ÖmerKaya

1986

1986 · Rüsselsheim, Dicker Busch

Under your windows

On November 10, 1986, Ömer Kaya is born in Rüsselsheim, the Opel town in the middle of a dense metro area that nobody would ever call a model neighborhood. His grandparents came from Kayseri in 1978, his parents in 1984. His grandfather works at Opel, his father works shifts at the Schott glassworks, and when he is not working, he sleeps or plays cards at the Turkish cultural café.

His mother wears a headscarf, speaks not a word of German and became a mother at seventeen. Money is always short, and the boy feels it. Vacation means the whole family packs the car, drives three thousand kilometers to a village near Kayseri and, after six weeks, heads straight back to the factory and to school. He is eighteen before he sees a beach for the first time in his life.

What he lacks is not only money. In all those years he never hears a single sentence like this one from his father: “Bravo, my son.”

I was born in Rüsselsheim in 1986 and grew up there. In the ghetto, if we're being honest.

The lessonWhat you lacked as a child drives you later on, and as long as you don't recognize it, it steers you.

90s

The nineties · Out in Rüsselsheim

A kid from the street

The Opel town has a bad reputation, even the police here are at times overwhelmed, and Dicker Busch is known as a troubled neighborhood. Out in Rüsselsheim, among high-rises, housing projects and a dirt soccer field, by the Walter-Köbel-Halle, on the McDonald's corner and in Königstädten, forty, fifty kids hang around, Turks, Germans, Italians and Spaniards. About those years he says only: “It was brutal.”

His best friends are older boys. The day starts with cartoons and breakfast, then it is soccer until evening, and his first club is Sportfreunde Bischofsheim.

And still it is a great childhood, he says today. There is pride, and respect still means something. Ömer Kaya is a kid from the street.

At the same time you grow up in the ghetto and see that the street has its own legal system. You don't have much of a choice.

The lessonOn the street as in your company, you earn respect through your character, not through titles or money.

90s

The nineties · Rüsselsheim

Fists

He stutters, and when the class takes turns reading aloud, a single word feels like it takes him an hour. At about twelve he is diagnosed with ADHD and offered pills, and the boy turns them down himself. When his mother comes to parent-teacher conferences, women from the neighborhood interpret for her, the teacher nods politely, and he sits beside them knowing: “My life depends on this conversation, and nobody in this room has the language to defend my life.”

At home, beatings count as a way to raise a child, and when a thunderstorm rolls in, the frightened boy crawls under the radiator. At nine he hits back for real for the first time, rarely at first, then regularly, against boys who are bigger and older, and he takes a lot of beatings. To this day his face carries many scars, on his nose, on his forehead, everywhere. Look closer and you see them, and his beard hides a few.

Letters of complaint arrive at home, more than once he is not allowed on class trips, and when the class elects him class president, the teacher takes the post away from him on the second day. “Nobody believed in me.”

At thirteen he walks into the Rüsselsheim boxing club, really just to shut up anyone who lays a hand on him. His coach, a Belgian named Francis Roebben, picks him up at home, drives him to training, tutors him and cooks him pasta with tuna, tomatoes and cream. With every session the violence recedes, and years later his own transport company brings his coach's piano from Belgium to Wiesbaden.

Francis brought me in when the world had written me off.

The lessonOne person who believes in you can redirect your strength, and for your people, you can be that person.

2003

At sixteen · Downtown Rüsselsheim

Money talks

At sixteen he loses his role model. His father loses his job and spends his time at the computer, the family has serious money problems, and there is no more peace at home. The family almost falls apart, and the turmoil lasts seven, eight years.

He works in an older buddy's internet café downtown, printing, copying and scanning for other people and selling watches and perfume on the side. Then he finds watches on eBay from Calvaneo, a brand almost nobody knows, ten of them on the entire platform. He buys all ten.

This is not chance but calculation: with not a single listing left, none of his buyers can look up the price. In the café he sells the watches for double, and he never takes more, even when he could: “Double, not triple, not quadruple. Never more than double.” The line is not drawn by any prohibition but by his own code of honor. And that is when he understands how the world works: “I can keep on stuttering, but money talks for me.”

To this day, that's how I work. I only want what's rightfully mine.

The lessonWhen your customer can't compare the price, you set the margin, and the limit is one you set for yourself.

2005

At eighteen · Rüsselsheim

The worst day

One day in the café he looks in the mirror and sees an unhappy boy chasing three euros, five euros. “Is this supposed to be your life?” his reflection asks, and it is the biggest revolt he has ever led against himself. After that he sells home savings contracts on the side, brought in by a family friend and mentor, A. A.

His first deal earns him 1,300 euros, he is overjoyed, and that same day he has promised his little brother a movie. Just a quick stop at the café first, his bag full of money: five euros into the slot machine, twenty won, then a hundred lost and another hundred to win it back, until everything is gone. When his brother asks if they are going now, he cannot tell him the truth, only that the movie is off and they will play at home.

He holds himself together until he reaches his room, and then he cries for hours. It is not only about the money, it is about the broken promise and the shame he feels in front of his little brother. He never touches a slot machine again.

On the day I thought I had lost everything, I actually gained a great deal.

The lessonIf you throw more money after the money you lost to win it back, you keep losing more, at the slot machine just as in your company.

2005

2005 · Nauheim, movie theaters, nightclubs

Nights at the door

At eighteen he drives his father's Mercedes C180 to his part-time job at a print shop every day, and he can still see those shiny alloy wheels today. One day the car is sold, without a word. It is not the car that hurts but what stands behind it: I don't matter to you. For the first time he swears to himself that he will change his life.

As a real estate broker he rides his bicycle from owner to owner and, in 2005, lands his first listing in Nauheim. He gets properties, but he cannot sell any of them, because there is no money for advertising, and when it comes to home savings plans, people do not trust his beardless baby face.

The money is not enough, so he works evenings and nights. He drives vans and delivers popcorn to movie theaters, some nights he is a security guard at a theater, on others he works the door as a bouncer outside nightclubs. In the morning, in the sweetest hour of sleep, he gets up in tears and goes back to work.

No shortcuts, working like crazy. That's what's behind it.

The lessonIf you lack capital, you pay with time and sleep, and there is no shortcut.

2007

2007 · Four in the morning

The morning in the snow

He gets his truck license and drives city deliveries for a freight company for 1,800 euros, and it is the hardest work of his life. He gets up at four, loads goods for twenty-five customers, heads out at eight and makes his deliveries, at least fourteen hours a day. There are moments when he wishes God would simply take him.

Then come six months of classes for his commercial freight license: straight from the truck into the classroom without a break, home at eleven at night and up again at four. For someone who was held back twice, math, law, constitutional law, labor law and business management add up to something like a business degree, and in 2007 he passes every exam.

Those six months have wrecked his body. One morning around three thirty the snow outside is almost knee-deep, and he cannot get up because abscesses have formed in his armpits. He looks out the window and cries, maybe for half an hour. Then he presses the wounds shut with his arms, gets up and drives off. Today his body is covered in scars, and the ones under his arms are still there.

To this day I carry the scars under my arms. I see them every other day.

The lessonYour body keeps a record of every night without sleep, and the bill comes due whether you look or not.

2008

2008 · His own company

The speech

With the license he founds his own transport company, his income climbs to 3,600 euros, and he keeps driving a truck himself. In 2008 he suddenly stands alone in front of twenty men, all of them friends of his father, all of them his father's age, and all of them shouting. They want to quit, and if they walk out, he is bankrupt on the spot.

He has never spoken in public, and he rates his chances of keeping them about as high as climbing Mount Ararat without a rope. Then his eyes fall on the business license on the wall, the one with his name on it. He stands up, an invisible hand at his throat, and he talks.

Not a single one of them quits. At the entrance he hugs the baffled security guard, dances his way home and cries with pride, and the boy who stuttered and could only express himself with his fists now knows: “I can talk. I'm a machine.” The one-man business grows into the OKay Group, with more than forty trucks, more than sixty employees and over five million euros in revenue a year.

I can't guarantee anything. I don't know what happens next month. But I will keep fighting. For those who stay, and with those who stay.

The lessonLeadership begins when you can't promise anything and still say that you are staying and you are fighting.

2008

At twenty-two · Rüsselsheim and Bischofsheim

Moving out

There has been fighting at home for years, and he deliberately keeps his earnings to himself, afraid that otherwise his father will walk away from his responsibility altogether. He wants the family to stay together, and at the same time his engagement to Gülşah is coming up. Finally he makes his father choose: “Either you go, or we do.” His father only says: “Go.”

He leaves the fourth-floor apartment where he has lived for twenty-two years, together with his mother, his seventeen-year-old brother and his nine-year-old sister. Among boxes, bags and his sister's night-light, his mother looks at him like a flight attendant when the plane hits turbulence, calm, even though she knows it is not calm. When they are already standing in the doorway, his father calls after them: “Don't go!” They go anyway.

The family finds a place with relatives, and he sleeps in a storage room at a friend's place in Bischofsheim, between boxes and old furniture. The apartment he bought in his own name with his father at a foreclosure auction just weeks earlier is now his alone to hold, with no money from his father and too little credit. He pulls it off: his mother and his siblings move in, and the family is together again.

Have you ever seen a bullet come back after it's been fired?

The lessonIf you look straight at the solution after a fall instead of at the pain, you win the time others lose to self-pity.

2009

From 2009 · Security, parties, concerts

The other side of the door

On April 24, 2009, OKay Trans GmbH is registered, and out of it grows the OKay Group, a holding company with OKay Autovermietung, OKay Clean and OKay Security. OKay Security provides personal protection. Only a few years earlier he stood outside nightclubs at night as a bouncer himself, and now the security company is his.

And now the nights belong to him: he throws parties, at several locations. The man who used to stand at other people's doors now sends out the invitations himself.

Over the years the stage grows bigger. He brings big singers from Turkey to Germany or is the main sponsor of their concerts, among them Bülent Ersoy, İrem Derici and Mustafa Ceceli. He puts on concerts and is a sponsor of big clubs and major events.

Getting rich was never one of my dreams. I dreamed of people knowing who I am.

The lessonRelationships are capital: when you bring people together, you build a network no budget in the world can buy.

2011

2011 · The fall

The letter

In 2011 he marries Gülşah, pays for the wedding entirely on his own, and then they leave for eleven days in the Maldives. When the two of them come home, suitcases still in hand, a letter from a tax case is waiting at the door, and in it is a number: 850,000 euros. He keels over, literally.

That same year he collapses with burnout, and personal bankruptcy follows. For half a year he gets up in the morning, walks around, eats and trains, and that is all he can manage. They sell their own apartment, furniture and all, move in with his mother in the apartment where he once got the family back under one roof, and search under the sofa cushions for twenty cents. It does not stop at this one burnout, and anxiety disorders and panic disorders are part of his path as an entrepreneur too.

During this time Gülşah is working on her master's degree, and he makes sure she keeps studying, no matter what happens. When he is on the ground, she shakes him: “Get up! Is this you?” Before 2011 is over he founds a second transport company, and even though the case is still open, people come and work with him. It is not closed until 2019, and in the end he pays around 185,000 euros.

My wife held me up. In life, and on my feet.

The lessonWhen everything is gone, you still have your reputation and the people at your side, and with them you build again.

2013

2006 to 2025 · Financial services

On the trucks

Alongside the trucks, the finance business is always running too, ever since that first home savings contract and later as a general agent for Allianz. In 2011 he becomes a regional manager at BKM, in 2013 a district director, and the boy nobody would take seriously because of his baby face now leads around 160 people. His motto sounds simple: “little work, lots of money.”

In 2015 the Inter insurance group lures him away, and he stays there until July 2025. He used to sit behind the wheel himself, and now his face rides the autobahns on the tarps of trucks.

What I do today has its roots there. It has grown, branched out, multiplied. But the core of today was laid there.

The lessonYou don't get rich selling hours, and only when you lead people do you earn from decisions instead of from your own working time.

2016

April 2016 · Mainz and Istanbul

In front of the camera

In April 2016 he starts taking acting classes, in Mainz and in Istanbul, and his life turns from black and white to color. To him, film is first of all a calculation that has to add up, an investment that is supposed to multiply.

In June 2017 his commercial for loans comes out. Its slogan, Hayatınızda Keşkelere Yer Vermeyin, leave no room for regrets in your life, becomes the title of his first book three years later.

I wanted to turn 8 into 16, 16 into 32, and I wanted to turn 23 into 320.

The lessonEven a passion you count as an investment needs a limit before the first money goes in.

2016

Around 2016 to 2019 · Germany

Floodlights

The boy who played soccer every day until evening comes back to soccer, this time as an adviser. From about 2016 to 2019 he works as a sports and soccer adviser, supporting professional soccer players and other athletes.

Starting in January 2018, omerkaya.de has a Soccer Manager section: placement and advising of professional soccer players worldwide, career planning, financial advice, contract negotiation and PR, in Turkish Futbol Menajeri, with transfer talks and sponsorship.

In Germany he organizes scouting tournaments, and the scouting is done by big former pros he brings to Germany for it.

Your fastest athlete hasn't even started running yet. Don't give up the fight.

The lessonTalent without a plan, a contract and an adviser gives away its market value, and in your company that goes for every key person.

2019

2019 · Midyat, Mardin

Muhteşem Üçlü

In May 2019, filming on Muhteşem Üçlü begins in Midyat, produced by his own company, ÖK Yapım. His first feature film is paid for with the proceeds from the apartment that once brought his family back together. In one scene, passersby take three of the actors for real street musicians and toss money into their instrument cases.

Three days before the October release, the premiere is called off. The new date in April 2020 falls into the first lockdown, and almost 150,000 euros are gone. Later, the film airs on Turkish television.

This apartment, with a whole story resting on it, makes it possible years later for me to fulfill one of my biggest dreams. I sell it. And with the proceeds I shoot my first feature film in Turkey.

The lessonA release date you don't control is a risk you have to price in before you put your money down.

2020

2020 · The pandemic

Keşke

In the spring of 2020 every shoot comes to a halt, and nothing makes him as unhappy as not being able to work. He remodels the house and the garden, trains in the basement at night and writes his first book, in Turkish, as a conversation with an interviewer who stays at his side for months. In the afterword he reveals that this interviewer never existed: it was him all along.

Hayatınızda Keşkelere Yer Vermeyin comes out in September 2020 from Az Kitap and goes into a fourth printing. The same year brings İlham Veren, a series in five volumes.

This is not a success story. This is not a sob story either. This is simply how it was.

The lessonWhen you write your mistakes down honestly, you see your life the way a soccer player watches the tape after the game.

2022

2020 to 2022 · Istanbul, Kadıköy

Osman Sekiz

In 2020 and 2021 he lives in Istanbul for two years, in Kadıköy on the Anatolian side, where his company ÖK Yapım is also based. At the end of 2019 he offered Ezel Akay the screenplay for Osman Sekiz, and then the pandemic stops the shoot before it starts. In August 2020 he even talks with Mike Tyson's manager about a cameo.

In the middle of the pandemic he takes the risk: from March 2021 the film is shot in an old mansion in Kadıköy that he has turned into a studio, and Ezel Akay publicly thanks him for taking that risk.

On March 24, 2022, the film opens in Germany, and on April 1 in Turkey. It is his second feature film and his most expensive: 800,000 euros, and to this day nothing has come back from distribution. Across both films, he has lost almost a million euros.

I have seen the end of the world coming many times. Not once was it the end.

The lessonSuccess in one industry doesn't protect you in the next, and unfamiliar ground makes you pay tuition first.

2025

Mid-2025 · Dubai

Dubai

In mid-2025 he moves to Dubai with his wife, his son and his daughter. He gives the reason straight out: “I want my son to grow up masculine and my daughter to grow up feminine. Not because of the taxes.”

The boy who saw his first beach at eighteen now lives with his family in a city by the sea. From there he works with entrepreneurs from the German-speaking world and the Emirates.

Your child will become what you are. Not what you say.

The lessonIf you choose your location for your children instead of for taxes, you are deciding about the next generation, not just the balance sheet.

2026

Today

Die Hand des Vaters

Today he is an entrepreneur and a mentor. As Der Mythenbrecher, the myth breaker, he takes apart costly beliefs about taxes, wealth and growth in free videos, and at Kanzlei Falke he is in charge of management and strategy.

The boy from the street has become a wise man. He has seen a lot, been around a lot and has connections worldwide, above all in Germany and in Turkey, reaching into politics and the sports world. Several burnouts, anxiety disorders, panic disorders: he has been through everything an entrepreneur can go through, and that, he says, is exactly why he is so successful today.

Back in Keşke he writes: “I think my biggest problem is my father.” Now the boy who never heard “Bravo, my son” from his father has written a book about what fathers pass on in business-owning families. It comes out on October 23, 2026.

When a founder or a business owner sits across from him and rattles off their own numbers, he knows how that feels: “I used to rattle off these numbers myself. In a different office, in front of a different man, with the same shaking hands.” What they entrust to him is never just numbers. It is their lives.

Your father's hand rests on your life until you lift it.

The lessonPatterns you took over from your father have a say in your company until you recognize them.