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When I first read about Lea Woodward and LIP living, my eyes filled with tears, always a clue that I’ve discovered something I should find out more about!

Not only is LIP Living a thrilling concept, Lea is incredibly generous with information about how to create and manage your own Location Independent lifestyle. Read on to find out more about both LIP Living and Lea herself.

What exactly is LIP living?

LIP stands for “location independent professional” which is what my husband and I call ourselves. The LIP lifestyle basically means we have nowhere we really call home and travel the world permanently, running our business which we can run from anywhere with an internet connection. We’re currently in South Africa with Dubai, Thailand and Costa Rica on the plan for next year.

What inspired you to choose travel as a full-time lifestyle?

We didn’t actually set out to travel permanently! Our main objective was to leave the UK but we didn’t really know where we wanted to live, so we started off by heading to Panama and then kept on going.

So far we’ve lived in Panama, Grenada, Buenos Aires, Toronto, Dubai, Thailand, South Africa, Italy and Hong Kong. We love the freedom this lifestyle brings—going wherever we like, travelling with very little luggage (about 20kgs between us) plus the freedom to move to lower cost countries if we need to, which means we have less pressure to earn a fortune from our business every month.

What’s been your biggest challenge in switching to LIP Living?

Figuring out what to do when we don’t like somewhere! And also planning the places we want to go, based on the criteria we’d like our next “home” to have. As we run our business, we do need decent internet connections so unlike the average backpacker or traveler, we can’t go too far off the beaten track.

We literally spend hours and hours researching the different places we’d like to go, to ensure we’ll be able to run the business and keep in touch with clients—if we can’t do this, then our income dries up and we’d have to settle somewhere which is not what we want at the moment. Fortunately we now use a VA (virtual assistant) to help with this and have recently set up a forum on our blog to share tips with other people like us.

What’s been your most joyful moment?

Floating in the azure blue sea of the Caribbean on a Monday morning and realizing that this is our lifestyle! Plus waking up every day realizing how privileged we are to be able to do pretty much exactly as we want that (and every) day—and usually being surrounded by awe-inspiring scenery and a different country to get to know if we don’t need to work that day.

What inspires you?

Positive, go-getting people who like to have fun and choose a different path in life from the one they’re “supposed” to lead. I also love nature—just sitting by the ocean and watching the power of the waves is all I need to inspire me.

What books, movies or music have inspired you?

Books: I’m an avid reader of any and all business/marketing books. I also like to read fiction to switch off— which in itself helps to generate ideas when I least expect them. I’m a sucker for criminal/forensic-type books from authors like Jeffrey Deaver and Nelson DeMille.

Movies: I watched The Secret before it became mainstream and loved its positive message despite being somewhat of a sceptic about all that fluffy stuff. Otherwise I’m not a big movie fan, much to the chagrin of my husband who loves them.

Music: I have a “Mrs. Motivator” playlist on my iTunes which has around 6-7 songs I play when I need a lift. It changes all the time but one piece of music that never fails to inspire me (even though it was played at my Mum’s funeral) is Pachelbel’s Canon in D—I just love it.

How would you define your personal and/or business style?

Everything I do—whether personal or business—I try to do with honesty and integrity. Friends, family and clients who know me, know that if there’s something to say, I’ll say it. I believe that honesty is one of the most important things you can bring to a relationship of any nature, so that’s definitely something I bring!

In other respects, I have a slightly different personal and business style:
My personal style = Casual and relaxed.
My business style = Organized and super efficient; I usually aim to over deliver on everything.

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Revved up to hit the road? Learn more at Lea’s personal blog.