First thing first: I'm hosting a free live event later this month (!!!)

I'll be announcing the details in the next few letters. But here's what I can tell you now:

Stay subscribed. The details are dropping soon in sha Allah.

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On July 16th at 1PM ET, beehiiv is unveiling the next chapter for audience-led businesses.

For years, creators and brands have been forced to stitch together bloated stacks of tools just to publish content, grow an audience, and make money online.

Newsletters in one platform. Websites in another. Podcasts somewhere else. Analytics scattered everywhere.

beehiiv thinks there’s a better way. Now, they’re ready to show it off at their Summer Release Event.

Reserve your spot.

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I had a job most people would do anything for. Free breakfast, lunch, and even dinner if you stayed late. Access to 9-figure net worth individuals. Wardrobe stipend. Top of the line health insurance. A k*ller Manhattan view.

I quit.

Now I run social media brands, write this newsletter, and I'm building software that's going to change how Muslims think, work, and build businesses online. All praises to the Most High!

Some months I make less & some months I make more.

Every month, I own my time & output.

I never once wished I stayed. Well actually I was forced to go to the doctor the other day and not having that premium Cigna health insurance hurt just a tiny bit but there’s always a trade off.

If you went to school in the States I know you were forced to memorize "O say can you seeeee, by the dawn's earrrly light, what so prouuudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming…." before you could even tie your shoes. And I know you read it in that tune too. Land of the free. Home of the brave. I vaguely remember something about the California redwood trees too.

This July 4th weekend everyone’s off tmrw and the whole country's gonna BBQ, light or watch fireworks (lighting them is more fun), celebrate “freedom”, and enjoy(?) the heat wave weather. It’s 96 degrees right now at 8PM. Safe to say I am indeed sweating in my thin nose string black niqab while typing this but all is good for the next life.

90% of everyone “celebrating freedom” this weekend are going to be back at their desk on Monday morning answering to a boss (often times a kafir who doesn’t give two flying pigs about you). Is that really the true American dream? Nobody wants to admit to this because everyone got a stake in the current arrangement:

- Corporations need your labor.
- The government needs your income tax.
- The bank needs your 30-year mortgage.
- Your parents didn’t leave their entire lives back home for no reason.
- Your siblings went into debt to get a job after they graduated.
- Your uncle who did 40 years at the same job needs you to validate that his sacrifice was worth it.

The whole system is set up to make you feel like a 9-5 with health insurance is the goal. But I'm going to tell you what they don’t tell you and what you already kind of know:

No one is free in a 9-5.

Real freedom looks nothing like a paycheck.

Take it from someone who did the whole job stuff and the corporate life for almost a decade. If you look at the “American founders” for a second, the men who wrote the Declaration of Independence, they were: farmers. merchants, lawyers with their own practices, land owners, investors, printers who ran their own presses.

I say American founders with quotations because we know this land was stolen *cough cough.

They were all entrepreneurs before the word even existed. They owned their time, they owned their labor, they owned their output, and when the system got oppressive enough, they could walk away and build something new. It's ironic that 250 years later their descendants are lining up to celebrate with weiners before returning to the jobs that own them.

Now here's where it gets interesting for us.

The islamic world was way ahead of Thomas Jefferson on this.

The Prophet ﷺ was a merchant widely known as Al-Amin, the Trustworthy. Khadijah was one of the wealthiest merchants in Makkah. She hired the Prophet ﷺ as an agent to run her caravans. Abu Bakr was a cloth merchant. Uthman was a textile trader who was so wealthy he could fund entire armies out of his own pocket. Abdul-Rahman ibn Awf came to Madinah with nothing after Hijrah and became one of the richest men in Arabia. He began trading in butter, cheese, and horses. Zubair ibn al-Awwam was a trader and real estate investor. Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas was a merchant known for his skill in making arrows and weapons. May Allah be pleased with them all.

Look at the ten Companions the Prophet ﷺ personally guaranteed Paradise to. Almost every single one of them was self-employed.

And there's a famous saying although scholars note its chain is weak: "9/10 of rizq is in trade." Even scholars who say the specific wording is not authentically from the Prophet ﷺ, they agree the meaning is confirmed by the entire structure of the early Muslim economy. Trade has always yielded greater wealth distribution and financial independence than static wages or physical labor alone

When I say trade I do not mean Bitcoin and crypto. I don’t believe in fake currency. Real currency is in the raw tangible materials i.e. land, gold, crops, silver, etc.

P.S. I will never message. you online for trading, please don’t fall for the scammers using my name.

Trade means you own the thing you're offering and you exchange it directly with the person who wants it.

Writing is trade.
Teaching is trade.
Building software is trade.
Running a small business is trade.
Selling a book is trade.
Being a doctor with your own practice is trade.

None of these require a corporate parent letting you do them.

But let’s get one thing clear before you all attack me:

A job is not haram.

On the contrary I believe having a (halal) job is honorable and even required if you have dependents and no other option. The Prophet ﷺ himself worked as a shepherd before he was a merchant. Musa عليه السلام worked for his future wife’s father for 8-10 years.

But a job was never meant to be your identity. Your parents and the older generation came here and took jobs because they needed a foothold in a new country. That was necessary and honorable. You inheriting that mindset and dying in a cubicle 40 years later without ever questioning it… that’s a different story buddy. I find it hard to believe humans were designed to wake up at 7am, commute for an hour, stare at an Excel sheet until your eyes are red, come home too tired to play with your kids, cook a dinner half asleep, binge filthy tv shows, go to bed, and repeat it for the next 4 decades.

Especially since we have tools at our disposable akin to the internet being introduced in the 2000s.

Yeah, it’s crazy and exciting times we’re living in.

The job is supposed to be the runway but somewhere along the way we made it the destination.

HALAL WAYS TO QUIT YOUR JOB:

(1) Trade your skill directly instead of renting it out.

If you're a designer, take clients. If you're a writer, get paid to write. If you're a developer, take contracts. If you're an accountant, get your own book of clients.

It’s essentially the same skill as what you’re doing at your job but with a different arrangement. Instead of one employer paying you 30% of what your labor is actually worth, you keep 100% and sell it to whoever will pay for it. And if you ever get to the point where you have too many clients than you can handle, you can start hiring help and train them with your own skills and expertise. Now you have an agency. Ta da.

(2) Sell a digital product.

An e-book. A course. A planner. A software tool. Something you make once and sell to many people in your sleep.

I sell both digital products on my Stan Store and other Islamic physical products through eternah.com. I get to be a Muslim woman running faceless businesses that serves my ummah while paying my bills. Alhamdulillah x 1000000000.

(3) Build media.

Newsletter. Podcast. YouTube. Instagram. LinkedIn. or even TikTok (my least fav).

Attention is the new commodity. If you can build an audience of people who trust you, you can sell them almost anything (halal) and they will buy it. This letter you're reading right now is part of how I make my living. I write. You read. Sometimes you click something. Sometimes you buy something. Nobody is in between us. I made over $700 just through ads on my last email.

(4) Build software.

If you have any technical inclination (or even if you don't and you can hire someone who does) SaaS is one of the highest leverage businesses on earth. Build a tool people need. Charge $20/month. Get 500 people. That's $10,000/month for the rest of your life if nothing hits the fan. I'm actually in the process of building my own software right now. I'll tell you more about it in the live event I'm hosting later this month as mentioned before.

(5) Real estate.

Buy assets. Rent it out. Reinvest the profits. Eventually create a self-sustaining legacy that funds your vision. This has been the strategy of wealthy Muslims for 1,400 years. Uthman ibn Affan famously bought the well of Ruma from a Jewish merchant, made the water free for the community, and every deal he touched after that was blessed.

Just make sure your financing is halal and don’t ask me how - I delegate this task to the halal finance peeps.

(6) Ecommerce.

Sell physical products online. A book. A non-toxic candle. An organic material fashion line. A natural skincare line. A box of cookies. Build a brand around something you care about. The barrier to entry has never been lower. Shopify and TikTok Shop and Meta ads have made it possible for anyone with a phone to run a global business.

(7) Service business you own.

Own the cleaning company, don't be the cleaner.

Own the restaurant, don't be the waiter.

Own the tutoring business, don't be the tutor.

The person who owns the thing captures the value.
The person renting their time gets a wage.

NONE OF THIS IS EASY.

I am not one of those "quit your job and manifest abundance" gurus.

Every path above involves risk, discomfort, learning new skills, and years of grinding before it pays off.

But so does 40 years at a job you hate. That also involves years of grinding to climb the ladder, discomfort, keeping up with new company skills, and the pain of waking up at 7am everyday. My sister is a product manager at a highly successful firm and she was telling me how the company is now shoving AI down everyone’s throat. She doesn't have time to learn it because of her demanding role but there are people who are sacrificing their weekends to learn it.

The difference is at the end of it you own nothing.

Before I quit my last job, my manager told me he envied how I owned my asset of 100k followers on Instagram. I have over 1 million now. Say allahumma barik.

The truthful, trustworthy merchant will be with the Prophets, the truthful, and the martyrs." (Tirmidhi 1209) The Prophets. The truthful. The martyrs. AND THE MERCHANT.

That's the companionship you get to have on the Day of Judgement if you build something honest with your own hands.

Independence Day means one thing to the country.

But for me the true independence is the freedom to build something Allah is pleased with, on your own terms, without someone breathing down your neck if you don’t log in at 9:30am.

You don't need to start or quit anything now but I hope this letter got some of the juices flowing.

My live event will help you get there in sha Allah.

Until next time.

مع حبي (with love)

Saufiyah ♡