Money is a really strange concept. A lot of people do not understand it very well. I’m actually willing to bet that there are more people in the world who don’t understand money than those who do. Unfortunately, they don’t teach you money in schools, certainly not the way I want to talk about it.
I often encourage everyone in the developing and emerging markets to work on the internet, reach a global market and earn a foreign exchange. I go on to the point where I believe and preach that it’s often even better for you to be positioned in an emerging market to unleash and hack the full power of money. Here’s what I mean.
It is ten times easier to live on $3000 in Pakistan, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Turkey, Bulgaria, and so on than it is in US, Canada, Australia etc. It all comes down to purchasing power in the end. With internet, for the first time in the history every individual has been given an opportunity to hack money in a way that you can absolutely earn an equivalent of what you can earn in US, without physically being in US. The equivalent might be equal in the number, but it’s even more valuable. Which brings me to my point, that money needs to be measured in the purchasing power terms.
Some of you might argue that the quality of life is not good in these emerging countries. I’m again willing to bet that there are dozens of countries with better quality of life than in US, that are 10 times cheaper, with lesser taxes, often complete tax waivers on exports and foreign exchange, and allow you to earn (online) an equivalent of what you’d make physically in US.
Great entrepreneurs not only work on yielding high gross revenues, but also on cutting expenses. For bootstrappers, reduction in expenses is the survival game. So use this opportunity to set up your company anywhere in the world with the right infrastructure and ecosystem while positioning yourself anywhere else in the world where you have the best and most affordable lifestyle and have a distributed team to run your business.
In the end it’s your choice whether you want to to live like a millionaire, or be a millionaire, or both. I’d go for both.