We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Malak Kudaimi. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Malak below.

Malak, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

I believe one of the biggest things necessary to be successful is thinking long-term instead of short-term. And I think that can be for any goal. Society really socializes us to want instant gratification, but most good things take time. For example, most folks want to invest in the stock market and become millionaires overnight, but investing is a slow burn. Or folks want to lose 20 pounds, so they start eating healthier and exercising and hope to have the 20 pounds shed by the end of the week.

Another example is building a business. Building a successful business means investing a lot of time, money, and effort that will yield amazing results for you in the future. But that’s the key: in the future. You won’t see the return right away.

I’ll share my story: I invested $50,000 into my business in 2022. A small sum of that was wages to my team (paying folks to do what they excel at), but the majority (around $40K or so) was in mentorship. Business coaches and courses that taught me social media, marketing, sales, money mindset, etc. I guess you can think of the amount as almost another university degree since I didn’t come from a business or marketing background (my background is in public health). The investments came from my business revenue, and there were months that I had $300-$1000 in profit because of these investments. Which was hard. Because we so want to enjoy the fruits of our labor quickly. But I knew that these investments would allow me to build a multiple six-figure business later.

Flash forward to the last couple of months in 2022, and now the first month in 2023 – I’m averaging consistent five-figure months in my business, with a high profit margin. Everything is now paying off and manifesting. But it required putting my blinders on, breathing deeply sometimes when I got impatient, and also – reaching out to those mentors I paid when I needed support.

You have to think long-term instead of short-term to get the success you need in life!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I’m a financial coach who teaches Muslim women how to manage and invest their money according to Islamic principles. I started my business, Prosperous Financial Solutions, in June of 2021. I took a financial literacy class as an elective in high school, and fell in love with personal finances and money management. I was essentially budgeting, building credit, and investing throughout my university and early young professional years, and I realized that many of my peers weren’t doing the same. I was giving informal advice to friends and family for years.

Flash-forward to June 2021, I had just quit my full-time job to prepare to go to to London, UK for my Master’s degree. I wanted to start a side hustle to make me some income while I was a student. They always say you should start a side hustle in an area of expertise where you might be two steps ahead of the average person, and for me, naturally that was finances. I did some research and found that financial coaching is a legitimate profession, so I decided to take a financial coaching training and start my side hustle. I chose to focus on the Muslim female community because they were very much neglected in this area (most of the people in the finance space in the Muslim community were male).

I grew my business while I was doing my Master’s in London, and and it grew bigger than I ever imagined t would. Once I completed my master’s, I decided to pursue my business full-time, and really grow it to new heights.

In terms of offers, I do private 1-1 coaching, group programs, and one-off masterclasses that teach basic money management (budgeting, building credit, organizing money, paying off debt) and more advanced topics, like investing in the stock market, money mindset, and money and marriage.

I’m slowly dabbling into business coaching too. I’ve had some clients ask me how I’ve built my business, so I’m beginning to offer more business related courses/programs. I’ve also started a financial coaching training for my community to teach other women how to be financial coaches themselves (the training I took and others like it are not tailored to the specific issues the Muslim community deals with, and I had to do a lot of research on top of the training to hone my knowledge to serve my community).

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

The story of how I built my social media audience was interesting. My main platform is Instagram, and I had a private IG with no posts prior to building my business (I was one of those who followed/lurked on others but never posted myself). I had around 300 followers, and one day I just decided to post to my stories and let folks know that I was starting this business and making my profile public.

I hadn’t niched down to the Muslim community when I first started. I started off as a general financial coach, trying to find my voice and personality online. To be honest, I was very bland and vanilla online at the beginning, because I was afraid to express who
was.

Eventually, I realized that, naturally, since I’m a proud hijab- wearing Muslim woman, a lot of my followers were naturally Muslim women as well, and they were asking me Muslim-specific questions (aka what’s halal- the Arabic word for permissible, within finances, and what was not?)

I tried to juggle these questions on my platform, but I was aware that folks who weren’t part of the Muslim faith wouldn’t resonate with the Muslim-specific advice. And then I realized, I couldn’t serve everyone. In trying to serve everyone, I was serving no one. And so, I made a decision to serve my community, and that helped me strengthen my voice.

So, as for advice, the first piece is, niche down. Figure out who it is you want to serve, how you want to serve them, and speak to that person. And those people will find you.

The other aspect of this is building a brand. As I started becoming more comfortable on social media, I realized that I am: funny, empowered, bold, confident, and I really needed that to come through in my content. So that’s what happened. When I started building my personal brand, my audience grew like no other.

So the second piece of advice: build a personal brand

People want to see the REAL you. People are attracted to ENERGY. If you are fully yourself, and you’re bold, and you’re confident, and you show up as who you are on social media, people FLOCK to that. That is MAGNETIC.

And this, who you are, that’s part of building a personal brand. A brand is what distinguishes you from other people. There are likely a hundred thousand people doing what you do, so why would customers choose YOU? Brand. It literally comes down to brand. A client might quite literally think to themselves, I want to buy from her because I like her. She speaks to me more. Plain and simple. Someone might actually have better programs or products than you, but you might make more money than that someone because you have a stronger and more known personal brand.

Part of building a personal brand is showing and embodying your personality. When I was bland and vanilla, I didn’t stand out. When I embodied who I was, people took notice.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

I manage my team in a couple of ways: Honesty, the lack of micromanagement, and good compensation.

1. I’m very honest with my team, which I think they find refreshing. I share what’s going well with the business overall, and what isn’t working. I ask for their feedback and insights, and I even share the business revenue/sales with them. They’ve told me that the transparency is very motivating for them, and encourages them to do honest work.

2. I try not to micromanage my team. I give specific instructions but then allow them to carry out the tasks as they see fit within the framework I gave them. They’re also allowed to work whatever hours they want, as long as the tasks are completed. SO they fit their work around their lifestyle.

3. I believe in good compensation SO much. My family was exploited back in the day, and that left its mark. Good compensation not only recruits good talent, but reduces turnover rate and builds loyalty. My teammates know they can grow with the business, and I’ve given raises to my team members multiple times. I love paying my team to do what they excel at. I believe in investing in people and creating livelihoods. The more you invest in your team, the better the payoff will be for your business revenue.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsmalakkudaimi/

Image Credits
The credits of the business photoshoot (the ones where I’m in the suit) are by Ahlam Ghanim, owner of Aa Photography https://www.instagram.com/aaphotography.co/ The others were taken by informally by family or friends