MY
STORY

“MY PASSION IS MOTIVATING
PEOPLE TO GET RESULTS”

I have 2 lives, my formal job life and my Personal finance life. On the corporate side, I handled several positions in one of the best multinational FMCG companies in the world. I had a chance to work and live in Egypt, Dubai, Lebanon, South Africa, and Geneva. At the early years of my career I always maintained a zero balance in my account, this triggered the following question: How am I working at one of the best paying multinational companies and still don’t have any savings in my bank account?????

So I started reading about Personal Finance, attending courses, and searching websites. With time I managed to create some positive balance that translated later on into achieving my personal financial goals. During this journey I was sharing my learning with my close friends and I applied whatever I learned not only to help myself but also to help them achieve their goals. I also started managing their money and investing on their behalf in stocks and real estate. The feedback I received from everyone was that I am good in what I am doing which gave me confidence to continue in this field. They started telling their friends about me and the question that often popped up is “can you tell me how can I do it?”

When I was working in South Africa in 2007 we were having the so called “capability day”, it is a day that is dedicated to training employees in the company where I am working. Few other colleagues and myself were selected to be trainers at that day. As a trainer you get to select the topic that you will train on. Beside the technical part, some of my colleagues gave a training on running, others on diet, and I was wondering what should be my topic. I didn’t spend a long time thinking, the topic jumped in my mind, it was personal finance. So I spent few hours making some power point slides. I didn’t find any difficulty preparing my presentation as things were very clear and organized in my mind, they just needed to be put on the power point presentation in the proper order. The next day I delivered a 1 hour presentation about my personal experience on how I managed my salary, expense, savings, and what I was investing in. The session was really an eye opener to many people and I could see the passion not only about the content of the presentation but also in the question and the interaction from the audience. At the end of the session I asked the audience for their feedback and I heard lots of positives words “inspired, motivated, WOW, I wish I knew this before” and most importantly, “we need more of that”.

What happen next day was a life changer for me. Few hours into the day, someone passed by my desk and told me: “I heard about your presentation yesterday, would it be possible to organize this session once again?” I replied “Sure, why not”. Few minutes later, I got the same request from a different person. Not before the end of that day, the same situation was repeated 5 times. Clearly there was a demand there and I found out that what seemed to be like basics to me, many people had no clue about it. Throughout the week I got several other request so I decided to give another session but this time was 2 hours. I received the same positive feedback, don’t ever underestimate the word of mouth. The only comment from the trainees was that 2 hrs is not enough, we need more. I decided to take it a step further and I designed a 4 hr session. This time the only comment was that we want some practical hands on exercises on top of the theoretical part so everyone can design his own action plan and comes out of the course not only inspired but with clear steps what do to next. I then created the full day Personal finance 101 training. I continued the journey from that day on in Dubai when I moved there in 2009 and then in Geneva as of 2013. Every time I was giving this training I was getting better at it. I realized that if you want to be good at something then create a training about it and give it several times.  In every course I ask for feedback and how to make the course better. It is a practice that I started in my first 1 hour session which is continuing till today. It is amazing how feedback can bring value to you.