We've Worked in... Japan

This series is about places that we've been able to visit because of our freelance lifestyle. This isn't just so that I can share my travel photos; there is a larger point! We have been able to take more holidays or stay longer because we could combine our work with travel. I want more people to get involved in online freelancing and I hope that this series will inspire you. Yes, you.

We've Worked in... Japan

Seeing as it was ski season and Agi and I had been living in South East Asia for the past 2 years we wanted to get a snowboard under our feet. We decided to go to Japan. Agi had never been there before so we decided to visit Tokyo and Kyoto on our way to the mountains and make it a 3 week trip because you can do that when you're an online freelancer! Read on for details of probably our best trip to date...

Tokyo

We started in Tokyo and had an amazing time. We walked miles and miles and saw all of the fantastic sites: Meiji shrine, Harajuku, Shibuya crossing and Asakusa. I worked in Japan as an English teacher from 2004 - 2006 so I dragged Agi on a trip around my old haunts in Ikebukuro.

There were almost too many great things that we saw but my favourite had to be the giant Gundam mech suit in Odaiba. Odaiba is a very modern district built on reclaimed land with shopping malls and entertainment centres. I had heard there was a large Gundam statue in the area and wanted to see it. When I turned the corner I wasn't quite prepared for a 2 story tall robot. I hope the photo captures the scale, it was amazing.

We stayed at the FlexStay Inn in Higashi Jujo in a tiny room that had more amenities cleverly packed into it than most hotel rooms I have seen. The hotel had a comfortable reception area where Agi and I worked most mornings before going out sightseeing.

Kyoto

From Tokyo we took the Shinkansen to Kyoto. This time we stayed in a traditional Japanese style room with tatami mats on the floor. I had a room like this when I lived in Japan and I loved the smell and feel of the mats under my feet again. Our hotel, Peace House Sakura rented bicycles so Agi and I took 2 and went out to see the sights.

I visited Kyoto for a week in 2005 and saw more temples than I could take. With that in mind I gave Agi the greatest hits tour of my favourites: Kinkauji - the golden pavilion, Ginkakuji - the silver pavilion, Nijo Castle, Kiyomizu temple and a new one for me; Fushimi Inari-taisha.

They were all great but really spread out so we continued our exercise: walking in Tokyo, cycling in Kyoto! Even after cycling miles and seeing sights we had time in the evenings to do some work and keep the money rolling in. We also found a street market near our hotel that sold the best fried chicken I have tasted.

Hakuba

Once the sightseeing was over we headed into the mountains for some snowboarding. Hakuba, site of the 1998 winter olympics was our destination. We stayed at the confusingly named Pension Hakuba Airmail which was a lovely little hotel. We had 10 days of a routine I could easily get used to: wake up early, go snowboarding, come home, do some work, get something to eat, watch a movie, sleep, repeat.

Hakuba is absolutely gorgeous with mountains on all sides of a small town full of alpine style buildings. Best of all, I proposed to Agi on top of Goryu ski resort and she said yes!

We had an amazing time and were both really upset to leave. Agi has declared Japan to be her favourite country in the world and we now have to plan a trip to go back.

Another great trip enabled by freelancing! Get in touch with us and see how you can freelance and have more holidays.

Unexpected Pros & Cons of Freelancing

On this site I have talked a lot about how great freelancing is. I also try to be honest and present the downsides. Everybody knows that being able to work from anywhere is fantastic. Everybody also knows that not having a regular, steady paycheque can be problematic. Today I thought I'd talk about some of the lesser known pros and cons of working remotely; the things that have taken me by surprise.

Cons

Last week I mentioned a tool that helps me navigate time differences between me and my clients. The downside of having international clients is that sometimes when they want to talk the time difference goes against you. I recently had a conference call with Sydney, Australia and Salt Lake City, USA. Saying that makes me feel pretty cool (see the pros below) but in order to make it work for everybody the meeting happened at 5am my time. I got an early start on my work that day!

Pro or Con? You Decide

I've read a lot of articles about how to be productive as a freelancer / remote worker. I agree with a lot of the things they say: separate your living and working spaces; maintain a routine etc. One that I totally don't get down with is to dress as if you were going to work. I have never been a clothes horse and I don't like dressing smart. One of the best things for me is that I can work in shorts and t-shirt all the time.

The downside? Recently, 2 of my best friends got married. When the weddings approached I looked in my wardrobe to find - a fine selection of shorts and t-shirts... and little else. As I don't need smart clothes for work I had gradually, largely unintentionally but very thoroughly eliminated all smart clothes from my wardrobe. Cue a quick dash to the department store to find some smart trousers!

Pros

My clients live in quite different parts of the world. Some of them work remotely and move around too. I personally get a kick out of talking to people in other countries and hearing what they are up to. It also makes me feel like a boss player when I say, "I have to run, I've got to speak to Washington." Plus, as documented in this post one of my Australian clients invited me over to visit. Hard to imagine how that would have happened when I had a normal job.

In one of my first posts on this site I talked about how freelancing had got me back into music in a big way. Working by myself lets me listen to whatever I want. I invested in a Spotify subscription and I haven't looked back. I also discovered Noon Pacific, a weekly playlist of funky tunes that I always look forward to. All of this has led to me discovering new artists that I love, rediscovering old favourites and generally spending a lot more of my time listening to music. A definite win!

Most of the jobs in my adult life have involved a whole lot of time indoors. I'm not constantly outdoors now but the flexibility of freelancing means I get to see a lot more sunshine. I even get to work from much nicer locations. Currently I am sitting in my local coworking space which has cool decor, comfy chairs and serves great coffee. A big improvement on some of the factory offices I used to work in!

I'd love to hear about any unexpected things you discovered when working remotely. Alternatively, I'd be glad to tell you more about what I discovered. Drop me a line and let's chat.

My Freelance Tools & Tips

This week I thought I would share a few lessons I have learned while freelancing; mainly from screwing things up, and some tools to help avoid the same problems. If you want some hot tips, read on...

Where to Work?

I often proudly proclaim that "as long as I have my laptop and an internet connection then I can work anywhere!" That is true and it is great but what happens when you suddenly don't have an internet connection?

There was an article on the Upwork blog recently giving suggestions on how to prepare yourself. These are all great tips and I especially endorse the mobile tethering. Tethering is not just great as a backup when your net goes down but it also really enables you to work from anywhere. Anywhere could mean somewhere that's not your home or it could be another country. Whenever I go somewhere new these days my first step is to grab a local data enabled SIM card; in most countries this doesn't cost more than $10 - $20. Mobile data speeds are so good these days that it can often be better than a fixed line.

Another great tip is to know your surroundings and have fallback places to go if power / internet fails. I was looking on Product Hunt the other day and found Workfrom. This tool lets you search for a location and shows you all of the places that you could work. Not just coworking spaces but cafes, libraries etc. If you do want a coworking space then Coworker and the Coworking Wiki are also great tools.

Remember Time Zones

I have clients in several countries and time zones are the bane of my existence. I have an engineering degree but for some reason calculating time differences melts my brain.

Generally, I do not have to speak with clients on a regular basis but when I do time zones are always an issue. In Bangkok I am used to the time difference with my clients so it has become semi-intuitive. However, when travelling that goes out the window! It even goes out the window sometimes just because I'm stupid.

I love World Time Buddy, it's a great app that lets you choose multiple time zones and draw lines between them to see what time (or day) matches your time. I find this especially useful with my clients in the US because quite often we are working on different days; my Tuesday morning is their Monday night. If I relied on myself to work things out I would end up posting things not just at the wrong time but on the wrong day too.

The free version only(!) lets you compare 4 locations at a time. There is a paid version of the app but I have found the free version works great for me. I have never needed to compare 5 different locations at the same time. If that day comes then my life will have changed significantly and I will spring for the paid version!

These are a couple of the tools that I have found useful. What do you use? Get in touch and let me know.

A Little Housekeeping

In case you hadn't noticed, 2016 is now in full swing so this seems an appropriate time for a little 2015 housekeeping. I recently attended a small business owner's workshop with one of my clients and read this article. Both of these got me thinking about "knowing your numbers". As a small business owner or freelancer you are often so involved in doing what you do that you don't look back and understand how you performed. If you don't know how you did, how can you know if you're improving?

The article in particular is valuable for freelancers; it helps you to work out what 1 hour of your time is really worth. Obviously this is worth knowing when bidding on client jobs but another benefit that I hadn't thought about before is using this information to make other decisions in your life. To take an example from the article:

Should you buy the nonstop flight and save two hours or get the flight with a stopover and save $90?

Being the cheap ass that I am I would usually save the $90 and spend 2 hours reading. This article made me think about things differently; if 2 hours of your time is worth more then $90 then this is not a cost effective strategy:

If you know your time is worth $80 per hour, then you should always buy the direct flight that saves you two hours even if it costs $150 more than the flight with a stopover.

There is a counter argument that you might not always have work to do, don't mind reading for 2 hours and would like to keep the $150. That is all true but it still got me thinking about how much my time is worth and how I performed in 2015.

Agi and I started freelancing in 2014 so 2015 was our first full year as freelancers. We learned a lot during the year, lost clients, found new ones and kept trying to earn higher rates.

I spent a couple of hours pulling together all of the data I had on my earnings and hours worked last year. I put all of the info into a spreadsheet (I love a good spreadsheet). The result? My average hourly rate for 2015 was $23/hour.

That was a bit lower than I expected but as I discussed in my post about How We Started Freelancing I had to start at a low rate to get my foot in the door. With that in mind I decided to look at how my hourly rate had changed throughout the year:

That's better! So, at the end of the year 1 hour of my time is worth around $32. That's good and I'm happy with that but even more important to me is that I want to keep getting better so check out the trendline:

I'm even more pleased with this trend but how am I going to continue it into 2016? I wrote a post recently about my thoughts on how to keep that improvement going through investment in yourself. I will keep this chart updated throughout the year and let you know how the trend progresses.

Have you done any self assessment like this? What did you find? Get in touch and let me know, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

We've Worked in... Chiang Mai

This series is about places that we’ve been able to visit because of our freelance lifestyle. This isn’t just so that I can share my travel photos; there is a larger point! We have been able to take more holidays or stay longer because we could combine our work with travel. I want more people to get involved in online freelancing and I hope that this series will inspire you. Yes, you.

We've Worked in... Chiang Mai

Despite living in Thailand for a year and half and visiting multiple times before that I had never been to Chiang Mai. Agi visited in 2009 and loved it. When my parents visited Thailand we decided to take advantage of the opportunity and the four of us headed up north for a week.

Things started well as we were staying in a traditional Thai house made of teak. It was absolutely beautiful and a real change from our apartment in Bangkok. On the first day Agi went off to do an 80km run in the hills with some people she knew through the running club in Bangkok. I took my parents for a more sensible walk around Chiang Mai. The town is lovely, there are temples everywhere. It's also a foodie's paradise. One evening I had a Mexican / Thai fusion meal; pork enchilada in penang curry sauce. Delicious! Check out Ole Gourmet if you are in town.

We took a day trip to Doi Inthanon, the highest peak in Thailand. I had to laugh because there was a big sign stating that you were at the highest point in Thailand when you could clearly see steps behind the sign and a higher point beyond that. The main photo for this post is from the small shrine on top of the mountain. I loved the moss covered elephants. Also on the mountain were two pagodas dedicated to the King & Queen. These were spectacular and the views down into the valley were captivating. Definitely worth a visit.

Obviously Agi and I had to work some of the time we were there and it was an absolute pleasure! Our hotel had a covered seating area outside. The temperature was perfect, there was a cool breeze from time to time and we never got too hot. I'm seriously considering moving to Chiang Mai after this, Bangkok is too damned hot.

My mum had her birthday while we were there and she wanted to go and see elephants. She was adamant that she didn't want to go somewhere that teaches elephants to do tricks or offers elephant rides. We found the Thai Elephant Care Centre, a place that cares for elderly and sick elephants. She had a wonderful time there. We helped feed the elephants, learned about the medicines that elephants need and helped bathe the elephants in the river.

All in all Chiang Mai is a wonderful place. Nice Thai food, not too hot, plenty of sights and activities. I can see why everybody has been telling me to go there for years!

Another great trip enabled by freelancing! Get in touch with us and see how you can freelance and have more holidays.