Roy Abdo fled Lebanon with $30, self-funded his education, and spent seven years in television before building a digital agency. He wakes each day asking if he helped enough people yesterday, and his goal is to halve the 52% of U.S. businesses without a digital strategy.
When I go to bed, the one thing I think about: did I help enough people? 11 years ago, I got on a flight to the States with $30. It was the last plane to leave Lebanon before the war started. When I landed in the airport in Missouri, I went for supposedly one semester. And I figured out a way to go to Georgetown for another semester. At that point, I made a decision. I wanna stay in the States and change my life. And that was only gonna happen if I had to figure out a way to pay for it, and I did that. And I raised the money and I paid for my entire undergrad. Graduated, I got a job in television, and I worked my ass off for 7 years. I was figuring out how to help TV transform to digital. It's been a lot of hard work. It's been a lot of hard work. It's been a lot of waking up and making that dream happen. Waking up and working as hard as you possibly can and try to get that sleep. I can't even remember the last time I got 8 hours of sleep. Because every single day I wake up and in my mind there's so many, so much things to do, there's so much, so many people to help. I mean, thinking about how many people helped me along the way And when I was at the lowest point of my life, people believed in me without— when I even did not believe in myself. I mean, knowing that I just landed in the States with $30 on me, walking out of the airport, and I see a sign that has my name on it. How come someone who doesn't even know me just go to the airport and pick me up from the middle of nowhere? That, that hard work that I've been putting for the past 10 years is because every day before I go to bed, I think, and I'm blessed how much I'm surrounded by those people who help me get further, and I'm blessed that I have the ability to help a lot of people get further in life. Life is just not that easy. You just have to have people around you to compliment you. When I go to bed, the one thing I think about: did I help enough people today? Did I change someone's life? Did I help them get further where they're trying to go? Because if not, I didn't do a good job that day. And the reason why I wake up, and even before I go to bed, I pray to God that I have the opportunity tomorrow to wake up and do more things for more people to help them get further. There's only value for you in the world when you help other people. There's magic. Magic will happen once I help people. Communication with marketing, with everything, it doesn't matter. Like, all those kind of stuff to me are secondary. Like, my why in my life— I believe that every single person on this planet should have the opportunity to do what they do best. I'm so obsessed by it that You know, people think when I have my shake and my smoothie in the morning, that's something fun I do. That's actually for me to save me time because I just need to fuel my body so I can wake up and do what I love doing and help other people do it more. You don't think I want to have like a good meal, enjoy it in restaurant? I do. But I value more— what I value more is helping other people. And what I value more is sometimes I forget to eat, and then even like I figured out a way to have someone just do my laundry because I want to do what I love doing. I don't understand people who are trying to be fancy and worry about looks and things. I mean, pretty much don't think about stuff, and I really don't care for this stuff. What I do care about is helping other people. And if you think about it, even Mark Zuckerberg himself, Bill Gates, They're not wearing fancy. They're worried about helping other people. And last week alone, I read a study that 52% of businesses in America do not have a digital strategy. And my goal with this agency, I want to cut that in half. That's why we do what we do.
