Lay your first Brick Today
Lay your first Brick Today
My Name is Rany Zein, and I have been running my own business since 2008. My journey has been a roller coaster of emotions, wrong decisions, trusting the wrong people, and losing a lot of money before I learned what I am about to share with you in this guide.
Before we dive in, I would like to take you back to the year 2005; this is the year I graduated from college with a master’s degree in mechanical engineering. I always wanted to have my own business, but due to my financial situation, I had to put that on hold in order to build capital for my company—or at least this is what I thought I should do first.
Within a couple of weeks, I was able to secure an engineering position at a multinational construction company, which dispatched me to Qatar to work on the construction of the Pearl project.
After a couple of years of working in the desert, I went back to marry my college sweetheart and start a family. A year passed, and the dream of me building my own business grew in me. I started to experiment with some ideas, until I met my business partner in January 2008, who was a well-established contractor in Qatar back then, and I thought it was a great opportunity to partner with him. An idea that proved to be fatal later on. At that stage, I had accumulated impressive technical and hands on experience in my industry, I was becoming the go to guy in the company to solve engineering problems, but I knew nothing about running a business, managing cash flow, or winning a job—the thing I was blindly and totally delegating to my partner.
Two years passed, and the company was always barely breaking even, although we were doing a lot of projects, which put a lot of pressure on me and my house finances. At this stage, my wife and I were expecting our first child, which was born in May 2011, and shortly after, my wife got pregnant with our second child. At 25 weeks of her pregnancy, my wife’s water broke. My son was born prematurely 3 weeks later and had to go into neonatal intensive care. Those following weeks and months defined my whole life thereafter.
Coming from a country that provides zero natural health support, I found myself facing a $1000 hospital bill every sunrise. How I hated these sunrises. By now, the company was dying, we were doing projects, but our accounts were empty.
For the first time, I started investigating and asking questions and trying to understand why. After much resistance, I was informed by our accountant that some strange activity was going on with our company accounts; all the projects were never won directly from our clients, but contracted through my partner’s company and subcontracted back to my company for slashed prices, less than our cost. In other words, my company was doing all the heavy lifting and main work, and my partner’s company was collecting all the profit.
I confronted my partner with the truth, and he did not deny it, he justified it, since all the clients and contacts came through him, he believed that he disserved the biggest cut of the profits.
I made the decision instantly to liquidate the company and stop the financial bleeding. Further investigation revealed more that my company owed $350,000 to local suppliers who hadn’t been paid for months.
Here I found myself in a situation with a sick wife in the hospital, a newborn baby in intensive care with a $1000 hospital bill every day, a one-year-old child who needed care, no job, and a dying business $350,000 in debt.
I wanted to scream, shout, curse, cry, even die, but no…
There was no time for all that, it was time to plan, think clearly, prioritize, and take my family and myself out of this deep hole.
I started with identifying the source of my debt and negotiating payment terms with all the suppliers. Fortunately, they were understanding, and my personal reputation in the market also helped me to reschedule my payments.
I contacted every person in my market and made sure that they knew I was in business and I was willing to do anything and everything related to engineering.
For the first month, I was Designing, technical writing, supervising, taking plumbing work, electrical work, land surveys… anything that I could lay my hands on. And money started flowing in. But now it was different; I was focused on all aspects of the business—financial, cash flow, sales, client relationships. I had no idea what I was doing, but I had to learn it, and I had to learn it fast.
I started generating enough money to pay the hospital, take care of my one-year-old, and pay some money back to the Debtors. After a couple of weeks, my wife was back home with my one-year-old, and my son was still in neonatal intensive care, fighting for every breath.
On the 45th morning, my son took his first breath on his own, it was a joyful day, and a sign that this could be done. Success does not just appear, but it gives you flashes and indications that you are on the right path.
I continued my daily struggles and fighting one battle at a time, and in September 2016, after five years, I paid off my last debtor, and I was debt free.
I took the remainder of 2016 as a recovery period, and started my second company in January 2017, my third in 2018, and my fourth in 2020.
Now I have multiple income streams coming from four companies, generating millions of dollars annually. Now my Son is healthy, he is running the businesses with me and learning to take over soon, Now I know that running a business needs much more than money and capital, I know the power of having the right people around me, I know that asking the right questions opens doors, and I know the advantage of a winning plan.
This is my story, and this is part of my experience.
Now a days, my business is self sustained and runs with out my daily supervision, my team take care of the daily hustle and bustle of the business, giving me the chance to pursue my main dream which is to help people and young entrepreneurs to start their own businesses from scratch and grow them to new successes.
How to start and grow your own business without the need for big initial capital or investors
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THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO PROMOTE INTO A MANAGERIAL POSITION
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