How to Build a Location-Independent Income (Step by Step)

In this episode, I explain how to build a location-independent lifestyle by earning online. We cover remote jobs vs online businesses, the power of geoarbitrage, high-income digital skills, finding clients, and choosing the right country to maximize your income and quality of life. Whether you’re looking to leave the 9-to-5 or work from anywhere, this episode provides a practical roadmap to getting started.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello guys, hope you're doing well. So, in this video, I'm gonna be talking about setting up a location independent business or and lifestyle. So perhaps you are working a job you don't like, maybe you're s you have to go into an office or to a site every day, and you're living in a country maybe which you don't like. Unless you've been living under a rock, you should know that, and if you pay attention to economics, geopolitics, it's pretty obvious that all of the Western nations, and by the Western nations, Western Europe, USA, Canada, Australia, UK, New Zealand, all of these nations are following the same playbook right now, which is high levels of debt, over-government spending, and really high rate just raising taxes every single year. There's taxes on everything now. So you can either stay there and struggle, like the energy, the UK energy costs are the highest in the world because our stupid woke government refuses to drill in the North Sea, so we just buy it from Norway, who are drilling it from the North Sea, and then we end up paying like four times what we should be. So basically, chances are you're living in a Western nation like I was. I basically got to a point where I was just looking around and I was like, this is like the collapse of the Roman Empire. Life, the chances of uh setting myself up financially in this place is becoming harder and harder because you know the cost of housing has gotten in gotten crazy, uh, the wages aren't keeping up with the inflation, and it's just get getting harder and harder to get ahead financially. Not to say that you can't find, you know, if you have a successful business or you have uh a job that pays you pretty well, not to say that you can't still do well in these countries, of course you can, but it's getting harder. That's the point. So now, you know, with the internet, you can set up a location-independent business which allows you to offer a service set or sell a product just through the internet without having to physically be there, and through this, achieve financial independence. Okay, so I think that's the it's the first thing to consider is what are your motivations for going? Do you want lower cost of living, better climate, better dating opportunities? What don't you like about your country? And then find somewhere where you do like. I think eventually everyone wants to have everyone who is nomadic eventually wants a long-term base, um, or at least a couple of bases, but I do believe in try before you buy, so it's important to visit a lot of places before you actually commit to one, otherwise, you just simply don't know. So then you know why you want to you want to be a location-independent digital nomad, and you also know understand where you want to be or what you want from it, then it's a case of okay. Well, what are your options? Really, if you want to truly take advantage of geo-arbitrage, and all geo-arbitrage means is you earn in a stronger currency and you live somewhere which has a weaker currency, and you essentially immediately double triple your spending power. So um you can do this a few ways, you know. There's there's many ways to to there's many different businesses, online businesses, which you can start. The what the the one I chose was to learn a skill, a digital skill, which then I can sell to businesses and offer that as a service. I think that is the most straightforward, lowest cost option to do. Um, and it's a great first business. Like an agency is a is is a good entry into business because it doesn't require a lot of startup capital. Okay, so maybe you want to start a personal brand. I mean, personal brands are great once it compounds and once it's grown, but the thing with personal brands is it takes a long time to compound, it takes a long time to actually build an audience which you can monetize, and maybe you want to leave in the next six months, so you need cash now. So, really, you've got a few options. You can either go down, become an independent contractor, set up a set up a business where you offer a service, or maybe you're a coach, or maybe you drop ship, start an e-commerce store, launch a Shopify store, try and find winning products. That's that's one path. The other path, obviously, the upside of that path is your income potential is a lot, it's hard, it's basically not infinite, but as much as you can scale it, it's gonna be a lot more than a salaried role, typically. Um, saying that some of the drawbacks which are involved in running your own uh your own business is that it can take a it's a lot of work to get off the ground, and the first two years are typically gonna make or break. Um, once you can get to a point where you start hitting that velocity where you have enough clients to be able to hire, then you can start delegating that work and actually step back from the business. But for me personally, I have been just working a lot, literally six, seven days a week basically. Um so really that is one path. The other path is you you get a remote job, and this is totally valid. I do I don't think business is for it is for anyone, everyone, and what a job can provide is you can if you're earning pounds or dollars or in a stronger or euros and you're living somewhere where it's cheaper, then even if you're making three, four K USD a month, then you can still have a good quality of life in these countries without having to worry about starting a business. So I would say if your goal is just to make like between three and five K a month, then a remote job is gonna probably get you there without the stress of owning a business. If your job, if your goal is to get to 20, 30, 40, 50k a month, maybe more beyond that, then you're gonna have to start a business. So what remote jobs are available? Well, again, it's the same as launching a business. You have you learn a skill, I learnt paid ads, funnels, and that was the service which I initially offered to marketing agencies, and that's how I got my first job, which was remote. So learn a skill, which you can a digital skill, which you can offer to agencies or companies which are willing, looking for that, looking for that. Um sales is also a great um income, a great job which you can do to earn money remote. Um, high-ticket sales, you can earn you can earn good money doing that. Um you know you get paid based on normally like a base, and then you get paid bonuses anytime you actually make a sale. Um so then, so you have offering a service, sales, um other jobs which can be done remote, teaching English or online, teaching um any kind of skill through personal brand, and then having that as uh like having like courses, digital products, um, communities, Patreon, paid memberships. There's many different ways to do this, but I think it's important to pick one, decide whether the job is gonna be the right one for you. If your goal is to earn uh just get location, I think it's a good first step, and it's good because you can learn, you can build those skills whilst being on the job, and then or you want to just go straight into business, right? Um, I you know, I wouldn't recommend going to a country with a weaker economy and necessarily um getting a job in that local economy because typically your actual liver standards are actually going to get less, unless you're gonna start a business there and you're gonna start investing and like developing. I know people who have bought property in Thailand, in Bali, in uh Brazil, and they've actually invested and turned that into like Airbnbs and rentals, short-term rentals, and that's actually worked out really well for them. So that's that's a valid valid option if you have capital to invest there. So those are really the main options. So I I've I've lived in Southeast Asia working a remote job for about six months all across the region, and that was a remote job which I had working for a marketing agency, and then eventually, which is also one of the downsides of having a remote job, potential risks, is um if they cut staff, you could lose that, and then you lose all your income, which is what happened to me. The agency went for a period of where they had a lot a lot of client churn, and then they let go of me and some other staff members, which meant I had to return back to the UK once the money, once my income had dried up, and then I spent that time in the UK actually doing outreach, getting clients. So, how did I actually get clients? Well, there are a few ways you can do this. Um, outreach really is the lowest cost if you don't have money for ads. Uh, so cold calling, I think, is still the most effective form of signing clients through direct outreach. Um, also, I didn't have much success with cold email, but it's good for following up after a call or in order to like remind people to show up to an appointment, but actually just blasting out uh mass cold emails for me personally. I didn't have any success of that. LinkedIn uh DMs, LinkedIn um, you know, you connect with someone and you you know you share like a mini VSL in the DMs and see if they want to jump on a call with you if they're interested in your offer. So DM outreach on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook is pretty good. Join Facebook groups, depending on what service you're offering. Um, and then and then really, if you have the budget for it, if you've got one to two thousand USD to spare, um, then put that into paid ads, and if you can get it to work for you, then you don't have to worry about doing outreach anymore because you have that inbound source of uh of leads consistently coming in. So that's what I'd recommend. I would definitely say that it's a good idea to get out of the West Um right now if you if you can. Um I know there's a lot of people, like my parents included, who are in denial about the collapse of the UK and the West. And it's you know you can't you can't convince everybody. Um I think some people are still still hold on to what the nation once was, and they still have this idea that the West is still, well it's US is still the power, economic powerhouse, but you know, it's losing relative power. Um but really for most people, unless you're rich living in the West, if you're working class, your cost of living and your standard of living is going down year by year. So really, like how you combat that one of the ways to combat that, I think one of the most effective life hacks in the modern age is gear arbitrage and earning in a stronger currency and living somewhere where your money goes a lot further. So I would say depend choose the region which you think would align most to your culture. For me, that is Latin America and Europe, Eastern Europe, mind uh, Western Europe is um, you know, that any country which is in the EU is and ruled by EU law is following the same um, basically turning very socialist, which means higher taxes, bigger welfare state, and more spending, but the actual productivity is getting less because they're driving out all the businesses and entrepreneurs. So this kind of thinking has infected the EU really badly, um, and also the uh most of the most of the West. I think the US is um has done some things to try and turn it around. I think Trump has has improved it since he's been in power compared to when Biden was in power, um, but the UK is following a lot of you know it's just been every single government that the UK has had in has just been um has had the same thing and just looked after their own interests and protected the elite class. So I would advise looking into options to relocate. Um I would say, you know, pick a skill and a business model which is um which ties into your unique uh attributes and pick and your goals as well. You know, maybe you're happy earning less, but you just want that stability of a job and be able to enjoy your weekends. I completely understand that. Um look into remote sales, look into learning, um, learning any digital skill which which marketing agencies offer because there's plenty of agencies out there always looking to hire media buyers, um now AI automation specialists. I think AI is becoming um a more used skill in the digital marketing space, so becoming fluent using Clawed, Chat GPT, Gemini Perplexity is very important in the coming years. So, yeah, that would be my advice. Um, if you have any questions or if you want to ask me um my opinion on a specific uh your specific situation, then by all means reach out. You know, you can book an intro call with me below. Um, we can do a a session of uh of consults if that's something which you feel like you could you could benefit from and you want to really get advice on where you should go and what you should really be doing in order to what would be the right path for you. So, guys, if you found this video helpful, hit subscribe if you haven't already, give it a thumbs up, and I'll see you on the next one. Peace.