There are people who find themselves inside a high-performance environment and slowly start to become someone else. They absorb the culture, mirror the leaders around them, and somewhere along the way lose the thread back to who they actually were. And then there are people like Ali.

Known inside the Elliott Group as “The Prince,” Ali Hammoud is a Lebanese-born entrepreneur who grew up in Benin, a French-speaking country in West Africa near Nigeria. He is fluent in French and Arabic, a former national taekwondo champion, a real estate investor, a father of three, and the owner of a seafood restaurant called Lapirog back home in West Africa. Lapirog, which translates roughly to “little fishing boats” in French, is run by his sister, a PhD pharmacist who studied in Germany and returned home to build something of her own alongside him.

By the time Ali walked into the Elliott Group, he already knew exactly who he was.

A Midnight DM That Changed Everything

The story of how Ali ended up in Arizona is the kind of thing that sounds too good to be scripted. He was in Tampa, Florida, fresh off a late-night gym session with his friend Drake, when Drake mentioned a guy he had heard about in the insurance world. He did not know how to reach out. Ali grabbed his phone, found the Instagram page of a man named Andy Elliott, and sent a single direct message. It was midnight.

The next morning, a man named Jonathan Roberts called him back and invited him to a Master Closer Seminar that same weekend. Ali booked two tickets, bought two flights, and showed up to Arizona with Drake two days later.

He came for Drake. He had no personal interest in insurance or sales training. But something shifted when he sat down with Andy after the seminar workout and they started talking. Andy told him insurance was not the right path for him, and then extended an offer Ali was not expecting: come build something with us.

Ali turned it down at first. He had a great life in Florida, money coming in through real estate, and no desire to move to the desert in the middle of summer. But a few weeks later, standing on a beach watching people move through their days at what felt like a fraction of the speed he wanted to operate at, he made the call. He moved to Arizona.

“When I’m around Andy and his team, I feel like we’re going 100 miles per hour,” he reflected. “When I’m away, everybody around me feels like they’re going 10.”

For eight months, he and his wife, Elise lived three weeks in Arizona and one week back in Florida while she was pregnant and managing their family largely on her own. It was hard. It was also exactly what he needed.

Identity Is Not Something You Build Overnight

One of the most striking things about Ali is his clarity about who he is and where that came from. In an environment full of driven, high-performing people who have poured much of their identity into the culture of the Elliott Group, Ali stands apart as someone whose foundation was poured long before he arrived.

He rarely wears shorts. He always wears long sleeves. He is deeply modest in how he presents himself, both physically and professionally. He has never tried to speak like Andy Elliott or carry himself like the people around him. He shows up as himself, every single day, and he considers that one of the most important decisions he makes.

“You’ll never hear me speak like Andy or act like Andy,” he said. “I know who I am, and I made that decision before I got here.”

He draws a distinction between people who built their identity through life experience before entering a high-intensity environment, and those who built their identity inside one. Neither is wrong. But Ali believes knowing yourself before the noise starts is one of the most valuable things a person can have. It means you can absorb everything around you without losing yourself in it.

When asked what makes him most effective in business, his answer was not about aggression or ambition. It was about relationships.

“I am relational, not transactional,” he said. “I value people at a very high level and I build for the long term. That is what makes me dangerous.”

The 7–7–7 Rule

Ali’s father gave him a framework for parenting that he now applies with his own three children, and it is as simple as it is deliberate.

The first seven years of a child’s life: play with them, spoil them, let them feel loved and safe. The second seven years: discipline them with everything you have. Push them, challenge them, make them go through hard things. The third seven years: become their best friend. Be the person they come to with everything.

Ali is currently in the discipline phase with his son and daughters. He does not ask them which sports they want to play. He tells them. Currently they are in MMA, tennis, and soccer. All three, year round, no exceptions.

When his son begged to stop soccer because he was not good at it and everyone around him seemed better, Ali responded the same way his father once responded to him in the car on the way to taekwondo practice: with silence, and a drop-off at the gym.

“You don’t like something until you become good at it,” Ali said. “The psychology of winning changes everything. My son hated soccer. Now he loves it, because now he is good at it.”

He traces this philosophy back to his own experience. At twelve years old he told his father he did not want to go to taekwondo anymore. His father did not debate it. He dropped him off. Five years later, Ali was the national champion of Benin and the sport had become the foundation of his character, his confidence, and his discipline.

“Thank God my father did not listen to me,” he said.

He is planning to take this philosophy further in 2026. His goal is to spend a month and a half with his kids in Pakistan for wrestling and another month and a half in Thailand for Muay Thai. He will be nearby but out of sight. The point is for them to cook their own food, wash their own clothes, and feel what it is like to struggle in a world that does not cushion the blow.

“They need to understand that what we have here is not the real world,” he said. “This is too easy. I need them to know what the real world looks like.”

The Trophy That Felt Like Nothing

The most vulnerable moment in the conversation came when Ali talked about the day he became national champion.

He had sacrificed everything for it. Training was his whole life. That title was the singular destination he had been pointing himself toward for years. And when he finally reached it, he went home, took a shower, and felt completely empty.

“I got excited for a couple of hours,” he said. “Then I realized I had not enjoyed a single day of the journey. I was just waiting for that moment to make me happy. And when I got there, I thought: now what?”

It is a story he tells now not with regret but with gratitude, because it reoriented everything. He no longer waits for a number in a bank account or a milestone on a scoreboard to give him permission to feel good about his life. The journey itself is the point. The people around you, the problems you are solving, the version of yourself you are becoming in the process: that is where the real reward lives.

“If I ask you right now what you need to be happy,” he said, “you would say a roof over your head, food, people who love you, your health, the ability to move and grow. You already have all of that. So what are you waiting for?”

What He Wants to Be Known For

When asked what he wants his legacy inside the Elliott Group to be, Ali did not reach for a revenue figure or a title. He reached for something harder to fake.

He wants to be known as the man who told people the truth even when it cost him. The man who practiced what he preached. The man who believed that real success is achieving your full potential without compromising your values.

“People will do anything and everything to get to the money,” he said. “And when they compromise their values to get there, they lose a piece of themselves. They arrive and they are miserable. That is not success.”

He admits that directness does not come naturally to him. He is, by his own description, a people pleaser at heart. But he leads by example, and the standard he holds himself to becomes the loudest message he sends to anyone paying attention.

And plenty of people are paying attention.

The Skittles Bag

Ali has a way of describing the Elliott Group that captures something most people struggle to articulate. He calls it a bag of Skittles. Every flavor is different. Every person brings something distinct. But they are all in the same bag, moving toward the same thing.

“I never wanted to be anyone else here,” he said. “I just wanted to be the best version of me, and become one of the most important pieces of the puzzle we are all solving together.”

In a world that constantly pressures people to perform a version of themselves built for someone else’s approval, that kind of groundedness is rarer than it looks.

Ali has it. He has always had it. And if you spend even a few minutes around him, you can feel it.

About me:

I am currently a Master Facilitator for The Elliott Group in addition to being on the board of advisors for our Cultural Transformation Department in ELLIOTT ARMY.

With over 14 years of client service experience, I have held substantial leadership roles in the automotive industry. I’m also an accredited coach, a writer, a speaker, and a triathlon finisher. To contact me for engagements, you can reach me at [email protected].

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