It's hard enough starting a company from scratch but it’s even more difficult starting a company while your country is at war. Your business might have great potential, but you don't know if the money you make today will be worth anything tomorrow, or if sudden political unrest will leave you with a smoking crater where there was once a thriving business.

Hanan Saab, a native of Beirut had a very big dream of starting her own pharmaceutical sales company. Hanan’s dream was directly influenced by her father—who once owned one of Lebanon's oldest pharmacies, in downtown Beirut, which was sadly burnt to the ground during the country's devastating 15-year-long civil war. Hanan saw a gap in the market for her own business: a unique mix of specialized pharmaceutical knowledge, strong client and vendor relationships, and first-rate customer service. Hanan's own experiences in a climate that has forced her and her family to move eleven times in the course of one year, just to stay safe, have taught her that starting and operating a business was going to be a real challenge.

In 1990, having only recently emerged from a long and painful war, Lebanon was not the most stable place to launch a business and Hanan Saab knew she would face numerous challenges. Hanan admits, “There were lots of risks. When I started my company, everybody thought it was crazy to enter a market already saturated with distributors and to sell products that might not result in a quick return. My friends said, 'You have a stable job, you're a mom and you have your own family, and you have your steady income at the end of each month. How do you know that it's going to work?' Of course, I didn't know that it was going to work; I just knew that I was willing to go the extra mile and work hard to sell things that would make a difference to peoples' lives. On top of all these normal concerns was the fact that our country was in a period of great instability, there was the very real fear of currency devaluation, and there was the fear that you would owe money to your vendors and not be able to pay them. And Lebanon at the time was a very volatile place—you didn't know if there would be security tomorrow, or if there would be an explosion or political upheaval. It's an unstable area and creating a business here at that time was definitely a risk.”

Nevertheless, Hanan Saab refused to be deterred from her hopes of starting her own pharmaceutical sales business. Instead of seeing only the challenges, Hanan also saw the opportunities that owning her own business would open up to her. So instead of turning away from her destiny, she embraced it and moved forward. According to Hanan, “During the war, I had practiced at the American University Hospital as a hospital pharmacist. I could see that there was the potential to get certain medical products and make them available on the market, and I felt that I could do much more than this. I was ambitious, and I could not bear the idea of limiting myself to just being a hospital pharmacist. I wanted to create something that would provide self-fulfillment for me while creating jobs for other people. And this is exactly what happened. I started by myself because of the time required to register drugs at the Ministry of Health. It's a long and tedious process and it's not like you get the product and start selling it the next day. You have to compile files and make them readily available for the health authorities to study until you are granted a license to actually market your products. So, I started the company Pharmamed with only one employee—me—and now there are 25. Our main clients are hospitals, pharmacies, the Ministry of Health, the Army, and other government agencies.”

From the beginning, Hanan focused on marketing a very specific selection of pharmaceuticals that were mostly ignored by other companies. This allowed her not only to establish her business and get it off the ground, but also to successfully compete against the many well-established firms that dotted the Lebanese marketplace, “When I started the business I had in mind that what I wanted to do was to get into a niche market that provides added-value products, because Lebanon is saturated with people who are working in this field. Focusing on added-value products was good for me and my business and it was also good for the end users and for better overall healthcare for patients. An example of an added-value product is a sustained-release formulation whereby, instead of having the patient takes three or four doses of the medication each day he would only need to take one dose, providing better patient compliance and better results.”

One advantage that Hanan had over her larger, international competitors was that as a small business she could respond rapidly to changes in the marketplace. Subsequently, she decided to specialize in providing the latest anti-cancer and pain medications and then kept a very close watch on this fast-evolving medical field. According to Hanan, “In the old days, whenever somebody was diagnosed with cancer, they were sent home, there was nothing that could be done. Now the story is much different. I wanted to target these areas to provide new medications for patients and added value to the end user. I educated myself to find the newest trends and to seize opportunities before others did. Pharmamed was one of the first companies to get generic medications and particularly, generic anti-cancer medications into the country. I dealt with controlled drugs and pain management. Pharmamed was a leader in providing vital medications in this area because in that period in the 1990s Lebanon was coming out of war and many medications were not available, particularly controlled drugs. Because of the fear of handling these things, pain control for patients was practically non-existent. Our customers rely on us to provide them with medications for their rare and difficult cases because they know that we are willing to go all the way to provide these hard-to-find products for them. We are constantly researching and reading; I correspond and participate in conferences and trade shows to keep up with the new products and approaches in this area.”

When asked why other companies have not jumped into the niche market that she created in Lebanon with Pharmamed, Hanan suggests it is because her company specializes in a very narrow market segment and is willing to go much farther to satisfy the customers specific needs rather than being purely profit driven. “We research the new medications that are coming to cure certain disorders, say a particular form of cancer, so that when a doctor diagnoses a patient, there is a particular medication available and we can provide it. We would be aware of it and we would have started working on it, even if it's a rare form of cancer. It's positioning yourself in the market in a way that's not only giving an added value to your customers, but that you are willing to go the extra mile to make the medication available for people even if the return is not very high.”

While Hanan's family's willingness to invest made finding the money necessary to start her own business less challenging, obtaining the additional financing necessary for growth has been more problematic. When the country goes through one of its occasional periods of decreased political stability, financial support is not always possible. According to Hanan, “The most difficult part was what we went through last year. Banks tell you that they will support you but, when the time comes when you want to take full advantage of whatever it is that you have agreed to, they are often not that willing. So instead of, let's say, giving you 100 percent of what they promised, they tell you they can give you only 80 percent because of the political situation. When Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was assassinated, the period of danger regarding the currency lasted for four to five months and interest rates soared. Fortunately, by the time we went to the bank to secure our financing, things had cooled down, the interest rates started to level off, and we were capable of getting through. This was one of the things that really kept me awake at night. It was an extraordinarily difficult situation.”

Building a successful business takes more than having a vision, it requires financing, hard work and of course the right employees. Hanan is passionate about treating her employees in a way that motivates them to give their very best every day of the week and ensures their loyalty to the company. This is a tall order in a country like Lebanon where political instability often makes people want to emigrate to other safer, less volatile nations. “Unfortunately, people don't want to stick around in this country,” confirms Hanan. “Many Lebanese emigrate abroad and this is a major concern for me. All of my colleagues at the American University Hospital dreamt of going abroad because of the turmoil in the country. I do everything possible to find good employees and retain them. We invest in employees who are willing to expand their knowledge and expertise. I have one employee, for example, who wants to go for her Master's degree. I told her that we would be willing to contribute to her education if she would in turn be willing to continue to be employed at Pharmamed.”

Hanan is also aware of the need to treat her employees fairly and to update her company’s policies to suit employee needs, which helps to maintain a stable and talented workforce. But that’s not all. Says Hanan, “I am thinking about starting a profit-sharing program with my employees. When I was in the States, I learned about employee ownership, which I am hoping to achieve here one day. But the first step I would like to make is to have my employees feel that what might be available in other companies, particularly in the multinationals; they can get in my company. Pharmamed will grow with the employees; we will all grow together, along with the sense of knowledge, expertise, and success. You have to give employees the opportunity to explore what they want and increase their expertise and back them.'

Above all, Hanan wants to be sure that Pharmamed will be able to continue without her presence and that her employees will be ready to run it when the time comes. Having her employees feel that the company is just as much theirs as it is hers is essential: “I'm trying to educate my employees that they will have to carry on with the company regardless of my presence, even if I die,” says Hanan. “You should be working in this company to make a difference and make it grow. This is why I always involve them in the business and in coming up with new ideas that will improve it. I tell them that we are a company that is growing and will continue to grow with the efforts of all of the people that are in it. I would love to get to the point where the company can move on its own regardless of my presence, but at this time it's still a small company. I tell my employees that they have to be creative, when they're going to the field they should come up with new ideas. It's not only me: they are my eyes and ears. They are the people that make a difference in the company, they are the future.”

It may come as no surprise that Hanan Saab has big plans for her company and her country. “We really want to expand our business outside of Lebanon. We have already started this process and we are gradually growing the market abroad in order to fill in the gaps if we have difficulties here. We have representation in Jordan and we now have a distributor in the Emirates. We have registered products for an American company in Egypt and I'm exploring the viability of our products in Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.”

Asked about her experience being a female business person in such a tough marketplace, Hanan enthusiastically states that “Women have a capability to create businesses and I believe that if they focus well, they can be capable of achieving great economic growth for our country. In Lebanon we have so many resources that are not explored and women in my opinion are one of these resources—in terms of their education, their insight, and their creativity. It makes me happy to think that my company is contributing to the welfare of 25 families. Now, imagine if we had 10,000 companies created and established by women, just how many jobs and how many families that would affect. The positive impact on our economy and on our nation's families and future would be enormous.”