Are you location independent? What steps did you take to make it happen?

Ooh, fun question!

I used to work the famous corporate 9-to-5, which very much so kept me location-dependent, but I jumped ship to start my own business and have been location-independent, and living the dream, ever since.

The trick to being location-independent is creating an online business that you only need internet to work from. Because I only need internet to work, I can literally be just about anywhere. I’ve spent weeks even working from 3rd world countries because let’s be real, just about everyone has WiFi somewhere! The only place I haven’t been able to work from so far was a cruise ship. But, rock on, I needed a real vacation anyway.

What really puts the icing on the cake for being location independent is setting my own hours. Then not only can I travel when I want or live wherever I want, I can work (or not work) whenever I want. That’s the real trick to lifestyle design.

Challenges:

• It becomes very difficult to truly take a real vacation. Even when I’m on “vacation”, I am still usually keeping an eye on business. I didn’t realize how much of an impact that has until I was on that cruise where I literally couldn’t even check in with work. It truly felt like a vacation.
• Assuming you are talking about starting a business, starting any kind of business has a lot of challenges (especially on one’s wallet) and an online business is no different.
• Not having a set 8-9 hours per day lets me occasionally drift off from work and watch my soap opera, or a movie, instead of working and sometimes that messes with my work flow. 🙂 Funny, but speaks to a bigger point too–having freedom often distracts me from when I probably should be working…
• I can think of weird random challenges, but those may be more related to not having set hours.

Keys to lifestyle success:

This is a really good point. The absolute key to “lifestyle success”, or “lifestyle design” as I usually call it, is passive income. Money you don’t have to work for.

There are two ways to get passive income:

1. Start a business that ends up being primarily outsourced
2. Invest in passive real estate investing opportunities

Both of these also fit the bill of being location-independent. The less you have to work for anything, the more free you are to do what you want, live where you want, and work when you want.

To give a last insight into how my lifestyle success/design goes, check out Don’t Believe Passive Income Is Awesome? Check Out the Diary of My Week!

🙂 I wouldn’t trade it for the world! Not even in exchange for getting rid of the challenges.