Freelancing Freedom vs. Job Description Restriction: Flexible Careerbuilding, with Hannah Dixon from the Virtual Excellence Academy

Today's episode is a challenge to reshape your understanding of freelancing versus traditional remote jobs. Our guest, Hannah Dixon from the Virtual Excellence Academy, challenges the so-called freedoms of remote roles by exposing their hidden constraints like geographic limitations and rigid hours, compared with the liberties freelancing can offer. Through Hannah’s personal experience and her inspiring journey from a virtual assistant to a community builder and educator, listeners will gain a fresh perspective on creating a career that aligns with personal passions and strengths.

Hannah and Maya discuss the genesis of the "Five-Day VA" challenge, a transformative program that has empowered over 30,000 people to secure their first clients and build sustainable freelance businesses, using skills they already have. Whether you're juggling the decision to leave a traditional job or seeking to enhance your current freelance gig, this episode provides tangible strategies and first-hand stories to guide you towards a fulfilling, balanced work-life.

The conversation also explores the community aspects of remote working, recognizing the pivotal role of intentional social connections in combating isolation. Our reflections on maintaining relationships through digital means offer valuable insights for fostering a supportive network while working from home, whether through the Virtual Excellence Academy, Remote Work Europe, or a community of interest each listener can create around themselves.. Additionally, we tackle the risks and rewards of freelancing, from financial uncertainties to the joy of aligning work with your curiosity and mastery.

Enjoy this discussion which takes an honest look at the complexities of remote work and freelancing, while reflecting on the rewards of building a career rooted in authenticity and passion.

Missed the present 5-Day challenge with the VEA? No problem, get on the waitlist for next time!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

You're listening to the Remote Work Europe podcast, the show formerly branded as the Future is Freelance. The name has changed, but our values have not. We're still the podcast for solopreneurs, digital nomads and slowmads, consultants, remote workers, e-residents and everyone living a life without traditional boundaries. We're here for people who defy categorization, those who make a living and a life their own way in Europe and beyond. Fortnightly, on Fridays, we're serving up expert tips, inspired insights and stories from the frontiers of freelancing and the remote work revolution to help you achieve success with your borderless business and liberated lifestyle, whatever success means to you, as you live life on your own terms. So today's episode is a little bit different to the usual stuff that we bring you, because this is a recording of a live stream webinar that we had in Remote Work Europe early in June 2024.

Speaker 1: 1:06

I sat down to talk to the wonderful Hannah Dixon from the Virtual Excellence Academy and we were talking about her upcoming five-day Digital Nomad Training Challenge. Now she repeats these five-day VA challenges throughout the year, so I'll put the link into the show notes. If you've missed it this time, don't worry about it, because you can join the waitlist and the next one will be advised to you as soon as it comes up. And the second thing to say is that obviously this was a live conversation, so at times we may be referring to comments or questions, but there were no visuals that you've missed or anything like that. I think this stands very well on its own as an audio conversation. All of the real gold is in the actual dialogue between Hannah and myself. I think you'll find this really fascinating and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Speaker 1: 1:53

Okay, hello, hello everybody. Sorry for starting a couple of minutes late, but we wanted to make sure everything was just perfect for you. Thank you very much, everybody, either joining us live, listening to the podcast, or watching or listening to the replay, wherever whenever you are tuning in, we're delighted to have you with us and I'm really looking forward to this afternoon's conversation because I am joined by Hannah Dixon from the Virtual Excellence Academy. She has been a longtime friend of Remote Work Europe. We feel that we're very much on the same path, the same agenda to try and help more and more people access this lifestyle that we both enjoy, and increasing numbers of people all over the world are tapping into to make a life and a living your way without having to be dependent on going to a particular place. And what about if you didn't have to go and do a particular job either?

Speaker 1: 2:43

Because that is the thing we're going to talk to about today, right, Hannah? The problem with jobs. How are you, Hannah? Anyway, Welcome.

Speaker 2: 2:49

I'm very good. Thank you so much for the lovely intro and having me once again. It is 9am here, which is early start for me. Because of this freedom lifestyle, we have the flexibility of our work. I usually work in the evening, so I am up early and feeling good actually Excellent, excellent.

Speaker 1: 3:06

Yeah, I'm not a morning person either, and isn't it nice when you can tune into those personal rhythms a little bit more intuitively? Alarm clocks are great when you have to catch a flight. The rest of the time, they should have no place in your life.

Speaker 2: 3:21

I agree, we should ban them.

Speaker 1: 3:24

Okay. Well, we want to help more and more people to do that, but I think we ought to start with, apart from alarm clocks, what are the other things that are wrong with the old way of doing things and applying for jobs? I tell you what, hannah I get so many people in my inbox, in our social media, every week saying I want a remote job. Yeah, it's really frustrating because I want to give them a very long answer. So I thought I know I'll just talk to somebody else who's got the answer and we can unpack it together and create a lasting piece of content. So what would your response be if somebody asked you that question?

Speaker 2: 3:55

I mean, I don't think there's anything wrong with remote jobs entirely, and I think that for some people it might be the right route. But I think for a lot of people there's this fantasy that the remote job is somehow different to traditional employment in some way, and in many ways it's not, because there's still restrictions on the hours that you work, maybe geographic locations that you can only go to remote, but only America's remote but only Europe, something like that. And I think ultimately it's that lack of decision making that you have in your role when it comes to what you spend your time on, the people that you work with. You can't is the easiest route in the world, but it does get easier. And then it comes with all these kinds of benefits that we just don't have in traditional employment, whether remote or not.

Speaker 1: 4:54

Absolutely, and I know what it's like. I know that people want jobs because people want to replace what they've had in a previous life and indeed we look for the jobs. Remote jobs are out there. They do exist. We find at least 30 of them every week to put in your newsletter. So shout out to Diana for scouring around, and she often has to work really hard to find ones that are definitely open to at least part of Europe, because that's the territory we cover and, as Hannah was just saying, there are lots of jobs that they might be advertised as remote and then you start to dig just a little bit deeper and you find out it's actually certain states of the US.

Speaker 2: 5:34

I'll actually tell you a funny story. My wife applied to a remote job a couple of years ago with Slack, Got through a couple of rounds of interviews too many, if you ask me only to find out that it was remote Europe. And then she was like, okay, but like what does that mean? Went a little bit deeper. We'd like you to be in Basin Island. Went a little bit deeper. We'd like you to come into the office in Dublin two times a week, and more if you'd like to. And she was like that's not remote at all, I'm out.

Speaker 1: 5:59

Not at all. And come on, even LinkedIn now enables you to distinguish between remote and hybrid when you're listing a job. So let's do it properly, people. I mean, you know, that's just laziness, right, they didn't bother to classify things correctly, but I think I mean to be fair to the people trying to hire remotely. There are so many regulatory constraints that make it really difficult. Employment law evolved in different countries separately. There have been various attempts over the years to kind of line things up within the EU and things like that, but even then it's completely different Employment terms, just say, between the UK and Spain, where a lot of our members are. They're totally different, and somebody might find the perfect remote job in the UK that requires no office presence whatsoever. So can I go and do it in spain then?

Speaker 2: 6:44

well, even if you have a visa you often can't, and so many reasons.

Speaker 1: 6:50

So it made me think. It made me think about a long time ago I used to work in student services and helping people with finding jobs, and actually now I'm trying to help people find remote jobs. One of the things that still hasn't changed is trying to match yourself to that job description and person specification. Back in my day it used to be a fact they sent you in the post. It's still in a form you actually had to fill in. Now it's going to be something you read on, indeed, or think and whatever, but it seems that it hasn't changed that much. You'll still have, say, 12 bullet points of things you've got to do and the person you have to be, and hopefully you know if you're bothering to put in a quality application. You're going to think at least half of those are yes, that's me. I love that. That describes me utterly. That's my zone of excellence, what I long to do.

Speaker 1: 7:43

And as you go down the list, they'll be thinking, oh well, okay, I can do that, I can probably learn that, so I'll figure that out when I get there and by the time you've got to the end of it, you've ended up with this kind of pick and mix of stuff you love, stuff you care about, stuff that really fulfills you, balanced out by what somebody else thought would be a good kind of rounded package of skills and attributes and experiences that go with that job, that fits under that label that they've got funded for or they think they need, and it's not. Until you look at it from that perspective, you realize what a messy way that is to kind of make a living.

Speaker 2: 8:22

Absolutely, yeah, yeah, completely. And I think you know I always think it's funny when in the past I've gone for interviews for jobs and they're asking me, like why do you want this job? But I'm like, well, in my mind I'm thinking I'm half excited about it, but also I just want the money. Like what do you want me to say? Like honestly, yes.

Speaker 1: 8:40

And there is half of it I'm really excited about, because that was what I searched for in the first place yeah exactly For years I wanted to be a writer and I was looking for sort of content writing jobs and things. And then you come across oh well, I don't know SEO and I think, yeah, I suppose I could do that, and it doesn't feel, how much of the job would I end up doing?

Speaker 2: 8:59

that yeah, and like what's the pay?

Speaker 1: 9:02

and the happiness. Yeah, it's worth it. I bluffed that at an interview. I love SEO. Sorry, apologies to anybody who does Never my bag, but that's the thing. They should have been doing that bit of the job. An SEO freelancer who was actually good at SEO, not me Whereas I should have been crafting the words and we should have been discussing together asynchronously how to create perfect content. Absolutely yeah, the humans loved, and the engines. So that's it, but it's a bit harder. I suppose it's a bit more difficult for the managers to figure that out, although it's changing.

Speaker 2: 9:41

I'm seeing it changing. I'm seeing a lot more. You know, big corporations starting to hire freelancers for specific roles, like people who really want to do those roles and only those roles. So that's good to see.

Speaker 1: 9:52

Definitely yeah, and to be fair, I'm doing more content, certainly content strategy work for larger organizations. There's often, sometimes it's there's a challenge in the sort of interface of getting paid or making the contract, but actually when you're working with a hirer who knows exactly what they need, you can overcome all of that. You can figure it out. There are ways and means of doing it, and sometimes it means they can work with me in Europe if they're in the US, whereas they couldn't give me an employment contract in a million years. So, okay, we've both figured this out and I know that you've been helping a lot of other people figure this out too. So I know that we've talked before, we've had you on talking to our audience before and we have covered some of this ground, but it'd be great to recap how the Virtual Excellence Academy came about and where, where the need grew out of and how you've seen that change.

Speaker 2: 10:47

Yeah, for sure. I mean for me. I started working online I don't even know how many years over 10 years ago and I immediately was just like this is for me. I prioritized travel my whole life up to that point, so it was just like this made absolute sense to me. I can keep traveling, Like you said, you don't have these barriers of the labor laws or tax laws or anything like that. You can work from wherever you want. So this was obviously a huge draw for me, and what I'd found was I'd started a community at the time, a Facebook group, where I was just connecting with other people who were kind of in my shoes, who wanted to work online, wanted to travel, and I was sharing what was happening for me as a virtual assistant. I didn't know I was a virtual assistant until one of my clients called me a virtual assistant. I was like aha, there's a name for this and so I was sharing what was happening for me and sharing that.

Speaker 2: 11:33

You know the places I was going to the clients, I was working with the projects, I was working on my day-to-day you know goings-ons and people started to ask well, how can we do this too? And I never considered myself a teacher or a coach or anything like that. But I was like, hey, maybe, maybe I do have something to share, who knows, let's try. So I said, hey, I'm not going to charge you anything, let's do a free five day thing. Let's, let's see if we can access Also once. Yeah, so I threw together this free five-day challenge I call it the five-day VA, and every single day of the challenge I thought to myself what would I do next? Or what would I have wished I'd known and not had to work hard to figure out, so that I can just give these people exactly what they need, the steps they need to get started. And by the end of those five days, we had multiple people landing their first clients with absolutely no experience.

Speaker 2: 12:32

No experience that's one of the things we teach is that everybody has experience. They were landing clients and I was like, hey, this stuff works, I'm pretty good at this. And so, long story short, 10 years later now, I've trained over 30,000 people through this. The Virtual Excellence Academy is our more comprehensive program that has been refined over the years. Both of these programs have been refined over the years to meet the needs of today. We do live in a world that is changing technology-wise constantly. So we do keep that up to date and we like to make sure that our learners are always tapped into what's happening in the world that they operate in so that they can be you know, they can stand out, they can get those premium rates, they can work with amazing people and always stay ahead of the game. So I never expected to be in this position, that I now train, but I really enjoy it and for me, passing on the knowledge that I have for people to have the kind of flexibility that I have is really powerful and really, really enriching for me.

Speaker 1: 13:22

You kind of you just want to share it, don't you?

Speaker 2: 13:24

When you feel like you've unlocked the magic, yeah, and then when you hear people, other people's stories, and I'm like, wow, this person was able to move country. This person was able to leave a war zone. This person was able to, you know, finally realize their dreams of taking care of their parents. There's like so many ways that this can benefit you if you desire that you know.

Speaker 1: 13:45

Absolutely that this can benefit you if you desire that. You know, absolutely, yeah, and it's just about getting clear on what what really matters, because I want to circle back to another thing you just said about experience, because another question we get. First question is can you give me a remote job? Well, you know, I'll just pull one out of the bag. Sorry, doesn't work like that. The next question is well, what skills do I need to be a remote worker? What should I train as? What experience do I need to get in order to get a remote job? And again, this idea that you're competing for a job and the minute you look at the ad on LinkedIn, it says there's over 200,000 people already applied for it. If you're working for yourself, you've already got an awful lot of what you need. So I know this is something that you lean into a great deal within the Virtual Excellence Academy. How do you help people tap into what they've already bringing to the table?

Speaker 2: 14:34

Yeah. So we take people through a few exercises. I won't detail them here because they're better to look at visually, but ultimately these exercises just kind of identify the things that you really enjoy doing and not disregarding the things that you enjoy doing in your personal life too. So you know, bringing yourself to the table which I know is part of the topic of today is being able to bring all of you to the table. When you build a business, for me it's like there's no point doing it if you're not going to inject a bit of you into it. You know it needs to be from a place of authenticity, intentionality, and if not it's kind of you're just building, you're building four walls for yourself, you know. And so kind of listing out the things that you're really good at professionally, personally. Then move into another category where we're looking at what are the things you enjoy doing out of those things, because there's going to be lots of things that you're good at that you don't enjoy. That we probably have done in jobs. You know, like I'm really good at data entry. Do I enjoy it? Hell, no. So then you know, pulling from that original list, what do I actually enjoy doing? And listing that again, professional, personal, everything. Let yourself go wild with it for 10 minutes, set a timer and just write it all out and then, finally, moving into what can I get paid for? And in order to do that, I always think, put any business in your mind because every business can benefit from a freelancer or a VA and just list out all the things that they do in their business behind the scenes. If you really think hard about it, like just us today, we're on this session today. This needed the calendar set up. This needed the emails going out. This needed you to set up this little link popping up here. There's so many little intricacies of everything that goes on behind a business, whether it's online or offline, because every offline business has some sort of online presence these days and maybe keep that in line with the types of industries you'd want to work with, so that would be informed by what you're good at and what you're interested in, right?

Speaker 2: 16:13

So if you are really good at yoga and you love yoga and you love customer service, or you're really good at web design, an obvious choice for you would be to look at online yoga studios, because you can help them build their websites. You can help them with their customer support. If you were really into, let's give a really weird one. Let's say you were really into. I don't know. You lived somewhere not in the United States, and you love American diners right, it's like a passion of yours.

Speaker 2: 16:37

You could check out all these diners. You can be offering services to these diners. You can be designing their menus. You can be doing online ordering forms. You can be doing their website. You can be doing their social media. So there's so many ways that you can get paid for the things that you're actually interested in and are good at. So I always get people to start from there. This sounds probably a little bit messy talking about it, but we have some worksheets and structures for you to go through to figure this out during the five-day challenge which is popped up on the screen right now if you want to check that out.

Speaker 1: 17:06

Yeah, I really strongly recommend it because I know so many people who've been through this process with Hannah and I know what kind of results they've got. But also, even if there were people who halfway through the challenge, landed that dream employed job or they simply realized it wasn't for them to work for themselves, they still found it a very powerful self-discovery journey, just identifying those skills, those passions, figuring out what they don't want in their life, what your red lines are, the kind of businesses that you would never work for, for example, the kind of boundaries you want to put on your time. I'm not prepared to build the next unicorn startup and work 90 hours a week at the expense of my sanity and relationships and health. Or you might be. You might be that person, but until you have that self-awareness piece, it's very difficult to make decisions and get unstuck and not be at the victim of circumstance because you've got nothing to kind of push back against. So I think that's really, really important that you know people have.

Speaker 1: 18:07

Marquette has just signed up for the challenge. That's great to know. And Alden, yeah, don't worry, there will be a replay. It'll be on our website so you'll be able to catch up with this and you can register for the challenge right up until it starts, which is the 24th of June. Is that?

Speaker 2: 18:21

right Monday, the 24th. I would recommend, if you're here, sign up a little bit earlier, because tomorrow actually, we open the doors to the support community and in there you'll be able to get connected to an accountability buddy which we have found. Those who join accountability buddy teams do have better results, so I would highly recommend joining before the Monday.

Speaker 1: 18:40

What a brilliant idea, because that is one of the things that you learn as a remote entrepreneur of any kind and you're all entrepreneurs even if you're working for somebody else, you have to be an employee. If you haven't got a manager standing over you, is that you have to figure out how to hack your own motivation and accountability. So, pairing up with somebody else, even if it's someone on the other side of the world, you'll find something in common. You'll find something that you connect over and they can become really powerful, that you connect over Absolutely they can become really powerful.

Speaker 1: 19:06

Oh, we've got a question from Stephanie how long will the sessions be? This is quite a challenge.

Speaker 2: 19:11

So it's completely self-guided in that sense. So you'll get access to a course platform every day of the week at 8 am. The day's content will be released. When you take it within that 24 hours is up to you. So this is another really good reason that you have these accountability buddies, because when you come to post your assignments, you're going to be tagging your buddies so you can support each other and give each other feedback. Myself and my team are also in there giving feedback and this is crazy but even if there's 3,000 people in there, I will personally support every single person who posts their assignments.

Speaker 2: 19:40

That is our promise to you, because we really want you to leave this experience feeling like you have clarity and feeling like you have something that you can take forward. That makes sense. So if you've got questions or concerns as it comes up, we are there to help you. But the sessions themselves I would set aside an hour to an hour and a half a day, maybe two hours potentially on the first day, just because it's a little bit more deeper, deeper dive into, sort of your background, your history, your interest, that kind of thing. But yes, you will receive everything by email. I just saw a question here. So, yeah, an hour to two hours a day maximum, at your own time, at your own leisure, and then you'll pop into the group. There are two live sessions. They will be recorded if you can't make them live. They are on the Wednesday and the Friday. I don't remember the times right now, but they will be recorded and once you join the group you can RSVP to those as well.

Speaker 1: 20:24

Brilliant, yeah, so I think I mean you know these are the tools that we work with online, where we have a mixture of synchronous and asynchronous communication or we do things like this, but we have a live session and we get that energy and that responsiveness and we get people popping in and commenting, which we love.

Speaker 1: 20:38

So keep going. But then it is all available afterwards because people are in different time zones, different countries, drop in and out whenever, and some days you might have a lot of time to sit and think about it. Other times you might be doing some of that subconsciously. While you're subconsciously hopefully not self-consciously whilst you're doing your day job or going about your business, it's all mulling away in there. So it's probably really important to get that email open and just be mulling on the prompts, even if you're going to come back to it later, once you've had a chance for it all to percolate, and that's how you'll get the most out of it. I'm sure and I just think this is so powerful, Hannah you're helping people. It's not just designing a work, it's designing a whole lifestyle, isn't it?

Speaker 2: 21:17

It is? Yeah, because I think you know if you're building a business, it's not just work, it is your life to a degree. Right, there's an enmeshment that happens, and it can happen in an unhealthy way or it can happen in a healthy way, where you're taking that in mind, where you are designing it all from a place of, like I said, intentionality. So that's something we also focus on. I won't give too much away, but on Wednesday we do have some sort of resources for you to look at this more holistically as well, because I think that's really important.

Speaker 1: 21:41

Yeah, I totally agree and it goes back to that fact that we've all done jobs where we haven't been in that zone of fulfillment for one way or another. I'm trying to think of some of the worst things, certainly as a writer. Getting started, I I remember at one point writing product descriptions for a brand of patriotic workout where I think that was probably the idea of fulfillment they went up to a size 12.

Speaker 1: 22:07

XL and they were printed with guns and flags and it was just an awful product and I had to come up with these like 50 unique. It's all AI or anything.

Speaker 2: 22:22

You're like another pair of pants with guns. It really was.

Speaker 1: 22:25

You know, it was how the Lycra didn't stretch and you could still see the guns.

Speaker 2: 22:30

Oh my God, it was just horrific. That's crazy.

Speaker 1: 22:31

I often reflect on that when I think about you know how lucky I am and how consciously I've moved away from Will Wright for food yes, because I have bills to pay and kids to feed and all of that. And yes, you do have to start there.

Speaker 1: 22:51

I do recognize. It's tough and I hope nobody's listening to this, thinking well, it's all right for them, they've got it all figured out, they've made it. It's not like that, honestly, because I look back. Yes, I did write the patriotic leggings descriptions and talked about which kind of guns went with which flags. Did you learn a lot about guns?

Speaker 1: 23:10

The thing is, I was already at that time thinking very deliberately I don't want to be doing this. I really don't Not. If you know, they're so lifelike they'd come off the page and hold it to my head. I don't want to be writing this kind of copy. I'm thinking about what I did want to do and starting to pivot my business more into helping people work remotely. At that time, pre-pandemic, I was working more with businesses. There weren't individuals coming to me saying I want to work remotely. They were companies saying let's introduce a lovely, long, slow, evaluated change management process, because that's what they thought we had to do before 2020. But I was already starting to think what's my goal? What am I serving here and how can I start creating and moving towards that?

Speaker 1: 23:50

I still do things in my business I don't adore. Yeah, there's always something right. I mean, I also come across things I'm not good at. Luckily, I'm at the stage and I know Hannah's at the stage now where you can actually think well, not good at that and I don't love it. So how could I actually make an opportunity for somebody else who does love doing creating things for social media? Shout out, diana, for all that you do for Remote Work Europe. I couldn't do that. I know I'll take this and repurpose it and resize that for Instagram and the stories.

Speaker 1: 24:23

That would drive me crazy. I'll create the original thing and she just magics it all over the internet. That's her superpower. It's not mine. I can't do it. So what do you outsource, hannah? What do you avoid? If you can, I?

Speaker 2: 24:36

avoid all the techie stuff on my website because, even though to a degree I do enjoy it, I will poke around to the perfection point for way longer than needed and stuff doesn't get done or I'll break something eventually because I messed around too much. So I have someone, monica. She's amazing. She does all of our tech and all of our design, so she is fantastic and I just I feel like it's such a weight off my shoulders to know that I can just be like we need a signup page for this webinar we're doing. We need a thank you page, we need the graphic done and it just, it just magically gets done and looks fabulous and I'm like that is just such a great thing to have in your back pocket. And Monica is so good that people are always like is Monica free? Is Monica free? I'm like I don't know, talk to her, and then she's like I don't have availability, like you've like magically had Monica for too long. Yeah, because Monica.

Speaker 1: 25:25

Monica for too long, yeah, but you don't know when she's free, because Monica's an agent of her own. Exactly I might speak to.

Speaker 2: 25:36

Monica, a client, her roster. Hopefully she fits in all the Hannah stuff she does, she does, she makes it a priority and I'm very grateful for her. In fact, she's the first person I hired and she's the longest person that's been on the team.

Speaker 1: 25:43

She's really amazing, that's actually, I'd say the same for Diana, because we've been working together since long before remote work. Europe and that is another secret superpower of working for yourself is you get to collaborate with people you actually like and trust and build a relationship.

Speaker 2: 26:00

I consider Monica my best friend, one of my very best friends, so it's awesome.

Speaker 1: 26:04

Yeah, it's actually the same, even thoughiana lives on the other side of the country and we might see each other, you know, once twice a year. We're talking constantly because I couldn't do this without her and I utterly depend on her and it's so. It's that combination of trust and relationship, and the relationship one is interesting because lots of people come back with that about remote work and it's isolation and you know, people get lonely and I just have this horror, if I was of the idea of only being allowed to be friends with the people I worked with yeah, that's yeah.

Speaker 2: 26:36

I never really thought about it, that's true.

Speaker 1: 26:38

I've never considered this a lonely route, but I guess, yeah, I have seen people in remote jobs talk about loneliness a lot people do talk about it and I I'm not sure where it's come from, because I did not hear this so much pre-pandemic, when I was doing the work with companies to pilot remote working and they were just sending one team home and everything that was all done in a very controlled way and of course, I was working with them to talk to them about being intentional about your social life and your needs and having done the kind of work you describe in your challenge, you know people know what they need and it's like, well, I might like to just get my head down and work on my own, but actually I'm better doing that around other people, so I could go to a coworking or a coffee shop or whatever, and you know that's never been a problem. I think an awful lot of this ties back to fears generated during lockdowns and people's experience of what it was often so bad. I could see that. Stephanie, thank you for commenting that loneliness is one of your biggest concerns. I think it is really important that we talk about this authentically and and again, for me it's not something I've ever experienced, but I'll be honest, I've always had my family around when I've been working at home. I started that when my millennium baby came along. That's why I've been doing it so long. She doesn't like me calling it that now. Shout out, cass, if you're listening. She's now taller than me, but there's always been people around and that's not been a problem for me, whereas I know for a lot of people, their only experience of remote working was when they had to do it. They had no choice over it. They often had a very negative experience because their manager hadn't got a clue what they were doing. They were probably trying to learn how to work remotely, learn how to home tutor.

Speaker 1: 28:18

Living with fear of a global pandemic and everybody dying and all of those other things are sort of combined to that isolation piece. And I would only say to Stephanie and anybody concerned about this is that it comes back again to intentionality. When it's on you, you decide who you go and hang out with. You know whether that's. I'm going to do my work, I'm going to get my head down for five hours, then I'm going to go for a walk, I'm going to go to the pub, I'm going to go down to my local community because I haven't had to leave that community behind and commute to a distant city center to see the cubicle and I don't actually know who my neighbors are. You can do so much more when you work remotely, but you have to do it. Yeah, you don't have a water cooler or a manager or a team meeting or afterworks or anything.

Speaker 2: 29:03

I will add, though, that also digitally, you can sort of help the loneliness with. You know, one of the things that we implement in the Virtual Excellence Academy is, every single week we have digital co-working. So we're coming together, we're having a chat, we're getting some work done. We're having a chat, we're getting some work done. And I think when you join communities that really are community focused, that is greatly relieved as well. And it's really about when you are working for yourself, and I'm not going to say this couldn't happen in a remote job. I think it can.

Speaker 2: 29:29

I think in some remote work there is a focus on like, let's get together and do something online or let's meet in real life, or that kind of thing.

Speaker 2: 29:35

But I do think there's that more flexibility when you are working for yourself to meet other business owners who are in the same position as you, who understand the struggles you're going through and are willing to be like let's jump on it and work together. Today, I often will just reach out to a friend and be like you want to jump on Zoom, let's get some stuff done, and then you can have a chat and laugh, and these people become great friends and, because of the flexibility of the work. You might be heading off to play a Dol Carmen together at some point, which I just recently did with one of our members. So I think there's so many ways that you can approach loneliness and, maya, you just mentioned a really great list of them and I think also just to bring that online as well digital co-working actually just catching up with other business folks, being in communities of people doing what you're doing.

Speaker 1: 30:15

It's a different kind of energy, I feel, than the online office and that sense of fluidity between when you work online all the time and you communicate online continually. It's very easy to forget that there's any kind of barrier at all, especially when you might see people online regularly and then you meet them in real life and it's wonderful and you probably don't do any work because you're too busy just catching up on all the real life stuff and it's really powerful. And that's why I don't like the phrase in real life, because this is real life, this is how we spend our life.

Speaker 2: 30:50

True, yeah, some of my best friends are online.

Speaker 1: 30:53

I had to just think for a moment. One day we will.

Speaker 2: 30:56

No, no, we haven't.

Speaker 1: 30:58

And I don't even know, it wouldn't matter if we finally do, but when we actually manage to hit the same continent at the same time, that will be a great occasion. But until that time we can still develop absolutely a personal and a professional relationship because, there's. I mean this. I realize that for some people watching you might be watching a grainy replay, you might be having audio only, but if you're watching this live video.

Speaker 1: 31:23

Now I feel like this is really fixed and I have been doing this a long time and I remember when it was rubbish, like video conferencing and trying to get the technology to work and trying to actually, you know, connect with other people and feel like, and then, oh, should we give? I'll just phone you. Yes, that'll be easier, but actually it's so good now on a one-to-one or a small group basis. It really is like somebody is just sitting the other side of your screen. They could be the other side of your desk. You know there are no barriers to that communication until it goes wrong and then you remember, oh God, they're in another continent, but actually most of the time it's just not there.

Speaker 1: 31:58

Marquette has just mentioned being in a community of online teachers and, yeah, you can find that tribe. That comes back to the essence of designing your. Your job and your work is that doesn't matter where that tribe is and if you, if it happens to be online teachers you need to connect with, there might not be any in your neighborhood. There might not be any down your street there might not be.

Speaker 1: 32:19

What was it? Yoga teachers who are planning events or or eating hot dogs. So yoga enthusiasts who love hot dogs might get extremely niche, but there are, you know, four or five billion people on the internet. So actually you probably could form a community of online yoga hot dog enthusiasts by finding those people. We have search, we have social media. If you can connect with those people or if you can be the the this metaphor is going a bit, but if you could be the hot dog marketer who only wants to work for yoga teachers, you- can find them if they exist, you can do, and the point is you never could before.

Speaker 1: 33:00

If you were relying on finding that market within your village or even your city or even your country, it would have been really difficult and you might just have had to kind of think well, actually does this market exist? You know, can I do?

Speaker 2: 33:14

I have to rethink my model a bit and actually and could I create that community which it sounds like you're doing Marketta, so that's amazing and that's pretty much what I did at the beginning.

Speaker 2: 33:23

You're doing Marketta, so that's amazing and that's pretty much what I did at the beginning.

Speaker 2: 33:27

When I started that Facebook group where I was sharing my stuff, it was because at that time, when you search Digital Nomad, there was one distinct demographic that would come up in the news and the media and I was like hold on a second, not really and so I started a Facebook group because I was like there's got to be other people out here, like where's the women at?

Speaker 2: 33:46

And so you can find it and you can create it, and I think that that's also something to be said about. You know, a lot of people worry about where to find clients, and there are so many ways and places to find clients digitally in these niche markets too, because one of the ways that I have a friend of mine who gets a lot of clients from Reddit, just from Reddit, because she's in a very niche field which I can't talk about because it's a little not safe for work, but she uses Reddit to get clients and I'm like there are so many forums, groups, social media platforms where these niche communities will be hanging out and that's where you want to be showing up.

Speaker 1: 34:16

Yes, and obviously, the more niche you get, the less competition you're going to have and you become truly uniquely you. It's hard to stand out on LinkedIn. You know there's a hundred million people out there who are all trying to be the next whatever, but if you find the right subreddit, that could be an absolute goldmine. And that feeling, when you find that tribe, that connection, you know there's nothing like it. Once you really do connect with your people and you realize that there is nowhere on earth you could move to where you'd meet those people, because there's one here, and it's only this amazing communication that we do increasingly take for granted these days that lets us come together and actually do business, build, build a life Really amazingly powerful.

Speaker 1: 35:06

So I suppose that's just one more thing we ought to try and debunk and circle back to, though, because this whole thing of your passion and follow your dream we still see this being put out there, especially, you know, the LinkedIn memifiers about. Hopefully we've put all the pre-pandemic hustle culture to bed that you can just achieve anything by working a million hours a week and you know you have to sleep at work, and apart from elon and a couple of other weirdos that mostly we're beyond that. But what it seems to me is flipped into now is this idea that you can just, you only have to find one part of it which is what you love, and somehow build a business with that. And I don't know so much of this. It just feels really icky to me because I can see it leading to so much failure, so much heartache, so much loss of passion, because if you don't have a thing you love, go do that thing and love it.

Speaker 1: 36:04

Many cases I don't know I feel like that advice is often put about by people who either have a hidden agenda to sell you a course or a thing, or they're people who've already found financial security and, yeah, they can spend their time just doing what they love. So I mean, how do you counter these sort of arguments, hannah, when you see them?

Speaker 2: 36:21

because you must come across them all the time yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, I've never been in the school of thought that you can just follow your passion and something fruitful will come of it. There's a lot more to it and I think, yeah, like you said, if you do have this deep passion that you're very clear about, that is like your life's mission. By all means go for it. But I'm never going to tell people to do that, because I think that's a really intimidating concept.

Speaker 2: 36:43

Number one as human beings, we change constantly and our interests change and our passions change, or our curiosities, I'd like to call them change and so I always like to direct people to start from there, like what are you curious about? What are you interested about right now? Knowing that it's going to change, it will change, that's the nature of the work and knowing that you can have multiple interests and curiosities as well, because that's how we are as humans. We're multifaceted, we're not like I'm going to only do this thing forever, and I think we kind of limit ourselves with that as well. And then, like you said, when we do let ourselves down or fail because that's not necessarily a strategy then we can become disillusioned with that passion and fall out of love with that thing that we thought would bring us all this money.

Speaker 2: 37:26

I think sometimes it's good to actually keep separate the real things we're passionate about. What are we really passionate Really, really, really, on a deep level? What are we actually passionate about? We're passionate about our family, our friends, our connection to nature, our connection to self. The things that work will never really fully give you, no matter what you do. So I think trying to inject that into monetization is just a little bit dangerous, anyway, to a degree. And on the other side of that, I also think that I had a really good point and it's like escaped me. Let me just backtrack in my mind.

Speaker 1: 37:56

Don't you just love it when that happens?

Speaker 2: 37:57

It's really good Speaking to your passions that was the other thing I want to say as well is that oftentimes, if we start doing things we're interested about let's say that you were interested in SEO I know you weren't, but I'll give that example you were interested. You're like, hmm, that's cool, I would like to be able to see how I can get these websites to rank or whatever. You're curious about it. You want to learn more about it. Maybe you're a writer already, so it complements your work.

Speaker 2: 38:21

Passion can be born through mastery. The better you get at something, passion you might have for it as well. So I think it doesn't have to be this before that or that before this. Passion can come when you get really good at something. I didn't ever think I would be a coach to freelancers and virtual assistants, but I now have this deep passion for it because it's something I've mastered, it's something I've spent so much long doing and seen the fruits of, and so that wasn't something that existed before. It was just something that came to me, and I think there's so much merit in just following your curiosity, and that's what I did. I was like, oh, I'm interested in this online work. Oh, I'm interested in community. Oh yeah, that's interesting. I'll try and put a five day challenge on, and this is where I am here today. And it's because I followed that curiosity it opened more doors for me that led me to passion later.

Speaker 1: 39:01

Yes, and you can't always see even how that's going to join up at the beginning. You look back and realize, well, everything I've been doing for the last five years has been about helping people to find their route into this amazing new lifestyle, and that's what I care about. That's what I'm passionate about and it was the curiosity that got you there in the first place. And I do think also that the passion can come from the outcome as well as the intention that if you you know you might hate your data entry, but if it's actually going to be something that makes this challenge go better and there's no one else around to do it, you'll crack on.

Speaker 1: 39:38

On the SEO front, I love to see the stats from remote work europeeu, because it's my baby and I'm thinking, yeah, what can I do to keywords? And it was certainly still not my zone of expertise and I wouldn't even say it's fashion, but it's something, becomes something I care about and I'm interested in because I care about the results that it brings and because it satisfies that bigger goal of helping more people find remote work and find that, that upgrade. We just have to get them away from this idea that there's a job out there that somebody else has written a description for you. They figured out what's going to fill 40 hours of your week, because on some level, our minds are still back on the Ford production line, talking in and out of a factory, because that's where our employment law comes from right. That's the only reason.

Speaker 1: 40:24

That's. The only reason that we ever had a nine to five working day was because we all had to show up work on that line and twiddle the thing on the next car.

Speaker 2: 40:34

I think it's really interesting what you just touched on there about how there's things in our business. Circling back to what you said earlier, there's things in our business that we do that we don't necessarily enjoy, but because it feeds the bigger purpose, the bigger thing that we are interested in, it doesn't feel so difficult to do, whereas if you're in a job and you're just given a bunch of tasks that you're like oh, I really hate this and you don't really understand why it's happening, and you or you don't really care why you have to do it, because that's the truth isn't it?

Speaker 1: 41:09

A lot of us don't go to work because we really care about the mission of the company. When it's your business, you care. When it's your bottom line, yeah, you care, um and so, and it's so different from lying through your teeth at an interview. But why do you want this job?

Speaker 2: 41:13

well, you always wanted to work at the food production line.

Speaker 1: 41:15

I have this bill to pay. You've got something you need done and you've got money, I've got time I need the money, yeah, and you wouldn't get anywhere saying that in an interview, but I would bet that 95% of the time it's a complete lie when people talk about oh, I'm really aligned with making more money for your hedge fund or whatever, or building more cars.

Speaker 2: 41:36

But when it's I'm really aligned with I want to keep traveling or I want to support my family, or I want more time flexibility then the motivation is there yeah absolutely, and that's when you actually broaden your skillset anyway, because you care about.

Speaker 1: 41:50

Okay, you're going to figure out how to do the thing on your website, because done straight away or whatever, and sometimes it will break and it won't work.

Speaker 1: 41:58

And that's why we have Monica and Diana and shout out to Jim for when I break things on the website. And it's really built in the first place. I tried to set up and make it my proof, which is not always an easy task. But you know, I've had to figure out how to do stuff on that website because I know that I wake up one morning and think of an event or a blog article or something and I just want to get it live and I just want to do it. There's no job that somebody else is paying me to do. In the past that would have let me just change everything I was going to do that week and launch a new product, and it sounded like a fun idea. And it was only. It's only me that's going to bear the consequence if it falls flat on its face, or enjoy the learning experience. I mean, that's an outcome, but but you know, if I'm prepared to take that that risk on then, um, it's worth it to me in order to be helping more people. So it's been great to see some comments coming in. Do we have any more questions?

Speaker 1: 42:56

I had one question that came in via email earlier today which I thought was a really interesting one. It was about risk and about the perils of freelancing. It was somebody who's always had a job and they're in a job now, but they don't like it and I'm not going to say any more about it not to out that person but they've never freelanced and they're very concerned about going from that certainty. They know what's coming in, they know what's going out. They have high lifestyle expenses. Their biggest concern is the lack of consistency with freelance income and I know you've written a lot about this, hannah, but can you reassure in a few words?

Speaker 2: 43:37

Yeah, I would say number one you can build your freelance business on the side if you have capacity and time for that. If you don't have capacity in time for that, being really realistic about your capacity in time first is to make sure that you've built, I would say, 6 to 12 months emergency fund, Because freelancing can take a little bit long to get to that place of consistency. But in terms of consistency, stability, security what a lot of people think that the remote job or the job will give them versus freelancing, that can be built with freelancing as well. So if you have multiple clients who are paying you on a retainer basis, that's a really nice position to be in, because if one client does drop, it's highly unlikely all of them drop at the same time.

Speaker 2: 44:17

I always give the analogy of if you had an investment property and you've got one unit rented, or you've got multiple rentals and one person moves out, you've still got everyone else paying rent. So it's the same concept. If you have multiple clients, you have multiple streams of income. You are kind of actually more protected in some sense, but it can take time to get there. So make sure you have an emergency fund that covers your expenses of six to 12 months.

Speaker 2: 44:39

You need to determine your risk level on that and how much time and capacity you have to build the business. But the business can be up and running with retainer clients in six months if you really throw yourself into it. But again, it requires that capacity. Just to wrap it up, I would say to you you can build consistency, security to a level where you feel even more secure in freelancing, but it's going to take a little bit longer perhaps, depending on your experience, your time commitment, that thing. Make sure that you have a comfortable chunk of money to support you in the meantime and just get started as and when you can.

Speaker 1: 45:10

Yeah, I think that's a really excellent answer. I would add two things to that. The first is, when Hannah talks about six to 12 months emergency fund, I can feel a lot of people going I can't save for the next six weeks, nevermind six to 12 months. But think about it as a bare minimum, not necessarily the lifestyle that you're enjoying now, what you spend in a typical six months. But in order to do this arithmetic, you need to think what is the minimum I could live on. What compromises might I be prepared to make in my spending, in my lifestyle, even where I live, if we're talking fully location, independent work, could I geo-arbitrage? Could I go and live somewhere? Could I rent my house out and go and live in a small apartment? So, yeah, if you really want to do this, there are ways to reduce your spending right down and therefore that buffer you need to have.

Speaker 1: 45:56

And the second point I want to make on this. This sounds really negative, but I have my inbox and it does not lie. Jobs are not as secure as they used to be. There are so many people who've lived with this illusion of safety, maybe for a very long time, and so I've never go freelance because I love to know I'm on this track, I'm in this career, I'm employed by this big organization, and the last 24 months or so have been a bloodbath. In so many industries, particularly in tech, where a lot of my clients are, there are people really good people being let go and often you know of course they'll pay whatever the legal minimum is for redundancy. But unless you've been there a very long time and unless you're in certain particular markets, that might not be very much at all. Certainly a lot less than that six to 12 months where you could be. So everybody needs to build that savings cushion.

Speaker 2: 46:47

Yeah, regardless of what you're doing.

Speaker 1: 46:49

Yeah, because the thing is, when you work full time for one place that is to use Hannah's analogy that is your entire rental building being empty, everybody walking out one night and not renewing.

Speaker 2: 47:01

The house went on fire. That's it.

Speaker 1: 47:03

Yeah, it burned down, so there's nothing coming in and that is terrifying and I've been in that position. I'm sure lots of people listening to this have been in that position and I know it's now seven years of full-time freelancing for me. I will never put myself in that position again where somebody can take away the whole of my income like that.

Speaker 2: 47:24

Yeah, and I think it's also important to note that a lot of these tech companies, because an ex-partner of mine worked for Buffer and their policy was last in, first out when it came to layoffs. So there was no package. She was only there for a few months and she was out. And there was no severance pay. There was no, nothing.

Speaker 1: 47:43

And there was a huge. You know the economic cycle is reflected in the jobs market and we might be getting a bit off topic here, but it's important. When things are good, times are good, everything's booming, people get hired and companies overshoot, they overhire, and then they turn around and say, right, we're just going to cut 12% or something. And it often will be first in last out, or managers will be told you've got to cut 12%. You know well, I need everybody, I love everybody. I don't want to do this to anybody, but they have no choice because they have to make those cuts.

Speaker 1: 48:16

And there are real people at the end of that, and often in tech and this is another real reason to work remotely often in tech that involved visas and relocations as well. You know the people getting laid off in the US and they've literally got like three months for them to find a job, or they and their family are out of the country, never mind out of that expensive apartment. They've got no rationale for staying in the place that they aren't rooted themselves to move to. So next time I hope they'll get a remote job and choose where they want to live. Nobody can take away from them that isn't tied. So you know, it really is incredibly difficult.

Speaker 1: 48:47

And we've got one more comment coming from Marketa. We're so happy that you found us too. Do you think I can find a remote job? Well, you know, this whole thing we've been talking about today is about building your own job. Thing we've been talking about today is about building your own job and, honestly, yes, you possibly could find somebody who's going to pay you exactly what you need to earn doing business admin. That most fulfills you. But honestly, being self-employed as a language teacher, I'm sure that you could find additional self-employment opportunities using your business admin experience, very well positioned with the online business admin course as well.

Speaker 2: 49:23

I mean, this is the perfect candidate for you.

Speaker 1: 49:27

I think you said you've already signed up, marketer. Yeah, I think I get a lot out of it.

Speaker 2: 49:32

Yeah, I'm already seeing ways that you can package that up and move forward of sort of premium pricing on like online business management. So I would look for you. I'd personally look at the OBM route. So there's VAs and there's OBMs there's a lot of similarities, but we'll talk about that in the challenge. Uh, online business management. I could see you really, really rocking that.

Speaker 1: 49:50

Yeah, I think, um, it's probably as important to touch on that. We're coming up to 50 minutes now and this is going to be a long podcast, but nevermind, Um, I I first came across the concept of a virtual assistant, I think, back in the Tim Ferriss days for our work week. We're all basically going to outsource our jobs to somebody in India and then go and sit on the beach for the rest of our lives. It's got a lot to answer for that book. It's probably why I'm not in the UK anymore, but obviously I'm never quite approached for hours because life isn't like that.

Speaker 1: 50:18

But I think a lot of people's initial perception of a virtual assistant is somebody low paid, doing very repetitive work, using that geo-arbitrage to basically outsource bits of your job that you don't want to do because they're boring or repetitive. Can you just debunk that one for us? Because you just mentioned online business management and I know that in the VA you embrace so many different skill sets and possible routes to carving out a career that I don't know what we do with the language, but there's so much more.

Speaker 2: 50:50

Yeah, I mean virtual assistant. To me, if you flip it the other way around, if you assist people virtually, I use it as an umbrella term. It's all types of freelancers, it's online service providers. I should probably change it at some point, but the truth of the matter is I'm also trying to reclaim people's misconceptions about it. Virtual assistants operate in different areas as well. I think a lot of people think they just do admin or repetitive tasks, like you said, but they also operate in the technical space, creative space.

Speaker 2: 51:14

There's a lot of crossover. There's a lot of scope for you to design something unique to your skills and interests or curiosities, as we talked about and Marketa, just to give that example again, online business management is essentially a really high level project management, people management, business management, admin at a high level, which it sounds like you have that experience and OBMs starting pay is $50 plus an hour and I know OBMs making $120 an hour, more than that, even some of them. So if you have retainer clients which for OBMs, it mostly is going to be retainer clients because you're doing online business management, it's not singular tasks, singular gigs you can be on some really nice retainers. That's a really fruitful trajectory to be in and in terms of the pay and the misconceptions about $3 an hour in India or something that does exist I don't agree with it.

Speaker 2: 52:04

I don't think it's good for anybody on either side of the equation. I think there's a whole ethical standpoint we could go into for another time, but in short, that is not your competition when you're carving out a niche for yourself. I was saying niche or niche. I'm half American, so it's hard for me. I'm like which one do I use you saying niche?

Speaker 1: 52:23

niche or niche. I'm half American so it's hard for me. I'm like which one do I use? You've gone over to the niche side.

Speaker 2: 52:24

Let's come back. When you choose a niche for yourself and when you are operating from a place of understanding the value that you're bringing to someone's business, the competition ceases to exist. You are carving a place for yourself. You are showing up in places where your particular audience are showing up. You're providing value. You're delivering an excellent client experience. That's not competition for a $3 an hour gig on Upwork. People that are going to Upwork to look for people for $3 an hour are not the clients you want to be working with either. So that's also you know it works on both sides and so, yes, that does exist. That's one part of the online, you know, freelance gig world, but it's not the part that you need to be in, and there's just as big, if not bigger, a part where people are really paying you handsome amounts of money to do things that you're really good at and that you enjoy.

Speaker 1: 53:09

And you'll be called whatever they need, whether that's a you want to call yourself A cost engineer, or a business manager, or an operations director, or whatever.

Speaker 2: 53:18

They can have fun names. Monica calls herself a tech wizard.

Speaker 1: 53:24

That's her name. There's a lot of it about. Customer service is where it's gone the most bonkers, isn't it Sort of happiness engineer or joy wizard? Well, we're getting a bit daft now, but I think to wrap up, let's just a bit of a call to action. You've heard a lot today about the possibilities of really changing your life.

Speaker 1: 53:47

If you happen to be working full-time in one place or full-time in one digital place, even if you have that remote aspect already sorted, I honestly believe you've got nothing to lose by checking out Hannah's Five-Day Challenge, because we all need something up our sleeve, something in our pocket, some bit that's not owned by your boss. Whether that's just the thought piece of figuring out what could I do next, even if I'm looking for another remote job, to think about it in a completely new way, and once you start identifying those little bits where you could freelance, you could build up those six to 12 months essential living expenses. What could you do with that? Where would that take you, even if you just took a sabbatical to travel, and that might give you new ideas about what you're going to do in the next stage of your life. So it's really it's such a powerful thing and this is free Now. We've got one coming up this month, but you do this several times a year, don't you Hannah?

Speaker 2: 54:38

Yeah, four to five times a year. I don't have a very strict schedule because I have to be realistic about my capacity and, like I said, we do make sure that everybody is supported that comes through, so I need to be in good shape to be able to serve you. So, yeah, four to five times a year, every two to three months roughly.

Speaker 1: 54:53

Great. So if you're watching the replay now and you've missed June, the 24th 2024, don't worry. Okay, if you go to this link on the screen now remoteworkeuropeeu forward slash five day va then you will find a registration form where you can join a wait list and as soon as it opens up again, then you will get contacted by hannah and by her team and given the first place in the queue to get on to the next one. So this is is a rolling thing. I know that it's not open all the time, because Hannah likes to work with people in cohorts and really give them that attention, that individual attention that people need, because the whole point of this is that everyone's unique in terms of what they're bringing to the table. But it is something that opens up periodically and you need to take a long-term view when you're changing your life. So let it percolate, let it sit, think about what you've heard today start to think about where that curiosity could take you.

Speaker 1: 55:47

I think that this has been an absolutely amazing session. I'm really grateful, hannah, for our collaboration in remote work europe, for all of our members that you have helped and likewise it's a wonderful collaboration and it's really nice to connect with you again here.

Speaker 2: 55:59

I feel like we're just just like already met in person. When you said that, I was like really we haven't yeah have we?

Speaker 1: 56:04

No, I don't think we have yet, but it's going to happen. Definitely it's going to happen. We will make it so and thank you very much everybody who's been listening and chipping in with comments. I can see I've got other messages blowing up as well that haven't made it to the front page of the comments, so if there's anything that we can answer directly, we'll come back and take a look. This broadcast is spread across our website, linkedin, facebook, youtube, so we'll try and get to everything. Jump around today, but if not, what's the best place to get hold of you, hannah?

Speaker 2: 56:37

LinkedIn, hannah Dixon or anywhere else Digital Nomad, kit, KIT, instagram. I'm very responsive as well, so LinkedIn and Instagram is good and a lot of stuff will be covered during the challenge. If you have questions, we have a couple of live coaching calls. We're going to answer all your questions and questions you didn't know you had until. So, yeah, definitely join and it'll be great fun. Fabulous.

Speaker 1: 56:59

Thanks ever so much, hannah, thanks everybody who's been watching and listening, and here's to your future success. Thanks for having me. You've been listening to the Remote Work Europe podcast brought to you by remoteworkeuropeeu. We bring you community information, training, coaching and more to help you achieve your location-independent lifestyle in Europe and beyond, as an employee, entrepreneur, freelancer or whatever you want to be. If you enjoyed the show, please like, rate and comment, and subscribe to our feed wherever you get your podcasts. If you really liked it, we'd appreciate a review as well. Here's to your remote work success in Europe and around the world.