Thriving in Southeast Asia’s Startup Scene w/ Tim Grassin

Tim: [00:00:00] I only had $5,000 in savings when I started my company, which was basically three months of rent if I didn’t eat anything.

I like to think of entrepreneurship as a mindset and not necessarily what we consider entrepreneurship with like funding and startups and technology.

In the last six months, I probably met 300 founders. And what I realized was A) there’s some really smart people in Southeast Asia and B) they’re not just doing copycats now. They’re coming up with extremely creative new products that I believe North America is gonna be using as opposed to vice versa.

I knew a lot was about to happen in Southeast Asia.

I felt like it was the next big wave of technology coming to the world.

Scott: Hello and welcome to Made it in Thailand, the podcast where we learn how to thrive in Thailand from top performers who have found success in the Kingdom. I’m your host, Scott Pressimone. Today I am speaking with Tim Grassin. Tim is a successful entrepreneur who has built and sold three [00:01:00] businesses. Now he helps other B2B founders in Southeast Asia scale their businesses to at least $1 million in annual recurring revenue.

Tim doesn’t only have experience here in Thailand, but also in the Philippines. So today’s episode will be a bit more broad than usual. So really instead of being Made it in Thailand, it’s more like Made it in Southeast Asia. So Tim, thanks so much for joining me today.

Tim: Yeah, thank you Scott for that intro. And I appreciate the effort in pronouncing my last name, which is French. That was nice.

Scott: Yeah, of course. So to kick things off, I understand that you have quite a bit of international experience. So could you share a bit more about where you grew up, where you went to school, and how you eventually found yourself on this side of the world?

Tim: Sure, yeah, absolutely. My dad was a diplomat when I grew up. So in my childhood, we traveled quite a bit, mostly in Europe. So we went from Finland to, England and Denmark. And then when I was a teenager, we moved to Africa. So we ended up in Nairobi. [00:02:00] So that kind of opened my eyes to traveling and having to adapt to new environments constantly.

And that’s something that I, you know, that stuck with me. I went back to study in France and almost immediately decided that it wasn’t for me, that I wanted to explore a bit more, of the world. So I decided to go and do my business school in Canada instead of staying in France. So I landed in Montreal.

And, yeah, I stayed in Canada for quite a long time. It was a country that I felt adopted me and that, there was a lot of opportunity. And so I decided to stay there, and I’m sure we’ll get into it, but that’s where my first businesses were born. And then more recently in my life, in my early thirties, I moved to Asia for another business opportunity.

So I moved to the Philippines. Stayed there for quite a while and I’ve been in Thailand for a little over a year now.

Scott: Wow. Excellent. [00:03:00] So let’s walk through more of that background because it is quite interesting. I think, having a father who’s a diplomat has to be unique. How did you find your childhood? Were you, did you enjoy the fact that you were able to go to different countries so frequently or was it challenging?

Tim: I have vivid memories of, bawling out when I had to leave Finland because from six to ten, you make a lot of friends, and you don’t have the emotional maturity to understand that it’s for the best. Or at least that your parents let you know that it’s for the best. I remember it was hard at first, and I think I get used to it, over and over, moving every three to four years.

In hindsight, I know I developed a lot of skills that I use on in day to day life, like adaptability, the ability to make new friends or connections anywhere I go, enjoying what new cultures have to offer and trying to immerse myself in them and making the best of every new opportunity. So all of those are hindsight.[00:04:00]

Sort of developments, but definitely when it was happening in real time, it was probably a lot more painful than I like to think about it now.

Scott: Yeah, it’s gotta be hard. As you said, those early years, those formative years where, I guess your, friend, the world is a lot smaller at that time. So if you, if you have those friends, you think those are gonna be your friends forever. And it sounds like you had to adapt to learn how to make new friends, every new place that you’re going.

Tim: That’s the thing. So I remember very vividly in my like late teenage years and early university, I was always hearing about hometown friends and all that, which I was like, I don’t have those. And it was something I was missing out on. But later on in life, late twenties, early thirties, and now.

I realized that most of my friends, are people they met later in life. Those hometown friends, and maybe people they’ll see every time they’re in their hometown, but they don’t stay in touch as [00:05:00] much. So I feel like at the end of the day, I didn’t really miss out on anything other than some stories.

I have stories from all over the place, so can’t complain.

Scott: Speaking of stories, I’m interested in your time in Kenya. Cause not everyone goes to Kenya. I think you said, was it high school that you spent in Kenya?

Tim: All of high school.

Scott: All of high school. Is there anything that you could share about Kenya that you wish other people knew or something that you found out after having lived and really grown up through your teenage years, there that you found really interesting?

Tim: Yeah, one thing that I found interesting was that when I was living there, it was the sort of birth of FinTech as we know it now. And what I mean by that is that, before we had e wallets and all sorts of payment technologies, cellular phones were, black and white and you couldn’t do much with them, but the sort of, telecom networks there [00:06:00] allowed you to send credits to each other, I guess because some people couldn’t afford to buy them or some people were too remote to buy credits, and people hacked that into a payment system where you could pay for stuff, sending credits to each other because there was no fee to send each other credits.

And it turns out that was one of the first instances of an e wallet in the world. And it was developed in Kenya. And so as much as that has nothing to do with my living experience, I was always surprised because for me it was second nature when I was there, but I never realized the impact that it would have in the world because it actually was born there.

So it’s crazy. But other than that, I think most people don’t know much about Africa. They assume it’s just safaris. It’s a lot more than that. There’s a, lot going on in Africa. it was the birthplace of humanity, according to most scientists. A lot of great culture, a lot of great, actually, the beaches are amazing in Kenya.

That’s why I preferred the [00:07:00] beaches over any safari. They’re like Caribbean style, blue lagoon, white sands, et cetera. And yeah, the people were amazing, just super friendly. They speak English, so it was very easy to be there and feel like you could belong. And I met a lot of interesting people, whether it was, African families that were in my school or expats that I was hanging out with.

Just a great melting pot. So I really enjoyed those years.

Scott: Yeah, correct me if I’m wrong, is it M-PESA that was also there in Kenya? Was that the cellular network? Yeah, I spent, I was there for maybe about four to six months in 2012, and I traveled around there, Mombasa, and, Nairobi, and, also spent a lot of time in Uganda. but it just, as you said, it’s absolutely beautiful.

And I would say that the beaches are nicer than, I hate to say anything negative about Thailand or Southeast Asia, but I really enjoyed the beaches [00:08:00] in the environment.

Tim: They’re definitely comparable.

Scott: Yeah. Yeah, it’s, but I think it’s a very beautiful country that people don’t necessarily know about, but, no, it sounds, great.

And also the entrepreneurship there. I’m curious if you were exposed to a lot of entrepreneurship there, because it seems a little bit like Southeast Asia where everyone has a little small business, whether it’s a small phone shop or it’s, something else like that. Do you see a lot of that while you’re there?

Tim: Yeah. I like to think of entrepreneurship as a mindset and not necessarily what we consider entrepreneurship with like funding and startups and technology. So in that regard, it’s very much like Thailand. You have street vendors all over the place. And I admire them. I think these are the sort of entrepreneurs that make a country in that sense.

So yeah, absolutely. Like most people are technically self employed in Kenya. The same way in Thailand, many, people are self employed. So yeah, a lot of similarities, between the two countries. But in terms of startups and, what we consider entrepreneurship at this stage, [00:09:00] when I was there, it was close to none.

But I heard the country has been evolving substantially. I just haven’t been back in a while.

Scott: Now let’s fast forward a bit to your time, your undergraduate, excuse me. With your undergraduate, I understand you were studying finance in Montreal. Is that right?

Tim: Correct, yes.

Scott: Yeah. So you didn’t take the finance route. Can you explain why you didn’t go down that path?

Tim: Yeah, I think I can explain it by explaining why I took that path in the first place and why that was the wrong move. So when I was in, in prep school, I did an internship at a hedge fund in London, through contacts. And I was blinded by the lifestyle and how, the sophistication of the deals, the lifestyle they were living and like the, ecosystem of intelligence that I was surrounded by.

And I thought, huh, that’s something I’m really keen on. I was, like big into [00:10:00] math, in high school. So I thought, okay, that’s a really interesting path to me. And the, obviously the, the, internship I did was in the best conditions possible. The hedge fund was owned by my friend’s dad. I was given all these opportunities and exposure.

And so when I went into finance in order to pursue that type of path, and I started working in real finance during university and every summer, I realize that’s not the true finance and even in investment banking, you have to grind a lot more, there’s a lot more protocol, there’s hierarchy, there are decisions coming from above that makes absolutely no sense and when you have, an argumentative and logical mind, you can get very frustrated very quickly by that type of structure.

And essentially, a few words from one of my bosses, the VP that I was working under who told me I was insubordinate basically, and I should probably explore entrepreneurship. [00:11:00] And he meant that as an insult. I took that to heart and I actually quit. And I said, Hey, you know what? I am going to go into entrepreneurship because if that’s the route I have to take to be more creative and have more direct impact on all my decisions, then that’s the route I’ll take.

And, and that’s how my first business in Montreal was born. Actually, it was born out of, frustration in my job and doing things that I didn’t enjoy doing, which were completely unrelated to finance, such as creating presentations and spreadsheets, you could argue our finance, but it’s just not very, there’s not a lot of thinking that goes into it.

It’s a lot of grinding. That’s, what, started my entrepreneurship journey. Those few words from him. And he knows it. I say it to him as a joke now and we’re still friends, but it’s interesting.

Scott: Was there anyone else in your family that had started a business or that you caught the entrepreneurial bug from, or was it strictly that, that moment [00:12:00] you, you know, how to almost someone to prove wrong.

Tim: Yeah, my, my grandfather on my mom’s side had, he was an eye doctor. So he had a few stores in France. My uncle who took over his stores was also, an entrepreneur, but I’m not too sure where that came from because, my family, it’s not coming from very wealthy backgrounds.

So most people were in the mindset of getting a job and sticking to that job until you retire. And then you enjoy your retirement. And, the typical rat race, for them, that was like, like pride was, pride was, related or attached to your job. And so I couldn’t think of anyone in particular that inspired me. But more the exposure that I had to, entrepreneurs or at least business leaders while I was in Kenya, which were most of my friends parents were either in the UN embassies or leading, branches of different [00:13:00] businesses, foreign owned business.

And I think that exposure helped me a lot. And then the ascent of startups in the, mid two thousands, 2005 to 2007 when I was about to graduate from university or from business school. And at that point, everyone was excited about Facebook. the social network movie came out and all those things hyped up the startup life and working for yourself was seen as something cool.

And so all of that combined, allowed me to, want to pursue that.

Scott: How did your family respond to that? Cause you mentioned there’s a little bit of saving face or hey, this is the safe thing to do. This is get a good job at a good hedge fund. but when you made that decision, how did your family react?

Tim: They’ve always been very supportive and I think they don’t always understand what I do. And to, to this date, I’m sure they don’t understand the majority of the things I work on, but they trust me enough that they, [00:14:00] they knew I would figure it out. And I think for them having a degree in finance meant that I had something to fall back on, worse comes to worse.

So they were not too worried there. But I didn’t really mention the fact that I only had $5,000 in savings when I started my company, which was basically three months of rent if I didn’t eat anything. So I didn’t give them the opportunity to stress out about it too much. But also, like, they said, I probably did have a, cushion to fall back on with a degree, which in this day and age doesn’t mean anything anymore.

Like most people with degrees are struggling to find jobs. But I would say that when I graduated in 2007, 2008. Wait, was that even, yeah, I guess around, I don’t even remember now, 15, 16 years ago, let’s say, trying to do the math. Then jobs were readily available. It was right after the financial crisis, but on the [00:15:00] rebound, meaning, yeah, the economy was booming and it wasn’t too hard to find a job.

Scott: Now, some of the qualities though, you mentioned that you only had so much money to make it work that first business. And so I think entrepreneurs, it’s common to be willing to take risks, but also a little bit contrarian as well.

Would you consider yourself to be those, have those qualities or not?

Tim: Yeah. I’m, most of the sports I do are extreme sports and I don’t know if that’s related, but I don’t feel risk the way other people feel it. I can rationalize most risk, as long as there’s a, a real, return that is a lot more, prominent than the, value of the risk. I don’t mind taking it.

And then the contrarian element. That’s definitely the case. And that’s probably why I clash with my boss so much because I would always want to take the contrary and take on [00:16:00] most things. It was hard to fold me into a mold. So yeah, I would agree with those for sure.

Scott: Cool. So let’s dig more into the business side of things. You started this first business. Can you tell us a little bit about the business and also maybe what your trajectory was in the business and how you eventually sold it? Cause I think even the selling of a business it can be a daunting task in itself.

A lot of business owners will hold on their business, they’ll never actually make sure it’s something set that’s sellable, right? And so I’d love to hear a little bit more of the story of what business type you started and then how you went about selling it.

Tim: it’s a long story from beginning to selling, but I can definitely walk you through the steps. And the business was essentially funny enough, or ironically enough, I was complaining about doing presentations in my finance job, and I started a presentation design company. Because what I realized was, I was the one creating all these presentations for, multi million dollar deals in [00:17:00] finance.

And I kept telling my boss that, we should spend a few thousand dollars on a proper designer or storyteller or something that would make our prof our presentations a lot more professionals so that when we pitch for a $10 million deal, first impressions are a lot more impactful. He said, that’s your job as a junior.

It made no sense to me ever. And so I started a company and I thought, hey, you know what? If I can convince a few people that they’re doing it wrong by. providing or giving these presentations out to juniors and interns. And especially when the stakes are high, they’d bet they’d be better off paying a few thousand dollars to someone who craft a really powerful story, who will visualize it and bring it to life.

Then I would be onto something. And it turns out that I was able to sell that vision to quite a few people within the first few months. So I started hiring a team, building processes, figuring things out on the go because building a business [00:18:00] was not something you learn in school, regardless of if you go in the entrepreneurship route, which I didn’t, but I know for a fact that all they learned was to do business plans, which I’ve never done in my life,

rather than learn about the realities of building a business, like how to incorporate, how to start an advertising campaign, how to get your clients to pay you all the stuff that we have to do in business. You don’t learn it in school. So I had to learn all of that sort of as I went, but I was lucky enough that my pitching, my sales, intuition was pretty strong.

And I was very comfortable speaking to people who were my seniors by many years, just because of maybe my exposure in my, youth, talking to my friends parents, who were CEOs and whatnot. I was never shy to discuss with them and be candid. So I was able to sell a lot of presentations and to start jacking up my prices very quickly.

But my limitation was that I was in, in Montreal, which is a Francophone town. And I was [00:19:00] always, eyeing growing in the U.S. And every company that I spoke to in the U.S. saw me as a francophone company in Montreal and refused to work with me. And so that’s when I decided to move to Toronto and to set up shop there because I figured that would make me more legitimate for North American companies.

And that actually worked out really, well. So I started, reaching out to more and more American companies because at the time the exchange rate was about what it is now. So 1.3 to 1.5x Canadian. So every new client that I signed in the U.S. and they, were a lot more keen on working with me because for them, It’s all about ROI.

If they can justify spending money and making money, they’ll do it. So I started exclusively working with, with American firms, getting bigger and bigger, growing a team in Toronto, et cetera, and not to make the story too long, but essentially after about five years on working on that business, I was met with, [00:20:00] an opportunity to build a different yet similar type of business.

Another product I serve as business, which was in digital advertising. And as I started working on that, I was detaching myself more and more from Stinson Design, the original business. And, basically my, partner at the time, who was my girlfriend, we split ways, in life. And she decided that she wanted to take Stinson design, to bigger, so to, to scale it on her own and to buy me out.

So that was my first acquisition and how it happened, essentially. So it was a, very easy acquisition because she knew the business inside out. Having, worked with me on it in the last two years, ’cause I brought her on into the business about three years in, from Proctor and Gamble. She didn’t like working there and I brought her on and she really enjoyed working at that business.

And I was focused on scaling the new business at the time. [00:21:00] And because of our lives were separating in that sense, it made sense also to maybe part ways business wise. And she decided to buy me and like she secured the funds. And yeah, that was my first acquisition. So it was a very easy one.

Let’s put it that way. But still a good one cause she knew the business inside out. So I didn’t have to do due diligence, but she knew the numbers and she knew the value and she was like willing to pay for it, which was perfect. First liquidity event.

Scott: Yeah, and on the point of entrepreneurship, it’s just, you found a problem, you had a problem in your first job. You solve the problem. And surely if you have the problem, a lot of other people have that same problem. And as you said, it’s very common. It’s almost amazing how frequently the larger businesses, they have the money to burn, but they actually don’t end up spending in the right place.

And they have the interns doing presentations and stuff. Even when you’re talking multimillion dollar deals, I was. I also graduated with finance, but then I went into consulting and I really appreciate my time at Accenture, but I would say sometimes you’re a little bit surprised [00:22:00] by how little effort might go into telling the story as you said, and I recall similar things where it’s just create a PowerPoint deck, right?

And a lot of times people tend to put a lot of text on their PowerPoint decks. And they don’t necessarily tell a story so well. And guess what? We respond to stories, right? We, we as human beings are going to resonate with stories so I can understand why that business,

Tim: Oh yeah, it was good and like we went into really like high end sort of presentations for corporate launches, like M&A. Like all sorts of really cool stuff. We even did a project for NASA for launching some sort of exoskeleton suit. I’m sure I can talk about it now because it was a long time ago.

But it was pretty crazy like the type of stuff we worked on. I’m still in shock that how well that business worked. I know there are a lot of competitors now, but like at the time we really had only one real competitor and they had been the agency of [00:23:00] record for Apple for the longest time. And they were charging hundreds of thousands per presentation.

So that was what I looked up to. And I was like, okay, how do I go from charging $2,000 – $3,000 per presentation to charging a hundred thousand a presentation? Because clearly there’s a market for it. And that’s how I worked through that business to, to reach to the stars.

Wow, now let’s talk about the second business because I think that’s where you were taking even more Internationally. And it I think that related to how you began working with people in the Philippines. Can you explain what the second business was? Same thing. It was, created out of an opportunity. In this case, I wasn’t personally affected by it, but, a friend of mine, who I was sharing an office with for about a year, he was working, on a, we were actually on vacation, technically, in Dominican Republic, on a kite surfing trip. And I could see him working through the night on these little banners, and I was wondering, You’re a talented art director.

Why are you building these banner ads? [00:24:00] And why are you spending all night on them when we’re on vacation? And he told me, agencies in Canada are struggling to find the developers for their banners. And so they’re throwing insane amount of money at people like me because we’re willing to do the work and we have a bit of Flash background.

Back then it was Flash. It was just about to turn into HTML5. And he told me the budget. He said, look, I have these 10 banners to make and they’re paying me $20k for it. I was like you’re shitting me. He’s yeah, I’m doing it in two nights. It’s insane. That’s why I’m working on holiday. And I was like, wow. He’s like, how can like Is there more where it’s coming from?

It’s yeah, there’s a ton. And there’s two or three developers in Toronto doing it only. So they’re struggling and that’s why they’re paying more. And I said, what if I build a business around it? Would you open up your connections, teach, teach the team how to do it. And I’ll do everything else, all the operations, all the logistics, et cetera.

I said, absolutely. I would love to not have to do it myself. And so we started looking for [00:25:00] flash developers, around Canada. Turned out there was a big lack of developers and that’s why the budgets were so high. And so I sent out feelers to developers across Southeast Asia. India, the classic near shore and offshore options.

And this Filipino guy, did a test for us and just did a tremendous job at the banners, the animation, great work ethics, spoke perfect English, was willing to work around the clock. And I thought, okay, what is the Philippines? Where’s the Philippines? I need to know more about this country. And, one thing led to another.

He brought on a friend because we were getting more work and more work. And ultimately we said, look, we know you’re working another job. Would it make sense for you to join us full time? We’d give you a higher salary, etc. I said, I’m working at Google actually. So I’m a manager at Google. Getting fairly well paid and it would take a lot for me to move to you guys.

And I barely know you [00:26:00] guys, a couple of guys in Canada, like we’ve never met. And so we booked a trip to go to visit these guys in the Philippines, just a two week trip to, to see what was going on. And we ended up opening up an office and making a deal with these guys to help us grow operations in Manila.

And over the next few years, my partner and I, we traveled every three, four months to the Philippines. We grew the team at, the peak we were over 40 developers and animators in Manila. And yeah, constantly traveling there. And in this case, what led us to stay in the Philippines or for myself to stay in the Philippines was as I was traveling back and forth there, I realized the Philippines was starting to develop as, a start, or the ecosystem was starting to develop for startups.

Lazada had launched very recently. People were getting used to buying online and all these things that were very [00:27:00] common to us in North America was starting to develop. And, With that comes a lot of different technologies and startups that are needed for an ecosystem. So I knew a lot was about to happen in Southeast Asia.

And so someone pitched me the idea to build a FinTech around buy now pay later because Southeast Asia had very low credit card penetration and there was a huge opportunity. People were paying for their growth, for their Amazon style deliveries like Lazada with cash. And I thought that’s outrageous.

Like definitely a business around buying up pay later or some sort of credit solution would work. And so I moved there full time. And I’m intentionally skipping how I sold the second business because that happened as I was working on this business in the Philippines called TendoPay. My partner and I were both working on TendoPay because we were also tired of doing service work for 10 years almost.

And we had read this book when we started our second [00:28:00] business called Candy Banners. We read this book called Built to Sell. It’s my favorite book to recommend to anyone working in the service or productized service industry and trying to build an agency because it helps, it helps us structure the entire business to work on autopilot and to not be relying on the founders.

And so one day as we were working on TendoPay and the other business was on autopilot, one of our clients, long term clients knocked on our door, so to speak, sent us an email and said, hey guys, I know we’ve been working on banners for a while. And we thought maybe he’s firing us as a client, but no, actually he said, we want to internalize production.

And we heard that you guys have a team in the Philippines. That’s really impressive. We want to learn more about it. Or alternatively, are you willing to sell your business to us? Cause we would just absorb the whole thing and sell, sell your services to our clients. And my partner and I looked at our [00:29:00] at each other and we’re like, hey, we’re working on this other business.

We, this is a cash cow, but we don’t even know where banners are going. They might stop one day. Should we just take a check right now? And we agreed. And that’s how we sold the second business. And again, there was a lot more due diligence for that one, but it was also not that hard because we didn’t go through an M&A process of, creating a data room, soliciting buyers, etc.

This client was like, good to go, he knew us, he knew our business. He just went through the due diligence process with his lawyers, but everything else was understood. He understood like the numbers were very clear. He actually could validate a lot of the numbers cause he had been a client for that long.

So he knew the quality, he knew all of that. So it was an easy sell. And that was the second sale.

Scott: So since you got me on the recommendations. I think Built to Sell was the book you recommended. I’m curious if you’ve read the book, the E-Myth [00:30:00] Revisited or Systemology.

Tim: I think I, I might have it here somewhere. Yeah, not in this shelf, but yeah, I’ve, read the E-myth, yeah. Scaling Up is a great, good one as well. To be honest, like I like books, but I always feel like when I read a book I’m reading and for me, I’m talking playbooks and structures and things that will help me scale because that’s what I read most about. When there’s a book about it that playbook is already obsolete almost, you know. If you want to develop new playbooks and sort of strategies that are going to work today, you have to either figure them out on your own or really be like in very niche forms and so to be talking to market leaders and hearing things firsthand, rather than reading them along with a million people who are going to try to execute. But that one, Built to Sell because it was [00:31:00] not for scaling in any way. It was really to create a structure around automating processes, building SOPs, mapping out everything and detaching the, founder from operations. That was really helpful.

Scott: Traction is another one, or EOS. I have a few clients that follow that. But I, whatever books they are, to your point, there’s some tactics that became, that can become obsolete, but when you’re thinking big picture, I would argue that some business owners forget to think about how to build a system that doesn’t fully rely on them. And some don’t build their business to be sold. And they might not want to sell it and that’s fine. But I would argue that if you build your business to be sold, it’s probably going to be a better business to operate as well. And so if you keep that in mind, then you’re not going to build this kind of job, right? Cause I think it can be easy to build a job, when you’re.

Tim: Oh, it is. And that’s a mistake most people make. It’s they get, they, try to escape the rat race and they create their own [00:32:00] rat wheel.

Scott: Let’s fast forward a bit to Thailand, and I understand we got you to this side of the world where you’re now, building teams in the Philippines. Tapping into the talent there. But now you’re here in Thailand, so why Thailand?

Tim: Between you and me, like spending four full time, four years in the Philippines was a bit exhausting. I went through a lot there. I spent COVID there. The rollercoaster of owning a product business, the lending business, a lot of stuff happened for four years. And once we sold that business and I had a clear picture that I didn’t want to stay with the bank that acquired us, I started thinking about my next move.

My wife being Korean, we wanted to stay in Southeast Asia. And I created a matrix of all the different places you could live in Southeast Asia, and did a comparison of quality [00:33:00] of life, cost, education, leisure, travel opportunities, connectiveness, all of those things that you need to live a good life. And yeah, Thailand came on top, Bangkok more specifically.

And so we decided to take the plunge. We’d obviously been to Thailand quite a lot before. Spent a month on Pha Ngan, a month in Chiang Mai. Traveled all over. And always enjoyed the food, the people, and the people we would meet as well because it’s one of the top destinations in the world, right?

So you get to meet a lot of people regardless of if it’s local or foreigners. And we enjoyed that, the diversity. And so we decided to come as a tourist just to see if it’s something that we would like to do long term. And so what was started as a three month plan turned into six months and then to a year, and now I just got my DTV.

That is an extra extension of about five years. So we’ll see [00:34:00] if we stay that long. Right now there’s no reason to move, but yeah, we’ll see.

Scott: So you mentioned DTV, how about we stick on that for a bit? So DTV, Destination Thailand Visa, it’s a relatively new visa. If you could just describe what it is and then why it is that you decided to pursue the DTV, and maybe by comparison to, incorporating or starting a business here in Thailand, if you could tell that story.

Tim: Of course. So yeah, the DTV is brand new. I think they officially launched it less than two months ago. And the idea behind it is that the, it has many labels, but it’s called a digital nomad visa for some, but you could technically apply to it as an extended education visa or a cultural visa or indeed a workation visa.

So it has it’s a, catch all sort of a visa as well. But the idea behind it is I think Thailand is really trying to attract more people. [00:35:00] The numbers, they had, targeted did not get met and they had to come up with a solution because the rest of Southeast Asia and actually the world is trying to attract these digital nomads that make money and spend money, but need a more long term plan than the three months tourist visa that Thailand used to offer.

And so they launched that and I fell in the category as workation because I do all my work online. I derive all of my income from outside of Thailand. And I just want to be in Thailand with no restrictions in terms of being able to travel in and out of the country. Indeed, you have to stay a maximum of 180 days unless you renew, which is an extension of 180 days.

But for someone like myself who leaves the country at least a few times a year, it doesn’t really make a difference. So it just happened to be the perfect visa given the cost of it, the length of it, the flexibility of me being able to work [00:36:00] here without working for a Thai company, just working remotely.

All of that just coincided perfectly with my lifestyle. And as much as before that I was going to incorporate and, do the more traditional route of being able to work in Thailand, this came at the perfect time because I, the paperwork hadn’t really pushed through with my lawyer, and I just said, hey, let’s explore this new opportunity, and it just worked out really well.

Scott: As you pointed out, it’s that if Thailand’s trying to get more tourists here, they’re trying to get more long term, individuals here. And so there’s been a lot of changes with visas, whether it comes to the, long term resident LTR,

Thailand Privilege, which was previously called Thailand Elite.

They’ve always been trying to get people in and with Thailand Elite, it was really trying to get wealthy individuals in. And while, plenty of people, and you might have qualified for that, it still is like you’re paying a lot of money to have some privileges and have some, points at malls and stuff like this.

And it’s [00:37:00] fine. But when DTV came out, it was amazing. And it sounds like it was great timing for you because you’re more than a standard tourist, but you have a lot more flexibility. It’s a great price. And, it, it seems like a good, lily pad or stepping stone to where if you’re trying to get adjusted to Thailand, you want to be more than just a standard tourist, but you’re not quite ready to maybe register to a company under BOI or some of these other paths that you can take.

It seems like a good temporary or maybe not so temporary cause it’s five years as you said, step. And so it sounds like it was fairly easy for you to obtain it and you feel pretty good about your decision. Is that fair to say?

Tim: I’m very happy about the decision. I think it’s the best decision Thailand has made in a while with visas. It’s just a, it’s a no brainer for anyone who’s very passionate about Thailand, And in my opinion, it’s going to attract the right type of crowd, people who can bring value to the country, not just [00:38:00] tourism, but people who make money outside and bring money inside.

So like an, an money import scheme, if you will, for Thailand, which I know that they are always going after bringing as much money from the outside and keeping it inside. So I think it’s going to work out fantastic for them. And it works out really well for people like me. So it’s a big win-win for the country, I think.

Scott: Yeah, absolutely. Now, again, the big thing for people to know is that when you come in on DTV, you’re not able to work for a Thai company or make money in Thailand. So that would mean if you’re consulting or something, you can’t consult with local businesses.

If you’re thinking of going more the smaller business or consulting route, DTV can still work for you so long as again, like you said, you’re working online and you’re pulling money from outside the country into the country. And yeah, that’s a great fit.

Tim: The gray area for me is whether like you’re working with a company here that is mostly incorporated in Singapore and the Singapore entity pays you. That’s one that I [00:39:00] want to, I don’t want to really touch cause I don’t want to play with fire. But being able to work with the rest of the world with no restrictions, just the only restrictions is working with Thailand I think is very fair.

And I’ll take that any day.

Scott: Yeah, absolutely. So now let’s talk about what you’re doing today. After having these three successful businesses, which is a pretty good track record, let’s say, I want to talk about the Next Big Wave. What that is and what you’re doing with companies in Southeast Asia now.

Tim: Yeah, so Next Big Wave is a name that I played around with for my podcast, because I also run a podcast. And the idea for me was to create sort of a sounding board for founders in Southeast Asia. I felt that they were underrepresented online and in forums and especially in podcasts. I’ve always myself consumed a lot of podcasts as a founder and it’s helped me feel connected with other founders, feel motivated, feel [00:40:00] inspired.

And I wanted to recreate that for Southeast Asia. And I always thought that, as Southeast Asia was growing economically, I think the startup scene was also going to grow and catch up with the rest of the world. And I felt like it was the next big wave of technology coming to the world. And that’s why I coined the name like that.

And one thing led to another from doing all these podcasts and creating content on LinkedIn. I started coaching people and teaching them some of my growth sort of playbooks that I had developed for TendoPay and other companies in the past. And, I realized that a lot more startups needed my help than I had anticipated and I was getting a sort of flooded with requests on, LinkedIn and through the podcast.

And I decided to turn my one-on-one coaching into a one-to-many coaching and create a program, that would teach people, in a self serve sort of situation, a variety of different playbooks and strategies for growth [00:41:00] and then help implement those playbooks by one-on-one coaching, one group coaching and other such initiatives.

And because I’m not that creative, I just decided to use the exact same name of my podcast for my program. So it’s also called Next Big Wave.

Scott: So given that this is all about the next big wave in Southeast Asia, what gives you so much confidence in Southeast Asia? And I asked that because I had a guest on here, which he’s very, still very positive about Thailand, loves Thailand, is running a business here, but he also looks at some of the data behind Thailand and not all the numbers are great today. I’m curious what makes you optimistic about the mid and longterm, growth of entrepreneurship and businesses here in Southeast Asia.

Tim: I think because, the easy answer is because they’re playing catch up and their economies are growing faster than the rest of the world in general. And the playing [00:42:00] catch up part means that as the population gets educated on new technologies, the next wave of technologies is going to happen to them the same way they’ve already happened in the past with North America and Europe.

And so that type of catch up is usually an acceleration of, technology. And so just from that fact alone, I can tell that Southeast Asia has still a lot more to offer. But also I’m meeting, hundreds of founders now. In the last six months, I probably met 300 founders. And what I realized was A) there’s some really smart people in Southeast Asia and B) they’re not just doing copycats now. Like the copycatting era is behind them. They’re actually coming up with extremely creative new products that I believe North America is gonna be using as opposed to vice versa. And funding is evolving as well.

Like when I started TendoPay and things are moving very fast. That’s what’s impressive. Six six years ago when I started TendoPay, [00:43:00] funding was close to dry in Southeast Asia. We knew every fund and every fund was super strict and private investors were close to none. And now six years later, there’s a ton of momentum.

Governments are investing. There’s accelerators everywhere. Foreign investment is flooding into the region. And that is finally allowing a lot of people who were on the fence about starting companies because of the lack of investment and noresources of their own, they can finally jump into entrepreneurship and try themselves at it.

And funds are a lot more lenient in terms of the risk they’re willing to take. And so that’s what’s creating the next wave of startups in Southeast Asia. So I understand where your guest is coming from. The numbers are not fantastic, but the momentum is there. And that’s what matters.

Scott: Oh, yeah, absolutely. And just for the listeners, I’m referring to Nick Bernhardt. He, he runs a market research company here. And again, I don’t mean to risk misrepresent him because, I think he’s very [00:44:00] optimistic about Thailand. But it’s just a matter of sometimes we can look at certain economic data and it can say one story, but then, there are other, advantages that we certainly have in Southeast Asia, as you mentioned.

So it’s a balanced approach. You have to go in with both eyes open. As it’s not all rainbows and butterflies, but there’s a ton of opportunities still. And another thing it ties back to when you were mentioning Kenya and M-PESA and some of these things, sometimes the more developing economies can actually leapfrog.

And so just as, yeah, it was amazing because I remember coming from America straight to Kenya, cause that was my, one way flight. And it was amazing how you had everyone with phones that were so easily transmitting money. But I just remember that by comparison M-PESA was way better than the U.S. dollar that I was used to back home. When I wanted to split rent with a friend of mine, it was way harder than it was for any Kenyan, that I saw at any market that was paying for fruits with money on their phone. And so it’s, really quite amazing. And so I think you can extrapolate that to, Thailand as well, and [00:45:00] that they, have leapfrogged, some other economies as well.

Tim: Sure. Look in Thailand, I don’t know how often you go back to the US, but I know that in Canada, paying with your phone is limited to Apple pay or Google pay, right? Here, you have scanning, you have all sorts of ways to pay bills on your phone. Like the financial fintech scene in Southeast Asia is so much more advanced than North America and people in North America have no idea.

And that’s what’s impressive is that, like you said, we’ve more than leapfrogged. We actually leapfrogged and overtaken Western countries and people don’t give us any credit or enough credit in Southeast Asia for what we’re doing compared to what North America is doing. We were still swiping credit cards not long ago in the US so.

Scott: Yeah, absolutely. It’s, we have a good here and I know it’s easy to talk about things like fast internet here. And as you said, QR code scanning, but it all works very well. And it is funny when you think about buying a [00:46:00] 30 THB meal on the street and the fact that you can do the QR code. Given that you’re helping, a lot of these businesses reach the 1 million per year mark. And that’s what you’re specializing in. I know that you mentioned a couple of the playbooks that you use in your group coaching. You had mentioned the LinkedIn content machine, podcasting, and signal based sales.

So hopefully we can dig a little bit deeper into each of those, or maybe give like a brief summary of what they are and some tips, just so any small business owners that are trying to get to that level, have some idea. Maybe we can start with the podcast, given that’s something that you and I both have a podcast and there’s a reason for it.

Can you tell what this playbook is for starting a podcast?

Tim: Yeah, very, like quickly, essentially what happened at TendoPay is we were struggling to get leads. We were realizing that our response rates was very low for email [00:47:00] marketing, LinkedIn outreach and all. And at that time, I got a weird LinkedIn message from a random guy I didn’t know, inviting me to jump on his podcast for Startup Founders.

And I didn’t even think about it. I said, hey, yeah, sure. Be happy to be on your podcast. And, it, cause it was targeted, I was a startup founder. And I thought, okay, what’s the worst that can happen? I can talk about my story. Maybe I’ll get a bit of exposure. Nothing to lose. I replied and, I got on his podcast and then as the podcast went on and actually ended, I realized that I had been groomed into understanding what his auxiliary services were, which was providing – VAs and appointment booking for, founders. And because of the way he did it and how he navigated the conversation, it felt very organic. And at the end of the call, I wanted to ask him about his services and what he could do for me.

And after I [00:48:00] hung up, I had this light bulb moment. I thought, huh. This is like the, either the smartest playbook in history or it’s, random, but I highly doubt it’s, random. And so I reverse engineered it and developed it for TendoPay and we started to invite, like we created a, an industry podcast for HR leaders, who are our ICP in the Philippines.

Started inviting them and our response rate and I’m not kidding, it went from 3 percent to 30 percent overnight, because we were targeting people that had never been invited on podcasts, we structured it in a way that would flatter their ego and whatnot. Not everyone went on the podcast, but the response rate went up.

And, I started doing the podcast myself and then I started training my SDRs to run them. And essentially what it was is like just a zoom call, not as professional as what you’re doing right now, but just a recorded zoom call where we would go through five to seven questions that had two goals: flattered their ego and highlight pain [00:49:00] points they might have in their business that we can solve for.

And after the call, we would try to convert them into a demo call for TendoPay. And it worked like somewhat well at first. And then we optimized it and started working really well. And when I quit TendoPay, I realized that was a really smart playbook that I had developed and no, not many people were doing it.

There was a lot of podcasting, but they weren’t selling anything except advertising. And I realized you can create these industry podcasts to, to have people on a call that you typically would not be able to, because they don’t want to be sold to. And you do like soft selling or reverse selling through the podcast.

And I started doing my podcast more out of passion and all, but I realized when I started my course, that half of the people I would talk to on the podcast, because I spent time with them, I brought them value, it was very easy to convince them to join my program. So in a way, it was working for me as well.

And I said, okay, this has to be a playbook that I talk about and I write about and I create a framework around. So that’s the [00:50:00] podcast playbook. The content, the LinkedIn content machine is very similar, but I was creating a lot of content during TendoPay, trying to target my audience. That one wasn’t working as well, but for myself, when I quit TendoPay, I just wrote a ton and a ton of content, and people got to know me, they bought into my story, they bought into the value that I provided, and just, it was creating a ton of inbound opportunities for me, so I decided, I should also create a playbook around this, because it’s working really well for me.

I’m trying it out with other B2B founders and it’s working for them and I can see that a lot of B2B founders that are really passionate about creating content are getting a lot of momentum. And so I created a playbook around that and now I’m teaching that and it’s working quite well. And then the signal based one, and there are a lot more that I’m working on, but essentially signal based is the theory behind that and it’s a lot more particular between one company to another.

So the theory behind that is you want to capture as many signals about your leads as possible, [00:51:00] whether it’s on your own real estate or your website, your LinkedIn page, your social media, or external signals, are they hiring for X job or are they in the news or are they launching a new company?

Like depending on what you need, what you’re offering as a business and use all those signals to create levels of intents for your targets and then nurturing sequences that are adapted so that not every lead is treated the way, the same way, which most companies unfortunately do. And so you’re just able to capture all these different signals and to create proper sales, outreach strategies.

That’s the concept. So those are a few of the playbook that I work with.

Scott: Oh, that’s great. And it sounds like you’re expanding and continuing to add to them because you’re expanding. Testing them things out in the market when they work, you’re, sharing them. I’d only reinforce all those ideas because I think sometimes, number one, you’d be surprised by how many people aren’t doing some of these things.

So some of the concepts are relatively easy, right? But then knowing the details, as you said, of how to make a podcast in a way that it’s, flattering the guest, but then [00:52:00] also, providing them a value and, it took you a while to optimize it, is my point. And so I had only reinforced that if you’re not doing some of these things, you’re missing out.

Your competitors might be doing them. And in fact, your competitors might not be doing them, but that’s your leg up. So start taking some action and start getting them underway. I have to quickly just say because I believe so highly in the podcasting side of things. For me, it’s that I love talking to business owners and leaders and entrepreneurs here in Thailand. And I’ve loved the fact that I meet someone at an event and you can only talk so much with someone at a networking event because you do want to talk to other people. And so sometimes if it’s a really interesting person, it’s hey, maybe I get you on the podcast and I’d say probably 10 or 20 percent of the time that someone that I might want to work with.

But for the most part, it’s that I just want to extend that conversation. I find them to be interesting conversations. It’s an interesting excuse to have a deeper conversation with an individual than you’d otherwise have. And I’d say, you can push back against this. I would say if [00:53:00] you really don’t like talking to people and you really don’t like podcasting and you don’t think you’ll stick with it, maybe you don’t do it. But if you can actually form a podcast around something you enjoy and tangentially related to the services that you provide, then do it. Because it’s an amazing channel.

Tim: Absolutely. I agree with that a lot. And I know I’m not necessarily like the most social person. I can be an introvert, but for some reason in a podcast, I’m really comfortable because it feels like a one on one conversation. I never think of people watching it down the road. Although I should sometimes be more careful about what I say, because I can be a bit outspoken.

But I just feel like I’m having this one-on-one conversation about something that you’re, like you said, about something I’m passionate about. And I feel like intellectually stimulated and challenged to talk about something. That’s what I enjoy about it. And then if other people benefit from it, then that’s just bonus.

Scott: Absolutely, so since you’ve done a lot of coaching with business [00:54:00] owners. That sounds like it’s come organically. Like people have asked you for advice on things over the years. I’m curious if you have any patterns or any limitations you think some entrepreneurs put in limit their self with? Or something that prevents them from growing more. Because I know again, your focus is getting people to the $1 million annual revenue mark, right?

But if you were to form any sort of pattern over why people are not hitting that $1 million mark, what would you say are those common patterns?

Tim: I would say they’re not investing in their growth enough. I think people invest in product, they invest in a variety of different things, but they don’t invest in things that scale that much. They’ll throw money at digital marketing because they want to get a direct impact or direct response. Or they’ll throw money at the most random stuff.

But if they invested a lot more in their personal branding as a founder, things that are going to scale. [00:55:00] You know than anyone else that did the sort of compounding power of building a brand around yourself so that anything you discuss down the road will be heard by a lot more people.

Those are the things that are going to bring value to your business. Essentially the same way you’re investing in stock, it’s better to invest your money from your company into things that will grow and pay dividends rather than things that are one offs. And I think that’s a mistake most people do.

Overbuilding things that people don’t need. So rather than selling what you’ve already got and figuring out what people really want or willing to pay for, later on, people get more passionate about building everything and then trying to sell it later on. That’s a big mistake that I see. So I’m, a big believer of running with your MVP for as long as possible, or even pre selling and validating your product early on.

Those are things that I’ve always done in my businesses. So yeah, I’d say those are common mistakes.

Scott: Yeah, and I want to [00:56:00] emphasize how good I think you are doing this. You mentioned having selling, what you have, right? And I think sometimes people can have a comfort zone of say, oh, I want to build out my website. I want to build out my feature set. I want to build this more. And sometimes that can be an excuse. Where sometimes having a splash page and having a video, on, a website is, all you need to get started.

Now I know usually it’s, once you have established business, you need a bit more than that. But still, if people are going to find excuses don’t know why not to start the podcast, why not to do the LinkedIn outreach, why they need to work on the product more, why they need to work on the R&D more. Whatever it is. Because that’s their comfort zone, right?

Tim: For sure. And they don’t feel confident enough in what they have. I’ll be honest with you. Like you said, those things with the splash page and video, I have the worst splash page ever. And the worst video that I shot, like at night in my spare bedroom, because I just wanted to get something out there and get traction and validation.

[00:57:00] And no one looked at it and be like, oh my God, it’s the worst. I’m not going to work with you. Even if they did, it doesn’t matter. Like building a value that you get some form of traction or interest to validate what you’re offering is important to someone, and then you’ll just improve it. Look at my background.

Like I painted that by hand. There’s freaking holes everywhere because I don’t care. I wanted something that was half decent so that I could start putting out content. And then most people will be paying attention to the content more than the rest. It’s all fluff, right? Like having a really nice website, having a nice background, all of those are optimizations.

But if you’re getting started, what matters is actually providing value with the minimum effort possible on the, actual, like production side of things, but maximum value.

Scott: Absolutely. Couldn’t agree more. Tim, I really appreciate the time that you spent with me today, and I want to make sure people have the best way to get in touch with you. So [00:58:00] you had mentioned that you have a podcast of your own. You have a coaching program. So if you could run off the best ways for people to get in touch with you, if they’re interested in learning more.

Tim: Yeah. I think LinkedIn is the best way because you’ll get to learn about me. I’m very, vocal, so I post almost daily on LinkedIn. If you, like long form and you’re a founder in Southeast Asia, the podcast is definitely going to be insightful, but because you can also reach out to me on LinkedIn, I think LinkedIn is a good place to start.

Scott: Perfect. thanks so much, Tim. I really appreciate the time today.

Tim: Of course, happy to be on and, good luck with, growth of your podcast.

Scott: Well, I hope you enjoyed the episode. A big thank you to Tim for sharing his journey with us. If you are a business owner in Southeast Asia and you’re trying to reach the $1 million mark, you should definitely reach out to Tim on LinkedIn. Tim is also very active online, so you’ll likely see his posts and videos, all of which offer a ton of value.

I’ve [00:59:00] included some of his links in the show notes. Now, if you or someone you know would like to be a guest on the podcast, head over to madeitinthailand.com and send me a message. I hope you learned something and I’ll catch you on the next one.