Sometimes, you have to change your career goals and think outside the corporate box when you want to achieve your full potential in life.
After working for an international company in Albania, Arjodita Mustali ventured into the entrepreneurial world only five years ago. Having taken on many leadership roles in her life before, the founding of Unit Center Group has been one of her must successful projects. This holding company provides high-quality and cost-effective services such as real estate, financial and commercial services as well as marketing, coaching and consultation for their many international clients.
For the last three years, Arjodita has also been very active with the Albanian Business Services Association and other BPOs. Working with theses Business Process Outsourcing Organizations, her biggest goal is to facilitate foreign investment in Albania to boost employment and offer more career opportunities for the next generation.
Being a successful business woman in Albania has not always been easy, but Arjodita shares her story about starting out in the hard-working but exciting world of entrepreneurship and finding herself along the way.
What were your first steps in the business world? How did you start out?
I was working for an international company in Albania 12 years ago and I feel grateful for the opportunity, because that is when I started learning and improving the skills I have today. Five years ago, I decided to launch my own company. Nobody ever said that starting a company would be easy! But if you have an idea that you just can’t wait to bring to life, take it from me: It’s 100% worth it to turn that dream into a reality.
Why did you found Unit Center Group? What did you want to achieve, what were your goals?
When you run your own business you really come to know what you are made of. The kind of adversities that you face on a daily basis help you become more aware of yourself as a person and it also helps you grow phenomenally. When you start working for yourself, you have nobody to fall back on. You have no option but to work on your weaknesses in order to make your business grow. However, it only lasts if there is enough passion and determination to succeed.
EVOLVE was my first step in the business world; a training and orientation company for young people. Unfortunately, it did not manage to attract many investors, because back in 2014 the market was still skeptic about BPOs. This is how Unit Center first started as a company; to keep alive EVOLVE’s vision. Expansion soon followed, thanks to the great collaborators in other business opportunities gradually turning the business into a corporate. This is our achievement so far.
What helped you find your own path in the business world?
Commitment is the key to excellence. You cannot have anything if you are not committed. When you are committed, everyone can feel it. When you have commitment, suddenly everything else falls into place.
At the end of the day you can have all the traits, all the skills, all the vision, all the confidence and all the creativity, but if you are not committed you will not be able to succeed.
What was the biggest obstacle in your business career so far?
Being a woman in business, in Albania, would be impossible in the past. Even now this fact constitutes a major difficulty for the business categories they are able to commit, which shouldn’t be the only faced problem in a series of troubles. The main obstacle that women may have to enter in the business sector is exactly the confidence they have in themselves and which seems to take them one step back. I guess now after five years, I am halfway from excellence: my employees have accepted my vision, I have found the right team, we are constantly improving our skills and are ready to work.
While working with organizations like ABSA, what do you hope to achieve for young people and small businesses in Albania?
The BPO sector has emerged as one of the most promising and rewarding career avenues for fresher as well as experienced professionals. As one of the fastest growing sectors it provides employees with better-than-expected pay, great work culture, good incentives, amazing career growth, and a host of facilities. And thanks to these enticing factors, now people from different backgrounds, including media, marketing, finance, IT, and commerce are preferring to join BPOs.
Business and young people are strongly connected in this field. BPOs are a new era of business in Albania.
If we talk about a small country as Albania is, and with an economy in transition, the difficulties rises when they do not have the right legislative codes for the sector. ABSA was created to propose and support the policies and to adapt the international solutions in our market.
Please share with us your top five tips for young entrepreneurs who want to run a business successfully:
What are you prepared to sacrifice to make it a success? When you start your own business, you’re certain to hear a lot of different advice. Most of it will come from people who don’t know the first thing about running a successful company. But just because it isn’t easy to build a successful business it doesn’t mean that there aren’t ways we can make the journey a little easier. As life and business strategy coach Tony Robbins often says: success leaves clues. After twelve years of experience I can share with you these tips:
1. Stay Focused:
Have a vision, begin with a detailed plan, get out there and network, believe that you can succeed, and you’ll find ways through different obstacles.
2. Evolve:
Your value to the marketplace will depend on the skills that you have. It will also depend on how you use them. People that want to improve their value must improve upon their skills. There are skills in all areas of life and understanding how to develop skills and how to use them will help you grow as an individual.
3. Empathy:
People are driven by feelings. Emotion is the source of action. If you want to be successful, you must understand your feelings and be able to understand the feelings of the people around you. Entrepreneurship is all about channeling your emotions and connecting with the emotions of people around you.
4. Dare:
Face the fears and take action. You can have all the knowledge in the world, but if you don’t take action, it won’t get you very far. We never know the outcome of our efforts unless we actually do it.
5. Find a mentor:
Despite challenging trading conditions, there are always experienced people with often decades of experience to impart. If you find such a mentor, particularly one who has been successful in your market, do everything you can to hold on to them.
Women can have it all: How do you manage and balance your business and family life?
As I always say, I don`t believe in the idea of “work-life balance” I would prefer to say I am trying to live an “integrated life”. Our schedules are getting busier than ever before, which often causes our work or our personal lives to suffer.
I take a more fluid approach. I try to spend as much of my life as possible doing what I like with people whose company I enjoy.
What are your goals for the future? What do you plan to do in the next years? Any upcoming projects?
The future of business is female. I would like to be doing what I am doing now—that is, enjoying my work, working smart and contributing to the best of my abilities. My nearest upcoming project is the chapter as part of the female leaders of tomorrow A guide on how to become a successful leader book. I am working on several projects for 2019/2020: Building a strong corporate identity and develop the training Future Leaders Academy. I would like to define my future goals as strong points I would like to inherit, such as the same passion and never stop learning because after all, knowledge is power.
Please share your most valuable life-advice with our readers:
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