The “American Dream” is what makes America great. By definition, it is “an aspirational belief that all individuals are entitled to the opportunity for success and can achieve upward social mobility through hard work.” In reality, American Dream is what pushes bold entrepreneurs to break the boundaries of the impossible and inspires them to never back down, even from a most formidable challenge.

While a recent YouGov poll indicates that only 43% of Americans still firmly believe in American Dream, success stories are all around us. People dream big and achieve even greater things. One such person is Amela Smailbegovic, a seasoned entrepreneur and real estate magnate operating across the United States.

Her story began back in 1985 when she was born in a small European country, Croatia, to a lawyer father and an architect mother. If it was up to her and her parents, she would’ve probably gone to school there, finished whatever college she wanted, and lived a nice life in her home country.

But life wouldn’t be life if it didn’t throw lemons in your face, and Amela’s lemon was a civil war that ripped her country apart. Forced to flee from war-torn Croatia, her parents moved to the United States in 1994 to restart their lives from scratch. When the Smailbegovic family first came to the States, they only had what they could bring in their hands, which wasn’t much. And building a life from nothing is never easy, but they managed to get by; there was always a warm meal on the table.

Fast forward to 2007, young Amela quickly immersed herself in American culture; she had already finished college, got her philosophy and political science degrees, and started working as a paralegal at Morgan & Morgan. Some people would be beyond themselves to reach that point – have a stable income and roof over their heads – but Amela knew that she could do much more.

That’s when she got into real estate by pure luck. Her mom was working as an architect for David Siegel, the famed timeshare king, and it gave her the idea to pursue a similar route. “I made my first steps in the timeshare industry fifteen years ago, and I loved the concept,” she says. “So I started working there, mastering the art of the trade, and slowly moved up in the ranks.”

Today, Amela Smailbegovic is one of the industry’s top performers working with a leading International Company. She leads a team of over ten who produce between 30 to 40 million dollars in sales annually. But as she explains, getting to that level of success required four times the effort – twice the effort for being a woman and twice for being an immigrant.

Still, Amela points out that she probably wouldn’t have succeeded if the odds weren’t stacked against her because, for her, the odds were the best motivators. “I will always identify as an immigrant who came from nothing. But that was even more of a reason to make it big,” says Amela Smailbegovic. “I believe immigrants will always have more willpower and drive to make it here. And you can’t succeed without either of them.”