Location Independent Professionals – Interview With Lea Woodward

One upcoming trend in the current global workforce is the rise of independent mobile professionals. People that can work from anywhere using the Internet so location doesn’t matter. Lea Woodward calls them Location Independent Professionals.

Lea left her job as a management consultant for the world’s largest consulting company to pursue a life of freedom. She now runs a business with her husband as they travel the world with their daughter. And they run The Location Independent Network.

I had the pleasure of asking her some questions about the way she works.

Why did you decide to become location independent?

LW: “My husband was made redundant in 2006 and we decided to make a go of running our own business together (me doing business coaching & him doing branding/graphic design). The only problem was how to maintain our current (nice) lifestyle with a new business. We hit upon the idea of living & working from lower cost countries while we were getting going to take the pressure of our business and that’s why we hit the road.”

Do your clients know you are “on the road”? Does this matter?

LW: “Yes, most of the time they do know (even the larger corporate clients). We make no secret of it (it’d be hard given that we run the site LocationIndependent.com!) and have always been upfront with clients about our nomadic lifestyle. From a project management perspective, we decided that we needed to be honest about it not only for our own peace of mind but because of aspects like being in different time zones and other small challenges that we thought we may face (such as the rare times we’ve not had stable internet).

We have always tried to mitigate for the fact that we’re location independent by ensuring we give a superior service to clients and anticipate any potential challenges our lifestyle may cause. This includes ensuring we schedule client projects & time lines around our travel schedules (and vice versa), ensuring we always respond to clients emails promptly and being very specific and clear in our email communications to prevent any misunderstandings. Good project management is a must – and it’s what has set us apart from others, even those who aren’t location independent.”

Do you manage others and how do you make this work?

LW: “We have worked with a number of different VAs (virtual assistants), technology suppliers and we work with small teams of people on some of our different projects (clients & personal ones) who are based all over the world. For the LocationIndependentProfessinals.com site, I manage an editor & team of writers who are based in Spain, the US, Barbados & Japan. It works well & we’ve never had any problems working with people based in different countries.

We manage the majority of communication by email but always use Skype as a stand-by for phone calls and quick screencasts (Jing) for tutorials, if we need to visually demonstrate how to do certain things. Again, one of the things we’re careful to manage are time zone differences – as you’ll see from my email signature, I always put what time zone I’m in and it’s usually one of the first things I ask someone we work with.

We are also careful to set and manage expectations of the people we work with – we create process documents, informal agreements & contracts (where needed) and ensure that everyone knows where they stand, before they have to ask. It’s about anticipating problems, before they arise…also known as risk management, in the project management world, I believe ”

What should managers/clients realize when they are working with location independent professionals?

LW: “Remote working is not a new concept – as a former management consultant for Accenture, we frequently worked away from the office, with multi-national teams on client sites or in satellite locations. Location independence is basically the same thing – it functions well with clear lines of communication, good guidelines, setting expectations, professionalism and respect.

It sometimes comes with a few additional challenges but as long as these are recognised and a solution is implemented to deal with these before they arise, the benefits of location independence outweigh the drawbacks.

The only other thing I’d stress is about understanding any cultural differences – or language differences – when it comes to working hours, working practices and communication with multi-national teams. If you’re working with or managing people from multiple countries, it’s essential to understand that sometimes differences or problems are cultural, not because somebody is unprofessional or not very good at what they do.”

What is the number one lesson you learned in the last years?

LW: “Creating and maintaining a network (both online and offline) is a vital key to your success. Keeping up-to-date with and leveraging social networks online to do this is a must-have these days and having an effective strategy to do so ensures these add value rather than become just a time suck. And the other key lesson we’ve learned: whatever the interaction, always add value.”

Lea left her job as a management consultant for the world’s largest consulting company to pursue a life of freedom. She now runs a business with her husband as they travel the world with their daughter. They share their experiences and a range of resources to help other rat race escapees live & work from anywhere through the Location Independent network.

Image by sskennel.