Why Asad Saddique Avoids Marketing Gurus and Trusts Execution Instead

September 2015. Asad Saddique walks into his bank and withdraws $6,000 from his savings. No business degree. Can't code. This is basically all the money he's got left to test an idea.

A few months later? His iSwegway store became the UK's biggest online hoverboard retailer. Black Friday 2015 hits, and he does over $800,000 in sales. One day.

The next year gets even weirder. He wins Shopify's global Build a Business competition, rings the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange, and spends a week at Oheka Castle getting advice from Tony Robbins, Tim Ferriss, and Daymond John.

But here's what messes with people's heads: ask him what books or blogs helped him build this thing, and he'll tell you he can't name one. He's self-taught, sure. Just not in the way you'd expect. No courses and no frameworks.

He just... started.

Why Execution Beats Books & Coaches Every Time (+ 3 Ways For You to Adopt Asad’s Approach)

Walk into any entrepreneur's browser right now. You'll find at least twelve tabs open. Three courses they haven't finished. Five frameworks they're "about to implement." Two gurus promising the secret sauce.

Saddique's approach? It cuts through all that noise.

"A lot of people think there's one source or magic bullet, one book or blog that will have a winning lottery ticket in it," he said in an interview. "It's better to believe in your own choices and take action instead."

Yeah, he admits he was "too lazy to even read them" when it came to business books. But dig deeper and you'll find the real reason. Asad Saddique’s experience taught him that you need to take action, so he got busy building the actual thing instead of spending time consuming theory.

1. Speed Over Precision

Saddique sees hoverboards on the news. What does he do? He doesn't spend six months researching, doesn't hire a consultant, and doesn't take "The Complete E-Commerce Masterclass."

He opens Google's keyword research tool. Checks if people are actually searching for this stuff. Then he signs up for a Shopify trial and gets a working store running in two weeks.

That speed? That's what gave him the edge. His competitors were still arguing about brand colors and debating whether to use Shopify or WooCommerce. Saddique was already selling, already capitalizing on the media coverage through what's called "newsjacking" — jumping into breaking news cycles while everyone else was still planning.

Your takeaway: Set a deadline that scares you a bit. Launching an online store? Give yourself two weeks, not two months. You'll skip the vanity features that don't matter and focus on what actually gets you to launch.

2. Turn Customer Questions into Assets

Early days, Saddique's getting "silly emails." Basic stuff. "Is it safe?" "How do I reset my board?" "Will this explode in my house?"

Most people see this as annoying. A distraction from "real work."

Saddique saw it differently. He took every single question seriously. Then did something smart: turned all those questions into a comprehensive FAQ section. Updated his product descriptions based on what people were actually confused about.

Three things happened immediately:

• Support tickets dropped (saving time and money)

• Time on site went up (SEO got better)

• Conversion rates improved (he was answering objections before they became deal-breakers)

Your takeaway: Start a document right now. Log every customer question, complaint, or confusion point. Every week, review it. The patterns you find should go straight into your product pages, FAQ section, and email sequences. Your customers are literally telling you what they need to hear before they'll buy from you.

3. Trust Your Own Data Over "Best Practices"

The marketing world loves rules. "Your homepage needs to look like this." "You must have social proof here." "Never do X without Y."

Saddique ignored most of it.

Setting up iSwegway, he focused on what made sense from a buyer's perspective. Put himself in the customer's shoes and asked one question: "What would make me trust this site enough to pull out my credit card?"

His answer was straightforward. Working phone number. Real address. Visible customer service options. Trust signals like credit card logos and media mentions.

Not because Gary Vee said so. Because that's what he'd want to see as a customer.

He set up ZenDesk not because it was the "industry standard," but because it was quick to install and easy to customize. Function beats fashion. Every time.

Before you implement any "best practice," ask:

• Does my customer actually care about this, or am I doing it because some blog post from 2018 said I should?

• Will this directly increase conversions, or am I just copying what "successful" sites look like?

• Can I test this assumption with real user behavior instead of taking someone's word for it?

  
  

The Mentality Shift You Need

Knowledge without execution is just entertainment.

You can read every Gary Vaynerchuk book. Take every course. Watch every masterclass. And still fail because you never shipped anything. Saddique succeeded because when he spotted an opportunity, he moved fast enough to actually capitalize on it.

Think about his position. Limited funds with no technical skills. Down to his last bit of savings after previous failures. Most people there would spend months "learning more" before risking their final $6,000.

Saddique spent two weeks building, then let the market teach him everything else.

The market's a brutal teacher. But it's honest. It doesn't care about your Notion workspace or how many business podcasts you've listened to. It only rewards what you actually put out into the world.

Practical Steps to Adopt an Action-First Approach

Tired of consuming? Ready to actually do something? Here's how to shift:

1. Set a "ship date" before you're ready

Pick a date two weeks from now. Launch your MVP, start your service, or open your store. The artificial deadline forces you to focus on essentials and cut everything else.

2. Replace one learning hour with one doing hour

Spending five hours a week reading about marketing? Make it four hours doing it instead. Write that email campaign. Test that Facebook ad you've been meaning to test.

The one hour of reading becomes way more valuable when you've got real-world context to apply it to.

3. Treat every customer interaction as research

Stop seeing support tickets and questions as interruptions. They're free market research. Log them. Find patterns. Let your customers tell you what your marketing should say.

4. Measure behavior, not beauty

Your metrics: bounce rate, time on site, conversion rate, customer acquisition cost. Everything else is vanity. If the data says your ugly landing page converts better than your beautiful one, trust the data.

5. Build your "unfair advantage" through speed

Winners aren't always the smartest or best-funded. They're often just the fastest. When you see an opportunity, you've got a small window before everyone else catches on. Move before you feel ready.

The Real Secret

There's something almost rebellious about Saddique's approach. Everyone's obsessed with personal branding, thought leadership, and guru worship.

He didn't build a Twitter following before building a business. Didn't create a course about creating courses. He just... built the thing.

Look at the results, the sales numbers, and the competition wins. The week with Tony Robbins. The years since, running both iSwegway and his digital agency Raddal. Hard to argue with the method.

The entrepreneurs who make it? They're not the ones who consumed the most content. They're the ones who, despite fear and uncertainty, decided to start before they felt ready. Who learned by doing. Failed forward. Adjusted based on real feedback instead of theoretical frameworks.

So here's your challenge: what would happen if you stopped reading articles about entrepreneurship (yeah, including this one) and spent the next two weeks building something instead? What if you trusted your own judgment, moved fast, and let execution be your teacher?

You might not ring the bell at the NYSE. But you'll be way closer than if you're still reading about it a year from now.

The clock's ticking. What are you going to ship?