Working From Anywhere - What To Look Out For On Your Journey To Making It Happen.
How Did This All Start?
Working from anywhere started for me as a burning desire to work from home.
Like a lot of women, this stemmed from a desire to be able to drop off and pick up my daughter from school, when she was growing up (she is now twenty-three), and to have a more flexible arrangement, while raising her.
The other motivator for me was to be able to take time off to go on meditation retreats. I discovered Vipassana Mediation (www.dhamma.org) in my early twenties and apart from during the first four years of my daughter’s life, I have always gone away on regular live-in retreats. I know a lot of other Vipassana meditators who have full time jobs and also frequently attend retreats, but for me, that desire coupled with the desire to be around for my daughter while she was growing up, fuelled the choices which enabled me to maintain the ability to work from home. This then translated into being able to work from anywhere, so long as there was an internet connection.
I first got online in 1995, the year I was pregnant with my daughter. Of course, the internet has been a paradigm shift enabling work to become more flexible, (thank goodness), and to free those that have this goal to live life on their terms.
From time to time, over my career, I would take jobs which were office based, but they were few and far between and inevitably I would always end up back at home, in the work-from-anywhere-camp.
If you have a desire to work from anywhere there are a number of key components necessary to make this happen.
Work From Anywhere - Key Component Number 1
The first one is to have a burning desire to work from home and or anywhere. Without this, when circumstances change unpredictably, (such as losing a client), as they often do, you will end up back in an office, commuting, and living life on someone else's terms.
So, the sub desires under the umbrella of having a burning desire, are:
living life on your terms
refusing to commute to work
refusing to have an inflexible working arrangement when it comes to children and family
and perhaps having a strong desire to travel.
Being stubborn and committed to nothing short of working from anywhere, is the only mind-set to adopt when working out how you will make this happen.
Work From Anywhere - Key Component Number 2
The second component is choosing work that will enable you to do this.
The most logical place to look of course, is work that can be done online.
What are the options that have worked for me?
Contract/freelance work
Business (accountability) coaching
Over the phone sales and lead generation
The following list of 20 options to choose from when it comes to working from anywhere, were taken from an article, the link of which I will post at the end.
Copywriting
Virtual assistant
Translation
Search engine advertising
Social media marketing
Web design
SEO
Graphic Design
Programming
Consulting
Online Teaching
Trading
Sports betting and arbitrage trading
Affiliate marketing
Online poker
E-commerce
Blogging
Completing surveys
Data entry
Online entrepreneurship
There is only one thing on this list that I did not realise was an option, which is online poker (never heard of it). Apart from that, the rest are all possibilities that I have heard of.
Work From Anywhere - Key Component Number 3
The third component is choosing the right mentors or system, once you decide on the right option for you. Take affiliate marketing for example, your success will depend on the integrity of the people you choose to learn from.
One of my outsourcing clients from a few years ago had bought an affiliate marketing package for $2,000 online, which he wanted to outsource the implementation of. So, I hired a fantastic virtual assistant from the Philippines for him, (through my business gotooutsource.com), to follow and implement the program.
After a few months, it became evident that the program was a dud, and we canned the project. Luckily, he had only spent $2,000 on the course itself and $2,400 on the wages for the virtual assistant. (It was nothing to do with her that it failed. Her skills were way above average. In fact she was quickly scooped up by some other clients.)
Vetting the integrity of the people you choose to learn from also applies to any other option (career choice) you choose to master, to take you to your goals of working from anywhere.
To take myself as an example, I spent $10,000 on a course teaching me how to launch and sell products on the Amazon platform. The products I was most interested in were in the supplements niche. The course came with one face to face consultation with the mentors from America. I followed their instructions to a tee, and booked the consultation or coaching session when I had done all of my research. The mentors had not prepared for the meeting, or read any of the documents I had sent them beforehand, and consequently they did not pick up a key mistake I had made in my product selection.
It was only after I was about to sign the terms and conditions (agreement) with the manufacturer in the US, (which were quite unfavourable), that I thought to myself, I better just check everything through one more time. In that process, I picked up that to enable my product to be successful it had to sell at a certain price. This price was way above what the market on Amazon was willing to bear. To go ahead would have made it unviable. When I went back to the mentors for them to verify my suspicions, they agreed.
So, I had wasted months and months on an unviable product. I paid ten thousand dollars to make sure they could check my work, and they failed on that front. Then I went back to the drawing board, followed all the steps again, and by the time the second supplement launched on the platform, it was way too saturated in that niche anyway.
So, the strategy I purchased was already dead by the time it got to me, from the US, and the boat had sailed. So that was an expensive lesson. It was not my only expensive lesson when it came to pursuing my dream of working from anywhere (and creating passive income). I have had bad luck in picking teachers with integrity that actually deliver on what they promise in their marketing material. They are brilliant at sales but their programs lack integrity.
E-commerce, including Amazon, is certainly one such vehicle, where many people have achieved the goal of working from anywhere, however finding a product is much harder than what the teachers out there have you believe. Most people who embark on this journey have limited success. We have products on the platform making sales, but not enough sales to dramatically change our life.
These days I steer more towards courses on Udemy and of course YouTube is amazing for education. With these options, you simply have to piece the learning together yourself, and there is no better teacher if you are starting off in offering business services, by doing work for free to learn on the job, in exchange for case studies.
Work From Anywhere - Key Component Number 4
This leads me to the other component of the work from anywhere equation, which is that whatever option you choose to get you to your goal, will work better, if it is in alignment with you, your values, skills, work you love to do and ultimately with your true self. This is what I have personally found. Affiliate marketing failed for me, choosing products to sell on Amazon flopped for me, I’ve tried mastering and sticking with copywriting, and I’ve tried to learn YouTube Search engine marketing amongst other things, but none of it really stuck or held my interest.
In my work as a business accountability coach I find that when clients repeatedly don’t do what they say they are committed to, it is often an alignment issue. They are not aligned with what they think they should be focusing on. So, this is a big consideration in anything that you take on, even if your burning desire is to work from anywhere.
I have worked from home/anywhere, all my career. This was my burning desire and still is. Even after my daughter grew up and moved out of home, my real burning desire is to have flexibility. So, whatever I take on, will never lock me into a 9-5 commute, because that is not who I am fundamentally, and I have made it work for myself consistently year in and year out. The majority of my contract work has all been work from anywhere situations. I just happened to be working from home.
From Dec 2018 - to March 2019 my partner and I went on a working holiday for 3 months overseas. I wanted to try out what it was like being a laptop nomad. I thought this was my aspiration. What I realised is that I love travelling, and certainly have goals to do more of it, but working from anywhere, when you are on the move, is quite a challenge. We went to five countries over three months and then spent ten days in Perth on our way home. If you are interested in reading my article called Is Your Dream To Travel The World And Become A Laptop Nomad, you can find it here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/your-dream-travel-world-become-laptop-nomad-angela-de-palma
At the time of leaving on the trip, I had five business coaching clients to look after, and one legal client from my business AusLegalSecretary.com. Plus, I had income from my home, which we rented out while we were away. (My partner Kevin had two Amazon account management clients.) The real test for me was going to be, could I acquire new clients while I was on the road. And the answer for me was no, not on that trip.
Work From Anywhere - Key Component Number 5
This leads into the other component to consider which is your lead generation and sales acquisition systems. This determines how long you can be on the road for. For me, three months was the maximum, for as it turned out, I did nothing for my legal client while I was away. Even though I lugged his laptop around the world, (including my own laptop). Somehow it did not transpire. He waited for me until I got home before we picked up where we left off. Also, one other client that knows and trusts me, also waited for me to get home, before she engaged me for further contract work. Somehow the fact that I was not in the country influenced their faith in resuming our work together. So, although I work from home for them on a contract and part-time basis, being away was not fruitful with those clients.
Being away was fine when it came to my coaching work. The calls were either over Zoom or over the phone, as in the United Arab Emirates, (where internet phone apps are banned). So, it did work, and my clients were really understanding and happy to move their schedule around when my time zone changed.
The trip was fantastic, but what I realised was that if I do a trip like that again I want my income and lead generation systems to be more solid so that if we want to be away for longer, the business can sustain the ups and downs. I also realised that I would like to stay longer in the one place and time zone, and still have a routine.
I realised a lot about what I want to create moving forward, and for me it is all about multiple income streams. I don’t want to rely on just one thing, or one big client, or one business model.
I am still totally committed to being able to work from anywhere, so much so that one of my new ventures is all about helping other people embark on the journey of working from anywhere, by helping them transition into contract work. Working for regular clients, on a contract basis, for me, has been the most solid work-from-anywhere consistent strategy over the long term. That is because the clients that I have acquired all fit with my skill set. My strategy is to become a valuable trustworthy team member and exceed their expectations. It is very much relationship based.
If you are interested or know anyone that has a burning desire to work from anywhere, by acquiring a group of regular clients in the legal niche in Australia, send them my way by contacting me personally on 0414 707 751. Through my brand www.auslegalsecretary.com.au, people that are intimidated by marketing and branding, who would not know where to start and are bad at selling themselves, get to lease my brand, and as well, get coaching and mentoring from me in order to create their own group of regular clients in the legal niche. By joining my program, they get to bypass the hassle of setting up a brand, and working out all of the marketing and the systems.
In Summary, the goal of working from anywhere is more than achievable, if all of the right components are in place, and my goal is to spread the freedom and flexibility, so more and more people can live their dream.