What the F**k is a Digital Nomad?!?
Before we started planning our transition to this lifestyle I was only vaguely aware of the term “Digital Nomad” (DN). However, once I started doing some research on locations, equipment, etc, I discovered that the term “DN”existed and that we would, in fact, be considered such creatures once we shoved off and started drifting around the world.
[For those of you who haven’t heard of Digital Nomadism and have no idea what the holy hell I’m talking about, a Digital Nomad is someone who travels around the world and finances their lifestyle by working online.]
So I hopped on Facebook and joined a few DN groups, e.g. here, here, and here, to name just three, to see what everyone else was up to. Maybe I could learn something!
I started reading. Then I read some more. Then it dawned on me, with a sucky twinge of sadness, that these groups were awash in a tide of overwhelming bullshit and confusion. It happens. Something appears to be a multi-layered Chocolate Awesome Cake, and boatloads of sketchy individuals pile in to sell people all kinds of questionable and imaginary tools to help make the cake.
There is so much misinformation out there that many earnest folks wanting to try the lifestyle are misled and end up wasting their time or worse, divorced from their hard-earned cash.
Which sucks. But there’s a silver lining: the lifestyle does actually work, and there are people who know how to make it work without selling courses on How to Make the Lifestyle Work.
[Yes, that’s actually a thing. Judging by the numbers of people hawking such courses there’s probably a fair amount of money in it. But it’s icky. And icky money ain’t no good, as my grandmother used to say.]
So let’s make some good stuff happen today. Strap yourselves in and prepare to pay me $0 via PayPal, because that’s how much this is going to cost you.
Nathan’s “I Don’t Know Shit But Here Goes” Guide to Being a Digital Nomad:
[Disclaimer: My experience, and therefore the guide below, is based on starting your own business in order to fund a DN lifestyle. You can, of course, live as a Digital Nomad by working a job remotely or by consulting or freelancing. In my opinion, which admittedly could be 13 gallons of crap, it’s better to learn how to start your own business. The effort required is almost equal to all the work necessary to continually chase down consulting or freelancing work, and I vastly prefer to control my own business than rely on continuing employment with someone else’s.
Plus the powerups you receive by starting a business or two are even better than kicking several Bosses’ asses in Shinobi. Trust me, I’ve tried both.]
1. The Green Stuff- How Much Is Enough?
First things first: how much money do you need to live this fairytale lifestyle? This is different for everyone. Some people are wedged in deep with their credit cards. Others have a wonderfully irksome pile of student loan debt. There are folks have no debt and are happy to travel the world by couch surfing. Maybe you want to stay in a sweet MTV-Cribs-style villa every week. Some like the idea of spending months on the Amalfi Coast (which can be expensive AF, as the cool kids like to say) while others are happy to meander around SE Asia or India for a year.
Open a spreadsheet and bang out a budget.
[Wait, you do know how to use Excel, don’t you? If you don’t, bookmark this page and go learn the basics of Excel pronto. You may thank me later. I accept payment in Carrot Cake Larabars.]
Include flights, travel insurance, health insurance, accommodations, food, ground transport, phone, monthly storage for your stuff back home if you need it, etc.
Don’t forget to factor in taxes. I know, fun. But we’ve tried doing without roads, police, the military, prisons, schools, libraries before and that didn’t work out too well. So figure in a chunk for taxes.
Sum up what you’ll need for a year, then use that to determine your monthly necessary income. You have a target. Now let’s get some ammunition.
2. Hit the Books
This is the fun part, where most people start dreaming big and getting excited. Excitement is good, but don’t get too carried away – there’s hard, back-breaking work ahead. That’s the price you pay for this lifestyle, but it’s worth it.
Start reading. Fire up your browser, pay a visit to Google and type in “digital nomad”.
Read for a few hours or a few days, but keep your reading broad. [Aside: I strongly recommend visiting Pat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income site. Pat knows his stuff, SPI is an incredibly deep resource for DN’s, and he seems like a cool dude to boot.]
When you see things that seem interesting but slightly Greek-sounding like “SEO”, “Affiliate Marketing”, or “E-Books”, make a note to explore it but don’t do it yet. Continue to read about becoming a DN, how to stay a DN, living the DN lifestyle, etc, until you feel like you’re consuming the same information over and over.
Check Out: Wrapping Up Our Stay in Phuket
Then pick up your notes and repeat the above for each topic you’ve written down. Read about each one until you feel like you’re seeing the same thing repeatedly, then move on to the next note. Continue to take notes as you go.
Repeat this process until you feel like there’s nothing new for you to read about DN’s and how to make an income online.
There. Now you know just enough to be dangerous. It’s time to start the hard work.
3. Go! But Only for a Limited Time
This is the step that most people never get to, or many that do never finish. Pick a method for making money and start working on it. The strategy you pick doesn’t matter much, and you don’t have to go with an idea you’ve seen in your research. You can choose a business idea that’s not even included in the strategies you’ve read about.
The only requirements are that eventually you need to be able to do the work remotely, and you must find it at least a little interesting.
Work on it for three months. Try to get to making your first dollar as soon as possible. Stay with it. Don’t worry about making it perfect, just worry about making it pay. Spend all of your free time on it, and any time you have that isn’t free, cancel as much of that other stuff as you can and work on your idea.
Work until you hit a wall and run out of ideas, then talk to other people in the space to get new ideas. Start conversations. Compare notes. Keep driving forward to get to that first dollar. Then your second. Then your first $10. And your first $100.
Then, when you’ve been working on it for three months, stop. It’s time to take a breath.
4. Evaluate the Green
If you’ve gotten this far, you’ve achieved more than most people who entertain the notion of becoming a DN. Congratulations. Give yourself a single pat on the back.
Okay, enough, let’s not overdo it. Time to get back to work.
Now you must ask yourself an important question: Can this business provide your minimum monthly income in 5 years or less?
Be brutal. It’s possible that you’ve picked a niche so narrow and your financial needs are so great that the answer is no. Or perhaps the numbers are close and you realize that you should simply downshift from wanting to live like P. Diddy taking a G5 from place to place to sucking it up and doing a little bit of couch surfing. Or maybe you’ve learned that this particular idea isn’t quite right, but another is better.
If the answer to the above question is “no”, then pick another strategy and return to step #3.
If the answer is “yes”, good. Now comes the really hard part.
5) Grind
Get back to work, and stick with it for 5 years. You heard me correctly.
5 years.
Keep pounding on your business model. Don’t relent. Don’t slow down. Tweak, correct course, and by all means apply what you learn as you go, but becoming a self-sufficient online business owner and not some desperately-wanting-to-live-the-lifestyle-but-can’t-quite-get-there DN means settling in for at least a 5 year haul.
I have started many businesses, the majority of which have failed. What I have learned from all of those experiences is that, for most people, getting a business from zero to better than Ramen Profitable takes at least five years.
Many of you may be pissed off. Dude, I read all of this and looked at a dozen freaking pictures of your kid just to hear that it’s gonna take me five years to live this lifestyle? WTF?!?
Yes. I’m not selling you anything, and I’m not gonna sugarcoat this sucker like it’s a spice gumdrop. It’s going to take a while. The good news is that the time is going to fly by, and if you’re like most people, when you finally have your business up and running you’ll have decades of time to enjoy on the road.
There are, of course, people out there who have made it happen in less time. By and large they either (1) have previous experience starting a business and know how to avoid making all the mistakes you’re going to make, or (2) are insanely lucky.
You will not be insanely lucky. But if you stick with it, you’ll end up on the other side with either a successful business that can fund your lifestyle, or with one failed business under your belt and markedly increased odds of making the next one work.
So that’s it. It’s simple, but not easy. If someone tells you differently and asks you for money, smile at them kindly and run the other way.
Determine your target income. Get knowledgeable. Work on an idea for 3 months. Evaluate. If all systems go, dive in for 5 years.
It’s well worth the ride, trust me.
Feel free to give me a shout if you have questions or need help. Good luck, and go get it!
Sneem and County Kerry
Lest I forget, we also spent a couple of weeks in County Kerry in a beautiful farmhouse in the tiny little town of Sneem, population 560. Yeah, it was small and adorable and everything you imagine when you think of a cozy town in Ireland.
Out for a stroll on Derrynane Beach
The house was divine. It was roomy, well-kept, and beautifully decorated, and the only way to get there was via a 3-mile-long access road from Sneem that wound through rocky meadows filled with sheep and cattle. The road was barely wide enough for a single vehicle, which wasn’t a problem most of the time because no one else was staying out where we were.
Sneem itself was fantastic, just two tiny town squares lined with pastel-colored storefronts and separated by the bubbling Sneem River. We quickly tried all of the 3-4 pubs and found our favorite, D. O’Shea’s, where we spent nearly every afternoon playing cards, drawing, coloring, and enjoying pints of Guinness and milk. Not mixed together, of course. That would be ridiculous.
Sneem is right on the famed Ring of Kerry, a 111-mile circuit around one of Kerry’s beautiful peninsulas, the Ivernagh, and we took full advantage. Over the course of our two weeks there we frequently hopped in the car to visit Kenmare (the location of the closest big supermarket), Portmagee (a little town close to the Skellig Islands, where the final scene of Star Wars: The Force Awakens was filmed), Caherdaniel (near the stunning Derrynane Beach), Molls Gap (an unbelievably beautiful valley north of Sneem), Killarney National Park (again, unbelievably beautiful, with incredible views), and Glencar (a mountain pass that just blew our minds) to name a few.
Kerry is famous for a reason. It’s easily one of the most beautiful places we’ve ever seen, and by now we’ve seen a lot.
Juliann and Braeden also took a few riding lessons, the first for both of them, and I had such a blast watching the two of them learning how to work with their horses that I didn’t even mind that it was rainy and in the 50’s for the nth day in a row. Yes, the weather sucks in Ireland, but the land is so gorgeous, the food so delicious, and the beer and whiskey so good that you just don’t care.
We also managed to find a local farm in Sneem, Blueberry Hill Farm, that gave tours for kids, so we stopped by one morning and followed Braeden and several other children around as they learned how to feed all the animals, take the baby calf and the goats for a walk, make candles, and bake their own scones. Yvonne and Sigi, the German folks who run the place, were so kind and great with the kids that we wanted to stay with them. The boy had a ball, so much so that the next week Juliann took him back for a second visit while I got some work done at the house.
One morning we took a chocolate making class at Lorge Chocolatier just outside Kenmare, which was a lot of fun. We learned how the chocolate is blended, cooled, and mixed, and had an opportunity to make – and take home – chocolate pops, bon-bons, hard chocolate candies, and some other goodies. YUM!
We also made time to visit Dingle, an adorable seaside town on the Dingle Peninsula. Lunch at Chowder was a highlight, where we feasted on some absolutely delicious seafood chowder and brown bread, as was our stop at Dick Mack’s, a haberdashery and pub. Dick’s is a holdover from a time when Dingle was much smaller and many businesses had to hawk a few different types of products in order to be profitable. At Dick’s they made hats and belts at a counter on one side of the pub, and on the other side was a traditional bar where you could sit down with a pint and watch the craftsman on the other side working with his leather. We had a pint, soaked up the atmosphere, ruefully wished we had room in our packs for a new leather belt, and headed out.
Dublin was fun, Cork was beautiful, but Kerry was like nothing we had ever seen. It was difficult to select pictures for this blog post because there were about 1,000 and every one was of a gorgeous, postcard-perfect landscape.
It’s a must visit. So go and hit me back to tell me how it was for you. And tell Dick Mack I said hi.
Next: Galway!
Great article – I’d like to ask you some hard questions though. I was hoping to find the answers in your post.
What does it cost you per month to live your lifestyle?
Has your income gone up, down or just maintained since?
Hey Will, great to hear from you! I’m happy to answer:
1) I’m hesitant to give exact numbers because, well…I suppose I’m programmed not to talk about how much money I make, just like everyone else. Which is silly. But anyway, I’ll try to answer without being too cagey. But before I do, keep in mind that to live a nomadic lifestyle you can get by on a fraction of this, and if living this way interests you, you SHOULD try it on way before you hit these levels. We’ve met people that have been on the road much longer than we have and spend a quarter what we do.
We budget $3,000/month for accommodations, and roughly another $1,500-$2,000 is spent on food, ground transport, cell phones, entertainment, sightseeing, schools (when we check the boy into one), CrossFit, yoga, our storage unit, etc.
Travel insurance from WorldNomads costs another $2,500 annually, and we budget around $10,000 annually for flights.
Everything that’s left over is put on our student loans, which we’re paying down at a much, much faster pace than when we were in the States.
2) I started working with my business partner in 2003 (it was my 3rd business, not including selling Fireballs on the playground when I was in the 4th grade) and I was making just a few hundred dollars a week. By 2008 things had grown to where we could pay ourselves six figures and I started working remotely. We’ve been able to increase the amount of money we take out of the business every few years since then, and the business continues to grow.
Let me know if you have more questions and I’ll be happy to help. Best to you and the family!
Nathan, thank you for the write up! I’m somewhere between steps 3 and 5; and there is one question that’s been bugging me a lot: How can I find the best possible team? If the response is that I don’t need one, I’ve considered that and keep coming up with good reasons (perhaps due to the nature of my business ideas or my personality) for indeed needing one. Any advice/suggestions/further reading material?
Hi Igor, thanks for reading!
I love the question, now we’re digging into the details! Are you referring to partners or staff? If the latter, I’ve had the most success in the U.S. (I hire mostly tech staff, like Software or Data Engineers) with Craigslist, believe it or not, even though I’ve tried my own social media, Monster, MediaBistro, Dice, and others. [For smaller stuff I used to have a lot of success with Elance – now Upwork – but that was at least 4 years ago and I haven’t heard anything good about Upwork lately.]
Sourcing staff is easy. Interviewing, hiring, and training them is much, much harder. That’s unfortunately beyond the scope of this post, but the best advice I can give you is to just start doing it and constantly ask yourself, “How can I get better at this?” as you go. It’s a learned skill, just like any other.
If you meant “partners”, then that’s a different animal entirely. I’ve started businesses with partners and without, and there are pros and cons to both. I don’t have any magic solutions for finding partners, as I admittedly have stumbled onto them in the past. But the best advice I can give for potential partners is to work with them as much as you can at the start so you get a sense of whether you like working together. The *second*, and I mean the second, that your gut tells you this isn’t a person you want to work with, make your apologies and walk away.
Starting a business is stressful and it will test you. Having a partner whom you support and who will support you through that stress is an indescribable blessing. A partner that does the opposite will turn a stressful situation into pure hell.
Good luck, and let me know if you have other questions.
Thank you for insight, Nathan! I have many questions, but would like to chose wisely as to not pester.
I was referring to partners. Over the past three years (for more than 2 years before I went ahead and started the project solo), the constant answer to my “How do I find a partner?” has been “keep talking to people, spreading your idea, get involved in forums, and the person will come along.” I duly followed that advice without real success. As I was hiring staff last year, I finally found a person who wholeheartedly understood the model I’ve created and became excited about it. She was fulfilling her duties and responsibilities beyond the call of duty, and provided much needed support, but I knew in my gut that was temporary (which is what it’s likely turning out to be now).
I understand that I need to be ready to go through with the endeavour by myself, and I’m prepared. However! Two reasons keep me wishing to have a partner: most importantly, someone to bounce ideas off of, to be the devil’s advocate during hard decisions. And second, I direly need someone to compliment my lacking skills, to 1) fulfil certain aspects of work with enthusiasm/diligence/soul investment to succeed, and 2) to save dramatically on labor expenses.
I found link to your blog on one of the DNomad groups on Fb, where you acutely pointed out how overly polluted with bs much of those groups are. At some point I hoped/counted on those groups to provide much needed support. And they have/do, but to a limited degree (mainly since diluted with junk). Part of the issue is that I live in a place (Shanghai), which is teeming with entrepreneurs, but who are very removed from my business niche (I extremely enjoy attending startup meetups and conversing about this in some of the more open-minded European and American centers, but don’t have an opportunity to do it often enough).
Any other sources of support or potential partners that you could recommend? Or perhaps any wise feedback on this mini rant of mine?
As others’ve mentioned, thank you for taking us along on your journey — both travel- and life-wise!
Of course, Igor, it’s my pleasure. Without knowing more about the details of your model I can only make two general recommendations:
1) Try posting “Seeking [Foo]” in every job site related to your domain, where [Foo] is the highest job title you can assign within your startup to someone with the skills you need, e.g. CTO, Creative Director, etc.
2) Don’t stop trying. When an apparently seamless wall blocks your path, don’t turn away from it. Sit down and stare at it for as long as it takes to see the seams. Then use those very seams to take the wall down.
Problems that appear intractable will, over time, reveal their weaknesses, so even though it feels like you’re going nowhere, don’t stop trying to drive forward.
If you’d like to discuss the details of your model privately, feel free to friend me on Facebook or contact me via email at nathanblew@gmail.com. And don’t be afraid to keep the questions coming. I’m happy to help.
Wow Nathan, only 6K a month! Would you say you live comfortably, extravagantly or middle of the road?
This may be a sensitive subject, but considering what I’ve seen you lift at 203.. I’m sure you can hang. Has there been any negative effects or struggles with educating your son?
I ask because in movies you often see the hard backstory of the kid who’s parents we’re in the navy and always moved around. Any social issues? or Am I completely on the opposite side of things?
Hey Will,
In places like SE Asia and Mexico we live very comfortably and want for nothing. In Europe we were pretty comfortable but had to keep an eye on spending. We ate out, but not every night like we did in Thailand or Cambodia, and we didn’t do *every* single excursion that looked interesting.
As far as educating Braeden, it’s obviously too early to say anything definitively about how this will all turn out. We’ve read tons of (obviously biased) stories about couples who road-or-homeschool their kids, and in every case they report their children are ahead of where they “should” be. I do know that the longer we’re on the road, the more strongly I feel that I don’t want to put him in school again. It just feels to me (again, it’s subjective) that he’s getting exactly the material he needs from us just when he needs it, instead of being behind 10 other kids in his class or way ahead of everyone and having to wait while the teacher catches the other kids up.
We’re developing habits that seem to be working: every day right after breakfast we sit down and spend 10-20 minutes working on math, and 10-20 minutes working on reading/writing. We also read to him a few times a day, he does art lessons on Youtube (which he loves), and we’re trying to get in more project-based work to turn his interests into longer-term focused work. And of course he’s seeing all kinds of things that I never even thought of at his age, and learning all about other cultures, religion, architecture, wildlife, conservation, engineering, you name it.
The *only* negative that I’m experiencing is that he doesn’t have the social environment that other kids his age do, as you astutely pointed out. He gets some exposure to other kids but for the most part he’s with us a LOT. That’s mostly on us. We’ve been places where we’ve put him in school, or put him into soccer lessons, but we haven’t done it enough.
All that said, I’m not convinced it’s a bad thing. I moved around a ton when I was a kid and never had friends for more than a year or so until I got to college. I was the weird kid and had trouble relating to other children. But I don’t know that I would have done it any other way. I’m who I am because of it, and I’m grateful for the road I’ve walked.
Now that, too, is subjective. I’m probably still weird, and I may suffer from stuff of which I’m not even aware that was a result of moving around so much when I was a kid. But on the whole I think it was good for me, and the way we’re raising our son is similar but more thoughtful.
After all that, keep in mind that this is really just an experiment. If at any time we decide we don’t like the way things are going or we tire of it, we pull the ripcord and do something else. As much as I’d like to I don’t really believe that we’re going to road/homeschool him for all of the next 13 years, so I think he’s going to get balance either way. There will be some moving around and some stability. It’ll be a mix of many things, which is just what life is going to throw at him. And that, I think, is one of the most important things he’s learning out here: self-reliance.
Anyway, that’s a goddamned long answer to your question, and I hope it helps. Keep ’em coming if you have ’em and I’m happy to help.
Nathan, I appreciate the long winded answer. It’s helpful. My goal is to get to be able to have a laptop lifestyle, and I get that question often when expressing my vision around family and friends.
Seems like this will turn into a Q&A thread, but what do you do about health insurance? I’d only assume that the health care establishments would be rather poor in other areas of the world.
Also, how old are you?
I’m 46 for a few more months. :^)
For health insurance we decided back in 2016 before we left to take a three-pillar approach:
1) We have family coverage through my business. We’re very lucky. We have reasonably low copays and decent preventive healthcare, and the premiums are all paid out of the business. It only covers care in the U.S., however.
2) Travel insurance. This policy, which we get through WorldNomads, covers a host of stuff we don’t really care about like lost baggage, canceled flights, etc. But it also covers catastrophic stuff, like needing to be airlifted out of an area that doesn’t have a good hospital system, or emergency care internationally.
3) Local healthcare overseas. Everything we had read online led us to believe that healthcare in most places outside the U.S. was decent to great, and everywhere we’ve needed it it’s been true. I had a fibroma growing on my lip for almost two months in France and Mauritius (talk about feeling like shit for an extended period) and I had specialists look at it in France a few times in different places. Each time it cost me $23 US for an office visit, biopsy, etc. Crazy.
I finally had it removed in an operating room in a big, beautiful hospital in Mauritius by a delightful laser surgeon and a team of techs and nurses to the tune of $224. (You can read more about it here:
http://www.tryfailgrow.com/?p=1263). That’s not a typo. The treatment was fantastic and probably less than a tenth of the cost it would have been in the U.S.
We get dental checkups regularly, just as we would at home. Our first was in Mauritius, where we had a fantastic dentist with a brilliantly clean office who spoke better English than I do. The cost for three cleanings, three checkups, and a few unexpected fillings was $200. We had a similar experience at our next checkup in Florence, Italy. Excellent care at a fraction of what we would pay in the U.S.
So we happily get the care we need around the world from local providers, our family plan at home covers us in the States, and for unforeseeable emergencies overseas we have our travel insurance.
Your blog has become an immediate read for me. I look forward to the next one. This one, because I’m a complete Numbers geek, was one of the best…especially since Ireland is on my short list of places to visit! Thanks for allowing all of us to enjoy your trip along with the three of you!
Thanks Dave, that means a lot! I’ve been delighted to stay in touch with you, it’s been awhile since we’ve thrown down together. Best to you and yours!
Hello ,
I saw your tweets and thought I will check your website. Have to say it looks very good!
I’m also interested in this topic and have recently started my journey as young entrepreneur.
I’m also looking for the ways on how to promote my website. I have tried AdSense and Facebok Ads, however it is getting very expensive. Was thinking about starting using analytics. Do you recommend it?
Can you recommend something what works best for you?
Would appreciate, if you can have a quick look at my website and give me an advice what I should improve: http://janzac.com/
(Recently I have added a new page about FutureNet and the way how users can make money on this social networking portal.)
I have subscribed to your newsletter. 🙂
Hope to hear from you soon.
P.S.
Maybe I will add link to your website on my website and you will add link to my website on your website? It will improve SEO of our websites, right? What do you think?
Regards
Jan Zac
Congrats on starting your journey, Jan Zac! I’m excited for you.
I would definitely begin using an analytics package like Google Analytics so you understand where your traffic is coming from.
I’m not, at the moment, focusing on promoting my site at all. I have a small amount of traffic and I’m trying to improve the conversion of visitors to subscribers, and once I’ve done that to my satisfaction, I’ll work on increasing my traffic. In the meantime I continue to write and produce quality content, which will slowly increase both traffic and grow my email list.
If you have some traffic I would focus on converting a decent percentage from visitors to subscribers. If you have no traffic, start spending some time on social media answering questions, being helpful, and providing useful content. Occasionally post links to your content when it’s appropriate. You can slowly grow your traffic that way.
I had a look at your site, and what strikes me right away is that there is no emotional appeal, just, “Do you want to make money online?” How can you get your visitors excited to read more? How can you get them so pumped up they can’t wait to hear more from you?
Most people don’t respond to the money. They respond to the things money can buy: freedom, peace of mind, status, etc. Try to make your appeal as simply and as powerfully as possible, right there on your homepage, and then put your signup form right next to it or use a popup.
You may also want to read Michael Hyatt’s “Platform”, a great resource that will help you start with the basics.
Best of luck and let me know how it goes. And feel free to ask more questions, I learn a ton from answering them.
Hello ,
I saw your tweet about animals and thought I will check your website. I like it!
I love pets. I have two beautiful thai cats called Tammy(female) and Yommo(male). Yommo is 1 year older than Tommy. He acts like a bigger brother for her. 🙂
I have even created an Instagram account for them ( https://www.instagram.com/tayo_home/ ) and probably soon they will have more followers than me (kinda funny).
I have subscribed to your newsletter. 🙂
Keep up the good work on your blog.
Regards
Wiki
Thanks, Wiki. I’m not a cat type of guy, but they sure are cute. Thanks for sharing!
I actually came over here from another web page related to real estate news and imagined I might as well read this. I like what I see so now I am following you. Looking towards finding out about the site all over again.
Thanks, Carmelia, and welcome! Be sure to let me know if you have any questions.