End goal – World Traveling Freelance Designer

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For my entire life, I dreamed of travel.

I dreamed of visiting far off lands, experiencing new cultures and doing something unconventional with my life. Yet I always thought that travel would come someday in the future, someday when I had become wealthy and could afford it.

Today, I write this post from a small town outside of Barcelona, Spain. In about 12 hours, I hop a plane from Barcelona to Paris. France will be the 13th country that I will have visited this year.

I’m not independently wealthy and I’m not globetrotting on my parents’ credit cards.

Instead, I’ve built a freelance career that allows me to work remotely and travel the world.

The emergence of a new age

We are in the emergence of a new age. The age of the digital nomad and the remote worker.

• Years ago, tools like Skype, Dropbox and e-mail were just becoming mainstream.
• Years ago, the internet was outrageously slow and hard to come by in many foreign countries.
• Years ago, we lived in a completely different world.

Technology has granted us a new opportunity, an opportunity to work from anywhere.

For the first time in history, our income is no longer dependent on our location. This shift in how we do our work has the ability to completely reinvent your life.

The benefits of remote working

Maybe you desire to travel the world, or maybe you desire to work from home and spend more time with the kids.

Regardless of your motives, the ability to work remotely can dramatically improve your quality of life. Working remotely means:

• less time commuting to an office or client meetings.
• more time spent on what is important to you.
• that you can travel the world, live in foreign countries or take extended vacations.
• freedom that you can use however you see fit.

How to work remotely

It’s easy to overcomplicate remote working, but in reality it is quite simple. To work remotely, you need two simple things.

1. The ability to create value without being physically present with your client
2. The ability to find new clients without relying on in person networking

If you can do these two things, then you can build a freelance career that allows you to work from anywhere.

How to create value without being physically present

This is highly dependent on the skills and services that you offer.

Some skills such as graphic design, web design, development, copywriting, video editing, consulting, etc. are all skills that require no in person contact. Everything about this type of work can be done from anywhere.

On the flip side, there are skills that do not lend themselves to remote working. Skills such as photography, videography, make up artists, event designers, etc. are skills that require you to be in person with the client.

So what do you do if your skill cannot be accomplished remotely?

Either you suck it up or learn something new.

I was a videographer in a previous life, but when I got hooked on this idea of world travel I knew I needed to change. I signed up for some courses on Lynda.com and learned how to become a web designer. The processes are similar, but the skills are different.

It required starting over from scratch in many ways, but for a life of freedom, it was worth it.

How to find new clients without relying on in-person networking

This scares many people at first.

It scared me as well since in-person networking is often an easy way to build a network and find new work. But the truth is that in-person networking is only one of the many ways to market yourself as a freelancer.

Some of the methods used to find clients remotely are marketing tactics you may already be using.

Below are just a few of the other marketing methods that you can use to get clients without being physically present:

• Direct outreach / Cold e-mailing
• Job listing websites such as oDesk & eLance
• Staying in touch with friends and past colleagues
• Social media
• Partnerships with agencies or other creative professionals
• Asking for referrals
• Online networking in forums and industry groups
• Blogging / Content marketing

When you work remotely, you invest the time you once did in networking events and focus that on additional time in other marketing channels.

It takes time to build up, and it may mean learning some new marketing methods, but it’s worth it for the freedom it provides.

How to make the jump to remote working

Start small. Start by setting up a home office and working from there.

This will give you a small taste of what it’s like to work remotely.

If you still need to visit networking events or take in-person meetings, you still have that option. Get into the habit of trying to avoid these temptations. Start avoiding commutes and you will experience just a bit of what remote working is like.

Once you feel that you have some momentum, make the jump.

For me, when I landed my first client without ever meeting them in person, I knew it was time.

I bought a one way ticket to Mexico for my girlfriend and myself. We spent the next four months living on beachfront property enjoying margaritas as I built up a client base for my freelance career.

Start somewhere cheap, so the transition to a digital-nomad lifestyle becomes easier. #remotework

CLICK TO TWEET

Start somewhere cheap

Why Mexico? If you’re planning on working remotely and traveling, start somewhere with a low cost of living.

By going to Mexico, we dropped our living expenses by nearly two-thirds, which meant both that I needed to make fewer sales and that I had more time to invest in marketing, learning and building my business.

Starting somewhere cheap will make the transition to a digital-nomad lifestyle much easier.

The bottom line

Remote working is a completely new privilege, and it’s simpler than most make it out to be. Remember, you just need two things:

1. The ability to create value without being physically present.
2. The ability find new clients without relying on in-person networking.

If you can do those two things, then you’re well on your way to experiencing the freedom that remote working can bring.

For some, that means more time at home with the kids, more time to care for an elderly family member, or simply a more leisurely, hobby-filled, stress-free lifestyle. For me, that means 13 countries in one year and a series of experiences that I will never forget.

How you use that freedom is up to you.

 

About Jake Jorgovan

Jake Jorgovan is the creator of Outbound Creative: We help agencies win their dream clients. He has also published a free email course that dives deeper into this strategy – How to win your dream clients with outbound marketing.

What You Fear You Attract – Coach Corey Wayne

 

 

 

What you fear you attract, what you look at disappears.  What does this mean?  Human will do more to avoid pain than what we do to gain pleasure.  When we operate in a place of fear we are gonna make decisions that are not as good and efficient as if you were in a peaceful and relaxed state.

What you look at disappears..means you need to face your fear.

Stop thinking from a scarcity mindset.

 

You must accept the reality of your life as it is right now.  Let go of attachments of your past, then it is easier to look towards the future with positive expectations. Then you can create a space for effortless relationships to manifest in your life.

THE 6 HUMAN NEEDS: Why We Do What We Do – Tony Robbins

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The Six Human Needs

1. Certainty: assurance you can avoid pain and gain pleasure

2. Uncertainty/Variety: the need for the unknown, change, new stimuli

3. Significance: feeling unique, important, special or needed

4. Connection/Love: a strong feeling of closeness or union with someone or something

5. Growth: an expansion of capacity, capability or understanding

6. Contribution: a sense of service and focus on helping, giving to and supporting other

The First Secret of Great Design | Tony Fadell

1.  Look Broader
2. Look Closer
3. Think younger

There are invisible problems all around!  You should be around young people – help with creativity.   Picasso once said every child is an artist..the problem is how to remain as an artist.

 

Your challenge to wake up and ask “How can I experience the World better?”

The U.S Challenge

Tai Lopez: 67 Steps

Step 1: The Billionaire’s Brain
& Jennifer Lopez’s Voice

“To get what you want, you have to deserve what you want. The world is not yet a crazy enough place to reward a whole bunch of
undeserving people.” – Charlie Munger

Most people in life are victims of their own making.

Sam chat said – There are three kinds of people in this world:

1. People that watch things happen
2. People that make things happen
3. People that wonder what happens

Warren Buffet challenging question – 10% off someone you know for life in high school made…how would you choose?

On flip side, who is someone you would not choose? Make sure that person isn’t you

Using a set of intangibles that increase your “deserve it” factor

*See above on Charlie Munger quote on deserving

There are many intangibles:

Courage, Patience, Perseverance, wisdom, focus, intensity, etc..the most important is awareness.

Aristotle listed moral character:

We need to have massive awareness.  Helen Keller is a prime example of this.

Froyd said “The pain of life is often to hard for us.”  We substitutes and diversions from reality. To succeed you have to be focused on now.

Money represents reciprocal altruism in most cases.  If you are doing much for the world..then the world isn’t going to give you much back.

*Research the life of Nelson Mandala

Goal is to just go to bed a little wiser.

Instead of focusing solely on what will make you successful instead ask yourself what will not make you successful?  Invert.  Not having awareness is a great thing of guaranteeing you to not be successful.

Pablo Picasso said “good artist copy great artist steal”.  Meaning, awareness of who is a good artist..what can you learn from them and bring into your own success?

How much do I deserve? That is what I will probably get.

1. Must be worth a damn
2. Deserve It
3. Awareness

Stephen Hawking says time is an illusion in the book “Theory of Everything”  Time is measure three ways:  1. Cosmologically 2. Physiologically 3. Thermodynamically

Step 2: Blue-Footed Booby Birds, ESS & The 500 Yr Old Mind

 

Charles Darwin – On species: Not most intelligent or strongest but one that is best able to adapt that survive.

We have been taught since 500+ years we have been taught to think in black and white.  Ex. The World is flat belief. This logic is the 500 year old mind.

As long as you are moving towards your goal it is not a failure it is an experiment

Thomas Edison said he made more mistakes than any would patent all  of his “failed” experiments.

“Pivoting” is a familiar word in the startup world.  When your first business model isn’t working (and this happens more often than not), the CEO and team pivot to plan B.

Charlie Munger says avoid extreme ideology.

Sam Walton – a man never afraid to fail.

Change is the basic law of nature

ESS- Evolutionary Stable Strategy

You need stability in your strategy.   Respect others and their view and demand others to respect yours.  Nothing about human beings, friendships, relationships and even your body remains static.

Adaption for no reason can also be another extreme. This is over adaption.  When things change try to find a new equilibrium.

The best person to argue something is someone who has tried everything.

3. SAM WALTON’S NIGHT IN A BRAZILIAN JAIL, STEALING FROM MCDONALD’S & MICHAEL JORDAN’S HUMILITY

Michael Jordan what was his secret to his success? He was A. an excellent listener and then B. go and do it.

Dali Lama in book
Beyond Religion”

1. Listening
2. Understand and Comprehending
3. Making it instinctually part of who you are

Sam Walton spent the majority of time in competitors stores.  Do you project the attitude that you are humble and willing to go to extremes to learn and grow? Ex Sam Walton arrested in Brazil crawling on his knees to learn more…

Tracking down your mentors..no matter how you have to do so.  All the greats had a mentor Einstein, Tesla, and etc

Things you should really ask yourself:

1. How many books have you read?
2. How good have you been to track down mentors to help you?
3. Copying the competitors
4. How much money have you spent on your own self-growth

Froyd said life is often too hard for us so we use three things:

1. distractions
2. intoxicants
3. substitutive effects

Get humility in action the payoff is huge

What is the number one area I have not been humble in action??

Love, wealth, money?? What is it and the tangible thing you will do to change it.  Write things down from you mentors..take notes!

One lesson Tai learned at an early age was to have several mentors. Many of his was people like Joel Salatin (The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals), Allan Nation..

4. PICASSO’S RISING TIDE & THE LAW OF 33%

 

Pablo Picasso – Good artist copy, great artist stea which means building on the shoulders of great people.  Sir Issac Newton quoted it as “standing on the shoulders of giants.  We learn in school the human mind is built to learn: visually, auditory, kinetics method (doing). In fact it is in the act of osmosis . Example mother and baby cow..no communication. The baby cow just learns by the mother cow rubbing off on it characteristics.  To get what you want you have to be a continual learning machine.

Osmosis is the art of unconscious learning. It is where we stop studying materials, and start absorbing them.

In the book “The Selfish Gene” – Dawkin’s says “One way for our genes to solve the problem of making predictions in unpredictable environments (meaning anywhere) is to build in a capacity for learning.  ex. speaking English but born in China

Jim Rohn say “Poor people should take rich people to dinner.”

70% of human communication is non-verbal

Lift the mental weight. Don’t go easy push yourself…and also you don’t need to overdo it

when you feel uncomfortable get excited..when you have the pain you are growing.

It is important to have not just one mentor but several.  You want to spend 33% of your time with them. These should be your closest friends. Friendships are forged through adversity.  We are born with the innate capacity to learn.

Not all good mentors are easy in their delivery of teaching…they might be rough around the edges.  You need to have the heart and character to know that it will be a little tough..the average person can’t handle the grow..they will always shy away from situations that are uncomfortable or those that are far ahead of them will just hate or make fun of them.

Froyd says” Life is often intolerable for us”..we usually cover it up.

 

Pitfalls that come with mentors:  is the not being able to handle the stress from feeling uncomfortable around a mentor, looking for perfection in them, you can’t expect that they will take the time out for you to train you. You need to be an absorbing machine and be persistent. Watch the way they walk and talk.

Make a list of mentors that are 20-30 years ahead of you.  Ones that are not perfect but tolerable to you.

Great way to get a mentor is to simply reach out to them.  Whether it be email or to their publicist. You make a blog or something and ask for an interview.  Afterwards make sure to send them a gift.

Mentors – Don’t just ask will you be my mentor.  Give first.  3/1 ratio

Practical steps:

1.  YOU MUST TRY  (“Nothing impossible to him will who try” – Alexander the Great) Set a goal and execute. 18 months is a realistic time period to set.
2. ADMIT DEFEAT- Willing to give up (Kenny Rogers “You have to know when to hold them and went to fold them” Sometimes mentors are just to busy..that is why you need to have 5 ideal mentors set up
3. THINK BIG

 

5. MY POOR FRIENDS & CAMERON DIAZ’S PARROT

Speech is a direct reflection of what is in your brain.

Rich Friends Poor Friends

Great lesson to take away from Coach Carl was that he liked to ask lots of questions. Even if he was already an expertise on basketball.  Successful people have the pattern of asking questions.  They have the tendency to use quotes as opposed to their own opinion.

Another pattern is rich friends they know math.

We need to become self-educating machines

 

Our thought patterns are passed on through memes..just not by blood relations but through the media, books we read, and people we associate with. You must control these.  A good goal is to have is to spread good ideas.

Like Jeff Bezos be a truth-seeker.

6. SCULPTURE VS. THE LOTTERY & THE ANTHROPIC MEDIA BIAS

Take the “sculpture” approach to life..each day you chip away at it instead of putting your efforts into just luck or shortcuts.

Ectomorph, Endomorph, mesomorph body sizes.

1. Avoid popular stuff in media
2. Cut back on magazines
3. Go easy on things on the internet

Don’t let the media fool you..focus on directional paths

We must realize we are out of the “cage” and in the real world

Martin Seligman’s did a research on depression using dogs. Learned helplessness  Dog that were trained to be helpless experience much lower levels of happiness. It is possible to rewire the brain towards helplessness.

Instead of having other people think for me..do the research. Google questions instead of being lazy.

Unreliability and laziness will kill you.

Staying with what is safe is a false economy.  It is penny wise and dollar foolish.

You are never gonna get anywhere if you don’t take risks.

Slave mindset that comes from thinking there are things that our out of our control.

You need to innovate out of your problems this is the solution. The anticipation of helplessness is creativity.  You need to move out of a place of helplessness to a place of creativity.

Reps and sets.  If you do enough practice on something you can innovate and grow into whatever that is.

The present is such a great place to be taking risk.  Stop staying in the cage.  Taking risks is allowing yourself the chances of rewards.

You are not helpless that you cannot fix yourself. Innovate your way out of whatever circumstance you are in.

8. THE INTEGRATED GOOD LIFE & THE FOUR PILLARS OF EUDAIMONIA

 

Life cannot be reduced..there are components and elements but they are not separated but integrated.   When you are unhappy with work and don’t look forward to going in believe it that you are experiencing low levels of Dopamine.

To simplify your life have everything within 2 miles of you.  Traffic is a high stress factor.

When you life with too many ups you will have many downs…live like a 7 or an 8..

you need contrast

Look for areas in your life where you are separating but can integrate

Happiness does not come from taking this for yourself…its about contributing to something bigger than yourself.

Love relationships usually come through integration.

Make your spare time the same thing you want to do in your every day life time.  You should ENJOY what you do for work.

Work & Health

Religion & Work

Friends & Health

Love & Health

9. WARREN BUFFETT’S BOOK-A-DAY DIET & MAKING WAR WITH A MULTITUDE OF COUNSELORS

Richard Dawkin’s book The Selfish Gene “Survival machines (us humans) that can simulate the future are one jump ahead of survival machines that can only learn on the basis of overt trial and error. Why is this?  The trouble of over trial is that it takes time and energy..the trouble with overt error is that it is often fatal. Simulation is both safer and faster.  The evolution of the capacity to simulate seems to have culminated in subjective conscientiousness.

Our brain it is what it is so we no longer have to learn from overt trial and error, which takes a lot of time and energy which we don’t have much of.

We are programmed to be feared based, but need to use it progressively towards a successful life not letting it paralyze you.

Work on reading a book a day. In order of the list: http://www.tailopez.com/books

1. Set you time
2. See yourself as a gold miner (grab a little something in the book and move on)
3. Embrace the chaos

 

Those that can simulate the future can win.

Skip the books don’t spend all the time in it.  Most books have 80% stories and 20% the main point of information.

10. STOIC VS. EPICUREAN ARNOLD’S 1,000 REPS, APACHE COLD SHOWERS, AND THE SPARTAN WHIPPING POST

“A nation is born stoic and dies epicurean” – Will Durant   Stoic believe you must forgo present pleasure in the hopes to get something better. The investors of ancient history.  Epicurean believe humans should live for now. Eat, drink, be merry for tomorrow you die.

Successful people sacrifice present luxury for a future benefit.

Newtons 3rd Law: For every action there is a reaction

Use it or lose it…you grow old through lack of use.  You need to work on getting enough toughness to handle the grind of life.

Don’t be reliant on things to much.  The phone becomes the master and you the slave.   You need to be the master.

What will make you depressed is when you feel a slave to your environment.

Start off with a cold shower..next time you don’t want to do something just do it to mess with your brain.  Burn off the fat in your brain.

If you don’t feel the burn that probably means you aren’t doing enough..lifting enough to force the muscles to regrow.

 

Learn to build slowly but try different things.  Try turning off your cellphone for a few days.

Be excited for when you fail..it will make you stronger. You will find yourself in life with all your enforcements fallen and have the will to go forward. When you do the world will be surprised and give up its rewards for you.

When you pull through the toughness you feel better about yourself

11. THE WHISPERS OF 10,000 GENERATIONS, DUNBAR’S 150, & EVOLUTIONARY MISMATCH

The whispers in our brain is from thousands of years ago saying to eat as much sugar and high calorie meals as possible because we don’t know when we will eat next.

Read This

We are not financially wired to save money. We come with the ideology to eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die.  You need to bi-pass this desire..it will take extraordinary effort.

 

 

John Wooden: The Difference between Winning and Succeeding

 

“Never try to be better than someone else, always learn from others. Never cease trying to be the best you can be–that’s under your control.  If you get too engrossed and involved and concerned in regard to the things over which you have no control, it will adversely affect the things over which you have control. ”

Peace of mind attained only through only self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do the best of which you’re capable.  If you make the effort to do the best of which you are capable, trying to improve the situation that exists for you, that is success.

You’re reputation is what you are perceived to be; your character is what you really are.

1. Never Be Late
2. Be Neat & Clean
3. Never Criticize A Teammate

 

 

Tai Lopez -Success and Money (May Notes)

Website

 

Notes:

Everything you do should turn to gold.  There are three kind of people: People who live up to your expectations, those who under perform, and the rarest which are way better than what you expected. (Be that person-the 3rd)

Everything you touch: Your work, social life, etc.  If you want to get to being great and it is something maybe you are not that great at…just train.

“To get what you want, you have to deserve what you want. The world is not yet a crazy enough place to reward a whole bunch of
undeserving people.” – Charlie Munger

Notes:

Invest in yourself! You never go broke investing in yourself…what makes you go broke is consumption…  consumption is money goes out but never comes back.

Don’t procrastinate..motivate.

The purpose to life it to win and to bring others to win too

 

“The one thing you can control in life is effort.” “Don’t follow your passion follow your efforts.”- Mark Cuban

You should always be learning and read a book every day.  Warren Buffet reads 500-1000 pages a day.

Best practices by Mark Cuban:

1. Pay off your credit cards
2. Save up 6 months worth of income for a rainy day
3. Be a smart shopper
4. Find something you love to do and be great at it

Our common enemy is ignorance of our upbringing.

Toni Robbins “When you fail you ponder, when you succeed you party.  So all the great things happen out of failed because you ponder.”

Research Daniel Kahneman books – Being better each and every day little by little

80-20 rule:  Everything you do in life, 20% of people will only really be there for you.

 

 

Successful Formula:

1. Knowledge – not just information that makes you book smart but information that you can apply into action
2. Strategy – not just a plan because life is unpredictable.  Like a General leading in a war, they make multi-faceted plans.
3. Execution – You do it through immersion.  The average person takes 67 days to form a habit.