Khalid Ali — From Sudan to Dubai

right so right now we are in april 2026 we're in dubai as you can see i'm here walking in my community see i know about all the propaganda and people what you are hearing in the news but i'm gonna talk about my personal experience right so my life there is no change from what happened before the war and right now like i'm going to the mosque every day i'm doing my work as a real estate consultant every day my family are here like life is pretty much pretty pretty much normal like we are doing the same thing that we have been doing before and like this is not something this is not a small sentence to say you know when you have a country where in the sky there are drones and rockets but you still say that dubai is one of the safest cities in the world

the leadership they are doing a fantastic work up on the sky to make us live a normal life during this situation of course protection comes from allah so alhamdulillah thanks to god he is the one who gives protection he the one who takes protection but the work that the leadership in dubai are doing here to make people live a normal life despite this situation and again i'm gonna say it still today dubai is one of the safest cities in the world so this is not something like to say that's why i wanted to emphasize on that so yeah

Assalamu alaikum, guys. My name is Khaled Ali. I'm a real estate consultant in Dubai. And I come from an engineering background. I'm a computer engineer with 20 plus years of experience. So, from my engineering background, I'm an analytical kind of person. I've been doing business consulting for about 15 years now. And I've been fully doing real estate,

you

know, since 2017.

I started as marketing and then from 2021, I went fully as a real estate consultant. Now, number one, I love real estate marketing. No,

Okay. I live in Dubai for 13 years now. You know, me and my family live here.

So, this video is about the life in Dubai. And what people are doing, how life is here. So that you know you can get an insider information of what I usually do on a day -to -day basis. And understand how it is if you want to move and if you want to live in Dubai. Because you see different things when it comes to the media. But you know there is a whole different side to life in Dubai. And this is one of them, you know. Going to writing courses and you know, doing what you love to do. So, you can live the... You know, you go to the middle of things being in it, being in downtown and business day. You know, doing business, making money, closing deals. And you know, you can come to this side to chill and relax. You know, everything is here. So, this is we are trying to show you the other side which you don't know about Dubai.

you want to start from there or after I came here? Just before like Sudan Yes, Sudan Yes, and then I came here and it was really interesting your approach because it shows your character like how you do things like you don't give up I want to go to engineer department but they don't accept me Ok, I'll

after I came here I started applying How was it like? How was the idea? Why IT Salat? Because you weren't familiar with IT

Salat Yeah, see, I graduated in 2006 I was in computer engineering and then I worked in MTN MTN is like it's a big telecom provider in Africa in multiple countries And where did you work? In Sudan and I was in the core team

this, you know the job will not teach you anything about business generally in business actually the foundations I got it from network marketing it's I didn't make much money out of it like my biggest income per year was around

$80 ,000 to $100 ,000 max that's what I could reach but you know back in my in Sudan it's a lot of money

and you know I was in my job and then I came here 2013 so now you know I've completed 13 years

in Dubai

so the way I came here it was not planned so actually I am I play taekwondo professionally so there was an international referee course here yes sorry one

I had you know I was earning well as a as a network engineer in Sudan but then you know I was looking for options I always wanted to improve myself when I came here you know I got a chance that there is an international referee course for taekwondo you know I used to play taekwondo professionally and I know like if I get this certificate I can earn well in all the competitions they pay good money I said okay no harm it's only two days and I get a visa for two months free visa

so I put my annual leave I applied I applied for the course I came here I finished the course Alhamdulillah I passed I'm an international referee certified I also had that and then I started applying for taekwondo sorry international referee certified of what of taekwondo and unasserted black belt

international certified both ways I can play and I can be a referee

you did it today yeah but you know that was that was long back now now I'm 38 years old

I'm retired okay okay so you know Alhamdulillah so you know after I applied you know like my specialty is being a a core engineer a core telecom engineer but there is no way you know like how can I apply there was even no opening but then I got a chance to work in Ettesala so if I'm working in Ettesala at least I'm around you know I'm not an engineer but the way you can enter is a call center so will I take the risk I said yeah I'll drop myself from an engineer to a call center agent and then from there see how can I access and get to where I want it took me two and a half years but then after two and a half years I knew the team I knew the managers I submitted my CV I got an interview and I was hired

was I was doing call center so I was handling calls and then after that you know they understood that I have some sort of knowledge when it comes to telecom engineering so they moved me to the back office team what we saw you know complaints my mobile is not working calls are not working so you know you do based on your access and then if you have anything you escalate into the engineering team which is actually the team I want to get into so I started escalating to them I started sending them emails so I started knowing them by emails and knowing the names and who's the manager because you know you are an insider now so I got the managers I got the manager emails so I was communicating with them for like a year so now they know my name is Khaled but they don't know who I am so after I built a good relationship then I I told them guys can I come visit your office they say yeah yeah come to this place now this is the first time I knew where their office is because you know there are thousands of employees you don't even know where they work so and then I was shocked that their office is in Ajman actually the engineering team hidden no one will know in Ajman Ajman so I went there you know I had a few visits there I told them guys by the way don't think I'm a post center guy I'm a chilean engineer this is my certificate of life so then when they got an opening they asked me to come and for an interview they did the interview to me they liked my experience and then I was hired so that took two and a half so just don't give up you know even if you are searching for a job just you know take it step by step

then like you know like in the beginning you feel yes I arrived but then I was not satisfied because back in my country like you know I did yes I did network marketing but you know the earnings the freedom I had you know the challenges I was facing if you started with that you cannot end up being in a job it's not going to work so yeah so this is when I started on the side I opened a marketing agency and this is how I got introduced to real estate I was running Facebook into Instagram ads I was doing it for doctors for lawyers for you know for plastic surgeons anything that can come to your mind I was selling it using Facebook ads and you know I started making some income out of it you know when I made

I came here with the you know all the money I had in my pocket was that's it

is it possible well you know I just there is a friend of mine you know we used to study together so he accommodated me in his house until I got a job and I started I started making money then I moved to my house so if not for his help it's going to be very difficult of course so I came here with nothing just this 500 dirham which I also borrowed from someone when I came here so it was a little zero and then coming back to my agency work so I used to go we were doing shift based job so I go to my shift sometimes my shift starts 11pm sometimes my shift starts 3pm but then at the end I'm running ads so I just I log into the to the Facebook manager and you know I keep running the campaigns checking the results and all and you know after a while I started getting first second third client you know and I was happy with the challenge how to say so when was it like that was 2017 you know it was after it

marketing you know network marketing gave me the foundation because network marketing I was doing it in university you will learn how to market you will learn how to sell you will learn how to build a team this is the most challenging part you know recruiting and building a team you know for your business to work that thing is gonna teach you a lot and I did this back when I was in the university I thought it's something stupid but then now when I think back to my life you know the skills

and the skills and the knowledge I acquired at this time it really helped me a lot throughout my career especially on this time you know especially when you gotta think okay what should I do how can I increase my income my income is not enough yes I'm an engineer yes you know people perspective on learning well but it's not even covering my expenses it's wild so there are two options either you sit down and cut on expenses and live a depressing life or you think about how you can increase your income so then you gotta come up with ideas so this is when I started you know getting clients and trying to sell them my service in the beginning I was doing it for free for people to learn my skills and even for me to sharpen my skills I need to do it for free when my clients when they started getting clients or they started earning they started paying me wow you know for free

but you know see if you are in Facebook it's easy if you are running ads for them and then they realize like for example they pay 5k but then their net income from the 5k they spend on the ads is 50k of course they will pay you some money to keep doing it so that was my goal how can I 10x the amount that they are investing on this you know on this campaign this is what I was working on and then I also and this is the interesting part I started getting some clients who are on real estate real estate companies they want clients agents they want clients so I started attracting them on my marketing agency and you know to do that I have to learn about real estate so all of this is 2018 2019 so this is how I started selling projects on real estate and then I realized people they used to pay me like between 5 to 15k but they needed yeah for

after it was a lot because you know in the beginning you will feel that when I get this job then I'm going to be happy then I got this job but I was not you know I was depressed actually you know I saw a story of one guy he's been working there since 1992

and then you know he reached the age of 60 and you know they sent him an email that hey you are not going to work with us anymore you reached the age and he was having his kids in school

they didn't you know like when they sent him this email they sent him the email it was December I remember 2018

and and he told them okay guys just my kids are in the school don't cancel my visa don't want anything just keep my visa till till till May or June same year they rejected he's working from 1992 he just requested to keep his visa for 6 months and they rejected so it's like I worked there for one year but then I saw that last episode right in front of my eyes so I said hey I got to build up something I don't want to be in this position so you know like this is the thing that came in front of me running campaigns even while doing my job I can do this sorry sorry

2019

you had more clients when were you confident okay it's time okay so I put a target that when I 3x my income every month for 3 months I'm gonna resign how much money so by that time I was making around $10 ,000 around 30 to 40k

a month consistently for 3 months you know I was just you know I was doing it part time like 3 hours a day 4 hours a day so it was beautiful you know

then I resigned and you know I started going all in yeah before that how much did you pay for rent how was your life you

I was really scared you know like like the day I submit my resignation after sending the email you know like I even tried to recall the email after I sent the resignation email I called my mom and then she told me you are really crazy how can you do something like that like you have been dreaming about this job for so long but like you know whenever I compare the feeling and the stress on this time to the situation that happened with the guy when he was 60 years old imagine like you don't have any experience in the market you know I realize that it's you know it's way worse if I stay doing what I am doing if not if I did not see this film in front of me I wouldn't have resigned definitely you know but I was more scared to stay there working there for 40 years just you know doing the same job and you know and not improving in life so I said okay let me take the risk and then the funny thing is that after I did that for one year Covid hit

I realized in Covid I lost like 90 % of my business how was it?

it was really tough it was really tough but you know

why? what was it tough? it was tough because you know because like when there is a crisis people they will start cutting on expenses and you know one of the easiest expenses to cut on are the ads like imagine I was running ads for doctors

doctors you know only the hospitals were working at that time you know I'm running ads for real estate agents, real estate agents a lot of them exit the market on this time

the campaigns I run in 2018 because you know I realized most of the agents they actually because I was working on a commission base so they told me the deals are not closing your leads are not good so to verify that I used to when I get the lead I call the lead first and verify that it reached the agent the developer office whatever so you know this is what I used to do so in 2021 I started getting calls from clients who complained that okay we bought from you but like you know the handover is delayed because of covid you know many handovers delayed so they called complaining why because they called the agent and the agent was not answering so they called me thinking that I'm working with them and I was just a marketing agency and I realized there are so many deals that got closed that I was not paid for I got actually screwed how many people did you call you?

I cannot remember but it's minimum 18 to 20 people minimum and these are the people who called I won't know unless they called and they say we bought from you in 2018 but now we are not getting our property yeah and another problem was that you mentioned that Facebook like meta yeah and then after that the main challenge is the game of paid advertising changed a lot after 2020 because you know Facebook they introduced a rule to help people to opt outside tracking like the way that we were doing it is you know we used the Facebook pixel to track the people but then when they opt out of tracking Facebook cannot track anyone so the performance of the ads after 2020 it dropped significantly I don't like to lie to people you know I tell them straight that hey Facebook ads now even for it to work you gotta spend a lot so this is what happened I lost clients and my business model is not working anymore yeah

it tracks for example if you want to if you are looking for a doctor it tracks you know like you go to Google search check some application check some website so it comes to know that you are actually for example looking for a dentist and then it shows you ads from you know from dentist this is how it used to work but then if there is no tracking it's just gonna go randomly we won't understand anything so

cold calling was working better than Facebook ads so you know you can see the challenge here I left my job I built the business model and then what happened in Covid is that I lost the clients and my business model doesn't work anymore like even if Covid is over I can't keep doing the same thing and your mother I told you yeah so yeah and everyone told me yeah see so then like I decided okay I'm just gonna go on real estate because you know this is the best model that worked for me so I went on real estate

and I started doing it you know fully you know as an agent not only doing marketing we can make a pause here we

little bit that's one of my problems i walk too fast yeah yeah okay okay so and then like when it comes to my family i'm living here with my family in dubai and you know it is the same we're going out in the mall right now i'm here shooting a video they are outside in the mall you know taking my daughter to go there and play so there is really no difference the the life now and life before the war to me is the same actually to me yeah

and you know rents is usually managed by wassail inside you know it's like one bedroom is around 55 60k two bedroom is around 80 to 100k three bedroom starts 110 to 130. um yeah these are the prices here

the location yeah the reason why we chose this it's it's quiet calm okay not much people here because you know the community now in the buildings i think they opened around 10 of the buildings like you know only the buildings around the central park the far ones that are still under construction so

know it's calm and it's a center location for everyone but right now uh i'm bringing my mom i don't want to talk about where we're gonna move because it's still not confirmed we didn't find anything yet hello so um so yeah i can discuss the location and um it's good for families yeah

so like for me like my direct family we are living all around the world i have my sister she's living in the uk i have my brother in sweden uh my brother and my sister they are living in the us okay and as i mentioned i'm planning to move my mom here with me actually she chose you know she lived with me here in dubai she she lived in uk she lived in sweden and she chose to be here most number one because of the you know of the lifestyle you can see the comparison when it comes to dubai and all these places

as someone who have lived in all these places like dubai is the best

and secondly you know my mom she's old she wants to be close to mecca and medina you know so it's quite a short flight from here compared coming from the us or coming from different places

so that's why she chose here and uh hopefully inshallah in the coming one to two months she will be with us and

so so the reason why i chose this community it's uh very peaceful very quiet i care about this thing a lot uh secondly the location like you know my wife she's a teacher her school is like 15 minutes from here uh for my daughter the kindergarten is also very close even for my work as a real estate consultant so you know like the areas that i'm mostly working on it's uh dubai hills uh creek harbor al barari all these communities from here it's like 15 minutes you know comparing grass or it's a very sent downtown is from here is also 10 to 15 minutes uh even in all the coming off -plan projects like like d3 by miras close from here so the location it's very good for when it comes to us as family for my work for my wife's work and even for my daughter and it's everything for the family you need is here there is swimming pool basketball court football court everything is there so yeah so

I've been doing horse riding now for around 3 years.

I come here to relax. Horses have this feeling whenever you get close to them you get this inner peace. Sometimes you need to get out of stress and all the work and whatever is happening in life to escape.

Horses are one of my favorite places to be in. That's point number 2. Point number 2.

It's an Arabic saying. Al khayru marbutu min wasiha al khayru It's a hadith actually.

Good things are usually around a horse. Plus it builds a lot of self confidence. You can think about you controlling an animal.

I feel like I'm in a horse race. You're going to be 500 kg up to 1 ton. You're commanding it and it's listening to you. That's why I always recommend for parents to teach their children horse riding from 6 to 8 years old. It will have a big impact. It will make them have this leadership personality. But you know you can do it at any time. It's a good sport.

It's a good stress reliever. It's an amazing skill to have. I come here often.

Sometimes I come 3 times a week. Sometimes when there is a huge pressure maybe I come once or twice a month.

all of them are Arabic courses. There are different courses. So you know Arabic courses for you to ride the Arabic courses you need to be really good. Because you know they like to run. They are very strong.

Some Arabic courses they train them for beginners. But you know the Arabic courses you realize they have very low cost. You know horse riding doesn't cost much man. I think like you pay you know for 10 sessions you pay around 2000, 3000 dirhams. Depends on the sometimes they make offers sometimes they don't make offers. And you know it's different when you want to ride a horse in the sea. You know it's the water different than you want to ride a horse in the desert. It's different when you are inside in the school. So yeah. Ok,

But it's something that I love to do. The thing is, I believe the main reason why. Usually clients who interact with me, they don't change. They stay with me for a long time. And the main reason is, I always, you know, I like being honest. For me, anything I do in my life, I have three priorities.

I'll mention my priorities. Like, priority number one is using Allah SWT. Priority number two, building a long -term legacy. So my main goal is that whenever you get an information from me now, if you verify it after ten years, it is true. And then my priority number three is making money. Because this is one of my streams of input. Alright? But I'm planning to do this. So I'm ordering them on priority. And then remember the story I told you about the video? And then I hold it for like five months just to verify some information. Yes, yes, yes. And then I posted it in... Yeah, yeah. This is a really

and then also the second thing i'm deciding working these days to move my mom here my mom currently she's living here with her daughter and she's living in dubai in the united states and i'm working to bring her here to live with me so you know if if what's there in the like i'm really shocked like because in the news they are saying things i come to know about only in the news but guys i'm not planning to leave life it is still normal people are outside they are living normally and uh yeah that's it