The BIGG Successs Show
Leaping From Place To Place - See The World While You Work
Learn about extreme telecommuting with our special guest Carmen Bolanos from NuNomad.com. Read the show summary at biggsuccess.com.
Welcome to The Big Success Show. Today, we'll discuss how to see the world while you work. The Big Success Show with George and Mary Lynn. In honor of Leap Year, we want to talk today about leaping from place to place while you work. Stage one of this whole process was people realized that they could work at home instead of going to the office every day. And now there's this growing trend of people who are realizing that I don't have to be at home. I can work from anywhere in the world that has the right infrastructure. And we have a guest today who is doing just that. Her name is Carmen Belonios. She's an executive coach and the founder of New Nomad that's NU Nomad.com. It's the place for people who work and live remotely. Like I said, she knows firsthand because she travels several months each year with her family while working. She's also contributed to the book Quit Dreaming and Go! Carmen, thank you so much for joining us on The Big Success Show today. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Well, Carmen, we're happy to have you here today. Let's dive right into some questions. Obviously, some occupations work better for this than others. You're an executive coach. What characteristics of coaching make it work so well for working remotely? Well, as you might know, a lot of coaches work by telephone already. And so that's one of the reasons I got into coaching. The telephone obviously makes us mobile. And by seeing our clients by telephone and using internet for communication in between our calls, pretty much we can be wherever we want, whenever we want. Now, have you been somewhere, Carmen, where the call wouldn't get through or you couldn't get online? I mean, how do you know before you go that your location will support your wireless business? Well, the funny thing is I have lost calls, but every call I have lost has been sitting here in my home in Austin, Texas. That's funny. Call while I've been traveling. And, you know, your question is a good one. How do you know? And basically, like any preparation that we recommend for travel, it's doing your homework upfront. Finding out what is the internet access, where you're going, what's the phone access, and being prepared before you leave to work with whatever you have available. So on your site, new nomad.com, is there a place where you can do some research like that? Yes, we're developing destination pages. I think we have about eight right now for the most visited countries where we talk about, you know, what internet access is, what phone companies service that for mobile phones, how you can get SIM cards that are specific to the country that you're visiting. So, yeah, I would say go to our destination pages, and you'll find a lot of information. And, Carmen, what are some of the most popular destinations? It depends on what you're trying to do. Some of the most popular travel destinations are the traditional ones that you think of, you know, France, Italy, Spain are all quite popular. But if you're trying to lower your cost of living at your destination, you know, for the long haul, I would say the Asian destinations and some South American destinations are popular. Thailand is a very popular one. Interesting. Carmen, this is a growing trend, but here in the states, we're being faced with a recession, and at the same time getting hit with higher energy prices. That's putting a damper on travel in general. Has that had any effect on the new nomad lifestyle? Well, certainly, you know, as prices go up, people are thinking twice about everything that they do, including the travel. And, yes, people are, I think, being more careful about where they go. Like I said, you can offset a lot of your costs in travel or in nomad by choosing a destination where the costs of living are low, by living like a local person as opposed to a tourist. If you're a homeowner, you can look into house trading opportunities. If you're not a homeowner, you can look into house trading opportunities worldwide, and all of those choices will dramatically lower your cost of living. The other thing that will lower your cost of living is staying in one destination for a longer period of time as opposed to moving frequently. That's just like homeownership here you want to stay put, right? Exactly. It makes sense. And coming up, Carmen shares some tips on how to get started as a new nomad. Today, we're talking to Carmen Bolanos, the founder of newnomad.com, and it's the community of professionals who want to maintain their income while they travel the world. Now, Carmen, if I wanted to do that, how would I get started as a new nomad? Well, the advice is going to be like any business owner and any business. The first thing you should do is to develop your business to a point of stability. You want to have stable income coming in, stable cash of clientele, and good word of mouth referral system so that your money can keep developing as you are traveling. After that, I would say start looking into how to break the change from your brick and mortar office into a mobile office, including moving from the desktop to a laptop, understanding what technologies are such as Skype, or other technologies that allow you to back up your computer remotely or view your computer remotely. And then the last thing I would say would be start shedding your current life of things that might keep you trapped, such as clients who will only meet face to face, heavy debt, maybe pets that need a lot of caring if you can't find someone to care for them. So those are the three top things. We list a lot more in the book. There's a reason to buy the book, then. Exactly. You can find a written summary of today's show on our blog at big success.com. That's also where we have links to the book that Carmen contributed to quit dreaming and go. We also have a link to her site, new nomad. That's new and you nomad.com. And also we have a link to Carmen's coaching page because her story is truly amazing, and you should check that out too. Let's get our big quote for the day. Our quote today comes from William Bolito, and I think Maryland, he was thinking about us when we were kids when he said this. Adventure must start with running away from home. Yeah, but without the wagon, right, Carmen? So run away to your home office away from your home office, right, Carmen? Go for it. Hey, by the way, where are you off to next? Costa Rica. All right. Sounds a lot warmer than we have it here in Illinois. Yeah. I hope to be writing a Costa Rican destination page on there. There you go. Work and while you travel, Carmen, thank you so much for being on the big success show today. Thank you for having me. It's great talking with you, Carmen. Man, we learned so much. Boy, we did. You're ready to pack up and go, aren't you, Maryland? I'm set. Let's do it. Well, I'll tell you what, before you do, let's tell everybody what we're going to talk about on our next show. We're going to bridge the generation gap and talk about age matters. All right. Until then, here's to your big success. The Big Success Show at B-I-G-G Success.com. [MUSIC PLAYING]