Jamil Bhuya: Managing Partner at Other Half Studio

^{Joe Fox (00:02.682)}
Hey everyone. Thank you so much for tuning into another episode of retain growth thrive. The, sorry, I'm going to start that one again. Sorry, man. I haven't had enough coffee. All right. Hey, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning into another episode of retain growth, right? The grow wave podcast. I'm your host and president of grow wave Joe Fox today. I'm joined by a very good friend of mine, someone who is a, is a force to be reckoned with.

^{Joe Fox (00:32.527)}
not just in the Toronto Shopify scene, but just the Toronto business environment in general. And we're going to go right into his background. It's going to be a ton of really, really cool tips in here for entrepreneurs, store owners, agency owners and everything like that. So without further ado, please welcome my friend, Yamil. Hey mate, how you doing?

_{Jamil Bhuya (00:53.474)}
Fantastic Joe, how about yourself?

^{Joe Fox (00:56.187)}
Good, dude. Good, good. Thank you so much for jumping on. I'm super excited about this episode. I know you've had some really cool stuff happening, you know, relatively recently with the exit, everything you're up to with jazz with other half. So there's quite a bit for us to cover today. So I guess I gave you a little bit of an intro, but I'd love it if you could introduce yourself and other half as well.

_{Jamil Bhuya (01:18.798)}
for sure. Yeah, yeah. So Other Half Studio was kind of, it was something that was born out of, I don't want to say necessity, but it kind of became something a little bigger than we first realized. And to give a little background on that, my partner in iJazz, luckily my partner in life and also my other half, if not my better half, was actually in the Shopify world about 2013 to 2016. So...

It was really cool because she was actually part of the original design team that built Shopify home and designed it. So was really cool to see that. And I think in that ecosystem, she just learned a ton about the space, merchants and vendors. So just naturally, we had both started our own store through Shopify. So around 2016, she actually left because we had started Yellow Beauty. So Yellow Beauty was a turmeric-based skincare store.

And essentially at the time turmeric was, you know, seen as the superfood, insane inflammation, sorry, anti-inflammatory kind of benefits, antifungal, but it was used actually in my kind of background. I'm from Bangladesh for hundreds, if not thousands of years. So we saw a lot of kind of cool things happening in that space, especially back in 2015, I think in Australia, like Frank.

Frank body, you know, was like a huge thing with the coffee scrub. So, we went to turmeric scrub route, pretty quickly landed in, anthropology worldwide of kind of major retailer in the States. We're in over 300 locations, got into urban outfitters, fab fit fun. And, it was a lot of overlap with, I guess like my previous business in terms of, where I'd kind of started. So my background's a little all over the place and

^{Joe Fox (02:44.707)}
Yes.

_{Jamil Bhuya (03:12.696)}
how it ties into e-commerce, but I was in the restaurant space before this. I had started a burger chain called Burgers and Fries Forever, scaled it up to over 25 million in lifetime kind of revenue. And I think I learned a lot about branding then. So myself and Jazz, with her kind of Shopify background and experience, we were able to create a really great brand. And that's kind of how Yellow Beauty really took off. It's just...

People saw the branding, they loved the product, packaging. It was super kind of photogenic at the time. was very, from a creative perspective, that was kind of what made us shine. So over time, eventually we were able to kind of take a lot of those skills and transition it. Jazz being more of a designer, always by trade, wanted to get back into the design world. So she ended up working at Sharma Brands for Nick Sharma. There she was kind of employee.

^{Joe Fox (04:06.127)}
Yep.

_{Jamil Bhuya (04:09.354)}
six or seven, I believe, one of their first senior web designers and basically worked on some amazing kind of Shopify plus brands there that were doing eight or nine figures. And them and the team were really able to kind of increase conversion rate site wide. So she eventually became director of design, learned a lot there and decided to start freelancing a few years later. And that was about a year ago.

From there just kind of our first six months. She just got overwhelmed with like the amount of business that was coming in we hired our first designer in January and just recruited a new principal designer about a month ago and now I'm helping on the Go-to-market side and why I do it in air quotes is because you know, I'm sure you know Joe It's kind of like you do everything that's not the actual

Design works so like filling up the pipeline partnerships marketing sales you name it kind of that's something that I touch on

^{Joe Fox (05:13.429)}
loved that. And I feel like that's such a cool journey for both of you. You know what mean? And I'm a big fan of, you know, I think work-life balance is something that's a little bit like, you know, it's a loose term that's thrown around. But I think, you know, you being able to work with in your own words, your better half, a lot of the time, like that's amazing. And I think it's so cool. it, you know, really the other half really plays

to both of your strengths, right? Because it's like, know, Jazz has this incredible design background. It's obviously very accomplished in, you know, designing websites that convert really well, knows the Shopify ecosystem inside and out. I mean, I've only known you for probably what, just over six months, but in this time I've seen your, you know, hunger, your passion for doing everything else, as you said. And I feel that you're, you know, you're very,

naturally good at partnerships, but that's obviously due to your entrepreneurial flair and everything like that. So congratulations on, you know, on all three of those, because, you know, a lot of people in this lifetime, unfortunately don't even have one successful kind of business or venture, but the fact that between you and jazz, you have, you know, more than, more than a few, it's really impressive to sort of see. and I guess from

_{Jamil Bhuya (06:21.432)}
Thank you.

^{Joe Fox (06:39.254)}
you know, just for the audience's perspective. Typically, when, you know, we have guests, we really focus on the e-comm side of things. But I want to kind of dive a little bit into just from a personal perspective, because I know we have, we have a lot of foodies and a lot of people who are really into hospitality and stuff sort of come on the show. So I'd love for you to kind of talk a little bit about how you were able to exit, how you were able to, you know, generate that, that revenue from

_{Jamil Bhuya (06:57.347)}
Yes.

^{Joe Fox (07:09.174)}
a very competitive space, right? Like I'm rereading, blue ocean strategy at the moment. And, know, typically hospitality can be very red ocean, right? Like super competitive. You've got like all of these different contributing factors that ultimately, you know, sometimes negatively impact profit margins, cost of labor is really high cost of goods and then production is really high. So can you talk through a little bit around.

what made you stand out in that competitive space. And then also for the audience's sake, talk a little bit about what that transition looked like, you know, into beauty and then now into Econ.

_{Jamil Bhuya (07:47.672)}
For sure.

_{Jamil Bhuya (07:51.362)}
Yeah, I'll do my best to kind of draw as many parallels as I can during so it's it's relevant to everybody because you know, the first thing I always say is like any entrepreneur, any person understands a restaurant business model. Everybody has to eat. Everyone's been fortunate enough to consume at a restaurant. You know, it's a low ticket, highly competitive, high kind of, you know, capex business, right? Like you need a lot of capital to get into the industry.

if you're not trying to be a mom and pop shop and there's insane competition, know, it's, it's one of literally one of the oldest business models out there. So I think, you know, for us, ironically, it's actually created a lot of, easy dialogue, right? Because everyone understands like those challenges and pretty quickly they can understand how it kind of crosses over. you know, so the things that we focused on, I think from day one was we realized that branding is everything, at least when it comes to a restaurant, like that's your moat.

Without that you're just another place offering another offering and I think that really applies to like ecom right like I know there's like the drop shipping community and I have friends in it and and they're very Margin and ROAS focused but like chasing trends and their whole goal is like get in as fast as we can scale up and Then get out before everyone else is kind of going out the door kind of sounds like crypto to me. Whoops. I didn't mean to make it

^{Joe Fox (09:16.885)}
Yes. Yeah. A little bit for sure. It's a, it does know it's, sounds like a bit of a kind of a rug pull environment, right? Like it's like, get in, pump it up, pull out as quick as possible, get as much profit in a short period of time. Whereas like, I think the way that you're sort of sidetracked here, but I can tell that you're very much like a build it to last, you know, kind of mindset with what you do.

Jamil Bhuya (09:27.48)
Yes.

_{Jamil Bhuya (09:45.388)}
Yeah, because starting a business is just really hard, right? So it's like, if you're starting with already a half life in mind or a shelf life, I think, at least for me personally, it's very hard to kind of like get past the product because like, I'm more of a creative type. And so like, if it's just focused on utility of product, I think there's something to be said about like that type of North Star, but like,

It does eventually kind of wear out and like once you optimize the product and the costs and things like that, there's no real story. And, you know, they say like stories is what makes us human, right? Like stories is what's gonna, in my opinion, like beat out AI, that personality, the emotion. So, for the restaurant, it was like the moat was the brand and marketing, right? So what we did and not to keep it like too focused on that, but it's like, we did burgers of the week, burgers of the month.

^{Joe Fox (10:24.288)}
Yeah.

_{Jamil Bhuya (10:41.934)}
We actually ran Facebook ads from day one in 2012. like I was on, yeah, I was on Meta and I was kind of like, Hey, traditionally like, you know, that kind of, uh, advertising relationship is like you blast out into the ether. You pray someone walks into your store and you go from there. And I was like, this is amazing. The fact that like, you can basically create like a one-to-one dialogue, if not one to many and kind of create like a dialogue versus traditionally in the restaurant industry, what's a monologue.

^{Joe Fox (10:45.93)}
Yes, wow. Yeah.

_{Jamil Bhuya (11:11.938)}
know, radio ads, TV ads, it's like, there's no tracking, there's no attribution, none of these things. So, early on, we got a lot of like, we were actually on like a Facebook, like business tour, I was on many panels for like, not so much e-comm back then, but like just digital marketing. And, you know, I think recognizing that like,

^{Joe Fox (11:14.25)}
Yes. Yeah.

_{Jamil Bhuya (11:36.502)}
your product isn't a moat unless like you're building something that's patented and that's like rocket science. You really need like the storytelling and the brand for like longevity because humans I believe buy from other humans at the end of the day. And whether that's like a story, you know, even something like GrowAway for example, it's like your value prop, you know, is like, hey, you guys have like integrations built in across like the three different verticals. You know, it's cost

^{Joe Fox (11:49.356)}
Absolutely.

_{Jamil Bhuya (12:05.966)}
cost effective, but like at the end of the day, think a huge part of even, you know, like why we became buddies, like after I met you and after I met even Eldar, I was kind of like, I got to know like the different sides of you guys as people. And I think that's what made me connect. And I believe that's like what a brand really is. So taking all that, you know, across from like restaurants to e-comm, I think it's just very translatable.

^{Joe Fox (12:26.431)}
Yes. Yeah.

_{Jamil Bhuya (12:35.574)}
And those are a lot of the clients that we work with. really value brand longevity and creating kind of like that loyalty that once people are dialed in, they will literally fight for you. And that's, that's what happened to us. One of our most controversial ads on Facebook, we're a fully halal burger joint. really niche down and we ran an ad with like hijabi women at the time. And, ISIS was like a big thing and like, we got attacked, but then.

^{Joe Fox (12:47.199)}
Yeah. Yeah.

_{Jamil Bhuya (13:05.73)}
the pushback from our loyal customers was so strong that we actually ended up on like national news outlets, right? And we ended up on like, you got to eat here on the food network. And it was just kind of like, really helped blow us up from there. So I'll wrap it up by saying like, there was a lot of highs and lows 13 years. I think the biggest thing the restaurant industry taught me was like grit and like not everything's going to be easy. You know, it's like.

_{Jamil Bhuya (13:33.836)}
been sued, I've almost gone through bankruptcy, I've had to close down restaurants, I've ran out of cash before. And I think when you compare it to even Ecom is in the last 10 years since when we started Yellow Beauty in 2015, Ecom has changed so much from like a very cheap interest rate environment, which a lot of people don't talk about, right? When the economy was better pre inflation, it's like, there's so much competition, people are always talking about like,

^{Joe Fox (13:55.754)}
Mm-hmm.

_{Jamil Bhuya (14:02.548)}
CPMs and CPAs, but a lot of people don't talk about even timing in the market You know like when you enter and the acquisition funnel starts so I think that's what like restaurants taught me that like there's always gonna be problems and you just gotta like if you believe in it she thinks we're gonna get really hairy at times and like You could either be seen as brilliant or crazy right and only you can like see it through to the other side

^{Joe Fox (14:08.395)}
Yeah, yeah.

^{Joe Fox (14:27.883)}
Yes. Yeah. See the difference. No, I love that. I mean, you know, honestly, I respect you so much. I knew the minute I met you and kind of got like a bit of your background that I had nothing but respect for you. And I think, you know, you hit the nail on the head there, mate. Like that grit is so important. And I think, you know, you mentioned a couple of timeframes there with like

_{Jamil Bhuya (14:32.269)}
Yeah, yeah.

^{Joe Fox (14:54.503)}
early stages of Facebook ads and everything, you know, back in 2012. That's when I founded my agency with my business partner that I had in Australia that I sold. And so like a lot of that brings back memories, but you're right. It's like, even then that took grit for us. Everyone who's worked and have businesses through the pandemic or any of those sorts of things, there's a level of grit there. If you can survive that and push through that and thrive in those times.

it's super impressive. And I think, you know, the thing that I think is so cool about other half is it's like, you know, you, you clearly have this very cool, creative stripe to you. You've got your own brand in the way that you dress and present. I feel like you may have a bigger hat collection than me, but I really like, you know, there's obviously that strong business acumen, that strong sense of branding, that strong sense of creativity.

Um, and then, you know, uh, jazz being able to execute on that creativity and on that vision, and then you being able to push the business forward with that grit. mean, it's a combination in my mind. Um, and from what I see and, know, dealing with so many agencies, you know, I think in my personal network, I think I have over 500 agencies within grow waves. have well over, you know, 150. So like being able to see that I think.

That combination that you and jazz have, is, spectacular. And I think it's going to be nothing but continued success. Honestly, I say that I think that's really important. so in saying that, you know, sorry, I'm going on a few tangents here, but I'd love, I mean, we obviously have the, the audience of this podcast is, you know, our, our customers that are used grow, grow wave our,

_{Jamil Bhuya (16:28.398)}
Thank you.

_{Jamil Bhuya (16:33.774)}
appreciate it.

_{Jamil Bhuya (16:39.02)}
No, no, no, I love it.

^{Joe Fox (16:51.73)}
partners, whether it be tech or agency. I'd love for you to kind of dive into a little bit of what you're, you know, you mentioned you're wearing all the hats, pardon the pun again, but you know, doing all of the things external, like, you know, doing everything as you mentioned before, besides the kind of like creative execution and everything like that. What are a couple of tips that you would give to agencies in the Shopify space or

_{Jamil Bhuya (17:10.243)}
Yes.

^{Joe Fox (17:20.965)}
Or to, you know, for example, the young freelancer that's starting of thinking of, you know, going from just being a freelancer to moving into starting an agency. What are some of those kind of, know, grit driven pieces of advice that you would give to those people?

_{Jamil Bhuya (17:37.986)}
Yeah, I think like early on what I learned was like, for us, we're a high ticket agency, right? so what makes us special and why I'm saying this first is to kind of give a little context as to the advice I'm going to give. What made us special we've realized is we're a project based agency that doesn't, that doesn't do retainers. And because of that, we've created kind of cost certainty for

^{Joe Fox (17:45.746)}
Yeah.

_{Jamil Bhuya (18:04.846)}
SMB. So like our ICP is like mid market to small biz, three to 50 million. you know, I can say that cause we finally signed a $50 million client, which we were like, what the hell? but like we thank you. It's like we work pre revenue. And I think the biggest thing I've learned is that like most founders actually get very easily overwhelmed with like technical jargon and like,

^{Joe Fox (18:07.197)}
Yes.

^{Joe Fox (18:15.879)}
Yeah. Congratulations. Yeah.

_{Jamil Bhuya (18:33.518)}
tons of problems and even more solutions. So even looking at Grow Wave, one of the things you guys offer just really simple is Instagram UGC. We were just talking to a Shopify plus brand that we're hoping to work with and they sell a crap ton of accessories for cars. And it's for a very specific brand of car. And rather than going crazy on like,

^{Joe Fox (18:53.084)}
Yes.

_{Jamil Bhuya (18:59.18)}
Hey, we can build like this really amazing mega navigation with like car models, break it down by year and then break it off, make it like super visual with these amazing hover states. It's like, I can geek out about creative and design and like UX, UI wireframing, but like for the client, they're just like, like, whoa, this is TMI too much information. Like I'm overwhelmed with like.

^{Joe Fox (19:19.685)}
Yes, yeah.

_{Jamil Bhuya (19:24.984)}
tariffs and supply chain. I'm overwhelmed with like it's summer. So my sales have dips. So got to get ready for Black Friday. Like I don't care about all these things. What I do care about is can you save me time, money or headache? Right. So with that person, it was just like we were asking a ton of questions. They said one thing that I was like, I'm going to attach onto this. And I was really like making it about them. And I think sales is about like learning how to communicate and actually

^{Joe Fox (19:37.831)}
Yeah

_{Jamil Bhuya (19:53.324)}
getting information from the other party rather than like spewing all the info, right? It's a very like one way relationship ironically, but not the way most people think when they first get into sales. And for me, it was like, hey, if we're gonna help with like increasing, you know, conversion rate or AOV, I need to know how you get traffic, right? That's kind of like one of my fundamental questions. If I don't understand how you do traffic or get traffic, sorry, I can't help you because...

^{Joe Fox (20:06.747)}
Yes.

^{Joe Fox (20:15.141)}
Yeah.

_{Jamil Bhuya (20:21.866)}
Lower your acquisition cost because like if I don't understand how your business works, then everything I say is kind of doodoo from there. So One of the things he said which validated was like hey, we actually have a Massive Instagram community and we do a lot of lifestyle videos So these kind of like low price accessories are kind of like an easy kind of conversion method for them to be like I really want this little thing get him into the funnel keep going and

^{Joe Fox (20:28.58)}
Yes, yes.

_{Jamil Bhuya (20:50.062)}
You know, this maybe is my grow weight plug, but like right away we're like, Hey, UGC, like you guys have so much great UGC, but it's nowhere on the website. Right. It's like this lifestyle that you guys are talking about. You know, it's nowhere to be seen. There's no like imagery. There's no like people who look like the ICP why I do it in air quotes is cause like they're just people, right? ICP aside, they're just people. So how do we create that same excitement from your IG?

^{Joe Fox (20:59.761)}
Yeah, yeah.

^{Joe Fox (21:11.247)}
Yucks.

Yes. Yes.

_{Jamil Bhuya (21:19.712)}
and translate that to your website so you continue selling the thing that actually matters to the audience, which is the lifestyle, the outdoors, the fun of using these accessories on their trucks, which for a lot of people are like their kids. You know what I mean? And it's like...

^{Joe Fox (21:34.117)}
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I'm in Texas, man. I hear you on that. Yeah.

_{Jamil Bhuya (21:39.136)}
Right? So it's like, it's just feeding into that and understanding like the language of actually the customer. Cause if you can solve the customer pain point, now the business owner is like, dude, we're on board. Right? So I think my thing like advice would be for us, because we were super high ticket, we have to build relationships in person. It's just so much easier to like,

^{Joe Fox (21:46.213)}
Yes.

^{Joe Fox (21:51.834)}
Yeah, yeah.

_{Jamil Bhuya (22:05.026)}
get that kind of relationship building and accelerate it. Like as much as we can do it over a call, most people don't let their hair down because like they're in back to backs, they're in meetings. So it's like trying to meet them where they're trying to relax and get them to like you and trust you. I say that to everybody. If you like me and trust me, you'll probably take a second call. then from there, I can kind of give you the pitch. Once I learned the first time like,

^{Joe Fox (22:14.246)}
Thanks

^{Joe Fox (22:25.572)}
Yes, yeah.

_{Jamil Bhuya (22:34.978)}
Who you are, how'd you start? know, like I know personal details about you, you know, personal details about me. Cause we've had that conversation even before we get into business, right?

^{Joe Fox (22:45.519)}
Yeah, yeah.

_{Jamil Bhuya (22:48.334)}
I see the only caveat is of course like for me, I don't need a shit ton of leads compared to like a SaaS product or something that's like more of a you know, $99 a month with a free trial. So my methods of like getting business is very different, but it's at the end date like most of my business's referrals now it's all about relationships and just getting people to trust me. I think that's what I focus on the most and

^{Joe Fox (23:02.105)}
Yep.

_{Jamil Bhuya (23:18.03)}
I'll wrap this portion up with saying like really like being able to read body language. And I think that's just like shutting up and observing. Cause I've been pitched many times and like, can feel the anxiety of this person. Like you can see the wheels turning in their head like shit. Yeah. It's like, did I talk about like our roadmap? Did I talk about all these new features were coming up? Blah, blah, blah. And meanwhile, I'm like, Hmm. I'm like, do you like a burger? Where are you from?

^{Joe Fox (23:34.745)}
going through. Yes. Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (23:46.945)}
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

_{Jamil Bhuya (23:48.364)}
You know, like I travel a lot, so I'm like, are you from this part of the world? Like, do you know how to cook this? Cause like Toronto is super multicultural and I haven't had this food before, right? So, build relationships.

^{Joe Fox (23:57.571)}
Yes. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah, no. And I must say to that point, you know, because we met originally at a networking event. it's funny how these things, you know, kind of come full circle, but I've seen the way that you do that. You're very, very, very good at sort of like building rapport quickly, listening to people, making people feel at ease. But also you are a really amazing networker because

Definitely every Toronto event that I've seen pop up, you're there or you're in the comments, like I'm going to be there. And you know, the ones I've attended, you've been there. So, you know, I really like that you practice what you preach, but I also think that comes from your ability of being a really good entrepreneur, right? Like you can understand people, you're empathetic. you've obviously clearly got experience managing.

teams and you've got all of that. So I think that's really impressive. So that's a compliment to you, like in a big way. think you get networking and you get business. And I think, you know, people who are tuning in, really should watch how you do it. And if you're, if you're lucky enough to meet in person, like I think people will see that from you. You know what I mean? You're, you're, very good at that and people watching this will see it, but to your point, it's like,

_{Jamil Bhuya (25:00.59)}
Thank you, ciao.

_{Jamil Bhuya (25:18.222)}
Appreciate it.

^{Joe Fox (25:22.572)}
It's much easier to see that in person and to get those vibes and people have their guard down a little more.

_{Jamil Bhuya (25:30.102)}
Yeah, I think the biggest thing too, it's like, I tell people this all the time. It's like, a lot of maybe why people trust me is like, I'll tell my story even though sometimes like, even my wife used to tell me originally, she's like, why do you talk about the restaurant at Ecom stuff so often? She's like, why? And I tell them, I'm like, it's a huge part of who I am. And ironically, as I mentioned earlier, it's like when I tee up the fact that it's the easiest business model to understand.

A lot of people actually bring a lot of business owners bring in right away a negative and by bringing in a negative, it kind of allows us both to like see eye to eye at like a lesser stage where we're, can I swear? fuck it. Yes. That's, that's the word. It's, it's no longer a dick measuring contest as to who's doing better. It's more like I'll tell them I almost went bankrupt and then they're like, yeah.

^{Joe Fox (26:16.645)}
It's like trauma bonding. It's like trauma bonding. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

_{Jamil Bhuya (26:28.77)}
There was this time where it almost like becomes like we're competitive on who screwed up harder. And then it just kind of becomes funny. They're like, yeah, dude. There was this one time where I had an entire like palette seized by like the FDA or like, you know, suddenly something didn't get shipped. And it's like, we just start to kind of laugh about it. And they almost like kind of relax and they're like, okay, like you've been through some stuff. Like even if it's not completely adjacent, I understand your industry and the trust is there.

^{Joe Fox (26:34.688)}
Yeah. Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (26:43.928)}
Yeah, yes.

_{Jamil Bhuya (26:58.278)}
And I think like learning to find like common pain points in businesses and letting people speak to them and understanding who you're talking to. So, you know, I'll just wrap this portion up with like, I'll quickly try to identify like, are you a founder? Are you a director? Is this just a job? Have you like, tell me more about yourself and based on where you're at, like I'll catalog. I'm like, Hey, okay, cool. Like you don't actually.

^{Joe Fox (27:05.336)}
Yes.

_{Jamil Bhuya (27:27.948)}
I don't want to say care for the success of the business. You just care for like how you look in your job and your role. So how can I help you look better? You know, by helping you with a solution to like, maybe you're trying to get a promotion. So you need to hit this maybe, you know, so it's like trying to meet them where they're at, solve their problem first and in tune. It's like the golden rule. If I help you and understand you nine times out of 10, unless you're a sociopath, you're going to want to help me.

^{Joe Fox (27:36.237)}
Yes, yeah.

^{Joe Fox (27:57.156)}
Yeah, yeah, no, I love that and it's it's so spot-on. I think you know, I have a very big philosophy and partnerships It's like give to get you know, like I can't be out here just like or having my team just banging on doors saying hey Where's our leads right? Like it doesn't work like that. And and so I think it's like to that point. It's like we always

_{Jamil Bhuya (28:06.755)}
Yes.

^{Joe Fox (28:20.557)}
try to be empathetic and understand what's going on because every agency is in a different stage, whether their issue might be making payroll that month or some, some other agencies are like, Hey, we need more customers or Hey, we're about to go through an and a process. I really need, you know, some time. So it's like, I agree completely. It's like, gotta be empathetic. This is why I take your same stance around AI.

_{Jamil Bhuya (28:31.704)}
Yes.

_{Jamil Bhuya (28:42.818)}
Yes. Yes.

^{Joe Fox (28:49.533)}
I don't think AI will ever replace that human element. And I think as entrepreneurs and as business owners and brand owners and partner managers or agency owners, like never forget that human element that you've spoken about so much here. think it's like that human element, the focus on relationships is just so crucial and so key to your success. Whether you're a SaaS that doesn't have

much direct interaction, you still need to make sure that that interaction is there along the customer journey.

_{Jamil Bhuya (29:26.926)}
Can I have a little tiny hot take? It's a bit of, I think AI like everything is dominating the news cycle because it's become such a, I don't wanna say the word bubble, but it's become such a driver of investment and revenue. And it's essentially propping up the economy during like a global trade war that I think it's like a bastion of financial hope for like,

^{Joe Fox (29:29.835)}
Absolutely.

^{Joe Fox (29:48.672)}
Yeah, yeah.

_{Jamil Bhuya (29:53.598)}
many people that like using that narrative and dominating on fear based new cycles, which we've become very accustomed to is kind of the hot new thing. And like anything, it is going to become a tool that it will get rid of jobs. It will kind of allow, you know, scale ups and startups to do more with less. But at the end of the day, you know, humanity as a whole, it's still going to treat it, I think long term kind of like

On Google reviews or Amazon reviews as soon as you know a store has a fake review You just instantly your trust breaks and you're like fucking I'm moving on it's like a similar thing right like there there are people who are going to value I think AI for like Many things but I think there's a massive founder driven narrative behind the AI push that I think it makes it sexy to invest and easy to kind of

^{Joe Fox (30:31.968)}
Yeah. Yeah.

_{Jamil Bhuya (30:51.86)}
sell hope but from like the actual core consumer side i think there's gonna be like a pushback overall where like in-person events things that are real are actually gonna gain more value and be worth more in the future because ai is gonna go like the way of canva right like everyone's gonna be able to use it but there's still a lot of people who suck at using canva and

^{Joe Fox (31:07.211)}
Couldn't agree more. Yeah. Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (31:15.519)}
Yeah. Yeah.

_{Jamil Bhuya (31:16.364)}
those larger businesses are still gonna want to use agencies and other things to be like, look, I know I could do this with AI, but I've got a million other things to work on, including hitting my $100 million sales goal. Can you guys just use AI, do it however, and handle it? So, and rent.

^{Joe Fox (31:29.525)}
Yeah, yeah.

^{Joe Fox (31:34.388)}
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, no, a hundred percent. And I think I'm going to add to this just quickly in tech and agency, you know, in Ecom, we're often at the forefront of technology too, right? Which means we hear the most about things. We use things earlier than a lot of other people. We're early adopters when it comes to these things. It's like any tool, right? It's only as good as the person who's supporting the tool. Like you can hand a Klaviyo account.

_{Jamil Bhuya (31:48.012)}
Yes.

^{Joe Fox (32:04.417)}
to someone who has no idea about email marketing and it's not going to work well. I see AI very much as the same. It's like, unless you know how to utilize and implement and do things correctly, utilizing AI, it's definitely not going to be as, uh, you know, as urgent of a, of a replaceable kind of thing. That's just going to wipe everyone's jobs out tomorrow. I just don't see that happening, but, yeah, I agree wholeheartedly with that. Um, look.

I know you and I could talk forever, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna get to, I'm literally, but I'm going to get to the, the, um, the question that I like asking everyone on this, because to that point, you know, in e-commerce and in agency and in tech, we all travel quite a lot. spoke about traveling to events and everything regularly. Um, so I always like to ask everyone, um, and you can't say a person.

_{Jamil Bhuya (32:34.776)}
Forever, yeah.

^{Joe Fox (32:58.977)}
What is something that when you're traveling, you can't live without? Um, I'll start first cause I, this is mine. It's a portable battery. It doesn't matter. It's the best portable battery I've ever had. And every single time, whether it's personal travel, work, travel, this lives with me because I can get two laptop charges. think three or four phone charges out of it. It's, it's something that, you know, I have to travel with. If I don't travel with that, I have anxiety. So, um,

What's yours?

_{Jamil Bhuya (33:30.9)}
man, you know, when you first asked I was panicked. was like, my Lord, like my ADHD. It's like, feel like I lose everything half the time. So I'm trying to even think, it's, actually, I carry a travel wallet that I, I bought in 2010 when I was traveling to Thailand. And at the time I was like, you gotta be worried about pickpockets and all this stuff. So literally still religiously I carry kind of, you know, for the, Gen Z's out there, they'll know I look like an unk.

^{Joe Fox (33:42.964)}
Okay, yeah.

^{Joe Fox (33:47.733)}
Yeah. Yeah.

_{Jamil Bhuya (33:58.838)}
like with this kind of travel wallet that I wear under my pants and it's like a belt that's like a clip on and and like I keep my foreign currency in there. I keep my passports, my boarding passes and like I just wear that through the airport and back and that's it. And it's like it's

^{Joe Fox (34:05.483)}
Okay, okay, yeah.

^{Joe Fox (34:17.459)}
Nice, nice. Well, that's good. what, look, hey, that's the whole thing. It's like these travel hacks, they have to be something you do religiously and they have to be practical. So that sounds incredibly practical to me. And on the pickpocket thing, my wife and I were just in Paris recently. And I kind of like, felt blessed in the fact that we didn't have anyone, you know, try and try and rob us or anything, but.

On one of the tours we did, we did the Palace of Versailles on a Saturday. I'd never recommend that to anyone. If you can do it during the week, because it was just, it was the most crowded and packed I've ever been and such a beautiful place, but hard to enjoy it with that size of a crowd. But, you know, to that point, the tour guide was pointing out to everyone like, hey, be careful in this particular room, because there are so many like pickpockets target people in this room.

_{Jamil Bhuya (34:51.598)}
Slim.

^{Joe Fox (35:11.648)}
Cause you have to go through a smaller, narrow passageway so more people bump into each other. So what you're talking about there is incredibly practical touchwood. were lucky there, but that's, that sounds like a very good travel hack. I appreciate that.

_{Jamil Bhuya (35:15.137)}
Yes.

_{Jamil Bhuya (35:21.87)}
Yes.

_{Jamil Bhuya (35:26.402)}
Love the question.

^{Joe Fox (35:28.09)}
Awesome. So look, man, thank you so much for coming on. As I said, we can chat forever. We'll do a part two of this in a year's time. I know that some of our AI predictions will have sort of like come to fruition by then. And a lot of what we've spoken about, you know, is incredibly useful to the audience. So thank you so much for coming on. If people want to connect with you, connect with Jazz, connect with other half, connect with your brands.

_{Jamil Bhuya (35:34.498)}
Sure.

^{Joe Fox (35:55.135)}
Can you give a little bit of a shout out as to where they can do that? I'll make sure it's all linked in the show notes. But I just want to make sure that people can connect with you, can follow with you, can follow your journey.

_{Jamil Bhuya (36:01.25)}
Yes.

_{Jamil Bhuya (36:07.768)}
I appreciate it. Yeah. easiest place to hit me up is on LinkedIn. So that's Jamil J-A-M-I-L, B-H-U-Y-A. I believe I'm the only one on LinkedIn. If not...

^{Joe Fox (36:19.295)}
I think you are mate. I know there are rather Jamil's, they're definitely the only one Bhuya.

_{Jamil Bhuya (36:21.646)}
Yeah.

and Otherhalf.studio. So you could hit me up at Jamil at Otherhalf.studio. That's the domain name and URL. So you could hit me up or even Jaz, J-A-Z at Otherhalf.studio. Always willing to chat whether it's about anything or everything, restaurants, AI, EECOM, Grow Wave, whatever, happy to chat.

^{Joe Fox (36:50.015)}
Awesome, Jamil. Thank you so much for coming on, man. Really, really appreciate it. As always, appreciate your support. Appreciate the partnership. Looking forward to seeing you in person soon. I'm not sure whether that's going to be stateside or in Canada, but yeah, really appreciate it, And thank you so much. I know I speak for the audience when I say this, but the insights you've given today, sharing your story.

you know, sharing everything that you and jaz are up to incredibly useful. So, I encourage the audience, to connect. I encourage you to follow the links mentioned. I cannot stress enough how much value Jamil and jazz give. And just really like he, know Jamil means that when he says hit him up, if you see him and have a conversation, cause, he's a master networker I'm, very grateful to call him a friend and a partner. So, thank you so much for coming on board. Really appreciate it.

_{Jamil Bhuya (37:47.768)}
Thank you, Joey. You're leaving me blushing, which I appreciate. can't see it, but I swear I am. Thanks, you too. Bye bye.

^{Joe Fox (37:50.495)}
Well, you have a fantastic day. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Well, everyone, thank you so much for tuning into another episode of retain growth thrive. I'm sure you enjoyed that conversation just as much as I did. Please check out the links in the show notes. and thank you again for tuning in. We wouldn't be able to do this without you. If you have any one that you would particularly like to see on the podcast.

I encourage you to mention them in the comments and we'll do our best to get them on. Thank you again for tuning into another episode and I'll talk to you soon.