Michelle Reinhard

I studied business administration in Munich, majoring in hospitality and tourism. Then I 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 from Germany ten years ago for a job. Not as a founder. So I went through the visa process, the documentation and the paperwork as an employee first. I was on the receiving end of it long 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 much 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. It shows up 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. An hour reconciling invoices, an evening rebuilding a CRM nobody maintained, a morning chasing a payment that should have arrived weeks ago. None of it stands out on its own. Together it is most of the week.

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