The Power Of Perseverance

“It’s easy to give up, it’s much harder to persevere,” restaurateur Joey Ghazal says. If there’s something the founder of The MAINE Group knows a lot about, it’s the power of perseverance

- Olivia Morris

If we’d have said to Joey Ghazal 20 years ago that he would be one of the most successful restaurateurs in the Middle East and founder of the ever-popular The MAINE Group, there’s a high chance he would not have believed us given that his chosen career path was “purely accidental”. After his father “forced” him to get a part-time job while he was at university, which happened to be working in a steakhouse in Montreal, the rest – as the age-old saying goes – is history.

While his choice of career path wasn’t a planned one, it’s safe to say it was the right choice for Ghazal who has become widely known across the region and beyond, particularly in Dubai. But in an incredibly competitive industry, the climb to the top hasn’t always been easy. A philosophy Ghazal lives by, he tells Emirates Woman, is you have one of two choices: “let hardships and failures define you and keep you down or let them embolden you to rise, aim higher and be better than before”. “It’s easy to give up, it’s much harder to persevere,” he says. “I always choose to move forward out of respect for all of the hard work that I and countless others have put into projects.”