A Bahrain martial-arts guru and weight-loss advisor with a way for (self-)advertising
Suhail Algosaibi – martial-arts guru, radical marketing consultant and, in his most recent incarnation, a weight-loss expert – saw the entrepreneurial light when he was working for a London investment bank in the 1990s. “The whole experience was such a disaster, I vowed never again to work for anyone – except myself,” he says.
A Saudi national, Algosaibi spent his formative years in Bahrain, but, since returning in 2002, has been at the helm of three business ventures in the Kingdom. When the take-up for his first venture, Zen-Do Bahrain, a martial-arts school, plateaued in 2005, Algosaibi immersed himself in marketing. Instead of relying on the usual image-based advertisements to which Bahrainis are most used, he offered free trials, money-back guarantees and testimonials from satisfied customers. Zen-Do now has 270 pupils (Algosaibi claims this compares to an average of 30).
The success of this recruitment campaign led other people to come to Algosaibi for marketing advice and, hence, his Radical Marketing consultancy was born. “Good marketing is about telling people what benefits they will get,” he says, “but then you go to the next step and also tell them about the emotional benefits as well.”
Algosaibi has tapped into the psychology of obesity to personalise the marketing for his new venture, a weight-loss and body-shaping business called the Dream Body Centre, the cornerstone of which is a 23-minute weight-loss programme. Two hundred clients joined up during the opening weekend.
The 34-year-old cites three main factors that have contributed to his success: “Number one is having a passion for what you are doing, number two is understanding the psychology of your target market and number three is focusing on the benefits, both concrete and emotional, that your product offers.” But if things ever do go wrong, Algosaibi will remain unfazed. “I decided I did not want to live my life and have regrets,” he says. “If you tried and failed – so what.”
Fiona Clark; portraits by Phil Weymouth
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