Month: December 2021

Here’s something that you’ll hear rarely — running a business is like raising a child. While this analogy may be strange, I believe it holds true.

There’s no business person I know out there that doesn’t hold their business close to their heart. That’s what happens when you spend ten, twenty, thirty years of your life and millions to build a company. It becomes your baby.

But the funny thing is, only when I became a dad did I understand how similar both are. In the rows below, I’ll share my thoughts on how being a dad and a businessmen compare to each other.
One of my biggest revelations was that to be a good dad and a good business person, you have to know what you truly want.

Growing Fantastic Services to a £40,000,000/year company in 10 years wasn’t an easy feat. Back when we started, in 2009, we had a rough idea of what we wanted to achieve with the company, but let me tell you, that vision was quite… broad.

We knew we wanted to make the easiest place to book services for the home. But we never imagined it would’ve been as big as it is today.

To be successful in business you have to know exactly what you want. Otherwise, you’ll spend a lot of time chasing ideas around and never get to materialize anything.

How does that overlap with fatherhood? Well, for starters you should know what you want to teach your child. For me, it’s always staying true to yourself, and consistency. Those to me are the most important aspects of life.

Translating this to business, knowing what you want means that you have clear goals, targets and a roadmap to achieve them. A team needs a clear vision and goals in order to be successful. To set those, you have to know what you truly want to achieve as a business.

For this to happen, you need to be patient. Just like you are with your kid.

Any parent will tell you that patience is the golden ticket to successful parenting. You just can’t rush things when it comes to raising a child.

They need to learn on their own. And more often than not, kids take things at their own pace.

It’s exactly the same with teams, employees, and well… business. Quite often, it doesn’t matter how much you push your team or employees, they will take things at their own pace. And that’s okay.

As a leader, you have to realise that and accept it. There’s no rushing learning a skill, or understanding a niche. It comes with time and experience.

You have to support that team and your employees throughout the different projects and stages your company goes through. Only then you will be able to go grow a company that’s a force of nature.

But most people don’t talk about how much of a mind-game running a business is.

Now that you know how important it is to know exactly what you want to achieve with your business and the setting of clear goals, it’s time to talk about the whole mind-game that comes with entrepreneurship.

Trust me, raising a kid is hard. So is growing a business. But when it comes to keeping your head straight and working hard, it can be challenging.

See, as a businеss owner, you have to give up a lot of things. Not only that, but even if you make a million you may end up with not enough money to pay yourself. Here’s where a lot of entrepreneurs on the internet don’t give you the full picture — revenue and profit are completely different things.

Finally, being in business is very much about building your dream world.

Most of us spend at least 40 hours a week working. So, why don’t you make it awesome? Raising a kid is pretty much the same. You have to create a magical world for them too.

Ever since I can remember, I’ve had an obsession with Legos. Mainly because you can create anything your mind imagines. With business, it’s the same. It’s your small world and you get to do things the right way.

Whether it’d be ensuring your employees build amazing lives, or you help make the planet a better place you can do it. There’s this saying I love “Everything you can imagine, you can create”. I always remind myself that. And I’m always reminded of that whenever my son and I play with Lego.

The teams within your company, your goals, the culture, the experience — they’re all a part of that dream world I’m talking about.

To wrap things up, my advice to any entrepreneur (or parent) is to act the way you want your company to act. Lead by example. But I digress.

Read more:
Lessons fatherhood taught me about business

Jancarthier Voyages is a family owned and operated travel agency based in Paris, servicing the globe.

Founded in 1963 by Dan’s grandfather, the agency has evolved from a small neighborhood operation to a € 100M a year agency operating in Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, South America, the Caribbean, the Middle East, The Indian Ocean, and Oceana. While Jancarthier focuses on business travel, they also offer world-class and one-of-a-kind vacation experiences.

Jancarthier Voyages has been able to grow its brand, gaining trust and new business along the way, precisely because of its deep connection in the industry as a family-owned business. After Dan’s Grandfather started the company in 1963, Dan’s father, Phillipe, joined when he came of age in 1982. Dan himself has been around the business ever since he was born; as early as the young age of 4, Dan would spend afternoons at his father’s office after school and accompany him as he delivered airline tickets to clients before the invention of email. Dan officially joined the company as soon as he graduated school at the age of 18. Despite the family connection and early exposure, Phillipe wanted Dan to get his start from the ground up. Beginning as a courier, Dan quickly evolved into a top salesperson, and now, at the age of 28, is a branch manager, taking care of top clients’ portfolios as well as collaborating on new and exciting projects for the company. Following his family’s path, Dan is a part of the third generation of this company, completely ingrained in the travel industry.

Due to this strong familial connection, personal touch, and robust expertise, Taieb and the rest of Jancarthier Voyages are able to differentiate themselves from the competitors. Jancarthier employees have deep, intimate relationships with 100% of their clientele — not just the breadwinner, but everyone from the oldest member of a family to their children. Further, the Jancarthier’s team pairs older, more experienced travel agents awash in industry relationships with younger, more tech-savvy recent graduates in order to make sure they are accounting for every travel and hospitality opportunity out there.  Of course, all of Jancarthier’s employees regularly go on tours and visit the locations and hotels they work with in order to ensure the quality of what they are selling as well as experience it themselves. If the employees, or any clients, have a negative experience with a certain hotel or airline or hospitality experience then the company may blacklist those suppliers in order to keep their customers happy regardless of the margins.

Jancarthier’s personal understanding of their clients, commitment to quality, tried-and-true relationships, as well as new age, internet-enabled tactics allows the agency to holistically understand and best facilitate a perfectly curated travel experience. To this point, Jancarthier works with all airlines, tour operators, as well as with large and small hotels all over the world in order to make sure they understand the market and therefore provide the most tailor-made experience and service to their customers, from the lonesome traveler to the family to large corporate clients.

Now, as COVID-19 is changing the travel landscape, Taieb is adapting as well. The young travel entrepreneur has plans to expand a point of sale to Dubai, which has actually seen an increase in their hospitality business since the pandemic. Further, Taieb is working with Upclaim, a new legal technology that supports travelers with airlines disputes and is creating a ‘Tour Operator’ position in order to consolidate the group’s hotel purchases.

Read more:
Dan Taieb on Jancarthier Voyages and Travel During the Pandemic

Business confidence fell in October but was still at its second highest level since the start of the pandemic.

Sentiment dipped last month to 43 per cent from 46 per cent in September, mainly because of a fall in optimism about the wider economy, although it remains considerably higher than the long-term average of 28 per cent, according to the latest Lloyds Bank Business Barometer.

Despite rising energy costs and supply chain woes, the survey also found that the net balance for firms’ own annual trading outlook was down by only one point to 42 per cent.

The survey also suggested that staff shortages in some sectors may ease, with 60 per cent of companies that have furloughed staff planning to bring them all back and a further 30 per cent expecting more than half of their furloughed workers to return.

Hann-Ju Ho, a senior economist at Lloyds Bank Commercial Banking, said that “it should bode well for the labour market as we head into the winter”.

However, pricing expectations among businesses continued to rise because of increasing input costs, including raw materials and staffing, with 45 per cent expecting to increase their prices, up from 37 per cent. The level outstripped the previous high of 44 per cent in March and April 2018. Lloyds said it indicated that firms continue to consider passing costs on to customers.

The monthly survey, which started in 2002, was conducted before last week’s autumn budget, involving 1,200 companies between October 1 and 15 across all sectors and regions.

Five out of the 12 UK regions and nations registered an increase in business confidence last month but it also fell in five. London, which rose 65 per cent, and the northeast, which was unchanged at 61 per cent, remained the most positive regions. Employment expectations are particularly high in the capital, the survey found.

Confidence remained highest in the manufacturing sector, where it rose to a five-month high of 51 per cent, up from 49 per cent. Sentiment in retail and services fell slightly to 37 per cent and 43 per cent, respectively, although they remain higher than three months ago.

Official data last month showed that retail sales fell unexpectedly in September, dipping by 0.2 per cent, according to the Office for National Statistics.

The survey, which provides an early signal of economic trends, comes as the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee prepares to meet on Thursday. Expectations are rising that it will increase interest rates amid inflationary pressures.

Read more:
Business confidence dips but staff shortages show signs of easing

As world economies recover from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, investors all over the globe are more willing than ever to part with their cash.

When scouring countries for investment opportunities, they should look no further than India.

According to data published by NASDAQ this year, India is the world’s fifth fastest-growing economy and has already had a considerable bounce back from the pandemic. There are prime opportunities for investment that could deliver attractive returns across a huge range of sectors.

There are a number of reasons why investors should focus their capital on India. For one, in the 2021 financial year, the country received its highest ever inflow of foreign direct investment of over $81 billion. This was due to a backdrop of policy steps that have improved the ease of doing business in the country, attracting investment into projects focused on manufacturing capacity and new infrastructure developments.

The largest investors in India in the past year were Singapore, the USA, and Mauritius, but the rest of the West stands to gain a lot if they follow suit. India’s GDP is forecasted to grow by 11 per cent in the next financial year, the highest since their independence in 1947, and is estimated to become a $5 trillion economy by the same year.

This large, expanding size of the market makes India an attractive prospect for foreign investors, with easy access to other emerging markets such as Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Myanmar.

Many of the world’s most prominent investors and venture capital funds have already succumbed to the allure of investing in India. Warburg Pincus and Prosus Ventures recently backed the Good Glamm Group in a $150 million funding round, making it the latest Indian startup to become a so-called ‘unicorn’ company, with a value of over $1 billion. Similarly, last month General Catalyst led a $160m investment round in Mumbai-based Dhani Services, founded by Sameer Gehlaut.

Given the current geopolitical climate and how western nations are reacting to China’s foreign policy decisions, many investors see India as a safer alternative. Tensions in the South China Sea are scaring away the big corporates, especially those based in the US, for fear friction between the two countries could affect their bottom line.

Many companies also made moves to prevent their supply chains being so reliant on China following the coronavirus pandemic, instead focusing on domestic production. By comparison, India has relatively good relations with most of the nations in the west, and many companies have decided to shift their manufacturing bases from China and into India.

The Indian government has recently taken the policy decision to encourage digital transformation across the country. This is another reason why it is becoming increasingly attractive for investors. For a long time, many companies have chosen to outsource their IT departments and call centres to India, but with digital technology expanding across the country, it will soon become more than just that.

We are seeing a huge tech boom across India, which is revolutionising industries such as finance, e-commerce, agriculture and medicine. This leads to increased investor confidence as the economy becomes more developed on the whole, and venture capitalists who have found success in these industries in other countries will view India as an even more attractive place to invest.

It is reforms like this that increase investor confidence. India’s government is keen to get other countries doing business here. The country regularly ranks in the top 10 improvers in the World Bank’s “Ease of Doing Business” rankings, which is in part due to the actions of the government.

India is undoubtedly an attractive place to invest, and it’s time more firms and individuals in the west recognised this. The growth of the country’s already significant economy can’t be downplayed, and the emergence of more and more unicorns by the year, as well as its geopolitical benefits compared with China, all make India an ideal place to shell out capital.

Read more:
Why you should invest in India