Location Independent Professionals

Interview With A Location Independent Writer In Barbados

Lea Woodward — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 09:00:07 +0000

Today’s interview is with a hard-working and pretty successful freelance writer – Sharon Hurley Hall. Originally from the UK but now living in Barbados, Sharon has been a strong supporter of our Location Independent network for a while now.

She also happens to be one of the more successful freelance writers I know and as this kind of career is one which frequently attracts those aspiring to be location independent, I asked Sharon a few questions about how she’s managed to carve out a successful career in this field…

Can you briefly introduce yourself & what you do?

I wear many hats – I’m a web content writer, blogger, journalist and occasional editor.

How long did it take to get to where you are with your freelance writing business? And how long did it take to get to a stage where you could live off your freelance writing earnings?

I’ve been freelancing for nearly five years now. I started while I was still in the UK and while I still had a part time job, which gave me some time to get the business up and running. The first 18 months weren’t that lucrative, but by the end of the second year, it was obvious that it was a viable business.

What tips do you have for people looking to start their freelance writing careers?

Gosh, where should I start? Aspiring freelance writers need to build a writer platform so that potential clients can find their work (a blog is good for this, especially if you have no clips).

One of the things I did when starting was write for consumer review and article marketing sites. I was already a skilled writer, but this helped me make the transition from journalism to web content writing.

And the most important tip is to take every opportunity to write content for your target market. If you do this, you will soon be able to attract clients.

What have been your biggest mistakes and successes during your freelance writing career?

One of my biggest mistakes is one that a lot of new freelancers make – not knowing how to manage my time and taking on too much. That’s a short road to stress and burnout (not to mention RSI). Keeping a handle on what you can actually do helps you to plan a realistic schedule and keeps writing fun.

Biggest successes? I’m easy to please. Every time a client likes my work, that’s a success. Most recently, I was able to change a client’s attitude to working with editors. Another of my clients was so happy with the work I did on her site and brochures that she has referred several other clients to me.

What’s your opinion on job boards and sites like Elance? Are they worth joining if you’re just starting out?

I’m probably the wrong person to ask because job boards haven’t worked that well for me. I’ve had a couple of jobs via Rentacoder and Ifreelance, but haven’t found other job boards that useful. A lot of my colleagues have had great success on Elance, though.

My top picks for finding jobs are Freelance Writing Jobs and The Writer’s Bridge. Both of these sift ads from various sites to find the ones that are most likely to be great opportunities.

What have you found to be the most effective ways to market your freelance writing?

I took a “throw everything at it and see what sticks” approach in the beginning. I set up a website and did article marketing articles, then I added a blog. That blog’s successor is regularly on the front page of Google for its main keyword and I’ve been hired based on what people have seen there.

What’s really worked for me, though is connecting with people on Twitter and Facebook and, increasingly, LinkedIn. I mainly talk to other writers and bloggers, but we pass opportunities to each other, either directly or indirectly.

Your site, Get Paid To Write Online, provides some useful tips – any particularly valuable posts you can point us to?

Many aspiring LIPs look at freelance writing as a relatively “easy” way to become location independent. What would you say to them?

Building a freelance writing career takes hard work and dedication. Sometimes you work harder than if you had a 9-5 job. However, it has many advantages which may be summed up as — have laptop, will travel. As long as you have the technology and a good internet connection, you can work from anywhere, so from that point of view, it’s one of the best location independent careers.

Are there any specific challenges you’ve faced on the road or living overseas that have impacted your freelance writing business? Any tips for dealing with these?

Once you realise that just because your clients are in a different time zone, you don’t have to be awake at that time, it’s all gravy :)

Seriously, the big challenge when living on a small island like Barbados is services. Most things work most of the time here, but occasionally you get a power cut at just the wrong time. It’s always good to have a couple of internet cafes and friends’ computers on standby just in case. I backup regularly and keep my laptop charged up so I have a couple hours’ grace if something happens.

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Could HK Be Your Next Location Independent Destination?

Lea Woodward — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 09:00:30 +0000

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You may or may not know that we have a small but growing directory of Little LIP Travel Guides. What makes them stand out from other travel guides is the fact that they’re written by authors who have spent more than a few days in a place and who really know the destination.

In this series, we interview some of the authors and asking them to share more information about their particular destination. The second stop on the tour is HK – this also happened to be where I was born so I know it pretty well (hence my additional notes throughout – sorry I couldn’t help myself!!).

Here to tell us a bit more about HK is the author of The Little LIP Guide To Hong Kong, Meghan Lazier…

What made you choose your destination in the first place?

I moved to Hong Kong when I was awarded a Fulbright after graduating college. I knew I wanted to move abroad and I had previously studied in Japan. When I found out I was going to Hong Kong, I was thrilled.

How much research did you do before heading there?

Honestly, I didn’t do much research. I bought your typical guidebook and skimmed through the photos. I consider myself an adaptable person, but Hong Kong is very easy to acclimatise to.

People are generally friendly and it’s not difficult to find people who speak English to help you with any sort of question you may have (although it always helps to learn a bit of basic Cantonese).

Editor’s note: HK is a great introduction to Asian cities if you’ve never been to Asia – it has some very western aspects to it combined with the traditional Chinese culture. It’s a fabulous mix of both East & West and you’ll find it an easy place to get to grips with.

What makes it a suitable destination for LIPs?

Hong Kong is fantastic destination for anyone wanting to venture to a new place, but still be able to work professionally. The time difference with the U.S. also works quite well for those who are night owls!

Editor’s note: HK has everything that a location independent professional needs: good internet access, short term (albeit usually expensive) accommodation, lots to see & do in your spare time, great public transport options and it caters well to a wide range of budgets. It is a buzzing city so will suit entrepreneurs well.

From someone who knows first hand, what is internet access really like?

Accessing the internet is fast and easy. I never had a problem with internet access during my entire 11 month stay.

Editor’s note: Free wi-fi is available in many places in HK. HK Park has park-wide access and there’s also free wi-fi at Chek Lap Kok, HK’s airport. Plus, you can also use your mobile phones on the MTR, HK’s underground railway system – one of the fastest, cleanest, most efficient systems in the world.

How easy is it to find accommodation there?

Finding housing is not difficult. What is a little more complicated is figuring out section of Hong Kong is best for you – I’d suggest staying in a hostel or hotel until you can get a feel for the various urban and suburban places in Hong Kong. In the Guide, I’ve suggested a shortlist of places which might be particularly suitable for LIPs.

Where you’ll really save money is by not living on Hong Kong Island and instead heading to somewhere on the mainland. It also helps if you can find someone to help you negotiate rates in Cantonese.

Any tips, tricks or insider info you’d like to share?

Wait to take your first mini bus trip until you have a Cantonese speaking friend with you (unless you speak Cantonese) or you’ve been in the country a few months…unless you want an adventure and you have a few extra hours to spare!

Don’t be afraid of street food. It’s delicious, inexpensive and I’ve never heard of any hygiene complaints. My favorites are Gei Dan Jai, waffles with peanut butter and sugar, banana pratha and any sort of noodle dish. I think Mong Kok is the best for strolling and snacking.

Have you travelled to other towns/places within the country? Any favourites?

While in Hong Kong, don’t miss the 10,000 Buddha’s Park in Sha Tin. It’s like a buddha theme park. Some of my favorite pictures were taken here. It’s a little off the beaten tourist track, too.

Meghan Lazier is a freelance communications consultant and writer. Feel free to drop her a line at www.meglaz.com.

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Three Common Tax Avoidance Schemes To Avoid As A Location Independent Professional

Lea Woodward — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 19:59:47 +0000

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When we first became location independent, I was advised by my UK accountant that we should set up a corporation in another country and we then wouldn’t be liable for tax in the UK. So as some of you may have read in the original ebook, we set up shop in Panama – our first destination.

It turns out that was crappy advice and it has been a frustrating and costly exercise which has brought us practically no benefit. Just ask Marion (the author of our latest guide) and she’ll scoff at the advice we were given :-O Unfortunately at the time, we didn’t know any better and all we had to go on was the advice of a supposed professional (who charged an arm & a leg) and the research we’d done online.

As with many things you try & save money on by doing it yourself, organising your own tax & financial affairs can be a complex, confusing and lengthy process. It can also be quite dull – at least in my opinion!

And unless you’re savvy enough to know better you can easily be taken for a ride. With that in mind, I asked Marion to share a few of the most commonly used schemes to be wary of…

Fictitious or Overstated Invoicing

The taxpayer’s business is billed by a purportedly unrelated offshore entity for goods or services – e.g. “consulting” that is either non-existent or overvalued.

This is especially tempting for nomadic LIPs who run their businesses primarily online and may use offshore outsourcing companies, overseas partners & foreign service providers – and believe that no-one will never bother to check these transactions out. Believe me, if the tax department in your country decide they’re going to check you out, they’ll check you out within an inch of your life!

Offshore Internet Business Kits

Of special interest to LIPs who have businesses conducted primarily through the internet, have you ever seen “kits” which supposedly enable you to give the appearance that your business is foreign owned and operated?

However tempted, please don’t press the “I Want It Now!” button. The mechanics of the “kit” involve transactions routed through offshore servers and business receipts collected through offshore bank accounts or credit card merchant accounts.

These schemes particularly target businesses that offer delivery of computer software and other digital products such as music, pictures or video. They may also provide a means of operating offshore gaming activities.

Repatriation of Offshore Funds Using Credit Cards

Credit cards, such as MasterCard and VISA, issued by tax haven domiciled banks are a preferred method used by taxpayers to anonymously and covertly repatriate offshore funds that may or may not have been previously taxed.

This works by loading up your tax haven credit card with cash & then withdrawing this on home soil without it seemingly ever touching any of your home-based accounts.

American Express cards are used in the same way but differ in that these cards are issued directly by American Express rather than by member banks. If you really think that there is only one roll of paper in an ATM machine and it’s there only for the purposes of your transaction receipt, may I suggest that you seriously reconsider this belief!

If you’re a US citizen planning to become location independent, you might be interested in the recently-launched LIP Guide To Tax & Finances (US version). The Guide contains more of these schemes to be wary of and a multitude of preferable options you do have available to you – so if you’d like to get things set up right from the beginning, this guide will help.

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A Salutary And Sobering Tale About The Importance Of Financial Planning

Lea Woodward — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 19:24:26 +0000

Once upon a time – in the ﬁrst few years of the 21st century – hidden in a quiet, unassuming suburb of Philadelphia, there lived a delightful “early 30s something” married couple of US citizens – Ken and Barbie O’Mara.

Ken had followed his father into the steel industry with the same Fortune 500 Company whilst Barbie worked part-time as a waitress in a local pizza parlour – a means of ﬁnancing her studies as she developed what was looking to be a promising writing career.

But underneath the seemingly mild mannered normality of this typically “white picket fence” all American family there lurked the distinct signs of non-conformity – Ken and Barbie were not at all content with their lot…

The couple had always dreamed of travelling the world before settling down somewhere and starting a family. In his spare time, Ken had been putting together an internet consultancy business and Barbie had been seeking out long term freelance copywriting projects.

What they really wanted, you might even be risqué enough to say lusted after, was to adopt a completely nomadic lifestyle and become citizens of the world.

However, like many people they had fallen into the “sometime someday, deferred life programme” as there seemed no real sense of urgency to do anything about it. When the world economy started falling like a pack of cards, Ken was laid off, fortunately receiving a generous severance package.

Barbie held onto her position, although she had already noticed falling restaurant attendees which had made her increasingly nervous. In any case, they couldn’t comfortably maintain their standard of living for any length of time on a part-time salary. Adding further woe to their personal circumstances, Ken’s surviving parent – his mother who’d returned to live in Ireland after her divorce – died suddenly, leaving him (the only child) to administer her estate.

It seemed that the time had come for Ken and Barbie to make some serious decisions and make that leap of faith – plunging into the largely untested waters of a real, as opposed to deferred life.

There were an awful lot of practical tasks to tick off the “To Do” list before they could board a plane and get the hell out of the US – at least for a good few years. It is understandable then, that amid the excitement, the thorny subject of future tax and ﬁnancial obligations to Uncle Sam received little attention.

They had made some initial enquiries to a handful of provincial attorneys who, in their turn referred them to international practitioners. Their fees were, in Barbie’s words “outrageous for such a simple case like ours”, so the couple decided that they would “get self-educated on the tax thing” and sort things out for themselves. Finding the IRS website was easy enough but Barbie quickly grew rather tired trying to navigate her way round the appropriate sections and understanding all the different technical terms…

In between putting the family property on the market for rent, sourcing storage facilities for personal possessions, booking ﬂights to Ireland, advertising for a new owner to adopt their elderly cat and all the tasks associated with leaving the US, talking about optimal tax and ﬁ nance solutions whilst on the road was as far as the subject progressed in the O’Mara household until a fortnight before they were due to make off for the Emerald Isle.

Over a few farewell beers one night with a well travelled roving reporter friend, Ken learnt that “the thing to do is just set up an offshore company and bank account– solves everything. Anyways, the IRS can’t touch you if you’re living outside the country”. Ken pondered…

That all sounded pretty logical to him so he set about ﬁnding a bargain basement online broker to carry out the work. From what he understood, he ﬁgured that by funnelling money through a corporation in Delaware, all their personal assets and business activity would end up somewhere like Switzerland – including their savings – thus minimising their tax worldwide. After a whirlwind three months of frantic activity, they were off!

As Ken and Barbie ﬂew above the clouds, fearlessly winging their way into the heart of Europe, it was just as well they were unable to foresee the multitude of ﬁscal problems that lay germinating in the loopholes of naivety that they had left behind…

This is an excerpt from The LIP Guide To Tax & Finances On The Road (US edition). If you’d like to find out what happened to Ken & Barbie (hint: it definitely wasn’t pretty!) & how you can avoid the same happening to you as a location independent entrepreneur from the USA, check out the Guide now.

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The Basics Of Planning & Strategising Your Location Independent Business

Lea Woodward — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 09:00:28 +0000

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In all my work with clients whose businesses are struggling and are not where they want them to be, one of the most common missing components is a solid business plan.

It seems that there’s something about business planning which scares many people off. It’s almost as if having something written down makes a commitment to something you’re not sure you want. Or perhaps you’re afraid you won’t get it. Or maybe you’re not sure whether it’s the “right” thing to be aiming for.

Is it simply the thought of having to sit down and write a long-winded document that then just sits there gathering dust and never again sees the light of day, that stops you from completing an all-important activity which just might be the very reason your business is not where you want to be?

There was a time when I wouldn’t contemplate starting a new business venture without building complex business models in excel, drafting a 30-page business plan and dotting all the i’s and crossing all the t’s. That was then, this is now – and these days I create nothing more than a single page plan for every project I start.

Why You Need A Business Plan At All

Like any exciting adventure, it’s useful to have some sort of plan in mind – even if the plan is “Let’s make some money first, head to Guatemala & live off beans and rice for 6 months”. It’s a plan, a goal even…something basic to guide you along the way,

While some people declare themselves to be “anti” goals – arguing that it encourages you to live too much in the future not enjoying the here & now or that you’re setting yourself up for disappointment if you don’t reach them and instead achieve something else – I believe goals are vital to setting up, running and growing a business – location independent or not.

Call them aims, a vision, guidelines or whatever you want, but consider this: if you don’t know where you want to go, how will you ever know if you’ve got there?

The Cheshire cat in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland said it best:

“One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. Which road do I take? she asked. Where do you want to go? was his response. I don’t know, Alice answered. Then, said the cat, it doesn’t matter.”

So What Makes A Good Business Plan?

At the very least, a business plan should contain the following:

The overall mission of your project – a guiding statement which keeps you on track and which ultimately determines everything that follows.

Example: Our mission is to spread the concept of location independence to those who would benefit from it and provide everything they need to become location independent.

What you need to do to get there – the key things you’ll need to do to get you to your ultimate objective; a useful question to ask yourself is whether a particular activity will take you closer to your mission or not.

Example: In order to achieve our mission, we must do the following

Offer inspiration & insights into the location independent lifestyle
Provide a comprehensive range of tools, services & products
Spread the concept of location independence to an ever-increasing audience

How you’re planning to get there - there are always multiple ways to achieve the same thing; you need to define which ways you’ll be trying even if these change over time.

Example: In order to achieve our mission, we choose to focus on the following:

We will write, edit & manage a range of blogs which provide articles, inspiring interviews and more for free to our audience. This will include sites for Location Independent Professionals, Parents and more…
We will send out a monthly ezine, called The Odyssey, which provides insights into our location independent lives.
We will provide a range of free tools, including: A Global Costs of Living Wiki, A free Business Readiness Assessment, a directory of recommended resources elsewhere.
We will provide the following premium products: A range of high quality, value-packed guides covering all the subjects somebody would need to be location independent.
We will create marketing and promotion campaigns both online and offline to obvious and not-so-obvious audiences.

Note for all the above, there are multiple things we could have chosen to achieve each of our aims; but this part is about deciding exactly how you want to achieve each aim and making some specific, more detailed decisions.

When you’ll be aiming to get there – it’s always useful to set some deadlines and milestones along the way; how else will you know whether you’re on track or not? These can be based upon time or achieving specific results along the way – they can be fixed or fluid, you decide what works best for you.

Example:

We have a blog posting schedule which is usually planned out 2-3 months in advance.
We have a planned schedule for launching new sites throughout 2010 and beyond – including 2 new blog-based sites and 2 other types of site.
We have a planned schedule for launching 2-3 new guides throughout 2010.
We have a range of other dashboards with specific goals & milestones to keep us on track for the whole project.

You don’t have to write pages and pages for each section, some bullet points will do. And it doesn’t have to be written with perfect spelling, punctuation or grammar either – no-one’s really going to see it except you – which is why the following secret may also help…

The Secret You Should Know About Business Plans

Let’s cut to the chase, the secret about a good business plan is this: It doesn’t actually matter what’s in the plan. It’s likely to change constantly and it’s not set in stone.

The chances are, you’ll pull up your business plan a few months from now, possibly even weeks, and much of it is no longer relevant. Things may have changed so much that the environment you thought you were operating in or the things you thought you wanted to do no longer apply.

The important thing about writing a business plan is the process you go through to create it.

By simply putting yourself through the exercise of creating a business plan and spending time and energy on the important questions of why, what, how and when, you’ll be saving yourself from the to-ing, fro-ing and decision-making pains from which so many entrepreneurs suffer on a daily basis.

Without a basic business plan, this is often what happens:

You lose sight of your original goal
You may not know when you’re “there”
Even simple decisions become painful, long and arduous to make
Your business flounders at every hurdle
Important crossroads become major obstacles

Business strategy & planning is not some mystical or cerebral activity that only those of us who have worked in corporate strategy can take part in – it’s a simple, often exciting exercise in which you get to decide where you want your business to go, what you want it to do and you begin to think about how you might get there.

So if you haven’t done it already, why not grab a pen & paper or open up a new document on your screen and have a bash at setting out your strategy for the coming year and even beyond?

This is the second post in a series designed to help you start and build a location independent business. The 1st post was here. These posts are, as always, free for you to read and implement. If however, you need more help you might want to check out The LIP Business Guide which has the in-depth detail you’ll need in each of these areas.

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Planning For Crises: What To Do When Your Dream Lifestyle Becomes A Nightmare, Part 2