Trying to be the cheapest?

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How South Asians do business..

Many years ago, I was in a Chicken shop opened by some Kurds, this was the time when they first started becoming popular in my hometown.

As I was waiting for my burger and chips, the guy behind the counter, out of the blue and quite aggressively said:

‘Your people don’t know how to do business’

I was taken aback by this, and thought hmmn a bit random

Then he proceeded to tell me how he was selling burgers for ￡3 and barely making a profit and surviving but all the South Asian businesses on that block decided to drop their prices and start selling their burgers for 99p. And how that was such a dumb way to do business.

Being a typical desi, for many years I thought the idea of being as cheap as possible and competing on price instead of quality was a clever strategy. It’s only in the last five years running a business trying all those strategies did the wisdom of why it’s such a flawed strategy dawn on me.

I’ve been hearing this from my mentors and coaches much longer than five years, but we often don’t learn until we’ve experienced things for ourselves.

Just like the ones who approach me still thinking their solution is more dieting and more training. They just need a meal plan, a PT, or join a gym, start running. Until they’ve experienced and failed on these things multiple times, they won’t appreciate our Minimalist Method program.

It’s as my mentor kept telling me trying to be cheaper than the others is a:

‘A race to the bottom’

You’re unable to fund growth, your own personal and professional development, hire quality staff, and much more. It’s a vicious circle.

After a while you start resenting the people you’re meant to serve because you realise it’s not worth the time and effort, when you can’t even pay your bills.

You can’t invest time into your clients, you can’t invest time into creating resources for them and making your business better for them, so their results suffer and ultimately you suffer, eventually you cease to exist and go back to your old job.

So recently it’s come to my attention. People are trying to copy me, some trying to join as staff members others as clients.

I heard one say, ‘I’m going to just copy everything and offer it cheaper’

Although I feel it’s a bit unethical, healthy competition doesn’t bother me one bit. For the following reasons.

A. There is enough to go around

B. I’ve invested close to ￡37,000 (see picture that's just one receipt) and nearly a decade to get to where I am. I don’t know too many desi PT’s being prepared to spend that sort of money on personal development and acquiring knowledge, especially if they’re trying to be the cheapest. The mindset of being cheap doesn’t allow for that level of spending.

Without professional knowledge, they’re going to provide a crap experience.

The only thing that really bothers me is that they’re going to wreck the industry and create a bad reputation for Online Coaches in particular Muslim coaches.

As ironic as it sounds, I still suffer from a bit of prejudice against Asian and Muslims businesses because we have a reputation of being cheap and unprofessional. That's where we’ve tried differentiating ourselves by being premium.

Look our goal is to change the health status of our community and create a cultural shift, so our community can live, a longer, happier, healthier lives. And I welcome people to join us in that endeavour in whatever way you can. But please do it professionally and ethically and I’ll even support you.

I’ve had calls with certain qualified and professional people and offered an hour of my time free to help them get started because they went the right way about it.

Good luck trying to be the cheapest and the best .

We're putting our prices up at the end of this month. Like for like coaches are charging at least ￡2000 more than we are. Our goal is to become the Rolls Royce of the industry not the Nissan Micra.