Making the Move: Setting up Your Life to Move Abroad

Get ready, because everything is about to change. There's a new way of living life and doing business that will blow your mind. This is a podcast all about the timing of life and the timing of success. It's what we call the Right on Time life. And you are listening to the Right on Time podcast with Amber McHugh. Hello. Hello. Good to be here with you. Amber McHugh here, coming at you from Abidjan, Cote d', Ivoire, the Ivory Coast. And I have had such a lovely break between the end of the year and the new year. I took a big break as we do every year at both of my companies. We just sort of wind down, relax, disconnect, and it was good. It usually doesn't take me three so long to disconnect. Usually I can turn it off and turn it back on. Vacation begins. I am in vacation mode. But this year, for some reason, we had about a three week break. It took me a solid six days to wind down. And this year, unlike most years, I was running to the finish line. It felt very busy. The days felt very full. So I'm taking, I've been taking a minute to get back into the new year routines and rhythms as well. And something happened over that winter break that surprised me. More questions over the winter break than I have gotten in years of living abroad. And people were asking me, messaged me, maybe it was the new year or maybe routines and people reflecting and planning for the year ahead, which I've also been taking my time on this year. I'll tell you more about that in another episode. But many people over this winter break messaged me and said, where would you recommend I live? I'm thinking about moving abroad. What should I consider? And oh, could you create something about this? And as I was getting these questions, I thought, you know, I am just gonna create a series of sessions where I tell a little bit more about our experience coming to live abroad, practical considerations, other considerations and things to think about once you get abroad, as well as what it may look like if you stepped into this as well. Now, if you're not thinking about moving abroad, living abroad, spending part of your time working or doing life abroad, even if you're not thinking about moving full time, this may just still be fun to listen to. So we're going to do a couple of sessions together on this experience of living abroad. And first I'm going to sort of explain how we came to it and then I'll step into some of that more practical stuff. So I'm excited to be Here. I'm excited to talk about this. I want to keep it super casual, super chill. And of course, you have other questions, things that come up through this series or in follow up to something I've said, let me know and we'll get you some info. To the extent that I have it. Because my experience living abroad is. May not be the same as the one that you are considering or thinking about. But I'm going to go back to the very beginning and how it started for us. And it started for us because we had this idea, this inkling that we were not living in the place that felt like we were going to be for the long run. Very specifically, we were living in a suburb in the DMV area. And we were there for about 15 years, 14, you know, by the time we actually moved. But before that we were thinking, you know, we're not gonna be here forever. Where are we gonna go? What are we gonna do? And I actually spent time living abroad. When I was growing up, I lived in Saudi Arabia. My stepfather worked for a company in Saudi Arabia. So I spent time there growing up. And I really enjoyed that experience. Experience. Actually over break as well. I was messaging with a friend of mine from Saudi Arabia elementary school. I don't keep in a regular contact with a lot of people from that season in my life, but when we do get in touch, it's like we just pick right up. Like she, to this day I would describe as one of my dearest, closest friends. And we don't even meet that much because there is just such a depth and a unique experience that we shared and had together that was very impactful on my life. I've got some strong connections that were built there because living in Saudi Arabia, very unique experience. So I enjoyed that and it contributed to who I became. And my husband and I were talking about, you know, the life that we wanted, changes that we wanted to make in our life. We thought that maybe living abroad would be a part of that. We didn't know exactly what, we didn't know exactly how. There was a whole lot of surrender and right on time and just, okay, we're just going to set ourselves up for this. Someday it will unfold. And what did that mean? So very specifically for me, that meant I was in corporate at the time. I was going into an office on a regular basis and like, okay, we want to make some shifts in how I show up in corporate, what my work looks like, because I didn't know what it was going to look like when we went abroad. We didn't start there saying, okay, let's move, change careers. We had my husband's career to also consider. So I started percolating so I would just be ready come what may. And so that meant that we set up businesses and one of them is actually in person. Three Boudoir. I'll put the links to all of this in the show notes in case you want to check us out. Get in for a shoot that actually started the company. Three Boudoir. You may know, because my husband was overseas at the time, working, and I wanted to send photos to him, do something unique. And we did that experience. I grabbed a photographer friend and a business partner now who is a former model, so she had all the posing tips and tricks, and we came together and got those photos from my husband. And we're like, this is fun. That was a super empowering experience. I was really nervous going into it and realized, oh, if I can do that, we can do pretty much anything. Like, I can do anything. Confidence rebuild. Saw myself in a different way. So what was a gift for my husband, myself, and many of our clients say, like, I thought it was a gift for someone else, but it ended up being an incredibly powerful gift for me. Somebody mentioned a firewalk. Doing a firewalk as an experience, and somebody related it to that, like, okay, it's something you don't think you could do. You're a little nervous to do it. But once you do, unlocks so much. And so we're building the photography business now might be a little contrary. How do. I became our primary photographer in that business at the beginning. So how do you create a life overseas and prepare for a life overseas if you're running a business now, mind you, this is an idea that we had. We're moving towards it. And my business partner and I had conversations. We're like, okay, let's set this up so we have more flexibility. And we started asking questions like, how do we scale this? We systematized things so it didn't always have to be us doing the photo shoots. So if you're setting up your life right now, if you're setting up a business right now, do it for today, but also think about where you're going and what you want in the future, which is exactly what we did. So it took us many years to build up a business to get systems and structure really in place. But we had an eye on flexibility and scale and freedom from the very beginning. So my business partner is now in New York. I am an Abidjan Cote d' Ivoire, where I can work on all sorts of things for the business from here. And we've got a team in 26 cities across the US so we've built up an incredible team that we are so lucky to get to work with that serves our incredible clients. But it was, it was done like, okay, we're starting a business. I'm in person in this business because I'm taking pictures. Then it evolved to, all right, I don't always want to live in this location. So how do we make it scalable? How do we adjust? So we had that eye on the future. So fast forward to today. That business is fully, well, we've got team members across the board. We're all around the world, mostly us based with me sitting here in Abidjan. And so we. Oh man, just memories were just flooding back there. I just have a little train of thought. So we set that business up with an eye on the future. Right. I was in person but we knew that wouldn't always be the case. We put system structures in place and honestly, I stopped shooting before my business partner did. So I was the photographer for a while. Joanna, my business partner was our shoot director and we are shooting in one location. Then we were shooting in two locations. We added D.C. where I was not the photographer, taught someone our systems, taught someone our flow and it was a photographer and my business partner in those shoots. Photographer and her shoot directing two team members more and Megan came in. They were our photographer, shoot stylist and that started allowing us to expand to other cities and shifted our roles in the company. So that was something we had our eye on from the beginning. In addition, I was also starting my Amber McHugh business which was fully online almost from the very beginning. I did some in person strategy sessions, but Amber McHugh focuses on really consulting with business owners on how do you want to run your business? Different, better, right? How do you lead your business? What are the elements of building a business from marketing to scaling to financials, really understanding what it takes to build a business and run a business so that you can do multiple things, things with it. Just like I do in my businesses. I absolutely am practicing what I talk about in corporate. I was doing consulting. I did change management as well as strategic marketing and operations and spent a good bit of time in HR type activities. So I had some breadth of experience and pulled that in. Say, all right, these are the elements of running a business. These are the things we need to pull through. So that is done. Amber McKee.com and that was set up remote pretty much from the beginning with that in mind, with that methodology, that mindset. So really, truly an online business. And so we've got a couple of variables at play here. But what about my husband? His job was in the office pretty much every day or. Right. He was traveling and away, but he had places to go. So it was in 2013, probably four or five years after we started thinking about setting ourselves up for some changes, that he said, I think I'm going to make a career change. And this is what actually would take us abroad and overseas. So he made a big career change. It allowed us to be mobile, a bit more mobile. And ultimately, where we move is decided based on where his next move is in his career. So I have the flexibility, like, yeah, whatever. I had two requirements. One, I'm okay to not have a lot of snow if we were going to move. I grew up in the Midwest, south of Chicago. About an hour in cornfield, plenty of snow there, super cold. I'm like, I'm okay. I'm okay. Not doing that. And in the DMV area, not as much snow. Snow, DMV, DC, MD, VA area, not as much snow. It's not cold in the winters, and there was definitely still snow. So I was like, I'll be okay not having snow. So my two requirements were, let's go somewhere warmer. And I need Internet. I need Internet to connect with my team, my clients, and to run this online business and to continue to serve and operate the photography business. So those were the requirements. And so Matt owns that side of it. I shared my requirements, like, all right. And he would let me know when, where we were moving, and I followed along with that. If you've been following our journey for a while, that was a little bit bumpy as well. And I think that as you think about living abroad, this is going to be something to embrace. And it's the adventure, it's the unexpected. Whether it's getting delayed, you know when you're flying to the destination, or the move gets delayed because visas don't come through, or your move location changes. That's what happened to us. We were scheduled to move to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Circumstances changed. We Airbnb hopped for months, and after 11, I think 11 Airbnb hops, we ended up in Ethiopia, not the DRC. And then we had a couple more moves before we got into our home in Ethiopia. So it was 13 moves that year. Whoa, whoa. It was a lot of moves. But because of the way things are structured I can literally put down my laptop anywhere, open it up, and go to work. So as you think about you designing your life, there are going to be mindset shifts. They're going to potentially be structural operational shifts in your work and how you engage with your clients and how you connect with people. So it's a shift. I love it. And I would highly recommend, if you are on the beginning of this journey, pause and think through, where do I want to go? How, what does this look like for me, right? And start to percolate on it, and things will just kind of start to fall into place, like, reach out to people. Just like people reached out to me over break. And my sister is actually. She's a great example of someone who can pick up and move. She taught English overseas. She went to nursing school in Puerto Rico. She found careers and sort of moved from that. And so there are a lot of different ways that you can move and that you can step into this lifestyle. But start asking questions, percolate, right? Look and start doing research and stay incredibly open to the possibilities. Stay so open to the possibilities. For example, we're in Africa, and I love it here. And it's very different than living in Europe, than living in Asia. My husband and my sister both lived in South Korea. We have family in Indonesia. So it's very different than, you know, and even across Africa, really, when you look at different countries, like Abidjan is different than Cape Town is different than Addis. So there are different things. Even as you start to narrow down locations, like, okay, get a little bit more specific. Get a little bit more specific and plug into those communities. So what are you looking for? Do you want a digital nomad community? Do you want us to area where there are a lot of kids and schools? That will be great if your kids are going, are they going to do remote school? Okay, we've got to make sure Internet's really solid. What does Internet look like? These are the practical things I'm going to walk you through in the next sessions. But I wanted to start with a little bit of background for us, how this journey started with a question. We think we might want to live abroad someday. That'd be really cool. So I started setting my life and my career up for that. Then it was my husband who actually made the career change to sort of take us abroad. But we didn't know that that's what the path was going to be when we started. So it all starts with the question. So if you're asking yourself the question, hey, what would it look like for me to change work locations to live abroad. I'm going to dive into that more and I will pick this back up in our next session where I'm going to talk the really practical things to consider. So we'll be back for that. It's been great chatting hanging out with you here. Thanks for listening. If you want to check out any of the resources that I shared Amber McHugh.com for setting up your business 3boudoir.com for photoshoots 26 cities in the US it's incredible, powerful, amazing. If you're thinking about making a change and you're feeling any sort of apprehension, that'll help you get clarity and build confidence in yourself, who you are and what you're doing. So a couple fun things to throw on there. Not directly related but the things that get us where we want to be going. It's not always a direct, clear path. So happy to be on this journey with you. Excited for what you're brewing. Definitely let me know where you are. Like no, I'm definitely not moving anywhere. Or yeah, we're thinking about it and I'd love to get in conversation with you about it. You can tag me in on Instagram @ Amber McHugh, if you're checking this out on YouTube, comment below. We will connect there and love you. Thanks for being here. You are right frickin on time on this journey and I'll see you in our next episode where we dive into the practicalities. Imagine this. You have sales coming in every single day without you having to lift a finger. Pretty great, right? Even better, imagine that it's all of the excitement of a live launch without you ever having to live launch again. I know it sounds like a dream, but it's 100% reality. The circuit sales system is the automated system that combines the best of both live launching and and evergreen with none of the stuff you don't like. Think high conversions and high predictability without chaos or risk. Go to circuitsalesystem.com amber to get more details and sign up for their free on Demand video training. 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