Introducing Your Wealth

Your Wealth is a custom Enterprise briefing for people just like you: Executives, entrepreneurs and builders who know that time isn’t money, but that time and money are feedstock for the one thing that matters most in life: Your family, however you define it.

Once a month, in partnership with our friends at CIB Wealth, we’ll bring you a hand-picked selection of ideas, tips and inspirational stories that will help you make the most of your time, enhance our wealth, and build a better life with the people you love.

As always, we love hearing from readers. Send us story ideas, hints, tips or interview suggestions to editorial@enterprise.press.

MUST-READ OF THE MONTH: In business and in life, your first thought is rarely your best thought, and you need to schedule time to just … think. Sounds frivolous, right? Not if you want to get the most out of your business and your life. “A lot of people see thinking more than a few minutes as a waste of time, but this viewpoint is shortsighted and flawed. While it might take me 30 minutes to come to the same conclusion that you come to in 5, I’ll likely have a better idea of the nuances of the situation, including which variables matter the most. I’ll know what to watch for and I’ll know how to frame things for other people to appeal to their interests. Not only will collaboration take less time, but I’ll make fewer mistakes. That’s the real advantage.”

Who doesn’t want a 10x return? “Thinking time is non-linear. The time you spend thinking – walking around a problem in a three-dimensional way and exploring all of the various perspectives and mental models – pays you back tenfold in the end.”

Next, go read Maker vs. Manager: How Your Schedule Can Make or Break You. The best quote: “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands

Want to know who took time to think? Steve Jobs, that’s who. Love him or loathe him, the man’s thinking changed the lives of multiple generations in his brief time on earth. Jobs would have turned 63 on 24 February. Go watch his 2005 commencement speech to Stanford University. Then go think about what you’re going to do to make the most out of the day today — and every day. (Watch, runtime: 14:33)

(Oh, and speaking of Steve Jobs: The Wall Street Journal would like you to know that Dad Style is now in fashion. “Yes, even the jeans”. Think of it as normcore taken to its most (il)logical extreme.)

Do you really want Alexa in your bedroom? Whether it’s Amazon’s Echo, a Google Home device, Apple’s HomePod or an, er, internet connected device designed for self-pleasure, more and more Egyptians are bringing back voice-controlled internet boxes to turn their flats and villas into “smart homes.” That may not be the best idea in the history of best ideas, warns former Reuters correspondent Kashmir Hill in The House That Spied on Me. Who needs Big Brother when we’re willing to serve up all of our personal data for inspection all by ourselves?

Follow that up with Brian Chen’s In an era of ‘smart’ things, sometimes dumb stuff is better.

Oh, and don’t think your smartphone isn’t doing it, too: The US intelligence community is losing its mind over the growing popularity of Huawei phones, with the heads of the CIA, NSA and FBI telling the US Congress in February that “American citizens shouldn’t use products and services made by Chinese tech giants Huawei and ZTE.”

Or you could just trust musician Will.i.am and stop worrying. The pop star made headlines in Dubai last month for comparing artificial intelligence to “the rapidly developing internet of the 1980s. That followed his widely noted appearance at the World Economic Forum in January, during which he noted, “Of course, when something new comes around people are going to be afraid because they’ve never seen it. But then the creators, folks with vision and imagination, are like, ‘Oh my gosh, you know what we can do with that. You know how that could bring about a better life?’” Because creators only create good things, right?

Worries about robots will hit closer to home when they come for the garment industry: “Automation is reaching into trades that once seemed immune, transforming sweatshops in places like Bangladesh and bringing production back to America.” That’s good news for America, the Wall Street Journal tells us, but bad news for countries (like Egypt) that rely on low-skilled labour.

From the Department of Nostalgia: The band that is poured Nirvana is a bunch of feminist punks, and they’re back with a new album. Rolling Stone has a fantastic profile of L7. Not enough ‘90s nostalgia for you? BuzzFeed has your back with 45 Things People Who Weren’t Teens In The Late-’90s Will Never Understand, just in time for a new Netflix offering timed to cash in on the rage for all things pre-2000s. This time, the streaming service is hoping that Everything Sucks will do for the 1990s that which Stranger Things did for the 1980s. What we’re really looking forward to, though, is Arnold Schwarzenegger joining the full-length sequel to Kung Fury, an action comedy set in 1980s Miami. Watch the most awesome original short here (runtime: 31:02).

What ever happened to Brendan Fraser?GQ on “the stupendous rise and surprising disappearance of the once ubiquitous [1990s] movie star” who—grey stubble and all—is mounting a comeback on the small screen.

Need a little more? Go pick up a copy of Crossing Souls, which the Guardian dubs “fun Stranger Things-style nostalgia for the 80s. … Crossing Souls’ chief ambition is to evoke nostalgia, and that goal it is evident in everything it does. This Goonies-style gang works through puzzles and battles baddies while the rose-tinted popular culture references are laid on thick and fast.” Out now for PS4.

No hugs for you: “Go on, habibti, give Uncle a hug.” What Egyptian kid hasn’t been forced to hug some honorary family aunt or uncle—or simply some random stranger with whom your parents are passingly friendly? “Is the era of hugging over,” asks the Washington Post. “Some people sure hope so.”

How would we react to finding aliens? Maybe not as bad as Hollywood would have you believe, the National Geographic writes in this piece on a recent paper published in Frontiers in Psychology.

The five most important business and economy stories out of Egypt in February 2018:

• Egypt signed natural gas import agreements with Israel, on track for one with Cyprus, and planning for exports to Europe by mid this year.
• The central bank cut interest rates by 100 bps, signalling victory over inflation.
• Egypt’s USD 4 bn eurobond issuance was more than 3x oversubscribed in what Finance Minister Amr El Garhy said was “excellent news.” The government is planning issuing USD 3-4 bn in eurobonds in FY2018-19.
• The automotive directive is set to be voted into law by 2Q2018 and the government is revising the minimum local component requirements that would make producers eligible for incentives under it. Oh, and the Consumer Protection Authority is aiming to oversee the sale of cars.
• Egypt now has a bankruptcy law that decriminalizes bankruptcy by abolishing prison sentences with special bankruptcy courts to arbitrate on these cases now being formed.
• Bonus: Emerging markets, including Egypt, outperformed “richer counterparts” during the global sell-off, Bloomberg noted earlier in February. Egypt was the only one of its peers to make a small gain and see its market capitalization increase, thanks largely to the impact of the currency float.

At work: What the [redacted] goes on all day at a communal workspace? Communal workspaces such as WeWork are all the rage in global cities big and small (they popped up in Cairo nearly three years ago, if we recall correctly), but what goes on there all day? And can you get any work done there? Two mandatory reads if you’re a corporate drone planning a plunge into the “gig economy”: Sriracha is for closers, wherein Esquire’s Eric Konigsberg “clocks in to find out just what the hell people actually do [at a WeWork] all day.” It’s one of the best business stories to be written so far this year. Follow that up with Why it’s so hard to actually work in shared offices, in Canada’s The Walrus.

Off the clock” From Columbia to Tasmania via Belgrade and Bhutan, the New York Times helps you plan your next escape from the veal pen in which you labour in its 52 Places to Go in 2018.

The old rules of retirement no longer apply, and we’re courting disaster by not planning for it today, Thomas Koulopoulos writs for Inc magazine. “The truth is that we are doing an enormous disservice to society by setting retirement as an end goal to a long career. … Even if you’re lucky enough to be among the 20 percent, who have a USD 1 mn-plus net worth and enough saved up to retire, there is some evidence that the classic notion of retirement may actually be harmful to your health.”

Instead, you need to treat retirement as your “third act” in life. And if you’re an entrepreneur, you’re already ahead of the game: “Why are we stuck on the zero-sum proposition of work is bad and retirement is good? … You get what it means to build a business and a brand. You are the ultimate authority on where and how to invest your time and energy. In the same way that you would invest in a new product or service, why not invest regularly in preparing for your third act?”

Read It’s Time to Say It: Retirement Is Dead. This Is What Will Take Its Place in Inc.

Even if you’re a long way from retirement, it’s never too early to be concerned about preserving and growing your wealth? CIB Wealth is now offering its clients dedicated wealth managers through whom all your banking transactions will be executed and well managed. Through CIB Wealth’s Financial Health Check program, clients will get a personalized approach to understand their individual wealth management goals and plan to achieve them. The Financial Health Check is a financial management tool conducted regularly to help CIB Wealth tailor products, services, and financial advice to help clients realize their financial goals. CIB Wealth clients can contact their Wealth Relationship Manager to obtain advice on:

• Long-term/short-term investments products
• Optimum bundle of products according to your needs
• Updates on products you are interested in
• The best borrowing product to serve your needs
• Portfolio diversification​

How to raise more grateful children:If you think today’s kids have an overdeveloped sense of entitlement, you may be right: “Every generation seems to complain that children ‘these days’ are so much more entitled and ungrateful than in years past. This time, they might be right. In today’s selfie culture, which often rewards bragging and arrogance over kindness and humility, many people are noticing a drop-off in everyday expressions of gratitude.” Poll data backs it up: Only 35% of Americans aged 18-24 report expressing gratitude regularly, a recent survey found.

Gratitude has benefits… “A growing body of research points to the many psychological and social benefits of regularly counting your blessings,” the Wall Street Journal reports in a recent weekend read.

…and it can be taught. Here’s one exercise you can do at home: Read ‘The Giving Tree’ by Shel Silverstein and ask your kids “to write down one thing they would do to show the generous tree in the story that they were grateful for what she had done.”

A man’s guide to belts, from the good people at The Art of Manliness.