Ameera Sayeed, AICP is an accredited transportation planner with 20+ years of success in the urban planning field. She has built a reputation within the Architecture, Engineering, Construction, and Planning (AEC+ P) industries for expert knowledge of comprehensive transit, freight, highway, transportation, and land planning.
As a serial entrepreneur, her latest philanthropic effort into the tech space includes the REINS App, founded in August 2020.
What is REINS LLC all about?
REINS is a question and answer platform in which the Questioner has direct access to credible, certified leaders within the industry of Architecture, Civil Engineering, Construction Management, and Planning. The purpose of REINS is essentially to create a sense of collaboration and community between the four disciplines of Architecture, Civil Engineering, Construction Management, and Planning. Having a 25+ year career as a transportation planner, I have come to realize that there is a nexus between these four disciplines. For example, when we are doing a project, the planner is the first one to envision what the project is going to be for an infrastructure project, where it’s going to be, how many people it’s going to take to complete. It is then the architect who translates that vision into some sort of rendering of what it’s going to look like.
Next the civil engineers take the mock-up and mathematically implement the design. The final tangible product is dependent on the construction management team. Thus, through the life cycle of the project it is evident that these 4 fields are interrelated. Yet today, the problem is that they function in their silos and don’t communicate. REINS is trying to make them understand and appreciate each other’s fields and their contributions towards infrastructure. We hope our app will increase the community feeling between the four fields, and provide better end products to infrastructure projects and increase economic growth overall.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you started your business?
I started off as a young planner in the 90’s with little knowledge of the workforce. I worked hard and achieved project management status within 5 years of my career, advancing it through public and private sector experience. The REINS App is basically a passion project of mine- an effort from me to give back to my discipline that has thus far brought so much success to my career. I truly feel that I would not have gained the success and recognition within my field as a qualified subject-matter expert if it weren’t for the social aspect and personal interaction with experts and mentors.
As times change, the need to take that social interaction of mentors and professional development to a digital platform is critical as the newer generation is used to accessibility through tablets and phones. A like-minded mentor and I had envisioned a platform with the same kind of access that we had to experts and mentors, but in a judgement free zone. Thus REINS was born. I hope that this platform will allow young professionals, college students, and even seasoned experts and professionals to get the support and advice they need to create better community infrastructure.
How has the pandemic affected you or your new business?
Our vision for the mobile and web apps was slowed down in March of 2020 due to the uncertainty of the direction the Covid-19 pandemic was taking. However we proceeded to create the necessary wireframes and start the process for building the mobile app around the curriculum. Unfortunately my mentor that was assisting me in launching REINS passed away. I personally struggled with that loss, while dealing with the many unknowns of the pandemic. Many people had been affected by Covid, and the lockdown or production schedule was well behind which increased our costs as well. We continued to develop the softwares however branding and marketing suffered tremendously because of a solid 3-month shutdown. Nobody was willing to risk new ventures or communicate as much as before.
On the positive side, it spurred a new creativeness with the advantage of being in our own homes. We were much more out of the box in leveraging social media, personal networking, as well as emailing, and making soft calls. Trying every possible avenue to operate made us more determined to circumvent conventional methods. With any setback, we learned to reorient and move forward. As a company, the pandemic and lockdown has made our team more resilient to any challenges.
What was the biggest problem you encountered starting up and how did you overcome it?
The biggest challenge has been in increasing our questioner base as well as marketing what REINS offers as a unique problem solving tool. Since the branding and marketing does not increase the user base it has been difficult to convince our questioners to sign up and begin to use REINS. Currently with the economy opening up and our aggressive social media campaign, we have seen encouraging signs of interest and enrollment.
What were the top mistakes you made starting your business and what did you learn from it?
First I underestimated our branding and marketing budget. We learnt a healthy budget is required in this area. Second, for software development a person with process management and implementation knowledge is essential. Lastly, rather than wait until the beta testing phase and the deployment, I learned that early marketing of any tool or product is critical.
What was your first business idea and what did you do with it?
Very early in my career I began to find automated solutions for paper shuffling processes. During the pandemic my biggest “first business idea” specifically has been to create a SAS (software as a service). The software enables locational data to be viewable in a spacial format that is understood by executives as well as project managers through a mobile device. Currently we are also promoting this product while increasing its client base.
What are you learning now? Why is that important?
As a serial entrepreneur it is very important to articulate the purpose and the solution that your product is providing. One has to convey this message in a 3-5 minute sales pitch to potential clients or customers or users of the app. Failing to capture their attention in this short span is not an option. Since this is not in my technical skill set, I’m learning to be articulate and to communicate in a succinct manner.
What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business
Our marketing process has been heavily reliant on social media and my personal professional network. Our experts using the REINS platform and our Spotlight Interviews have tremendously boosted our online presence.
If you only had $1000 dollars to start a new business, knowing everything you know now, how would you spend it?
The priority would be in ensuring funds to cover a domain purchase, building a website, the company registration, and all it’s licensing fees, both local and state. The remainder of the money should be for basic charges and incidentals.
What’s your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
There will be days where you will have more losses than wins, but that should never be taken as failure. The fact that you’re an entrepreneur is an achievement in itself. If you fall, learn why you fell, correct it, dust yourself off, and keep marching forward. Self-confidence and faith are key to keeping your business’ momentum. I think entrepreneurship goes beyond running businesses and profits- it also about empowering staff and maintaining the company vision.
What’s a productivity tip you swear by?
A good to-do list and an organized calendar is something I swear by. I am a very traditional paper to pen person and I usually do my to-do lists the night before my work day and put it on my calendar. I think that’s what makes my day productive because if I have 10 assignments, I make sure they are completed by the close of business.
What is your favorite quote?
“Be just and fear not”
To me, being just in your actions, just in your intentions, and just in your interactions with people is extremely important. I believe it motivates others and is a mark of true leadership. Injustice and failure to deal with people justly creates discord, distrust, and disingenuity.
How do you personally overcome fear?
It’s alright to be anxious, however it should not culminate into fear. Fear paralyzes and is a gut instinct. Just taking a deep breath, analyzing the cause and making a level-headed judgement call- which is also a sign of a leader- is the answer. For example, the fear might be that the budget is not enough and the company is going to fault. In this case it’s not necessarily about subduing the gut instinct but more about responding to it.
Our team has honed in on Zoho Projects for task management and project deployment, Microsoft Office products like Office 365, and Intuit Quickbooks for accounting and managing the financial side.
How can readers get in touch with you?
That’s an easy one! There are several ways you can contact me but the best way is to become a user on the REINS App. You’ll see my bio there so feel free to contact me through that. Another way to contact me is through my email at ameera@reinsapp.com.
Or you’re welcome to go through my Director of Operations at dunya@reinsapp.com. There’s also a contact form on our website at reinsapp.com for advertising purposes. Lastly, we have a generic phone number on our website.
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