What do you do?

I’m a CEO/co-founder to MyLocal, a husband to Amina, a father to Zain.

How do you stay up to date with trends in your industry/field?

Tech, Startups, Products Websites: Techmeme, Launch.co, Product Hunt, Launching Next, The Verge, StreetFightMag Podcasts: ThisWeekInTech (Leo Laporte), Foundation.kr (Kevin Rose), The Random Show (Kevin Rose + Tim Ferris)

Restaurant Industry Restaurant News, Restaurants Canada, Rare Republic, too many LinkedIn Groups

Best way to stay on top of email?

Defer to later or reply now as soon as the email arrives. Mailbox is great for this.

Top five applications and programs?

Mailbox – Not sure how email existed before Mailbox.

Slack – Almost everything that happens in the company gets pushed into Slack. Its our company newsfeed.

Sunrise – I’ll try anything to get away from Google for Work’s calendar. Sunrise makes it tolerable and then some.

Dropbox – Hands down the best way to backup. Dropbox for Business sweetens the deal.

Rdio – Because sometimes I want to listen to Offspring from 1999, but not enough to have it take space on a hard drive.

Notable mentions … IA Writer, Instapaper, Sublime Text, Adobe Fireworks, Microsoft Excel

What is your best time-saving trick?

Grabbing my Rhodia notebook and a pencil and unplugging from the Internet. I get a lot more done when I can physically write it all down, circle things, regroup, sketch, etc without being interrupted.

One non-tech thing you can't live without?

My family and Super Pekoe tea from Distinctly Tea.

What does your workspace look like?

Structure of your typical day, how do you divide your time?

I wake up and jump into Mailbox to triage any mail that’s come in over night and look at the previous day’s stats. Then I spend the next 30mins catching up on local, tech, and industry news. Have some breakfast and tea and head to the office. Once I’m there I sync up with others on any outstanding items in Mailbox. The rest of the day is meeting customers, rolling out customers, servicing customers, working through product related issues. Once I get home, I play with Zain before putting him down for bed. The rest of the night is hanging out with Amina, blue skying, prototyping, payroll’n, eating, reading, prospecting, TV… anything really.

What is the greatest piece of career advice/wisdom you've ever received?

Nobody knows anything.

There’s no shortage of advice and information available, especially in the “startup” world, and you can read yourself into circles. It’s important to distill down the studies, the experiences, the stats, the success stories and failures etc, into what you can apply to your business, your life, your career, etc. I try to never take anything at face value.

Who would you like to see featured on Ways We Work?

Ali Asaria of Tulip Retail, Rod Regier of City of Kitchener.