Thursday, July 11, 2013

Bali businesses going bananas

Abandon hope all ye enter here...

As our village is turning from a rather poor, remote settlement into economically blooming paradise, number of smiling, happy people is proportionally going down.
What is going wrong?


a) as in most places in the world – many things
b) creativity and fresh minds are gone with the wind
c) business ideas and solutions are becoming slightly weird
d) number of bankrupt businesses is heading towards stratosphere

Through the years some change in mindsets started.
Old idea of doing what you are good at, what you like to do, what you are nicely paid for – this is passe!
Doing a business, even if you don't know what the word means, is the thing!

How this started and what is going on?
Probably they collectively attended a workshop “Stop working – do business”.
Guidelines from this workshop are simple:

"Having a good job with a nice salary is for losers. For success you must have your own business. If you don't have funds to start it and not a slightest clue how to do it is not an issue. Look at it as a challenge and your advantage.
You take a look what business your neighbor has. Then borrow heavily. As you have to stand out, you don't copy blindly from your neighbor – you have to use your creativity. If neighbor is offering fried noodles, you put on your menu fried noodles special... And after a short while you have dozens of same rundown businesses all struggling to survive and from time to time going belly up...
As (just in order to keep your business above the water) you desperately and unscrupulously try to steal staff and guests from your neighbors your relationship with neighbors becomes a touch sour..."

Before you start laughing at simplicity (some bad characters would say stupidity) of Pemuteran people, just take a look at the newest international enterprise in Pemuteran.
After intensive fact finding mission great business minds gathered information that six hotel restaurants in Pemuteran offer also pizza. All together they manage to sell 12 to 16 pizzas per month.
Voila!
After a heavy brain-storm they rented land, and a bunch of locals from the neighboring village, some French and Swiss “blue sky thinkers” and one Pemuteran businessman are preparing to open a striving business.

Yeah, a pizzeria...

A living, walking proof of a combined Western - Balinese business superiority...
 

2 comments:

  1. Dear Zen Diver,

    it seems, that you are

    - thinking too logically (or maybe just logically), or
    - until now still believing that mankind would be able to learn from earlier mistakes or mistakes that already have been done all over the world in a similar way, or
    - expecting that Pemuteran people would be different; because when you decided to live at that place they were different.

    You are not alone: I also can see this development since let´s say two years, but every day again I am astonished about all these things that happen around me.

    What can we do? Brain storming, too? Better we sit together in the late afternoon, have a look at the different look of Pemuteran main street and let pass this day....and the next...

    We call this "The Ultimative Pemuteran Zen Wait And See Club". At least a new business idea:-)
    Yours
    Bali-Scarlett

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  2. My dear Scarlett, I'll follow your famous line: "I'll think about that tomorrow...".
    Today I'm absolutely focused on makaroniku (al dente) and chicken in chili sauce - it helps amazingly that my mind is not also gone with the wind...;)

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