Entrepreneur Steve Ashby Helping Others Start Up

New Zealander Steve Ashby tells Dubai-based newspaper The National that he launched his start-up Businessmentals in the UAE in 2017 with one clear ambition: to provide other would-be entrepreneurs with everything they needed to know to succeed in what can be a daunting and all too often doomed undertaking.

According to The National, Businessmentals, which is now migrated to an online operation, promises to teach its clients how to launch and keep going profitably by defining a start-up’s product, market and audience and how to understand and speak the language of business. The company also offers entrepreneurs the basics of accounting, social media and digital marketing, as well as managing outsourced providers and getting those stubborn clients to pay.

“It’s an ecommerce business; we design and develop products for small businesses,” says Ashby, 65, who in another guise was managing director of Vivoteq Middle East, which he started in 2009, a specialist indoor air quality business with a primary focus on hotels and large residences.

As Businessmentals’ founder and chief executive, he brings a deep well of experience to the role. With some 35 years plus of experience in corporate human resources, he says the company he self-financed is built on the lessons he learned working for global organisations such as Compass Group in the UK, where he was HR director for the Remote Services Division until 2008. “I’ve taken that ‘big thinking’ about structured approaches and processes and now we’re bringing it down to the sort of things that small businesses need to do,” he says.

Original article by Christian Nelson, The National, July 28, 2019.

Photo by Ruel Pableo.