Home Thoughts From Dubai

When I came to Dubai three years ago I did so with maybe not the full level of investigation that friends of mine would expect. It was a large jump for somebody who for most of his career life had benefited from and become accustomed to the luxuries of a corporate expense account. Banking also gave me access to hundreds of people many of whom become my friends. Since those days I have come to rely on many good friends for business and social support. So what ‘drug’ was it that caused such a brain challenging change.

The ‘pill’ of time and realisation that faraway hills can have bogs would result in my rapid return to Irish, UK or Australian shores. Well despite many of these experts being dear friends, they have been wrong. What a truly great place Dubai is. Most people around the world have now heard of Dubai and have a vision of ‘the hotel that looks like a sail’, a place where everything is the biggest, largest, best ….. A place where dreams could be delivered.

Well let me not make this ‘About’ section to serious. It IS everything that you read about. Sure there are the ‘knockers’. But you find them everywhere. Sure Dubai has not got everything right. But look at the scale of the challenge they set themselves and I can assure you if Ireland, the UK , Australia or the USA tried to deliver this level of ambition or development it would be littered with cost overruns, broken delivery timelines, employee strikes, press/political interference, budgetary constraints, lack of spend on essential complementary utility needs etc. Not however in Dubai.

Under the excellent and intelligent stewardship of Sheikh Mohammad this Emirate (for those of you ‘lacking in geography’ there are seven in the United Arab Emirates), Dubai has and will continue to be a place where peoples career and wealth dreams can be delivered. Any young person ( as long as you do not age faster than me you qualify ) who has common sense, ambition, wants to work hard ( don’t worry there is time to iron and wash dishes ) and has a particular skill should just leave their current employment and set up business/take a job here.

It is truly the place where dreams can happen. And no matter how dumb your ideas might be - they will get a fair hearing here - and probably the finance to make it work. It is a place where English is the business language, the law is understandable (not the overpriced legalistic s*it that we all grew to accept in the world of my career youth), business barriers don’t exist, success is encouraged and rewarded and I can go on and on. But we are all busy. So lets just add lifestyle, cheap cars, cheaper petrol and one starts to wonder if I am the idiot or those who tearfully worried about my future in this unstable part of the world and the slow degrading disease that had obviously infected my ‘cerebral centre’.

So fear not. There is plenty of money (tax free) to be made in Dubai - and it would be nice to think that this weekly column could have something to do with it. Don’t worry this in NOT an invoice!!! If you don’t believe me come and visit. I can put ’some’ of you up for free!!!

One final thing about this site. I started this communication journey to give some real honesty to the Dubai story, to encourage entrepreneurship and to save people the time and cost of making the wrong career and investment decisions. Every link on this site has to pass this ‘honesty’ and ‘friendship’ test. So hope you enjoy your visits