Omar Khalid

I didn't start in marketing. I started with a camera.

In university I picked up photography, then Photoshop, then video. One skill pulled me into the next. I was already doing this work since 2009 on on a freelance and contract basis, because i was passionate about it and was good at it. The agency came in 2015 as a formal business. By then I'd been at it for six years.

They're usually not looking at the whole picture and make us all look bad.

Either they'll be good at creatives but won't know how to look at numbers or will be good at numbers but would fall short of creativity, or won't bother to understand the product, what the brand goals are or how their buyers think. And if not all this, they'll win clients with strong pitches, impressive numbers, confident people, good case studies and move on to the next sale. Then a junior will take over, someone who hasn't run a real campaign, doesn't understand the brand's actual problems, and is figuring it out as they go. The client pays for one thing and gets something else entirely.

That's not just a reputation problem for agencies. It makes brands distrust all of us.

I don't work that way. When I take on a brand, I get into everything. Marketing is where it starts, but i'll go into pricing, operations, the sales side and everything in between. We've had clients where we became so embedded that replacing us would have meant rebuilding a core part of their business. We stay small on purpose. We take a certain number of brands and go deep. And, most of the time, you're working with me directly.

Selling digitally is my core expertise. No matter the channel or format. Whatever it takes.

Social, paid media, SEO, ecommerce, a better website or an unorthodox strategy. I've learned which angles to take and when. I've sold $2 biryani, $40,000 designer kitchens, and $470,000 home bookings in tier-1 markets from developers. The price point never mattered as much as understanding who's buying and why.

I believe transparency is the only way this works.

One side can't purely rely on the other. The client has to be in it with us and we have to be in it with them. 65% of our clients double revenue in their first six months, and why our average client stays with us for 4.5 years. It becomes a relationship. We've had clients that stayed for 6 years. Given the current times, that's not normal in my industry.

Since 2015 i've never been fired as an agency. We've only ended engagements with clients either because they couldn't sustain costs on their end or their belief of the whole engagement becoming obsolete for them.

Nokia didn't collapse because they made bad products.

They stopped evolving and the market moved without them. That's exactly what keeps me more alert than anything. I'm always asking whether we're still relevant, whether we're still adapting, whether what we do matches what the market actually needs right now. And, if the answer is no, we change. Quickly.

I started with $200.

A few years ago, our whole infrastructure got hacked. Client ad accounts, our profiles, everything. For nine months we couldn't run ads normally. Meta accounts banned, cards charged, clients' bank accounts drained without authorization.

We refunded every client their financial loss. Out of our own pocket. It wasn't our fault, but it was our responsibility. We covered them first and figured out recovery after.

While that was happening, we were quietly finding other ways to keep performing for the brands onboard. Some of them didn't know how bad it was on our end. We coordinated with Meta every day, managed the chaos internally, made sure nothing leaked through to the client side.

We lost more than they did. They lost one account each. We lost all of them.

The complete recovery took nine months, cost us a lot, and it was traumatic. But every client who was with us through that period stayed. It taught me to account for cyber security more than a side thought.

I'm not a funny person. I'm a very direct one.

I've watched every platform rise and every algorithm shift. I go deep into everything I touch, to a level people around me find uncomfortable. I hold the team accountable in a way they find scary. That's not something I apologize for. Mediocre work bothers me at a level I can't fully explain. I'd rather not take something on than do it halfway.

If I tell you we'll do something, we'll do it. If I can't, I'll say so before we start. I can't sugarcoat. I've tried. I'm just not built for it.

Outside of work i train in boxing 4 days a week. It tests my limits and keeps me disciplined. I wake up at 3.30am and sleep at 8pm. Most find it odd, but because of my fast paced work, i meditate after i'm up and catch up on the world afterwords before my work day begins. I read about everything. World economics, AI, supply chain, history, human behavior. If you sit down with me we'll find something to talk about. I'll either know something about it or ask questions until I do. I cook a good beef steak. If you're thinking about working together, the best next step is a straight conversation. No pitch, no deck. Just talk.