The level of influence one has to somebody close is in direct and inverse proportion to the closeness of that relationship.
As you will know if you have been following the blog I am co-writing a book at the moment. Tentatively called “The Bootstrapping Book – How to start up a business from nothing” (Catchy title I know) it comprises ten chapters with various ideas for getting started in your own business without having to buy stock, rent a place to conduct your business or, in essence, put money down.
The World Bank has come out with a rather shocking picture of what it is like trying to operate a business in Spain. As explained in the video below, Spain ranks 62nd in the World for ease of conducting business, that is just behind World powerhouse economies like Mongolia and Tonga.
This blog was very quiet last week as I went on holiday with the family. Asturias was our destination in the north of Spain where we were looking for a bit of rain and a lot of food. Just a quick post to say we are back and to show you a few Asturian “delicacies”.
Aug 232012
“I’m sorry, we’ve just changed all the policies around that, you’ll have to call back in a few weeks” said the person at the Spanish embassy, promptly hanging up.
Great. I should be used to this by now, as it seems every time I get to grips with some aspect of the big move to Spain, someone changes the rules back in Spain!
I’m back. It’s been a while, and despite all good intentions to write a post every Sunday, the last month or so has been a mess of scheduling issues.
My daughter is getting older and flying the nest this week, or rather driving away from the nest and it is me doing the driving, on her way to University in the UK. So a road trip is in order just for her and me, all the way through Spain, over the Pyrenees into France, through Bordeaux an up the west side of France and Paris because it is a bit more interesting than the motorway straight from Barcelona to Paris and then over the channel or possibly under the channel by the Chunnel.
The Spanish are great negotiators… if you think that taking a stubborn position and entrenching yourself is a great negotiating tactic. They have a fixed position and stick to it and never ever under any circumstances negotiate… unless they have to. This is strange in a culture where bartering and haggling were the norm for centuries.
Apr 222012
For many years working as an estate agent in the Spanish property market a 16 hour day was considered for wimps. 18 hours a day 7 days a week and no holidays was the norm. We were so busy that we literally had no time to build a business and therefore when things slowed down of course the business didn’t work too well.
Looking for your Facebook Comments
After years of having to manage rather nonsensical spam comments on posts congratulating me on my excellent knowledge of the subject, asking me why it didn’t work on their browser and mostly not even referring to the article, today I have installed the Facebook Comments plugin you can find here.