My Morning Routine: Youssef El Tawil, managing director of Scandinavian Timber Trade

Youssef El Tawil, managing director of Scandinavian Timber Trade (STT): 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 STT Managing Director Youssef El Tawil (LinkedIn).

Edited excerpts from our conversation:

I’m Youssef El Tawil, managing director of STT, a timber export house. We buy wholesale directly from Scandinavian and European sawmills and sell to construction and industrial buyers across the Middle East and North Africa. Our family business started in 1988, when my father founded El Tawil as a commercial agent — essentially representing sawmills to customers and taking a cut on the trade. In 2013, he founded STT as a full shift in our business model: we moved from being agents to being actual traders, buying directly from sawmills, holding our own stock, and selling straight to end customers.

I started working with my father in 2016 while still at university, spending summers in Sweden learning the trade from one of our suppliers, Polkky. I became fully employed in 2017 and officially took over STT in 2021.

Egypt is our biggest market — it’s one of the largest consumers of wood in the world, but it doesn’t produce any locally. Our job is to bridge that gap and make raw material available for construction and industrial uses there, along with our other major markets — Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Palestine, and Morocco.

The most interesting fact about my industry is how strict the sustainability rules are, especially in Sweden and Finland. It isn’t a passing trend; it’s a way of life. When they cut down one tree, they’re legally required to plant three. Seeing how carefully the forests are managed is easily my favorite part of the business.

The biggest challenge right now is shipping. Because of the volatile events in the region, shipping rates and terms fluctuate daily. We’ll wake up to sudden USD 300 fuel surcharges per container, or have prices double overnight under “war risk” clauses for destinations like Jeddah. It makes long-term planning impossible — I have to price and evaluate transactions day by day.

I wake up between 7-7:30am every day; if I don’t wake up early, my entire day is ruined. I start with breakfast and a massive cup of coffee, then open the news, switching between CNN and Al Jazeera to catch up on what I missed while sleeping. After becoming a father, I’ve adjusted my routine to spend an hour playing with my son before heading out. I’m at my desk at 9am sharp. When I’m in Sweden, which is at least three to four months of the year, I head in earlier and hit the office by 8am.

The constants in my day are coffee and praying at least once, and then I strictly time-block my rest of the day. Between 9am and 12pm, it’s entirely “supplier time” — I’m on the phone with our vendors and sawmills in Sweden and Finland, checking stock levels, getting market updates, and preparing purchase offers. In our industry, the power lies entirely with the suppliers, so maintaining those relationships is critical. From 12pm until 5pm, I switch to the sales side — customer calls, meetings, and heavy documentation. I stay focused by being a pen-and-paper person; I’m not someone who can think on the spot, so I have to organize my thinking beforehand. Every morning, I open a fresh page in my notebook, write the date, and outline everything in numbered bullet points.

Professionally, my next big leap is mastering delegation. I’ve realized that a great leader shouldn’t be afraid to hire people better than them. Right now I’m stretched thin doing purchases, sales, and overseeing operations. My goal is to build an executive team — a dedicated operations manager and a sales manager — even if it means giving up equity or offering aggressive performance-linked structures. That would let me step out of the day-to-day and focus on the purchase side, where supplier relationships matter most.

I don’t believe work-life balance is as easy as people make it out to be. It depends entirely on your ambitions. Right now mine are big, so I’m admittedly bad at balance and don’t give my family as much time as I should. I’m aiming for my 50s to be when I can finally turn off the motor, delegate heavily, and enjoy financial freedom.

When I do switch off, I’ve become a total stay-at-home person. The older I get, the more I appreciate low-pressure environments. I want to sit at home with my family or hang out with a few close friends. To mentally unwind, I’d highly recommend watching Matthew McConaughey’s Oscar acceptance speech about chasing your future self — it’s an incredible reminder of how to keep your priorities aligned.

The best advice I’ve ever received comes from two places. One is a proverb I keep as a permanent state of mind: “This too shall pass.” It gets me through any crisis. The other is an old Arabic philosophy passed down by my father: “Do good and throw it into the sea.” It completely anchors how I treat people and how I conduct business.