His Job Gave Him Four Weeks a Year. He Spent Seven on Umrah.

I want you to hold two numbers in your head.

Four. And seven.

Four is the number of weeks of annual leave Hamzah's job allowed him per year. That was the maximum amount of his own life he was permitted to have back. Four weeks, and not a day more.

Seven is the number of consecutive weeks he just spent in Makkah and Madinah. Praying in the Haram. Making dua at his own pace. He spent the whole of Ramadan there. He spent Eid there.

Same brother. The only thing that changed between those two numbers is one decision.

The Prayer Problem

Hamzah is a recent graduate from the UK. Before IMA, he worked as a pharmacy assistant in the NHS. 9 to 5, 40 hours a week.

On paper, a perfectly respectable job.

But here's what it looked like in winter, when the days get short and 3of the 5 prayers land inside working hours.

His break covered 1prayer. 1.

For the others, he'd slip into a room, pray as fast as he could, and hope nobody caught him.

Now listen to why he joined IMA, in his own words, because it's different from most stories I share:

"My main thing was getting closer to Allah. I wanted the freedom of working around my prayers instead of trying to squeeze prayers into our schedule."

Not a Lamborghini. Not even the money, really.

He joined to fix his salah.

The Skeptic

Hamzah came up in the era where every "make money online" name on his feed had three reviews underneath calling it a scam. He was skeptical of side hustles as a category. Every course he looked into, someone was saying you'd never make your money back.

What broke through wasn't a bigger income claim.

It was that he'd never seen a Muslim get on camera and talk about keeping the whole thing halal. That trust element didn't exist anywhere else he'd looked.

So he watched the video. Joined the community. We spoke, and he came into the Accelerator with a clear intention: get closer to Allah, and build an income around that.

Foot in the Door

Just under two months in, Hamzah closed his first deal. A $5,000 deal with $1,000 profit.

And notice the maturity in how he played it. He could have squeezed more profit out of that deal. He deliberately didn't. He wanted his foot in the door with the brand. The brand came back wanting more deals, exactly as he'd planned.

He'll also tell you what he valued most about the coaching in those early months: "They wouldn't give me the answer. They would give me a mentality change." The coaches were building a business owner, not a student who needs his hand held on every email.

That mentality was about to be tested in a way nobody could have predicted.

The Week Everything Could Have Stopped

A few months into his journey, Hamzah was in a major car accident.

He passed out. Three X-rays. Alhamdulillah, he walked away with minor injuries but the aftermath was real. Mobility so limited that even praying salah became a struggle.

Every excuse to stop was sitting right there

The following week, he secured $11,500 in deals, profiting $2,500.

His own words from the post he wrote at the time: "I'm securing deals whilst dealing with the worst pain ever. There's no excuse for me to stop. I remembered why I joined. Every day that passes by, opportunities are created."

Big vision, small ego. That combination wins.

The Decision

About four months after joining, Hamzah quit the NHS.

Here's the part I want every hesitant brother to study. He didn't wait until the business income made the decision undeniable. After five or six closed deals, he had the only thing he actually needed: proof that the system works.

The real question he asked himself wasn't financial. It was this:

"Is it worth me going back to rushing my salahs? Or is it better for me to work from home and build my day around my salahs?"

When he puts it that way, was there ever a decision to make?

He said something on our call that I haven't stopped thinking about: "When I left my job, it wasn't a risk. There are no risks in Islam as long as you have true trust in Allah."

And what happened after he went full-time? In his words, the deals started increasing and the doors started opening.

Today he earns, at minimum, roughly double his old NHS salary around £3,500 a month at the low end against the £1,800 the job paid him, with weeks that go far beyond that. Recently, one long-term client alone brought him $17,700 in revenue and $6,600 in profit in a single week.

Allahouma barik.

What He Bought With It

When he wrote about his results, he said this: "Looking back, the money isn't what I value most."

What he values most is the seven weeks.

Seven weeks in Mecca. Ramadan in the Haram. Eid among the muslims in Mecca. Making dua for guidance and barakah in his dunya and akhirah, with no leave request, no manager, and no countdown back to a desk.

His old job's four weeks of annual leave could never have held that trip.

And the most beautiful thing… He travelled those seven weeks with a brother he met inside IMA. A brother he had never once met in person before the trip. He trusted him purely from the brotherhood built in the group. Their families know each other now. "Brothers for life," he calls it.

He came back to an engagement, Alhamdulillah he's getting married this summer.

His deen grew alongside all of it. He'll tell you openly that before this journey he didn't know his adhkar, didn't pray the sunnah rakaat. The free time and the brothers around him closed those gaps.

A job change did all of that. Because it was never really a job change. It was a life rearranged around what actually matters.

What I Want You to Take From This

Hamzah wrote down four lessons for the brothers in our community, and I'll give them to you as he gave them:

Make sincere dua and have good expectations of Allah.

Take action consistently, even when results aren't immediate.

Trust Allah's timing.

Never forget that every blessing comes from Him alone.

And when we asked what advice he gives friends thinking about this path, he didn't start with income. He started here:

"Evaluate your relationship with Allah. If your job is restricting you from your prayer, you need to look into it. The whole goal is to build your Akhirah."

Then he added the line I want to leave you with:

"Islam doesn't tell you to be poor. Islam tells you to be grateful."

There are brothers reading this on a break right now, checking the clock, calculating whether there's time to pray before someone comes looking for them.

Hamzah was you. Four months later, he wasn't.

May Allah bless his marriage, accept his weeks in His house, and put barakah in everything he builds.

Barakallahufik,

Abu Lahya