Internet Business Mastery: Business Development and Internet Marketing for the Web 2.0 Age

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Sterling: This is Internet Business Mastery, episode 108.

In a world where bosses control your life, and thoughts of escape fill your mind, where inspiration seems dead and cynicism rules the masses. You have a desire to break free; you feel the need to take control. Now there exists a place where the secrets of freedom and wealth are given to those who believe. Internet Business Mastery.com – free your mind!

Sterling: Hello, and welcome to Internet Business Mastery online at Internet Business Mastery.com, I’m Sterling….

Jay: And I’m Jay….

Sterling: And we’re here to help you escape the ‘9 to 5’ and live the lifestyle of your dreams by turning your life’s passion into a profitable internet business, even if you’re just getting started today. On this episode of Internet Business Mastery, we talk about how to have freedom of location with an online business. And in our Quick Tip, we share a tool that can save you from losing all of your site content overnight.

And we’d like to also remind you that if you’d like to get a jumpstart on creating your own profitable internet business using our proven system, you can claim your risk free trial membership to the Internet Business Mastery Academy by going to freeaudiogift.com.

So Jay, what’s been going on?

Jay: Well I guess first and foremost I’m just excited that the new Academy, Academy 2.0 is launched. It’s our 5^th anniversary of Internet Business Mastery, 5 years ago this month in October we launched this show of ours not even realizing I guess where this would take us. So we thought what better way to celebrate but to just launch an even better new and improved version of our Academy training, which has our A-Z how to start your own internet business system.

And the previous Academy was awesome, lots of great success stories that it brought but you know of course in the last two years we’ve learned a lot of lessons and just wanted to take it to the next level. So it’s been exciting to see that go up and have people signing up for it, getting great feedback and we’re just really looking forward to seeing people accelerate even quicker now towards the kinds of success that the Academy has brought people in the past.

Sterling: Yeah absolutely, one of the things I really enjoy doing was streamlining the process even more and helping get people to money faster. The nice way of being able to get to control of their life even faster, I love that.

Jay: Yeah absolutely.

Sterling: It’s also interesting, I think back to the five years, it actually went by incredibly fast now that we’re saying ‘5 year anniversary,’ and it’s funny because I remember you and I started talking let’s say in September 5 years ago about podcasting and I think by the end of that week we had decided and were all prepped to do the first episode. It was that fast, it was like oh my gosh we’ve got to do this, this is amazing this podcasting thing. Let’s do it, let’s do it right now and I think we did like six episodes before we even put the thing up?

Jay: Right we recorded a whole bunch of them and then we finally put them…we recorded a bunch of them in advance just to make sure it was all going to work out and then we put that first one up and I remember us joking about ‘hi mom, you’re probably the only one listening out there!’

Sterling: Yeah even my mom!

Jay: And now here we are a million downloads later so it’s thrilling to have been on this journey and we just want to thank all those who listening because obviously that’s why we do this, to reach out and offer whatever value we can and our hope is to inspire and offer you the kind of knowledge that will help you get to whatever the next level of success is for you in the next level of lifestyle, freedom, fulfillment, all those things in your life. So thanks to all those who have been listening whether it’s been short or long. And here’s to another five years!

And now the featured segment…

Jay: Alright, in this episode we are going to continue in what we’re calling our Freedom Series. A few episodes ago we talked the freedom of time; freedom is one of the big things we love championing. One of the reasons why we love internet business, we know it’s one of the main reasons people want to start their own internet business.

Talking to a lot of people who listen to our show they say they want to make more money, but then one of the big things is they want to be able to have just more control in their life, provide more things for their family, have more options available to them and certainly internet business offers that in many, many ways putting you in control of your time, giving you the money and finances in order to open up those new possibilities.

But one of the types of freedom that we also love that internet business brings is that freedom of location. This is just pulling examples from our own lives if you’ve listened to the show for a while, you probably remember I’ve lived in New York City at one point. I was doing business in Utah and also my wife’s like, “Hey, I’d love to go and get my degree at this school that’s off in New York City,” and she had been really supportive of me when I quit my job so I wanted to be supportive of her.

And I was able to just pick up and move my business there because I was doing business online at that point and I could just take my business with me. And we’ve been able to live in Alaska for the summertime where my family’s at and spend more time with them, or we’ve even gone to Argentina. Even though we were there for three months, we didn’t miss a beat.

Sterling and I kept running the business even though he was up in the United States and I was in Argentina. And then a lot of those things happened even like last minute, it was like hey let’s go to Alaska and a couple of weeks later we’re there. Or hey, it’d be cool to live in Argentina and a month later we’re there. And it’s just been a lot of fun to enjoy that, and we know that’s something that a lot of people…a big reason why…and a lot of people out there, there’s different styles of freedom of location but they’re looking for that kind of control over where they might live.

Sterling: Yeah and for me, I was able to do the stereotypical success thing and move to the beach in San Diego. Again, something I couldn’t have done working a regular day job because what I did before doing internet business, there was nobody doing it down in San Diego so I wouldn’t have been able to move down there. But with internet business I was able to go live right on the beach and enjoy that beach lifestyle, and then I ended up actually moving again from there which I’ll talk about a little later in this particular episode.
But that’s the kind of idea behind freedom of location, the world is now open for you to go there because it’s an internet business, it’s a world-wide business that can be accessed anywhere with an internet connection.

Jay: And you know there’s a couple of myths I want to bust here because I shared how I’ve been able to benefit from it, and you shared how you’ve been able to benefit and there’s a difference there in that you’re not necessarily wanting to…my wife and I are just like, “Yeah! Let’s pick up and go live in another country!” You just wanted to live by the beach and now you’ve moved back to be by your girls, but this could be…it doesn’t necessarily have to be somebody who wants to travel all the time.

That’s not necessarily freedom of location, it’s also just the ability to say yeah, you know what, if I could live anywhere now that I’m in control of my own life and how I’m doing things, maybe you want to live right downtown in the city. Or maybe you want to live out in the woods in a cabin where there’s nobody else and you just have your internet connection out there but you never did it before because it was going to be a two-hour commute in to town when you did have a job.

But if you did have that freedom now you can live in that ideal place. Or maybe it’s just knowing instead of living in this city where this is where all the tech and engineering jobs are at, now I actually can go and move to the city where the bulk of my family lives because I’m not longer tied to that one particular job. And that’s how most people make that decision about where they live is it’s based on frequently their job and where they can get work, and that’s understandable. But I know a lot of people even though maybe we don’t stop to think that because maybe this idea of freedom of location is because we’re trained to think of our lives as revolving around our work, our employment so much, maybe we don’t stop to think if I just had the option to live anywhere, where would I want to live? Who are the people I would want to live by? What would that look like?

Would it be a condo in the city? Would it be a cabin in the woods? Would it be a little house on the beach? Would it be just in the suburbs next to my mom and dad on one side and my brother and sisters down the street or whatever the case may be, and having the decision to do that. So that was the firth myth I wanted to bust, we’re not just talking about…freedom of location doesn’t necessarily mean that person who wants to travel abroad and go place to place.

I mean that might be but just whatever the circumstances are. And the second myth I want to bust is that it’s not necessarily…especially in this day and age, I think maybe in the past people though oh well you have to be a millionaire or a billionaire to have that kind of flexibility to be able to live in a foreign country or travel often, or be able to just choose wherever you want to live.

But the truth of the matter is, if you set your life up in the right way and just kind of reorder your priorities just a little bit and understand just a few key concepts (and we’ll talk about those later), it’s actually very feasible to enjoy this freedom of location. I know people on very minimal incomes and minimal budgets who are able to do it and live fabulous lifestyles while they do. And so that’s what I wanted to point out as well, just a couple of little myths that popped in my mind that I wanted to get out of the way there.

Let’s talk about the benefits that come with freedom of location and then we’ll talk about how you can achieve it.

Sterling: Yeah, let’s do it!

Jay: I mean the first benefit is you get to live wherever you want! We’ve already touched on this but what’s your ideal climate? I mean my wife and I moved to Portland where we live right now because we wanted to go to a big enough city where we still had an urban lifestyle but somewhere where it didn’t get too hot and it didn’t get too cold, and it didn’t snow. And so it has all those things here and it’s perfect for us, and that’s what we chose.

Sterling: Yeah, and it’s interesting to design your life around just all those kinds of things rather than oh, my job’s here. I don’t like snow, but my job’s here so I’ve got to be a part of this. Or, I do like the seasons but I have to live in L.A. because that’s where this particular tech thing is, and I’d rather have the seasons, but nope. But now we can design that based on something as simple as what’s your ideal climate and for some people too, it’s nice to be able to live near family and friends. And some people again, have to live somewhere other than where family is, and if they want to live next to their family there you can. Like internet business is such a world-wide business and as long as there’s internet access, you can operate your business. It just means you can be anywhere with internet access.

Jay: Absolutely. Another benefit is that you do get to discover new places or new cultures. For some people, that is part of what drives them. Some people just want the simple life next to their family and some people they’re like hey, wouldn’t that be cool every year or two to be able to pick up and go to a new place? And so you have that flexibility and even to go and live abroad. I mean like we said, we lived in Argentina.

And then just having the flexibility too to be able to change locations on a moment’s notice. Like I said, a lot of those decisions to move to New York, to move to Alaska, to move to Argentina. All of a sudden it feels like a good time to try something new, let’s do it. And within a few weeks we were there. Or a couple of years back, when my Mom was diagnosed with cancer. She’s cancer free now thank goodness but at that time I was able to just pick up and go down and spend a lot of time in Utah where she was being treated and still keep my business going, but like if I’d been an employee I would have blown out my sick and vacation days very quickly, it would have been hard for me to pull away on such a moment’s notice like that.

But it was great…in fact when we launched we talked about this 2-year anniversary of the Academy, 5-year for Internet Business Mastery. When we launched the Academy the very first time back in 2008, I was down in Utah. I remember the night that we launched it, I was actually staying in my Grandma’s apartment where my Mom was staying waiting to go get a scan or something. And so there I was just working on the business. And we had one of our biggest launches ever and something to this day is the number one money maker for our business and it was all launched while I was somewhere completely than a couple of weeks before I didn’t even plan on being, but it just worked out that way that I needed and wanted to be there. So it’s nice to have that flexibility.

Sterling: Yeah, and for me this past Christmas, my kids were back in Salt Lake City and they told me that they wanted me back with them. And within a couple of months, I was able to have a home and be back in Salt Lake City where I had been in San Diego. And that wouldn’t have been possible or at least as fast if I had a job that kept me in the city I was originally in. but I was able to make that decision and as much as I absolutely loved San Diego and plan on being back, I had the ability to move even based on how my kids are moving or where my kids are and stuff. I mean I get so excited when I think of this idea of location independence as just yet another benefit of doing internet business.

Jay: Alright, so there’s some of the benefits that we’ve talked about there. And I’m sure a number of people have thought yeah maybe that’s nice. I mean we’ve given you a new perspective, oh maybe this is something I would like to be able to pick more specifically where I live. A lot of people I think if you ask them, they do wish they could travel more. So let’s talk about how you can establish this kind of freedom of location in your own life.

The number one thing to do I guess would be to…it’s kind of a lifestyle design question is, decide on your ideal location. Decide what are the factors that you want to have? Like for instance before we moved to Portland my wife and I sat down and said well, where would the next ideal place be for us? At the time we were actually staying with her family just a bit, we were spending some time with them kind of in between, didn’t have really anywhere in particular that we needed or wanted to be.

We were just kind of had been traveling around a lot, we had a few suitcases and we just one day sat down and said well, what would that look like and we made decisions about ideal climate and what type of city. Did we want it to be a bigger city where there’s still a minimum of culture and stuff or we have a urban lifestyle where we could live without even necessarily owning a car. We haven’t owned a car for many years while living in New York City so we were very used to that kind of lifestyle.

We wanted to have an apartment or a condo where we could just walk downstairs and there’s cafes and restaurants and grocery store and all that stuff right there in walking distance. We had a very specific picture and then we went online and starting looking up to find those kinds of places. So that would be the first thing and even if you feel like you might be a few years away from being in that position, that’s one thing that I still think you can do right now because it still starts feeding that success mechanism that works inside of us, that piece of our self-conscious that is always there to come up with creative solutions and drive us towards new success, new achievements.

And if you feed that with imagery, and feelings, and the kinds of things that you want to have and experience, the more specific you are then the more it’s going to help kick that in action, almost like a cruise control on a car. And so maybe even start getting magazines and cutting out pictures of the types of places you want to live and having those to look at often. But write it down, what are some of the criteria, that ideal location that you would like to live once you have achieved enough freedom of location to do that.

Sterling: Yeah, and I did a very similar thing a couple of years before I ended up moving down to the beach in San Diego. I started doing my research and I would take a vacation down there and start looking around. And the great thing is, once the business was really working out and I saw oh my gosh, I might really be able to move there very soon, I was actually able to use the business to help me find a place down in San Diego and I think I’ve told this story before but I’ll just kind of mention it lightly again.

I was able to do even more research with Twitter and my Twitter and Facebook lists because I put it out saying, ‘Hey, I’m thinking of moving down to San Diego. If you live down there and know a great place to be or which little city down there should I come check out, let me know,’ and I had a lot of people tell me. And it’s funny because the two guys that really gave me the biggest breakdown…what happened was I went down there for a second vacation.

I went there once to look around and then I went again and they showed me around and are now both good friends to this day because of a Twitter list, just putting it out to my big Twitter list. And I was able to use the business to even find that place, and I finally went down there and I found a place with the help of these two guys and moved down a month or so later.

Jay: That’s awesome. Yeah, the power of the social media connection.

Sterling: Yeah, that’s so funny.

Jay: Yeah, it’s very interesting the things that can come from that, absolutely. Alright, so once you’ve kind of decided on your ideal location, I mean obviously in order to enjoy that kind of freedom of location and not be completely tied to where you’re at by…maybe it’s by…most likely it’s by some kind of employment. I mean right now you may be going to school or maybe you already live by family and that’s where you want to stay put.

But maybe there’s a different type of place you’d like to live or different neighborhood you’d like to live in, but there’s a few different things that you want to start moving towards in terms of your income model. I mean something that we learned many years ago reading a great book called “The Cash Flow Quadrant,” is there’s four main areas that you can pull your income from. The one that most people pull their income from is from being an employee, you call that the “E Quadrant.”

The second most common is that people drive their income from what’s called the “S Quadrant,” or being self-employed. So that’s a lot of self-employed professionals, maybe freelancers or professionals like designers, doctors, lawyers, those kinds of things, CPAs, etc. Then the quadrants that you want to be in are the “B Quadrant,” which is business owner and there’s a difference between self-employed as kind of…most self-employed people still, if they stop working, the business goes away. They are the business, it’s dollars for hours whereas business owner is something that’s a little more passive, more of a scalable system.

And then the “I Quadrant,” is investing money in stocks or other things like that real estate, etc. where your money is out there working for you. So you definitely need to start bringing yourself out of the “E Quadrant,” and into ideally the “B Quadrant,” or maybe over to the “S Quadrant,” but ideally into the “B” or the “I Quadrant” as much as possible.

And of course our favorite channel to do this is with the internet, but if you’re not quite there where you have your own internet business, one thing you can start doing is you can start telecommuting for your employer. And this is something that Tim Ferriss talked about in his book ‘The 4-Hour Work Week.’ One of our Platinum students from last year, his whole niche and site is about helping people transition from that “E Quadrant,” into a more telecommuting experience where now they can work from home and they regain all kinds of time and control because now they’re not commuting all the time.

And his site is TellAWorker.com and so he’s got all kinds of articles, and resources and ideas about how to transition into that. But approach your employer and say, “Hey, let’s start, let’s just try a trial period. Maybe one day a week and tell them you’ll track your productivity to prove that you’re more productive that way, have a plan and stats to back you up, and then go and present it. You might be surprised, it’s becoming more and more common for this to happen.

And of course, if you do arrange this kind of a thing, use the saved time – the time that maybe that hour or two a day that you’re no longer commuting, now use that time to put it into something like an internet business, something that eventually can get you completely out of you employment.

Sterling: And actually we had one of our Platinum people as well, I believe he went down to part-time and was able to do it from home. Like he worked out some deal with his employer where he could do it that way just so that we would have that other 20 hours a week to work on his internet business. And he worked it out to be able to do that and I mean that was his first step, was developing that virtual business model so he started with the telecommute for your employer. It’s awesome.

Jay: The other thing that you can start thinking about is going into more of a consulting or freelancing model. I mean if you are an employee right now, and of course it depends on what agreements you have with your employer but think about in your skill set, is there a way to start transitioning into the “S Quadrant?” And that’s an appropriate thing to do often before getting into the business owner thing.

People do kind of go into the self-employed thing first. It’s kind of a stepping stone into that so ask yourself maybe is there a way I can start doing more of a consulting or a freelance type thing where you don’t have to work with the…test out working with your clients in person but more virtually. I know lots of people who with Skype and GoToMeeting and things like that and just getting on the phone now and again – even when we were in Argentina we had one of these Vonage phone lines where if I needed to I could get on the phone with Sterling or any of the people we work with and so much of our work is done through email and Skype. I mean I even know like therapists who are doing therapy virtually over Skype now.

Sterling: I was just actually going to say, one of my best friends is a psychotherapist and he does it over Skype, isn’t that amazing?

Jay: That’s awesome.

Sterling: Suddenly he now has this huge world that he can help rather than just the little tiny local community he happens to live in, it’s amazing.

Jay: So maybe if you already are doing that kind of consulting or freelance or self-employed professional work, maybe start bringing in clients with the expectation that the work will be more virtual. And test that out and see how it goes, and if you can transition more and more your hours into that kind of a thing, then now all of a sudden you can have clients all over the nation or all over the world. You don’t have to have clients just in your one locality.

So finding a way to transition to that, so you can either telecommuting for your employer or you can kind of transition into a consulting or freelance/virtual consulting or freelance situation. Or then there’s the ultimate solution.

Sterling: Yeah, the ultimate solution is start an internet business! Of course that’s the one we highly suggest, and this should actually be the ultimate goal so we believe.

Jay: Yeah, that’s what drew us so much to…I know when I first got a glimpse of what this internet marketing/internet business information marketing thing was it was like, wow that is so cool because of the freedom it gives me. I can help people all over the world, I can reach people all over the world, I can do the business from anywhere there’s an internet connection, I can do it in whatever niche or topic I want.

I’m somebody who wants to learn all kinds of different things and so just that flexibility and the different possibilities, I can see with real estate investing I mean people do have real estate all over the place but it gets a little trickier. But it’s so much easier to systemize and have a virtual business, it’s just a powerful, powerful channel. The internet certainly has changed e-commerce or just commerce and the economy all together, to have this channel for reaching your audience and delivering value.

And when information is your product, you don’t even have to worry about keeping inventory, or an office, or a warehouse or anything anywhere you’re at. So that’s why we’re such champions of this business model. Because whatever topic is your topic of choice, whatever audience it is that you want to reach, that you most ideally want to work with or are working with right now, even if you are an employee now, even if you are a self-employed consultant or freelancer, you can start transitioning yourself into more of an internet based virtual product based business where now you’re not tied to one location and not just exchanging your time dollars for hours. So that’s the ultimate trajectory that we would recommend having if you’re the kind of person who wants to have this freedom of location.

Sterling: Yeah and I’m actually such a product of the marketing that’s around success. Whether it’s internet success or real estate success, it seems like in all those types of ads they show a guy or a woman sitting in a lawn chair…what is it called… a beach chair with a margarita or some kind of mixed drink and a palm tree over them right at the beach. It’s so funny because when I was thinking where do I want to live in the world, that marketing just kept playing in my head – I’ve got to go see the beach thing, I’ve got to go actually sit on the beach and do that.

And it was quite awesome, there was quite a few people that we went out with our beach chairs and would sit there on the beach and talk business. And I was like, here it is and yes, it’s just as cool as I imagined.

Jay: Yeah, that’s the quintessential imagery there isn’t it, is that beach imagery.

Sterling: Yeah, I’m definitely a product of that because I had to go do it and try it.

Jay: Well and it’s funny, I would visit you in San Diego and we’d walk a few steps from your door to the beach and there’s the sunset. I’d be like oh, I can see why you live here. And then you were just here in Portland the other day and we’re like doing business and hanging out in my place and we’re like hey, let’s go down and get a burger and we just have to walk across the street and you’re like, “Oh I can see why you live here.”

So it’s like okay, how can we have all these things at the same time? It’s like I want the cabin in the woods, but oh I want the beach too, oh but I want to be right in the city thing. I guess you get to where you own three or four places and you just bounce between them, I don’t know.

Sterling: I guess that would have to be the case, it would be cool too. Maybe that’s the next level.

Jay: Not to that point yet, but…maybe that’s where we’re headed with it.

Alright, so that’s the first couple steps. The next step is, you’ve got to understand the power of leveraging currency and this is something we learned very powerfully when we started looking into living in Argentina. I mean obviously we’re in what people call the global economy now and wherever you’re at, whatever country you’re in, likely the currency where you’re at, in other countries is worth even more money.

And there’s just beautiful places in the world today, and you hear about…okay so there’s Greece and you see the wonderful beaches and islands and all these cool things, well not too far from there is Croatia which has an up and coming economy and these beautiful places for tourists to visit, and at a fraction of the cost you can go and live there for a while and enjoy a place on the beach. The same thing with Argentina, that emerging economy and we went and lived down there in this great two or three bedroom apartment in a nice part of town.

We had a maid that came and cleaned for us several times a week, we had high speed internet, everything was there and provided. We were able to go to a grocery store right down the street, it was awesome. We loved living there and we were able….

Sterling: All for just $8 a month, no I’m just kidding.

Jay: I mean it was certainly a heck of a lot cheaper than what we were paying in Manhattan and even by other standards. We got so used to just taking taxis everywhere we probably started gaining weight because of it, but like going in a taxi across town was like $3 or $4 or $5 tops. So it was just like walk out our door and hail a taxi and then just have them instead of walking, or biking, or whatever. So it was really easy to get around.

Sterling: Really quickly, say the city you’re in. It always cracks me up.

Jay: Buenos Aires.

Sterling: Buenos Aires! Nice!

Jay: And we had the benefit of learning Spanish. It wasn’t very expensive to have a tutor come to our place, it’s like three times a week and teach us Spanish, so it was just a really cool experience and the same thing with…I know a lot of people going to Southeast Asia these days going to Indonesia or going to the Philippines. Because we obviously live in the United States so the U.S. dollar does have value in some countries still.

So if you’re in Europe, your cash or currency probably has more value than a lot of different places so leveraging the value of your currency and starting to look into some of these possibilities, there’s some really good deals to be had out there if you’re that kind of adventure-seeking person.

Alright, the fourth thing that we’d say is to start simplifying your life and your belongings a bit. I guess I’ll just speak for American culture in the U.S. I know very much we can be in that mode of oh, let’s just get lots and lots of stuff, and I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that but there’s something very, very freeing…when we decided to go to Argentina, we just started…I referred to it as the Craig’s List locusts.

We just put some ads on Craig’s List and immediately all these people descended coming to our place buying stuff and taking stuff. We were just like here…if somebody’s coming and buying an office chair for a couple hundred bucks, we’d be like here, take these five things for free…just go. And we were just like getting rid and going through our closets like, we really don’t need this stuff, and giving our friends our camping gear and we got ourselves down to like…actually when we went to Argentina we still had way too much stuff.

It was like eleven suitcases which now that I think about was just incredibly crazy that we took still that many, but by the time we moved to Portland when we showed up in Portland we were down to like four suitcases and like the first day we arrived we like took a taxi out to Costco and got like a bed and a couple working tables and a couple chairs at least to start out so that we had some furniture.
But it’s interesting when you do kind of simplify, if you are going to be that kind of person who wants to bounce around some, then yeah, just take a look at simplifying your life and belongings and start going through and saying you know, when was the last time I really used this? Probably three years ago, I don’t need it and throw it away, recycle it, give it away, sell it on Craig’s List, whatever the case may be. It’s a very freeing feeling for sure.

Now that’s just for the people who want to be able to travel a lot. Either that or you’re just going to be putting a lot in storage. I guess that’s the other way you can go too. Alright, and then the fifth and final thing is start to researching.

When you’ve got that list of the ideal criteria for you and again, even if you feel like you might be a couple of years away from making this happen, feed your mind, feed your goal/success mechanism with that information, get a book. When we decided we wanted to move to Argentina, we found a book on moving to Argentina and living there and so it was cool to start reading and understanding all these things. We immediately got a Spanish program or two, actually it was funny, I think like ten…well not ten, five or six people all of a sudden as gifts gave us Spanish programs.

So all of a sudden we had all these Spanish programs, we started learning the language a little bit and it was kind of exciting to have that goal to look forward to and make happen. So that’s something that you can start preparing for even now, so start doing your research on places and put that goal up in front of you. Whether you have a vision board, maybe make it your screen saver on your computer, the backdrop on your desktop, maybe some pictures on your desk or whatever the case might be to feed that success mechanism with that idea, ‘I’m going to have freedom of location.’

And here’s how it’s going to look, whether it’s a place on the golf course, whether it’s the cabin in the woods, the condo in the city, the nice house in the suburbs next to your friends, next to the beach, whatever it looks like or whatever it might be.

Sterling: Well and remember to use social media to get help with your research because people love to tell you about where they live. And if you want to live where they already live, they love showing you. The guy that showed me around, his name’s Rob and he does SEO and we’ve become friends.

It took ten hours, he took the entire day and started at the very top of San Diego, went ten hours and hit every tiny little beach community with knowledge of everything, all the cool places to eat, he told me everything. He was an encyclopedia of knowledge just because of social media and our connection through it.

Jay: That’s awesome. Yeah, Craig’s List is another great resource and here’s just a few more that we throw down for you to consider. Number one, there’s a great site called LocationIndependent.com. It’s actually a couple from the United Kingdom that have been traveling the world and now even have a daughter and very much have made this interesting niche out of teaching people how to be location independent.

I remember we discovered them when we first went to Argentina so some really good information. We already mentioned Tellaworker.com, that’s one of our prior Platinum students who has all kinds of information on this. And then a cool site we found a little while ago that I think, I’m not sure, this might (sorry apologies) only be for in the U.S. but it’s a database with a little quiz.

The site is called FindYourSpot.com and you basically go there and fill out a little bit of a…like the first thing they ask you is – where do you want to live? What major metropolitan area, a medium sized community, or a smaller town or community? And then they just start walking you through climate and other types of criteria and in the end they’re going to give you a short list of here’s five places that you might want to think about living.

So it’s really interesting to go and try that out and see what pops up as far as…so if you’re looking for a little inspiration about the right place for you. So there’s some resources for you and just to review then the five steps that we have here…number one – decide on your ideal location, number two – establish a virtual business model. Number three – understand the power of leveraging currency. Number four – simplify your life and belongings and number five – start doing research on the places to feed that success mechanism.

And of course if you want to dive into to trying out starting your internet business, then that’s what our Academy is there for and you can get your risk-free trial at InternetBusinessMasteryAcademy.com.

It’s time for the Internet Business Quick Tip…

Jay: Alright, on this episode’s Quick Tip we’re going to save you a lot of time, potentially your sanity, and you know there’s that thing that can always happen to us. I mean it all has happened to us at some point or somebody we know where your computer goes down. It’s fried, a hard drive goes out, your laptop goes kaput and all of a sudden you lose a lot of information.

And we’ve talked about that in the past but something that as online content creators we can forget, that site and all that content on it that’s attracting a bunch of traffic and has all those comments on it and the hub that everybody finds us and opts into our list. I mean that’s a huge asset and it would be horrible if all of a sudden you lost all of that content overnight.

Imagine now that we said we had our 5-year anniversary, that means for five years we’ve been putting blog posts, and episodes, and content onto our site which is run by WordPress and it would be horrific if all of a sudden we woke up tomorrow morning and our host was like ‘oh sorry, we had server meltdowns and we don’t have a backup of your site.’ I mean you definitely don’t want to take for granted that your host is backing up your site for you.

Sterling: I don’t even like you to say it, that we could lose 5 years worth of stuff. That would make me insane.

Jay: Painting a picture for you here? Well fortunately there’s a very, very easy way to take care of this problem and that is with a popular plugin for WordPress very simply called the WordPress database backup. And what this can do is it just backs up…I mean WordPress is all run off of a database where all of your comments, and your posts, and your different things are stored at.

And you can set up this plugin to automatically daily or weekly, whatever you choose, at least weekly I’d say – you can have it send you a zipped up version of your database so that if anything goes wrong, somebody who’s technically inclined can reinstall WordPress, import the database and boom, your site is going to be back up and ready again.

It would also be a good idea and we actually haven’t found a slick automated way to do this, so I guess if anybody listening knows it’s a good idea now and again to also backup the files on your site so that your custom theme for your WordPress site, you have all that backed up and stuff too. But at the very least if you do get that database, then you can reconstruct the content and that’s where everything is stored. That’s like the lifeblood of your site.

So you can either find that if you just Google for ‘WordPress Database Backup’ or in the newest versions of WordPress you can just go in to plugins and say ‘find new’ and then just do a quick search for WordPress Database Backup and it will pop up there at the top and you can just click ‘install’ and bam, there it goes. And all the configuration you need to do is go in there and say hey, back up everything, send it to this email daily and then hit ‘go’ and it stores that and off it goes, and you’ll be getting those forever more. So if you’ve got a WordPress site and you’re not running that plugin, do it now to save yourself all of that potential loss, headache, sanity, and all those things that could go horribly wrong.  You’ll be thanking us someday so just get it done.

Sterling: And if you’d like to see how we use it, we actually made a video in the Academy with all the cool little things we do with it and how we use it. So that’s in the Academy. Now if you’d like dozens of other resources such as this one, you can find them in the Internet Business Mastery Academy, along with video tutorials showing you exactly how we use them. To get a 30-day no risk trial membership to the Internet Business Mastery Academy, visit freeaudiogift.com. That’s it for this episode of Internet Business Mastery, until next time we wish you ultimate success in your internet business!

You’ve been listening to the iconoclasts of the 9 to 5, and the purveyors of freedom and fulfillment – Sterling and Jay. Sterling and Jay invite you to discover one of their most popular audio programs ever – The 3 Pillars of Designing Your Ultimate Internet Lifestyle. Visit freeaudiogift.com now and sign up for the free weekly Internet Business Mastery email newsletter and you’ll get instant access to this life changing audio presentation pulled directly from the content of the acclaimed Internet Business Mastery Academy membership community. Go now to freeaudiogift.com. Internet Business Mastery – free your mind!