MY TRIP TO INDIA
By 21 I was ready for more excitement and decided to turn my desire for new experiences into a business adventure by going to India to establish more streamlined development operations with the top companies I had been outsourcing with.
I flew to India and was determined to crack my first million before 21. I set up office in Noida, India in a giant warehouse we started renovating.
It was a breakneck pace of 16 hours days and exhaustion every week .. with my good friend Kyler Glauser who came with me from Utah to watch the adventure unfold.
But it was very fulfilling as I got more done in a few months than most people do in years. I recall one time where we put an ad in the India times.. Looking for ‘freshers’ .. students fresh out of college to come be part of our new “SEO” division.. And learn how to do search engine marketing. My thinking was that the field was so new and information changing so rapidly in about 3 months time we could have experts helping us at a very low cost.. Freshers at the time were earning just $100 – 200 a month! How could you go wrong?
The half page ad in the India Times generated a line that went up 3 stories and around the block. I remember sitting there with Sandeep (my new Indian partner) and his team interviewing people for what seemed like a never ending day .. and hiring 40 people to start work the following week at our new office.
We had found and renovated a 4,000 sq ft office that used to be a warehouse.. So we still had plenty of room.. we were going to go big time, or so I thought.
MY SCOOTER STORY IN DELHI
I purchased a scooter and drove it around in Delhi.
The streets were insane with chaotic flows of traffic.
In one particular instance I nearly crashed.. An ox cart was making its way across the lane I was in and there was cars to my right and fruit stands to my left. The ox cart cleared my path just as I was about to hit it.. Ripping off half of my left handle-bar, but somehow I managed to maintain control of the scooter and breath a sight of relief.
MY STORY IN GOA
I was enjoying my freedom in Goa .. traveling around by scooter and going through what felt like ghost towns until finally ending up at some black lit cave on the ocean around a bunch of tripping people who felt like they had been stuck there for a while.
On one occasion in Goa I picked up on a dude that looked like a girl and it only became clear when I got back to the room it was a dude.. I shockingly returned the he-she to where I had picked her up and thought that a less understanding patron might have been less forgiving than I was for being deceived.
I loved walking the beach in Goa feeling like I was in the middle of some far away place, all by myself. While some might fear this, I felt elated. An experience of total freedom with the world as a playground.
SETTING UP OFFICE IN DELHI
I located a 4,000 square foot warehouse in Noida, India and spent what little capital I had getting it ready for the huge amount of business I knew would be coming. Unfortunately it never did and most of what I invested into the warehouse was a sunk cost , never to be recovered.
I sped up most of the office implementation by offering bribes and paying people off to move things along faster.. I was always about doing things FASTER.
PARTNERING WITH MY ELANCE CONTRACTORS
At the time before Odesk or Upwork there was Elance. And I found all my contractors on there, so when I went to India, I picked my two best contractors Saurabh and Shubie and convinced them to join me and merge offices.
HIRING FRESHERS
When I heard that college graduates in India earn just a couple hundred dollars a month I realized that with a well trained team on the latest advances in tech at that time, around SEO, it would be hard not to be successful with them.
I put a half page ad in the Indian times and we had a line going around the block, as if they were attending a rock concert.
ROCKET VS BICYCLE
At one point my Indian partner Saurabh and I were having a discussion with my friend Kyler present, and we were talking about the difference between a rocket ship and a bicycle. Saurabh was very slow but efficient, I wanted to be very fast and it consumed a lot of energy but it went much further. While I admired the bicycle approach, I wanted to be a rocket ship and thats probably why we burned through all our resources in just a few months.
MY MISPERCEPTION ABOUT INDIA
Before going to India I had no idea what I was in for.. I thought everyone lived on dirt roads in extreme poverty and I expected people to be grateful to even have AC. Perhaps some were, but I realized my perceptions were completely off.
BUYING NICE CLOTHES IN INDIA
I decided to dress up a little more while in India and so I went to a few nice clothing stores and splurged on pants and shirts.. Very Indian style. It felt like it was too hot to even wear them during the time I was there. Who wears pants in 200 degree weather?
TRADING A BED FOR SOME CASH
The heat in Delhi during the summer made it almost unbearable to sleep. Add to that we got a little dog that always had ticks on her and you can imagine the scenario. Heat, ticks, straw mattresses .. we were really roughing it.
Something happened to my bed and I had been sleeping on the floor , vulnerable to the wall of ticks that would surround me at night. I offered Kyler $20 or $40 for his bed that still had a bed frame and he agreed, as his money supply was dwindling and he needed funds to last the entire 3 months we were there.
THE INDIAN RAID
One day early in the morning while I was at the park doing some exercises, a truck load of Indian security forces drove in front of our house and about 6 Indian troops or police (I couldn’t tell) ran into the house. I thought for sure Kyler was going to be taken to an Indian jail or worse.
After the same forces jumped back into the truck and drove off, I went inside expecting the worse. Kyler was just sleeping as though nothing had happened and everything in the house seemed fine. To this day I still don’t know what that was about.
SURVIVING ON RADISSON BUFFETS
When my friend Kyler and I first got to India we were very excited about all the new things present and we even had a cook named Kahn! Khan was a muslim chef who knew how to do one thing very well, make the spiciest damn food you’ve ever eaten in your life.
After about a week of constant spices our stomachs were begging for a break. Going to the bathroom had become a difficult task.. Hurting and squirting on the way out.
Khan promised to tone down the spice levels, his toning down was unnoticeable. We ate out at Dominos a few times until we got really sick from it. Other street options were out. Pretty soon even though we were on limited budgets we found ourselves eating at the Radisson buffet all the time, it was the only place that felt like a ‘home’ we could trust in. It was like the modern world thrust into the setting of a very developing India. Thankful to have the Radisson buffets or we may not have survived.
By this time I thought that I was set financially. I had a team in place in St. George before I had left to India, and I had cracked a few big deals that gave me about $50 k in my bank account. I had no concept of money so when I left for India I would carry a brief case around with lots of cash in it and use it for food, for massage, for fun.. And thought it would never end.
It’s amazing how you use money when you have on concept of how much is enough. After setting up the office and sustaining the operations team in the US, and getting too lazy to do sales myself.. Up until that point I never saw money go out the door so fast. It never occured to me I could go back to ground zero so quickly.
All the new overhead that I have established without creating cash flow stream to support it meant all my savings from the business would evaporate in just 6 months. I ended up having to do a complete 180 on the office in India and tell my partners that I could no longer support it financially.
This turned out to be a whole fiasco as many clients were complaining their sites weren’t being built fast enough and my Indian partner Saurabh promised to complete them, but when the office could no longer be sustained he said he had to quit and go look for other work and I was left holding the bag on a lot of refunds that drained what little I had left.. And I even got one lawsuit filed against me, so I decided to take everything down and stop the web design business while I started focusing on creating a call center business.
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THE PHILIPPINES
Thankfully when I had made my trip to India, I also decided to take a little side trip to the Philippines..and visit my friend Beau Rudd. He and I had grown up together in high school and he was thick in the call center business.. I thought it would be interesting to see him, explore a new country and see what other opportunities might be out there. I was basically looking for excuses to travel and also support it with my knack for business.
I also realized during my time in India there was no way I could live there long term. 3 months was my maximum and I was ready to get out of there.
Somewhere along the way I had read a book that said I should look for 3 things in a business: Residual, Scalable, Good Margins
So while I was visiting India and the Philippines and got exposed to call centers, I realized that they had all 3 things. I also knew that based on my experience web development was not really any of those things. I’d spend all this time and energy to win a client, complete their web site and then the relationship would be complete and I’d have to find a new client.
At least with call centers you could work with the client for potentially years and they might even grow with you.. And I was right, my oldest client has been with me from the beginning for more than 15 years! That would never happen in website development world I was living in.
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SHARING A STUDIO CONDO
When I first moved to Manila at first I shared a studio condo with a friend and business partner, we lived on less than $10 a day for food and another $10 a day for rent. Thankfully where I had chosen to establish a business was also very inexpensive to live at the time.
I thought it would only be a year before I was able to establish the business and move. It turned out it would take four more years before I could even think about leaving and letting the team run things.
LIVING WITH ROB & CHRIS
During this time I had a blast.. I moved in with friend and investor Rob Rawson who I had discovered through his profit puppy newsletter. And his friend Chris Jankulovsky and soon to become my own Soul brother of a friend, moved in with us. 3 bachelor men in the Philippines for 6 months, one of the best times of my life.
Completely blown away by the fantasyland I was living in as a young kid growing up feeling like Tom Cruise in a Philippines culture that had not yet fully experienced having foreigners coming into it.. But for some reason were very drawn to the young American men such as myself living in that environment.
SPIRITUAL FOCUS
For the first few months of being in Manila, in spite of my pleasure seeking ways, I was also very spiritually focused. Practicing deep relaxation, lucid dreaming / astral projection. I created some sign boards with things like “it’s all Maya” or illusion on them, as a way to remember that it’s all an illusion. Enjoy it.
ALMOST CALLING IT QUITS IN THE BUSINESS
Yes it was wonderful to experience a completely new way of life.. And to be in business for myself but it was extremely difficult at the same time. I was plagued with technical challenges I had no idea how to solve .. never having been in the call center business, it was way harder than I imagined! On more than one occasion I wanted to quit. I can distinctly remember the moment I was ready to throw in the towel and tell my clients that’s it, life is too short.. I don’t have any idea what I’m doing..
I was at a coffee shop enjoying myself after a very long and hard week and I get a text message of yet another emergency.. I was at the end of my rope.. That’s it I’m done.. I saw myself going in there and telling everyone that I was through with the business.. But instead I finished my meal and went up there to solve just one more problem. That was the fine line between success and quitting for me that would surface several more times over my business career.