Growth Sometimes Looks Like Walking Away

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 media as the primary marketing channel.

That's exactly what I did.

I started documenting the entire journey, showing every step from absolute zero until landing the first client. I spent 8 months building it little by little while we were also trying to grow ATWOM.

Unfortunately, ATWOM didn't last, and for the exact same reason as before. Client work in Morocco is freaking exhausting. Late payments, endless delays, constant complications, and people dragging projects forever until you start hating your own work.

We eventually stopped that activity, but I kept going with Brand Audit.

This time the model was much clearer. Create branding content, attract clients, provide consulting, get paid, then move on to the next client.

That was the plan.

Alhamdulillah, it actually worked.

Brand Audit became very well known in the branding space in Morocco. More and more people started recognizing it, and clients began reaching out consistently.

Everything was going well until I found myself running into the same old problem that probably won't disappear until people's mentality changes.

Clients who constantly drag things out.

Clients expecting free services.

Clients wanting you to spend hours explaining everything before they even decide whether they want to work with you.

People who don't appreciate the value of the work and make you justify your pricing every single time.

I tried to stay patient.

But another problem slowly started growing inside me.

The branding industry itself became mentally exhausting. More and more people entered the field without really understanding it. They simply repeated whatever was trending on social media until misinformation became the standard.

Eventually, if you actually spoke from real experience, you became the one who sounded wrong.

Either you repeated the same recycled ideas everyone else was repeating, or people assumed you had no idea what you were talking about.

Despite all of that, I kept going.

Then 2025 arrived.

I was still pushing through until Ramadan came.

Ramadan has always been my month to disconnect, slow down, organize my thoughts, and reset. During that Ramadan, I realized I was slowly heading toward another burnout, the same one I had only recently recovered from.

So I took the month to rest.

Around that same period, I had gotten to know someone and was seriously planning to get married. At that point in my life, it genuinely felt like the right time to build a family.

When Ramadan ended, I came out with one clear conclusion.

Instead of staying trapped in this endless cycle of stress, I needed a completely different business model.

Since I was seriously preparing for marriage, I started thinking differently.

I needed a business that had a meaningful mission beyond serving clients and dealing with endless headaches.

I wanted to create something whose reward wasn't just money, but something that could become a continuous charity.

And because I was preparing for marriage, I wanted something that would also allow my future wife to never feel forced to work somewhere just to earn a salary.

If she wanted to pursue her own ambitions, great.

But I wanted her to have a safe environment where she could work whenever she wanted, however she wanted, ideally within something we built together.

Eventually, I wanted us to build something that would benefit everyone.

Something good for us.

Good for our family.

Good for humanity.

Good for the community.

Good for the environment.

In short, I needed a business model that could bring all of those things together.

So what business could possibly check every one of those boxes?

Yes.

You guessed it.

Nhance.

"But wait... weren't you planning to postpone it until 2030 because you didn't have the capital or funding to build it?"

Yes.

But this time I had a completely different strategy and a completely different vision for funding.

Instead of bootstrapping through traditional service work, I wanted to rely on the experience I had gained through consulting and teaching. By then I had already been running 101 mentorship sessions, and I had also started experimenting with AI automation services.

The plan was simple.

Launch Nhance with highly automated services.

Use consulting and teaching to generate fast, relatively stress free income.

Reinvest that money into building the startup infrastructure.

Then launch another fully automated service agency where AI and a small team handled most of the execution instead of me doing everything myself.

The biggest motivation behind this plan was honestly marriage.

I wanted to enter married life with a clear direction, a stable income, and a solid vision for the future.

Why was launching Nhance during that period so important to me?

Because I didn't want to enter marriage burned out.

I didn't want client work and service business stress to drain all my energy before I even became a husband.

I wanted to have enough inspiration and emotional energy to actually become the husband I hoped to be.

And I also didn't want my future wife working under someone else simply because we needed money.

I wanted us both to be free.

Free from clients.

Free from employers.

Free from depending on anyone besides Allah for our livelihood.

Real freedom.

Since Nhance checked every one of those boxes, it felt like the perfect time to launch it.

The new strategy made sense.

The vision felt stronger than ever.

Alhamdulillah, the project started really well.

People joined the first groups.

Consulting sessions started coming in.

The volume wasn't exactly what I had hoped for, but there was genuine demand, and that alone was encouraging.

The first phase worked.

The second phase worked.

The third phase was launching an automated service called Brandilya.

The idea was for it to become a fully automated cash engine that would finance the startup instead of me constantly investing my own savings.

Everything from May until December 2025 was dedicated to building that vision.

So what happened?

Why did I stop when everything seemed to be going in the right direction?

December arrived.

The Africa Cup of Nations had started.

By then I was already mentally exhausted because obstacle after obstacle kept appearing without any clear explanation.

Nothing seemed to work anymore.

It honestly felt like barakah had disappeared from everything.

Problems started appearing from every direction for no obvious reason.

Even the marriage that had motivated this entire journey fell apart.

To this day, I still don't fully understand how everything collapsed so quickly.

At some point my brain simply stopped processing anything.

Whenever life starts unfolding like that, I've learned to recognize the sign.

It's time to step back.

At that point, things are no longer in my control.

They're under Allah's decree.

By the end of December, I went back to the drawing board.

I deleted social media, which had become one of the biggest sources of mental noise, as I explained in previous posts.

I disappeared from the internet.

That's when I started seriously questioning whether I should continue with Nhance at all.

The strategy itself was working.

But the startup still required significant investment.

I had even started pitching it to investors.

Yet everything kept falling apart.

On top of that, every new AI update from Claude and Google made it increasingly obvious that the creative industry was about to change dramatically.

The original idea behind Nhance might not even remain relevant.

The business model would probably require a complete pivot.

But by then, all the motivation I had was simply gone.

Now we're in the middle of 2026.

Honestly, I still haven't made a final decision.

I still don't know whether I'll continue or not because I genuinely can't see what the road ahead looks like.

I needed a long break.

That's when I finally decided to take a vacation.

Ironically, the money I had originally saved for marriage ended up paying for that vacation instead looool.

So that's the story of Nhance.

Will I continue?

Will I postpone it until 2030 after all?

Allah knows best.

The biggest realization I came away with after these past six months is that I no longer want to build anything that depends on putting my face on social media.

Nhance was built around personal branding.

And personal branding is no longer something I want, as I explained in the previous stories.

If I had to guess today, I'd say there's an 80% chance I won't continue with the project.

It has been my dream since 2018.

But after all these attempts, I think that if I build something new, it will probably be completely faceless.

No personal brand.

No social media dependency.

No constantly being in front of everything.

Maybe a product based brand.

Maybe something else.

I honestly don't know yet.

But that's the story, even though it ended up being much longer than I expected.

Inshallah, whatever Allah has planned is better.

Alhamdulillah for everything.