When I told my colleagues I was quitting my job as an engineer to move with my girlfriend to a little island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, where we had no job, no house; just a couple of friends living there and nice weather all year long, they all said I was crazy. Now, looking back, I think it’s them who are crazy for staying where they are! I clearly remember one coffee break, talking about what we would do if we won the lottery. And absolutely no one would stay where we were.
So, I thought, if you don’t like what you do, why keep doing it?
Here, in order to pay the flat rent, my girlfriend took some sporadic jobs as a nurse, and I used my engineer skills from time to time in some projects, but most of the time, we were free. We had reduced our expenses to the minimum, and our capacity to enjoy life to the maximum!
However, after some time, we realized that the sporadic incomes we earned were enough for that kind of hippie life, but that wasn´t really the lifestyle that we were looking for. Not that we wanted expensive cars or a mansion to live in, we just wanted to be able to travel more and not worrying about money at the end of every month. We wanted complete Financial Freedom.
By coincidence I learned about Affiliate Marketing. I started out with PPC and did reasonably well. Then I moved on to Adsense, Amazon and video marketing. I watched videos, read and underlined hundreds of e-books, bought all the latest software, commented and asked questions on Affiliate forums. I had so many ideas, but 24h a day wasn’t enough for me to able to elaborate on any of them. I was doing pretty good numbers, but I was also working 24/7. This wasn’t what I and my girlfriend had set out to do. Sure we wanted Financial Freedom, but not at any price.
My favorite place for an Ice Coffee, I've been spending a lot of time here lately!
So to get some free time, I started to outsource, particularly on E-lance and RentACoder. But I wasn’t that pleased. At a point I had about 10 people working on different tasks for me but there was no coordination between them. Sure, I was able to launch more landing pages and I was doing a lot more netbuilding, but I still didn’t have any free time! Coordinating all the people, providing them with training, paying them, and then looking for new people… This was definitely not living the dream; the “4 hour work week”.
But then just a few months ago I read about John Jonas and ReplaceMyself. I thought it looked pretty good and decided to give it a try. Due to my previous disastrous experiences in Outsourcing I wasn’t expecting much, but I was immediately surprised! I watched the videos and I knew at once why Outsourcing hadn’t been working for me until that point. Philippines really is THE place for outsourcing. It’s a hassle-free and reliable way to outsource and you get very good value for your money. The Filipinos on my team are great! So loyal, so trustworthy and so very effective.
At this moment I have three people working fulltime on my team and I don’t have to do anything anymore! Adense, CPA, Adwords… All working out beautifully. Our monthly income is sufficient for us to live a comfortable life and to secure our future. I have finally been able to do what I want with my time. I have to admit that I sometimes do some keyword investigation, but just to provide my guys with ideas, not that they need them…
Finally we are living our dream! I take long walks, read the newspaper lying on the beach, and (to my gf’s surprise!) have learned how to cook! My girlfriend quitted her stressing nurse job and now she is doing something much more satisfying, giving assistance to a local NGO. Next year we are getting married and we are already planning our Honeymoon (more accurate would be a Honeyyear, as we will be backpacking around the world for a whole year!). During that time our business will continue doing good numbers of course; our team will keep up the good work replacing us!
Have just read your story and a direction i intend to follow. I have listened to a John Jonas webinar – i have spent the last 25 years working in Asia in particular the P.I. as a marine archaeologist and dont nessasarily agree with his thoughts on Filipinos as a employee. How have you found them and John’s course?
How long did it take to get the employees working well? Obviously there’s a settling in period and maybe training needed but was this days, weeks or months?