I was born in Sharjah in the early 1980s. My father came to the UAE in the 1970s and built his working life here, and the Gulf has been home for most of mine. It is where I learnt that business is done between people, and that trust takes years to earn and a moment to lose.
I started my career in frontline banking, and six years later I spent nearly ten years in a private equity backed software business that sold into supply chains. This is where I cut my teeth. I started in data entry, passing contacts to the sales team, then writing scripts and booking meetings. I moved into what was then telesales and quickly became one of the top performing reps in the business. From there I led teams and became obsessed with data. This gave me the opportunity to work in sales operations, and to learn the value of forecast accuracy upstream. Over the years I helped open offices around the world, including Hong Kong, and worked on turnarounds across Europe. Fifteen years on, I still sell into supply chain and logistics businesses, and I still use what I learnt there.
Since then, I have built go to market from zero in the Middle East more than once. I helped launch a business into the Gulf with no customers and no team, and today it turns over more than 30 million in the region. I took a new digital product from nothing to 4 million dollars through partnerships, in the middle of COVID. I led a commercial turnaround in the Middle East for one of the world’s largest data businesses.
I have made many mistakes, and I have seen how it goes wrong in so many different areas, and someone usually gets blamed. Sales hires made in a hurry. Targets set with no plan to hit them. Founders told what they wanted to hear until the money ran out, or so delusional they did not want to hear the truth. Most of it was avoidable, and everyone usually knows.