First let me apologize for not posting the last couple of weeks, i’m starting a new business venture and had no time to post on any subject, but will start keeping you posted on my new venture and what kind of problems i will face. I sure hope many will benefit from my steps. I will explain what is the business venture that i’m creating and will use your help to start it too but not in this post. In the last two weeks i had an idea of opening a new radio station (this is not the idea i mentioned above) and after the financials (numbers research) the idea was promising. I got the idea when i saw the new law in alQabas newspaper that stated you can now apply for TV and radio channels, that was 7 months ago. After sending out mandoubs to both Commerce and Information ministries, just to know who can direct me to the right place and get what are the requirements to start the radio channel. Then when the mandoubs started being attacked with the Kuwaiti Ministry syndrome, i went searching for the information myself. After 4 days of jumping from one ministry to another i found the right place. Then and there i was told that there are NO licences to issue a radio fm station in Kuwait, (so what category does marina fm fall into, go figure) The law passed was for the satellite radio station like MBC FM, these are broadcasted through NileSat Satellite. So after a couple of days of research, i found out again that we do not live in a free market. Just a feeling of one.  

tennisondean.jpg

Try not to circulate your personal info over the internet or at open forums, chats, etc.. i.e. facebook, as they may circulate your information to various sources when you have agreed to without reading the terms and conditions.

Here’s the story: 

Just over a week ago I received an international internet phone call (As the country code would not appear or sometimes appear as the figure 150 or +111XXXXX) from a person with a Scottish accent asking to confirm that I am the person whom he’s calling for. Due to bad reception/unclear line I couldn’t make out who the caller was, but I made out that he was addressing me so I assumed that he was a representative of one the many companies my employer deals with. I vaguely could understand what he requested; eventually I conveyed the message to call me at a later time to allow me to change my location for a better signal. The man calls again, and starts talking about stocks etc, I was a bit confused as this has nothing to do with the core business of our company, and however I listened carefully.

 The man is claiming that his company is a large and very reputative, experienced/profound brokerage firm in the market, and that they are seeking new investors/clients to establish business with them. I was asked many questions regarding the stock market which I’m pretty ignorant in. Not to bore you, I was lectured for about 20minutes about the Stock Exchange, and that they have access to lead information of various stocks which basically describes their so called success but attaining high returns to their clients.

The man then states that as a valued customer/client to-be, it is crucial to invest a minimal amount equivalent to the cost of 1 Unit of shares which accumulates to 1000 shares. The stock he was referring to is currently being traded at a value of $22, where his offer which is only valid for the moment will cost $19. Such ‘minimal’ amount that I’m suppose to invest will compute to approximately $20,000, however, due to their intuition and solid information – that in 90 days I will be able to sell and make a net profit after paying their commission of  minimum $11,000. Now, I’m no financial expert, but I can distinguish that this is a very large return of investment especially in a 3 month time frame!

As the man claims; The Tennison Dean Company is willing to share this tremendous ‘success’ and high profit with me just in order to establish an effective trust relationship in which my future business will be furthered though their firm.Of course, he emphasizes that it is essential to be decisive about this issue and confirmation of proceeding with the transaction is imperative! (Very pushy, eh?). Then he makes a remark that all he needs is my verbal agreement over to phone so that he can allocate 1 Unit worth of the specific share mentioned.

Being polite, I told him I need time to think and research, review my finances (My many millions), etc. yet again he is so persistent – eventually he said that he is willing to bring down the purchase instead of 1 whole unit, I would invest in ½ of a unit. I ended the call stating that he can call me in 3 hours as I had to hang up.

Also, being curious I visited their ‘dodgy’ website, tennisondean.com; which not surprisingly contained no contact information whatsoever, no phones/email – just nothing for the exception of bullcrap (excuse my French). The amusing thing was that I click on the ‘careers’ tab of the website, which stated “Please Forward an up to date copy of your curriculum vitae to Human Resource with a brief covering letter highlighting the position you are applying for.” (BUT there is no info - such retarded idiots).

Of course, Tennison Dean, would not want to un-grasp and let go of a ‘potential valued client’ like me and he calls again in another 3 days time! Attempting to be refined, I tried to convey the message that I am aware  of what they up to, and even if they were legit I would not interested – but he was insisting and relentlessly asking ‘WHY’, I had no choice but to break my silence and blur out the truth that they are a bunch of hoaxers.

Just wanted to share this story to inform all - just in case you or someone you know comes across these swindlers.

A designers haven for free spirited designer, a website that sells unique designed tees. Well, you all know how people love to own unique designs tees. Designers come in submit there artistic idea’s and then can see them on tees around the world. The only missing part from that website is the Arabic perspective of design, honestly i think that Arabic typography is the most beautiful script i have ever seen. Believe me i’m not biased towards Arabic culture but the old Arabic scripts are beautiful and have a sense of time, culture and a certain rhythm to it. So if any designers out there, check the site out.

An entrepreneur in my view is a connector, you have to be a person who connects idea together creating a business model then getting these idea into actions. The hardest part is to make these ideas into action, because some need very simple follow ups  and other you got to go at 5pm in July to shuwaikh to meet a person. Just remember this, take one step forward and other steps will follow, they follow because you start feeling satisfied and this makes you take the second and third….then you reach a point where you are so confident about your business venture that you cant go back. Back to the connecting part: get a sheet of paper, write your idea, U GOT TO WRITE them. When you do you never lose your path or where you want your business to be heading. I personally do that, my laptop is full with business idea that i keep updating. Let me tell you something else, i’m a very messy person and thats the worst kind for running a business, the more you are organized the better. Be organized as much as you can, keep a file for your papers, licence etc… create an exceldocument with the expiry dates of your licences: Fire department, Ministry of Commerce, Rental Agreement, Ministry of Social affairs, Insurance and employees civil id believe me the list goes on and on. Especially when you got a lot of work to be done regarding any institution in Kuwait, you have to have all your papers ready and a stamp too, i use to run around from Kuwait customs at the airport then to Kuwait city then back. I even had letter heads and the stamp in my car. When establishing your company whatever legal state it is, it has to have a stamp and a Arabic and English letter head for addressing any part in the government. Keep sharp and keep your wasta ahead of you. Sometimes u just stop and think, why am i doing all this, at the begging you have to do most of the work then its simple just hire a mandoub right, why not hire a mandoub from the beginning then? because he has to be on your residence for him to do your work and its worth knowing how hard it is to start a business in Kuwait. The mandoub residence need atleast 2 months of running around the ministry to get the mandoub on your residence. 

Watched the movie Caramel over the weekend and i must say i was impressed. A smart, funny and well written movie. When watching the movie the first thought that comes in mind is to log in to jazeeraairlines.com and book a flight to Lebanon. The sounds, colors used in the movie brings back beautiful memories of how beautiful Lebanon is  and the sounds of its busy streets, the scent of of true mediterranean  food, and its amazing breeze. A must see. PS (never knew that shira was called sukar banat:P)

Lately my sms bill has been increasing, i truly believe in the sms service and i appreciate it because of its power. You can never deny not getting the information, but when i say i called you and you did not pick up well thats another case. So sms is really like a mini email, so i got a call from Zain. A very well mannered lady requested a few minutes of my time to explain a new sms savings offer. Most of the times i would ignore such calls or say i cant take the call now, but when she said (SMS) and savings i told my self lets listen. (and by the way now they are using 90 lines trying to make us feel better when accepting such calls, smart) so i  accepted the benefit and terms given by her and the sale took 5 minutes only. Why did such a sale go smoothly, because i wanted the service simple yes? not really  Zain must have some sort of CRM system to sort out customers showing a gradual usage of sms and surly would see the benefit of such a service, filter the numbers out and get your call center to call them and create sales. If such a simple  be implemented in many companies around Kuwait, we surly would have less wasted calls and less phone bills and more sales. I would only wish that Zain would think in such a smart way with there approach to the Kuwaiti Society. Now such an idea can be implemented in any form and in any business, you just need to listen closely.

When looking around your home, room, car etc etc you can see how many comfort we own. When i see such services being marketed to people i keep thinking how much of our brains are we utilizing. Do we really deserve such comforts to ease our minds more, or are we supposed to increase our synapses in our brains. When looking at the emirates suite on-board service, i just think cant we get a good old fashioned comfy seat and a nice book to read. Some consumers plan there trips because the Emirates airlines has the best entertainment system. I’m complaining because when sometime i just sit at home and watch TV, after a couple of hours you feel bad inside thinking what did i do to increase my brain usage. I honestly think that a book is much more satisfying to the brain than TV (witch includes sound and image) compared to pure quietness. Average human brain usage revolves around 3 to 4% utilization, Einstein used about 6% of his brains capacity. I just think sometimes if we continue living the way we are, we may lose some and go back to 2%. Just imagine whats going to happen in 500 years ahead? How much would our brains be working at and what would it produce if it was at 16% or more? Just a note, Sir Richard Branson just flew his first Virgin Atlantic plane using biofuel. Wanting to create a better enviroment and running an airline business at the same time. Just compare the two different  visions of Emirates airlines and Virgin Atlantic. 

Well when you think of it, how wonderful is the independence and liberation days, when skimming over the newspaper every time after these two events we find a kid that died from the stupid nonsense maseera. We are to far off to celebrate anything in Kuwait, we are late in education, the only thing our MP’s have in there minds is sex and dowaniyas, we are in the top worst countries in the world in: Obesity, Co2 emission and Human Slave Trade. How patriotic are we now, just as always we claim our patriotic feeling by crowding the streets and endangering kids. The so called gift to Kuwaitis to increase salaries will further increase inflation prices, most Kuwaitis will just go back to the banks to refinances there loans. Some ask how can we decrease prices, and why are the prices going up in the first place? When real estate hikes all other prices follow, when the owner of a cafe gets a notice that his rent is going up by 15% he just adds the 15% back on his product or service and then passes it to the consumer (me and you), now multiply this idea with all of the Kuwaiti business sectors and you get a wide inflation effect. Now we ask again why did real estate go up? Our house was estimated to sell at 260k before 8 months ago, now it cost 340k. Well you may think that its a great time to sell and make a profit and buy another home, but all the other homes in Kuwait went up the same amount, so thats one of the causes of inflation, offcource commercial prices of real estate go up too. So why did the prices go up that much? was Kuwait being nominated the next best destination after Monaco, well no but a group of real estate companies again used the law to there benefit and started to buy land all over Kuwait and then not offering to sell, driving demand up to over evaluate the price. offcource these companies have financing to buy land in the millions, and kept on holding the sell deals. Now after the CBK have noticed the problem, they are supposed to sell all land they own in 3 years and the CBK have issued a law that its legal for a private company to buy residential land anymore. Are we really protected by laws or are they customized for certain groups?

Im not realy into politics, but i can explain the problem and a simple solution from a business point of view: let me explain, what is the goal of our debate/political clashes between the two liberal and conservative side, isn’t it to provide the best education for the next generations. Well its a simple matter from my view, we have implemented the segregation of students law, yes?we should have studied how effective the segregation on Kuwait University students and if it created a better educational environment. These should have been studied and done by statistical students and the psychology department at KU. After such a law that has been passed, these studies should provide a clear decision if to continue the segregation law or to reverse it. A study in some state schools in the US have implemented a class segregation to study if its a more effective from an educational perspective (i never got the results honestly). The true benefit for the coming generations is to create a better educational environment and to have a stronger workforce to lift the quality of life in Kuwait. So as i have said before “numbers never lie”, if we had the numbers proving how good or bad the segregation law is, we would not be talking and fighting everyday, and the raciest and religious shout outs would stop. Each side is blaming the other and trying to get the people behind them, the main reason we are discussing such a law is to provide the best educational system, not defending what ideologies we stand for!

Before 3 years ago, i found an Australian franchise called Cartridge World. Looked interesting so i researched it a bit more and then started contacting them. I even found a perfect store in Kuwait city to open the first branch. Let me explain what the franchise does: it takes the empty ink cartridges of any printer and refills it for you for half the price of the original. A smart idea honestly due to the expense of the cartridges, especially the non laser cartridges. And if you are wondering why the first ink cartridge that comes with the printer originally never last because they only fill a quarter of it. HP and other giants make there profits from the ink not from the printer it self. A good laser printer costs 230KD and the ink toner all cost a whopping 145KD. So after that phase i thought of making my market study and look what i found out: a huge Kuwaiti factory in thajeej area that refills empty cartridges and sells them back to the ministries in Kuwait, this small plant is selling for all the ministry printers in Kuwait, so now the only target in my head is the consumer yes? well the Kuwaiti consumer has been dissatisfied and have already heard about such a service from small shops in Hawali that claim they refill the printer cartridge for less than half the price. But because of there unprofessional methods, the printers later on break down due to the ink cartridges sold by them. At this point many consumer that i have talked to where dissatisfied and do not trust any store that claims he can refill your ink cartridge. After such research i have contacted the franchiser and explained to them that i wont be taking up the franchise in Kuwait in due time, and may contact them in a later date. So just to show you folks that you got to understand the market, the consumer and what he thinks of such a service. Because i searched for the consumers feeling and perception, i understood it may be very hard to persuade them again into trusting my franchised service. But some did go for the franchise and a store opened in the same area i wanted to open the first store, Kuwait city infront of the Blockat area.