What does having a location independent business mean to you?

For me it means being able to work from anywhere I want, for as long as I want, without my business suffering because location really doesn’t matter.

I could be anywhere.

Location independence is a big part of my brand. I was literally born location independent!…from the age of 3 weeks I’ve been travelling and living around the world as an expat child living in 11 countries (some of them several times so I’ve got 20+ international moves packed into my suitcase and memory bank) and travelled to 46 countries, several of those many times.

And so this is a topic that I’m asked to speak about on summits and in interviews on a regular basis. And it’s something that clients and potential clients also ask me about.

So I thought I’d share a quick peek of how this has looked for us over the last 12 months. Our travelling looks quite different according to where in the world we are and at what stage of parenthood we are. It’s not all exotic locations and long international flights.

So what does location independence look like in real life?

March 2014 moved from Thailand, Koh Samui, to Sydney, Australia. Here’s how that came about.

May spent a week in Perth. My boyfriend needed to go there on a business trip so we went with him. I purposefully planned my business week to only work 3 days in a row precisely so that we could accompany him on business trips around Australia as we knew this was coming up. I held a few client calls during the evenings when he was off work. The rest of the time I enjoyed Perth with our toddler.

July we went to the Gold Coast for a long weekend. This was right in the middle of a big launch and I wanted to be able to relax and really enjoy it. So I worked. From a luxury apartment right ON the beach. Needless to say, I worked a few hours, fitted in a ton of Discovery calls and had time to go to the beach and visit the wildlife park. I don’t do busy in the common understanding of the word.

October we went to the Northern Shore (couple of hours north of Sydney) for my writing retreat. My boyfriend took time off work. I wrote every morning. Every afternoon we went to the beach, visited friends who live up there and visited other beaches. I pretty much wrote the bulk of my ebook in those 4 days, more about that in another post very soon.

October / November, two weeks holiday in Sri Lanka for a friend’s wedding. I was again in the middle of a launch except I outsourced the whole thing so I was truly on holiday. I checked email a couple of times, no more than an hour in total over the 2 weeks. I did film some video blogs whilst we were there as the surroundings were just so amazing that it would have been rude not to! I didn’t have to though. I plan topics ahead of time so really it was just shoot the video and done.

February we went on a one week Buddhist retreat in Ballina (up by Byron Bay). One of our Lamas was in Australia and this is something that we usually do several times a year in Europe. This was our daughter’s first retreat, she loved it! I still had my client calls but didn’t do any other admin, marketing or other business related tasks outside of client calls. I even signed on a new Buddhist client! So except for a few hours of calls, this was time off.

March/April we’re moving back to Copenhagen, Denmark. We’re taking two weeks to fly back turning the stopovers in Singapore and Dubai into mini city-breaks and a side trip to visit my sister in Hong Kong.  The only work I’ll do is one day of client calls. I’ve shifted all calls into one day so that I can fully enjoy each place we’re in. Why don’t I take a full 2 weeks off? Because right now I don’t want my clients to have a 3 week break between calls (as I’m also giving myself time to settle in once we arrive in Europe) so I’m happy to shift them all into the one day.

So there’s a peek into my location independent travel diary over the last 12 months. Some short trips (super easy way to make the most of your online business without some major planning or costs), some holiday, a big international move and country-hopping.

Do you have a fully up and running location independent business? If so, what have your last 6-12 months looked like? If not, what do you envision it to look like once you have full location independence?