The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future (11 page)

Digital nomads and roaming entrepreneurs come in all packages, and it’s hard to get away from their infectious stories. As I interviewed business owners and put the word out for more submissions, I kept hearing story after story that sounded like those of Brandon, Kyle, and Bernard. I’d continue to cast the net for more traditional businesses, but I kept thinking:
This is a great business model
. Why would you want to do anything else?

In these examples, Brandon is a music teacher, Kyle is a photographer, and Bernard is a developer. The list could go on: Cherie Ve Ard, whom we’ll meet in
Chapter 13
, is a health-care consultant, and Brandy Agerbeck, whose story is in
Chapter 7
, is a graphic facilitator. Because of the nature of their work, many of the businesses in the other case studies are technically location independent even if they currently have a fixed address. There is more than one road to the road, in other words, but one business model is especially useful for location independence: the business of information publishing. Since this model is both common and highly profitable, let’s look at it in some detail.

Become Your Own Publisher

As the founder of 800-CEO-READ, a leading retailer of business books, Jack Covert is a veteran of both traditional publishing and self-publishing. I asked Jack what has changed about the publishing world in recent years. “Everything’s changed,” he said. “We’ve
always seen authors self-publish their works, but never to such a wide extent. What’s different is the quality of the work. These days, a number of self-published works have at least as good a quality as do books from big publishers. The playing field has been greatly leveled, and continues to be.”

The other thing that’s different, Jack told me, is that most authors chose self-publishing in the past because they couldn’t get a traditional publisher to purchase their work. Today, some authors are deliberately choosing to distribute their work directly, even turning down significant offers in favor of going it alone.
^‡

But hey, who needs books? You don’t need to be an author or even think of yourself as a writer to take advantage of this changing world. Digital publishing tends to fit into at least a few categories: one-off products, fixed-period courses, and recurring subscriptions.

Jen Lemen and Andrea Scher, two friends who had attended a retreat together, had an idea to start an online course for women. They called it Mondo Beyondo, and created a community model for participants to post their life lists, goals, and ideas. On the other side of the Atlantic, former journalist Susannah Conway was independently setting up a similar project called Unravelling. Thousands of participants later, both projects have long waiting lists for future sessions, and both produce six-figure annual incomes. Part of the beauty of this model is that it grows predominantly by referral. As students finish the four- or five-week courses, many of them tell their friends, who then sign up for the next session.

A few people have created true scale in their online publishing efforts. In Melbourne, Australia, Darren Rowse created a popular photography forum that attracted more than 300,000 subscribers
in less than three years. He also founded ProBlogger, a hub for new digital publishers seeking to learn the ropes. In Texas, Brian Clark runs a company that provides online services, including website themes and marketing advice. Many customers arrive from Brian’s writing on
CopyBlogger.com
and related sites. The business employs a dozen people and earns more than $5 million a year, in large part thanks to reliance on recurring subscriptions. (We’ll discuss subscriptions and hear more from Brian in
Chapter 10
.)

A cynic might wonder, Is there really so much market space for all of these projects? Long story short, the answer is yes. These examples aren’t highly unusual, and I had to decline many additional stories because this book is not strictly about information publishing. Some parts of information publishing are still in a Wild West stage, but this strong business model is here to stay.

Like everything else under the sun, this “new” business isn’t entirely new. As Jack from 800-CEO-READ mentioned, some independent publishers have always known that it’s often better to sell direct. What’s changed is the speed, quality, and potential to reach a much broader audience. That’s what these roaming publishers are doing—and a guy in Fullerton, California, provides a typical example.

Brett Kelly, a self-described “professional geek” who worked as a software developer, had a busy job and a stressful home life. As a result of $15,000 of credit card debt and the high cost of Southern California living, Brett and his wife, Joana, worked opposite schedules to make ends meet. “I’d get home and trade off with a high-five to Joana as she went to work at a restaurant,” he told me as we sat at a taco stand in Los Angeles. “The last few months, we were both tired all the time, the kids were unhappy, and the overall situation wasn’t good.”

For years, Brett had watched from the sidelines as friends and colleagues started profitable projects and either quit their jobs or established an additional income stream. Finally, he had an idea of his own: As a power user of Evernote, the free note-keeping software, Brett noticed that there was no detailed user manual for people to get the most out of the service.
^§

Brett spent months carefully documenting every tip and trick he could find about Evernote, compiling everything with detailed screenshots and tutorials into a big PDF file. “I obsessed over this thing,” he said, “and I wanted to make sure I got everything exactly right.” When he sent me a draft of what would become
Evernote Essentials
, I was impressed. Many e-book writers pad their products with superfluous copy, big fonts, and wide margins. Brett’s was the opposite: The finished product weighed in at more than ninety pages of solid content. Nevertheless, solid content isn’t everything; you also have to sell something that people are willing to spend money on. Would they?

Right before the guide went on sale, Brett made a deal with Joana: If he sold at least $10,000 worth of copies, she would quit her job waiting tables at the restaurant and stay at home with their two kids full-time. Brett estimated that it would take months, if not longer, to reach the $10k goal … but just eleven days after
Evernote Essentials
went on sale, the PayPal account tipped into five figures. (Being the geek that he was, Brett promptly took a screenshot on his iPhone and made it his wallpaper.) Less than twenty-four hours later, Joana put in her two-week notice at the restaurant. Aside from brief breaks when the kids were born, this would be the first time she didn’t work in their seven years of parenthood.

Months later, sales of
Evernote Essentials
continued to bring in at least $300 a day, projecting annual revenue of more than $120,000 for something that was essentially a side project. Interestingly, if the project had been produced as a print book from a traditional publisher, those numbers could be considered a failure—author royalties would have brought Brett only around $18 a day. But since Brett was the sole owner and delivery was digital, the $300 that arrived in his PayPal account every day was almost entirely profit.

In an odd twist, the executives who developed Evernote got word of the guide and sent Brett a note that they wanted to talk. Brett was worried they were upset about him making money from their free product, but the opposite was true: The CEO loved it and wanted to hire him. Brett left the boring full-time job and took on a new role at Evernote, with the understanding that he could continue to sell the guide and retain all profits while working at home for the company. Sweet! Here’s how Brett describes the end results:

Brett’s project had all the predictors of success we’ve considered thus far: It began with something he was both passionate about and skilled in, and then he forged his knowledge into a useful package that could be acquired instantly by users. If you wanted to learn about Evernote but didn’t want to spend the time surfing around, a $25 investment could solve the problem. The choice of price was
also perfect: Brett could have priced much lower, as some digital publishers do, but he chose to take a stand and provide a clear value proposition to his potential customers.

Alas, like any trend or business model, not every story of independent publishing is a success. Many aspiring publishers operate on an “if you build it, they will come” model. Later in the book, we’ll rename it the “if you build it, they
might
come” model—sometimes it works, but many times it doesn’t, and there’s no guarantee of instant riches. For every online course that becomes a Mondo Beyondo-size success, many others flounder on with five participants. For every $120,000 e-book like Brett’s, many others sell two copies (one to the writer’s grandmother and one to a friend of the family) before fizzling out.

Some of the failures relate to unrealistic expectations. Put simply, some people want the sun and the fun (or the $300 a day) without the work. Partly as a result of the allure of working from anywhere, many aspiring entrepreneurs focus much more on the “anywhere” part than they do the “work” part. Since the work part is what sustains everything else, it’s better to focus on it from the beginning. After all, the best thing about a location-independent business is
possibility
. The fact that you can head off to Argentina or Thailand on a whim doesn’t necessarily mean that you actually will.

The classic image of a roaming entrepreneur usually involves a guy or girl sitting on the beach in a swimsuit, drink nearby, with a laptop propped up against the backdrop of a sunset. My limited attempts at replicating such a scene usually involve worrying about the laptop (Will it get stolen? Will I get sand in the keyboard?) and straining to see the screen against the glare of the sun. 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.