Mali Hope Woodward born on 4th July 2009 by emergency C-section after 2 days of pre-labour and a 12 hour active labour - at a whopping 8lbs 110z.

Whilst this may seem like a random occurrence, it is not.

It’s the result of a strategic plan, sparked by a genius idea and implemented with military-like precision (ha - that last one is *so* not true)…

You may know that at the beginning of this year, I made the decision to take the Location Independent project to “the next level”. In my mind, that meant treating it more like a business rather than a hobby and making it pay its way.

The Strategy

Outreach Teams

There are a number of parts to the strategy in doing this - but one of the core ones that I’ve been implementing to date is the concept of the Community Outreach Teams (inspired by Skellie’s idea of street teams to help promote a blog).

The goal of this strategy is to spread the word about the concept of location independence by harnessing the passion and interest of people already part of the community and creating “brand advocates” - or Team Leaders - whose role is to help us spread the concept and help promote the site/products/services we’re building.

Whilst the income from this business is not yet at a level which means we can afford to permanently hire people and pay them to do this, we do currently offer incentives such as free access to all our Location Independent products and free business coaching every month.

At the same time, we also hope that by aligning themselves to a growing ‘movement’ and community there are numerous non-monetary benefits to their own brands, reputations and businesses - which certainly seems to be the case so far.

Community Services

In tandem with the above, we’ve been working really hard in the background to provide a greater range of services and forums for the community by opening up the blog with various new features, starting up a Ning-based forum and adding to the range of resources we offer - both free and paid-for.

The Benefits

Brand Awareness

The obvious benefit the Location Independent business gains is brand awareness. A growing number of people are becoming ever more aware of the concept, our website and the services/products we offer - and at the same time, we’re spreading more than just a brand - we’re helping people to create the lifestyles they want.

Increasing Sales

One of the core goals of any business is usually to increase sales of the products/services on offer - by increasing the number of people aware of location independence, driving more traffic to our site, promoting the products & services on offer and partnering with people who can help us do this, we’re obviously seeing an increase in sales of all our products.

The Challenges

Brand Management

Whilst “location independent” is the brand for the business we’re building and is a term we coined, created a visual identity for and own the domain name for - it is also a phrase to describe a concept which anyone can use.

In having more people associated with the term, using it and promoting it, we’re opening up the brand in a way that at times, makes me uncomfortable (control freak that I am) and that could become hard to manage in the future.

It’s a balance between letting it grow organically and ensuring that it is not compromised nor damaged by anyone closely associated with it - hard to do in a community that’s as open as this and for a term that has essentially become popular to describe a lifestyle concept.

Managing Time & Effort

I can honestly say that the effort I was previously putting into the location independent project is nothing compared with what I’m doing now! The combination of strategising, planning, implementing, co-ordinating, organising and supporting is almost a full-time job - which I’m pretty much managing to cram into about 2-3 hours a day at the moment, given my energy levels.

It’s been fantastic working with the Team Leaders and other members of the community but boy, is it hard work responding to requests, answering questions and all the other admin-type stuff which I haven’t yet managed to outsource!

Measuring ROI

Again I have to be honest and say that whilst sales of our products have increased, it has not yet increased *enough* to compensate for the additional time & effort I feel I’m putting into the business.

Whilst increasing brand awareness is great, it’s one of those things that is hard to define & quantify - unless you obsess about blog subscriber stats, website traffic, twitter followers etc. which we do measure but tracking conversions and where exactly these have come from remains a challenge.

Of course, the bottom line for any business measurement of success has to be profit. But aside from a couple of successful joint ventures and promotions which had been organised prior to much of the above, many of the other activities haven’t yet generated a noticeable increase in sales.

Fortunately, in monetary terms, it’s not costing us any more financially but the cost of my time is currently more than I’d like it to be - and measuring (and maximising) the return on investment of the time I’m spending doing community building, enablement and support is something I’ve still got to figure out.

In Conclusion…

I’m really, really pleased that the concept of location independence as a lifestyle is having its time - and that we’re really focusing on our mission to help others create this lifestyle - but at the end of the day, we’re also running a business.

Which means that I need this to be commercially viable if this is what I’m going to spend the majority of my time doing - and the bottom line for me, means that the increased effort I’m putting in must result in a comparable increase in the income generated from this business.

Whilst I suspect (and hope) that the location independent community itself will continue to grow organically, as a business it’s vital that we review our strategy and activities - and measure the ROI from these on an ongoing basis and then adjust our course if necessary.

If you’re not doing this yet in your business, maybe it’s something you need to do too?

But as somebody who is none of these things and sometimes really wishes she were, it can be frustrating to feel so boring, normal and run-of-the-mill…

And when I look at some of these guys and see the strong brands and personalities they’re creating around themselves, it’s useful to remind myself of the following:

• You can’t be what you’re not
• If everyone were quirky, offbeat & weird then no-one would be
• You can still be successful without being like that

Here’s how you can achieve the same effect & business success as some of the cool kids you see online whilst still being boring (like me):

Polarise your audience

One of the reasons why people like Naomi & Havi do so well is not because they’re insanely popular with absolutely everyone but because they polarise people. Naomi especially is great at this - you either love her or you hate her (I love her, well maybe not “love” but I do think she’s fabulous).

This is a brilliant strategy because the people who hate you clearly aren’t the people you’d want to work with anyway and the people who love you, really do love & rave about you.

There’s no wishy-washy, happy medium here - there are strong, passionate feelings involved which is quite something to achieve in any business evironment (another example of this is Marmite - you either love it or hate it).

Here are a couple of ways you can achieve a similar effect if your personality isn’t up to scratch:

• Focus on making your product or service 200% suitable for a very specific group of people only - don’t try and make it appeal to everyone, in fact it may even turn some people off but that’s ok. If you can build loyal, raving fans of the product/service you do offer, that’s enough.
• Tweak your marketing messages to be more exclusive - by this I mean don’t try and appeal to everyone with vague, generic phrases on your marketing literature but be specific, state very clearly who your ideal customers are and behave in a way that they’ll be turned on by but perhaps others wouldn’t.

Make what you do, not who you are interesting

If you’re not a “personality”, then there are plenty of other ways to pique & keep people’s interest. What you’re basically looking for is some sort of hook - something which makes you more memorable to people and if that’s not through your personality then find something else.

It might be something you do, something you know or something you have which gives you a hook.

Our personal example is obviously the fact that we’re location independent. The business we’ve been running (which, once again is going through yet another reincarnation!) wasn’t particularly spectacular or different from many others but the fact that we did it whilst travelling the world, living in exotic places gave us a hook, a story which made us stand out from the crowd.

Keep your branding & core message consistent

[Please note, this is very much a case of do what we say and not what we do - even though it's not turned out too badly for us!!!]

To become and remain memorable (and in the forefront of people’s minds), keep your branding and your core messages consistent. In practice, this means:

• Decide on a message (your USP - the thing that tells customers why they should buy from you and no-one else) and stick to it.
• Keep your offline and online branding consistent - use the same logo, colour scheme and tagline on all your materials.
• Use the same avatar/profile picture for all your online profiles, here’s what Seth has to say about choosing one.

It can be hard when you look around and see the cool kids clubbing together and being quirky, offbeat and cool whilst you sit there wondering how you can make it too, but here’s another secret to being successful if you’re not part of that club…find a club you do fit into or better yet, create your own.

[Side confession: I love reading things like that and am always extremely flattered despite what you're about to read - so thank you to anyone who regards me as such].

The unfortunate reality is that many, many people do when they really, really shouldn’t.

Check out many websites/profiles of online entrepreneurs out there and you won’t have to look hard to find one or more where people refer to themselves as “an expert”, “a maven”, “a veteran”, “a pro” or “a rockstar”…when in reality they’re *relative* beginners.

And whilst I’m not yet convinced that it takes the 10,000 hours of hard work to achieve the superstar status that Malcolm Gladwell claims in Outliers, I am pretty damn sure that it takes more than a few months of working experience in a subject to be able to then claim you’re an expert…no matter how much success you’ve achieved.

If you’re running a small business in whatever industry, believe me, I totally understand the need to project the right image and to market yourself as more than competent to get the job done for customers - but there’s a balancing act to achieve that, whilst still acting with integrity, transparency and honesty.

Here’s a personal example…

Despite designing and building blogs and websites for clients for the past 2+ years, neither Jonathan nor I would in any way call ourselves web design or development experts and we certainly don’t state this anywhere on our websites nor make this claim in any of our online interactions. Neither do we need to - and in truth, nor do you.

The fact that you’re offering your services and charging for them is usually evidence enough to most people that you’re a pro (and if you’re not - and you’re a true scammer, then you will eventually be found out - just call it karma).

The core purpose of calling yourself an expert, pro, rockstar, vet or whatever is usually to prove you’re good enough (and whom exactly are you trying to prove that to? Yourself, perhaps?). But that’s just you saying it - and really who are you to say that?

If you are marketing your business online and want to prove to prospects that you’re an expert in your field, then here are a few business tactics I’d suggest instead…

• Focus on gathering quality testimonials and references from satisfied customers - this often works best if you give them some guidance as to what kind of things you’re looking for them to emphasise about working with you.
• Put together a range of case studies using the above testimonials that showcase each particular feature or USP you’d like to highlight about your business that sets you apart. If creativity is a USP for you, then create a case study that highlights this or if value for money is a USP, then create a case study which highlights this.
• Create a resource which demonstrates your knowledge & expertise in your field, not for clients but for colleagues & other industry professionals - either a white paper or a guide is a good start. You can then make reference to this on your website, demonstrating (without explicitly stating) that you’re a valued industry “expert”.

Running our location independent business means we rarely meet clients or customers face-to-face and yet we still manage to sell $2k+ projects and multiple products without proclaiming ourselves as experts, pro’s, rock stars or gurus. You don’t need to either.

If you’ve been over to this site recently (versus reading it via a feedreader or via email), you may have noticed a slight tweak to the masthead. The strapline now says “Blogging Behind The Scenes Of A Location Independent Business” - which means that once again, this blog is evolving.

The reasons for this are two-fold:

1 - The fact that I live a location independent lifestyle is what many people find the most fascinating aspect of my life - and on the advice of someone I respect, I am going to be leveraging this more as part of my personal brand - especially now that the Location Independent project is becoming my main focus on a day-to-day basis.

2 - I believe in transparency in business. What this means is that I believe it’s important to understand why businesses behave the way they do and why they make the decisions they make - no matter what size the business is. As far as I’m concerned, this transparent approach benefits everyone - and especially customers and clients.

The kind of business that Jonathan and I are now building with Kinetiva is a pretty unique one (that too is evolving, by the way) and I’d like to be as transparent as possible about how we’re doing this and the decisions we’re making along the way. I hope that you’ll find it interesting and useful too…

P.S. For a pretty exciting event in the growth of the Location Independent project, check out this post on Chris Guillebeau’s phenomenally popular site, The Art of Nonconformity.