Son of a Gun: Ali Ozyon

As a child, Ali Ozyon dreamed of becoming a plumber. It was the best he could envision.

"When you’re very young, you think about a career that can make you a lot of money. Everyone wants to be a soccer player or an athlete, but that’s not always realistic," he tells The CEO Magazine.

"Dad was a taxi driver, a makeshift carpenter, a truck driver. I always thought I’d follow in his footsteps, but I was motivated by money. I could see plumbers making a lot of money, so that became my dream."

His father Hakan had a dream too: to create a suitable financial group for his Islamic community. The result was Hejaz Financial Services, which provides Sharia-compliant avenues for Muslims to build wealth without compromising their faith.

Today a leading Islamic financial firm in Australia, Hejaz is recognized by the industry and celebrated by the community. To date, Hejaz offers everything from lending products to asset management to investment pricing. It’s on the ASX, and with a comprehensive app set to take Hejaz’s reach even further, it’s safe to say Hakan has made his dream a vivid reality.

Pipe Dreams

Ali’s plumber dream, on the other hand, didn’t happen.

"I didn’t act on it. I was never book-smart at school, but I was very hands-on," he says. "I was close to my father while he was fixing things for a living, and I learned a lot there."

The most enduring takeaway from these lean years was his father’s dream of owning his own business.

"He had this vision for many, many years," Ali recalls. "And because I was there with him while he was earning enough to make it happen, I heard all about it and eventually became a part of it. He’d always paint this picture that we’d make a lot of money, and being so money motivated I went with it. ‘Yeah Dad, we’ve got this!’ But on the other hand, I was a kid just going with the flow. It was just a dream."

Not for his father, however. Determined to realize his vision, Hakan Ozyon started studying in addition to his many jobs. Nightly planning sessions became a regular event in the Ozyons’ Melbourne household, and Ali began to understand this was more than just a dream.

"I think it started to become real when we came up with the name: Hejaz."

You’re Crazy

The result of the toil of the Ozyons, along with Co-Founder and COO Muzzammil Dhedhy, was Hejaz Financial Services, a financial group designed to address the challenges faced by the Muslim community.

"As a Muslim born in Melbourne, I found that I couldn’t build out my wealth through conventional means," Hakan says. "I couldn’t put my money in conventional investments because they went against my beliefs."

Living on a minimal income, supporting a family of five and studying in addition to his multiple jobs, Hakan doggedly pursued his dream.

"They were tough times to say the least," he says. "Everyone was telling me, ‘You know what? You’re crazy. Why are you wasting all your money on this?’ You start to doubt yourself after a while, but at the end of the day I was convinced this was going to work."

When the Hejaz name came into the picture, the viability of the idea finally came into focus for young Ali. But the road ahead was still full of uncertainty.

"Dad made a big call to leave his job and go studying to build this dream," he says. "That takes a lot of balls. I’ll never forget him doing that, because in this day and age people don’t like taking risks."

Risk and Reward

Ali himself is no stranger to risks. With so much instability at home, the younger Ozyon soon found himself sharing his father’s struggles.

"I have so many little memories of the money just going down. As a kid you don’t really care about it because you think money grows on trees, but after seven years of no income, your quality of life drops quite a bit."

Going to school with worn shoes and torn clothing became the norm. "Mum would just sew them up. Meanwhile, Dad was selling Mum’s gold just to get by," Ali says.

"Eventually I got expelled from school for being an idiot, and Dad decided to homeschool me."

What began as homeschooling eventually became the dawn of Hejaz.

"I’d be in the garage printing paper and sorting through files," Ali recalls.

"Dad was genuinely studying the market and working out how to fill the gap he’d identified. It was very intimate being by his side and watching him learn the trade."

Hakan was acutely aware of the hardships his family endured on his behalf, but his belief in what he was building never wavered.

"Dad promised to buy me a Ferrari when I turned 18. I’m still waiting!" Ali laughs. "But there was a lot of talk, a lot of dreams, and over time we all became very attached to Hejaz."

Superman of the House

Convincing investors of Hejaz’s worth was another matter entirely. Hakan made tracks around Melbourne seeking funding for his dream, a sight that left young Ali slightly unsettled.

"As a kid, your dad is Superman," he says. "And here he is selling his truck and running around begging for money. He’s a very proud man, and I know he’d rather die than be reduced to that level, so to see that happen showed me just how much he believed in Hejaz."

For Hakan, placing himself well out of his comfort zone to realize his vision wasn’t as smooth a process as he’d imagined.

"I’d always wanted to be my own boss. I’d been in the Victorian Police Force for a few years in the late 1980s and quickly realized I didn’t like being bossed around," Hakan says.

"By the time I came up with the idea for Hejaz, I had a little transport company. It was an easy, cushy job and I was earning good money."

In 2007, however, inspiration struck – and never left.

"Two years after that I was trading up. I sold my company and my truck because I just couldn’t give them the time anymore. In hindsight, it would be five years before I actually opened any doors for Hejaz."

During those five years, Hakan and Ali would clean childcare centers at night while Hakan studied during the day.

"It was getting to a point where it was unbearable," Ali says. "And even he knew it. He was at one point considering expanding his cleaning service by taking on more workers. He might have walked away from his dream if he’d followed through on that."

Never Back Down

Risk has become rare. As the financial crunch worsens, Ali believes the kind of sacrifice and dedication that went into creating Hejaz are things of the past.

"Considering how expensive life is right now, no-one’s quitting jobs. No-one’s investing their life savings in a business. It’s not going to happen because life is too brutal now. No-one can take these risks anymore."

That’s why what Hakan and his family went through to realize Hejaz is that much more impressive.

"We’re religious people, and it almost feels like God pushed Dad along at times," Ali explains. "It’s as though it was prophesied to happen. I don’t know what was going through his mind while he was doing all of that, and I don’t think anyone would be able to understand the true magnitude of his sacrifice."

Through it all, Hakan resisted any temptation to take an easy way out, and instead remained true to his vision.

"I don’t think there’s an entrepreneur that started in their garage that didn’t face a lot of challenges," Hakan says.

"The biggest test was family. You can deal with external factors and people, but family is close to the heart. A lot of the family around me didn’t believe in what I was doing, and would make fun of me. When you’re really struggling, that’s even worse. It got to the point where the only person backing me was my 11-year-old son."

While Ali wasn’t blind to the hardships and the ridicule, his belief in his father’s dream never wavered simply because Hakan refused to stay down.

"He proved his determination," Ali says. "He was relentless in his pursuit of kicking down the doors that had been closed to him for so long."

And open they did. In 2014 the fledgling financial services firm opened its first branch in Heidelberg.

"It was an old brothel above a cake shop," Hakan says with a laugh. "It was all I could afford."

‘Go for it’

As Hejaz was finding its feet, Hakan hired a marketing manager to raise awareness of the business’s unique value proposition among its target demographic.

"Dad came to me and said ‘Son, we’ve hired a marketing manager. He’s going to revolutionize Hejaz and we’re going to make it big,’" Ali says.

"By then I was in uni, at a bit of a distance from the business. I told him ‘Go for it’."

Over time, this new development proved to be a letdown. "They had limited capital. They couldn’t afford to keep throwing money away, and they had this guy who wasn’t effective. In the end, they demanded more of him and he left. I don’t think he believed in the Hejaz vision."

The departure left a gap in the young company’s growth strategy. True to form, Hakan thought outside the box for a replacement.

"He came to me and said ‘Son, I have a position for you,’" Ali says. "A marketing manager role for a company no-one knew or cared about. I knew nothing about marketing, so I had to learn on the job."

Immediately, Ali delved into the world of marketing, sharing his father’s determination to make Hejaz a success.

"I had to learn graphic design, web development, social media, all that stuff," he says.

"And that took a lot, because I was 19 at the time. That’s an age when you’re out having fun and exploring the world – all my friends were doing that. I was locked away learning how to be a marketing manager, but because I’d seen Dad go through the same thing, I knew I could do it."

Mistaken Identity

No matter how much work the younger Ozyon put in, he felt as though he was not being taken seriously.

"I made a lot of mistakes," he admits. "But no-one noticed because I was such a small part of a small entity. These days if I stuff up, the whole community will talk about it."

Little by little, Ali began to gain confidence in his role. Meanwhile, Hejaz’s stature and fortunes were also growing.

"We moved out of Heidelberg and into the city, and that’s when we started getting more serious," he recalls.

"And then I’d meet with these professionals, terrified they’d realize I didn’t know what I was talking about. I was role-playing in an attempt to make myself much better than I was."

Eventually, Hejaz’s growth reached a point where Ali knew he had to stop trying to wing it.

"I’d fluked my way so far, but you can’t get away with it forever. I had to step up my game so as not to embarrass my father," he says.

"So I refined myself. I just kept learning."

Finding his Voice

Ali’s first venture beyond his remit was Hejaz Media, a side of the business that produced podcasts and other direct methods of community engagement.

"That was great," he says. "I always try to come up with creative ways to market the Hejaz product and add some sort of branding exercise for the company. I couldn’t see any Muslim company or Islamic platform doing a podcast at that time, and I could see the multiple benefits in doing so."

Ali felt a podcast was the right way to simultaneously cultivate an audience and expose them to a mild form of advertising.

"It’s a professional way of engaging with the community and also letting the world know what we’ve got," he says. "It took several months to get approved by the boss. He kept knocking it back."

The strategy was part of Hakan’s way of reminding Ali that life’s wins wouldn’t be gifted to him.

"He never says yes to me the first time. He makes me fight for it, and that’s what I did with the podcast."

The battle won, Ali assembled a guest list of community influencers to join the program and share their success stories.

"People loved it," he says.

"There was no such thing in the Muslim world, so it gained a lot of traction."

The weekly schedule kept listeners engaged with the Hejaz brand and provided a steady stream of useful content. Over time, the guests got bigger and bigger.

"We ended up with Tyson Fury, Peter Bol, UFC fighters and some big Muslim names," he says. "It became its own beast and started outgrowing us."

Although the podcast is now on hiatus, Ali is hard at work on the next iteration.

"I’ve got a whole new strategy. People still want it, and if we don’t release it once a week, we hear about it. It was perfect for us as a way of telling our own story and for Hejaz to once again lead the way."

Trial and Error

While Hejaz Media grew, the firm’s main marketing arm was not positioned the way its Founder wanted.

"I felt I had to leave marketing while I leveled up, so while I was working on Hejaz Media, Dad brought in some new marketing people," Ali says.

Once again, the external team couldn’t fully comprehend what Hejaz could be. Soon enough, Ali was back in the marketing hot seat.

"The Muslim community is a tough market. Very difficult to understand for outsiders. Not everyone can understand that world. You can’t put people in a marketing position and expect them to understand Muslims because they think very differently. Their priorities are completely different to the Western world," Ali says.

"I think that’s the edge I had over everyone else. I’d seen Hejaz go from nothing to something, I had a sizable footprint in that growth, and I understood the community."

This understanding came through a lot of trial and error, he admits.

"We’ve tested financial products, we’ve tried advertising through marketing firms: it does not work," he says.

"It’s a completely different ball game advertising to Muslims, and I don’t think anybody in the industry understands marketing financial products to Muslims as much as I do."

Living the Dream

Hakan’s 10-year odyssey to learn Australia’s financial services market and the needs of the Muslim community needed to be partnered with the kind of understanding Ali had acquired in order to properly promote the unique product they had to offer. At that point, Hakan promoted Ali to the Chief Marketing Officer role.

"It’s my baby now," Ali laughs. "It’s exciting and I’m confident in my abilities. I have a lot of patience and passion for it."

These have come through lived experience. "We need to keep pushing. You can’t go through years of seeing your father beg and clean and not feel like this," he says.

"We all lived with this dream, we’re still living it, but we’ve got a long way to go."

Don’t get Personal

You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs. The creation of Hejaz has come with many costs, some of them more painful than others.

"I don’t see everything as a mistake. Many are learning experiences. But trust is an area where mistakes can be irreparable," Ali says.

"There’ve been times when we’ve trusted the wrong people and we’ve been burned. The more allies we have, the better off we’ll be is the line of thinking, but you get burned so often and your guard will always be up."

This is why, in Ali’s opinion, it’s better to keep business strictly professional.

"In the professional world, you have a job. Do it. Stop building personal relationships with people. It’s self preservation ultimately; there are only so many times I can take a hit emotionally before I become a wreck. It’s better just to keep your distance and keep it professional, and a lot of our most wealthy clients say the same."

Family Business

The only exception to this rule is the family nature of Hejaz, something Ali says has its pros and cons.

"Life is so busy now that if we weren’t all working together, I don’t think we’d ever see each other. Some people, they’re lucky to see their parents or siblings once a week, maybe even once a month. I see these guys every day," he says.

"That’s not always easy, but I embrace it."

The family angle has, at times, led to accusations of nepotism by those not privy to Ali’s skills in his role.

"Dad’s hired managers who’ve had the audacity to tell him ‘Your kid’s maybe not the best person for the job.’ They don’t, they can’t understand Hejaz. They hadn’t been there through the early years. They hadn’t had the arguments, the fights. And they’re no longer with us."

Seize the Day

Ali’s blooming career as a marketing guru started with an opportunity. He’s quick to suggest anyone should take the chances they’re offered.

"The best piece of advice I can give is to take the opportunities that come your way. Many times, we’ve offered to take youngsters under our wing and nurture them, help them develop their careers. The amount of rejection has been out of this world. These are people who are probably rotting away in mediocre jobs because they didn’t take the opportunity."

The failure of young people to seize the day and go wherever life may take them is something Ali takes to heart.

"You don’t know where an opportunity may take you. Why would you say no to something like that? Dad had the opportunity to follow his dream, and look where it’s taken him."

By creating Hejaz, a financial services group specifically created for a market that had none, Hakan has created opportunities for young Muslims looking for a place in a world traditionally closed off to them.

"And when one of them takes that opportunity, you nurture them."

Empowering the Community

As Hejaz continues to grow, Ali says his own path isn’t as clear. "I’ve never been interested in titles. If I’m the CEO one day or not, I don’t really care as long as the company keeps moving forward," he says.

"Anyone could be Hejaz’s CEO as long as they aren’t a blockade. For me, I just want to keep pushing, pushing, pushing."

At the moment, that’s taking the form of Hejaz’s push into the world of fintech with the impending Halal Money app, which allows clients to access a range of financial services in one place.

"There’s so much potential there," Ali says. "We’re passionate about Halal Money and there’s a lot of excitement around it. It’s my job to make sure that our products are in everyone’s pockets."

And these products have the potential to change lives, he adds.

"We hear it all the time. They genuinely thank us. ‘I’ve been renting my whole life with four kids, but thanks to Hejaz we’ll own a house the Islamic way.’ It’s emotional. We’re empowering the community, and that’s the best marketing message you could have."