Working Nomad

I recently wrote how I was planning on starting an offline business.  It is taking a little longer to get started than I would have liked, but I think that is typical in developing countries like Indonesia, where bureaucracy seems much more difficult to deal with.  By early next year we should be completely up and running.

The last couple of years I have been running everything from the internet and all communication with the companies and people I was dealing with was by email.  Recently, I have had some meetings where I had to actually travel and meet the person who wanted to work together.

The advantage is that you can create a real working relationship with the person and the companies involved.  The problem is that unless you take minutes of what everything was said in the meeting, people’s memories of what was said in the meeting sometimes changes over time and in my recent experience, for the worse.

It’s frustrating to say the least.  You also have to deal with people who have no knowledge of the internet, especially from a marketing perspective.  Many people will happily pay a large amount of money for advertisements in printed magazines, but don’t value things like getting good rankings in Google for keywords, or placing targeted ads on websites.

I have been having fun though trying to use Web 2.0 properties like YouTube and Facebook to promote the business.  I think having even the most basic knowledge of these sites, puts you in powerful position, especially when the competition has no knowledge about these sites, or how they can be used from a business perspective.

You can read more about my adventures on my Bali Blog.