Advice on running a "remote" business
Hey Indie Hackers!
Mid last year, I embarked on a business venture (selling the forgotten African music genre Benga) that runs from my home country while I reside in another as a full time employee.
I launched successfully - well signups were 80%+ of the early access list but conversion wasn't that good - first reason?? product catalogue was very small and the payment process was waaaay to complicated - I had 4 artists with about 50 tracks on the launch date.
For sure I needed someone on the ground, either an employee or a partner but the partner option at this level seems like someone whom I can easily rely on to help me on marketing.
A friend of mine introduced me to his friend who had several chats with him about the same idea but after 2 months, he couldn't commit or do
anything and I had to let him go.
After another month, I got a very good guy who is a DJ of the same kind of music and has several entities attached to this kind of music but the only challenge I found was, instead of being a solo partner, he wanted to use family business which was a big red flag to me.
Its been almost a year now and I am struggling to get a very good business partner as my business runs entirely on my home country and am not there all the time - just fly there like once a month or 2 months.
Is there anyone here who had such kind of an experience and how did you handle it???
I have run a few businesses remotely, and the answers for me come in the form of tons of Skype chats. (Video always). A premium Skype telephone # which gives me a worldwide accessible phone #. An account with EarthClassMail which scans all my snail mail. And a willingness to make/take middle of the night calls when necessary.
A more specific answer isn't possible because the answer would probably be very specific to your type of business, and it's not clear what it is exactly.
Is your business online? Is it even possible to run this business remotely? Is it a local business? What are the revenue streams? Do you need to be abroad? What is the role of the on-location partner/employee and why does he need to be on location? Is this a high-touch business? Etc.
Thanks for your feedback.
This is actually the product - https://www.kambamusic.com/ - Its basically a music platform (just like Spotify) but with other pivoted features that seems to be working in this market. E.g. single track audio file paid downloads seems to be working better than streaming.
To respond to your questions