Omar Zenhom recounts living on $200 a week for two years while building a business, moving into a granny flat with young children including his son Kai. He won the Telstra Young Businesswoman of the Year award during this period. The turning point came when finances improved enough to buy blueberries, a small moment that marked the end of severe hardship.
I had to come back and tell Matt and go, okay, we can't afford to pay our mortgage. We've got to leave and rent out the house next week or we're going to default on everything. And, you know, we moved out with our kids, were 2 and 3 at the time, and we lived in the back of a granny flat, like this dingy, disgusting place for a couple of years. And we lived on $200 a week for two years to try and build it up again. And this was while I was getting heaps of media. I won the Telstra Young Businesswoman of the Year award. This is all happening while you're going through. Yes. It wasn't fake because we were growing really, really fast. But I was hanging on by a thread in the back because it was growing so fast that I had to pay for that infrastructure as it was growing and couldn't quite keep up with it. And so the sacrifice of that and how difficult that was, like walking around the grocery store with the calculator and having to figure out what we could put back. And one of my best business moments was, which I know can sound strange, but it was when people say, like, what are you most proud? Like, the moment that makes you the most proud. Kai's favorite food is blueberries. My oldest son. And when we went grocery shopping and I realized that we had enough, that we weren't on the poverty line anymore, and I was like, yeah, you can have the blueberries. And he got them, and I let him have them. He's sitting in the front of the trolley, and I let him have them right there and then. And he, like, picked them up and shoved them in his mouth. And he was laughing with blueberry juice just running down his face. And I was in the middle of the supermarket bawling my eyes out, just going, that is your made it moment. I got out of this situation. Yes. Yeah, it was. And so from that point, I've never been back to there again.
