How To Start Working Remotely Even If You Don’t Have Any Experience was originally published on www.xscapers.com
The popularity and availability of remote work has been on the rise for the past several years, and it has never been more popular than it is now. With 2020 we’ve seen the spread of Coronavirus, and subsequently, hundreds of thousands of companies expanding and offering remote employment. So how do you start working remotely even if you have no experience? If you have been wondering how to work remotely but worry you lack the experience or skills, keep reading. This article will walk you through how to work remotely, even if you’re a total beginner.
While it used to be that the only remote jobs available were for highly skilled individuals, that is no longer the case. There are remote jobs in every industry you can think of! If it can be done from a computer, it can be done remotely. This means:
This list could go on forever. The point here is that you don’t have to have special qualifications or a degree to get a remote job – so many entry level positions exist. And if you do have a degree or certification, that’s great! But it is not a requirement to get started, so don’t get hung up on that.
The first step on your remote work journey needs to be deciding on your ideal life and work situation. What works for one person may make another miserable. What do you want your life to look like? Are you a morning person? Do you prefer set hours and a set, predictable income? Aside from starting your own business, remote work can be broken down into remote employment or freelancing.
Before you start your remote work journey, be sure to have a clear picture of your personal financial requirements. Set your budget and decide how much income you need to bring in to sustain your lifestyle. Once you have a clear picture of your income requirements, you will know what to look for (and ask for) in your remote job search.
Remote Employment: As a remote employee, you’ll likely be working for a company or business and need to adhere to set hours – like 9-5 or whatever you agree upon with your employer. As an employee, your employer takes care of your tax withholdings and you may also be eligible for certain benefits through your company, like health insurance or 401k. You will earn a salary or hourly wage and have steady paychecks.
Freelancing: As a freelancer, you will be self-employed and take on clients of your choosing. You will be in charge of setting your pay rate, getting new clients, and deciding how often and how long you want to work based on your income requirements. You will also be in charge of handling your own tax withholdings and seeking out your own insurance needs.
These skills are necessary for any remote work situation, whether you decide to be a freelancer or a remote employee.
The above skills are essential for remote workers. So how do you identify those skills in yourself from your past work experience, AND convey them to potential employers?
There are two categories of skills: soft skills and hard skills. The most valuable remote work skills, like the ones listed above, are soft skills. Soft skills refer to how you work, hard skills refer to what it is that you do. Effective communication is a soft skill, proficiency working in Google Drive is a hard skill.
If you’ve never worked a remote job before, it’s easy to assume that you don’t have the experience necessary to land one. However, that’s not true! Not all remote employers are looking for candidates with remote experience. But, they will be looking for certain soft skills that show them you can effectively work from home.
To identify your remote work skills, start with making a list of previous work experience. This list should contain every job you’ve ever had, no matter how insignificant it may seem. Not all of this list will go on your resume, only the most relevant parts. If you’ve ever had side jobs, done any volunteering in your community, held events, wrote a blog, include those in your preliminary list.
From this list, determine what skills you had to have to perform essential tasks that you could relate to a remote work environment.
For example, as a bartender or server, your skills might look like:
If you’ve ever had a hobby blog, your skills would include writing, proficiency using computers, etc. Or, if you’ve ever been a volunteer admin for a Facebook group, your skills could include community management. Get really creative here! Even parenting skills can translate into remote work skills.
Now that you know what you can bring to the table in a remote work situation, you need to be able to convey those skills on a resume for remote employers.
Include any relevant job or hobby experience, and list the relevant skills and tasks you performed for the job that could relate to a particular job or remote work situation in general.
Be sure to list any tools and softwares you’re already familiar with, too.
Now that you know your skills and have revised your resume for a remote job search, where do you go to find remote jobs?
As a freelancer you can use these techniques, as well as finding potential clients you want to work with and reaching out to them directly, whether or not you see a job listed.
Working remotely is a lot different than working in an office, and as such, there are certain things you can do to set yourself up for success in your work and for your health.
Remote work is the future, and it’s more attainable now than it ever has been before. By now you should be aware that you, in fact, DO have the skills necessary to be a remote worker… even if you’ve never done it before.
To connect with remote working full-time RVers, join the Xscapers Facebook Group here.
For remote work inspiration and advice from full-time RVing remote workers, check out this interview series!
Author
Carrie has been on and off the road for the past 3 years, experiencing travel as a full-time RVer and most recently trying out the van life.
When she’s not geeking out on marketing or befriending the local cats, you can find Carrie at her website: Making Money and Traveling – where her love of travel and obsession with location-independence meet.
Internet Security for Digital Nomads was originally published on www.xscapers.com
Welcome to my world, where bits and bytes fly through the air across the wire and (if I have done my job right) slam right into a firewall and “get injected, inspected, detected, [dis]infected,
neglected and selected” before being passed into your laptop, phone, or tablet. We are going to chat about the basics of Internet Security while you are on the road and how you can make sure to protect all your technological doodads.
The first thing, and I can’t stress this one enough, is PATCH YOUR SYSTEMS! Like RIGHT NOW!
This means:
While I know many of you will be using some sort of cellular upstream connection (Wi-Fi puck, Wi-Fi tethering to a phone, cell card in a device in your rig, whatever) and I know those gigabytes are critical to survive, you still need to make sure your machines get their patches. You can set both Windows and Mac laptops to download the updates at certain times, maybe off hours in the middle of the night, when the bandwidth usage on the cell tower is low or possibly hold off until you are near somewhere with a good broadband Internet connection (like a coffee shop or library). Either way, I want you to promise me that you won’t go more than 14 days after the patches have been released to install them.
The patches that are being released will always include some security update for an application running on your machine. These security updates are being released because someone found a flaw and either has released it into the wild before the patch was released, at which point hackers are trying to use it to figure out how to exploit it and get onto your machine before the vendor releases the patch, or the security flaw is released concurrent to patch at which point you have some time (usually hours or days) before the hackers have a working exploit. This is why you have to install your dates quickly!
I would like to make a quick point about the Android operating system and how it gets patches and the economics of the “cheap” Android phone. If you have a Brand X Android phone sold by Verizon to get updates, this is what has to happen:
First Google releases a patch. They do this really well and often.
Then Verizon has to review the patch and make sure it works on your BrandX phone. In doing this, Verizon has to do a cost analysis of calls per hour into their call center from any potential failures from this patch, plus the cost of them doing testing to see if this patch works on a few thousand different variations of software and hardware, plus the cost of the infrastructure to keep patch servers up and running 24×7 versus the satisfaction they get from making sure you could be a bit more secure.
Yeah, they aren’t going to decide to help you very often. In the off chance they DO, its likely weeks or months behind and comes with some additional Verizon “features” to help sell you some more stuff.
On the other hand if you bought a phone from Google (ie if you have a Pixel device), then all you have to do is press update and your phone reaches out to Google Data Centers and downloads the patches for the hardware and software that they built from servers they are already using to send you search results and give you free email. Google takes this into consideration when selling you one of their phones (as does Apple) which is why they are about $800. They need to get enough cash out of you to make sure they can keep supporting your phone for 2-5 years.
Second thing I want you to do is promise me (and don’t lie because I will know) that you won’t use the same password on all the websites you use. As soon as one website gets hacked, the hackers then use any passwords they found and try about 5000 other websites they have in a list using the same username and password to see what else they can get into. They have scripts that do this for them, it takes them seconds to put a single username and password into all those sites and see if they get in anywhere else.
I know remembering passwords is hard. I use a password manager App called 1Password. In my opinion, it’s the best, but it costs money each month. You can also use LastPass. This one is free and they have a great security track record for fixing any issues that are uncovered.
Basically, humans are really bad at coming up with random passwords. Thankfully, machines are REALLY REALLY good at it. Use a password manager and you only have to remember a single password (and it better not be password123 or even “ifyourRVsarockinImstillcomingknockin”) then the password manager will generate random passwords for you and use those password to auto-log you in to every different website you visit. I have hundreds of passwords in my password vault and use a long passphrase that’s easy for me to remember. I don’t know any of my passwords because most of them are 26 character randomly generated strings of gibberish. When setting up your password vault password use something easy to remember but hard to guess like “I like Kyle because he has a pink bus” or “RVing is awesome because it allows me to meet people like Kyle” or a sentence from your favorite song “big lizard in my backyard cant afford to feed him any more” (Dead Milkmen, 1985). It doesn’t have to have caps or letters or numbers (better if it does, but it’s harder to type) it just needs to be long.
Third thing please also put passwords/passcodes on your devices just to make it harder for someone to login who might be in your rig for a few minutes. You don’t want your neighbor seeing those pics of you and the Mrs from your birthday last year, do you?
If you have a Windows PC and have it all patched and password protected, give yourself a little pat on the back. Good job! You have now become part of a small elite group whose machines will be a little tougher to exploit.
Sadly, however, the Windows operating system is the most attacked system on the market due to market share, age of the code bases, and complexity. You are also going to have to turn on some antivirus and enable the Windows firewall. The FREE windows defender Antivirus is great don’t buy anything else and if you already did then please uninstall that garbage and install Defender instead. Turn on Defender and allow it to get its updates and run a full scan of your file system. If you want I will happily wax poetic over a roaring camp fire and some whiskey about the pros and cons of third party antivirus but the reality is that ONLY Windows Defender gets access to the ooey gooey guts of the operating systems in a safe way. Every other solution is jamming its grubby little hands deep into the operating system to see what’s going on. Often, it gets it wrong and lets in attackers instead of keeping them out. As for the Windows firewall, it’s pretty great, too. Enable it and set your rig wifi to be “home” and anytime you join a new network, set it as a public network so that people at the coffee shop can’t make unauthorized incoming connections.
If you have a Mac machine then you are a bit safer here, there are no real viruses so no real need for anti-virus solutions, but I do run my Mac with the firewall turned on to keep the unauthorized applications from accepting incoming connection.
As far as other operating systems (Apple iOS, ChromeOs, Android, etc) go, just make sure your OS and applications are updated and you will be fine. There is no need to add antivirus or antimalware to your phone.
Finally, please make sure that your email client is setup to use and encrypted protocol (HTTPS, POPs, IMAPs, SMTPs). If you are using mainstream free email setups like Gmail or Yahoo with your browser, you are fine keep doing that. If you have it setup in your Outlook or Mac Mail, go into settings and make sure your that the client is configured to use SSL/TLS for the incoming and outgoing servers. If you don’t have this turned on, your email client is sending your username and password in the clear across the Internet every time you check your email or send an email. So, change it, then go change your email password.
Finally, take a moment to understand what network your device is connecting to and try to make an assessment as whether it is safe. In my bus, I have a WifiRanger (running on 12v power) that acts as my Wi-Fi when I am near the bus. I can connect it to my Wi-Fi hotspot for internet connectivity or use some other Wi-Fi network (like at an RV park).
I have my 2 AppleTV’s, my Network Attached Storage Array (for movies, music, and backup), my Victron gear, my phone and my iPad all connecting to the “Bussy McBussface” name on the Wi-Fi Ranger. When I got to a park or if I was moochdocking with a friend I would login to the Wi-Fi Ranger and have it reach out to my friend’s, or the park’s, Wi-Fi. That way everything in the bus was safe behind the WifiRanger and I didn’t have to change all my gear around every time the Wi-Fi name and password changed. When I was on the road, I definitely found myself connecting to some sketchy networks just to be able to get my email or stream something, but I would not have done so without the WifiRanger acting as a firewall for the bus.
Now, some of you know me know that my big pink bus does not stealth camp, at all. There were times that I would go into town to get fast Wi-Fi. In those cases, I was usually picky about where I was getting Wi-Fi, trying to stick to establishments where you had to ask for the password and it wasn’t just a signal that said “Free Wi-Fi.” I consider the “Free Wi-Fi” signal to be akin to a white windowless van with the hand painted cardboard sign that says “free candy.” Don’t do it, go to a Starbucks or the local Library or McDonalds.
That’s it! Really… There’s a lot more to do in my consulting practice but honestly if everyone, including every firm I have worked and consulted for in the last 25 years, followed these rules we would likely have a much safer Internet. If you want to chat in detail feel free to reach out, hit me up on Facebook or over email and hopefully I can help you out!
Authors
Kyle has been in Internet Security for more than 25 years professionally and spent his youth hacking phone systems and logging into computers attached to modems before the days of the Internet. He spent a year full time on the road in his Prevost bus, towing his Jeep and seeing the county with his dog Zen. He has since come back to his sticks and bricks in Scottsdale, but continues to be involved with Xscapers Community for convergences and other RV adventures. Kyle also runs an Information Security focused consulting practice called Cyber Nomad Security helping customers to ensure their systems and practices are secure.
Organizing Your Digital Workspace was originally published on www.xscapers.com
This is a transcript from a live webinar called Organizing Your Digital Workspace. Watch the Webinar here on the Escapees RV Club website or scroll down to the bottom of this article.
You can view the entire Escapees RV Club Webinar Archive here.
Being organized and doing most everything digitally is super important to this lifestyle. Organization leads to improved efficiency, freeing up our minds to focus on the tasks at hand and freeing up our time to get out and explore.
My husband and I live in a 37-foot travel trailer full-time with five kids and a dog. To be able to work, have a business, and get to spend time with family and actually explore, I have to be organized. Here are a couple of tools I use, and recommend to my clients, to maintain an organized digital workspace.
Having an organized workspace really begins with having a digital hub where everything goes. It’s easy to end up with tools for everything. There’s that saying, “there’s an app for that.” Just because there is an app for that doesn’t mean you need to have it. When we start to feel scattered, we turn to our digital hub. Notion is the tool I’ve gravitated to for that purpose.
I love Notion because it’s flexible. I can store information in almost any format and organize it however I want. Whether it’s audio, images, text, any type of data can go into it. So many alternatives are very limited, only allowing you to store photos or photos and texts. With Notion, being able to toss the data in there and organize different pieces together is something I really appreciate.
It’s also shareable. We enjoy building our travels plans and reservations into a list we can share with friends and family. This allows them to see where we’re going to be and maybe meet up or share with family back home so they can keep tabs on where we are. It’s really practical for daily things like grocery lists, too, so we always have it with us. It’s very shareable in small chunks so that you can share the right things with the right people.
Another big perk of Notion versus other options is that Notion is usable. This sounds odd, but so many other systems are meant for storing and organizing information. With Notion you actually get to use the information that you’ve so painstakingly gathered. I call it my reliable external brain. I love that I can put down thoughts and ideas and quotes I’ve come across, and then three months later when I’m writing a blog post that’s related to that topic, I don’t have to depend on my brain, which is kind of holey like Swiss cheese, to remember those things.
Amazing Marvin is a task manager, and it’s really unlike any other task manager that I think I’ve ever used. I love systems and built a business around systems before having any idea I had ADHD. My diagnosis actually revealed to me why I’m good at systems – they’ve been a coping mechanism. It’s how I’ve functioned. I was always looked at as driven and ambitious, but it was really just I had systems and I moved really fast. So, when I found a task manager that can keep up with that and be flexible, I was ecstatic.
This is the primary reason I love it. It’s flexible. If you’ve ever thought, “Oh, I want to try organizing my task list this way,” you usually have to find a new planner or app and insert your information all over again. Amazing Marvin has that within it. You can switch to a whole new way of organizing your tasks without switching to a new app and having to reimport everything.
It’s super customizable and can be as simple or as complicated as you’d like. They have what they call strategies and you can turn them on and off, down to being able to estimate your time, track your time, change the way things are organized and tiered, etc. And, of course, it’s ADHD friendly. If you have ADHD, you have issues like procrastination, trouble prioritizing, and it really does have tools that help with all of those and a lot of gamification within that.
Now we’re going to get into two really obvious tools here that I think are super core to having an organized digital workspace, and that’s Google Drive and Google Chrome. I cringe any time someone’s still using Microsoft Word and they’re in a collaborative space. Whether we’re working with clients or coworkers, using something like Microsoft Word is just a little bit outdated because we constantly have to decide like, “Is this the most recent version of a file? Did I get the updates you sent?” Google Drive is a huge help with this because it’s real time collaboration. Being able to edit on the fly with a coworker can be really handy. If my assistant is helping me with proofreading an email series, or if I’m working with a client, being able to make those edits without having to re-save, update the file name to indicate its current, resend—all of that is eliminated, making the process of collaborating much easier.
Your files in Google Drive are always up to date, thanks to autosave. You even have revision history! If you accidentally delete an entire thing, or a collaborator makes changes that need to be reversed, your original document is still there in the version histories. Autosave can also be a lifesaver when we have to work offline. Those of us who are nomadic don’t always have a reliable internet connection. Thanks to Google Drive’s autosave, we can work offline and not worry. It’s still going to save. It’s still going to upload. We’re still going to have that version history.
Within Google Drive, you have docs, you have spreadsheets, you have slides, and they all work so nice and neat together. I never thought I would be giddy that I could take a set of cells in a spreadsheet and embed them in a slide or a word document and be able to edit them and update them without copying and pasting all over again. It seems minor until you have to do reports for people and put them in another method. Not everyone prefers looking at spreadsheets, and clients may rely on you to break down the information into more digestible chunks. Because of Google’s integration between their file types, pulling pieces of different docs together is much easier than you’d think!
The last thing I enjoy about Google Drive is that you can organize a file in your folder system, and then that file is shared with somebody else and somebody, they can organize it in their own file structure. Maybe you prefer to organize by project, but another collaborator prefers to organize by date. You can both store the exact same file in your individual organizational structures without problem! I cannot tell you enough how much I love that.
Continuing with the Google thing, we have Google Chrome. This is really the most powerful of the browsers when it comes to being able to work efficiently. Your browser is the thing you use the most during the day, so it should be a help, not a hindrance.
One of the reasons I love Google Chrome is it allows me to set boundaries. At the top of your browser window is an icon where you can select which account you want to use (if you use multiple Google accounts). If you’re multi-tasking work and personal needs, you can sign into one set of browser windows with your personal Gmail and another set of browser windows with your work one and move between the two as needed without signing in and out every time you switch, also making it easier to ensure you don’t send an email from the wrong account or save a file to the wrong drive. Because we can’t always create boundaries between our personal and our professional lives, especially when we’re nomadic entrepreneurs, it is important to create them where we can to keep things manageable.
I made the joke earlier, “There’s an app for that and it doesn’t mean you need it.” There’s an extension for that, too! There are some really awesome ones for Chrome. Forest helps me focus by blocking sites I don’t need to be on during a certain time. LastPass, Grammarly, OneTab—there are so many amazing extensions that can make life easier, which also make my browser more of a help than a hindrance.
Chrome also has the omni bar, which goes beyond the standard URL bar. Unlike other browsers, Google’s omni bar serves as a URL bar, a search tool, conversion calculator, time zone calculator, and much more. Another handy feature of the omni bar is how it keeps my workspace neater. You know how it can be when you really get into a project, you end up with a bunch of windows and tabs open. With omni bar, when you try to open a “new” page you may have forgotten you opened an hour and six tabs ago, it will tell you, “Hey, you have this open already” and just take you straight to it. Really, really helpful.
The fourth reason I love Google Chrome is syncing. Your individual accounts (see my note above about boundaries) also have individual search histories and bookmarks. When you sign into that account from a different device, like a smart phone, you can access your recent history, bookmarks, etc, even if you were working on that same account on your laptop. This can be so handy for simple things like checking recipes to make sure you’re buying all the needed ingredients, and for more complicated things like having to relocate from a desktop computer in your RV workspace to a laptop at the local library when your internet gives you problems.
Now we’re going to get into some tools that are a little bit more specific in what they do. Acuity Scheduling is one for keeping your calendar organized. Time is a nonrenewable resource, and your calendar should be sacred. If you are booking things with clients, coworkers, having a tool that allows you to put in your availability, set some boundaries, and then people can book based on their time zone and when they’re available, removes the back-and-forth scheduling tennis. You can send a link with your availability, and they can figure out when their availability syncs up with yours. It’s basically like having an assistant to do your scheduling and you’re just outsourcing it with a link.
Acuity Scheduling also helps you limit others’ abuse of your time. When you’ve spent time and money developing your expertise, you often have people who want to “pick your brain” about something. There is a time and place for helping out friends and colleagues and allowing that dynamic to happen, but more and more, it’s a way for people to get free consultant work. With Acuity, you can set up “pick m y brain” appointments and even charge a fee, reminding others that this is a service you provide having dedicated time and money to learn it. You didn’t just wake up one day knowing things.
A video is worth 10,000 words. Loom works both as a desktop app and as a Chrome extension, and it allows you to record your screen, make a video of yourself, or do both. The best part of Loom is that, instead of having to deal with downloading the video then sending or uploading elsewhere to share, it’s automatically available with a link. People watching it can even reply, with their comment timestamped for easier reference. It puts feedback within context, so it really just speeds things up.
It can also be great if you are reaching out to customer service and need to show them what’s going wrong. You can record your screen and interactions with their product to demonstrate the issue, speeding up the troubleshooting process immensely. Same convenience applies if you’re trying to teach someone something. You can use Loom to record the process of how it’s done and send the link. Thanks to their commenting feature, you can also answer questions the recipient may have more efficiently and effectively by seeing where in the video they became confused.
And then there’s Franz. We have so many communication apps between Facebook Messenger, Instagram DMs, Slack, Skype, What’s App, etc. Having all of those apps running on our computer or other device slows them down. Franz brings all of those together into one app, one place so that you can have all of those at your fingertips at once. It also means you can shut them all off at once when you need to focus.
And then lastly, we have Krisp. It’s technically an AI app, part of your computer or your phone. Krisp’s purpose is to drown out background noise. It works between your microphone or headphones and the recording device to cut out background noise. Need to take calls from a coffee shop? It’ll silence the background noise.
Though this isn’t technically an organizational tool, it’s vital to my digital workspace. It’s such a freeing thing because it eliminated the panic over where to go for an important call or meeting when the kids are rowdy, it’s grounds maintenance day at the RV park, or someone else in the RV has their own call or meeting they need to attend that also requires a quiet space. If you’ve stayed in an RV park as a remote worker, you know that, without fail, your busiest day of the workweek will coincide with the day park staff decide to mow the property. Knowing my clients won’t hear the mower six feet from my RV makes for a more peaceful and productive work day!
And that’s my list! These eight tools have been invaluable in helping me organize both my personal life and my business. As an entrepreneur serving my own clients, it is incredibly important that I keep my digital workspace organized so I can answer their questions and needs efficiently. These tools help me do just that!
Author
Dani is a Business Systems Strategist. She helps entrepreneurs who want to ditch overwhelm to create a sustainable, dreamy business through establishing boundaries and systems that work for them. After 8 years in entrepreneurship, she knows that it doesn’t have to be all about the hustle and grind. It’s the systems and processes that we build that allow us to build empires and live dreamy lives all at the same time.
When she’s not nerding out over workflows, spreadsheets, and statistics, you can find Dani traveling with her husband and five kids, taking in a baseball game, or getting a little bit of peace and quiet on her yoga mat. Get all of Dani’s best tips, tricks, and tutorials at https://simplifiedbusinesssystems.com.
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6 Ways to Empower Remote Employees was originally published on www.xscapers.com
I teach and coach people to reinvent themselves with remote work or business.
I study trends and have been watching companies reluctantly wade into remote work waters. Fear of losing control, giving employees too much leeway, or managing from a distance seemed too big a risk.
The companies who were willing to dip a toe in did so because offering remote work is actually good for business. I predicted (and the data supported) steady growth in remote work opportunities with more companies offering part-time and full-time remote options over the next 5-10 years.
I’ve been confident in the growth of remote work, but I never could have predicted a worldwide pandemic that would reshape the remote landscape almost overnight.
This has impacted businesses big and small, and forced some to enable their workforce to work at least partially or fully remote, and in some cases indefinitely.
I wrote this article to provide companies and employers ideas for how to support a rapidly growing remote workforce both immediately and long-term, because the reality is that remote work is here to stay. If you are an employee looking for ways to showcase your remote skills to employers, click here to read The Top Skills To Be A Remote Worker.
In 2016 my husband Bryce and I walked away from long corporate careers. He was a senior financial analyst and I was a corporate trainer responsible for employee training and development programs. I also managed projects, people and remote teams. I have always been an employee advocate using my influence to positively affect workplace fairness and career advancement.
As career professionals it was unthinkable that we would ever willingly leave our safe little cubicles to do something so extreme like quit our jobs, sell our possessions, and RV around the country full-time. But that is exactly what we did.
We reinvented ourselves professionally by freelancing, starting a blog, and launching Remote Work School, where I teach and coach people about remote work and business.
Because I’ve been both a remote employee and business owner who employs remote contractors, I have the perspective of how each side is impacted and what both parties can do to create a win-win remote experience for everyone.
Empowering employees should be the core of everything.
While doing research for this article, I found it odd that many articles talked about how managers should ensure that “remote employees are accountable.” I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s standard stuff to task middle managers with every responsibility, including how their employees might behave when they aren’t in the office, as though managers are crystal-ball carrying wizards.
When managers are tasked with making employees more accountable the opposite can happen—employees aren’t empowered which can lead to the manager owning all of the decision causing overwhelm and burnt-out.
Studies show that empowering employees to discover and communicate their own work style not only takes the burden off of managers, it makes employees feel more valued and can result in more productivity, loyalty and longevity.
This list will help you manage remote employees in practical ways, but more importantly it will shift power back into the hands of employees, creating a more balanced and productive remote workplace. If empowering employees scares you, then you my friend definitely need to keep reading.
Let’s get real—this whole remote thing isn’t easy. It’s not easy for companies or employees either. Some employees can adapt easily and find that being location independent is no big deal. But some don’t make that transition so easily.
Working away from an office or location, without the familiar co-worker and manager dynamic can be hard. Feeling isolated is real. Distractions like TV, a load of laundry or home-schooled kids can make focusing harder. Maybe that’s true for you too, so you can relate to what your team members are going through.
The best thing you can do as an employer is be supportive of this transition. You were put in this role most likely because someone thought you’d be a good leader (or you promoted yourself to a business owner). Part of leadership is showing empathy for your team members, by asking them how they’re doing, and giving them grace on this adjustment period. We’re people not robots and “embracing change” isn’t exactly in our program code no matter how many company mission statements like to promote that ideal. Show empathy and your employees will feel more cared for which creates a more harmonious relationship and productive employee.
Sidenote: If you’re looking to hire remote workers be sure to look into the RV community. RVers are already adapted to working remotely, managing their time, and navigating things like internet and staying connected. They are incredibly resilient people who make great remote employees.
When I was a new manager in the mid-90s, I used to watch who packed up their desks at 4:59 PM. The people who stayed longer were labeled “high achievers” and given more opportunities. Here’s a secret though—I’d pretty much run out the door one-minute after the last person who left.
I cringe thinking about it because it was backwards thinking. Yes, there are some jobs where employees are paid by the minute and “being on the clock” is the policy. But this outdated way of managing people was dead a long time ago, and frankly should be buried as we transition to remote work.
What’s most important is what people do with their time. Are they producing results? Did they hit agreed upon deadlines? Did they innovate on an idea? Is your employee recommending improvements? Look for employees to demonstrate initiative rather than if their online profile is “available” at 5:00 PM. And if possible, try to avoid wanting employees to be at your beck and call whenever you feel like “pinging” them. There’s a better way.
I’m one of these people who has a million ideas always floating in my head. And I have this terrible habit of popping in on my husband and sharing them. Or if he’s not around I have the urge to ping my virtual assistant Nicole on Slack (a really great communication tool that gets totally abused).
This is incredibly disruptive. It’s not like Bryce and Nicole sit around all day waiting for my spur of the moment ideas to flood in. My agenda shouldn’t be any more important than anyone else’s. Sure, sometimes we’re all in crunch mode and scramble to get stuff done, but we should all work towards a more sustainable and sane workflow.
A better approach is to do advanced planning. I’m a big fan of working in 90-day goal windows and then breaking them down into monthly and weekly priorities. It’s not like I can plan every little detail and prevent every surprise, but it adds discipline and sanity to how we work. It also helps us stay focused on the most important things, so we don’t get lost in the “daily weeds” of thoughts, ideas and tasks. We use three tools for planning:
Nicole and I have co-created a communication flow. We meet every Monday at 2:00 PM ET (this is a good time for her) to talk through the weekly priorities. We use a shared agenda on Asana (a great project management tool) and we each add our topics in advance of the meeting. My job is to keep Nicole focused on the top priorities and her job is to communicate things I need to know and what support she needs.
Throughout the week we use Slack for quick updates. We use Voxer (a great voice communication tool) if we need to explain something in more detail. And we have an agreement to respond by the end of the day, unless something is urgent in which case we make sure to say “this is urgent.”
I honestly don’t care what hours Nicole works, as long as she hits the weekly targets. Of all the clients that Nicole supports (because she’s a contractor) she says I’m her favorite because of how empowered she feels (maybe she says this to all her clients). I know it’s true because she recently fired a client for bad management. Now that’s empowerment.
Nicole and I have established great working standards and boundaries which I’m proud of, especially because we’re on opposite coasts. Bryce, on the other hand, is just steps away and has yet to figure out how to fend off my daily idea-bombs. Although, I noticed a few days ago he started wearing a headset.
A lot of articles say you should create interactions for employees. Virtual water coolers, fun games, set up a Slack channel just for memes. Ok I get it; you should have some fun especially since you lose in-person connection when you go remote. But people don’t love forced virtual connections any more than when they worked in a location.
I used to work for a retail home design company in the midst of a big brand change and reorganization of the stores which affected the retail employees. Leadership wanted us corporate trainers to create fun games and competitions to take the employees’ minds off of things. While their jobs were intact, the roles were changing and since humans and change don’t mix well, the games were meant to “improve morale.”
Everybody hated it. They felt forced into cheesy games that they didn’t want to play. They just wanted direct answers and to know the future of their jobs. That doesn’t mean they didn’t want to have fun, but fun doesn’t replace reality.
I encourage managers and business owners to find ways to interact with their team members in organic ways. Perhaps it’s a team game or competition, but maybe it isn’t. Some people would prefer to meet with you one on one for a deep conversation. Some people are totally fine being left alone to get their work done. The point is don’t think you MUST create forced interactions just because you have a remote workforce. Instead focus on what your employees want and how they feel best supported. Then make that your interaction policy.
This last one is more of a mindset than a specific action step. Try approaching this whole remote work reality with trusting people first and questioning them second (if that’s even needed).
Managers and leaders are sometimes unconscious about the dynamic they create. It’s no one’s fault really and more of a cultural thing. Old management systems die hard and one of the oldest is that employees are not to be trusted. That somehow, they will cut corners, do less work, and now that they are remote, surf the internet all day. Maybe that’s true for some but most people want to do a good job. Most people take pride in their work and want to make their managers proud. If you follow numbers 1-5 in this article, then your employees will appreciate and respect you even more. That will go a long way to create loyalty, dependability, and better results too.
If you’re someone who likes a tight grip on your staff (like I did in my first mid-90s management job) then I want to help you get comfortable with letting go a little and trusting that your employees want to do a good job—so let them.
These are six ways that you can empower your remote employees and create a more productive workforce. Keep in mind that while these are recommendations that help remote teams, the big takeaway should be to meet with your employees individually and find out what works best for them, you, and supports the company’s mission.
I will leave you with this: One of the best managers I ever had was one who I never saw. We worked in two different states and time zones. We met weekly on the phone, talked about goals, and then he set me free to do my job. When I turned in my work, he always praised me, and if it wasn’t to his standard, he would coach me on what he’d like to see differently the next time.
He never made me feel like I was anything less than a rock-star employee, even when I screwed up. And he often talked about what it was about my work that made him trust me, so I always knew what to keep repeating. It was the lowest-effort management relationship on his part that produced the highest-quality work of my corporate career.
This is what empowerment looks like.
Author
Camille is the founding partner of MoreThanAWheelin.com, a website specializing in travel, RV life, remote work, and the emotional journey. A lifelong learner and longtime instructor, she is passionate about helping others live a life of freedom and flexibility. She is the creator of Remote Work School, an online school helping people find remote work opportunities. In 2016, she and her husband, Bryce, left their corporate jobs to travel and work full-time. When not working and helping others, Camille enjoys hiking, snowboarding, culture and the arts, and photography.
Finding Seasonal Work From Your RV was originally published on www.xscapers.com
Would that make you think twice about exclusively pursuing online work?
I know it made me think twice. That’s because I’ve been able to find chunks of seasonal work that might involve a lot of hours in one place, but quickly free me up to enjoy my off months to the fullest.
Meaning I don’t have to have my nose in a computer on my off months.
I get to work with my hands.
And I make good money while doing it.
So, let’s have a chat about seasonal work as an RV’er – what it means, what types of work you can do, and how to find it.
As the name implies, seasonal work is short-term work that revolves around a particular time of year. In this context, season can mean a good weather time of year (e.g. people flock to Montana in the summer but not so much in the winter), it could mean event season (e.g. NASCAR, the MLB, and large concerts generally roll out during specific months of the year), or it could even imply a travel season (e.g. towns near national parks almost always have high and low travel seasons).
By understanding what seasonal work is and when+where it happens, you can ride this wave as you full-time it in your RV.
This list is far from exhaustive, but it’ll give you a bead on some real-life examples of seasonal work you can do whilst RVing around the country:
Additionally, COVID-19 forced many full-time event workers to pursue other lines of work, meaning there are new opportunities for seasonal event work as reopenings occur. Event organizers generally go to great lengths to ensure events are run safely and according to current CDC guidelines. I wrote this Xscapers article that’ll tell you all about this fun industry and how to get into it.
State and County Fairs – It’s no secret that COVID-19 has led to state and county fair cancellations all over the country. But these closures have also inspired new avenues for creativity. Fairs like the 2020 Arizona State Fair, for example, offer guests a drive-thru fair where they can enjoy their favorite fair foods! Creative reopenings like this also generate new opportunities for staff positions helping to ensure the safety and health of attendees.
National Parks – National parks hire shuttle drivers, food workers, tour guides, trail keepers, and much, much more. Many national parks are open year round, but they will still have a busy season where they hire temporary workers.
Cities near national and state parks – Cities like Jackson Hole, Wyoming grow exponentially during the summer months as people flock to see parks like Grand Teton. This means that every business in town, from gift shops to restaurants, will be hiring extra help for the season.
Ranch hand – Horse ranches, cattle ranches, organic farms, orchards, and more are regularly looking for hands to help during high seasons.
Holiday work – Retail businesses are usually slammed from late October to early January as folks buy for the holiday season. One of the best examples of this is Amazon’s Camperforce where Amazon would hire you to help fulfill their influx of holiday orders (and one of the benefits is a camp spot allowance!).
Become a groupie – If you have a band you absolutely love, why not try to follow them on tour and work the show? You could work selling t-shirts, food, or maybe even get in with the stage crew while also listening to music you love.
Work Camping – Generally speaking, work camping involves hosting at an RV park or campground. These opportunities are usually seasonal and offer a free or low cost RV spot in exchange for work. Some of these positions offer additional pay on top of a free RV spot.
Water guiding – If you enjoy water related activities like fly-fishing, whitewater rafting, jet skiing, or sailing, you could find seasonal work as a guide. Any location that’s known for water-based activities will have tour companies that’ll be hungry to hire during the high season.
As with any job, the best place to start is by taking inventory of what you love to do and what you’re awesome at. From there, you should brainstorm ways to turn that into seasonal work.
Into crafts? Search for crafting conventions or a touring craft fair that might need extra workers in a place you want to go.
Love all things RV? RV shows happen all over the country and are usually hiring.
One with nature? National, state, and county parks are always on the hunt for cool people.
Once you’ve figured out where your passions lie, you can get about the business of finding people who’ll pay you for them. Here are some resources for that:
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Author
Josh is half of the husband+wife duo behind OutofNorm.al – where their mantra is life, unwasted. Josh and his wife have been galivanting all over the country in an ’88 Airstream for the past 3 years…and counting. They seek out small towns, BLM lands and the next vintage camper they can renovate for their AirBNB glamping business.
Collaboration Tools for Remote Teams was originally published on www.xscapers.com
So today, I’m rounding up my favorite collaboration tools for remote teams. Whether your team is just you and a virtual assistant or business partner, or it’s a collection of individual teams spread globally, these tools will help bring you to get things done apart but together.
As a bonus, most of the tools shared here are accessible to small businesses at free or relatively low cost.
Loom is possibly the most straightforward tool on the entire list, but I consider it to have the most significant impact. For many of my clients, adopting a screen share video tool into their workflow drastically improved their team’s communication and collaboration.
While there are other options out there, I find myself partial to Loom for its ease of use and the fact that it beautifully integrates with nearly every other tool I recommend. Loom has an application for almost every operating system, and it embeds beautifully in many of the platforms we’re already using. It’s as easy to create and share the videos as it is to watch and give feedback.
And to be honest, there are many times that text alone, or even a static screenshot, just won’t do. Recording a quick video can help us close communication gaps and overcome barriers more efficiently.
Whether we’re showing a teammate how to do something or describing a glitch we encountered to our tech support, a 30-second video can save us many back and forth messages.
Quick videos can also have a considerable impact on customer service, and I cannot recommend using them there enough!
Who should use this tool? Loom is for anyone who needs to communicate with other people, inside or outside of the company, and can benefit from a more visual communication method than email alone.
Slack is possibly the most well-known team communication tool. It’s a marvel for keeping well-organized conversations going and is often a central hub for remote teams of all sizes.
Perhaps one of its most underrated uses is as a central notification hub. You can tie in numerous platforms and receive all of your notifications in a single space, making it easier to get through them and keep things from falling through the cracks. The ability to tie in your task manager (Trello, Asana, Todoist, ClickUp, etc.), document hubs (Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, Box, etc.), and calendars (Google, Outlook) gives you a command center that helps you feel less scattered.
Another bonus of Slack is the ability to connect with your virtual meeting platform of choice and quickly launch team meetings or 1-on-1 conversations. Sometimes there’s no replacement for a face-to-face meeting, even if it’s virtual. The ability to talk things out in real-time can save a lot of frustration for remote teams. And if you can’t quite find a time that matches up, it’s effortless to drop a Loom video into a Slack conversation and cut down on the back and forth by communicating visually.
Who should use this tool? Slack is for teams who need a central communication hub but aren’t using another tool that meets that need.
Google recently stepped up its collection of tools for remote teams with their updates to what was formerly known as G-Suite.
While I’ve always loved Google Docs and Spreadsheets for collaborating, it’s now even easier to do it in real-time by launching a video chat inside the document you’re working on.
Google Workspace adds real-time communication tools to the apps we already use and love like Gmail, Drive, and Calendar.
Who should use this tool? Google Workspace is for teams who need to collaborate on documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. It’s also for teams who need organized email and calendaring solutions that work well on various operating systems.
While marketed as a customer support platform, Help Scout is a fantastic tool for managing any sort of shared inbox.
Help Scout allows you to manage multiple shared inboxes by delegating messages to team members, allowing you to see message history for that customer, and facilitating team member discussions about particular emails. Ultimately, it’s a fantastic way to keep a shared inbox organized without worrying about any messages going unanswered or multiple responses being sent simultaneously.
Who should use this tool? Help Scout is for teams that need an organized shared inbox, customer help center, or customer-facing knowledge bases.
If you don’t need a full help desk solution, Hiver is a more scaled-down option that lives right in your Gmail account. Or, if your team is all Mac users, Spark Mail is a great email app that features robust team collaboration tools. (Spark Mail is currently working on an application for Windows and will be amazing once it’s available cross-platform.)
ClickUp is the ultimate project management tool. Having been around the block and used everything else from Basecamp to Trello and Asana to Todoist, nothing quite matches the power of ClickUp.
Whether you’re looking for a basic shared to-do list or need more involved features to create a company-wide productivity headquarters, ClickUp is up for the challenge.
Perhaps my favorite feature of Clickup is its ability to house various forms of information in a very organized way. It’s ridiculously easy to connect Google Docs and Spreadsheets or record and embed a screen share video.
ClickUp can quickly become your all-in-one business hub that works wonderfully for teams of all sizes, especially large, complicated ones.
Who should use this tool? While ClickUp can work for any size team, I find it works best for teams of 5+ who want the capability of advanced features like dependencies and detailed time tracking and are looking for an all-in-one solution. Smaller teams may find ClickUp can be a bit of overkill for their needs.
I saved the best for last. Notion is a favorite of mine, both on a personal level and a professional one.
If you have a smaller team or need something less linear than ClickUp, I highly recommend Notion. While it offers some of the same features, like the ability to play nicely with Google Docs and embedded media, you aren’t stuck with the rigid list structure of a project management tool like ClickUp.
Notion is best described as like building with Lego. It’s a blank slate, and you can create exactly what you need to suit your business and work style using their various “blocks.” It can be a little intimidating to get started with, but it’s always worth it.
I use Notion both personally and professionally. It’s as well suited to managing the minute details of nomad life (grocery shopping, reservations, and remembering regular tasks around the rig) as it is to planning complicated project plans for my business.
Notion is particularly well suited to people who identify as neuro-diverse as it’s less rigid than most available apps. It combines structured databases and templates with the ability to build, change, and grow as our plans do.
Notion works particularly well for building a company wiki and housing references for company systems and processes. I also find that it’s fantastic for sharing only specific things with clients and outside contractors.
Who should use this tool? Notion can work for teams small and large that want a more flexible platform to build to fit their needs. I do not recommend Notion for larger teams who rely heavily on automations or built-in time tracking.
Team collaboration tools are as varied as the teams who use them. Some tools are well suited for teams of 2-10, while others work better for larger teams. But many tools can be configured to work no matter your team size.
The key to finding the tools that work for you is understanding how you use them and what purpose they are serving. As the popularity of remote work grows, the ability to utilize real-time collaboration alongside the asynchronous features we’re used to increases importance.
Choosing tools that support your work style and your team’s natural communication tendencies will reduce frustration for everyone involved.
My biggest advice for choosing collaboration tools is to go with as few as possible and make sure that your team understands which tools are to be used for what.
Once you’ve chosen your tools, it’s worth spending the time to properly set up your platforms and train your team on how to use them. The learning curve and struggles that teams have with new systems and processes are almost always reduced by taking the time to do it right and communicate it well.
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Author
Dani is a Business Systems Strategist. She helps entrepreneurs who want to ditch overwhelm to create a sustainable, dreamy business through establishing boundaries and systems that work for them. After 7 years in entrepreneurship, she knows that it doesn’t have to be all about the hustle and grind. It’s the systems and processes that we build that allow us to build empires and live dreamy lives all at the same time.
When she’s not nerding out over workflows, spreadsheets, and statistics, you can find Dani traveling with her husband and five kids, taking in a baseball game, or getting a little bit of peace and quiet on her yoga mat. Get all of Dani’s best tips, tricks, and tutorials at https://simplifiedbusinesssystems.com.
DISCLAIMER: The information and materials we share in this article are intended for reference only. As the information is designed solely to provide guidance to the readers, it is not intended to be a substitute for someone seeking personalized professional advice based on specific factual situations. Therefore, we strongly encourage you to seek the advice of a professional to help you with your specific needs.
Starting your own business is exciting! Your creative juices are flowing with big ideas for your product, branding, and marketing. But, wait. What government forms do you need to fill out to be official? Where do you start?
We’ve got you covered with documents to complete on the accounting and tax sides of your business. In this article, we’ll walk you through the foundational business formation ideas to consider and the five basic forms that need to be on your radar:
To be clear, to start a business in the U.S., you typically don’t need to complete any official documents for your business to be expected to pay taxes to the IRS quarterly each year.
Paying taxes is complicated and intimidating. Here are steps to take and documents to complete to set yourself up for success to pay your business income taxes and stay in compliance with the IRS.
The first step you need to take is to determine if you want to organize your business as a Limited Liability Company (LLC). This is the first step, because this determines how you approach and complete the other documents you’ll take on next.
Here is a short list of pros and cons to determine if you want to apply for your business to become an LLC. To apply to become an LLC, you’ll file what are typically called Articles of Organization with any state of your choosing.
1. Being an LLC May Protect Your Personal Assets if Your Business is Sued:
Having your business as an LLC may give you some limited protection of your personal assets if your business is ever sued and owes money. Make sure to speak to a lawyer about this. The limited liability protections vary state to state.
If your business is sued there is a chance a court may choose to “pierce the corporate veil.” This means the court may waive the business’s limited liability and use your personal assets to make sure the money owed by your business is paid. You can read more on why and how courts may decide to pierce the corporate veil here.
One basic step you can take to protect yourself from a court piercing the corporate veil is to make sure to separate your personal money from business money by setting up separate bank accounts. We’ll walk through how to do this below.
2. Possible S Corporation Status in the Future:
Having your business as an LLC gives you the opportunity to elect S Corporation status when it’s tax advantageous for your business to do so. You can read more about the best time to do this in your business’ growth here.
3. Build a Professional Image:
Being an LLC and having the “LLC” after your business name may make your company look more professional to potential clients. Being an LLC may also give you an advantage in receiving work over other competitors, because some companies require all vendors they work with to be organized as an LLC in hopes to clearly establish that you are not an employee working for them but a separate vendor or contractor.
1. More Work:
Forming an LLC creates more work to set it up and stay in compliance each year. To stay in compliance, you typically need to file an annual report and pay an annual fee with the state you filed your LLC within each year.
2. Extra Costs:
There are extra costs for filing to be an LLC and annual fees to stay in compliance. You can see a list of each state’s estimated filing fee and annual fee here.
If you decide you don’t want your business to be an LLC, you can skip this step and move down to the next document to complete: filing for an Employer Identification Number (EIN).
If you’ve decided for your business to become an LLC, you’ll need to file your business’s Articles of Organization application with the state of your choosing. Like we shared above, some states require a fee to apply. For example, Georgia’s is $100.
To find your state’s Articles of Organization application on their government website, search online for “State Name + Articles of Organization for LLC.”
The next document to complete is to get an EIN from the IRS. The IRS assigns and uses EIN’s to track businesses who are required to pay taxes.
To get your business’ EIN, get started here with this tutorial.
The third thing to do for your business is to get a business bank account that you solely use for business purposes to separate your business transactions from your personal transactions.
To apply for a business bank account, go to your current bank and ask to open a business bank account or do research and choose another bank to apply to.
If you’re just starting a business and have a small number of transactions, you may discount this step, but it’s important to keep your personal accounts and your business transactions separate from the very beginning. Here are a couple reasons why.
Here are the documents you need to complete quarterly and annually each year to submit your business’ income taxes.
The U.S. tax structure is a “pay your taxes as you go” system. As your business makes money throughout the year, you’re expected to pay your income taxes quarterly as the year progresses. Typically, the due dates for businesses to pay quarterly taxes are:
To make your quarterly tax payments, you can pay them online to IRS here.
By April 15 of each year, each business is required to file Form Schedule C. This is the tax document you’ll fill out all of your business’s income and expenses for the previous year and share with the IRS. You can view the Schedule C document here.
DISCLAIMER: The information and materials we share in this article are intended for reference only. As the information is designed solely to provide guidance to the readers, it is not intended to be a substitute for someone seeking personalized professional advice based on specific factual situations. Therefore, we strongly encourage you to seek the advice of a professional to help you with your specific needs.
Author
Adam Nubern -CPA and Lindsey Nubern help RVers, digital nomads, and location independent businesses with their taxes and accounting at Nuventure CPA LLC. They are digital nomads and have been traveling for over four years in the US and abroad out of backpacks, campervans, and RVs. They live the lifestyle and enjoys helping folks navigate their numbers while being on the road.
As a fulltime RVing family, internet connectivity is not optional.
Homeschooling, work, and staying connected with friends and family all require it. When we first got on the road in 2016, satellite internet was not able to offer affordable unlimited speeds. It was one of those ‘some day’ items for us. Imagine the possibilities! You can set up camp in some of the most remote and iconic spots in the US. Not a soul around for miles. Panoramic views. It would be ah-mazing.
Spring of 2017, brought the launch of HughesNet Gen 5, which on paper appeared to offer speeds that were actually competitive with today’s cellular LTE providers, as well as nationwide coverage. Mobile business plans became available through specialty resellers like https://www.mobileinternetsatellite.com/ (you cannot sign up directly through HughesNet). Given that the dish is 3 feet across, and more importantly auto deploy setups come with a full retail price tag pushing $20K+, our bank account has had us grounded in reality. Like the majority of those on the road we were using mobile cell data for internet access and satellite internet has (until recently) remained a day dream.
We have traveled on the road for three years and our data sources have been consistently: T-mobile, AT&T, and the ubiquitous Verizon. We were satisfied with this method for a long time and only occasionally had issues with coverage or data speeds. So what changed? The list of places we wanted to see was becoming increasingly remote. The number of RV events and rallies we were attending seemed to all come with overloaded cell phone towers making our cell data useless so we moved the satellite internet up on the priority list to ‘someday soon’ and starting looking for used ground deploy equipment.
Setup entails finding a fairly level spot for the tripod and using a small level to get the head adjusted until it is perfectly level. After placing the dish on the tripod and running the coax to the modem in the RV, you temporarily connect the signal meter. Once the modem is powered up, you enter your current GPS coordinates and it then directs you where to point the dish in the sky. After a few rounds of sweeps (moving the dish left and right pointing towards the southern sky) and elevation fine tuning (how high in the sky the dish is pointing), you lock in on the spot that gives you the strongest signal. Lastly, you remove the signal meter, the modem resets and you are online!
It has already enabled us to start checking off spots of the country that we previously had to steer clear of.
There are a number of positives, but also plenty of cons.
Most options at present use a ground-based dish to point at a geostationary orbit (fixed spot above the earth in the sky, otherwise known as GEO), 22k+ miles up in space. The data must go from a ground station 22k miles up to the satellite, and then back down to the end user’s dish for each packet of data. Given the distances involved it introduces an above average amount of latency (time delay) from what the average internet user today is accustomed too. Up until recently, “broadband” speeds were not available in a mobile RV setup.
Before the launch of these newer services, RVers were creating their own mobile installations as far back as 2002 with maximum speeds of only 0.4Mbps down and 0.05 Mbps up!
While HughesNet has at least one more GEO satellite planned, the exciting future for remote/mobile connectivity lies in low earth orbit (LEO) constellations (hundreds to thousands of smaller satellites working together for global coverage) that are much closer to the earth (as low as 340 miles), yielding latencies much closer to that of cell connectivity today. While there are several giant LEO constellations in the works (to the tune of Billions of dollars each), the most famous and aggressively scheduled is that of Elon Musk’s Space X Starlink network. Once in operation these networks promise global high speed, low latency data and what is claimed to be economical pricing.
So while using satellite internet is not a fit for everyone, it has become a game changer for us in our travels, no longer having to wonder if we will be able to connect to a nearby cell tower.
Author
Kevin has been full-time RVing since May 2016 with his wife Emma and two daughters (ages 6 and 2). Shortly after launching, their second daughter was born quite literally on the road! Since going full time this family of 4 has visited most of the lower 48 states and some of Mexico, and traveled internationally extensively before having kids. Kevin is a “retired” electrical engineering consultant, homeschooling dad, Convergence groupie, and fan of all things outdoors. Emma and Kevin maintain a small blog about their adventures for family and friends ‘back home in Maine’ at: wickedwanderers.net
Tomorrow is moving day – the first of two travel days we’ll need to get to our next stop.
Brian (my husband and business partner) is outside taking care of RV-related travel prep. Right now he’s handling the sewer hose. An hour ago it was a proposal for a prospective client’s website refresh.
I’m in front of my Mac, on live chat with a support rep trying to figure out why our client’s domain name hasn’t yet transferred. It’s one item on a list of many I’m trying to tie up before our travel days.
Just as I’m musing about whether our clients realize everything that passes through our hands, Brian rushes up the steps into the RV.
“We have a leak!” he announces.
A year ago I’d have been near tears hearing those words.
Now, like wayward website domains, it’s just another thing we need to handle.
I don’t mean to suggest we have this whole live-work-travel thing completely figured out. No way. What we have figured out is to expect problems.
RV problems. Internet issues. Client crises. They’re inevitable when you’re running a business from the road. What’s optional, however, is how much you worry about them.
It’s my hope that sharing what we’ve done will give you ideas about how to set your business up for success – and roll with the punches when things go wrong.
We were actually in business before we decided to RV full time. Separately.
Brian’s business was the bread and butter. Mine occasionally brought in big bucks. Most of the time, though, it barely covered the grocery bill.
That’s because I hated all the peripheral tasks that are part of running a business. I liked just doing my thing, making clients happy, and putting money in the bank.
Bookkeeping? Marketing? Not so much.
The problem with my approach was that it’s impossible to create anything sustainable by doing only what’s fun. I knew this, but my efforts around the less creative aspects of my business were half-hearted. At best.
Brian, on the other hand, single handedly ran a gunsmithing business that covered all our bills for the nine years leading up to our move to full-timing. He did all the work, managed the bookkeeping and taxes and promoted the heck out of it to get it going.
Fortunately for us, the business was in a popular niche. Brian had little legitimate competition. Once he opened up shop, the business and his reputation grew quickly. It wasn’t long before all we needed to do to market it was make it easy for people to find him.
Thanks, internet!
I designed and developed a website, and Brian was off to the races. He only had to log in occasionally to maintain the site. No blogging. No marketing. Only basic SEO.
Boy was that a downhill coast compared to where we are now – and compared with what most businesses need to do to attract visitors and create customers.
So, why would anyone quit such a successful and lucrative business?
For one thing, it wasn’t something we could have done from the RV without drastically morphing it. We did come up with a couple of seemingly good ideas for an RV-friendly transformation, and even started pursuing one.
Partway into it, though, Brian admitted he was pretty much over the entire niche and ready for a new challenge.
Like, business strategy and project management for my formerly solo website consultancy.
Yay team!
I loved parts of what I did, but constantly got bogged down in things I hated. I was certain that Brian could help make the difficult parts work better. We just needed to figure out how to work together.
Gulp…
We’re 10 months into full-timing and only began traveling four months ago.
Still, as we’ve struggled to build and run our business in a way that works for us and supports us, we’ve learned a lot.
It’s my hope the suggestions below will help you if you’re on a similar journey.
You don’t have to be absolutely passionate about every bit of the niche you choose. Just find something you love enough to do a lot – and that others are willing to spend enough on that you can earn a living.
Brian’s gunsmithing business was profitable but not portable, largely thanks to complicated regulations.
When we decided to hit the road, we looked at ways he could offer value in this niche without getting on the wrong side of the law. Firearm appraisal seemed like a way we could morph the business for RV life.
But at the end of the day, it was not for us.
The primary reason we nixed the appraisal business was that it was such a small niche we’d have to have next-level marketing and pricing to survive. A deeper reason for getting out of firearm-related business altogether was that Brian came to realize he was burnt out on it.
As for my website consulting business, I loved most aspects of it. But the parts I hated were sucking up huge amounts of time and energy.
I liked fixing broken websites, making websites faster, and building websites for people with interesting businesses or projects. The more business I got the more time I spent outside of my favorite parts of it.
The negative (for me) aspects of my niche almost caused me to completely ditch it. I planned to help Brian with the appraisal business, and maybe scratch my creative itch by writing on the side.
When we decided we didn’t want to continue down the appraisal business road, we realized that Brian’s experience – pre-gunsmithing as well as running his shop – could help us create something sustainable from my WordPress consulting business.
I’m the creative one, and the website expert. I’d rather get lost in design, code or words than deal with goals or invoicing. I know we need these things as much as we need the things that are my forte.
But I struggle with them.
When we first started, Brian thought I was just being obstinate. I was, a little. The bigger problem is that it’s such a leap for the way my brain works best. Obstinance was a side effect – not the cause.
Brian has strengths in many areas I don’t.
He has an MBA. His experience handling 100% of a small business has been invaluable in our new venture. Before opening the shop, he worked in IT project management, IT staffing and sales.
Except for websites, he’s way nerdier than me.
I’ve long been an open book about my weaknesses. Saying that is one thing, but actually seeing the gory details is quite another.
Brian wasn’t amused. There was much strife in our 400-ish square feet.
Now, I think we’re on a good track. He’s gotten better about giving me executive summaries I can relate to. I gladly surrendered control to most things outside of website work or writing.
What’s been more difficult to sort out is balancing our strengths, weaknesses and workload.
We’re rebuilding what was a solo freelance business in my niche. Not Brian’s. His workload is constantly expanding as we find more things that are a natural fit for him. But it’s not a 50/50 split right now.
I’m OK with that. But if all the tasks at hand are creative, he gets frustrated. He wants to help and feels like I’m not letting go of enough. Plus, he’s legitimately concerned about things that affect our bottom line.
It’s important to recognize strengths and weaknesses not only to decide who does what, but to play to our strengths to better serve and attract clients.
If that means the business load gets a bit lopsided at times, it’s OK. We can always shift personal chores so neither of us is overloaded.
We’ve learned it’s important to be willing to invest in systems, services or help as soon as it makes financial sense.
Not before you have money. And ideally, not after you’re already having problems the expenditure could have prevented.
When you’re starting from scratch, it might feel difficult to justify the expense of tools/services, etc. We’ve learned to stay in tune with what things are costing us time-wise, and look at spending money there as an investment – not an expense.
Be careful about where you spend limited dollars, though.
Sometimes it seems like “everybody” uses a certain tool or service, but the reality is that affiliate commission, limited experience or both are often driving a recommendation.
If you’re truly starting with a near-zero bank account, resist the temptation to spend money on expensive products or services. Big-ticket expenses that are easy for beginners to get wrong include designers, promotional products, and even websites.
You’ll change your mind about a lot in that first year. Instead of depleting your bank account before your business is up and running well, consider starting more simply. DIY or even do without where you can.
Delaying big-budget expenses will give you time to figure out what you’re doing with your business, and decreases the odds of making costly mistakes.
When the aim is to live, work and travel in an RV, flexibility is key. Not only for us, but for clients, too.
We set our clients’ expectations from the get-go, making sure they know we’re full-time RVers who can’t/won’t be at their beck and call. We work hard to over deliver so they know that, as much as possible, we’ll go to the ends of the earth for them.
Flexibility works the other way, too.
Today we said a sad no to stand-up paddleboarding because it would’ve unreasonably crunched our workload and taxed our clients’ expectations.
People pay us to serve them. They may be understanding about our lifestyle, but they’re clients because they need our help. Not because they want to fund our travels.
Along those lines, we never want to tell a client that their urgent issue has to wait until we can get on the internet. That’s a problem we need to solve in advance, and one any internet-connected business should plan for.
We’ve worked hard to maximize the internet connectivity that drives our business. Yes, we’re RVing so we can enjoy freedom and fun and not work ridiculous hours. Without dependable RV internet, however, we’d be at the mercy of whatever free WiFi we can find.
That’s no way to run a business.
Our Mobile Internet Resource Center membership has been worth its weight in gold. We’ve used it to create what so far has been a reliable, four-network mobile connectivity arsenal – and do it at a price that doesn’t kill our bank account.
If the business you’re considering has any web or internet component to it, plan to have as many options for connecting as your budget allows.
I used to assume that people were smart enough to realize the benefits of working with me, and leave it up to them to hire me or not.
The reality is that people often don’t understand what we do, or how we can help them. Plus they’re busy and bombarded by all kinds of distractions.
Without the right promotion, we are likely to get lost in the shuffle.
As an introvert, networking for our business is up there on my list of things I’d rather avoid. Right next to karaoke. Brian, on the other hand, is a former sales pro.
Brian thinks I do OK but would love it if I pushed a little harder. I think he does OK but I’d love it if he was a little less pushy. We each have our own styles, but the bottom line is that we both advocate for the business.
We solve real problems for people on entrepreneurial journeys similar to ours. While I don’t want to make every blog post or conversation about what we can do for them, if I care about what they’re doing I’m going to let them know how we might be able to help.
Brian will do that and then some!
Whatever your style, understand that you must let people you can help know that you can help them. If you don’t, you’ll be back where I was when I was freelancing by myself – barely making grocery money.
Choosing to build a business and work from the road is easily the best, most exciting thing I’ve ever done.
While it’s definitely still a work in progress, after years of doing what everyone else does (or trying), it feels great to do it all differently.
Struggling with something I didn’t cover? Or have something helpful to add? Leave a comment below and share – I’d love to hear where you’re at.
Author
Teresa is a website fixer and writer living, working and traveling in a Class A motorhome with husband and business partner Brian and their Greyhound John Lee. Teresa and Brian own A Fearless Venture, a consultancy focused on preventive maintenance and problem solving for WordPress websites. Teresa also blogs at Wandering Porcupine, where she chronicles her quest to live a more-free life.
DISCLAIMER: The information and materials we share in this article are intended for reference only. As the information is designed solely to provide guidance to the readers, it is not intended to be a substitute for someone seeking personalized professional advice based on specific factual situations. Therefore, we strongly encourage you to seek the advice of a professional to help you with your specific needs.
As full-time RVers we spend a lot of money paying for campgrounds each night. It’s one of our biggest expenses if we don’t find that perfect boondocking spot. Wouldn’t it be awesome to be able to deduct some of these costs on your tax return?
There may be a way.
The purpose of this article is to help you understand if you may be able to claim campground fees as a business expense deduction on your next tax return.
In general there are two distinct ways to potentially claim your campground fees as a business expense.
If you have a legit home office in your RV, scoot on down to the section titled You Have a Home Office in Your RV below. For the rest of us, let’s determine your tax home to see if you can claim your campground fees as a business expense.
We say us, because we’ve personally determined we don’t have a qualified home office in our Casita Travel Trailer.
Your tax home isn’t the place you live. The IRS considers your tax home as the place you work and make your money.
If you live and work full-time out of your RV and travel around, the IRS considers you an “itinerant.” An itinerant is another word for a transient.
Here’s what the IRS says about itinerants making travel deductions (this includes campground fees):
“If you don’t have a regular or main place of business or post of duty and there is no place where you regularly live, you are considered an itinerant (a transient) and your tax is home is wherever you work. As an itinerant, you can’t claim a travel expense deduction because you are never considered to be traveling away from home.” Source
Since the IRS sees us full-timers as itinerants, they see our tax home as wherever we are in our RV living and working. So, as an itinerant, you can rarely claim a travel expense deduction (like a campground fee) because you aren’t often considered to be traveling away from your tax home for business purposes.
However, we all know our situations are always changing. Here are three factors the IRS gives us to determine where our tax home is at any given moment.
Here are three factors to determine your tax home from the IRS.
“If you don’t have a regular or main place of business or work, use the following three factors to determine where your tax home is. If you satisfy all three factors, your tax home is where you regularly live. If you satisfy only two factors, you may have a tax home depending on all the facts and circumstances. If you satisfy only one factor, you are an itinerant; your tax home is wherever you work and you can’t deduct travel expenses.
Three factors:
Again, if you satisfy all three factors, your tax home is where you regularly live and you can claim your campground fees as a business expense if you are at the campground for business purposes. If you satisfy only two factors, you may have a tax home and you may be able to claim your campground fees depending on all the facts and circumstances. If you satisfy only one factor, you are considered an itinerant, and your tax home is wherever you work and you can’t deduct travel expenses and campground fees.
Based on this information, where is your tax home? Is it the home you regularly live and base camp from? Or is it your RV that’s always on the move?
If your tax home is your RV that’s always on the move and you don’t have a legit home office, then we don’t suggest you deduct campground fees as a business expense. If your tax home is your main home that you travel away from for business purposes, then you may be able to claim your campground fees as business expenses.
1. If you travel away from your tax home for a business purpose and duplicate your expenses.
If you have a tax home that you travel away from for business purposes, you may be able to deduct your campground fees.
Here’s an example: You are a photographer that lives in a sticks and bricks home in Arizona. You’ve been hired to shoot a wedding in New Mexico. It makes more business sense for you to take your RV and stay at a campsite in New Mexico while you shoot your client’s wedding. Your campsite is an ordinary and necessary expense to perform your photography service for your client and can be a business expense deduction on your taxes. This is because you left your tax home in Arizona to do business work in New Mexico.
2. You have a home office in your RV.
Assuming you have a home office in your RV that meets all the requirements in this article, it is our opinion that you can claim a percentage of your campsite fees as “utility” fees to run your business. The key distinction that we make is the campsite is not considered a “lodging” fee, but it is a “utility” fee. This is because your lodging is your RV that you have already paid cash for or have a mortgage for. As RVers, we pay for campsites for the utilities they provide us. We need the water, sewage services, and electricity for business purposes like charging our laptops, printers, phones, etc.
This is similar to a typical home office environment where you have an office for your business in your home. Utilities are considered a business expense that can be claimed (at a percentage) as a deduction.
Read this article about how you can claim the home office deduction and claim a percentage of your utility fees as business expenses.
If you can deduct your campground fees based on the factors above, here’s how to make the deduction.
If you are considering doing this, make sure to understand this is specifically speaking for a Schedule C business that is taxed as a sole proprietor. If you operate as a Partnership or S Corporation, you will need to have a formal Accountable Plan in place to route a rental agreement through.
If you have any questions about your specific situation and claiming campground fees as business expense deductions, seek professional advice from your Certified Public Accountant.
DISCLAIMER: The information and materials we share in this article are intended for reference only. As the information is designed solely to provide guidance to the readers, it is not intended to be a substitute for someone seeking personalized professional advice based on specific factual situations. Therefore, we strongly encourage you to seek the advice of a professional to help you with your specific needs.
Author
Adam Nubern -CPA and Lindsey Nubern help RVers, digital nomads, and location independent businesses with their taxes and accounting at Nuventure CPA LLC. They are digital nomads and have been traveling for over four years in the US and abroad out of backpacks, campervans, and RVs. They live the lifestyle and enjoys helping folks navigate their numbers while being on the road.
