Shezad Nawab: Deaf Entrepreneur

I am a Deaf entrepreneur based in Birmingham, West Midlands.

My specific areas of business activities are: business consulting, property, international business, innovation, creating a space where entrepreneurs can meet investors, interim management, media and a business leader and role model for the deaf community.

I have received the following awards; Business Institute Award 2011, Young Entrepreneur Award 2011 and Innovation Winner 2010.

I was born profoundly deaf and use British Sign Language to communicate. English is my second language.

What has your experience been with education?

I have attended mainstream schools throughout my education. As English has to be learnt by deaf people, it can take a few years of extra support in college before a deaf person will feel equipped with the skills and level of English to attend university. At secondary level, I attended a mainstream comprehensive, with a hearing impaired support unit and then attended Derby Deaf College, Bournville College and Solihull College.

I graduated from Birmingham City University with a BA (Hons) in Business and Marketing. On reflection, I am pleased that I did not attend a specialist deaf school as I prefer mainstream education.

Occasionally I daydream about attending Harvard Business School, but due to my work and family commitments I don’t think this will ever be possible.

What is your philosophy?

Ideas, creativity, find a good mentor, future, present, past and getting stronger.

Broken down this means:

• Ideas – I am an entrepreneur so I understand not all ideas succeed, but you need to learn from this and move on to make successful projects and accept the flow of the business cycle.
• Creative – I am always looking for collaborative opportunities; business to business (B2B) and business to customer (B2C).
• Finding a good mentor – I was extremely lucky to have been raised in a family that was very business minded and has a very successful portfolio of business. My father is the perfect mentor and he has taught me about creating a solid foundation for each business venture.
• Future, present, past – I investigate balance sheets, cash flows, profit and loss and forecasting trends.
• Getting stronger – learn from your failures and have a positive ‘can do’ attitude. Don’t let anyone tell you that you won’t succeed.

Where do you work? What does your organisation do?

I have five different business ventures: Pitching Events, Fab Solutions, World Property Luxury, Business Consulting and Global Synergy Group. When I can I also work on the family businesses.

I have many ventures with blue chip companies in a vast range of sectors. I am passionate about entrepreneurship in the United Kingdom, Europe, and in International markets and have helped many new businesses, start-ups, SMEs and growing businesses.

I am based in Birmingham but I do travel to London for networking and client meetings. I regularly travel around the UK for business and three times a year I travel overseas to visit clients in South Africa, United Arab Emirates, Morocco and other countries.

How do you communicate at work? What adaptations do you use? Is there anything that you need that isn’t provided? If so, how do you deal with this?

I have a small pool of trusted British Sign Language interpreters that I book to work with me on a daily basis. I use interpreters for meetings, accessing events, conferences, networking, and telephone calls and to proof read written documents. Obviously when I meet deaf clients I don’t bring an interpreter as we conduct our meetings in British Sign Language.

What kind of access issues do you have outside of work and how do you address these?

My biggest barrier is language, but with advances in technology, some communication barriers are being broken, for example I use text messages, email, Blackberry messenger and WhatsApp to send messages, whereas before this technology the deaf community relied on letters or meeting face to face to communicate.

What are you passionate about?

I am passionate about supporting other deaf entrepreneurs with my skills, knowledge, insight and experience.

What access issues do you think need addressing for deaf people in the UK?

A major issue facing the deaf community is access to information and services and reluctance of organisations to book appropriately registered and qualified interpreters. Someone who has studied a 2 year evening course at a local adult education college is not trained or appropriately skilled to provide access, but is often used as a ‘cost-saving’ reasonable adjustment. I believe it is a deaf person’s right to access services such as hospital appointments via an appropriately trained and fluent interpreter. The deaf community also want interpreters to be available via Skype or similar. Applications such as ooVoo and Face Time have enabled the deaf community to communicate visually in their first language, which is an empowering tool.

What are your hopes for the future?

I hope my businesses continue to grow and I look forward to gaining more clients and having many more meetings.

These are my top tips:

• You must keep information confidential.
• You must trust your interpreter.
• You need a business plan with information about proposed services/products, marketing, management and finance and a maximum of 6 pages.
• Get recommendations for accountants and solicitors.
• You want go on Dragons’ Den? You need to practise a perfect pitch.
• Share your business network with other entrepreneurs. If you have a business network that holds events – are they accessible?
• Use social media to raise your profile; Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are essential.
• If you are looking for investment; business angels, private investors, venture capital & private equity and crowdfunding, please don’t forget that you must register as enterprise investment scheme (EIS) and seed investment enterprise scheme (SIES).

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