The Key to Income in South America – or Anywhere Else!

My niece would like to join us in South America with her four children. The problem: She needs a job.

This is the story we hear from so many readers and subscribers. They call or write and want to come but ask can they find a job?

There are job opportunities here. Quite a few foreign corporations are here, including from the United States. Both Uruguay and Chile are working to build their IT and other industries.

But without Spanish, we could not recommend that anyone come without funds to see them through while they get their bearings and get established—or a monthly income on which they can depend. This does not apply if you are retired or have an independent income. In that case you will be just fine. We refer only to finding employment  here.

Having said all that, still we watch with interest as expats come and figure out ways to support themselves. We published the story of one young woman who came here, did not speak Spanish, and found it impossible to get a job. So she connected with a magazine in the States that was willing to work with her and sold advertising for them. Later she had the idea to produce organic meals, each in its own container, and have them delivered to customers once a week. The interest here in organic food is on the rise. Her business has grown to the point of hiring a food preparer and a delivery person while she continues to build her business. This woman has done all this without knowing Spanish. When I interviewed her she spoke Spanish at about the level that I do now. Hardly conversational but enough to get by.

Another expat set up a myriad of web sites from which he makes his income from advertisements. He works in comfort from his apartment.

A couple that planned this move for years built a publishing business before they came. They are children’s book publishers now based in South America.
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One expat in Buenos Aires owns not one but three businesses.  Another in Uruguay opened a discotheque.  One young woman here in Argentina, of Swiss origin, became a midwife who delivers babies at home. She came to Argentina with no Spanish, chose to have no contact with her native language, only with Spanish speakers, Spanish language TV and books, and was conversational in less than one year. So that shows us how fast it can be done.

There are unexpected benefits in entrepreneurship. One of them is that you learn to think. We believe thinking to be a learned skill. We gain proficiency in thinking . . . by thinking.  Most of us just repeat what we heard on TV or in school or from parents. Thinking is a more independent activity. Here is one example in learning to think.

Before our family started our first business we lived in a little town in Michigan. Michigan was depressed. There were no jobs. We could see no opportunities in our little go-nowhere town.  The gloom hung low overhead. There were bumper stickers that said, “Will the last one out of Michigan please turn out the lights.” There was little traffic on the roads. We went to Colorado to work.

Have you ever heard the story of acres of diamonds? It is about a man who sold his farm because he wanted go and make his fortune in diamonds. He went far away looking unsuccessfully for diamonds. Meanwhile, the buyer of his farm happened to notice a sparkle in a creek. Upon investigation he found that the farm had a large deposit of diamonds.

I could tell you a similar story of our small town. There were diamonds all over and we went off to Colorado because we could not see them. Our state was depressed. But with crisis and depression there is opportunity. But we saw only the gloom.

Today, with more experience, here is what we should have seen in that little town. The Ben Franklin store was for sale. It was affordable. But it looked to us like a bunch of junk. We had no idea how profitable Ben Franklin stores could be. Around that time Sam Walton bought a Ben Franklin store in a small town in Arkansas and it became Walmart and Walton ended up the richest man in America.

Next, in our town there was no garbage pickup. We burned our burnable garbage and piled stuff that would not burn (bottles, etc.) on the back of the lot. So did everyone else. Years later I talked with the man who, during that extreme recession when his own construction business failed and he faced bankruptcy, started a garbage pickup. When he talked to me it was incredible his enthusiasm—for garbage! He loved garbage! He was making a mint.

Next, there was no local advertising newspaper in our county. If we advertised something for sale we did it in a small newspaper in the next county. So did everyone else. Another diamond.

We encourage and support home schooling. We suggest that part of the curriculum be helping children start and run a business. Perhaps you don’t know how either, but it’s a vehicle for parents to learn as well. Work right with your children. Help them to be successful. Make it a family project. Don’t just tell them what to do and leave them to do it.

When my son was nearing the age to enter college, I made an appointment with a counselor, thinking they might help him choose a curriculum. The guidance counselor asked him what he wanted to do and he said, “I want to be an entrepreneur.” The next words she said went so against my education-orientated thinking that to a degree it didn’t register until years later. She said, “College can’t teach you to be an entrepreneur. College trains you to work for a corporation. The only way to learn to be an entrepreneur is to do it.”

Truer words than those were never spoken.  The only way you learn to be an entrepreneur is to go do it!

Even if you have a job, start a business on the side and learn to do it successfully. If you have a problem, don’t be afraid to ask advice from someone who is successful. Find a mentor.  Multilevel marketing businesses can be a good learning experience (and can be very profitable, incidentally) because you have a successful up line willing to teach you.

Don’t be limited to just looking for a job. Look for a way to make money. Living outside my home country has been one of the most beneficial and enlightening things I’ve ever done. One of the things I have observed is that you can set an entrepreneur down almost anywhere and he can look around and see opportunity. This is not saying it is easy–but it is empowering. That person is not dependent. He is free.

Hasta luego . . . until next week.

Arlean

Email: info@fourflagsjournal.com