Hannah and I recently did a guest lecture at the University of Virginia. In this 10 minute excerpt, I swear a little, make fun of Bono, and probably piss off small retail shop owners. Deal with it. It’s the truth.
TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
Best types of business for a mobile lifestyle? Products are better than services. I tend to do a whole bunch of service businesses, but products are better than services, because a product you make it once and sell it a bunch of times and every time it makes money. A service? You or somebody you hire, which a lot of times is the case in my case, has to actually be there.
So, as much as you may think that being a rock star or a movie star might be a really great life. When U2 showed up down here put on their little tootie fruity show? Bono had to show up and sing. When you pay your money and go and see U2. Four guys had to fly in from Ireland and put on their little shiny pants and get up there and flop around, but every time they sell a cd they don’t have to do that. It’s a very different model, products versus a service.
The internet is better than physical. If you’re going to sell something, sell it on the internet. Don’t sell it physically. Physically you have to show up and stand around. Physical retail establishments blow my mind. The idea that you have to show up every day at a place kills your mobility right away — you’ve got to open the door at 9:30 and close it at 9:30 (or whatever) and the whole time you’re just standing around just in case someone might want to buy a latte. Just in case. Two hours in the middle of the day, no one comes in? Guess what? You’re still standing there, or somebody you hire is still standing there. It’s just bad for mobility to have some sort of physical storefront or any kind of place that you physically have to go.
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I was going to write a post on how to survive working at home, then somebody did it for me. Kudos to “A List Apart”. Good stuff y’all.
We recently had the opportunity to talk with Dan Clements about his terrific new book, “Escape 101: Sabbaticals Made Simple
” It’s an inspiring and practical guide to taking a career break without losing your money or your mind. Here’s our interview with Dan.
Family Hack: Some jobs seem easier to “escape” from than others. What jobs would you choose to put in your Top 10 for easy escapism?
Dan Clements: I honestly don’t believe that it’s about the job – it’s about the mindset of the person doing the job that determines how easy it is to get away.
That being said, there are some jobs that lend themselves to portability, or to periodic downtimes:
Jobs with structured extended leave programs
Teachers
Career jobs at a companies with established sabbatical programs
Jobs with global demand
Doctors
Nurses
Portable work
Writing
Design
Programming
Any other web-based freelancing
Jobs with a defined end
Temp work
Contract work
There are many others, but these are the ones that always strike me as the easiest. A lot of these are easy because they let you take your work with you. Many people will prefer the idea of taking a complete break from work, but the trend towards mobile work lifestyles is definitely worth considering as an alternative way to escape.
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In this video I show you how I use a brilliantly designed and dirt cheap file holderto keep my active projects organized, in view and easy to retrieve. The system also makes working while traveling a breeze.
Product Link:
Rubbermaid File Folder Organizer
Have a good tip…we’d love to hear it.
I’ve already shown you how I handle my cable clutter when we travel. But there are a much wider variety of solutions for the cables we accumulate at home. Today, I’m going to take a look at 7 options.
1. The Cable Shelf:
My choice for taming cord spaghetti is a cable shelf. I like it’s large capacity and easy access. When we travel I can easily remove the cables I need.
Life Hacker has a step-by-step article showing how they used my favorite cable shelf to whip one of their desks into shape.
2. The Cord Hog
The Cord Hog is simple to use, comes in many colors and is appropriately priced….ie: dirt cheap.
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So far, we’ve learned about getting the best deals on accomodations and how to travel with the kids. Now, let’s look at two free tools that will keep your business humming while you’re living the jet-set mobile lifestyle…or just working at home in your skivvies.
FreeConferenceCall.com overcomes the problem of hosting a conference call without a super-macho phone system. The service lets you easily set up a teleconference with up to 96 yackers. Did I mention it’s FREE?
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This is the background story of how a family with two small kids lives the mobile lifestyle talked about in the best selling book the “4-Hour Workweek” by Timothy Ferriss. This blog will feature lots on in depth, detailed posts on how we’ve made “family hacks” to get the most out of our time, money and mobility.
