Todd: OK. I'm here with Dan and we're talking about his international business lifestyle. He lives in Bali, Indonesia and he runs an international business. Dan can you talk a little bit about what you do, and what countries you deal with?

Dan: Sure I mean .... the primary places of importance for our business would be southern China for manufacturing, South East Asia for marketing, and southern California for distribution and sales. I think we're sort of in a new age of business, and what I've been calling it is this term called micro-multinational. We've all heard the term multinational. That's like a big corporation like a oil company or a car company. But it's only recently that small companies like mine could have offices all around the world, employees all around the world at a relatively small level. And that's what we're trying to do. When we hire any new employee we always ask ourselves the question, what would be the best place in the world to hire these people. If it has to do with manufacturing for us that's southern China. If it has to do with marketing, we found that South East Asia is great for hiring people that are great at marketing. So it's a sort of new age of business for small entrepreneurs like myself. And it's really exciting for me because I love to travel, and so I get to see some amazing places.

Todd: So... So could you talk about how large is your operation. Like when you talk about a micro-business, how many people are we talking about in each country?

Dan: Well it's an interesting way that, you know, what is a small business versus what is a medium business. I guess the way I make the distinction is a small business is under five hundred employees, and then a medium sized enterprise would be 15 million dollars annually or above. So when we're talking about micro-multinationals in my audience and the people I interact with we're talking about small business people with less than 50 employees and less than 15 million dollars in revenue. Yeah.

Todd: Wow, that sounds really interesting. So how do you find these people? Like how do you create these relationships? I mean if someone we going to start out and do what you do, I think the first thing they would think of is... How do you meet people from all these different countries, and, and put them together to make a business?

Dan: Well, there's two different sorts of relationships that are important. One is your sort of staffing and supplier relationships. I think that would be more traditional methods. Job boards. You know going on to sourcing websites and finding many matches and things. But then there's a whole another thing, which is how do you meet like minds? How do you meet your peers, other entrepreneurs? And I think the big opportunity there is self publishing online. Either do blogs or podcasts or Facebook or Twitter. Really reaching out to like minds, and trying to help them. Just... And that's one of the things I really love about the internet is that it rewards altruism. Right, so if I reach out and help my fellow man, and you get rewarded on the internet for that. And so if you know about something, go around and se if you can help people with your skill set, with your talent, with your knowledge. And that's how I think you start to build a network because you value that knowledge, and the people you're helping will value that knowledge. And that's a great way to start a relationship.

Todd: You know. You do this in South East Asia. Do you think your model for doing business can be replicated anywhere in the world? Like could someone do this in Latin America? Or in Africa? Or in other parts of the world besides here?

Dan: Absolutely. I think, you know, I'm just a small player, and when you look at all around the world this is exploding everywhere. People are utilizing the internet to connect with people that can help them directly. You know if you want to know about something, you can go to the internet and you can search and you can find the information immediately. To me it's an absolute revolution. For relationships, it's even greater because you can find the people that can help you directly, so if you need somebody... a customer, a business partner, and, even if you need a new girlfriend you can go to the internet and you can search for what you're looking for and start to connect with people. I think it's magic and it's applicable in any continent

Todd:Ha ha. Great. Good advice.