Why You Shouldn’t Go For The $1,200/Month “Location Independent Life”

A reader wrote in asking what I would do if I could start my career over again. Perhaps this advice can help someone else, too.

THE EMAIL

Hey Kyle, I’ve been reading your blog pretty consistently the last few months. I can’t remember exactly, but I think I found you from a Wallstreetplayboys or 30daystox retweet. Regardless, I recently read one of your tweets that said you quit your day job 4 months ago, and are now putting money in the bank each month.

I’ll keep this short. I’m from Wisconsin, skipped college, am 19 years old, teach English in <redacted Southeast Asian city> as my “day job”, have a small side writing client for $200/month (we write content for niche sites), and have a blog similar to yours. My blog has 250+ old posts, and gets about 115 unique visitors and 150 page views per day despite being inactive.

As a hustler, what would you do in this position? Within a years time I want to be where you are now — Creating helpful content while earning more than I spend (not much as a minimalist). Any guidance or thoughts you’ve learned from your experience would be appreciated, even a few sentences from you could dramatically change how this next year plays out.

-Reader

MY RESPONSE

Hey Reader,

First off, thanks for reading and glad you enjoy my stuff.

First advice: I wouldn’t pursue blogging as a living again. It’s a really, really rough road. It’s taken a lot of trial and error, and I still have doubts here and there. I have other things in the pipe so I can “retire” from blogging if I decide to one day.

Ebooks don’t sell well enough, and stuff like my harem course require a lot of time, your face to be out in public, and a big enough audience that trusts you to sell a big ticket item.

Second piece of advice: remove the world “minimalist” from your vocabulary. Your goal while living abroad in a small city shouldn’t be to make the $1,200/month to live. It should be to make $10k/month and bank a ton of it for future business opportunities. Too many guys do this, and it’s hardly different than working a corporate job in America so you can barely pay the bills. I’ve tried to remove this mindset by not always going for the cheapest places (as in, spending $8 on a meal compared to $2), and making sure I actually *do* spend money overall — for example, my trip to Chernobyl set me back a couple hundred bucks, more than a Ukrainian citizen makes in a month.

This helps keep me working hard rather than just making the minimum and that’s all.

So personally, if I were in your boat — I’d keep the day job. And I’d really focus in on what you want to do on the side. I know English teachers only teach about 20-25 hours a week (before private tutoring), so I’d make a real solid business plan on what you want to do for the side business. What other skills do you have? Can you reach a level of copywriting where you can get paid several hundred an hour? Do you have design skills, or niche site ideas (Amazon doesn’t count, need a higher ticket item(s))? Do you want to get paid by the hour or do you want things that are more passive?

Those are the kind of questions I would start with, and then I’d start plugging away. I’d probably get up early (depending on when your class is) and dedicate at least the first hour or two of my day to making this happen.

I hope this helps.

Cheers,
Kyle

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