Client calls from Patagonia on a budget Dell. I'd love to frame that as discipli
By George Barnett Reid 👀 · November 6, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
Client calls from Patagonia on a budget Dell.
I'd love to frame that as discipline. It was mostly stubbornness.
I ran the Amazon ads agency from South America for three months.
> Colombia: fine. Cafes, decent signal, calls on time.
> Peru: patchy. I learned which hours were safe and stopped promising anything outside them.
> Patagonia: no signal at all, for days at a time.
Clients in the US, Europe and Australia. Ads managers in India. Me, occasionally, in a valley with nothing.
Nothing broke. Not because I'm clever. Because my team lead had been managing Amazon ads daily for ten years and didn't need me to sign off a bid change.
The uncomfortable lesson: the system was never my availability. It was who I'd hired.
Most agencies have that backwards. The person on your call is rarely the person in your account.
P.S. Worst wifi you've ever taken a client call on? 😂