Should I focus on selling automations to local businesses in Indonesia (less competition, blue ocean) or target US/English‑speaking markets, considering I need to form an LLC due to Stripe restrictions?
He uses a simple success model (order value ÷ saturation × culture fit). Estimates Indonesian market: low order value (~$300), low saturation, low culture fit → ~0.5 success rate. US market: high order value (~$3,000), high saturation, high culture fit → higher potential. Concludes that doing both is fine; suggests starting with the US market then translating the approach to Indonesian, noting many other factors matter.
Focus on your local market first – Saudi Arabia or the UAE. The cost of living and average service rates are higher there, so you can charge more. Once you have traction locally, you can expand to other markets. Keep in mind time‑zone differences make remote work with North America challenging.
No, as a beginner you should not target local businesses first. There’s a big list of things to target before going local—always start with digital, and consider hybrid or high‑cost‑of‑living countries before local. Local businesses are much harder to scrape leads for; you usually need to pull data via Google Maps API or address‑based scraping, which is hyper‑limited and raises the bar significantly. You’d have to invest far more money than for digital businesses, yet the pay is low, so the return isn’t worth it. Generally, these businesses have a high barrier to entry and offer little pay. If you want context, I’ll link a video about niches; three automation‑agency niches come with criteria I use, one of which is that they tend to be digital. For newcomers, that means definitely not targeting local businesses—it’s just a lot easier to pull the digital lever. If you’re experienced and see a genuine market opportunity with a particular type of local business, then I might consider it.
You're in the best spot ever — you get to arbitrage your local cost of living against the best economy on the planet. US labor productivity is about 1.5x that of Canada and most EU countries, so if a service costs $1,000 in France, it'll go for $1,500+ in America. If you're selling a service, why sell it for $1,000 when you could sell it for $1,500 to a US client? The buying-power gap is even bigger for people in places like Bangladesh or India — it comes down to how many loaves of bread or months of rent that $100 buys locally versus in the US. Being Western and working with Western companies also gives you an edge you might not have — you're less likely to be seen as outsourced/delegated talent and more as a business on relatively equal footing. The arbitrage opportunity here is genuinely huge; you'll run into normal friction like time zones, but it's a really good position to be in.
Local Indian automations are more affordable but the market is price‑sensitive and less familiar with AI, so earning in dollars is harder. I recommend targeting tier‑one (English‑speaking) countries because they pay the most per unit time, even though they’re more saturated. Success in the program comes from focusing on those markets, using cold email, Loom videos, and lead generation, while recognizing that response rates depend on how many others are contacting the same audience.