Success leaves clues. Finance Strategists sat down with Adil Zaman, founder of the small business education website Fincyte, a site dedicated to helping new entrepreneurs succeed in the business world. Zaman shared his thoughts on the past, present, and future of the company, as well as his own personal “future insight” about where it was headed. Q: Who are you and what’s your background? I’m Adil Zaman, founder of fincyte.com. I was born and raised in Lahore, Pakistan. I studied finance and business administration in public sector universities. I’m also a certified internal auditor with experience in accounting and bookkeeping, business and corporate consultancy, and financial management. I started freelancing in 2014 as a content writer with a keen interest in business and technology. After one year, I started my blog (in my favorite niche) with an aim to publish content pertaining to small business ideas, tech trends, and how-to guides for startup owners and business professionals. Throughout this journey, I made several mistakes as a newbie. But after working day and night, I learned a lot from my mistakes and successfully grew my blog. Today, I’ve published 1000+ pieces of content, attracted hundreds of thousands of relevant readers on SERP, allowed dozens of guest authors to share their tips and experience, and advertised brands from all around the world. And this journey is still going on! I’m still striving for excellence. Q: Who has been your biggest influence, and why did they have such a significant effect on you? As I said earlier, I have a keen interest in business and tech trends and I have an entrepreneurial mindset. Specifically, in the business landscape, there are several personalities from religious to political and professional ones who greatly influenced my own. Here are two famous quotes of these personalities I’d like to share with you and the readers who are reading this: Hazrat Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him). This advice greatly motivated me to work on my own entrepreneurial ideas instead of applying for traditional jobs. With business, I can avail myself more opportunities as compared to working 9-5. Muhammad Ali Jinnah (The Founder of Pakistan). This is another amazing piece of advice that reminded me that if I work hard, sooner or later I will accomplish my dreams. Q: Knowing what you know now, what would you have told yourself when you were in your twenties? Well, when I was just starting, I didn’t have a good budget for this blog project. And truly I didn’t make a foolproof startup plan with effective marketing strategies and cash inflow methods. I was not familiar with SEO stuff either. I just started out with a goal to make it worth reading and a useful blog for people with a business mindset. That’s why I made more blogging mistakes than I expected. Today, I’m somewhat improved in SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Initially, I was not very good at it. But today if I were supposed to start again today, I’d definitely tell myself that I should learn SEO before getting started. Q: What is Fincyte? Fincyte is a small business blog/magazine devoted to entrepreneurs, startup owners, and business professionals. At Fincyte, we are covering a range of topics including small business ideas, news, how-to guides and advice, advanced business tips, and tech trends. Further, we are also highly enthusiastic about our blog and often share with our readers high-quality and well-researched informative content. Apart from that, a lot of people often ask me what the meaning of Fincyte is. I’d like to explain that here. Fincyte is derived from two words with little modification which are “Future Insight.” I believe that current, as well as future insight about business and tech trends, are highly important for entrepreneurs and startup owners’ success. They can make rational decisions and devise good strategies after learning what is happening and what may happen in the future in business and tech landscapes. Q: What makes Fincyte different from its competitors? Well, just like other similar blogs, we are also publishing content for our audience. But what makes Fincyte unique as it is a dynamic blog, most of the content has the same structure and relevancy. Further, we’ve also granted permission to experienced guest authors to publish informative and well-researched content. Currently, we’ve allowed 500+ guest authors to publish their blogs and share their exclusive tips with our relevant audience. The interesting thing is that most of the guest authors at Fincyte are not merely content writers, they’re also CEOs of small, medium, and even large companies experienced editors, and content marketers of other major online brands, tech geeks, academics, researchers, and business professionals. Further, we always strive hard to publish well-researched content and try to include authentic research, survey results, numbers, and statistics. This practice ensures that we maintain the quality of our blog. Due to this practice, our blogs have been cited and featured on various other renowned blogs, magazines, and websites. Q: What led you to start Fincyte? As mentioned earlier, I started my career as a freelance content writer before starting Fincyte. During freelancing, I noticed that various blogs were publishing content just to get internet traffic and make a living. This made me think that I have the skill (even though I was a beginner at the time) and I should start my own blog where I can cover all the aforementioned topics in detail and help the up and coming entrepreneurs with updated information and tips. The good thing is that my academic background was also the same, as I was studying Finance and Business Administration at that time. Q: What has the experience of building the business taught you? I learned a lot from freelancing, starting out a business blog, and pursuing other entrepreneurial ideas. For me, I consider “business” like a sapling; initially, you need to take care of everything, from seed investment to marketing strategies, business management, lead generation ideas to revenue generation, and a lot more. But when it grows, it becomes your tree. It not only covers your bills but also creates various job opportunities in society. As I said earlier that I made dozens of mistakes while starting out. You may laugh at me, but the truth is that I didn’t know how to operate a WordPress blog or anything else when I started out. But gradually I learned things. I improved my skills. I remained consistent and honest with myself thought-out this time. Q: Where do you see things headed for you in the next 5 years? No one can perfectly anticipate the future because of uncertainty but still, I think that I have to strive hard and make this blog more interesting and take it to the next level. It can easily compete with other similar leading blogs and websites. And hopefully, I’ll fulfill my dream in the coming years. Apart from this blog, I’m also working on other projects in which Tripfore.com and oBookkeeping (virtual bookkeeping services) are prominent ones. Tripfore.com is a travel blog focusing on the best places, things to do, and tourist attractions around the world. I started this blog as a hobby to cover all the best places as I have plans to travel around the world after retirement. Similarly, oBookkeeping will be a virtual bookkeeping services startup. Soon, my qualified friends and I will launch this startup as it is more related to my professional background. For more information, see fincyte.com
Introduction
Who is Adil Zaman?
What is Fincyte?
True Tamplin is a published author, public speaker, CEO of UpDigital, and founder of Finance Strategists.
True is a Certified Educator in Personal Finance (CEPF®), author of The Handy Financial Ratios Guide, a member of the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing, contributes to his financial education site, Finance Strategists, and has spoken to various financial communities such as the CFA Institute, as well as university students like his Alma mater, Biola University, where he received a bachelor of science in business and data analytics.
To learn more about True, visit his personal website or view his author profiles on Amazon, Nasdaq and Forbes.
