The thread runs through all of it

Kingsgrove, Sydney

The kid who froze

Primary school. A speech in front of the class that did not survive contact with my nerves. I remember the heat in my face more than the words I forgot. Nobody in that room, least of all me, would have picked public speaking as the thing my life would be built on. Remember that detail. It matters later.

South Lebanon

Two worlds

My family moved between Australia and Lebanon, and so did I. Three years in the south as a kid gave me the language, the land and the long Thursday nights of du'a with my father above a furniture shop in Arncliffe when we returned. I grew up translating between two worlds. It turns out that is a skill.

Sydney, high school

Finding my voice

A mentor pushed me to recite in front of three people at a Thursday gathering. Then a community play cast me as the messenger from Medina to Karbala, and the shy kid found out an audience is just people you have not served yet. By Year 12 I was quietly certain about something I had told almost no one: I was not going to be a dentist.

Karbala, Iraq

The sign

Seventeen, accepted into medical science, standing between the shrine of Imam Hussein and the shrine of Abbas. I asked for a sign. That night a scholar in our group put his arm around my shoulder, unprompted, and said: you would make an amazing talab al-ilm. A seeker of knowledge. I broke down on the spot. The debate was over.

The seminary, Lebanon

The making

I announced it to my whole extended family and it went about as well as you would expect: an Australian kid trading a degree for a seminary that paid fifty dollars a month. I told them I would sell my phone, my bed and my clothes before I asked anyone to carry me. Five years of twelve-hour days followed. Arabic until I was the one teaching it to the Western students. Theology, jurisprudence, ethics. Brotherhood measured in sixty-hour conversations. And summers back in Sydney labouring on job sites to fund it all. The seminary did not just teach me, it shaped who I am as a character.

Bellfield College, 2022 to 2024

The mentor

Life brought me home with heavier bags than I left with, and rebuilding was slower than any highlight reel would show. Coaching and NLP had already been my trade for years. From 2022 to 2024 it had a home: mentoring students at Bellfield College, boys who reminded me of the kid who froze. Alongside it, years of NDIS support work, showing up for people on their hardest ordinary days. In 2023, still at Bellfield, I registered Intelligent Solutions Agency, because I could see what AI was about to do to ordinary work and nobody around me was building for it yet.

Sydney, 2024

A movement for the young

In 2024 I started Miraj Scouts Academy, a program to give young people what the community rooms of my own childhood gave me: structure, brotherhood, standards, and something real to belong to. It grew into something bigger than scouting, and in 2026 it became MSA Youth Academy, where I lead the Scouts initiative today. This is the work closest to my heart. I am building for the kid who froze giving a speech, because I know what one mentor and one room can do for him.

Str8n Up, 2024 to 2025

The practice

In 2024 I left Bellfield and went all in on the human work: Str8n Up, my own personal and professional development practice under AYM Industries. Executives, business owners, schools, and the conversations people avoid having with themselves. ISA took a back seat for those two years, and they turned out to be the years I learnt to build with AI: systems for the scouts academy, for my own business, for friends who needed something real and could not afford an agency. That is where I learnt what it can and cannot carry.

Sydney, 2025 onwards

The builder

When AI could finally build properly, I did not come at it as an engineer. I came at it as someone who had spent a decade learning how people actually change, and had already spent two years building with it for the people around him. Intelligent Solutions Agency came back to the front and started shipping real systems for real Sydney businesses: surveyors, brokers, clinics, builders, law practices.

AAA Accelerator, 2025 to 2026

The room

In 2025 I joined Liam Ottley's AAA Accelerator, the program behind a lot of the serious AI agencies coming out of this wave. It put me in rooms with people building at a scale I had only watched on YouTube, and gave ISA a standard to build to rather than guess at. The photos are from the Sydney meetup on the harbour, October 2025, with Liam and Josh Brown, the two founders. I went in as the coach among the engineers. It turned out to be a useful seat.

With Liam Ottley and Josh Brown, founders of the AAA Accelerator, and the room. Sydney Harbour, 11 October 2025.

Today

The thread

A wife I am building a life with, three kids by September insha'Allah, a business, a youth movement, a minbar in Muharram, and a book taking shape called The Thread. Different rooms, one job: build people, then build what they need. The kid who froze gives lectures now. That is not my achievement. That is what a sign, a family, and twenty years of mentors do to a person.