Part of the challenge with working and being a permanent traveler at the same time is how to do everything you normally do, but do it in a compressed time frame. To enjoy your life abroad, you have to compress your work into tighter period, otherwise you’ll spend endless hours on your computer just like you do at home, and miss out on the perks of being abroad in the first place. I fell into this trip during my 2 month experiment in Japan last year.
First of all, let’s do a quick tech rundown. The following are the services that I consider essential for being able to cloud surf:
- VirtualPostMail.com or EarthClassMail.com for converting postal mail into digital format
- RingCentral.com, Nextiva.com, or HelloFax.com, as the IRS will not communicate by email, but willingly fax stuff
- Web-based email service
- Cloud storage service – I use DropBox, Amazon Cloud Drive, Apple iCloud, and Google Drive all to some extent
- Google Docs, plus a web-based PDF editor (there are several, just search for one)
- Google Voice and Skype, for voice communications.
- Click2Mail.com, the web platform contractor for the US Postal Service, allows me to send outgoing correspondence and direct mail marketing.
My current incarnation of cloud surfing bypasses possession of a laptop — I’m not taking this machine with me in two days when I leave for Europe. Theoretically I will only ever need a computer during tax season, as my tax software only runs on a full machine. Many people are discovering that an iPad or other tablet works well for them, others not. Personally, I’m opting for just using the iPhone 4S (it’s basically a tablet, in my mind) over wi-fi and Internet cafes when I need to.
So what about the time management stuff? Here are some of the things I’ve already started doing and will continue to do as I travel:
- Cater to a more specific clientele in both my tax practice and my marketing and practice management consulting business. I no longer accept any or all cases that come my way, and I have structured my client intake flow to better fit my lifestyle design objectives (require client financials before starting work, retainer paid before filing Power of Attorney, etc.).
- I no longer accept live calls. All calls go straight to voicemail, no matter who it’s from. I simply can’t take phone calls from clients, prospects, even IRS agents while I’m out hiking the Alps.
- Batch process everything. One or two days per week, make all phone calls I need to make, and do it within a set time block. Do all my IRS paperwork for the entire week in one sitting. Do all my blog writing in one sitting (and keep in mind, I write for 5 blogs each week and write two paid newsletters).
- Use webinars as a key prospecting tool.
- Have a strict “no fires” policy. Most business owners spend most of their time putting out “fires”, rather than working on their business. The reality is that, in business, there is no such thing as an emergency. Unless something is on fire or somebody is getting shot or mauled, it’s not an emergency. In my situation, even a bank account levy by the IRS is NOT an emergency — it can wait a few days to address (the money doesn’t go anywhere for 3 weeks).
My properly utilizing technology tools, batching tasks, and ensuring that everybody that works with you does so on your terms and by your schedule, you can successfully cloud surf and still keep your business intact.
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Time for another one of my infamous 30-day challenges. It’s rare for me to actually finish one of these things, but for this one, I really have no excuses, because it’s actually pretty simple: 30 days of person reflection and a little bit of writing about one of Dan Kennedy’s wealth magnets.
Who is Dan Kennedy? And what exactly is a wealth magnet? Well, Dan Kennedy is the “millionaire maker”. He’s one of the single greatest contributing minds to the field of modern marketing that is still alive. He’s written probably two dozen books I’d imagine, has spoken on thousands of stages, and is the man-behind-the-man in numerous fields. If you come from outside the marketing world, you may have never heard of him, but within the marketing world, he’s basically treated like an idol. He is the marketing genius behind the success of many TV infomercial products, the most commonly famous of which is probably Proactiv acne treatments.
Dan Kennedy defines a “wealth magnet” as a habit or personality trait that helps a person to naturally attract opportunities to them. Described in full detail in his excellent book, No B.S. Wealth Attraction in the New Economy, available on Amazon, Kennedy discusses 28 different traits that, when combined, make a person a nearly unstoppable force for success, no matter what their chosen endeavor (not just business — the principles apply in athletics, spirituality, the non-profit world, politics, etc.).
I highly suggest reading the book, and making a personal study of it yourself. Ben Franklin had a list of 13 traits he wished to embody, and spent 1 week working on each of them in turn, and repeated the 13 week cycle for most of his life. Kennedy’s 28 traits would make for a 6 month cycle at one week each, and is probably worthwhile. However, it also fits nicely into a monthly cycle, and my mentor James Orr and I have discussed doing this several times, and repeating the cycle monthly as an exercise.
The past few days, I have been privately communicating some thoughts to James about the wealth magnet that corresponds to the day of the month, but he agreed that these would make great blog posts, so for the next 30 days, they will.
Each day, I will briefly explain my own viewpoints on the Kennedy Wealth Magnet, and how it applies to the overall concept of Personal Prosperity (I’m not going to replicate Kennedy’s thoughts — seriously, buy the book, it’s worth the $11). Then, I will briefly discuss how it applies to my life right now, and also how it applies to James’ real estate business. In all reality, these latter segments are really to better myself and for James to see my perspective on his business. While the particulars of how it applies to my business or James’ business may not be of immediate interest to you, the reader, hopefully seeing a day to day application of the principles to real businesses will help you see how you can readily apply the concepts to YOUR life, your business, your goals, your Personal Prosperity Plan™.
I hope you enjoy reading these over the course of the next month, and that doing so contributes to your own Personal Prosperity.
Do you owe back taxes to the IRS? If so, get your $697 in FREE tax services today!
- Content is king, keywords are queen. Write frequent, good, original content on your site (blogs work great), with articles of 400 to 1000 words each, embedded with targeted keywords that are interlinked to your other blog posts.
- Understand thy keywords. People search for keyword PHRASES — do the research necessary to laser target the keywords you can really rank for. “Taxes” = bad keyword. “Personal Income Tax Return Preparation Denver” = good keyword. Tip: Google the following: “google external keyword tool”. Learn to use it, embrace it, make love to it’s data.
- Links back to your site are gold. Write guest blogs elsewhere. Write on HubPages, EzineArticles, etc. Put your URL in the description box on YouTube. Get StumbledUpon. Get Digged. Super secret sauce: Twitter tweet links are very well indexed by Google. Even more special secret sauce: A secondary Blogger blog ranks uber high with Google, since they own it. Tip: They also own YouTube. And Feedster. You do the math.
- Fiverr. Yes, $5. There are people that have bought the TOOLS that you need access to in order to create massive backlinks that boost PageRank. These people sell access to their tools on Fiverr. Go spend $5, not the $50/mo for the tool. Outsource, outsource, outsource.
- WordPress is your second best friend it. SEO optimized themes (skins), SEO plugins, easy ability to post frequent, new content (see #1, above). If you are chasing SEO and don’t have a WordPress self-hosted blog, you’re doing it wrong, pure and simple.
- On page factors: Make sure your primary keyword phrase is in your title tag, keyword metatag, and description metatag, even though these aren’t that important. Use keywords when writing anything in HTML headline tags. Interlink to other pages on your site using keywords as anchor text.
Do you owe back taxes to the IRS? If so, get your $697 in FREE tax services today!
The DOW fell over 500 points after the “market” realized that the U.S. national debt deal was a complete joke (the 10 year plan still increases the national debt from $15 trillion to $22 trillion over the course of that decade).
Also in response, the S&P downgraded the US credit rating from AAA to AA+. This was completely symbolic — it has no impact on what the US government can or will do.
G7 and G20 leaders have been meeting to discuss how the U.S. economy is collapsing and how our national debt is almost 100% of GDP. They forgot to discuss the fact that many of THEIR national debts vastly exceed 100% of GDP already.
The media is screaming holy terror. Democrats are calling Republicans insensitive. Republicans are calling each other sellouts. Republicans are calling Democrats idiots. Reporters are saying your retirements accounts are hosed, and we all need to snuggle into our bomb shelters and await the end of the world as we know it.
What does the U.S. debt crisis and the responding market conditions really mean to you?
Not a damn thing, that’s what.
Did gas prices spike overnight? Nope.
Did unemployment skyrocket the next day? Nope.
Did little Jonny and Susie have to eat out dinner out of a dumpster for the first time? Nope.
Did anything really change? Not a bit.
Here’s the reality of the situation: What Congress does, what the Treasury does, what Wall Street market makers do…None of it has any real impact on your day to day life.
Your daily activities stay the same. For the most part, the price you paid yesterday for this or that will be the same price tomorrow, more or less (yes, it trends up over time, it’s called inflation, you should be used to it by now). You still go to work, take the kids to soccer practice, and blow money on absolutely, 100% non-essential goods and services.
What if you own a business? You should be worried, right? Wrong. If you run a business, you shouldn’t give one shit about what the economy as a whole is doing. Instead, focus on YOUR business. Focus on what YOU can actually DO to market your products and services and get more paying customers through the door. So, again, nothing changes.
How can I be so callous, you ask? I’m not being callous. I’m simply reminding everybody about this little thing called reality. Back in the Depression, people still scraped by. As a matter of fact, more millionaires were created during the 1920′s than at any time in U.S. history, both before and after. People with good business sense will always do well. So will people with good, marketable job skills. If your only employable skill is manual labor, you’re gonna have a hard time in ANY job market.
So if you’re sitting around fretting about what is going to happen to you, your business, your job, or your family…Stop. Just stop. Life goes on just as normal.
Look at it this way: Do you think your average Iraqi citizen is sitting around worried about the global economy? Nope. He still has to take his goods to market, go to work, feed his family, and show up for his kid’s soccer game. Despite the fact that his country’s infrastructure is now shrapnel, his economy is in the crapper, and there is the constant threat of violence in the streets, he still has to go about living his life.
You, my friend, need to do the exact same thing. In fact, YOU should be thriving, because you probably won’t get shot at today.
Perspective is a bitch, ain’t it? 
Do you owe back taxes to the IRS? If so, get your $697 in FREE tax services today!
Over 70% of the world’s population currently owns a mobile phone. I’ve had one for most of my adult life, since I was 19 and cell phones were the size of a brick and before digital service existed anywhere.
Cell phones have permeated every possible fabric of our society. From mobile banking and workout tracking, today’s smart phones in particular come with everything but the kitchen sink (but you can look up where to buy a sink, of course). The most advanced smart phones are more computer than anything else, with a phone chip and antenna just along for the ride, it seems. With mobile Internet, email, navigation systems, high definition video, today’s smart phones can do almost anything.
Which, honestly, is why I switched from a fairly basic, phone-only device to an iPhone 3. My thought process behind the iPhone was to be able to do all the things I do with a computer, but from a mobile device. In this way, I could always keep in touch with my clients and their IRS agents. I would never be far away from anything I need for business. On top of that, I wouldn’t have to plan ahead and print maps, I could listen to whatever music I wanted, wherever I wanted. It seemed like a perfect, magical little box.
So, what happened?
It didn’t take me long to figure out that a smartphone is actually a leash. After just a few months, I didn’t WANT to be constantly available. I was able to work 24/7, even when I was on vacation, even when I was at the rink. Although I could suddenly work from almost anywhere, that was the problem: I was working from everywhere. And quite frankly, it sucked.
So, I basically just quit using the stupid thing.
After moving to Utah, the iPhone became something I basically used for just two things:
1). Playing music at the rink
2). Texting with ONE local friend, mainly to arrange where to meet up for lunch.
When I was at the office, I would, of course, use the phone to contact clients, but months ago I adopted a policy of time blocking my phone time, as a time management tool. In other words, I *never* actually answer my phone live when it rings. 99% of the time, the ringer is OFF, and vibrate mode hasn’t been turned on for six months.
Like many people that experience smartphone addiction (they’re not jokingly called “CrackBerries” for nothing), I dealt with the problem by simply stopping the usage. This is actually a subset of a growing problem in industrialized countries. While the world of Facebook, Twitter, and mobile devices are supposed to be bringing us all closer together, they in fact further isolate us from one another. This is now a mainstream topic for research in psychology.
Technology should enhance our lives, not enslave us. What’s even worse is that we get to pay through the nose for this. I was paying $120 per month to AT&T for the privilege of carrying a leash around, basically.
So, what’s the solution?
Ditch the damn thing.
Most smart phone users are under contract, so there is an Early Termination Fee in most cases. I was fortunate to be one of the last iPhone 3 purchasers, and was under an ETF scheme that decreased with every month, so I only had to pay $100 to get out from the last year of my contract. Even if your ETF is $350, which many are these days, you’ll make that back within 3 to 6 months, depending on your average monthly cell phone bill. I’ll be saving $1,440 per year.
My service with AT&T is officially over on August 8th, but I’ve already disabled the data service manually, and have quit carrying it around. And you know what? I don’t miss it. Period.
Considering the fact that I’m in the professional services industry, the question immediately comes up: What am I going to do about telephone service?
Well, I’ve been using Google Voice for all inbound communications for over two years, and it works great. Now, Google Voice offers outbound calling, as well, and the call quality is fairly comparable to most commercial VOIP services. There is also Skype, which tons of people use as their primary phone service around the world, even though the call quality isn’t always the greatest. In the tests I’ve conduced, Google Voice is more than adequate for business level service, particularly when done over a hardwired connection.
What was that? Yes, I’m using a laptop with the wi-fi disabled and a physical CAT-5 cable plugged into the LAN jack.
What am I going to do about “emergency” cell phone service?
There are numerous options out there for simple, pre-paid cell service. You can go to Wal-Mart and walk out with a cell phone for $10, that doesn’t require a monthly bill. Problem solved. Just keep it in the car and it’s there when you need it.
Is doing this a bit drastic? Yes, of course it is. But often times, it requires drastic change to get where you want in life. For me, being tied to a U.S.-based mobile device, particularly for voice communication, was one thing preventing me from making the switch to VOIP based communication, which was ultimately going to be necessary for me to live overseas but keep my business here operating.
Interestingly, I can use Skype over on my iPhone (now just a glorified iPod touch with a camera) when I’ve got wi-fi around, and the call quality isn’t that bad, and I can use it overseas with nothing more than the few bucks a month for a Skype plan.
I’ve accepted the fact that I’ll be taking a computer with me overseas. It’s part of what I was trying to avoid with getting the iPhone, but I just have to do too much data work, too much programming, too much with PDF’s, etc., in order for that to be realistic. But when I’m away from that computer, hanging out on Bondi Beach, I’ll be playing, not working. Booyah.
Do you owe back taxes to the IRS? If so, get your $697 in FREE tax services today!