Mohammed takes ‘working his way through school’ to next level

Mohammed Mohammed was born in Sudan. Warfare and genocide forced his family to flee to Kenya, where they lived in a refugee camp for seven years before the United Nations resettled the family in Spokane.

Mohammed, the middle child of seven, began fourth grade upon settling with his family in the Inland Northwest and quickly became fascinated by the opportunities surrounding him.

“Since we got to America, my dad has always taught us that education is the way. Without education, you can’t get anywhere in life,” Mohammed says. “My dad and my mom never even got to go to elementary school, but yet they still knew education was the answer.”

Each of Mohammed’s three older siblings earned an undergraduate degree from Eastern Washington University, and two of them are currently in doctorate programs.

Mohammed will graduate this spring with a bachelor’s degree in business after double-majoring in finance and economics.

Mohammed became an entrepreneur at age 16. His father loaned him capital to start a t-shirt printing business, and Mohammed also taught himself to repair iPhones.

Next, he says, “As soon as I turned 18, I went to real estate school and got my real estate license. Real estate was something that was fun to me. Everything about it was intriguing.”

Mohammed graduated from Ferris High School in 2021 and spent a year studying business at Western Washington University. Then, he realized that if he wanted to get serious about real estate, returning to Spokane and living with his family would be a good launchpad for success.

Mohammed dreams of investing in real estate – his loftiest ambitions include building clinics and hospitals, apartment communities, and homeless shelters.

“I lived my whole life in poverty,” Mohammed says. “Coming here to America … I can’t be around opportunity 24/7 and not take advantage of it and not do something for myself and for my family.”

Mohammed didn’t make any sales during his first two years in real estate. Last year, sales began rolling in, and Mohammed closed more than $1 million in sales volume.

When Mohammed wasn’t in class or building his real estate business, he was working as a certified nursing assistant at adult family care homes. He found the workload and schedule accommodated his studies well.

Mohammed and a similarly business-minded friend from high school decided to go into business together and opened their first adult family home in January. Within the next 18 months, Mohammed and his partners plan to expand with four new family care homes.

Mohammed also launched international candies company Sweet Emporium Inc. through The Eagles Accelerator, a school-wide pitch competition held each spring. Mohammed learned about the competition about a week before it began and decided to join. He competed on his own, rather than on a team, and started out with the idea of a company that would bring a variety of international sweets to the U.S. markets in a subscription model.

He took fourth place, earning grants from the competition that he used to formally launch Sweet Emporium. Import tariffs, however, have forced Mohammed and his small team of employees to put the business on pause. He’s working on a new strategy that would require him to travel overseas to make handshake deals with small candymakers.

When Mohammed was considering which business degree to pursue, he ruled out entrepreneurship and business administration because he already had experience in both.

“I started breaking it down and thinking about what exactly I need from a business degree,” Mohammed says. “Accounting, finance and economics. Those are very hard to teach yourself. Finance is the one degree that has a little bit of accounting and a little bit of economics. As I started taking finance classes, I realized it wouldn’t be that hard to get an economics degree; since so many classes overlap, I only needed about eight more classes to get an economics degree. So I was like, why not just make it a double major?”

How does Mohammed juggle all of this?

“My philosophy has always been, if I can fit it in my schedule and it’s something that would help me or benefit me in the future, I’ll do it,” he says. “I’m thankful that I’m healthy, I have energy, I’m motivated, and so I’m able to do all these things.”

Mohammed says he hasn’t “even thought about applying yet,” but he has his eye on a Master of Business Administration degree.