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How to Prepare Your Business for Location Independence

Before we left for a traveling as a lifestyle we had a business that was kinda location independent. Not fully independent, but kinda. Through becoming fully location independent we learned some lessons that we’d love to share with you.

If you currently work a job some of this may apply to you, however there’s a whole different consideration for employment and ensuring you have a backup plan while traveling.

Defining Terms

Businesses can exist on a spectrum between fully location dependent (retail brick and mortar) to fully location independent (dropshipping ecommerce or info-products). There are 7 basic categories which need to be considered when looking at a business and it’s relationship to a location.

  • Address/Mailbox
  • Financial matters (banking, receiving payments, sending payments)
  • Operations/Staff (if you don’t have staff you might not have a business ;)
  • Sales/Business Development (Where do you get new business from?)
  • Product or Service warehousing and delivery
  • Customer Service, Customer Support & Account Management
  • Legal

I’m making a large assumption that no matter where you travel to you will have or find Internet. As most location independent businesses no matter what position on the spectrum need to have internet connection. Some might say that it’s a requirement for living the nomadic lifestyle as much as water is. It feels that way to me, but I know it’s not.

Address/Mailbox

As a business you’ll still need a mailing address. Even though you move around a lot your business needs to have a place where documents, checks, and legal paperwork can be sent.

Some people use their Mom’s address or a friend’s address and instruct them on what mail to open and how to process it. For example: toss the junk mail, the rest save for a week and then overnight it to me in whatever country I’m in.

I recommend using a mailbox forwarding service. I have used travelingmailbox.com and currently use mailboxforwarding.com

These services give you an address. You have to fill out a USPS form to allow them to receive/open mail on your behalf. They open it and scan it. You receive a notification and then can choose to forward, deposit checks, or shred the mail. Perfect for cloaking your address and never having to receive mail again!

Financial Matters

I am by no means a banking expert, but I do know that you will need at least one bank if not multiple. I found that by having multiple if something were to get locked out (an ATM which has happened to me on more than one occasion) you can always access funds from a different account.

For the business I recommend having cash stockpiles in multiple accounts, I used Chase and Paypal as my two business accounts. I also have multiple personal banking accounts as well, for similar reasons.

You will obviously need to have online banking set up and running well, I also recommend electronic delivery of statements to save money/hassle with your address forwarding service or person.

Things to consider:

  • Writing checks. There are electronic check services if you need to write checks. Especially consider your bank’s bill pay service.
  • Foreign Transaction Fees (FTF) If you use an ATM or a credit card in another country they can ding you on a FTF.
  • Wire Fees, can you transfer from bank account to a bank account at a different bank? What about international
  • Bank transfers? (US Banks are notorious for being unable to do international transfers)
  • How do you receive payments, are they all Credit cards (Easiest!) or do you accept checks and bank transfers as well?

Operations/Staff

My staff has always been remote workers. However, if you have in person staff, suggest they work from home or close your office and move to a co-working space. This will prepare your staff for “normal days” when you are not around.

 If you have to have to run a staff that requires an office or a location do you have an operations manager who can be trusted to run the company while you are gone for months at a time?

If you have clients can you hire a contractor or remote employee who can manage the work while you are on travel days? It takes a bit to get settled into a new culture, a new house, and a new routine. You’re going to need someone to take the reigns for a couple days to a week or two. So if you don’t yet have staff you need to hire at least one part timer whom you can rely on while traveling.

Sales/Business Development (Where do you get new business from?)

This was my downfall. My biz dev revolved around in person meetings and a referral network. To move your business to the location independent side of the spectrum you need to have new business (growth) coming in from a location independent sourcesTypical sources of location independent business growth include:

  • Content Marketing (Writing and publishing free content)
  • Podcasting (or being a guest on podcasts)
  • Email Marketing
  • Social Media Marketing
  • Online Advertisements
  • Prospecting via email or phone call (yes you can cold call from other countries via a skypeout number)
  • Joint Ventures
  • Affiliates
  • Paid or Organic Search

No matter what method you choose you need to have this locked down before leaving. If your new business funnel relies on referrals, in person meetings or meetups you absolutely have to change this before becoming location independent.

Product or Service Warehousing and Delivery

How do you deliver your product or service?

If it’s a drop shipping this is already taken care of, but what about a service based business, how are you presenting the product, deliverable or service to your clients.

What about warehousing? Or shipping and delivery? Can you outsource that? Yes it might be more expensive than doing it yourself, but you always have trade offs, and in this case we’re talking a lifestyle versus a few hundred dollars which can be increased through more efforts in sales.

Customer Service, Customer Support, & Account Management

You should not be doing customer service. And as best as possible you should get out of account management. This will free you up to travel and be location independent.

Granted there are plenty of tools to accomplish both, not the least of which is Skype or Google Hangouts, but in the end customer service, customer support and account management is better performed by someone who is more stable and reliable. Especially when traveling.

Legal

This is not a simple thing to consider, but it’s very important.

Do you have visas that allow you to work, even though it ‘s on a business which doesn’t reside within the country all visitors visas have some stipulations about the amount or type of work that can be performed.

Also consider having an authorized representative for your LLC or INC with in your home country to sign paperwork as needed. I cheated this many times by placing a digital file of my signature in the PDF scan from my mailbox service. And then I would email it in. However if you cannot electronically deliver the document it is more difficult.

And those are just some of the considerations you need to take when preparing to transform your business from where it is on the spectrum to fully location independent.