at you know at that time and from there I I was selling pharmacy franchises Okay. I was targeting high net worth individuals or companies who were looking to expand their pharmacy operations and I was really successful at it. Before that, my first job was selling cigarettes. So I came from selling cigarettes to selling pharmacies. So it was a very... Yeah. sell, you could sell, right? yeah, so very diverse experience and it was very a lot of learning, you know. And again, from there I realized the power of sales, the power of selling, the power of relationships. When I graduated from my master's in Florida in 2018, I just wanted to do something. I wanted to do something of my own. I knew I couldn't work for somebody else. So from there, I took a risk and started my first company, which was a tech company, tech platform connecting. influencers and brands. You know, it's called Influencer Hub. I had access to cheap resources in Pakistan who could build me good, you know, technology. So I just made use of them and built out and, you know, the company didn't kick off as such. I spent about two and a half years trying to build it. very tough times, but it didn't kick off. There were a lot of problems. But in that journey, I came across opportunities where people wanted me to build their technology just because I'd built a comprehensive technology solution myself. Now they wanted me to help them build their technology using my people. That's where the IT services model started from. I did that unofficially for a couple of years and then I started ITitans officially right when COVID started, honestly. I think I started in March of 2020. And... a time to start a business. yeah. And luckily, you know, I was working on a few health tech projects at that time. So when COVID came, those health tech projects, you know, kicked off, skyrocketed. And with them, you know, I grew. And since then, you know, I've been of the mentality that the only way a services company like myself can grow is if your clients grow. You know, if the things that you worked on, if they become successful, that is how you become successful. I can work in the best solution and the best technology, but if it's not going to make business a sense and are gonna, you know, kick off, then that is waste. It's not gonna be long -term money for me even. So my ideology now in my business is also very similar. You grow, we grow. So I help, I try to help my clients at my max capacity to grow. If they grow, then you know, I grow with them. And one thing that happened in this journey was Chris, that I used to work with big companies. You know, I started off... officially because I had to work with Lyft, the right share company Lyft. They bought out one of the things, one of the products I was working on and they wanted me to be registered and you know all that stuff that they have because they're publicly listed. So I worked with them, I earned a lot of money in the first year and a half of business but what made me realize was that like relationships you cannot marry or you cannot work with somebody who's too big. you know than you you know who's not at that same mindset level you know people over there were working a corporate job i was running my business there's too much mismatch happening yeah so that was my biggest learning and since then i worked i try to work with people my size or at least nearer to my size that mindset match that hunger that growth mindset that agile mindset the come up, who's really still hungry and fighting and scrapping for every dollar their company makes. Yeah, yeah, and also, you know, I work with mid -sized companies, 20, 30 million revenue companies. That's usually my max. But again, because they have come ground up, you know, that hunger is there, you know. I think that hunger starts to go away when you start to grow like publicly traded type, you know, when you go to that level, that is where the hunger sort of... dies down, there's more structure and there's more formalities and stuff. But yeah, I think I found a sweet spot now, which is, you know, people who are hungry, I don't care if they're starting off or they're mid -level, but no more than mid -level. But I want that mindset to match. Yeah. So what's your typical projects kind of build outs? What do they look like? I mean, you said it's custom for everybody, but give us an example of a couple that you've kind of done. You don't have to name the companies or anything, but just kind of walk us through what some of those projects are. Yeah, for sure. My industry, by chance, was health tech, as I mentioned when I started. A lot of health tech work, you know, telehealth apps and prescription delivery applications like the one with Lyft and, you know, internal business health tech management, you know, employee health tracking and contact tracing and all the fun stuff that COVID threw us into. And then from there, you know, when it sort of calmed down, I worked on multiple other industries. I worked a lot on fintech. I worked on banking solutions and crypto solutions. wallets and some good interesting fintech projects. I've worked on MarTech solutions, which is marketing technology, anything which helps you market your business, like influencer management is one of them. I worked on e -commerce solutions, of course, that's a very common one. And I've worked on, I think one interesting one has been logistical tech, supply chain technologies, warehouse management and trucking solutions, fleet management, driver delivery applications. I've done dating apps, you know, I've done, it's been a bit of everything and again, I started by chance and I don't care what industry people belong to, unless it's something that my models don't agree with. I got an opportunity to work for... I can't name them, but a few big platforms that do adult content, for example, and they want me to build out their technology because what I had built in the past was very similar. The influencer management was very similar to what they do. They're very famous now, but of course my morals didn't match, so I didn't do that. So I don't care about what industry you're in, if it's legal and within my morals, and I care about what type of people I work with. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you want to work with people who that are, you know, passionate about what they do that are morally sound individuals. So I, I get that. I definitely do. So let's dive into it a little bit more. And I'm doing this for personal reasons because I, you know, kind of want to start an econ brand. I'd love to hear about kind of that side of things and what you kind of did on that side of your business. Yeah, so Ecom, when you say Ecom, Ecom means Ecommerce, which is selling online, right? And people have multiple... Ecom solution can be as small as a WordPress website, which costs very, very less, a couple of thousand bucks, and can be as big as, you know, an intense Ecom marketplace platform, which can cost, I don't know, upwards of half a million even, you know, depending on how comprehensive you want it to be. And you know, this is me talking about enterprise level solutions. Individuals don't really need such a comprehensive solution. But depending again, I go lowest hanging fruit first. Depending on what is needed, I have a good layer of, we call them the middle layer, the bridge, project managers, product managers, product owners who try to understand what you need. And then we propose a solution. You know, if you come to me, here I need an e -com. I will talk to you, my people will talk to you and they'll understand, okay, what do you want to sell? Who do you want to sell it to? What's the age group? They'll ask you questions which sometimes you've not even thought yourself when starting a business. So, you know, you really go deep into business refinement, requirement gathering, and then we give you a proposal, you know, so all of this is free of cost. Of course, I don't charge you a dime till I start the coding part technically. So all of this is sunk cost on my end and... You know, I've had people ask me, why don't you charge for this? And you know, you waste so much time if the client doesn't come because, you know, half of the clients come, half of them don't come, especially since I've, you know, been charging, you know, I increased my pricing this year. So a lot of people just can't afford at that time. So they back off. And then it's all five to 10, 15 hours of time wasted for us. But I know it's an investment. The other half that comes and that work with us are the right kind of people that I want to work with. So in the e -comm field, as I said, we can go as small as a WordPress website if you're starting off and you're not really sure and there's financial crunch and all those kickoff problems. I recommend going simple, third -party WordPress, Shopify. Yes, if you have big goals, you think you can make money, arrange money, get investor money. or you think you're offering something unique and it will really sell, then I recommend going more custom tech, which is building custom technology, because you can grow on it more, you can convert it into a mobile app, you can convert it into a web portal, a marketplace. You have a lot of directions that you can go towards. So yeah, I think e -commerce is a field which can be very small or very big depending on your use case. Yeah, no, that's awesome to kind of hear that it can pretty much start from WordPress and go on all the way to however big you want to scale it and build it. That's really cool. I like that a lot. So how long did your previous business kind of last? Where you said about two years, were you able to find success really at all within that business or? it was my first proper big boy business. So I put a lot of effort into it, man. This was the time that I had left my job so I had no money. I was hustling, I was doing whatever I could. I was driving 12 hours of Uber. I was coaching kids for cricket. I was doing whatever I could to make money. And God didn't just reward me financially in that business. I learned a lot. I made a lot of connections. I saw opportunities through that business, which I would have seen or else, but financially didn't kick off. A couple of years ago, three, three and a half years into that business, I sort of partnered up with somebody else and I gave them the solution. So now I still get recurring revenue from it, but it's a very small number. Hey, that's okay. That's something. Yeah, yeah. But again, and I say all these things in a very grateful and positive manner, God really rewarded me in other ways. My next business, I put in half the effort honestly, and God just gave me back. And I believe that it's all that effort, just God giving me back in different ways. So yeah, I'm very grateful that it happened and I sort of failed, because I think that failure taught me a lot more than that success would have taught me at that time. Yeah, no, that's awesome. I love to hear that. And I love to see, I love to hear that the business is still around. It didn't just, you know, fold and go under. I love that you were able to kind of work with somebody to take it over and that you still receive that small monetary gain from it occasionally. You know, that's, it sucks that you weren't able to take it to where you wanted it, but it's awesome that it's still able to be around and that you've been able to find success in your current business and in that role. the initial business is whatever you do, especially if you start young, sometimes you're very emotionally driven. So I was very emotionally attached to that product and that's why I held on for so long. You know, one of my key learnings was that, you know, not to get emotionally attached. You know, you're attached, being attached is okay, but emotionally attached or, you know, bringing in a lot of emotions is not healthy. In the end, it's just business, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it doesn't do you make smart decisions as a founder if you become emotionally attached? So yeah, you know, it taught me a lot. It taught me a lot about things that if it succeeded, it would never have taught me those things. But that failure sort of helped me realize and understand things much better. sure. Well man I really appreciate you having you on today. It's been fantastic talking to you. If people are interested in reaching out to you what's the best way for them to do that? I've been recently using Facebook very efficiently. I've realized people use Facebook like how LinkedIn is meant to be used. But that's a positive, right? That's a positive that has come out of Facebook. So I think Facebook is a very good way. I can also drop my number if you want to add that. You know, I'm open to chatting. And then, of course, we have a website where our team handles the queries that come in. I usually stay very involved and very... interested in the first few conversations with new people because that's what... gives me the thrill, the new experiences, the new ideas, the new discussions of building stuff. So yeah, if anybody's interested, I'd love to talk again, no commitment, just two people talking about technology and how technology can help others. One misconception, Chris, that I've seen, people get scared. Smart people get scared when it comes to technology. They think technology is an expense, it's long -term, it's a sunk cost. know it's scary but in the end I tell all my people that if you can't use it as a leverage tool if you can't use it as a return on investment tool ROI tool then there's no need you know so only do what you need and not what you want in terms of technology. And that way, it's always going to give you back more and more return. So yeah, I'm open to talk to anybody who wants to talk about their business technology. Well, awesome, man. Much appreciated. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. Enjoy your day, man. Thank you, thank you Chris, great time.