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4 Industries and Jobs That Will Disappear Due to…

Starting Your Own Business Cover — Content from the author of Starting Your Own Business Far From Home: What (Not) to Do When Opening a Company

Future events are uncertain, and detailed information about times to come is impossible. But we can use current trends, technological innovation, and reliable information to predict likely scenarios. We can use it to discover industries and jobs that will disappear due to technology.

During most of my career, this is what I did while working for global airlines. It worked fine — most of the time we were right. Predictions saved considerable money for these companies.

Saving money. In that lives the biggest benefit of futuristic reflections. Predictions are useful when we are planning our next investment or career choice.

The billionaire Bill Gates wrote a book calledThe Road Aheadtwenty-six years ago. There he predicts the impact of the Personal Computer revolution. Many of these predictions materialized. In the same book, there is also a phrase that stands true to this time.

We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.

Considering the technological, socio-economical, and environmental changes of the next years, here is the list of 4 industries and jobs that will disappear due to technology (or become niche) before 2030.

Telemarketing

This form of marketing will fade due to automation, and also because it is often annoying and intrusive.

In 2017, the Guardian published an article predicting which jobs would disappear. Telemarketing had a 99% chance to be fully automated in 15 years.

Nearly 70% of B2B buyers go online to search for business solutions instead of waiting for a call. Today, if you call up a prospect with an offer, the chances of making a sale are less than 5%. The majority will hang up the phone.

There are still over 8 thousand telemarketing companies in the USA, but the effectiveness of most of them is questionable. Besides, their business is changing from offering products to services like credit collection.

Therefore, instead of a telemarketing operator interrupting your dinner to offer you a new credit card, soon we will only receive a call if we forget to pay for the credit card company.

Staffed retail

As with telemarketing, staffed retail will also fade because of increasing automation.

Take a look at the picture of any supermarket 10 years ago and compare it with the same place right now. Chances are that the number of self-checkouts at least doubled, reducing the need for human cashiers. As a result, it’s been estimated that the self-serve kiosk industry will be worth $34 billion (£27.5bn) by 2023.

While the demise of the cashier is not a secret (it is one of the 4 professions that will disappear in the near future), other retail-associated jobs are at risk, like sellers or cleaners.

Places like the automated stores from Amazon Go will be everywhere. In fact, Amazon themselves declared they plan to expand from the current 30 non-staffed stores to over 3000. This plan, coming from a company that earned $300 million just by developing a button, looks plausible.

Customers who have the Amazon Go app just need to enter the store, grab whatever they want and walk out with the items. Later, their account is charged.

Of course, few retail sectors will remain staffed. While people do not need help to buy their groceries, niche industries like luxury stores will opt for the personal touch of sales assistants.

Staffed banking

A few months ago, I asked all my friends in our chat group when was the last time they visited a physical bank agency. Of the 8 respondents (yes, not an enormous sample size, I know), only one answered less than 1 month. On average, the last time they stepped into a bank was 3 to 4 months ago.

Ask yourself the same question. Ask your friends and family too. There are exceptional cases still requiring the physical presence in a bank agency, like a few businesses or people who are not tech-savvy enough, but they are becoming a diminutive minority.

Finance leaders warned that those in customer service, middle and back-office roles likely will lose their places to computers soon. IHS Markit estimates that 1.3 million bank workers in the United States will be affected, and 500,000 in the United Kingdom.

A report from GP Bullhound revealed that 91% of people prefer to use an app than go into a branch. That includes me and most of my social circle. Unless you feel some peculiar pleasure by waiting in lines (I will not judge), I bet you prefer to make bank payments remotely instead of driving to the local branch.

Travel Agencies

Of all the sectors in this article, if there is one that I bet will disappear not before 2030, but even before 2025, are travel agencies. Or at least the ordinary travel agency.

Besides all the data (see more below), I base this guess on my observation as a Hotelier. Only 4 years ago we still had a considerable share of our guests coming from travel agents. Today they are rare.

Most people make their reservations using portals like Booking.com, Hostelworld.com, Airbnb.com. Others book direct, using the resources from Google Hotels or TripAdvisor. Even elders do that now.

In 2017, a report from Local Data Company (LDC) revealed that 700 brick-and-mortar travel agencies closed up shop in the UK alone. The research found that the biggest reason is the competition from OTAs (online travel agencies)and short-term rental companies such as Airbnb.

A few travel agencies will survive, mostly in niches like extreme-sports adventure travel or group holidays for pensioners. Or to travel out of the earth, like the nascent but booming industry of space tourism. For that, you will need a travel agency since there are no rooms at the International Space Station available at Airbnb.

In your opinion, what are the other industries and jobs that will disappear due to technology in this decade? Remember to consider economic trends like inflation. Inflationary cycles can kill some businesses but at the same time benefit entire sectors.

If you don’t want YOUR business to disappear, check the channel Small Business Hacks.

Or this selection of related articles:

How to Attract Employees & Turn Your Small Business into a Talent Magnet

4 Polish Habits To Increase Productivity

Competitive Benchmarking – A Parable to Understand Why It is Essential

Levi Borba is CEO of expatriateconsultancy.com, creator of the channel Small Business Hacks, and best-selling author. You can check his books here, his other articles here, or his Linkedin here.

Business in Europe

The Best Countries to Start a New Life Abroad…

I was just a recently graduated countryside boy with no money in the bank. I asked myself how could I move out. What were the best countries to start a new life with no money?

Since I was 15, I dreamed about living abroad, for multiple reasons. Some were real, like my willingness to escape the Brazilian violence (including the murder of a family member). Others were fantasies from my mind, or as the maxim says, the feeling that the grass always looks greener on the other side of the fence.

This plan to move abroad even influenced my choice for a university degree. That is why I refused to apply to law school and studied economics and management.

But most Brazilian expatriates already have either solid careers, luring recruiters from abroad, or they have deep enough pockets to invest overseas and gain an investor’s visa.

I had none of it.

I was just a recently graduated countryside boy with no money in the bank. I asked myself how could I move out. What were the best countries to start a new life with no money?

One year after graduation, I found the answer. I moved to the first country on this list. There I lived until I move to the next (also on this list), and then to another country which, you guessed correctly, is here too.

One disclaimer: when I write you can move to these countries with no money, it doesn’t mean that no qualifications or skills are necessary. In fact, it is the opposite. Almost all these countries will require something from their immigrants. Either a specific diploma or a well-written business plan (but don’t worry about the funding, they help you with that).

Let’s start with the first country where I moved to, with no money and no solid career to write on a CV: Chile.

Chile

Almost every time someone talks about moving to Chile, he means Santiago. The Chilean capital alone concentrates almost one-third of the entire country’s population. It is also the services and financial center of the nation. So, unless you are planning to work in Chile’s northern mining industry or with tourism in the dazzling southern regions, it is likely you will live around Santiago.

The demographic concentration in the capital, while causing issues like traffic and pollution, brings a benefit. Easy access to infrastructure, finance, and talents. The Chilean government wants to cement Santiago as the entrepreneurial hub of South America — rivaling São Paulo and Buenos Aires. For this purpose, they created Start-Up Chile.

Start-Up Chilereceives funds from the Ministry of Economy, Ministry of Development & Tourism, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Ministry of the Interior.

This means one thing: they have resources to fund good ideas.

For approved business plans, Start-Up Chile provides up to $78,000 in equity-free funding through different support programs.

They require that the entrepreneur remains in the country for a period between four months to one year to implement and expand the business. They also offer training and facilitate contact with investors and a free co-working space in Santiago.

In addition to the funds, they grant the entrepreneur a one-year work visa and a list of business contacts. You don’t even need to speak Spanish for all that.

Chile also has few booming industries, like mining and tourism, that hire foreign young professionals with little to no experience. I was one of them.

What do you need to live in Chile?

A good business plan containing a proper competitive analysis, if you want to launch an enterprise and access Start-Up Chile funds. Or the skills required by industries like mining (especially copper mining).

What makes Chile one of the best countries to start a new life?

There are concerns about the violence increase in certain regions. Still, Chile remains one of the safest and most stable countries in South America.
There is good air connectivity both with Europe and the rest of the American continent.
Santiago also has a pleasant climate.
A high number of businesses and incubators do not require the Spanish language — or provide Spanish lessons, as it was in my case.

Did I also mention that they have good, inexpensive wine?

Disadvantages of living in Chile.

After decades of economic growth — journalists nicknamed it the South-American tiger — in recent years Chile reached a plateau, and some negative indicators like violence and unemployment increased.

The United Arab Emirates / Qatar / Bahrain

Instead of one country, here grouped 3. I did it because they are similar — although someone that lived in Doha, like me, would never compare it with Dubai in terms of entertainment.

Just like in Chile, most of the expatriates will converge to Santiago, in the United Arab Emirates (the UAE), they will be in Abu Dhabi or Dubai. In Qatar, expatriates will concentrate in Doha. In Bahrain, the logical choice is Manana.

When we talk about immigrants in the GCC (the region comprising these 3 countries plus few others) we are not talking about a smaller share of the population. Quite the opposite: foreigners make the largest portion of these Arabic countries. They represent an overwhelming 88.5% of the entire UAE population.

While the internet is full of memes and tales about Emirati or Qataris with gold-plated Lamborghinis and private jets, you don’t need to be a millionaire to live there. In fact, you don’t even need to worry about a place to live.

If you have the skills GCC employers are looking for — and can survive excruciating temperatures during summer — they will provide you with all the basic needs plus a comfortable salary.

Industries like finance, air transportation, and Oil & Gas actively seek western professionals to fill both entry and managerial roles.

What do you need to live in the UAE?

There are multiple sets of skills and qualifications that can land you a good job in Dubai, Doha, or Abu Dhabi. Any of these will soar your chances:

Naval engineering
Petroleum engineering
Pilot certification
A Tourism and Hospitality degree or certification
Aerospace engineering
Experience in Financial Institutions

What makes the UAE/Qatar/Bahrain some of the best countries to start a new life?

Good air connectivity — even though the UAE has less than 10 million inhabitants, it has 2 of the world’s largest airlines. Qatar also has a national carrier with a global reach.
The GCC countries are among the few in the world with no personal income tax.
Above-average salaries.

Disadvantages of living in the UAE.

High living costs.
Scorching heat during half of the year.
Cultural idiosyncrasies that may cause a considerable cultural shock — although in the UAE or Bahrain they are less evident than in neighboring countries like Saudi Arabia.

Canada

While Canada is the second-largest country in the world, here we will focus on a specific region called Saskatchewan.

It is a province larger than France but with little over one million inhabitants. This means lots of lands and prairies.

If you got a degree and would like a bucolic life, this is a good place for you. They offer tuition reimbursements of up to 20,000 Canadian dollars.

Saskatchewan’s Graduate Retention Program was created to convince young people to remain in the province once they finished their studies. It’s now used as a recruitment tool to bring in young professionals from around the world.

Besides the tuition reimbursement, the region offers a tax rebate of up to $20,000 to its inhabitants. The amount depends on what is your diploma and is paid over seven years.

What do you need to live in Canada?

You are eligible for the Graduate Retention Program (GRP) rebate if you:

Graduated from an approved post-secondary program and applied within seven years of graduation.
Plan to move or is already moving to Saskatchewan.

What makes Canada one of the best countries to start a new life?

Saskatchewan has a lower cost of living than more urban areas of Canada.

Disadvantages of living in Canada.

High taxes.
Specialized requirements in terms of skills and qualifications that are eligible for the immigration program.

Italy

I will start the section about Italy stating a fact: there are places there where you can buy real estate for 1 euro.

The sale price is a symbolic value for abandoned houses and train stations. While the prospective owner of these properties would need to invest in renovation, local governments often offer extra help.

The Sicilian town of Troina, for example, offers for successful applicants a “restyle bonus” of up to €15,000, plus another €10,000 for energy efficiency upgrades. There is a requirement for a €5,000 deposit, but they return it to you once renovations are done.

Besides Troina, there are dozens of other cities or villages with similar offers, like Augusta in Syracuse, Taranto in Puglia, Bivona in Sicily, Maenza in Lazio, or Nulvi in Sardinia. There is even an option in the middle of the alps, in the village of Oyace in the Aosta Valley.

What do you need to live in Italy?

If you want to join the 1-Euro Houses program, what you need is:

Plan a restructuring and revaluation project (often within 365 days of purchase).
Support notarial fees for registration.
Once you have all the permits, start the work within the time decided by the municipality.
To guarantee the correct execution of the works by the buyer, the municipality asks to take out a surety policy of between €1,000.00 and €5,000.00. The policy expires at the end of the completed works, usually within 3 years.
And, of course, 1 euro to buy the property.

What makes Italy one of the best countries to start a new life?

Since most of the properties in the 1 euro program are in rural areas, the cost of living is lower than in urban regions. The job prospects are also meager, so it appeals more to remote workers, investors, or pensioners.

Disadvantages of living in Italy.

At least to purchase a house in the 1 euro program, the person needs to present a well-rounded renovation plan. The investor also needs to handle the purchase bureaucracy, and Italy is quite a bureaucratic country for European standards.

Poland

There are 2 ways to move to Poland without having money.

One way is similar to what I did. I opened a business, and Poland is one of the countries with the smallest financial requirements for obtaining an entrepreneur visa: 100 000 zlotys or more — this is equivalent to €22,000. (Here you can compare it with the requirements of other European countries for an entrepreneur visa).

But wait! You told me that about having no money and now you are talking about 20K euros?

Yes. But you don’t need to have this money in your account. Poland is a stable country with an attractive economy. With a decent business plan and some pitch training, you can find investors. That is what I did.

The second way to move to Poland with no money is to work with IT.

IT professionals in Poland are well-paid when compared to most professions because there is a deficit in qualified people, and the tech industry in the country is booming. This results in industries sourcing talents abroad.

What do you need to live in Poland?

A good business plan that will convince investors to buy your idea, and convince the government to grant you an entrepreneur visa.

Qualifications and skills in IT and project management.

What makes Poland one of the best countries to start a new life?

It is a safe country, one of the safest in Europe.
Stable economy.
Productive work environment.
It is very cheap to raise kids, and public education is among the best in the world (in Europe, only Finland and Estonia have netter systems).

PS: Uber there is also quite cheap, in case you need it.

Disadvantages of living in Poland.

While in large cities like Warsaw and Krakow, one can live without speaking Polish, dealing with public offices or living in smaller cities can represent a challenge.
An increasing tax burden.
The rent and real estate costs in Warsaw are much higher than in the rest of the country, and already similar to many western European capitals.
Risks of overheating in the economy — in other words, risk of inflation.

If you are thinking about moving to Poland, remember that Colligere Expat Consultancy can help you with that.

What about your thoughts? In your opinion, what are other places that you would place in a list of the best countries to start a new life with no money?

Business

How to Attract Employees & Turn Your Small Business…

How to attract employees is not about the fridge full of ice cream.

During my last semester at the University of Sao Paulo, there was a book causing a gigantic corridor buzz. The name of it was Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman It covers, among other themes, human cognitive biases. One of the most discussed subjects is loss aversion. It was a concept essential later in my entrepreneurial journey to understand how to attract employees.

To understand it, imagine how unpleasant is to lose $50 in the street. Rate it on a scale from 0 to 10, where 10 is the most unpleasant situation possible. Now imagine finding $50 on the sidewalk. Rate it on a scale from 0 to 10, but now 10 means the most pleasant situation imaginable. Often the first situation will have a grade higher than the second. This synthesizes loss aversion. It is the fear of losing a certain amount being higher than the joy of finding the same amount elsewhere.

This notion comes to my mind when I see startups still far from making their first profitable trimester investing in pricey rewards to lure new employees. Things like unlimited holidays or top-tier gym memberships.

If their CEOs considered the concepts of cognitive biases, they would realize that expensive free perks have 3 tremendous downsides.

1. They lose their motivating power across time, since people take it for granted.

2. They are replicable. If a competitor wants to steal your talents, they can just copy your policy of sending interns for “conventions” in 5-star hotels.

3. When the company faces adversities and needs to cut costs, removing the rewards will be more destructive than it was constructive to implement it.

This third point we can attribute to loss aversion. It is what happened when Upload, a virtual-reality company from Los Angeles, needed to cut one unusual (and expensive) perk. They had a tap free-flowing Kombucha — an expensive fermented tea from Manchuria, trendy in the Silicon Valley. As their founder, Taylor Freedman, explained in an interview to CNBC:

People would drink five glasses a day. It was $3,000 to $4,000 a month to have Kombucha on tap, so we had to shut it down. It was a big hit to the morale of the community.

You can avoid similar situations by considering the 3 points mentioned above and answering: Can we pay for this benefit during a crisis?

Some benefits are costly, but they pay for themselves and relate to the firm’s core business. An example is a financial incentive Airbnb gives to employees to travel and stay in, well, Airbnbs.

Once you decide which benefits to offer (or not) to prospective employees, the next step is to pick what you will talk about during the interview.

Socio-cultural adaptations for Interviews

Interviews are not the same everywhere. Here I bring the findings of the illustrious Dr. Geert Hofstede. His indicators help to outline expectations between employers and candidates. Before asking about how to attract employees, discover what they want to know about you.

Societies with high long-term orientation present candidates that prefer to know the career and development chances, while low-term orientation prospects will favor bonuses and short-term remuneration.

The same is valid for other Hofstede factors like Uncertainty avoidance. Risk-taking societies like the US have candidates more fond of variable wages, while risk-averse cultures prefer a stable income.

The economic situation also plays a big role in how interviews happen. When I was in South America, in a country with a two-digit unemployment rate, even qualified candidates had a firm stance of promoting their feats to win the job. This cultural aspect made it easier for interviewers to know about their previous experiences and achievements.

On the other side, when I arrived in Warsaw, the unemployment rate was below 3%, one of the lowest in Europe. I needed to build my team. With plenty of opportunities available everywhere, the interviews became sessions promoting the job for the candidates. This is not a problem per se, since the skill to promote your business has ample applications, like future capital raises.

Hire on time.

According to Forbes Magazine, two of the biggest money-wasters for new companies are over-hiring and early hiring. The first means employing more people than you need for the early stages of a project. The second means contracting too soon.

Both problems derive from too optimistic planning and the non-existence of buffers — time-reliefs to accommodate delays or below-expected business results. It happens when executives overthink about how to attract employees.

Hiring too early will waste money, since you are paying for a person who may not even have a desk. It also makes your business look unprepared and amateurish for the eyes of a recently built team.

Over-hiring is even worse. Having more people than you need means less work divided into more brains, which underutilizes talent capacity and makes your entire business run in slow-march. You can solve it by letting people go, but this may damage the group morale and create a crisis atmosphere.

Bottom line: do not hire people for your team based on your goals, but based on your most likely scenario.

Hire Slow, Recognize Fast

Another mistake I made — you may ask how I did not go bankrupt after so many mistakes — was to hire in a hurry.

Entrepreneurs know this is not wise. Still, one day either you have excessive demand, or a staff leaves and you enter the hiring rush. You rush to interview a few candidates. Even none of them matching your company profile (or your company matching their aspirations), you decide to employ one.

Few weeks after doing the mistake I described above, one of the best members of my team gave me a bold signal I messed up. She just asked Levi, where do you find this kind of people? She did not mean it in a good way.

Take special care when you already have a committed and fine-tuned group. To put in your team a new member that does not match the spirit of the rest can be poisonous. I am not talking about distinct personalities here, but about different levels of commitment.

Once you find a candidate matching your team’s standards, recognize him fast. During the first weeks, he or she will seek to understand what is right and what is wrong. Positive reinforcement is crucial to guide your new member and speed up his practice.

Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s. Have Skin in the Game.

It is easy to start a fiery discussion regarding the positive or negative impacts of coffee on the human body. Debaters will find several scientific articles and researches to attack or defend caffeine. A similar phenomenon happens when we discuss remuneration and how to attract employees.

One of the best books I read on the subject was Freedom from Command and Control: Rethinking Management for Lean Service, by John Seddon. The author makes a great case for fixed remuneration. Contrarily, Silicon Valley startups often have strong policies of variable remuneration or equity bonus for employees.

How to decide the most appropriate method for remuneration?

There are situations where equity bonuses instead of fixed wages have dubious efficacy. A junior manager, in a corporation with thousands of employees, unlikely will see his higher efforts increase the company shares. There is no incentive, in this case, to seek a superb performance, because there is no benefit for his pockets.

In new, smaller companies, the work of every single member has a visible impact. A remarkable performance of a single team can reflect in the entire company result. Here, it makes all sense to go for equity.

Not always is possible to offer equity to your first employees. In my case, it was not viable, since the paperwork for it would be too expensive. Still, it is possible to offer a remuneration package with more skin in the game for every team member, where everyone earns more if the results are good.

Quoting a famous Brazilian movie, who wants to laugh, must first make others laugh.

If you want to learn more about how to attract employees and develop them, check this video.

If you are ready to go for the next step and start your business, take a look at this article about the types of business risks that we prepared for you, and the damage that agency problems can cause for your enterprise.

Digital Nomads

5 Things to Buy Before Moving Out

Start a New Life at Full Speed!

Moving Out, Working Abroad and Keeping Your Sanity Cover — Moving Out, Working Abroad and Keeping Your Sanity

You are leaving! Time to think about things to buy before moving out! It is a new step in life — an increasingly frequent step. According to FiveThirtyEight, a person in the USA moves on average 11.4 times during a lifetime.

Millennials break this number much earlier. As the author of this article, for example.

I am not a globetrotter, but just a random, simple entrepreneur. Still, in the last 15 years, I moved 17 times, to 6 different cities, in 4 different countries, on 3 distinct continents. There are a couple of things that I learned through practice.

Some of these experiences were painful. Like when you realize you have no tools to fix your new home or no pillows, and the entire country is on a 4-day long holiday. To use a plastic bag filled with clothes as a makeshift pillow is a useful travel hack, but it is far from ideal.

In the next paragraphs, I listed 5 items (or 6, considering the bonus) to avoid regrets, back pain, and coronary disease. Some of these are affiliated links.

All of them are things to make your life abroad easier, and free your time to explore the neighborhood and meet interesting people at your new place.

A Tool Set (Or Tool Kit)

Why it is one of the things to buy before moving out:

Hammer, knife, scissors, hex keys, screwdrivers, tape measure… Everything you need for DIY around the house are there!

One could argue that an adjustable wrench, instead of dozens of fixed wrenches, could do the same job as half of the pieces of a tool set. They are not wrong. The problem is when you lose (or loan to someone that never returns it) an adjustable wrench, you will have no alternative.

Another plus of toolsets are the cool cases that come together with them, making it easy to organize and using little space in your apartment.

What I recommend: Any decent toolbox with 120 to 150 pieces. My brother-in-law gave me one at Christmas — a nice gift! The Cartman 148Piece Tool Set General Household has everything you will need to assemble furniture, fix a shower, or make basic repairs.

A Good Mattress

Why it is one of the things to buy before moving out:

My father had a mattress store in my hometown. I was raised hearing the phrase:

Do not save money on your mattress, because one-third of your life you will spend on them.

This phrase was convenient for the sellers, but it was true. Or at least partially true: to spend 1/3 of life in a mattress, one needs to sleep at least 8 hours per day, on average. Who sleeps that much? Certainly not me.

Buy the best mattress you can afford. The philosophy is the same for an office chair. These things can either ruin or boost your productivity, therefore, they affect your earnings multiple times more than whatever you are saving.

What I recommend: If you are a man in his 30s and more than 90kg, like me, check the Casper Sleep Element Mattress. It is one of the best-reviewed mattresses in the world for a reason — and it has an affordable price. If you are a lighter person, there is a softer version of it. Always remember to choose a mattress that fits your body weight.

A Pillow Gentle to Your Neck

Why it is one of the things to buy before moving out:

Besides a bad pillow, there are not many things in a bedroom that can cause neck pain — unless you have company.

A person should not save money on a pillow for the same reasons already stated for the mattress above. It is the kind of item that can ruin your productivity and make you lose much more than whatever you are saving.

The world deserves you in your best state. For that, you must rest with good neck support.

What I recommend: Have you ever noticed how the pillows at good hotels are splendid? It is because they know how to choose. To turn your room into a 5-star hotel, opt for the Lincove Hotel Collection. As they describe it, The 90% White Duck Feather chamber surrounded by 10% White Duck Down creates the signature thick and fluffy support you feel on a pillow at your favorite luxury hotel!

There are some types made of memory foam. Some people love it, others cannot adapt to it. I am in the second group.

A Scale

Why it is one of the things to buy before moving out:

To move to a new home is hard work. With so many tasks and a myriad of things to work on, it is easy to lose control of how much you eat and how little you exercise.

When I moved to the Middle East, I gained almost 10kg. My family was thousands of kilometers far away, so there was none of their comment (sometimes cruel but honest) about my terrible shape.

Don’t commit the same mistake. It is difficult to return when you go too much off the rails.

What I recommend: Scales are an inexpensive item, so look for one that, besides your weight, it also measures your body fat — how precise they measure it is a subject for another article. The RENPHO Scale does that, and has two extra benefits: an elegant design and synchronization with your cellphone to upload your measures.

Working on a White-Collar Job? Buy a Steamer.

Why it is one of the things to buy before moving out:

You should buy it because wrinkled shirts are ridiculous. People may not tell you directly, but they will talk about it at the coffee shop at the corporate headquarters of your company.

Before opening my business, I worked at a corporate, white-collar job. The steamer was lone of the most useful gadgets to guarantee me a neat appearance — together with a beard trimmer.

What I recommend: Choose a device that has an inbuilt hanger, so you don’t need to hold the garment while you steam it — and burn your fingers in the process. The PurSteam Garment Steamer has that, plus a fabric brush to brush away wrinkles.

Bonus: The Book Moving Out, Working Abroad and Keeping Your Sanity

Why it is one of the things to buy before moving out:

At the beginning of the article, I told that, by moving 17 times across 3 different continents, I committed plenty of avoidable mistakes.

In this book, I tell you all of them. Including:

The source of information to make you like a local, still you are not using it! (hint: I revealed it in this article)
How to adapt to the local behavior and etiquette in a few days.
How to build a time capsule and avoid the death of Harambe — I am kidding, that I am still trying to discover how to do.

Levi Borba is CEO of expatriateconsultancy.com, creator of the channel Small Business Hacks, and a best-selling author. You can check his books here, his other articles here, or his Linkedin here.

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Business

4 Polish Habits To Increase Productivity That You Can…

Polish professionals are among the most productive in the world, according to a survey from DeskTime. It surprised me that their productivity was far superior to Germans, a fact that would amaze even Poles themselves. But when you observe how the Poles carry their duties and some Polish habits, it is easy to understand.

What is Productivity?

First, it is important to make clear what I mean by productivity. Let’s adopt the simplest definition: it is the output divided by time (or resources used). Productivity is, in this sense, analogous to the rate of production. A way to measure it is by GDP produced by every worked hour.

Productivity depends on factors like training, incentives, and experience on the job. It can also be boosted (or curbed) by few cultural aspects.

I remember when I was working as a stockbroker in Brazil, and every Wednesday my colleagues went to eat Feijoada at a nearby restaurant during our lunch break. This is a traditional Brazilian dish that is very heavy to digest. It even makes me sleepy, so I avoided eating it during workdays. Some of the other guys in the operations room were at a slow pace during their post-feijoada hours*. A slow stockbroker is a inferior stockbroker.

What you eat — or when and how long you take to eat — is not the only factor to impact productivity. Trivial habits have an enormous influence on a person’s output. I realized that after adopting a few practices from the Poles. Things that made my productivity boost.

Reading at the Public Transport

I start this by saying that this habit in São Paulo or most western megacities can be complicatedunless you commute to work in unusual times, with little passenger influx. If the transport is cramped, your priority is to breathe, stay on your feet and avoid pickpocketers.

In Poland, it is not like that. Here it is common to have enough personal space to open a book in its trams, metros, or buses. I used to live around 50 minutes far from my work. I adopted the Polish habit of reading, so I took an ebook reader with me. This minor change, alone, helped me to read over 40 books in a single year, including some excellent books for entrepreneurs that were on my must-read during years.

I often see people complaining that they do not have time to read. When I ask what they do while they are sitting on the bus, they answer that they check Instagram or Facebook, gigantic time-wastes. Sure, Donna, every day you have a 1-hour commute to work and you tell me you have no time to read?

On a side note, I know it is tempting to reach for your phone and start scrolling on Facebook. Sometimes we even do it unconsciously. The solution I found is to put the phone in the backpack instead of my pocket.

Random things at Nature

Poland is one of the European countries with the largest proportion of its territory under environmental protection. They preserve 33% of their land in 2043 parks and natural reserves.

The abundance of natural areas serves well to the Polish habit of spending time in nature. Sometimes they do weird stuff, like a woman that almost died because she wanted to hike half-naked during winter. But on other occasions, they spend time in nature doing healthy activities. One of the funniest (and tastiest) polish idiosyncrasies is the habit of picking forest mushrooms.

Yes, you can buy them at the supermarket and they are not expensive. But this is not only about the mushrooms. It is about quality time spent with family and friends, breathing fresh air scented by pine trees, listening to birds, and watching squirrels and hedgehogs play around.

One still may argue: yes, to spend time in the forest is cool, but what is the relation of that with productivity?

The answer is that spending time in nature lowers your cortisol, improves cognitive function, and reduces blood pressure, increasing your overall productivity.

The Kanapki

Reading in the metro or hiking in forests are not exclusivities of Poland. But the habit of eating kanapki is something that I found nowhere else.

Most foreigners in Poland will discover it accidentally when they order a sandwich at a street stand and the attendant delivers something.. different. Because it is common that Poles understand kanapki and sandwiches as the same thing.

But they are not.

They are more similar to a giant version of the French canapé (the word kanapki derives from it) or the Spanish tapa. That is what every day, millions of Poles eat in their breakfasts or work breaks.

How the kanapki helps you to be more productive? They are easy to prepare and practical to eat, and they have fewer carbs than an ordinary sandwich, because they have 50% less bread. Carbs kill your productivity for a myriad of reasons, from messing with your insulin levels to flooding your brain with sleep hormones like serotonin and tryptophan.

No Lunch — at least at work.

During one of my first meetings with my wife — back then, my girlfriend, we had an extensive discussion about the polish word obiad. She translates it as “dinner”, while I call it “lunch”.

The truth is that obiad is neither.

It is later than what we call almoço in Portuguese or almuerzo in Spanish. In both Iberian cultures, this is the largest meal, happening around 13:00, and usually taking one hour or more. Some people even take a nap after it.

Obiad, on the other side, is around 16:00, and, depending on how quickly a person returns home after work, you have it with family.

Therefore, in Poland, lunch virtually does not exist — my wife still disagrees with me, she keeps insisting that obiad is lunch.

This is not a surprise only for Latin-Americans or Iberians, but even Brits are surprised that during lunchtime Poles stay working at their desks. The absence of a longer lunch break is common in other cultures, like in Germany, but rare, and even illegal, in most romance cultures.

How does that help? Fewer breaks lead to a better mental flow, using the primal resources of our mind, like hunger.

Conclusion

There are few habits that I learned in Poland that raised my productivity and helped me to get more from my time.

Read on public transport, using my commuting time to learn useful things for my entrepreneurial journey.
Spend more time in nature, to reduce my cortisol and stress levels.
Eat Kanapki, and cut carbs.
Cut long lunch hours to interrupt my mental flow when performing cognitively demanding tasks, also called deep work.

The above-average Polish productivity is not new. We are talking about a nation that, after the II World War destruction, rebuilt its capital in only five years. There are many other things one can learn with the Polish habits, although I still find it disgusting to eat pizza with garlic sauce.

If you are planning to live abroad, it is a good time to check the things to buy before moving out, but if you already live abroad, I recommend this simple but life-changing advice for expatriates.

PS: After learning these interesting Polish Habits, if you want to know some interesting findings of productivity and multitasking (they will surprise you), watch the video below.

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Business

Competitive Benchmarking – A Parable to Understand Why It…

If you enjoy this article about competitive benchmarking, take a look at this similar video about how to analyze competitors.

All Good to Great companies began the process of finding a path to greatness by confronting the brutal facts about the reality of their business. When you start with an honest and diligent effort to determine the truth of your situation, the right decisions often become self-evident. (Jim Collins)

Imagine you are driving a fast car on the Autobahn 9, the road connecting the German capital to Munich. Parallel to the highway, you slowly see a train approaching. The aerodynamic shape of the locomotive and continuous red stripe through the wagons reveals that this is the ICE Schnellfahrt, or simply ICE S, one of the fastest trains of Europe.

You get puzzled. The way the twenty thousand horsepower machine slowly approaches and overtakes your car raises the question: why it is so slow, in such a straight and empty rail? Is it broken? Are those passengers from Berlin to Munich not in a hurry?

After a moment of reflection, seeing the formidable train gently opens distance to you, you glance at the car velocimeter: 250km/h.

That is when you realize that the rail convoy was in reality dashing at three hundred kilometers per hour. Wrong benchmarking caused the illusion of the slow train.

How to know when your business is doing well, and when it is wrecking?

The first and most common answer would be “If we are having a profit, it is fine”. It is a simplistic and often naïve attitude of new companies. It is also a fallacy that often destroys investment portfolios. If your profit is below the cost of capital or because of investments delayed, better postpone the celebrations.

Likewise, losses and negative margins are not synonymous with poor management or miscarried business. It may be just seasonality, local economic conditions, or, as of 2020/21, a global virus outbreak.

The high-speed train in our previous example looked slow because of how the human mind perceives relative speed. To see how fast it was would be enough to have a fixed point of reference. A benchmark — the point of reference for business — will help to avoid illusions in your entrepreneurial journey.

Competitive Benchmarking will give you peace of mind

Any hotel operator in a coastal city would be euphoric with lucrative summers and depressed during unprofitable winters if they did not benchmark. Managers of ski-resorts, on the other side, would have the opposite behavior.

This is not smart nor healthy, and it can get worse.

Do you remember the fable The Ant and the Grasshopper? If an entrepreneur gets deluded that he is doing very well without realizing that the success is just cyclical, he may not save for the winter, just like the grasshopper.

My favorite philosophical school is stoicism, and one of its teachings is that just a fool gets upset for not succeeding in something out of his control*. Therefore, that your business needed to navigate during the storms of a pandemic, a natural catastrophe, or a social turmoil, is not your fault. You could not avoid those things.

What you can do is to take action, control costs, and keep revenue streams alive during hard times. The only way to assess if you are doing it properly is to benchmark exhaustively. Competitive benchmarking will show what to consider “normal”.

Not always you will be able to benchmark. Sometimes you are the sole player in the region or in the whole industry. If your product is completely innovative, it’s tricky to make comparisons with businesses that are similar but not the same. However, when you have an established pool of competitors, comparing indicators will draw the line in the sand.

Compare quality standards, costs, prices, and any indicator important to your core. But keep your soul.

You got how important is performance comparison when venturing in unknown seas. But compare what? Which indicators you should benchmark against the competition?

Most conventional markets have their pre-established sets of indicators. A simple internet search for performance indicators for + [business type] will tell you beforehand what you need to measure against. Hint: get ready to see a bunch of acronyms.

Example of performance indicators:

Consulting firms: RPC (Revenue per client), CRR (Client Retention Rate), Repeat business rate, etc.

Restaurants: RevPASH (Revenue per Available Seat Hour), Food and beverage sales per guest, etc.

Hotels: RevPAR (Revenue per Room), Occupancy Rates, ADR (Average Daily Rate), etc.

Mobile App Company: CAC (Customer Acquisition Costs), Average Revenue Per User, Conversion Rate.

When implementing benchmark tools — often an electronic spreadsheet does the job well — remember to be aware of your firm specificities. Makes little sense for a low-cost airline to compare their average price to a first-class charter since they make money in different ways — the low-cost carrier profit from selling things like extra luggage, while the first-class charter earns with all-included pricey tickets.

Remember that opportunities are not missed, but taken by someone else. Do you want to react quicker, discover tendencies, and grab prospects before everyone? Discover first how fast your car (or business) is against the train of the competition. Benchmark.

*On the subject of being upset by changes out of control, I recommend the classical manuscript Enchiridion, from the Greek philosopher Epictetus.

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Digital Nomads

Among 17 Countries, These Are the Cheapest and Most…

Budget Travelers Digital Nomad and Expats Book — To save money during your next time abroad, take a look at the tips I gave in this book.

(The entire ranking of the cheapest and most expensive cities to take an Uber is at the end of the article, just in case you want to jump directly to there)

Besides the splendid scenery and exotic food, there is another discussion subject among friends returning from holidays.

Prices.

We discuss price discrepancies and inflation because it affects our pockets, and also because it gives us a perspective of labor costs, living standards, and infrastructure development.

And, at least for some people, including me, it is also enjoyable.

I remember when I was a teenager how I spent time reading the charts of the Big Mac Index. It is an index compiled by the magazine The Economist comparing the prices of a Big Mac in different parts of the world. My interest in prices and charts, later on, resulted in my choice for an economics major at University.

The Big Mac Index became a hit because economists view the index as a decent real-world indicator of local purchasing power. This is because the pricing of a Big Mac considers local costs of raw materials, labor, taxes, and business premises.

I rarely listen to economists because many of them do not deserve any attention. But in this case, they almost got it right. Almost because the Big Mac Index does not take into consideration anomalies in demand. So if a country with low material, labor, and tax costs has an unusually high demand for hamburgers, the price still may be higher than expected.

Outside of these cases, however, it is a good measure.

In the same fashion as the Big Mac, the price comparison between Uber in similar conditions can illustrate how high are the labor and material costs in a certain country. Since drivers are freelancers, if the salaries are high and unemployment is low, Uber rides should cost more to attract drivers enough. These price fluctuations take into consideration offer and demand. Uber Dynamic Pricing model — something similar to what I did during my airline career — controls the price changes.

The Comparison Criteria for The Cheapest and Most Expensive Cities to Take an Uber

Before jumping into our Uber Rides comparison, first the criteria. I want to compare apples with apples, or, in the worst case, apples with pears, not with golden bracelets.

Every ride here will follow the criteria below:

All rides to be compared have a distance of 6 kilometers.
All rides are between the financial district and a residential district.
All rides compared consider average traffic. No congestion. This solves the problem of comparisons between the rush hour in city A and the low-traffic flux in city B.
All rides consider the cheapest form of Uber available.

Australia — Sydney

Departure: The Sydney Central Business District (CBD)

Arrival: 70 Simmons St, Newtown

Price: 18.73 Australian Dollars (US$ 14.61)

Belgium — Brussels

Departure: The Northern Quarter

Arrival: Rue Jean d’Ardenne 78, 1050

Price: 11.98 Euro (US$ 14.62)

Brazil — Sao Paulo

Departure: Av. Brg. Faria Lima, 1384

Arrival: Rua Tomás Carvalhal, 818–1018 — Paraíso

Price: 16.80 Brazilian Reais (US$ 3.19)

Canada — Vancouver

Departure: 674–624 Granville Street.

Arrival:1491 Kamloops Street.

Price: 14.33 Canadian Dollars (US$ 11.89)

Chile — Santiago

Departure: Rosario Nte 660–460, Las Condes

Arrival: Av. Luis Thayer Ojeda 1698–1502, Providencia

Price: 4119 Pesos Chilenos (US$ 5.77)

Colombia — Bogota

Departure: Cra. 10 #72–44, Comuna Chapinero

Arrival: Cl. 64D #69h1

Price: 9900 Pesos Colombianos (US$ 2.67)

France — Paris

Departure: 1–15 Rue des Longues Raies, 92000

Arrival:Rue du Souvenir, 95870 Bezons

Price: 12.25 Euros (US$ 14.95)

Germany — Frankfurt

Departure: Börsenpl., 60313 Frankfurt am Main

Arrival: Ulrichstraße 43, 60433 Frankfurt am Main

Price: 12.58 Euros (US$ 15.35)

India — Bangalore

Departure: 61, Avenue Rd, Ballapurpet, Chickpet, Bengaluru.

Arrival: 987, VK Gokak Rd, Gavipura, Kempegowda Nagar, Bengaluru.

Price: 140.54 Indian Rupees (US$ 1.97)

Italy — Milan

Departure: Borsa Italiana, P.za degli Affari, 6, 20123 Milano

Arrival: Via Ettore Ponti, 30, 20143 Milano

Price: 16.81 Euros (US$ 20.51)

Japan — Tokyo

Departure: Tokyo Stock Exchange, 2–1 Nihonbashikabutocho, Chuo City

Arrival: 4-chōme-22 Senzoku, Taito City, Tokyo

Price: 3702 JPY (US$ 34.06)

Mexico — Mexico City

Departure: Polanco, Polanco IV Secc, Miguel Hidalgo, 11550

Arrival: Cidet, Av. Clavería 119, Claveria, Azcapotzalco, 02080 Ciudad de México

Price: 63.05 Pesos Mexicanos (US$ 3.15)

Poland — Warsaw

Departure: Warsaw Spire, plac Europejski 1, 00–844 Warszawa

Arrival:Jana Maklakiewicza, 02–641 Warszawa

Price: 13.17 Zlotys (US$ 3.56)

Spain — Madrid

Departure: Torre Europa, Paseo de la Castellana, 95, 28046 Madrid

Arrival: Calle de Asura, 6–16, 28043 Madrid

Price: 8.68 Euros (US$ 10.59)

Switzerland — Zurich

Departure: Paradeplatz, 8001 Zürich

Arrival: Birchstrasse 28, 8057 Zürich

Price: 18 Swiss Francs (US$ 19.98)

Ukraine — Kyiv

Departure: National Bank of Ukraine, Instytutska St, 9, Kyiv

Arrival: Pravoberezhna St, 61, Kyiv

Price: 71.43 UAH (US$ 2.57)

The United States — New York

Departure: 16–2 Pine St, New York, NY 10005

Arrival: 353 Hoyt St, Brooklyn, NY 11231

Price: 30.28 Dollars (US$ 30.28)

Ranking of Uber Prices

From the cheapest to the most expensive, here is the ranking.

The cheapest Uber ride among all cities compared is in Bangalore, India. Using an exchange rate of 0.014 USD per Indian Rupee, the total price of the 6km route was US$1.97.

Below the ranking:

2nd — Kyiv, Ukraine. US$2.57

3rd — Bogota, Colombia. US$2.67

4th — Mexico City, Mexico. US$3.15

5th — Sao Paulo, Brazil. US$3.19

6th — Warsaw, Poland. US$3.56

7th — Santiago, Chile. US$5.77

8th — Madrid, Spain. US$10.59

9th — Vancouver, Canada. US$11.89

10th — Sidney, Australia. US$14.61

11th — Brussels, Belgium. US$14.62

12th — Paris, France. US$14.95

13th — Frankfurt, Germany. US$15.35

14th — Zurich, Switzerland. US$19.98

15th — Milan, Italy. US$20.51

16th — New York, The United States of America. US$30.28

17th — Tokyo, Japan. US$34.06

Conclusions about Cheapest and Most Expensive Cities to Take an Uber

The Uber prices in the analyzed cities reflect the discrepancies between the labor costs. A single uber ride in Tokyo would cost more than 17 rides with the same distance and characteristics in Bangalore, India.

This comes as no surprise when we realize that Japan has a per capita income almost 20 times bigger than India.

An apparent surprise is that Milan had the largest price among all European cities since Italy does have an average income lower than Switzerland or Germany. But we must remember that Italy is a fairly unequal country, and Lombardy (the region of Milan) has an average income far higher than Italy.

If you are curious about how you can save when ordering an Uber, and many other travel hacks, I recommend the book Budget Travelers, Digital Nomads & Expats: The Ultimate Guide: 50 Tips, Tricks, Hacks and Ways to Free Stuff & Cheaper Flights

Receive for FREE! Digital Book - 20 Essential Hacks for Saving Money While TravellingLearn the one single trick to pay almost 60% less in your airline tickets!

Expat Problems

5 Things Insanely Expensive In Poland - How They Affect Our…

This is the second article of a series about the cost of living in Poland. The first was focused on the costs of living in Warsaw.

After living on four different continents, I got this costume for praising things that are well priced in some countries. The coffee in Brazil, the wine in Chile, the gasoline in Qatar, or the mountain resorts in the Carpathian Mountains. All of them are gems that have prices far better than a foreigner would expect for their quality.

But there are dark sides in each of these countries, overpriced stuff, just like everywhere else. Electronic products in Brazil, ski passes in Chile, beer in Qatar, or… What is expensive in Poland?

Eastern Europe (or Central, as the Poles consider themselves) is not famous for being exactly expensive. That surprises many expatriates I saw on this long road of life abroad. Poland can be pricey. Especially when you behave like a little spoiled kid and prefer to not change some habits from your homeland.

Habits like…

Taking Showers Too Frequently

PS: by the time I write this article, 1 dollar is 3.74 zloty — the Polish currency.

The price of water in Poland is quite high compared to Brazil (our water prices are among the smallest in the world) but in line with the European countries. This is not the reason showers are madly expensive there.

The problem is that in some cities, like Warsaw or Łódź, the garbage collection tax is based on the amount of water used — I don’t know why, and I think nobody knows. This indexation can increase the monthly bills quickly.

Badly, awfully, dramatically quick.

The water price (considering also sewage, since most of the clean water we use later becomes sewage unless you throw it through the window as I did in the winter) in Warsaw is 9.85 zlotys per cubic meter. One cubic meter is 1000 liters.

Then comes the garbage tax. It is 12.73 zlotys per 1000 liters of water consumed.

We have a final price of 22.58 zlotys per 1000 liters of water.

Modern, efficient showers use on average 9 liters of water per minute. Therefore, a 10 minutes shower costs you (22.58/1000)*90 = 2.03 zlotys.

0.55 dollars. It may look small if you live in the USA, but have in mind that the average monthly salary in Poland is 3733 zlotys net. An average person who bathes daily would spend nearly 2% of his salary — not counting water heating.

This would be the same as an American spending 105 dollars monthly on shower bills.

To make things worse, this is the price of cold showers. If you want warm water — something enjoyable in the winters where the temperature often remains for months below zero — you need to sum the heating prices, and they are also not cheap.

Coke (and any sugary drink)

If you had been in Poland before 2021, you may think that I am exaggerating by including this item.

But in 2021, the Polish government (just like almost every government in the world) needed money to cover the bills of all the stimulus checks promised during the Covid-19 crisis.

So they created a new tax. A tax that could use the excuse of helping people’s health. A tax over sugary drinks.

This tax alone increased the price of some soft drinks by 40%.

A 2L Coke bottle costs now around 9 zlotys on the supermarket shelves. 2.5 dollars. This is 30% more than the price in Brazil, or 25% more than in the USA.

Lettuce

If the prices of water and soft drinks surprised you, the price tags of Lettuce should not.

At least 4 months per year — being optimistic — Poland is just too cold to plant it. Their delicate leaves suffer when the temperature goes below 15 degrees Celsius.

A friend of mine, when facing the outrageous prices of lettuce here, questioned: why they don’t just rise it indoors, using the hydroponic method?

It would be a good idea, if not because hydroponic crops need a lot of water, and they are expensive — see previous paragraphs. Plus, the room still would need to be warm during winter, so there are additional heating bills.

Importing lettuce is also not a simple job. It has a short expiration period.

All these problems and no straightforward solutions result in a price of — hold your breath — 5 zlotys. 1.35 dollars.

Per kilo? No. Per package of 140 grams. One kilo of lettuce would cost almost 10 dollars.

Fortunately, there are other vegetables that are more resistant to lower temperatures, so the Poles can keep their daily intake of fibers. Cabbage, for example.

Cigarettes

Another item that is costly because of the heavy taxation. A package of Marlboro in Poland costs around 18 zlotys. Almost 5 dollars. This is more than twice the price of the same product in Brazil, 40% more than the price in Miami, and even more expensive than in Doha, the capital of one of the richest countries in the world.

I am addressing the price of legal cigarettes here. Poland has quite an issue with smuggled tobacco.

Curiously, neighboring Ukraine has one of the cheapest cigarette prices in Europe — if not the cheapest. It is nearly 60% cheaper than in Poland.

This creates an enormous flow of contraband in the Polish frontier. They had arrested even diplomats smuggling cigarettes.

A Square Meter of Land in Warsaw

This is a common situation in post-communist nations: an enormous discrepancy of land prices between the capital and other cities. This is visible not only in Poland but also in Hungary, the Czech Republic, and nearly every other country that was behind the iron country.

I am not talking about comparisons between the major city and tiny villages. Even when comparing Warsaw with prosperous centers like Wroclaw, the differences are heavy.

Warsaw is nowadays more expensive than Brussels or Berlin, even though Germany has a per capita income almost 4 times larger than Poland. While food and leisure are the affordable part of the cost of living in Warsaw, an average land price per square meter of almost 5000 dollars imposes a heavy burden on the habitation costs, making the capital an exception in the otherwise affordable cost of living in Poland.

What about your perception of cost of living in Poland?

How do these costs compare to your city? I am curious to read it, so let me know in the comment section. Cheers!

If you are planning to move abroad, check this article with a list of 5 books to read before moving to another country. And if your idea is to be an entrepreneur overseas, there is a list of essential books I wish I read before opening my company far from home.

Although the cost of living in Poland is not always cheap, the book below has some awesome money-saving hacks.

Business

5 Books Every Entrepreneur Must Read This Year - Even Before…

If you are an entrepreneur or aspire to open your own company, I would bet that the last 12 months made you think twice. At least this was my case as an owner of two different businesses. One is in the hospitality industry, and the other is a consultancy, and both suffered during the Covid-19 crisis. Fortunately, we survived, thanks to some of these books every entrepreneur must read.

If you want to prepare your enterprise for the oncoming reconstruction — a word that is more and more used by government worldwide — there are a few things that you should know.

The first is that the new business climate is more efficient than it had ever been. The 2020 economic crisis accelerated the natural selection among inefficient companies. Survivors have leaner costs and better systems.

The second is that customer experience changed. People are, slowly, going back to socialize. They will have renewed expectations of how your firm should serve their needs.

The third is that scarcer resources demand better negotiation. That applies to government grants, contract renewals, or debts.

The books that I recommend below address these problems. While they may not be recent, neither are economical crises. The causes change — sometimes are the subprime loan, others the oil prices, and now a global pandemic. The challenges are similar. This reading list will help you be prepared to thrive in this, and the next, post-crisis conditions.

Exceptional Service, Exceptional Profit: The Secrets of Building a Five-Star Customer Service Organization

Author: Leonardo Inghilleri, Micah Solomon and introduction by Horst Schulze (former The Ritz-Carlton president)

Amazon Link: https://amzn.to/3b1FbiU

Why read it:

A must-read if your enterprise relies on customer service (meaning most businesses) or if you manage people who do. This book gives you the necessary knowledge for identifying a company in a congested market. It teaches valuable lessons about how to build a brand, improve customer loyalty, and obtain the most elevated of all forms of publicity: passionate word of mouth.

Especially helpful is the contrast between predictive service and reactive service. Clear examples are presented, and their effects.

The primary reason any entrepreneur should read this book is that you lose customers if you disappoint them, regardless of how amazing your product is. Additionally, if your product is easy to copy, providing exceptional customer service not only differentiates you in the market but also builds loyalty. Loyalty makes your customers less sensitive to price changes. Price changes that may be needed in the post-crisis, inflationary scenario.

How it helped me: It is the second book by Leonardo and Micah that I read. Again they delivered flawless lessons of service culture and delivery to customers. This is a book that anyone in the service industry should read. I shared with my staff the insights about predictive service, and it helped us to achieve better satisfaction ratings.

Hacking Growth: How Today’s Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success

Author: Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown

Amazon link: https://amzn.to/3uqZUo8

Why read it:

Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown are leaders of the “growth hacking” tendency; one of them being the creator of the term. This book is not about tactics and strategies. It is also not about one single hack that will drive crowds of customers. It is about tuning processes (like testing alternative solutions) to reduce risks and generate quick wins. It is all about iteration and incremental growth.

The authors lead the reader through the steps to build a growth engine, with the help of examples from actual businesses. Instead of isolated cases, they bind each case so you can understand the entire process from the start to the end.

Hacking Growth does not give you the formula to go viral or escalate your business. Especially because there is not a proven formula for that. But if you are looking to learn about process improvement and designing agile companies, this is an excellent book to start.

How it helped me: The grocery story examples. Instead of delivering their lessons using deep-pocketed startups from California, they create situations with a small brick-and-mortar and use it to exemplify their message. It makes it easy to understand even the most alien concepts.

The 1-Page Marketing Plan: Get New Customers, Make More Money, And Stand out From The Crowd

Author: Allan Dib

Amazon Link:https://amzn.to/33eq5T0

Why read it: Allan Dib dismisses the myth that print marketing is dead. He brings the concept that all forms of media may be useful, and should be mixed to find the perfect blend for your business. To find this blend, he suggests a sequence of tests and trial-and-error. The testing relies on measurement, and that is why this is one of the critical points from Dib: calculate your marketing ROI.

Once you find your ROI, you start to optimize it. This means cutting out everything that is not profitable because we cannot position a business to everyone in every niche. Have a narrow focus on your customer avatar (another idea from the book), and you will create a robust marketing model.

How it helped me: It helped me with my pricing decisions — something I explained in this article. My firm competitive prices compared to our regional competitors. I did not realize, however, that our standard of service was far better.

The problem is that cheap prices gave the wrong message about our market positioning. Potential guests thought we had an inferior quality just because of our prices.

Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It

Author: Chris Voss

Amazon link: https://amzn.to/3b3HW3u

Why read it:
Chris Voss served as one of the main FBI negotiators in many crisis, not only in the USA but also abroad. In the Philippines, for example, he negotiated with the members of Abu Sayyaf, an ISIS-affiliated terrorist organization. With all his career expertise, he translates in this book brilliant insights, useful in multiple sorts of negotiations. There are lessons to avoid the fight-or-flight reactions that often make both sides lose.

We negotiate dozens of times every day. Some of these negotiations change the course of our life: a salary raise, a new job; buying a house. Still, most of us have no serious training in negotiation. And that is why this book makes such a difference.

Chris Voss presents techniques like the Ackermann model, isopraxis (also known as mirroring), calibrated questions, and many other proven solutions he used during his career at the FBI.

How it helped me: It helped me to reduce the costs of my business during the COVID crisis — like the negotiation that I described in this article.

High Output Management

Author: Andrew S. Grove

Amazon link: https://amzn.to/3eiytr1

Why read it:
This is the oldest book on this list. It is even considered “old” by current standards.
Curiously this makes it a must-read. It is from a time when what was needed to be said (or written) was said. Andrew Grove does not save words or is afraid of crushing sensibilities. He put on the paper what he applied during his decades at the head of Intel, overcoming plenty of crises.

Andy Grove explains complex organizational concepts and processes into simple steps that anyone can comprehend and execute. The former Intel CEO was a decisive individual, and the book shows it. He lays out dilemmas, lists the pros and cons of decision making, and then makes a judgment, for better or worse. Over the 272 pages, there are frank stories of the difficulties of management, including the mistakes committed by the author. Brilliant lessons from a legendary CEO.

How it helped me: I learned I can’t control my customers, but I can control my enterprise inputs and processes. As a manager, I should do everything possible to reduce brief stops caused by minor issues. This led me to quick reactions and responses to emergencies.

Extra Mention (Maybe not exactly one of the books every entrepreneur must read)

Starting Your Own Business Far From Home: What (Not) to Do When Opening a Company in Another State, Country, or Galaxy

Why read it:

I put this book as an extra mention because I am not overconfident to the point of listing my own books among titans like Andy Grove or Leonardo Inghilleri. Still, I think it is a good reading for starting entrepreneurs, written by one himself.

Four years ago, I dropped a promising career just after a promotion, to follow the dream of opening my own business. It was difficult, especially because it was a hospitality firm and we faced one of the worst crises in history in this sector during 2020.

As an additional obstacle, I opened this company in a country totally different from my culture and with a language that I barely speak (at the beginning).

But both I and my business survived. The lessons I learned, the mistakes I made, and the solutions I found are all in this book.

PS: some links above are affiliated links to Amazon.

Do you have any other title to suggest to this list of books every entrepreneur must read? Let us know at the comment section!

Business

10 Business-Friendly Countries with Low Taxes and Little Bureaucracy

I left my home country almost a decade ago to start a career and become an entrepreneur. During this time I wandered across all continents (except Antarctica) with my ideas and projects. I never thought about checking the most business friendly countries somewhere.

Back then, I was only relying on my guts and anecdotal evidence, but now, with plenty of official information available in English, you do not need to take the same risks.

I prepared this list for entrepreneurs that are considering the hypothesis of venturing overseas. After analyzing near 200 countries, I considered three major factors to rank these 10 nations among the most promising for entrepreneurs in 2021.

Here are they

Countries with Low Corporate Tax are Business Friendly Countries

This is the most straightforward of all the factors considered. Low corporate taxes are beneficial for businesses — at least businesses that make a profit. This is because if you are burning money, you will pay no corporate tax in most parts of the world.

Here we understand corporate tax as the tax imposed on the net income of the company.

In some countries, it varies according to the industry sector, size, or government subsidies. To simplify, in this post I will use the most applied rate of corporate tax in each country, not considering government incentives.

Ease of Doing Business

The World Bank (almost) every year ranks all the world’s economies in terms of ease of doing business. As they explain on their website:

A high ease of doing business ranking means the regulatory environment is more conducive to the starting and operation of a local firm. The rankings are determined by sorting the aggregate scores on 10 topics, each consisting of several indicators, giving equal weight to each topic.

To calculate the easiness of doing business, they consider factors like:

Dealing with permits
Getting utilities like electricity
Registering property
Getting credit
Trading across borders
Enforcing contracts (my personal advice is that every entrepreneur overseas should pay special attention to this topic), among others.

Reports From Entrepreneurs in Global Communities about Business Friendly Countries

The third factor is the most subjective. If you want to start a business in another region or continent, the first step is to get involved in communities of fellow entrepreneurs. The internet makes this easy and this a first step to conquering business allies.

Do you want to open an SEO agency in Singapore? Join the LinkedIn or Facebook group for digital marketers in Singapore. Thinking about creating a startup in Ireland? There are plenty of groups you can join. Always look for entrepreneurs that experienced similar situations as yours.

With these factors considered, I made the list below. Here is a disclaimer: some countries should be there, but they are not. At least if we consider only tax burden or ease of doing business. Countries like the United Arab Emirates or the UK.

But I didn’t include them for a reason. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of articles on the internet talking about starting a business in the United Kingdom or Dubai. I didn’t want to be repetitive, so I decide to mention less mainstream destinations.

North Macedonia

Gorgeous natural scenarios dot this country, formerly known as F.Y.RO.M, and they are on the track to become an EU member. There is an abundant offer of credit lines for entrepreneurs, and the government is quick to solve obstacles with construction permits.

Some programs allow you to register a company in only 4 hours, and the government’s macroeconomic policies are remarkably stable.

The corporate tax rate of only 10% is lower than in almost all European countries.

Place in the Ranking of Business-Friendly Countries: 17th.

Corporate Tax Rate: 10% (21st lowest in the world)

Georgia

In the last decade, Georgia advanced from a poor and war-ridden post-communist state to one of the easiest places in the world to start a business. The simplified processes to obtain a visa, register property, and enforce contracts are attracting investors from all over Asia and Europe.

The country established a cluster of Free Industrial Zones, where there are no corporate, income, profit, or property taxes.

Place in the Ranking of Business-Friendly Countries: 7th

Corporate Tax Rate: 15% (36th lowest in the world)

Singapore

I was in Singapore years ago, and my impression was to be immersed in some futuristic scenario where humankind just… succeeded. It is everything so clean that it just looks like a maximum punctuation game in Simcity. One may argue, however, that the heavy workloads and high living costs present an ugly side of the Singaporean business environment.

Singapore is among the least bureaucratic places in the world, with most of the processes and paperwork digitalized and solved in a matter of hours.

Place in the Ranking of Business-Friendly Countries: 2nd

Corporate Tax Rate: 17% (48th lowest in the world)

Lithuania

I remember the 2015 new Year’s eve as if it was yesterday. I was in Vilnius, and people were thrilled because their country adopted the Euro, concluding years of European integration.

Since Lithuania left the now-defunct Soviet Union, this small Baltic nation had a streak of fortune. The Lithuanian journey upwards is somewhat ignored because of the bigger hype over their neighbor, Estonia. This is unfair, given the similar positions of both nations in most of the rankings.

Registering properties in Lithuania is easy, and the low real estate costs are attracting investors from other parts of Europe.

Place in the Ranking of Business-Friendly Countries: 11th

Corporate Tax Rate: 15% (36th lowest in the world)

Bahrain

During the years that I lived in the Middle East, we knew Bahrain as the small neighboring country (you can see the entire island in a glance from the window of an airplane) with good parties.

With pockets filled from revenues of the oil & gas exploration, the Bahraini government does not charge corporate tax. A common practice among gulf countries. Different from them, however, Bahrain is friendly to foreign investors.

The downside of this Gulf island is the often conflictual relations with its neighbors, in special Qatar, which results in closed borders and restricted connectivity.

Place in the Ranking of Business-Friendly Countries: 43rd

Corporate Tax Rate: 0% (lowest in the world)

Ireland

Ireland is one of the richest countries in Europe nowadays (at least in terms of GDP per capita). But differently than the other members of the rich boys club, the tax burden is not heavy there.

The corporate tax rate in Ireland is only half the rate of countries like Belgium, for example. If this is not enough to convince you how this island is friendly to entrepreneurs, consider all the entrepreneurial development programs that Ireland offers.

Place in the Ranking of Business-Friendly Countries: 24th

Corporate Tax Rate: 12.5% ( 33rd lowest in the world)

Montenegro

Like the previously mentioned North Macedonia, until a few decades ago Montenegro was part of Yugoslavia, a communist state. It is one of the countries that are close to joining the European Union. Things like the ample credit offer for entrepreneurs reflect this progress.

The corporate tax rate of 9% is the lowest in Europe (tied with Hungary) if you don’t consider tax-havens like Guernsey or Jersey Islands. The language barrier may be a thing, but the number of English speakers in the younger generations is increasing. When I visited Montenegro, I had no problem finding people that spoke at least the basics of English.

Place in the Ranking of Business-Friendly Countries: 50th

Corporate Tax Rate: 9% (19th lowest in the world)

Hungary

Hungary has the lowest corporate rate in the European Union. Besides this attractive title, it also is one of the best-connected trading points in the EU. The country still requires many of the old-style, post-communist paperwork to get construction permits or register for utilities — problems that I experienced also when moving to Poland.

Place in the Ranking of Business-Friendly Countries: 52nd

Corporate Tax Rate: 9% (19th lowest in the world)

Estonia

I wrote an entire article about the solutions Estonia created for publishers, digital nomads, and remote businesses. The Estonian governed digitalized most of their processes, so entrepreneurs will waste little time dealing with registrations, permits, and unproductive paperwork. You can incorporate a company in a matter of hours.

Place in the Ranking of Business-Friendly Countries: 18th

Corporate Tax Rate: 20% (61st lowest in the world)

Thailand

The first business that I opened was in the tourism industry. As a result, many of the entrepreneurs that I contacted were foreigners that started firms in Thailand.

While this beautiful Asian country has a natural advantage for the tourism industry, other sectors also benefit from its low costs, large English-speaking community, and high connectivity. So many airlines fly large planes to Bangkok that the two times I flew on the colossal A380, both were to the Thai capital.

A warning point: The Thai government has the fame of being harsh with foreigners that break the local laws or do not have all the needed permits. More than once I heard about the army seizing properties because of unpaid debts or broken regulations.

Place in the Ranking of Business-Friendly Countries: 21st

Corporate Tax Rate: 20% (61st lowest in the world)

Are any of the countries above in your entrepreneurial plans? What are other business-friendly countries? Tell us in the comment section.

If yes, be aware that some of them may have minimum investment requirements for foreigners starting a business. Also in Europe, almost always you will need to present to the authorities a business plan. You can learn more about how to write an impressive business plan and how to analyze the local competition in this article, and take a look at this list of books about moving abroad.

If you are planning to start a business in one of these business-friendly countries, first check this book.

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