It continues to puzzle me how people still perceive failure as a bad thing.
Why can’t they view it as a lesson and instead of saying: “Oh god I failed” and dwell on their misery, they could say: “OK, so now this happened. What can I take from it to come back even stronger?” Notice how powerful that statement sounds; how there is hope instilled in it. Imagine if you said that to yourself every time something doesn’t work out in your business. That way, you would have no room for misery to eat away at your mind or, more importantly, your time – the time you could invest into something else.
I have seen it countless times with budding entrepreneurs who quit and return to their comfort zone just because one thing did not work out during the start-up phase.
The most common excuse is one recently shared by an acquaintance: “I’m a perfectionist, and if things do not work out the way I want them to, then I consider it as a failure.”
That is the issue right there. I also used to brag about being a perfectionist, trying to control situations as much as possible to ensure the outcome was to my advantage.
I remember commenting on this trait of mine in one of my previous columns.
However, being a perfectionist in business does not necessarily work to your advantage. While it is always a bonus to have things work out the way you want them to, sometimes they could turn out even better – but only if you let them.
When you give something your best and then just let things be instead of pushing and forcing them, you will free your mind of stress and also achieve an equal if not better outcome.
When I was in university, I came up with different business ideas – things I wanted to work on once I graduated. Entrepreneurship was in my blood. There was so much I wanted to do, and I started planning and moving towards the first step. Then stress or other obstacles would get in the way. The excuses do not matter though, because what I chose to do was quit and not follow things through.
I remember telling myself that I’d failed because I lacked experience in the workplace, in a proper organisation with 8am to 4pm working hours.
Regardless of everything I told myself, guess what happened next? I just started again. I started to develop new ideas, read about success stories and trying to align my passion and business idea together. And I did fail again and again.
This is how it should be done in a business.
Accept the fact that something went wrong and use that to perfect your next move, then start again.
Do you really think it was that easy for the founders of some of the world’s best known brands? Do you think the likes of Steve Jobs and Jack Ma found securing funding to kick-start their businesses a walk in the park? Not at all, and that fact should comfort you, to know that you do have something in common, that failure is part of the journey.
You would have even more in common if you were resilient towards failure and viewed it as a valuable lesson.
Looking back now I know if it wasn’t for failure, I would not have been able to enjoy doing what I do today. Everything that “went wrong” back then led me to where I am today, and I am really grateful for that. Had I not failed, and realised the importance of combining my passion and what I want to do together, I may have been stuck doing something that would have generated good income but was unsatisfying.
All it takes is a tweak of perception. Once you look at things differently, you will realise the power of what those lessons in failure actually bring; they fuel your business and help to develop it further.
Manar Al Hinai is an award-winning Emirati writer and communications consultant based in Abu Dhabi. Twitter: @manar_alhinai.
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COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kumulus Water
Started: 2021
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
Based: Tunisia
Sector: Water technology
Number of staff: 22
Investment raised: $4 million
The Baghdad Clock
Shahad Al Rawi, Oneworld
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ETFs explained
Exhchange traded funds are bought and sold like shares, but operate as index-tracking funds, passively following their chosen indices, such as the S&P 500, FTSE 100 and the FTSE All World, plus a vast range of smaller exchanges and commodities, such as gold, silver, copper sugar, coffee and oil.
ETFs have zero upfront fees and annual charges as low as 0.07 per cent a year, which means you get to keep more of your returns, as actively managed funds can charge as much as 1.5 per cent a year.
There are thousands to choose from, with the five biggest providers BlackRock’s iShares range, Vanguard, State Street Global Advisors SPDR ETFs, Deutsche Bank AWM X-trackers and Invesco PowerShares.
At a glance
- 20,000 new jobs for Emiratis over three years
- Dh300 million set aside to train 18,000 jobseekers in new skills
- Managerial jobs in government restricted to Emiratis
- Emiratis to get priority for 160 types of job in private sector
- Portion of VAT revenues will fund more graduate programmes
- 8,000 Emirati graduates to do 6-12 month replacements in public or private sector on a Dh10,000 monthly wage - 40 per cent of which will be paid by government
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Election pledges on migration
CDU: "Now is the time to control the German borders and enforce strict border rejections"
SPD: "Border closures and blanket rejections at internal borders contradict the spirit of a common area of freedom"
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
ESSENTIALS
The flights
Fly Etihad or Emirates from the UAE to Moscow from 2,763 return per person return including taxes.
Where to stay
Trips on the Golden Eagle Trans-Siberian cost from US$16,995 (Dh62,414) per person, based on two sharing.