Welcome to another episode of our serious SLC meetups by Super Luxury Group, where we connect with some of the most interesting players in the Luxury market. My name is Alvaro and today we'll be having with us a very special guest. His name is Zizza and he's the CEO of One Investments. In this conversation, our inspirational guest is going to be talking about how he became a successful real estate broker and serial entrepreneur.
Zizza is also going to be sharing with us how he manages all his business activities between London and Dubai and the importance of continuing growth and South of the Valley. Definitely great insights and I hope you guys will enjoy it. Let's welcome Zizza. See my friend, what's happening?
Hey, how you doing brother? Oh good, all good, leaving the dream. How are you? Amazing, I'm great.
How are you? Good, good. You're in London, right? Yes, I'm in London, beautiful weather here in London.
So Ziz, thanks for joining. It's amazing to have you here today. Thank you very much for having me. And you know, I was telling a little bit about your story, how you went from Pakistan to London, you started building an empire in real estate.
Now you're into huge projects, Dubai, London, Pakistan. Tell us a little bit about your story and how did you end up building such incredible things. I started my career as a broker in real estate, working for a brokerage. And you know, I was just always wanting more and always trying to take the next step, never being satisfying with what I had.
That's actually, I guess everything your parents teach you, for example, with what you have and be satisfied in life. I want more, I want to do more, I want to do bigger things. A lot of the time stages in my life came where people were like, Oh, you've done so well, you're so successful. And I'm like, no, not really, I've got so much more to do.
So even now, I don't feel like I've achieved anything. I think like the things are just starting now. The big things are about to come. You know, so it's just always having that hunger and drive.
And it's like I compare being an entrepreneur to like a baby learning to walk. So how a baby learns to walk is that a baby's baby stands up and falls over. And every time the baby falls over, they learn that, okay, it's a balance. I should put less weight on my left foot and more on my right, if they fell to the left, right?
Right, that and then they might fall to the right. Okay, so I've got to put less weight on the right and eventually to trial and error, they learn how to walk. And after learning to walk, then they start to learn how to run and they'll fall over when they run and they get better at running, etc, etc. That's the same thing with entrepreneurship that you've just got to get up and go.
You're going to fall over, you're going to get it wrong, but there's no other way to learn. Nobody's born in this world as a perfect entrepreneur or a perfect business person. You've got to get 30, you've got to fail and learn and grow. I completely agree with you.
And it's funny that you're making that analogy with a baby. You're not learning how to walk because this weekend I was helping my niece to learn how to ride a bike without the two little wheels in the back. I don't know how you say it in English, but yeah, but those things, you know, and she was actually starting to lose balance. So she started to put the food on the ground and you know, she fell over.
I felt terrible, but you know, she stood up and she kept learning. And now look at her by herself. And this is like the first step in life, you know, and as you said, in business, it relates the same thing. You fail, you fail, you fail.
You are a serial entrepreneur. You have many multiple, you know, businesses going on. One of them is one investment. I'm big fan of your business and what you're doing.
So what are some of the nice projects that you're currently working on? What investments is a brokerage and we have the pleasure of dealing with prime super prime real estate in London and in Dubai as well. So in London, the properties that we work on range anywhere from a million pounds starting price going up to 60 to 70 million pounds, from let's say, 80, 90 million US dollars. And mainly its clients from overseas, not local from the UK from overseas, they're investing into London and we facilitate them.
On the other side, we also deal with very prime properties in Dubai. So like, you know, beachfront properties, we work with some great developers like one developers called Demac. We work with they've got Versace properties and Fendi properties and two production properties and that's helping people from the UK who want to buy their properties and divide. So that's what one investment does.
And then we also have development sides of our business. So one side of the business, which we will a new business I launched about three years ago, which has now evolved to become a company called DR Homes developing luxury real estate in Pakistan. So we're just in the process now of launching a new project in the capital over there, which is going to be a $1.5 billion project and going to be the most luxury project in the country. Wow, that's incredible.
You know, see, I love all these different projects that you have going on because, you know, in such a usual time, I will say there is not that many people that take the chances to really endeavor into new projects like that. And you were talking about luxury and you know, I always like to ask this question because luxury is such a saturated world that everybody uses in different terms. I would like to ask you what it looks like to you. History is attention to detail.
The difference between good and great, great being luxury is attention to detail. So if you, for example, if you look at a let's take a Hermes belt, right? It's not missing a Hermes belt in the front of it, right? Hermes belt or Hermes brand 100% luxury brand.
No, you will deny it's a luxury branded everything. It stands for right and everything it does now that same piece of leather, right? Maybe some high street store is selling in their belt. The quality in the letter may be a 10% difference, right?
The high street store is selling that belt for $50. Hermes is selling little bit high-quality, but only 10% high-quality belt for $700. What is making them achieve 12, 13x the price is the attention to detail. When you get the product, the attention to detail is handcrafted.
It's perfect. That's what luxury is. And that's a true and you know, sometimes that brand is being carried by the people that are the face of it, you know, and it requires passionate people to transmit that passion into the brand itself and experience, you know, it's all about that attention to detail, as you will said, and the experience that surrounds it, you know, because when it comes to homes, you know, how do you translate luxury from that attention to detail into what you're building? When we talk about real estate development, we mainly what we develop is large communities.
So we don't do single homes, we do large communities. And for me, real estate is enhancing standards of living. It improves people's quality of life. So when I'm looking at a real estate project, I'm saying, how can I make this something that makes your life better?
That my buyer, the piece of my... How can I make this something that improves their standard of living? So important. Yeah, and that is by looking and not just looking at the, I'm buying this for X, I'm going to spend Y and I want it to sell for Z, right?
That's secondary. The first thing you need to look at is how am I going to make an incredible proposition that will make someone's life better? That is the first point you should be doing in any business is how can I add value? How do I create something that will have an impact?
After that look, okay, how do I make this impact feasible? But that shouldn't be the first thing, shouldn't be the feasibility. The first thing should be how does this make people's lives better? Then after that calculate how it can make you money because I guarantee you, if you do things that improves people's lives, you do things that make people live better, you make money for it.
Guarantee. You are setting up the tone from motivational book, you know, you have the right mindset, I love it. And you know, at the end of the day, this is what really drives you to wake up in the morning when you do things with a purpose, because it's not just something for yourself, but what can you do for others? And especially during these days, you know, it's about that quality that you can bring to others people's life.
And through building those communities by having the right type of homes that really fits what people are looking for these days, I would like to ask you a little bit more personal question, you know, because I believe that those that are listening and watching today can see themselves, you know, going towards their next dreams, their next goals and looking up for someone like you brings inspiration. So what are some of the little tricks or takeaways that you recommend? I think the most important thing for anybody is don't think too much, which is what most people get stuck with is overthinking. They overthink what can go wrong, right?
And they don't take action. By not taking action, you're guaranteeing one thing, right? And that is zero outcome. Already not going back with it, right?
So it's not thinking too much about what's the right thing to do and what's the wrong thing to do. Just make a move. The last thing you want to be in life is a guy who regrets the decisions they didn't take or the opportunities they missed. Take action, pursue your dreams, take risks, be bolding your risk taking, take big risks.
You know, for me, especially early in my career, I lived all over the world. I moved to like four or five different countries. And I would, if I make a decision that I was going to move somewhere today, I would be gone four days later. Back to back everything gone turned up.
Is my house sorted over there? No, it's not. Do I have enough money to survive over there? No, I don't.
But I will work it out. I know it will all work out. Life has a beautiful way of working out for the people who take risks, for the people who put themselves out there in the way. Nature has got away.
Nature of God, whatever. People who believe in God, we say God, people who don't believe in God, they say nature has got away. But the world has a way of helping those people who help themselves. Very well said, you know, and there is one word that you use there that we always love to bring it into some of our values, which is the beautiful success, you know, everything that you do in life, regardless of what it is, it needs to be without passion and to bring that beautiful success could be from a failure, from an experience, from a connection.
So in your eyes, what will be a beautiful success? For people to remember you in a positive light, to say that you made their life better, that you delivered, you gave them something which enhanced their life. Think about someone like Steve Jobs. We have no person, not every single person, but especially in the Western world, almost everyone has been impacted by what he created.
It's improved our life. Me and you were talking, he's facilitated that in some way. My phone, my computer, my watch, everything, it's all by Apple, right? He's been in front of me, which makes my life better, which makes millions of people's lives better.
And for me, that success, knowing that at the end of your journey, forget how much you've got in the bank or not got in the bank. It's about how many lives you were able to positively impact. Incredible. Now, well said, Steve.
I think that you are definitely an inspiration for many of us, not only by your wife's words, but also by what you're doing by taking action and taking, as you said, the risk of trying to make this of a better world. Now, if somebody wants to reach out to you or wants to know more about you, where can they find you or how can they reach out to you? Instagram, man, I'm active on Instagram. You're the man here.
You're a pleasure, Blue T. You're getting all over. I love it. Yeah, it's just me, me, me.
And if it's, I mean, yeah, I get a lot of DMs. I don't always get to check them all. But generally, I think probably over the course of three, four months, I do get to check most of my DMs. And if it's something serious and someone approaching it right, I reply as well.
I'll give one piece of advice though, that I get a lot of DMs like this, which I don't even reply to. I don't even open where they say, hi, I need a job. I've hired a lot of people from Instagram. Some of the best people who work with me are from Instagram.
But guys, if you're writing to somebody saying, I need a job, that's not of interest to me. I don't need you to get a job. I need people who will add value to my organization. So whenever you want something from someone, when you, this is a lesson I'm teaching me, when you want something from someone, tell them what you can do for them.
So what you would actually say to that is instead of going to someone saying, I need a job is you'd say, hi, I've researched your organization. I understand you do A, B and C. And if I was to join your organization, I could do D, E and F, which would be great and complimentary. And I would have lots of value to your company.
Mm-hmm. Definitely. No, that's for sure. And, you know, we get those across all the time.
People want to go the AC route just by dropping something, but you need to add value in life. That's the only way to make a better place and to really get it ahead in life. So, Z, enjoy the beautiful weather in London. When you get to Tyre of it, come visit us in Miami.
I'm sure you love it. And for sure, we'll be connected. Thanks again for your time. Looking forward to meeting you in Miami.
Again, Z, it's a pleasure. Thank you so much. All right, take care. Good to meet with you.
Bye-bye. And thanks again for everybody tuning in today. We hope you enjoyed it. And remember, embrace it's beautiful success in life.
My name is Alvaro and I'll see you next time.