The Heeraclitus Blog

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Beyond One Discipline

August 03, 2026

As I get closer to turning 32, only 6 days left, InshAllah, I thought this would be the perfect time to reflect on one of the strangest things about my life. It has always been both a blessing and a curse. For me, though, I thank Allah for it every single day. Throughout my life, people have criticized me. Sometimes it was constructive criticism, which I genuinely appreciate. Most of the time, however, it happened behind my back, only for it to eventually make its way back to me. Let's be honest, these days everything eventually reaches you. I never paid much attention to it, and occasionally I even found it amusing. Hearing someone criticize me in such a strange way sometimes made me smile. Usually, when people criticize you behind your back, it is because they see a flaw, a weakness, or something missing in you. Ironically, the thing people kept criticizing me for was never a weakness. It was the complete opposite. The criticism was always the same. "You know too many things...

Living My Dream, Losing Myself.

July 13, 2026

In the previous post, I left things on the impression that my professional life had finally fallen into place. I was doing well. My entrepreneurial journey was moving in the right direction. I was living independently, I had my own workspace, the beach was just a short walk away where I would go every day to clear my mind, there were beautiful cafés nearby, I was working out, and from the outside everything looked like it was going exactly as planned. But then something strange happened. The same symptoms I had experienced months before started coming back. Back then, I was frustrated with agency life. I was working endlessly without getting paid fairly, so I assumed those symptoms were simply the result of overwork and frustration. This time, though, I was finally living the life I had dreamed about. So why were they coming back? One day I was watching YouTube. I always enjoyed those "Day in the Life of an Entrepreneur" videos. They inspired me, and I often picked up useful ...

The Cost of Choosing a Different Path

July 12, 2026

In my previous post, I talked about how I ended up becoming interested in entrepreneurship, even though no one in my family or my surroundings had ever been an example that inspired me in that direction. It all sounds fun when I say that my first boss was the person who inspired me to become an entrepreneur. It makes for a nice story. But let me walk you through what it's actually like to dream of becoming an entrepreneur while growing up in an environment where people genuinely believe that every boss is an oppressor and an enemy. More importantly, I want to show you what that kind of environment does to someone's personality and mental health. Let's go back to 2016, after that story with my boss happened and I discovered entrepreneurship. I didn't immediately change my plans. I spent 3 more years working as an employee. The difference was that during those 3 years, I became obsessed with learning. I read books, spent a good amount of money on courses, bootcamps, and p...

It Started With a Number

July 08, 2026

In the previous posts, I talked a bit about ambition, the story of Nhance, and entrepreneurship. In this one, I want to go back in time and reflect on where this ambition of becoming an entrepreneur actually came from. The strange thing is that in my family, which Alhamdulillah is a very large one with more than 12 uncles and aunts, their children, their grandchildren, and even great grandchildren, there has never really been an entrepreneur. Not one. The closest person I can think of is one of my cousins who works as a carpenter. Even then, I would not necessarily call him an entrepreneur. He is more of a skilled craftsman than someone building a company. He has his own woodworking workshop and employs a few people, but he never struck me as someone with an entrepreneurial mindset. When you look at hundreds of family members across generations and not a single one even runs a business, it is a little strange that I ended up with this ambition. The funny part is that before my 20s, I a...

Why Success Was Making Me Miserable

July 03, 2026

If you've known me for a while, or at least read a few articles on this blog, you probably already know that Ramadan is the month where I literally put everything on hold. It's the month I dedicate to worship, and to reviewing my life psychologically, intellectually, spiritually, and in terms of my faith. Every aspect of it. I even stop working, which makes Ramadan feel incredibly long, especially because the days themselves are long, and there is so much time to reflect. But the most important habit I've built over the years, little by little since Ramadan 2021, is using Ramadan to deepen my understanding of Islam. More specifically, my understanding of our Aqeedah. At least for me, and I don't want to generalize, the problem was that I never truly understood my own beliefs. I simply inherited my religion. I wasn't practicing Islam because I deeply understood why I was doing what I was doing. Like many of us, I was simply following what I inherited from my parent...

Growth Sometimes Looks Like Walking Away

July 01, 2026

Well, as I mentioned in the previous post, I had originally decided to postpone the idea of Nhance until 2030, when I'd hopefully be one hundred percent ready from every angle, especially financially. But ironically, I ended up launching it again in 2025. Why? How? And am I going to continue with it after launching it again? That's what this post is about. After we shut down the startup, we decided to separate the services that had dragged us down the first time, mainly branding and mobile app development. I launched the branding service under the name Brand Audit Consulting, while the team launched the development service under the name ATWOM. This time everything felt different. There was no startup pressure. The only goal was to build great services, work with great clients, and gradually grow into an agency based company. So I started building Brand Audit from scratch. At the same time, I wanted to show my community how to build a business from zero using nothing but social...

Building a Startup Was Never the Goal

July 01, 2026

The two questions I've been asked the most over the past few months are, "Where did you disappear to? We don't see your Instagram account anymore." This mostly comes from people who don't have my personal accounts and only find my LinkedIn, which I only brought back a few days ago. Believe it or not, some people even end up messaging me through Pinterest. Very few people from the Instagram community have my personal number, so mashallah, the fact that so many people noticed I disappeared and actually reached out means a lot. May Allah reward them all with goodness. The second question always comes with the first one. "What happened to Nhance? It looked like it was doing well. Why did you stop? What really happened?" So I thought this would be the right time to reflect on the story of Nhance, how it all started, why it stopped, and everything that happened in between. Very few people know the full story from the beginning. Let me take you back to 2018, wh...

Who Is Thinking for You?

June 28, 2026

I think throughout this blog I've reflected a lot on how social media has affected me as a creator and the psychological impact it has had on me over the past 4 years. In this post specifically, I want to reflect on what the digital platforms we use every day are doing to society as a whole, both to the people consuming content and the people creating it. To me, the biggest danger facing modern society, something that has quietly become part of our social fabric across almost every connected country, is the "algorithm". If you don't know what an algorithm is or how it works, let me simplify it in two sentences. An algorithm is a system designed to constantly feed your emotions. It either makes you angry, makes you happy, gives you exactly what you want to hear, or throws ideas completely opposite to your beliefs at you. It does all of this almost randomly for one reason only, to keep you using the platform for as long as possible so your attention can be sold to adver...

From Visibility to Peace

June 28, 2026

To wrap up these reflections on social media, both for myself and here on paper as I try to put my thoughts into words, I want to reflect on one last thing that's been on my mind for the past 6 months. For the last 4 years, I've been trying to build an audience on social media, both for business and for my personal brand. I've already talked about other aspects of the experience, especially the relationships and the psychological impact, in the previous posts. If I ask myself today whether these 4 years on Instagram were worth it, did they actually lead to something meaningful? Did I achieve enough to justify everything I gave in return? I would say yes. I built meaningful relationships through social media, and I did a lot of business with people I met only through Instagram. The whole model of building an audience to generate business clearly works. I've been making a living from it for 4 years. But would I recommend it to someone else? Would I tell someone they need ...