Breaking Free
Remote Jobs > Free Nomad Guide > Breaking Free
FastCompany's article, titled The Digital Nomad’s Guide To Working From Anywhere On Earth, states that "Still, the majority of digital nomads are freelancers or small business owners, and a disproportionate number of them are developers or content creators of some kind."
Our Inspiration & Metamorphosis
In July of 2017, we went paragliding, white water rafting, canyoning, and mountain hiking in Switzerland. While there we saw a goat parade and the Matterhorn in Zermatt, tried Gruyere cheese in Gruyere, took a chocolate tour at the Maison Cailler chocolate factory, witnessed alpenhorn playing in Kandersteg and visited Jungfrau, the top of Europe, near Grindelwald. We also saw the castle in Thun and took a boat ride across Interlaken. It was the most exciting vacation that we had ever been on and we were convinced that it couldn’t stop there.
Early in 2018, we decided to quit our jobs in Orlando, Florida and start a business, Eat Wander Explore. But we decided to grow this business while we were on the road, traveling the world. We were now evolving into Nomads.
Digital Nomad Life
As a consequence of that decision, the year and a half that followed was an amazing journey through many new cultures coupled with a breakneck crash course into content creation, blogs, social media, digital marketing, search engine optimization, video editing, virtual reality tutorials, and swift app developer courses. We’ve had to find time to fit in all the work and learning while on the road.
But, we can now say that we have traveled to many parts of this world… across North America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Oceania (see below for the highlights).
As of May of 2021, we are still doing it, and we are just as committed as we’ve ever been to Eat Wander Explore. If anything, our time abroad has taught us that it's possible to work from anywhere, even while seeing it all. However, we have also learned that starting a business on the road is exhausting work - as you are constantly required to learn new things. Yet, we managed to get this far and we were able to become profitable within only a few months of being on the road. Despite that, it took a few years to have enough profit to fully fund our limited full-time travel budget.
Vacationing vs. Traveling
Traveling forever may sound very expensive if you haven't traveled for more than a few days or a few weeks at a time before. If this is the case, you are probably thinking of "vacationing forever" instead of "traveling forever", which is entirely different. While this setup will teach you to travel forever, and if you do it starting at Step 1 you may eventually be able to vacation forever too, it is important to understand that it will take a bit of work and a good amount of your time - while traveling - to get to that point.
So, the first step is to recognize that traveling will be work, not (always) a vacation.
What type of work are we talking about? Basically just keeping up with the income you are generating through your side-income strategies… But wait, what side-income strategies? And why should I have them?
Simple. Traveling will cost money. Even if you save up enough money for 1 year, 2 years, 10 years, or 20 years of travel (retiring?), you will still eventually run out of money. You can slow down the burn rate of your money by using sites like The Earth Awaits to choose places that are more affordable - as there are likely dozens of places in this world that are more affordable than where you are living right now - however; you’ll still eventually run out of money if you aren’t earning some at the same time.
So, we’ll need to learn how to create an endless supply of money! It’s easier than it sounds, but it does take a little bit of work.
Endless Income
This is the step that will determine your future success, so we recommend starting this step at least 2 years prior to your intended travel adventures to allow it enough time to begin growing a decent income stream for you. We didn’t set up our strategies in advance and it really made things tough at the end of our first year - but, sometimes you have to be in the hotpot to get yourself into action! You may think that you can simply save up, like we did, but even if you have been saving for your entire life, you may find out that the money eventually runs out. We only saved up enough for one year of travel, and the amount of work we had to do during that year - while we were traveling - was not easy OR fun. So, for your sake, please consider our advice.
Are you ready to learn how to create an endless supply of money? Check out “Step 1: Income” to get started with Generating Income!
What we’ve done…
and what you could be doing too!
We’ve visited the Eiffel Tower in Paris, ate cactus ice cream in the Masca Valley of Tenerife, hiked the Volcano Trail in La Palma, tasted and smelled our way through the Medina in Marrakesh, spent a month traveling through Italy on a train, crafted our own Sound of Music tour in Austria, journeyed through the Highlands of Scotland, explored the Dan-yr-Ogof Caves in Wales, relaxed in a thermal spa in the ancient city of Bath, located Harry Potter filming locations across the U.K., drank a Guinness and saw the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland.
We ate the most delicious waffles in our lives in Belgium, attended Oktoberfest in Munich, ate gyros while island hopping in Greece, walked around the Great Pyramids and sailed down the Nile River in Egypt, went on a few Safari’s and in South Africa, visited many Wats in Thailand, were amazed by the Gardens by the Bay in Singapore, saw amazing temples and adventured through the Monkey Sanctuary in Bali, saw fire dancers and went island hopping in Fiji.
We explored hiking trails and caves around Sydney, did a coastal camping trip on our way to Melbourne, explored the Great Ocean Road, refreshed in the hot springs of Rotorua, visited the glowworm caves and Hobbiton in New Zealand, hiked the Tongariro trail, and circled around the full south island. Our plans for Taiwan and Japan were cut due to the Covid-19 Pandemic, but we managed to see the biggest highlights of western Malaysia - including Penang, Ipoh, the Cameron Highlands, Kuala Lumpur, Malacca, and Johor Bahru - when it was extraordinarily safe there.
After 14 months there, we were finally kicked out and are now in Turkey. In all, we’ve been to over 40 countries on 5 continents so far, but we’ve slowed down a lot because of the pandemic and the fact that we ended up having a couple of babies along the way. It also worked out that we saved a ton of money on transportation costs when we stayed longer in each location, making it possible to continue traveling longer.
Do you have great advice that you think should be on this page? If so, send us an email with the information and we'll likely add it. Also, unless you say otherwise, we'll add a special 'thank you' after the advice you've provided on this page. If you'd like us to give your website or blog a shout-out along with the 'thank you', please include your site link and we'll be happy to add that as well. Thank you for your help and support!