How to become a Digital Nomad and live a location independent lifestyle
If you’re reading this post, then you’re slightly interested in the idea of Working remotely online to create a lifestyle that can allow you to travel the world full time and become location independent. fantastic!
After 9 years of travelling full time and living a location independent lifestyle, I wanted to share with you my experience and the journey up to this stage to give you a taste of what this lifestyle is like and possibly encourage you to ponder around the idea of what’s possible.
My current location independent lifestyle
Today I woke up in Chiang Mai, ready to start a new day. I walked to my new favourite coffee store and logged onto my MacBook air and flat out typed 2,000 words. Once I’d completed my daily writing goal, I answered a few emails, worked on a few tasks from my To-do list and was done for the day. I spend the rest of my time exploring the city and meeting up with new friends for dinner and drinks in the evening.
On a day to day basis, this is pretty much the general layout of what I get up to. The location may change, but the structure remains. Every day I’m able to support my passion to travel by creating content as a freelance writer. It doesn’t seem like work at all, they both make me happy and they both support the lifestyle I wish to live.
As long as you’re doing something you love and it remains fun, keep on doing it, even when it gets tough.
I’ve started to call Chiang Mai my new temporary home until I get bored. When that time comes I’ll decide to look at the next place I fancy living. With this location independent lifestyle, You no longer have to be glued to one fixed location, the world is there to be explored.
There are many ways to take your current skills online to generate an income that can support this lifestyle. Freelancing is not new either, anyone can set up an account on Upwork or Fiverr.
Today you can learn from a handful of online resources and create a location independence lifestyle.
(Sienna, one place I recently fell in love with and added to my “will move to soon” list)
Often on my travels I visit these incredible places I could picture myself living in, Now I can simply add them to list I can come back too. This is the wonders of working online and living a location independent lifestyle.
Take the EU, for example, a majority of people who live in the EU don’t understand how lucky they are to hold an EU passport. Those that don’t hold an EU passport understand this frustration. As an EU passport holder, you can live and work all over the EU and even EEA countries visa free. That’s a lot of nightlife cultures and countries to explore. You could spend a whole lifetime living and discovering them. But many still choose to not take that risk, go with what’s comfortable and stay at home.
After living in Switzerland for 6 months, Finland for 1 year The Netherlands for 3 years I can tell you how easy it is, you can literally pack up, move, find a place to rent, sort out your WIFI, create a new social circle, and run your online business remotely, it’s that simple.
Becoming a digital Nomad
I’ve always travelled and had the desire to keep going, in the past I would find ways to extend my travels, such as volunteering and Internships, anything I could do to support my passion and to keep the dream alive. Now I’m happy I could find a way to bottle that desire to travel and focus it towards a way of generating financial stability by becoming a digital nomad.
My journey into Travel blogging
(An entrepreneurship Lecture that I took whilst on my Erasmus exchange in Vaasa, Finland, really changed everything)
All throughout my journey I had always enjoyed sharing my stories and advice online, then 4 years ago on my Erasmus exchange in Finland I met a lecturer during my entrepreneurship class called Mikko.
He was 27 years old and had set up and sold 3 businesses and become a lecturer for fun, to help the youth of tomorrow. I was blown away by him and his story, how the bloody hell did he do that? wow! I wanted to pick his brains and work out this type of success for myself, I wanted a slice of that cake for sure.
After a private chat over coffee at the end of the lecture, he asked me about my story and he instantly told me, what I had done so far with my travels and blog posts could easily be turned into a business.
I kind of laughed, how can you make money travel blogging? I enjoyed doing it for free, it was fun sharing my journey with the masses, people were interested and it was fun. But surely I couldn’t turn this fun hobby of mine into a profitable business that could support my passion of travelling?
As instructed for my assignment, I looked around the market place at other travel bloggers and discovered very quickly that yes, it was possible, I could see others selling ebooks, helping travel services with marketing and writing about the places they went to with embedded links to the locations.
It hit me that if they were doing it, why couldn’t I? I enjoyed travelling, I enjoyed helping others to travel, it was just a natural progressive step to take my blog to the next level.
Passion into business
(There will always be temples that need exploring )
It is hard work, I’ve spent a huge amount of hours getting everything up and running, without earning anything in return. It was time that I was prepared to invest in myself to create this location independent lifestyle.
Its tough, its hard work, but nothing is easy, but you can create systems to make things easier and that’s what I learned over a period of time. It’s ok to learn, its ok to grow and you don’t have to rush success, if you’re prepared to put in the hours and manage your time well, success will come naturally.
Put the time in now to gain success later
Fast track to now and I’m super happy that I put in this hard work over the past 4 years since I met Mikko to start and run my own online business. To create passive income, to work on fun projects that help people to travel and to keep on building on top of the foundations that I laid out from the start. It’s just an incredible feeling to finally see it all working like clockwork and allowing my dream to visit every country in the world start to become a reality.
It’s never been easier to start out this lifestyle.
If you start today I’m extremely jealous, it’s never been easier to be location independent. When I first started out, it was a dream idea, only a handful of people were doing it and you could only find a few books on the subject, it was a struggle to find information.
Now you can find endless amounts of Facebook communities around your chosen skill. Loads of Sub Reddits full of fans surrounding your topic. Boatloads of Ebooks for the Kindle by leading experts. Stacks of Udemy courses to learn new skills. YouTube tutorials on how to create this location independent lifestyle.
No longer are you alone, there is a whole support network out there online, ready to help.
If you have a problem it used to be impossible to solve, now with one google search, you’re able to find a solution in a support form, a YouTube video explaining how to solve it or a piece of software that just does the trick. It just blows my mind how easy it is to get things done now.
If you have a skill or time to learn one, then you can make this location independent lifestyle work for you.
(Digital nomad, my new Ebook, out now on the Amazon Kindle)
Traditional office jobs have started to shift towards working from home, this idea has started to spread globally. It’s only a matter of time until these remote workers start to notice that the work they are doing from home can simply be completed anywhere around the world with an internet connection.
Soon everyone will be running online businesses all around the world, if you want to create this digital nomadic lifestyle for yourself, then start building it today, your be putting yourself one step ahead of the rest.
I understand that some advice is needed to kick start this concept so I’ve spent some time writing down my own personal thoughts on how I see Digital Nomads evolving in the future and how you can create this lifestyle for yourself. If you want to get started, my Ebook, “Digital Nomad” is available on the Amazon Kindle and will point you in the right direction if you want to get started. Full of helpful tips and advice on how to become a Digital Nomad and work remotely around the world.
I wish you all the best of luck with your new adventure into becoming A digital nomad and living a location independent lifestyle.