What 15 Years in Thailand Taught Me About Hiring, With ExpatDen Founder Karsten Aichholz

[00:00:00] Karsten: I think as a small company you can do things that a large company can’t do. You can have like an unstandardized hiring process.In the beginning, I always try to hire the absolute smartest person I could get for a task, thinking if I get the absolute smartest person, they will figure it out.

[00:00:14] Karsten: And I got some good people, but the retention rate was atrocious.

[00:00:19] Karsten: So I kind of switched way more to cultural values and say, let’s find somebody who’s challenged by the job.

[00:00:26] Karsten: Because these are people who enjoy challenge, which honestly is most people.

[00:00:31] Karsten: And then, um, you will be able to transfer those people anywhere and they will stick with you because you give them something interesting to do.

[00:00:42] Scott: Alright, so I’m here today with Karsten Aichholz. And uh, Karsten, thank you so much for joining me today.

[00:00:50] Karsten: Thank you for having me.

[00:00:50] Scott: the topic for today is really about how to build a business in Thailand that lasts.

[00:00:56] Scott: I know that you’ve been able to keep a business running that hasn’t been solely dependent on you.

[00:01:01] Scott: So to start off, I’d love if you could give a brief background about yourself, just the TLDR of who you are, what you do, and what your exposure to Thailand has been.

[00:01:11] Karsten: Gotcha. Sure. So essentially I came to Thailand in 2006. 24 years old. Back then I had not much of a clue of anything. The very first rental contract we signed for a business was in Thai. Didn’t understand a single word. 15 years later, I left, flew in Thai with a million more in the bank than I arrived with.

[00:01:34] Karsten: So a million. And, uh, the company I’ve built during that time is still running today and it’s running without me. So basically over that period, I build an organization that doesn’t need me. So I guess my greatest accomplishment was making myself useless. So yeah, here we are.

[00:01:57] Scott: I think that so many business owners here struggle with that. They often get a little bit bitter when everything’s dependent on them. And it seems like you have a little bit more freedom. I assume now that everything’s not solely dependent on you.

[00:02:11] Karsten: Well, I mean, nowadays, uh, I guess I have the freedom to volunteer on the school board of my little kiddo. Yeah. Try to find the power tools to hit around the house.

[00:02:23] Karsten: But yeah, that, that keeps me busy. That kind of management rather than the other kind.

[00:02:28] Scott: Can you sort of paint the picture of what Thailand was like back then?

[00:02:30] Scott: So I remember the very first time I was in Thailand arriving at Don Mueang airport back then. And, and this was a time where you kind of landed in Thailand and you kind of expected there’d be bicycles on the street.

[00:02:46] Karsten: Like just no clue what’s going on. I mean, obviously. No YouTube, no anything. So you kind of go there and you’re like, wow, this is actually a lot nicer than I thought it would be. So I think that was the very first impression where I kind of had this image in my head. I spent some time in India before where I thought, okay, this might be rough, but it was really nice.

[00:03:06] Scott: what was your first exposure to doing business in Thailand?

[00:03:09] Karsten: So my first exposure to doing business in Thailand was actually before I got here. So we had a company in Germany essentially making websites and tools for online games. And um, at some point we realized maybe if you’re a company in Germany and all your customers are in the US it doesn’t really make sense to stay in Germany.

[00:03:31] Karsten: Mm. And my business partner had done an internship in Thailand, so we’re like, could we move our company to Thailand? And uh, that was literally a reaction of everybody, right? Like, right. Yeah. Okay. And, uh, I think that goes to show like, and to this day I have that where I’m like, come up with some crazy idea.

[00:03:51] Karsten: And the first reaction is always truly, that can’t work. I’m like, I’m not saying it’s gonna work, but I first want to figure out the real. Why not? So, um, in this case you know, we had nowhere to start. It was like 2005. okay, Google was around. That was about it.

[00:04:09] Karsten: And, uh, then we were like, well, let’s just start at the very first place we can think of. Let’s call the Thai embassy in Germany. Oh. And ask them, Hey, we wanna start a business in Thailand.

[00:04:23] Karsten: how about you, uh, talk to the board of investment, like board of what? The Board of Investment, it’s the investment promotion agency of Thailand. And they handle basically bringing business to Thailand.

[00:04:35] Karsten: And at the time we were like, you know, 22, 23 years old sitting, I wish we had a garage, but we didn’t. But so we sit now, sat in our apartment together and we had like two student houses and that was the company. Mm-hmm. And now we’re supposed to talk to literally the Thai government agency in charge of bringing forward investment investment to Thailand.

[00:04:56] Scott: well, we called them up and they’re like, well, why don’t you just come in? We’re like, well, why are you guys, oh, with Frankfurt, it’s like, that’s like two miles down the road from us.

[00:05:05] Karsten: So we literally, basically took the bus over, walked into the office, and there were like five people and we’re like, well. Here’s our business. Can we take you to Thailand? And they’re like, we’d love to. I’m like, really? Yeah.

[00:05:15] Scott: Wow.

[00:05:15] Karsten: And like, you have to fill out a form and get to do a business plan. I’m like, guess we can swing that.

[00:05:21] Scott: Yeah.

[00:05:21] Karsten: But if you need help with the form, we’ll help you with the form. And so we filled out a business plan, you know, did the form ourselves and uh, handed it into them.

[00:05:30] Scott: Yeah.

[00:05:30] Karsten: And they’re like, alright, we’ll send this to Bangkok and they’ll contact you with an interview.

[00:05:35] Karsten: So we essentially got on a flight, like literally three days later, flew to Bangkok, we went to the board of investment office, presented our idea. We’re like, alright, well think about it. You’ll hear from us.

[00:05:46] Karsten: And, um. We didn’t, we did get a recommendation for a lawyer that we ended up working with who at some point called us up and we’re like, guys, why are you not picking up your board of investment promotion? We’re like, what do you mean it’s there? It’s like about to expire in five days from now. Like, we never heard of it.

[00:06:03] Karsten: Well, you’re supposed to pick it up in person. I’m like, what? We’re back in Germany. Okay, how about this? You just sign a blank power of attorney and I take care of stuff. You are like, what damage could you possibly do in Thailand with a blank power of attorney? So, uh, they’re like, f*uck it, let’s do it.

[00:06:22] Karsten: Yeah. So sign a blank power of attorney, send it over. Took care of everything.

[00:06:25] Scott: Yeah.

[00:06:25] Karsten: And this whole thing of like signing something we didn’t understand lasted for quite a while. First office contract. No clue. Labor contracts, no clue. We were like. What could possibly go wrong? I mean, if we can’t unsign it, we can’t continue, so that seems worse than the worst case.

[00:06:42] Karsten: So let’s just sign it and see what happens. So that, what was like 20 years ago in Thailand.

[00:06:48] Scott: My gosh. I mean, that’s interesting though that how helpful they actually were. I’m just, I’m surprised they were that receptive. Do you think it was just due the time, were they just looking for a ton of investment and just anything? Or what was the reason you think they were so receptive?

[00:07:02] Karsten: I think that was part of it.

[00:07:03] Karsten: But in general, I think what people have this preconceived notion of like how things work. If it’s one thing I learned everywhere in the world that you have to find the people who will be on your side. You know. The immigration officer as Don Mueang. He’s certainly not on my side. But the guy who gets a target to bring in forward investment, he’s on your side. He will want to like make this happen. As long as your interests are aligned, you’re good. And I think that even holds true today.

[00:07:34] Scott: Yeah. I mean I guess a lot has changed, but I think maybe people tell theirselves the stories that, oh, things are there’s no way to start a successful business in there’s no way to start a business. I’m only 20 years I think people make those excuses, and it seems like you at a younger age, were just like, we’re just gonna make it work. Or at least try.

[00:07:52] Karsten: a friend of mine likes to say there’s two types of people. There’s the yes buts and there’s the why nots.

[00:07:57] Scott: Right? Ah, yes. I like that a lot. I like that a lot.

[00:08:00] Scott: Whoa there. Hold up for just one second. I’m sorry to interrupt, but if you are struggling with business operations, cultural challenges, or growing your business in Thailand, you are not alone. This market is really tough to navigate. I know because I’ve been here since 2012 and I’ve experienced a lot of these challenges myself.

[00:08:19] Scott: That’s why I founded Fractiond, a Thailand-based consulting firm aimed at helping businesses succeed in Thailand. My Accenture experience from the US, and our community of top consultants from around the world, allow us to deliver top tier strategy and execution to businesses in Thailand. If you wanna learn more, you can book a free 15 minute discovery call to see how we can help your business.

[00:08:43] Scott: You can email us at [email protected]. Alright, back to the show. So I had first been exposed to you through a website that was a very good resource for me when I came to Thailand. And I want to better understand how what you were doing in the gaming industry actually went into you producing a website that was giving expats knowledge for how to actually migrate to Thailand or start businesses in Thailand. How did that even happen? How did you get into that game?

[00:09:14] Karsten: I always created educational resources in some way, just instead of gamers. Now it’s expats.

[00:09:19] Scott: But more importantly what happened for me was over time, I’ve been doing this for a long time, and markets come and go.

[00:09:26] Karsten: The gaming business was in decline. And I’m like, okay, what’s gonna come next? And I thought about doubling down on that and I think, you would call it throwing good money after bad money. And but I actually decided now this is the time to try something new for my list of business ideas. How about I start a personal blog I just write about whatever, and I will see what kind of reaction do I get?

[00:09:54] Karsten: And one of those was health insurance. And I’m like, maybe I should write about health insurance.

[00:10:00] Karsten: And there was this file where I created a spreadsheet to decide which health insurance I wanna buy.

[00:10:05] Scott: Yes.

[00:10:06] Karsten: And, people create spreadsheets and, they make, sometimes they make decisions with it. This spreadsheet took me three days to create. I asked a bunch of brokers for quotes back then, and nothing was up to the level of detail and analysis that I wanted. I was like what about aids?

[00:10:22] Karsten: What about organ transplants? What about these? What about, and like, so I just created, used all these fine print PDFs. They’re like 60 pages wrong from every of those plans, and pulled out every single clause and every single number that I felt was relevant. And created a custom spreadsheet for that. It took me three days.

[00:10:41] Karsten: Yeah. And at the end I’m like, that one. And then I went to an insurance broker and said I wanted that plan. He’s like, all right, here you go. I’m like, wait, that’s how you get a commission. That seems the easiest job in the world.

[00:10:53] Scott: but anyway, I was like, so it kind of was like, okay, all I need to do is just tell people how to make better decisions.

[00:10:59] Karsten: So how about I use this mothership of a spreadsheet and translate that into somewhat, slightly more accessible material a 5,000 word blog post. And I did. And it was literally one of the first articles that went viral. I think it was the first article that went viral on that personal blog.

[00:11:17] Karsten: Yes. I’m like, what? It’s a 5,000 word article about how to buy health insurance. You don’t expect that to be your first viral hit.

[00:11:27] Karsten: over the next few months I posted more articles and what always seemed to gather a lot of attention was when I went full on Rainman on some weird practical talent topic.

[00:11:42] Scott: Right?

[00:11:42] Karsten: You know, was it taxation or whatever. And, and then at some point I’m like, well, I guess I’m a Thailand blogger now. So I took all these Thailand articles. And, uh, put them in a new website and called it Thailand Starter Kit.

[00:11:56] Scott: Okay. And that’s definitely where I was first exposed. Thailand starter kit resonated with me because when I came in 2012, 2013 range, that’s where I was looking for things like health insurance, how to get a job, how work permits work, all that stuff.

[00:12:11] Scott: And by that point, I think you had created a lot of content on those topic areas, is that right?

[00:12:16] Karsten: Yeah, I think that was like just the, in true, I guess Karsten fashion, I had used an expense tracker to write down every single coffee I bought. Every single Spotify subscription, every single thing over a six month period.

[00:12:29] Karsten: Uh, the most detailed cost of living overview ever. Yes. And I used that to kind of, well, I published that as well. It was also a. Very, uh, unique blog post. Um, that got a lot of attention, but also

[00:12:41] Karsten: when I first came to Thailand, I had a travel insurance plan.

[00:12:46] Karsten: First five years, nothing but travel insurance.

[00:12:48] Scott: Yes.

[00:12:49] Karsten: Interesting.

[00:12:49] Karsten: Five years on the travel insurance plan. Yes. If you need one now, I have a website for it.

[00:12:54] Scott: Oh, tell me again.

[00:12:55] Karsten: It’s safe and not sorry. Dot com. Okay. I created it with a friend of mine who’s an insurance broker who is okay travel insurance is horrible. You can’t compare anything.

[00:13:04] Scott: Yes. What

[00:13:04] Karsten: if there were such a thing as Google flights for travel insurance? I’m like, that’s cool. Let’s build it. So it’s like a little hobby project and you basically enter your details and it tells you what’s the cheapest travel insurance, which has actually good coverage. So it’s like a very small project, but it’s just so incredibly useful because it really helps you figure out. For analytical people. Yes. What to get, the people who buy a brand don’t need it, but if you’re like an analytical person, you are like, that’s your thing.

[00:13:32] Scott: When did you realize that this was going from a hobby to actually becoming a business?

[00:13:36] Karsten: when the health insurance article launched, what happened is, like I went to these networking events in Bangkok and people started recognizing me. Like insurance companies are like, oh, you are the guy with a blog. I’m like, yeah. And I’m like, oh, this is impact. And actually the health insurance I was insured with at the time shout out ACS. Hello. Um, they’re great. They’re like, you know what? How about we advertise on your site? I’m like, that would be terrific.

[00:14:02] Karsten: I’m like, how much are you gonna pay? And they’re like, how about we pay you three euro per click? Hmm.

[00:14:08] Karsten: Yes, please. Yeah, take it. Right? I’ll definitely take that deal. And a few months later they’re like, yeah, maybe that was too much. Um, but yeah, at three euro per click I realized, okay, we’re onto something here.

[00:14:20] Scott: Yes. Yeah. You had built up, I guess, quite a reputation by that point. And so yeah, I can see that adding up pretty quickly.

[00:14:27] Scott: Very cool. Um, now. I want to then fast forward a bit though, right? So you are creating all these blog posts by yourself. Mm-hmm. You’re now getting approached by individuals that are looking to advertise. Mm-hmm. Um, now can you take me to when you hired your first employee or when you started to realize, or maybe not even employee, but whether it be freelancers or others, how did you start to bring more on board to help you expand?

[00:14:52] Karsten: the interesting point here is I never hired anybody for that project because all the people already worked for me. So every single person who ended up working on that side had been hired years earlier. And, um, they basically just, I worked with them.

[00:15:10] Karsten: I liked them, they were good. And I’m a big believer in like attitude and willingness to grow and learn matters way more than domain knowledge. So I basically transferred all these gaming people over to be expat people. None of them actually being an expat. Um, but that worked. Yeah,

[00:15:31] Scott: And so I guess that does say a lot about your method of hiring, I mean, you, do you feel that people mostly have transferable skills like this and are able to make that adaptation? Or did you just get lucky?

[00:15:43] Karsten: Okay, so if you are open ai, you can get whoever you want. If you are a little, outlet in the outskirts of Bangkok, you’re competing with maybe not open ai, but at least with like Mercedes.

[00:16:00] Karsten: Or Deutsche Bank or all the other potential employees in the city. So what do you offer your employees, because it’s certainly not gonna be more money, right. Um, luckily it’s Bangkok, so you can’t get anywhere. So, Deutsche Bank is in Sathon and that’s like an hour away. So not really competition.

[00:16:16] Karsten: Right. Um,

[00:16:17] Karsten: but more importantly in the beginning, I always try to hire the absolute smartest person I could get for a task thinking if I get the absolute smartest person, they will figure it out.

[00:16:28] Karsten: And I got some good people, but the retention rate was atrocious because what happened is that those people walked in and they did the job and they got bored and they left.

[00:16:38] Scott: Right.

[00:16:39] Karsten: So I kind of switched way more to cultural values and say, let’s find somebody who’s challenged by the job, who kind of is curious about growing and becoming better, but is challenged. So that kind of aligns very nicely with transferring them to another area. Mm-hmm. Because these are people who enjoy challenge, which honestly is most people.

[00:17:00] Karsten: And then, um, you will be able to transfer those people anywhere and they will stick with you because you give them something interesting to do.

[00:17:09] Scott: Mm-hmm.

[00:17:10] Karsten: If you hire, we had actually one of the for those people familiar with Linux. There’s a very popular business distribution called Ubuntu.

[00:17:18] Scott: Yes.

[00:17:19] Karsten: One of the core developers of Ubuntu applied at our company for a job.

[00:17:25] Karsten: Wow. As a system administrator. And I’m like, what? Yeah. What? And he’s like, I just need to work permit. Um, so I’m happy to do this. And I’m like, yeah, this is not gonna work. Like, that’s exactly the person I don’t want, I want to have somebody. Who on his first day will copy over a bunch of stuff from Stack Overflow and we have to have a sit down how that is not okay and then it never, ever happens again.

[00:17:53] Karsten: That’s kind of, I wanna have somebody who can grow in that role. And I think that’s a lot of about retention is like having people for which you can offer, offer a growth path. And as a small company, you don’t have like an endless promotional ladder, right? So that having just the job itself offer challenge is a really important aspect.

[00:18:13] Scott: Yes. Now if we can get a little bit more into the details of h hiring in Thailand though, because as I said at the beginning, a lot of expat owners or international companies, they’ll complain a little bit about the workforce here and they’ll say, oh, Thai people can’t do this. Or There’s all these generalizations about Thailand, about Thai people, about expats in Thailand.

[00:18:33] Scott: And people kind of just say all the reasons it can’t work. And what you’ve explained to me before is how you’ve been able to build a company that you can trust people. They are working without you. And I want to know if I can extract any of the wisdom from you as about how you were able to do that.

[00:18:50] Karsten: So if there’s anything, if there’s just one thing you take away from this interview it’s when you interview people in Thailand, people are very differential. They will not ask you challenging questions because that would be inappropriate.

[00:19:10] Karsten: So how do you find out that this is a match if they don’t bring their own concerns out to you? Because you’re not just vetting the employee, they’re vetting you. And a lot of retention is issues comes from them realizing this is not the right job for them. And the single most effective hiring strategy I used is when I had somebody who I felt, this is somebody who I could hire.

[00:19:40] Karsten: I’d be like, do you have another two hours? Because then you can just sit here with a team and just join them and ask them whatever you want. You can see how they work. You can see what their job is like. You can see who would be on your team. You get a full hands-on experience of the company. Mm-hmm. You will not walk out with any, you know, ideas of that.

[00:20:02] Karsten: We maybe just deal with big brands or whatever. Like this is a hands-on immersion in the company culture. And that just weeds out so many people who notice this is not what they wanted. But it also goes the other way because, and this is maybe a little bit mischievous part. Everything, the moment you walk into a door is part of the job interview.

[00:20:24] Karsten: So the moment they left, I went to the employees, you know, who I have a good report with and said, what do you think about the person?

[00:20:32] Scott: Yeah.

[00:20:32] Karsten: What did they ask about? What did they seem concerned with? What is your impression from them? And they’re like, well, this guy only asks about the lunch breaks and the vacation.

[00:20:42] Karsten: I’m like, alright, we’re done. So your employees are actually some of the best interviewers in the company, especially if you don’t sit them at the interview table, but kind of sit them together with a candidate so they can actually get to know each other in a much less formal environment than an interview table.

[00:21:00] Karsten: And the candidate can see hands on what it’s like. You know, maybe they wouldn’t speak up so much in an interview because it would be very, it would cause a lot of issues if you would do that in a Thai job interview. And, um, I think that is one of the biggest ones.

[00:21:17] Scott: I love too that you said that it’s an interview that’s not just about getting the best talent, it’s about making sure that they actually would want to work for you. Right? Yes. And so this reminds me a lot of something like dating, right? If you’re on a first date with someone mm-hmm. You wanna put your best foot forward, right?

[00:21:34] Scott: And so I think in a lot of job interviews, what an employer is trying to do is say how great they are, how great the benefits are, how great the job is, right? But then it can actually take sometimes days or week. Until you actually realize what the real job is or what the limitations of the job is or whatever.

[00:21:50] Scott: Right. But it sounds like through the interview process that you laid out, you were showing the real job, uh, in a way that I think a lot of interviews wouldn’t. Right?

[00:22:00] Karsten: I think so, yes.

[00:22:02] Karsten: And I think as a small company you can do things that a large company can’t do.

[00:22:06] Karsten: You can have like an unstandardized hiring process, and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. The one thing every single employee I hired throughout the, all the years in Thailand, all of them will remember one moment in the job interview, and that’s the Elvis test.

[00:22:25] Scott: Please. Please explain.

[00:22:26] Karsten: So the eldest test is, and I literally, it is one of those things like 7:00 PM in the office.

[00:22:32] Karsten: I’m like, I just have to kind of, I’m brainstorming how do I test English skills because I can test spoken English skills and there are like these standardized tests, but they don’t really convey what I want people who can write, like have a voice who kind of can communicate good in a written way.

[00:22:50] Karsten: So I went to some website and pulled a short story. And this short story is basically about a disgruntled employee trying to kill his boss.

[00:23:01] Scott: Okay.

[00:23:02] Karsten: I didn’t even think about that part at the time, but at an Elvis lookalike contest. And the grand plan was to dress up as Elvis himself.

[00:23:11] Karsten: And uh, so it’s like a three page short story, and I gave that to people and said, summarize this.

[00:23:20] Karsten: and nobody has ever encountered anything like that. That is not a job interview test. You’re just confronted with like a story about employee trying to kill his past in, I guess it also conveys a little bit, what kind of environment are you working in here? Like this is like, this company might be a little weird.

[00:23:39] Karsten: It was actually surprisingly great for evaluating English skills and maybe that is a little bit less of an issue today, but I think still it’s one of the main criteria in Thailand. Because you could really say, first of all, did they, can they write a sentence? Second do they just kind of copy random sentences together to make a summary?

[00:24:00] Karsten: Because I guess summarization is not a super common taught subject. And then if they summarize, can they highlight the most important points of the story? And I mean, this doesn’t make any sense if you’re hiring, you know, a coder or so, but for people who are communicating, I, and especially in written form on the internet, I felt this was massive.

[00:24:19] Karsten: And uh, to this day, I believe that was the best English language test we ever used.

[00:24:23] Scott: Ah, it’s great. I mean, ’cause it just points out, like you said, how creative you can be as a smaller company, right? I guess it comes down to what advantages do you have?

[00:24:30] Scott: Big companies have their advantages, right? They have their referral networks and all these other things, but you have some advantages. As a smaller company you can be a lot more creative it seems. Right?

[00:24:38] Karsten: I think you can also just do less rules. I mean, when we first came here, we literally had like timestamps, you know, for our employees because that’s what we kind of knew from our corporate world.

[00:24:48] Karsten: And then I’m like, well this is kind of stupid. Let’s just get rid of that. Hmm. And then I think in, back in 2016, we just got rid of, uh, in person office entirely. So about four years before everybody else. Hmm. Uh, where I’m just like, you know what? You can work remotely and in Bangkok, that’s huge. Some of those people are commuting an hour and a half. And that is not something that anybody else would offer.

[00:25:13] Karsten: And did people mess around on Facebook when they work time? Well, you know, work time probably. But this was an incredibly strong retention mechanism because nobody else could match this. And our employers constantly had to justify to their parents, between parents why they’re working for such a company that is not so well known.

[00:25:33] Karsten: Because that’s something I realized. You kind of have to evaluate employees in Thailand in a Thai cultural context. So what do I mean by that? For example, you would never ask about parents in a job interview. In the US you’re probably not allowed to do so, but in Thailand it tells you so much like how they talk about their parents.

[00:25:56] Karsten: In the US you always ask about which universiThai you went to in Thailand, the universities aren’t that competitive, the high schools are so, which high school they went to tells you a lot more about than which University. I know a lot of foreigners, like I want to have somebody who speaks up into a meeting and will be like challenging me.

[00:26:15] Karsten: Like I want to have somebody who behaves like somebody who grew up in a Western culture. And if you actually hire somebody who grew up in a Western culture, I think that’s a good standard. The problem is if you are looking for those attributes in somebody who grew up in Thailand, they probably were like that always.

[00:26:32] Karsten: And in Thailand, those attributes do not yield you a nice life, right? They mean you are constantly at odds and fighting. And you, like a lot of the people who kind of initially showed these Western attributes of like confidence or like, you know, being self-assertive, a lot of them turned out to be sorry, assholes.

[00:26:53] Karsten: Like complete assholes.

[00:26:55] Scott: Yeah.

[00:26:55] Karsten: so what I was thinking, what I was looking for was a Western attribute of speaking out. Was actually just the Thai version of being a dick. And I feel like, so we’re kind of actively hiring against our own interests by trying to kind of somehow replicate this western cultural environment.

[00:27:12] Karsten: Whereas when we understand how you kind of get Thai people to speak up in their own culture, that works way better.

[00:27:19] Scott: uh, a few years back, I remember you went through a rebrand and you expanded, right? So can you share a little bit more about the status of your business today, what it’s called, and kind of what you provide?

[00:27:31] Karsten: So Thailand Starter Kit has Thailand in the name and Thailand has not been without its crisis over the years.

[00:27:37] Karsten: And, um, there was a significant issue there of a. Fully dependent on Thailand and b, I knew I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life in Thailand. So, um, and running a Thailand website from abroad would be a, it’s just, you, just worse. I know actually some well-known Thailand bloggers who kind of hide the fact that they have left Thailand because they feel it would be bad for the branding and I guess it would be.

[00:28:09] Karsten: So to me that was a bit of a. Idea of like, well, maybe I can use this idea that we created for Thailand and replicate that for other countries because there’s other countries like Thailand, so surely the same advice in some form must work there. So we did a rebrand to a site called Expat Den. It’s expatden.com, and that is kind of the home of the expats.

[00:28:34] Karsten: And we have this concept of the overly analytical super in-depth content for. Uh, everything from driving licenses in Costa Rica to health insurance in Mexico to retirement visas in Malaysia. Mm-hmm. And all of this is kind of a thing that grew out of the idea of maybe there’s something we’re doing right and maybe there’s other places where it can be done the same way.

[00:28:56] Karsten: So essentially I rebranded it as expert then put people, uh, in charge actually sold my stake. And um. Left. You know, and I’m still like sometimes involved where I’m like helping out or so, but this site is now run by my team that I hired 13 years ago In Thailand, who went on to work across different projects and to essentially took on that project and are still running it to this day.

[00:29:28] Karsten: Every single person who works at Expat Den full-time has been. It was hired by me in 2012 or earlier. Wow. Yeah, that’s, uh, I feel like have I built the next Google? Nah. Have I solved a really interesting problem for small foreign business owners in Thailand? And I think so. Yeah. And uh, there’s just these insights you gather over the years and, you know.

[00:29:53] Karsten: Many missteps in between and where you just mess up and you’re like, well that was a massive mess up. Um, how do we do better? Yeah. And so this wasn’t like some linear journey. It’s like there were a lot of, things where essentially, you know, signing the rental contract and Thai didn’t work out, but it got you one step forward and did you kind of stub your toe.

[00:30:17] Karsten: Yeah.

[00:30:17] Karsten: But you’re now one step further.

[00:30:20] Scott: that’s incredible. It’s incredible how long it’s lasted. And again, something that wasn’t even the goal of the initial business, uh, that you started and how it’s transformed and then how it’s continued to, to last on. Now, uh, you’ve been really generous with your time, Karsten, I’d love, um, what is the best way for anyone who wants to either know more about you, get in touch with you, or just learn more about Thailand or other countries, um, you know, what’s the best way for them to get in touch or learn more?

[00:30:45] Karsten: I think most people are really interested in Thailand. Probably don’t wanna talk to me.

[00:30:50] Karsten: So how to best get in touch with me would be my website, Karsten.me. Mm-hmm. Still around. Um, there’s a contact form, so if you want to have something that you want to have my perspective on, great.

[00:31:00] Karsten: Go for it. If you kind of just want to learn more about the things I talked about. Those are things that I’ve written in the past that are now carried on by other people, whether it’s expatden.com or that travel insurance side at some point. Created called SafeAndNotSorry.com, which is kind of I guess my work.

[00:31:19] Scott: Awesome. Thank you so much for the time. Really appreciate it.

[00:31:22] Karsten: Thank you so much for having me.

[00:31:22] Scott: All right, cheers.