Khokhar: \u201cIt’s getting to read between the lines, or getting to understand the person, the business, and their motivations, and their rationale.\u201d<\/p>\n
An entrepreneur for entrepreneurs \u2013 Bill Khokhar shows the way.<\/strong><\/p>\n Bill Khokhar is an entrepreneur whose business is in\u2026 entrepreneurship. With many, many young adults in the UK aspiring and working towards self-employment there comes an opportunity to train them in the means to achieve their goals. And that is where Khokhar has stepped in with training and promotion services.<\/p>\n Typical clients, he says are \u201cmillennials mainly, but even pre-millennials, \u2013 people who are pretty much digital savvy,\u201d says Khokhar \u201cSo you need to have a certain amount of digital skill, you know, using modern technology and using social media \u2013 it’s not for somebody who’s a complete novice.<\/p>\n \u201cI have a potential client who’s a young lad and really quite industrious. He’s only coming up to 16, and he’s got his own brand of clothing. But he does it in a wholesale setting. It’s kind of street wear, it’s at a price point that is quite accessible. It looks really kind of cool and funky.<\/p>\n \u201cHe’s found a London-based, supplier and he’s asked them to produce the product with his branding on it. He goes to trade shows and he sells his products. Where he needs help is with the marketing and the promotion of his products. And we are also providing him with the facility to sell on our platform.\u201d<\/p>\n Khokhar\u2019s business, \u2013 WhereIts@London \u2013 aims \u201cto promote the best of London business and lifestyle past, present and future.\u201d He\u2019s focused currently on largely creative people in the capital who are setting themselves up in business and need help.\u201d<\/p>\n After six years in preparation he is looking for partners to form the Whereits@academy that will \u201cprimarily up-skill young Londoners and SMEs, start-ups and entrepreneurs (with a nationwide objective),\u201d in the wherewithal to start and to propagate a venture including content writing, social media marketing and entrepreneurship\/lead generation.<\/p>\n “I think I was born to create this, and work with this, and deliver this.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Khokhar says that in advising a new business venture, it\u2019s important that he has a good understanding of each entrepreneur\u2019s aims and motivations which sometimes demands interpretation on his part: \u201c It’s getting to read between the lines, or getting to understand the person, the business, and their motivations, and their rationale. And creating a whole narrative around that, and the person, and the business, you know, what their aims and objectives are.<\/p>\n \u201cI’ve met thousands of creative people that have said: \u2018You know what? I want to go out, do this, but I’m not sure how I wanna go about doing it.\u2019 Khohkar says he is \u201cpassionate\u201d about his work and sees it as helping young people to liberate themselves from the nine-to-five routine and working for someone else\u2019s profit. \u201cWell, it’s a way of creating opportunities for people, using technology to make a pound note and not to have to be stuck in any particular hours. And to do something where whatever they put in [the reward] is measurable, you know, with the money that they make.<\/p>\n \u201cOnce people start earning the money, and they can see how much they’re making, it will inspire them to put a bit more work into it. And through our academy and through our training, we’re gonna provide them with the tools to be able to develop.\u201d<\/p>\n While he doesn\u2019t view the clientele for Whereits@london as being exclusively disadvantaged, he does anticipate that its services will assist some people to overcome obstacles created by their personal circumstances: \u201cI wouldn’t say that they’re disadvantaged. But it does include people that are disadvantaged either by socioeconomics, or geography, or mobility issues.<\/p>\n So what exactly does Whereits@London offer?<\/p>\n \u201cSo what we do; we teach the skills and the mindset to be able to get to a point where they can create, curate, replicate, and also propagate content. So that content is promoted,\u201d explains Khokhar. He goes on: \u201cWhat we’re try to do to create digital communities. And what the academy does, and what the training does \u2013 it gets people into meeting, using their skills, and combining them, and creating a community of people that are able to work together. Even if they are geographically separated.\u201d<\/p>\n It’s my kind of self-actualisation, I guess. I’ve envisioned myself doing something like this forever. I think I was born to create this, and work with this, and deliver this. And I’ve, thankfully, found the right people to help me along the journey to, you know, with the right skills, and the right level of creativity \u2013 too numerous to kind of name individually. And they\u2019ve bought into the idea.\u201d<\/p>\n Khokhar tells The Mint that another significant part of his motivation is to try and do something to address inequality and exclusion in UK society. \u201cWhat’s happening in policy making areas in government, \u2013 and I’m not trying to make a political statement \u2013 is simple. They try to come up with strategies to make life better for people. But they tend to have meetings about meetings and try to work out what the strategy is. And there’s consultation and stakeholders are identified\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cI’ve worked with local government. I’ve worked in that kind of area before as a contractor, and it can be quite laborious and long-winded. And in the Digital Age that doesn’t work. If you’ve got something, the best way to get it to market is get it to market as soon as possible, and just crack on with it.<\/p>\n He says the academy taps into the social media skills that are prevalent among his target market. He says it enables people to become \u201cmedia influencers\u201d by developing abilities honed while posting their updates on Facebook and Snapchat to be used in a business context. \u201cNow that’s all just a series of ways of creating opportunities for people and providing them with a platform to be able to create a pathway that fits with what they want to be. And that could be a single mother, who may have a couple of hours spare to earn a pound note.\u201d<\/p>\n There is a sense from talking to Khokhar that a strong element of his motivation for making his business has been his own life experiences. He acknowledges that his upbringing has played a pivotal part in setting his career path but through valuable lessons rather than easy opportunities. His parents were from pre-partition India and his extended family was divided by the border when Pakistan was created. \u201cI’m reluctant to say that I’m either one or the other, but most of my family is in Pakistan. His father \u2013 \u201ca very strict disciplinarian\u201d \u2013 died in 1981: \u201cI didn’t really know\u2026 I only had him for nine years.\u201d Khokhar\u2019s five older siblings were adults when their father died so he and his younger sister were brought up by their mother. \u201cMy mum, she’s just a wonderful woman. She’s amazing. She makes me laugh every day,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n “part of his motivation is to try and do something to address inequality and exclusion in UK society”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In his 20s, Khokhar says he travelled Europe in his work for \u201ca large organisation\u201d selling and negotiating deals and subsequently started up \u201ca couple of businesses.\u201d He used those opportunities, he says to learn his business craft: \u201cI’ve always considered it as collecting tools. If I was lacking in a particular area, I’d go find out what I need to know to be better prepared for the next time I go into a negotiation or to sell a product.<\/p>\n Khokhar\u2019s business today is in London but he is moving closer to his ambition to expand to other centres: \u201cWhereIts@London will translate into WhereIts@city-town-region. We’ve got the technology to create WhereIts@Glasgow, WhereIts@Cardiff or WhereIts@Timbuktu if we so choose.\u201d Meanwhile he has a vision of a national hub, WhereIts@UKGBNI, to be launched soon.<\/p>\n Other strands are planned for the business \u2013 a charity, WhereIts@Foundation and a training arm, WhereIts@Academy. Profits from sales of merchandise sold on WhereIts@London will fund the foundation which will pay for training for people in the regional spin-offs from WhereIts@London.<\/p>\n Khokhar explains: \u201cOur objective with the foundation is to create ten training opportunities in every Parliamentary constituency in the UK \u2013 6,500 people. So these people will be able to approach other businesses in their constituency and say to local SMEs: \u2018Can we promote you on our platform?\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cOnce we’ve raised sufficient of funds through sales then we will setup the charity WhereIts@Foundation. And that’s going to fund the 6,500 training positions.\u201d<\/p>\n The charitable aims of the academy, says Khokhar, will include free provision of training to people whose circumstances meet various criteria \u2013 but not, Khokhar emphasises \u2013 necessarily financial ones. \u201cWe’re not a social enterprise; we’re a business,\u201d he says. \u201cWe’re a business with a social core that is lowering the barriers to entry to the point where it makes it a lot more feasible for people with stretched incomes or people considering the move into doing something, making that leap without having to commit to so much time and effort.\u201d<\/p>\n The academy, he says, is a bid to address what he says is a digital skill’s gap in the UK. \u201cWe are a bit behind the curve in finding the right people with the right skills and it’s acutely felt at the small business end,\u201d says Khokhar. \u201cPeople there are scratching around to find someone to run their social media. Now a small trader hasn’t got time to run social media to do something so if we pair that small trader with people who\u2019ve got the digital skills\u2026 We provide the platform. We can manage the audit trail. So we provide that safety and security, and the training, and the development, and the ongoing mentoring.\u201d<\/p>\n Khokhar describes one of the \u201cfabulous little creative places\u201d in London that form the focus of his business: \u201dThere’s this little area in Tower Hamlets called Fish Island. We did some work there \u2013 it’s just a hive of amazing creativity. There\u2019s something like 500 small businesses in there. There are so many pockets of little places like that in London. And we’re touching into those people, and creating, and helping them develop their businesses.<\/p>\n Some businesses don’t want to make millions of pounds. They just want to have a business that’s functioning, that’s earning them, and that doesn’t increase their workload for little gain. So what we’re trying to do is kind of rush increase their productivity using technology, providing them with an upskilled workforce that work flexibly with them, locally. And we provide them with the outlet.<\/p>\n Khokhar is an embodiment of the notion that the kids in school today are preparing for jobs that don\u2019t currently exist. His venture is built on a social and technological construct that only came with the smartphone. And it is also riding on an outlook that has spread from its natural home among the moneyed into the working class: that employment doesn\u2019t have to be a job in the PAYE bracket.<\/p>\n The post-war working class aspiration was to work in an office. That didn\u2019t start to change until the jobs outside offices began to vanish in the 1980s. Now a kid from Elephant and Castle will naturally picture himself in portfolio career helping others to build their portfolio. And Bill Khokhar might be able to help him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Khokhar: \u201cIt’s getting to read between the lines, or getting to understand the person, the business, and their motivations, and their rationale.\u201d An entrepreneur for entrepreneurs \u2013 Bill Khokhar shows … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4513,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,55],"tags":[437,141,234,375,439,111],"class_list":["post-4511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-industry","tag-bill-khokhar","tag-dec-2017","tag-industry-strategy","tag-innovation","tag-new-starts","tag-the-dentist"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\u201cI’ve advised people for over 20 years about what their businesses are and stuff, and how to go about increasing their productivity and their sales. So for me it was a natural extension from what I’ve been doing throughout my professional life really.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI’ve been fortunate,\u201d he says. He tells how he was born and raised in \u201ca very working class area\u201d in London around Elephant and Castle. He offers a characteristic sketch involving his elderly neighbours: \u201cThere’s shopping needs doing \u2013 you go and get the shopping, and you go and take it upstairs to them.\u201d<\/p>\n