About

I learn things by running them.

Operator first, everything else follows.

I have sold on Facebook Marketplace, Etsy and Amazon, built Shopify stores and brands of my own, and spent several years inside corporate analytics and marketing finance. Most of my time now goes into how a business gets found, understood and chosen.

Zayn Dhalla smiling outdoors, with a lake and mountains behind him

Right now

Three things at once.

They feed each other. What I learn running a store shows up in the client work, and the other way round.

  • 01 · Client work

    Vizible

    Digital foundations for businesses that need to be found and understood, by people and by AI search.

  • 02 · Own brands

    Stratus and Persona

    A technical water-treatment catalogue and a sports jewelry brand. Both real stores with real customers.

  • 03 · Products

    Milo and Coach Mahjy

    Two products in progress. One for tennis players, one for people learning Mahjong properly.

How I actually work.

Four habits that came out of running things rather than reading about them.

  1. 01

    Start from the customer, not the channel

    The platform changes. What makes someone trust you and click does not change much at all.

  2. 02

    Ship it, then look at the numbers

    A live page with real traffic teaches more in a week than a plan does in a month.

  3. 03

    Boring fundamentals beat clever tactics

    Structure, speed, clarity and trust. Most of the wins are unglamorous and repeatable.

  4. 04

    Say what I have not done

    I am not a developer, a designer or a media buyer. Knowing the edge of my lane is part of the work.

If I cannot measure it, I do not claim it.

A slightly non-linear path.

Corporate operations on one side, marketplaces and my own stores on the other. The overlap is where it gets interesting.

  1. Corporate

    Tim Hortons / Popeyes

    Analytics, operations and a very large marketing fund.

  2. Marketplaces

    Facebook / Etsy / Amazon

    Learning to sell by selling, one listing at a time.

  3. Shopify

    Stores and brands

    Ownership, conversion and the 5% obsession.

  4. Apps

    Ambitious Labs

    Working alongside founders building their first products.

  5. AI search

    Indexy

    Getting businesses understood by machines, not just people.

  6. Building now

    Vizible / Ventures / Milo

    Operating, building and shipping in parallel.

See the full timeline

Off the clock

Outside the browser.

Most of my best business thinking happens somewhere other than a desk — on a pitch, on a court, on a plane, or halfway through a conversation that started about something else entirely.

  • Soccer
  • Tennis
  • Fitness
  • Travel
  • Reading
  • Long business conversations

Things I can talk about for way too long

  • E-commerce
  • Shopify
  • Soccer
  • Business models
  • AI
  • Conversion
  • Tennis
  • Why your website is confusing

Want to talk shop?

I love meeting builders, operators, founders, and people working on interesting things. If you want to compare notes on e-commerce, AI, apps, sports, or anything in between, say hello.