Oct
The Mindset Of The Nomadic, Location Independent Entrepreneur
Image by Dimi15
Being a nomadic, location independent entrepreneur is not just about travelling around the globe permanently, earning an income via the internet and working from exotic places.
That’s part of it of course. But the biggest part of living a nomadic, work-from-anywhere kind of lifestyle is the mindset which underpins it.
If you follow any other people who live our kind of vagabond lifestyle, you’ve possibly noticed something similar in the things they write, the way they view the world and the ways in which they go about their lives.
It’s these beliefs, values and attitudes which form the “location independent” mindset. Do you have it?
Image by zampano!!!
Break your attachment to material things
To be free to travel to anywhere you want whenever you want, you don’t have to sell off all your worldly possessions and live like a homeless hobo out of one bag, but in our experience it sure makes life simpler.
We rarely buy superfluous stuff for the sake of it and think at least twice before buying a book, CD, DVD or anything else which we’d have to cart around with us. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy material things, I am a gadget freak after all but it’s not a money thing either – it’s about simplicity and streamlining.
In this world of instant gratification, it is so easy to fall into the trap of buying things without question. Buying for that quick fix of feeling good, only to load your life up with lots of fleeting moments of gratification coupled with bulging wardrobes, shelves, apartments and no space nor simplicity around you.
The location independent lifestyle provides a fantastic antidote to that…if you have to carry around whatever you buy with you permanently, it certainly makes you question whether you can live without it.
The belief that life is to be lived now
We see it all around us – in our families, with our friends, in colleagues – fun and enjoyment delayed until later life. I said to a friend just this week, that if I died tomorrow I’d be happy. There are still plenty of things I’d like to do in my life but I’ve been living life on my own terms for the past couple of years and have not had to wait until I retire to finally do what I want.
It was Rose Tremain who said “Life is not a dress rehearsal” and she’s right…living is what life is about, not just existing but living, warts and all.
Image by ziga-zaga
Develop an opportunity radar
As you travel, you extend your horizons and your opportunities. You might not go looking for business opportunities or to make new friends around the world but if you keep your eyes open and your ears peeled, you will almost certainly find them.
Just last weekend in our local coffee shop, we picked up a potential new client for our business strategy and web design services. We never go looking for this as most of our real marketing happens online – but we’ve picked up more business from the places we’ve visited than we ever planned to.
You will also find multiple opportunities and gaps in the market to serve others’ needs more readily than simply sitting at home trying to figure out what target markets you can serve and what new services and products are still in short supply.
Despite these current tough times, there is a world of opportunity out there waiting for you…
Control is not the goal
I am a control freak. Always have been and probably always will be. That’s not the mindset required for the location independent lifestyle however.
You travel around staying in unknown places, subject to the mercy of the fickle airline industry and the misleading pictures on property websites. You can control things on a macro level with this kind of lifestyle but rarely on a micro level. You get used to it because you have to.
There is something compelling (even to a control freak like me) about this lack of ultimate control – and it’s not just the travel thing either. It’s also the fact that you run your own business, generate your own income and your own destiny is ultimately in your own control. And yet it isn’t.
Whilst you can control things to a certain degree, you have no way of knowing just what will happen tomorrow, next month or when you arrive in whatever destination is on your itinerary next.
You can do what you can to mitigate the foreseen risks but there is an element of uncontrollability about all of this that is intoxicating. I think it’s called freedom.
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Great article Lea – it all sounds very familiar!
Letting go of control can be difficult, but once you do, you realize that you really never had it in the first place.
Outstanding post, Lea
I agree with you on not being too attached to material things. I lived in a 16 sq-metre shoebox for a year and a half and I learned not to accumulate anything superfluous — “think at least twice before buying a book, CD, DVD or anything else which we’d have to cart around with us.”
If you don’t need something for six months, you probably can live without it forever.
Hi Lea
Here Here!!!
I love the picture at the start of the post too. One of the things I struggle with the most is listening to my heart and not my head! My head is very strong and extremely LOUD! If it had a map that was written by my heart – life would be much much easier!!! The problem is keeping my brain silent for long enough, so that my heart can draw the map without any interferance
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@Ross – So what plans for next year then, Ross? Will be in touch about the community organiser role, if you’d still be interested?
@Jason – I still try to have control, all the time knowing I don’t have it!! It’s in my nature I guess but I’ve realised that what is meant to be, will often just be whether I think I’ve controlled it or not!!
@Yu Ming Lui – Thanks! Wow 16 sq m is pretty small. The 6 month rule is a great one – fortunately with our lifestyle, packing up everything we own every 3 months or so forces us to re-evaluate what we’ve got and whether we really do need it still.
@Tima – LOL! Can you turn down the volume of your head?? There must be a volume control somewhere
@Lea I’ve got a lot of options (probably too many!) so I’m still figuring it out.. but I’d love to find out more about the role. Your recent posts especially have been really useful to me right now.
Ya the stuff about not being materialistic is something I can relate to. I’ve always had this mentality long before I ever took up the mobile lifestyle. I guess I just don’t understand the appeal of cramming a huge house full of dust collecting knick knacks or having flashy cars in the driveway when the point of a car is to get from point a to point b. So I’m happy that the nomadic life has slotted in nicely with my views on consumerism. Although I, like you, am a sucker for gadgets!
Living in the moment is a big thing too that I think I do but not in a flashy type of ‘grab life by the balls, throw myself out of airplanes’ kind of way. I think just putting things in place to help you life the life that you want is living in the moment, even if you are just spending your time sitting around reading or whatever. I thin kthe important thing is that you’re able to do what you want to do with your time without living by other people’s agendas. That’s living in the moment for me.
Great article, as always!
Kirsty
It’s a great site you have here, I’ve got 11 of your article open in tabs now, what would be really great is if you had a “most popular” of something like that list in your sidebar. Great work keep it up.
Question: is there something about an independence of location that helps independence of thoughts and maximise exposure to opportunities?
@Kirsty – thanks! Where are you these days?
@Kiri – thank you for the positive comments; hope to be writing many more articles for you! I added a few “popular” posts in the sidebar – any other suggestions for ones you’ve read and found particularly useful? (do they match the ones you had open in your tabs??!?)
@Taylor – good question. I believe so – we feel our minds are much more open to opportunities than they were when we were based in one location.Even when we’re not looking, all sorts of opportunities appear in our lives – and being free to try them is what this lifestyle is all about!