Perhaps, but not everyone has the temperament to supervise others. But maybe if they make enough money here they might try something new later. You are a motivating element.
Do you sell locally or export? Do you sell raw product or make finished goods? By finished goods I mean things like jams, canning, etc. If you don't export or sell finished goods, did you look at those ideas and decide not to, or just have not bothered with it yet?
[QUOTE="poorboy, post: 4422281, In a lot of primitive societies you don't use someone elses trail without paying them. You get killed if you get caught. They don't care if you cut a trail right next to theirs or across theirs, but don't you dare use that trail that they busted ass to cut. Off course cutting trails is hard work, it uses a lot of food and so on. So some enterprising travelers will take a short sprint down a trail, then jump off and wait for a while look and listening, then get back on and sprint. Usually they only make it less than a km before they get caught. If they are children or white they might get excused one time, maybe branded.[/QUOTE] I never heard of that, it's tough in the 3rd world. And I thought it was unfair to get a ticket for driving in the HOV / Hybrid lane. But at least you don't get branded.
Its good for character development. I thought I had my character nailed down until the first time I became a manager. Then after a while I thought I had it until I worked a different job with different circumstances and had to step up some more. I'm not sure I ever read the book "managing people is like herding cats" but its an apt title. Its a balancing act to encourage people, make them fear you (you have to, its not my preference but almost all employees have to understand you will cut them loose if they get lazy and put their dead body in a dumpster if they really double cross you) without making them miserable, and without making them hate you.
Thanks for the reply! I definitely noticed that while I lived in Thailand; they often have a tribal mentality and say "farang" continuously. Granted farang just means westerner, but you can tell that there's the Thais, then there's non-Thais. I know that as a teacher in a public school, Thai students were more disrespectful to me than they would have been to a Thai teacher (private language schools though it was different). But, with that said, I still had good times while in Thailand. I hear Japan is the same way about either being Japanese or a Gaijin. During my time in Nam (Saigon) I noticed that the locals were curious about and overall liked Americans, but you always had to be careful about being overcharged. That's cool to hear about your friend in Africa; That would be an interesting place to do business. Ditto with the middle east, although I figure I'd have to stay out of Saudi Arabia and Iran/Iraq due to safety concerns...? Believe me, I can relate to what you said about the USA; I got laid off not to long ago from my corporate job and it's been jumping through a lot of hoops just to get interviews (which sucks). I think too I can invest in frontier markets, but up to this point I've only bought and held VNM. The odd thing is, I remember going to night markets in Thailand and seeing wallets for around $2; It kinda piqued my interest as to whether they might sell back in the States. How about getting into Supply Chain Management/Logistics? Might that open up opportunities to markets abroad? Thanks again!
Ideally I'd like to work for a multi-national, so there's less risk of being screwed over by a local (unless it's a young and pretty lady, heheheh ;-) ). I know there are horror stories of people in say SE Asia who get a Thai, Vietnamese, Khmer, what have you biz partner and they are forced to put the business in the local's name, then they get back-stabbed and lose everything (same also goes with marrying a local in many foreign countries). But, I realize there are also people who succeed, so I don't want to be all doom and gloom. My wife is a Thai national and her father is a soldier (a Colonel), and she is wanting to start her own business (like her mom) in 10+ years in Thailand and she wants us to leave the States. She said I could do Imp/Exp work in Thailand, but again, I'd like to be with a large company, or have the protection that I won't get screwed over by any jealous locals...
If her dad is a colonel you probably don't have to worry about getting screwed over. What part of the states are you in now?
Correct about Japanese and gaijin. But there is, in the viewpoint of the Japanese, a gradation in the gaijin category. If you're Caucasian (e.g. USA/Canada/Europe) you are ranked higher than when you are from SE Asia. Koreans, Chinese, Africans and Iranians rank very low. Not really as this is all done by software. You would be sitting in an office behind a computer using SAP the entire day.
We sell on the local market but we have a pretty expensive setup where we're able to produce 365 days a year whereas most farms there produce 3-4 months a year, so we make the real money when it's low seasons for a given fruit / vegetable and we're able to sell it. To reduce the risk of theft, we sell most of it at a discount on the farm, so there's a bunch of women who come every day and buy from us at a 10% discount. The cost to produce one of our vegetable / fruit (I'd rather not be too specific) is 23 and we sell it on average throughout the year for 500. The 23 includes the cost of labor, insecticides, etc. but excludes depreciation etc. As a comparison, if you were to sell to export or to local factories, you would sell for 150, so the margins would be much lower and you would be paid at D+90 instead of cash. Here we're paid cash, the money goes to the bank, at the end of the week it leaves the country and goes to an account in Dubai, there's very little risk in case the country goes at war or government change or whatever. We're thinking of building a factory to export, but the return on factories is smaller (you invest 1m$, you make 900k a year) and we have other deals like this where we can get the same yields.