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Hi, I'm Omar.
I'm an Entrepreneur.

I’m Lebanese, and I’ve turned into a millionaire before the age of 29.

But I was a typical employee a few years back.

I’d like to share my story to explain how that happened.

Read below.

I have been featured on:

Warning: you might get inpired so much that you’d want to take action right now!

The Beginnings...

My parents are from Lebanon, and I was born in Rome, where I lived until I was about nine years old. I don’t come from a family of business owners; in fact, I would say we were part of a lower middle class.

We moved back to Lebanon in 2000; I continued my education there in a french school and completed my university degree in medical lab in 2012.

At this point, I still wasn’t exposed to anything related to entrepreneurship, but I always dreamt of having my own business, even though I didn’t know what that would take.

My graduation from Medical Lab, in 2012

I completed a Master’s degree in Oxford Brookes Uni in 2013. The Masters degree was useless, but my stay in Oxford opened my mind a little to entrepreneurship, especially as I met some friends there who were paying for their tuition fees on their own by working online as website and app developers.

That was one of my first exposures, where I saw that some people with specific skills could work as freelancers on the internet and earn a decent amount of money.

Check the photo below. The name of the guy at the back is Lukas, he’s Polish and was working as an app developer, paying his own tuition fee.

Photo in London, late 2012, with my new mates

My first job...

I moved back to Lebanon in 2013, and like most Lebanese people, finding a decent job in my field was tough.

I kept applying and even came to Dubai in 2014 just to find a job in healthcare.

Nothing happened until I moved back to Lebanon and, after countless applications, got a job as a sales rep at a medical equipment company.

I remember that job was so EXHAUSTING, in a period in which Lebanon was going through bombing every few days, with a salary of around $800 USD. For someone with a Master’s degree from England that costed $30k+, I just thought, what is this degree even for?

And why did my father have to pay close to $30k USD for a 1-year degree for me to get employed like this? It would take men FOUR YEARS to make that money back. Incredible.

Dubai, 2014. Anxiety phase, can't find a job

Moving to the UK...

So after just the 3rd month, I decided to quit, and two months later I left and went to France to find a job there… aaand as you would expect, I didn’t find ANYTHING there.

For 4 months, I spent my time distributing my Resume to any recruitment agency, going to job events, searching online for any opportunity.

Out of desperation I even sent my Resumes to shops like Decathlon and even as a cashier for Carrefour. 

They declined me, via letters sent by post.

I was at my lowest.

Finally, I got the idea to go back to the UK, and after lots of applications, I was offered a job at TripAdvisor, back in Oxford city as an inbound sales rep. I had to sell a marketing tool to the French market over the phone.

That was very intense, but at this point, I was just happy that I found a job that allowed me to earn some extra cash from commissions.

I was at 1200 Pounds monthly, but if I exceeded my daily and monthly targets, I could reach at least 2000 pounds.

But Oxford is super expensive, and I was paying 550 pounds for one single bedroom in a small house shared with three other people.

My first week working for TripAdvisor in Oxford, 2015

Moving to Austria...

Long story short, I certainly couldn’t accept this, and four months later already started looking for another job anywhere in Europe.

After many interviews and traveling around the country, I got two offers, one in London for Oracle and one in Salzburg at a well-known dental company called Sirona.

I accepted the job in Salzburg, and I finally felt that I got a “typical” job with a better salary, which was 1900 euro at that time but with some benefits.

Although Salzburg is also really expensive, they speak German. Beautiful city, but not much to do.

Salzburg, 2016

 

I was responsible for the French market from there, and I had an excellent job, often traveling to Germany, Italy, and France.

It looked like I had a promising career and jumped salaries quite often, but still, I felt completely stuck in this job. I wanted to move forward, faster, make more.

At the ADF exhibition, Paris, Late 2016

The 'Aha' Moment in Thailand...

In 2016, I took take a three-week summer vacation.

I decided to go to Malaysia and Thailand for those three weeks.

It was July 2016, to be exact, and honestly, those three weeks were some of the best travels I’ve had, so much so that that trip alone was one of my life’s most significant turning points.

Koh Phi-Phi, Thailand July 2016

I saw the beautiful nature of both countries, went to the tourist cities and the beaches, and rode a small motorbike on the islands.

I just thought to myself “what the f*ck are you doing in Europe“, working so hard for a salary, far from your parents, with only two times per year that you can use to travel, one in the summer, one by the end of the year to see your parents?

And most importantly, I did some calculations: if I earn 2,000 euros net, and I’m able to save 1,000 euros a month, I would end up with ONLY 12,000 euros by the end of the year.

What would that do?

How can I improve my quality of life with that amount, living in a small apartment in a small city where everyone speaks German, and pretty much nothing happens?

Something had to change. I wanted to make at least the same salary but live in Thailand. Increase my purchasing power to increase my quality of life!

So, I googled: “best ways to make money online”.

And I got FLOODED by so many different business models, endlessly watching youtube videos, reading articles, and joining groups.

I got information overload and shiny object syndrome.

In October 2016, moved to Paris with the same company, my salary increased to 3,000 euros, and the company even gave me a car.

But I lived in a tiny apartment rented at 1000 euros a month (see below).

My tiny 1k Euro/mo apartment in Paris

The "Bet" I Made with Myself...

I had to focus on business now. So:

  1. October 2016, started a blog – Failed miserably.
  2. November 2016, started a dropshipping store selling the UK – Failed miserably.
  3. December 2016, started Amazon FBA – Gave up and failed.
 

Then in January 2017, I made a bet : by the end of year, I will quit my job and travel the world.

That’s it.

If I find a way to make money online, then I live; if I don’t, then I lose my job.

It’s “sink or swim”, and this doesn’t give any other choice to your mind and body.

You either succeed, or you succeed—no other option.

Retrying Business Models...

Although I had this resolve, starting something was still not easy.

No matter what I searched online, the best business models I could find were either:

1- Dropshipping
2- Amazon FBA
3- Affiliate marketing

I even tried Airbnb: I invested 1000 euros to enroll in a course that would show us exactly how to purchase a property in France using 0% of my money, then register it and turn it into an Airbnb rental that would pay the mortgage and give us enough money to quit my job.

The course was good. But I was refused by more than 5 banks for useless reasons, and that project failed too.

Now the deadline was approaching.

What was I supposed to do?

How can I make money online?

Soon I’ll have to quit, and I need to have something working.

I decided to start a new Dropshipping project, but this time, selling in Italy…

After doing product research, setting up our Shopify store, and learning about Facebook and Instagram ads, “CHA CHING” I heard that sound.

It was my first ever sale made on the internet. I sold my first product!

And that was when I started believing in myself. I can do it. It was a product I found for less than 2 dollars and resold for more than 13 euros.

I continued working on this and opened another Dropshipping store in France this time, and while we were at it, I also started a new Amazon FBA business based in France.

Now here I was lost this time with another problem—legal and taxation.

How and where to register a business, how will I be taxed, and what are corporate and personal tax? All this was entirely new for me.

And in the meantime, I had some issues with the suppliers for the dropshipping store, as products were not arriving on time, and some were not arriving at all to Italy.

So, unfortunately, I had to refund many people and stop selling there.

I sorted out legal issues, focused on the Amazon business only, found a good product that started working well, and decided to find other ways to make money.

What REALLY Worked...

As I spoke five languages fluently myself, I decided to help dropshippers translate and write their descriptions to boost their sales…

And used the power of freelancing platforms (Upwork initially) by posting my services on any platform I could think of.

Well guess what?

I got my first sale, and I loved it. Later on, got other similar clients that would pay me to write and translate their product descriptions.

By that time, it was the end of the year. The time to quit my job. That was the promise I made to myself. 

So I did, in December 2017.

And within 3 months, the demand drastically increased, that we made more than $6k USD combining all sources!

That was double my salary, from a job we can do from our computers.

Now keep in mind that at this point, I was working more than 10 hours a day to secure sales, do the work, and deliver and manage all client relations.

— So think about it a little at this exact time.

If in one month we made $6k USD, that would be around $72k for the year. 

That’s one of the critical turning points that happened.

We offered three different services: copywriting, social media management, and design.

And this is one of the most obvious mistakes beginners make: thinking of providing more services to make more money.

And in fact, at this point, we started profoundly focusing on the main business, offering only one single service.

Here’s where we stopped selling on Amazon, and founded our first copywriting agency: OJ Digital Solutions.

And this alone let us make nearly $200k USD in the first year of 2018.

And guess what? All this while traveling the world.

In fact, I went to Lebanon, Egypt, three islands in Thailand, lived one month in Kuala Lumpur, went to Bali for 3 weeks, then went back to Lebanon, Cyprus, Turkey, and Spain, all in 2018 alone.

Digital Nomading in Egypt, 2018

My First Investment...

Now I had more money than we imagined as employee, and I started thinking about what to do with the money.

In one way, I was still in my scarcity mindset, thinking that money was going to run out and what would happen if suddenly we didn’t have anymore.

So the first thing we did, as many would do, bought an apartment. The first one was in Istanbul in 2018.

I purchased our first ever apartment for $60k including renovations, and put it up for rent on Airbnb.

That apartment alone got us around $7k the first year (more than 10%), but it was hard to manage while traveling, and that’s a story for another time.

1st Apartment in Istanbul

In 2019 and 2020, I focused on a bunch of other projects, which included my service, and a Youtube channel.

In 2019 I made around $400k and bought a second apartment in Istanbul for approximately $120k, including renovations but didn’t rent that out.

And I’ve lived most of those years in beautiful Bali, Indonesia.

Living in Bali, 2020. This is an Entrepreneurship meetup I organized.

Outsourcing to the MAX...

In 2020 during the pandemic, I made around $500k, which was used to buy a beautiful 3 bedroom apartment in Dubai in 2021.

At this point, I had already reached the million.

However, I was still deeply involved in the businesses, and I realized that money is just all potential power with a value that heavily fluctuates over time.

So in 2021, I made it my goal to build systems and get people to work in the business, so I could spend as little time as possible in it.

I invested in education, processes, and teams that would help us finally grow our assets while we give back to other people helping us in our missions.

Dubai home
At my home in Dubai. One of my best real estate investments.

Fast forward to today, the service business is still healthy, we have systems that get us clients on autopilot, and a team that closes and handles the clients without my involvement.

I later learned that this agency model is also called “dropservicing”. We sell a service that we don’t do ourselves. It’s contractors that we hire per project that do the work.

Photo from an expo in UK. My agency that made all this happen.

Right now, I mentor eligible people to start businesses exactly like mine, to reach from $0 to $10k/mo from an online service business.

If you think you’re a fit, apply to work with me. I’d love to help.

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There is still much to be said and countless stories that happened during these years, and I can’t wait to share them with you in my blog in the upcoming weeks.

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