Family as the key to successful business development – Exclusive interview with Arslan Gabidullin!

Today, the guest of our interview is Arslan Gabidullin, who is the founder and owner of self-service coffee shops LifeHacker Coffee and not only. In this talk you will find out how he managed to start a business during hard times, his point of view on various things and about leaving LifeHacker Coffee in the near future to launch the business of his dreams.

Arslan, tell us about the trends of the current time and why customers choose one brand or another when there is a seemingly obvious presence on the market of identical coffee-based products?

Now I sincerely believe that the general trend in the world is the saving of human time, and I think that the most important resource for a person is time. He/she can spend the saved time on self-development, on family, on loved ones, on something really important, so now I think the most significant is the simplification of everything, the reduction of all chains, the simplification of business and saving the consumer’s time. That’s why our business has achieved success.

After all, we are a franchise company that sells equipment to people, our partners, who want to build a business on this. And so, first of all, they buy a very simple business in which they save their time, they don’t need to hire an employee and find large rental areas, as the commodity matrix is already quite small at the coffee itself. There are not too many drinks where you need to suffer in the agony of choice, the simpler the better. And so, they buy a simple business that can help them to become entrepreneurs, receiving income with the least risk. After all, the self-service coffee machine is attractive because it forgives mistakes, as we can simply transfer it to another location if we didn’t choose the right place.

Why am I talking in this way because I had a huge experience discovering exactly full-fledged caffeine. I had 15 chains with hired employees, with baristas, whom you need to constantly monitor, hire and train. You also need completely different rental areas from 15 to 10 squares to 50 to open a full-fledged coffee shop. Here, one square meter is needed, and employees are not needed, or you can hire a person for a modest fee as it takes 30 minutes of his time.

We are successful in front of our customers because I was a franchisee when I bought a franchise Coffee Hacker and went all this way myself. When I was a young inexperienced entrepreneur with absolutely no information or experience, I received full instructions from the franchisor on what and how to do it. And we do exactly the same, we sell instructions with equipment on how and what needs to be done, and we do part of the work even for our partners. That is why our clients – future entrepreneurs, choose us.

What is the secret to “winning the heart” of the customer and building brand loyalty?

Firstly, I will explain why self-service coffee shops are chosen – it’s just saving time, everything is now moving towards simplifying the business in saving time. The second reason why people choose this or that brand is that behind the brand or business there should be some kind of mission or goal, where the business exists for the sake of something and not just to make money. So, my partner and I opened the Green billion world fund long before the Lifehacker business, where we invest money ourselves and buy a large number of trees and seedlings and distribute them on the appointed day and time each in our city. Yes, we cannot be 100% environmentally friendly and a cup of coffee with us decomposes longer, but we spend a lot of money on a direct positive impact on nature – this is planting trees. And the most important thing is not just words, it is implanted in our minds, the founders of this business in me and my partner.

Secondly, this is the ideology that we introduced into Life hacker because our business is called Life hacker for a very important reason. It’s just like breaking the system and life, by hacking it. Just the same with our approach, as a rule, in our business we constantly come up with something new, but the most important goal is to break the business model, that is, we took the usual business of a full-fledged coffee shop and simplified it as much as possible by removing all absolute costs. That is why we came up with some kind of time-saving life hack for both the entrepreneur and the consumer.

Therefore, we have such 2 missions – to do environmentally friendly and progressive business, to do it differently and we are a completely unusual company, as you can see it in everything. We are a company in which the majority works remotely, where people can walk around in whatever they want, who can say whatever they want.

What does a customer-oriented business mean?

Customer-oriented business is when you really care about the convenience and positive emotions of the client, making him satisfied with your product or service. In order to do everything right and focus all attention on the client, we can do something that is not according to the rules and not go after the bureaucracy. In general, the main thing in life, as well as in business, I think this is a human relationship and the one who wins the heart of a client, friend, or just a person, then they will be successful.

What emotion does the customer get when buying?

If we take our future partner who buys a business of self-service caffeine with its equipment for himself, he receives full support, which our team provides. That is, he gets such experience in business, gets a self-service caffeine tool and immediately practical instructions on how and what to do, and thus gets his first experience in this business.

Arslan, please open a vision for the future, what do you want to achieve and what are your business horizons?

To be honest, after the pandemic, I opened this business quickly because I had already been doing the coffee business for 7 years. I had my coffee shops, but during the pandemic, they went bankrupt and I just quickly adapted and started doing what I can. I understood that self-service coffee shops can quickly make a good business and I started it. But I always wanted to connect my business with waste recycling and ecology, and now I’m looking at it, so we have already launched a platform Eco Market place, we tried it, but soon I will devote more and more time and immerse myself in the environmental sphere and soon I will leave from the business Life hacker coffee and I will devote all my attention to good deeds completely.

I really want to positively influence people and share my life experience, how once I managed to change my life and get out of the village where I was under the control of addictions of a huge amount, alcohol and even illegal substances and was uneducated. But thanks to self-development, I get cool results in business and even open an international business. and I want to share this knowledge in order to motivate people to believe in themselves and change their lives for the better.

I want to connect my business with recycled materials and garbage processing. This is what really fascinates me, this is where I want to go. Therefore, honestly, coffee is a temporary stage of my life. But the Lifehacker brand has great prospects and this company will exist for a long time and will become famous. Because this market is huge – coffee is the first food product in the world in terms of consumption.

Are there any idols in business?

There are no such idols because I think if we put someone too high on a pedestal and we move him too far away from ourselves in advance, as if we are looking at them from the bottom up, in this way we subconsciously convince ourselves that we will not achieve this. Well, many people are ordinary, people who have achieved high results are the same ordinary people, who can think big and do extraordinary things, but there is one of these people, whom I like, it’s Elon Musk. I like that he is an innovator, that he does something new and changes the world for the better.

Which is the most important thing in your life that makes you happy?

In general, the family is the most important value that I have and highly appreciate, and only then my business. Ideally, business is done in order to provide the family with a better life. The more money and experience I have, I understand that the most important thing in life is still a family and this is the main source of happiness, so I don’t understand people who do successful business at the expense of their family.

Can you describe your perfect morning, day or vacation?

The ideal morning for me is when you get up for two or three hours before the main activity, you have time to be alone and calm when the whole world is still sleeping, ideally, it is at 5 in the morning when everyone is still sleeping and you can calmly plan what is really important to you. I also love doing some exercises in the morning. I usually run 3-5 km and it gives me energy for the whole day and as a rule, if I skip a run, my day in terms of mood goes noticeably worse. I clearly understood this for myself and looked at a lot of research on this topic. So, it’s in the morning.

Further, I like the awakening of the children having a short time in the morning with them until the moment when they leave for school. In general, for 5 years at the beginning of my business, I was at work from morning to evening until very late at night and practically I did not see the children, and I am very sorry about this lost time, because the children are already very adult. My daughter Adalina is 10 and my son is 7 and a big part of their childhood I spent little time with them. Therefore, now I’m trying to spend some more time with them, doing various interesting activities. For example, we fly together in a wind tunnel or go hiking in nature. We especially like it, so during my ideal day I see a lot of time and now I am increasing my time with my children more and more.

Real business is about the formation of some habits and is always associated with the founder and his personal history. Can you tell us about your habits, which helped you to become successful?

In all of this, while describing my perfect day, I forgot about the most important habits that generally allowed me to achieve everything that I now have. I am sincerely convinced that no matter how magical it sounds, what a person believes in, he will eventually receive, and those thoughts that he generates, he will eventually receive. 8 years ago, when I was a taxi driver, I read the book “Think and grow rich” by Napoleon Hill, where he said that every morning and every evening you need to read your sheet of notes, written in advance with your goals and an ideal vision of the future that we wanted to achieve. So, every morning and every evening I do just that. I imagine my future in which I want to be and the qualities that I want to possess and the life that I want to live. I write these thoughts right before bed and as soon as I get out of bed. And it is very important to systematically do this.

The main problem is why we do not achieve certain goals, because we sincerely do not believe that this can happen. And believe me, it was very hard for me to write that a guy from the village who earns 50-70 thousand rubles can earn several million rubles, and then the brain refused to believe in it. But in the same book, it was written that if you do not give up and repeat these actions systematically, then sooner or later you will believe in it. And this is the whole power, just imagine your best future that inspires you and do it systematically, even if you don’t believe in the beginning. But over time, you will believe in it, and believing in it, you will be inspired. And when you wake up in the morning inspired, you will take actions and by taking more and more actions your goal will become closer. Therefore, the most important habit in my life is constant systemic visualization, generating thoughts of what I want to achieve.