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The biggest promotion in my career wasn’t a new title. It was having the courage to become a beginner again. – Vivek Gyawali
Some career stories follow a recognisable arc. A clear path, a steady climb, a logical sequence of roles that build on one another until the person arrives, credibly and inevitably, at where they are today. Vivek Gyawali‘s story is not that kind of story. It is something more honest, more instructive and considerably more interesting.
Vivek is the Regional Business Partner for the Middle East and Asia at Burmatex, one of the UK’s leading carpet tile manufacturers, and the Founder and Director of Creative Floor General Trading LLC in Dubai. But the title, as he would be the first to tell you, is not the point. The point is everything that happened before it was possible.
Twenty-four years and seventy-one days
For twenty-four years and seventy-one days, Vivek knew exactly who he was professionally. Logistics. Procurement. Retail sales and operations. He understood supply chains, negotiations, customer behaviour and how to run businesses efficiently. He had spent years building that experience and the confidence that comes with it. He knew the language of his industry and spoke it fluently.
Then he made what many would call a risky decision. He left the comfort of knowing to become a beginner again.
He stepped into manufacturing, brand development, international distribution, commercial strategy and start-up entrepreneurship. Almost overnight, he found himself sitting in meetings with people who had spent twenty or thirty years in flooring manufacturing. They spoke a language he was only beginning to understand: yarn systems, production efficiencies, backing technologies, sustainability, colour development and product engineering. There were moments, he says, when he felt completely out of his depth. And that, as he now understands it, was probably the best thing that ever happened to him.
The same exhibition halls, completely different eyes
One experience still makes Vivek smile when he recalls it. For years, he had attended international flooring exhibitions from a retail perspective. You walk through the halls looking for products, trends and suppliers. The question is always the same: what can I buy?
His first major flooring exhibitions in Shanghai and later Las Vegas after moving into manufacturing were entirely different. He was walking through exactly the same halls, past many of the same products. But the question had changed completely. Instead of what can I buy, he found himself asking why was this product made this way? Why this yarn? Why this backing? Why is this manufacturer investing here?
He remembers catching himself laughing in the middle of an exhibition floor.
The buildings had not changed. The products had not changed. He had. He was seeing the same industry through completely different eyes.
That moment, quiet and unheroic as it was, became the clearest articulation of something he had been living for years without quite naming it. Growth is not always about changing your surroundings. Sometimes it is simply about changing the questions you ask.
Can you adapt?
Life has asked Vivek this question more than once and in more than one form. He left his home country to build a career in another. He built his family in a different country from the one he was born in. He has worked across cultures, markets and industries that never stop evolving. He has navigated economic uncertainty, regional conflicts, changing leadership and markets that can shift overnight.
Each time, the same question arrived. Can you adapt? Not once, but again and again and again.
Looking back, he reflects that adaptability was not something he learned as a skill. It became part of who he is. It is the thing that connects every chapter of a career that has moved across industries, geographies and disciplines in ways that no linear career plan could have anticipated or produced.
Richard Branson once said: if somebody offers you an amazing opportunity but you are not sure you can do it, say yes, then learn how to do it later. That quote, Vivek says, makes more sense to him today than it ever did when he first encountered it.
What the beginner’s room actually is
Howard Schultz did not build Starbucks because he already knew everything about coffee. Sara Blakely did not create Spanx because she came from fashion. They succeeded because they were willing to learn faster than they were afraid. Vivek draws on both because they say something he has lived rather than simply observed.
Today, he still walks into rooms where someone knows more than he does. Years ago, that intimidated him. Today, he sees it as a privilege. Because those rooms are where learning happens. Every room where you are not the expert is a room that can change your future.
For anyone changing careers, starting a business, moving to another country, rebuilding after redundancy or simply feeling overwhelmed by a role that seems bigger than you, his message is both simple and hard-won. Do not let being a beginner discourage you. No one starts as an expert. Everyone starts with curiosity.
One day people will call you an expert. They will admire your confidence and celebrate your results. What they will not see are the countless moments when you quietly questioned yourself, learned, adapted, failed, tried again and kept moving forward.
What comfort gave and what adaptability opened
Vivek closes with an observation that carries the weight of a career built across geographies, industries and decades of quiet reinvention.
Comfort gave him stability. Adaptability gave him opportunities. But having the courage to become a beginner again: that changed his life.
It is a distinction worth sitting with, particularly in an industry like the built environment where expertise is hard-won and the pressure to project confidence is constant. The people who build the most enduring careers are rarely the ones who stayed in the room where they were already the expert. They are the ones who kept walking into new rooms, kept asking different questions and kept choosing curiosity over comfort, even when it would have been entirely reasonable to stop.
Vivek Gyawali is one of those people. And the title, when it finally came, was never really the promotion.
Vivek Gyawali is the Regional Business Partner for the Middle East and Asia at Burmatex and Founder and Director of Creative Floor General Trading LLC, Dubai. This piece is part of The Minds Behind the Build, PAGES’ ongoing series celebrating the founders and leaders shaping the built environment.
