Muslim Money Talk
Introducing the Muslim Money Talk Podcast, a place for all things Muslim and Money related.
Every week we'll be sitting down with Founders, leaders and industry experts from across multiple disciplines to discuss lessons learned, mistakes made and most importantly 'How they did it?'.
Brought to you by Kestrl: The Muslim Money App, software to help Muslims grow their wealth without compromise. Find out more here: https://kestrl.io/
Muslim Money Talk
Helping Muslim Women Become FINANCIALLY Independent! | Fahan Ibrahim Hashi - Muslim Money Talk Ep 17
This podcast episode explores the journey of Fahan Ibrahim Hashi, founder of Nisa Invest, a financial platform tailored for Muslim women navigating personal finance in alignment with Islamic values. Fahan discusses her transition from investment banking to entrepreneurship and the challenges faced by Muslim women in finance.
This podcast is powered by Kestrl.
Kestrl is an app that helps Muslim to grow their wealth without compromising their beliefs
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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 - Intro
02:11 – Fahan’s career story and her decision to transition from banking to financial planning.
03:34 – Education background and early career in investment banking.
06:12 – Fahan describes investment competitions in university.
08:10 – Explanation of her decision to pursue personal finance content creation.
11:04 – Participation in a boot camp for software development as preparation for Nisa Invest.
13:11 – The moment Fahan decided to focus on financial literacy for Muslim women.
16:13 – Early validation of Nisa Invest’s concept through community events.
19:20 – Fahan’s interest in modest fashion and its parallels with Islamic finance.
24:08 – Encounter with a modest fashion client sparks thoughts on entrepreneurship.
26:54 – Decision to fully commit to Nisa Invest and family’s support.
29:21 – Discussion on financial planning challenges for Muslim women.
30:49 – Explanation of Nisa Invest’s vision and services.
32:42 – Audience feedback and financial literacy tools provided by Nisa Invest.
34:23 – Description of Nisa Invest as a life-stage-focused financial planning platform.
38:30 – Importance of financial planning and breaking down taboos around money.
42:29 – Biggest challenges faced by Muslim women in finance.
51:01 – Simple starting advice for financial planning.
56:50 – Personal anecdotes and strategies for financial literacy.
1:02:16 – Fahan’s future goals for Nisa Invest and her current development work.
1:04:56 – Rapid-fire questions covering Fahan’s favorite books, influencers, and inspiration.
1:08:10 – Closing remarks and where to follow Fahan’s work with Nisa Invest.
I think as an industry, financial services in general isn't the most gender diverse.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:Because when you think about it and going back to you know when I was speaking to all the sisters at our mosque very quickly you realize that financial planning is just about what your goals are and what is it that you're trying to achieve, and a huge part of that your faith is central to that that you're trying to achieve and a huge part of that your faith is central to that. Wanting to be a financial planner and Islamic finance is a big part of how I want to deliver that.
Speaker 2:In today's episode, I'm joined by Fahan Ibrahim Hashi, the founder and the CEO of Nisa Invest, a financial platform that helps Muslim women to navigate major life events. Vahan shared with us her journey, starting off in financial services, working for a major US investment bank, and how she took those experiences and applied them to what she's doing in the wonderful world of entrepreneurship today. This is a really interesting episode if anyone who's looking at making what can be quite an opaque black box of personal finance and introducing some transparency, figuring out how they should be managing their money, especially in a way that aligns with their faith and their beliefs. As always, I'm your host, areeb Siddiqui, and this is Muslim Money Talk.
Speaker 2:Before we begin, we actually noticed only about 10% of you are subscribed to the podcast, so if you like what you're listening to and you want to hear more from us and see more things Muslim and money related, then please consider subscribing and, of course, leaving this episode a like and share it with your friends. Leave us a comment or a review, because it really really does help us out and help more people to find us. Thank you. Now back to the show. Assalamu alaikum, fahan, how are you?
Speaker 1:Walaikum salam.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the podcast. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1:Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:I was really excited for this one because we've not yet had a Muslim woman on who can really talk to the issues that women face when it comes to personal finance. I guess there's so few and far between in Islamic finance, so thank you so much for agreeing to come on and talk to us.
Speaker 2:So your story is very interesting, but also there's so many parallels with the Islamic finance founders story. You were in financial services in the conventional space. You became disillusioned with what you were doing and your very high-flying, successful career, mashallah, and you decided to throw that all away to start up Nisa Invest, yes, which, as you describe it, I believe it's a financial platform designed with Muslim women in mind, helping them through the major points in their lives.
Speaker 1:Is that correct? No, that's exactly it.
Speaker 2:Okay, amazing. So tell me the journey. How did you get started? What did you do at university?
Speaker 1:Yep. So I graduated university about 10 years ago, studied business at King's no way, and yeah, I mean, I would say I definitely personal finance is like a field. I definitely think it got sparked studying microeconomics when you are in class, learning about how irrational human beings are when we make decisions, and also around that time auto-enrollment started with pensions, where it became you'd be automatically signed up to your pension.
Speaker 2:So before then you had to opt in to a pension, exactly In the UK it started to be rolled out around that time until it became something that's mandatory. Okay, okay, very interesting. So you did that and then, I believe, you went to UCL.
Speaker 1:Yes, to continue studying policy, focus more on public policy, economic policy, really just out of interest. I think that's probably the best way to choose a degree, just to study something, just because you're interested in it. I think around that time I'd already done a couple of internship, uh, in investment banking, so I knew that that was where I was gonna work full-time oh, you'd already done an internship. Yeah, and that was at city that, no, that at the time it was just that.
Speaker 1:Um well, uh nat west okay yeah, back when it was rvs and um yeah, so I was just, I just kept interning until I got the role I had at city, which was the one that I started full-time okay um, but yeah, I think, uh, yeah, I don't draw too many parallels with what I was studying at university, with what I ended up doing, um, for my day job. Hey, I did physics at university with what I ended up doing for my day job.
Speaker 2:Hey, I did physics at university, so, and I ended up in management consulting yeah banks. I think it's naturally when you grow up in and around London, it seems to be where everyone gravitates towards. I think it's just the main way of making money. Were there people in your family who worked in financial services?
Speaker 1:No, no, I would say actually, if you ask, if you'd ask me like, right when I finished school, can you name 10 investment banks, or even three, or or even one? I probably wouldn't have known, but I think at university I was part of the societies. I think competitions are really good, um, because you get your everybody's a bit more relaxed, just trying to by everybody I mean also the people running the competitions, like when companies come and visit. So that's exactly how I came across Citi. They'd come to King's, they did like a M&A case study and with that then we did something at the offices and once you visit one or two, you're kind of you start to develop a network, um, and you're just trying to get the internship. And then you do the internship just to get the full-time job and right, so it was almost.
Speaker 2:I feel like there's this thing within the london universities um the ucls the kings the imperials, maybe not the soases um of the of the sorry we have someone in the room but maybe not the so as because they're a little bit more of a hippie uni. But the banks really come and I think they do their milk rounds and they really push these things. But you mentioned competitions. What kind of competitions are?
Speaker 1:they running. Yeah, I mean, I used to run them as well, as in our team. It's really just like a case study. See how you can understand. So different parts of the bank run different ones. So if you're in sales and trading, maybe you might do a trading game.
Speaker 2:What's an example of a game?
Speaker 1:A trading game is like. I think it's similar to poker, probably, and I don't know the rules of poker so I don't know how to explain it, but it's just to see how you respond to risk.
Speaker 2:So you're given some money to manage some pretend money. Yeah, exactly, and it's like okay, this event has happened. I don't know, there's a hurricane in South America.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, okay, what are we doing? Where are we moving the money? What are we investing?
Speaker 1:in. That's actually bringing some memory back. So, for example, they might say there might be like currency themed ones, or you might have commodity themed ones, um, and yeah, exactly okay, very interesting.
Speaker 2:So you find yourself in city um, and which team had you joined?
Speaker 1:so at the time I was part of a grad graduate program, so I only got into a fixed team about a year and a half in and that was in equity capital markets. So I was there for about just almost three years and and then the last seat I had before I, before I left, was in consumer and retail investment banking consumer and retail investment banking.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so when I think of investment banking, I often don't think of that in the context of retail customers, ordinary people. So what? What does that mean exactly?
Speaker 1:so it was a sector team, um. So that means you're still doing normal corporate finance. So whether you're helping doing an ipo or you're helping with mergers and acquisitions, um, but instead it's only for the big consumer and retail investors and companies. So it's actually a really broad like scope. So it goes from agriculture all the way to your actual oh okay, so it's investment banking that affects the consumer space.
Speaker 2:Okay, understood because usually I think of it as consumer banking versus investment banking I thought this was some sort of blend. Okay, that's really interesting. So then you were there for seven years. Where did Nisa Invest come from?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I would say at the beginning I think I realized that with personal finance it's all learned through trial and error and it was my own experience to kind of be like, oh I can't believe, like the first time you were trying to understand how you can invest or the first time you try to understand how a credit card works and whether you actually want to keep one. You're always just stumbling through these sorts of decisions and so, personally, every time I'd find something out that was new. I just tell everybody I knew like my starting from my family, then to my friends, and after a while I think I either got gently pushed in that direction or it was like a really good advice was to just go to the internet and talk about it.
Speaker 1:So I the famous Fahan finance blog exactly, okay, okay, great, so you started writing that yeah, and that was just like a very nice uh outlet for me. So I I'd um at the time I started on tumblr, um, just with a photo and like a small paragraph about something. Um on tumblr.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I thought tumblr was just a place where people write like fan fictions and yeah, exactly so.
Speaker 1:So I tried to make it as aesthetic as possible. So I don't know. I have a nice photo that I took on holiday of a long winding road.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I put a nice quote that says like the longest journey start with the first step, the first step. Yeah, okay, talk about how important it is to start with your pension in your 20s and things like this. I also had some memes too. So there was a meme of the TV show 30 Rock where one of the characters says I want to learn how to make money and then do the thing that rich people do turn money into more money. So she's obviously referring about how investing works and I talked about that.
Speaker 1:So I just had like a normal wordpress website and then, you immediately learn like if it's on wordpress and no one's gonna find it, so I just link it to it to tumblr and uh and twitter.
Speaker 2:So you were just doing this alongside your day job. You were just writing about your own personal experiences, whether it was with pensions or building a credit score. Um, wow, okay, okay, the whole time. And then what made you think, okay, I need to go and start doing this full-time.
Speaker 1:Because you went full-time on this this summer I went, uh, full-time, um, I think, well, full-time definitely this summer, where I was only focusing on nissan best, because I had left my role at city towards the end of last year. But I, um, I mean, we can go into it, but I, for the majority of this year, I was just, uh, part of a software development boot camp. Oh, okay, was that with dean developers? Um, no, that's what I'm doing currently, okay, okay, fine, so tell me about that. I was just part of a software development boot camp.
Speaker 2:Oh okay, Was that with Dean Developers?
Speaker 1:No, that's what I'm doing currently.
Speaker 2:Okay, fine, so tell me about that. Sorry, I'm jumping ahead in the story. So let's go back to Citi. What encouraged you to leave, and then you know, I guess what was the inciting incident? What made you think this idea is now getting so strong in my mind that I need to leave and do that?
Speaker 1:yeah, no, that's a. That's a. That's a good point, because you want to be somebody that actually responds to things that are happening around you. I didn't want to be the type of person that just ignores a very pressing need in our community. And so you can imagine, by the time you know, you have friends and say, oh, what's your Instagram? And I'm like, well, my instagram is my hand finance. I don't really use it, it's just for my personal finance stuff. So I had like friends who connected with me on it and you can imagine I started the blog maybe in 20. Uh, I've got the domain in 2016 because I'm reminded every year when I have to refresh yes but I got it.
Speaker 1:Then, um, and you know, I didn't. I wasn't like super um, um, super active on posting until I picked it up again after COVID. Um, and then, um, I was like, okay, you know, let me actually make a go of having like a blog where you post. And I was actually more interested in getting started again on YouTube, but I just stuck to Instagram to start with. And a friend of mine, at the end of 2022, she started like a sister circle at my local mosque. She started a sister circle at my local mosque and it was great because it's like on a last Friday of the month you're just kind of with your friends and we just reflect on a particular topic that someone's a real expert in. So we had one of the sisters who's like maybe an artist full time. She did like a workshop for us. Uh, we had like mental health counselors run a session for us.
Speaker 1:So people talk about the thing that they they know very well. And so for me, she sent me a text saying oh, maybe, fine, you can talk to people about, uh, personal finance. And so that was really the first um time that, like I was standing in front of a group of people who I might not have, not, everybody would have known me as someone because before it was your friends reading your blog or your instagram or seeing your youtube videos yeah this was a group of strangers or even just anybody that I was.
Speaker 1:I became really adept to finding out, getting people to talk about money, so my favorite question to ask anybody is oh, what are you investing in at the moment? And that's not like an unusual thing for someone who works in finance to ask you, and I think that was always a great way to get people to open up yeah, what?
Speaker 2:what was the typical response? I mean, we'll get into this more later on, but the typical, I guess muslim 20 woman. What are they investing in?
Speaker 1:I would quite literally ask anybody, not just my friends. But I could tell you the best answer I ever got was from one of my colleagues that it was at the height of 20, uh, 21. Um, and he said to me oh, all my friends are investing in um index funds, but I have student loans. So I'm going to focus on getting rid of that first, because oh, okay. I mean that that guarantees me a return, and I was like oh, a weirdly responsible answer.
Speaker 2:The most responsible, 22 year old responsible answer from someone in financial services, the most responsible, 22-year-old.
Speaker 1:But since then I've actually gotten even better answers I updated it recently of students who work throughout uni to fund their living expenses so they minimize any debt or not take debt at all if they're able to get scholarships, which I know is a really privileged position to be in and then they invest using Moneybox on various different asset classes and as part of a balanced budget. I think that's probably the best answer I've ever gotten. And then in between then you just reveal people's priorities. So some people actually the best you know, a friend of mine said actually, fahim, I'm really focused on finding better ways for me to give back, for example. Or other people are saying actually, I'm trying to save money so that I can go back to university.
Speaker 2:And that kind of just opens up the yeah, it's the real kind of means short time versus long-term goals, and you don't need to just be putting your money into growing something yeah, it's much better, if you're saving for something in the next five years, to actually put that money away, um, you know, towards something, whether it's education or a car, or a wedding, whatever it might be okay. So take me back to that. So you had the mosque sister circle yes stood in front of people, you spoke to them.
Speaker 1:The feedback was good, I assume definitely, and I uh took inspiration actually from university. I was lucky enough to. I wasn't like super into entrepreneurship then, but I definitely like to follow entrepreneurs and follow their journey. So the founder of Innocent Drinks Innocent.
Speaker 2:Smoothies? Yes, exactly, no way.
Speaker 1:Richard Reid came to speak to us at university and he was telling the story of how they did their present maybe I don't know, like like a pop-up. And then they had two bins and they asked people, should I do this full-time? Uh, yes or no? And then I think that the bin that was full of yeses I wasn't that forward at the time wait wait.
Speaker 2:So he did a pop-up. Did he have smoothies, like on a stand?
Speaker 1:yeah, exactly was he a student no, because he was uh I think he was at mckinsey I think he was a consultant at mckinsey.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I guess he was having people trial his product and then put your answer in a box anonymously they should go and do this full time gosh, that's some um interesting marketing tactic. Yeah, I'm sure he'd already made his mind of which direction he was going to take, but yeah, that's very interesting yeah, but I did want to come away with something.
Speaker 1:So I gave out cards that just said um, what else would you like to know? And what did you take away from it? And people were like, um, and I still have them, like a stack of about 50 cards of all sorts of all sorts of questions. Um, and if the pressing question is something like how do I start investing? Or the pressing question can be how you know, how, what should I do about my pension? To me that, like I remember when I had those exact questions and then also studying it at university, how important, uh, it is to be able to take ownership of your future as early as possible, I just thought to myself, wow, I'm getting permission to talk about this for as much as possible. So at the time, I was just really I don't know encouraged by it. This was February, so I was't know encouraged by it. This was February, so I was- this year.
Speaker 1:In 2023.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:So you can imagine from then, six months later, I was doing it full time.
Speaker 2:So what was it? Was there like a aha moment? Or was it a culmination of everything you had done, plus the sister circle? And then you said okay, I'm going to leave city, I'm going to give this a go.
Speaker 1:I think so. I think when it starts to, I can tell you, once it starts to encroach in what you actually do for your day job and then you start to think it's not that massive of that huge of a leap, um. So if I think about fahan, who was working at at Citi, um around that time uh, about actually a year before then, um, I started to cover modest fashion within consumer and retail banking.
Speaker 2:That's interesting. Um, so talk to me about that. So that was. The bank was investing into modest fashion.
Speaker 1:No, as a as a banker. I was just covering it like as a sector.
Speaker 2:Just doing research on it.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:Fine.
Speaker 1:Exactly that Making a really big PowerPoint on the topic.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:And so I had over the summer I had like an intern and she was also Muslim. Actually she was a full-time analyst because we finished it around October, but I had interns help me over the summer and it was just a response from kind of what I was seeing the growth of like micro-influencers and how I thought really big companies were very focused on how Gen Z consumes, like in terms of the types of targets we would present to big corporates. They were interested in some of the most like really niche topics. And then I thought to myself actually hold on a second modest fashion is not niche at all.
Speaker 2:It's a huge sector.
Speaker 1:It's a huge sector. So I thought I wonder how I was like genuinely curious um about it. And uh, thankfully I mean I've always had like great support at city and I just mentioned it because I wasn't really covering luxury or fashion. I just mentioned it to one of my bosses and then he said oh man, you should.
Speaker 2:That's actually really interesting your boss really encouraged you to go for it. Yeah, so so, just so I get this right. After everything that happened, you were asked to then cover this idea of modest fashion, which was seen as a niche, as Islamic finance is often seen as a niche right.
Speaker 2:The biggest pushback we always got with Kestrel was when we were going for fundraising. It's like, oh, it's kind of like a niche of fintech, when in reality it's something planet. Yeah right, how on earth is that a niche? And then you thought, okay, the thing that I'm super interested in there's many parallels with modest fashion.
Speaker 1:Yes, right, you spoke about it with your boss, who actually encouraged you to perhaps pursue this, to, to pursue me actually looking into modest fashion. Um, as in oh, I see to actually spend my time making this uh presentation. Okay, um and yeah, just to fast forward a a little bit. That's when I kind of learned all the statistics about the islamic economy and about generation m and how it's going to grow to like nine, almost a billion what's generation? M. It stands for generation like the, the muslim millennial and does it um is that what these banks are calling us.
Speaker 2:Really the legal.
Speaker 1:Muslim. Yeah, I mean, you start to see, actually there are like demand side factors that are fueling the growth of the Islamic economy, and also from the supply side. And so, yeah, that was great for me because, like I had my, I could interview my friends and ask about it. And the overwhelming thing I realized was that maybe my generation, when it came to modest fashion, we kind of put up with having to mix and match our clothes and trial, like, go on into shops and not really finding things that are suitable for us, but that nowadays, there's actually no compromise at all in the sense that, um, it's from throughout the 2010s, like modest fashion has made huge leaps.
Speaker 1:Um, and to actually uh be able to, to see that and how, even with an active wear, there are several kinds of hijabs. There's like performance hijabs and more hijabs that you might wear to go to yoga. So I thought to myself, ok, so there's this, started to look at investments in, like between the Middle East and South America around halal certifications of meat and how that was like a big driver of like what sovereign wealth ones like to invest in. And then I said to myself, okay, fahim, you're not a foodie and you're definitely and you're not a fashionista like you actually have a passion for financial services and I thought you know this could actually be something that I could pursue.
Speaker 2:But Siti almost became like a training ground where you were doing all of your macro research in terms of adjustable market because modest fashion is basically the same. It's a very similar target market to Muslim women interested in Islamic financeic finance in financial services. So yeah, so many parallels there. I would say okay definitely.
Speaker 1:And the thing that, like you talked about, like actual events that really make you think, oh, I don't want to be doing what I'm doing now, I'd rather be doing what someone else is doing. Um, I remember, um, I actually had a, a call with a client that was the turkish modest fashion.
Speaker 2:Uh, firm oh, modernisa, um no, oh, you can't say the name.
Speaker 1:Okay, sorry yeah, and they were. So I was the um the ceo and um the cfo and they were just, we were just chatting and we had one of their investors on the call as well, and then one of them asked oh, a fan, who, who covers modest fashion at city? And then the other one replied well, fan, obviously, just, just just me. And then, um, I just thought to myself wow, you know, I would so enjoy do doing what you guys are, what you guys are doing, um, but for in financial services, exactly, gosh, and that's when you thought I'm gonna hand in my notice and do this I.
Speaker 1:I think at that time I was thinking oh, there are many interesting things that I could be doing sure um, and you know, when you join investment banking, I think it would be naive for anybody to think, oh, it's forever.
Speaker 2:Like you already are primed to think about different exits and what you could be doing and typical exits entrepreneurship and investment banking, because I know you know people sometimes go in in-house or they go work at one of their clients. But to start up your own thing in investment banking, does it happen that often?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I did have like, let's say, role models, definitely. I remember one of the individuals that interviewed me at Citi is now running his own startup, so I definitely had like. There were people you could follow examples you could follow.
Speaker 2:So I definitely had like there were people you could follow, examples you could follow.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And then you know I think yeah, so it wasn't like outside of the realm of possibility. And then, since it's so funny, because I used to say that what I was doing kind of hushed tones to my previous colleagues or like someone, maybe lingering conversations on LinkedIn with university students, and then I'd always find it so funny when a few of them would say to me, oh, but that's why I'm joining investment banking is so that then I could go and do my own thing, really Okay.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, look, it's got all the hallmarks of a good founder story. You went to a prestigious university, you went to a place which has a great brand name, um, you gained the experience in something very similar and then you went off to do your own thing, which makes you hugely backable, not just from a customer perspective, but as a potential investor perspective. Right, so it's, uh, you know, much like credit to you. So you basically had done a lot of the groundwork, part of it by accident, partly because of your own interest, and then you thought I'm gonna do this full-time, yeah, okay, so what? You just had it in your notice and off you were.
Speaker 1:Uh, yeah, exactly I I was. I think I don't know I was over to a bit of a break okay, how did your family react? I was super supportive.
Speaker 2:I have to say.
Speaker 1:That's probably the thing I was saying the first six months after I was like, yeah, I know my family is super supportive and yeah, and I think they were super supportive and encouraged me to start the blog in the first place. Actually, so it wasn't even that surprising that that's what I wanted to focus on you struck me as like an elder sibling.
Speaker 2:I don't know why. Yes, I'm proud of that title. Yeah, one of the elders. That that's what I wanted to focus on. You struck me as like an eldest sibling, I don't know why. Yes, I'm proud of that title.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one of the elders I have an older brother but an eldest sister.
Speaker 2:Okay, fine, I think there's a pattern amongst all the people we've interviewed so far. They all tend to be oldest or the oldest of the girls or the oldest of the boys um to strike out on the yeah and do something okay, gosh. So everyone was super supportive. And forgive me for asking are your parents like first-gen immigrants or uh, yes, okay so usually there's quite an immigrant mentality against entrepreneurship and against doing anything that rocks the boats, but it sounds like that didn't come across for you.
Speaker 1:No, okay, if no, I wouldn't say I think yeah, and I mean I had like a pretty straight laced story up until then and I just knew I'd be learning so much that you know It'll be worth the investment, exactly.
Speaker 2:Okay, mashallah, incredible. So I have all these questions for you, right, that you know it'll be worth the investment exactly. Okay, masha'allah, incredible. So I have all these questions for you, right, as someone who's in islamic finance ourselves. And we're not gender specific, but when we talk to a lot of women, um, something like 45 of our user base right now is are muslim women. Um, we often hear that they feel a little bit like Islamic finance is a very masculine industry and that all these guys out there us included, are very masculine focused and they often don't feel like there's a space for them. Is that the feedback you're hearing?
Speaker 1:I mean, you know, when I think about money it can be like a taboo subject to talk about anyway, um that by the time, um yeah, so whether you're male or female, like um, you have to be in. You can't just talk about money with anybody like it's a, it can be quite a um a tough topic to to bring up. So I mean to answer, to answer your question.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think as an industry, financial services in general isn't the most, uh, gender diverse sure it tends to be, yeah, quite masculine heavy, but why did you choose to focus on muslim women on their own, as opposed to muslims?
Speaker 1:as a whole. Yeah, I mean, I think, to answer that question I really felt like I had to respond to and really thought to myself you know what? There is financial services in general as an industry the margins are really, really thin in terms of how you gain somebody's trust, like it's not something that you can cast a wide net and just immediately loads of people are going to trust you. So I knew that it was going to be tough anyway. So I just thought to myself let's just pick up from the conversations that I was already having, and at the time it quite literally looked like just on sundays I'd go to a coffee shop and invite someone who wanted to just chat to me okay and that I I was doing for a good year before I left, uh, uh, left city and um, you know if?
Speaker 1:and then I would have some of those sisters um recommend me to others and it was. And then at the time I actually thought to myself if I could imagine the best sort of experience someone could have with financial services and with a financial planner. That's what I wanted to deliver, so it was more of a way for me to be able to do this full time. So I knew I wanted to do it for Muslim women, because Muslim women had asked me, but I knew that in order to do that I'd have to do a lot muslim women, because muslim women had asked me, um, but I knew that in order to do that, I'd have to do a lot of work myself. So it was more a lot of it. How do you get fahan to become a financial planner and um, and that, and that's kind of what I went and did so.
Speaker 1:You took financial planning qualification exactly, I presume, okay, wow was that the first thing you did after you left?
Speaker 1:yes, okay, as in, I took a bit of a break, changed it from fahan finance to nisa invest, where nisa means woman. Um, just to you know, uh, a nice line, yeah, location, and then, uh, and then went back to the drawing board about what it was actually going to be. And then then I knew I wanted. I knew that I had evidence that I wasn't going to get bored of the topic. So I knew that, you know, I could take my time in startup speak. That's not really. You have to move quite fast, but still I knew that I needed to get the qualifications I needed to get.
Speaker 2:Of course, it's so important, like you said, trust is so, so important in this space. And it's so important, like you said, trust is so, so important in this space. Yeah, and it's very important to have a personal qualification if you're going to be doing what you're doing, so tell me what exactly is Nisa Invest? What do you guys do?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I mean, nisa Invest is a place where you're able to plan for the very long term and it's financial planning for you each of your life stages.
Speaker 1:I I realized quickly that um and this was actually from also a research piece that the department of money and pensions did about like the financial capability of uk adults and they found that the the time that you're most able to engage with people on financial decisions is when they're going through some type of life stage.
Speaker 1:So you can picture somebody who's moving city, or somebody who's just starting a new job, or maybe they've just gotten married or they've, yeah, something like that. And so I thought to myself I really, in those instances in my mind, the way I experience financial advice, it's good to have somebody in your corner, and it's good to also have nice case studies of people that you can relate to and people who are in similar cohorts to you that you could speak to. And so that's kind of what I wanted Nisa Invest to solve that problem of being able to make those sorts of decisions with confidence and the idea of like doing what you can and focusing on what you can control and just seeing exactly how much you can control and tackle these long-term decision making so.
Speaker 2:So you're a platform that helps muslim women deal with these major life changes, whether it's starting a job and signing up to a pension, maybe it's saving for a first home or a car, or getting married, all those sorts of things. You help coach them through that and yeah, no, yeah, exactly right, and I think, um, a big part of it, I think, is the?
Speaker 1:um like, uh, the, the one-to-one experience, or or that is required. But I think, um, there's and there's so much good content out there, um, and but you, you and uh, and that's that's. That's, that's a huge part of what I wanted to do. That's why I started it out with a podcast as well.
Speaker 2:Of course. Co-host of the Nissan Invest Tea Talks podcast. Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1:So that's a big part of it, but I think software tools that you feel like you can actually use that help you make these decisions. I just want everybody to. If someone asks you what's your financial plan at this very moment, you cover the big topics.
Speaker 2:So few people can answer that question right. Even if you go to someone and say what are you investing in right now? Right, I think people are like firstly, it's like why are you asking? Secondly, I think there's a little bit of a red flush of embarrassment of, oh God, I, I'm gonna get judged on this and I've got a pension here, or maybe I'm got something in aj bell or and I lost a bunch in crypto like three years ago. It's so interesting trying to engage with people in that conversation is that really what you're trying to do?
Speaker 2:you're trying to break down those walls and make it less of a taboo type.
Speaker 1:Subject yeah, because when you think about it and going back to you know, when I was speaking to all the sisters at our mosque very quickly you realize that financial planning is just about what your goals are and what is it that you're trying to achieve, and a huge part of that your faith is central to that. Your faith is central to that and so of course, you're. You know I want to be a financial planner and Islamic finance is a big part of how I want to deliver that. That.
Speaker 1:you know that's the medium through which I want to deliver that and most people know what to do already and I sometimes say I wish I could try and change, swap any my financial planning habits for any other kind of good habit. Most people have really good habits and like I don't know about that, that they can. Um, you know, I just feel like it's really important not to you know. When you mentioned the embarrassment.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:A phrase I always say is you know. You know that more better than me. You know what you're trying to achieve and what sits right with you.
Speaker 2:Thank you for listening to Muslim Money Talk. If you like what you've heard so far, you might be interested in checking out what we do at Kestrel, the Muslim money app. Kestrel is a service that helps Muslims who want to grow their wealth without having to compromise, whether it's on their belief or user experience or price. I founded Kestrel because of how fed up I was at how poor Islamic financial services were in this country. Often people didn't use them because of how bad the user experience or customer service and indeed, how high in price they were. So Kestrel was the answer to that. If you download the Kestrel app today, it can help you by creating a budgeting plan. Plug in whatever bank account you have and it will create an auto budget just for you. You can then tell us what goals you're saving for and we'll save towards them automatically into pots and then, crucially, link you towards Sharia compliant investment and savings products as well. So download Kestrel today and try it out for yourself.
Speaker 2:Now back to the podcast. But do people even sometimes know what they want to achieve? Because I guess it's like when you don't have role models and you don't have anyone that you've been talking to about money. Maybe you don't know. Maybe you don't know when you want to be buying that house or when you're even looking to get married. So that kind of thing is so up in the air for so many of us these days yeah you know?
Speaker 2:so I guess it's like are you trying to plan for the unknowns, or are you looking at other people and saying, well, this person is doing this by 25, they're doing this by 27 and by 30. I should be getting a house and my salary should be at this point. You know how? How do you end up advising people on that?
Speaker 1:what I love is now I don't necessarily have to draw from my own experience, although before I did used to draw from my own experience. I can think, talk about people, can talk to each other and be inspired by each other if they come to events that I've organized. What I like to say is, for example, you don't really need a reason to save. You could just be saving because it's part of a good, balanced budget. And once you do, another thing I like to say is you know, once you have your emergency fund, the conversation changes. You will change like you're just going to start thinking about different things.
Speaker 1:So a friend of mine, she said she kind of, even, just mentally, she just said okay, this money is my emergency fund, this is my short-term savings. So when she uh, earlier this, like a few months ago, she changed jobs so this was like before the summer we were chatting and she said, oh, you know, I'm starting a new job in in in the autumn, but I realized, you know, I actually could just delay the start date and take a month off for myself.
Speaker 1:And she realized that because she actually could feel good about seeing one pot of her money going down like it's okay, if you spend your emergency fund during an emergency, that's a good thing wow, okay, so the mental health linkage is really, really important though yeah, okay gosh, so the big.
Speaker 2:It really reminds me of something that we used to do, we still do at Kestrel. We have this phrase, which is invest, but tie your camel first. Yes, right, which I think you also bring up. I think I saw the tagline tie your camel, which is a beautiful hadith which where a man asked the Prophet Muhammad should I, you know, just tie my camel? Should I leave my camel untied and just trust in Allah that the camel is going to be there in the future? And the response by Rasulullah was you should tie your camel and then trust in Allah, as in take account of everything that is within your control and then everything that's outside of your control. That's what you should leave to Allah. And it's got a beautiful um, a beautiful translation over to financial services and investing, and that so many people are just excited about investing and the the fun part right and making the money making money into more money, um, not in a rib-o-y way, but you know yes uh investing in a in halal uh
Speaker 1:things, but they forget the basics like just building a budget, an emergency fund, and saving for short term versus investing for the long term you know, I would say that the story doesn't um get more complicated than that, and I think you know you mentioned um, um muslim women. Are there particular things that come up? Um whether or not? Maybe you could say because there are fewer women in finance, maybe there are fewer women in your own circle that talk about money, unless you have the unfortunate chance of sitting next to me at dinner, but it is possible that the jargon can be a big turn off and, uh, what I like to say is that, like and I don't know if that's what you found to uh, financial services it's huge jargon yeah, and especially when it comes to islamic financial jargon, because then you have all the arabic terms thrown in marabaha masharaka um you know, uh, commodity with araba, all of this kind of thing, and no one knows what's going on and no one knows what it means.
Speaker 2:I think the biggest failing in Islamic finance is actually marketing right. No one actually understands how these products work and what makes them halal or not, and ultimately you lose out on the most important thing in our industry which is trust. Because of that, I'd love to ask you this this is a big question. I'd love to ask you this this is a big question. What are the biggest problems that Muslim women encounter today when it comes to their finances?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean I would say it could sound like it's a small problem at the beginning, like you know. Oh, I'll just ignore that, or I'm just you know, you know just um, what my biggest concern is not someone not feeling like they ever had an entry point to, to talking about money, um, and so I always like to say, you know, even one hour with a professional can really make a big difference to, uh, to your, to your personal finances, um, and if you know, maybe your employer offers that you, you don't know, a lot of forward-thinking employers do offer like a financial personal finance. So I have like many questions about that of like, how often are people even talking about their own finances and getting advice on it? I like to get advice on pretty much anything, like if I have a friend who's a specialist in something I'd like to ask. But even in my job I used to have a business coach.
Speaker 2:I used to oh city would provide that um no, I, I had my own one. Okay.
Speaker 1:But some employers do. It was just someone I knew for a long time.
Speaker 2:Fine.
Speaker 1:And so you know I saw a lot of value. Even now, like doing what I'm doing with Nissan Invest, I often get like borrow people's time to just talk to them for an hour, or getting someone's services to just teach me what they know, but you're saying the biggest problem really is women.
Speaker 2:just don't have anyone to talk to about this.
Speaker 1:I would say that, yeah, and that's almost I think the jargon can be really off-putting and I would say that if that translates with you never really getting your head around your pension, um, I'm just staring down, not wanting someone to look back and think, oh, my paycheck didn't go as far as it could, because I think that there's a huge dignity that comes from actually knowing that the hard work that I'm doing is doing it its best that it can. Uh, and that's like what I'm trying. The problem I I'd like to solve, like really for people to have control over um, over this area of their life.
Speaker 2:So is that one of the bigger problems you see people making that they're just not understanding the importance of a pension or, you know, making their money actually work for them in the long term yeah, I mean I made.
Speaker 1:the first youtube video I ever put out was seven, uh, was how do you save for retirement in your 20s? And I really resisted for as long as possible to just start exactly from there and I feel like I've come full circle now to, to, to, to think about pensions. Before I was just speaking to people and seeing what's on their mind, um, but yeah, I think, going back to when I was speaking to, um, like my sisters, I'd I'd find that even knowing how do you get started with investing, and if I can reply to you and I say, oh, what does your employer provide? It sounds like a really boring question, like pensions isn't the most exciting. The first thing that you think about when it comes to investing very often is the best place to start, and I think actually and you might have views on this I think country differences matter a lot as well.
Speaker 1:Country differences in terms of people's backgrounds here in the uk no, like, uh, let's say, british muslims versus people in the us or people yes in other countries massively and I don't say that because we're muslim, but actually country, yeah wise I.
Speaker 2:I find that america, our american counterparts, are much better with money. They tend to have more of it and they're much more comfortable talking about it. I've got family in the Bay Area in California and I go there regularly. They love talking about money, they love talking about how they're making it, how they're spending it, and there's a much larger culture around entrepreneurship and becoming your own kind of business owner and doing something partly just for, I guess, the clout of saying that you're an entrepreneur and doing something, but also the drive for money is there, whereas I find here in our podcast with Abdur Rahman, the founder of Pillars, he talked about how there is the opposite of an abundance mindset amongst British Muslims.
Speaker 2:I'm forgetting the term Scarcity mindset. There's a scarcity mindset. This is great having an audience, a live audience, today.
Speaker 2:There's a scarcity mindset amongst British Muslims where they think, okay, if I win, someone else has to lose it, or rather, if someone else is winning, then I'm going to end up losing out and therefore I can't uplift other people in the community or I shouldn't do that. It's very, very competitive and I think that comes with being. You know, I don't know a different kind of immigrant family that came here versus which came out in the US, but I think we are a little bit more backward when it comes to thinking about money.
Speaker 1:What I like to say, like I try to strip out the layers and and think you know, actually I have a theory that very I don't know if anyone's ever had a really great relationship with their financial services, like I really want to find somebody who's had like a great, massive, like throughout their entire life, never had a bad experience with a financial service.
Speaker 1:I think maybe if you're very wealthy and you had someone like managing your family's money for a long time very wealthy and you had someone like managing your family's money for a long time and and I was speaking to an old colleague and she was telling me how she moved from the uk to the us to do the exact same job, um, in wealth management, and she said that in the uk they they are not as fee sensitive as in the as in the US.
Speaker 2:What do you?
Speaker 1:mean, like, even if you're someone who does have a lot of money and you have somebody managing it for you, they want to call their own broker and do certain things. You know the idea of just giving a percentage fee to someone for huge, for the AUM, like the assets they manage for you um much easier to do in the UK than it is in other countries. Um, I remember doing IPOs. An IPO, and this was probably my highlight of my career at Citi. Uh, it was for the AJ Bell of Sweden.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, so they IPO'd. So by IPO you mean international public offering. They were going public on the stock exchange to raise money from everyone and anyone, and that's kind of where you take your company out of being privately owned to being owned by everyone. The share price is now dictated by the market and how many people are buying it, so it's a huge event for a company exactly so that was probably the only ipo prospectus that I actually really wanted to read really uh cover to cover and a big part of like a tailwind and and of that um that helped that um, uh, that company be so successful in convincing investors that it's a great thing to invest in.
Speaker 1:And AJ Bell is like a robo-advising platform, investment platform, and every country has their national champion. So this was the Swedish version and a big part was the savings culture that there is in Sweden. That has a big impact on whether this company is going to be successful. And so even reading that, so then you go back to the Muslim woman and you realize actually it's not just me, I like to just let people know that there are a lot of and then, at the end of it, we're all human, so we're not wired to want to delay things for the future like we have to consciously make those decisions yeah, it's the, you know, delayed gratification yes yeah, if you can kind of master that earlier on, you'll be much more suited to investing yes um, okay, I'd love to ask from the perspective of if there's someone out there listening right now.
Speaker 2:Maybe they have a bit of money, maybe they're about to start a job um, you know and they're thinking what on earth should I be doing? What kind of steps would you broadly lay out for someone to follow?
Speaker 1:yeah. So I think that advice can really fit in a very small post-it. It's not going to be and it might not even sound, revolutionary, I think, a big thing I like to do and we had a workshop just this weekend tailored for early careers, so people who have just graduated and uh and um about to start on the career ladder exactly maybe uh have been working for one or two years.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of agency that comes from just shaking off the student tag or just if you've never switched your current account. Ever start there, please why?
Speaker 2:why start that?
Speaker 1:I just think I think it's in the interest of the big banks to make current accounts feel like they're commodities or things that you just start you have, just like your water bill, completely not the same. Um, I view and I did as in my old job and I still do now financial services products as consumer products, and it should be as easy as possible for you to switch around. And so that's maybe might not sound like the best place to start, but if you're having a bad experience with your bank, you should switch. And if you feel like it's not about another thing, I like to say it's not about the amount that you have. Just having the different types of accounts and having things going into the right places is really important.
Speaker 2:So what sort of bad experiences are people having with their current accounts?
Speaker 1:I mean just for me, if I had to speak about it like if it, I can't picture people opening. I mean we're Muslims so we wouldn't necessarily do that. But people do talk about how long it takes just to move money sometimes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:And you could see that could give a lot of anxiety to someone if they have to wait a week to to have their savings account moved between banks.
Speaker 2:So that's like, um, that can yeah, especially now in the, in the age of monzo and revolutes, to just move money around from different accounts within the same bank seems bizarre it's.
Speaker 1:I sometimes think, like how can this be tolerable? Like it's not, it's not okay. And or if you ever have a bad experience traveling abroad and maybe your card doesn't work, yes, that in of itself, for me is is is really bad. So, um, I would, I would like set yourself up for success, like a lot of it has nothing to do with you. It's because of the services that you have and maybe you don't have the right accounts open.
Speaker 2:Okay, so move to a current account that suits you and suits your purposes, whether it's traveling or spending.
Speaker 1:Start there, yeah, I would definitely feel like you have control over all these decisions. And then it depends, like I think for if someone's just graduated I think I'm still getting to grips and understanding, and I think the whole country in the uk is the student loan situation um, just how much student debt is out there? I personally, I really want them to to really tackle that issue.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like actually understand that. So this is for I mean for for um, whether you're muslim or not, but especially if you're muslim. I think that's kind of where I personally started with my financial journey, and what?
Speaker 2:the debate of whether you took a student loan or not? Yeah, yes, okay. And I love that there are a lot of efforts now on Halal students.
Speaker 2:There's a fantastic lady called Asha Asha Hassan, who has been championing this for the last 10, 12 years, ever since David Cameron promised a Sharia compliance alternative to student loans I think 10, 11 years ago now and it's been sort of kicked down the road by each government and now they're saying they're going to do something about it by 2025. Inshallah they do. Hopefully they do by. You know complete credit to the efforts of her Sadiq over at Muslim Census, who did that campaign, the guys at IFG pushing it. They've done fantastic work championing this cause. So, inshallah, we will see it and then it depends.
Speaker 1:I mean, a lot of the times, the biggest place that you could start is um, like your, your your own goals. So if I, if let's say, alhamdulillah, you do have your dream job and you're like really happy to just get stuck in, um, I would start from there. Um, uh, if, uh, you've you've never looked at, uh, yeah, one thing that anything that sounds like a black box, try to try to tackle. Um, so, even as simple as understanding every number that's on your payslip, um, I think you give yourself the grace and the space to do that.
Speaker 2:For some people do you think it just sounds insurmountable? There's so much stress which comes from this right. As soon as there's money involved, it's like okay, where is it going? What should I be doing with it? What I find is that money is such a psychologically emotional, emotionally draining type issue for a lot of people. They're often afraid of, you know, checking where their money's going or ensuring that they're not paying for too many things. Or maybe they're paying for two netflix subscriptions or or something like that. Do you find that's very emotionally entangled issue?
Speaker 1:yeah and um, that's, yes, simplifying things, but probably that's actually really good advice as well, like in in general, um, um simple keeping your finances as simple as possible is a.
Speaker 2:I think is is really good it's part of the reason we started kestrel. We noticed there were so many people who they were getting money coming into their accounts and they didn't really understand what was happening to it after that and not really realizing okay, I'm not actually saving anything. So we thought let's try and simplify it. We created this app. People can plug in whatever current accounts they have. We'll create a budget for them based on their previous spending, and then they could edit it and track it, and then they could save towards their goals into little ring fence pots and, crucially, link them up with Sharia compliant savings and investment initiatives as well. So that was kind of the idea behind kestrel. Of course, we wanted to do it more automatically than having a person to it, but I absolutely understand the benefits to both approaches and why one might appeal uh, you know to someone so, and I mean even what you showed at muslim tech fest about the interest purification, oh yeah you.
Speaker 2:I forgot Were you in the audience.
Speaker 1:Yes, oh no way, okay, there you go.
Speaker 2:So for people who don't know, muslim Tech Fest, shout out to Muslimic Makers Arfa and Zahid for running that. We did a roast my app workshop where we showed all these different features and asked people what they thought. But yeah, the interest purifier has proved one of our most popular products. We've had thousands of people just check it out and so many people are gaining interest, either knowingly or unknowingly, through their current accounts or through a savings account, because they feel like it's safer to have their money in a savings account, rightly or wrongly, and they just want to do something to get rid of that interest and we can seamlessly see how much interest you've gotten and help you to just donate it away very meaningfully, um, and with the touch of a button.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, that's the feature, but you think that's useful I think it's massively useful because sometimes you're like I just need to keep round figures in my account so I can tell which was the interest yeah um, which you don't you know. You'd rather not have to do that um, so, um, yeah, but I would say definitely.
Speaker 1:The reason I said that it could fit in a post-it note is because one book that I actually I I heard about it through a podcast, uh, a freakonomics the freak yeah, freakonomics yeah yeah, there was one, this professor, uh, his name was Harold Pollack, and he wrote a book called the Index Card why Personal Finance Doesn't have to be Complicated, and he basically gave like advice on personal finance on an index card, like a revision card.
Speaker 1:I understood that you know if you are debt free and if you are able to have access to an employer matched pension and if you are have to have money saved up for emergencies and then investing consistently. There's not much more you could do aside from really focusing on the goals that you have, much of which have nothing to do with money, and be bold with them and also practice gratitude. I think that's a huge part. So that was what I did and that was the most exciting thing that had happened with Fan Finance. I did my own version and I put it it on twitter and he actually commented really so what was did you have like, more like islamically focused?
Speaker 1:like. My last one was uh, be grateful for your at your health and your youth and your family, because they're not going to be here forever and it's priceless and like that is like a big part of um, the way that we look, we look at money.
Speaker 1:And another great article that I loved was from the yakin institute, uh, where they they talk about like and they it's like a quite a heavy read actually, but it's compares like um economics and how the homo economicus, like how he's presented in in in economics and what's the islamic version of that um, and how the wealth that you have is actually the one that you can take with you, which is the good deeds that you do while you're here, and really leading into that. I think that can be really empowering.
Speaker 2:Okay, incredible, incredible. So we're running a little short on time, but I'd love to find out what are your future plans for Nisa Invest? What do you want to do with it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I'm really at the moment. I'm really grateful to have been on this podcast because I'm currently on the dean developers build-a-thon, which runs for seven weeks, so I'm writing them.
Speaker 1:Uh, halfway through it actually takes place in the exact same building, so I'm gonna be yes, it does, of course, yeah back here this weekend and that's actually given me the space to sort of think less about necessarily building the MVP and I should give a shout out to Founders and Coders which was where I trained in software development and that was really helpful for me because it made sure that I was Was that the King's Accelerator Program? No, that came after. And that just came in the summer, so that's also where I'm'm based on on an average day uh, working from there um oh, from the king's university accelerator nice okay, uh, but no, I mentioned that because I was able to work with a great team of software developers to build like an mvp version of nissan bass.
Speaker 1:But no, um, uh and uh. I'm working, uh, with a co-. Her name is Diana and she's staying on with me and we're doing team developers together, which is really exciting.
Speaker 2:Anything you can share from an early MVP idea.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely. I mean, I'm really focused on how people make the decisions around money right before it hits their paycheck, make the decisions around money right before it hits their paycheck. So when I position Lisa Invest, or how I want people to hear about it, is as an alternative to the financial well-being benefits that some forward-thinking employers do already provide, and how you can make all of those decisions guided by your faith. And how you can make all of those decisions guided by your faith starting from your halal pension that, alhamdulillah, all employers have to provide.
Speaker 2:Now they do. Yeah, now they do. It wasn't that way when we started working though I don't think Okay, exactly.
Speaker 1:So yeah, if people listening can check out exactly like what their employer offers, and if they've ever said, oh, I'll ignore that email, maybe reach out and I'm happy to chat about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I think team developers they've done a really good job of actually making you think about exactly what problem you're solving and how you're going to be like validating your idea with exactly the people who are their employee resource groups, not necessarily the end user. So it makes the business model look quite complicated.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, you know, sometimes going directly to business can be a really good way of getting revenue. We do that at Kestrel. We sell a lot of our software services to the Islamic banks, which were the whole frustration as to why we started Kestrel because of how poor their user experience is and customer service and how high the fees were. So we actually ended up accidentally building a solution which really helped them to upgrade a lot of their offerings. So we do that for banks in Malaysia and now in the UK and UAE and places like that.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, very interesting, slight pivot, but still with the overarching mission of helping muslims to grow their wealth in a halal way. Um, I'd love to move on to some rapid fire questions yes, go for it okay, favorite financial services book, oh, or financial book, personal finance book?
Speaker 1:I I would say um, um the nudge by richard thaler yes, I often say that I could trade in my entire degree for that book because I refer to it so much. I I mean, I carry what, like I have it in my bag right now, um, so that's like a got really great. I mean, it's not necessarily personal finance focus, but if you're interested in those sorts of topics about how human behavior works and how a lot of the ways that we're making decisions- are architecturally decided for us already.
Speaker 1:But if you're looking to improve your finances, I think the Psychology of Money is a great book.
Speaker 2:Love that book Absolutely Okay. Okay, so that was your book recommendations um favorite financial financial literacy influencer oh yes, um, I would say I, I I can give recommendations galore.
Speaker 1:So whoever wants uh, for whoever will suit you, um, when I was just starting out, I really like the financial diet. Okay, so youtube uh channel, um, they've got some really um nice. Especially some of their most viral videos are really good uh. And then I like uh, ramit sati.
Speaker 2:Um who's that sir?
Speaker 1:um uh ramit sati he's in the us okay and then personally, though I not necessarily influencers, but I use, um yeah, islamic finance guru and money saving expert of course, all the time.
Speaker 2:Of course, yeah, yeah, they're the the staples for many muslims here in the uk. Um, okay, amazing. And to round it all off, favorite money related story from from the Quran or Hadith Was there anything that inspired you or a person or an individual?
Speaker 1:Yes, so I recently came back from Muslim Tech Week in San Francisco and that was like a really great experience. We like there were actually some talks related to Islamic finance, but in general, the sort of things that people were talking about was being Muslim entrepreneurs, which is very related to finance. So I like the idea of you know, starting out your day with charity. So how, like in a Muslim market, you're like the first, like the first thing that people buy is like for free, like just to start your day off in a on a good note, or people recommending, like someone nearby who hasn't had a sale to just do that. I like that kind of increases the buyer care that you have in in in your own business in your own business, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:So giving something away for free or saying listen, I've already had some customers, they haven't got any, direct them over there yeah, yeah, that was like a recent one that I've, which is so like anti-capitalist, anti-competition, and I think so many of us working in the west we really fall into that competition type mindset that has to be us right. We're going to be the only ones within the space. When you know it goes back to that abundant scarcity mindset right, just because I'm winning doesn't mean other people have to lose yeah, exactly amazing.
Speaker 2:All right, it's fun. Thank you so much for your time. If people want to find out more about you, about nissa invest, where can they do that?
Speaker 1:yep, so I'm pretty reachable on on linkedin. They can just message me, um and uh, you, they can follow along with Dean developers as well because, uh, the team there, they are really great support and they have excellent social media, so they always have a camera on us, so people should watch fantastic.
Speaker 2:All right, fahan, assalamu alaikum, thank you so much thank you for listening to the Muslim Money Talk podcast. If you like what you heard, then please subscribe to Muslim Money Talk. Wherever you might have been listening to this, give us a like and share it with someone who you think might be interested. It really, really helps us out. Thank you, assalamualaikum, and see you next time.