Expat Empire Podcast 4 | Building Businesses to Solve Customer Problems in Indonesia with Brant Connors

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Episode Description

Today we will be hearing from Brant Connors. He was born in the United States, got his first taste of living in Indonesia in university, and then decided to build a career full of entrepreneurial endeavors in Bali over the last 18 years. In this episode, you will learn:

• Tips for learning and improving your Indonesian language skills
• Everything you need to know to get your Indonesia work visa
• How to develop an entrepreneurial mindset abroad by helping people to solve their problems
• New business opportunities for expats interested in the Indonesian market
• How to avoid common pitfalls when setting up a company in Indonesia

You can reach out to Brant with your questions at brant@baliseafarers.org.

Music on this episode was produced by Eli Hermit, please check him out at elihermit.bandcamp.com/.

Learn more about Expat Empire at expatempire.com!

Episode Transcript

Intro

David McNeill: Welcome to the Expat Empire Podcast, the podcast where you can hear from expats around the world and learn how you can join them.

Hi everyone, thanks for joining us today for the 4th episode of the Expat Empire Podcast. Today we will be hearing from Brant Connors. He was born in the United States, got his first taste of living in Indonesia in university, and then decided to build a career in Bali over the last 18 years. We discuss many topics including how to develop an entrepreneurial mindset abroad by helping people to solve their problems, how to acquire a work visa, and how to avoid common pitfalls when setting up a company in Indonesia.

Without further ado, let’s start the conversation.

Conversation

David McNeill: Hi Brant, welcome to the show! Tell me a little bit about your background — where you’re originally from, where around the world you’ve worked so far, and where you currently live and work.

Brant Connors: Sure. So I’m American. I grew up on a small town, kind of outside of Seattle but in the West Coast, Washington State. I’m currently living and working in Bali, Indonesia and I’ve been here for about 18 years, I guess. Really, I’ve been here since I graduated from the University of Washington, so at the end of my university I came out here and I’ve kind of been out here ever since.

For the past 15 years or so, I’ve been working on the island of Bali here in the fields of job training and social welfare projects, mainly for workers in the maritime industry. Most recently I opened a medical centre specifically serving Indonesia seafarers and that’s pretty much taken up the bulk of my time over the past four or five years.

David McNeill: What exactly got your interest in working abroad originally? How did you first think about that as a potential opportunity, especially Indonesia in particular?

Brant Connors: So like, my background from like, you know, when I was a young kid is my mom taught us to travel, me and my brother. So she always took us somewhere, we were always go on trips, just kind of, you know, getting that traveller bug in us. So I was travelling from a young age, when I was in high school I lived in Japan for a year, in Hamamatsu, Japan, I was an exchange student, went to high school there.

I went to the University of Washington where I actually started in business but ended up finishing in English and anthropology and by the end of my… Well, almost the end of my university career, I hadn’t done, you know, a study abroad program from there, from my university days, so I thought, Man, I really want to go abroad before I’m done, before I, you know, get into the working world and all that.

So I just stumbled into the study abroad office there at University of Washington, just started looking through the catalogues of programs that had to do with anthropology. I saw one that was kind of interesting in Thailand, there was one somewhere, I think in East Africa and then one in Indonesia and I just said, yeah! Let’s do this one. I didn’t really know much about Indonesia, so I signed up and came to Indonesia that was 1999.

So I did like five and a half, almost six months in a small town called… It’s not so small but a smaller town called Malang in East Java. It’s the Island next to Bali. And, you know, went to university there, did this anthropology program, you know. It was really good, it was so interesting, I travelled around a bit. Went back at the end of that year, graduated from the University of Washington and thought, Hmm, I think I’m going to go back there.

So I worked for a little while in Seattle, and then came back to Indonesia just to travel around some more because there’s was a lot more places I wanted to see and that was the start, in the middle of 2000 and I’ve been here ever since.

David McNeill: Wow! So you essentially went back to see more of the country and you just decided to stay?

Brant Connors: Yeah! That’s really what happened. I went back… I wanted to travel, there’s… Indonesia it’s like a, you know, it’s like its own mini continent, really. There’s so many islands and they all have different cultures and different languages, even different foods, different things. So it’s, it was just a really fascinating place for me to travel at that time. I had just been here so I’d picked up enough of the language that I could travel and so I thought, right, I’ll save up some money, it was super cheap at the time, you know, I could travel around for six months, it didn’t cost me hardly anything.

And then just one thing led to another I got an offer to be a guest lecturer at a university and then another university gave me a, kind of six month gig teaching a political economy course. You know, just things fell into place that couldn’t make me stay here longer. I was writing some travel articles for magazines and newspapers and stuff, just kind of, just getting lost a little bit. You know, kind of young, not young but younger guy in my early 20s, you know, living abroad, kind of exotic place just got lost and one thing led to another, opportunities came up and I just said, yeah! I can try that. Let’s do that.

David McNeill: That’s amazing. Yeah! How did you actually build that initial, you know, community; that initial group of folks that you were hanging out with as you moved there more permanently?

Brant Connors: So, well when I came back the first time, after the university I went back to states, graduated, when I came back I ended up having a girlfriend there in Malang, so I kind of, immediately kind of became familiar with her network and her group of friends. But living in Malang, in that town, at that time, you know, it’s a smaller town, it wasn’t a… I don’t know. It wasn’t international town, there was not really that many expats, so all my friends were local people.

You know travelling, just meeting local people and just networking with them, really. Just trying to find out about the culture, trying to find out about, you know, the places and then developing through that, obviously developing my language skills. Just being able to speak Indonesian good enough to get around, to, you know, travel and just do what you need to do to learn.

David McNeill: How did you initially start out learning Indonesian and being able to communicate? Was it through courses or was it more just on the go, taking a book with you and, you know, practicing with people around town?

Brant Connors: I was lucky in the sense that when I came for that, you know, first anthropology program, it was tied in with the university, so it was a kind of 10 week intensive language component to it. So I’d studied the language with a couple of teachers, for a couple hours a day, you know, Monday through Friday.

So over those 10 weeks, I developed enough of the language skills as a base that I could then travel on my own and develop outside of the classroom. So that’s really the only study that I’ve ever done of the language, other than that, you know, meeting people… Like I said, having an Indonesian girlfriend, you know what they say? The quickest way to learn a new language is to kiss a mouth that speaks that language.

David McNeill: Definitely!

Brant Connors: And then also, like I… Well, living now it’s a little bit different, I’m living in the Island of Bali, which is a, more of a tourist kind of focused island, so it’s easier to get by in English. So if I had started here, I imagine my Indonesian wouldn’t be as good as it is but starting there, Man! if you wanted to eat at the local, you know, food stall, if you wanted to get on the bus, you had to learn how to speak Indonesian or Javanese even for that matter, the more regional kind of language they have there.

But my thing with languages too is I’ve always been pretty good with languages. It’s, you know my, one of my skill areas I guess is linguistics. I picked up Japanese pretty quick when I lived there and when I was in high school. So I’ve been okay with languages and Indonesian language overall is not particularly difficult. So I think it’s not a hard language to learn and once you get the basics, you know, it’s just adding vocabulary, you know, the normal stuff. The more people you talk to, the more diverse things you learn to talk about. And it comes pretty quick.

David McNeill: How long would you say that it took you until you got to the point where you were comfortable on a daily basis, just getting around town, ordering, doing the things that you needed to do, maybe outside of going to the government office?

Brant Connors: I think even by the end of that first, kind of five or six month period where I was here for that program, I was at that level and then when I came back, probably another six months and I was, you know, good to go. I’ll just do pretty much anything, even interact with kind of government people. And then just after a few more years, you know, it’s alright.

Like I said, it’s not a real difficult language. To me, it didn’t… Even now, it’s all I speak in the office, kind of all day, every day. I do contracts stuff for the office, so my Indonesian level is, you know, it’s about as good as it will get. It’s where it needs to be, for sure for all the work I’m doing.

David McNeill: So when you first went back to Indonesia to travel around and ultimately decide to live there, how did you manage that through the visas that you had? Did you come originally on a tourist visa and then have to get that changed as you found work there. How did you manage that process?

Brant Connors: So, when I was here… The first time obviously I was a student, so I was on a student visa. When I came back, I was on a tourist visa because I was a tourists and then I got on to what’s called a cultural social visa, and that’s basically where you’re sponsored by somebody living there because you want to stay for a period longer than 30 days. So at that time, you know, I was sponsored by somebody that was, you know, staying, that I was staying with actually in Malang, in East Java.

And under that type of visa; the social cultural visa, you can stay… You have to go outside the country to one of the Indonesian embassies and get the visa. You know, there’s a sponsor letter and all that kind of stuff but when you come back into the country, you can stay for a period of up to a maximum of six months but you can’t work, so you’re just here a kind of, you know observer, you’re observing the culture, you’re travelling or whatever! And I didn’t really work at that time.

But if you go out of the country, then it’s gone. So even if you come and you stay for like one month and you leave, then the entire visa is done. If you want to get another one, you have to start all over again. But I stayed here, so I stayed for that… Well, most of that six month period. And then the university that offered me this, kind of lecturer position, they arranged kind of the next visa that I had and let me see, I think when that one was finished, I went back out.

I had to go back out again, came in again as a tourist and then when we set up our first company, I think it’s around 2001, 2002, I moved from Java back to, over to Bali; the island here. And when we set up the first company that’s when I got my first kind of sponsorship from the company actually. And the way the system works here is a bit strange. So you think if you set up a company that they would make it easier to get your work permit and all that, it’s not really the case.

The fact that you’re employed to work here is somehow bureaucratically speaking not entirely related to the fact that you’re, you know, owner or investor in the company. So the company itself still has to go through all this long process of saying yes, we want to employ this foreign person to come and work for us, even though on the documents of the company, obviously, there’s my name there as a shareholder in the company. But anyway, it gets done eventually and so the company has to decide, yes we want to sponsor this person who’s part owner of us to work here for us. But then once you get that done, you get a work permit and what’s called a kitas, it’s a work and stay permit. It’s something like a permanent residency, I guess you would say.

David McNeill: Right!

Brant Connors: And it’s valid for a year and at the end of every year, you just need to go to the immigration office here and extend it. They’d retake your picture and photo prints and renew certificate and everything else. And then you just extend it at the end of every year.

David McNeill: But you have a high likelihood of getting the extension or do you have to worry much about, you know, the guy at the counter is probably not in a good mood today, maybe my chances are low or anything like that?

Brant Connors: No, no, no, not like that. Once you have it, the extensions pretty much, you know, automatic. The place where it’s a little bit difficult to get is, the very first time you get the work visa, you have… The company has to, and you know, everybody uses agents. There’s agencies who do this kind of stuff. And so the company, and usually through the agent has to submit to the immigration office, the head office in Jakarta saying, this person wants to do this job, in this company, and they have this skill set.

And then the big, kind of ministry or whatever in Jakarta says, “Yep! That’s okay.” And as soon as you get the letter from them, then the processing part here is just bureaucracy, really. But once you have that first letter saying, yes this company can employ a foreigner to work in this position then is fine after that. So there’s a couple of different options too for visas here. So after you’ve worked here for a while in certain positions, you can go from kind of one year extendable visa to a five year extendable visa.

But at the end of the day, I kind of look through it, they’re pretty much the same thing. It’s just you don’t have to extend the first one every year, so you just get another five year one. And that’s kind of the path that people take if they want to eventually become Indonesian citizens but if you’re not kind of planning to go that route, then there’s not that much benefit to it.

David McNeill: Right! Yeah! That makes perfect sense. I appreciate the overview on the visa processing. It’s always a bit difficult to navigate for first timers for sure.

Brant Connors: Yeah! Definitely, yes! And here too but, you know, there’s a lot of visa agents, so people that come and want to work here, I think just talk to some foreigners that are already working here and they can probably put you in touch with some of the more reputable agents. It’s also not particularly cheap to have a work visa here, they make it a little bit expensive.

So they have one portion of the cost for the work visa where they say, right, you need to set aside $100 a month for the period of the one year and that goes into a special fund to train Indonesians who are ideally being displaced by having a foreign worker here. Which is, that’s alright, I mean it’s, if it’s actually being used for that. You know, that’s a good, it’s a good thing and it’s supposed to be paid by the company.

So if you’re, have a, you know, a company that’s legitimately interested in hiring you, I suppose they’ll kind of pay that cost. But, so that’s $1,200 a month and then with all the other processing fees and this and that, this and that, it probably costs around $1,500 to $1,800 a year to have a work visa here. So it’s not a cheap thing but, you know, if you want to do it and you have a decent job then it’s worth doing because you can’t… Man! You can but you really shouldn’t try to work here without kind of proper work visa and that.

A lot of people have tried it and they just, it seems like, you know, you hear these horror stories, people just getting burned all the time. So if you want to work, you know, here, at least Indonesia, I’m sure every country is different but if you want to work here, you should, you know, try to follow the laws that they have.

David McNeill: Right! And how did you actually find those first positions? Was it through some of the network that you had built up over your time living here that, you know, gave you those travel writer and lecturer opportunities or did you actually apply for those directly?

Brant Connors: Nope, those were all just found through a network of people that I’d known, you know, from living here. The lecturer one was actually with one of the guys that was teaching the program that I was at, kind of the year previously. We became friends and talked about stuff and he said, “You know, I really think you could you could teach this course for six months,” and I said, “Yeah, man, let’s do it.”

The writing stuff is also just friends of friends and saying, “Hey! I’m interested in doing this” and they said, “Hey! You should go talk to my friend here or here” and then just finding it that way. I don’t think I’ve ever… I don’t think I’ve ever applied for an actual job since I’ve been in Indonesia. I mean where, you know, a job where you just see an advertisement, you put your CV together and you’d submit it. Everything I’ve done is either been, you know, network of friends like that, or basically identifying a problem saying, right! How can I put a team together to solve this? And if it becomes big enough, let’s make a company to support it.

David McNeill: Taking that line of thinking, how did you apply that and building your first company?

Brant Connors: Yeah! That’s interesting. So, the maritime thing, it’s not my background at all. Alright, I’m not a sailor, I’m not a seafarer but when I jumped from the university side… So I was working with my friend at the university in Java and I kind of got introduced to some people in the universities in Bali here, so I had that kind of like network within the universities. And I started talking with them about actual, like job training programs for their students and universities and if we could put some programs like that together to actually help Indonesian university students get, you know, better skills training or even like on the job trainings, you know, abroad in the United States.

So it’s kind of going the other way, right? And through that I met, you know, a friend of a friend, a guy here in Bali who’s, you know, became my first partner and his position at the time, he was also involved in the Indonesian seafarers union. So we were working together on the student project and that went pretty well. We organized kind of training programs for students that lasted for probably seven or eight years until, actually until the visa problems in the United States and the like, bureaucratic stuff from the United States side became too difficult then we just kind of canned it, said no, it’s not worth doing anymore.

But along the way I had been working with him doing various, you know, maritime training projects. It was still in that kind of realm of like training and, you know, seminars and organizing, you know, workshops and stuff for the seafarers. And I just got involved with more and more projects with the seafarers union and met people that he worked with in the kind of global trade union, kind of network, with the International Transport Workers Federation, they’re a big kind of global transport workers you know, group. And just met different people that said, “Hey! Can you help us out with this project? You’re down here you’re in Indonesia, you speak the language.” I said, “Yeah, man, take this.”

I just did a couple different projects, smaller things and then worked with him to help try to develop some kind of social welfare institutions here in Bali. Set up, you know, seafarers centre for the people while they were home. And we set up a little barn restaurant for the members, we set up a credit union for the membership and their family. Just started working in that space, you know, with those seafarers. So from that community of seafarers union we probably have about 10–12,000 members here in Bali on the island here. And so just setting up programs, you know, to service them and their families.

And just working in that space with the trade unions and with those people, and they’re just all hard-working people, nice people, genuine people. Most of them I think were working abroad on the foreign ships. You know, either fishing ships or cruise ships or cargo ships, and so I just got more and more involved with that industry; the maritime industry. It was just, it was interesting, it was new to me and they had problems that needed solving and I found that to be kind of like, you know, little mini puzzles that I could try to attack and say, “Right, how can we set up a financial institution for these guys and their membership?”

I’m looking into the credit union process, putting a team together and saying, “Right, we can do this, it’s difficult but we can make it happen.”

David McNeill: Yeah! That’s really incredible and it speaks a lot to finding that opportunity, as you mentioned, and definitely having those, you know, your ear to the ground and being able to see what’s going on around you, seeing those opportunities where they lie and then figuring out how to attack them.

In terms of putting that team together what was that initial group like and outside of… Was it just you and the other person that you mentioned or did you actually put together a larger group going into the first opportunity?

Brant Connors: So my main team from the beginning was me and my partner, Budi; the guy that I mentioned and then another friend from Malang, from the first city I was in on the other Island. And we, the three of us were kind of like the master, kind of brains of the entire operations. We thought about, you know, how can we kind of first put the student program together and second how can we develop it into something outside of just, you know, students, that we can apply first off to the seafarers and eventually maybe even to other groups or the general public?

So with my partner Budi, the local guy here, you know, he’s a local guy, Balinese guy, just super friendly. We just hit it off, we became good friends from the very beginning and he had also worked abroad, right? So he worked on a cruise ship for, I don’t know, 8 or 10 years or something. So his thinking was also little bit kind of westernized and that kind of helped, I think, at least help me from the beginning. But we would just sit and so there’s a local, kind of bakery coffee shop, not too far from here, actually down the street and we still meet there, you know, a couple times a week for coffee and just sit upstairs and talk about, you know, how can we do this?

You know, what can we do for these, you know, seafarers? This cruise ship guys need a seminar that they can, you know, develop collective bargaining, you know, negotiation skills or whatever it is, and we just sit there. And we called that our first office; this coffee shop, we set up there and we made a lot of scribbles and scribbles on, you know, scrap paper and eventually we said, right! Well we actually, we were getting enough projects going that we actually needed to come up with a company.

So we created that first company, it was a consulting company. It was just kind of an umbrella, it covered us to do kind of everything we needed to do and then, you know, I could get my work visa, we could be covered, you know, legally, all the taxes and stuff was sorted out. And we just grew from there. And I still, he’s… I partnered with him on multiple projects and we’re still, you know, partners to this day. And just worked out well, we get on really well together. We bring kind of different skills to kind of what we do, kind of in each, in each project if that makes sense.

So we really complement each other in that way. So I was lucky to find him or him to find me, I don’t know. But we really work well together and we’ve put a lot of successful projects together, including the clinic that we’re running now. I mean that’s still another thing where him and I said, right! Here’s an opportunity, here’s this group of seafarers that don’t have anybody giving them dedicated medical services. You know, setting up a medical centre was outside of the, kind of cost ground I suppose of the local union. So it has to be something private.

We could put a, kind of group together and you know, make something that can kind of fill that spot in the market and we did. You know, we brought a couple other people in, so. We’ve done other couple different projects. Between him and me and then there’s another guy, so the three of us, we just kind of look at each project a little bit differently and then saying, through his network and sometimes through my network, who can we pull in to have as a part of this project? And it’s… Yeah! Hasn’t always worked out but for the most part it works out pretty good.

David McNeill: In terms of, you know, actually setting up that initial corporation, I guess it was a consulting corporation as you mentioned, how long did that take and what was required? Were you directing that process or did you rely on Budi, your business partner, to help you along with it?

Brant Connors: So, for sure I relied on him, you know a lot on that type of stuff. So he still does a lot of the, you know, work with governments and this and that, kind of more of the, yeah! technical paperwork kind of stuff, just because he knows enough people to get that done relatively easy and quickly. But setting up a company, it’s not an easy thing to do here. It’s just a lot of hurdles and hoops to jump through and it probably took maybe three to four months, just kind of start to finish.

But you can get to a point where you start it, right? You go to the notarial office, you register it with the lawyer and you kind of start going through the steps of getting the license from this office and this office and this office, from this office, and you get halfway through the process and then somebody says, alright. Now you’re kind of on the way there, so you can start operating now as a legal company and then over the next couple months you kind of finish up that. But, yeah! It takes… It probably took three or four months and then, by the time that was finished, then it took another couple months before I kind of got my work permit, work visa. So it’s not a quick thing.

That’s one thing that Indonesia is trying to improve on, I think. Because they made a lot of changes in the way business is operating. The government’s trying, at least from the top down in Jakarta, in the capital, they’re trying to improve kind of business efficiency, you know, how easy it is to set up companies. Making, you know, the government offices into like a one-stop centre where you can get all of your different licenses and permits in one place but it’s a slow process. It’s not easy. So I think actually in the 15 years since we set up that one, it probably takes longer now to set up a company. I’d say maybe between four and six months.

So it’s definitely not an easy thing to do and that… There’s also multiple types of companies, right? So there’s a fully foreign owned company, there’s a local company where you can get, you know, agreement with the local partner, where you’re kind of attached to the company. So you need to do a bit of research before you set that up. And then there’s certain industries as well where the government says, right! We don’t allow foreign investment in this industry but we do allow foreign investment in this industry and even that changes every couple of years, the government will amend their list and suddenly this one that used to be off limits is now open for foreign investment.

So, you kind of have to be on the ball and you know, come down and really look and see what’s going on. And even I think the information on the internet, if you look on the internet it’s hard to find kind of accurate, up-to-date information. You really need to come talk to somebody here.

David McNeill: Right! I mean, have you seen it go the other way where somebody was doing a business in a industry or field that was completely okay with the government and then in short order, the government changed its mind on that position and they had to bend in the business or something like that?

Brant Connors: Not so much in that sense. I think if they were in, like when they make these changes if you’re already in, they will kind of allow you to keep going, they just don’t want to make any new investment in a certain field. But what I’ve seen more people having problems with is coming in, saying, “Right, I want to set up a company” and then branching off and trying to do something a little bit outside of what the original intent of the company was.

And, you know, for example, they come in and set up a company doing, you know, garment industry, you know, making clothes, sewing clothes, whatever, and then they kind of want to branch out into kind of importing goods and then doing a little bit of like, you know, setting up events and property management and then it’s like, not, you’re outside of the scope you set for yourself. Just shut it all down. So there’s been a lot of problems, not problems but cases like that, that I’ve seen. And that’s really one of the reasons why when we made the first company, we did just set it up to be almost as kind of generic as possible, just overall, you know, consultants and we can really kind of do a lot of stuff under that.

So the more you kind of pin yourself down unless you’re absolutely going to be working in that field, if you have a specific product you’re trying to launch, fine, then just pin it to that. But if you can keep it as broad as possible, you have a lot more kind of room to develop a little bit down the road.

David McNeill: Yeah, that makes sense. Were there any particular Indonesian rules and regulations that caught you by surprise as a new business owner?

Brant Connors: Yeah! Yeah! I’ve been caught by a lot of things over the years. The funniest things are the ones that are not really actual rules and they’re not really anywhere on the books but there’s some government officer somewhere that says, well, we kind of have to follow this path. And so it’s all little kind of bureaucratic hurdles that you kind of have to get used to and kind of learn to manage. And in that sense, you just have to have a pretty good local partner that has a sense of how to kind of deal with those things.

David McNeill: Right!

Brant Connors: And also just be patient. I mean, you can kind of get through a lot of stuff if you’re pretty patient and just kind of start talking, you can find solutions. Obviously, there’s issues in this country with kind of, you know, corruption and that kind of stuff, all the bureaucracy and corruption, all that stuff kind of works together. And the government’s made pretty good efforts actually, they try to attack that, they try to kind of push it back or get rid of it. And they’re ongoing, you know, it’s not a easy problem to solve overnight.

But basically, the desire for corruption that was here from, you know, years and years and years ago leads to an increased bureaucracy so that, you know, people can get lost in this kind of middle space where there’s no real kind of way out and those are the most frustrating things, I think. But, you know, other than that, I think it’s not such a difficult place to work once you’re inside and you kind of, you know, have an overview of what’s going on.

David McNeill: Being a foreigner in Bali, I mean, I suppose as you mentioned it’s a more tourist-centric place, I know a lot of folks from Germany like to go there on vacation and you probably see more expats living there than you did in the first place you lived but how important is it to be able to speak Indonesian to live there and particularly to be able to work there, perhaps start your own business?

Brant Connors: Sure, sure. So, Yeah! Bali, obviously tourism is their number one industry on this island. And it’s not a big island it’s like, I think maybe the size of, you know, the state of Delaware or something like that. And most of the development and everything is in the southern part of the island, so I’m probably… From where I am, I’m you know, one or two hours away from pretty much everything, you know, on the island that I need to do in terms of, you know, government stuff, offices, you know, networks of people, you know, all the main tourist areas, you know, places to hang out, restaurants, bars, clubs, all that kind of stuff. It’s all in that Southern part of the Island.

So that’s, you know, one thing, it’s a kind of small island but it is tourist-centric. My field is not tourist-centric. I’m like one of the few people that are working here as an expat that’s not either in, you know, teaching or tourism. So the tourist stuff, if you’re doing some tourist here, I think you can get by without having great Indonesian. My stuff and the stuff that I do, it’s really key, I think it’s pretty important to, you know, the things that I’ve been able to develop that, you know, obviously it expands the number of people that I can work with, it’s easier to kind of build up the network that way. So for me and for what I’ve done, I think it’s been really, really key to be able to speak fluently in Indonesia.

So, yeah! So that’s definitely important for me. The other thing that’s been important for me I think is, is I didn’t really realize at the time but looking back it helps a lot; is the background that I had in anthropology actually, from my university days, it’s really given me a lot of insights since I’ve been living here. You know, especially even in business or in, you know, social occupations like welfare projects that we’re setting up; is to be able to analyze, you know, the target audience here and see what they want, to see what they value and be able to put something together from that sense of trying to understand, you know, their culture and their belief systems.

It’s been really, kind of interesting for me to be able to use that because, you know, coming out of university I’m like, “Wait, great! I graduated, you know, I studied anthropology, what am I ever going to do with it?” But at the end of the day, it’s really become a pretty useful tool. So, yeah, it’s been helpful for me as well. But the other thing about speaking the local language is, it obviously gives you kind of respect and kind of cred with the people here. So, and that’s also a really key thing for working here is people like to feel like, you know, one; they’re being respected, they’re culture is being respected and they respect you if you’ve made the effort to do it. To understand about their culture, to understand their language, stuff like that.

So it really helps you out. People trust you more automatically if you can, not only just speak to them Indonesian but, you know, say the right, you know culturally appropriate things. That’s really important. And then you have a network of people that do trust you and you can, kind of deal with them a lot a lot more easier and they help you out if you need something down the road.

David McNeill: So how have you seen Indonesia develop over the 18 or so years that you’ve been living and working there, and what are opportunities do you see for entrepreneurs going forward, particularly ones that are coming from abroad?

Brant Connors: So, yeah! Indonesia has developed, you know, a lot in the last 17, 18 years. The economy’s grown, they’re trying to stay really, really relevant in the kind of Southeast Asian market and they are. I mean, it’s a huge country. Some, I guess the fourth largest kind of population in the world. And it’s the biggest country in Southeast Asia and then also looking forward there’s going to be, there’s kind of like a trade block, I guess they’re going to… they’re trying to create basically a South East Asian kind of trade block, trade network.

So there’ll be more kind of… Well, ideally they’re still ironing things out but it’s the ASEAN Block; The Association of Southeast Asian Nations block where they’re going to create a kind of, not exactly a Free Trade Zone but a zone within those nations where Indonesia is going to be the biggest country and the biggest player but they’ll also have to deal with, you know, labour and goods and things in coming in from other countries; Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia. So that’s also going to affect how business is going to go here but they’re trying to kind of raise each other, you know, up together that’s the ideal point.

But Indonesia I think it’s, it’s going to continue to be relevant, it’s got a huge population so there’s, needs for services are growing, incomes growing, wages are going, I think the minimum wages this year were about 9% higher than they were last year. So wages are going up pretty fast and because of that the demand for new services are also rising pretty good. So there a lot of opportunity, you know, for new businesses here and the biggest opportunity, the biggest thing that I see actually is opportunities to improve businesses or improve facilities that are already here.

So that’s, I think where people can come in and really find a way to make a quick impact without even, even without investing a whole lot of money. I mean, I’m not talking about coming in and building a brand new factory but identifying something that’s happening here and saying, yeah! I can come in, either with technology or with, you know, ideas about logistics or whatever and make that work better, make that more efficient, make that more profitable, I think that’s the one area where somebody could come in with a background from United States or Europe or wherever, and make a very kind of quick impact and do something but it’s going to help people here.

David McNeill: Yeah! That’s excellent. Thank you for that. What are your particular plans going forward? Do you intend to stay in Bali for the foreseeable future and continue to build businesses there or do you think that you might try a new avenue, maybe somewhere else around Southeast Asia or potentially head back to the states in the future?

Brant Connors: No, I’m pretty tied into, to Indonesia and to Bali now, so I’m here for the foreseeable future. You know, I don’t really plan on going anywhere else. But I still do projects kind of around in the region, that’s another thing I would say if somebody wants to maybe come and live in Indonesia, work in Indonesia, especially with the new kind of trade block coming up is, yeah, understand Indonesia but get to know a little bit about the rest of the region, about Southeast Asia because I’ve done, I’ve had projects in, you know, Timor Leste, which is East Timor, you know, Thailand, Malaysia where, you know, different groups from outside said, right! You’re in Indonesia but you know enough of the region that we want you to kind of handle this project.

So you can essentially use Indonesia as a kind of springboard to be available for different, you know, roles for different projects and kind of, in the entire region. So there’s more opportunities there for that. But yeah, I’m definitely here. We’re still developing the Medical Centre here with kind of plans to expand that. I’m starting this month trying to start, there’s a new five year national trade union social welfare system that got approved at the Indonesian seafarers union congress last month and they want to kind of have me try to make a push to develop that. So that’s a kind of five-year program that will kind of take me around a lot more places in Indonesia but it is fun, it’s a new challenge and I can kind of help incorporate medical developments alongside that. So I think they’ll probably both help each other, so that’ll be kind of fun but I’m definitely here for the long term.

David McNeill: Excellent! And in terms of folks that are interested in also living in Indonesia, you’ve provided a lot of wonderful information. But do you have any particular resources or other pieces of advice that you would give to them as they consider making that their new destination?

Brant Connors: I think, the first thing would be just to come here and just try to talk to people. I mean if its sounds like something you could be interested in, come and just visit, you could travel around, it’s pretty cheap still even now. So you could travel around for a month or two quite cheaply and just talk with people, see if it’s a place that you would like to live and if the people, the type of people you can work with and if the ideas you have, you know, resonate here.

There’s a lot of Facebook groups and I think there’s a couple expat websites and stuff that you can read but I wouldn’t… They’d be maybe okay as kind of resources if you’re just looking for information but I wouldn’t worry too much about the kind of negative side because a lot of people use those to kind of tell their horror stories or their sob stories of, you know, the business they set up but it went wrong and everything kind of fell apart. But I saw… I’d take all those also with a grain of salt because I’ve been around here long enough to see businesses that have fallen apart and, you know, 9 times out of 10 or probably more, it’s because people came and tried to take shortcuts of, you know, I didn’t want to register this, so I just put in someone else’s name…

David McNeill: Right!

Brant Connors: Or I didn’t want to get a proper visa or work permit or whatever and then, you know, everything went terrible. And people do stuff that they wouldn’t do in their own home country sometimes. I just kind of shake my head at it. So definitely, I would avoid shortcuts and stuff like that but the best thing to do is just come here, travel around a bit, have a look, you know, try to get a feel for the place and then once you are here, just make connections with, you know, local people and eventually you need a little bit of a network.

It’s almost impossible I think, to start a business entirely on your own. You do need to have a local partner or two or at least a local network of people that you can kind of depend on,
and so you need to be here for a certain amount of time before you can develop that. You know, when find some people that you can work with and, you know, people that you can trust.

David McNeill: How is the expat community in Bali by the way? I mean, do you find it to be quite welcoming, you know, of a diverse group of people, you know, how would you characterize it?

Brant Connors: Yeah! It’s, it is pretty diverse actually. It’s the different groups and they kind of, almost kind of click off into their own kind of nationalities. There’s a kind of Dutch expat group, there’s a kind of Australian expat group. I think there’s the kind of, in Ubud, which is the kind of trendy, kind of hippie area, there’s like the yoga, new age type kind of expat group but because it’s a tourist town, there’s a lot of, you know, people that come over and just hang out here or even like, retire here.

So I’d say that kind of expat group is probably a bit older than it would be in other places. Or you have the expat group of people that are working in hotels; that are chefs, are GMs, are, you know, in charge of, you know, tourism development and stuff. So when I start… Like I said, when I was first in Malang I was pretty much exclusively hanging out with local people, I don’t think I had hardly any expat friends. When I moved to Bali, I started to get a few more, it kind of became, not quite 50/50, it was probably more Indonesians than locals.

But as I’ve lived here long enough and have met other expats, people that I could actually kind of connect with that were doing interesting stuff here, I’ve kind of probably balanced out. So I think at the moment I’m like, half and half but the people I hang out with on a weekly basis are both kind of expat and local. And so there is a group of interesting expats here and you just try to get into some different activities. So like my Dutch friend and I, we set up a football team about eight years ago and through that football… Soccer team… And so by setting that team up, you know, we started bringing in people that are interested in, you know, playing soccer every week and then going out and having a few beers afterwards. So it was really kind of a social thing but we set up in such a way that it was something that expats here could join but also something that locals that were really passionate about football could join as well. So we’d set it up to be, specifically to be 50/50 and we were going to play, there was another team that was here at the time, that was an expat only team. A little bit kind of snooty, they’re an English team.

And so we purposely set up a team so that we could kind of challenge them and in the end, they folded before we ever, ever had our challenge match but we’re still here. But through that, just through, you know, having that team and knowing, people talking to each other and saying, “Oh! This is the guy that has this team that’s half Indonesian and half, you know, foreigners,” then you’d generally kind of run into people that are interested in people that are, you know, doing that.

David McNeill: How can our listeners find out more about you and what you’re doing?

Brant Connors: If people want to get a hold of me, they can send me an email at brant@baliseafarers.org. If they have any questions about Indonesia, send me an email and I’m happy to chat with anybody.

Outro

David McNeill: Thanks to Brant for sharing his story with us. You can find the full transcript for this episode at expatempire.com.

If you are interested in sharing your story on Expat Empire, please consider submitting a user post about your expat experiences on expatempire.com or email us at podcast@expatempire.com and let us know more about your international background.

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Originally published at expatempire.com on January 21, 2019.