It has never been easier to live and work abroad. If you are self-employed and work online there is nothing to stop you. Why nor sublet your apartment for a few months and live abroad in a fascinating (and potentially cheap) destination? Here is a list of all the things that make long term travel super easy:

• Have your home post rerouted to friend (or commercial service) who scans it into a Dropbox account for you. If a friend does it, buy them a multi-page scanner for this.
• Get a professional agent to manage the sublet of your apartment back home
• AirBnB for renting longer term accommodation (especially for whole apartments)
• TripAdvisor for short term hotel stays
• Cloud services for file storage (e.g. dropbox, google drive)
• Clound services for backup (e.g. Crashplan or Backblaze)
• A small scanner app on your smartphone for scanning any paper you need to keep (receipts etc) when abroad
• Get your online banking set up for all the transaction types you will need to do
• Get your Credit/Debit cards set for use abroad
• A password manager (e.g. LastPass, 1Password) for your online passwords
• An E reader (e.g. a kindle, iPad) to enable you to read as many books as you want while you are away
• A lightweight laptop for your work
• A Smartphone with a nice camera for taking pictures and getting online
• An external encrypted drive for local storage/backup
• International plugs for all your devices

Phoenix Zerin is the author of the blog Five Years Abroad. He left his country of origin (USA) in 2012 to experience living abroad for at least 5 years. In this interview he describes his experiences so far travelling in Colombia, Paraguay and Chile.

Podcast Episode

An episode about how to use goals and visions to move forward in creating the life you want. Show Notes: Previous Episode on GTD Getting Things Done by David Allen

This episode is about the concept of limited liability and it's role in entrepreneurship.

• The purpose of the limited liability principle is not to protect the entrepreneur as director or manager of a business, it is for the protection of investors.
• There is a big difference between this principle and how the actual law of limited liability works in practice. The law is messy and confusing, with strange concepts such as "corporate personhood" granted by the State.
• I argue that the principle of limited liability for investors could be implemented through contracts and that the whole messy legal implementation that we currently have is unnecessary to achieve investor protection.
• I argue that it makes sense for entrepreneurs to use contractual limits of liability wherever possible and to use insurance whenever you need to reduce risk in that way.
• The reality for small business entrepreneurs is that you will not be able to hide behind a shield of limited liability, for example you will be expected to personally underwrite loans.

These are just my opinions. As always, you need to rely on your own due diligence and get your own legal advice.

This episode discusses the question of risk in investment, speculation and entrepreneurship. When is it a good idea to take risk and when isn't it? I share my own personal opinion. Podcast Episode

An episode on how to scale and optimise your business to make more profit and enhance your competitive advantage. The issues covered include:

• Standardisation: making one version of what you do
• Proceduralisation: making one version of how you do it
• Optimisation: speeding up and automating your procedures
• Knowledge Capture: maintaining and growing your operation within the context of staff coming and going
• Optimising at the level of the whole business: only doing the things that it makes sense to do

This episode is about employing people as an entrepreneur. Topics covered include:

• The destructive legacy of the reward and punishment paradigm from school
• Why pay isn't as important as you think
• The importance purpose, mastery and autonomy in motivation
• The problem with relying on interviews for hiring and alternative ways of finding great people
• The value of freelancers or independent contractors
• What employing people teaches you about taking responsibility for your side of a relationship and how it deepens your respect for individuality

Show Notes:

• Dan Pink Talk on Motivation
• Discipline Without Punishment by Dick Grote
• Gifts Differing: Understanding Personality Type by Isabel Briggs Myers

An episode about the problems with Intellectual Property, from the perspective of an entrepreneur. I started off thinking that IP is an integral and necessary part of entrepreneurship. I thought that it would be very important for my business. I have now come to see IP law as something that:

• prevents innovation,
• is immoral,
• promotes conflict,
• diverts resources to unproductive uses
• and is ultimately unnecessary for making money from ideas.

Show Notes:

• Against Intellectual Monopoly by Boldrin and Levine
• Article about the Shopping Cart case
• Against Intellectual Property by Kinsella

Part 2 of an interview with entrepreneur Judd Weiss, talking about business relationships. In this episode Judd talks about:

• The pitfalls of employing people
• The benefits of partnering or affiliate relationships
• How to create awesome relationships with clients

Part 1 of an interview with entrepreneur Judd Weiss, talking about business relationships. In this episode Judd shares his thoughts and experiences about how to approach working relationships in general and the question of going into business with others.

• Should friends go into business together?
• What makes a good business partnership?
• Why do so many business partnerships go so badly wrong?

Find out in this episode.