Set long-term goals and keep learning: One MD’s advice for a career in asset management

As a child, I used to watch movies and always aspire to look like the gentleman who's wearing a suit, carrying a briefcase, and being busy from meeting to meeting. And I projected this image, I want to look like this in the future.

I expand and develop fruitful long-term institutional relationships with sovereign wealth funds, pension funds; in general, asset owners. You are given this responsibility by a client. Your loyalty is to the client and when your clients will feel that loyalty, then it develops into a long-term relationship.

It's not always win. Sometimes the markets are difficult, they cause you pain, but you share that pain with the client. Learning for me is like bread and water. If we stop learning, we lose it. So how do you want to stand in front of your clients, be an advisor, if you're not investing in your own self and learning continuously.

So I was sitting in a majlis and you know, the majlis is where a very wealthy patriarch is sitting in the middle and advisors are sitting around. And I was busy taking notes with my right hand, and they offered me coffee, and I took the coffee in my left hand and everyone was looking at me. I didn't know that in the Arabic culture, you're not allowed to use your left hand to drink coffee.

This is a tiny example of how we can learn fast. You have to ask for advice, and you have to be very humble when you get exposed to a new culture. I was born in the middle of the civil war in Lebanon. Later on, I discovered that in life, every time you start something, there will be challenges and you have to be resilient.

When it comes to starting your career, you have to fix your goals. You might achieve three of them or just two, that's fine. Be passionate about your job and to be passionate about what you do on a daily basis. Definitely stay curious forever. Stay ethical forever. Please be prepare that the only constant in your career is moving and hopefully moving forward.