IAM904- Entrepreneur Helps People Turn Ideas into Online Businesses

00:00 - 00:16

Odeh Ahwal: For fresh entrepreneurs, I would say, never trade your time for money. Know your worth, your strength points, and start capitalizing on that. You should accept the fact that you need to put in the hard work and invest. And when I say invest, I mean your time and money.

00:30 - 00:44

Intro: To a long, long, long interview. If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I Am CEO podcast.

00:45 - 00:45

Odeh Ahwal: Hello, hello, hello.

00:45 - 00:54

Gresham Harkless: This is Gresh from the IMCO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Odeh Bassam of AECOMDIMES.com. Odeh, it's awesome to have you on

00:54 - 00:57

Odeh Ahwal: the show. Hello, Gresh, so glad to be here.

00:57 - 01:25

Gresham Harkless: Definitely, super excited to have you on and it's gonna be an awesome show. And before we jump in, I want to read a little bit more about Odei so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. And Odei, an entrepreneur who's holding a BA in finance and banking, a former bartender turned into a multiple six-figure online seller, affiliate market and accomplished blogger. And over the last 5 and a half years, he has refined his approach to digital marketing to be as fast and efficient as possible. Now he shares his best secrets with us.

01:25 - 01:27

Gresham Harkless: So, Dey, are you ready to speak to the IM CEO community?

01:28 - 01:30

Odeh Ahwal: Yeah, I'm ready. Awesome. Well, Let's

01:31 - 01:41

Gresham Harkless: do it then. So to kind of kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit, hear a little bit more on how you got started. Could you take us through what I call your CEO story? We'll let you get started with all the awesome work you're doing.

01:41 - 02:17

Odeh Ahwal: Yeah, sure. Well, back in time to 2014, I guess, when I used to work as a full-time bartender. I remember there were some months that I had worked over 300 hours a month, which is insane. Deep down, I knew that I was meant for something better. Until 1 day I decided to draw a line in the sand and say enough is enough. It didn't take me long to realize that the internet will keep evolving. I quit and I started dimming my toe in the digital world, dropshipping precisely. I failed hard and I've almost lost my shirt

02:17 - 02:57

Odeh Ahwal: trying to figure things out. From that point, I knew that I could be doing better. I knew that I was meant for something better. Aaron, they have flatter. I don't know exactly. I was able to finally crack the code of the online game and have been making a living online ever since. Working for myself has given me the space for improving and the flexibility that everyone dreams of. So basically I've started the Ecomdianus community with a mission, a mission to help people worry less about money and provide wealth for their families by creating online businesses.

02:59 - 03:08

Gresham Harkless: Nice, I Absolutely love and appreciate that. And for people that may not be as familiar with drop shipping, could you tell us a little bit more about that and how exactly that works?

03:09 - 03:28

Odeh Ahwal: Yeah, exactly. Drop shipping is a fulfillment method in which you sell other people's product, having them ship and fulfill the orders for your customers. So you basically act as a middleman between the service provider or which the supplier or the end consumer.

03:29 - 03:38

Gresham Harkless: Nice. And I definitely appreciate you for expounding upon that. Yeah, so many times if you want to start a business or you want to be able to maybe not have all the items on hand, you're able to use.

03:38 - 03:39

Odeh Ahwal: Yeah, exactly.

03:39 - 03:57

Gresham Harkless: Yeah, methods like drop shipping, where they take care of the all, if not a lot of, if not all the fulfillment for you. Perfect, perfect. And I know that's a little bit, you know, of what you do to kind of help support, you know, the clients that you work with. Could you tell us a little bit more about how that works and what you do to kind of help support them and what we can find on your site?

03:58 - 04:33

Odeh Ahwal: Sure, EcomDimes is a blog and online community that talks about various ways of making money from the internet. We publish well-researched and thorough articles about different business models and money-making opportunities to help our readers not just drive extra cash to their pockets, but also to create a living from the comfort of their home and the reward of being their own boss. Recently I released the Econ Dimes Drop Servicing Blueprint that teaches all the secrets of the new edge startup called Drop Servicing this time. By the time for those who are not familiar with the name, drop

04:33 - 04:47

Odeh Ahwal: servicing is a business model whereby you sell other people's services online without the need to provide them by yourself. So it's similar to drop shipping, but instead of selling physical products, You would be selling digital products.

04:49 - 05:14

Gresham Harkless: Nice. I absolutely love that. I hadn't actually heard of, you know, that term before, but it makes so much sense because as you said, you know, in the very beginning when you were thinking about and working those, you know, 300 hours in a month, you started to look into the online world and you saw that it was going to continue to evolve. There are going to continue to be opportunities there. So you decided to double down on that. And it sounds like your site has loads of information to help out with that.

05:15 - 05:16

Odeh Ahwal: Yeah. Yeah.

05:16 - 05:27

Gresham Harkless: Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. And so I wanted to ask you now for what I call your secret sauce. And this could be for yourself or your business or a combination of both. But what do you feel kind of sets you apart or makes you unique?

05:29 - 06:04

Odeh Ahwal: This is a great question, actually. As Econ Dimes, we help people turn their ideas into real online businesses without breaking the bank. For me personally, I'm a true believer that the more you give, the more you receive because no 1 has ever become poor by giving, right? As I started helping others build their online businesses, I saw them go from being stuck in the red trace, working a 9 to 5 job, feeling trapped and just unexcited to living a life full of complete freedom. That really gave me a sense of urgency and fulfillment. You know that

06:04 - 06:28

Odeh Ahwal: satisfaction that I'm talking about, right? Absolutely. Yeah, this mentality is obviously reflected in my blog and my newly released blueprint. Frankly, I've seen people selling a similar drop servicing information product for a thousand bucks and they are not as thorough as mine, not even close. Currently the course is available for a 50% early bird discount, which is for 297.

06:32 - 06:54

Gresham Harkless: Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, I appreciate you for making that available and being able to kind of, definitely, provide all that knowledge and that information there. And also for people that may not be familiar with affiliate marketing, and unless something that you've been able to do to grow, could you tell us a little bit more about that as well too, so that we have a little bit more of an idea of the different ways by which you can kind of create that business?

06:55 - 07:26

Odeh Ahwal: Exactly, affiliate marketing actually a method, a marketing technique in which, in which you sell others, people, products and services and get compensated or paid commission by referring them to the company. So for example, if someone make an action on a website, you get paid. It may be a lead, a sale, a purchase or whatever it is. So I basically bid to bring business to those companies.

07:27 - 07:55

Gresham Harkless: Yeah, absolutely. And I'm glad you broke that down as well too, because I think it speaks to what you mentioned as far as your secret sauce, to be able to build and start a business without having to, I guess, get all the money in the world or mortgage your house or do all those things where sometimes we have that misconception about the only way to grow a business is to take a line of credit or take a loan. But a lot of times it's like you said, being that connector, having that opportunity between knowing and finding

07:55 - 08:20

Gresham Harkless: the person that wants to buy a certain product or service, and then the company or organization that wants to sell that service and basically creating that connection and that opportunity for that transaction to happen. Exactly. Awesome, awesome, awesome. And so I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

08:21 - 08:40

Odeh Ahwal: Sure. A couple of months ago, a friend of mine introduced me to what's so-called the Pomodoro technique, which is a time management method that breaks down the work into intervals. Each 25 minutes of focused work is separated by a short 5 minutes break. Did you know about it or am I the only 1 here who lives under a rock?

08:41 - 08:47

Gresham Harkless: No, no, I heard a little bit about it. I don't know it as well. So you said it's 25 minutes and then you have a break in between.

08:47 - 09:15

Odeh Ahwal: Exactly, 5 minutes break after each 25 minutes of work. Yeah, it was new to me. And when I started implementing it, I felt more productive, more focused and even smarter. The problem for many people, and me included for sure, is that they race against the clock to finish assignments and meet deadlines. The Pomodoro technique teaches you how to work with time instead of struggling against it.

09:17 - 09:37

Gresham Harkless: Nice, yeah. I love that phrase that you said, you know, work with time instead of against it because it almost gives me the vision of a lot of times we have to we try to swim against the stream, so to speak, and instead of going with it and understanding like the natural tendencies of time, natural human tendencies, it sounds like the Pomodoro techniques all taps into.

09:38 - 09:39

Odeh Ahwal: Yeah.

09:41 - 09:53

Gresham Harkless: Awesome, awesome, awesome. So I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be a word of wisdom or piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client or if you happened to a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

09:55 - 10:28

Odeh Ahwal: Sure. For fresh entrepreneurs, I would say never trade your time for money. Know your worth, your strength points and start capitalizing on that. You should accept the fact that you need to put in the hard work and invest. And when I say invest, I mean your time and money. Yes, it's going to be a tough journey. For sure it's not easy, but totally worth it. Be willing to invest in yourself and your business and just get in the right mindset of doing the hard work today and claim the rewards tomorrow. It's not a hit-and-run kind of

10:28 - 10:48

Odeh Ahwal: stuff. It's a journey. It's a process in which you will be rewarded for your hard work. And for business owners will for from a digital marketer standpoint, don't ever become obsessed about your product or your company. The only thing that you should be obsessed about are your customers. They are the blood of your business.

10:50 - 11:21

Gresham Harkless: Nice, I love that last point especially, because you speak to a point that I think sometimes we forget where we're often so passionate about what it is that we do, and we're even passionate about what we've created. And we fall in love with that. And we sometimes forget or lose sight of why we've even created that. And a lot of times that's to solve whatever problem, to serve the clientele or the client base that we're hoping to serve. And I think that when we get so attached to the how or the what, maybe it might be

11:21 - 11:31

Gresham Harkless: a better way to say it, we lose track of exactly how to pivot and how to change and how to evolve when business life and all the things around us can evolve and change.

11:32 - 11:32

Odeh Ahwal: Exactly.

11:34 - 11:45

Gresham Harkless: Awesome, awesome, Awesome. And so I want to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote unquote CEOs on the show. So, Oday, what does being a CEO mean to you?

11:46 - 12:08

Odeh Ahwal: Well, I believe that being a CEO is a heavy, heavy responsibility towards yourself, your business, your family, and your future, and also towards others. Also, it's a journey in which you find yourself. Better know your personality, your style, your ethics. It gives you power, trust, and will teach you the art of patience. And this is the most important thing here.

12:10 - 12:37

Gresham Harkless: Absolutely. And I think that as you kind of talked about, you know, in the nugget, understanding and realizing that things aren't really built in a day, but if you're really, I guess, mission driven and you're really trying to provide something that helps support the client, you understand it is a marathon. It does take time. You do have to plant those seeds and those seeds can blossom into really awesome and phenomenal businesses and ventures like you've been able to do and like you help so many people do. So I definitely appreciate you for doing that. Thank you.

12:38 - 12:55

Gresham Harkless: Awesome, awesome, awesome. And Oday, truly appreciate that and I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do was just pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best they can get a hold of you and find out about the book you have and all the awesome things that you and your team are working

12:55 - 13:30

Odeh Ahwal: on. Sure, I really enjoyed being on here and for the opportunity to talk to you. Well, as I mentioned in the last section of the Econ Dynastrop Servicing blueprint, having a business is like playing chess. You always have to think 3 steps ahead and analyze your moves to win. No 1 succeeds by expecting a checkmate to fall into their grasp. You have to think long term and have a clear vision of where you want to be in the future. Not everything will be according to your plan because there are always going to be other factors that

13:30 - 13:46

Odeh Ahwal: can take you off for sure. That's it. I would like to invite people to my new course which is totally beneficial for everyone who wants to start an online business and it's currently on a 50% discount.

13:48 - 13:56

Gresham Harkless: Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, I definitely appreciate you Oday for making that available. And you have that available and getting in contact with you at ecomdimes.com, right?

13:57 - 13:58

Odeh Ahwal: Yeah, ecomdimes.com.

13:59 - 14:28

Gresham Harkless: Okay, Perfect, perfect. So we'll have the LinkedIn information in the show notes as well too. But I appreciate that last reminder because I think it's so important that we can think and be strategic about our business and the steps that we're taking just as you mentioned, like we are, the chess piece is on a chess board. And when we start to approach those things in a strategic way, the world really opens up tremendously and so do our business opportunities as well. So I appreciate you again for arming us and so many people with the tools and

14:28 - 14:35

Gresham Harkless: information on how to do that and in different ways that we can do that from a digital standpoint. Of course, I appreciate your time and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

14:35 - 15:04

Outro: Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.