Hey folks. Lots of great people have sent me e-mails with the same basic question:
How do I make a resilient income?
Other ways to rephrase this question:
- How can I make an income that allows me to transition to a resilient community (even communities in rural areas or overseas)?
- What can I do to make myself less vulnerable to job loss?
- How can I build a network or tribe that provides me with help making an income in the turbulent times ahead?
Unfortunately, I can't answer a question this deep/complex in a single e-mail or post to this blog. Here's a part of the answer.
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IF you want to become more personally resilient, you need to build a global brand. A simple Web presence that tells the world who you are and why you are unique. Here's why you need it.
Spend a bit of time reading about my background. You can see right off that I've done many, many different things. I can tell you from the school of hard knocks: jumping from one career to the next wasn't easy. It was tough. However, over the last decade it has gotten much easier. Why? I now own a global brand.
In fact, I have two. John Robb and Global Guerrillas. Here's how a global brand works for me:
- When you put John Robb into Google, you can EASILY find me. This also makes it easy to find out information about me and much of my work. That's a good thing. People will Google you. Particularly prospective employers or customers in the informal/service economy. If you don't have information up, you've already lost. This is something that goes beyond a Facebook page (the amount of work I picked up from my online brand: hundreds of thousands of $$. Amount from Facebook/LinkedIn : $0. No contest).
- People interact with me through my brand. They read my work. They correspond with me. If the experience is positive, and it often is, they have and do ask me to do work for them. Some people, and they are best (thanks), even send me tips using the link on the upper left side to financially support the valuable work they get here for free. At the end of the day, I generate multiple income streams from that work. Further, the more work I do on-line, the more flow (offers, prospects, etc.) I get. It's a virtuous feedback loop.
- Finally, over time I've also built an an absolutely amazing network of people due to this brand. From people at the highest levels of gov't/corporate power to the lowly (but brilliant) permaculture expert in Nicaragua, and everyone in between. What do they all have in common? They are interested in the same topics that I am interested in. In fact, I would wager that on these topics, there isn't a better network in the world.
So, here's what this means to you:
- In order to become personally resilient, you need to build more income streams. At a minimum add another income stream to the one you have. A larger number of income streams reduces your vulnerability to the loss of any single income stream. I'll address how to do this in future articles (although this is common sense).
- You will find that some of your best income streams, are from work that you source and fulfill online. Optimally, this work comes to you because of your online brand presence.
- A global brand makes it easier to generate a network of people that can help you find online work. The brand makes you real to people that haven't met you in the flesh. NOTE: this brand can also make it easier to find other people to build a resilient community with.
So, think about building a global brand. It doesn't have to be a blog or a complex site. It can start as simply as a single web page. But, beyond a doubt, it's something that you should have. It doesn't matter whether you are 20 or 60 years old. If you know someone that needs to read this, forward it to them. It's not too late to start your brand.
Follow me as @johnrobb on Twitter.