Discovering the World through Freelancing

Hey Nomads, welcome to Digital Nomad Stories, the podcast. My name is Anne Claessen and, together with my co-host, Kendra Hasse, we interview digital nomads. Why? Because we want to share stories of how they did it. We talk about remote work, online business, location and dependency, freelancing, travel and, of course, the digital nomad lifestyle. Do you want to know more about us and access all previous episodes? Visit digitalnomadsdories. co. Alright, let's go into today's episode. Hey, hey, nomads, welcome to a new episode today with Sharon Zaks. He is a digital nomad for two years. He is a digital writer, copywriter, blogger, content writer and social media manager. I'm super excited to have him on today to talk about his digital nomad journey, about freelancing, some amazing places that he has seen on his travels. So, Sharon, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah, I'm super excited about today to chat Nomad life. So first of all, can you tell us more about what life looks like right now? Where are you and what do you do?

So I was invited to see you. A little bit about myself. I left Israel a year ago and started in Europe. I started with Batsko Domad Test. I finished my contract. I acted every second in Stuttgart, so I bought one way ticket to Batsko Domad Test and, as I said, I was flow-matted in Batsko. Different countries around Europe. I was living in Bulgaria, albania, canary Islands, turkey and now Bosnia. I was in the area. I was given an invitation from Bosnia government and local organizations. They invited me to stay in Mostar, which is a little cozy little town in Nusseldorfina. They invited me to stay here on their behalf and then returned to write about this, about this local media. So I saw myself in a small city with not so many nomads, but very authentic and original and everything is very charming here.

I love it. That sounds awesome. And how amazing that you got an invite to be there. I mean that's really cool. So what does your day-to-day look like? Does that mean you mentioned that there is not a big digital nomad community, so are you there to mostly focus on work, or what does a typical day look like for you?

I'm trying to balance between working and exploring the world. So for me, I like to stop my day by getting into it for six hours of just deep work sessions, just learning, just getting things done, working on my coaching, business, writing content, helping people and only after that, when I feel the satisfaction of getting things done, I go out and start exploring different things. But this mark was a little bit different because we had some activities that had to participate. We had kanyui kaya tini kai tini. We had wantei sti is an odd story Cool Local meals, the hallucinatives and riding cocktails. It was really fun. That sounds like fun yeah it is. It was a great experience. So I was mainly balancing between working and going to all these activities and exploring the region, which is absolutely gorgeous, by the way, if you haven't been to Vina, it's two hours away from Duvall's make, two hours away from Slith, eight hours from Belgrade. It's really beautiful area.

Cool, Sounds perfect. So I hear you say that usually, like in normal times, when you feel accomplished, when you've done the things like you've been, you've been working for a bit, then you start exploring. But I also know that you work freelance, right, so you don't have a boss telling you you need to work now until I don't know 5pm. Does that feeling ever come? I mean, as a business owner myself, I'm just wondering, like, do you ever find yourself at the end of the day thinking, oh, I didn't do anything else to work, or is that just me I lost to have productive days regardless to what I have a boss with not, but I do have clients, so I do have deadlines to achieve.

It's just I don't have to report in the exact same way that I used to default when I was just an employee. So I can just decide that this morning I'm going to archery or run a new high school and I'm going to work in the evening. Have this flexibility, and that's what's beautiful about being a freelancer. You'll have to work in specific hours and specific days and you can decide I'm going to go to the festival for three days, three nights straight, and I'm going to work a little bit more, but for a little bit more after.

Yeah, that sounds like you found that balance quite well.

I, yeah, but I have to admit that I do like working in the morning. This is the way I am the most productive Like, immediately after I wake up, the brain is like it's like it's outside, you know, just getting things done writing, publishing, helping people, emails, everything and then in the afternoon it's like it's more like okay, my brain is tired, but my body is awake. My body demands a movement. So now, after the noon, I'm going to go to the gym, I'm going to go dancing, I'm going to do some yoga. This is what works for me.

Yeah, that freedom is awesome. What did you do before you were a freelancer and before you were traveling?

Well, I was working in various jobs in digital marketing, including copywriting, coder writing, social media management. I even wrote content for crowdfunding projects back in Israel and I didn't like it so much. I didn't like 95 at all. It was very emotionally exhausting. Whenever I got back from work, back home, and wanted to recharge, I felt like I can't really do anything else. But I can't really think I can't really work on my projects. I can't really develop a side business or a side hospital. Now it's time to just let go of thinking and use the body, operate the body.

Yeah, so how did you get into freelancing then? Because I mean, from digital marketing to freelance writing, I think you already had the experience and the skills, probably, but how did you make that transition?

Well, every company I used to work for, I always ended up as a content writer. There was always someone the boss, the team leader, the colleague who told me you're not good at client training, you're not good at e-mail, but you're very good at writing emails. So I wanted to be a content team. And it happened to me three or four times, and still I started saying I should get the hint and just focus on content.

Yeah, and then how did it happen that you became a freelancer, like, where did you find your first few clients?

Well, I didn't know what to do, so I just posted a post on social media, on Facebook and LinkedIn. Hi, my name is Salon. I did X and Y. I did that experience. I'm a freelancer. I would like to help you write newsletter, blog articles, SEO, social media content, landing pages, whatever. So, if you like, this is my phone number. This is my email. You're welcome to contact me. And it didn't go viral, but I had a few friends who called a few friends or tagged a few friends and it started to roll like a snowball and all of a sudden I've got people DMing me and asking for help. And when that got into a block, then I started a Fiverr account as well. I started freelancing on Fiverr and now I'm combining them two the two of them.

Interesting. Yeah, pretty cool that that post worked so well for you. And what I'm hearing you say is that really your network helped you to get those first initial clients right.

Yeah, You've got to have network. And you see, go stop working on this right now.

Yeah. So if you're thinking about going into freelance, I'm probably starting by building a network. Even if, if you just have the idea of maybe sometimes, like in the future, I want to go freelance or want to start my business or be self-employed or whatever it is to work with clients, then network is super important. I hear that coming back over and over again when I ask people how they started their business. So it's really interesting to hear you say that that's a well.

Indeed. And another thing that is very important as well is to niche down, because nowadays it's not just to be a writer, content writer. You have to niche down two areas. First, the first thing she's down is what kind of content are you doing? Have deep levels of understanding. It could be health, wealth, hobbies, habits, money or whatever you do that. And the second thing she's down is going to be what kind of platforms, what kind of content are you creating? It's not enough to be a content writer. You need to be a fintech. A fintech writer specializing in emails, or a someone who writes about the license trick, who specialized in social media? Right, so there's two needs to be down when you have to do before people stop perceiving you as someone who's experienced. Yes, exactly.

No one hires a generalist, but the expert in a specific field. That definitely makes sense. How do you figure out where, like how you want to niche down because there's so many options, right, like, how do you actually make that decision?

It's called Inky Guy and one simple word. And you're going to have to start writing. There's no on the way, there's no shortcut, there's no way to figure it out by asking theories of questions. You're just going to have to write and write and write every day and publish every day and you start realizing a what do I really like writing about? What do I really feel like? Whenever I write about this, I'm getting into a state of flow. And second, what kind of reactions do I get from my clients? Because sometimes I'm writing about something that I'm very passionate about but my audience doesn't react at all. It just doesn't care about that. But sometimes I got to write about things that, okay, it's kind of interesting, but my audience is going to be like whoa, this is really interesting. Please give me more information about that. And you have to kind of find the overlapping point of these two. So if you found a subject that you love writing about and your audience like that as well, that's probably going to be a niche. And niche is not the one thing that you started. That's there for everyone. It's like it's not a Catholic marriage. You can start and ask the two or three years change. You can start and ask and change it after a month. So it's not a permanence that you're not married. You can always change, add, deduce. You know it's flexible, so you can make mistakes and that's no problem. Yeah, I love that.

You also said you just got to start. There's no shortcut. You just got to write and figure it out and niche down as you go and it's not set in stone. I think that is a fantastic tip, Absolutely so show, do you write mostly in English? That's an excellent story.

So I started writing on the internet four years ago and I started in Hebrew because it got this advice of people it's probably going to be easier. So for three years I was writing in Hebrew. I guess the audience from Israel, but I always had this thing in my mind like I can write in English, I'm pretty good at this and instead of having an audience of seven million people, I'm going to have an audience of seven billion people. That's 1000 times bigger. And eventually this year, in the new year, as if Eve, I made a decision to start writing in English and realized not only it gets much more reactions from the world and also easier, because I have all these AIs that I have in my head, these AI tools like Grammarly and War Tool and ChatCpT, which do not operate in Hebrew but just in English, and I can use them. So I make much more gathered and spelling mistakes in my own native languages than I do in English. Now, Interesting.

I'm used to writing in English.

It's easier to write in English because of these tools.

That's really interesting. Yeah, because I was actually going to ask how difficult is it, as a non-native speaker, to be a writer in English? I mean, I work in English, right? English is not my native language, obviously. So I mean, I built my whole business. It's all in English. Like we communicate with clients in English, all the podcasts we produce are in English. So in that sense, you know, that's, I think that's already a thing, but it's relatively easy, because the product itself is kind of in English, but it's not. We don't create it from scratch, if that makes sense. So I was just wondering how that is. So do you have any? I mean, you actually already shared this, but do you have any other tips for non-native English speakers who also want to be a writer in English? So you said, like, use the tools. Do you have any other tips?

You have to understand that this is a matter of confidence. Right when I started speaking Spanish 10 years ago, when I was backpacking in Latin America, I was very insecure. It's something that you build over time, but you're going to have to start it and you have to understand that people don't really care about your grammar and about your. They care less about the grammar and about your coherency. See, put it that way, they look for good ideas. That's the beauty of digital writing. It's not like being an analog writer, where you just smoke something and you stare out of the window and you get the news and you start writing all these crazy things like Hemingway. Now, digital writing is about getting good idea, writing this down, and it's published every day Small bites. It doesn't have to be long, it doesn't have to be perfect, it doesn't have to be even grammatically correct. By the way, it's very easy to check with grammar. You don't have to understand tense and punctuation and all that stuff. It comes with time. It just has a very good idea that people can relate to. And this thing of feeling insecure about writing in English is a form of perfectionism. I need it to be exactly like it is in my English language. I need it to be excellent, very good. It doesn't have to be perfect, it doesn't have to be good enough.

Yes, I like that very, very much. I think a lot of people also hold themselves back because they think what will other people say? What will my friends think if I start doing this in English? I skip this part completely because I started my business in English from the start. I think, especially when you write in Hebrew for four years and then you make that switch, did you experience that at all? Do you have any tips for people who have these thoughts?

You mean in the sense of how do they made a smooth transition to English?

Yeah, but mostly I think a lot of people worry about what other people will say when all of a sudden.

they publish in English it's a question that relates to the way you Hal Mark Meneston was talking about that Stop the lousy, not giving a fuck. You have to be in a state of mind and in a state where you just have to understand that people will criticize you no matter what you do. People will shoot some arrow toxic, toxic arrows on you sometimes and criticize you and be judgmental towards you sometimes, and it's fine. This is the way the online world works. If you want to gain something, if you want to build audience, you're going to have to expose yourself really expose yourself and be out there Not expose everything of your personal life but you're going to have to share your moments of ah, I failed, I failed miserable. I faced rejection. You're going to have to put yourself out there. That's something I turn out to teach and very few people can actually teach. You're going to have to make that decision in yourself that I'm going to face some rejection and failure and criticism. That's how it is. But the good news is that at some point you're going to feel much better about yourself. You're going to build this how do you call it with the email, emotional, the zillion?

Yes.

And you also have to understand that 90, 95% of people on their social media are not actively passive. They're just reading and scrolling down, maybe like sharing. But very few people, just the 5% percent, are actually active in creating content and sharing themselves. So the moment you decide to put yourself out there and share yourself, you are already the top 10% of social media. You're already put yourself in the arena. So when somebody sits on the fence and doesn't take any risk, criticize you, that's a little hypocritical, that's a little unfair. So remember you are the one who is in the arena, you're the one who is going to win this game. They're the one who sits aside, so they have less rights to criticize you. Remember that when you get some toxic comment or something, yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense.

What I'm also hearing you say is basically what's more important being criticized by people that you actually don't care about, or reaching your goals, but to travel and write and live the lifestyle that you want to live. What's more important, then? Well, it's way more rational, makes way more sense that reaching your goals is more important and taking the steps to get there makes a lot of sense if you look at it from a more rational standpoint. So, yeah, I think that's really good to keep in mind as well. Of course, travel is also a big part of your life, so I don't want to spend the whole interview talking only about work and freelancing. So I know that you have your travel style. You would describe it as slow madding, right? Can you tell us a little bit more about what that means exactly for you?

Okay. So when I was in Albania on that test last year, I started traveling faster a little bit. I would book three days here, four nights there. I was moving around between Albania, macedonia and Montenegro. Then every time I reached a new place I realized that it's really exhausting. I carry my backpack and my suitcase and everywhere I go I need to find a good place to work from co-working space, a cafe. I need to find a new gym, I need to find new running routes, I need to find new WhatsApp groups, I need to meet the local community. Then the moment I start getting into it, I have to leave. I'm putting a lot of effort on the logistics, but I don't get to enjoy it. This is what happens when I travel fast, when I stay in a place for a week. It's just not enough. Then I realized if I want to get things done and I want to actually build my business, if I want to build new habits, if I want to make deep connections, I'm going to have to stay in one place. How long I started with one month, I remember I was in Budva and I just started in Nakh. This is too fast for me. I took a bus to Tirana in Albania and I just stayed there for a booked apartment for one whole month, which was very long for me. At the time. In my mind, nobody was like back, back, you have to move around. But then I stayed for one month and what happened to me? There was just wonders. I went every day to the court in space. I got things done. I went to the gym. I felt much better about myself, about my body. I made new friends. I had the time to explore things on the weekend. I went back to creating this, recreating this balance between working, work life, leisure, relationships, friends. I regained this balance again. I realized that this is only possible when you stay in a place for over one month. So I just said, every place I went, I decided I'm going to book a place for one, two, three months. I'm going to stay there and I will travel only on the weekends. So basically, this is like a mealy relocation.

Yeah.

That strategy has worked very well everything.

Mm-hmm. Interesting Again. I hear this from so many different people and this is also what I experienced in Nomad Life that it is different from backpacking when I was backpacking, because I actually started my Nomad journey just backpacking, and then at one point I was like I need to make money so that I can keep going. And the thing is, when you're backpacking, that's your focus, right. You don't have all these other things going on in your life. Like you meet people, sure, but building long-lasting relationships, it's fine to not do that for a few months at least. For me, it was Building a business or career. It was not top of mind. For me, it was not the most important thing at all. I was just backpacking. And then, when you start a business or when you're serious about your career especially if you want to grow your business, grow your freelance roster, find new clients, go somewhere with your career, even if you have, maybe, especially if you have a remote job and you're looking at growing your career I think it is extremely important to also prioritize that. I think what you just said is so important the balance, right, the balance between all these different things that you have going on in life, and I think that's also is what makes life digital, nomad lifestyle sustainable.

That's what makes it possible to keep going, yeah yeah, absolutely, Because if you just move around very quickly, you just backpacking, you just traveling, and I realized very early on in life that traveling extensively in a high speed is just a strong point. It's not satisfying. I realized that 10 years ago, when I was backpacking in Latin America, I had to fast beautiful months in Patagonia, high-key partying, drinking, making new friends every single day for two months. And then I got to Bolivia and I just realized I need rest. I can't do this anymore. It's exhausting, it's mostly draining, and I just took 10 days off, just stayed in a friend's place and just, you know, step up the window. And it was good for me, it was meditative, this is exactly what I needed. So sometimes you want to do this to backpacking experiences, but not all year round, not all the time, not every time you do want to. For most of the time you do want to stay in one place and build yourself. Build yourself because everything is life is habits. What kind of habits do you implement? It could be morning routine, yoga, meditation, deep work, cooking, going to the gym. Everything is healthy habits. If you have a series of healthy habits in your life, then you must have a good operating system. And when you just move around then your operating system is like it's falling apart. So you have to slow down, yeah.

So why do you travel?

Oh, that's a big one.

That's a deep question.

I have this troubling bug ever since I was young, you know. I shed a sea of me and I went straight to Europe, backpacking by myself, and I went to Latin America. I just there's something about traveling that puts me in a state of permanent and content, joy and excitement, because I was about time. So you used to say that the greatest feeling in life is mystery, Right? So when you tell me you have this mystery constantly around you, right? And also it keeps my mind open, Right. If I stay in one place too long, then I get. I get inside a routine. I get into a routine that sometimes gets a little bit boring. You know, you do the same things over and over and over again. At some point it puts you in a state of automatic pilot. Yeah, the comfort zone you move to the comfort zone exactly the biggest trap in life. But when you've moved to a different place, you immediately put yourself out of the comfort zone and it's a state of mind that you know you move around and your center is open, your heart is open, your mind is open and you just. It just turns your energy levels up in a few stages.

Mm-hmm.

And also I felt a little strangled inside my home country, israel, because it's a very small country and you know I needed to take space.

Mm-hmm. Yeah well, I think you beautifully put good reason to travel. I ask that because I ask myself sometimes like why do I travel, and especially after doing this for a few years, you know, like why do I still want to go to new places? Because it can be exhausting, and all the things you mentioned are super true. But I think that you describe travel in a very beautiful way. So what is next for you? You're now in Bosnia Herzegovina. Do you have plans where to go from here or not yet?

So actually I'm fully booked until I don't do lie. I'm going to go to the Nomad cruise in Italy very soon. Sure, there's the Kare-Sir in Croatia, then the Nomad cruise. Just me and a bunch of others, 300 Nomads on a boat, mingling, networking together. First time I haven't been at a ship for a very, very long time. I can't remember if I ever slept in a ship Exciting, yeah, yeah. Well, I was supposed to be in a navy, in the army, but I chose a different role. So there you know, be a good contemplation. And after that I'm going to go to Albania in the Bansko Nomad test.

Cool, awesome. That sounds really good. So you're staying at least a little bit in the region, still in Europe. Do you have any plans or any ideas? I wouldn't call it plans. We have any idea of what you want to do after that, after July.

I think I like springtime weather and I know the Balkans are very hot in July, August, so I might just go to Poland or the Baltics and spend some time, you know, in a more climate-friendly place, in the Stavra I was thinking about. Kraków. A couple of people told me good things about the study so I might go to Kraków and then in September I'm going to go and visit Israel. I'm going to go to Israel again a few days and then I'm going to go to Portugal and take my Portuguese citizenship. Ah, okay very cool, my new passport.

Ah see, yeah, Very cool, awesome, well, great plans. You have a lot of plans actually already. You know most of the year well you'll be, so that's awesome. Lots of exciting stuff coming up. Where can people follow you if they want to see all the places where you're going, if they want to see how it is, where you'll end up after that, after Portugal?

Cool. So if you want to see photos, videos and stories from where I travel, check out my Instagram page, and if you want to read the content that I'm writing about remote work, the benefits of digital, digital nomads, lifestyle design, building habits, digital minimalism and all that stuff I publish mainly on LinkedIn, facebook and Twitter.

Okay, perfect. We'll make sure to add all those links to the show notes. So when you're listening you can go to the show notes, click all the links and then you know where to read and follow Sharon. What is your Instagram? Just so that I know for sure that we have it.

It's Sharon Zaks with KS. I'll send you the link.

Okay, sounds good, awesome, so we'll make sure to include that one as well. Well, thank you so much for being here today, Sharon. It was great hearing your digital Nomad story. Thank you for sharing and thank you for all the tips about moving into a freelance career, slow matting around the Balkans and Europe, and I'm super excited to hear more about the Nomad cruise after you've been there. Let's keep in touch.

Oh, yes, surely do. By the way, two more things. This is my first podcast episode ever.

I never had a podcast before. Yeah, very cool, I feel very honored.

Me too. And the second thing is that I managed the Israeli digital nomad community for two years the biggest Israeli digital nomad community with 42,000 members, and it's basically a bunch of Israelis who want to live all over the world and they share tips and advisors and destination reviews about where to go. So I just wanted to mention that as well.

OK, awesome, another link for the show notes. We'll make sure to add that as well. Cool Well, thank you so much and can't wait to share this episode with our audience.

Me too. Thank you very much.

And that's it for today. Thank you so much for listening. I appreciate it very, very much. I would appreciate it even more if you could leave a review on Apple Podcasts for me. That way, more people can find this podcast, more people can hear the inspiring stories that we're sharing, and the more people we can impact for the better. So, thank you so much if you are going to leave a review. I really appreciate you and I will see you in the next episode.