Page 74 - The $100 Startup_ Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love

Furthermore, most beaches in tropical locales do not provide WiFi access, and
for that matter, plenty of other places don’t either—so if you’re going to operate
your business on the road, you’ll need to learn to think about your business as
much as you think about being on the road.

It’s just like following your passion to the bank: Some people prefer to keep
their passion on the side, and some people prefer not to mix their vacations with
their work. Even entrepreneurs like Brandon Pearce who have carefully built a
high-income, hands-free business that allows them to work minimal hours do
that only after the business has been established. In the beginning, there’s
usually a fair amount of fumbling and a large number of hours spent working on
projects that may or may not succeed.

But hey, that’s enough of a reality check. There’s no doubt that thousands of
people have established successful businesses on this model, especially over the
last decade. Why not follow in their path, charting your own course along the
way?

When I last talked with Brandon, he was still doing extremely well (up to
$30,000 a month in our most recent conversation). He was now branching out
into new areas in Costa Rica and beyond, even thinking about buying shares in a
local farm. Perhaps the farm won’t be as profitable as the online project, but
that’s OK—month after month, the income from the music software will
continue to roll in. Brandon and his family have established complete freedom
and the ability to make a new life wherever it leads them. Every day is an
adventure.

KEY POINTS
Roaming entrepreneurs are everywhere these days. Many of them are

quietly building significant (six figures or higher) businesses while living
in paradise.
Just as not every passion leads to a good business model, a lot of people
pursue the nomadic lifestyle for the wrong reasons. The best question to
answer is: What do you want to do?
There are many roads to location independence, but the business of
information publishing is especially profitable. (And there’s more than
one path to information publishing; it isn’t just about e-books.)
Everything relates to the lessons that began in Chapter 1: Find the
convergence between what you love and what other people are willing to
buy, remember that you’re probably good at more than one thing, and
combine passion and usefulness to build a real business—no matter