Today was a great day for new business ventures.First off, Warren came over and we went up to tour farm land where we will be building a chicken farm this coming May. It's a beautiful coconut-tree-lined hectare of land overlooking a river valley on one side and adjoining the back road out of Jasaan on the other. It's actually a bit of a crime to build some nasty old barns on such a nice piece of land... but there you are. The two of us also had a visit to the neighboring chicken farmer's set up and asked him about 100 questions, and got 100 helpful bits of information. After that, it was back to the house where Warren and I discussed what we had learned, and fine-tuned the decision making process.
Also, Warren is going to toss me a bone in the make-work-now department, as he needs a bunch of data entry work done for his job in Australia. He'll be paying me a ridiculously generous amount to do it as well... but it won't be too many hours of work per week to start. Even so, my current-soon-to-be-former job is paying so poorly lately that 10 hours of Warren's data entry work will be equal to a full week of erstwhile efforts.
Finally, as noted earlier, with my shiny new generator, I've got the only lighted restaurant in town during these upcoming four months of scheduled rotating blackouts, and the first after-dark blackout was tonight. Everything went well... although since we weren't advertising a "blackout special" or anything, there weren't any big crowds showing up. But, as I have a monopoly on light, I'm expecting good things to happen there... especially this coming Friday and Sunday. I'm going to try to put together some flyers tomorrow.
Finally, I'm still pondering the idea of opening up a medical transcription school. I've got another friend who has offered to invest a million in that. The unfortunate thing is that right now I don't have the time to do it... but if I did, my school would be the only medical transcription school in The Philippines owned and operated by a former American medical transcriptionist, and that will be a hell of a marketing point.
What I would actually hope to do is hire other expatriates in the area who could use a bit of spare cash to teach the various courses. I also figure that the school would be a great centerpiece for Mayor Jarula's initiative that he announced at last summer's International Night to engage and use more expatriate talent and professional experience in both business efforts and vocational training. But: Like I said, I've got the chicken farm to focus on first.
Exciting times.
Who would be doing the actual work on the chicken farm?
ReplyDeleteWho will be doing the work? Some guys who work long hours and get paid too little... just like every other chicken farm on planet Earth.
ReplyDeleteYou now have a monopoly on electric light at night. Don't want to be all negative but how long do you think it'll be until the other restaurants catch on and purchase a generator too?
ReplyDeleteI met my wife in the Philippines in 1986. In the next 24 years I have seen en known many foreigners who tried a bussinees in the PI. Very few succeeded. Many lost all their money.
ReplyDeleteNevertheless I wish you all the luck.
Quite true. I wondered if it would be some of your wife's family or if you would just hire folks.
ReplyDeleteI think most folks would agree that having a job is much better than not having a job.
Anon, I don't know how many other businesses can afford to buy a generator. All in all, I've put almost 20,000 pisos into my generator and generating system. Most businesses can't afford that kind of expense... although as time goes on, they may choose to.
ReplyDeleteLuc, I wish I could say, "No, this time will be different," with all the confidence I'm now feeling and believe myself 100%... but the fact is, yes: What you say is true.
But I also know many foreigners who have succeeded as well, and the fact is, Warren and I have studied long and hard and literally sat for hours trying to figure everything that could go wrong, and developed ways to avoid or solve those problems that we hope will work. That's really the best we can do: Hope that our plan works. The risk is higher here in The Philippines than elsewhere, but the reward is substantially higher as well.
Tom, I'm not sure I could convince people that it is better to work from 6 a.m. until 8 p.m. 7 days per week for $100 per month than to not work at all. But that is what I have my two farm managers for.