Meet Sameer
Here’s the low-down on me. I’m an attorney and I’ve had my own law practice since 2001. More specifically I started an immigration law practice 5 days before 9/11. When everything you know changes overnight you gotta learn to adapt, and adapt quick.
I have a passion for teaching. Nothing floats my boat more than being in front of an audience teaching business and marketing. No, I don’t have an MBA and I’m not a corporate guy. I’m a smart (and clearly humble) bugger who learned a ton about “automating my business” to free up time and learned “effective marketing” to bring in a lot of money.
Here’s the long story (hey, if you want to know me then you gotta hear me yap for a bit).
The Early Years (I’ll bullet point this to make it as painless for you (and me) as possible)
- Was a stock broker right out of college and managed to average between $3.50 and $4 an hour with the insane hours I was working. Not fun. Decided to go into a less slimy profession and headed to law school.
- Law school was not particularly exciting and a ton of reading and research (ouch). Managed to get by and graduate with mediocre grades.
- Took the bar exam for NY and NJ.
- Failed the bar exam in NY & NJ.
- Took the bar in NJ only.
- Whew! Passed.
- Worked for a year as in-house counsel for a small technology company.
- Decided to leave them in a year and start my own gig.
- Started my own gig, an immigration practice, on September 5, 2001.
- The world of immigration law changed a week later.
- Ended up working out of my parents’ basement for a year. Didn’t make much money.
- Got an office the next year. Still didn’t make much money but added more expenses.
- Went into a partnership in 2003/2004.
- Took on a TON of overhead but made some decent money.
- Dissolved the partnership in 2005/2006 because it wasn’t working for a variety of reasons.
- Still had a ton of overhead and not enough money to pay it.
- Had to figure out a solution. So started learning about business operations, true marketing, automation, systematization and outsourcing. And this is where the story begins . . .
Fast-forward to 2007 when after much trial and error I figured out that it really was possible to create a low-overhead, highly profitable, professional business where I could maintain a high level of integrity and at the same time create an experience that my clients would be blown away by.
So after I figured this out and figured why not teach other attorneys and business owners how to start and run their own businesses so they could make a lot of money with a minimal investment of time. This wasn’t some gimmick. This was something that was practical and effective.
But this wasn’t the cookie-cutter, write a business-plan and prepare an elevator pitch type of education. This was about totally revamping the status quo. This was about teaching white-collar professional business owners how to make a great six-figure salary while working under 20 hours a week. Yeah, seriously!
Look, if you are a serious businessperson then you know that you have to be laser focused, work smart, invest intelligently (both time and money) and not waste your resources!
Everything in business comes down to marketing (well a HUGE part of it at least). Everything you and your people do is marketing and every correspondence people have with your business is marketing. The rest is business operations. Making sure your business runs in a manner that frees up your time and makes you more money.
Now that freeing up time and money were where I got the other two elements that make a great business: Automation and Outsourcing. I won’t get into it here but if you read my stuff you’ll learn that almost everything I talk about in business comes down to automation, outsourcing and marketing. Well, on the business-side at least. On the personal side it comes down to keeping life simply and always playing (i.e. having FUN)!
The Personal Side
I’m married to an awesome, beautiful, fun-loving chick who will probably kick my ass for calling her a chick!
I love my workouts. Gym, jogging and oh yeah, mountain biking (my favorite). Being the nerd that I am I’ll jog for miles on end listening to my “business seminars.” I thought that was bad until I started listening to them at the gym and actually taking notes between sets.
Don’t think that’s funny? Just imaging be trying to bench press while hearing a guy in my ear talk about time-management software. Alright, maybe it’s not that funny after all.
Moving on… Let’s talk a bit about food. Sushi is a no-brainer but Thai, Indian, Ethiopian cuisines make all the exercise well worth the reward. I’m not a big movie buff but my wife got me into Netflix and now I’m on a mission to beat Netflix at their own game. I’m still nowhere close to watching 22 movies in a month but I’m dedicated.
I’m not a people-pleaser. I’m a down-to-earth guy who’ll always give you straight-forward advice. I don’t subscribe to the school of thought that requires me being overly polite, politically correct or bending-over backwards for people who could care less about me.
I used to be militant with my time but realized that I enjoyed life less when I did that. Nowadays I prefer to shoot-the-shit with my clients and my friends. That’s time well invested for me. I find it makes life much more enjoyable and I connect with people in a way I never would have in a strictly business relationship.
I’m a beer and whiskey drinker.
Nothing is better investment of my time than great food & conversation with friends!
I prefer to think I’m pretty simple but everyone tells me I’m not. So I’ll accept being funny, cool and making sure I always play.
That’s it. I’m bored talking about myself.
Go read the blog, keep life simple and don’t forget to play!
