I've built a lot of my business and brand around the premise of taking calculated risks – small leaps, that have the potential to greatly enhance your quality of life.
Uncertainty is an asset is what I've always preached.
Those who fear uncertainty will remain in a comfortable, albeit potentially unfulfilled life.
Those who embrace it will create great things, great stories, and help a lot of people in the process.
Yet despite talking about these concepts all the time, and taking numerous leaps over the years – I feel like in this moment, I'm a bit of a hypocrite.
When You're Too Comfortable to Change
The seventh (!) anniversary of this site was just a couple weeks ago, and we're coming up on FIVE years of Location Rebel here this summer.
It blows my mind how after all this time people are still tuning into read the site, and still joining and having success with Location Rebel. Not to mention that I haven't had to go back to a day job.
Yet, even though I've been doing this for close to a decade, not a whole lot has changed.
Sure I update Location Rebel with new content, and post new articles on Location 180 – but by and large, I'm doing things exactly the same way now as I was five years ago.
That's a problem.
We all know the old adage, "Don't fix what ain't broken."
But there are just as many cliched quotes for not making forward progress. And to be honest? I've grown too comfortable.
It's no different than someone who is in a cushy finance job pulling in $100k a year.
When you're making that kind of money and have that kind of status, the thought of blowing it all up to pursue something different is terrifying – and most people will never do it, regardless of how good things could potentially be on the other side.
I've been doing the same thing.
I've made no major changes to my brand or approach to my business in the last few years because I'm afraid of messing with a good thing that's working – even though I know it has the potential to be better, and help more people in the future.
So for that reason, I feel like a hypocrite.
I haven't been taking leaps. I haven't been embracing uncertainty. And I haven't been constantly pushing the business forward.
Working for Work's Sake
When you're feeling reluctant to change, it's easy to both make excuses, and trick yourself into thinking you're being productive.
I recently did a 31 day, daily video blog experiment that I easily spent over a 100 hours on. Was it ever really going to do much for the business?
Probably not.
I spend a couple hours answering emails every day. I create social media posts and blog posts. Hop on interviews and podcasts.
It all feels busy, and at the end of the day I go to bed feeling productive.
But the reality is, more often than not, I didn't do anything to truly push the business forward.
I maintained.
And once you get into maintenance mode, it's a difficult place to get out of.
There's always work to be done, but if you're not doing the right work, you'll never get anywhere.
Embracing the Next Steps
The realization that I haven't been facing my fears, and been willing to make significant changes to Location 180 for the betterment of the business, it's audience (you!), and my own life has been tough to accept – and even tougher to actually start taking action on.
But I'm finally there – and actively working towards the next version of what this site will become.
Don't worry, the tone of this post may lead you to believe I'm packing it in and doing something totally drastic.
That's not the case at all.
So. what does the future look like?
I'll go into much more detail in a future post, but let me give you a few sneak peeks.
Location 180 Will Be No More
It's terrifying to write this publicly. But for the sake of accountability I wanted to get it out there.
This summer, Location 180 will cease to exist in it's current form.
Both Location 180 and Location Rebel have become significant brands on their own – and that's the problem.
For new readers (and probably some old ones), there's confusion between the two.
What's the difference between them? Why are they on separate domains? Which email list am I on? I have to pay money for one of these, right?
When I do guest posts or go on podcasts, I never know which brand to promote.
Location 180 has also become less about me and my journey, but more about others and helping them on their journey
So this summer, everything from this site will be moving to Location Rebel – and that will be the brand moving forward.
We will still be blogging, shooting videos, creating products, and helping people leave their jobs to build businesses that allow them to travel.
We'll just being doing it in a much more cohesive way, on one central site, that is much more robust than this one.
I mean c'mon, Location 180 isn't even a responsive site. Unacceptable.
As such, the premium product and community currently known has "Location Rebel" will get a slight name change as well (let me know if you have ideas!) to help avoid confusion between the free content and the paid course.
And don't worry, all of the content from Location 180 will still be available for free on Location Rebel!
This is the biggest change I've ever made to my business, and while it's scary, it's also incredibly exciting and I think it's going to allow us to grow in ways where we were limited before.
A New Marketplace
Right now we more or less have one all or nothing product available in Location Rebel.
Location Rebel itself is fantastic. We have a great community there and a ton of content to help you with every aspect of creating a location independent business.
But what about the people who don't need an all encompassing program, or just need one small aspect of it?
Right now, we're not serving them well – even though we have content that could help them.
Location Rebel will still be the flagship product, and will actually get some changes to make it even better, but we'll also be releasing a new Location Rebel Marketplace that has other courses designed to help you with more specific aspects of building a business.
This could be helping you craft better pitch emails, overcome your fears, or say, create a niche site.
The main goal is to have more solutions for people who are seeking out additional help with various aspects of their life and business.
More Targeted Marketing
Right now the marketing we do is pretty hands off. Location Rebel speaks for itself, and has built such a good reputation that we haven't needed to push it very hard.
That said, we're missing the boat on a big opportunity to be more useful.
Sales and marketing is often a touchy subject, where visions of used car salesmen are often what are associated with those words.
But it doesn't have to be.
The people who are making the most money these days are the ones who are educating with their marketing – and not in a deceitful way.
I mean just being truly useful in the content they put out.
With marketing tools becoming more advanced it's easier than ever to discover what people really want to know about and give them useful information in the process.
Then if they want even more help, you create a product to help them with that.
We'll be expanding the marketing avenues we're currently pursuing, but doing so in a way that is useful, without being sleazy or forceful – which I'm looking forward to.
One Big Takeaway for You
Those are just a few of the changes that will be occurring over the next few months, and I'll make sure you know exactly what's happening to help avoid confusion.
Aside from the updates the one big takeaway I want you to have from this post is the concept that maintaining is not growing.
It's easy to convince yourself you're making forward progress, even if you're not.
So take a step back and truly evaluate where you're spending your time, why you're spending your time the way you are, and what needs to change to truly embrace the fear of uncertainty and move towards the life you really want.
Thank you again for reading this site, trusting in me to help you make big changes, and here's to the next chapter!
from Location 180 | Build a Business, Live Anywhere, Achieve Freedom http://ift.tt/20vFNiS
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