Founding Fort Galt - Our Great Chilean Adventure

Chasing the Dream

Two years ago, I gathered up my freshly-mined bitcoins and bought myself a one-way ticket out of Canada and into the libertarian promised land of Chile. Like many of us, I was pursuing the dream of living in a community of other freaks, like me, who actually respected property rights and cherished personal liberty. The now infamous real estate project known as Galt’s Gulch Chile had been drawing me southward ever since I first heard about it and when I finally arrived at its front gate, my universe seemed to make just a little more sense. Birds of a feather and all that.

I was given a tour of the project and its infancy was immediately apparent but while others would later recount their first impressions to be of disappointment, I felt inspired by the challenge before me. The paradise being peddled still mostly existed only in our imaginations but the land itself was perfectly real and I was looking forward to being a part of the birthing process.

Before moving in, I had to make a slight detour to the nearby city of Vina del Mar. I had enrolled in an entrepreneurship boot camp called Exosphere and it was about to begin. As a participant in the course, I would spend the next three months with other enthusiastic adventurers in pursuit of greater personal development. It was a completely worthwhile experience, mostly because of how the program facilitated my introduction to Chile and to the other people within Exosphere itself. It brought forty innovative and motivated people together in an inspirational and supportive context so that at the end of the program, we all knew that we had a good network of talent to henceforth call upon as we built our respective enterprises. We were all seeking the same things; Empowerment, independence, and community. I had to admit that the interpersonal aspect really was the most important component to the allure of Galt’s Gulch. It wasn’t Chile itself that was so attractive, it was the people that supposedly awaited me there.

The Gulch

Once the Exosphere bootcamp was complete, I moved out of my beach resort apartment and into guest quarters at the main clubhouse of Galt’s Gulch. The on-site project manager and his small staff welcomed me and let me know of the various ways that I might be able to help out. They needed someone to manage their website and social media channels so I was happy to slide into the webmaster role while also contributing my photography skills whenever appropriate as well.

I soon pieced together that the project’s most prominent marketer had been ejected along with numerous other past employees. I then began to receive messages from various people who were connected to the project and were very unhappy with its manager. Some of them were former employees and others were investors in want of a refund. I was assured by the manager that all grievances and refund requests were being processed and that there was nothing more I could do for them.

As I wandered the grounds, I couldn’t help but wonder why more people weren’t living on-site. I understood that the land subdivisions were still not approved and so nobody could begin building their homes yet but surely some of the investors would want to live there even if it meant camping in an RV in the mean time, right? It’s then that I decided to launch a project of my own in an attempt to bring more people onto the land so that it would start to look more like a town and less like a drug lord’s private compound.

The Fort

Originally, Fort Galt was to be an entry-level offering to attract younger people of more modest means to the gulch. I would lease and renovate an existing building, fill it with sleeping pods, like the ones found in Japanese capsule hotels, and sell them individually to anyone wanting to move in. I enlisted the help of some friends and put together a website to explain the plan. On August 12, my birthday, I opened up the doors to anyone wanting to invest and pre-orders immediately started to come in.

A little over a week into my initial pre-selling phase, an article was published on a prominent libertarian website accusing the manager of Galt’s Gulch Chile of fraud. Crap. I knew right away that I would have to hit the brakes and modify my plan. I immediately explained the situation to my buyers and refunded their pre-orders in full. I assured them all that I was not quitting but that I would have to find a new location at which to proceed away from the mess that had become of Galt’s Gulch Chile. To my relief, they were very understanding and wished me luck.

A New Direction

A few days after the scandal broke at the gulch, a friend of mine from Exosphere messaged me. Luke Crowley, who had spent most of his life in construction with his wife, recognized the potential of Fort Galt and wanted to partner up with me as I took it all back to the drawing board. I happily welcomed him and his wife Lourdes aboard and together, we set up a new project headquarters on the beach and went to work on a new vision for what Fort Galt could be. They also brought another friend of theirs, Patrick White, into the project to assist with finances and 3D animation work. We decided from day one to do everything by the book and with great attention to detail. We obtained residency in the country, incorporated the business, opened a bank account, and recruited an excellent team of local professionals to assist us including an excellent architect, a crack legal advisor, and an accountant that knows just how to best navigate all the otherwise daunting Chilean bureaucracy.

The Perfect Spot

After designing the new building and re-launching the website, the project still needed a home so we turned our attention to exploring the country, in search of the ideal location. It took a few months before we finally discovered the city of Valdivia, in the south, and knew that this was the right area to focus on. The next eight months was spent slowly and carefully exploring the local real estate market, which, in Chile, is a tedious endeavor. There is no Multiple Listing Service here and shopping for land means actually driving around, talking to people, taking pictures of signs, jotting down numbers, and all that fun stuff. A whole lot of time was spent traipsing around on disappointingly substandard properties as well as beautiful ones that were too expensive. We needed something that was visually impressive, large enough to support a small community, close enough to the city for convenience, but still affordable for our budding little startup. It was a tall order and seemed borderline unreasonable at times but in the end, we finally found the perfect spot on the coast. Plans had already been drawn up for a community project there in 2008 but the developer had died and left her plans on the shelf. We were fortunate enough to come along and discover it the way we did because it has turned out to be a perfect match for our vision. Imagine a rainforest park right on the coast. That's where we are now and it's freaking awesome. Not only was the location ideal, but a lot of the preliminary work was already done for us. The hundred-acre property had already been subdivided into 60 individual lots, which we could sell to our own members, and there was even a power line, street lamps, and a self-sufficient water system installed.

Boots on the Ground

It has already been a massive learning experience, full of bureaucracy and rude reminders of just how much work really goes in to doing anything of any real significance. Seriously. Contrary to what some people have been saying over the past few years, it’s not that easy to expatriate and start a new business in a foreign country while on a modest budget. I like Chile but it’s not the cakewalk playground that certain people have promoted it as. This is why we are dedicated to doing things right the first time – so we don’t ever have to jump through any of these headache-inducing hoops again. Galt’s Gulch was a wonderful case study in just how much a good thing can go bad when things aren’t done properly from the very beginning.

Getting Real

To expatriate and start a new life down here in Chile, you need to have your finances in order. This means that you need either a reliable stream of income already established that allows for easy relocation or a job waiting for you when you arrive (the ability to speak Spanish is pretty much a must). You can’t be dependent on others to solve your problems for free when you get here. Nobody will hold you by the hand and provide for you here anymore than they will back in your country of origin. This is why we have decided to build Fort Galt for a very specific target market: The Entrepreneur.

Anyone can self-identify as a libertarian or anarchist but I’ve encountered far too many such people through the gulch who are merely armchair theorists that don’t actually practice what they preach. Some of these people are completely unrealistic in their expectations and others are flat-out delusional. Some people wanted to be left alone entirely while others wanted socialized services and there’s no way to please such a broad spectrum of demands. We have no interest in building a conservative hippie commune for people who expect their fellow misfits to provide for them. We’re building a community of self-reliant men and women who are financially secure and independent. Creative artists, freelancers, consultants, journalists, day traders, and anyone else who is flexible enough to move into the Fort and bring their business with them will be welcomed with open arms. It’s to be an inspiring and mutually supportive environment that encourages business owners to network and deal with one another in a way that fosters innovation and productivity while also facilitating residents’ leisure and private lives.

My time at the gulch afforded me a priceless education but the most important lesson of all was to never compromise my standards. It’s tempting, at times, to lower the bar so as to let more money in but when the stakes are this high, it’s important that the people involved are providing value and not burdening their neighbors. When every member is an asset rather than a liability, you can’t even begin to predict how much can be accomplished. It’s the difference between building your home out of stone and building it out of dynamite. We have no time or money to waste on the latter so committing to the highest standards isn’t just a matter of preference, it’s a necessity. My team and I are putting everything on the line. Our reputations, our time, and every red cent of our own money. Compromise is simply not an option.

-Gabriel Scheare

www.fortgalt.com
www.facebook.com/scheare