Working less 🥵, saving your sanity 🙏, and the guy who makes $250K sailing around the world ⛵️

The "Work Less" Edition (Totally a Recurring Theme)

Sept 21, 2022

OH GOD, WORK IS WEIRD.

For many of us creators, it's like there are never enough hours in the day. I used to laugh A BIG, FAT CACKLE LAUGH whenever anyone would say to me: "Are you done with work?"

AM I DONE WITH WORK???

GEE, I DUNNO JESSICA, ARE YOU DONE BEING A MOM??? ARE YOU DONE BEING A VEGAN? ARE YOU DONE BEING A TYPE-A COLOR-CODING SADIST WITH A PERKY RESPONSE TO EVERYTHING???

Just kidding, I love sadists.
When you work for yourself, however, it can start to feel like your entire identity. No, the work is not "done," because that would mean that YOU are done. It would mean death. It would mean that you weren't 10,000% dedicated. (And there's a sneaky shame with that, right?) There's rarely an "off" switch when you work for yourself, especially when you're new in business and have zero idea how to set any boundaries with intimidating people named Barb who are giving you money and simultaneously stealing your soul.

To be "done" with work feels like a gross negligence. How dare you post all that FUN you had on Instagram, lest the world think you are just hamming it up while their project goes untouched!

You know what the cure was for me? (And by "cure," I mean "way of managing my work/life balance without wanting to promptly walk into the ocean.")

The cure was the opposite of what you'd probably imagine. It wasn't setting traditional 8-5 business hours and then forcing myself to stick to 'em. (1. Ew. 2. Good luck.) It wasn't leasing a co-working space where Brenda who lives two blocks away can torture me with stories of her cat. It wasn't creating dedicated zones in my house, where Zone 1 is for work and Zone 2 is for screwing off. And it wasn't pasting a bunch of color-coded sticky notes up my butt. (Just kidding, could very much use that.)

The cure for me was travel.

When you work from home, you've got plenty of time to fill—and that's a problem. Because, you know what you fill your days with?

Too many accidental yeses.

Sure, I'll take on that extra project.
Sure, I can launch this other thing.
Sure, I can schedule this, that, and the other thing.
Sure, I can accomplish superhuman amounts of work!

You HAVE the time, so you SPEND the time. And, it's Parkinson's Law at its worst. Parkinson's Law is that one that goes like "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." Which is maybe the truest thing I know, besides the fact that those tiny little Betty Crocker microwavable mug cakes are suspiciously delicious. (Have you had these?!?!?!?! Capitalism is so freaking evil.) Anyway, Parkinson's Law means that, if you've got ten hours a day to fill working from home, you're going to fill up all of those hours and then some—and soon, you're going to blow up into a giant blimp cake (from all the mug cakes), be ripping your hair out feeling burnt out, and punishing yourself for overcommitting yourself...again.

When you travel, however, you need to operate on a tightly condensed schedule by necessity, lest be locked up in your Airbnb the entire time. You don't want to miss out on that ancient wine bar! That kayak! That hike along the cliffs!

In other words, you don't want to miss out on your LIFE.

When you're at home, however, you don't appreciate your own life very much. Everything seems banal and uninteresting, and therefore it's easier to fall into a trap of working yourself to death: there's nothing better to do. Right?

When you're traveling, however, it forces you to make different choices with your time. You don't want to spend all of your time working. You have other interests in addition to your work. And therefore, this becomes a useful exercise in extreme prioritization.

If you only have half the time available, what do you really want to work on?

What really matters to you?

And what things can you proactively decide not to do, simply because it isn't enough of a priority to trade your life for?

Being endlessly available is a curse.

Constraints, as it turns out, are the fastest way to be free.

Ash Ambirge

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Digital Nomad Mini Stories 🌟

• Troupe is a new travel app that makes it easier to plan trips with groups of friends. (Um, YES to voting on accommodations, how much everyone should chip in for groceries, and what the itinerary should be. ✅)
  
• ITALY DREAM LIFE ALERT 🇮🇹: Sardinia will pay you $15,000 to move there! There's a catch though: you have to live in a town with less than 3,000 residents and sing "O Sole Mio" outside the flower box window every evening. Okay, that's not entirely true but there are some interesting restrictions. 😂
  
• They're taking their inspo from other successful remote worker programs, like Tulsa Remote, where Oklahoma pays you $10,000 in cash 🌟 to go live and work in Tulsa. Recently, a study showed that the program added $20 million in additional local gross domestic product to the economy. 😱
  
• These programs are highlighting some of the positive impact remote workers are having on local communities. Brazilian National Justice Secretary José Vicente Santini recently said that these workers “warm up the Brazilian economy,” and that attracting remote workers is “an important step for Brazil in the promotion of one of the most modern labor models.”
  
• OH, and also??? If you're ever torturing yourself wondering if you should fly out of Newark or JFK (just me???) , this new study ranks JFK as #3...and Newark as #19....SO THERE YA HAVE IT. (Don't be afraid of NYC traffic, it's harmless. Unless you run over 30 people by accident. Don't do that.)
  
• P.S. Hot Tip Alert: Albania is a trending travel destination for fall. 🍁 It's seen double the number of bookings in 2022 than it enjoyed in the same period in 2019!
  
  

30-Second Travel Skill: A Head Nod in Greece Can Actually Mean NO. 🚫 🙊

WHATTTT!

I know. Life just gets more and more exciting every day.

This whole "Greek head nod jawn" is probably a really important rule to know, especially if some guy is asking you if you would like some delicious baked bread with your stuffed eggplant, and you shake your head yes, meaning YES, but accidentally tell him NO.

No bread for you!

Talk about a Greek tragedy. 🎭

So, get this: in Greece, there are two head nods. There's down....and there's up.

1️⃣ A down head nod means yes, gimmie dat delicious, yeast-laden delight.

2️⃣ An UP head nod, on the other hand—you know, when you tilt your head upward?—actually means no, get away from me, you freak. (Loose translation. Thanks, Wikipedia.)

Which is all to say: make sure you practice in the mirror before you get on the plane, mostly so you can feel really weird and self-conscious anytime you even move your head so much as 15 degrees. 🤷‍♀️

Nomad Business: "I Quoted a Client a Big, Ballsy Number —But Then They Declined, Stating it Was Out of Their Budget. 😭 How Do I Save the Business?"

First of all: good for you for stretching the hell out of your comfort zone!

It isn't always easy to quote big, scary numbers, even if they're justified.

(This is especially hard if you grew up in an environment of scarcity, where asking for perceived large sums can be particularly triggering.)

That said, sometimes you'll take a big swing and it won't land—that's okay. You may be able to still save the business without making it seem like you artificially inflated their numbers...which is not what you're doing here (I hope). There's a difference between artificially inflating something, and charging an appropriate amount for damn good work.

The way around this one?

Offer to negotiate on scope, terms, or timeline. This way, your rate doesn't change, but the way you work does.

Here's a sample script you can use to see what I mean! (Save this guy in a folder. 🗂)

<Client>,
I totally hear you. Because when we’ve got 99 problems, money is almost always one, am I right?
Since I can already tell we’d be great together, here’s a super fancy idea (for your eyes only). What if we <suggestion of cutting pieces of the project, offering less revisions, offering less time, or even extending/staggering the deadline>?

To sweeten the pot, I’ll also <insert something to make them feel like they’re really getting a deal>. This way, you’ll still get <benefit they really wanted to receive by working with you>, and stay within your budget of $<insert amount>. Let me know how this feels! (Hopefully like a warm towel out straight out of the dryer.)
<You>

And voilà: you are officially a professional negotiator.

What's next, the CIA?!?!

(Just try us, world.)

He Sails Around the World On His Boat...And Earns $250K a Year Writing SEO Content from The Sea ⛵️ 🌊 📝

I love this week's nomad business case study.

Maybe it’s the fact that he knows way more about sailboats than I EVER will.

Maybe it’s the fact that he runs an agency entirely remotely while flipping people the bird on shore. (Just kidding, he’s so nice, he probably doesn’t ever flip the bird. 🐥)

Or maybe it’s the fact that he’s engineered his life specifically so he can have it all: the wife, the boat, and the biz.

But, that’s only the tip of the iceberg (which totally feels like a cruel boat pun). You know why else I was SO pumped to do a case study on River’s business?

1. He earns $250,000 a year remotely from wherever he happens to be in the world. You can buy a lot of really nice sailing shoes with that. (Are sailing shoes a thing??? )
   
2. In a past life, he was a lawyer—but as he sought career advancement, he suffered massive anxiety just interviewing for his next role. Did he really want to sue people for a living? (Answer: GOD NO.) (Maybe he does flip the bird, if only metaphorically. )
   
3. He lost his partner of 9 years, his dad, and his grandmother all within the same year of each other, accelerating his decision to enter into a new line of work.
   
4. In 2017, he also made the decision to transition to the gender where he felt most like himself: River is trans male. He was 42 when he made the transition.
   
5. He was always a great writer, and writing became the creative calm he craved in his career. So, he also started writing on Upwork, a freelance marketplace, and actually had a ton of initial success. From there, he was able to leverage those relationships into referrals—and hence, his current agency—where he writes SEO content for busy professionals…like lawyers.
   
6. Today, he has four writers that write for him!
   
7. Most of his clients are super hands-off—AKA the dream. This is a fascinating biz insight you’ll DEF want to hear.
   
8. And the way he converts clients is just SO, SO GOOD. It’s damn-near bulletproof. I can’t wait to tell you how he does it!

Go behind-the-scenes of this $250K content writing business case study with me and learn how he gets his clients, how he gets them to say YES (this is great), why his clients are the easiest clients ever, and how he runs the business from anywhere in the world. ⬇️

Exclusively for subscribers of Vivette Business.

Have a great week!

Ash