The Story Behind A Strong Heart
There is nothing quite like a near-death experience to gain a renewed perspective on what matters most. While it might be a stretch to express gratitude for my two heart attacks and four stents, there is no denying that these experiences have also been a transformative gift in many respects, putting an entirely new spin on living wholeheartedly. While I have always grabbed life with both hands (being an ‘all in’ kind of person is in my DNA), my heart sent a clear message that it was time to prioritise life in a more balanced way.
Life and business have taken my heart on a rollercoaster, and I have come out the other side a survivor in more than one sense of the word. The miracles of modern medicine, combined with my own tenacity, resilience, flexibility, willingness to take calculated risks, and a genuine passion for life, has meant that I have emerged from the ‘fire’ of events such as the Asian financial crisis and my own health crisis as a stronger husband, father, mentor, business leader, and social justice advocate.
A Strong Heart—An Autobiography in Progress charts my rise to great heights of success, from a one-man-band startup funded by a few credit cards to a small multinational company—it tells the story of becoming that ‘somebody’ I so dearly wanted my father Abba Jee to witness. The book details the high highs and the inevitable vicissitudes of our family building and re-building our business, always with the goal of leaving humanity a little better than before by doing tomorrow’s work today.
A Strong Heart is more than an entrepreneurial guidebook (although it contains many lessons of that nature); it is the story of how a red 1976 Honda CD-175 motorcycle transformed a young man’s belief in himself and provided him with the impetus to travel across the world and take control of his own destiny. I arrived in Montreal, ready to launch my career in hotels on a dream and a prayer, aided by a good dose of Karachi street smarts. From Dubai to Islamabad, Darwin to Dili, and to Europe, I have had the instinctive ability (honed through experience and the invaluable wisdom of mentors) to seize opportunities and be in the right place at the right time.
Over the years, experience has taught me it is just as important to be agile in life as in business. As the saying goes, ‘fortune favours the brave,’ or as my dear friend and mentor Mujahid Hamid once advised me, ‘Enjoy yourself today because there is no tomorrow.’ Seizing opportunities to expand one’s horizons and living the good life was the path we chose as a family when my youngest daughter Ismat announced one day in 2013 that she had been accepted as a student at the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. It took us less than a minute to decide that we were going to pack up our newly established life in Sydney and move to Paris. The plan was to take a one-year sabbatical while Ismat earned her Le Grande Diplôme.
Without hesitating, the next time I was in Dili, I flew out to Paris and organised all the necessary arrangements for our apartment in a historic pocket of the 16th arrondissement (just a ten-minute walk to the Eiffel Tower) and a year-long residential visa. We revelled in the opportunity to travel throughout Europe and immerse ourselves in different cuisines, cultures, architecture, environments, people, languages, and customs.
Then, just before Ismat graduated, she announced her intention to move to Switzerland to study at the world-renowned Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne (EHL), which had always been an unfulfilled life-long ambition of my own. I couldn’t have been prouder! And so, just like before, we decided to pack up our Parisian life and move to a beautiful apartment in Lausanne, with spectacular views looking across Lake Geneva to Évian-les-Bains. We were living the best of both worlds, travelling around Europe, absorbing its breathtaking sights and culture, whilst also running our business in Dili.
Over those years, I would fly in and out of Europe and Dili at fortnightly intervals, keeping on top of what was happening on the ground with our East Timor Trading Group. I knew in my heart (quite literally) that it was time to look towards the future with an eye to succession planning. Part of establishing a sustainable work-life balance necessitated preparing my son-in-law Sam during this time to take the reins and become CEO, which he did with flying colours in 2017.
The meaning behind the book’s title Strong Heart refers to the essence of my business and life philosophy. It is my firm belief that ambition and a shrewd business sense can go hand in hand and are indeed strengthened by the humanistic qualities of empathy, philanthropy, and ethics. Material gain will only take you so far; what keeps me going is seeing my staff excel in life and better their lives, which has tangible benefits for the whole community. We are all people with hearts, and to borrow the words of the legendary 19th century Urdu poet Mirza Ghalib, whose verse served as the background soundtrack to my childhood, a heart is ‘just a heart, no stony shard.’