Picking a country to incorporate your business in is far more important than you think! Singapore is a great country to start a business in with their tax incentives and structures, but I find it to be a poor choice in hindsight given that my business is online-based and that most of my customers are in the US.
I wish I had incorporated it in the US. It's worth paying more taxes just to get the newest and best technologies, tools and services to help out with work. For example, I really really want to use Stripe's payment services, as well as the full feature set from Shopify.
I cannot reference specific US tax law, but I can reference Canadian tax law, and many other countries follow this approach which is based on common law. The U.S. is generally unique when it comes to taxation.
"Common law has generally established that a company is resident in the country in which its central management and control is exercised. British courts have rejected the place of incorporation as the one test of residence of a company because this is only a circumstance like the birth of an individual. Other factors such as the place where the principal business is done, books and records are located, the company seal is kept, bank accounts are maintained, and where the directors reside have been considered by British courts as useful, but not conclusive."
To translate the above: If you are operating your business via the internet from another country, even if most of your customers are in the US/Canada/UK, you may be taxable in the country in which you are physically working from. It depends on the laws of whatever country you are in. Assuming you also don't have work visas for the countries you are in, that means that you are also potentially violating visa laws.
Canada is one of the few countries that can use Stripe
Why not just incorporate in Canada?
I thought the tax savings would have been worth it for Singaporean incorporation. Also, I was thinking of possibly settling down in Singapore so I wanted to establish a business there (so I can more easily get residency).
My question is regarding what you've learned and how you've matured in the 3 years. I look at the last 3 years of my life, and a lot has changed (finished uni, lived in big cities, different relationships, etc).
I've written this response so many times now. You've asked such a great question and I don't even know how to begin to express how I've grown over the recent years. This won't be all encapsulating but I'll give a couple.
Meeting a range of personalities from different backgrounds and cultures who perceive the world around them and their accounts of history so differently, I realize everything is a matter of perspective, and that it's most important for a balanced individual to see things in as many perspectives as possible, despite how it makes you feel. Beauty is in all things, just as well as ugliness. It's great to be uplifted by beautiful moments (and there are an abundance when you travel) but you only polarize your view of the world if your tendency is to see it with a smile on your face. I would rather see the world as it is then to be constantly happy. To travel is to experience the world, and traveling for however long I've traveled my experience has taught me to see the world in full color.
If you had to pick one place you would travel to again, where would it be? And do you always travel alone, and if thats the case, whats it like?
I would love the opportunity to travel to each and every single country again after a decade or two. It would be immensely interesting to see how each country has progressed and how the travel experience has changed. If I were to pick one single country though, it would perhaps be Myanmar. It's perhaps my favorite country that I've visited and it was relatively recent that Myanmar opened its borders to the world so I'm sure the country will be (and already has) been going through some monumental changes.
You've spent around a month per country, where do you stay? In hotels, hostels, apartments?
What's your most common form of crossing borders? By air, land or sea?
Do you have employees running your business back home? Or is this a one man operation?
How long did it take to get your business automated to the point where you could just take off?
Did you sort out visas before you leave or did you sort them out while on the road?
Have you ever been without internet, if so, what did you do about it?
I say I average to about 2 months per country. I try to be as thorough as possible when traveling to a country since I usually have to cross border-to-border (overland) anyways.
My spending on accommodations has increased with time. Sleep is extremely important as it's what keeps you agile for both on the road and business. In the beginning, I would stay in dormitories, which was great fun as you get to meet so many new people, but it turned out to be not so great for doing work at night. Dorms turned into shared rooms at hostels, then to single rooms in the recent quarters. I got a real idea of how sustainable this nomadic way of living is when I lived in a private apartment in Bali via AirBnB. That was a much appreciated comfort!
One thing I noticed in Tim Ferriss' book is that his sports nutrition supplements company must have either been an extremely automated, heavily bootstrapped business that was in a very high profit margin, or that he's over-inflating his income. It's impossible to run a fully functioning and growing online store with a single hire that is the assistant. I know I've tried that model and it was impossible in my experience. I have a couple of employees who are located from all over. We communicate via emails and Skype.
The business was running for nearly a year before I left my country. It's easy to automate a business, but it's much harder to grow it passively. You always need to put in the time to grow a business!
I sort out the visas on the road. I had no idea where I was going to go next when I first landed in my first country, Singapore.
Technology is an amazing thing, especially 3G! Even the poorest countries have some form of mobile data connection these days, so it's always possible to work in a country. There are, of course, some more rural places where there's no signal at all. In those situations, I try to predict the regions beforehand and schedule my offline work for that period of time.
I can say from personal experience, b/c I was working for a company that worked for Tim well before his book came out that his numbers are not inflated ($xx,xxx per month). However, it was a significantly automated business. We handled the optimization of his order process and produced significant results and a large percentage increase in his business. I don't know how many other people he had working for him, but it wasn't many, but the outsourcing and drop-shipping made it so that he didn't need to handle much day-to-day business. My opinion is that he was pretty early to a market, and that was his biggest asset. Though, his story inspired me to do something very similar.
Singapore was the first country I visited! It's an amazingly modern country with a lot of growth ahead. Very polite people and very impolite taxi drivers ;) My company is actually incorporated in Singapore!
Want to do the same thing , just need to know , did you have money at the start ? how you launch this ? I have no money , but truly want do this.
I started my business with about $150 dollars. The business had been online for about a year before I started my travels.
If you're interested in doing the same, I highly recommend reading 4-Hour Workweek, as well as frequenting sites like Hacker News.
I was fortunate enough to have some entrepreneurial experience before launching Postertext, and I would recommend doing the same before starting a business that will be funding your travels!
I was wondering how did you manage to start with only $150? At the beginning, did you hire a web developer to create and administrate your website or did you create it by yourself? What about other expenses like company registration and maintainance taxes (if that's the case) and such? If you can clarify these things and related, I'd be grateful.
I don't like how that book is titled and marketed - we all know Tim works way harder than that. He gets off on semantics because if you "love" your work then it is "not work."
Clever marketing, but I don't buy the whole 4 hour thing.
The title of a book can have very little to do with what's between the pages.
The original title of the book was "Drug dealing for fun & profit". Needless to say publishers weren't that impressed with that title.
As someone who is doing a start-up with $20,000 in my personal bank, I am quite curious as to what 4-hour workweek recommends as I have been working a 9-5 while building my product. As essentially I have been doing very short workweeks for the startup with a lot of progress. So I am just wondering if it is primarily about time management?
Have you read "The 100$ Startup" ? I wonder if it is equally usefull as the book you recommend.
I can comment here, $100 Startup is very similar to 4HWW, except, in my opinion, it's not as good.
Not to say it's the exact same book, you'll get value out of both. But if you're going to pick one of those books, pick 4HWW.
Now, if you REALLY want to create a business that can free you, read MJ DeMarco's "The Millionaire Fastlane".
Reason why, is Tim Ferriss's book teaches you how to make a thin, "lifestyle" business. Where you don't have to work much and can make income. That's great, but there are more sides to the story.
For example, in order to BUILD a business, you can't use Tim's automation mindset... especially in the beginning. Tim Ferriss recommends "batching" email all on one day. If you really want to build a business fast, though, you should be answering emails instantly, whenever possible.
Tim's model is, spend a bit of time building a business that can hopefully generate at least $10,000/month, then outsource it completely and travel abroad. It's a good strategy but it has flaws, and Tim's book makes outsourcing look much, much, much easier than it actually is (although his way of doing things is definitely possible).
MJ DeMarco, on the other hand, stresses the importance of working HARD at a business for a few years (generally takes 5 years). So you make your business EVERYTHING for those 5 years.
Instead of aiming for $10k a month, you aim to make $100k+ a month with your business. Then, after five years, and proven profitability, you can sell that business for a huge lump sum which can be semi-passively invested for the rest of your life.
The amount you can sell a business for depends on the industry it's in, and the industry's multiple (he explains this in the book).
So the difference is, with Tim's system, you can get a "lifestyle" business, which may be temporary depending on the niche you're in. With MJ DeMarco's, you create a real business, then sell it for hard cash.
With $10mm, even if you only get 1% returns a year, that's $100,000 a year, DOING ALMOST NOTHING. For the rest of your life.
I don't understand this stuff. Are you a millionaire? If creating a business that makes 100k a month is possible over 5 years, why isn't everyone doing it? I'm not trying to be aggressive, I just don't understand how stuff like that is possible. You'd need a good idea first, right?
1) People don't understand that anyone can create a business. Most people think that people who get rich "get lucky". This attitude is largely responsible for keeping poor/middle class people poor/middle class.
2) Most people don't like the idea of spending 5 years on something that is "not a guarantee". Especially because for the first 3, you're probably not making a huge amount of money.
Also, the entire time you do this, people will be telling you it won't work. Then, when it starts to work, after years of hard work and sacrifice, people tell you you get lucky.
In five years of straight effort, you can do anything you want at a VERY high level. In fact, I'd say you could become world class at just about anything in 5 years. So why aren't more people world class?
Because generally, people are lazy, and they want "guarantees". Which is why so many people go to college and then get a 9-5 job. Because it comes with a guarantee.
Problem is, that guarantee isn't backed by anything, and more often than not, turns out to be the exact opposite of the promised outcome.
Try the Millionaire Fastlane.
Easily the best of the dozens of books I've read on the subject. Honestly, it's enough to replace a business education IMHO (I say this as someone who went to college for business).
Nope, haven't. Sorry, can't make the comparison for ya
How much do you make per quarter? How much are you spending to travel and live per quarter?
The thing with being a small business owner is that your income is directly tied with the company's. That said, it's somewhere in the low 5 figure range.
I don't have a real budget when it comes to traveling since some countries have very different living standards and costs of living. I always just try to live like a common local when I'm traveling: taking public transport, eating at local restaurants where there are most people, etc.
How much on average would you say it costs to travel and live from country to country?
I've been working my way around the world for about 12 years now. The cost varies a bit, but it's still a fraction of what you would pay in a developed country.
Everything else is generally cheaper. For instance, today is my birthday (woo hoo) My lady friend and i went out for lunch, got massages, haircuts, movie, kumquat tea, dinner and booze for just under 70usd. I live in Malaysia. Last time I was in Thailand, I got a 2hr massage for 10usd. As for the majority of not so developed countries, Belize is about the only place outside of Japan that I've found to be crazy expensive and that's due to a super fucked up gov.
Sleeping wise, If you are doing hotels instead of longer term stuff, you can find decent places for maybe 20 - 40usd a night depending on the country. Except for Japan. It's fucking expensive. A hotel will run you around 70 a night. I currently have a place with the bay on one side and monkeys and jungle on the other for about 300usd a month. Bills amount to about 90usd (5mb dsl, power, water, gas).
For food, If you can cook you are better off some places, but if you are in asia, it's almost always cheaper to eat out. There are carts, stalls and holes in the wall with some of the most fantastic things ever. My fav buffet runs 2usd a person for a big fat plate of amazingness. At my fave indian place, you can get 5 main dishes drinks and naan for around 7usd. In Thailand, you can hit a rocking buffet for about .80usd. In Taiwan it's closer to 3usd. Taiwan also has all you can drink clubs for around 15usd.
All in all, If you are doing a reasonably priced accommodation, 800usd a month can easily get you by.
How many hours per day do you work on average?
But, most importantly: do you absolutely have to be an entrepreneur to do this kind of thing? I am making preparations to lead a mobile lifestyle starting on the first months of 2014, and I have a friend that insists I should start any kind of business, but I find it so much simpler to be an employee. I am a translator, and that's a job that I can do anywhere with Internet. The only problem is that it does not pay that well... But I think it will be enough if I put 6 to 8 hours a day.
So, what do you think? Would you still do this if you were an employee and not an entrepreneur?
(Also, if you could respond: what's the absolutely minimum amount of money you can be expected to have monthly to travel, have some fun and eat moderately healthy?)
It is still a full-time job so I work a full-time job's worth of hours. Though on more productive days, I'm able to get what I need to get done and spend more time traveling.
I think you do need a bit of an entrepreneurial spirit for these kinds of things, if not a bit of business sense. Having either of these will at least help increase the chances of the business being financially stable enough to fund your travels. Not having either, you'll be taking a considerable risk not just for your finances but for your traveling lifestyle.
As a translator, you'll do great. I've met translators who does the same thing as I do. Their best advice was to indicate your sense of multi-culturism and the mobile lifestyle as indefinite proof and motivation on letters and resumes.