Anyone can be a nomad, but first, you need a career webover. What is a nomad career webover?
A nomad career webover is the process of transforming your career by using your existing skills, education, and personal hobbies to create a web-based business. Your career webover is what will allow you to become a nomad.
Now, before you get confused, at Nomad Mom Life, being a nomad is just as much of a mental mindset as it is a physical description. You can have a permanent home and be a nomad.
Once you have a business (or a job) that allows you to have the flexibility to be a stay-at-home mom and work from anywhere in the world you choose, you are a nomad. You can also be an actual nomad, like me, who travels the world with her family and works wherever she finds wifi.
DIY Career Webover
Now that you know WHAT a nomad career webover is, you need to understand how to DIY your own career webover.
Generally, I like to say there are three phases to your nomad career webover.
1. Self-Reflection + Brainstorming.
Starting anything new requires demands that you examine yourself. You need to take a look at your lessons, learning and loves. Examine your work, professional, personal, and academic skills and experiences.
At this point, it’s not about finding a money-making idea as much as you’re trying to find a synergy between your skills and your joy.
The foundation for your nomad career webover requires you to find the synergy between your joy and your actual skills. Because ultimately, if you don’t enjoy what you do—or worse—you don’t have sufficient proficiency, your online business won’t succeed.
At the end of this brainstorming exercise, you need to have a general idea of WHAT you’d like to do. For instance, you could write, provide graphic design, make jewelry, do YouTube videos, provide tax preparation assistance, you name. You can do it.
Ok, so here’s a caveat. At this point in your business, you don’t have to be an expert, but you do have to enjoy the work enough to WANT to become an expert. So if you love graphic design, but you’re not the BEST designer, it’s fine. You just have like and know enough about graphic design to take the courses and do the work to become the BEST designer.
Remember, getting started isn’t about being an expert. It’s about starting.
Once you find where your joy and your skills intersect, it’s time to form a business.
2. Business Formation
Phase number two is business formation. Now, full disclaimer, I can’t help you with the legal aspects of business formation, because each location has different legal and administrative requirements. I can help you create a business model for the purposes of starting to make an income online, using the self-reflection and brainstorming you completed in phase 1.
Creating a business can be intense and a bit scary. Before you get started, here are two great points to remember. First, everything is changeable and second, if you don’t know how to do something there’s a good chance you can either figure it out on your own or find someone (free or paid) to explain it to you.
So now that you have a general idea of WHAT you want to do, let’s get started on your business creation.
Identify Your Audience or Customer
As an employee, you work for a company. They’re your client. They hire, employ, and pay you. As a business owner, you get to decide who you want your clients to be. So, you need to understand WHO you want to work for.
If you want to create YouTube tutorials on makeup applications or fun hairstyles, you need to know WHO you want to be watching the videos. The same is true for a graphic designer, a freelance writer, a health coach, a bookkeeper, or a consultant. Who do you want to hire you?
Communicate With Your Audience
Now that you know WHO you want to work with you, it’s time to meet them and talk with them. That means you need to create a way to find where they hang out online and invite them to hang out with you.
You may be thinking, I don’t have anything to communicate. I don’t have anything to sell.
Right. You don’t and that’s a good thing, for now.
When you meet someone, you don’t automatically launch a product or service in their face. No. They would most like be appalled, perhaps a bit offended, and they most certainly wouldn’t buy from you. After all, they don’t know you, yet.
Enter your communications. You need to meet the people who you want to hire you. And since you’re starting an online business, you need to meet them online.
At this point, you may be asking… So, how do you meet people online?
Well, you need to create an online platform. Ideally, you’d create a blog/website with your own domain. If you need help getting started, I did an overview on How To Start A Blog.
Now, if for whatever reason, you can’t or don’t want to start a blog right now, you could create a public, Facebook Page.
The point here is to start creating targeted content that you can share publicly to find your ideal audience/customer. Then, start getting to know them. Figure out what they like, want, and need because the success of your career webover will depend entirely on your ability to create content, products, and services that your customers like, want, and need.
Create A Great Freebie + Start A List
As you’re building an audience of ideal customers, create something free to gauge their interest in the products or services you plan to offer. As a health coach, it could be something as simple as a free kid-friendly snack recipe, and you could offer it as a PDF for download. Whatever you create, be innovative and generous. Give more away for free than you’re comfortable giving. And try to add tremendous value to your ideal customer.
If you use a free email marketing and database service like MailChimp or Drip, you can start collecting email addresses of the people who love your free product. These are your people, and you need to get to know them so that you provide them with the services and products they want and need.
Create Your First Paid Offer
By this point, you should have a pretty clear idea of who your audience/client is and what he/she needs. If your first great freebie was a success, you could build on it and create a product or service that provides even more value than the freebie.
From here, the goal of your business is to create and price products or services in a way that benefits your customers and adds value to their lives.
3. Plan To Be A Full-Time Digital Nomad Mom
Remember, you can be a digital nomad mom from your laptop in your kitchen in the ‘burbs. Being a nomad mom is about creating location-independent income and having the options to live and work wherever you want.
So, once you create you launch your first product or service, you have a baby business. However, to complete your career webover, you need to make a full-time income from this baby business and sometimes, that takes time. Most digital nomad moms aren’t overnight successes, but you have to plan to go full-time with your business. Here’s what you need to do:
Start A Monthly Profit and Loss Statement
Determine how much money you need monthly to make a full-time income. Remember, you also need to take into account how much money it takes to run your business. The best way to do this is to start a profit and loss statement that list your business expenses and your business income.
When your business is covering your expenses, you’re making revenue. Figure out how much you need to make monthly to cover your expenses, have enough money to support yourself and your family, AND pay taxes. Don’t forget to factor in taxes; they are sneaky, but most people (no matter their country of residence) have to pay some form of taxes. So, everyone’s ideal amount of profit will vary substantially.
Set An Income Goal
Based on your profit and loss statement, set an income goal that states: By X date, my business will earn Y income. Then work backward from that “X” date to create a monthly marketing/advertising plan to meet that goal. Just work diligently toward your goal. You may not always hit them, but you’ll move closer to your full-time income number with each goal you set.
Final Thoughts
Giving yourself a career webover is not easy. It’s a constant uphill battle and only those willing to keep working, even when it’s hard and not quite working, are the ones who ultimately succeed in their nomad mom career webovers. Don’t expect to be an overnight success. Expect instead to work for six months to a year before you actually start build traction, but know (and remember) that the ability to create your own income and bless others with your product(s) or service(s) is a gift for you, your family and all who benefit from your services or product offerings. Invest in your gifts.