Money Magazine Captures A Glimpse of Barefoot Consulting

Money Magazine is picking up on what we’ve been saying for years… downsizing creates many freelancing opportunities for the global earner…

I find their use of the word “settle” an insane perspective! (see first line of article)

The freelance job gives all those formerly cubicle bound drones the freedom of a global income and the flexibility to travel at will… sounds good to me!

April Membership Call- 5 Tips for Improving Your Global Earning Profile

60 minute membership call includes 5 Tips for Improving Your Global Earning Profile, questions answered about the safety of living abroad, how to combine career with passion overseas

Boomer?

The vast majority of baby boomers are wrestling with fickle employers, shrinking retirement plans (IRAs, 401(k)s)  and uncertain job prospects over the coming months…

They’ve seen their retirement plans postponed… options severely limited… or worse… completely demolished…
Many feel they are in a trap and dependant on “the system” to bail them out.

A Different Kind Of Boomer

A small but growing group is embracing a different point of view… one where they take charge of their own destiny by beginning to improve their earning power…

And for many the best way to do this is to put their skills (personal and professional) on the global market.

Don’t Sell Yourself Short

If you are just working or doing business in the United States or Canada you may be ignoring 30% to 70% of your earning power.

Many baby boomers find themselves in circumstances they never thought they would face.

Complicated, Complicated, Complicated NOT!

For many people moving abroad, the prospect of earning an income seems difficult.  There are visa rules, work permits, language barriers and a host of other “complications” that seem to put earning abroad out of reach.

Well… things have changed!

The Internet now gives you “presence” virtually any place on the planet that has a computer and a connection.

No “Back to School”

And I’m not talking about having to learn how to be a web programmers or graphic artist if you aren’t one now.  In fact, I believe the key to getting this right is matching the way you earn an income with your past experience, your life skills and your comfort online and with technology in general.

If you can send and respond to email, and are able to surf the web a little bit, any of these options listed below could be your ticket to a more enjoyable and relaxed life abroad.

A Ticklish Issue

We found that moving overseas helps lower your expense structure tremendously.  It lets you be more selective in the kind of work you do take on.

I Don’t Want to Go

But, remember… you don’t have to move overseas to earn a global income.

Here are five practical ways baby boomers, near-retirees, and expats can earn an income abroad. These aren’t all that you can do, by any means. Rather, they’re “doable” avenues that are helpful as you start to sort out the retirement—or pre-retirement—phase of your life.

1.    Convince your boss to let you move your job.

First, see if you can take your present job overseas. Many companies now have requirements to cut down on the number of cars their commuting employees put on the road.

My wife and I saw this quite a bit in the Los Angeles area, where we used to live. All major companies must have a commuting plan set up to reduce the effects of pollution. Part of that commuting plan is having employees work four days a week or less. Some companies create plans that have a percentage of home-based employees…if at home, why not over the border?

If you live in a major metropolitan area and work for a large company, check whether your company has a commuting plan and gets incentive dollars or credits if you work at home. That’s one avenue to explore.

2.    Turn your job into a consulting practice.

If you can, turn your job into a consultancy. Do what you do now for other companies. Be very cautious, obviously, of any sort of non-compete agreements required when you leave your current job.

You can’t take proprietary information or your customer list off to another company as a consultant, of course.
But you can take your skills and your experience and the non-proprietary knowledge from your company and actually put that into the marketplace.

3.    Do what you do now for your existing company as a consultant.

We see this happening quite a bit as larger companies are forced to downsize due to current economic challenges. They find they need older employees’ expertise, but they need to lower their labor costs by hiring younger employees.

We saw this happen a lot in the aerospace industry. It was simple math. An aerospace company, for example, would have a number of engineers making $100,000 a year because of their seniority. The company could hire newly graduated engineers for perhaps $60,000.

The company thought a great solution to the economic pinch was to have the senior engineers take early retirement and then hire younger staff. They did that—and, much to their chagrin, found that the younger engineers lacked the skill set needed for certain types of complex aerospace engineering.

The company had to hire back some of the senior engineers it had just retired or laid off. However, it brought them back as consultants. By doing so, it saved not only the full-time salary, but also the host of other costs that often add up to even more—healthcare benefits, office space, additional taxes, utilities, and the like.

By hiring you as a consultant, a company can afford to pay you more on a per-hour or per-day basis than you may have been making before. You may well make more money working only two to three days a week than you did previously working full-time.

And for a company, it’s a very attractive trade-off, as hiring a consultant avoids all the benefits and legal entanglements that a full-time employee represents.

Many people, of course, particularly in the U.S., want a full-time job precisely because of benefits like healthcare plans, since healthcare is so costly. But good healthcare in Mexico is relatively inexpensive, usually costing less than half what you’d pay in the U.S. So if your company is looking at cost-cutting, consider how you can tap into that trend—and turn your position into a consulting job you can do from any country.

4.    Teach others what you do.

You have a lifetime of experience. You have worked in the marketplace for a number of years. You have learned skills that you don’t even understand that you have. If you can find a way to teach others what you know, it’s an efficient way to earn an income in your pre-retirement or retirement years.

When we work with people in our coaching practice, they are always very amazed to understand what skills they actually have. They think, “Gee I just had a job, and I just did this or that, and I can’t see how anybody would want to do that.”

But you have skills and abilities far beyond what you may be considering right now. Think beyond your job description to innate or learned skills you have to use.

As you move through the process, you’ll get a much broader view of what you may be able to do with your skill set. If you have an expertise you may well discover you can turn that into a product that you can sell. And a sellable product frees you from those fee-per-hour kinds of jobs. You create the product, put it in the marketplace, and it sells itself over and over.

5.    Apply your life skills to projects online.

This is something that has blossomed in the last few years, thanks to the Internet. It really enables you to take innate skills and apply them to different situations.

There is a great story about what we all might call a soccer mom. She did not have a traditional career in the workplace, but she was very adept at organizing things, projects, and people.

For instance, she was involved in the band at the high school. She could plan great birthday parties or bowling tournaments. She was good at doing all the different things moms get involved in. In fact, she was so good at organizing that a lot of the moms with professional careers turned to her for help. She coordinated events, created schedules, got people to commit to dates for activities, and many other things—all for free.

When it became possible to work over the Internet, however, she began listing herself on some of the networks as a project management consultant.

She became a person who could take on any kind of project. It could be developing a brochure, planning for a trade show, or doing a small construction project.

Any project that has a flow of activities over time, with multiple people involved who have to be kept up to date and committed to schedules, can use a project manager.

She now makes a living doing different kinds of projects for people. Of course, she doesn’t have content knowledge. She is not a developer, so she doesn’t know how to construct a building, for instance. But people who put these projects up for bid do have that content knowledge and can give her what she needs to know. What they need—and what she provides—are the organizational skills to keep their project on schedule and on budget.

This is a very viable alternative for somebody who has good planning skills, time management skills, communication skills, and good e-mail skills.

Summary

These five ways to earn income are certainly not the only ways, but they’re the most realistic—and they’re becoming more common. Of course, you’ll also need to make sure that the employment you choose conforms to the laws and tax regulation of your new country and to your home country’s tax and income laws.

But with a little bit of ingenuity and elbow grease you can probably find a way to turn your life skills into an income stream you can “do” from where you sit right now or anywhere in the world. This extra income can be very liberating, as it can helps preserve your retirement nest egg, keeps you active and engaged in the marketplace, and affords you a higher standard of living than you might otherwise have.

Resources

I have developed a comprehensive “mind map” of over 100 resources that you may find helpful in learning how to earn an income abroad. To get your free map, go to www.thebarefootconsultant.com/web

(We do ask that you register so that we can send you map updates. You can cancel your registration at any time.)
Copyright 2010 Barefoot Consultants, Inc.

5 Ways To Put Your Baby Boomer Skills On The Global Market And Tap Into Your Global Earning Power…

The vast majority of baby boomers are wrestling with fickle employers, shrinking retirement plans (IRAs, 401(k)s)  and uncertain job prospects over the coming months…

They’ve seen their retirement plans postponed… options severely limited… or worse… completely demolished…
Many feel they are in a trap and dependant on “the system” to bail them out.

A Different Kind Of Boomer

A small but growing group is embracing a different point of view… one where they take charge of their own destiny by beginning to improve their earning power…

And for many the best way to do this is to put their skills (personal and professional) on the global market.

Don’t Sell Yourself Short

If you are just working or doing business in the United States or Canada you may be ignoring 30% to 70% of your earning power.

Many baby boomers find themselves in circumstances they never thought they would face.

Complicated, Complicated, Complicated NOT!

For many people moving abroad, the prospect of earning an income seems difficult.  There are visa rules, work permits, language barriers and a host of other “complications” that seem to put earning abroad out of reach.

Well… things have changed!

The Internet now gives you “presence” virtually any place on the planet that has a computer and a connection.

No “Back to School”

And I’m not talking about having to learn how to be a web programmers or graphic artist if you aren’t one now.  In fact, I believe the key to getting this right is matching the way you earn an income with your past experience, your life skills and your comfort online and with technology in general.

If you can send and respond to email, and are able to surf the web a little bit, any of these options listed below could be your ticket to a more enjoyable and relaxed life abroad.

A Ticklish Issue

We found that moving overseas helps lower your expense structure tremendously.  It lets you be more selective in the kind of work you do take on.

I Don’t Want to Go

But, remember… you don’t have to move overseas to earn a global income.

Here are five practical ways baby boomers, near-retirees, and expats can earn an income abroad. These aren’t all that you can do, by any means. Rather, they’re “doable” avenues that are helpful as you start to sort out the retirement—or pre-retirement—phase of your life.

1.    Convince your boss to let you move your job.

First, see if you can take your present job overseas. Many companies now have requirements to cut down on the number of cars their commuting employees put on the road.

My wife and I saw this quite a bit in the Los Angeles area, where we used to live. All major companies must have a commuting plan set up to reduce the effects of pollution. Part of that commuting plan is having employees work four days a week or less. Some companies create plans that have a percentage of home-based employees…if at home, why not over the border?

If you live in a major metropolitan area and work for a large company, check whether your company has a commuting plan and gets incentive dollars or credits if you work at home. That’s one avenue to explore.

2.    Turn your job into a consulting practice.

If you can, turn your job into a consultancy. Do what you do now for other companies. Be very cautious, obviously, of any sort of non-compete agreements required when you leave your current job.

You can’t take proprietary information or your customer list off to another company as a consultant, of course.
But you can take your skills and your experience and the non-proprietary knowledge from your company and actually put that into the marketplace.

3.    Do what you do now for your existing company as a consultant.

We see this happening quite a bit as larger companies are forced to downsize due to current economic challenges. They find they need older employees’ expertise, but they need to lower their labor costs by hiring younger employees.

We saw this happen a lot in the aerospace industry. It was simple math. An aerospace company, for example, would have a number of engineers making $100,000 a year because of their seniority. The company could hire newly graduated engineers for perhaps $60,000.

The company thought a great solution to the economic pinch was to have the senior engineers take early retirement and then hire younger staff. They did that—and, much to their chagrin, found that the younger engineers lacked the skill set needed for certain types of complex aerospace engineering.

The company had to hire back some of the senior engineers it had just retired or laid off. However, it brought them back as consultants. By doing so, it saved not only the full-time salary, but also the host of other costs that often add up to even more—health care benefits, office space, additional taxes, utilities, and the like.

By hiring you as a consultant, a company can afford to pay you more on a per-hour or per-day basis than you may have been making before. You may well make more money working only two to three days a week than you did previously working full-time.

And for a company, it’s a very attractive trade-off, as hiring a consultant avoids all the benefits and legal entanglements that a full-time employee represents.

Many people, of course, particularly in the U.S., want a full-time job precisely because of benefits like healthcare plans, since healthcare is so costly. But good healthcare in Mexico is relatively inexpensive, usually costing less than half what you’d pay in the U.S. So if your company is looking at cost-cutting, consider how you can tap into that trend—and turn your position into a consulting job you can do from any country.

4.    Teach others what you do.

You have a lifetime of experience. You have worked in the marketplace for a number of years. You have learned skills that you don’t even understand that you have. If you can find a way to teach others what you know, it’s an efficient way to earn an income in your pre-retirement or retirement years.

When we work with people in our coaching practice, they are always very amazed to understand what skills they actually have. They think, “Gee I just had a job, and I just did this or that, and I can’t see how anybody would want to do that.”

But you have skills and abilities far beyond what you may be considering right now. Think beyond your job description to innate or learned skills you have to use.

As you move through the process, you’ll get a much broader view of what you may be able to do with your skill set. If you have an expertise you may well discover you can turn that into a product that you can sell. And a sellable product frees you from those fee-per-hour kinds of jobs. You create the product, put it in the marketplace, and it sells itself over and over.

5.    Apply your life skills to projects online.

This is something that has blossomed in the last few years, thanks to the Internet. It really enables you to take innate skills and apply them to different situations.

There is a great story about what we all might call a soccer mom. She did not have a traditional career in the workplace, but she was very adept at organizing things, projects, and people.

For instance, she was involved in the band at the high school. She could plan great birthday parties or bowling tournaments. She was good at doing all the different things moms get involved in. In fact, she was so good at organizing that a lot of the moms with professional careers turned to her for help. She coordinated events, created schedules, got people to commit to dates for activities, and many other things—all for free.

When it became possible to work over the Internet, however, she began listing herself on some of the networks as a project management consultant.

She became a person who could take on any kind of project. It could be developing a brochure, planning for a trade show, or doing a small construction project.

Any project that has a flow of activities over time, with multiple people involved who have to be kept up to date and committed to schedules, can use a project manager.

She now makes a living doing different kinds of projects for people. Of course, she doesn’t have content knowledge. She is not a developer, so she doesn’t know how to construct a building, for instance. But people who put these projects up for bid do have that content knowledge and can give her what she needs to know. What they need—and what she provides—are the organizational skills to keep their project on schedule and on budget.

This is a very viable alternative for somebody who has good planning skills, time management skills, communication skills, and good e-mail skills.

Summary

These five ways to earn income are certainly not the only ways, but they’re the most realistic—and they’re becoming more common. Of course, you’ll also need to make sure that the employment you choose conforms to the laws and tax regulation of your new country and to your home country’s tax and income laws.

But with a little bit of ingenuity and elbow grease you can probably find a way to turn your life skills into an income stream you can “do” from where you sit right now or anywhere in the world. This extra income can be very liberating, as it can helps preserve your retirement nest egg, keeps you active and engaged in the marketplace, and affords you a higher standard of living than you might otherwise have.

Resources

I have developed a comprehensive “mind map” of over 100 resources that you may find helpful in learning how to earn an income abroad. To get your free map, go to www.thebarefootconsultant.com/web

(We do ask that you register so that we can send you map updates. You can cancel your registration at any time.)
Copyright 2010 The Barefoot Consultants, Inc.

All Rights Reserved