I DITCHED the UK and went ALL IN on a business in PHUKET THAILAND @Richie And Maybelle
they had a price i'll knock them down we'll pay one year up front will they take this much i didn't spend my money to do this i used credit cards to open this place use credit cards yeah yeah sorry let's talk with the capital and which how much did you put into it using it if you would have said to me before three years ago they'd come and do this interview i'd have got no way no way are you interviewing me on camera i don't like it i hardly share stuff on facebook i mean but then you know i sort of like just really wanted to get away from the uk and move here and i was just seeing like okay maybe that youtube is away hey folks pete here from tirish times how's it going and you can see behind me i'm in my usual position perched up watching bangkok's beautiful skyline it's about 6 30 p.m the sun is setting over there we've got the vanilla sky it's not looking too bright tonight but you know bangkok really does have an amazing sunset if you're on top of it of a skyscraper like this you get a great view anyway we were not in bangkok for the last couple of days we were actually in phuket and the reason why we went there is because we were invited to paddy doyle's celebration of traveling to 77 provinces in thailand and vlogging the lot so paddy had a party and he had a party at maybell's coffee garden and some of you will know that because of the youtube channel richie and maybelle and they vlog about their business and they vlog about their life in phuket so i met richie for the first time and it was great top fella sound fella exactly the same on camera as he is off camera should i say off camera as he is on camera he's the same fella and i can't be said about everybody i've interviewed folks so we're going to talk to richie today about basically going all in in thailand because richie left the uk came over to thailand and he has set up a business well technically it's his wife maybelles business and we're going to get into that in the interview and before we start with this interview folks i just want to say i've had some major problems with the audio on this one the insects those cicadas just started as soon as we started rolling the cameras and it was richie's day off from work i didn't want to bother him again and say can we film it again so what i did was i tweaked a little bit in the edit the first couple of minutes are a bit kind of the the pitch of those insects is quite high but it kind of drops away after maybe the fourth minute into the interview so bear with me you know in an ideal world i would have went back and done that interview again however richie's in phuket and i'm in bangkok so we'll do it again another day we'll start now with some clips of paddy doyle's party and then we'll jump in we'll meet richie and if you like the content please subscribe to the channel we're not far away from hitting 15k 15 000 subscribers and i need your help to do it so like the video leave me a comment you like it or you don't like it whatever i'm always interested to hear what you have to say now i'm rambling too much again let's go me richie hey richie pete how's it going good night good yeah how you feeling now i was feeling after the other night yeah recovering you know it takes a couple of days now getting old yeah yeah we had a big night the other night for uh paddy doyle's down here at maybell's coffee garden yeah it was a big one it turned out very good you know we've done it well we've done like a few barbecues now we're not doing anything like that a party but i have to admit the build-up to doing something like that is a little bit stressful you know you've got to get everything ready and you're thinking i hope it goes right hope it don't rain and all this and then when it you know the show i think that the cabaret show made it was like this is good you know turned out good everyone's chatting having fun oh cabaret show was great yeah you had a big smile on your face they smiled too yeah no it was good they were they were i was like i wasn't sure what they were going to do myself so when there's dancing around and seeing walking up and down it was good you could see everyone was enjoying it right so uh let's start off with um well tell everybody where you're from yeah so i'm from derby grew up in derby uh worked uh worked in london for like 15 years worked all over i worked away for a long time in engineering worked all over europe and stuff worked in london for 15 years so i kind of left my hometown like in my early 20s what was life like for you back in england and there be london you're working life safe back back in the west yeah it was like a hard working hard always like working long hours chasing the money i was a contractor so you know just going after the money as much as i could that's why i left my hometown like i started on cars and i went onto trains i went to power stations and trains and i was just always wanting more money per hour jeremy it's never enough more work than enjoyment type free time was it stressful life yeah i wouldn't say it was so much stressful no more i like to go out a lot i like to socialize with my friends you know right yeah i'd say it was a good life but i wasn't fulfilled with my life there was always coming here on holidays you know work hard save up come on holiday and you know go home and go [ __ ] i was always thinking to myself how could i stay there you know move here been doing that for a long time the usual thing was always open a bar i met all the guys that have done it open bars and i was like no not a good idea for me it won't fit my won't be good for my lifestyle what made you make that final decision that's it i'm gonna move over here and get a business and and do this what you're doing now i've been thinking about it for a long time and then like 2018 was like a pinnacle year for me like i was out of shape badly well not that bad you know i was doing partying too much and i just decided look i need to change my life i was working away i worked in germany for six months and uh i came here spent three months here like getting in shape and not going out so much and uh yeah then i was like look i just came on my own so i was like i wanted to see how it was coming i've never been on a holiday on my own or travelled on my own let's see how it is on my own if i could actually live here spent a lot of time on there and that's when i met mabel as well was chatting online we met and yeah stayed for three months and just thought you know that was when i decided while i was here i said i'm gonna move there that's it you know i'm going home and i'm gonna set out a little rental property a house in uh south wales i will sell that and work for a year or two and come back well there's two i meant to come back in october 2020 that was the plan so work for two years sell the house come back with the money and move here well let's talk about the business tell everybody what is this business this is maybelles coffee garden named after my wife maybelle we've had this one year now so moved to thailand in march 2020 and then opened this business in march 2021 like one year after being here when i moved here i started the youtube channel just sharing you know changing our life moving to thailand what we're doing stuff all around phuket the usual style videos i was doing you know sharing all the different places around phuket and then i did a cost of living video you know the usual vloggers what everyone's doing on youtube and then when i made that video i said to maybe look we've got i've got enough money left in the bank for one year if we spend this much a month that's talked about doing a coffee garden a picturesque place where people take you know take pictures and share on instagram and stuff like that that was like the idea in my head so after i made that video i said look we only got one year left we don't do it now i mean you know may never be able to do it so i didn't spend my money to do this i used credit cards to open this place use credit cards yeah yeah sorry let's talk about the capital how much how much did you put into it using the first time around i spent 13 000 pounds on the credit cards to set it all up the coffee machine the the benched table over there tables and chairs you know get all the garden done all the ins and most of the inside and then the second round which was came from just turning over money here five thousand pounds more that was i think the second video i made i've worked out we've spent 18 000 pounds on this all together setting this up we'll probably spend more now obviously it's like never ending always something to do something to add more to buy obviously the first lot 13 000 was on credit cards i didn't i didn't i used that i had that available you know them credit cards available to me and i thought you know my money in the bank luckily i did it that way because i would probably run out of money i need a bit of capital in the bank as well right otherwise you know when you're not making money obviously in the beginning when we started this place was dead you know hardly anyone around tourist wise locals were here people expats were here that were staying yeah but so richie um i'm very interested in just this business i really want to do this into you because i think what you have what you've done here is really great and i think um well let's just get into more questions on it because how did you why did you pick this piece of land because there's not a lot of footfall here we're like we're up on a hill there's no people passing i sort of like the area qatar and carroll even though it's one of the more quiet areas of phuket but i just like i wanted to live in this area out of all of phuket or rawai i like rawai and nahan as well but uh when we spoke about it me and maebel said you know you know what are we gonna do this so we're gonna attempt this coffee garden business and i said yeah look let's do it we'll start looking around i went to the we was living in carroll at the time i went to phuket town for a haircut as i was driving back for some reason i turned up this road i just stopped here literally the building the the our coffee shop building all just finished painted white workman was still here and this was just like a you know just a big ditch of land you know not done anything with the garden and i started looking at oh that looks nice you know white picket fence around it nice garden that could be the coffee garden and the owner came over to me and said uh started speaking like ty and i was like oh you know for rent to the i couldn't understand obviously a communication problem i said i come back when i got maybell came back and the owner was saying we'll make a good coffee shop i was like all right okay that's what we want to do you know and i said ask them if they'll take this one they had a price i knocked them down we'll pay one year up front will they take this much and they said yes so like okay we're doing it but then then the nerves start singing in like oh [ __ ] you know the location a bit out of the way you know but basically the rent we're going to pay was not much more than the condo was paying so and we were going we lived in the back that was the idea we'll live here we'll set it up and you know grow slowly setting up the business as a foreigner was that difficult no if we did it all in may bell's name it's maybe i was business it's all in her name that was a lot easier but much easier if to set it up as a proper company from the get-go costs a lot more for us to change this to a proper limited company it will cost us 35 000 bar just to register the business and you know already speaking to the accountant because that's something we're going to do soon the liquor license was the easy to get that unbelievably easy yeah yeah very easy well obviously the the business is registered maybe i was coffee guarded maybelles business and we go down to the i think i shared it in one of the videos as well we go down to the government building in phuket town paperwork a lot of people what you need is the landlord's paperwork 300 or 400 baht boom done nobody even comes here they come here from caron municipality to check when you get their business license but the liquor likes are very easy and then we just renewed it and we knew it at 7-eleven we knew that's the 7-eleven yeah pay them and then you get the paperwork sent and that's it okay very easy and then you've got your alcohol license and your tobacco do you find it very um the market here is super competitive in phuket you know just from i mean in the last couple of weeks i've obviously lived i live in bangkok i've been to samui two weeks ago yeah uh two months ago we were on call chang and i'm just comparing different areas and i would say kochang is obviously tropical island big island sleepier way more chilled out way less business right samui big island um what the vibe is i suppose people are not as hustling as much as as phuket when you come to phuket everyone's making money it's everyone's hustling everyone's on the take probably imagine it's super competitive yeah so it's up there with a big tourist hot spot to go to yeah so there's probably you know there's more business here maybe not yeah at the minute this there's still quite a few people coming now but nothing like before but in good times you know there's people i'm not sure how many a day but there's a lot wanting you know packed good weight to good place to make money i'd say what's been the most challenging thing here of setting this up so scaling up and making it bigger and building a good team of people i think that is it's been hard to get staff you probably think it would be easy but it was in the beginning it seemed to obviously we everyone was close and we were probably the only place opening up people calling us mad but uh now we need a few more people and it's quite challenging finding stuff or good stuff that will stay we've had a few come and just go just like that way i don't know i don't know stay for a day and then go stay for a little while or you know yeah and i've spoke to other business people you know obviously me doing the youtube going around i've met lots of different other business people and they all said the same yeah we're struggling and covered hit so many left i think fought when they said the bridge was going to close for people coming in i think some of that 40 000 people left and mostly employees back to their own province and a lot of them have not come back you know now i have to be kind of careful how i worried this right and you'll know what i you know what i mean when i ask the question right is there anybody that comes here say once a month that you kind of have to give some money to to stay operating and if you didn't give those people or person some cash it might be difficult for you to operate yeah what do you think what do you think if you're gonna guess have you lived in thailand a long time right yeah i know everyone's told me from when we started this up soon you'll have to give someone some money nobody one year not any only person being in here was the caroline municipality to check our license and then we come back when we got the alcohol license we've got the two things in the frame that go behind the counter and that's it then we came back just you know we've just gone over one year we'll come back to check it again nobody do you think that'd be a different story if you were in patong or somewhere else maybe in patong and you're a bar you're operating late at night maybe yeah i honestly thought it would happen or maybe because of the times as well you know they might drove past here and there's a couple of people in the garden but maybe so give them guys a break to try and you know trying to open a business in the worst time ever yeah why did you go while in in the middle of a pandemic i had to it was like i'm going to spend all that money can't gamble everything on making money on youtube so i could have spent the money and carried on with all in on youtube for another year what if i i don't know how many subscribers right i think we had six or seven thousand subscribers when we opened this so i could have spent all my money carrying on just traveling around making youtube videos then be making no money on youtube where would it be at so it was like look i've got one year of money left let's start this now and it was a right decision really obviously i could be making more videos but also i was kind of like finding my way on youtube what i want to make videos about kind of liking you know just traveling around showing things yeah i wanted to maybe inspire some other people you know if you have a go you can anyone can try and do it you know it's not easy definitely because yeah there's more things more failures than success stories right but when we started doing this i started enjoying making the videos again well i think it what what you have gone for you is that you've got this business people are interested in your journey i've always said this as well about youtube and it's probably the biggest mistake i made at the start if i was to go back and start it all again create a journey worth following right yeah yeah and your journey is worth following because for me i'm like here's a guy who's gone all in yeah he's trying his hardest he's got a nice business he's got a nice wife and a friend in a weird time yeah yeah that's intriguing yeah and now people can follow the journey but then i can also when they're on holiday here because they look people started following our channel because of phuket but when they come on most were like were stuck at home during coving when they come on holiday here they're like we're gonna come and have a coffee and support you that's what i find the most people are coming we want to support you people are coming in tuk tuks from patong yeah but you've also been very open and honest no yeah i said that that was like a choice i made when i was started making the videos i was watching other people what they're doing and i was like there's a lot of [ __ ] on on youtube money live in thailand on six hundred dollars no you can't but you'll be a hermit in your room and never go out you know so i said i'm gonna share the real i'm going to share exactly what i'm spending a month and i'm going to set this up there's actually a friend that suggested me said share what you're taking a month and i was like okay that's a bit much i was like yeah i know be open it doesn't really matter in the beginning you know it's peanuts so and when people are interested you know people want to know don't [ __ ] tell us the truth and when we opened people coming and sit to meet us we're like we like what you're doing we like that you're honest and you're not you know full of it on on there well yeah that's the first thing i noticed when i met you the other night is you're the same on camera as off camera and that can't be said for everybody yeah you know yeah so fair play to you if i ask you what have you learned the most from your your youtube journey what we'll learn from the youtube journey what about myself anything it's a mad world yeah it's crazy it's been like two years and it's some journey [ __ ] out because even i would like i'm not if you'd have said to me before three years ago they'd come and do this interview i'd have got no way no way are you interviewing me on camera i don't like it i hardly share stuff on facebook but then you know i sort of like just really wanted to get away from the uk and move here and i was just seeing like okay maybe that youtube is away say like i felt uncomfortable in the beginning over time if you keep trying something you can get better at it i'm not saying i'm really good at youtube now but getting more comfortable speaking on camera more open speaking to people say like here we come and sit in a coffee garden every morning anyone can turn up and come and sit see you you know all people that are coming are nice and they're like yeah and it's like before i might have been a bit more uh shy and reserved and not so open talking to people i think now i'm becoming a lot more open and communicating and chatting to just anyone has it changed your life yeah all this well obviously your house yeah yeah you seem to be you seem to be happy yeah yeah a lot more happy or relaxed i have to say i think before a bit more reserved and i'd sit back and let other people do talking uh obviously starting your own channel you've got to do the talking maybe i believe it's bringing maybelle out of her shell if i'd just stayed in the uk and continued with my job which a lot of us do i did i'm 45 you know for years saying i was gonna do something like this yeah i missed out on all this amazing stuff that i've done maybe we got married just done so much in two years like i'm amazed when i look back like if you look at what we've done in two years it's like a night and you really is from just starting that channel so richie yes pete right so we've been here in phuket now for a couple of days and i've been to we were in patong last night we checked it out and to me have you been here before yeah years ago it's been probably been four years since i've been in phuket um so patong to me seemed busy right yeah well you're the man to know what's it like in phuket now what kind of uh capacity are we at so patong bangla road obviously busy the beach road there's been a lot of business has been transformed there you know the beach road i remember i was said to uh i'm gonna make a video what's available to rent on the beach road a couple of weeks went by i went back and they're all being renovated i was like [ __ ] you know i missed it so the beach road is busy bang the road busy i say busy i mean for what's just happened and yeah it's getting it's getting back there the the rest further back is still a bit not how it used to be lots of businesses closed lots of available properties for rent johnson shopping centers not open you know people look a lot of people come in here and go oh wow i can't believe how busy it is and look come in and say wow it's like you know mass because they've been coming every year so they just all of a sudden land here and see the change and like wow it's different another area that's become very popular is rawai and nahan since covered it was like left alone it's out of the way the very south of the island and people seem to be moving there some business is moving why is that because i was there actually yesterday the beaches were busy yeah and i think because it's just becoming you know i i like the area before i looked at a business there in 2018 and said no it's too quiet uh during cover it's sort of like left alone like okay it was open not fully open but open it you know yeah and then obviously there was more expats living there more people and then i heard a lot of people were moving from the north of the island bang tao area chiu and talay because it's more expensive and that's more cheaper and a couple of businesses ali's barbecue which is very popular let's move down there or open another one down there a few other businesses that opened up so it's just become a place i think for people to live what are your future plans for future plans right yeah because like you know i was trying to i think i was rushing into doing other things like with the bikes i quickly jumped on something else and for now we're definitely honing in on this make this as good as we can see what happens because the first of may is the rumor for no anything dropping all restrictions come in we're saying first of july but apparently a lot of pressure is on them to open now other places are open right you know so i want to see what happens with this because we're getting busy now uh and then another one maybe sea view coffee garden well hey never know so you never know i said it in a few videos you know when i'm showing all the places that are available you know and a few people have said to me would you be interested in doing another one like now go in with them um i was almost going to do it maybe i was like stop slow down i was like okay yeah yeah let's just concentrate here and then it would be nice to do another one in but we're out the way maybe a better location busier this is a pleasure thank you thank you yeah and um rishi has a channel called richie mae bell and you can see the uh the whole story here of this business is coffee garden so check out i'll leave a link in the description and if you like this interview as well subscribe to the channel here we got loads more coming yeah loads of stuff you found your niche mate you're good cheers yeah i enjoy it i enjoy stories it's stories man everyone has a story out there people good personally talking i like you know like a chat and a cup of coffee and a beer in a chat with me but i have a coffee today we're on the water today good hydration anyway we'll see you later folks thank you very much leave us a comment like the video and share the video i don't say share it enough and check it check us out on instagram thairish times so see you on the next one
2022-04-23 03:27