How my life turned upside down as a result of Covid-19 and how I have remained successful..

I want to share with you my personal experience of life during Covid-19, and the challenges I have faced - I hope this may help some people during this unusual time.   

In January this year, I started my new role as Head of Sales, Asia for Hansard - a challenging role with a lot of responsibilities, but the dream job that I have always wanted. Building relationships, training people and travelling to so many different countries – I basically get paid to do what I love!

My job is very demanding, I like to plan my yearly (personal/work) targets – including personal development - and monitor my progress each month. I structure my day/week in a way that works for me. I personally believe that work should not be restricted to 9 - 5pm, there should be a healthy balance between both your work and personal life with the flexibility and freedom to support your well-being, making time for my hobbies is dear to me.

 Let me share my working week with you, pre Covid-19:

 Monday to Wednesday I would be based in Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, waking up at 6:30/7am every day to exercise, then off to my favorite coffee shop between 8 to 9am to check my e-mails whilst enjoying the best double espresso in town - my working day starting with the best mood ever.

 I would then head to the office to start handling queries from all around Asia. I always take 20 to 30 minutes to catch up with our Operations team, three lovely ladies that are my key support (work and personal). I consider them as my Kuala Lumpur family - they are more like sisters to me, we have a very good relationship and to me this is essential - how you get along with your team will determine how efficient you become. 

For lunch I would try and meet up with clients, I find you get much more done during an informal meeting than you do in a formal setting. It’s a good time to meet somebody that I appreciate giving me positive energy for my afternoon.

I would then spend 2 to 3 hours in the afternoon visiting client offices around Kuala Lumpur for different reasons: training, product updates, sales strategy etc. Then it’s back to the office to organize my e-mails and get in touch with the team based in the Isle of Man, UK.

 During the evening I would spend time doing my favourite activity - a futsal game - then finally drinks with a client or home to call my family in France and rest - I need 6 to 7 hours sleep to be efficient.

 This was my perfect half week in Malaysia.

 Then Thursday morning, 4am I would normally head to the KLIA airport to go visit clients in other countries in Asia. This is a more intense time as my days would usually start with a breakfast meeting at 8 am with back to back meetings until late evening. It’s usually a couple days where I don’t have much time for myself between appointments as I must still respond to queries around Asia (this is why the Operations team back up is very important to me).

However, my secret and what I look forward to is my Saturday. I always book my flights back to Malaysia at around 6pm so I have the whole morning and afternoon to play sport/read/and relax - this is my weekly me time. Why do I always want to be back in Malaysia Saturday evening? Because Sunday early afternoon I have my 11 aside football game with my team & family “the KL wolves”. So, the two ways I socialize as an expatriate is through work & sport.

 This was a full normal week for me, 4 days in Malaysia and 3 days in another Asian country, and I was happy with the unusual routine that I had for a while.

The most important question I believe you should ask yourself is why? Why are you doing what you are doing?  If you can’t answer this positively, then the likelihood is that you won’t achieve the best of your ability. But once you find it, life gets easier - I believe this is the first step to success.

 Now, I’m sure you are thinking why does this French guy insist on this, well simply because sometimes you can lose the vision of this “Why”, especially with what is happening in the world right now, and that is what happened to me for a short period – and here’s how.

 So what happened?

 After my last business trip to Bangkok in March 2020 everything was turned upside down. I travelled to Bali to enjoy a weekend for one of my best friends and football teammates birthdays – but whilst there, the Malaysian Movement Control Order happened, and Malaysia closed its borders.

 Oh my gosh, the borders are closed, I’m in Bali. What am I going do? That was my first thought followed by so many questions…. How will I continue working from here? How can I keep my routine? How can I still be efficient and based in Bali? How will I survive with only have a minimal luggage and a minimum amount of clothes.  What will my business partners think of all of this?

I had so many negative thoughts.  My family in France were also stressing me out with all the negativity on the news, the same for my friends in Malaysia. At that moment I almost took a flight to France. On top of that I felt sick - like flu with the exact same symptoms as Covid-19 (probably due to stress). I called my dear colleague Katherine and she handled the situation and calmed me down, sorting all the paperwork for my health insurance, and arranged where I could go to get cared for.

It lasted for 4 days…what an unproductive first week in Bali. I have always had the mentality to face everything and rise, in my mind I am a fighter, I am the best at what I do, no one in Asia could be better than me at my role ….but me “Karam” became inefficient, how? I really needed to pull myself together.

I had a weekend of relaxation - I didn’t open my emails, I tried to switch off from everything and all the negativity. On Monday morning, I organized a call with my previous manager and mentor Michael Wrigley - I needed some input from somebody I trusted. I always keep to my core values in my professional life, so I never lie, and I always stay true to myself and the people around me, even if it doesn’t go in my favour.

I told him everything that was happening, he took 2 hours of his time and this was very helpful. The conclusion was: what is done is done and there is no point looking at the past, but what I can do now is plan my weeks and keep my activity going - be proactive and stop procrastinating. Sometimes, we all need a little push (it’s human) and I thank him for being there when I needed him.

I then contacted our Sales Director, Graham Morrall, to set up a conference meeting to explain the situation. The meeting went well. I always believe that to be a manager and handle employees must be a very difficult task, in particular for international companies handling different culture, personalities and ego’s! Well Graham is a pro, his first questions were not work related, his first questions were: How are you? How can I help you? How is your family in France? (you remember earlier I mentioned understand your “why” well my family is basically my “why”).

Graham was genuinely worried about me - this surprised me but told me a lot about Graham’s values and Hansard’s ethos towards their employee’s. I am from a very hard sales background where I have been used to being just a number, but not this time. I told him that I was considering going back to France. His answer was simple and rational: “Karam, if you go back to France, firstly won’t you be putting your family at risk and secondly you will be in a different time zone to your clients? If you stay in Bali you can help keep your family safe and you will be in the right time zone to be able to do your best to support your brokers in Asia”. A couple of days later he sent me a daily routine/planning tool from back in the days when he was working from home in my role (when he was about my age so quite long time ago J ) to help me structure my week. 

One tip for business owners or managers - concentrate on your employees, happy staff are more productive.

Well, March 2020 ended up being one of ASIA’s best production months in terms of sales, I achieved 176% of my monthly target!  One of the great advantages I had was the capability for all Hansard employees to continue to immediately work efficiently from home - due to our online system capabilities and technology – allowing me to stay in touch daily with colleagues around the globe to share experiences.

I hope this helps you understand the importance of never giving up and to always be honest and direct with your management - every issue has a solution, anything is possible if you believe, and take the right actions. Nobody can help you if you are not willing to help yourself. Question yourself during these moments, learn from your mistakes and you will come back stronger.     

Throughout this experience, I have also been able to make some personal changes, I eat healthier, do twice the amount of sport I use to do, take guitar classes (I didn’t had time previously) and most importantly I feel happy and comfortable with a totally new lifestyle. I will share this in my next article - hopefully this will help those that are finding it hard to adapt to a new lifestyle as a result of Covid-19.

It is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able to adapt to and to adjust best to the changing environment in which it finds itself……so says Charles Darwin in his “Origin of Species

Stay safe.

Karam