Location Independent Professionals » Ask The Coach

Ask The Coach: How Do I Become Location Independent When I Have Other Commitments & Priorities?

Alex Fayle — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 05:00:41 +0000

Editor’s note: This is a question from one of our readers and community members of the Turkish edition. If you read Turkish, you can see the original post here.

Ali in Turkey says:

Being in the last year of university keeps me away from everything and puts me in shackles. I feel like there is no life before the school finishes and I am wasting every second of my life.

I know that once I start doing something, it will get very easy, like rolling down the hill but I don’t know how to make the first movement. Another thing is the debt that my family has to pay. It torments me and I feel like I have to pay it and I will never have my own freedom until the payment is over.

Besides this, I am ready to live hungry, but happily anywhere possible.

I don’t want to live in one city on this planet, where I travel between two points every single day. I want to do something that makes me feel good in all circumstances, even when I can’t see what tomorrow will be like. It may be a life in the comfort of a good holiday, or a miserable one including sleeping hungry sometimes. The important point for me is living every moment in the pleasure of having my own life. While doing this, it wouldn’t be bad to put aside some amount for my future children. I guess that’s all…

The Coach’s Response:

I remember being exactly where Ali is. I see this type of pain all the time. One phase of his life is about to end and other one is about to begin but this new one has no focus and has the shackles of debt attached to it, diminishing the delight of the future.

And since Ali is near the end of his time at university, he has lost patience for it. After so many years of school he’s ready to move on but he has his final year to finish.

Beyond school, Ali hungers for a life of excitement, full of highs and lows and the idea of a traditional life with a traditional job horrifies him. He would rather go to sleep hungry than feel trapped in a stable life. I like that Ali has accepted the instability of a life outside the traditional path. Yes, there are great rewards but also great risks and the future often isn’t clear. He wants to pursue happiness, not comfort.

These two words although related, have distinct meanings. Happiness is a sense of contentment even when uncomfortable and in negative situations. It comes from actively choosing actions and accepting the consequences with open arms.

Comfort on the other hand can often be painful. We accept comfort when we don’t make active decisions or when we choose stability over happiness. I’ve been unhappily comfortable in my life at times, having chosen the stable and known over the risky and unknown, even if the risk might have gained me great happiness. When I finally made the leap I decided that I would never again let myself be merely comfortable.

Ali can’t however just run off and take risks as soon as he’s done school because he needs to pay back the debt of going to school and he would like to start saving money to support the family he plans to have the future.

The following three desires create conflict in Ali’s life.

He’s impatient to finish one part of his life.
He wants to live a life of risky happiness, but doesn’t know what that looks like
He has a financial responsibility to his (current and future) family.

Impatience

Unfortunately there’s not much Ali can do about his impatience. He has to finish his final year but by creating a strong idea of what he wants to do next, he can use that dream as inspiration to pull him through his impatience and get him to the end of the year.

A Life of Risk

The need to pay the bills or pay debt has killed the dreams of millions of people. It doesn’t have to. The two can be combined – sometimes not in an obvious way – but they don’t have to sit on opposite sides of the either/or fence.

I recommend that Ali figures out what he wants out of life without the financial pressure. Create the dream – both the outcome and the major steps to get there – and then bring back the reality of the financial situation.

Ali’s conflicting desires all revolve around a clear future.

What exactly does he want to do? He has a vague idea of doing good and traveling but beyond that there’s nothing specific. I’m not a big fan of vision exercises that picture the perfect outcome because they so often don’t ever come true because in this type of vision we do nothing to look at the gap between here and there. But in this case having even a few details about Ali’s dream life will help him with his impatience and the financial pressure he feels.

Notice as well how I said creating the dream isn’t just envisioning the outcome. It’s also deciding on the major steps to get there. For example, if Ali wanted to become a travel writer, he would picture a life where he’s traveling mostly for free and earning money for his writing. He would also however, envision learning how to be a travel writer and envision practising his writing and submitting pieces to editors with both rejections and acceptances.

When creating a future or a dream to inspire him, if he doesn’t include the steps from here to there his present self has no obligation to do anything. The future, in whatever form, will come true at some point, so why work for it?

By envisioning even a few steps along the way he will acknowledge that the goal will take effort on his part, starting now.

Responsibility

Once Ali has his dream and the major steps he’ll have the inspiration to get through the rest of the school year, but at the end he’ll still have the paralyzing debt and financial responsibility facing him.

Reality often intrudes into life this way. For example, I would love to spend all day writing fiction and not worry about anything else. However I need to eat, pay rent and would like to take holidays every once in a while, so I have to earn money.

For that I have two things – a coaching business and a job teaching English. The teaching job covers the basic bills and the coaching business pays debt, extras and savings. The first job is part-time but pays well and the second is slowly building. Financial freedom doesn’t happen overnight – it’s a slow process.

So that’s one route Ali could take: pursuing what he loves while earning money on the side to support the dream and his other financial responsibilities. He has another option however, which is one many people have pursued: working hard for a short period to earn big money.

Depending on Ali’s university degree he could find himself a decent job and combined with living frugally, pay down his debt as fast as he can to then start pursuing his dream.

Neither route is right or wrong and both have their positive and negative sides. A slow build risks never earning enough while the short detour along the traditional path risks getting comfortable derailing the dream completely.

Homework

Based on the above, this is what I recommend Ali do to start moving towards his dream Location Independent life:

Brainstorm and use other creative thinking techniques to come up with an idea of what he wants to pursue (this likely will change along the way but it at least provides a start).
Come up with five steps that connect the present to this future.
Determine how this journey from now to then be supported financially (with a side job or front-loaded by a detour away from the dream).

Of course, as Ali brainstorms ideas for his dream life he might stumble across something that gives him both the excitement he craves with the financial support he needs. It all depends on what he wants and what he’s willing to do to achieve it.

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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Ask the Coach: How Can I Decide On Just One Idea to Pursue For My Location Independent Business?

Alex Fayle — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 15:40:31 +0000

Image by Boby Dimitrov

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:

Brainstorm interests
Determine required resources
Find common denominators
Determine timelines
Pick actions
Follow through
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.

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Ask The Coach: How Do I Become Location Independent When I Don't Have the Right Skills And I'm Running Out Of Time To Make It?

Alex Fayle — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 10:00:15 +0000

Image by Paco CT

Ana from Japan says:

I’ve been looking to become location independent for over 5 years now. I have no particular expertise in anything and no upfront money. My absolute passion is Spain and Europe – and writing about it (travel issues, destinations, hotels, pilgrimages, etc.). But as I’m not currently living there and can’t travel there often, I can’t access insider information to provide credibility. I can’t use it as a base for a business.

I’m from the U.S. but currently teaching in Japan. This is my third time here. In 2000, I left behind a modest life in Los Angeles to go for my lifetime dream of living in Spain. I was unable to make it as I had little money and it’s difficult to get a work visa. So, out of money, with no home to go back to, and with debts to pay off, I ended up teaching English in Japan.

There are no longer any decent day jobs at home for a 55-year-old woman without a professional background (in my former life I was a proofreader/editor and typist.) Being here is a means to an end…

I have no particular passion for this place and I don’t speak Japanese (although I am trying). I want my lifestyle to be truly location independent. I don’t want my remote living to depend on being here. After struggling back home for the past 5 years, I came back here with the goal of making a successful remote lifestyle within 2 years, so I can move to Spain. At my age, failure simply isn’t an option anymore. I have got to find something. I don’t want to end up stuck back there toiling in a retail store at age 60!

The Coach’s Answer

Ana is in a place that many people find themselves in during an economic downturn. There are no easy jobs to be found, going back to school is prohibitively expensive and time-consuming, and there’s the age bias working against her if she enters a new field.

Plus on top of all that, Ana’s dream of living in Spain is severely hampered by her lack of European passport or work visa.

Add all this together and you get a pretty discouraging situation.

Specifically I see Ana’s Somedays as being:

Living in a country that won’t allow her access without a proven stable income.

Living a location independent lifestyle based on doing work using the skills she has.

Making the most out of the next 10-15 years to allow for a retirement, and being able to live exactly where she wants to live.

When I first read of Ana’s plight, I thought that her Somedays seemed almost too far out of reach to pursue and considered counseling her to find something more achievable. But I have no right to tell someone to give up her dreams.

Yes, achieving her Somedays will be difficult but they don’t have to be impossible. Let’s take a look at each one…

Living in Spain

If Ana can develop enough of an income to pay for flights, her day-to-day expenses and to put money aside for retirement, then while she might not be able to live in Spain permanently, she could turn to house sitting, taking three month gigs (the limit of a travel visa) alternately in Spain and the United States.

This would not only get her into Spain for at least part of the year, but also remove the cost of rent or a mortgage. And if she can gain enough income in the next decade or fifteen years, she might then be able to retire to Spain proving that she has the income (and health coverage) to live in the country without needing support from the Spanish government.

As I write this I see a lot of “if” statements based around income. Yes, Ana will face challenges developing that income but it doesn’t make the dream impossible. At least there are alternative ways to get to Spain which she might not have considered previously.

House Sitting Options

Mind My House

House Carers

House Sit World

Location Independent Income

My first recommendation here would be for Ana to take deeper advantage of the Location Independent offerings on this site – because there’s nothing better than learning from the experts about how to develop a Location Independent Business.

There are many skills and options that Ana can consider…

She lists proofreading as a skill she has, and typing as well, indicating an eye for detail. Plus she’s been a teacher for many years, meaning she knows how to explain and how to listen. And by living in a culture where she doesn’t speak the language, she shows that she can adapt to new and potentially stressful situations without breaking down.

Put all those things together and add in the desire to be Location Independent and I immediately think of a Virtual Assistant with a proofing/editing specialty. And fortunately there are many resources for learning how to become a VA.

Virtual Assistant Resources
There are any number of programs both free and paid that offer training as a VA – click here to see what Google came up with.

And that’s just one business idea!

Making the Most of Time Available

The harsh reality in Ana’s situation is that she’s not a 20- or 30something. She doesn’t have five to ten years to build up a business and make it successful. She needs it now or at least within the next year. That means an almost obsessive focus on developing the business.

This intense focus is contrary to what I normally recommend as I believe true success comes from finding a balance with all areas of our lives. In this case, however, Ana has about 15 years to develop not just an income, but a retirement fund as well.

Basically over the next at least six months if not a full year, Ana will need to eat, sleep and breathe her new venture. This level of dedication requires not only passion but a detailed plan and because of that I recommend the Location Independent Guide to Business.

Other LIP resources on the site include

The (free) LIP Business Readiness Assessment

The LIP eBook

The LIP Clubhouse

Homework

Here’s what I would suggest Ana do in the next three months:

Figure out her basic needs
What are her minimum needs to live on a day to day basis in the US for the next year? This does not include daily expenses for life in Spain, the travel expenses for going back and forth between countries, nor retirement income. This is what will get Ana through the next twelve months as she develops her business.

Find a long-term (one year) house sitting gig in the US
There are many such gigs available and this would give Ana the stability of location where she can get a part-time job without having to think about moving about while she dedicates all her energy on developing the new business.

Get a part time job to cover your basic expenses
While Ana said she didn’t want to be 60 and working retail, right now is not the time to take on work that will require much investment emotionally or intellectually. If she can find work that covers her basic needs and that she can walk away from (bothy physically & mentally) when her work day is done then she can devote all that saved energy into developing a business that will take her out of that part-time job in her spare time.

Start networking like crazy
Online businesses are all about making connections. Even before starting anything about the business, Ana will need to begin developing those connections. If she comments on blogs and participates in forums specific to small businesses, when the time comes to launch her own business, she will have the connections necessary to generate income.

However, there’s a caveat here: The participation in the online world needs to be highly focused. While it’s necessary to let personality through (allowing people to feel connected to her), Ana will also need to subtly include a sense of helpfulness in her online participation, answering peoples’ needs sometimes even before they express them, so that when she does launch her business, people already see her as detail-oriented, incredibly helpful and someone they can trust & might turn to for help.

Figure out future needs
This is where Ana will determine what income she needs not just to live part-time in Spain and travel between countries, but also what savings she will have to accumulate to ensure a large enough retirement income that will allow her to retire in Spain.

Develop the new business
And of course most importantly, starting right now, Ana needs to determine what type of Location Independent Business she wants, what skills she’s missing (and therefore need skills training of some sort), and what steps to take to build the business to a successful level quickly.

Ana’s situation and her Someday desires have come together to create a difficult path for her, especially in the next few years, but by having a direction and with enough passion and commitment to work hard now, she will not only develop a Location Independent Business, but finally achieve the Someday that’s been nagging at her for decades.

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Ask The Coach: Should I Go Back To School To Learn How To Create A Location Independent Business?

Cath Duncan — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 09:00:03 +0000

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Tony Camacho, USA says:

I’ve been researching the best way to pursue a mobile lifestyle and am wondering if you think going back to school to get my BA in business with it leaning towards e-business would be helpful or just redundant?

It would take 24 months, I would get finance for the costs so I’d delay paying for it, and I can do it online, therefore allowing me to be mobile. It may help with my profile as a leader and mentor – not to mention the growth that would take place.

I ask this because there seems to be so many sources of mentoring, niche education sources, life coaching, etc. on the web that makes the traditional sense of education seem a bit outdated. I am 47, presently a self employed architect with a strong sense of design and a strong desire to help others. I need to develop skills that are mobile.

My question is: Should I go back to school, and if I were to decide to go back to school what should I focus on to develop skills that could translate well within an internet business model?

The Coach’s Answer

Cath says:

You’re right to wonder about the relevance of doing a formal degree, especially if you want to launch an online business. Educational systems and the opportunities to learn have been dramatically changed by the internet, as has the world of business, and the way that authority is developed online is often quite different to the offline world.

Resource alert:

“I am 47, presently a self employed architect with a strong sense of design and a strong desire to help others.”

You’re clear about your strengths, you’ve developed your skills through years of experience, and your desire to help others will be essential for your success as an entrepreneur. These are all important areas of resourcefulness that you can draw on as you decide the way forward.

While university can be a great “growing up” experience for kids fresh out of school, with your life experience and maturity, I’d question whether a degree would be relevant and worth the cost – especially if you already have entrepreneurial experience.

So what’s getting you stuck? There are only two things that ever get us stuck:

Not knowing what we want
Focusing on our fears

In fact, I believe that we always know what we want, and the only reason we think we don’t know what we want is because we’re afraid to want what we want.

So actually it’s just one thing that gets us stuck: fear. So what fear is getting you stuck?

“It may help with my profile as a leader and mentor – not to mention the growth that would take place.”

I have a hunch here that you’re feeling a little afraid about taking the leap and assuming that having a BA in Business would get you the confidence you want and that formal education is required in order to earn credibility and authority in the eyes of others. Tell me where I’m wrong…

Previous generations have placed great emphasis on formal education, and it’s a common assumption that people will be impressed by further educational credentials and letters after your name, but that’s an assumption that more and more people are questioning – especially online.

When it comes to starting and running an online business, your ability to get your clients the results they want is the most important factor in building your authority and your business, so any learning program that you engage in should be designed to give you the skills to deliver results for your clients and to give you the skills to create the system for delivering results for your clients.

A formal education will typically give you a full overview of your domain and then drill down into detail in all of the relevant areas – including areas that aren’t relevant to the business you want to start. This is because formal educational programs are usually designed for the masses, standardized and driven by the institutional curriculum, which is often driven by professional associations, international educational associations and sometimes legislation.

This is great for industries like law, medicine and architecture where there are a lot of black-and-white facts to learn, rules and policies to follow and you have to complete a specific curriculum in order to register with a professional body and practice your profession, but less important in the online world where the people who succeed are the people who invent new rules and ways of doing things, rather than following all the old rules.

While you might want to experience further formal education, and you’ll always learn something valuable from a formal education, you don’t have to have a formal education to create a successful online business, so don’t let that drive your decision.

Think about how quickly you want to be up and running – and think about what 24 months is worth to you. If you’re committed to learning full-time and you purchase short courses and coaching programs that are relevant to your learning needs, and create your own custom-designed learning program, you should be able to get an online business up and running and beginning to earn an income in less than 6 months.

Formal education can offer great mentoring and leadership opportunities, but you can always find these opportunities elsewhere in the community too, so you don’t have to go to university or college for that. You can join a community group, such as toastmasters, your local commerce association, or a sports team, or you can volunteer as a mentor for something like Big Brothers Big Sisters of America.

Broadly, the questions you’ll need to consider in starting an online business includes:

What are my skills that I already have that I can use to help others?
Who are “my people” (the ideal people you’d love to serve)?
What do my people need? How can I serve/ help my people, using my skills?
How/ where can I find my people? How can I make it easy for them to find me? (ie. a marketing plan specific for working online)
What skills do I still need to develop, to make all this possible?
What fears do I need to overcome, to make this possible? (Don’t underestimate the importance of this question!)
What technology do I need to learn to use, to make this possible?

Editor’s note: I’d also add that deciding upon the “type” of location independent business you want to run is important from the start – a service-based or product-based business or a combination of both? This will depend upon whether you want to sell & deliver services or products.

Most of this information is covered in the LIP Guide To Business course, so that’s a great place to start.

My sense is that formal education will teach you that these are the questions you need to figure out, but the “new” ways of learning, such as coaching, will help you to actually answer these questions for yourself.

If you’re self-employed already, you may be familiar with having worked through questions 1 to 6 before. For an online business, the main thing that makes it possible is the technology, so perhaps this is the main area where you need to develop your knowledge and skills. The LIP Guide To Business gives great detail on the technology you’ll need to learn in order to make your business location independent.

In summary, my general advice in these high-change, fast-paced times, and especially when it comes to setting up an online business is prioritise imperfect action and real-world feedback over perfectly researched and documented plans.

My sense is that formal degrees tend to still prioritise perfectly researched and documented plans, and that, as you already sensed, the “new” ways of learning will help you to prioritise action, application, real-world feedback and results instead. Ask yourself, if there was a solid, valid, quicker, and probably cheaper way to establish a location independent business, would I still want to go to get a BA in Business?

And here’s the Twitter-style answer:

You don’t have to have a degree to have a successful online business. Identify your learning needs and customize your own learning program with the focus on learning by doing.

About The Coach: Cath Duncan blogs about Agile Living at Mine Your Resources and through the Bottom-line Bookclub, she provides resources for busy professionals to accelerate their personal growth and develop the life skills for thriving and making the changes they want.

If you’d like help overcoming a specific challenge in your life, submit your “Ask The Coach” question here >>>

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Ask the Coach: How Can I Focus on Moving Forward When I Don't Know What I Want To Do?

Alex Fayle — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 09:00:09 +0000

Image by Sentrawoods.

Jojo from England says:

I just don’t know what I should be focused on. I have successfully worked in marketing communications for many years and could easily go freelance doing what I do, but it doesn’t totally inspire me – it’s more a means to an end.

I would love to do something that I am really passionate about but the only thing that truly does that is writing and my literary interests are very niche and extremely unlikely to be a potential revenue stream.

I think my middle ground would be an online business of some kind that is relatively low-maintenance to generate revenue and the occasional freelance project – hopefully giving me time to write for pleasure. But I am worried that I would lose focus. I can’t see the wood for the trees!

My priority is to be able to work flexibly as and when I choose. I am not afraid of hard work and am prepared to make the effort to reap the reward. I need to generate enough revenue to pay my rent and while I accept some compromise in my lifestyle, I don’t want to have more free time and no cash to enjoy it!

The Coach’s Answer

Welcome to the problem of most artists! We love what we do and would do it whether we get paid for it or not. Unfortunately that pesky need to eat and integrate ourselves into society keeps us from living without money.

It’s no wonder that much of English literature was written by the nobility – they had passive income and no need to work if they wanted to eat. And those artists who weren’t so lucky, worked hard to find themselves a post as an in-house artist to some noble house.

But for some strange reason our modern-day equivalents of the nobility – CEOs of multinational companies – just don’t seem to have that same sense of responsibility to promote the arts.

So we have to support ourselves.

Let’s take a look first at what I see as your Somedays…

Someday you will live a life full of passion for what you do on a daily basis.

Someday you will have a good balance of free time and cash flow.

Someday you will figure out what it is that you want to do to achieve the first two.

This list of Somedays is pretty common across the board. Your specific skills, passions and possible solutions to challenges will differ from everyone else, but what you’re looking for is what most people are looking for.

The order you go about getting rid of these Somedays depends entirely on which one has the highest priority for you. None of these is better than any other. Everyone has their own idea of what’s a priority and before you start you need to toss out any judgments of what’s right or wrong in terms of priorities or you might end up choosing a path that’s based on expectations and “should” rather than on desire.

Living A Life of Passion…

This is the route the typical starving artist takes. It’s the route I took. After years of suppressing my dreams, I went for a radical change, selling up everything and moving across the Atlantic.

I needed to be a writer and nothing else mattered. Only after I’d settled into my new life did I consider what I wanted to do to make money to pay the bills while building my fiction career.

From what you say above, this is not the route you’re predisposed to take. There’s no need to make any dramatic or radical changes in your life. Achieving your Somedays will come bit by bit without disrupting your life too much.

While you are passionate about writing and you would love to live off your writing, you’re not willing to lose the lifestyle you currently enjoy.

Balancing Free Time & Cash Flow…

Highly practical people take this approach. My sister, of Urban Panther’s Lair and Silver and Grace, is taking this approach. She has a full time job that doesn’t thrill her, but it gives her the things she wants. Meanwhile she’s developing a few business ideas that range from middling interest to high passion.

The thing is, she’s not diving into anything right away. She’s carefully allotting time to the new projects and checking in with her boyfriend about how they are doing while she basically works two jobs. She’s also already decided at what point she will take an unpaid leave from work to give the new business ideas a full try.

From what I see in your question, I think this approach fits you better.

The work involved in getting there requires having a lot of patience. It also means planning out step-by-step what you will do to lay the foundation for a successful location independent business.

However before you do that you need to know what you want to do, which brings us to the third Someday…

Knowing What You Want Out of Life…

For many people their Someday Syndrome centers on this issue. Not only do you want to find your dream and pursue it, but you want to find a way to support the dream financially, because we have to live in the real world even though we might not want to.

There are any number of ways to figure this out – and my blog spends a lot of time on this issue, especially in the Lab Rat series for this year.

Based upon what you’ve written, I have one major bit of advice…

Don’t compromise on a middle ground that kind of, sort of mixes what you love doing with your current marketable skills. You’ll just end up tainting your passion with the same lack of interest you feel for the marketing work.

Not everyone has to have a job that includes their passions. Perhaps you could find something that doesn’t disgust or bore you while giving you the time to pursue your true passions.

Homework

Yes, that’s right – curing Someday Syndrome is all about taking action, so here are your actions…

I Can Do Stuff!
Pull out your CV and make a list of all the things you’ve accomplished as well as all your skills, right from your very first job.

Mix and Match!
On a separate piece of paper, write down various combinations of accomplishments and skills that relate to each other somehow. Don’t divide everything based on the divisions of your present and past jobs – get creative and come up with a large variety of possible combinations that stretch the imagination.

Name that Job!
Take a look around the Internet and determine how you could earn money using each combination of accomplishments and skills. From that research create yourself a list of possible income streams.

Ooh! Pretty! Shiny!
Finally pick the job that gives you the goosebumps thinking about it. If there aren’t any that do that for you then pick the one that most appeals to you, the one that you feel you could spend as much as several hours a day working on.

Once you’ve gotten rid of this Someday, work your way back through the list figuring out how to create the income that will then allow you to follow your true passion of writing.

If you’d like help overcoming a specific challenge in your life, submit your “Ask The Coach” question here >>>

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