Navigating Life's Spectrum: Hussein Rifai's Global Journey of Resilience and Connection

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Living the Dream Podcast with Curveball. If you believe, you can achieve. Welcome to the Living the Dream with Curveball Podcast. A show where I interview a guest that takes, motivate, and inspire. Today's guest has a life that has taken him across more than 80 countries and multicultural business investments and personal high and low. Australian is an Australian businessman, investor, an entrepreneur. Engineering in California. And he is uh experiencing behind the boardroom. Like Letrail. Amazing successful kid. And he is uh helping others today through his experiences and he is tackling some of the biggest things that are going on in society. So we're going to be talking to Hussein about you know his life and everything that he's up to and gonna be up to and his experiences. So Hussein hi, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

Thank you for having me and glad to be here.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?

SPEAKER_01 1:38

Well, I uh I'm 66 years old. I was born in the West Bank uh and grew up most of my life in Jordan. As you mentioned, I studied my first degree as an electrical engineering degree from California, from the Silicon Valley. I went on to work for Procter and Gamble, migrated to Australia, uh and did my MBA in Australia, worked for Johnson ⁇ Johnson, Ernst Young, uh had my first marriage in the early in the early 90s. Uh and then uh uh that didn't work out. I had my second marriage shortly after. The first marriage was from a girl from Minecraft the woods, from uh for a Jordanian-Palestinian girl. The second girl I married was a Greek-Australian, and after difficulty with the IVF and uh conceiving, we had uh we lost a child in the process, and we had lovely twins. Those twins today are 26 years old, so born year 2000, and then I went to Dubai. My career took me to Dubai, and I uh was lucky enough to be involved probably in one of the very early Sharia compliant and conventional funding for private equity funds and technology and in healthcare. Uh, you know, I had my second divorce over there, and I married the lady who was out of the fashion industry. That also didn't work. Came back to Australia, established my uh uh uh investment bank and private equity, and I met my lovely, lovely wife, who is the love of my life, and I've been with her for now 10, 11 years. We have four kids, two of my kids who are very successful boy and girl, my twins, and two lovely stepsons who are also successful kids are Amanda's my wife's kids. And I live in Sydney, Australia, and I my job right now is to cherry with various businesses.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

Well, I know you grew up between the discipline of a Supreme Court judge and a creative poet. So talk about uh you know, growing up and how that has helped you shape to be the man that you become.

SPEAKER_01 4:05

Well, it's it's you you actually that was very, very interesting because my father, who's a Supreme Court judge, he would probably tell you he wasn't the most intellectually smart in the classical sense, as in mathematics and physics and everything else, but he was one of the most disciplined, intelligent people you'll ever meet in your life. I mean, the guy would put in 12 hours worth of work and he and he'd think he had a short day. My mom, on the other hand, she was creative and I uh and I, but she was very, very sharp individual. She wasn't good at math, but she was very, very sharp individual. She was a lot more uh you know good in real life sort of thing. And each one of them sort of left me with some different lessons in my life. So I built a lot of my work ethics and my diligence and my hard work from my dad, and I got a lot of the street life uh uh from my mom. But one thing they both did raise all three of us is it doesn't matter, you judge the person, you don't judge where they come from, you don't judge their religion. So my dad was a Muslim, my grandpa from my mom's side was a roaring, uh, was a roaming Muslim scholar who taught the Chang'ai in the tens and the twenties of last century, but I grew up in a French Catholic school. My beautiful wife comes from Ashkenazi Jewish background. So we were raised to respect everybody and to love everybody and judge people by who they are, regardless of color, creed, origin, everything else. So there's certain values I learned from each one of them, and there were some common values that I learned from both of them. And that really shaped a lot of who I am, shaped a lot of how I deal with people. You know, I mean, my my uh dissertation in my PhD was how multi-c how different cultures negotiate and talk and interface with each other. Uh, and that really enabled, I was I was able to do that because the respect of everybody, all cultures or religions, was embedded in me from a very young age. You would not dare tell my dad, oh, I don't like this guy because he's uh you know black or white or Christian or Jew or anything like that. In those days, you got a slap on the face for saying something like this.

SPEAKER_00 6:33

Well, I know you left Jordan at the age of 17 to study in California. So talk about how those early experiences uh helped you when it came to independence, challenging conventional thinking and establishing your own identity.

SPEAKER_01 6:48

Well, you gotta remember first of all, you gotta remember first of all, uh what California was in the late 70s, uh Curtis. So I come from a fairly, I left a fairly conservative environment, which is Jordan, in the 70s, to go uh, you know, to go via Texas, uh deep Texas. I spent one year in Bling College in Texas, in college uh Bryan College Station in Texas. And for a guy with a name like Hussein, that wasn't very pleasant experience, and then I moved on to California where I finished my degree. And California was a very, very liberal sort of a view of life. Uh so as it was a bit of a cultural shock for me, the two extremes of them. You know, I went from a fairly conservative to an extremely conservative, and then Arvara and the other end to an extremely, extremely liberal. At some point in time, I lived in a commune in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Now you can see me, uh, you know, I have no hair, but at that time the hair was down to, you know, down to my bottom with the joint hanging up there, and uh, and uh sorry, I was living the happy life. So again, that that gave me a very different perspective on life in the sense that it doesn't also matter how you look and not judging the book by the cover and accepting that certain people might walk on the line in terms of what was legal and not legal at the time, which was the the weed wasn't legal, but still, again, you don't you don't make that judgment. I mean, we used to, in those days, we used to make a little bit brownies and drive up to San Francisco to give them to the AID patients at the very, very early uh onset of AIDS in the in the late 70s to try to help uh you know to try to help uh uh the patients with their uh you know with their with their pain uh management. So California gave me a very different, very liberal perspective of life, but in a way it enhanced the uh my parents' issue of not being prejudiced against somebody and being accepting, but in a way it was done in a very different, in a very liberal way as opposed to a very conservative way, which was what where where I've come from and from Jordan.

SPEAKER_00 9:10

Well, I know you've lived, worked and traveled in more than 80 countries. So talk about what those multicultural experiences have taught you about what people have in common everywhere.

SPEAKER_01 9:26

Look, I go through life assuming that people are good people. Not I'm not being naive. I assume that people are good people because through my experiences in life, most people want the same thing. They want prosperity, they want to be able to raise families in peace, and they want an understanding and they want respect. Uh so I find that this is common everywhere. Every family, every head of a family, every father, every mother want the right thing for their kids. Whether you're talking to a Chinese person, you're talking South American, to a US sort of an American person, a Canadian, an Arab, Australian, they all have that in common. And and children with the race, they have no prejudice. Prejudice and racism is taught through through society and they become racist as they grow up. So as long as you respect everybody's views and you listen to everybody, and uh, you know, I always told my kids, don't knock it until you try it. So even you know, being critical of foods, of different habits or rituals or cultures, don't knock it and you try it and respect what other people are doing. You'll find that in most cases, again, I can't generalize about 100%. There are some people who are not like that, and you gotta build, you've got to build your defense mechanism against those people, but the very, very uh uh vast majority, they reciprocate back by giving you respect and listening to you and opening a good channel of communication. So long as there's communication, nine times out of ten, doesn't matter how complex the problem is, it gets resolved.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

Well, I know that you've uh experienced the loss of a child, and I don't want you to, you know, re-experience anything that you don't want to, but just uh if you could talk about what that taught you about resilience and what really matters in life.

SPEAKER_01 11:31

Uh you know, Curtis, I've lost my child in the mid-90s. And we are in 2026, and I can genuinely tell you that I think about her every single day. And she's still as close to my heart as as as as my children. Uh and I can't help but get emotional when I when I think about her. But it does also it does also teach you to appreciate what you have, which is my children, and appreciate you to love them and to continue to care for them and all of that sort of thing. The hurt from the loss of a child is something that never leaves you. But you've got to go on in life and you've got to continue to be positive, and you gotta, you know, wake up and and and take it the next day, and you hope that you know she had as little suffering while you know as you're passing away and uh uh as as possible. But the reality of it is life has got to go on, and this sort of a hurt, you keep it inside you, you don't project it onto other people, because if you do, not only you're hurt, you're hurt, but you also hurt the other people that are around you. So uh every single individual has their own way or have to develop their own way on how to deal with the tragedy of life. And we all go through a tragedy of life. How do you process it and how do you get up the next day and and and and continue on with life? At the end of the day, the good times will always end, but the bad times will always end. And uh, you know, although I still think about her every single day, I uh I'm absolutely also delighted and positive about my children, about how I grew up, and and uh and I keep that to keep the head to myself and don't try to project it onto others and negatively impact the people around me.

SPEAKER_00 13:35

Well, talk about how becoming Australian had the biggest effect on your adult personal and professional life, you know. Break that down to the listeners.

SPEAKER_01 13:47

Oh I don't know if you or any of your listeners visited Australia, but Australia Australia is genuinely the lucky country. I mean, we consider ourselves a lucky country, and there is a and there is a the lucky country for many reasons. Yes, it's a wealthy country and all of that, but that's not not the only reason of the lucky country. The main reason why Australia is the lucky country and how impacted me is the people, Australians. Australians have something, for example, in common, and that's why I love this place with California. They're very chill, they're very relaxed, they go at a fast pace, at least in my job, but they're not a New York fast pace. So they are the right, for me, they are the right fast pace. I think they are the most multicultural, accepting people on the planet. Is there some dickheads who are racist and all that? Of course there is. There is that 1% that you're gonna find everywhere. But generally, broadly speaking, it is a very accepting society. It's a very relaxed society. And uh, you know, I'm not a big surfer or anything like that, but we have some of the most beautiful beaches on the planet. I think Sydney is one of the most fantastic cities in terms of food and culture and nice people. I mean, one example that I uh uh uh, you know, sarcastically mention in my book, and I go, you know, if you're standing at a ATM machine, you want to cash some money, and there's three people behind you. One is from the US, one is from Britain, and one from Australia. Uh yeah, you know, the one from the US is always sort of looking around, making sure they don't, you know, gonna get mugged or anything like that. The British ones will look down and they'll want to face you with eye and don't want to have a conversation with you. By the time you finish, and the Australian behind you, you will know their kids and their parents and what they had for lunch and what they're planning to go on holiday, and they'll tell you their love story and they'll enjoy their love story with you. Very chatty, very friendly, and that's just in public places as well as in private places. Every time you get in an elevator, people chat and have a have a you know, a bit of a chat, even if it's something small about the weather. So it is a lot more relaxed, a lot more friendly, and a lot more accepting sort of environment. And that has to affect your personality because you become a lot more relaxed, your guards a lot less, and you you it allows you to bring down what is best in you and contribute to society and what is best in you.

SPEAKER_00 16:24

Well, I know you've been a part of of things like um private equity, investments, entrepreneurship, and restructure businesses. So talk about what you've learned about people in business that you wish you would have learned much earlier in life.

SPEAKER_01 16:44

Uh look, one of the things that I I I wish I've learned much earlier in life is I've always maybe I was a little bit too naive in my trust and some of the business people. Unfortunately, a lot of business people are driven purely by the financial part. And to that end, and in some of the large corporates, you'll find that the the more successful person is not the person that does the job or does actually uh effectively perform. It's more of the politician. It's more of the one, as we would say, over here, knows how to suck up, or I think in America, how to brown nose the boss. And I wish I knew that a little bit earlier because I'm a lousy politician. I I focus on the performance, I focus on getting results, and I'm not really as good at sucking up, and I'm not really as good as brown nosing. And I've seen a lot more people who are not as good as performing or getting results as I am, who've just passed me by and got promoted very much ahead of me because of that. Or they're the sort of people where they're happy to stab you in the back in order to get something, uh uh, do that. Today they're your friends, and tomorrow they're not your friends. And a lot of times my I'll let my guard down. And if I've known what I know today, I probably wouldn't have let my guard down, and I probably would have been aware that you know sucking up or politics is a bigger part of a job or a career move than it really is. It's not necessarily the right thing, and I've written an article recently about that, but it is a fact of life that it is, it does impact uh your career. So that's one key learning that I've learned later on in life that I wish I'd learned a lot earlier in life.

SPEAKER_00 18:39

What do you feel like the difference is between finding someone that you're attracted to versus finding someone who is truly a life partner?

SPEAKER_01 20:11

Uh it's it's a very big difference. I mean, I've I've like this is my fourth marriage, and I've had a few girlfriends, so so I haven't haven't uh uh uh been what you call uh celibate or a hermit or anything like that. And uh, you know, the first thing you're attracted to is obviously a gorgeous-looking woman or or a partner or whatever, whether a woman or a man. But then, but then after that finishes and after that's done, if you're trying to build a longer, I mean, if you're trying to have a bit of fun for a you know, a weekend or something, that's great. And that's fine because you really you're there for one purpose, the other person is there for one purpose, you serve your purposes, you get it out of your system and you move on a lot. But if you're trying to build a long-term relationship, there is a lot more to the relationship uh than just the looks. There's a peace of mind, there's a trust, there's the feeling that you know somebody's got your back. And somebody in the good times and the bad times, they'll be there to lift you up and be with you rather than somebody who's you know there for the good times and leave in the bad times. Uh so it is a very different person. Uh uh doesn't matter how they look, it's a very different person, the person who wants a transient type of relationship, and the person who's there to build a long-term relationship. It doesn't mean you won't have disagreements or you won't have fights or any of that sort of thing. Of course you do, because you're two different people, two different experiences, and that's part of the beauty of it. It's it's how the mechanism of you looking after each other, it doesn't matter what the dispute is and getting together and building and building something that is much bigger than both of you, building a relationship that each of you look after each other. It doesn't matter in what in what circumstances. And it doesn't have to be through the vows of a church or through a vows of a wedding, it's through your behavior. Certainly a lot of the people who have been married or did the vows or whatever it is, and then two days later they start doing their own thing and they're not really genuine to the relationship. And there's people who haven't been married officially in a church or in a in a mosque or in a in a synagogue or in a proper place or anything like that, but they actually genuinely have the spirit of the relationship and the spirit of the marriage, and they look after each other and look after each other's kids and and have each other's back in the good and the bad. That, in my view, is the relationship that lasts.

SPEAKER_00 22:54

Well, I know you talked about your twins and how successful they are. So talk about the values that you try to teach your kids and while teaching the kids these values would day ultimately teach you.

SPEAKER_01 23:10

Look, one of the things that I applied for the kids is I w I even when they were very young, I taught them to behave Like responsible adults. So I'll give you, I'll give you an example. You know, my daughter or my son, they would go to school and they will see some other kid that has a phone, a new phone, or a gadget or something like that. And they would come and say, Oh, Dad, we want that gadget. And I would sort of say, listen, Dad, we have that much money and we got to spend it on the family. It's for all of us this money. It's for you, it's for me, it's for everybody else. Do you think that gadget rates are high up in what we need to spend it on? Or is there some things that are more important for the family? Do you want to buy this, or would you rather that all three of us go on a lovely holiday? Uh uh, you know, that's before before I met my wife when they were in their early teens. Or would you rather all of us go on a holiday and explore a new place? And you find as time goes on, they start thinking like mature uh uh uh grown-ups. One of the things that I am struggling with with them is that although they're twins and they're both successful in their own right, I'm trying to bring them to become closer together. But because they're a boy and a girl, they're really just siblings born on the same day. They're not like identical twins. I'm trying to pull them together a little bit closer. They have a very different personality, very different lifestyle. Uh, you know, my son did an engineering degree from the UTS. At the age of 26, he is a senior manager. He's got a senior management position in one of the largest AI companies in Australia, possibly the world. Uh, you know, my daughter tried to do psychology. I pulled her out of that because it was the sort of thing where she used to come home and sort of say, Oh, I had to deal with two suicide calls a day. And I thought I didn't want her to deal with that for the rest of her life. So I very gently tried to convince her to do a different degree, and now she's doing a devil degree in arts and English, and she's sort of shifting her career into uh into arts. Uh so I've sort of learned from them that you can take the horse to the water, but you can't make a drink. So if you unless you actually treat them with respect like adults and convince them on how to do things or change their life, each child will have their own life. And they live in a world that I don't understand. Just like I lived in a world that my father did not understand. I live in a world I I they live in a world I do not understand. They have their own lingo, they have their own way of communicating, traveling, doing this, even partying. Very, very different than when I was growing up. So if I try to impose my way on them, I'm just gonna make them miserable and I'm not gonna allow them the room for them to grow in their own world and become successful.

SPEAKER_00 26:19

Well, talk about your you're also an author, so uh tell the lessons about your books.

SPEAKER_01 26:25

Well, my book hopefully uh uh be uh launched later this year. It's called The Chaos Theorem, and it really talks about my experiences and my lives in the last uh 66 degrees, and you know, and it talks a lot of stories about you know doing transactions and deals from deep sub-Saharan Africa to Dubai to Europe to the US, plus the you know, the four marriages and and the and the ups and downs of all of that, and what I've learned from all of this. So it is in a way a series of stories that started in the West Bank of Palestine in 1960 and continued until you know today, 2026, when I'm 66 years old and across you know uh uh 60, 70, 80 countries, across four or five continents, and uh, you know, everything from dealing with intelligence agencies to dealing with people to charities that I worked with and everything else. So I was a very lucky man to have a very colorful life. Uh, and I every time I spoke to somebody, they sort of said, well, you know, there's a lot of stories there we'd like to read about it. So I put it all in a book, and I'm just in the final stages of uh of finalizing the book before starting to talk to publishers and uh and uh publish the books.

SPEAKER_00 27:54

Well, besides your book, tell us about any other upcoming projects that you're working on that listeners need to be aware of.

SPEAKER_01 28:02

Well, I do publish regularly on my LinkedIn and on my website articles that cover all sorts of things from a business aspect from AI to uh uh to uh corporate governance to migration and and you know how do you migrate and fit into your new home versus migration, where a lot of people just migrate to get another passport. Uh and I publish an article just about every you know week to 10 days, sort of thing. Uh I got a lot of traction on it, and uh and uh so I I I invite people warmly to come to my website, sayinrefare.com, and uh look at some of the interviews. One of the interesting recent interviews was done with Four Corners, which is like a 60 minutes in the US, but Four Corners is the local equivalent in Australia for the uh for ABC. ABC is the is like BBC, it's a government-owned ones. How I went undercover to investigate slave labor in the tomato industry in in uh uh in southern uh Italy. Uh so that was you know that's very interesting. You can see the interview that was done on uh on my website. You can see on the ABC website, but it's all in one place. You could sort of uh read some more of the other articles about slave labor, and that's something that's that's a cause that's very close to my heart about eliminating slave labor into in this day and age, and about child labor, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and some of the Asian countries. So, all of those sort of uh things you could probably uh look at them and see some interesting stuff that I uh that I write about and I do on my website.

SPEAKER_00 29:50

And their website is husseinhone.com, right?

SPEAKER_01 29:58

Sorry, I missed that bit. Uh uh was your website again? Husseinrefai.com.

SPEAKER_00 30:07

Okay, husseinrifi.com. Okay. We'll close us out with some final thoughts. Maybe if that was something I forgot to talk about that you would like to touch on any final thoughts you have for the listeners.

SPEAKER_01 30:21

I think we covered we covered uh a a lot of uh a lot of subjects, and I and I think that just the last message is that really humans are much more similar and have a lot more in common with each other, doesn't matter what race, what creed, what background, what culture, then we have uh that that that keeps us apart. And as long as we go through life respecting each other and we, you know, and put your shoe in the other person's uh in the other person's uh position, I think life will be a lot easier, and I think success will is is measured well beyond just purely the financial financial uh success.

SPEAKER_00 31:06

All right, ladies and gentlemen, be sure to pick up Hussein's book when it comes out and to keep up with everything that he's up to, visit his website at hussainfy.com. It'll be in the show notes. Also, I would like you to visit www.curveball337.com to keep up with all things living the dream. Share the website and the show to everybody that you know, and thank you for listening and supporting the show. And Hussein, thank you for all that you do, and thank you for taking time to join me.

SPEAKER_01 31:43

Thank you very much for having me. Very much enjoyed uh having chat to you, Judas.

SPEAKER_00 31:48

For more information on the Living the Dream with Curveball Podcast, visit w dot curveball337.com. Until next time, keep living the dream.