The Humbling Hustle #3

This Week’s Successes

• Shipped out our first 5 FBM orders.

• Sent more SKUs to Amazon.

• Completed and revised the outline for my Law Review article.

• Worked out everyday.

This Week in General

This week felt like a good reset. After Eid I had more energy than usual and just wanted to be productive. The “alright, let’s get things done” feeling. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday were focused on our Amazon business. We made decent progress and started figuring out a better flow and got a lot of groundwork for future plans. I also went to the gym every day and the soreness definitely reminded me I have been slacking. But it felt good to be back.

On Tuesday and Thursday I spent the whole day at university. I did not go to all of my classes but being on campus helped me stay productive. I rotated between the library and the outdoor tables and I realized I cannot sit in one place for too long. Every 30 minutes or so I had to get up, walk around, or stretch a bit to reset.

I ended up doing a lot of family errands this week like cooking, groceries, and even some gardening. This weeks errands were actually fun as I worked on our flower bed aerated the grass, planted flowers, cooked roast beef and turkey sandwiches, and started the car collection on my wall. (pictures at the end)

One thing I noticed though is that when I have too much free time and no plan I just end up on my phone. I use a physical to-do list right now but I am thinking of switching to a system I can access anywhere so I am not just winging it and doing whatever my mind tells me to do next.

Also I got kind of obsessed with cars and chess this week. I learned how to use the manual mode on mine and spent way too much time watching car content on Instagram. I also studied openings for chess and played like hundreds of games online. No regrets.

Overall it was a solid week.

This Week’s Business Ideas

This week I wanted to talk about a new unicorn tech company I saw online called Whop. It’s really interesting and a lot of people like Iman Gadhzi and The Digital Social Hour Podcast have invested in it.

It’s basically a free platform where people can make money and sell digital products. Their social media pages are full of testimonials after testimonials of people earning sustainable income from this app and that got me intrigued.

Apparently, the average Whop creator makes about 9,000 dollars a month. I was especially interested because there wasn’t a post that completely outlined what the app was exactly.

So I did some research. I created an account, more to know how all of it works than to start making money off of it. I looked into the reasons why Iman decided to invest so much in this company.

Whop is a digital marketplace that connects creators with people looking for online products like courses, communities, templates, and software tools. It is designed to make the process of selling and buying digital products simple and fast, with a strong focus on user experience.

On the creator side, Whop offers tools to build and manage digital storefronts, handle payments, and deliver products automatically. For buyers, it provides a central place to explore a wide variety of offerings across different interests, from business and productivity to lifestyle and tech.

The platform has gained traction for being especially creator-friendly and for making it easier to monetize knowledge or digital skills. Instead of building a full website or managing complex systems, users can launch and scale their digital businesses from one place.

Whop also includes built-in analytics, subscription management, and access control, making it a practical choice for anyone looking to grow a digital product or community.

After opening an account with them, personally I thought it was quite confusing to use as I did not know how to start. Mostly I saw accounts of creators on the platform offering money to people who clip their long-form content into short-form content to make them go viral and pay them 100 bucks for a certain amount of views.

The creator offers the Whop users a course on how to make clips go viral and then provides them with clips they can use to start. The Whop creator benefits and the user gets a little cash. I think it kinda resembles a pyramid scheme, but at the same time, there is no cost to the clipper until he gets paid (Whop takes a cut).

I’m excited to see where this goes, but will not take part in this platform yet until it develops a little more maybe.

This Week’s Reading

This week I read Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kayosaki. The book compares two different mindsets around money and success.

His “Poor Dad” (his real dad) followed the traditional path like getting good grades, landing a safe job, and saving money.

His “Rich Dad” (his friend’s dad) thought differently. He focused on building assets, financial education, and making money work for you.

The book challenges a lot of what we’re taught about money growing up and pushes for financial independence through education and smart risks.

My favorite line in the book was,

It’s the same lesson that was in the The Richest Man in Babylon, yet the way Mr. Kayosaki developed a stronger urgency and modern examples helped me understand the concept of making money work for you better.

What really hit me was the importance of financial education. Like, we’re in school learning so many things, but no one really teaches you how to manage money, invest, or even just understand taxes. Kiyosaki talks about how being financially smart is more powerful than just working hard.

As a college student trying to get into both business and law, that lesson really changed how I see things. Now I’m more focused on learning how money actually works, not just how to make it. Whether I’m building a business or planning out my career, having that financial foundation gives me way more confidence. It’s like a cheat code most people don’t even realize they need.

This Week’s Academics

My editors are so much smarter than me, it’s crazy.

I’ve always thought I was a good debater and could build an argument that landed well. But when I turned in my outline last week, their feedback humbled me real quick. Turns out what I thought was clear and persuasive… wasn’t really either.

They pointed out things like the difference between the premises, assumptions, and conclusions I made just in my thesis and how it would be contradictory to prove everything I tried to fit into my thesis. I was basically burdening myself with more arguments than I should have been.

My topic is about social media and how its engagement drive algorithms are curated to further divide and radicalize factionalism in our country and the legal and regulatory implications of that. The burdens of my argument before the changes were:

• Undermining democratic stability is bad.

• New media platforms actively shaping political divisions is bad.

• The legally significant consequences (misinformation, liability, and algorithmic accountability) are bad.

• Regulatory intervention will stop new media from undermining democratic stability, shaping political decisions, and from having the legally significant consequences.

• Engagement driven-models of new media platforms actively foster political factionalism in ways that undermine democratic stability.

• Unlike traditional media, new media platforms actively shape political divisions instead of reflecting them.

• The engagement-driven models and algorithmic curation of new media platforms have legally significant consequences such as misinformation, liability, and algorithmic accountability.

Arguing all of these things would distract from the main idea and if one of these arguments fails then the whole paper falls apart. So all of the thinking I did about how I could argue this was based on premises and assumptions I had the burden of proving first.

It’s like arguing that everyone should love coffee just because you can’t start your day without it, without considering that some people might not enjoy it.

It made me realize how much sharper and tighter my writing can be.

After trying my best to fix everything I could on my own (which took about 2 hours) I was still stuck on some of the suggestions they made, so I texted my staff editor, asking her a few questions.

The questions I had were very advanced in my opinion. I personally thought I cooked. But, the way she so succinctly explained to me in so little time how exactly to fix my problem or find the solution was actually so humbling. She gave me examples with proof and everything, all while she said she was at work.

It’s frustrating, yeah, but also kind of exciting. Looking at your seniors, kinda gives you a path on where you are supposed to reach in a few years inshallah. Iron sharpens iron, and I can feel myself getting better just by going through this process. Definitely grateful to be learning from people who know their stuff.

This Week’s Struggles

I was having trouble sleeping this week. I don’t know why. Usually, once I put my phone away I’m out pretty quick, but lately it’s been more like a quiet wrestling match between me and my thoughts.

I think I might attribute it to the mess up of my sleep schedule in Ramadan, but I can’t go to sleep before 12AM and it’s taking a toll on everything else. I can’t wake up for fajr, even though I didn’t miss a single day in Ramadan, I miss the first few hours of the day, and I don’t feel well-rested when I wake up.

It made me realize how much rest actually impacts everything else. When I don’t sleep well, I notice it in how I talk to people, how sharp I am with work, and how easily distracted I get.

This week wasn’t bad overall. Just a reminder that getting stuff done doesn’t have to mean running on empty. Honestly, solid sleep might be the most underrated productivity trick out there.

This Week’s Quote

This Week’s Pictures