How To Shift Your Money Mindset To Unlock Financial Freedom | Anas Bukhash

0:00I have a brand new book called Make Money Easy. and if you're looking to create more financial freedom in your life, you want abundance in your life and you want to stop making money hard in your life, but you wanna make it easier, you wanna make it flow, you wanna feel abundant, then make sure to go to makemoneyeasybook.com right now and get yourself a copy. I really think this is gonna help you transform your relationship with money this moment moving forward. We have some big guests and content coming up. Make sure you're following and stay tuned to this episode on The School of Greatness. Thank you so much for being here on The School of Greatness.

0:43I want to remind you that you are a blessed human being. And if anyone ever tries to discount you, I want you to remember that you are worthier than you think. You have more value than you think. you are deserving of love and peace more than you think. And sometimes we forget that. I know for most of my life, I didn't believe I had worth based on the experiences I went through and based on the meaning that I interpreted around those events in my life. And in fact, for many years, I thought I was unworthy and unlovable. And so I had to prove myself. I had to over-accomplish. I had to overcompensate.

1:25I had to, you know, boost my ego to feel like I mattered. And for whatever reason, the more I chased accomplishments and success from a place of a wound, and the more I ran away from my past pain, instead of healing and creating integrating relationship with myself, creating boundaries in life with others, making sure I was going away from people pleasing and living in true alignment service rather than trying to please to try to be accepted or seen, that's when everything shifted. And I just want to remind you before we jump in today's episode with my friend Anas, that you are loved and you are worthy beyond measure.

2:09It is immeasurable on how worthy and loved you are. But sometimes you just need that constant reminder. And I'm so grateful that you're here, part of the School of Greatness community, because this is a place where you can be constantly reminded of your worst. You matter, you are loved, you are accepted, but it starts with you. And if you're not willing to create that inner harmony and inner abundance within yourself by taking yourself on that journey of healing, peace, and prosperity, then you'll always feel stuck. You'll always feel like something's off and like you're never enough. And so this is your reminder.

2:50And I just want to say thank you for always showing up for you and being here a part of the School of Greatness. And if you haven't heard yet, the new book that we launched a week ago, Make Money Easy, Create Financial Freedom and Live a Richer Life, became an instant New York Times bestseller. And I want to say thank you and acknowledge you for your support in buying the book and getting copies for your friends and coming out to see me on tour and all the different things in your support of this journey. It means a lot to me. And we work really hard here at the School of Greatness to find the best guests, the best content, the best research, and share it with you in ways that can serve your heart, your mind, in a way that helps you today.

3:36And if you're struggling today, I hope the book helps you today. I hope this interview helps you today. And all the content we have here on The School of Greatness helps you every single day. We are here to be of service to you. So please let me know how we can continue to help you. You can always email me, you can email us, you can send me a message on Instagram and connect there. But we're here to serve you. We appreciate you. And without further ado, let's dive into this episode today. You live in Dubai, a city of wealth and of extreme luxury, but you also grew up in America. so you have a mixture of american values and dubai culture that you live in and you are surrounded by and have interviewed some of the wealthiest people in the world and i'm curious what is the difference that you've learned from americans and those who live in america who think about money versus business and those who think about money in dubai what is the difference in the mindset what i think these are all just perspectives i don't know how accurate they are but i feel in the u.s it's a bit siloed like each to their own like you don't have this unity in between each other and you're a go-getter and you want to just make as much as you can and i don't know i don't find that cooperative feeling as much maybe now versus 50 years ago it's different it's more like single-minded competitive i'm gonna get mine i'm gonna compete against you that type of thing probably and then in dubai specifically because also each place in the region is different in dubai there's a crazy level of entrepreneurship if you actually if whatever anybody now is watching whatever whatever you google can you believe that the uae has done all of this in 50 years which is younger than our parents people sometimes criticize the uae or dubai and they say ah it's this or that it's fake or no no that do you actually realize how many years we've built all of that it's very short so it's a very entrepreneurial city in dubai a lot of people come there whether from the u.s from the uk from europe from asia that's where they start their careers because they create a business and don't forget it's like raw so when lewis has an idea and you come and pitch it in the uae or in dubai you probably are the first one it's not like it's a thousand years old and many people thought and built those businesses no you might be so all of my startups are technically the first of this kind really not because i'm a genius it's because it's a young country so i have a got an idea i start it and it does well so very entrepreneurial what is the for a lot of people who've never been there they think of like it's maybe it's superficial or maybe those who have visited it's very superficial there's luxury everywhere it's an excess of money it just seems like it's just unlimited like it just keeps coming um does that help or hurt values within the communities there by having that much money or what does that do to values or communities?

6:48I think it's an inaccurate perception. Do a lot of rich people move to Dubai? Absolutely, because Dubai has provided so much. Like it's, you know, you leave your car keys in the car. Yeah. Your doors are generally open. And it doesn't happen by coincidence. It happens because the level of security and the level of effort that the government is putting is immense. Like the other day I was walking with somebody who was just coming for a week and she goes, can we walk here? And I'm like, yeah. And for her, it was shocking because she's like, in Europe, I can't do this walk at the end of the night.

7:30No way. For me, it's a no brainer, but for her, it's a brainer. So I think the level of safety and the level of logistics and the level of ease to build your business and all of that and the network you build in Dubai. It's well, if you think the world has six degrees of separation between any two people, I think in Dubai, it's two. Really? Between you and anybody, it's probably two max. So your network there is crazy. So that's why the rich people are moving. The schooling is great. The logistics is good. Quality of life is good. Safety, which is quite undervalued, is so important. So that's why you see a lot of rich people there.

8:05But it doesn't mean there are no middle class and low income people. people everybody there are all kinds of people now to the second part of your question how has it affected maybe culture the the interesting thing about dubai has always been a trading city even my grandfather when he was there it's where people used to go to the port sell carpets sell spices sell gold so it's always had a lot of people different nationalities so we're quite accustomed to that but you still feel a sense of value and togetherness which i love like i don't to lose that so what is the what is the mindset about how to generate wealth how is it different with people in dubai then versus in america from your experience how do they think about money differently is it is it um is it scary is it something they're anxious about are they holding on to it are they are they thinking i'll spend it invest it because i'm going to create more of it that's also a good question I've lived in the US and in the US I feel I do feel and I hope nobody gets bothered I don't the American dream is is quite just a dream like I do think 1 % make it and they make it big probably the best in the world if you make it in the US as the 1 % yeah but the 99 % to come with the American dream I don't know if they ever achieve their dream because I see them hustling so much just to live okay not even wow not even really comfortable it's like i'm doing two jobs and a part-time and my wife is doing this and my son and you're like all of you are working for this level so i always found that the marketing wise is great you know you think i'm gonna come and build this life but i do think that has shifted now you come to the region I've seen a lot of expats come to the UAE and Dubai and they actually live the dream.

9:59They come, they build a business. It could be a chocolate business, it could be a specialty coffee, it could be whatever, textile. And suddenly they have 16 branches. So how we look at money is not out of fear because it's contagious when you live in a very entrepreneurial city. If you go to New York, it's a bit different than going maybe to Dallas or to Wisconsin. or not. It's very contagious in Dubai that everybody's coming up with an idea. So it's competitive. But if you're entrepreneurial, it's pretty a good place to be. And I've seen people, like even my best friend is from Boston. So a few years ago, I kept telling him, come with your wife, come to Dubai, trust me, trust me.

10:40And I had to nag for years. Eventually he did. And for him, you can ask him, it's the best decision he's ever made. His kids all go to a good school. He has a beautiful villa, has a nice car, has a great family, and it's safe. And he's built a business as a consultant now. So it's not like I'm selling something. I've seen it happen. He's making more money in Dubai now than in America. For sure. Really? Yeah. Do people talk about money differently, though? Is it like an open conversation? Because I feel like a lot of people live in fear around money, or it's taboo to talk about sometimes, or it's hard to get in America sometimes.

11:16times they see a few people the one percent getting it and they're like okay maybe it's possible for them but not for me how's the conversation around abundance and money different in Dubai I think when you live Lewis in a city where you see people make it and when I say make it it doesn't mean you have to be a millionaire you could just have ten thousand dollars twenty thousand dollars but you're happy with it so even the idea of wealth and abundance is a subjective of things some people don't want a million dollars they just want a quality life where when he wants to buy a t-shirt he buys it and he doesn't need to do three jobs to do that right and i think that's the difference here it feels they put so much effort just to live okay just to survive just to keep up in the rent and payments and bills there there's more of a direct correlation as okay lewis came to dubai he worked this much he will get the return on investment here i feel you work this much your return on business like really i don't know maybe i'm wrong yeah but that's the perception i get i haven't lived here for a while did you i mean when you grew up here though what was your perspective around money growing up in the states did you got did your parents talk about it openly was it a free-flowing conversation was it hey we don't have a lot of it so don't go spend this we can't buy this what was that conversation like and did it shift when you started to go to to buy more so on on a tangent the idea of discussing money I do think is quite taboo in Arab and Asian like you don't sit on a lunch table and talk about it if you read the book rich dad poor dad he had that contrast one of the fathers like oh it's the devil talk you don't talk about money on this table and then another father's like no we talk about money so I never came from a culture where you talked about investments and all we should invest in stocks and we should do this and don't put it in this account never so financial literacy was extremely poor for me and for a lot of my generation you just don't talk about it you just put your money in the saving and get your one percent per year which is probably the most silly thing you could do with your money if now today we are more educated like no move your money keep something but move it put a bit here put them there get some make your money work don't let it just stay in a bank so that was never discussed if that's the question it's and when i lived in boston that was that was when you were in boston no that was ever always yeah your parents never did never yeah and i don't think they had the idea the financial literacy to teach us and if you don't have the conversation you never improve you never debate you never discuss which stock you should go to so we didn't have that but in boston i was on a scholarship and boston is expensive very so i was just trying to manage my i was i've been independent since i was 17 so yeah just how to i i remember lewis the we didn't have uh nice clothes when we were students and uh and my my roommate was chunky he was big and i was so skinny i was like like half of this yeah and i was like man there's this store we need to go i don't even promote them but it's just a designer yeah and I'm like we need to get a t-shirt but it was expensive for us to so now it's not but you look at it like we can't buy anything from there so I'm like you know well why don't we buy one t-shirt like in the middle the size somewhere where it looks like you're wearing spandex and for me it looks like I'm and we literally share like he's this big and I'm this small but we both paid for it and it was really nice to have but it just didn't look good on any of us right but that was how i think it's beautiful that you work towards then earning your money that so you can live well when did you start to think about money differently because it sounds like you grew up where it wasn't talked about your parents didn't talk about it and you weren't allowed to have open conversations so when did the shift happen for you where you said i need to learn about money differently to be able to run my business or to be able to raise the kids i have whatever might be what year is that and when did it start to unlock where money flowed to you the problem is i'm very ignorant when it comes to investments and i'm teaching myself so real estate is something that my grandfather did very well god rest his soul and we never learned how he did it he didn't teach you guys no and and i think with me because i'm a purist when it comes to my entrepreneurship, I follow my passion.

15:48And when money comes, it comes. And the good thing is, if you're usually good at what you do, it eventually does come. But it doesn't mean you're being smart. Because you could, let's say, you suddenly make, the first time you open the podcast, in six months you make$10 ,000, buy new cameras, get the sound engineer, and suddenly you're back to zero. So you need to realize, okay, if I'm ill, how am I making money? If you're sleeping as Lewis, are people purchasing my book? Are people purchasing a course? And that's who I think I started to think more like that in the last five years or so. Really?

16:23Where how can I have passive income? And even I was talking to my brother the other day and he's like, yeah, this year has been challenging. We need to restructure, blah, blah, blah. And I told him, you know what? His name is Harath. I'm like, Harath, even if you take out$1 ,000,$5 ,000, whatever, every month, just put$2 ,000 somewhere. Put it in crypto. Put it in real estate. Anything. one of those are going to hit but i don't want it in the bank so let's start and he's good with crypto and we're good with stock so like listen it doesn't have to be a big one so this is something also for the audience we don't have to feel crippled you could put a hundred dollars you could put five hundred dollars but that times 12 months is something yeah and that in five years is something else and i think we need to do that more we're so afraid and we keep things in their saving because we're like oh rainy day yeah but keep something as security what will make you live maybe for three months after that move everything let it move sure and that's what i'm trying to do now i mean you've interviewed a lot of i think you've interviewed some people in the royal family right are you sorry have you interviewed some people in the royal family yeah in dubai correct and what is the difference between those who grow up in wealth versus those that don't grow up with money that's a great question because a lot of people in the royal family or the you know the the children of the royal family they grew up in wealth yeah right it's just around them is there a difference in the way they think the way they act the way they move do they have an entitlement are they more humble what is the difference between growing up in wealth versus not it's a very good question and um of course you have all kinds of people you know some rich families the kids take it for granted they don't feel the value of money and some they suddenly have a business acumen and a finance acumen and the ones i was lucky to befriend it's we they don't feel inferior to money i think a lot of us that we came from a modest background or a simple background it's like it's a taboo it's like how can i get it you know but when you when you think is just a tool and like it's a mindset it's kind of a confident mindset you know when you feel you can't get the girl or you're already losing so you walk up to the girl you're already feeling inferior or insecure or you're trembling that energy doesn't welcome the the best looking or the smartest girl for example but if you're like i think it's worth a try you know what i think i have the right confidence let me have a conversation very different response and i think their confidence towards money because they've lived it is a bit different for somebody who's like i don't know and i i really believe law of attraction only works not by what you write down or what you say out loud i think it's law of attraction is based on conviction inner conviction and if your inner conviction is clear that you actually louis actually inside believes he will have the best-selling book next year for example you truly think no my book i wrote it so well it has a definite chance a chance for it then you have a chance but if you're like it's not that good well you say it's good to everybody but internally and the same goes to how we look and same goes to how we feel about our brain our self-esteem and what we think we're worth so if you look at your relationship with money and you truly think i'm talented i'm working hard and i'm pretty sure i can one day have a vehicle like a private jet i think i can have a private jet or i think i can have a million dollars or or you truly believe it i do think if you then you add that with the work it will equal manifestation for someone though watching or listening that's saying well it's easy to have conviction when your parents are wealthy and you grew up in wealth but if i didn't grow up in wealth or i have a more of a modest upbringing like us how do i create a conviction inside of me that i feel comfortable around money and I feel comfortable money is coming to me if I don't know how to handle it on the first part I will contradict it too so some let's say a wealthy kid who his parents pass away he inherits all the money how many blow blow out all the money a lot of them because that you see so it doesn't guarantee sustainability doesn't guarantee profitability for the long run a lot of wealthy kids they just don't know the value of money or they're not financially literate to know how to keep it dad had a lot of money he's the one who made it and now i don't know how to make money i lose it all i throw it all away in five years a lot of even professional athletes or whatever as soon as they stop all the money goes so it's never a guarantee if you were born into wealthier stay wealthy who made you wealthy you need to learn from that person now with with us to for for somebody that comes from a more modest background I do believe in small wins you know it's like confidence is a muscle and if you train it is gonna get strong and if you stop training it's gonna wither away and then you really have to retrain it maybe the second time you train retrain it it's quicker to build because you have the body memory and i think the same confidence for me has always been departments in your brain so when we say somebody is confident it's a very blanket statement it's quite inaccurate yeah but he's confident in what oh he's a great public speaker so he's very confident in public speaking but maybe he's very not confident in relationships maybe he's very insecure as a father so we cannot just say somebody's just confident it's a very delusional way of giving that sticker away so i like to see it as departments and how do you build these departments is by practice a bicycle the first time we tried to get on a bicycle we were so insecure we're so fearful we put those two two small training wheels on the side then you remove one but eventually you even do it without even holding the the handle you're so good at it and And even if you stop for a year, the next time you quickly pick it up.

22:41So I believe that's my advice is trial. So when you try, you're like, man, Anas, I invested in five stock. They all flopped except one. It's not bad, you know. I think this is why when I did the research on this one, it kind of worked more. And suddenly you're getting 1 % confidence, 2 % confidence, 3%. And suddenly you're at 70 % confident. And now you know your shit. You know how to. And I think that's so important. It's interesting because I was looking at an office building a couple months ago. And one of the units I was looking at to rent out, the broker, I was like, I feel like I need some upgrades or whatever.

23:20Would the owner put money to invest to upgrade it? And she was like, whatever you need done, she will do because she has owner's guilt. And I go, what do you mean? she goes well she got handed this building this big building and she's got a portfolio of like massive real estate portfolio that she didn't create it was like her father passed away and and gave her all the properties so the broker is like whatever you need she's going to do it because she feels guilty and so she'll invest in like just making it nice for you not trying to make the most money from it but just like i'm already making so much that i didn't create it's imposter syndrome It's kind of just like, yeah, I'll do whatever just to make people happy type of thing.

24:04Do you notice that as well in Dubai with like children of the royal family who've been handed a lot of money? Do they have this kind of guilt for receiving it or they have a different level of confidence? I don't know many in the royal family, but the ones I've met are really impressive. Really? I swear. How so? Just the level of sophistication, the level of knowledge and well-traveling, that's huge, you know, when you're well-traveled or when you're well-educated. And when you, Lewis, when you're born, and I hope I don't sound too biased, but I'm a big fan of my own country. And the writing is in the pudding.

24:44Like you can see, it's actually a great country. so when I see how the leadership that made the country a united arab emirates how they were visionaries like literally lewis with everybody watching can we if anybody told us 60 years ago that this piece of desert is going to be one of the most sought out countries in the world and best cities to live in in the world nobody would have believed it not you not me nobody nobody but you had visionaries and if somebody's going to watch this and yeah of course you had oil money how many countries in the world have oil money? A lot. Where are they? Not too well.

25:25That's my point. Some of them have corruption some of them they just don't know how to use it or invest it in their people. You know that one of our leaders God rest his soul he's the founder of the UAE his name is Sheikh Zayed Allah al-Rahman so Sheikh Zayed when he was taking the leadership I'm told that he went to families Telling them And listen to this He's telling them I'll pay you If you send your children Your boys and girls to school Not you pay to go to school No, I will pay you I will reward you If you send our children to school And we call him Baba Zayed Which is like Father Zayed Because he was literally a father To a lot of people in the country and outside Wow Like I've been to Comoros Islands which nobody probably knows where it is.

26:13And I saw I was in the car because I was with UNICEF. And we're going across this island, and I see a small school, and it's written Sheikh Zayed School for Children. I'm like, he even has a school here? So he was very, even in the U.S., he did a lot, by the way, a lot for the hospitals and for a lot of the charity. So coming back to the idea, if you have a leader who's investing in these people and paying them, like, please send them to school, please. because he knows in 20 years those those kids are the next wave so i think when you say petrol money it's one thing but what are you doing with it for example dubai doesn't have petrol but look at dubai right number one income tourism look at that like that's a huge achievement people might not maybe people might think dubai is still running on oil no dubai is about tourism really Absolutely.

27:05How much does it bring in a year with tourism? I don't know. I can't make up those. I'm sure we can find them on ChatGPT. But just in the last two years, I was talking to somebody in the tourism. In the last two years, we have increased only Dubai 400 ,000 new people. Wow. And they're not low income. These are families that are bringing money and investments in the city. I know Miami, I heard Miami is doing very well also in the U.S. And there are certain cities that are providing a good place for families to come and just settle. That takes extreme vision for someone like that to say, okay, we are in a plot of sand.

27:43There's nothing here. There's no infrastructure. There's no plumbing. There's no roads. There's no nothing. It's just sand, desert, and heat. And Dubai is hot, man. It's hard to freaking live there. In the summer, yeah. It is. It penetrates your soul, that type of heat. It's just so different, Louis. Even the ruler of Dubai, he decided to build a port. They're like, why do you want to build such a big port? And he's like, we should build it. And everybody didn't agree or didn't see it. That is one of the most important ports in the region today. Like when you think of it, it's easy not to say, of course you should build a port.

28:19No, no. Like back then, why would you? No one was going there. Yeah. But you know, when you have, that's beautiful. Like I would love to sit on a dinner table and listen to people like that. And we have them across the world. whether it's a Muhammad Ali or a Gandhi or a Mandela, you have visionaries. And they saw something that they didn't need to do because some of them are already wealthy. They're okay. They don't need to do it. But there's a passion in the people. And I think if you invest in the people, you never go wrong. Never. That's true. And notice all the names that I just said. They all invested in their people.

28:56So how was the conversation around money today there? Are people talking about it openly or is it still taboo in conversation? Not taboo at all. Really? Yeah, yeah. Now people talk. They do. I think the internet also helped a lot, you know? Yeah. Investments and people, how they use their money. It's in my family it wasn't, but I know even in Asian families, usually money won't be discussed much. So when you're around the royal family or you see them, they're very sophisticated. They're very well-traveled. What else do they have? They're very well-educated. Very. and again because we have this lineage right if you start from Sheikh Zayed and Rashid who are the founders and then you you take that teaching and how they approach the country and how it was so important that the people are happy for example as an Emirati we get land for free we get a loan to build we get an interest free we get um education for free we get um what else there is a loan to build a loan for weddings a lot of weddings yeah so you can actually get married and really so they set you up how like it's not so they will set you up they'll support you where it's really important to set you for life how important is marriage and family in dubai or in UAE.

30:16It's huge. Why? Why are they investing in people getting married? Because one, you want your people to grow and you want to build family units that are really strong. And I think maybe we're generally in the modern world, we're undermining the value of strong families. It's so beautiful. Like I work with my brother. He's my business partner in all of it. And my mother brought us up so well. We have such a solid unit. Like me and my brothers are all buddies and we all trust each other you can't beat that like you can't find a business partner if he's also competent and your brother's competent you always wanted the brother right he's your blood if he's not competent and someone else is then you don't use him like i do think to be a great entrepreneur you should be ready to fire your mother wow that's so it's tough yeah but that's that's what it takes you can't be like oh but you know that's my buddy that's my mother that's my brother no you have to as an entrepreneur of course you have to be very uh you need to put the bar you gotta put the best person in the in the position to help you grow yeah so i'm lucky with him and i coming back to your point marriage and good units and good families build a society and if the society is built on ethical good value people good mannered people good units you have a very strong society in europe today maybe in america and a lot of places and the world is very disintegrated.

31:38Like when you said NSU, I live both. I live the American life and I live the UAE life. And I love some things in both. And I don't like some things in both. So I try to merge the most of everything. What are the things you loved about both and things you don't love about both? Okay. So in America, I really liked just the people are really nice. I loved that and I loved my college years and it was just really good formative years for me what I didn't like is the family values where I felt were very weak compared to where I come from like if you just see your family once a year or Christmas or Thanksgiving for me that was sad like I'm like you're missing out guys like this is so important we go once a week to our families or we talk to them it's such a strong unit with your brothers your siblings so that I didn't like And like I said in the beginning of the interview, there's not much unity between people.

32:37Now back home, I think we moved so fast. Maybe before it was more rigid. Now we're so open to the world, so now we're great. But a lot of topics like the money was taboo, culture, openness to the world. Now Dubai is one of the most modern cities. But one of the beautiful things for me that I don't want to change is the good mannerism. I don't think, Louis, you've been to the UAE, you've been to Dubai. It's very difficult to find an Emirati who wouldn't treat you with good hospitality, good mannerism, and just be nice to you. So that's really nice, and how you're warm with people. If you just say, oh, guys, I'm hungry, they'll all invite you.

33:18Wow. Whether he has money or not, he will invite you. Yeah, it's in our culture. And I remember, for example, in a neighboring country, my dad was in Oman. So he went to the mosque to pray And he went to the small town in Oman Very, very, like a farming town maybe And he just went for prayer Like let's say afternoon prayer And at least three guys in the mosque They're like, your lunch is with us And he's like, no, no, with me And they're like, competing, who would invite my dad? And I found that quite sweet Like you don't see it in a lot of places in the world They truly mean, it's not like they're just being nice They really want to take care of you And he's like, listen, if you don't have a place to stay Our house, we have a guest room and it's why is that you're brought up like that you're brought up to be nice to other people and hospitable and you you represent your culture your religion and your country that way and i love that and i think the world generally needs a bit more of that yeah yeah hmm what what are the values you've learned through prayer that have allowed you to create more prosperity?

34:26Do you pray frequently? I do. I used to do it much better. You're a bad prayer. No, I don't think there's such a thing as a bad prayer. I was brought up in a very conservative family my dad is religious my mom and i think there's a lot of beauty to prayer louis it's let's talk about it from an objective point of view when you're a busy person and in islam there are five prayers and i think christianity i think you can pray five a day right yeah yeah at different times and i think in christianity it's flexible i think on sunday you go to the church and different religions have different practices but the idea of prayer that you have to pause i think that's really important like today we talk about meditation we talk about leave your phones so imagine you're in a religion where five times a day you need to take a five minute break it doesn't take long and you go and you pray and you take a spiritual connection or literally a pause.

35:33I think there's a beauty to that. It teaches you time management. It teaches you prioritization. It teaches you to take time for yourself. And it's also our prayer is a bit of movement. So there's a bit of stretching. It's like yoga. So I think there are a lot of pros and discipline. One of the things I love about the five times a day prayer it's probably a lot easier to let go of the past if someone if you got into an argument with someone and you're feeling frustrated or resentful about something if you're praying about it five different times a day you might be able to let that go quicker you know from one prayer to the next hopefully you could let it go i'm not saying everyone can but that type of practice of forgiveness of reflection of okay how do i want to show up with these next five hours or next four hours until the next moment.

36:27I didn't show up well. I reacted to my neighbor. I screamed. I honked in the car. Okay, how do I be better these next few hours? I think that five times a day gives you, hopefully, a moment to reflect and say, I got to be better. Let me go apologize to the person I just did this to. That's not okay. Even, you know, in our prayer, we have something called wudu, which is like you have to just wash your face and your hands. just that interesting practice calms you. Imagine like literally you're really pissed off, you're stressed at work, and you're like, okay, guys, let me just go pray and come back.

37:00And you have to go wash, and you wash your face. Just that interesting practice calms you down, by the way. You cleanse yourself. Yeah, so then you go and pray, and now you're forced to be good and nice and pray because you need to disconnect from the stress you just had in the meeting or an argument with your partner. So suddenly, you're pausing now. and I think that's where I agree with you when you pause you regulate I remember by the way your answer in Navy Talks I asked you a question I said Louis if you could teach every child in the world one thing only what would you teach your answer is one of the best answers I've ever had on the show truly he said emotional regulation and I think a prayer or a disconnect allows you to regulate before you just fight and cause something it's like when you're arguing you go for a walk and then come back so there is a lot of blessings to that what season of life were you making the most money what year did you bring in the most money from your businesses i have four businesses at them i used to have six i have four now but the funny thing is each one does better in different years yeah this year the hair salon is like hair salon it's doing well oh man i gotta i gotta come and get a haircut in dubai for sure it's a good one and i i got inspired by a new york loft style salons oh they're nice yeah they're nice uh a lot of your a lot of your business ideas you just visit america you see what's working and you say oh we don't have this in dubai let me bring this over and it's gonna crush actually two two of the six were because of an american idea that's smart yeah if it's not there but you know it does well somewhere else then hopefully the first one was artificial grass football or soccer field you didn't have i played it in boston we played and it was air conditioned i'm like oh yeah in dubai with our weather air conditioned but turf with cleats yeah with soft turf with like rubber with the exactly and i brought it and we were the first in the uae and it went from one or two pitches i think i think 26 28 pitches wow yeah indoor indoor indoor so it's ac i was gonna say because you can't have grass there you know people watering all day long it's like it's not a smart thing too yeah well that's cool it depends each year some of the businesses do well some not what was the year that you made the most you don't have to say how much but what year what year uh i think maybe two years ago three years ago we did great and all uh-huh so how much were you praying leading into that year i don't pray for money i'm not talking about money I'm just saying how much were you praying spiritually yes not like give me more money but how much yeah I act every player in your life every day I think it's important are you doing it were you doing it more before that that no no I've just been I'm a consistent guy yeah like even every night I will journal and in my journal you'll see my gratitude what I what I did today that kind of like a diary and what I'm happy that I did and what was quite cool and part of my, it's not a secret, but I don't usually share this, but part of it at the end, I will write, like they call it affirmations.

40:23I don't like the word affirmations. I think it's over trendy, but I think it's important to write things that you want to do or get. So I do that every day. And you know that was the funny part, Lewis. If any of you watching do this, go back at the end of the year and you'll see, you'll be shocked at how much of it actually happened. of what you write down, what you want to create. What actually happened. Like you said, you're going to do all of this in the beginning of the year. You'll be shocked what happens at the end of the year. Like I do that and I'm like... Check, check. Yeah, yeah. It's pretty cool.

40:57You got married young, 24. Correct. Married for nine years. Then divorced, then separated for the last 10 years. Nine, 10 years, yeah. What did you learn about yourself through getting married in your early 20s getting divorced in your early 30s and being not married for the last 10 years but co-parenting what have you learned about yourself from the whole process i learned that i don't advise people to get married young because it's very formative years in the modern age maybe back in your dad's time my dad's emissary was a bit different expectations and criteria. It's going to work for my parents.

41:37They got young too. Yeah, I don't know maybe if it worked because maybe the expectations and criteria of marriage was different 50 years ago or 80 years ago. Today, I think because you want them to be a proper companion and really get you, like we were talking also about your relationship, you need that proper partnership because they kind of wear more than one hat, not just the mother of your kids or just your wife it's your go-to your advisor so I learned that young marriage in my opinion young marriage has two advantages I used to say one it's two one that if you have kids the difference in age between you and your kids is small so you become buddies which is pretty cool other than that I never had anything I didn't think it was positive but the second one that I recently added is you're ignorant and when you're ignorant you don't overthink things so for example today at at this age, I know how expensive it is to have children.

42:32And now if I get married, I'll really be careful how many kids I would have, right? But when you're 24, you figure it out. Like you have kids and you're not over, you just do the bungee jump, you know? You're not so scared. So I think there is some advantage to that, not recklessness, but that like, I don't know, but I'm going to find out. We'll make it work. Yeah, we'll make it work. So that's with young marriage. And I think that's what I learned. and I think it's such formative years. When you're in your 20s, you think you kind of know, but we were different people at the end of the marriage, like literally.

43:07It's like you become another human. So for me, especially the 20s, if your trajectory is 10 degrees to the right and hers is 5 degrees to the left, you multiply that by 5 years, and that's just trajectory. I didn't even talk about speed. Imagine, at some point, one of you is looking at the other in the rearview mirror, at another point you don't even see them anymore so i do think we change a lot and as i always imagine the dolphins you need to swim like the dolphins when like sometimes you're a bit front they're a bit behind but you're kind of still in harmony and if there's no harmony you just grow apart and you fall out of love and you just change so that's i think on the young marriage co-parenting has been great i was i this i would give advice oh they say when you marry you marry a family especially in our world i think you do you marry the family yeah you don't marry only the person marriage you marry the family because your children louis will also be brought up in their household right with their with her mother with her father with her siblings with her auntie her cousin especially the children gravity to the mother also so it's not like only your wife is bringing him up or her up so i knew the value also even more of my in-laws when i divorced because they're till today they're great until today i speak to my stepmom i speak to my ex-wife and they're lovely people they speak highly of me i speak highly of them and i realize how important and one of the best decisions i've made was to marry into their family really because when you're divorced then it's like when you let somebody go in your business a lot of them are not nice because the benefit is gone.

44:54The contract or the agreement is gone. So now they don't have anything with Louis. They can say he was a bad boss. I can't believe that. They can do everything. Just blame you. But if they leave and say, man, Louis, one of the best periods of my life. Great leader. I learned a lot from him. Now, I always say, judge people on how they leave. And I think when I left that family, they've been class. Wow. so that's helped us a lot in co-parenting and we have two beautiful boys so we're always in touch about them um and what what was your third question about now you said you're yeah you've been you've been not married for 10 years now what do you learn about being divorced and then single essentially for for the last decade yet it's i don't know if i'd get married again why not now i'm more open to it if marriage is the fabric of your culture and your country you're getting me now why would you not want to be in alignment with the values of your country and culture now i am more okay and to be honest i wasn't so much maybe it is a trauma maybe it is um just trying i was so focused on my businesses and it actually paid off you know you got results yeah and i think now i'm more open to the idea that you know in the last stretch of your 30 40 years of your life 43 now let's say another 40 years if we live healthily hopefully you you start to think okay companionship is actually nice intimacy is actually nice and that's what i'm trying to teach also my son so with my son i told him when we talk to our children we say also baba and said it's funny i don't know how in certain cultures we also say to our so they say baba to you but you also baba right it's weird but it's it's in our culture so i was like uh majad his name i'm like baba listen i don't want you to be brought up like the pop culture that we were brought up in we were brought up with music videos and so many women and masculinity was defined by the quantity not the intimacy and i said that's how we were brought up in school in high school in college that's what we thought you see movies you see videos you see music and that's what you're taught as a man i you have a lot of women you're a really masculine guy and i told him i don't want you to i had to uninstall a lot of that programming from my brain which still today is a process but i told him i don't want you i would love for you to have lived a life where you come and tell me dad i fell in love three times in my life the fourth one was my my love of my life and i married her i'll be so proud of you rather than you telling me I went out with 40 girls.

47:41Right. Like, okay, what does that even mean? Like, do you want me to clap? Because if you're charming, you'll probably go out there. But that's not the goal. The goal is, can you be intimate? Can you be vulnerable? Can you build an honest, clean, not cheating or fighting or toxic? Can you build something healthy? I'll be so proud of you if you do that. And I want to instill that in my sons. Did you feel shame or some type of trauma when you went through the divorce based on cultural norms? Was there anything there or did you feel at peace about it? Divorce is not as scary as when my mother got divorced.

48:22When my mother got divorced, it was difficult for her, really tough. She went through a hard time in the society. Now it's way more open, but now I feel also some people are just too easy with it. Like they don't even wait. I don't like when people give up too easy. Like in six months, you're divorced. What does that even mean? What did you even do? Right. So I didn't face backlash from my society. But I'm sure there is some trauma somewhere. You know, when you invest nine years of your life with someone and you build a family with them, you can't be a robot and just think everything is fine. It's not.