The Remote CEO Life Podcast

S304: How To Work Online: Let’s Talk About Freelancing, Remote Jobs and Online Business

• Sophie Biggerstaff • Season 3 • Episode 4

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In this episode of the Remote CEO podcast, I share a few insights into my journey as a digital nomad currently living in Thailand.

I discuss the realities of running an online business while traveling, specifically focusing on creating location freedom.

Out of time, financial, and location freedom - location is definitely the easier one to achieve. There are various paths to achieve this lifestyle, including freelancing, remote work, and online business/entrepreneurship.

I share some of the best routes to achieving location freedom in this episode.

If you’d like to learn more about remote work, location freedom, and working online make sure you sign up for my FREE Find Your Freedom Model Masterclass where I’ll help you figure out which online work you can do based on your existing skills and passions.

Sign up here

#RemoteWork #DigitalNomad #LocationFreedom #Freelancing #OnlineBusiness #WorkFromAnywhere #Entrepreneurship #WorkLifeBalance #Travel #LocationIndependence

About The Remote CEO Podcast:

This podcast is for freedom-seeking online entrepreneurs, offering practical, actionable advice to help you step up into your new role as CEO by building an online business that works for you - not one you work for.

Hosted by Sophie Biggerstaff, an online business mentor, e-commerce founder, mental health advocate, and full-time digital nomad. 🙋‍♀️

👆Want to start an online business? Take my quiz to help you get started

👆 Want to achieve more freedom in your life? Find out how you can make it happen in my free masterclass.

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Sophie (00:01.282)
Hello and welcome back to the Remote CEO podcast. Today I am in Thailand. I have been in Thailand now for the past about 10 days, nearly two weeks. And I'm gonna be spending the next few months here. I am basing myself in Thailand for the first part of this year, escaping the European cold winter. If you know me, you know that I travel full time. I've been a nomad now for three years.

All possible because I started my own online business, which is obviously the purpose of conversation. The topic of conversation for this podcast is starting and figuring out how to make money online remotely. Hence the name, the Remote CEO podcast. And yeah, I've been in Thailand now for two weeks. I have lived in Asia previously. I used to live in Bali and I have been to Thailand quite a few times, but I'll be honest, it was an adjustment. Coming back to Thailand was actually an adjustment.

and trying to set myself up here again and remind myself how different being in Asia is versus being in Europe or Latin America. Like it is so different. And I definitely, I wasn't expecting to, but I definitely had a bit of a culture shock, which was interesting because I have actually been coming to Asia since I was 21 years old and I'm now nearly 33. So.

I know what to expect here, but I think in the past couple of years that I've been away, I last was in Asia at the beginning of 2022, 2022? No, sorry, 2023, the beginning of 2023. And I feel like I was in such a different place, like such a different headspace.

Sophie (01:53.912)
Ahem.

feel like I was in such a different head space and coming back this time, I just see everything so differently. Like one of the things I was like so excited to come back and do, right, was get on a little scooter and drive around the island to all of the different beaches. I've got on my scooter, bear in mind, I have a motorbike license. So I got on my scooter and I'm terrified. And I don't know if I'm just older and I now see the danger a little bit more or if I...

Or if it's just the roads are busier and I'm like a little bit nervous or it's because I haven't been riding for like at least 18 months. Last time I got on a bike was when I was in Mexico last summer. So I'm in 2023. So I don't know. It's been an adjustment. That's all I can say. There's so many things I love about Asia, but then there's so many things that just don't make sense. And I think, yeah, like coming back, you just remember like all of the things that.

last time you were like, what? This doesn't make any sense, which is kind of funny. But there's obviously still so many amazing things about being here as well. And I'm not complaining at all. Like I've set up my life so that I'm able to travel and explore places like this and live in beautiful places like this. And I've had to the curtain because it is so sunny over that side. This is like a room where it's literally got like more or less 360 windows apart from that wall. So

Yeah, I've had shut the window. Like obviously the weather's amazing. We're in high season. So yeah, it is really good. It's just taking a bit of time to adjust. And I think I want to share the reality of that. Like I am talking about running a business remotely and I am a remote CEO essentially. And I want to share the realities of what that actually looks like. And sometimes you get to a new location and you're like, okay. It's going to take me a minute to adjust to this. And that doesn't just throw off your life and like you having to reset up your life everywhere you go.

Sophie (03:55.498)
it throws off so many other things because I've been feeling a bit like, I need to remember where I need to go to the gym, for example, like, which gym should I go to? Or like, where do I go and work? And you've got to answer all of these questions that if you were staying in one location, you wouldn't necessarily have. How am going to make friends? How am I going to meet new people? Like, what's the process here? Like you have to set yourself up everywhere you go. And I'm so used to doing that, that to be honest, it feels quite normal to me, but I know to many people it doesn't. But

It has reminded me that this isn't a normal way of living. And I want to be really open and honest about the fact that actually it can be really hard to reset yourself up somewhere over and over again, especially if you travel quite quickly. This year, my goal is to travel way slower and not be moving around all the time, which is why I've come to Thailand for a good four or five months.

And I figured coming back to somewhere that I'd already been, it would be way easier to set myself up. So I think my expectations versus the reality were just a little bit different. Not complaining, like I say, it's still a massive privilege to be here and I'm here thanks to my online business. So today's episode, essentially, one, I wanted to share a little life update with you and tell you where I'm at and the reality is like, you know, sometimes it is a little bit weird to just up your life and...

go back and start again every few months is pretty intense. And I'm definitely starting to see that this isn't something that I wanna do forever. Like I love this lifestyle, but I definitely know that like traveling full time is not gonna be sustainable in the long run. So I feel like this year is like my year to try and figure out like what comes next basically, because I've been doing this for three years now. And then the second thing I wanna talk about today is

The most common jobs that I see people doing to work online to be able to live this lifestyle. don't necessarily, when I say live this lifestyle, I don't necessarily mean digital nomad lifestyle or travel life and working remotely, traveling. Like I just mean working online because ultimately if you do work online, you're able to do different, do different things like that and be able to be flexible in your location of where you're working. So maybe you do want to travel and become a digital nomad, which is

Sophie (06:16.461)
like highly recommend for certain periods of your life, or maybe you just want a bit more flexibility to go and work from wherever you are. You don't want to go into an office every day. So I just wanted to share with you some of the jobs and the businesses that I've seen people create, which have had the most success to give them that freedom of location, flexibility. And I think when it comes to creating freedom in your life, having location freedom is one of the

Biggest privileges you can have because the world is big. There's so many opportunities for you to go and work from different places, which is really cool. And even if it is just like you don't want to go into an office every day, you just literally want to go to your local cafe and work there every day. Cool. Like you're going to meet so many new people by doing that. Like you're going to be surrounded by more like-minded people because everyone else has made that decision as well. I think it's a really powerful thing to have location freedom.

Because freedom works in different ways, right? You have time freedom, financial freedom and location freedom. And today I really want to focus on talking about location freedom because I feel like that is one that is just such a privilege to have. And I'd also say out of all of those freedoms, it's the most easy to attain. And I say that because you have more options. You don't necessarily just have to start your own.

online business to be able to have location freedom. There's other things, other routes you can go down. You could do remote work, you could be a freelancer. All of those will give you the options of being able to be location freedom, having location freedom. So I just wanted to talk you through some of the things that I'm actually going to be sharing in my free, mask cast, find your freedom model, which you're more than welcome to join if finding freedom and living a life.

outside of that nine to five, working online is something that you wanna pursue this year. I will drop that link to the masterclass in the show notes. But I just wanna talk you through some of the bits that I actually called out to the people that are joining that masterclass. And one of the things is if you want location freedom, you don't have to start your own online business. Like great if you do wanna start your own online business, but there are other ways to be able to have that location freedom that might work better for you. Like being an online business owner,

Sophie (08:33.93)
is very different to being a freelancer and very different to remote work. So I want to kind of determine those different options for you to show you that it doesn't have to be that you spend all your time starting up a business. You have got other routes to entry that lifestyle. Obviously, if you're starting online business, that's amazing. Like I highly advocate for that because I think that's the most long term option that you could potentially achieve.

And that obviously offers you then extra freedom opportunity. You can go into financial freedom, you can go into time freedom, which you don't necessarily always have if you are doing freelance or remote work. But if online business doesn't sound like it is for you, where you kind of have to literally start from scratch and start and build something from base level up, then maybe you want to start off as a freelancer or maybe you want to go down the route of remote work.

Freelancing is essentially where you are offering your skills on a project basis for a fee from a client. So I started off as freelance when I started my online business. Most people I would say start an online business via freelance. So you go freelance based on like, let's say for example, I was a fashion buyer in my career, my nine to five career. I had all of these skillsets for fashion, for retail, for e-commerce. I utilized those and went freelance.

to start working for smaller companies and pitch myself as a consultant to some of these other companies and was able to secure work that didn't have to mean that I went into an office and worked nine to five every single day. I could pick and choose which projects I was working on and basically deliver a work within certain criterias that I'd agreed with that client, which was amazing. Now, being freelance doesn't necessarily give you financial freedom or time freedom because

Ultimately, you are still trading your time for money. You're still usually having to actually do the work. Whereas if you start your own online business, you can usually create scalable offers that allow you for those time and financial freedoms to come alongside the location freedom.

Sophie (10:42.222)
So freelance doesn't necessarily give you all of the freedoms. However, it is a really great way to start that journey, particularly if you want location freedom, it's amazing because you can pick and choose your own hours usually. Then you've also got remote work. So remote work is usually when you're applying to a company job. So like you would in a nine to five, but actually you can work from wherever and they don't really care where you are in the world. Sometimes you might be bound to certain regions. I kind of know lot of companies in Europe allow you to work in Spain, for example.

but you could travel anywhere in Spain or in the US, you could be anywhere in the US, for example. But some places will allow you to work from wherever, which is also really cool. And that option is definitely better if you want a bit more stability in your life, particularly if you want more financial stability, more financial security. You have way more benefits when it comes to having a remote job. The con might be that you have less flexibility in where you're working from because

of time zones, for example. Like I know quite a lot of remote jobs are based from US based companies, in which case you kind of need to be in a time zone that works for US working hours, which doesn't work. For example, if you are in Asia right now and you're working for a US company, you'd be working all through the night, which isn't obviously ideal. And obviously when you work for a company, they are dictating your salary. I'm sure there's a little bit of like...

a wiggle room when it comes to negotiating that as they would with freelance and as they would in your nine to five as well. But in general, they're going to still be dictating it. You're going to reach a ceiling cap. You're going to be working certain hours. You're still trading time for money. So it depends on what your goal is for that location freedom, whether you want to be fully in control. Obviously, then you'd go down the route of online business, mainly in control, freelance, a little bit less in control remote work.

which path resonates with you is gonna be dependent on your lifestyle goals and like how you want to live. And one of the things I'm teaching Find Your Freedom Masterclass is getting really clear on like what do you want your life to look like and design your online work capacity to work for you based on that goal. So for example, for me, I knew that I wanted the freedom to travel and work remotely but still earn a lot of money and have financial freedom and time freedom.

Sophie (13:05.206)
from wherever I was in the world. So that's why I went down the route of online business because I wanted all three of those freedoms. When I first started, I was living in London, so freelancers worked for me, like that was okay. Trading time for money was working for me. But the more that I progressed and I went freelance whilst I was traveling as well, I realized it didn't work because I had to show up, I had to physically be there. I had to still trade that time for money and work with clients directly on a one-on-one basis.

And based on the lifestyle that I was living with this remote travel life where I was moving constantly digital nomad, going from city to city, location to location, that didn't work because I had to still show up. like sometimes, like I say, when I got to Thailand, for example, I was a little bit out of sorts because I had to figure out my whole life again. That takes up quite a lot of energy. So then having to then trade your time for money and actually sit down and do work.

freelance didn't necessarily work for me in that circumstance and neither would have remote work. So for me, my personal goal where I wanted to be able to travel quite fast and be able to set myself up and focus on myself as well. My goal is also to have more time for me and focus on me rather than somebody else's business. Those two options wouldn't necessarily work for me, which is why I personally went down the route then about a year and a half into freelancing of actually starting my own properly online business that was a bit scalable. So

I just want to talk you through like based on those three things, what are the most common things that I see people doing? Just to give you, if you are thinking about that you want a bit more location freedom in your life, what kind of jobs can you actually do? How can you transfer the existing skills that you've got? And what does that actually look like if location freedom is the goal that you have? So I see it quite a lot where

People do, like I say, go into that location freedom first because it's the easiest one to kind of achieve. It doesn't require a fixed address. You've got time zone flexibility and you can operate pretty much from anywhere. Like that is still a massive privilege to have. So I quite often see people go down that freelance route to be able to achieve that. And the most common ways that I see people do freelance is social media managers.

Sophie (15:26.19)
graphic designers, copywriters, digital marketers, they're doing SEO ads, video editors and virtual assistants. They, I would say, are the most common freelance jobs that I see people doing whilst they are traveling or working remotely because you literally just need an internet connection. You don't really need to be sat in an office to do certain things for those jobs. So...

Those, if you are already that in your nine to five, one of those positions, that is very easily transferable into like freelance work. could potentially, if location freedom is a goal for you, you could potentially even propose it to your company that you went more freelance. So you had that location flexibility, but we're continuing to do the role that you are already doing. So that is great. And you can definitely charge more when you're freelance versus if you were in-house, because obviously you're self-employed, you've got other things to be thinking about like,

that you might not have work all year round, sick pay, benefits, none of that. You don't really get it. Obviously, if you're freelance, you have to kind of create your own benefits. But they are the jobs generally that I see people doing on a freelance basis. I have also met a few freelance therapists and personal trainers, for example. So people that are...

actually coaching people in real life. So they are more so doing like video calls. So for that, that's great to do that freelance. The only thing I would say that I see people struggle with is their location of where they work because they absolutely need like the highest quality internet connections in which case usually they're a little bit more bound to a city rather than jumping on a boat to an island, for example, which may or may not have the best Wi-Fi. So

When you are working directly with clients, obviously you want to make sure that you are setting yourself up to be able to deliver, right? So that's definitely another freelance role that I see people doing. Also teachers, I meet a lot of teachers now. would say that that doesn't, depending on who you work for, and I've met quite a few people that work for Cambly, for example, they don't get paid a huge amount, in which case they need to still work quite a lot of hours.

Sophie (17:41.324)
to be able to sustain their lifestyle. And if you live quite cheaply in like a location like Thailand or Vietnam, for example, you're probably fine. You're probably living on like quite a decent level, but obviously you still want to be able to sustain a nice lifestyle whilst you're living that location freedom dream, right? So I would suggest that if you are gonna do teaching, you find a platform that allows you to increase the rates because I think Cambly is quite low from what I understand.

But also gives you that flexibility freedom, which is amazing. In the remote world jobs, remote job world, in the remote job world, I see more people working in tech and finance, a few in like digital marketing, but I wouldn't necessarily say that that is definitely something that I see people actually having remote jobs in. Some people in customer service. So if you definitely have...

like a tech background, like you're a developer, a coder, you do IT, or you, yeah, you do customer support. Like that remote work is pretty easy to be found for you guys. think like quite a lot of people that I know that work for companies are in that world. Also UX, UIs, that's also a really popular.

job that's actually, they're still employed essentially by a company. They just have that flexibility to work from wherever. Like I said earlier, most of those jobs are with US based companies or sometimes in like central Europe as well. And I actually, in this free masterclass, I give you a PDF guide, which has loads of companies that I know for a fact give you remote work jobs. So it's definitely worth signing up.

the masterclass if finding a remote job is something that you want to do. And then obviously I do meet a lot of people that have their own online business as well. I would say when you're traveling as digital nomad, it is the harder route because you are having to think about a million and one things. But it is doable and it is...

Sophie (19:48.194)
definitely the route that gives you way more freedom to be able to lap up and enjoy this lifestyle. So a lot of mentors and coaches like myself, particularly in that business world, a lot of kind of more so in like the spiritual world as well, like healing, wellbeing kind of things as well. Also a lot of course creators.

So again, I do a lot of course creators, digital product sellers. There's definitely a big market there for online business owners to have that location freedom because you don't, again, you don't need to be in one location to do that. I also see people that do copywriting and ghost writing and they set that up in more like an agency format. Same with kind of digital marketing and social media. I've met quite a lot of people that have an agency.

within that world. Ghost writing and voiceover artists are also really popular. And also podcast management is something that I've seen quite a lot of people do as well, which I think is great because you can scale all of those things as well and create them into like agency formats.

And then also, obviously, I do meet quite a lot actually of e-commerce business founders. Most of them are doing dropship or affiliate, similar to how I work with my e-commerce business, Tina. It's all on an affiliate and a dropship basis because that means you don't have to be in a physical location to send out your inventory or look after your inventory. So it works really well. And I meet a lot of people that do e-commerce, as their side hustle or their full time.

So it's definitely possible. One thing I will say with e-commerce is that most of them have quite a lot of money to invest in ads, whether they've earned that money, raised that money or it's self-funded. Like that is definitely quite important. I think if you're going to be doing the dropship affiliate route to have that in mind, but essentially they're the main jobs that I would say I see people working on when they are working on a location freedom basis.

Sophie (21:56.522)
If that sounds like it resonates with you and you think that your job could go freelance or you could get into remote work or you might want to start an online business based on the skills and the passions that you've already got from your existing roles, definitely make sure you join my Find Your Freedom Masterclass because I will literally be talking you through all of the things step-by-step that you need to do to be able to make that happen for yourself based on the lifestyle goal that you have. I am literally going to do a whole workshop with you to get you really self-reflexing and thinking.

about why you would want that location freedom or the time freedom or the financial freedom, whatever freedom is looking like for you. And then work backwards from that to identify which business should you start, which freelance projects can you do, which remote job would you want to go down the route of so that you can start thinking about how you can take that next step into actually building that life for yourself. Because so many people don't, so many people say they want that location freedom. The amount of people that I say, you're so lucky to have that location freedom to be able to go and live wherever you want.

That's not luck. I have created this life for myself because I knew exactly what I wanted my life to look like and I worked backwards from that and built it for myself. So if you want that, that is possible for you, but it does take you taking that first step. Nobody is gonna do it for you. So please, please, if you want some more freedom in your life, location, financial or time freedom, I really encourage you to join this free masterclass that I'm hosting. Make sure you click on the link. You can subscribe to any time.

you're going to get access to the free masterclass, which is about an hour long. So if nothing else, you're all you're doing is spending an hour learning something new and maybe doing a bit of self-reflection, you're definitely going to take something away whether you decide to this is the route for you or not. And you get the PDF guide, which has got all of the self-reflective prompts and some extra information in here, which is going to help you identify.

the exact online business or job that you could do. I also have an online quiz that is gonna help you if you can't figure out, I've got this skill set or I want this level of freedom. How do I match that up to what business I can start? The quiz is gonna help you match that up for you. So I've got lots of resources basically. If you want to start living a little bit more freely, maybe come and be a digital nomad, maybe come and meet me out here in Thailand in a couple of months time, who knows?

Sophie (24:12.91)
There's definitely a lot of options for you. And I just wanted to kind of share today what some of those options look like, because I think a lot of people know that they want this lifestyle or know that they want a bit more flexibility in where they work from, but they don't necessarily know what they can do to actually get it, get themselves there. So.

That kind of concludes what I wanted to tell you about today and talk through some of the roles that potentially could work for you. So if any of those resonate, make sure you click the link in the show notes to join the free masterclass and I will see you very soon.