Location independence, defined as the the freedom to live and work from anywhere, is without any doubt the Holy Grail of the Millennial era.
You see, our parents were taught to prioritize stability and how hard work is the key to a successful life but us?
We were taught to prioritize our freedom and to learn how personal development is the most important thing in life and that working hard is meaningless if it doesn’t bring happiness to our lives.
Achieving personal development is more important to us than creating wealth and this is why most people of our generation are disappointed with the jobs they currently have thanks to their unrealistic expectations about how they would find their dream job after graduation.
Sure, most universities can teach how to be a good employee or how to build a successful local business (and there’s nothing wrong with that if that’s your cup of tea) but none can teach you how to create your own dream job in which you’re location independent.
Luckily for you, I have managed to summarize the last year of my life as an online entrepreneur in this 5-step easy guide about how to be location independent.
Are you ready to take the leap and quit your job now?
Find Your Calling
The number one step is to understand why YOU want to be location independent and the sacrifices you’ll need to make. If your current 9 to 5 job is making you unhappy, you need to rationalize first WHY you hate it and to analyze what’s your true passion in life.
The reason why most freelancers fail during their first year? They don’t follow their passion and instead focus on doing the same job they hated only that in an exotic location instead of an office cubicle. Can you imagine how boring that is after a while?
Trust me, you need to find your calling first and then build your new career abroad around it. In my case, my passion is travel and photography and that’s why I created Journey Wonders. I’m not telling you to follow my own personal dream.
I’m telling you to follow your own.
Know Your Skill-Set
The second step is to analyze the skills you currently have and whether or not they are needed in the global marketplace. And to get a good laptop of course (check some of the best laptops for digital nomads here).
In my experience, freelance writing is one of the worst-paid jobs in the entire online world since you’ll be competing against writers willing to do 1000-word articles for 5 USD.
As an online entrepreneur, the world is your marketplace now and your country’s average wages are irrelevant now. To a client’s eyes it doesn’t matter if you come from Canada or India, what matters is that you can do the job and that you can do it right. One of the best websites for freelancers to use is Upwork (formerly known as Odesk).
Some of the better paid entry-level online jobs include web and mobile development (I started by charging 300 USD for a website back then), any type of online consultancy (I currently do Social Media and Marketing Consultancy), teaching English abroad (you can get your TEFL certification here) and of course, being a virtual assistant to other online entrepreneurs.
PS. If you are on the other side and own a company here is a nice article which talks about how you can build a great remote work culture.
Remember my friends, it’s never too late to learn a new skill.
Make a Plan and Follow it
Step three is the most important one and before spreading your wings, you need to make a financial plan for the first 12 months of your new life as a location independent road warrior: Savings + Earnings – Expenses = Profit. (Read here about how to save money to travel more.)
In order to succeed, it is important to budget wisely for an entire year of accommodation, food and travel (500 to 2000 USD per month depending on the country) and no, there’s no shame in moving to a cheaper country in order to save money (and in case you want to take something big with you, try out an oversea shipping service such as Shiply).
In fact, Chiang Mai is a city well-known for its community of Online Entrepreneurs who relocated there to save money (rent in Chiang Mai is 200 USD per month). Alternatively, you can buy crypto currency such as paybis and see your investment grow.
Yes, there are many sacrifices that you’ll have to make during your first year and sometimes it’s going to be very hard to say no to the temptation of blowing your monthly budget on an epic yacht weekend in Croatia but remember: delayed gratification is the best and you really don’t want to end up broke, do you? Do you?
PS. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t break even a couple of months. It happens!
Achieve Sustainability
Step four is all about making sure that you will actually have the free time to enjoy being location-independent. My best recommendation is to focus on building a sustainable business model in which your income exponentially grows along with your free time. In other words? Passive income.
Ideally, 12 months is the make it or break it period for any type of business and if you’re not financially successful after one year, chances are that you won’t be afterward. For every inspirational story (such as Johnny Ward who built a 1 million USD business) you will find thousands of online entrepreneurs who were simply not good enough to build a sustainable lifestyle.
There are many ways in which you can build a consistent flux of passive income (but more on that in a future article) and my favorite strategy is to create win-win situations with local businesses (read more in this interview I did in Adventures Around Asia) since you’ll be helping the local economies and creating new jobs.
Don’t work for the money, let the money work for you.
Relax
In the end, the last and final step is to enjoy your new lifestyle and remember that work is not everything. To this day, it baffles me how some of my freelance friends are so stressed about deadlines, revisions and other trivial stuff that they aren’t able to fully enjoy the feeling of being free.
Freedom is a state of mind and it’s sad to see how some people just changed one set of chains for another and now are slaves to their computers instead of their cubicles. Just relax and live life to the fullest my friends! After all, you only have one!
Are you location independent? Would you like to? What is your own personal dream? Share your thoughts and let me know what you think! Until next time my wonder friends!
PS. Don’t forget to subscribe to be among the first to receive my upcoming e-book “How to break the chains of the local economy and earn a global income”.
