When I first started my influencer talent marketing consultancy, Bukhash Brothers, in 2014 we worked from our living room. We were ambitious, and believed in our business. We knew that getting started was more important than getting a fancy office to ‘get started’ in.
Within 12 months, we were making good money. We didn’t have staff, and we didn’t have any big overheads. We were small and content, and could have stopped there.
Our business was the first of its kind in the UAE market, and it was getting traction. We didn’t want that to be the end of the journey, but the start. We were already looking ahead to the next challenge: how to upscale? Over the past seven years, we have grown the business from a living room startup with a handful of clients to a business with a ‘fancy office’ and a team of 30+ employees, representing international clients and brand partnerships around the world. And despite the challenges we are still continuing to grow.
We wouldn’t be where we are today, if we didn’t have the same mind frame that we had back in 2014. Which brings me to the title of this month’s column. I want you, the readers of Esquire Middle East to go and buy an oversized t-shirt, and grow into it.
As the saying goes: without a goal, you cannot score. The metaphorical, oversized t-shirt that I want you to invest in, is the vision of what you want your future to look like. Whether it’s a business idea, family goals, fitness, the size of the house or apartment you want to live in or buy.
For the overarching goal of where you want to be in five or ten years time to materialise, you first need to ‘buy that oversized t-shirt’, envision it, manifest it and start putting together an actionable plan of how you are going to grow into it, and make it fit.
One of the biggest problems I see people face when putting together a vision of what they want their future to look like, is not believing they deserve great things to happen to them. They make their dreams smaller, and shrink in order to fit the view they have of themselves and their place in the world. We don’t need to make ourselves smaller and limit ourselves: we need to start believing in ourselves, and grow.
“People who set ambitious goals are also more likely to be happier in the long run, than those who set conservative goals”
Interestingly, according to research carried out by the University of California, people who set ambitious goals are also more likely to be happier in the long run, than those who set conservative goals. Despite the fact that ambitious goals usually require more work and determination. The study concludes that one of the reasons this happens is that when people set conservative goals, they often get conservative results. Whereas when people set ambitious goals, they tend to surprise themselves, and get astonishing results.
What does this tell us? Ultimately, yes, we should be content and grateful for what we do have, but that we should never let our ambition be satisfied —we need to buy an oversized t-shirt and grow into it.
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