What a Typical Workday Looks Like When You Run Businesses from Bali

By Trevor Fenner | Updated 2026

Fair warning: my schedule is going to sound strange to most people.

I stay up all night and sleep through the morning. My workday starts when most of Bali is eating dinner. I’m usually just winding down when the digital nomads in Canggu are opening their laptops at their favorite cafes. And that’s completely intentional.

I’ve been running businesses that primarily serve a US audience since 2013. I run Ecommerce Paradise, a high-ticket dropshipping education and services platform. I run Electric Bikes Paradise, an active ecommerce store. I run Paradise Skate Mag, a skate media project. And I’m building out several side projects including a personal blog, Bali Cat Paradise, which is exactly what it sounds like: a cat-focused blog featuring the twenty cats my wife and I care for at our house in Bali.

All of this is built around one core operational reality: my clients, students, and customers are mostly in the US, which means being available on US hours from Bali means working through the night. Here’s what that actually looks like.

Waking Up Around 5 or 6pm

My day starts in the late afternoon, somewhere between 5 and 6pm Bali time. The light is already getting that golden quality that signals the end of the day for everyone else on the island. I wake up, make breakfast, and usually watch the sunset from home before I do anything else.

There’s something genuinely good about starting the day with a sunset. It sounds backwards and it is, technically. But it sets a tone that I’ve come to appreciate: a moment of stillness before the work starts, a reminder that the environment I’ve built my life in is worth protecting and noticing, not just passing through on the way to a screen.

My wife and I usually have this time together in the early evening before she heads into her own evening and I head into what is effectively my morning. We’ll have breakfast together, check on the cats, and ease into the night at a pace that LA never allowed.

A Few Nights a Week: Amplitude Skatepark

Before I get into work mode, a few nights a week I head to Amplitude, a skatepark here in Bali that’s become a regular spot for me. This is where I get my exercise, connect with the local and visiting skate community, and film content for Paradise Skate Mag.

The skate session doubles as content production. I’m always thinking about what’s worth filming, what angles tell a good story, what tricks or lines would make a good clip. Sometimes a traveling amateur or pro comes through Bali looking to get some footage and those nights turn into more intentional filming sessions out at a different park or in the streets. Those are some of the better nights: someone with real skill who wants to document it, a location that has character, the kind of organic session that produces content worth watching.

On nights when I’m not skating I stay home and get right into work. Either way, I’m at my desk by 11pm at the latest, and often significantly earlier than that. From there I work straight through until 7 or 8am and go to sleep by 9am.

First Work Block: Keyword Research and Content

My first real work block of the night goes to keyword research and blogging. This is a deliberate choice about sequencing: the work that requires the most creative and analytical focus goes first, before client work or operational tasks pull my attention in other directions.

Keyword research drives almost everything I build from a content perspective. For Ecommerce Paradise this means identifying the search terms my target audience is using when they’re looking for information about dropshipping, suppliers, tools, and business models. For my niche affiliate blogs it means finding the opportunities where I can build targeted content that ranks and converts. I use KWFinder for this work consistently because it surfaces high-intent keywords with realistic ranking potential without drowning me in data I don’t need.

Blogging follows the research. Long-form content for Ecommerce Paradise, articles for my personal blog at trevorfenner.com, content for the niche affiliate sites I’m building out. This is the work that compounds over time in a way that most other business activities don’t. A well-researched article that ranks for the right keyword keeps generating traffic and leads for years after it’s published. The hourly return on content work looks low in the short term and looks excellent in the long term, which is why I protect it and do it first.

I’m also building out Bali Cat Paradise, a blog centered on cats and specifically on the twenty cats my wife and I care for at our home in Bali. It’s a passion project as much as a business project but it follows the same principles: good keyword research, genuine content, affiliate monetization for relevant products and services. The cats are real, the content will be real, and the audience for cat-related content online is enormous.

Second Work Block: Client Work

After the content block I shift to client work. This is the core of the services side of Ecommerce Paradise: Google Ads management, SEO services, done-for-you store builds, and the ongoing work of helping clients build and grow their high-ticket dropshipping businesses.

Client work is where the US time zone alignment really matters. By the time I’m deep into this block, the US business day is underway and clients are reachable. Emails that need responses, campaigns that need adjustments, calls that need to happen: all of this is live and active during what is my middle-of-the-night Bali time.

I also do manual outreach during this block. Prospecting for new ads management and SEO service clients through email and social media is an ongoing activity rather than a campaign I run occasionally. Direct outreach to people who are building dropshipping businesses and could benefit from professional ads management or SEO services is one of the most effective ways I’ve found to bring in new clients, and it requires sustained effort rather than a one-time push.

I track all of the financial performance across the business through FreshBooks, which keeps revenue, invoicing, and expenses organized across clients and services without requiring a dedicated accounting function.

Third Work Block: My Own Store

The third block of the night goes to Electric Bikes Paradise. This is my own ecommerce store and it gets my attention after client obligations are handled because that’s the honest priority order: people who are paying me for services get my focus before my own properties do.

Electric Bikes Paradise work covers a range of tasks depending on what’s active: reviewing Google Ads campaign performance, updating product listings, working on SEO content for the store, communicating with suppliers, and handling any customer service situations that have come in.

The store runs in a niche with real seasonality and real supplier dynamics, so the day-to-day management requires genuine attention rather than just a quick check. I’m also continuously working on growing the organic traffic side of the store through content and SEO, which is the longer-term play that makes the business less dependent on advertising spend over time.

Community, Courses, and YouTube

Woven throughout the night, rather than siloed into a specific block, is the ongoing work of the Ecommerce Paradise Community and the course and YouTube side of the platform.

Community management means being present for student questions, facilitating discussions, celebrating wins, and providing direct input when someone is stuck on a decision. This is some of the most immediately satisfying work I do because the feedback loop is fast: someone posts a question, I give them a clear answer, they move forward. That directness is energizing in a way that solo content creation isn’t always.

Course updates and YouTube videos are ongoing rather than project-based. The masterclass needs to stay current as the landscape changes. YouTube videos require scripting, recording, and editing that I fit in across the week rather than batching into a single day. The YouTube channel is a long-term investment in audience building and organic reach that I’m more committed to in 2026 than I’ve been in previous years.

Dinner Dates and Staying Connected with My Wife

Here’s the part that doesn’t fit neatly into a productivity framework but is as important as anything else I do: spending real time with my wife.

Because I’m working through the night and sleeping through the morning, our shared time is concentrated in the evening hours before I start work and in the windows I build deliberately into the night. Dinner dates are a regular fixture, either at home or at somewhere around Bali that we want to try. Staycations around the island are something we do semi-regularly, checking into a different part of Bali for a night or a weekend, experiencing the island as visitors rather than residents for a couple of days.

Every few months we take a longer trip: Thailand, another part of Indonesia, somewhere in the region that gives us a real change of environment. These trips are not work-free, I’m always reachable and usually get some work done during them, but they’re primarily about being somewhere new together rather than optimizing output.

The nocturnal schedule creates a genuine separation between work time and couple time that I think is actually healthier than the blended approach a lot of remote workers end up with, where work and personal life bleed into each other constantly and neither gets full attention. When I’m with my wife in the evening, I’m not working. When I’m working through the night, she’s asleep. The boundary is clean in a way that benefits both sides.

Niche Blogs and Side Projects

Alongside everything else I’m consistently building out niche affiliate blogs and YouTube channels in categories adjacent to my existing businesses and interests. This is the longer-term passive income layer of the portfolio: content properties that generate affiliate revenue once they’re established and ranked, without requiring the ongoing service delivery that the client work does.

The model for these is the same one I teach through Ecommerce Paradise: good keyword research, genuine helpful content, affiliate links to relevant products and services through the EP affiliate link system. The difference is that these are pure content plays rather than ecommerce stores, and the monetization comes through affiliate commissions rather than product margins.

Bali Cat Paradise is the most personal of these projects. Twenty cats generate a lot of content naturally, and there’s a real audience for honest, experience-based content about cat care, rescue, and the particular experience of caring for cats in Bali. I’m building it the same way I build everything else: keyword research first, genuine content, affiliate monetization for cat food, vet services, and care products that I actually use.

What Makes This Schedule Sustainable

Staying up all night sounds unsustainable to most people who haven’t done it long-term. But for my specific situation it’s not a sacrifice. It’s genuinely the best possible arrangement and here’s why.

The overnight hours in Bali are the quietest hours of my entire day. My wife is asleep. All twenty cats are asleep. The neighborhood is still. There are no interruptions, no social obligations, no ambient noise pulling my attention away from what I’m trying to build. The focus available between midnight and 7am in Bali is unlike anything I experienced working in Los Angeles during normal business hours. It’s the closest thing to a genuine distraction-free environment I’ve ever found.

At the same time those quiet Bali hours are live US business hours. When I’m deep in work at 2am in Bali, it’s mid-morning on the East Coast and late morning on the West Coast. Client calls are possible. Supplier communications for Electric Bikes Paradise happen in real time rather than across a frustrating 12-hour lag. Customer questions get answered the same day rather than the next one. The time zone stops being a liability and becomes an asset.

Working until 7 or 8am and being asleep by 9am also means I wake up to a full evening ahead. The sunset, dinner with my wife, time with the cats, and the skate sessions at Amplitude all happen in what is technically my morning, and that inversion gives the day a rhythm that works for the life I’ve built here rather than fighting against it.

This is the real version of running multiple businesses from Bali in 2026. Not a morning meditation routine and a laptop at a rice terrace cafe. A nocturnal schedule built around US client availability, a skate session a few nights a week, dinner dates with my wife, twenty cats, and a growing portfolio of content and ecommerce businesses that I’m genuinely excited about building.

If you want to build the kind of business that makes a life like this possible, start with the free beginner’s guide at Ecommerce Paradise. The masterclass covers the complete system for building a high-ticket dropshipping store you can run from anywhere. And if you want to talk through your specific situation directly, one-on-one coaching is available for exactly that.

Trevor Fenner is the founder of Ecommerce Paradise, an education and services platform for high-ticket dropshipping entrepreneurs. He has been building location-independent ecommerce businesses since 2013 and currently lives in Bali, Indonesia.