Michelle Reinhard

I studied business administration in Munich, majoring in hospitality and tourism, and worked my way up through the departments of a hotel. That is where the habits come from: reading what someone needs before they have said it, and caring about details that are only noticed when they go wrong.

I came to the UAE ten years ago from Germany for a job, not as a founder. So I went through the visa process, the documentation and the paperwork as an employee first, on the receiving end of it, before I ever handled it for anyone else.

I then spent several years at a company setup agency, where I learned formations, visas and amendments properly and worked closely with the clients I looked after. After that I moved to a law firm, handling a great deal of the same formation and visa work, and taking on operations as well: finance, client files and the running of the practice.

The firm is also where I saw what it costs when something has been done carelessly earlier on, usually somewhere else entirely. Corrections, restructures, and people who had been put into the wrong structure from the beginning. That is where my patience for getting the detail right comes from.

Running operations for a law firm showed me how much of a business sits in work that nobody sees. Finance, client files, invoicing, following up, coordinating, and whatever else the week needed. None of it is glamorous, and all of it matters.

Admin is where founders lose time. Not dramatically, but an hour reconciling invoices, an evening rebuilding a CRM nobody maintained, a morning chasing a payment that should have arrived weeks ago. It accumulates quietly until it is most of the week.

That time really belongs on your business and on growing it. If someone else can look after the operational side, you get your attention back for the work that only you can do.