Creating Authenticity in the Entrepreneurial World; with Multazim Zia

Hello and welcome to this episode of The Unnoticed Entrepreneur with me here in sunny Wiltshire in the southwest of England, Jim James. We're going to Bury in the northwest just outside of Manchester to meet Maltazim Zia, who is a really, uh, a multiple enterprise entrepreneur, has been an entrepreneur since the age of 19 and actually only now 23, running a company called Multipath. And we talk about how he's been building a personal brand. He's already done a TEDx talk. He's working with schools and he's got a lot of energy and enthusiasm and an amazing amount of experience for someone his age. So we're going to talk about how he is using his skill sets to get noticed. I think for anyone interested in building a personal brand, it's going to be a great show. Malta Jim, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure.

Well, pleasure's all mine because it's great to meet someone who is so passionate about being an entrepreneur, but also what you're doing is building a brand from the ether. So tell us a little bit about Multipath and what it stands for and how you're building this as a platform for your business.

Perfect. So yeah, the Multipath, I'll begin with what it's all about because I think that's what makes the most sense. So the Multipath in general is about sharing authentic knowledge Now that sharing authentic knowledge is in various different modalities and industries and just in general as well. So it actually came to fruition through my understanding and experience through social media that there was a lot of people who pretended to be coaches, gurus, advisors, consultants that didn't have experience, qualification, education behind what they were preaching. And a lot of times they were gaining that attraction based on fallacies and falsifying information or misrepresentation in certain situations. And one of the things I noticed was that someone had to make a change and regardless how big or small you are, it had to be taken. So this is where the Multipath actually came into its own brand essentially. So it started off mainly just as a personal brand where I would do more of my advertising for myself, who I was, basically what I'm about. And then over time, as I naturally grew as a public speaker, as an individual, as a consultant coach, I then made it more about what services I could offer. And then my social media all around this was to again share authentic knowledge. Now I use my qualifications and branding and experience all to, I guess, support and aid and assist my philosophy and principles of sharing authentic knowledge. So yeah, so that's essentially what the business and the brand is about. So we offer various different services and a lot of them are based about how I grew as a person myself. So public speaking is on there, writing services on there, PR work is on there. There's so many— and coaching of course is on there. There's so many different things that I tend to offer and that's exactly where it's come from, an authentic place of me, which then has now being imprinted onto my brand.

Well, I love that. Now, I am going to challenge you just a moment because you say there are a number of people in the marketplace that are, if you like, coming from a place that isn't necessarily credible. I mean, you said not necessarily authentic. There's a little bit of a difference because authenticity can be sort of trustworthy and credible is that they've, if you like, got the experience to back it up. You're 23.

Yeah.

How do you differentiate between being credible and being authentic? Because although it's a subtle difference, someone may say, well, if he's only 23, how can he be— how can he be authentic?

Yeah.

How can he be credible?

So, Joe, the funny thing is I actually thought of the same question, and I think of the same question often. And just before this, we had a bit of a discussion about imposter syndrome. And this is something I challenge quite a lot, and I challenge this myself personally. I challenge the idea of what's different between credibility, what's authenticity, and who can actually say they're credible and authentic and what qualifies that. What's the qualifying measures? Personally, for me, yes. The problem I have is I'm 23, and anyone that knows that and knows me personally knows I've always found that a threat personally. And I will come back to answer the question. I'm not going to dodge it. So just as a bit of an indication of how much I've thought about this is when I was even in university, they used to make us use something called a SWOT analysis. So obviously strengths, your weaknesses, your threats and stuff. And every single time I always used to write being a student, being 20, whatever, 21, 20, 19, they always argue that should be a weapon, that should be your advantage. You're a student, you're learning, you're younger, you've got newer ideas, you've got the more evidence-based knowledge. I keep coming out of university. I still, I was still pushed to that prejudice and stigma that you're too young for anything. And I thought really about what my educators used to say to me, and I said, that's true. When I was working, compared to my senior clinicians or senior colleagues, I was the one with more the newest and latest evidence-based practices. I was also the person who would go out there and want to learn more, not just be happy with what I had. or just practicing the same recycled information. And then I think that that's where this authenticity, even just recently came into my own mind of what is authentic. And authentic is obviously someone that says one thing and I think follows that same principle and is truly, truly at one with themselves. Like, and you have to know what you are about. A lot of these companies, and you'll see a lot of companies, coaches, gurus, you know, specialists in their areas per se, in quotation marks. will have a philosophy or a principle, but then you also see a different side of that where it's not following their philosophy, it's not following their principles. I think that's one of the main things. And their vision is one thing, their philosophies and principles are another, and their authenticity is what they actually do and who they actually portray themselves as, not on social media but off social media. And I know this personally as well. I know coaches, I know consultants, I know people that say one thing to me on the phone, for example, but on social media they're a completely different person. And I think credibility comes into this where credibility basically just comes from the simple fact of how are you backing up what you're saying? So if I say I'm a coach, if I say I'm a specialist physiotherapist, if I say I'm a public speaker, what am I backing it up with? What evidence do I actually have? And as a clinician, personally, as clinical director, personally, evidence is everything to me. And then that's where, regardless of my age, I still have accomplished— at the risk of sounding boasty and arrogant, but I have accomplished a lot more than a lot of people will accomplish that want to be in the same positions. And that's because purely I'm chasing this credibility, I'm chasing this authenticity. I think that is the right word to use, chasing. I'm pursuing it because it's not something that I will ever fulfill completely or entirely because we're always evolving. So also it was a bit of a kind of a cop-out answer with an explanation, but I think that's basically hit the nail on the head from what I interpret it as.

You know, I think that's great. And of course, authenticity, as you say, is really about being true to your values and isn't really age-specific.

Yeah.

You know, and, you know, credibility can come from experience, but it can also come from professional expertise. Yeah. Which isn't based on age necessarily, but on application, which is what you've been doing. So you're actually a qualified physiotherapist.

Yeah.

Right. And then you've built up a clinical practice where you, you've got people doing physiology and practices for patients. How have you built that brand? How have you got patients to come into the, to the clinic to get treatment? Let's start with the, with the simple stuff.

Oh, so that was a trickier task because obviously being a clinician is much tougher, especially when you're so young, to break out those stereotypes of, well, you have to go through, for example, in the UK, you have to go through the NHS to do your rotations. You can never go private and you can never start private practice. Don't think about it for 20 years, 15, 20 years. As you can imagine, I'm 23. I came out of uni as a normal age, 21, and started my practice quite early on. So essentially what happened was I got experience, as I mentioned. So you get experience. I got my experience in a private practice, exactly where I wanted to work and where I wanted to be. And then I specialized in my particular field. So it was MSK physiotherapy. So musculoskeletal physiotherapist specialized in that area and obviously made my own clinic. And the way I started to get clients was quite tough because I initially started off, and to be fair, this is something that's quite important for entrepreneurs in general. It was luck as well as hard work, of course, but luck had a lot to do with this. So Essentially what had happened was I started off my clinic to help friends, family. I knew a lot of people I could bring in during my free time when I wasn't working and I could get extra cash on the side. And then eventually I started to speak to a few different friends of mine, colleagues of mine, acquaintances, and then some professionals in different areas. So solicitors and insurance companies. And I was speaking to all these, just a vast array of people that I started to speak to. And then as I was speaking to them, they were like, oh, by the way, just drop us an email with your information. And I was like, yeah, cool. And you just think, look, at the end of the day, it's not a big deal. It's just dropping your information. So drop my information. But bear in mind, one thing I found critical in the way I communicate is the way I communicate with people, especially over emails. I always have to make sure everything is concise, but it's articulated in a professional manner. I sent everything over, friends or not. I sent it over in a professional manner. And then luckily, For me, a few of my solicitor friends, a few of solicitors I knew, some referrals went through and I landed some contracts with some solicitor firms and companies. And a lot of my referrals come through then also. A lot of times they just send me clients, which has filled up a lot of my diary. And then constantly through my business at the moment, we're innovating, we're trying to find new ways because look, a physiotherapy clinic isn't new. They're everywhere in Bury. There's like this, I think it sticks around my own area where I have my clinic. So it's not such a niche thing, it's quite common. So then it's about innovation and creation. And I think that it'll tie back to the multipath a little bit because it becomes personal branding. People like seeing the same clinician. People like seeing people that they feel are authentic and are honest and true and have credibility behind them. So that's essentially where I got my clients from, how they how they started to come in in quite large volumes.

Okay. Interesting. So some social and personal networking, following that up professionally and then getting in and serving them well. And then, yeah, and then that's been a referral network. That's fantastic for you. Now, I see as well that you've been building your personal brand with, for example, a TED Talk.

Yes.

Do you want to just tell us how you went about that and what was the impact on your business of doing a TED Talk?

Yes. So a TED Talk is something I wanted to do for a while. It's something I still chase after. Not actually, I still go look for now. But when I initially did the TED Talk, it was more of I was trying to find a way to share some knowledge and experience and increase my accessibility to a larger audience other than my own social media following. So as I was going through different speaker applications, speaking to, again, speaking to different people, I saw an opportunity. It randomly popped up as I was going through different speaking conferences. Obviously I follow a lot of conferences as well, and it came up that they wanted a speaker and they wanted a speaker in a specific area. So mine was done at the Northumbria University. And you can see it there, actually. So Northumbria University, I thought, perfect. That was like destined for me just because, A, I've got the experience with speaking to students, but B, it's also a bigger platform where it gets published on YouTube. And I think this was straight off the back of just COVID happening as well. So it was like last year in June time it happened, I think. And it was on the back of COVID people coming out of university, having studied through COVID. And as I did that talk, it was all about how to achieve what we want to achieve and those practical steps of how to apply for jobs, how to make the most of your experiences, how to actually do some research behind what you need to be doing for a job or a business or just your life in general, especially as a student. But as just— and the main point I made right at the very end is a student of life, which is a philosophy I still stand by. You're never going to stop being a student. No entrepreneur will say, I'm the best in the world at what I do.

Right.

We're always students. No one's really an expert. And the way that helped my business was because when people like yourselves with good platforms where they're trying to share knowledge and entrepreneurship and business advice, you look at certain areas of that person. And one thing that people tend to look at from me, as well as my qualifications, obviously people don't know my age. Many people don't know my age. People don't know what I actually have achieved. They'll see TEDx and they think, boom, that word credibility hits their mind. TEDx, boom. We know that's an authentic platform. We know that's credible. It's got a reputation behind it and it has some of the biggest speakers and the best idea sharers that are on the planet really to go and give their TED Talk. So it's helped my business incredibly from even a clinic point of view, but a personal branding point of view as well with Multipath. Right.

Oh, that's wonderful. Yeah. And congratulations on doing TEDx as well. Let's just talk about the social media side of Maltizen because, you know, your age group, you know, in the early 20s are consuming content differently to my age group. I'm obviously in my 50s now. What has been your strategy in terms of content creation around your personal brand? Because we could see quite a lot on your website. I'd love to hear your strategy behind that.

Yeah. So strategy behind the Multipath in particular, this one, it again transitioned, it morphed into different areas of my life. So at first it actually started off where I was just sharing physiotherapy content, but the more I grew and the more I did coaching and public speaking, I started to become a platform to share those knowledge. Now, the strategy behind that was a lot of it is currently at the moment as well. Trial and error. So I didn't want to just keep following trends where you post silly TikToks, silly videos, comedic type videos, because to be honest, that's not the person and the image I was trying to portray. However, what I did want to portray was how to share the knowledge and the experience I've got, but in a more engaging and I guess emotive way. That's what I wanted to basically do. And that was my strategy. And if you obviously can see a bit of my video clips there and some social media posts there, and it was trying to mix elements of my life, but following the social media algorithm, because an algorithm is a massive thing nowadays. So that dictates half of your social media following, engagement, reach, platform. And I think that's where a bit of a flaw comes in with the algorithms, because obviously it favors the ones that have, do have sillier TikToks and videos and Instagram posts. And the ones that do pay for adverts all the time and stuff, or have big, you know, budgets for social media marketing and things. So essentially my little trick is I trial and error every single time with my post and the things that seem to be working, I'll keep replicating, which is obviously the common thing you do. If it's not broken, you don't fix it. But that never has deterred me as an entrepreneur. I think this is a vital point as well. Even if it's not broken, you don't, it doesn't necessarily mean you're trying to fix something. You're just trying to innovate something, create something, do something different. Like that nobody else is really doing or sharing and make it again back to you. Make it back to you. If you're not the person that's comedic, even if, for example, you don't want to make a silly or foolish video and social media is demanding it, don't make it. Who cares?

And what has worked when you say trying things, what has worked, for example, because I see you've got LinkedIn, you've got Instagram there.

Yes.

Which one is working for you best?

So the thing that's worked for me best is Instagram. I think so. So I've worked a lot on LinkedIn and I try to do my best with LinkedIn, but LinkedIn, I don't feel like is the right target market for what I'm trying to hit. First of all, secondly, Instagram works for one main reason is because a lot of my work that I've done, which is posting content such as reels, posts, motivational quotes, they tend to work well on Instagram. And the fact that you can split between different type of posts, so you can do a reel or you can do a normal post and you can put highlights up. Those are the things that help people see your page and find some sort of relationship or interaction with it. Now, the opposite that happens on TikTok is that you can only really post videos. It doesn't really make sense to post pictures and you can't post pictures on TikTok. Whereas with, again, Instagram, you can show different areas of your life. And Instagram has this nice thing where it has a bit of a strategy to it. So where Instagram, the reels on Instagram, the reels will always increase your reach. Whereas your post and pictures and motivational quotes will always help with your likes and following and building a bit of a, a bit of a post repertoire. And then you have your carousels, which is basically where you slide your posts. And those are the things that will help people come to your page and learn more about you and increase your engagement as well. So it's quite a nice way of actually building what I want to build more of an overview of what my business is about on a social media platform. Whereas Instagram, TikTok, sorry, doesn't permit that really. I don't think you YouTube is really good for things like podcasts and videos and short clips, but again, it's the more entertainment-based, I think. And lastly, if you're looking at LinkedIn as a professional network, people don't really want to see what you're about. They want to see how we can help each other grow. And I think that's where LinkedIn is perfect for networking, but it's quite difficult if you're just trying to build a brand. But yeah, that's my main 3 platforms I use.

Multizoom, thank you for that analysis there. Now, coming up to a sort of semi-final question, what would be something that hasn't worked?

Oh, so in terms of—

sorry, in terms of visibility, from a visibility point of view, this is all about getting noticed. Can you give us sort of one, one thing that you've tried that you would recommend people don't do?

Yes. So what I recommend people don't do is they're both linked together. There's 2 points, but they're both linked together is I paid for a lot of social media marketing, but then I also paid for marketing in the sense I had a social media marketing team at one point, but I also had a— I tried to employ celebrities to do some of my marketing for me. Now, I did all that without actually understanding what each portion or part of that would help, what element of my business. So I didn't know what would factor in, like what they were supposed to do, what they weren't supposed to do. And as I trialed it, I realized I spent a lot of money in paying for You know, social media marketing teams and celebrities. I was spending a lot of money, or close to spending a lot of money as well, in trying to get noticed for a visibility point of view. And all it did was, I think, depleted my resources slightly as well as limiting all the extra opportunities I could have pursued had I just did some further background research into exactly what I was trying to target. Because I didn't have any knowledge of what I was trying to target. I was just hoping they'd be able to sort it out, which obviously wasn't the truth. So yeah.

Interesting. Yeah. So not giving the social media agency a tight enough brief, right? And then, and then the market is just too big. Maltazim, if there's one piece of advice to our fellow unnoticed entrepreneurs from your relatively short but still deep amount of experience, what would it be?

I would say if it comes to anything that's important in your business, it's try to get the right and authentic exposure. And by that I mean going on platforms, and it doesn't have to be huge platforms, but going on platforms that actually share the same values that you have or your business has, because that will tap into different parts and offer you different opportunities, just like I was offered with my network and connections as well.

Malta Zimzir in Bury, the northwest of England. Fantastic to have had your wisdom on the show today. If you want to find out more about you, where can they do that?

So there's a few places. Of course, you can go to my website, themultipath.co.uk. You can contact me there directly. Either my team will direct it to me or I'll answer myself. My social media platform is The Multipath. That's my handle. And my other one is just Malta Zimzia, which is my name. Any of those, perfectly fine. Drop me an email message, whatever. I'm more than happy to help in whatever way possible.

Thank you, Malta Zimzia, for coming on the show today and What a lot we've got into a very short amount of time. Thank you so much for joining me on the show.

No, honestly, thank you so, so much for having me. I feel like this is something I needed to share, basically more to my values.

Well, and you've certainly done and demonstrated you've got wonderful values, and, uh, and I'm sure you can have a, a massive future ahead of you.

So thank you.

For those of us that have really enjoyed this show, do please share it with a fellow unnoticed entrepreneur. And if you've enjoyed the show, please rate it. Uh, that really helps me and helps the, the players like Spotify to know this is a show worth listening to. And until we meet again, encourage you to keep on communicating. And once again, thank you for listening.