 Have you ever heard of the Newton message pad? Or how about the gyrocon? Or the social book reader? Probably not because these were the precursors to the iPhone, the Kindle, and the iPad. It's one thing to be ahead of the curve in business, but another thing to be too far ahead. And as they say, pioneers often leave with arrows in their backs. Today we're going to check out our crib in Paranon, Bali, Indonesia, and talk about how to ride a trend to the top by being early, but not too early. But first, subscribe and smash that like button so we can make more free videos. Let's get it. My name is Christian, and I've gone from a broke pizza delivery driver to making millions of dollars online while working from 25 countries over six different continents. This series Digital Nomad Crids is about what home looks like when you can work from anywhere in the world. Keep watching to see how and where I live while learning more about how to start, grow, and scale a work from anywhere online business or visit digitalnomad.com to start your work from anywhere journey today. Today we're coming from Paranon in Bali, Indonesia. It's a small beach town with rice field views, peaceful scooter rides, great restaurants, and temples galore. It's next to the more popular changoo area, but a lot more chill. Now we talked about Ganesha in a previous video. Paranon even has a version of Ganesha with a fish as a body. Elephant head, fish body. All right, now that we've got that down, let's jump into the tour and talk about how to ride a business trend to the top. So here we are at the villa in Paranon, and you're going to hear behind me is a lot of construction noise going on, which if you would guess if this was on the listing before I booked it last night, the answer is no. We had a nice surprise when we got here. I think Shoshu almost lost her mind when she heard how loud it was. No! God! No! God, please no! No! It's actually pretty good right now, and you can see just how beautiful a space this is. So honestly, I'm only here for a couple days before we move into our next villa. I don't mind the construction noise that much. Last year when I was in changoo, we had a construction the whole month next to us. So if I can get out of here in a couple days, that's great. And I just want to show you guys how cool this place is, how beautiful it is, and kind of some of the things they've done with this villa that are unique that you can use in your own business life. So you can see the outside, just really great presentation when you come in. First impressions matter, you know, an easy one right there. But really, this is a super tiny villa. If we walk in, you're going to see our suitcases are downstairs, and because they don't even fit up the stairs to get to the bedroom. That's how small this place is. But it's beautiful inside. It has AC. We got a little work zone down there, TV, if you're into that. A nice kitchen over there. And so the thing that really stands out is, in business, the thing that you're offering doesn't have to be huge if it's cool and fulfills people's needs. So if it's like this really shiny object thing that people desperately want to need, like a trendy villa, and they need someplace to stay, it doesn't have to be perfect or the biggest or the best thing ever. It can just be that little unique blend of cool. And you can do a lot, you know, in real estate with a small space. But in business, you can do a lot with a small offer if it's exactly what people want and need. The next lesson here is this place, while you're looking around with the wide shots, this place is in a place called Preranon, which is right next to Chengdu in Bali. Now, Chengdu is, you know, 10 years ago it was nothing. It was rice patties. But now it's hipster town. It used to be a surfing town and now it's just where the Instagram kids go. And obviously the surfers too, and a lot of other people have come to Bali. But Preranon is right next to it. And a couple years ago, I would think, oh, Preranon, you know, that's like so out of the way. I'm not going to stay over there. I got to stay in Chengdu. And now Chengdu is like way too crowded and Preranon is a cool place to be. So in business, it's kind of the cliche Wayne Gretzky quote where you want to skate where the puck is going to go, not where it is right now. So if we had just bought up properties and lots and Preranon five years ago, we'd be in a great place right now because now it's the new cool place. It's next to Chengdu, but it's not so crowded and overdone and full of partiers that it's not a peaceful place to go and hang out on vacation. So in business, you want to catch those trends. You want to be ahead of them. So five years from now, you're at the top of the roller coaster when it's going full blast, but you have to get in early so you can build those foundations. So you're building those villas by just where everybody wants them. Now the caveat there, the drawback is you have to be able to float that business until the trend catches up with it. You know, so for example, VR is notorious for this. People have been working on VR since the 80s, I believe it was invented in like the 60s. And so if you thought VR is the next best thing, but it hasn't hit yet, I'm going to start working on my business. If you run out of cash and you can't hold out long enough, you caught the trend too early, right? We saw this happen with iPhones, you know, Kindle e-readers. Lots of things that were developed way before their time. And then it wasn't until the next iteration until those actually branded Kindles and iPhones came around that it actually caught. But people were working on these in the 1990s. It's just you don't know their brands because they never caught on because they ran out of cash before the trend caught up. So catch the trends early, ride them to the top, but make sure you're not the very first person in that trend with the saying pioneers usually die with arrows in their backs. So let somebody else pave the way but get in before it's mainstream. Now the warning that you have to understand here is usually people, especially newbies in the entrepreneurial world, think that a trend is dead before it's even begun. So I'm guilty of this too. So I'm not just talking to you guys. But in 2015, I was working for a SaaS company that served the e-com market. And there was this woman who started a skincare brand, like a private label brand, meaning she outsourced manufacturing, created a new brand, and within a month she had hit 10K a month in skincare. Now, I heard about a guy the other day who went zero to $40 million in 12 months with the new skincare brand. And I can tell you in 2015, I go, oh, this thing is pretty cool. By 2018, I thought, you know what, I think e-com has been overdone and you can't get in now. It's too saturated. Does that sound familiar to you at all? Have you ever said a market is too saturated? I said the same thing about teaching at SMA May in 2018. I thought it was overdone, didn't want to get into it, waited six months, probably cost myself millions of dollars because the trend was still rising. You know? So these things, it's like they get popular to us because we're on the inside. But to the mass markets, they're not popular for another couple of years. So crypto, for example, it's gotten so much more popular, but it hasn't reached a skate velocity yet, where it's actually mainstream. And when it does, it's going to be crazy. It's going to be huge when there's actually mainstream use cases. It's going to get so much bigger than it is now. So a lot of times we think that we've missed the boat, but we have so much more time. So even as I'm standing here in Prairinon, all these bills are going up, I'm thinking, oh yeah, I really missed the boat on Prairinon. It's so popular now when it didn't used to be. The truth of the matter is, in another five years, it's probably going to be like Chengu is now. And so it's just building up and building up and building up. And I've done this in real estate so many times. 2013, the market was so overheated and overdone, I got out. I said it couldn't possibly keep going up from there. And if you looked at the numbers, you might cry like I do looking at them. I've missed out on so much money in Denver because the market overheated and it just kept overheating and overheating and rising and rising and rising and it hasn't stopped. You know, probably because the government keeps printing more and more money so the houses aren't actually worth more, but I digress. So this is the place in Prairinon. You know, a super cool place next to Chengu. A little more chill. It's got some more families over here, some nice up and coming restaurants. But it's not like overblown, overdone, super expensive and too crowded like Chengu is. For now, in five more years it will. And then I think it will just go one row over and maybe Cece next to this will be the next thing to blow up. So in business and in life, find that trend before it pops. It's going to feel, when it's starting to grow, it's going to feel like you already missed the boat. Most likely you didn't. And then also do cool things with small projects, right? Make it cool design. Make it fun to be around. Make it that flashy thing, even if it's not this massive best thing in the world. Like this villa, not the greatest villa in the world. It's small. It's tiny and I can't even fit my suitcase up the stairs. But I still think it's kind of cool that there's a spiral staircase coming up here. So how can you make your offer and your business and your service unique so that it's really cool for your customer, even if you're operating with a small team and you're trying to make use of a small space? So that's prayer and I'm that's all for today. Starting and scaling a business is hard enough as it is. You don't have to do it alone. Learn how to use the power of marketing to build a life you don't need a vacation from and join the WFA family at digitalnomad.com