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While it’s been quiet on the article-front here lately, it’s been quite busy behind-the-scenes and everything’s about to change. We’ve just put together a new team for the Professionals site including a full-time editor and a small team of writers.

It’s working brilliantly so far so we’re doing the same with the Parents site – which means that we’ll soon have lots of great new content for you, our first ebook and plenty of inspiration and personal stories to follow.

I’m delighted to announce that we’ve already got a managing editor – Jenn Miller from the Edventures project. Jenn is uniquely qualified to write about location independent parenting – she has 4 kids, has been roadschooling and home schooling for years and spent a decade as an educational consultant and curriculum designer in the home schooling world.

Join the team

We’re now on the lookout for a writing team…here’s what we’re looking for:

• A writer to focus on roadschooling, world schooling & home education
• A writer to focus on travelling with babies & children (including possible destinations, sights & travel tips)

If you’re interested, here are the details & how to apply:

• You’re not looking to be “just” a writer – you want to be part of a team which will be helping promote the location independent lifestyle as parents to the wider world and support each other in doing this. In essence, you’ll be Ambassadors for location independent parents.
• You can commit to writing 1-2 high quality posts a week.
• You must have at least 1 social media profile with at least 75 followers/fans (this can be on Twitter, a Facebook page, Friendfeed, YouTube or other mainstream social media site).
• You are reliable and professional and know how to meet deadlines.
• You are willing to work closely with the managing editor and your team mates to create a content schedule which will be the envy of the blogging world
• You are in it for the long haul – this isn’t a “get rich quick” scheme but it is an opportunity to be part of something that will make a difference to others and something that I’m hoping to grow massively over the coming months and years. If you want a part of it, now is the time to join.

As this site is in the early stages of growth it doesn’t yet earn an income so we can’t pay you for any contributions to begin with (and probably for at least the first 4-6 months). This will be a top priority however and we have a great range of digital products & guides in the pipeline. In fact Jenn’s already working on the first one now.

As soon as the income gets to a level which can cover the expenses, we’ll be able to start paying the team for contributions. This will be on a profit share basis, so we’ll all be invested in the growth & success of the site as much as each other.

If you’d like to apply to join the team, please send me an email.

A Personal Update

My little family recently passed an exciting milestone – Mali turned 1! In her first year of life, she’s already travelled to more places than some of our other family including Dubai, Thailand, Turkey and Italy.

We decided a couple of months ago however, that we needed a bit more stability for a while to focus on some business projects and to give Mali a few more benefits of being part of a less nomadic community, including a toddler group, visits from relatives and living near friends who we see regularly. That’s why we’re currently enjoying a wet, cold & windy Scottish summer up in Edinburgh!

We’ve also stepped up our search for a more permanent base from which to make 1-2 month trips every few months rather than being permanently nomadic with no base to call our own.

We’ve found that having no base to head to when we’re not sure where to go to next or if we decide a place is not right for us is stressful, expensive and unsettling for us all so we’re currently trying to figure out where to make that base when we leave Scotland in a few months.

A nomadic life is great – and we were excited to hit the road again when Mali was 4 months old but as she grows older through what everyone has always warned us was a more difficult phase (when they start to walk, can’t talk yet and just want to run around with no sense of danger!!), we need to adapt our lifestyle to cope with that.

I have no doubt that we’ll continue to travel – but we may well cut this down and spend 6 months a year in our base and then make shorter 1-2 month trips to other places for the rest of the year rather than being on the road permanently and moving every 2-3 months to somewhere completely different. You could say we’re a bit travel-fatigued – running a business, while travelling permanently with a toddler can be overwhelmingly exhausting!

That’s what is so great about the location independent lifestyle – it’s flexible, adaptable and you can change everything to suit your changing needs. So that’s us and that’s what our plans are for the next few months. How about you?

There are numerous things which people struggle with but one of the most common hurdles is generating a location independent income and setting up a location independent business.

We’ve tried a few things to help with this, including the Business Guide, the Freedom Roundtable and private consulting – but all of those things cost money and are therefore not available to everyone. We wanted to do something which is free, leverages our/your time as much as possible and which will help people take massive action and make massive progress towards their goal of location independence.

These conversations, in conjunction with others we have about where we want to be and what we want to achieve (especially Jonathan), have all resulted in this…the 12 Week Challenge.

In a nutshell, it’s a 12 week “program” which is free to join. The aim of the game is to help you make massive progress towards becoming location independent by getting everything in place you need for a location independent business. It starts on Monday, 5th April.

Each week for 12 weeks, we’ll post a task which you’ll complete with the help of the tips & resources we’ll be suggesting (look out for some pretty cool tips from people at the top of their game). At the end of each week, we’ll round-up your progress (if you tell us about it) here on the blog. We’ll be encouraging lots of cross-participation, community support and hoping to get you all commenting, cross-promoting and more on each others’ sites and projects so everyone who joins will benefit from this community effort to make massive progress on an individual level.

The details are here but if you’d like to take part, let us know here in the comments or in the Clubhouse so we can feature you on the site when it starts and help you along the way. So if you’ve been struggling to become location independent, why not join us on the 12 Week Challenge and make MASSIVE progress on your own journey?

In the meantime, Sharon, Amy and I would like to give you a preview of what we’ve got coming up in 2010 on this site:

Firstly, there is bound to be some cross-over between some of the topics we cover here and some that we cover on the Professionals blog. With that in mind, we’ll be posting intro’s to any relevant posts on the other blog with a link to the original article on whichever site it appears (does that make sense?!?).

So for example, we’ve got a series of posts coming up on the Professionals blog about setting up and running a location independent business – so that you don’t miss it here, I’ll post the intro to each article here which links back to the original article on the Professionals blog. I’ll do this whenever there’s anything I think is relevant to you here – that way you won’t miss anything.

Secondly, we’re going to be featuring some guest posts from other location independent parents, particularly about their home education and home schooling adventures. Between the 3 of us, we’ve got a few things covered but, as you know, we’re keen to emphasise on this site that there is no single “right” way to be location independent parents and in order to do that, we want to share a broad range of voices, stories and experience with you. If you’d like to contribute, please send us an email.

And finally, we’d like to hear what you want to read about…and what you’d like to see on this site. Would you like a forum? A wiki? A podcast? Video posts? What would help you become location independent parents? Let us know in the comments or by email…