The Sliding Scale of Remote Work

i'm going to talk about the sliding scale of remote work and it's really based on two factors how much you can earn and how much time do you have so if you want to start at the bottom this is like your entry level jobs like data entry this is things like um customer support you can walk in and walk out of these jobs fairly easily but you're also because the barrier to entry is so low you're competing with a lot of people you're probably not going to get financially rewarded as much as you like so you'll spend a lot of your time working and less time traveling and seeing the actual place that you're in level two this is your nine to five you're going to get financially rewarded but you give up a big chunk of the day you can change this around you can work on a different time zone to where the place that you're in maybe you have your day free maybe you have your evening free and you start a bit earlier the problem with this you do lock up a lot of your time you're not that autonomous personally i don't really like that environment number three is freelancing low level freelancing and when i say low level i don't mean low level like low quality i just mean you're not being like financially rewarded as much as you can but you are getting a lot of your time back and you set your own schedule this is things like language instruction uh maybe music instruction a downside of those is your students probably have a fixed schedule and they want the same lesson at the same time every week so you have to build that around but you do get more flexibility with the amount of time that you have you're also getting paid slightly higher than things like customer support language instructors online you're probably going to get around 15 to 20 pounds an hour the next level up this is freelancing with quite a high value skill this is things like web development digital marketing social media management these are all extremely good skills to have to work remotely and do if you're freelancing freelancing has the benefit that you are choosing your own hours you're choosing who you work with you have autonomy and yes your customer is your boss but you're adding high value so you can charge a lot more if you're the type of person you don't really care about seeing the place you're in which is kind of like why are you working remotely uh you can work a lot of hours earn a lot of money maybe you're saving for a period charging higher prices because you're providing a higher value service means that if you want to travel more you want to see the place that you're in more you have to work a smaller amount of hours to meet your monthly expenses and not go through your runway and not burn through your savings the next level up i think this is where if you're business-minded you should try and go for this is to run a company why would you want to run a company versus freelancing freelancing you're swapping time for money in the long run it's not the optimal thing to do because every time you want to get paid you have to work so it's not optimal a business structure you're leveraging other people's time your employees or the software that you've built or media and code this is from naval those are the four types of leverage you do not need to work in order to get paid you have set up this system so that customers are coming in the thing that they're asking for is being done by either other people or code you get paid you're working on the business not in the business if you're working in the business you've just built yourself a job i don't want to spend too much time talking about the business it's not the scope of this video i just wanted to talk about the different levels and why you need to be aiming to move up these levels and get more of your time back and be financially rewarded at a higher rate per hour to recap this entry level positions you can walk in and out of the job you get financially rewarded less but you have a certain level of autonomy and you are able to earn money while you're traveling if you haven't already sorted out a slightly higher paying job nine to five you get a big chunk of your day taken up but you're being financially rewarded it's not the best for traveling i see a lot of people working nine to fives on the road and they're not too happy they're kind of like a bit sad with their job because people are coming in and out saying hey do you um do you want to come and do this and they're like i'm working sorry freelancing slightly better you get more of your own autonomy and you get financially rewarded there you have it a sliding scale of what you want to be moving up if you want to be working remotely entry level nine to five freelancing higher value freelancing business structure