Yasmina Makram Ebeid, founder of Yasmina Makram design studio: Each week, My Morning Routine looks at how a successful member of the community starts their day — and then throws in a couple of random business questions just for fun. Speaking to us this week is Yasmina Makram Ebeid (Instagram), founder of Yasmina Makram design studio.

Edited excerpts from our conversation:

My name is Yasmina Makram Ebeid, founder of an eponymous design studio based in Zamalek, Cairo. It was very obvious to me as a young girl that I should be doing something creative with colors, materials, drawings, textures, and definitely not something with numbers. But I got into business school only to realize that I disliked all the options that were being presented. I worked in the corporate world and found out that this was not really for me. It became clear to me that I wanted to do design and focus on interiors so my husband encouraged me to go back to design school in Milan at Instituto Maragoni.

I launched my own company in 2016: We focus on interiors, and we will soon be launching our product design line, and hope to develop the third segment of our business within the coming year. This would have to do with an app and digitization in general. This is still in development though. We're a team of 15; every person here really matters since we're a small team; everyone is efficient, productive, and creative.

The way my day goes about is: I love to wake up early in the morning at 7 am to see my twins off to school. By 8 am, I'm usually at the Gezira Club. I do an outdoors workout called On Track which is a great way to boost your day and feel energized. I went back to tennis this summer after a long time away from the court. Everything is within walking distance, which I really love. From the house, to the club, to the office all by foot.

When I go to the office I sit down with every team member to get updates on every project. We usually order breakfast; very often from Zooba to support local brands we love. Then I have back-to-back meetings until 4:00 PM. After that I try to catch up on industry related research. This is my creative charging time where I can produce new work. It is often hard to find time for this while running a business and managing projects but it is essential to stay up to date and continue to come up with new ideas.

I love to spend some time with my husband, the twins and Max, our dog. I look forward to going back home to spend time with the kids and help them with their homework. Back to school is a blessing although I never worked from home during the pandemic. I personally always have to leave the apartment to work from the office.

We never fully shut down our office during covid so I never experienced total lockdown. We were very cautious; distancing ourselves and applying all the rules, but I never got myself to work from home. I really need to leave the house in order to be productive. Although most of the team worked from home for a while, they really overachieved during that period, so that was nice to see.

There's a silver lining in everything that happened. While the pandemic forced many businesses to slow down, we were fortunate to design many residential projects. The trend was moving towards individuals investing more in their homes, in particular, secondary homes due to the many travel limitations.

As a working mom, there's no time to waste. So the only way I personally stay sharp is by knowing exactly what my schedule for the day looks like from the minute I wake up. You need to know exactly how your week is going to pan out. In order to stay organized and focused, I take mini breaks, because sometimes my routine gets crazy. We need to make time to unplug and to recharge. And when I say this, I mean no Instagram and no WhatsApp.

For our company, there's room for growth. We can always be more focused on sustainability instead of luxury, because design as a global industry is moving towards four things: sustainability, innovation, creativity and functionality. So I think we've been delivering on most of these. But there's a lot of room for improvement on sustainability in particular so we will be doing lots of research to incorporate it effectively in current and future projects.

The pandemic has taught me how perseverant I can be. Even if there's a global crisis, there's always a way to re-gear and rethink. How can we position ourselves now with what's happening in the world? How can we be part of this in a positive manner? I think positive. The minute you get negative, you bring yourself and the people around you down. You have to stay positive and spin the negative situations by learning from them.

My go-to books always are Ayn Rand The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. From a business angle, I have a friend who just recommended a book called Powerful by the Netflix HR Patty McCord. It is about working your team efficiently through very difficult times. The one TV series that I can watch over and over again is Mad Men. I just love the set design, the characters, and the '70s in general. I’ve watched it three times.

I find inspiration in cities, architecture, history, fashion, nature and art. Most recently, I visited the Musée national of artist Fernand Léger located in Biot, France and was blown away. I found his use of color, lines and geometries to be very contemporary yet retro.