If you go online, you will find all the kids influencers asking you to move to Dubai. (Some of these guys have managed to make their entire personality about Dubai.)
Most of these are people without a lot of life experience and just repeat things they’ve heard from others.
However, they have managed to create a lot of interest in the city and a lot of you have asked me about Dubai so here’s my take.
Analysis of Dubai
In the previous post, I discussed criteria on which to rank a city.
Based on those, Dubai has a lot of things going for it:
- Multiple airports with direct flights to most important cities
- Modern infrastructure (good roads, gyms, restaurants, etc.)
- Lots of people with money
- No language barrier for English speakers
- Good food
- Clean
- Beach city
- Little to no taxes
- VERY good law and order situation
The downsides are:
- High costs of living
- Hot weather
- Not walkable. Everything is too spread apart.
- Not enough trekking options
- Awful dating scene. You are in a conservative Islamic country with some leeway for foreigners. Dating apps are full of escorts, not regular local women.
- General non-friendliness to foreigners. You can never become a citizen no matter how long you live there (even if your kids are born there, they cannot become citizens), you are deported fast if you lose your job, and the police will tend to side with locals.
- Party scene is extremely expensive and mostly revolves around beaches and cruises.
So… what’s my recommendation?
If you are rich and have money, you will enjoy Dubai quite a bit.
It’s the playground for people with money and the law and order situation is very good. It’s one of the few places in the world where you don’t have to worry about people stealing your watch.
If you are a young up and coming entrepreneur – I’d say… don’t move to Dubai.
As a young entrepreneur, your main priority is building your online business.
You need low costs of living so you have maximum cash to reinvest in your business and don’t need to make huge withdrawals from your business account to pay living expenses.
The big allure for most young entrepreneurs is the low tax structure of Dubai but you have to do some math. Are you increasing cost of living expenses by $100k to save $50k in taxes?
Side note: You don’t need to move to Dubai to take advantage of the tax laws there. You can just open a free zone company. You just need to go there once a year to keep your visa active. You don’t need to live in Dubai.
If you’re a new WiFi Money entrepreneur, move somewhere with very low costs (think $500 or $1000 a month) so you have maximum flexibility to grow your business.
Some people make the argument that “it’s inspiring to be surrounded by people with money” and that is true, but as someone who’s already an entrepreneur – if you need EXTERNAL MOTIVATION to do your best, you are NGMI.
Anyone who makes it big is internally driven. You have to work when people around you are partying. It’s hard but it’s the price of success.
Besides, if you have the internet, you are already surrounded by entrepreneurs.
You are already making the right moves. By reading LMM – you are already ahead of the masses (who consume Buzzfeed and Netflix). You are already trying to surround yourself with good information.
You aren’t the type of person who needs to move to Dubai “for inspiration”.
Be smart. Keep your costs low and build an online business.
My recommendations are: X audience building, web design, and copywriting. Just pick anything and get started.
– Harsh Strongman
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