Latest news with #SuGuillory
Forbes
2 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
The Expat's Playbook For Building A Global Personal Brand
By Su Guillory Leaning into your expat status can actually enhance your credibility and personability. If you're an entrepreneur or small business owner, personal branding matters. More often than not, it's your face that people associate with your business. But how do you maintain a solid personal brand when you live and work abroad? Here are some tips. Start With Clarity: Define Your Brand Identity This is a great exercise for any business owner if you've never done it. Start by identifying your niche. Who do you serve? The more specific you can be, the better. For example, as an expat coach, my niche is women who want to move to Italy. Yes, I can help men, too, but my brand and marketing are aimed at women who are ready to change their lives by moving to Italy like I did! If you can align your expertise with your expat story, great. Your experience can help you generate content for your blog and social media. I frequently write about the changes I've experienced living in Italy, and this is how 80% of my clients find me. Localize Your Brand…Without Losing Your Global Edge Living abroad may open the door to additional business opportunities. The key is finding a way to apply your business strengths to the local market. If, for example, you're a writer, you're bound to meet locals who struggle to communicate with their customers in English. This could create an opportunity for you, as the resident expat writer, to take on local clients for bilingual content. Stay open to the possibilities. Pay attention to how people react when you tell them what you do, and listen for opportunities. Optimize Your Digital Presence Having an online presence is even more important if you're living abroad. Select the digital channels where your target audience is most likely to be found and build your strategy accordingly. If you run a company serving B2B, you will likely get more out of your efforts on LinkedIn than TikTok, for example. Maximize the time you spend managing your online presence by using social media scheduling tools like Buffer. Keep in mind that your audience is in a different time zone, so schedule your content for the hours they're most likely to view it. If you serve clients back in your home country as well as your new country, consider having a profile in each language and posting content in both languages. LinkedIn allows you to create multiple versions of your profile in different languages, and with Facebook Pages, you can enable posts in multiple languages. Use Your Story As Branding Remember what makes you unique: in addition to whatever features and benefits your products or services offer, you have a story to tell, and that should be part of your personal brand. People are fascinated by expats who give up everything to move abroad. Find a way to weave your story into your business. Patti Perez, who conducts workplace investigation and leadership training, lives in Rome and frequently shares stories of her life as an expat, tying them back to the work she does. Lauren Bonheim, an expat coach, shares content about being an expat in Panama. These expats have found a way to use storytelling to brand themselves. If your content leans more toward the informative or technical, find small ways to weave in a little personalization where possible. With such a flood of content available online, the surefire way to stand out is to show some of who you are. You can also generate a little PR for yourself by pitching U.S. and international media outlets, podcasts, and blogs that are interested in the story of an expat entrepreneur. More from AllBusiness: Build Strategic Relationships Networking should be about building connections with others in your field, finding other expat business owners to connect with, and fostering relationships with potential customers. To find others who get what it is to live abroad and run a business, look for expat groups in your area. You might be surprised how helpful and comforting it is to connect with other expat entrepreneurs. And you never know what collaboration opportunities might pop up! If there aren't local groups in person, search for online expat groups for business owners, as they'll be the group that gets your unique situation. If you don't have local customers, you'll have to build your relationships online. Seek out groups and organizations that cater to your target market or industry. You can also participate in industry groups online, as well as attend online events and workshops to further your connections in your niche. Be Consistent…But Don't Burn Out Everything about your life changes once you move to another country, so give yourself some slack when it comes to building your personal brand abroad. You may find that you now prefer to work in the afternoons, since that's when your clients are awake. You might decide to dedicate one day a week to scheduling social media and blog content, and work on serving your customers the rest of the week. Remember that automation tools are your friends. They will allow you to schedule blog posts and social media, as well as automate responses to customers. The key to solid branding is consistency, and that means you'll need to find a rhythm that suits your new expat lifestyle and be open to that changing over time. Living in a country other than the one where you first launched your business doesn't have to hinder your ability to build your personal brand. It can, in fact, enhance your credibility and personability. Even if you're 5,000 miles from your target market, you can still be top of mind. Focus on storytelling and weaving your expat experiences into your business messaging.
Time Magazine
19-06-2025
- Business
- Time Magazine
10 Ways AI Can Support Remote Workers
This article is published by a partner of TIME. By Su Guillory It's become impossible to ignore the impact and potential of artificial intelligence. It's now become a tool we use to organize our lives, do research, and entertain ourselves. Every day, we're discovering new ways AI can make our lives easier and more productive. That goes for remote workers and digital nomads as well. Whether you do your work on a beach in Bali or take video calls while traipsing from one European country to another, AI can be of great use to you as an employee or business owner. Why AI? If you're resistant to allowing this technology to lend you a hand, you might want to reconsider. As a digital nomad, you may occasionally find it difficult to put the same focus on your work while traveling that you do while in the office, but AI doesn't miss a beat. It helps you sustain your business even when you're out-of-pocket. AI also helps you reduce the time spent on repetitive tasks, such as email replies, data entry, or content repurposing. It allows you to serve more clients without taking on more work. And as a citizen of the world, you can also serve clients in other countries without being fluent in their language. 10 Ways AI Can Help Remote Workers 1. Translate Content If you're a digital nomad or working abroad, even if you're fluent in the local language, you may not be well-versed in business or technical terms. Or you may want to offer your services to the local community, and in that case, you'll need to translate documents and marketing materials. Tools like Google Translate and DeepL use neural machine translation (NMT) and large language models (LLM) to translate images and text. You can take a photo with your phone and get the image's text instantly translated, or upload a file through your desktop. 2. Schedule Across Time Zones It can be a pain to try to calculate what time it is in your client's time zone, especially with different daylight saving time schedules. Use an AI calendar tool like Clockwise to find times that work for everyone you need to meet with. You can also add Focus Time when you need to concentrate on your work and not get scheduled for calls with others on your team. 3. Automate Customer Support Rather than hiring a customer service representative for your company, use an AI chatbot to serve your customers, even when you're out of the office. Today's chatbots can do a lot. You can feed them answers to frequently asked questions or set them up to process returns. Most customer issues can be resolved this way, which can cut down on the amount of human interaction needed. 4. Streamline Client Communications If you find yourself writing the same emails over and over again, AI tools like Gmail's built-in compose window can draft emails you can modify. Or you can create templates to respond to common questions your clients or coworkers ask. You can also install AI Mail Assistant to create personalized responses, translate your emails, and correct errors. 5. Learn a Language the Smart Way If Duolingo isn't cutting it in helping you get fluent in a language fast, try an AI-powered language learning tool like Speak. It provides conversation opportunities, and it adapts as you learn. The tool will create a personalized curriculum that helps you reach your learning goals faster. 6. Be a Better Writer In today's business world, flawless grammar and syntax are a there's no excuse for errors with AI! Grammarly can be installed as a plugin you can use with Windows, Google Drive, and even your phone. It corrects your mistakes and makes suggestions for better content. ChatGPT offers a way to polish your writing. Paste what you've written, and the tool can smooth awkward transitions, modify the tone to better fit your audience, or optimize for SEO. You can also take one piece of content—a blog post, for example—and turn it into multiple other types of content, such as a LinkedIn post or an X update. 7. Make Meetings Less Painful Staying connected with your team likely means countless video meetings. You already know that sometimes when you pause to take notes, you miss important information on the call. AI Meeting Notes auto-joins calls on Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet and even takes notes so you can focus on the call. It also automatically creates action items from the call. If you miss a meeting, you can get a 30-second recap. 8. Never Miss a Deadline If your digital nomad lifestyle involves heavy travel, you run the risk of missing a deadline or letting something slip through the cracks. AI tools like Motion take over task planning. The tool prioritizes your most important tasks and helps you balance your workload to ensure you meet deadlines. 9. Research Faster Artificial intelligence is even changing how we research for our work. Rather than Googling a question and then sifting through the results, AI tools like can do the heavy lifting for you. Input a query and you'll get an in-depth response on whatever it is you're researching. It's a great way to get data on your competitors, market, customer behaviors, and trends. 10. Close More Deals If you're an entrepreneur who sells online, you can automate the sales process with AI-driven customer relationship management software. For example, ActiveCampaign can automate workflows and communications so that a lead at the top of your funnel is more likely to buy from you. It uses intelligent segmentation and predictive sending to make sure that every message is sent at the right time to the right audience. Harness the Power of AI for Remote Work These are just a few examples of the myriad AI-powered tools for work. Find the ones that make you more productive, and get back to enjoying that nomadic life. Related Articles: About the Author: Su Guillory is an expat coach and business content creator. She supports women who want to move to Italy. Su has been published on AllBusiness, Forbes, SoFi, Lantern, Nav, and more, and writes about entrepreneurship, finance, marketing, and living as an expat in Italy.
Forbes
10-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
The 7 Best Freelance Jobs For Digital Nomads
By Su Guillory Living abroad as a digital nomad offers the opportunity to work without constraints on your ... More location. There's a lot to love about living in an era where you can make money no matter where in the world you live. With 43 million of the global digital nomad population coming from America, now more than ever, the idea of working while living in another country is within reach. But what kind of work can you do as a digital nomad? If you're not lucky enough to have a job you can pack up and take on the road, consider one of these many options that you can do as a freelancer or as a side hustle. For creative types, there's always work available that doesn't require working out of a specific location. Writers, graphic designers, and web developers can work from anywhere and can work with clients near and far. Here are a few other freelance opportunities in the creative industry. You may be in hot demand as an expat, depending on how many English speakers there are. You may be able to leverage your English-speaking skills with one of many roles, such as: Like the idea of making money while you snorkel in the sea or sleep in a hammock? There are many ways you can earn a living with digital products that, while they may require a little work up front, can provide passive income indefinitely. These days, everyone's got a coach or two. They're the modern-day version of a therapist. Whether you specialize in expat coaching, executive, or another niche, there's sure to be an audience for your work. As a digital nomad, you likely know a thing or two about travel, and you can leverage that knowledge in your career. Whether you write a travel blog with enough traffic to score free trips or you offer travel concierge services in your adopted country, you will be seen as the local expert. If crafts are your hobby, why not turn them into a moneymaker? You can sell your products online on sites like Etsy or at local craft fairs and markets. Here are some other ideas for businesses: If you come from a corporate background, you already have the experience to consult or offer professional services like these. If your industry is regulated back home, make sure to check what the requirements are for practicing in another country. Depending on where you want to work as a digital nomad, there may be visa requirements about how long you've been freelancing. Check those criteria and allow yourself time to build up your experience so that your visa will be approved. Once you've landed, give yourself time to set up your business. You'll want to balance work with play, so create a schedule that allows you to be available when your clients need you, and take into consideration that time zone difference. You might decide to check email first thing in the morning when your clients in the U.S. are sleeping, then go for a swim or run errands, then commit to several hours of work in the late afternoon or evening. Invest in the tech tools that will help you be productive. You may want a calendar scheduling tool that will make it easy to book appointments without having to calculate time zone differences. A project management tool can help you stay on top of deadlines. And if you work with people around the globe, an instant messenger can keep you connected. More from AllBusiness: If you continue to work with clients from the United States, make sure you've got an easy way to exchange dollars for your local currency and transfer funds to your local bank. Tools like Wise and Revolut have low exchange rate fees, and make it simple to get cash or pay for purchases with a debit card. As a digital nomad, you aren't exempt from filing or paying taxes in America, even if you don't live there. Educate yourself on whether you're required to file and pay taxes in the country where you live, as well as what the requirements are for American citizens living abroad. Living abroad as a digital nomad offers the unique opportunity to continue working without constraints on your location. The sky's the limit in terms of what you can do to earn money. Be open to possibilities that may arise as you build your network locally. About the Author Su Guillory is an expat coach and business content creator. She supports women who want to move to Italy. Su has been published on AllBusiness, Forbes, SoFi, Lantern, Nav, and more, and writes about entrepreneurship, finance, marketing, and living as an expat in Italy. RELATED: How to Get Paid as a Digital Nomad
