Most women live in a situation where ‘location independent’ living sounds like a distant luxury. Most of us are pretty tightly tied down by the location of our children’s school! Our challenge: how to ditch the ‘mother guilt‘ and find an alternative to the full on corporate career? An alternative that allows us the freedom of location (=home) and hours (=when the kids are at school or in bed) to build an interesting existence that generates comfortable income and is emotionally and intellectually fulfilling! If that scenario sounds interesting, then read on. These ‘location independence’ guys have a lot to teach us!

Tim Ferris’ ‘The 4 Hour Work Week’ started a global phenomenon of ‘location independence’, ‘lifestyle design’ or ‘lifehacking’. The idea in a nutshell is that you can create an online business and work from anywhere, when ever you want. Instead of working hard now and waiting for the retirement, you should start living the life you want – now.

Most people who have picked up this idea are men. Why? Perhaps because men are (generally) more ready to take risks and jump to the unknown. The unknown part is if you want to travel, but for women the motivation could be quite contrary – having kids and actually spending time with them when they grow up. Women are seldom interested in building a life on a tropical island – because tropical islands don’t have great schools. (Note: I’m the last person who wants to sound sexist. Equally men should embrace the freedom of ‘lifestyle design’ for having babies and bringing them up!! But as this blog’s primary target audience is women, and as most women still think they can EITHER have a career OR babies – we are highlighting this angle.)

We should fully embrace this idea of freeing yourself from the traditional 9-to-5 job and creating a lifestyle we want – be a stay home mother – yet building something interesting and fulfilling that earns us a comfortable living and allows for flexible hours. Women should abandon the idea of either career or children! You can have it all. It just means you must adopt a different attitude and learn a completely new set of skills!

Here is a comprehensive list of leading aurthors in ‘location independent lifestyle’.

If you don’t want to travel to the other side of the world to start your business, you can put these ideas into practise on your own home sofa whilst feeding a baby! You should research these sources for great information & inspiration even if a) you don’t have a baby, b) your business or idea involves real life interaction with customers!

Tim Ferris Blog, author of The 4 Hour Work Week – pioneer of lifestyle design!

– how to create passive income streams (ie. an online company/vehicle that generates income with only some maintenance work hours put in once the thing is up and running)

– productivity tips

– living and financing active & experimental lifestyle

– on-line business idea testing

– how to learn anything, fast

Art of non-conformity by ‘$100 start-up’ author Chris Guillebau should be on everyone’s reading list! He opens your mind to think for yourself and create the life you really want to live. (He sounds a bit like DrivenWoman 😉 ). He writes about:

– personal development

– life planning

– entrepreneurship

The Tropical MBA, by Dan Andrews has kept this great blog and Podcasts since 2009. The style makes it very much targeted to the male audience, but you shouldn’t shy away from it as the content is very relevant for any woman who wants to start ‘a lifestyle business’ (= to fit around your lifestyle with kids) ‘location independently’ (= working from home).

– business tips for ‘digital nomads’ (= in our case you can be a nomad in your own living room!!)

– on-line marketing

– ideas and tips for entrepreneurs

Location 180, by Sean Ogle is another great blog about location independence. It has similar content to The Tropical MBA and I think Dan and Sean are buddies. We follow both.

– practical tips from ‘how to create great sales pages’ to ‘how to choose a web hosting company’

– tips on blogging

– how to go from on idea to actually starting to do work that creates freedom

– one of Sean’s most popular posts is: ‘10 Things You Can Do Today To Start A Lifestyle Business (Even If You Have No Ideas)

Prolific Living, by Farnoosh Brock, focuses on how to leave your traditional career and to live a purposeful life. She’s also written a great book about juicing!

– how to leave your corporate career

– how to do work that you love

– positivity, gratefulness and productivity

Scott Dinsmore’s ‘Live Your Legend’ is a great blog and source on how to do work that you love.

– What makes you happy? Do work to live your passion. Create work and life on your own terms.

– how to find out what you love to do

– how to connect with absolutely anyone

– how to start a blog that matters

‘The Fizzle Show’ is a great podcast that we follow. It’s by three guys (Corbett Barr, Chase Reeves, Caleb Wojcik) who are absolutely passionate about what they do, ie enabling the internet entrepreneur to grow their ‘thing’. Even if you sell goods & services ‘in the real world’ you are likely to have an online presence that should matter. We follow these guys to help us grow our own on-line audience!

– how to grow traffic on your site

– do great work and care about what you do

– tips on blogging

I’ve been reading some of these guys for years, some are new addition (such as the Fizzle Show). If this is a completely new scene to you some of the posts or podcasts may seem a little irrelevant at first but if you stick to them a completely new world full of possibilities and opportunities will open up! The key is to start studying the idea of ‘location independence’ as soon as possible. If you are a new mother or think you’d like to have a family at some point you should be right into reading this stuff. There’s little point of trying to acquire these skills the day before your maternity leave ends and you have to go back to work…

~ Miisa