How I Live in Costa Rica and Work with U.S. Clients, with Maria Joyner, FounderScale
Maria Joyner: [00:00:00] So, I think when I first moved down here, I did. So, one of the clients I currently have, I’ve been working with since 2015, and he has been totally understanding of the internet problems, and it’s been a great working relationship. One of the clients that I had when I moved down here, they were fairly stressed with the internet issues. I got a lot of pressure from them to move to the city and try to find somewhere that had better internet. And I think that one of the benefits of consulting for so many years is it becomes really easy to know the red flags and be aware of the questions that could cause friction after contract sign and avoid that.
Maria Joyner: [00:00:43] So, one of the things that I — I’m very open and upfront with clients when I talk to them. Even though I do have great internet, I mean, there’s power outages here. I mean, there’s there’s plenty of things that are out of control in a way that may maybe wouldn’t be out of control in the States. And so, I’m very upfront with clients and I let them know, like, “Hey, I don’t always have great internet. Sometimes, we may not be able to connect via video. Sometimes, we may not be able to connect at all.” So, I give them a lot of those expectations, but then I kind of go a step further now and I’m like, “Hey, I may be out two hours a day going on a hike,” or “I may be up two hours a day surfing,” just so there’s an expectation of that I’m not always on, always available, so that’s just not an expectation.
Maria Joyner: [00:01:27] And so, living here has helped really identify like what my clients need to know to feel that they can always contact me. But more than all of that, I’ve set really freaking awesome work all the time. And then, my location is never an issue. Like that’s really the secret. I think so many people come to Costa Rica and they ask me, “How do you make it work? How do you get clients? How do you stay here?” And I mean, getting clients, fortunately, I have a great network in Atlanta that has just worked through referrals since I moved down here. So, that has been a blessing, but keeping clients is just doing awesome work. And if you do awesome work, no matter where you are, the client really isn’t going to care about your location.
Listen to Maria’s full Decision Vision interview here.
The “One Minute Interview” series is produced by John Ray and in the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX® in Alpharetta. You can find the full archive of shows by following this link.
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