One of our goals as partners in life and business is to build a business that we can run from anywhere in the world. After a number of years in the “building phase” we decided it was time to take the plunge and start doing it even though everything wouldn’t be perfect. Our first try was a year ago in SE Asia. We spent five weeks there. Then in September/October we went to Peru for three weeks.
Transcript:
Working from Peru
Hey! We’re in Lima, Peru, where we are traveling and working for three weeks. Yeah. And this is our second attempt at taking such an adventure.
And I would say far more successful than the last one. So far so good. So one of the biggest problems that I had was that I like to work at night or in the afternoon. That’s when I really get fired up and Shreya, she likes to get her stuff done early, so she’s knocking things out in the morning and being super productive.
So when we first went to Asia on our first go at this, she was, uh, finishing up all her work for the day, and I really hadn’t even gotten started yet. So that was one of the biggest issues we had. And now second time around trying things here in Peru in Lima, is, I have been working in the mornings, so we’ve been focusing on getting our work done in the mornings and then once it’s lunchtime, we get to go out and do some exploring and have some food.
The other thing that has helped me is to have a more normal workstation that I’m used to. So see, I got my a track pad. Keyboard and a little laptop stand to raise it up because I hate trying to work slumped over or the computer and a coffee shop just doesn’t work for me. So I do this little setup and it makes me feel great.
We are on the North coast of Peru and a town called Puerto Malabrigo? Yeah! Malabriga. Malabrigo. Okay. So now we have comparison between our Peru experience and our Asia experience and what it was like working in both of these places. I have to say that we learned quite a bit from our Asia experience. How so Shreya? Well. There. You know, I would wake up in the morning and I’m all gung ho.
I’m like working on stuff cause I’m like, I want to go explore food places for lunch and then go do all these other, go to this market and do this other thing. And so I had this plan in my head, did not communicate that to Colin and then we would fight because he wanted to have like a leisurely morning and then start working like basically right at lunch time.
[muffled sounds of the road] So another one of the struggles that we had, um, when working in Asia versus here was that having like a dedicated place to work for me, I grew up in like a really loud household and so I’m used to having like lots of background noise and being like slightly uncomfortable when I work. And so I can go to a coffee shop and just like zone in and get stuff done. Zone out and zone in? Zone out and zone in! And I can zone out cause I’m zoned in on all the neat stuff happening around.Yeah and so that was a big struggle. Um. In Asia, although I will say in Asia, the coffee shops were pretty amazing for working. Like the wifi was great. They had a neat little setup, tasty pastries. Egg-yolk coffee. Oh yeah. So it was like Bulletproof coffee on steroids cause it’s got that egg yolk. But here in Peru, I think, well, when I was looking at hotels, what I tried to do was to find, aside from this one specific one, hotel rooms that had like a little workspace at a desk.
Yeah. Except for one was a desk where the TV was right in front of you. Yeah. So you couldn’t like set your computer up cause there was a TV. Yeah, it was weird. It was weird. But that was good. Right? Because what I’ve noticed about the coffee shops here in Peru is that they’re not really set up in a good way to like work.
So we are at the end of our three week trip here working in Peru. Yeah. And we were watching survivor the other day, and this Indian woman on there, I was ashamed of her. Wait, can I talk about this? Because she got like this tiny cut on her hand and she had this really dramatic response to it, and then I just had a similar response where I have a tiny cut on my foot and I was like, I’m bleeding profusely.
Do you see it Colin? She’s doing fine though. So we were just trying to actually have lunch with a couple of other attorneys or another attorney from Los Angeles, and we were trying to recount, we were trying to recount our trip to them. Yeah. And we’re remembering on the first day when we got here in a daze after a red eye flight, we went and we tried to get cell phones well we didn’t try. We did. Yeah, we did it. Um, so it was great. We had cell phones were like 10 bucks for a month of service and data unlimited What’s Apping. Yeah. So that was a bonus. That was a good thing here. A negative was the, uh, coffee shop situation. It seems people just go to drink coffee and hang out.
Yeah. They don’t go to set up a workstation. Um, but, you know, we were, uh. Had a meeting today and just to…went to one of those shops and we’re like, no, this is all about coffee. Yeah. So we ducked into a Starbucks right now. I was like slightly ashamed that we went to a Starbucks in a different country, but they had great internet.
Yeah, we did our wifi calls. Yeah. No problems. No problems. Nobody bothered us. A nice little place to sit. It’s quite fantastic. Go starbucks! Seattle company! Yes. What else? What else about working here? Cell phone service was a little sketchy in some parts at times. It’s a challenge. Great horns though here. If you heard that. What else did we do to run a business?
Um, it was easier because the time difference was so close to Seattle, like where it’s basically as though we would, we are in Texas or Chicago or something, and we only goofed it once by…we got a late evening appointment today. Yeah.
Then we’ve got a hustle over to dinner. Yeah. But that’s okay. Yeah. It’s all about that hustle grind. That digital nomad, hustle grind.
What else? Hmm. I think that’s it. Do you look at yourself in the thing or do you look at the lens? I think I look at myself. I can’t stop looking at myself. Yeah, it’s not, it doesn’t take a lot to keep the old business going while we’re away, and I’ve noticed that a lot of people are. At first when they call a receptionist, and the receptionist is like, Oh, they’re not available until, I don’t know, three days from now, because well the receptionist doesn’t give them a reason, people might be a little bit like, “Meh, why is that? I don’t like that.” But then when I email them and I’m like, Hey, sorry, we’re going to be trekking through the Andes. They’re like, Oh, that’s so cool. I don’t mind waiting. Yeah, I know. I’ve started every email with “Greeting from Peru.” It’s like, yeah. Yeah. That’s good. Um, you know, actually something we did, we were talking about work schedules and I think when we went to Asia one, it was five weeks and it was a really long time.
This time we did three weeks and we scheduled things to kind of be away and unavailable for. You know, a week or a few days. And then we were available for a few days and then unavailable for a few days. So there’s never really a super long stretch of time when we were just totally off the grid.
And that seemed to work out pretty darn well. It did. I liked it. Cool. And so did our clients so far. Yeah, I hope so. And so we’re heading back. Tomorrow. Yeah. And then we got a couple months, three months, no leaving. Yeah. And then we’re on to the next adventure. Yeah. Tokyo!
