Nobody can tell you how to make money.

I know that's a strange way to open a letter that's supposedly about making money.

And it's the first thing you have to internalize before I can be useful to you.

There are a billion ways to exchange value for currency and all of them work. All of them have made someone rich. But none of them will make you rich just because they made someone else rich.

Your provision is written for you specifically before you were born.

The angel is sent to the womb at 120 days and instructed with 4 things: your provision, your lifespan, your deeds, and whether you'll be blessed or wretched. (Bukhari 3208, Muslim 2643)

Every dollar you will ever earn in this life has been assigned to you by Allah and your job is not to hunt it down like it's playing hide and seek. Peek a boo. You must design a life with the vehicle Allah is using to send it to you. That vehicle is different for every single person. Figuring this out is an incredibly intimate process because you need to get to know yourself on a deep level.

If you just keep focusing on the next big thing, you will eventually be kicked off the ship. I’ve seen it happen again and again (especially with ENTP personality types who get bored and want the next new toy every few months).

This is The Modern Merchant playbook.

P.S. I just launched The Faceless Million where you can learn how to build a profitable brand without showing your face. It’s 50% off right now and you get the new Starter Toolkit immediately. Get it here.

But read this letter first and decide if building a faceless brand actually fits you.

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This newsletter is inspired by an article I read on X last week shared by a random account and he said it was by a guy who goes by BB. I agreed with most and adding things from my experience of building businesses.

This is a process all the big Muslim brands have gone through whether consciously or subconsciously but never put it into words because it doesn’t make them money.

Instead the people on your feed are telling you "run an arbritrage agency and make $10k/month" or "SaaS is where all the money is" or "become a copywriter and quit your job in 90 days" or "start a personal brand” or “sell digital products and quit the 9-5”.

They’re either:

None of them know your nature or personality or your life experiences or what Allah gave you to work with.

Only you can figure that out.

And you figure it out by looking inward.

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Allah made you exactly the way you are for a reason.

Every person is facilitated toward what he was created for. (Bukhari 4949, Muslim 2647)

The way you are meant to make money and earn a living is not random. It's tuned to your specific wiring. The things you're naturally good at, the topics you can't stop thinking about, the thing you can talk forever about, the skills that come easier to you than to other people… these are not accidents.

They are the map.

Look at the pattern.

Everyone has a path they lean towards naturally.

Here are The Modern Merchant principles to make this process work:

Principle #1: you have to actually enjoy it.

If you don't enjoy the process at some level, you will not get good at it. If you don't get good at it, you won't make money. Let me tell you how I learned this the hard way.

I went into accounting in college because that's what my dad did and because it was safe and because I liked numbers and because everyone around me was choosing a vehicle - a college degree - and betting on getting a job from that college degree. Looking back at it now, it's laughable, but at that time it felt like the only way as an 18-year-old stepping foot into university for the first time without any more high school bell rings. I did a few accounting internships. And at every single one of them, I would fall asleep at my desk. I was so bored that I could feel my brain deteriorating. I’m too smart for this. I was in a box and it was slowly killing me. Deep down I knew I was not going to be the best at this because I do not like it. I have this trait where I need to be the best at everything I do. I've been competitive since I was a young girl. I guess thanks to my parents who would yell at me for getting a 96 on exams… It's like my subconscious knew it before my conscious did that this path was not it. If you're someone who likes being told what to do and following a course or rules, working inside a structure someone else builds, accounting might be your dream job. There is a personality type for that. There's nothing wrong with it. It just wasn't me, so I switched. I got a math degree. Alhamdulillah, it was the best decision that I could have made at that time because I am really freaking good at math and I really freaking enjoy it. That combo is what got me through advanced calculus classes with straight A's essentially killing the class curves of 50s.

Why is it really important to do something you enjoy? Before you hit any real success in the dunya, your patience is going to be tested. Your money is going to be tested, your confidence is going to be tested, your family is going to think you're crazy, and your bank accounts might hit zero more than once. If you are having fun with it, you're going to find the whole thing so interesting that you're going to keep pushing through.

If you're not having fun with what you're doing, you're probably not going to make it. You're going to have to put in at least 1,000 hours. You're going to have to solve problems that no one ever taught you how to solve and you're going to have to be able to wake up after Fajr and go straight into it. Otherwise you're just building another 9-to-5 for yourself except now you're the boss and you're mad at yourself.

Imagine two people racing to build the same business. Person A drags themselves out of bed, they meditate, they make coffee, they read a book, they do everything they can besides doing the actual work and opening their laptop. Person B jumps out of bed after Fajr because they cannot wait to work on this thing. Person A doesn't stand a chance, not one chance.

As long as your work is intellectually stimulating and it feeds any creativity that you have, that's all you need. It doesn't have to make you smile every morning. It just has to keep pulling you back to it.

Principle #2: Use the process of elimination.

This is one of the first things teachers tell you to do during the Regents (New York State exams).

Every model works but theres a specific set of vehicles that will get you and only you there faster because they fit your personal wiring. So we have to look inwards first. I recommend everyone to take an MBTI personality test as a starting point. Then list your traits, your likes, and your dislikes.

I found this insanely useful. A few things I like doing:

A few things I don’t like:

Just by listing this out I already know a few vvehicles not for me:

Cold calling / sales. I don't want to talk to people at all let alone “convince” them to buy over the phone.

Accounting. Too much of a box.

Trading. Too slow and analytical for my nature, need constant novel input.

Agency model. Selling to and managing clients drains me.

And I lived through what happens when you don't listen to your own wiring.

I lost over $150,000 trying to be a trader. If I had done this exercise 5 years ago and been honest with myself, I would have crossed "day trading" off the list before I ever opened an account on Robinhood. Same with the agency model. I tried it. I don't like selling and I don't like managing clients who feel like my boss. I quit.

So what was left?

E-commerce. Creative. I can work mostly alone. Building systems is a huge part of it. That became Eternah.

Copywriting / writing. Social media and this letter you're reading right now.

Design. Same nature as writing but different output. My aesthetic reels with my own b-roll. Eternah posts (est. 2020) - many of the design trends you see today started with what we were creating years ago.

That's my lane. But it took me a few years and $150K in tuition paid to figure it out.

If you can’t figure it out yet that’s fine. You just need to dig a little deeper and you’re probably going to make more wrong decisions before you find the right one. I made a lot of wrong decisions. I remember paying $3,000 for a Big Data course and they promised to help you get a $200,000 starting salary job guaranteed so I jumped in. Halfway through the course I realized I hated this. It was so annoying to be forced to be skilled in something so specific and so narrow (re: accounting should have been my sign). I quit haldway. The $3,000 was gone but I saved myself decades of that life.

Sometimes the vehicle is just not for you.

You have to be honest with yourself about it fast. Do not try to force it.

Principle #3: There are a billion business models but a specific one for you.

Reverse engineer your business model. A lot of the most profitable modern businesses don't fit into the traditional boxes because now (1) we have AI, (2) we have social media, (3) we have global e-commerce infrastructure, (4) we have distribution channels that didn't exist 5 years ago.

You can reverse-engineer.

Take something you love and ask: how can I make money doing this?

That's basically how Eternah was born. I wanted Islam, design, aesthetics, creativity, and systems. Nobody had built the exact company I wanted to shop from. So I built it.

You can do the same friend.

“Just build the islamic company you want to work for.” -Saufiyah Ali.

Now for the exercise.

Get a notebook. Yes, a real one with an actual paper and pen. Not the Notes app on your phone.

Write these down:

(1) What am I naturally good at that people compliment me on?

(2) What could I talk about for 4 hours without getting bored?

(3) What do people ask me for help with even when I don't offer?

(4) What did I love doing as a kid before adults told me to stop?

(5) What am I already better at than 80% of the people I know?

(6) What skills have I built that took years to develop?

(7) What are my biggest weaknesses? (Just as important because this eliminates paths.)

(8) Do you want to eventually sell this company or something you want to keep and pass down to your kids?

(9) Do you have any unfair advantages? (i.e. connections, wealth, attractiveness, resources, digital assets, community, time)

Then narrow the options.

Cross out anything that requires skills or traits you don't have. If you hate math, don't force yourself into finance. If you hate people, don't force yourself into sales.

Then look at what's left.

Ask yourself:

(1) Is the industry I want to go into growing or stagnating or dying?

(2) How much money to I actually want to make each month?

(3) How much money am I willing to lose trying to make this work?

(4) Would I be proud to answer to Allah about how I earned this money?

That last question is the filter most business content skips.

But truth be told, it's the only one that matters long-term.

After you sit with these questions, you should have a pretty clear picture of two or three vehicles you could actually be great at. Or at minimum, better at than the average person.

Now for the fun part.

Turn the dream into math (sorry number haters but you can’t escape math in money)

Btw this whole exercise should take you 3 days and not 3 months.

You're just trying to get an initial snowball rolling down the mountain. You will tweak later or better yet you'll probably even change the whole vehicle at some point. That's normal.

The point right now is MOVEMENT.

Let me show you what math looks like.

Say you want to make an extra $3,000/month.

You decide you're going to sell a $30 digital product. Could be a guide. A custom GPT. A workbook. A course. Doesn't matter what, for the math, it's a $30 product.

$3,000 ÷ $30 = 100 sales per month.

100 sales ÷ 30 days = around 3-4 sales a day.

Now what does it take to get 3-4 sales a day?

Let's say you're using organic social media to drive traffic (no ads yet).

Average click-through from a social post to your product page hovers around 1-2%.

Let's do 2% to be generous.

Say your product page converts at 3% (which is decent for a $30 offer with real proof).

4 sales ÷ 3% conversion rate = 130 visitors to your product page per day.

130 visitors ÷ 2% click-through = 6,500 impressions per day.

That's 6,500 people seeing your content daily just to make 4 sales.

Sounds crazy but that's the math.

And it means you also need to be building an email list because organic social alone can take a while to work.

Let's say 1% of the people who see your content opt into your email list. That's 65 new subscribers a day. That list is going to become your actual asset over time. You email that list 1-3 times a week. Every (good quality) email drives more eyes to your landing page.

So the goal isn't "make $3k/month."

The goal is: post enough content on social to hit 6,500 impressions a day, capture 1% of that onto email, and email the list consistently.

That's a real problem you can solve.

And once you hit $3k/month?

You hire a VA. Someone overseas like in Brazil, Colombia, Egypt, Morocco, India, South Africa, Philippines, Pakistan. You can start them at $5-8/hour for 20 hours a week. That's $400-$640/month.

They take over the social posting so you get to free up a lot of time.

Now the social media grind is off your plate and you have time to build the next thing.

You went from "how do I make $3K/month" to "how do I post the right content, 3 times a day, to hit 6,500 impressions."

Every big goal breaks down into a “boring” checklist if you do the math.

Most people never to do the math and stay in the dream stage forever.

Don't be like them.

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The Prophet ﷺ was the greatest man to ever walk the earth. He ﷺ led a community, taught his Companions, received delegations, resolved disputes, organized expeditions, negotiated treaties, managed the affairs of Madinah and carried the responsibility of conveying Islam. And he ﷺ still had time to eat with his Companions, play with his grandchildren, spend time with his wives, sleep and worship Allah.

(P.S. the secret is Tahajjud and recitation)

Your work is supposed to fit around your religion ok not the other way around.

So build the business.

Grind when it’s time because you will have to put in WORK (not going to sugar coat this part).

But never at the cost of:

Slowly killing yourself to get there faster doesn't make your wealth come any faster.

"The one who runs after what is already written for him will only exhaust himself, and it will still only reach him in the amount and at the time Allah decreed."

Translation: chill out, do the work, trust the Provider.

One last thing.

The reason most people never actually pick what they want to do is not that they don't know how but rather because they wait for certainty before they start.

There is no certainty.

You will pick something. You will try it. You will hate parts of it. You will change direction. You will fail. You will pivot. You will fail again. You will find something that clicks. You will build.

There are years of nothing then a few weeks does the work of years.

Your job is just to show up until that happens.

If you want to fast track it get The Faceless Million here.

P.S. I'm hosting a free live event next month where I'll walk through exactly how I built Eternah (600k+) and my personal brand (1.4M+) with a heavy emphasis on the Muslim entrepreneur playbook people don’t teach. I'm also launching my software (!!!). I hope I can finish this month.

I had to push it because of health reasons (if you saw my IG stories you have a gist).

Alhamdulillah.

Illness is a destination towards God.

مع حبي (with love)

— Saufiyah ♡