Stranded in Bali with few possessions, this ‘digital exile’ carved out a new business

One of the most beautiful and appealing things about being a digital nomad is that you get to choose wherever you want to work from. Many pick Bali for its lovely scenery, low cost of living, and burgeoning startup scene.

For Sai Blackbyrn, however, it wasn’t a choice. The story of how the born-and-raised Londoner arrived in the “Island of the Gods” started when he was facing a year-long stagnation in his business as a dating coach for men. That was in 2011. Blackbyrn and his investor, who had in 2010 plunged US$100,000 to take the concept to Australia, decided to run a high-ticket event in Bali to get some traction.

The event went well, but things took a turn for the worse when he was on his way back to Australia from Bali. “I was stopped at immigration and interrogated for three hours […] I was on an exploratory business visa, and it turned out that in order to run the business the way I was running it, I needed to be on an ordinary business visa,” Blackbyrn recalls. “A slight error in my visa agent’s judgement, but the consequences were huge.”

And huge they were. He was consequently put into a detention center, had most of his possessions taken away, and was barred access to his bank accounts. “And the very next day, I was shipped back to Bali, where my last port of call was,” he adds.

Blackbyrn’s few possessions after that fateful incident.

Here were the possessions that he was allowed to carry: AUD 450 (US$386) in cash, carry-on luggage with some clothes, a 17-inch MacBook Pro which he claims “was literally blowing smoke, it was so old,” and a Blue Yeti microphone.

Turning to Facebook for help

Because Blackbyrn wasn’t around to oversee his business, the Australian company quickly disintegrated, leaving him with close to nothing in his possession and no way out of Bali. A three-year ban from returning Down Under that was imposed on him made sure of that. Faced with the harsh new reality, he turned to the most cost-effective means of rebooting his dating business: the internet.

“I turned to the internet to figure out how to create a business which was location independent, required no capital to start up, and needed no qualifications,” he says. “I went through my Facebook friends list – and even my mother’s Facebook friends list – offering free one-on-one sessions to potential coaching clients.”

Not surprisingly, it wasn’t very successful. “As you can imagine, saying to someone ‘you need help with your dating life’ didn’t go down too well,” he admits. “So, out of the 2,000 people I contacted, I only got five clients.”

The one good thing that came out of this was that he managed to find a mentor, an established internet marketer, whom he had coached five years ago, and convinced him to provide guidance for free.

The small sum of money, however, was enough for him to regroup and rethink his strategy. “I started using Facebook ads, sending my potential customers to a landing page and onto a one-on-one session with me,” Blackbyrn recalls.

“Over the months, the process became more and more optimized, and eventually all I was doing were one-on-one sessions, and converting them into paid coaching clients.”

Lessons from exile