33-year-old says he's 'set for life' on a $240,000 salary in Dubai: 'I just fell in love with the energy'

CNBC

12-05-2025

Growing up near Lake Michigan meant swimming was expected, Fares Ksebati says. The Detroit native learned to swim when he was 5 years old, though his parents — who immigrated from Syria — didn't know how themselves.
"I fell in love with the water right away," the 33-year-old tells CNBC Make It. "I really enjoy being in this environment where you can feel free and weightless and just be in the sun."
Ksebati started swimming competitively in elementary school and continued through college and after. At 17, he started coaching other swimmers. But he never expected swimming to play such a significant role in his career.
That changed around 2014, when a woman Ksebati coached asked him to develop a training plan she could use in hotel pools while traveling for work. The inquiry sparked the idea for MySwimPro, a swim workout app Ksebati co-founded in 2015.
The app took off. In 2024 the company brought in $2.5 million in gross revenue from subscriptions, premium one-on-one coaching and weeklong swim retreats where Ksebati and other coaches train members at luxury resorts in global destinations like Egypt, Turkey and Thailand.
In 2025, Ksebati will take home a base salary of $240,000 as CEO, plus a bonus, profit share and earnings from brand deals and book sales. He expects to bring in a total of around $400,000, he says.
He enjoyed Dubai back in 2021 when he first visited, and spent more and more time there each year before buying an apartment there in February 2025.
"You have people literally from all over the world, all walks of life, people who come from wealth, people who are just getting started and making a name for themselves," he says. "I think for me to be surrounded by this diversity of perspective is what's the most empowering."
Here's a look at how Ksebati grew MySwimPro, as well as what it's like splitting his time between his parents' home in Detroit and his apartment in Dubai.
Just a year after it launched, MySwimPro earned Apple's App of the Year accolade in the Watch category. The award didn't come with any money, but it "gave us a lot of momentum," Ksebati says.
The business boomed in the first few years, notching a thousand downloads a day by 2019. But when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, it destroyed much of that early growth.
"All pools closed and our business starts falling off a cliff," Ksebati says. Paid subscriptions dropped by nearly 30% between 2019 and 2020.
Ksebati and his team had to innovate. They added at-home workouts to the app and Ksebati live-streamed swimming-specific workouts viewers could do at home without a pool. Within the next couple of years, the company bounced back to pre-pandemic active paid subscriber counts and added another 50% on top. It has over 15,000 active paid subscribers as of March 2025.
"I think it just goes to show by staying consistent, having a positive mindset and working through the challenges, you can continue to progress despite insurmountable challenges," Ksebati says.
The company turned a profit in 2018 and 2019, but the pandemic set it back financially. After restructuring, MySwimPro broke even in 2024, and Ksebati says it's on track to return to profitability this year. The company has six full-time employees and works with several part-time contractors and agencies.
Ksebati works around 40 to 60 hours a week creating content, working on his book or doing other projects for MySwimPro. He is "always plugged into our business, from almost the moment I wake up to when I go to sleep," he says.
Ksebati's income allows him to do virtually whatever he wants, he says, even in a place like Dubai with its reputation for luxury.
He first visited Dubai in 2021 and spent an increasing amount of time there each year, so he finally bought an apartment in February for $1.3 million dirham, or about $354,000. "Every single year I just fell in love with the energy, the forward-thinking mindset," he says. "It really is a city of innovation."
Dubai offers high-quality experiences across a wide range of income levels, Ksebati says. So while he often splurges on travel, sometimes taking multiple trips a month, his typical spending is fairly tame.
"I live relatively frugally given the amount of income that I have," he says. "And I sort of want to keep it that way. I don't really want to have a certain level of lifestyle inflation."
Here's how he spent his money living in Dubai in March 2025:
Despite the upfront costs, including a $142,000 down payment, buying an apartment has decreased Ksebati's monthly expenses. His mortgage costs come out to about $1,750 a month, whereas he previously paid between $2,700 and $4,000 a month for Airbnbs in Dubai. He plans to rent out the space while he's in Detroit for additional income.
Ksebati regularly spends on travel, both for work and fun, but he spent more than usual on food in March because he was going out for Ramadan iftars — meals to break daily fasting during the holy month, often with friends and family.
The bulk of his income goes toward saving and investing. He didn't have a strong foundation of financial knowledge growing up, Ksebati says, so he's taken time to learn about investing in the last few years. He's been aggressively buying into stocks and index funds, and aims to invest around $15,000 a month.
Ksebati owns over half of MySwimPro and has over $870,000 invested between his retirement and brokerage accounts. He has around $14,000 in cash in his savings account.
"You could look at it on paper and be like, I'm kind of set for life," he says. "But I [have] a bit more of an entrepreneurial mindset …. I have to hold myself back from too many ideas [for] building out other businesses just because there are only so many hours in the day."
Ksebati plans to continue splitting his time between Dubai and Detroit, although he can see himself spending more time in Dubai in the future. For now though, "I'm really happy with the mix that I have where I'm able to travel — I'm very mobile," he says.
Ksebati wants to maintain that mobility in the future, which may mean adding a few homes in different parts of the world to his budding real estate portfolio, he says.
As for MySwimPro, he hopes the company will continue to be a brand that "empowers people to swim for life" and use new technologies to further improve swimmers' experiences in the water.
"If I'm always able to provide and give to the world and create impact and share knowledge, then I'll be happy," he says. "And so for right now, I feel that I'm doing that and as long as I continue on that path, I think I'll be in a good spot."