Case Study of an Entrepreneur; Nasser Ali Mohammed

Nasser Ali Mohammed a professional optician was born around 35 years ago in an educated Qahtani family belongs to suburban area of Khamis, south-west of Saudi Arabia. I personally know him since his childhood being his neighbor and school fellow. Though his father was a professional pilot and traditional man, but he encouraged his children to choose the fields they like. His elder brothers graduated in medicines while he completed his master in Opticology from King Saud University in 2006.
Since his early childhood, he had business potential. He was the odd one out in his family who always thought differently. We all friends made fun of his early ideas and used to call him “a businessman”. At the age of nine, he started selling simple toys to his relatives’ kids, neighbors’ children, school friends and even his own younger siblings. He used to purchase toys from nearby mall and then sold them at the door steps of his early customers. His young fellow customers also loved to buy toys from Nasser.
He was born artist and painter too with his unique skills of floral design and gift packaging. I also was amazed with Nasser’s creative skills and innovative ideas. Realizing his capabilities and confidence, he initiated promoting himself at the age of 14 amongst the local gift shops. He visited almost every single gift and flower shops in his town to convince owners to buy his gift packaging and floral design services at cheaper rates. He always enjoyed while receiving even 10% to 20% out of total profit. Nasser learnt a lot from such humble experiences of his personal networking, customer services and promotion strategies.
He was a child to be known for his determination, smiling face, humble personality, charity and networking. With the passage of time, increased qualification and expertise in his personal selling boosted Nasser’s communication, analytical and business skills. At his early age, Nasser was very promising communicator and team leader. Important to mention that his family rarely appreciated his early child business activities because of family tradition and tribal culture. His parents’ motive was to focus only on his studies to become a professional doctor following his elder brothers. Nasser always listen opposing comments with patience and focused on his own business ideas in parallel to his education. He was above ordinary students in school and teachers also enjoyed his ideas, creativities, humors and cooperation.
After Nasser's passing out Year-12 from Khamis, his whole family moved to capital Riyadh for better education and job opportunities. It was in fact the deceive moment in his life which provided him a broader spectrum of business and entrepreneurship. He started learning English after his matriculation and improved his English communication skills while graduating from King Saud University in Riyadh. He challengingly convinced his father to opt the field of optics for which he was motivated due to his future business plans. His motivation was purely based on his personal research of local business market of optics. After settling in Riyadh, he found a niche in local market in the supply of branded spectacles. He got attracted towards this and made his early plan to be a successful optics businessman in Saudi Arabia.
During four years of his higher education in King Saud University, Nasser worked part-time for nine different organizations and industries like sales and optics manufacturing. After completing his post-graduation, he started working for the university hospital as an optician as well as an instructor for graduate and postgraduate students. While he was achieving his career path in academia, he was continuously thinking about opening his own optics business. It was his passion however, it required a significant capital and family support. He was going to prove himself as a pioneer in his family to open his own business. Although, Nasser’s own family had been observing him performing small scale personal business activities but no one had confident on his large scale business venture. Consequently, Nasser’s family even his wife started opposing his business idea and tried to influence him to focus on his valued job as permanent source of earning.
However, irrespective of his family resistance, lack of cooperation and wife’s anger, Nasser decided to go ahead to fulfill his dreams and started to develop his draft business plan to convince fund providing agencies. It echoes Tom Managhan’ famous saying “Life is too precious to be wasted in doing work you don’t love”. Being not supported by his family members, Nasser decided to fund his project with capital from financial intuitions. He contacted governmental as well as private funding cooperatives for fund youth and small businesses. After seeking initial approvals from local banks and financial institution, he presented his business plan to higher management and succeeded to gain half million dollars.
His main intention was to be independent in his own decisions to chase his dreams without any internal barriers and impacts from his on family members. Nasser did his homework properly by studying the project feasibility and doing the necessary SWOT analysis. He found that all local shops are focused only on normal spectacles and frames while, he was feeling a strong demand of modern eyeglasses such as multifocal, anti-reflective, scratch-resistant and ultraviolet protection tinted lenses, polarized sunglasses and colored contact lenses etc. He initiated his research of his main products’ suppliers (mainly Italian, French and Korean) and contacted them to negotiate for anticipated future supplies to meet the demands.
Nasser being an ambitious person always has thirst to grow his business even more. He travelled many countries famous for eyeglasses, frames, cosmetics and beauty products and established his business and marketing channels. Nasser returned all his loans within the three years after establishing his first business which now has grown to ten branches in the thirteen provinces of Saudi Arabia. His expanded business today also covered pharmaceutical, health care and cosmetics products. At this stage, Nasser has established his own company named "Rose Holding Co." serving around 650 businesses in Saudi Arabia.
Nasser’s entrepreneurial story is truly based on his own saying "To be or not to be". He highly believed on planning and risk assessment. It took him about four years to complete his first business plan which is against the saying of Bill Bolton and John Thomposon (2004) “Entrepreneur are people who take opportunities without too much thoughts as to the consequences for others” (1) but consistent with citation of Bjorn Bjerke (2007) “Many entrepreneurs live in the present and the future than in the past. They become very involved when making decision and evaluating things” (2). He also rarely listened “No” from others and focused on his ideas and projects. He gained higher qualification to enhance his awareness.
 “Success should not be measured in dollars. It’s about how you conduct the journey, and how big your heart is at the end of it” (Howard Schultz). As mentioned above in Nasser’s introduction that Nasser is very creative, innovative and team player. He is very focused on his ideas to make those real and successful. He is very humble, cooperative, risk-taker and visionary. He sacrifices his personal life because of his passion about his business adventures. Money is not his goal and he loves to embrace his failure. He highly believes on Bill Lear saying “Don’t tell me it can’t be done”. Nasser is truly born entrepreneur meeting most of the entrepreneurial characteristics and requirements.
Nasser's vision is to establish one of the biggest business in Saudi Arabia and Gulf Countries which must allow Nasser’s financial stability to employee more and more optimistic and energetic staff. Nasser always wanted his business to be elite and unique in his products and services it would offer to his customers. He believes that uniqueness is something that could attract more customers resulting into marginal competition thus would lead to more market share and more stability. Nasser considers also in keeping himself updated with what is going around and in the market about news, products and even new construction projects. For instance; Saudi Health Ministry would be opening new medical centers in three years period from today. Nasser is seeing an enormous opportunity of supplying these centers with their medical instrumentation and needs. Nasser is now looking for more reliable suppliers at competitive prices. He already working on his business expansion worldwide with his own trademarks and exclusive brands. Nasser’s company has recently started manufacturing simple products like contact lenses and cosmetics in Korea and Italy under Rose Holding Co. It reminds me Joseph J. Fuini and Suzy Fucini saying (1985) “When I climbed the hills, I saw the mountains. Then I started climbing the mountains” (3).
While not supported by his family members, Nasser decided to fund his project with capital from financial intuitions. Being emotional about his business idea and motivated, Nasser initially tried governmental funding institutions famous for youth and small businesses. Bill Bolton and John Thomspson cited (2004) “In many way it is the motivation and emotion of entrepreneurs that gives them a special kind of drive and purpose that marks them out from the rest of us. It is how they keep going and win through when lesser people would give up” (4). Nasser also approached local private fund institution namely Abdullateef Jamil and applied to support his optics project. After seeking initial approvals from local banks and financial institution, he presented his business plan to higher management and succeeded to gain half million dollars. He returned all his loans within three years of his business operation.
Nasser failed to convince his family members to support his business idea. He did not accept it as hurdle in achieving his goal and therefore, he planned for alternatives purely believing on his own idea. Further, to minimize risks and failures he employed best professionals to seek suggestions and share ideas. Nasser himself thinks extensively prior taking any further steps in his business which is aligned with Bjorn Bjerke’ excerpt (2007) “A business structure is supported by keeping the lines of communication open, establishing trust by being honest, be a good listen, be willing to delegate duties, be flexible, reinforcing the contribution of each person and maintaining the focus on the venture’s vision and mission” (5).
He celebrates his success with his family and friends wholeheartedly. He believes on team work and every success achieved by the company brings salary increments & bonuses to his employees. Nasser loves to help needy but energetic people who wants to do something to change their lives. He has initiated financing local businesses as well. On the social level, Rose Holding Co. strives to work on awareness programs and to support youth, entrepreneurial ideas and small projects.
I am seeing him very successful businessman in Gulf Counters in near future. Nasser’s plan to have worldwide registered trademarks and exclusive brands inspired me to believe in his prosperous future. Nasser’s current aims are to start manufacturing surgical and medical instruments and to establish his online store to sell and market his branded products. Nasser likes challenges but he planned well and worked thoroughly to eliminate risks and transforms those into opportunities. “Entrepreneurs enjoy the excitement of a challenge, but they don’t gamble. Entrepreneurs avoid low-risk situations because there is a lack of challenge ad avoid high-risk situation because they want to succeed. They indeed like achievable challenges.” Elizbath Chell, Jean Haworth and Sally Brearley (1991) (6).
The inspiration which I can have from his interview are “observe, live for your dreams, Insistence, determination, making his decisions far from frustrating, constant planning, focusing on ideas, never lose hope, remain positive, always have options, be humble and feel passion about what you believe”.
Lastly, I want to add Joseph H. Boyett and Jimmie T. boyett’s conclusions about entrepreneurs “The universal characteristic that all entrepreneurs possess is a willingness even eagerness to live with the fear of failure. Entrepreneurs don’t consider themselves to be risk takers. They have weighed the pros and cons and convinced themselves that their so called risky idea isn’t that risky after all. Entrepreneurs accept occasional or even repeated failure as the price of they must pay to succeed eventually. When knocked down, successful entrepreneurs pick themselves up and figure out what they can learn from the experience. Money is almost never the primary motivation for a successful entrepreneur” (7).

References:

1.      Bolton.B, Thompson.J (2004), “Entrepreneurs-Talent, Temperament, Technique”  2nd  ed. pp.22, Elsevier Butterworth-Heinmann, UK
2.      Bjerke. B (2007), “Understanding Entrepreneurship” p.87, Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, USA
3.      Joseph J. Fucini and Suzy Fucini, (1985), “Entrepreneurs: “The Men and Women behind Famous Brand Names and How They Made It”, p.4, Boston: G.K. Hill, USA
4.      Bolton.B, Thompson.J (2004), “Entrepreneurs-Talent, Temperament, Technique”  2nd  ed. pp.19, Elsevier Butterworth-Heinmann, UK
5.      Bjerke. B (2007), “Understanding Entrepreneurship” p.179, Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, USA
6.      Chell, E., Haworth.J, and Brearly.S (1991) “The Entrepreneurial Personality”, pp.43, Routledge, UK

7.      Boyettl, J. H., Boyett .J. T, (2000), “The Guru Guide to Entrepreneurship”, pp.32, John Wiley & Sons, Canada

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