My friend Adel Sajan grew up in Dubai working for his father, the founder of Danube Group (a multi-billion dollar conglomerate).

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After school, his father let him take over one of their retail businesses, which had been struggling to make sufficient money to survive.

 

Determined to turn the company around, Adel took his 32 top employees on a trip to Bali. They had a blast there and bonded together as a team.

 

On the final night, Adel announced that he wanted to scale the business to $1 billion in 5 years. 

 

The group thought he had lost his mind, but he then showed them the math and laid out the growth plan. 

 

Adel then told everyone that to reach this goal, everyone there would need to work 2x more than they currently were. If they didn’t want to do that, they could leave now.

 

But if they committed to it, then they would share in the profits.

 

Out of the 32, only 1 backed out. 

 

They then got to work.

 

5 years later, they didn’t hit a billion—but they did hit $720 million (a 6.5x increase). And, even more importantly, they had turned their 10% loss into a 13% gain.

 

I love this story because it shows the genius in Adel’s leadership.​