Palestinian Entrepreneur: This Fajr Habit Turned $1 into $M's

Summary

In this captivating podcast, Palestinian entrepreneur Ibrahim Alard shares his remarkable journey from a medical student to a multi-millionaire tech and finance mogul. Guided by his Islamic faith, he emphasizes the importance of worship and reliance on Allah, while discussing the impact of strategic arbitrage trading in bitcoin and innovative ventures in cryptocurrency mining. Breaking away from the conventional paths of medicine and law encouraged by his parents, Ibrahim talks about finding success through passion and providing value. His spiritual journey, fueled by the significance of small, consistent acts of worship, plays a pivotal role in his life and business achievements.

Highlights

• Ibrahim Alard turned $1.7k into $12k in just three months through arbitrage trading. 🚀
• The app for learning Hadith emphasizes Ibrahim's commitment to spiritual growth. 📚
• Ibrahim's first startup achieved $2 million in sales while he was still a medical student. 🏆
• Navigating Halal and Haram: Ibrahim's insights into ethical wealth in crypto are enlightening. 💼
• Spirituality as Success: Emphasizing worship outside work hours is key to Ibrahim's lifestyle. 🙏
• From Medicine to Millions: Ibrahim shows how following one's passion can lead to unforeseen doors opening. 🔓

Key Takeaways

• Passion Drives Success: Ibrahim's path proves that pursuing what you love leads to greater achievements and happiness. 🔥
• Faith and Fortune: Combining spiritual faith with business strategies paves the way for holistic success. 🌟
• Entrepreneurial Spirit: Taking calculated risks and learning from failures are essential in entrepreneurship. 📈
• Strategic Thinking in Crypto: Ibrahim's success in arbitrage trading shows the importance of seizing market opportunities. 💡
• Giving Back: Building digital platforms for Islamic learning shows the positive potential of technology. 🌐
• Value Provision Over Profits: Success comes from providing value, not just seeking profits. 💪

Overview

Meet Ibrahim Alard, a Palestinian genius who, with early exposure to entrepreneurship and an adventurous spirit, found a way to balance immense business success with deep faith. His transition from the conventional path of medicine to the lucrative world of cryptocurrency was fueled by a desire for freedom and passion for innovation. From managing tech ventures to being an Instagram influencer, Ibrahim is redefining the norms of success.

At the heart of Ibrahim's tale is a strong belief that aligning business endeavors with spiritual tenets creates unmatched success. With early morning prayers and meticulous time management, he speaks about a lifestyle that prioritizes both his faith and his work. This approach, according to Ibrahim, not only amplifies personal satisfaction but also enriches business outcomes. He's a living testament to the mantra that when you work with passion and integrity, both personal and professional aspects flourish.

Adding a layer of responsibility, Ibrahim sees his role as more than just business; it’s about setting a positive example and having a broader societal impact. The innovative projects he undertakes, like the Hadith learning app, are not just passion projects but a personal mission to positively touch lives. His ventures in tech and finance are laced with lessons of persistence, ethics, and a curiosity that mirrors his dedication to lifelong learning.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 03:00: Introduction to Ibrahim alard This chapter introduces Ibrahim Alard, who was born in Palestine. During his time in medical school, he achieved significant sales success by generating 2 million in revenue. While pursuing his studies, he also memorized the Quran and expanded his business endeavors. Alard emphasizes the importance of balancing his religious obligations, such as praying regularly, with his entrepreneurial activities. He critiques the mentality of neglecting spirituality for business and stresses that entrepreneurship requires a strong reliance on Allah. He expresses the belief that to achieve massive success, one must be prepared to endure significant losses. Furthermore, he advises that to attain worldly gains (referred to as 'd'), one should not chase them directly but instead focus on their personal goals and spirituality, which will naturally attract success. Alard also claims that there is a positive correlation between his spiritual connection and his life achievements, concluding that true fulfillment comes from deep faith (IM man).
• 03:00 - 12:00: University Life and Starting a Business The chapter titled 'University Life and Starting a Business' conveys insights about the intricacies of achieving success and personal fulfillment. It emphasizes the concept that true wealth and success are not solely dependent on business activities, but also on one's spiritual acts and reduction of sins. The narrative reflects a strong faith-based perspective, acknowledging that Allah's love and plans surpass human capabilities, paralleling divine love to that of a mother’s care. It highlights the significance of being discerning about friendships, as they hold the power to influence one's life extensively. Furthermore, it suggests that achieving a blessed and productive day is linked to spiritual and moral practices.
• 12:00 - 19:00: Success and Entrepreneurship The chapter 'Success and Entrepreneurship' highlights the entrepreneurial journey of Ibrahim Alard, a tech and finance heavyweight who ventured into business at the age of 20, achieving over $2 million in sales while still pursuing medical studies. Presently, he is an active fund manager and has founded four additional companies, runs a nonprofit charity, and invests as an active angel investor. In 2023, he earned a spot on Forbes' 30 Under 30 list for finance. Besides his business acumen, Ibrahim is a prominent influencer with over 1 million Instagram followers. The discussion in the chapter aims to address misconceptions Muslims might have about entrepreneurship and delve into Alard's strategies and insights.
• 19:00 - 29:00: Crypto Market Insights The chapter 'Crypto Market Insights' begins with Ibrahim, who has amassed over a million followers on Instagram, sharing his business journey and the secrets to his success. As the discussion unfolds, Ibrahim mentions a Hadith, which encourages sending peace and blessings to receive tenfold blessings from Allah. This is highlighted as a beneficial start to the podcast and sets a positive tone for the discussion ahead.
• 29:00 - 37:30: Islam's Role in Ibrahim's Journey The chapter revolves around Ibrahim's journey with Islam, focusing on the importance of learning and memorizing Hadith. It highlights a project initiated as a passion, where Ibrahim, inspired by a friend's dedication to memorizing Hadith, decided to memorize one Hadith daily. This daily practice led to the creation of a database of Hadiths. The chapter underscores the significance of Quran and Sunnah in guiding daily life, with specific experiences prompting the recall of relevant Hadiths, illustrating Islam's integral role in Ibrahim's personal growth and life choices.
• 37:30 - 52:00: Living in Dubai and Routine The chapter discusses the purpose and impact of an app designed to help people memorize Hadiths. It provides learning tools for non-Arabic speakers to understand and apply Hadiths in their daily lives. The mention of previous attempts and the potential global positive impact is explored. Additionally, there is a brief segue into the speaker's earlier life and career, touching on their involvement in various business ventures and their initial experiences as a medical student.
• 52:00 - 61:00: Dawah and Social Media Impact The chapter discusses the speaker's early life and career choices, particularly focusing on their decision to pursue a career in medicine despite having a broader interest in entrepreneurship. The speaker talks about their multicultural upbringing across different countries and the societal expectations placed upon them to pursue traditional careers such as medicine, law, or engineering.
• 61:00 - 73:00: Business Advice and Challenges The speaker reflects on the traditional 9-to-5 career path, expressing discontent with the lack of freedom it imposes. Despite not having a strong aversion to medicine, the speaker prefers the autonomy that entrepreneurship offers, indicating a passion for building businesses and startups. They decided to pivot from a typical career trajectory to focus on their interest in entrepreneurship, inspired by admiration for business people and the entrepreneurial spirit that was part of their mindset before attending university.

Palestinian Entrepreneur: This Fajr Habit Turned $1 into $M's Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 I was born in Palestine 2 million in sales whilst I was still in medical school start memorizing the Quran and then work on my business how am I going to pray in the musk regularly and work on my business I mean that mentality is flawed entrepreneurship requires a level you know Reliance on Allah more than any other career in order to make millions you have to lose thousands and in order to make billions you have to lose Millions if you want the d to run towards you run away from it run towards your focus on your and theun is going to come towards you I can plot a graph and show you my connection with Allah vers my success in life nothing's going to fill your heart the true thing that's going to fill your heart is IM man and
• 00:30 - 01:00 you can get whatever you want from the world but it's never going to be enough the money and the the success of your company is not made when you're doing the business of course you have to work but it's made outside in your acts of worship in the fact that you're reduced from your sins Allah loves me more than I love myself more than my mother loves me Allah is going to plan my life for me better than I'm going to plan my life for myself one of the main things I've learned in life is be very careful who you bef friend your friends can make or break your life the first way to get a lot of blessing in your day is
• 01:00 - 01:30 Ibrahim alard is a tech and finance entrepreneur he started his first company at the age of 20 and generated over $2 million in sale while still in medical skill today he's an active fund manager he's also founded four other company runs a nonprofit charity and is an active angel investor in 2023 he was named on the Forbes 30 under 30 list for finance a big money he's also an active da influencer and student of knowledge with over 1 million followers on Instagram in this conversation I want to discuss what Muslims get wrong about entrepreneurship talk through ibrahim's
• 01:30 - 02:00 business Journey how he built over a following of over 1 million followers on Instagram a dink into the secrets of his success Ibrahim welcome to the Muslim finder thank you you were saying before we started recording that you wanted to share a Hadith what was it that you wanted to say so theam said so whenever you send peace and blessings on theam Allah sends blessings on you 10 times so it's great way to start the podcast in Allah puts blessing in what we do a mean I mean I know this is something you being like doing on the
• 02:00 - 02:30 side a bit of a passion project like learning Hadith memorizing Hadith and you're also like building an app to help others like learn Hadith tell us more about that yeah so it's super important because our religion is based on the Quran and the Sunnah right so uh We've we've called the app and it started where I go for a sh tea in the morning with my friend and uh he's been memorizing a Hadith for you know a while now and he said why don't you start memorizing a Hadith so I started memorizing one a day and over time alhamdulillah I built a database right so whenever there's like a relevant situation in my life I can drop the
• 02:30 - 03:00 Hadith just like now alhamdulillah so the purpose of this app is to allow people to memorize a Hadith and if they don't speak Arabic they can learn what a Hadith means and learn how to apply it inshallah so nothing like this has been done before and I think this can have a massive positive impact on the world inshallah amazing amazing I know you're involved in quite a few different business business ventures before we come on to that later um take us back to you know the the origins you know the IBL CD story where all began uh I know you're a medical student at University H talk to us you know back then you know what was going through your head did you
• 03:00 - 03:30 know you wanted to start a business um yeah just just take us back to when you're like 19 years old 20 years old yeah sure so uh I was uh born in Palestine I grew up in most of my life in the UK we traveled a bit Egypt Norway and then I settled in the UK and as you know in our cultures uh there's a big push to do medicine law engineering and that's it right so uh you know for me I was good at biology in school alhamdulillah I enjoyed it um and then so I went and studied medicine in University and uh for me although I liked biology I didn't like the idea of
• 03:30 - 04:00 a career like having a 9 to5 uh I didn't mind medicine but I just don't like the idea of having to be in at this time every day and losing your freedom for me my freedom is my most important thing so uh first term of first year I was like I don't really want to do this right so I was like okay let me do something that I'm passionate about and before I went to University I knew that I'd always like building businesses right I looked at the business people I like the idea of building a business I've always liked startups it was just ingrained in me alhamdulillah so uh I before University uh before I went I had a friend who told
• 04:00 - 04:30 me about Bitcoin and this was like back in 2012 right what a great friend I had a friend I still remember the moment that he told me about it and the way you said it and everything and where I was Subhan Allah so he told me about it and I was um I just looked at it and I started researching it and I bought a book I got a job in a call center to save up some money so I could you know invest it in the market and uh one thing led to the other Subhan Allah so I took that paycheck from the call center job and started Arbitrage trading so and that was during my first year of of uh medical school right can you
• 04:30 - 05:00 explain Arbitrage absolutely so Arbitrage trading because I guess most people know is simply when you have an asset so Bitcoin um is in one exchange here and a second exchange right and there's a price discrepancy and because there's a price discrepancy you can buy it cheaper here and sell it here right byy exchange you mean like a different platform or different geography yeah different platform so because then the space was less centralized right you could buy it here and sell it here and make like a 10% profit every day you can't do that anymore because the space has been more centralized right now so I took that money and you know I just
• 05:00 - 05:30 basically kept Arbitrage trading and grew it and the reason I did that was because I was okay I want to have a bit of money while at University so I started with around 1.7k pound and I flipped that into about um 12K in about 3 months and I was like yeah exactly so I was like yo I'm a ball that's I was like I must be the richest kid in uni but for me I was like okay I made this money I'm going to take that money and put it into the market and I just was like okay let me focus on my study now because i' neglected it a bit Etc but alhamdulillah i' never failed an exam and I passed every exam so parents were
• 05:30 - 06:00 happy with me so um and then I was like it kept nagging me you know I'd be sitting Medical School exams and I'd be thinking about crypto right and I couldn't focus on the questions so I researched the market some more and then I found out there was a gap in the market for something called cryptocurrency mining service providers right so essentially what what that was is you have these machines that essentially solve mathematical problems and mine Bitcoin right like a virtual mine yeah so I built a company that essentially builds um these data centers
• 06:00 - 06:30 so we sell the machinery and we sell the hosting data centers for these um uh for for the clients right and the company alhamdulillah already took off um in its first year we did close to 2 million in sales whilst I was still in medical school amazing so um and I was running that alongside my studies alhamdulillah why do you think you were like so successful at a young age because it's not a normal thing even for a university student or even for like a professional like business person to do you know that much in sales within like you know their the first year business first couple years in business uh where do you think that success came from uh so for me it's
• 06:30 - 07:00 uh you know whenever I love something I put my heart into it so I was very passionate about what I did I did it like most of my free time I'd um you know I really put my heart into it and I gave I treated clients really well right so whenever you have any company if you treat your clients really well and give them the extra service it makes them be willing to buy from you over and over again and I had this sense of conviction in myself a lot of entrepreneurs what you find is they have this delusional sense of belief in their abilities right and I think mind came from the fact that
• 07:00 - 07:30 I was like if I have Allah's support I can do anything and alhamdulillah I still have that mentality like people people like to me you know you've done a lot by a young age alhamdulillah Allah has allowed me to do a lot by a young age but I'm just getting started inshallah is it's the confidence that comes with within and then to at the same time yeah I mean I wasn't as religious when I was younger I'll be honest is yeah I prayed and things like that but but I still had the inkling of you know all is with me and I think that's the thing and actually the reason one of the reasons I open the company was because uh you know you know as you know in University there's a lot of
• 07:30 - 08:00 Haram so I saw people around me falling into Haram and I was like let me fill my time with something that's going to keep me busy so I filled it with the company right so I believe that's why Allah put Bara in it because whenever you leave something for the sake of Allah he replaces it with something better for you so I left the Haram for the sake of Allah and he gave me the company in exchange for that amazing um just going back to what you said before in terms of you know most Muslims you know they go down the traditional career path or at least like parents push them towards these traditional career paths like you know medicine engineering lawyer whatever um a lot of Muslims are you
• 08:00 - 08:30 know still kind of think this way I would say even in the new generation um you know that mindset still kind of prevails um why do you think that is you know why do you think Muslims are still caught in this kind of you know 9 to5 P mentality and do you think it's better for them to start businesses to pursue entrepreneurship and you know what's your advice for someone wanting to to get into the space so I think it comes from you know the fact that that our parents are immigrants right so whenever you move to a new country you're taking a big risk right so when your kid kids
• 08:30 - 09:00 have that you know stability in terms of they have the passport they have the good education you want them to go and be play it safe right and Subhan Allah when I was in med school I noticed a theme that the Muslim kids in my year they were there because their parents pushed them to it and they weren't that Keen on medicine right but the kids that were non-muslim were more passionate about it right they didn't they were there for the right reasons right so I think it comes from the fact that you know because of that generational trauma if you like they they want us to take a safer route now not saying that these careers are not important of course they're important and if you really want
• 09:00 - 09:30 to be a doctor go and be a doctor but what I found in life is that whenever you do something because you're passionate about it you're way more lik to succeed you know you you do what you love and then you'll be good at what you love inshallah so you know my premise you know I don't have kids yet but if my kids came to me and said to me I want to be ex job as long as it's Halal I'm like go for it you know I don't see any job all of these jobs are important for society right so as long as it's Halal go for it even if it's like a twitch streamer uh I don't know it depends on the type of streamer right depends on the game a lot of twitch streamers right
• 09:30 - 10:00 now are not the best role models are they but it's good the thing is like people are like to me why why do you upload on a certain platform well the reason I do that is because if a platform was polluted let's try and put some good on it right so if there's a lot of bad on a platform go on it it's even more reason to put on it right what's your advice for a Muslim who wants to start business today you know say they're in your shoes where you're at you know they're building something while start University H what's your advice to them for you know breaking a becoming successful so I think focus on providing value right a lot of um people
• 10:00 - 10:30 focus on making money but if you focus on providing value the money is going to come and I have a friend who said to me something that I like the other day he said to me in order to make millions you have to lose thousands and in order to make billions you have to lose Millions so you have to have that mentality of that in order for me to learn I have to be willing to lose right so I don't see a loss as a failure as long as I learn from it in fact you learn more from your failures than your successes now people look at where you know where Allah has put me today and they focus on the successes but I've got way more failures than the successes right and that's a part of the learning process right so doesn't there's nothing wrong with
• 10:30 - 11:00 failing and also get started you see a lot of young people they have this mentality of I'll start later but actually you know I had a friend in uni said to me you know why don't you just like chill now and start after uni I said to him because if I start now I'm going to be years ahead of you and you start so have that mentality of starting early putting your heart into it being willing to fail and learn from your mistakes uh having that sense of belief in you know most importantly above all this is the belief in Allah that Allah is going to take care of you because the thing is entrepreneurship requires a level oful and you know Reliance on Allah more than any other career when
• 11:00 - 11:30 you have a 9 to-5 job you know on the first of every month or whichever day you get your paycheck you're going to get x amount of money but when you when you're an entrepreneur you could have a year where you make an amazing amount three and then three year years two three four you're losing and you constantly having to rely on Allah and the thing is what I've realized and what I tell people is that the money and the the success of your company is not made when you're doing the business of course you have to work but it's made outside in your acts of worship in the fact that you're reduced from your sins right so whenever have tawa of Allah he's going
• 11:30 - 12:00 to increase your rank and give you more so always be conscious of that what you're doing how you're living your life you know if you're going out and doing a Madness and doing all these things and you're coming back and you're like Ya Allah give me success in my business it's not really going to work out right and I've got I know guys that make illegal money right and you know you see them in the mosque and stuff it's good they're going to the mosque but I'm like guys like you know you want your money to be Hal so Allah can put bar in it you see baa is really important because like one I would rather have one pound of Halal money than a billion pound of Haram money and I would rather have no
• 12:00 - 12:30 money than any Haram money because Haram money takes away from the blessings of that money right like what you're going to risk your for some paper you see what I'm saying so it that question has a lot of layers to it and it's very deep and I think the best thing to do is get started and learn through the process and what you want to do is you want to combine two things there's atham where it says the best position to be in as a Muslim is to have knowledge and to have wealth and to use it for good because when you combine them it's an ultimate force of good inshallah so that's the position that I'm striving to be in
• 12:30 - 13:00 inshallah you mentioned a lot of your success came from the sequence of failures that you have talk to me about your first business you know what was it why did it not why did it not go so well so my first business Subhan Allah I've had so many failures you you struggle to remember right I think I start I tried to I started a YouTube channel a long time ago and it failed miserably some of my peers at school would mock me because it was so bad uh you know these little businesses that I would try here and there like selling e-commerce stuff uh so many things in fact I can barely remember them because I have so many if if you ask me what my successes are I'll name them because there're a few but
• 13:00 - 13:30 there's so many but you know I kept trying I kept trying I kept trying and I believe that one day it was going to work out and business is not like linear just going up it's troughs and Peaks troughs and Peaks and sometimes like if you look at Ray Delia for example one of the biggest asset managers in the world he lost everything he had in his midlife right and he had to take a loan off his father and he was distroyed right and he had to start again and now he's a bit one of the wealthiest people in the world one of the biggest asset managers in the world right that's the mentality you have to have a mentality of resilience you've been in the crypto space for a good like eight or N9 years
• 13:30 - 14:00 or something um you're basically like a veteran right now what's your advice for someone who wants to get into the space today um obviously there is quite a lot of noise um you know Meme coins nfts and all the rest of it and but the market is kind of you know picking up again A lot of people are talking about crypto right now H what's your advice for someone wanting to get into the space yeah over 10 years by the way I've been in the over 10 years sorry my bad my bad so uh you know I get loads of messages from people saying what coin should I buy and it's the most dreaded hated thing to me because it's like it doesn't work like imagine like so uh the crypto space is
• 14:00 - 14:30 incredibly risky incredibly dangerous like most of the coins are dodgy or scams uh but it's a new asset class and a new technology and whenever whenever you have a new asset class and whenever you have a new technology it's going to be filled with problems right so my advice to anyone looking to enter into the space is um be very cautious of what you buy right if you want to get involved try and build a product or something that provides value for the consumers right um if you want to have some exposure to crypto this isn't f advice I'm just talking to my friend
• 14:30 - 15:00 right so what you can do maybe is put take a portion of your paycheck and put it into Bitcoin ethereum the large cap coins but stay out of the smaller cap coins right like if your mate message you saying I got this coin and it's going to go to the moon be very careful right because yes it can go to the moon in other words it can go up a massive amount but it can also go down a massive amount right and as Muslims should always exercise caution in anything that we do right so my advice is before you go into the crypto Market what do you want to do if you want to make if you want to have exposure to crypto buy the
• 15:00 - 15:30 large cap coins if you want to um you know build technology for it look for a job that's applicable to your skill set right because the crypto Market people just saying it's just making coins and they go up in price no there's people building genine technology right people building exchanges there's people building blockchain um technology things that are like for for example tokenized assets right where you can own a portion of a house on a coin um so I would say it depends what your intentions are for going to the market what are you most excited of in terms of the technology in the crypto Market Market you mentioned like a couple of things there is it you
• 15:30 - 16:00 know tokenized assets is like there's a lot of talk about stable coins becoming like you know mainstream um there's defi that's been around for quite a while H what do you think is you know a good area to pursue or what are you quite keen on in terms of you know where you see crypto being successful in the next 5 to 10 years sure so I always like to say that the best application of blockchain technology which is the technology that cryptos are built on is cryptocurrencies right and the best application of cryptocurrencies is in decentralized financial applications right so I believe that cryptocurrencies
• 16:00 - 16:30 will do to finance what the what emails did to mail right now I can send you an email in a fraction of a second and it gets to your inbox and no one sends letters anymore right if you get if I get a letter in the post I'm like why did I get a letter in the post right so that's going to happen to financial products in other words I'd be able to move my assets to you between each other with no intermediary party instantly uh and that's going to change our financial products right there's going to come a time where our grandchildren or our children going to say you know dad Granddad I can't believe that you had to
• 16:30 - 17:00 uh wait three to five business days to get your money moved from one country to another country so I think the best application of crypto is going to be in financial products amazing do you think crypto has a space in Islamic Finance not only do I think it has a space I think it's going to revolutionize Islamic Finance right so as you know a lot of Islamic Financial products are built on interest anyway right so I believe that the implication of cryptos will be will allow Muslims to be able to build Financial products decentralized Financial products and have you know a
• 17:00 - 17:30 great deal of autonomy for what they built now right now if I want to send you money I have to go through my without cryptos I have to go to my bank and it has to be done through a middle party but if you have the internet what you have is something called smart contracts within the blockchain ecosystem and a smart contract allows a transaction to be verified between you and I without a middle party so it's essentially done through a code so what we're doing there is we're making it fairer we're making it faster we're making it cheaper and we're able to build a product like we want to build it
• 17:30 - 18:00 right you can literally have a young prodigy or someone in the crypto space build a smart contract and then people can use that smart contract as long as they have a connection to the internet we're opening Financial products to the world we're opening the banking system to the world like I believe that a lot of young a lot of people in general they don't understand the implications that cryptos are going to have on the entire Financial system and the entire world right that's why we have the US government now coming out and saying that they want to build a Bitcoin Reserve that's why you have uh other central banks thinking to do the same Some central banks have actually done it already like the impact of this technology is
• 18:00 - 18:30 massive amazing I know you mentioned that you know Allah and your Islam plays a very big part in your life but you also mentioned you know when you were younger you weren't like as practicing and talk to me about that transformation you know how did you become more practicing was it you know during University H how did you go on this spiritual journey with your Islam so Islam is a it's a lifelong journey right and as you get older and you mature you realize a lot of the things that seemed you know shiny and cool when you're young are not as shiny as cool you think right and then like when you're younger
• 18:30 - 19:00 you don't understand religion the same way as when you get older like um like Allah doesn't need us to worship him right if every single person on this Earth sinned the maximum amount it wouldn't reduce from the grace of Allah one bit and if all of us worshiped Allah 24/7 it wouldn't increase from the grace of Allah one bit Allah does not need us we are the ones in need of him Allah sent Islam to us as a mercy to humanity so when that clicks on your head you realize Allah loves me more than I love myself more than my mother loves me Allah wants better for me than I want for myself Allah is going to plan my for me better than I'm going to plan my life
• 19:00 - 19:30 for myself and then you have that sense of belief and and you Knowle on Allah you realize that the more that I get closer to my Dean the more my life is going to be better if you want the to run towards you run away from it run towards your focus on your and the is going to come towards you I can plot a graph and show you my connection with Allah vers my success in life and the thing is when I say success I don't just mean like um like we not just talking financial success there's a lot of forms of success right whether it's your health whether it's your family whether it's your friends whether it's your peace in your heart whether it's the
• 19:30 - 20:00 friends that you have like all of these are a form of blessing we live in a very capitalistic Society where we seem to think that blessing equals money no blessing equals many things right so the more that you give to Allah for the the more you give for the sake of Allah the more Allah is going to give you back right and it's guaranteed like a trade with Allah is guaranteed to to always come back with more Subhan Allah it's not in crypto yeah just in everything right so something clicked and I was like okay if I just the beauty of knowledge that's why like okay you described me as a student of knowledge I
• 20:00 - 20:30 mean I think everyone should be a student of knowledge you should always seek knowledge because without knowledge how are you going to know the right way to act right it's a massive n and I think that anyone that's not studying continuously and regularly is missing out on a big n I'm telling you you know alhamdulillah I've been very fortunate in my life I've traveled to 52 countries I've you know seen a lot of things done a lot nothing's going to fill your heart the true thing that's going to fill your heart is IM and you can get whatever you want from the world but it's never going to be enough so you mentioned knowledge is the thing that's brought you closer to Allah um is anything specific that
• 20:30 - 21:00 you did that you know brought you closer to this is it you know attending lecture spending time at the mid and praying your Salah um what were the things what were the like specific things that brought you closer to your Islam so it's important to that that the best acts of worship is small and consistent right so don't overburden yourself if you don't pray start praying a few times a day and build it up so for me it was a gradual process okay let me work on my prayers let me work on my relationship with the Quran let me try memorize one Hadith let me try going going to the m more regularly so it's a process of bit by
• 21:00 - 21:30 bit and when someone comes to me and says what should I do I'm always like start slow and build it up over time because what's going to happen is if you overburden yourself Shan will come to you and say you know how this is too much for you maybe you should stop right so take it slow and in fact there's aiam where where he says which means that the best acts of worship are those that are small and consistent so just try your best to be small and consistent with the acts worship inshallah what's one story from
• 21:30 - 22:00 the Quran or Sunnah that's had a large impact on your life great question so the beauty of the Quran is it's applicable to any part of your life right uh but I would say one story that sticks out to me is the story of prophet Sanam right he was a man that was blessed with a kingdom the likes of which no one would have after him right he was blessed with things that we're never going to have right he had control of the Gin control of the wind with the permission of Allah of course uh all these things he had but he always remained one but he was thankful to
• 22:00 - 22:30 Allah and despite what he had he was very humble you see with us if you get a bit of money or you get a bit of followers social media start thinking you're a big dog right I think you're a boulder yeah you think you're a boulder but like when he was very humble and that's something that I always like to look back to that no matter what Allah gives you in life remember he's the one Allah is the one that takes and gives so always stay grounded and in fact what happens is when you're thankful to Allah he gives you even more he increases you even more so I would say uh you know after theam after Alam I would sayam
• 22:30 - 23:00 story really sticks out to me from the Quran amazing amazing I know you've been living in Dubai for the past two years why did you move to Dubai what was the motivation behind it so I moved to Dubai for the business benefits right so uh so when I was moving it you know some people like to say they were doing K and stuff like that I'll be honest that was the reason I moved but andar is a prayer to Allah to ask him to guide you right towards a certain decision that you want to make so whenever you want to make an important or big decision make sure you pray Nara first so I prayed inara and
• 23:00 - 23:30 next thing I know I was in dwai uh alhamdulillah I've got a lot of friends here because it's a big crypto community over here the white has a great business culture the weather's nice you know I met so which is one of the downsides of the way alhamdulillah I've really enjoyed it I mean you you've really enjoyed it what's your experience of the way been like yeah I think similar to you I moved here as part of work and but then when I first came tasted the lifestyle you know didn't really want to look back I was living in London before um but I think it's like night and day for like a few reasons I mean ones like the weather and the lifestyle I think
• 23:30 - 24:00 London you know things uh haven't been As Nice especially in the past couple of years you know Dubai everything's fast it's clean um you know it's very accessible and I think safety is like also a big thing I also got married around the same time the other thing is just around the Islamic uh Community not the community but you know just the Islamic lifestyle you know it's very easy to be outwardly practicing as a Muslim you know mush are very accessible um and it's just good Brotherhood you know I've met people like um you know Z and yourself and some of our other
• 24:00 - 24:30 friends but yeah alhamdulillah it's been two years and I think I'll be here for the at least in the short to medium term longer term I'm always in two minds about what I want to do yeah amazing you know it's interesting there's going to be the editor is going to be busy because there going to be a lot cutting out so actually for the people watching so me and with good friends alhamdulillah and normally you have quite a jokey relationship but now we have to be quite formal so we have to keep stopping cuz we have to mix up our relationship for this hour of the podcast right Al so so far so good yes
• 24:30 - 25:00 sir um do you think living in Dubai has been better for your Islam so when I moved to Dubai the building that all my friends lived in happened to have a mosque right next to it and of course a lot of buildings in Dubai there's a mosque close by but this is literally like I look out my window the mosque is there right so being an ex M carrying the Adan five times a day uh you know it's definitely brought me closer to my Dean and there's a great community of Brothers where I live right uh uh duai is what you make of it right you can live the life you want to live and you know I chosen to live a lifestyle
• 25:00 - 25:30 alhamdulillah to be as close to my Dean as possible and having the mosque nearby has been lifechanging in fact I never want to live far away from the mosque in fact the last few houses I've lived in ones in the UK as well coincidentally Allah has put a mosque nearby to it and actually my Islam Journey started you asked me this question I forgot this point because there was a house I was living in and there's a mosque next to it the next house I lived in there was a mosque next to it and the house that I currently live in which is my house in dwai there's a mosque next to it so I always want to be next to the mosque I know you're very serious about your
• 25:30 - 26:00 Islamic habits and your lifestyle this is something that you're always like on my case about you know starting from fer being regular with vior with your Quran your Hadith talk to me about you know what your routine looks like and what's your habits what's your lifestyle when it comes to your Islam sure so the said which means oh Allah bless my nation in its early morning so the way the first way to get aot of blessing in your day which is something that I've been pushing you to do inshallah is to to wake up a fet and stay up right because a lot of people they wake up they pray F they go back to bed right so
• 26:00 - 26:30 when you wake up in the morning the time between between F and feels a lot longer than the time you know after so uh that it's a sequence of steps right so I try and wake up early um I try and get the important things done early meaning uh Quran my Hadith memorization my study right uh because your brain is the most fresh in the morning so you retain information better and what I do is I leave my uh so I also try and jym before then so basically uh Islamic stuff and gym before after is basically work so corporate
• 26:30 - 27:00 stuff uh and then after is socializing relaxing things like that so I would say that if you want success in your day and Baraka in your time wake up early um do the the most important things early which is the Quran Etc your Dean stuff nothing more important than that and you know when people say to me okay but I've got a 9 to5 you can you don't have to do an hour or two or three you can just do literally 10 minutes right if you want Bara in your day show that show to Allah that you prioritize your Dean over everything start your day with the most
• 27:00 - 27:30 important thing which is your um acts of worship inshallah um and then in terms of habits you know I try and be very focused when I do work I try and be as organized as possible um you know I try to not check my phone for example too much it's it's a cumulative impact of loads of small things if you want to be successful like think about it there's 8 billion people in the world right if you if you want to be successful you need to put your heart and everything into what you do and you need to be focused right like the thing is the reality is you can't be the best ENT entrepreneur and a
• 27:30 - 28:00 scholar of Islam and the best person in shape right because you have to focus so it's about striking a balance between these different things right so before I had a habit where I would basically go all in on one thing and then neglect the other stuff and then I would pull out from that and go all in on the next thing Etc but now I've built this mentality alhamdulillah my mom guided me to it a lot more is have a balance in all these different things that you do because over time there's no rush over time you're going to be a lot better off if you have a balance in um uh in your in your actions and what you're doing
• 28:00 - 28:30 amazing something I find quite interesting about you is that you know you obviously have quite a few business mentors you're obviously quite busy with what you do with your corporate stuff your business stuff and but you dedicate a lot of time to daa content and you know building a social media just pushing out different types of dawa content talk to me about that I know you've built up quite a large following on Instagram and even across other platforms like you know LinkedIn and all the rest of it talk to me about you know why you do that how you've kind of build that out um so so for me I'd say that um
• 28:30 - 29:00 never never underestimate an act of goodness that you do and the impact that you can have on other people and the thing is like we live in quite a selfish Society where people are all about you know me me me and they forget the impact of the wider Society like when you're about to die you you're probably going to be thinking about the the impact that you could have had the things that you could have done right so for me I wanted to have a positive impact so a few years ago um I built a team alhamdulillah who spread reminders online right as we're instructed in the Quran uh we're told by
• 29:00 - 29:30 Allah to remind for reminders benefit the Believers andam said conve for me um just one a one thing right so for me I saw that I said okay well at the time I had a lot of work and I said I can't post reminders myself why don't I build a team that can post reminders so I did what I could given my capacity and the most important thing is like you know when when the Instagram hit a million followers I got messages saying congratulations on hitting a million and things like that and I started thinking to myself you know it's not about the
• 29:30 - 30:00 number right people congratulate you but it's like congratulations if Allah accepted it because there could be a guy who has an account with 20 followers posting every day that's getting more reward than the person with a million or millions of followers right and intention is so important it's a constant battle when you're posting online anyone that says to you that their intention is perfect is lying because it constantly tests you you're being tested all the time when you're posting and Shan is going to come to you in different ways and make it more about the likes and the views as opposed to being you know bit for for the sake of Allah cuz that's the reason you're doing it if if Allah is not accepting it like
• 30:00 - 30:30 you you failed miserably right so uh for me I did what I could I built a team alhamdulillah Allah put blessings in it Subhan Allah I mean even the team that was running the account they said we've never seen an account grow that quickly and uh you know one thing that maybe helped the account to take off after Allah's permission of course was uh I don't know if you remember but Instagram started competing with Tik Tok and they started putting Reals in their videos right so we we capitalized on that early on we started posting reminders of real and stuff and they can't really grew alhamdulillah uh and yeah that that's
• 30:30 - 31:00 kind of where we are today so I'm just doing what what I can where I can and I think everyone should do it everyone can spread good and if everyone spreads a little bit of good the impact on society compound impact is massive and I think inshallah uh you know you're planning to do to post more and more right inshah what are you most afraid of you know what keeps you it's it's a deep question I think for me it's um it doesn't keep me up at night but I would say that not doing enough for the people that I love right
• 31:00 - 31:30 and when I say the people I love of course my family and my friends right but also the extended umah right because we're we're one umah we're one group and I feel that you know it's it's a duty upon every single one of us to try and have as much of a positive impact as possible so I think for me if I was to look at my life and be like I failed it would be looking at a life where I've not had enough of an impact on those that are around me right and the general Community because the thing is like like we have been put on this Earth as
• 31:30 - 32:00 um like it's been entrusted To Us by Allah right and we have a responsibility towards it and therefore I would say for me it's it's it's basically not doing enough right and I think that's probably why I was so driven from a young age because I wanted to do a lot and I was always in a hurry I was always like I want to do it fast right and I think that as I've got older and alhamdulillah matured a bit I've realized that do what you can and rely on Allah right like the thing is you can put as much work as you want in at the end end of the day your path and what you do is going to be chosen by Allah right and don't neglect
• 32:00 - 32:30 acts of worship um because you think that it's not going to allow you to do something remember the more that you do for Allah the more that Allah is going to give you never NE I had this mentality when I was younger I was like wait how am I going to start memorizing the Quran and then work on my business how am I going to pray in the musk regularly and work on my business I mean that mentality is flawed because at the end of the day the the success and blessing comes from your lord so how can you think for a second how can I do worship and not get success right we
• 32:30 - 33:00 hear it in the addent you know come to prayer come to success we hear it several times a day how many times people hear they call to prayer and they don't go pray right go pray you get success inshallah Allah put bar in your time as well when you do these things 100% And any acts of worship Allah puts more bar in your time so um always try and increase in your acts of worship over time inshallah how did you find your first customers you know how did you get your initial success so initially I tried different things I tried social media adverts I tried Google ads I tried something called SEO which is search engine optimization I tried a lot of different
• 33:00 - 33:30 things right it's called split testing so what then I found worked for me was Google ads and I skill the thing that worked for me right um and Subhan Allah it reached a point where the Google ads I kept optimizing them so much it was doing so well that for every 10 clients I got I was turning nine of them away because the the supply of Machinery that we had wasn't enough to meet the demand so what you need to do I would say is when you go into any Market split test and find the thing that works and then scale that thing right like business is
• 33:30 - 34:00 a lot simpler than people make it out right it's like people are like how do I make money okay well you you find you sell something that people want or need or you provide a service that people want or need right how do I get the clients okay you do split testing don't go all in on a certain way do different sales tactics and try different sales tactics and then scale the one that works right and then how do I keep clients okay provide clients such a good service that they don't that they you're the one person they go to and then they go and tell their friends about it I feel that a lot of people think they
• 34:00 - 34:30 need to buy a course or buy 100 books to be have success in business I've never really bought a business course uh I might have bought it but I never did it right uh I bought loads of business books but I never read them like the most I've learned in businesses from doing business right that's like in med school they used to say something they said the day that you learn how to be a successful business person uh not med school see all that think about his business they said the day that you learn to be a successful doctor or a doctor is the day that you graduate and start practicing similar thing in business you can go to go to business school all you want the day you start
• 34:30 - 35:00 business that's when the reality and that's how you start learning so trial and error start through the process right and that's why I always like to push people to start a young age how did you know like that was the problem you wanted to solve how did you know that this was the thing that you wanted to service your clients with because I think a big thing that people get confused about is that you know what do you do what do you build um you know what's the opportunity you know obviously you get people online telling you about you know H this industry or that industry but you know at the end of the day they're just trying to your course how do you know like what kind of Avenue that you wanted to explore so I
• 35:00 - 35:30 think a lot of people don't know how to make money and what I mean by that is they focus on making the money and and they don't focus on providing value and therefore they don't make money right like if you look at like the most successful entrepreneurs many of them were so focused on providing value the money just flowed right they weren't just obsessed like ronal Ronaldo doesn't wake up in the morning and says I'm going to be the richest football in the world he wakes up and says I'm going to be the best footballer in the world and consequently he is like the richest footballer in the world so uh for me
• 35:30 - 36:00 focus on providing value right if you fixate so much on the numbers then the numbers aren't going to come right of course there has to be a balance that's not what I'm saying but I'm saying if you provide people value they're going to pay you for it makes sense I think a lot of people watching this will see you you know you made quite a lot of money within the crypto space um but at the same time you know you're practicing Muslim how do you kind of balance that because obviously there's a lot of you know fit there's a lot of like Haram sources of wealth in crypto yeah so there's a lot of Haram source of wealth in general especially in financial
• 36:00 - 36:30 markets right so um uh if we're speaking specifically in crypto uh there's resources online right so that mu farz Adam who we've both studied with he's got resources mu B Omari I know ifg have a few resources so there's different mixture of things that you can look at uh you know I'm not going to give a fatwa because I don't I'm not licensed to do that so go to the muties and see what they say and make up your mind uh just to be clear you know the muties that say that Bitcoin is permissible that although Bitcoin might be it
• 36:30 - 37:00 doesn't mean that every cryptocurrency is permissible it depends on what's the crypto what does it do what Market is it from all of these are factors to consider right so it's a very difficult space to navigate in terms of Halal and Haram but financial markets in general are very difficult to navigate in terms of halam there's a lot of easy money that can be made quickly like right in financial markets there's something called a leverage trade right which is impermissible which is where you can take a trade and lever it up and make more money uh than you could by just simply buying the spot asset right but although you make you might make more money there's going to be less Bara in
• 37:00 - 37:30 that money you're going to earn sins for the money that you've made Leverage is where your borrowing Capital so Leverage is essentially where you're borrowing Capital to uh make more money but in Islam when you buy and sell something you have to buy and sell the actual asset right so my point being here is that if you want to navigate the space I would say go and get the fets on whether crypto is permissible or not and then if you take the position that is permissible uh be careful what you're buying in the crypto space because it doesn't mean that everything is permissible with within crypto and the thing with crypto is that you know
• 37:30 - 38:00 people say to me like do you think that Bitcoin is going to hit a million dollars and I say to them it's not a matter of uh if it's going to hit a million dollars it's just a matter of when it's only a matter of time before Bitcoin hits a million I genuinely believe that and I believe there's going to come a time soon where you know we transfer assets through uh you know centralized bank cryptocurrencies right we can move assets across border instantly pretty much right so uh 10 years ago in crypto people said to me you know Bitcoin is scam crypto is a scam now it's reached a stage where people are like okay it's not a scam
• 38:00 - 38:30 clearly uh you know but like at least Bitcoin isn't so like what like how is it going to be integrated in our day-to-day lives right what does the next 5 to 10 years look for you what's on the front of your mind so I think I want to be focused on providing as much value as I can both in and outside of business I want to amass as much Islamic knowledge as possible and general knowledge inshallah um I want to become really good at what I do in terms of building companies and scaling them and you know investing and
• 38:30 - 39:00 finding good Investments um and striking a balance between being trying to be good at several things right you can't be the best at everything but try and be balanced in everything that you do um and uh yeah I mean that's what I that's what I plan but we have a saying in Arabic right my mom Tau me it it's like read which means that you want something and I want something and Allah does what he wants right so we all have these plans like if I if you said to me 5 years ago I'd be living in Dubai sitting opposite so in a podcast
• 39:00 - 39:30 room yeah we're here exactly so like uh we never know where we're going to be and I think that's the exciting thing about life like life gets difficult for all of us right we all go through challenges but that's the beauty of life right and the most beloved people to Allah subhana wa tala were the prophets and they went through the most challenges right like if you think you're going to live a perfect life and people think we have a perfect life because we live in why we don't we all have challenges and different things that we have to go through right but I think if if your mentality changes that this challenge is actually a blessing from Allah right to to get closer to him
• 39:30 - 40:00 then life becomes way easier because anything that comes at you you're just going to handle it a lot better right I think a lot of problems in life they send from mentality to be honest last question and no pressure who's the best padle player in Dubai that's the toughest question you asked today why is it so tough bro you're looking right now where I don't see it uh so for people that don't know PD is like it's a racket sport that it's big in the way uh so hope seems to think he's really good at pedal I'm not bad but Subhan I remember there was an
• 40:00 - 40:30 incident right so I I was just like I had a long stressful work day right and I came and played pedal with a h and a few others and I was just playing really bad because I was just too much I was putting too much energy into it and so and pedal requires a level of peace and then I was convinced there was a problem with the balls right so I went and I bought a new set of balls to play paddle and after I bought these balls I played even worse right and so you know why I mentioned it cuz I knew he was going to mention it so I had to beat him to it but yeah was great fun alhamdulillah uh and yeah with regards to the best P
• 40:30 - 41:00 player in Dubai I'm yet to meet him what's your final piece of advice I'd say that one of the main things I've learned in life is be very careful who you befriend your friends can make or break your life and always try and surround yourself with the right people and I'm not just talking about in the dean of course you want to surround yourself with brothers that are practicing but also in your career and your ambition if you're friends you know go to go to a cafe every single night and that's all you do then you're just going to waste your life away so surround yourself with people that try and push both in and outside the dean
• 41:00 - 41:30 like people ask me like who what my closest friends right uh and you're one of my closest friends in the Bai thank you I'm ashamed to admit that you are my closest friends are people that try and push in and outside the dean right so because then it's going to push me and I like that competition so my advice is be very careful you be friend IIM thanks for coming on my pleasure that's awward anake