Yeah, I’m talking to you. The guy (or girl) sitting in your comfy office, with your sexy 401k plan and that fat raise you’ll be getting in July now that the economy is picking up again.
Perhaps from time to time you’ve thought about how great it would be to be working from a beach on a Tahitian island?
Maybe you just want to sit at home in nothing but your boxers and spend a whole day without having to shower.
Yeah, you aren’t cut out for this life.
While working from your laptop on a beach with a cute little umbrella drink in hand, may seem like a dream come true, did you stop to think about the heat that comes along with working in a tropical paradise? How about the mosquitoes and the sand that sticks to every inch of your sweaty body? What about the fact that the glare off your screen is so bad that not even your fake Ray Ban’s are dark enough to allow you to get any work done? But at least you have a blazingly fast 128k internet connection; not even quick enough to download your favorite You Tube videos.
Nah, you aren’t cut out for the reality of the location independent entrepreneur’s life.
But what about the freedom to not have to show up at your office Monday through Friday at 7:30 am?
Oh right that. Yeah that’s awesome. To go from working a comfortable 40 hours a week to 60 or more? What about the fact that you can’t enjoy an evening out with friends because there are so many pressing projects that are consistently on the forefront of your brain. And weekends? HA, who needs weekends! I hope you don’t like those.
Like I said, you aren’t cut out for the location independent entrepreneur’s lifestyle.
But wait, what about the freedom to travel where ever you want, whenever the feeling hits? Oh yeah that’s pretty great. But did you stop to think for a minute that while you are building your business you will be broke? Burning through savings and racking up credit card debt just to scrape by. Being able to travel is nice, you know, except for when you can’t afford a plane ticket. But hey at least you can put “entrepreneur” on that business card of yours!
Keep your desk job, this life ain’t for you.
And how could we forget the best part? The prospect to sell it all and become a millionaire in the process!
That surely makes everything worth it! Lucky for you 97% of all businesses fail in the first five years (and 58% of all statistics are made up on the spot). Ok well maybe you won’t become a millionaire, but at least you’ll be able to make enough to get by. Right? Well, how much are you making now? What would you deem a “livable salary”? Once you factor in taxes, loans, health insurance and the cost of all of those plane tickets to support your jet set life, you can’t have to make that much to get by.
Keep the cushy desk job, this isn’t the life for you…
…Or is it?
Why would anyone want this life? The answer is simple: Freedom. Take the control of your life out of your employers hands and put it back in your own.
June 15th.
Questions will be answered. Uncertainty overcome. The life of your dreams enabled.
Well, that is, if you are cut out for it.
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YES! I looove some MOJO Ogle. June 15th I’m popping popcorn and giggling my ass off.
The grass is always greener and all
There are different levels of stresses to every job. I sure do like these stressors more than those from working “regular” jobs.
C’mon…you can tell me. I have to wait ’til June?!
Lol. It’s not Tahiti, but other than that it’s everything you described. Ray and I are chillin in our beach hut in El Nido, the Philippines. We worked on our laptops all day (except for our 2-hour pause to drink rum and cokes and play chess) on our porch – on battery for the time that the power was out and we were sweating our rear ends off – and now he’s getting a $6-dollar hour-long massage in our room. Tomorrow we’ll do it all over again. The next day we’ll go for a scuba dive instead. We have a nice meal for breakfast (for less than 10 bucks, but that’s high class), and then make Ramen noodles in our hot pot for dinner. All in all, as we build our small business (empire, if you will), life is pretty good. And it’s costing us about $30 a day. That’s practically what we used to spend in gas money to go to work for someone else all day in a stuffy office without a view!
Of course…there ARE mosquitoes when sunset settles over the bay….
Great post! I can relate to every single pitfall you stated about being a location independent entrepreneur. Slow internet, mosquitoes, sweaty, too broke to travel, and working 10x harder and longer hours than I ever did as a ‘salary man’.
And guess what? Wouldn’t trade it for the best 401k plan in the world.
Looking forward to see what you have in store.
Like Cortez, I’ve already burned my ships. Succeed or fail, there’s no comfy office job in my future.
Well that was freaking mysterious of you! My birthday is June 24th. I fully expect a shout out.
P.S.
Sand that sticks to every part of me is really, really annoying, and I can totally relate. The glare thing, too. But overall….so, sooooo worth it.
How dare you give a random date with some sort of surprise attached to it?!! Just not fair.
Really great and entertaining post. I would GLADLY give up my “real job” for any of those discomforts.
You had me at “…I’m talking to you”. You got me on the edge of my seat now. Can’t wait to see what you will be dishing up come June 15th.
No mosquitos here in the PNW, but I can totally relate to everything else! I am more than ready to trade in eating eggs and rice everyday for thai food….eggs and noodles? All I need is a one-way ticket right? I could scrape that together…
Can’t wait to see what you’re unveiling!
What about the person who believes that being a LIP will solve all their problems in their life. “Oh if I could just live in ….” Not realizing that by living in a foreign country you are adding a whole host of new challenges to your life. If you’re the type of person who gets upset that the Starbucks kid forgot your cinnamon sprinkles then a life on the road may not be for you.
Every job has its pros and cons. I’d rather work for myself than waste my time 8 hours a day for someone else for a passionless project.
So here I am, newly unemployed. And I’m giddy
Let’s see what you have in store for June 15th.
And hey, uh… my birthday is June 4th. Hollerrrr!
i’m just wondering, can any of us consider ourselves location independt if we make a nominal amount of income?
I mean, many of us personal finance bloggers make $1-5,000/month from our sites. We could just travel the world and blog, but i donno if it’s the right thing to do.
Being your own boss never was the easy option, nor having so settled base, but let’s not be too down on those who can’t hack it – where would we find the stationary types to support us in our nomad ways? After all, they produce our food etc, and we’d be well up the creek without them!
Seriously, running your own business isn’t for everyone, but if it is, once you’ve done it, you’ll be any good at being someone else’s employee! I found myself wanting to change everything, cos I could see how much more effectively it could be done – not popular!
You don’t have to be an entrepreneur to be a nomad, though, we’ve been nomadic for 20 years, mostly supported by my husband doing contract work – his attempt at being an enterpreneur was very expensive!
Roll on June 15th, look forward to the surprise!
You’re a fraud. The account of the Red Shirt rally was pathetic mirroring only events reported by the BBC…and you had no original photos of your own? Give me a break. And wow…you stopped to play guitar in the midst of all that…you are so effin’ cool. Then you headed over to “touristy Khao San”, ha ha, straight out of the Lonely Planet guide book.
Now you lecture us in our cubicles with 401K’s? Ouch, that hurts. The place where most Thai’s I’ve met long to be. Most of your posts are long boring and predictable, especially the long one about how you have no time to post, or the outright shilling for Phillipine outsourcing, or advertising other peoples online blathering.
My guess is you are sitting in a cublicle in Portland and posting photos from your last three week vacation to Thailand.
So David, where did you write this from? Your cubicle? Yeah that sound about right.
Come on out to Thailand. I will buy you a beer and we can talk about how I’m a fraud. Maybe I’m a crappy writer, but until you do something to impress the rest of us, don’t hate me for making myself happy.
Here! Here!
Glad you were so brutal with the realities of attempting location independence, especially doing it without solid streams of income, most of the talk/blogs out there are just imagery, we can’t really tell from one person to the next unless we really know them.
I hope June 15th shows us some of how to sustain that freedom and how to build streams of self sufficiency from outside the trap of a cube! I’ll be following! Love it Sean, keep living and figuring out your freedom…I promise I will too!
Sean, OK maybe that was a bit harsh. Did I write from a cubicle? Well, no, but, I mean, I have my own office and everything…
If you are actually doing this perhaps you do deserve some credit. But what are you really promoting here? When I first discovered this I was impressed but I find very little about Thailand and less about how you are actually supporting yourself. Or maybe I’m just stuck in that office mentality.
Can you help me understand the freedom you are enjoying? or why most Thais I meet are desperate to live in the US?
BTW, I don’t hate you and I applaud you if you are happy.
@David First off, I appreciate both of your comments, the first one did come off quite harsh and and I just found most of the statements to be baseless. I appreciate you clearing up your issues in the second comment.
Second, If you go back through previous posts you will see that I do discuss Thailand in quite a bit of detail as it relates to my life. I don’t proclaim to be an expert on the country, and I can only write about that which I’ve experienced. I am also not a travel blogger. I spend most of my hours at my computer doing key word research for the product development company I’m working for. Not the sexiest stuff in the world, but it is what enables me to be out here.
That said, I purposefully haven’t been specific about what I do. I am working in a variety of industries that don’t need to be shared with the world, nothing nefarious, just don’t need the competition. However I will be writing in much more detail about how to enable this type of lifestyle – for those that want to do it, in the coming months.
As for the freedom aspect, I can work whenever and where ever I please. If I want to take a day off to go wakeboarding on the lake – I can. If I want to go spend the next two weeks working from Bali – I can. If I want to go back to the States for a few months – I can. Its all about being able to work on my terms, not the terms of my employer. In my life now, the goals of myself and the people I work with are entirely congruent. In the past this wasn’t the case, and I showed up to my office job for 10 hours each day 5 days a week. Personally, what I am doing now makes me 100 times happier than what I’ve done in the past. Thats the freedom.
As for why most Thai’s want to live in the US? I think that is just kind of a ridiculous question. For the same reason many millions of other people across the world want to live in the US – the idea of a perceived better life. Its the same reason why millions of American’s are desperate to live outside the US. In a way its a grass is other greener mentality. But frankly, I like to believe most people just want to experience something different and see what else is out there. That has been the case for me.
I hope that answers some of the questions you have about me. I have nothing against people that work in offices by the way, I just found that wasn’t the route I wanted to take. And to label me a fraud, when I am about as real as it gets, that’s just unnecessary. Go back through old posts, if this transformation and change isn’t real, then find me something that is.
Thanks again for the thoughts, it is always interesting to hear counter view points from time to time!
Thank you David Fuller for standing up for truth in this world and breaking up the kiss-ass fest that Sean’s blog tends to become. HOW DARE YOU BLOG ABOUT COOL STUFF SEAN. Here is what is going to happen, I just know it, and I’m preemptively pissed about it. Sean is going to get me addicted to to fun-loving adventurous lifestyle type stuff, and then on June 15th he’s going to slap up a paywall. All from his GD cubicle in portland. I’m going to end up HAVING to pay 5 bucks a post to hear about how awesome you are this week.
Here’s the lesson: next time you do something cool, useful, or interesting, please keep your damn mouth shut. The world doesn’t need more awesome, and frankly, we don’t even believe it when we hear it.
Dan
PS, you are also required, as stipulated in the blogger’s articles in incorporation, to disclose your social security number, your salary, your personal bank account transaction history, and the business strategies you are using in order to make money. YOU OWE IT TO US. sheesh.
To David, the douchy.
your question: Why Thai people desperately want to live in the US? my answer is it’s the same reason why Republicans in your country are so retarded, or why americans ( mostly) are ignorant and asking same old stupid question.
Yeah it was a stupid question, not carefully thought out and that’s a good question about Republicans. I’ve visited Thailand 3 times in the past 3 years and love the country and its people.
If I had taken more time to frame my thoughts I might have asked why so many of these blog posts are about Facebook and Twitter and outsourcing in the Philipines…sounds like cubicle talk to me…I feel like I’m at work, and as we know cubicle=bad.
With all due respect David if you have only visited Thailand you really have no idea about Thai culture or what it is like to live here. Living here and vacationing here are so completely different that it comes as a shock for many expats when they first settle here. The carefully crafted image that you see when on holiday is nothing like the realities of living in Thailand. The true Thai culture is carefully hidden away from the tourists and even for expats it takes a long time and careful study to even begin to be accepted and understand their culture.
Location independent is a bullshit term coined by a blogger to create a marketing buzz around a book about working 4 hours a week. It’s the latest trendy self help crap that the guidable public latches onto in a futile hope that it will improve their lives. It seems every decade there is some new trend that catches the public’s imagination. Tom Vu real estate, Tony Robbins fire walk, Tae Bo, Susan Powter, The Secret, and now location independent.
I applaud anyone who actually can be location independent, (and Sean is as I’ve met him) I question anyone who feels that reading a book or blog post is somehow miraculously going to change their lives. You change your life but making decisions and taking action, it doesn’t matter where you are located or how many hours you work. If you’re looking for validation from a product you are never going to find it but you will make a lot of other people rich in your search.
Could I love your blog anymore?!
I’m so confused by your message though…are you inferring that life is not all rainbows and unicorns for a location independent entrepreneur?!
Great post Sean. I love how you don’t sugar coat the location independent lifestyle. Sometimes you just need a reality check that its not all roses and sunshine. The freedom, as you mention, is the ultimate motivator.
Please don’t take this the wrong way – I am just trying to gain understanding. I would like to know more about your definition of freedom. I am all for being location independent. I myself am a freelancer but it certainly doesn’t entitle me to any more sense of freedom than working in an office. Sure, I can NOT work when I feel like it, but too much of that leaves me without food or accommodation. You claim that you do this all for one simple reason: freedom. But you, myself, and everyone else who isn’t 100% living off the land is a slave like anyone else and is no better than someone sitting in their cubical. We are all slaves to one very simple thing: money. Not being able to enjoy your life with friends and family because of work surly doesn’t sound like freedom to me. So, I guess I would like to know why it is that you feel so free exactly? Again, I am not trying to start a debate and hopefully this doesn’t come across as venomous – I would just like your perspective.
@James, I don’t take that in a bad way at all – but let me see if I can share with you how I view the idea of freedom. First off, at my old job, I worked 7:30 to 5. I could take an hour for lunch in the middle of the day, otherwise I was at that desk all day 5 days a week. I got two weeks of vacation – thats it. Two weeks out of the year, I didnt have to sit at my desk. I couldn’t even leave to go get my oil changed in the morning if I wanted to.
Lets look at my life now. Yes, I have work to do. Lots of it actually. But I can work on my own schedule. If I want to take a break and golf in the afternoon – I can. IF I wanted to take a Tuesday off and go wakeboarding – I can. If I want to spend all day at home and work in my boxers – I can. I can go to cafes, hell I am in Thailand right now – but I could just as easily be anywhere else in the world.
The freedom is that I can work on my time, not someone else’s. Not to mention that the stuff I am working on now doesn’t feel like work, as it once did. They are projects i am passionate about, and that makes a big difference.
Does that clarify my perspective at all?
@Sean, It does clarify. Thanks for giving your perspective. It’s how I too feel. It’s just nice that we also do from time to time look at the other side of things. After all, without my clients I would be broke so I don’t really work for myself – I work for my clients
Still, I personally wouldn’t trade it for benefits, more money, nice things, etc. Thanks!
When I visited Cuba a year or two ago I deliberately chose a hotel with internet access so I could keep an eye on my websites. Turned out that not only was it the slowest connection ever but it wasn’t wireless and their computers were virus-ridden so I didn’t want to take the risk.
I walked a good hour along the beach to another hotel and used their computer that was almost as slow but virus free. It was so slow I could only be bothered to spend a few minutes checking emails and stats. Painful.
Turns out though that I earned more than my vacation cost while away, spending a total of 30 minutes over 2 weeks online. And the walk along the beach wasn’t too much like hard work really!
Do lifestyle businesses rock? YESSSSSSSSSS!
Nice timing with this post! Just last week I wrote about “Location independent worker reality test” that I personally did last summer..
The reality sure is a.. well a harsh REALITY. It’s far from Piña Coladas and working happily from the beach!
It’s a very good thing to do reality checks every once in a while.. not all is what it seem!
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