About Shabbir Hossain:
Shabbir Hossain graduated from University of South Alabama in 1994 with a BS degree in Business Marketing. He started his first business the year before graduating – Byte 1 Computers and Software. Where Shabbir and his friend and partner build and sold computers to various local businesses. In those days the demands for personal computers were not very great, so they ended up closing the doors in just 18 months.
After moving to Tampa, Florida, Shabbir leased a BP gas station from a local company, launching his first gas station venture. Shortly after that, he applied to the BP Oil Corporation to become an authorized dealer and was ultimately selected to lease and operate either one of two stations. One was in Greenville, SC, and the other one in Mobile, AL.
Having lived in Mobile before, Shabbir chose to move back to Mobile and worked hard to build up a relationship with the local community there. Before long, Shabbir owned seven gas stations and secured yearly sales were over $5 million dollars on a consistent basis.
In last 20 plus years in business, he has owned, leased, operated and or sold over 25 Gas Station Businesses. Along with gas stations, he also has been involved in many other retail businesses like Quiznos fast food chain, liquor stores, laundromat even a wholesale operation where he sold to 85 local gas stations and convenience stores.
The key behind Shabbir’s rapid success was mostly common sense marketing, creative promotion, and innovative new age merchandising skills – the type of strategies that so many gas station owners overlook, along with common sense location management strategies.
Today, Shabbir shares his knowledge and expertise of gas station business management via the C-store Business Academy blog site
Shabbir recently started a new weekly audio podcast show call “Gas Station Business 101 Podcast”. In this podcast he talks about all the recent changes, opportunities, and challenges of today’s gas station business, he also shares tips, tricks and ideas on how to start, run and grow a gas station business successfully in todays economy.
You can find his show in many of the fine podcasting directories like iTunes, Stitcher, Blubrry, and Tunein radio.
What inspires you to write?
in 2012, I was hired by a group of investors who wanted acquire a few gas stations. After helping them to close the deal, they wanted my help to market and promote the stores. While I was doing all that, I had to train and coach all their managers, supervisors and employees as well.
Once I was done, I realized I should just write a book about How to Get stated in Gas station business.
My very first book “How to Start, Run and Grow a Successful Gas Station Business” was the direct result of that thought.
Tell us about your writing process.
I am not a professional writer, never was one, I still remember how scared I was to take English 102 in college.
I spend 4-5 hours in my car everyday, while I drive I do two things, I listen to various podcast shows and second thing I do is I take notes on a notebook(every time I am stopped at a traffic light). The notes usually vary from what I have heard on a podcast to what my thoughts are on a new blog post, a book idea or about a new podcast episode that I want to produce next week.
I usually write down bullet points with some mini notes along side of them.
Then when I get home, I just take those bullet points and elaborate on each.
For Fiction Writers: Do you listen (or talk to) to your characters?
No I sure don’t, well I am not a fiction writer
What advice would you give other writers?
Don’t think I am pro enough to give out advice to other authors, I may ask for advice myself instead.
How did you decide how to publish your books?
I knew a little about self publishing through friends. So when I decided to write my first book, I think knowing about self publishing helped me write and finish because I knew once I was done writing, I would be able to publish it to the world.
What do you think about the future of book publishing?
As more and more unconventional writers like myself are getting into expressing their thoughts and ideas in book format, I do believe the book publishing industry will grow more in the next few years.
What do you use?: Professional Editor, Professional Cover Designer, Beta Readers
What genres do you write?: Business, How to, Career, Marketing
What formats are your books in?: Both eBook and Print, Audiobook
Website(s)
Shabbir Hossain Home Page Link
Link To Shabbir Hossain Page On Amazon
Link to Author Page on other site
Your Social Media Links
Goodreads
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
All information in this post is presented “as is” supplied by the author. We don’t edit to allow you the reader to hear the author in their own voice.
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