Travel While You Work - The Ultimate Guide to Running a Business from Anywhere

347 Pages·2015·5.03 MB·English

by  Slade

Travel While You Work:
The Ultimate Guide To Running A
Business From Anywhere
Mish Slade
Copyright © Mish Slade 2015
All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by
way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in
any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without
a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent
purchaser.
Contents
BEFORE YOU GET STARTED…
Introduction
What does this lifestyle look like?
Which chapters should you read?
SECTION 1: SETTLING IN,
LOGISTICS AND SAFETY
Chapter 1: Settle In Fast
Chapter 2: Get To Grips With Money And Taxes
Chapter 3: Guard Your Data
SECTION 2: GETTING DOWN TO
BUSINESS
Chapter 4: Be A Productivity Powerhouse
Chapter 5: Freelance From Anywhere
Chapter 6: Hire Like A Champ
Chapter 7: Run The Best Biz
Bonus Chapter: Travel Like A Pro
Conclusion
APPENDIX: INTERVIEWS
Part 1: Different types of digital nomad
Part 2: Advice from families who travel
RESOURCES
List of links
Introduction
When my husband Rob and I first became "digital nomads" back in 2012, the
term barely existed. And whenever it was used, it sounded pretentious and tacky.
(Admittedly it still sounds that way, but no one has yet come up with a suitable
replacement shorthand for "someone whose work doesn't require them to be in a
particular place and can be done largely online".) It also sounded like a passing
phase – something for a few wannabe free spirits to try out before realising that
the lifestyle is unsustainable in the long term.
A mere three years later and – while the term itself isn't ubiquitous as such – it's
becoming more and more widely understood that travelling while you work is
not only totally possible but also extremely fulfilling.
I'm not just talking about freelance web designers, programmers, writers and
travel bloggers; I'm talking about accountants, lawyers, therapists and teachers.
Fitness trainers, economists, photographers and business consultants. Not to
mention entire businesses that have chosen to do away with a centralised office,
and instead hire and manage a distributed team who live around the world.
So why do they (and we) do it?
Essentially, it's about freedom. As you'll discover when you read this book,
being a digital nomad affords you the type of flexibility and autonomy that you
couldn't enjoy as an employee or business owner working out of an office. And
that freedom extends much further than just "the ability to travel a lot". Yes:
you'll have set up a life and business in such a way that enables you to
experience the world at your own pace, rather than squeezed into an annual two-
week vacation. But you'll also grant yourself the ability to do away with (or at
least question) everything that's taken for granted in regular working
environments.
You don't have to work 9-to-5 if those aren't your most productive hours, for
example. You don't have to commute. If you're a business owner, you can hire
staff from anywhere around the world – rather than from the far smaller
selection of people who live near "the office" or would be willing to travel there.
If you're a freelancer, you can – at a moment's notice – decide not to take on so
many clients for a few months (just because) and move to Thailand to save
money.
Being a digital nomad is possible and doable for the majority of professions –
just head to the Appendix for some interviews and inspiration. But it demands a
certain set of skills and know-how in order to be enjoyable and productive. This
is especially true if you're planning to set up a business and manage a team on
the move, but it's still the case if you simply want to freelance or become a
remote worker for someone else's company.
And that's where I come in. To help, that is. I started out as a freelancing
digital nomad (doing copywriting and web project management under the
company name "Mortified Cow"), and later – while continuing with the
freelancing – worked with Rob to set up our own business.
The business is called Yellow Lettings; it helps landlords to find tenants for their
rental properties, and then manages the entire lettings process (rent collection,
inspections, maintenance, legalities and a whole lot more) for them.
We came up with the name in Barcelona, set up the basic structure of the
business in Thailand, conducted interviews for our first hire in Edinburgh, and
launched the website from Prague. Meanwhile, our co-founder is in London, our
first seven employees are all in different cities around the UK, and we routinely
hire contractors who live anywhere from Sri Lanka to Bulgaria.
And between this remote business and our freelancing experience, we've learnt a
lot about what it takes to travel while working. We know how to get settled into
a new city in super-quick time. We've discovered the best methods for hiring
contractors and permanent members of staff without needing to interview them
in person. We've figured out (after an incredible amount of trial and error) how
to manage and communicate with our team of staff and contractors around the
world. We know the best methods for dealing with clients as a freelancer. We've
found out about some nifty tools for receiving cross-currency payments without
losing a ton of cash to conversion fees. And we've developed some mindset
hacks for maintaining our productivity while moving around the world.
This book is essentially a distillation of everything that works for us, and
everything I've learnt from the other digital nomads I talked to while writing this
book. It won't all be relevant to you – if you're a freelancer, you can skip the
chapters on hiring and managing, for example – and you may not agree with all
of it. But I think and hope you'll find enough in here to make it a worthwhile and
helpful read.
Thanks for reading!
Mish
[email protected]
p.s. If you want to read about planning for your trip (booking flights and
accommodation, figuring out visas and insurance, etc.), that's all covered in my
other book: Travel Like A Pro: road-tested tips for digital nomads and
frequent travelers: www.worktravel.co/protravel.
What does this lifestyle look like?
Here's what it looks like to us:
We move to a new country every six weeks or so – sometimes slightly more,
sometimes less. And once we're there, we live our "regular" lives: we work, have
meetings, go out for dinner, do exercise, shop for groceries, and so on. We don't
go to an office: we flit between our apartment, wifi cafes, and – thanks to data
tethering – anywhere we like outdoors too.