Notes
A team member pulled together the five questions Eric gets asked most about running a location independent business, and they weren’t the ones he expected. The first one sets up the rest: a business you can run from anywhere doesn’t have to be online. It has to be a business you can run without being physically present, which means you can’t be the technician.
Eric draws the line between owning a job and owning a business with a simple picture: real estate agents don’t build the houses they sell. He tells about a full time traveler who owns three carpet cleaning companies in three cities and leads the crews, sales, payroll, and culture from afar, and he notes that he once owned a restaurant himself. He walks through starting with OP3 (one person with a problem, one product to solve it, one pathway to buy it) and staying focused until the first million in revenue before diversifying. The biggest challenge is people, because leading from afar means you have to hire at a higher level, and leadership is messy because people are messy, so he studies the Enneagram, Working Genius, and DISC. He also covers the legal and tax side and keeping a marriage and four kids in view. On money, his answer is that you can make as much as you’re set up to make, but not by trading your time for money.
The Leadership Tip of the Week comes from Dave Ramsey’s EntreLeadership: to be unclear is to be unkind. Taking an extra 5, 10, or 15 minutes to give clear, specific, detailed direction saves your team from frustration, overwhelm, and doubt.
Key Highlights
- There’s a really big difference between owning a job and owning a business.
- Real estate agents don’t build the houses they sell.
- Leading from afar means you have to hire at a higher level.
- If you’re trading your time for money, you’ve capped what you can make.
- To be unclear is to be unkind.
Key Takeaways
In this episode, you’ll discover the answers to the five most common questions asked about running a location independent business. These aren’t the questions I thought would make the list, so I’m glad I had someone on my team collate these. So we have the actual most common questions and not the questions that I anticipated, not the questions I thought would be the ones asked.
Welcome to the Digital Nomad Entrepreneur podcast, everyone. My name is Eric Dingler. I am a full time digital nomad entrepreneur traveling around the world with my wife and our four kids. We’ve been to 15 countries in the last three years and having an amazing experience. And we’re able to do this because I have a location independent business. I own a digital marketing agency that serves clients and customers in the United States.
And I get asked, if you listen to the show for a while, you’ve probably heard me say this. If you’re a new listener, welcome. Glad you’re here. I’ll give you a real quick rundown here of how the episode is going to flow. But first, I get asked, hands down, I get asked this single question the most. When we meet someone and they find out we’re traveling full time, the most common question I get asked is, how do you make a living, or some variation of that? Are you just able to work online? Do you get a job in all these places? Everybody wants to know how we’re affording this very affordable lifestyle. In fact, this is a very affordable, reasonable lifestyle. It’s not extravagant by any stretch of the imagination, but everybody wants to know, how do we afford this, what do we do?
And so that question I’ve answered in the past. This time, what I wanted to do today is answer the five most common questions. I had a couple that I had in mind, but the question I get asked, which is how do you make a living, that was more specific to my circumstances, my life, when people ask me. So these five questions, though, are just about running a location independent business in general.
So the flow of today’s podcast, the outline if you will, I’ve got three things we’re going to talk about. Number one is today’s content. I’m going to give you the answer to these five questions. Number two is we’ll transition into the leadership tip of the week. Your leadership capacity is the capacity of your business. Your business cannot grow beyond your skills and abilities as a leader. So I want to make sure that I talk about leadership in every episode because it is the thing that is going to ultimately make the biggest difference in your business. And then for those that are interested, you can stick around to the very end for the travel life update. I put that at the end because not everybody that listens to the podcast is a full time traveler or is interested even in traveling full time. Or honestly, some people, they don’t care about our personal life. They’re here for the content to make their life better, to make their business better. So I’ll keep the travel update to the end.
Now, real quickly, before we get into today’s content, if we haven’t had a chance to connect on LinkedIn, I’d love to connect with you on LinkedIn. Just go to EricDingler.com, or the link is in the show notes, and that’s going to take you right over to my LinkedIn. EricDingler.com. Connect with me on LinkedIn. I just would really value being connected with you there.
All right, so let’s get into this.
Question number one: What is a location independent business and how does it work?
I love the fact that this is the first question, because a lot of people think that a location independent business means that it has to be online in some way. And that’s not true. I actually know someone who runs a carpet cleaning business who is a full time digital nomad. The business services get delivered in specific geographic areas. He owns three different carpet cleaning businesses in three metropolitan areas, and he’s got a crew that goes out and cleans the carpets and takes care of the equipment. And he manages the business and the big accounts and sales, and makes sure payroll is happening and marketing is happening. All the legal stuff is happening. Planning for the future, replacing equipment, hiring the team, training the team, ensuring the team is being developed, and that there is a company culture even though he and his wife are not there.
So a location independent business really means a business you can run without being physically present, which really opens the world to a lot of businesses. Most people think that, well, for me to be a location independent business owner, I can’t own a restaurant, I can’t own a carpet cleaning business, I can’t own a lawn care business. No, you can own all of those things. You just can’t be the technician that delivers those services.
There’s a really big difference between owning a job and owning a business. Now, you can be a technician who owns your diary, that owns your calendar. You can be the person that goes out and fixes the thing, cleans the thing, does the thing, but then is also responsible for making sure new clients are on the books and equipment is getting serviced. You can be the technician and the business administrator, or you can step back and say, I’m going to be the business owner, and I’m going to have technicians delivering on the service and product.
The way I like to say it is, real estate agents don’t build the houses they sell. Contractors build houses. Real estate agents sell houses. And so a location independent business, and how does it work, simply means that the owner has learned how to lead from afar. And this is tricky. There is no doubt, it is challenging. It does limit the number, but really it limits who you can hire. You see, leadership from afar is very challenging, much more challenging than leadership in the presence of someone. If you’re present with someone and you’re able to interact with them live, immediately, as things are happening, well, you can quite frankly hire people that have a little less motivation. They’re not quite a self-starter. You’re able to hire more subpar people, to be honest. But if you’re going to have a location independent business, how does it work? Well, one of the main things is you have to hire team at a higher level, and that would be the main thing.
Question number two: What are the best location independent business ideas?
Well, honestly, again, any business that doesn’t require you to be the technician and allows you to hire high quality people. Now, you could own a restaurant and have a high quality general manager that’s managing the day to day business and managing the team and things like that. And you can be gone for three months, six months, nine months, a year, and then cycle back through to check on the business, and maybe work with the chef and set up some new menu items, whatever it might be. But you don’t have to be there. I used to own a restaurant. I can tell you right now, I can run a restaurant and not be there.
So what are the best location independent business ideas? A business you kind of want to run. A business that you’re passionate about. A business ultimately solves a problem for someone. So you have to step back and go, what’s the problem I want to solve for someone? If you’re just chasing money, well, I feel sorry for you. I really do. And you’re not going to like many of my episodes, because that should be a byproduct of what you’re doing. Money and wealth should be a byproduct of your passion.
You should be able to execute on your passion, solve a problem. Look out in the world, see something that’s happening, and say, not on my watch. I want to solve this. I want to make sure that people have a great place to go get a wonderful meal. I can’t stand it that there’s no place where people can go and get great food at a very affordable price with high quality servers and a very clean environment. I’m going to have that kind of restaurant in this community, because these people deserve it, and I’m tired of it not being there. That is a great location independent business idea.
Maybe it’s going to help businesses have better websites, so I’m going to be a web designer. That’s a great location independent business. I’m going to be a copywriter. I’m going to run social media. I’m going to run ads. I’m going to do AI, whatever it is. Almost any business you could set up to be independent, especially if you’re willing not to be the technician. Now, if you want to be the technician, then you need to have a business that doesn’t require a lot of tools. Now we’re getting into a little bit more of the online business. We’re getting a little bit more into the web design, the digital marketing, copywriting, ad management, consulting, coaching, content creation, any of these kinds of things, because you want to be the technician. But I’m going to argue with you that in a true business, the owner isn’t the technician. You may be the technician at first, but the goal should be for you to replace yourself.
Question number three: How do I start a location independent business?
Oh, that’s a good one. Let me take a sip of my coffee. How do I start a location independent business? Well, what I do is I take people through a very similar process that I went through, and that I’ve studied other successful businesses follow. And I actually take people through a 90 day accelerator on this.
How you start a location independent business, the first thing you’ve got to do is you’ve got to define the problem you want to solve in the world. What’s the problem you’re going to solve? Then you have to come up with the persona of the person you’re going to solve it for. Who’s the person you’re going to solve this problem for? Okay, so you’ve got to identify a person with a problem. That’s number one. Then you’re going to do a little bit of make believe, a little bit of market research, and make sure that it’s not literally only one person in the world. But you’re going to find out, I’ve got this person in the world with a problem that I’m going to solve. And so this is your persona. This is who you’re going to solve the problem for.
Then you’ve got to identify the product that’s going to solve that problem. And once you have the product, you’ve got to figure out all the things around the product. Pricing points, profitability, deliverability, all these things around your product, your widget. And you’re going to test it out. There’s a little bit of a process there. And then finally you’re going to figure out your pathway, and the pathway is the sales funnel. How does somebody buy it?
So I lump all of this together as OP3. One person with a problem, one product to solve the problem, one pathway to buy the product. Now, you do that until you get to your first million in revenue. When you get to the point where you’re making a million dollars a year in annual revenue, then you begin to diversify out from that. But you don’t start diversifying out and doing lots of different things if you haven’t really nailed this first. All right, that’s how you start a location independent business.
Now, if you already have a business, or if you have an inkling to start a business, and you’re like, where am I in the stages? How healthy am I? What’s the next thing I need to work on in my business? Then I’m going to invite you to go over to my website. Go to DNEPodcast.com forward slash scorecard. That link, it’s in the show notes. That is going to take you to an assessment. It takes about four or five minutes to take this assessment of your business, and it’s going to assess the location independent healthiness of your business. And at the end, it’s going to give you the results. That’s going to let you see immediately where you’re already solid, and maybe where you need to do a little bit of work. So if you want to know where you’re at in this journey, what to work on next to achieve location independence, then head over to DNEPodcast.com forward slash scorecard.
Question number four: What are the challenges of running a location independent business?
Right off the bat, the first challenge you’re going to have is team. Hiring the right team, especially if you have a location independent business that has boots on the ground technicians. Your greatest challenge is going to be hiring. There’s no way around it. Team, team, team is going to always be your biggest challenge in business. Leadership is messy because people are messy. And so you’re going to have to become a full time ongoing student of leadership, of human nature. It helps to understand human nature in the context of making sales and hiring and leading staff and negotiation. And so these are going to be topics you’re going to have to be comfortable becoming a forever student on.
I’m regularly listening to content, reading content, on leadership, on human nature, on human behavior. Right now I’m studying Enneagram and trying to learn that, because I think it’s such an amazing insight into people and how people tick and how I tick. So Enneagram is something I study right now. I’ve been through all kinds of trainings, Patrick Lencioni’s Working Genius, the DISC profile. You have to learn how people are, human nature, and continuously be learning that. So one of the challenges of running the business is people, and you’re always going to have to be learning. That’s going to be the biggest challenge of running a location independent business.
The second one is going to be all the legal stuff. Having really good contracts and agreements. Taxes is going to be challenging. I don’t care what country you’re from, where you’re at, that’s going to be a challenge.
And then the third one is the work life balance of it all. Because people that live a rooted life in one place, they have work life balance issues. Now add on top of that, whatever frequency you travel, every month, three months, six months, a year, whatever it is, you’re in a new environment. For us, we change environments every four to eight weeks on average. Sometimes we’re longer. We spent a year in Costa Rica, but outside of that one year, we generally move a little bit faster. And so there’s always these new things to see and check out and all these experiences. But I still have to run a business, and I still have to give my marriage attention, and I still have to give each of my four children attention. So that’s the other challenge surrounding this. It just takes having some boundaries and maturity and some personal leadership. So those are some of the biggest challenges I see running a location independent business.
Question number five: How much money can I make and is it sustainable?
Yeah, you can make as much money as you want, and it’s totally sustainable. That’s business. Are you going to make it all tomorrow? No. Is it going to be a lifelong journey? Yes. But you can make enough money, and it is sustainable. Do you have to keep making more and more? No, you only reach a point where you’re making 150, 250, 500,000 dollars a year, and you’re like, I’m going to do this for a few more years, whatever it is. It doesn’t matter. The money is the thing that I always thought was going to be the biggest issue, and it’s not. It’s just not. And so I wouldn’t worry about that.
But the question was, how much money can I make and is it sustainable? The other thing though is this. You have to learn how to sell, and what you’re selling. If you’re selling your time for money, then you can only make so much money. If you’re the technician, and people hire you to do X, Y, Z, well, you can only be hired so many times to do that, because you can only do that so many times in a week, in a month. Now, if you are trading other people’s time for money, if you are able to sell a service that you can deliver one to many, meaning you do one thing for many people all at once, well, now you’ve got the ability of multiplication, and that is a lot more sustainable.
I do not think it’s sustainable as a freelancer. I don’t think that is wise. It might be fun for a season, but I don’t think it’s sustainable. I don’t think it’s a sustainable way to live a long, fruitful life. If you want to one day not work, if you want to one day be in the position where you’re able to retire, or move into being an investor where you’re just investing in other businesses, then you’re not going to get there if you’re just trading your time for money. So you’ve got to learn how to do business in a different way than maybe what you’re thinking, or what you’re comfortable with. But it is very sustainable.
So how much money can you make? Again, it comes down to your business leadership skills. If you think you’re going to be the technician that does the thing yourself, you’re capping yourself right there. You are limiting yourself. If you think that you just charge people based upon how many hours it takes you to do something, or how many hours it takes your team to do something, again, you’re limiting yourself. You can’t trade time for money. And so how much money you make depends upon your leadership skills, your business leadership skills. It depends upon how you set your business up. But that’s why I say you make as much as you want. You just got to be set up to make it. That’s all. And is it sustainable? Absolutely.
All right, so those were the five most common questions. So now I want to real quickly transition over to this week’s leadership tip of the week. And this is a real short one, but it is hugely powerful. And this is one that I learned from Dave Ramsey through EntreLeadership. This is one of the core values of his company, and I think it’s absolutely golden. And what the Ramsey organization says is, to be unclear is to be unkind. That is so good. To be unclear is to be unkind.
If you’re leading a team and you are not giving very, very clear, ridiculously clear, specific, detailed information, all the information someone needs to complete their job, you’re being unkind to them. Because they’re going to be frustrated. They’re going to feel overwhelmed. They’re going to have questions and doubt. They’re going to worry if they’re doing something right. And so you’re putting your people through all of these emotions and all these feelings, because you didn’t take an extra 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes to make sure you were being very clear on what you were giving them. So to be unclear is to be unkind.
Well, if you’ve made it this far, you’re here for the travel update. Now, in the last episode, I shared that we’re in Belfast. In fact, I’m in the co-working space on the last day of the year. I’m in an office here in this co-working space, and my 12 year old came with me. That’s our youngest. And he’s sitting out by my cubicle. He’s crushing it on Brawl Stars. I posted a picture on LinkedIn a little bit ago saying that he was crushing it in Brawl Stars, and I was crushing it in email. So we’ve been hard at work this morning here, and then I think we’re going to grab a bite to eat, or as they would say here in Northern Ireland, a wee bite. They use wee in front of everything, even if it’s not small. But we’re going to grab a wee bite for lunch on the way back to the house, walking home.
And then we’ve got two weeks left before we leave Belfast. I shared that in the last week. You know, one of the amazing things about traveling for us is we find a church to go to when we get into a community. And so far, we’ve always been so lucky and blessed to be led to great churches. The pastor of this church, it’s City Church here in Belfast, his name is Neto. And Neto last night showed up at our house with a Christmas tree. We had just asked him, hey, where’s a good place we could go buy a tree that we’ll donate to the church or somebody afterwards? Unless the church happened, you know, we’re like, by any chance, does the church happen to have an unused tree in storage? Sometimes places have stuff. And he’s like, I’ll look. And I said, okay, if not, don’t worry about it. Just let me know what’s the store, I could go buy one. And a few hours later, he showed up at our house and brought us a Christmas tree and a box of decorations and lights. And so we spent the evening setting up a tree with the kids. And they’re very excited, and they definitely help make the inside of the house feel a little bit more Christmassy. So in two days, it’ll be Christmas morning, and we’ve got a tree. So that’s really amazing. It’s great to find little pockets of community like that.
All right, so with that, if you’re interested in more about the family side of life on the road, the travels, the planning, all of that kind of stuff, then you want to connect with us on Instagram. My wife and the kids share things over on Instagram. We are @familyofdashes over on Instagram, also familyofdashes.com. But Instagram is the best way to connect, to get the travel life, personal, and what this lifestyle looks like as a family of six.
Well, with that, my friends, I am going to say thank you very much for listening, and I look forward to reading your reviews or comments or emails very soon. I always appreciate seeing those, and thank you very much for sending them and doing that. That means a lot. Until next time, make sure you chase the big dream, lead with courage, and safe travels.
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