After graduating from university at 19, Hamid began freelancing as an events and activations manager. While this gave her valuable insights into the market, it also allowed Hamid to communicate with her clients from the perspective of their end users, who were largely millennials like herself. Freelancing allowed her to develop activation concepts as well as a client base, which led to her registering a company and kicking off her entrepreneurial journey.

Today, Hamid’s Inspire Events is a leader in the advanced event production space, with a world-class experiential and activations division. Inspire Events handles everything from mall activations to product roadshows, provision of event support and management staff, the construction of displays and designing experiential installations to the production of content including films, 2D and 3D animations. Its clients include the likes of Vaseline, Pepsico, Nespresso, First Abu Dhabi Bank and Ferrero Rocher.

Early ambition and lessons

Hamid is aware that she was highly ambitious from a young age – and that she couldn’t settle for a nine-to-five job. Looking back to when she was 18, she believes she has learned quite a bit.

The first lesson: Take it easy. “Life isn’t all about the hustle,” she says, adding that it’s important to take a breather at times – something she didn’t do enough of when she was younger, with an incessant focus on business growth causing feelings of burn out. “That is when I learned the power of a healthy balance. Being an entrepreneur, sleep is never a good nine hours and a holiday is never guaranteed, but taking time out and making my physical and mental health a priority is a lesson I will always treasure.”

The second lesson is the importance of taking your time. As a self-described “city girl”, Hamid says she did everything fast: eating, walking, talking and presenting. This frenetic pace occasionally made it hard to articulate and evaluate things carefully before responding with an answer or solution. “I thought everything had to be done NOW to succeed. While there are things that are time-sensitive, for others we are free to circle back after some thought for better decision-making and planning.”

Hamid appreciates that it can be lonely at the top. “According to a story in the Harvard Business Review, half the CEOs from CEO snapshot survey reported experiencing feelings of loneliness in their roles. When I started this journey I learned that I lacked time to create any social relationships or meaningful friendships to share the load of running a business or even small victories. Giving myself time and finding time from my busy schedules to create a network of real human connections is extremely important.”

Hamid also advises taking important decisions when you aren’t too sad or too happy. “We all know what happens when we are pulled to extremes. It’s crucial to make the most important decisions while in a neutral, stable mind space for the best possible outcome.”

Finally, she appreciates the value of saying yes – even to things that are 100 percent unknown. Hamid attributes this to her entrepreneurial family. Since no one ever walks into a meeting with all the answers, she says, rather than responding with a “no”, it’s better to look inside and ask: “Do you trust yourself to figure this out?”

‘We strongly believe in the power of technology’

For Hamid, technology remains a key disruptive factor for the events industry, and something Inspire Events is vying to stay on top of.

“Being in the market for nine years has allowed us to carefully observe consumer behaviour and interaction, with a massive and significant shift to technology. It has completely changed how people communicate, respond and interact.”

Five years ago, Inspire launched its technology division, which creates custom hardware and software tech for brand activations and events. “As a full-service agency that designs, conceptualises and produces events across MENA, we have always offered interactive technology as an added service to our clients. This could be anything from interactive vending machines to sensor-based games, multi-touchscreens, hologram displays and virtual events, with all elements tailor-made to each client specifically for each event or activation.

“We strongly believe in the power of technology and the high adaptability or tech in these times allowing us to participate in any event physically or virtually, which has drastically disrupted this industry, especially over the past year.”