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Brandie from the United States says:

I have so many varied interests that I’m not quite sure where to begin building this location independent lifestyle. The conventional wisdom is that you are supposed to choose ONE thing, get really good at it and make your money from that (not sure how it fits into the whole – “don’t put all your eggs into one basket” thing).

But for me, as soon as someone mentions that I’m only supposed to focus on ONE thing, I get that panicky, trapped, bored feeling. I’ve always been one of those people who need a lot of different things going on to really be functional but I’m not sure how to turn that into a lifestyle that a) I love and b) pays the bills.

Ideally, I would love to do work that involves me providing interior design consultancy for great clients, scavenging great flea markets and stores around the world for great pieces of furniture and textiles and art pieces (maybe including my own paintings), reupholstering salvaged pieces, running some type of store where I can share my great finds. I envision working mostly from home or wherever I’m based and traveling on buying trips to different countries multiple times a year!

So you can see where my challenge comes in…Thanks for any advice you can give on where to start!

The Coach’s Answer

From what Brandie writes, I would say she is what Barbara Sher in her book Refuse to Choose would call a “Scanner” – someone with multiple interests who can’t focus on just one thing and feels like a failure sometimes for not being able to concentrate.

Sher suggests that instead of seeing this lack of singular focus as a liability to look at it as an asset. This is especially true for LIPs. The more sources of income you can generate (and maintain without overwhelming yourself or burning out), the better you can weather the ups and downs of the world economy.

I see Brandie’s Somedays as:

• Having many interests and wanting to incorporate them all into her life
• Wanting to earn money from these interests
• Specifically wanting to travel and shop the world to resell what she buys
• And specifically wanting to produce and sell paintings

The big challenge for Brandie or anyone in this sort of situation is to monetize these interests without getting overwhelmed by too many ideas. People with lots of big ideas and new ones coming at them all the time have trouble staying focused long enough on any one idea to see it through to fruition.

Fortunately Brandie doesn’t have to pick just one idea to follow through on. Depending on the time she has available to build up her various interests into profit-making ventures, she can follow through on any number of them from two or three to five or six. I personally have four projects on the go at any one moment, generally with several smaller projects within each larger project.

To do so, however, I have to be ruthless about my time management, about what I’ll work on when, and what I will say “not right now” to.

Because Brandie’s problem is one of planning and scheduling, let’s get right into her homework, but before that let’s just sum up what I see as the solution for her:

Brandie will bust her Someday and become a Location Independent Professional if she can evaluate her ideas and choose which ones are complementary enough to keep her workload to a minimum and yet satisfy her need for variety. Then through careful planning and not letting new ideas sidetrack her, she can roll out each monetized idea one by one until she can afford to go totally location independent.

Homework

Here’s the quick version of what I would have Brandie do:

1. Brainstorm interests
2. Determine required resources
3. Find common denominators
4. Determine timelines
5. Pick actions
6. Follow through
7. Measure and alter where necessary

And now for the details…

Brainstorm interests

When you keep your ideas in your head, none of them become very clear. They resist definition and remain nebulous what-ifs and maybes. Plus by holding all her ideas in her head, Brandie can’t be sure which of her interests will produce the best return on investment (money and hours worked).

For that reason, I suggest that she sit down and down one side of a page write out all her interests – and that she push herself going for three more once she stops, just to make sure the mine of ideas has been tapped out (for the moment at least).

Then with all the interests staring back at her, Brandie can brainstorm ways to make money online from each idea. For this she might enlist help or do a bunch of online researching. Don’t spend too much time on this however, as it’s easy to spend years on research and never get around to actually implementing any of the ideas.

Determine required resources

Each money-generating idea also has associated costs and support and administration systems. By figuring out what resources Brandie needs for each idea, she can later create a timeline (see below) that enables her to roll out the ideas to create income without requiring a huge investment.

Plus by determining the resources required for each idea, Brandie will be able to narrow down each idea and figure out what will and won’t work best for her location independent lifestyle. For example, buying big pieces of furniture and finding a local shipper to send them to a central storage (or directly to the customer) might make the profits disappear more quickly, so the search to find things for sale might be better focused on things Brandie can more or less carry with her.

Find common denominators

While having lots of interests isn’t a bad thing, having completely different business processes in place to manage each project will rob Brandie of all her energy and take too much time away from actually producing and delivering things that will bring her income.

In this part of her homework, Brandie will need to look at all her money-making ideas and categorize them by what type of support each idea needs. For example, for her round-the-world purchases and her art, even though they may have different markets and different ways of selling, they would very likely share similar background processes (the same shopping cart software and shipping and storage facilities, for example).

Determine timelines

Yes, Brandie can do many things, but she can’t do it all at once. She will need to determine how much time each of her ideas would take to become profitable then break down each idea into the big steps to get to that profitable stage. I say big steps rather than detailed plans because all too often people who have many interests can get sidetracked by planning and replace the planning for action, never getting anywhere.

In any project like the one of creating a Location Independent lifestyle for yourself, the first few actions will most certainly create unexpected results – if Brandie has too detailed plans she won’t necessarily see the new direction presenting itself and end up dead-ending herself, or she’ll stop her actions to go back and re-do her detailed plan. The trick is finding the balance of knowing the bigger picture and end game but being flexible and adaptable enough in the way you get there.

Pick actions

Based on the timelines there will be things with which she can start earning now, soon, later and much later. Based on resource needs and passion level, Brandie will do best by picking one idea from each of the four categories and determining what the first step for each project would be.

Note I say the first step – not the whole plan, just the first step. Brandie knows in each instance where she wants to go, but to get there she needs to focus on the actions in the moment.

It’s like going for a hike…You know your destination and have a general idea of the route, but if you don’t pay full attention to what’s around you and what might be blocking the path, you’ll miss the great scenery and might trip over a root and break your ankle, making the destination impossible to reach.

Plus without focusing on small actions, all Brandie’s energy and ability to focus on many things at once will just remain scattered thinking – action makes it all real.

Follow through

The challenge for many people in Brandie’s situation is staying committed, despite having many things to work on. It’s easy to start and hard to finish for many people, so Brandie will need to commit to working on each of her projects and putting a moratorium on new ventures.

By having the ideas and required resources list, Brandie can add to it when new ideas come up and then evaluate the ideas against her current plans, fitting the new ideas into the priority schedule.

It’s important not to just add them to the end of the list for a rainy day – because sometimes the ideas have an expiry date and might be lucrative at a specific time, so it may be worth putting something else on hold while pursuing the new idea, but (and this is a big but) this idea of an expiry date should not be used to avoid finishing other projects.

Measure and adjust where necessary

Finally, Brandie needs stay aware of what she’s doing and how it’s working for her, which means after each action, measuring progress and level of continued interest. If Brandie finds either slipping on a particular project she can either up her efforts on that project or re-evaluate her commitment to it and drop it off the list.

Again as with the new ideas evaluation, dropping projects off the action list should only happen rarely. If Brandie finds herself starting then dropping project after project then she really needs to re-evaluate her commitment to creating the lifestyle she wants.

Measurement will also provide further motivation, showing Brandie how far she’s come and how much closer she is to achieving her dreams.

Further Suggested Resources

Of course, any of the Location Independent resources here on the LIP site will help Brandie at any and all of the points in her journey. And over on the Someday Syndrome site Brandie will find a free Accountability Clinic that will help keep her moving forward one step at a time.

About the Coach: Alex Fayle, of Someday Syndrome, is a former procrastinator who, with his visionary ability to uncover hidden patterns, helps people break the procrastination obstacle so they can finally find freedom and start living the life they desire, including a Location Independent life.

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