From Lord Miles, this is unironically top tier advice
When doing business outside of the west, these are the unwritten rules as a white man
-if you offer $9k for an item and they ask for $11k instead, offer them $9k and a $800 iPhone. They will accept
-wear a $3 watch always, then when you come into problems, take off that watch and give it to someone. If it’s good enough for a white man, they think it’s valuable.
-send in your worker into a shop first to survey the prices of an item so you don’t get the foreigner price
- pay each of your staff daily instead of every week or month. Many cannot mentally perceive 1 month in the future and lose motivation.
- when bartering, offer 40% of what they ask and when they decline, start to walk out and say “maybe you don’t want to sell!”
- if you can’t agree on a price for an item, show a listing of the item with a low price in the west. Shop vendors often price match because all the prices are made up anyway
- if there is a high likelihood that you’ll be scammed on a high ticket item (precious stones etc), pay a member of their military $30 to threaten to arrest them if they try to scam you