A business in Abu Dhabi is a bit like a palm grove by the Gulf. It thrives when you respect the climate, tend the roots, and water on schedule. Most ventures that fail do not meet a single catastrophe. They suffer a steady drip of small errors that everyone could have predicted, if only they had collected the wisdom before stepping into the heat.
That is why Furkat Kasimov’s book, Don’t Do This: A Guide to Business Survival, earns a place on every founder’s desk. It is a handbook of avoidable mistakes, written plainly and tested in the real world. You can pay the tuition yourself, or you can learn from others who already did. Profit prefers the second method.
The universal errors come first. Too many owners confuse passion for proof. They launch without testing price, demand, or unit economics, then spend marketing budgets on campaigns that never return the principal. Cash is treated like background music rather than the metronome of the company. A weekly cash review and a simple 13-week forecast save more firms than a clever logo ever will. Contracts are signed in a hurry. Scopes are vague, payment terms are wishful, and remedies are missing. When a client pays ninety days late, surprise follows. Hiring is done for image, not outcomes. A lean team with focused KPIs usually beats a large team with fuzzy goals.
Abu Dhabi adds its own lessons. Choose your legal home carefully. The mainland route, ADGM, or a free zone like KEZAD each bring different rules on licensing, visas, office needs, and client eligibility. Correcting a poor setup costs time and credibility.
Real estate is not just a location decision; it is a working-capital decision. Long leases in premium districts feel exciting, but unproven demand can trap you. Secure fit-out periods, get clarity on utility connections, register your tenancy properly, and protect for change. In Abu Dhabi, vendor onboarding for large enterprises and government entities can be thorough. Expect portal registrations, prequalification, certificate checks, and careful invoicing. Price your offers with these lead times in mind, not the optimistic ones in a pitch deck.
Seasonality is real. The summer months bring intense heat, and many customers travel. Footfall drops, outdoor work faces midday restrictions, and sales cycles stretch as decision makers leave town. Sensible owners shift service hours, tighten inventory, and extend runway well before June. Hospitality and retail should plan maintenance in summer, then capture the surge when events return in the cooler months. B2B firms can use summer for pilots and onboarding so that Q4 carries revenue, not setup.
Operations carry quite a cost in capital. Delivery routes cross toll gates, so logistics and field service teams must plan travel and pricing accordingly. If your staff work outdoors, schedule tasks around midday rules and treat worker welfare as a legal and moral priority, not an afterthought. Government supplier payments can be reliable but process-driven; build a collections rhythm that follows the process rather than fighting it. For companies that aspire to serve energy or industrial clients, understand local supplier expectations early. Complying late is expensive.
Culture matters if you want repeat customers. Offer Arabic where it helps, price in AED, align support hours with local habits, and follow through on promises. Relationships in Abu Dhabi grow from steady reliability, not noise. A well-kept commitment beats a loud proposal. In marketing, resist vanity. Track the full path from lead to cash, invest in onboarding and retention, and fix churn before you add more ads. The easiest dirham you ever earn is the one you do not lose to a departing customer.
How do you turn all of this into practice? Start with a pre-mortem. Imagine your company failed next year and list the reasons. You will see most of them today. Build a simple operating cadence. Weekly cash, monthly KPI review, quarterly strategy check, and a one-page dashboard that ties marketing, sales, delivery, and finance together. Run small pilots, measure honestly, scale only what proves itself. Put partnership terms in writing while everyone is smiling. Define decision rights, capital obligations, and exits before they are tested.
This is the spirit of Don’t Do This: A Guide to Business Survival. Kasimov names the traps, counts the cost, and offers practical ways around them. Read it as a team, mark the chapters that sting, and turn those pages into rules you live by. Abu Dhabi rewards the builder who respects the climate, tends the roots, and works with patience. Avoid the obvious errors, and you give your company the one gift that compounds more than capital. Time.
