Seif Sherif, co-founder of Double Dribble League: Each week, My Morning Routinelooks 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 Seif Sherif (LinkedIn), co-founder of Double Dribble League.

My name is Seif Sherif and I am the co-founder of Double Dribble League (DDL), Egypt’sfirst amateur basketball league. The idea for the league came after my group of friends and I, who grew up playing basketball together and in clubs, retired [from the sport] when we hit our mid-20s. We realized that we missed the competition and the team spirit of the sport, so the idea emerged to create a league for retired amateur players. Since we’d all grown up watching the NBA and European basketball leagues and dreamed of playing in a similar atmosphere, we wanted the league to encompass all of what we saw on TV — good courts, international referees, cameras, videographers, and social media coverage.

We play year round: We found that the demand is huge. Since 2021, we have held threeseasons of the Men’s Double Dribble League and last year we introduced the Women’s Double Dribble League, plus we also run a Ramadan tournament. Every season is about development and new products, our players expect everything to be perfect and have a lot of requests. This helps us to develop the leagues with every passing year.

I’m a tea person, so the first thing I do when I wake up around 7am is drink a cup whilereading my emails and the morning edition of Enterprise Egypt, as well as the UAE and Saudi editions. Then, I stretch before heading into work.

During the day I’m an investment banker. I’m in the office at 9am and try to leave at 7:30pmat the latest, unless I’m in the middle of a transaction. Before covid, the days of an investment banker used to be very long, but after the pandemic the hours became much better.

My evenings are for the league. My DDL day begins at 8pm with phone calls with my partners.The flow of work depends on whether we’re in the period before a league kicks off or in the middle of the season. Before a season begins, my responsibilities include targeting and pitching to sponsorship partners, meeting with potential venue operators, and planning the schedule for the whole league ahead.

During the season, we oversee all the match operations to make sure everything goesaccording to plan — but it’s an easy task as we are a team of seven and everyone knows their role. Matches take place on a Friday and then on Saturdays we have a morning meeting to plan for the week ahead. On Thursdays, I review the social media content our designer has created, like match highlights and pictures before they’re published.

DDL tries to raise the bar: We make jerseys for each team and every player has a profilecontaining their statistics and highlights. We bring in photographers and videographers for the games. The new generation of players — the young guys — are looking for the extra stuff, they want to have good photos and content for their social media profiles.

Work begins a month or two before a league’s season kicks off: The last season — themen’s league — started in October and ran every Friday for fifteen weeks. We open team applications a month prior and require that every team signs up with a minimum of 15 players.

On the court: I’m at matches every single week of a season to make sure they run smoothly.The last time I had a Friday off was in October last year, but I’m very happy doing it so I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything. This year, I’ve been coaching instead of playing — I’ve been recovering from a back injury for the past six months.

I try to have a work-life balance and plan something fun every day — I watch a movie or goout with friends and before my injury I played basketball, football, and padel. It makes the workday much better. I sleep around midnight but sometimes there are NBA matches on, which due to the time difference means I catch the game at 4am and then go to work. My favorite team is the Dallas Mavericks — I like an underdog.

Planning ahead keeps me focused. I need to prepare and write everything down becauseboth of my jobs are very detail oriented. I try to keep both jobs separate, so that when I’m working as an investment banker, I’m not focusing on the league, even though sometimes I’m very excited about DDL and ideas start flowing while I’m at my day job.

Looking ahead, we want to grow DDL’s capacity: We hope that next year we can operateDDL leagues at two destinations in Cairo with ten teams playing in each. We are also considering introducing school, university, or academy leagues. I’m very optimistic about our next steps.

My uncle once shared with me a quote from legendary US basketball coach JohnWooden — “failing to prepare is preparing to fail.” I have this written in front of me on my desk to remind me to prepare for anything as much as I can. I also try to remember to have fun and not to stress so much over things. At the end of the day everything passes and any failure is temporary.

Tags: