Day 41: Step #16, How To Earn An Income Anywhere In The World

Start A Business

Dear Student,

I had a friend in Poland years ago who learned that Burger King was going to open up shop there and needed warehouse space for its supplies. My friend bought a warehouse. Burger King became his client. In time, he expanded his storage business to include other clients and other products…and he made a nice living for himself in the place where he’d decided he wanted to live.

Another friend noticed how few coffee shops existed in Warsaw. (This was 15 years ago, before Starbucks came to this town.) My friend found a local roaster to roast the coffee beans and then packaged them himself. He set up a combination retail and wholesale operation that was bought by another larger one. That company is still going strong.

Some of the best overseas businesses start like these two—organically. You show up, discover a market niche, and find a way to fill it.

Other business start-ups can be more pre-planned.

In 2006 or so, I took early retirement from the company where I’d worked for nearly 23 years. Six months later, I realized that retirement didn’t suit me. I liked being in business.

For me, the question wasn’t, what business might make sense? (I enjoyed the business I’d already spent 23 years learning how to practice.) For me, the question was, where best should I base the business I want to launch? (Panama stood out as the obvious choice.)

In other words, there are two ways to approach this—you can look for the best place to start the business you know you want to launch…or you can look for ideas for a business that might be successful in the place where you want to be.

Yesterday, we talked about laptop-based professions (consulting, copywriting, travel writing, photography, programming, even bookkeeping, for example) that can be practiced anywhere in the world you can get an Internet connection.

These portable professions constitute one approach to earning an income to support your new life overseas. Going this route is a chance to go into business for yourself, as it were, to be your own boss and to make your own money…without incurring the hassle and the overheads of a full-fledged business.

Some of us, though, are up for taking on the liabilities, headaches, and hassles that come along with running your own business. Perhaps you (like me) are interested not only in generating revenue and income, but also in the adventure of building something. I’m not here going to attempt to provide you with everything you need to know to build a business in another country. That’d be ambitious in this context. I would, though, like to prompt your thinking regarding ideas and locales for businesses that could make sense for you…