Faisal Alireza is the president of the Bahrain chapter of the Entrepreneurs Organisation (EO), which is a global network of more than 6,600 business owners in 38 countries, which was founded in 1987 in Virginia, USA, by a group of young entrepreneurs. After sharing stories on what each of them had experienced in starting up their companies, they decided to form the organisation to pool their knowledge and provide a forum in which they could benefit from each other’s experiences.

That ideology still holds true today — Faisal maintains that he has benefited a great deal from his membership of the organisation. “It really put things into perspective for me,” he says. “Sometimes things happen and you think: why do these things always happen to me? However, when you actually go out and talk to people, you find that they’ve faced very similar problems, and the knowledge, moral support and experience that you gain from talking to them is invaluable. They might be able to show you a solution that you had never thought about.”

The other benefit, according to Faisal, is the close social and business network you become part of upon joining the organisation. “Once you’re part of this organisation, other chapters will take you in, wherever you go,” Faisal explains. “We had members who went to Malaysia, and the local chapter there met them, took them out and showed them around, and really made them feel at home.”

Faisal joined the organisation around three-and-a-half years ago, in its second year in Bahrain, but now he is the president. He qualified thanks to being the managing director of the Alireza and Sons Group, which was founded by his late grandfather, Ali Abbas Alireza in the 1940s. While Faisal didn’t start the company himself, he did take over the real estate development company within the group and introduced several major projects that had a significant effect on the profits of the business. This, he explains, is part of a broader definition of what an entrepreneur is today.

“We have some members, myself included, who are part of family businesses, but what we look for is that they’ve either started a new division, or brought in new practices or initiatives to the current business helping it to grow significantly.”