They’re Lying to You About the American Dream… Here’s How to Get Rich

Abdullah “AK” Cudra is a Houston-based emergency-room doctor who said he owns roughly 13–15 businesses, with two recent additions. His interests also extend into hospitality, acting and television, travel, aviation, cars and unusual machinery, including a former British military tank.

A medical trip to Uganda and Kenya changed AK’s view of what he could accomplish through medicine. Traveling with a roughly nine-person church group serving children’s and women’s homes, he was seeing about 200–300 patients a day in areas with very limited access to doctors.

Because most of the East Africa team was not medically trained, AK built a simple system that allowed everyone to contribute. He trained teammates to perform point-of-care tests, interpret his prescription orders, retrieve medications and count doses, allowing the group to process far more patients.

The African trip convinced him that building institutions could create far more impact than treating patients individually. He returned to the United States thinking less about simply being a doctor and more about designing organizations and systems that could continue helping people without his direct involvement.

Medicine was not AK’s childhood ambition. In fourth grade he wanted to become a “cybernetic engineer,” inspired by films such as Terminator and RoboCop, and later gravitated toward computer science because he was good with computers.

He did not seriously consider becoming a doctor until his second year of college. He liked computers but concluded that they were not his calling, and a formative trip to the Amazon helped redirect him toward biology and medicine.

AK spent nearly three weeks in the Brazilian Amazon after being invited by researchers, including an ecologist. His family did not have much money and the roughly $1,700 airfare was a significant expense, but his father encouraged him to go because AK lacked direction and needed to get outside his comfort zone.

The Amazon transformed him from a homebody with little interest in nature into someone fascinated by biology. Seeing unfamiliar wildlife led him to question why organisms and humans function as they do, begin reading about biology and eventually wonder how people work, break down and can be repaired.

Hospital volunteering confirmed his interest in emergency medicine, but his early academic record created a major obstacle. His grades at community college had been poor, so deciding to pursue medicine required a substantial lifestyle change.

Once medicine gave him a clear goal, AK deliberately rebuilt his daily environment. He changed his friend circle and activities, deleted Grand Theft Auto because it consumed too much time, spent long hours studying on campus and eventually graduated at the top of his class after transferring.

AK said he began at “San Jac” and transferred to “UV Clear Lake,” where strong grades helped offset his weak community-college record. Combined with a good MCAT score, the academic turnaround enabled him to enter medical school.

He interpreted that academic recovery as evidence that sustained commitment matters more than thinking of yourself as naturally gifted. His lesson was that finding a pursuit compelling enough to justify sacrifice made extreme changes in behavior possible.

AK places health above wealth and said he would choose excellent health over being a millionaire. Years of treating seriously ill patients, including wealthy people who would have exchanged financial success for their health, reinforced that hierarchy for him.

His medical work has also made mortality a regular reminder to appreciate ordinary health rather than postponing happiness until financial goals are reached. He argues for remaining ambitious and self-critical where necessary while still being grateful for being healthy and alive.

AK grew up modestly in a first-generation immigrant family with five children. He recalled a single Snickers bar being divided into five pieces and having few purchased toys, while his parents nevertheless showed little resentment toward people with more money.

His parents emphasized character, effort and learning rather than wealth or professional status. He said conversations at home centered on being a good person, working hard and seeking knowledge rather than becoming rich or becoming a doctor.

He believes those childhood principles later became the foundation of his approach to business and leadership. Rather than treating ethics and management as separate subjects, he sees the way a person behaves privately as something that inevitably appears in how they lead employees.

AK deliberately built a life broader than medicine because curiosity and experience matter more to him than maximizing income from one field. He said that even when sitting beside strangers on airplanes, he is more interested in learning what they do than talking about himself.

Owning medical facilities gives him a degree of autonomy that practicing medicine alone does not. He values being able to tell someone who needs help to come in and be evaluated without first needing another organization’s permission, including people who may lack money.

He applies lessons from emergency medicine across unrelated businesses. Skills involving triage, hospitality, pressure, systems and dealing with people have carried over into ventures such as his rooftop lounge.

The rooftop lounge reflects his personal interest in hosting and creating social environments rather than being purely a financial investment. He described it as a place for birthdays, political events, musicians’ afterparties and other gatherings that also expose him to people and networks he otherwise would not meet.

Acting, television and music-video opportunities grew from AK’s willingness to try unfamiliar things. He likes the creativity of writing and performing, has written short stories, enjoys the adrenaline of being on camera and found that doing one project led other people to invite him into additional projects.

His interest in cars is part of a broader fascination with machines. Buying a military tank from England unexpectedly connected him with former British military personnel who contacted him online because they had operated similar vehicles decades earlier.

AK sees these seemingly disconnected activities as a network and learning strategy, even when that was not their original purpose. New experiences expose him to new skills and people, which can later produce opportunities or knowledge useful somewhere else.

He wants his social-media activity to show the path into unusual experiences rather than simply displaying possessions or achievements. He said followers have contacted him after seeing activities such as aviation or acting and decided to pursue their own discovery flights, licenses or classes.

Despite his unusually broad portfolio, AK’s default business advice is not to diversify. He estimates that in roughly nine out of ten cases an entrepreneur should keep developing expertise in the field they already understand and scale that business as far as possible.

His own diversification is driven primarily by curiosity and fulfillment rather than the highest available financial return. He acknowledged that building perhaps 20 medical facilities and later selling the portfolio could make him much more money, but said doing only that would bore him.

One recent diversification was an RV park acquired through a friend. The friend had owned it with a partner who died; the deceased partner’s family wanted to sell its shares, creating an opportunity at a price AK considered attractive.

He also viewed the RV park as a place to reinvest earnings rather than simply realizing income and paying taxes immediately. Beyond the existing operation, he was interested in the lake on the property and envisioned adding small capsule-style homes around it.

AK openly acknowledged that he knew virtually nothing about RV parks before entering the business. His solution to operating in unfamiliar industries is to understand the business at a high level, identify what he does not know and hire an experienced operator to handle the specialized execution.

He said learning how to select operators took years and involved repeated hiring mistakes. In unfamiliar industries, inexperienced owners can easily be persuaded by candidates who sound impressive because the owner lacks enough technical knowledge to recognize weak answers.

His first hiring rule for important operating roles is to demand evidence that the person has already done the job successfully. Someone who merely worked around a relevant business is different from someone who actually launched, operated or managed the same type of company.

He also recommends checking references and performing background checks rather than relying on interviews. Even then, a qualified hire can fail if the owner does not understand how to supervise the role.

Owners therefore need measurable operating metrics rather than simply trusting a manager to report that things are going well. AK sees the ability to identify the few numbers that reveal whether a business is moving in the right direction as another skill learned through experience.

Experience and culture fit are separate requirements in hiring. A strong résumé does not prove that someone will function well within a team, while a pleasant interview does not prove that the candidate can produce the required results.

AK believes managers must be chosen with particular care because they become extensions of the owner’s leadership. If a manager mistreats employees, he considers the owner partly responsible for putting that person in authority.

He sometimes looks for managers who compensate for his own weaknesses rather than simply resembling him. If an owner is overly strict or reacts too quickly, for example, a calmer operator may produce a healthier organization.

He rejects corporate “culture” as something that can be created through slogans alone. His model begins with leaders visibly setting the standard themselves—such as the owner picking trash off the floor rather than treating basic tasks as beneath them.

He also sees employee trust as part of culture. When employees bring problems to leadership, he believes they should encounter fairness and a genuine attempt to understand the issue from their side.

When management instructions are ambiguous, AK believes leadership should bear the cost of its own lack of clarity rather than blame employees. Honesty, keeping promises and genuine concern for people are, in his view, more important cultural mechanisms than formal corporate statements.

Managing roughly a dozen or more companies remains difficult for him rather than being a solved problem. He compares it to a crowded ER where new emergencies constantly alter what deserves attention first.

He reprioritizes his companies continually rather than following a fixed daily schedule. Each day he asks what the most critical action is for each business while trying not to lose sight of quieter companies that could deteriorate without attention.

His developing solution is a layer of executive support that works for him rather than for individual operating companies. Executive assistants can be assigned businesses, monitor particular signals and alert him when intervention is needed, reducing the number of accounts and details he must watch personally.

AK said it has taken roughly two or three years to build enough systems to begin separating himself from daily company operations. He now feels substantially more relief as those systems mature, but said he is still learning how to manage the portfolio.

A core lesson from his father was to avoid blaming other people, even when they genuinely contributed to a problem. AK uses responsibility as a practical tool: if a manager fails, he asks what he missed when hiring, what he failed to manage or whether he should replace the person.

His father repeatedly redirected anger back toward what AK himself could control. When AK was an angry 18- or 19-year-old reacting to someone who had threatened or disrespected him, his father urged him to consider the other person’s circumstances and warned that a leader who loses control of his emotions loses strategic advantage.

When AK responded that the other person might eventually get hurt by speaking to people that way, his father told him that gave AK a responsibility to protect the person from himself. AK said the response removed much of his anger because it transformed the confrontation from an insult into a responsibility.

AK sees ego as one of the main reasons people resist accepting responsibility. Blaming an employee, partner, teacher or circumstance protects the ego but prevents the person from asking what they could change themselves.

He does not mean responsibility as self-punishment. The point is to regain control: assuming there is something you can change gives you a problem to investigate rather than leaving you helpless before other people’s behavior.

When one of his companies underperforms, AK usually looks first at neglected attention, weak oversight or a bad system. He described checking specific weaknesses such as poor SEO, questioning reported results, consulting knowledgeable friends and requesting competing proposals rather than defending the existing approach.

Travel remains one of his main tools for breaking routine and generating new thinking. He sometimes travels alone because having nobody else to depend on forces him to solve problems himself and makes the experience more introspective.

He believes routine can make months disappear with relatively few distinctive memories, while travel compresses many memorable experiences into the same amount of time. For him, deliberately changing surroundings makes life feel less repetitive while exposing assumptions that would otherwise remain invisible.

AK recommends travel partly because it trains people to tolerate discomfort before higher-stakes challenges arrive. Someone who repeatedly practices leaving a comfort zone may be more prepared later to make a difficult business move, accept uncertainty or take a calculated risk.

He does not think meaningful travel requires expensive international trips. People with limited money can travel locally, visit American state parks, spend time around mountains or lakes and still use the interruption of routine to think differently.

AK has traveled to well over 20 countries but said he does not keep a precise count. He wants to return to the Amazon when he can disconnect for another roughly three weeks, despite the bugs, boats, canoes and difficult living conditions that originally pushed him far outside his comfort zone.

He values culture shock because it reveals that familiar behavior is not necessarily universal or objectively correct. Even something as minor as restaurant etiquette can force a person to reconsider assumptions about politeness.

He used European restaurant checks as an example: what an American might interpret as slow service can reflect a culture in which bringing the bill without being asked feels like pushing the customer out. For AK, noticing such differences encourages broader questioning of habits adopted simply because everyone nearby behaves the same way.

He has also adapted his communication style after observing relationship-oriented cultures in Asia and the Middle East. He said jumping immediately to a request or transaction can appear rude in cultures where rapport and indirect communication are expected first.

Japan was his clearest example of a more indirect communication style. He described business messages beginning with seasonal pleasantries and personal requests being framed in a way that allows the other person to volunteer help rather than being placed directly on the spot.

AK even applied that communication style to mundane situations such as appealing a parking ticket. He wrote a long, polite introduction before making his request and said his appeal succeeded while a friend’s much more direct appeal did not.

Hospitality is another cross-cultural behavior he has incorporated into his life. His father taught him not merely to offer visitors water but sometimes to place it in front of them, recognizing that a thirsty guest may decline an offer out of politeness.

AK generally accepts at least a small amount of food when someone sincerely offers it because he views sharing food as a bonding act. He contrasts that with cultures or households where everyone is expected to stay strictly within their own plate.

The hosts described a similar experience working with a ministry adviser in Saudi Arabia, where eating together was treated as a prerequisite to business. What initially felt like an excessive meal helped them appreciate that long-term commercial relationships involve character and personal compatibility, not just financial metrics.

AK said being betrayed or disappointed by business partners is common, particularly for inexperienced entrepreneurs who do not yet know how to evaluate people. Problems include people overpromising, underdelivering or changing after obtaining money or authority.

He believes money and power can corrupt people rather than merely revealing an unchanged underlying personality. He presented this explicitly as his own view and argued that success requires remaining alert to the possibility of becoming different as influence grows.

AK said he would rather preserve his core principles than become vastly richer by compromising them. His concern is that believing yourself incapable of corruption may itself make you less likely to notice gradual changes in your behavior.

A 75-year-old semi-retired businessman and attorney influenced how AK interprets past betrayals. After hearing one of AK’s stories, the older man essentially asked why AK had failed to anticipate ordinary human behavior; AK took from that exchange that business structures should account for predictable weaknesses rather than assuming people will never change.

That experience altered AK’s view of casual 50/50 partnerships between friends. He now considers it a mistake to split ownership equally simply because two friends decide to start something together.

Before dividing equity, he wants a detailed charter defining each person’s role, workload and obligations. A genuine 50/50 structure should explain what each person is expected to contribute and what happens if one party stops doing their share.

He sees resentment as an almost predictable risk when equal ownership is paired with unequal effort or recognition. One partner may feel exploited because the other is working less, while the less-visible partner may resent the attention received by the public face of the company.

AK increasingly prefers performance-based economics when a potential partner has not yet proved themselves. Instead of immediately granting 50% ownership, he might offer 20–30% of profits for achieving clearly defined responsibilities or results.

He warned that an underperforming 50% owner can become even more problematic when a successful concept expands. If the original company owns the brand, the partner may automatically participate economically in future locations despite contributing little to the expansion.

Written contracts matter, but AK cautioned that contracts do not eliminate the practical cost of disputes. Even with clear obligations, enforcing a deal might mean roughly $20,000 for a lawyer’s retainer on each side, years of litigation, arguments over ambiguity and an eventual settlement.

His broader lesson is that entrepreneurs develop commercial judgment through actual wins and losses, not purely from advice. He jokingly calls this accumulated experience the “kung fu of money.”

AK distinguishes being kind from being indiscriminately “nice.” He believes entrepreneurs can treat people well while remaining firm about expectations, boundaries and the economic value each person contributes.

He deliberately maintains distance between employer and employee roles because friendship can undermine accountability. If an employee begins to assume that friendship protects them from consequences for lateness or poor performance, both the business and personal relationship become harder to manage.

AK strongly opposes nepotism in operating roles. If a relative needs financial help, he would rather give them money directly than put them into a job for which they lack the required experience.

He specifically criticized doctors who automatically make a spouse the manager of a medical office despite the spouse never having managed one. His position is to hire a qualified operator instead of using family relationships as a substitute for competence.

For AK, leadership authority carries obligations that should not change simply because the person involved is a friend or relative. He used an extreme historical-style analogy of a ruler having to apply the same law to his own brother to illustrate the principle that responsibility to the institution can conflict with personal loyalty.

The conversation later applied many of the same ideas about vetting people to dating. AK argued that modern dating differs from older systems in which families and communities often introduced partners and therefore provided a built-in network of references.

He sees dating apps as reducing that external accountability because a profile can be constructed without anyone vouching for the person behind it. He said people can present exactly what a hopeful potential partner wants to hear, making behavioral verification more important.

AK claimed that meeting partners online has moved from essentially nonexistent in earlier decades to dominant today, though the conversation did not substantiate the specific percentages he mentioned. His larger point was that the mechanism through which couples meet has radically changed.

He rejected blanket claims that successful men should assume women are “gold diggers.” He noted that some men deliberately seek transactional relationships themselves, so dating advice depends heavily on what kind of relationship the individual actually wants.

His own priority in a partner is support rather than finding someone whose career mirrors his. Because he already earns enough money and has an intense workload, he said another highly driven partner who is rarely available could be less compatible with the life and family structure he wants.

AK recommends looking for a relationship in which the two people become more effective together rather than competing with each other. He pays particular attention to how someone treats other people, handles problems and behaves during ordinary situations because those small patterns reveal more than promises.

He also uses a person’s friendship circle as information about likely compatibility. Repeating advice from his father—“show me your friends and I’ll tell you who you are”—he argued that a person whose stated lifestyle conflicts sharply with their closest friends may eventually feel pulled between two worlds.

Relationship history can also provide useful information, though AK did not present it as an infallible test. Someone with a long pattern of unstable relationships may genuinely prefer a more turbulent lifestyle, while someone seeking stability may want to pay attention to evidence of stability in the other person’s past.

He has seen divorce seriously damage entrepreneurs financially and force them to rebuild portions of businesses or wealth. That experience makes partner selection, in his view, a consequential life and financial decision rather than an area completely separate from business planning.

AK cautioned against accepting any single dating guru, podcast or theory as definitive. His approach is to listen broadly, observe how people actually behave and remember that confident advice may still be little more than theory.

A painful five-year relationship in his youth became one of AK’s own formative experiences. He said the relationship ran roughly from age 18 or 19 until 23, he expected to marry the woman, and the eventual breakup left him heartbroken.

He now views that breakup as something that materially changed him rather than an experience he wishes had never happened. His broader conclusion was that painful periods can build abilities and perspective that would not exist if every setback had been removed from a person’s life.