1- Hello Asif , can you please tell us a bit about yourself?
I was born in Guyana, South America in 1979, and moved to Toronto Ontario with in the early 80s. I started working early in life – around age 6 to help support my family and earn money for school supplies and field trips. I spent several years employed by established companies and several years self-employed before I was 15 years old.
At age 15, I dropped out of high school and started my own business consulting company — partially because I was feeling burnt out and limited working in factories, delivering flyers and doing construction, but mostly because I was dirt poor for the majority of my life, and wanted to take a chance at doing something more.
2- what are your business focus areas and why?
I’m a small business consultant, I work with around 530 small businesses ranging from hair salons to hot air balloon rides to luxury tree house builders, I help them start, grow and hopefully succeed. If they are failing I help them fail and shut down gracefully. I do this because I love it, it pays well and I’m good at it.
3- How do you describe your Entrepreneur journey in few words?
I love it.
4- Where do you think you are making an impact?
I give away a large portion of my earnings to charitable projects that mean a lot to me. It’s slightly different each time but helping the homeless, single parents, overseas projects involving orphans, it’s different each time.
5- What are some things that most people don’t know about your journey?
I grew up dirt poor. I mean really dirt poor. In high school, my backpack was a plastic grocery bag and my shoes were always too small and worn out at the bottom.
6- The Business Consulting industry is very changing, where do you see yourself in the next 5 years?
I’d like to be semi-retired from business consulting within 5 years. I’ve been working towards building up my asset base in real estate and other stable ventures.
7- What were some of the biggest challenges you encountered while working as a business consultant?
Saying no to projects I hated. You know when you’re starting out you don’t have the option of saying no. So I took on projects for the money, which is a huge no-no. Because of this, I ended up miserable and totally stressed out. Now I just say no to a project if I don’t like it or if I don’t like the person I’ll be working with. I miss out on the possible payout but my stress is lower and I’m happier for it.
8- What are you most excited about at the moment?
Reaching and surpassing many (not all) of my goals. I have a lot of goals and after almost 20 years of working with them, it’s nice to see them come to pass finally.
9- What can you tell to young people who are pursuing their dreams?
I get asked this often and this would be it: Stay out of trouble. I see young people getting involved in drugs, booze and a party lifestyle that leads to failure. It’s so hard to build a business if you also need rehab. It’s hard to save up money if you have to pay child support to 4 different women or if you have 4 babies from 4 different men. You know what I mean?
10- The last Word or final thoughts?
Let your friends party while you work hard. You’ll retire rich 20 years sooner than them and you’ll get to party everyday.
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To know more about Asif visit his website at www.asifzamir.com