What Is the Best Remote Service I Should Sell as a Digital Nomad?

All right, here we go. Last week, a guy asked me on LinkedIn for my advice on what product he should offer to get the most new clients. So, he shared with me that he wants to attract electricians and wants to help them out, and he’s trying to decide between offering a website and a day service or should he offer something with SEO? What service is going to attract the most new customers for him? In this episode, you’ll discover what I shared with him, why I shared it with him, and why you need to know this and help you apply it to your own business.

So, you can evaluate your next product or service that you want to put in the world to sell. Welcome to the Digital Nomad Entrepreneur Podcast, everyone. My name is Eric. I am a full-time digital nomad entrepreneur.

I’ve been traveling full-time for over three years, living in 15 countries, 35 Airbnbs, living out of carry-on luggage while doing this with my wife and four teenagers, having an amazing experience but needing to grow my business along the way.

And I’ll tell you right now, it’s challenging. It’s not always easy. We are in a challenging season right now in my business, we’ve got some tough decisions that we have to make, and you know, we could always use more leads.

And so, we’re constantly testing things and evaluating and pivoting because it’s a challenge, it’s a slugfest. I don’t care what anybody says. There are frameworks that make it easier. There are definitely systems that help. There are best practices.

But at the end of the day, you don’t know what you don’t know. And so, what I’m trying to do with this podcast is share with you what I have been learning from experience on the road, in the trenches, as they say.

So, it is possible to travel full-time, to explore the world, and be building a true business. Not just having a remote job, not just having a job that you own, but truly building a business. And so, I’m so glad that you are listening to the podcast. Thank you very much for being here. Now, today, I’ve got four parts to our outline.

First, I’m going to talk with you on how to choose a product to sell, what the advice was that I shared with this young man on LinkedIn. And so, we’re going to unpack that. And then, I’ve got a special invitation for you to something that I has been by personal invitation only, but I’ve decided in this podcast episode to open it up to anyone and everyone, so I’m going to share that with you.

And then, I’m going to share this week’s leadership tip of the week. Your leadership capacity is the capacity of your business. Every single week, I will share at least one leadership nugget towards the end of the podcast.
And for those who want to know more about the travel side of this lifestyle, the digital nomad side of having a location-independent business, I will wrap things up with a travel update. I used to share the travel update at the beginning, but then I got some feedback from folks who are not traveling and don’t plan to travel. They feel like they have to listen through that until we get into the meat and potatoes.
So I moved that to the end of the podcast, and I appreciate the feedback. In fact, if you have feedback, reach out and let me know. Email me at [email protected]. Again, Eric@DNE, which stands for Digital Nomad Entrepreneur. Dnepodcast.com is in the show notes. If you have some constructive criticism, let me know. After listening to the podcast, if it’s beneficial to you, helpful, inspiring, empowers you, or equips you in any way, would you leave a review?
That’s all I ask. That’s the price of admission for today – a review. All right, so let’s go ahead and get into how we choose a product. How do we choose a widget to take to the market, a product, a service?
Well, I will talk from examples, specifically digital products, because that’s what most people with a remote business will provide – some type of digital service, a digital product, a service, a SaaS, or all kinds of ways to refer to these things.
But generally, it’s some type of digital service. It could even be digital remote coaching or fractional CFO, CMO, or project management. There are all kinds of things that can be done, especially in today’s worldwide connectivity and economy.
So I will focus on that. You don’t have to have a digital product, though. You can very much have a remote business, even if you have a brick-and-mortar location. You don’t have to be the one there to have that business.
So, like I was saying, for this, let’s unpack this when it comes to choosing a digital product, a digital service to sell. So the first thing I ask is, what’s the real problem you want to solve?
If the problem you’re wanting to solve is more money for you, the vast majority of business owners can smell that, and it feels yucky. People don’t want to work with people like that. And they’re going to dismiss you.
And you’re just you’re gonna you’re not gonna be adding to value to people. And so you’re going to get some gigs, you’re gonna get some work, but you’re never going to be fulfilled. Your clients aren’t going to be fulfilled, and it’s a big waste.
So if you just want money, the best way to get money is go get a job. Like, you know, just if that’s your end goal, if you. If you want money, go get a job. And if you want a job that pays better, get some skills and go get a better job.
But if you want to create something that adds value to the world, if you if there’s a problem that drives you nuts and you want to solve it, you want to see this eliminated for people, then that’s the thing you need to focus on. What is the problem you want to solve?
And if you don’t think this is how business works, I would encourage you to watch any Genesis story of any brand or any business owner that you like there. There are shows out there, you know, I’m familiar, of course, because I’m from the United States, but, you know, the, you know, businesses that built America, you know, as for example, for one.
And there’s all kinds of these shows that explore and unpack the genesis story behind brands and all of them and I’m not exaggerating all of them time and time again, they share in the narrative of that brand, that of that business that the owner, the founder saw a problem and came up with a solution for that problem.
And you can do the same thing, even if it’s a problem other people are solving. You can come up with a unique framework, a unique approach. You can come up with a way that you know how to do it and you just repackage it, to be honest, put it in some new packaging. My son is very much into Rubik’s Cube right now.
And he’s going to be doing some Rubik’s Cube competition as we’re here in the United Kingdom. And he’s very excited. And he’s always watching, you know, Cube Heads on YouTube, Solve Rubik’s Cubes. And he’s been gathering and collecting different Rubik’s cubes, and they’re not all from the trademark brand named Rubis. He’s getting cubes from all kinds of places.
And, you know, they look a little bit different, but they function the exact same. They have different colors, but they function the exact same. He there’s one that he wants now that actually has technology in it that would connect to his iPad and would track accurately, you know, the number of moves, how long it takes you to solve it.
And if you needed coaching on solving it, I mean, it’s crazy what’s happening with Rubik’s Cube, but none of these things are a Rubik’s Cube, okay? Like, it’s not something brand new. But he sees this one, and it’s like, it’s what he got now that is white.
But, you know, obviously the colored squares. But you know, the one I had growing up, I always had a Rubik’s Cube. It was black plastic with colored stickers on it. That’s what it is. He’s got something like that, but now he’s got a white one. He’s got a pyramid-shaped one. He’s got a 2 by 2, he’s got a 3 by three.

So don’t think there’s no new way to offer copywriting. There’s no new way to offer web design. There’s no new way to offer SEO. Put a different color on it, give it its own unique name that you came up with, and bam, you’ve got something.
Okay. You’ve, in fact, got something that’s proven to already work, and people like new and improved things. And so you’ve got a new and improved product to take to the market. If you want to solve a problem that a product would fix, if that product wouldn’t solve it, then don’t do it.

So the first thing you have to ask yourself is what’s the problem you want to solve? Alright? So with this young guy, I was like, well, wait a minute, are you, because he was saying, well, should I be offering website design in a day or should I offer like an AI service to help answer their phone and manage their calendar?
And I’m like, well, those are two completely different problems, you know? One is their web presence, and the other is lead generation. What’s the problem you’re wanting to solve? So, my dear listener, my friend, my question for you is this: what’s the problem you want to solve in the world?

Alright, what’s the problem you want to solve in the world? And if you’re already in business, are you solving that problem? If not, maybe it’s time for a pivot. Maybe that’s why you’re bored with your business.
Maybe that’s why you’re struggling. Maybe that’s why you’re starting to feel burnt out and tired, because you’ve got this business, you’ve got this thing, and it’s doing something, but it’s not really solving the problem that you want to solve in the world.

So what’s the problem you want to solve? Number two: who do you want to solve it for? Alright. Who do you want to solve it for? Yeah, and the specifics here matter. You know, back to this guy who asked me this question on LinkedIn, do you want to solve this problem? Let’s say it’s lead generation. Let’s say he says, “I want to help electricians with their lead generation and appointment setting.”

Okay? What kind of electrician? Commercial electrician or residential electrician? Because they have a completely different pathway to sell their service. Like, you know, it is totally, completely different.

And so you’ve got to be specific. Who do you want to solve it for? And with this, it’s got to be, can they pay you enough to solve it? And you got to start out solving the problem for people that have money.

All right? If you’re just like, “I want to help people get started doing something from scratch.” And if those people don’t have money, you’re not going to have a business. So, are you solving a problem for somebody that can afford to pay you a profitable margin, a profitable amount? Can they afford to pay you enough, and do you know enough about them? Have you really narrowed it down specifically to who you’re wanting to solve before now? It doesn’t have to be niche down. I’m not advocating for you to have a niche like, “I solve all the world’s problems for commercial electricians.” I’m not. That’s not what I’m saying. Don’t hear anything I’m not saying. Okay?

What I’m advocating for is you need to know what the problem is that you’re going to solve and exactly who you’re going to solve it for. We at my digital marketing agency solve marketing challenges. We come alongside business owners who are struggling because they keep trying, as my buddy, T, says, “random acts of marketing” and just trying to see what sticks. And they’re frustrated because they’re not getting results. We come alongside them, build a marketing strategy top to bottom, front to back, and then we help them deploy it, and they actually manage it. We then, instead of a lot of digital marketing agencies, don’t want people to hire them to manage their marketing. That’s not what we do. We create a strategy and then we equip and train and empower the business to manage their own marketing, and then we help provide accountability and assistance.

And so that is us. And for me, I don’t care if you’re a commercial electrician or a residential electrician; their marketing, even though it’s vastly different tactics, they both fit into our framework. Every, any, and every business fits into our marketing framework. So, I don’t really care. You just have to have enough money to pay us. That’s all. I mean, that’s it. And you have to be willing to use the service because when you do, your business is going to grow, and that’s what we want. I am passionate about helping business owners increase their revenue and profits so they have more margin for philanthropy.

That’s what I want. I want to see businesses be successful so there’s more money out there from these businesses that they can donate to causes they’re passionate about. It’s up to them about the cause. I just think, why not do that? Somebody needs to help these business owners who want to be generous have the margin to be generous.

So that’s the problem we’re trying to solve. And we help small businesses do that. So, number one, what’s the problem you want to solve? Number two, who do you want to solve it for? Number three, what can solve this problem with minimal effective effort? Or, if you will, the minimum effective dose.

You know, this morning I had a crushing headache, and why would I take 2000mg of ibuprofen when 200 was all I was going to need? Okay, so with doctors and medications, you don’t want to take more than you need. Same is true with our products and services. Too many times we overload our products and services because we feel like we have to justify the cost. When you feel like you have to justify the cost, you don’t believe in the value you’re providing.

And so you have to be really careful with that. Because if not, what happens? You start thinking you have to do all these extra things just to beef it up to make it sound impressive. Well, if that’s the case, then you’re selling features and not the benefit. If you have to add features to your product, to your marketing, to what you’re selling, if you have to add things to it, then you feel like people are only buying from you because of a list of features.

And that’s not what makes people buy. People buy because there is a benefit, and so you have to sell the benefit. And so, why would you sell, let’s say, a service where you help people post to their Google Business profile? Okay, you only need to post to your Google Business profile 99% of the time once a week. So why would you sell a service where you’re posting twice a week? There’s no additional benefit. The business isn’t going to go further or faster in SEO rankings.

Like, you’re doing this, you’re doubling the amount of effort to get the same result. That’s stupid. Like it or not, that doesn’t make any sense. If it takes twice as long, then you have to do it twice. But if it only takes once and this isn’t about being vain because it makes my product look better, well, that’s just really stupid, okay? That’s kind of vain. You’re doubling your work. You’re not going to charge double, okay? You know, it just doesn’t make any sense. So, let’s get back to it, let’s revisit this, let’s walk through them again, and we’ll get to number four.

Number one: What’s the problem you want to solve? Number two: Whom do you want to solve it for? Okay, who are you solving this problem for? Specifically? Number three: What can solve this problem with the minimal effective dose? And then number four and final: Don’t worry if you can’t make it all right? And by that, I don’t mean make it in business. I mean if you have a problem you want to solve and you know of a solution that can solve it, and you understand what that solution needs to look like, and it’s minimal effective dose. Don’t worry if you’re not the one that can actually produce the service, produce the widget.

All right? If you decide you want to sell websites, you don’t have to learn how to build websites. Real estate agents don’t sell the houses they build. You do not have to learn how to do this, all right? I was working with a guy yesterday on the vision, mission, and core values of his business. Totally thrilled for this guy. Such a unique thing. And as we were talking, we actually stumbled onto another productized service. And I am, like, pumped about this, and I haven’t been able to shake it, and so I’ve got it. I’ve added it to my list of maybe I want to sell that one day, but it is a service that is going to solve a problem that I have in my business and that I know others have in their business, and there isn’t a great solution for this.

So here is a service that’s going to solve a problem. Other people have this problem. People can afford to pay what I would need to sell this for. I understand what the minimal effective effort is to get this thing to work, but I literally don’t have the skill set to make it. This guy I was working with yesterday, and he’s a master coder. I may end up hiring his company to create this for me so that I can go out and sell it. Don’t worry if you can’t make the service. Well, I want to help businesses with lead generation, but I don’t know how to do lead gen. We’ll find somebody that does that. You can pay to do it. You go sell the service. This is why there are two things you need to always be studying: leadership and sales. Leadership and sales. These are the two things you need to be studying at all times. You should always have something you’re doing that is increasing your leadership skills and your understanding of sales.

Because as you do that, you’re going to naturally be learning about business, you’re going to be learning about human psychology and behavior. You’re going to be learning about taking products to the market, qualifying, and product market alignment – all these things you need to know.

And you might get overwhelmed, like, “I don’t know what thing to study.” Study leadership, study sales. And when you’re done reading a book on leadership and sales, go find another leadership book or another sales book, or have a leadership podcast and a sales podcast. Just learn those two things. Just explore those two topics, and you are going to pick up all the things you need to know to grow a great business.

All right, so four things I told this guy, and then I’m telling you for your business. If you want to know, and you’re trying to decide what’s the widget you should sell? Or maybe you already have a business and you’re thinking about not bringing on another vertical, another product. What is the problem you’re trying to solve? You have to clearly be able to say that down to the very root essence of it.

And, yeah, here’s what. What’s… And here’s what I… When I work with people and I’m like, “What’s the problem you want to solve?” They tell me, “Why do you want to solve that?” Okay, what’s causing that problem?

Because maybe the problem you want to solve can’t be solved by tackling the problem. Because what you’ve really identified may just be a symptom. This happens a lot. A lot of people, they just identify symptoms and they try to then treat the symptom.

Okay? You really have to understand what the problem is. So really wrestle with this: what’s the problem you think you’re trying to solve, is it a problem or is it a symptom of a problem? So you got to dig into that. What’s the problem you’re going to solve? Who are you going to solve it for? What’s the minimal effective dose to solve the problem?

And don’t worry if you’re not the one that makes the product. In fact, you probably shouldn’t even be making it now if you are. Like, man, there’s so much in that, and I’d love to be able to get more help with this. I’ve done something that is something that. I’m in a mastermind group with other business owners, and honestly, they’re like, “Don’t do that. Don’t do that.”

And I haven’t, and I’ve been thinking about doing it for months, and I just can’t shake it. And I’ve just decided I’m going to do it because I want to, and I can. I have a weekly group of people, every Thursday, and I think it’s at 12 noon East Coast time. I really should know that already. In fact, I’m sure I’ll look at my calendar real quick because I want to make sure I have this right. No, I take that back.

It’s at 9 am East Coast US time, 2 pm UK time, Greenwich Mean Time. And 9 am on East Coast USA time. I’ve got a group that every week, we meet, and it’s open office hours – ask me anything about business, any topic, anything we explore. And so, it is though, a pay service. You got to pay to have the link.

And it’s $19 US dollars a month. I do this at $19 US dollars a month because it’s mostly – it was not mostly – it’s all people that are in still in launch phase, you know, they’re in either the ideation stage where they’re coming up with their ideas. Some of them are in the warrior stage where they still have a nine-to-five job, but they’re working on their side hustle.

And some of them have just gone to the all-in phase – this is their thing, and it’s the only thing they’re doing. And a few have started the team builder. They may not have a full-time team, but they’ve got some freelancers and stuff like that.

So, these are folks that tend to be in the first three phases of an online business startup. The three phases most people go through are the ideation, weekend warrior, and all-in phases. Sorry, let me start over.

So, you’re not confused – ideation is where you’re just dreaming of the idea, what you’re trying to figure out what you want to take to market. Then, weekend warrior – you still have your job, but you’ve got this thing you’re starting to work on in the evenings and the weekend. Then, you go to all-in – this becomes your full-time thing. From there, you normally go to Team Builder. From Team Builder, you go to C Suite. From C Suite, you go to Legacy. Now, you don’t have to go through that. You can go from Ideation to Team Builder. Alright, that is great. In fact, that is probably a preferable path.

That is the faster, the fastest path to success. 95% of people don’t do it because we don’t think. They don’t think of it. It doesn’t feel logical to them, even though it’s the fastest route, and that’s okay. Most people go at the pace of Ideation, Weekend Warrior, all in Team Builder, C Suite, and Legacy.

So, for those that are in those first three stages trying to get their feet under them, that’s why I do weekly open office hours. It’s a way for me to give back, to give to those that are just starting out.

But you got to be ready to invest. You got to be able to put a little skin in the game. You are always going to want to have a coach. I pay for coaching. I currently pay about a thousand dollars a month for a coach, and so coaching is important, okay? You’re always going to want to have a coach.

And most people can’t start at the thousand dollars a month or more. And so I do this. But it’s, you know, it’s one to many. You’re going to be in a group. And but here’s the benefit: even if you don’t have a question, you get to hear the question that others have, that you will one day have or that you have, and you think you’ve answered it.

So, you’re going to get to hear the question and the answers of others. I ask others how they would answer. You know, somebody may ask a question, and you may have a different experience, a different perspective, and that’s great. I love having those different perspectives.

And if you miss a call, then I do. We just started last week posting the transcript in the video inside a community area. So, for $19 a month, you’re going to get access to on-the-spot live weekly Q&A where you can ask a question, where you can learn from the questions others are asking, you can start to find some accountability and help moving your business forward, getting momentum to make things happen?

And so, if you’re interested in that, just reach out to me, send me an email. Eric at @depodcast.com. Connect with me on LinkedIn and message me on LinkedIn. Go to ericdingler.com. And I have gotten rid of that website, and I just forward that domain name right now to LinkedIn.

So, you go to ericdingler.com, and it will forward you to my LinkedIn profile. Just go to LinkedIn and connect with me. Make sure we’re connected, and send me a message there, and I’ll get you access to it. Okay? And with that, you get access to two online communities on the same platform. So, you get access to the paid one, and because you paid, you get access to the free community where there are channels for people to ask questions and share things on running remote businesses.

And that’s a free community. If you just want to be in the free community, you can do that. You can join the free community. Just go to communityah.dnepodcast.com, and you can enroll in the free community. I put all those links in the show notes.

All right, so this week’s leadership tip of the week: remember, your leadership capacity is the capacity of your business. Your business will never grow beyond your ability and skills of leadership, and to lead it.

And today’s leadership tip of the week is: you never stop looking through your leadership lens. You need to develop a lens that you filter decisions through. You need to have a pair of leadership glasses on all the time that influence and color your decisions. You need to constantly be making decisions through your leadership lens.

And there are a few ways to do that. One, make sure you’re always learning leadership, like I talked about earlier. But this is where you need to have a clear and compelling vision, mission, and core values. You need to have some personal leadership axioms.

You know, I share several of these. If you’ve been a regular listener, as you become a regular listener, you’re going to hear me talk about considering the third option. You’re going to hear me talk about the principle behind the practice. You’re going to hear me talk about what’s memorable is portable.

Like I’m constantly saying, “Vision leaks.” Say it over and over again. You know, these are leadership truths, leadership axioms that I have embraced, and they have just become part of my nature because I repeated them over and over again until they just literally became part of what I am.

Well, not literally, but figuratively. Became part of my DNA. And now, as I’m making decisions and wrestling through things, these are always the lenses that I’m looking through. I’m looking through my leadership lens.

So, you need to develop and then never stop looking through your leadership lens. And for me, when I’m trying to build a new habit, if you will, or a new skill set, I used to hear things like this and go, “Yeah, that’s really good.” And then I would forget the very next day. So, I have a list of things. It’s generally two to three things on this list that I am trying to remember. I want to implement an idea I heard, but because it’s not something I’m going to set my mind to, like starting to run, it’s hard to stick with.

All right, so you get an app, and you put some time on your calendar; that’s kind of easy, but not easy to stick with. It’s one way to build that habit, that type of habit. Okay, it’s different when it’s a thought that you want to begin to have naturally.

Okay. I have been too quick to jump to solving problems when my team brings them to me, instead of asking them, “What do you think we should do? What are three options we should consider here? Which one do you think we should do?”

And so, I was struggling with that. So I wrote down on my list, which I read through every morning, a reminder: for every one problem, I want to know the three options and what’s the one we should do, and I want my team to think this way.

And so it used to be that I used to read through my mission, vision, and core values every day until they just became part of me. And then I would learn a leadership principle. My goodness, what gets repeated gets remembered.

That’s really good. “Vision leaks” is something I want to remember. Consider the third option, the principle behind the practice. And I would write those down and I would just read them morning after morning, and it was like, until it got to the point where I was no longer going, “Wow, I really didn’t remember that. I got to do better at that. I gotta do it.” Eventually, reading those over and over, I would suddenly at some point realize that I had gone from “I need to remember doing that” to “I did that three times yesterday. I did that twice yesterday. I did that yesterday.”

Okay, this is now here. I’ve repeated that. I’ve retold that to two people this week. And once I got confident that it had become part of my DNA, I’d scratch it out and then I would always have something else I would want to add. Or a week or two would go by, and I would see something new and go, “Gosh, I want to learn that.”

And so I added to it. And I do that to this day. I’ve done that for probably over ten years. I do it to this day. So there are things, you know, I’m wanting to learn, write it down, have a list, remind yourself, okay?
Otherwise, you’re gonna hear something and go. Like, you know, I’m not going to. You know, I’m going to do that. But then you’re going to forget. So that’s how you can develop your leadership lens and never stop looking through it.