When I landed in Bali, I thought I had it figured out.
I’d ditched my marketing job, booked a villa near Ubud, packed my laptop, and told everyone I was “finally working for myself.” The dream? Build a remote business, live cheap, surf at lunch.
The reality?
A slow-motion unraveling of every assumption I had about productivity, planning, and what it really takes to succeed on your own.
Here’s what I got wrong.
I treated it like a vacation with a side hustle
When every photo online screams laptop by the pool, it’s easy to confuse travel with progress.
My days started late, drifted aimlessly, and ended with a vague sense that I’d done “stuff,” but nothing that moved the needle. I built schedules around sunsets and café hopping.
Which sounds dreamy — until you realize clients don’t care what time zone you’re in. They want deliverables, not excuses. Eventually, I learned that you can’t outsource accountability to scenery.
The turning point?
Realizing that “freedom” without discipline just equals drift—and that fun doesn’t build businesses, habits do.
I chased too many ideas at once
I launched a blog, offered freelance marketing, joined three Slack groups, started a podcast, built an email funnel, and played with dropshipping.
All in the first six weeks. I called it “experimentation.”
It was actually avoidance — avoidance of committing, avoidance of failing publicly, and avoidance of doing the boring, focused work that would’ve actually made one thing succeed. It felt productive to juggle ideas, but looking back, it was just noise.
Focus doesn’t feel sexy, especially when nomad life encourages variety. But clarity always beats chaos. Always. The sooner you kill your darlings, the faster you gain traction.
I networked sideways instead of upward
Bali is full of dreamers. Which is great — until you realize everyone’s giving advice from the same rung of the ladder.
I went to coworking mixers, swapped ideas over smoothie bowls, and joined accountability groups with people who also hadn’t landed a client in months. It felt busy and validating. But if you want to level up, you need to spend time with people who intimidate you.
People who’ve built what you’re trying to build. I didn’t do that early enough, and it cost me months.
Find mentors, not just mirrors. Comfort-zone networking only gets you so far.
I forgot to treat it like a real business
Just because your “office” has a hammock doesn’t mean the work is casual. I winged my pricing. Delayed contracts. Didn’t track expenses. Ran client calls from noisy cafés.
I played small because I still saw my business as temporary — something to hold me over until the next “real” opportunity.
That mindset leaked into everything: branding, outreach, the way I talked about my work. And clients noticed. It wasn’t until I wrote a business plan and formalized my processes that people started taking me seriously.
Once I started acting like a real business owner, things shifted fast. I set clear boundaries. Got legal basics in order. Showed up like a pro — even if I was barefoot.
I didn’t separate “living cheap” from “thinking small”
Earning in USD and spending in rupiah makes you feel rich overnight. But that comfort can kill hunger. When your expenses are low, it’s easy to aim low.
I caught myself setting laughably small revenue goals just because I could survive on $1,000 a month.
I’ve mentioned this before, but surviving and growing are not the same. You don’t launch a business to tread water. You launch it to expand.
You still have to think big if you want to create something sustainable.
Don’t let Bali’s cheap coconuts convince you that mediocrity is success.
I ignored time zones until they punched me in the face
I thought I could run a Western client base from Southeast Asia without a hitch. And I did — until feedback loops stretched to days, meetings landed at midnight, and my energy was fried before lunch.
Being 12 hours ahead sounds fine until your workday is a graveyard shift.
My brain was always behind or ahead — never present. I didn’t think strategically about where my clients were or how I’d maintain momentum.
Now I plan work blocks around overlap hours and batch communication windows to stay sane. Nomadism gives you freedom, but business needs rhythm.
Don’t assume the clock will adapt to you — it won’t.
I worked from everywhere but never on the business
I was busy all the time.
Client projects. Calls. Social media posts.
But I rarely stepped back to ask the big questions: What’s working? What’s scalable? Where do I want this to go?
Bali can blur the line between motion and progress. I stayed in delivery mode too long and ignored strategy until burnout smacked me in the face.
Every business needs altitude, not just grind.
Now, I book quarterly “CEO days” — even if I’m the only employee. No calls. No tasks. Just reflection, review, and planning. You can’t grow a business you never zoom out to look at.
I compared myself to everyone around me
Comparison is a virus on the road. You’ll meet someone who made six figures in crypto last month, another who just sold a startup, and someone else who teaches breathwork on a cliff at sunrise.
If you don’t anchor to your goals, you’ll drift into envy or confusion.
I spent way too much time thinking I needed a personal brand, a course, a funnel — just because everyone around me was doing it. But comparison doesn’t just kill joy — it kills direction.
Clarity drowns out noise.
When I returned to what I actually wanted — freedom, creativity, enough income to feel stable — I stopped chasing other people’s paths. And the business finally started to grow.
So was it worth it?
100%.
Building a business in Bali forced me to grow in ways a cubicle never could. I made mistakes, burned out, pivoted, and rebooted. But I also built something that funds my lifestyle, scales with me, and taught me how to run lean and learn fast.
I earned real lessons in self-reliance, client relationships, and the mechanics of online income.
Would I do it differently? Hell yes. But that’s the point.
If you’re thinking about starting your own thing abroad, here’s my advice:
- Start focused.
- Choose one clear offer and one client type.
- Treat your time zone as a strategy, not an afterthought.
- Invest in relationships that pull you upward.
- Separate living cheap from thinking small.
- And for the love of coconut lattes, schedule time to work on the business, not just in it.
Bali didn’t just give me my first business. It gave me my first business wake-up call. If you’re lucky, it’ll give you both, too.
