34 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / August 2019Omar Jackson,
Partner, Berkely Assets“I BUILT MB&F AS MUCH AROUND
MY STRENGTHS AS AROUND MY
SHORTCOMINGS. I HATE MANAGING
PEOPLE, IT TAKES ALL MY LIFE FORCE
OUT OF ME. MANAGING PEOPLE
IS MANAGING OTHER PEOPLE’S
PROBLEMS, WHEREAS I JUST WANT
TO CREATE. SO, THIS HAS BEEN
A LONG JOURNEY. FROM DOING
EVERYTHING MYSELF TO SAYING, ‘I
DON’T EVEN WANT TO BE THE CEO
ANYMORE.’"“TALKING ABOUT NOT HAVING REGRETS,
EVERY TIME I’VE READ A BIOGRAPHY OF
A GREAT ENTREPRENEUR, THE NUMBER
ONE REGRET AT THE END OF THEIR LIFE
WAS NOT SEEING THEIR CHILDREN
GROWING UP."IMAGE CREDIT MB&FMaximillian Büsser,
founder, Maximilian Büsser and FriendsINNOVATOR
in the Middle East. “It’s not
by chance that they’ve got a
gallery today,” Büsser explains.
“Clearly, they’re not doing it
[just] for the money, but that
it’s the relationship that is
important for them, and that’s
one of the things I really appre-
ciate in this part of the world.
Relationships are still mean-
ingful here, and I have tried to
build my business on that.”Büsser comes across as an
energetic and friendly person
with a can-do attitude, and
it is clear why any kind of
problem that he might have
encountered would not have
mellowed his desire to develop
MB&F’s into a fully-fledged
haute horlogerie brand that it
is today. However, the com-
pany’s growing success shed
a new light on his compulsion
to guard the creative process
from any negative influence.
Consistently failing to achieve
work-life balance, in 2015,
Büsser moved to Dubai with
his young family (a wife and
a baby daughter at the time;
they have welcomed one more
daughter since). “Talking about
not having regrets, every timeI’ve read a biography of a great
entrepreneur, the number one
regret at the end of their life
was not seeing their children
growing up,” Büsser says, while
commenting on the family’s
decision to move out of Swit-
zerland. “But actually, it has
had an enormous resonance
on my company, because when
you founded a company your-
self, all alone in your little flat,
and you’ve done everything for
it, and you’ve micromanaged
every-single thing, you have to
let go at some point. Yet, it’s
very difficult for people like us
to let go. So, one of my ways
[of doing that] is by not being
in the workshop or the office
for 26 days out of 31. I’ve put a
structure in place which allows
that. So, it has forced me to let
go, and now, I micromanage
much less. It has completely
changed the way I manage.”
In another nod to his fairly
unusual self-awareness, Büsser
settles back and recalls another
similar situation when he
decided to stop the company’s
future growth, in order to
ensure that the MB&F watches
remained looking and func-
tioning different from other
familiar timepieces (MB&F
currently manufactures only
220 timepieces per year). “I
built MB&F as much around
my strengths as around my
shortcomings,” he says. “I
hate managing people, it takes
all my life force out of me.
Managing people is manag-
ing other people’s problems,
whereas I just want to cre-
ate. So, this has been a long
journey. From doing every-thing myself to saying, ‘I don’t
even want to be the CEO any-
more.’ One of the many reasons
I didn’t want the company to
grow, and to have any middle
management, is because they
exhaust me. Another reason
is that over the last 14 years,
the awareness of the brand
has grown significantly, and I
said this before, but I used to
be terrified that nobody would
buy what I do, and now I’m
terrified that people are going
to be disappointed, because
expectations have grown.”
Towards the end of our con-
versation, Büsser brings one
more proof that he has passed
the point where he believed
he could do everything by
himself. Even though it is not
unusual in the watch industry
that a large group acquires
an eclectic and independent
brand, it certainly would have
been an unusual thing to hear
had I met Büsser a couple of
years ago. However, he is now
willing to admit that the need
to secure his brand in a period
after him has been occupying
his thoughts lately. “You have
to think of what’s going to hap-
pen [to your brand] if some-
thing happens to you,” Büsser
concludes. “I am absolutely not
announcing anything, I’m not
in discussion with anybody,
but I have to start thinking of
things like that. It’s not about
making money, but about
making sure that it’s still there
after I’m gone. Because, I owe it
to the people in my team, and
to the customers. If you want
to do things well, you have to
think of these things.”