Raoul Vaswani, managing director of Bafra Industries, owner of the Moments collection: 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 Raoul Vaswani (LinkedIn), managing director of luxury leather goods manufacturer Bafra Industries, the company behind Moments.

My name is Raoul Vaswani and I am the managing director of Bafra Industries. Bafra is a family-owned business in Alexandria established by my father and we create high-end leather bags and wallets as well as printed products and corporate goods.

My mornings start with my childrens’ feet in my ribs and my wife poking me to go and make coffee, but I love it because it means I have a happy, healthy family. After getting my two sons ready for school, I try to do some exercise, either with a trainer or at the gym. I spend a lot of time driving between Alexandria and Cairo, so it’s normally the time when I catch up on emails, calls and read Enterprise.

The work day tends to go in different directions, so I find it helps to always have a paper and pen in front of me for doodling or mind maps. I might never look at it again but the process of putting pen to paper has a way of embedding thoughts in my head. My work day starts with breaking down my tasks for the day, because if I sit and think about everything that needs to be done it can become overwhelming.

I try to balance day-to-day problem solving with planning for the future of the company: If we’re always looking at what’s happening today we’ll wake up at some point in time and we’ll no longer be relevant. I’m attending a trade fair next week in Dubai to try and see if we can reopen some export channels. We currently sell 100% of our products in Egypt and if we can’t restart exports in the next year or two, I don’t see our business being sustainable, at least not in its current form.

We consider ourselves a teaching factory: We train our employees starting with basic skills until they can get involved in more advanced tasks and later make a product from scratch.

Yet that’s become harder and harder over time, as few of the younger generation in Egypt are enthusiastic about learning a trade, especially as there’s still a certain stigma associated with working with your hands. Even when labeled artisanal craftsmanship, manual labor is often seen as something less worthy than sitting at a desktop on a computer in Egypt.

I think there’s satisfaction in creating something: When you see something that you havebeen involved in the creation of, there is an emotion attached to it on every level. My father’s 74 years old and he'll still sometimes go to the factory and if he's in a bad mood, roll up his sleeves and just go and cut leather.

We’ve tried to increase the number of women that we hire within our production cycle, generally as we find they are more willing and eager to learn. However, due to societal pressures, once they get married they often don’t return to the workforce.

The younger generation want Made in Egypt brands: Trends no longer lean towards flashy bags with branding, customers want brands that they can relate to. For a lot of people in Egypt, that's about saying, okay this is an Egyptian brand that's supporting local workmanship and is something that we can be proud to say is Egyptian made. As a traditional brand we need to balance this with not alienating our existing customer base, which tends to sit in the 40-50 plus age bracket.

Customers connect with sustainability: The leather industry globally comes under a lot of pressure for not being environmentally friendly, due to the volume of water used in the tanning process, or the fact that it’s an animal-based product. Yet we have customers who come in on a daily basis and tell us that they have had bags for 20-30 years or that they’ve inherited from their mothers and are still in perfect condition. There’s a lot that can be done to improve production processes from an environmental perspective but people also connect with sustainability and longevity in products.

Life is work and work is life — it’s all one and the same: I don’t think it’s a good mindset to work in order to take a two-week holiday, as work becomes something you’re trying to get to the end of. I try to prioritize my day and be as productive as possible in those areas. Happiness comes from meaning and purpose.

I also just finished the Arnold [Schwarzenegger] documentary on Netflix: I'm fascinated by him or people like Tim Grover who have this kind of elite mentality. I don’t necessarily know if I would want to lead my life that way, but I think it’s great that there are people out there that are just wired towards success. I also enjoyed the Three Little Words podcast by John Bishop and Tony Pitts.

The best piece of advice I think I have would be the idea that perception creates reality;everyone’s version of the world is different, formed by their own thought process. It’s a liberating idea, as it means you don’t always feel the need to convince people or have arguments once you realize that for the most part everything is a fabricated concept.

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