Hi, my name
is Lorna Li,
and I'm the host of
Entrepreneurs for a Change -
a web show featuring evolutionary entrepreneurs who are
changing the world through business.
Today I'm going to share with you how I set up call-forwarding to
forward calls from anywhere in the world to my local cellphone. If you're location-independent and traveling around the world with no fixed
address, then how do friends, family, clients, and business institutions stay
in touch with you without skyrocketing your phone bill?
The two tools that are the foundation of my low-cost communication system are
Google Voice and Skype.
Here are three indispensable ways that Skype rocks my world:
Number 1; I signed up for Premium Service through Skype that allows
me to have a dedicated phone number with the area code of my choice. The reason why this rocks is because
any time I try to apply my Skype credits to call a phone, using Skype, on the
caller ID of the person's cellphone, you will see a series of unrecognizable
numbers that is associated with your Skype profile trying to call a mobile
phone. More often than not, since people do not recognize that number, they
will allow your call to go to voicemail. Since I have a dedicated Internet
phone number through Skype, with a 415 area code, whenever I call my friends,
or someone in the 415 area code, they will see the caller ID come up as a
local call, and they will tend to answer that call more frequently than let
it go to voicemail. This also allows my family and friends to be able to save
that number to their address book as well, so that when that number comes
through, they can see that it's me calling from Skype. This also allows my
friends to make calls directly to my Skype number as well, and if I happen to
be online as well, the call will come through directly to me.
Number 2; I use Skype to forward phone calls from anywhere
in the world to my local cellphone.
Only a few select people actually have my Skype telephone number, so I happen to use my Google Voice number as my
official number for anything business-related; credit cards, banking, insurance - my Google Voice number
is my official number. If I get a phone call that's related to one of these
services or institutions, it pretty much almost always goes to voicemail.
That voicemail message is transcribed into text, by Google Voice, and sent to
me, via email, along with the audio recording. This ensures that only the
people who are really important to me can reach me directly by calling my
Skype number which will then forward to me as a Skype call if I happen to be
in front of my computer online, or forwarded directly to my cellphone.
The third way Skype totally rocks my world is that I use the Skype
mobile app to make phone calls to anywhere in the world directly
from my cellphone if there happens to be an Internet connection.
Or I can make that phone call if there isn't an Internet connection, directly through the data service plan
from my cellphone carrier.
So if you happen to dream of living a location-independent lifestyle, or if
you're currently planning on going away on long-term travel but really need
to stay in touch with people; friends and family, and clients and business
contacts, then you should definitely consider becoming a power user of Skype.
Thanks a lot for joining us today, and I'll see you next time. For more
fantastic information about business lifestyle design, please go to
entrepreneursforachange.com. 'Bye for now.