The Livelihood Podcast

In this episode Luke and Alex discuss the ways that world is changing, how businesses shifting to working remotely more and more, and how this will eventually effect how you get paid. Without location holding people back, they're free to roam the world and capitalise on countries with much lower living costs. 
We cover the following questions:
1. If cities are no longer the place to find work, what happens to cities property prices?
2. What happens when there is much more competition for remote jobs online?
3. How will you stand out in a more competitive job market?
4. What skills should you be learning now to make sure you stay ahead?

Talking Points:

1. Work will shift to remote working - Corona virus forced companies to make people work from home. The experiment in working from home has proved there is no need for office based working 5 days per week - this means it’s worth investing in lower economic, beautiful countries as they will become richer and more sought after locations.
2. Property prices will drop in cities and go up in more rural, more scenic locations. 
3. Commercial lets and office space will drop in value. 
4. Career changes will happen more frequently
5. Automation will destroy a lot of jobs - truckers, delivery drivers, checkout workers, but also create a lot more jobs. 
   1. Opened up the service based work globally like the manufacturing industry. 
   2. Lower level jobs will become higher in competition, higher level strategic roles will be difficult to fill.
6. Innovation hubs will no longer be localised - goodbye silicon valley, it will be based on the cloud. This means your cv, personal brand, website needs to be easily accessible from these companies. Google encouraging working remotely, as is Yahoo. This may mean slightly higher competition for roles as you’re now competing worldwide. How does this affect wages? This means that more countries around the world’s gdp will become more equalised.
7. Higher education will be online only, less and less people will be educated in physical university buildings and more people will opt to take accredited online courses

Matched betting is a way to turn bookmaker sign up offers into risk free profit.

Matched betting is a completely risk-free method, where you place a bet at a bookmaker to trigger a free bet. You then bet against that outcome at a betting exchange, meaning that you don’t lose any money.

The bookmaker then gives you a free bet, and you repeat the process, but this time you keep about 80% of the free bet value as profit! £20 Free Bet = £16+ Profit!

In matched betting you cover every outcome of a sporting event by placing a “back” bet on an outcome at a bookmaker’s site; then placing a “lay” bet on a betting exchange (a bet against that outcome happening)

Go to adcaps.co/matchedbetting for the full guide on Matched Betting, plus loads of downloadable content, as well as links to other free content sites; which will help you make up to £1,000 in your first month.

1. Do your research on how to do matched betting, it can be quite overwhelming at first. Use the free website teamprofit and the free guides provided at adcaps.co/matchedbetting.
2. Use calculators to calculate how much you need to lay when you make a bet.
3. Track your profits, there is a free sheet at adcaps.co/matchedbetting to download it.
4. Make sure the odds off the bet and the lay are as close as possible, you can use websites like profitaccumulator that will actually match the bets for you.
5. Work through all of the sign up offers first. 
6. Bookmakers offer weekly and special event offers, keep an eye out for these.
7. When you have finished all the sports book offers, and you are feeling like you want to continue - start doing casino sign up offers. These are more advanced and use websites like teamcasino to help you through them.

In this episode we run through the different ways you can make money investing in property. Some ways require a hell of a lot of work upfront, whereas some ways can pay you straight away with a smaller amount of money than you might expect! We discuss the following points:

1. Dan Pena says any idiot can get rich it’s about staying rich and getting richer! How can you use property to do this?
2. Ways to make money: 
   1. Buy to let - Students, Long term rental, holiday lets, commercial 
      1. What sort of houses are good for this?
      2. What is yield rate?
      3. Isn’t buy to let heavily taxed?
      4. What if you don’t manage to rent the property?
      5. What about maintenance and duties of a landlord? 
      6. Is it better to airbnb during holiday times or long term let?
   2. Flip - (renovate and sell) hoping property price will go up
      1. What skills do you need to renovate a property - good to have a few skills to reduce the cost of the project.
      2. Good project management is key, time and cost are the most important factors in a renovation project.
      3. High stress environment
   3. New build - Land and pre-fab
      1. Ideally an experienced property builder/renovator.
      2. Costs can run very high, overrun 
      3. Lots of complexity

In this episode we look at some of the best cities in the world to live as a digital nomad. We factor in a few criteria to why you should live there - price to rent a one bedroom apartment in the city centre, price of a beer, price of a meal for 2 at a mid range restaurant, internet speed, visa requirements; and that little extra the place offers.

1. Bali
   1. Rent: $350 per month
   2. Beer: $2-$5
   3. Internet Speed: 512kbps – 2mbps (some providers can offer higher speeds).
   4. Meal out for 2: $27
   5. Visa: Standard 30 days can be extended
   6. Bonus Stuff: surfing.
2. Cape Town, South Africa
   1. Rent: $650
   2. Beer: $2.50
   3. Internet Speed: 22mb/s
   4. Meal out for 2: $45 
   5. Visa: 90 days
   6. Bonus Stuff: 
3. Southern Spain, Cadiz Coast
   1. Rent: $600 per month
   2. Beer: $2.50
   3. Internet Speed: 13Mb/s
   4. Meal out for 2: $29 
   5. Visa: As long as you like if you’re from the EU. 
   6. Bonus Stuff: surfing.
4. Dongguan, China. 
   1. Rent: $450 per month
   2. Beer: $1
   3. Internet Speed: 2-20Mb/s
   4. Meal out for 2: $20
   5. Visa: 2 year multiple entry visa if you’re a UK citizen
   6. Bonus Stuff: manufacturing!
5. Taipei, Taiwan.
   1. Rent: $587.45
   2. Beer: $1.78
   3. Internet Speed: 85mb/s
   4. Meal out for 2: $25.45
   5. Visa: 90 days on arrival + 90 day extension when you are there
   6. Lower expat community than most other countries
6. Saigon, Vietnam
7. Rent: $546.45 per month
8. Beer: $0.86
9. Internet Speed: 62mb/s (same as UK)
10. Meal out for 2: $21.56
11. Visa: 3 month multiple entry, can enter again any time by leaving country and coming back
12. Bonus Stuff: Friendly people and very safe

Our second fast bucks challenge has ended in failure, but we've learnt a lot during the process. We've spent over $1000 and overall not made a profit, but we have some lessons that can save you money in the past. 
We reflect on advice from marketing guru behind the UGG brand, Brian Smith, who tells us that you never advertise the product, but the life and benefits behind that product. This way you put yourself into the mind of the customer, enabling them to skip right past the product itself and begin imagining the product's effect it will have on their life. 
Luke talks us through the Hook - Story - Offer template that has been proven to work on both campaign level and on the micro-transaction level. 
We also geek about about how good Nike is at advertising and reflect on how they utilise these techniques incredibly well. 

Luke and Alex discuss the importance of exercise when trying to work efficiently. Alex reflects on his use of running and strength training whilst working as a way to clear his mind from distractions and regain focus on the task at hand. Luke discusses his approach over the last three years from being out of shape to running a sub 90 minute half-marathon and 30 10k runs in a month. Exercise can be a great relief from anxiety too as both Alex and Luke have experienced. 

This episode we do a deep dive on Amazon FBA product research, which is the most important first step into selling on Amazon. Becoming good at this is the difference between being a million dollar business and failing.

Product research is about finding a profitable product, with a low supply and high demand; and we take you through the steps to do it properly.

1. When you are doing product research, you aren’t necessarily looking for a product, you are actually looking for keywords and niches.
2. Don’t just use JungleScout or Helium10 product research tools. If you are using them and finding products there, so is everyone else. 
3. Use the product research tool for a different country than the one you intend to use. This gives you product ideas, that you can begin to explore further.
4. Use other ways of finding products
   1. Start typing words into the top of Amazon to see what comes up
   2. Use websites like kickstarter, exploding topics to see if there is anything hot right now
   3. Look at the top selling products, lightning deals, and other feature pages on Amazon.
5. Use the JS or H10 extension to look at the sales, competition, reviews and ratings. Remove any 
6. I rank according to three things:
   1. Search volume
   2. Average price
   3. Review count
   4. Average reviews
   5. Top 3 revenues
   6. Sprinkle - is it brandable or is there an opportunity to improve the product. 
7. Is the product good. Would you be proud to sell it?

In this episode we talk about the importance of cutting back your spending, and some techniques to help you manage your personal finances better. 

WARNING: We are no money saving experts, but Luke has to save money out of necessity and Alex has learnt a lot over lockdown.

The difference between your income and your outgoings determines how financially free you are. The closer your spending and earning are to each other, the more likely you are to be stressed about money. 

The goal in becoming wealthy is for your income to far surpass your outgoings, and then to reinvest that money so that it compounds.

We try and dissect the problems most people like us face (because we have faced them), and explain some things that we have done to try and cut back.

Items to drastically cut back spending on - Clothes, Alcohol, Luxury items, Electronics, Fad hobbies, Geek merch, restaurants, hotels, furniture, any self care -nails, hair, massage.

Remember - Trying to look rich is your worst enemy.

Also to note - You can only cut your spending a finite amount (earnings - basic living expenses); whereas earning potential is infinite. 

1. Try to break down your life into a few fundamental things that make you happy and try to focus on those. 
2. Stop spending money on dumb shit you don’t need - Gary Vee
3. Try to think of a pound spent to a pound earnt. 
4. Think logically about what your purchasing. 
   1. When you’ve spent a lot of time looking at products online you start to see them for what they are. 
5. Try to see spending as an addiction.
6. Think about your purchases as whether they are an asset or depreciating asset
7. Don’t buy new things, buy second hand things.
8. Try to imagine putting off a short term reward for more meaningful, valuable future. 
9. Track your spending with a spreadsheet or a banking app, because the results might scare you
10. Lower your outgoings costs - move to a lower cost country and maintain earnings. Right now is a big opportunity for this. 

Today we’re joined by Chris Burns, who is a serial entrepreneur based in Bali. Chris  is currently involved in two tech companies - Bali App, Omniup. As well as the online shop for Revolver Espresso in Bali.

Chris has multiple other businesses, including Secret Sumatra (surf camp in Krui), property investment in Bali and working at the Bali Tourism Board

Chris talks about the early days of his surf camp, where they were still building the site when half of the next season was fully booked! 

We cover the importance of knowing your customer, understanding their buying habits can spell the difference between making little to no sales or upwards of $2000 a month. 

We discuss how learning the native language can put you and your businesses in a much better position. There are quirks and nuances to culture and language that if overlooked can increase friction for customers, but if you nail it it can be really rewarding. 

When selling in his B2B proposition, we discuss how it's important not to over complicate things, sometimes the customer just wants one thing, so don't over sell! 

How B2B businesses are sometimes a lot easier to run as they solve specific pain points, whereas trying to convince regular people to download and use apps is a real challenge.

Today we’re joined by Josh Renouf, who is now closing his second crowdfunding campaign. 

The original campaign raised close to $800,000 and the latest one has just broken £100k. He runs the business with co-founder Markus and today we’re going to dissect how to smash a product launch. 

The Barisieur started as a university design project, and after some buzz around the product turned into a business.

Josh tells us how he reached out to design blogs and got unexpected media coverage that resulted in hundreds of emails a day and over 250k website views.

Early on, Josh approached Virgin Start Up and ended up working with Maus to figure how to how bring his product to manufacture.

We talk about how the first Kickstarter campaign did over $800k and the 2nd one, which has just finished on kickstarter and is now on Indiegogo has currently raised £110k.

Josh tells us how he ran a good product launch to get those numbers, and why creating a killer video is key to building attention.

We discuss how to get media and journalists attention, and why using a PR agency has been a key factor in getting in outlets like GQ, High Snobiety and Hype Beast.

The Facebook and google ads strategies they have been using to engage shoppers and get conversions.

How they were a year late to market after the first kickstarter campaign, and why being completely transparent with customers kept them loyal.

Barisieur is now in 30+ stores around the world, including Harrods and Selfridges. Josh tells us about the future of the brand and how he has brought in lower ticket items to appeal to more customers.