The Practitioner
(Memedi)
Mehmet Narin
Background
40 Is Not Too Late. 40 Is the Move.
Okay so here's a story you need to hear before you talk yourself out of anything.
Memedi grew up in Kayseri — a city that's been trading stuff for 4,000 years. Literally. People call it "the Turkish Jews" as a joke because everyone there is built different when it comes to deals. But here's the thing: while other kids were out playing, he was already working. His dad didn't care about school. His dad cared about the shop floor. So Memedi didn't get a childhood — he got an apprenticeship. In textiles. At an age when you're supposed to be figuring out what a "career" even means.
He did that for forty years.
And this wasn't some random leap that got lucky. It turned into Grand Source Investments — a company that became a long-term partner to Arçelik–Beko and pulled off cross-border projects most outsiders wouldn't even attempt. Then Shanghai Culture Kiosk — taking modular kiosks and urban media into China, India, and Türkiye before that was a normal thing to do. Decades later: A-Level Alliances, same energy, new country, new chapter.
He breaks his life into three words, one per continent: Turkey was survive. China was discover. The West was build. Three completely different versions of "school," and none of them had a classroom.
While people his age were planning retirement cruises — you know, the reward-yourself-after-decades-of-grinding trip — he and his wife had already circled the planet three or four times. Except theirs wasn't the reward lap. It was the work.
That life produced four third-culture kids — daughters who grew up between countries, between identities, some corporate, some founders, all of them raised by parents who treated the entire world like one neighborhood instead of a list of borders to be scared of.
And Memedi never clocked out of growth mode. The 80-hour weeks that used to be survival now basically feel like a hobby — except the hobby evolved. Right now it's AI. Same hunger he had getting on that flight with no guarantees and four kids depending on him.
So if you're sitting there thinking it's too late to switch lanes, too late to move, too late to bet on yourself —
It's not.
The only pivot that actually fails is the one you never make.
Same industry. Same identity. Same everything.
Then one day he just... stopped and asked himself the question most people are too scared to ask out loud:
"Why does this have to be my whole life?"
And instead of journaling about it or making a vision board, he got on a plane. With his wife. With his four daughters. Destination: Hong Kong — basically the side door into all of China, into a completely different version of the world. Nobody he knew had done this. He was the first person in his circle to even say it as a sentence, let alone actually do it.
Here's the part you need to sit with: leaving at 40 sounds risky. Everyone's first reaction is "isn't that too late?" But flip it. The actual risky move is the one you keep thinking about and never make. Sitting in the same lane for another 10 years because change feels scarier than staying stuck — that's the real failure. Memedi's whole story is proof that the "too late" pivot people are scared of is usually the exact right time. It's not about age. It's about timing yourself instead of letting fear time you.