Join the Dots
Hazem Mulhim
Founder and CEO, Eastnets | Tech Entrepreneur | Compliance and Payments Strategist| Social Entrepreneur| Author "Two Brown Envelopes "
If there’s one piece of advice I would give to entrepreneurs looking to make their mark in the world, and for those wanting to bounce back from failure, it’s this: join the dots.
What do I mean by this? Let’s start off by taking a look at the French word “entrepreneur” which is a conjunction of two words: “entre” and “preneur”. Together, they describe an action-man or action-woman, someone who “undertakes” to do something, who gets things done. But the word “entre” is interesting. On its own, it can mean “between.” In the context of the entrepreneur, that is significant. Why? Well, as I tell you in my book:
“In my experience, an entrepreneur is someone who not only undertakes to do something but also stands like a bridge between things, making connections, joining the dots, bringing disparate ideas together.”
This is what I have done all my life- both in and out of business. As a Palestinian exile, I’m inured to a life of being in the middle, between things. I was born in Saudi Arabia, have joint Jordanian-Belgian citizenship, spent significant amounts of my youth in Kuwait, England and Bulgaria, briefly toyed with emigrating to Canada, and now live in Dubai.
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Even from my earliest business ventures, I’ve sought to bring disparate worlds together.
“While I was still a student, I connected a Kuwaiti and a Bulgarian, who had a shared interest in German-designed forklift trucks. Then, when I launched the first computer store in Jordan, I acted as a reseller, linking customers with PC manufacturers. Later, I started what I still run today- a network business which, by definition, makes connections. This business really took off when I had the serendipitous conversation on a Cyprus beach: my interlocutor had developed SWIFT software for PCs, and I, through my banking clients, knew that small-and-medium-sized financial institutions in the Middle East would jump at the chance of using SWIFT for a fraction of the usual cost.”
And so it continues today! Even in 2022, I remain on the lookout for gaps in the market which I can bridge by making the right connections.