Tag Archive

I have a new post, which can be found here.

See my latest post here.

The reason I have not posted in so long is that nothing has really changed much. I am not one to really post crap when I have nothing to say, nor do I like being pressured in to having to write every day (or week or..uhhh month)…

I have seen some really interesting resources, and I will continue to post them here. I have gone back on my list of resources and found that it is huge. I tend to just clip sites that seem interesting and put them all in an email that I then send to myself. I looked back on the emails and there were hundreds of links to review! Yes, some sites kept coming up with great info, but a lot of these were the sites I already had on my blog roll (although there are some new ones that I will add later).

The best advice I can think of is to do what I do and use sites that employ user recommendations to find subjects in which you are interested. Go to sites like Digg, Del.icio.us, or Stumbleupon, to search for topics like “Freelance” or “4HWW”, and you will find quality sites that have been vetted by others. This is the direction that online search engines taking - instead of blindly finding every site relating to a subject, good or bad.

While I have pretty much finished work on my rental property, I have not really made any effort to market it or get a tenant into it. I don’t know what is holding me back. Probably fear. I have heard horror stories of tenants from hell and I am afraid that when I do get someone in, the nightmares will begin. Still I faced my fears when I bought the house in the first place, and I still want to try being a landlord to see if it is right for me. I guess I just have to face this fear and ride out whatever adversity that comes my way.

As I mentioned in my last post, the Thirty Day Challenge is back, and I am going to participate in that as well. In July, it will be a year since I first started my effort to leave my current job and become a freelancer. I have learned a lot in that time, but it is a humbling experience, and it is a lot harder than I thought it would be. Life has a funny way of coming in and interfering with your plans. Still, I have not given up and I will continue to try different things until I find the solution that feel right for my goals.

As for my next post, you will get it when it is worthy of publishing… :o)

As part of setting up my processes for marketing my rental property and handling prospective tenants, I am setting up a new website. I have registered a really good name, which I will put here when I get the site up and running. I am delving into web design books and getting ideas from friends who are also real estate investors.

I am also toying with the idea of moving this blog over to the new host. The host allows for multiple sites, and even though I don’t have a major following, it will give me the chance to experiment a little more, and eventually try to sell ad space. I am actually considering splitting the blog up into two parts, one continuing on with the 4HWW theme, and the second with my experiences as a real estate investor. This is a ways off, but I am looking forward to it.

On another note…tomorrow, the house will have new garage doors, and the landscaping will be complete. All that is needed is a new oven and a good cleaning and it will be ready to rent. I will then be free to move on to other projects. I want to get back to my goal of forming a virtual company…

In my next post I am going to list some excellent resources that I always turn to for freelance advice and ideas.

Yikes…I looked at the date of my last post and it was three weeks ago!

I apologize to the three or four of you that hang on my every word waiting for my next wacky adventure…

Seriously, I have been swamped…

The major rehab on the house has been complete, now comes the little details that need to be finished so I can get the house ready to rent. Today, I went to a local appliance store to get a stove top for the kitchen (I still need a new wall mounted oven and range hood); I also hung the fire alarms and started cleaning EVERYTHING!

The big to-do is getting the garage doors to work. My contractor could not do it, but gave me the name of someone who might. They have yet to get back to me…

I also have to get my “process” formalized. I know what the Georgia Landlord - Tenant law is, and I have a good lease. I now need to get a voice mail service to handle the calls from prospective renters and a way to run credit checks and criminal checks on any applicants. The devil is always in the details.

Still, I am excited. So far (knock on wood) I have been able to handle any problems that I have encountered. It has been crazy leading a double life, programmer by day, real estate rehab project manager by night, but I see the light at the end of the tunnel. Of course, that doesn’t mean that life as a landlord isn’t going to cause headaches, but financially, it will ease a lot of pressure having someone else pay the mortgage - assuming I find a tenant. Then comes the next house…

Keeping productive given my situation has been a challenge, and I have been surfing the net for productivity tips. I have found a really good article here. I hope you find it helpful.

The guy who runs Outlaw Design Blog is spending the month of February in Costa Rica. In preparation for the trip, he researched online tools he’s use to help him work remotely.

You can find his list of tools here.

One of the tools he recommended is ZOHO, which I also use and recommend. I find it a lot more robust than Google’s office tools.

I remember reading something somewhere that all of human behavior derives from two basic tendencies: “seek pleasure” and “avoid pain” or on a more basic level, move towards something, move away from something.

Yesterday, I posted a link to Catherine Lawson’s excellent collection of resources for entrepreneurs. She saw it and came to my blog and read my Escape! posting from last week. This prompted her to make the following comment:

“I know that motivating yourself because you want to leave your job seems like a good idea at the time, but it’s a good idea to set yourself a list of goals and motivate yourself towards them. It’s a lot easier that way and you’ll be concentrating on something positive instead of something negative.”

She is, of course, right.

My job has been grinding away at me, eroding my moral, and all I could think of was pain avoidance. I have seen this happen to my coworkers, where they basically can’t take it anymore, jump ship and take the first available job offer that comes along. This inevitably ends up in something similar to a “rebound relationship” that most every one experiences at least once in their lifetime, after breaking up with a significant other. It rarely works out in the end for either party…

I have been focusing on the obstacle, instead of what lies beyond it. I do have a list of goals, but I have not looked at it in a while. Between my day job and getting the house in shape, I have been too preoccupied. So I am setting aside some time tonight to go back over my goals and get myself back on track.

Thanks Catherine…

In keeping with my theme of new beginnings, I am looking for articles and resources to help you go out on your own.

Over at one of my favorite resources, Freelance Switch, there is a great article on kickstarting your Freelancing Career. Check it out here.

What I’m getting the house for: $90,000

What I thought the house was worth: $135,000

Look on my face after getting the news from the appraiser that the house is really worth $156,000: Priceless…

Ok…so I have to put in about $15,000 in repairs & closing costs, but still a sweet deal….

Looks like there is a MeetUp dedicated to The 4 Hour Work Week. You can find it here; I am also adding it to my blogroll…

This is for all of you nomadic web designers; it’s a great resource, aptly called forwebdesigners.com. You can find it here.

I have been catching up on my blog reading lately and saw this over at 43 Folders. The post is about Don Miguel Ruiz’s book “The Four Agreements”. Basically the Four Agreements are as follows:

1) Be impeccable with your word.

2) Don’t take anything personally.

3) Don’t make assumptions.

4) Do your best.

Yeah…the words “Common Sense” spring to mind, but I look at my dealings with other people and find that I may occasionally skip one or two of them (usually #2 or #3, but honestly, never #1).

Lea Woodward over at the Location Independent Blog has come out with this pretty extensive list of blogs that deal with Location Independent Professionals.

Lifehack.org (which is yet another excellent lifestyle design site) has a good article on 6 Rules to Work Less and Get More Accomplished. You can find it here. Some of the rules should be really familiar to readers of 4HWW.

Every quarter, publicly held companies are required to issue a report showing their progress for the past 3 months. This report is called a 10-Q.

Just over three months ago (last quarter), I finished reading The Four Hour Work Week, and I decided to work the principles into my life. The purpose was to create a virtual company, where I would subcontract the work to freelancers (or become a freelancer myself), with the eventual goal that I can run this company from pretty much anywhere in the world I choose to live.

Here now is my personal 10-Q…

The plan was to use multiple streams of income from the Internet, and possibly Real Estate investing (which sort of is counterintuitive because you need to be around to manage your properties, but I’ll get to that in a minute) to finance my endeavor.

Internet

I ramped up my education in Internet Marketing by taking the Thirty Day Challenge in August. My first attempt at applying the principles from the challenge ended with two outcomes; the first outcome - not desirable - was that I didn’t get any sales from my affiliate link on my blog. The second outcome - desirable - was that I placed on the first page of Google when searching for my keyword phrase. Yes it was at #10, and yes it was only for a couple of days before dropping off, but in my defense, I did not apply all the principles I learned and didn’t put a whole lot of effort into it. Seeing it on Google did boost my hopes that it was possible to make it happen, and motivated me to take more action. Like everything else in life, you get out of it what you put into it.

I got sidetracked a little with my “day job”, but I am on track to make another attempt at a successful Affiliate Marketing project. This time I’m all in.

The second Internet project I am working on is some sort of Information Product, like an eBook or Video. This is still in the early stages, but I have a couple of ideas I will explore, and document in later blog entries. I think this holds a lot of promise, because it doesn’t take a lot to produce, and if marketed right, it could produce a nice stream of income, with a minimum of maintenance.

Finally, something that I have not mentioned at all in this blog. Using an old PC I had lying around, I built an Ubuntu (Linux) server. Along with Linux, it had Apache - a web server, MySQL - a database application, and PHP5 which is used to create Web based applications (collectively called LAMP). I am getting up to speed on web page design and creation. This falls in line with my freelance aspirations. All you need is a laptop and an internet connection, and you can run a business.

Real Estate

As I mentioned in my last blog entry, I have a pending deal on the table. If the bank accepts my counteroffer, and there are no surprises in the inspection, I’ll have a nice house in a decent neighborhood. I originally intended to rehab and flip it, but in the current environment, I may either wholesale it to another investor, or change my strategy and rent or lease purchase it. Yes, if I rent it, in the short term, it will mean that I have to be around to manage it. Not something I can easily do from a beach in Nice…or the Italian Riviera…Still, in this market, I am thinking I can pick up one or two more houses, and if the numbers are good, I can hire a team to handle the property management. This, I can run remotely.

Plus there is no rule that I can’t do a little of everything, Internet Marketing, Web Design & Creation, and Real Estate investing.

The overall goal is to quit my day job to free up my time to do the things I want to do with it.

So…that’s the current state of Project Nomad, Inc. :o)

This first Quarter was primarily goal setting, education, exploration, and some action. The outlook for the second quarter is to take more action to move me closer to my goal of independence.

It’s not the destination, it’s the journey that’s important…right?

My destination is to be totally independent from a “traditional” job, and join the ranks of the professionals without borders. My journey is chronicled in this blog, and man am I having fun.

The two or three of you that actually follow my blog know that I try to find quality sites that align with my journey. You also may know that one of the methods I am investigating is Affiliate Marketing. I recently stumbled on a really cool site by a guy named Josh Wexelbaum. The site is called “The Scrappy Business Idea Blog” and it can be found here. He’s 25 and, like Lea Woodward of LIP Living, walks the walk. His site has tons of free resources, as well as his own eBook which appears as tabs on the main page. There are three basic online money making techniques he explains - affiliate marketing, Adsense marketing, and selling your own eBook. The information is geared more towards beginners, but there’s stuff for all levels of expertise.

He also has a link to his other site that chronicles his journeys around the world. His internet marketing gig pays for the ride. Not too shabby…

Just a quick update, the second part of Ryan Norbauer’s excellent article in 43 Folders on Enlightened Outsourcing can be found here.

As I mentioned in my last post, Lea Woodward over at LIP Living was coming out with a book…well the book is out, it’s called “X Marks The Spot: The Indispensable Guide To Living As A LIP & Working From Anywhere“.

I bought a copy this morning and read it throughout my work day. It is an easy read and covers a lot of information. The early chapters describe Lea’s background and how she and her husband got into the LIP Lifestyle. It goes over the places they have lived and their rationale for choosing those locations. I like this part because it builds up her “creds”; a lot of authors write about a subject with which they are not familiar; she walks the walk.

After this, the book starts getting really meaty. It goes into the rationale for doing it, facing your fears, how to get started, and the basic nuts and bolts of what you need to do and things you need to consider. The book is chock full of tips and hints, and the Appendix has an excellent list of additional resources. As an added bonus, by buying the book, you get access to their Facebook group of other LIPs and soon to be LIPs.

I consider the book a valuable resource, and an excellent how-to book on living the Location Independent Professional lifestyle.

The book costs $12 US (6 GBP). You can buy the ebook here. There are 100 ebooks for sale in this pre-release. The print version will be out at the end of the month, and will cost $22 (11 GBP); there will also be only 100 books in the pre-release.

Note: In the spirit of full disclosure, the link above is an affiliate link, and I will get a portion of the proceeds if you buy through it. But I really do like the book and think that it is a valuable resource, so much so that if you want to order the ebook without my getting the commission, you can get it from here; it costs the same either way - I’m just standing by my review.

Saw this through Technorati search on 4HWW and it looks really interesting. I haven’t fully explored their site, but I will; it looks like a book on their experiences is coming out soon.

I like the concept and branding. I added their link to my Blogroll.

Just spreading the love…