Faiza Yousuf

Image source: Google Solopreneurs are self-directed and highly motivated individuals who are quick and precise with getting things done. For running a sustainable business, solopreneurs need to create an effective sales funnel to make sure that they keep getting good leads and are able to convert them into paying clients. The first step of creating a sales funnel is to have an online presence. It doesn’t matter what you do (baking, designing, writing, consulting, teaching, etc.), your prospects should be able to find you online and connect with you. Social media is an excellent way to do that but having a well thought out website is a better way of introducing yourself and your work to your potential customers. Creating a responsive and dynamic website isn’t rocket science. You can do that using WordPress , which is one of the most popular and effective open-source CMS framework. You can buy or use an appropriate free theme and most of the work requires almost no p

Pakistan eCommerce Consortium   is a Facebook community of a little over 350 members who work in the local eCommerce industry. It functions as a close knitted support group where members ask questions, share knowledge and opportunities and talk about the issues faced by the eCommerce players in Pakistan. The group is run by  Anum Kamran (Founder & CEO – Buyon.pk)  and   Kamran Shamim (CEO – Apex Solutions)   and a couple of weeks ago, they announced the  first ever meetup   for their members which was hosted by  Anum Kamran (Founder & CEO – Buyon.pk) . The meetup happened at Center for Entrepreneurial Development (Aman-CED) inside IBA’s main campus on Saturday, 16 th  December, 2017 and was attended by some really prominent names in the local eCommerce industry along with a special guest who flew in from Chine to attend the meetup. The two hour long discussion touched almost all sore spots of the industry, including lack of e-payment solutions, ta

Mondays are always tough because most of us are recovering from the weekend and for me, it gets extra tough because my Sundays are on (Yikes! I know right) but this Monday was super special because of the twitter chat with #BizGalz . #BizGalz is a community initiative that started with a weekly twitter chat and has now turned into a thriving community of people who support the work done by women in all fields. The community does a weekly chat every Monday with a special guest and start a conversation about their area of work/expertise. The chat is co-hosted by two incredible creative ladies, Alissa M. Trumbull and Jade Phillips , both work in the digital space and are mighty good at what they do. Back in October, I was asked by them to be the guest on one of their Monday chat sessions, we picked up a topic and scheduled the chat for 27 th November, 1pm Eastern Daylight Time and 11pm Pakistan time.  A lot of people contributed to the chat from all over the world and

If you are anyway related to the technology industry in Pakistan, you must have heard about the recent conference #021Disrupt that was organized by The Nest I/O . It was a two day conference that fetched more than a dozen outstanding international speakers and investors to Pakistan and hosted more than 650 delegates with included 200+ entrepreneurs and innovators from all over the country. The conference was well planned and it showed in the flawless execution of the program and very insightful talks/presentations by over 60 speakers. I was there for both days and here is the list of my most favorite talks from the conference. This list is in no particular order and it was a difficult choice because all of the sessions contained great content and were worth attending. Apart from the list below, I loved talks by Jawwad Farid , Rabeel Warraich , Alden Richards and Charles Ludwig. So here you go! 1: Beyond Startup: How to Make a Dent in the Universe by SamMallikarjunan -

Image source: Google Technology is responsible for a lot of changes in our lives and the most important change of all is how we make money for sustaining ourselves and our families. With the increase in internet penetration and cheaper hardware costs, access to freelancing opportunities has become easier and we have seen a rise in people opting to work from home and providing products/services for a wider audience. For latest stats on freelancing, see here and here . I run a community for women who are connected to the tech industry and quite often we find our members asking questions about starting a freelancing career. We have already done a couple of webinars on this topic, but I thought it would be a good idea to create a blog-post that can help people in setting things up for starting their journey as a freelancer and a solopreneur. Before moving to the step by step guide, I want to give you some context to this blog-post, I started my freelancing career in Febru

Agile has revolutionized the way projects are being delivered around the globe and it has proven itself to be both adaptable and result oriented. Initially intended for technology development, Agile is now being adopted by other industries to get things done and build cross functional and self-organizing teams. Our local industry is not far behind and we have numerous Agile practitioners working on different process models within and outside the tech industry. These practitioners gather around every year for Agile Conference Pakistan which now happened for the fourth year in a row and was organized by Pakistan Agile Development Society . The conference theme was “Scrum in Pakistan” and the venue was a beautiful auditorium (Shah Abdul Lateef Bhittai Auditorium) in the capital city. It was a full day event with 300+ professionals in attendance from all major cities and the speakers/panelist were known Agile practitioners working in the technology industry. I went all the w