Georges Karam

What Georges talked about

Georges Karam grew up during Lebanon's civil war and describes that experience as the source of the risk tolerance and resilience behind his later business career. He talks about entrepreneurship as a discipline of managing risk rather than avoiding it, arguing that people considering a leap into business should picture the worst-case scenario in concrete terms, such as quitting a stable six-figure job and taking a mortgage with no guaranteed income, before deciding whether the prospect excites or scares them.

After a series of exits that made him wealthy, Georges found that money did not translate into happiness and instead left him anxious about what to do next, which led him to rethink his own definition of success. He discusses buying land in Costa Rica from a local woman reluctant to sell to an outsider, an encounter he says pushed him to build a trade school and retreat center there, framing it not as altruism but as something he does for his own sense of guilt and inequality he's observed while traveling with his kids.

The show

The Total Entrepreneur is a weekly conversation with founders, researchers, and health experts about what actually moves entrepreneurial performance across mind, body, spirit, and business.