Embracing the Sun-Soaked Digital Nomad Life: Productivity and Community in Paradise

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 digitalnomadsdoriesco. Alright, let's go into today's episode. Hello, hello, nomads, welcome to a new episode of Digital Nomad Stories. Today, I'm here with Abdi Badal. He is a product manager and digital nomad, of course, and he's here today to share his digital nomad story with us. I'm very excited to learn more about his travel lifestyle and, of course, also where he is now. Abdi, welcome to the show.

Thank you well, thanks for having me on. Yeah, excited to have a nice little chat.

Yeah, me too. So where are you now?

Currently I'm actually in Dominican Republic. Awesome very cool. Yeah, dominican Republic. So I'm here for a month or so. We're spending Christmas and New Year's here with a few friends that are joining me as well. So, yeah, that's the plan for now. See what January brings.

Cool, so it will be a very tropical Christmas.

Yeah.

Love it.

It's been quite a few years since I've had a cold Christmas.

Ah nice.

And it's my husband. Tropical Christmas is for the last few years.

Yeah, do you avoid the more winter temperatures and winter in general?

I keep making this joke to Peter, but I just used to believe in winter anymore in my life. I just don't want to shed the season, but soon as they had to winter in Europe, I always seemed to fly off on extended periods and some more tropical. I'm trying to enjoy that and the sun.

Yeah, same year, though I don't like winter, so I also definitely around October, november at the latest. It's like okay, I got to get out of here, can't do that. Yeah, on a sense. So yeah, to give you context, I'm in Spain, the Canary Islands. Actually I'm in on Gran Canaria at the.

Moment.

So, yeah, yeah, I was here two years ago because I literally googled warmest place in Europe in winter and it's the Canary Islands. So here we are.

Nice. Is this the first time. Are you based there for the whole year or do you just go there on October time?

So this is my second time here. I was here two years ago for a few weeks and then now I came back for slightly longer. But, yeah, not necessarily based here, at least not yet but I really like it. I'm thinking about coming back again because the weather is just literally perfect it's not too hot, it's not too cold, it's sunny most days, there's lots to do and to see on the island, even though it's a small island. So, yeah, I really like it here.

Nice. Yeah, no, I'm up here. I think I'm going to be heading to Spain and setting up a bit of a base in Barcelona as well, make sure next year. So I can fully understand why you chose Spain. It's the kind of warmest place in Europe. I mean really good quality of living.

Yeah, and the culture?

You really can't go wrong. Yes, the culture is a lot of attention. You can't really go wrong with it.

Exactly yes. So what brought you to the Dominican Republic this time? Why the Dominican Republic?

So Dominican, specifically, was more a choice with my friends, where every year we have a tradition for seven, eight years almost now we fly to somewhere for New Year's, and me obviously always working in the sun and trying to escape the European winter. I left back in October, I think it was, and now I spent a while in Colombia and Costa Rica and then I'm just trying to spend a month here, and I have a thing where I stay, taste tend to stay in countries for a month or more in order to fully explore the country and travel slowly. That's a really big, big, big factor for me. I want to travel slowly because I want to make sure I'm still working. It's very, very easy to get slipped into holiday mode and just continues to try to explore country and we can not get any work done. So I just get here early and just really take my time and enjoy myself, and while still continuing you know work, etc. Yeah, exactly.

No, I totally hear you. It's very, very easy to just do all the things, except for work. So you work as a product manager, right? Can you tell me more like? What does that look like? Are you employed? Are you freelance? Do you have your own business? Yeah, what does that look like exactly?

I do see things. Yeah, so I'm currently employed through a consulting company. We work with different clients throughout the world, so working being in the Caribbean or sexy quite convenient, because my clients is now American we've got American time zones, a lot of them, so it makes it a lot easier for me. But, yeah, that's working out quite well. And yeah, for anyone who doesn't know, product management is helping, you know, ruin software. It's just really helping companies build products, software products. I'm looking at you know the many different layers to it, but it's really scaling up products, looking at how the customers, the end users, use the products and building, getting the requirements and actually launching and looking at the market and the promotion as well, and then working cross-club collaboration across the organization and to ensure that launches and, yeah, in close.

So making software products successful. Basically, why would you say that in one sentence? That's it, okay, yeah, very cool.

Yeah, so it's been doing that for a while, and then at the same time I'm also running a travel blog website as well. One into the mini started started around four months ago, so now I'm slowly starting to be a bit of traction. But I've been wanting to share my stories for a while now. So, yeah, it's getting onto the blogging now and sharing stories etc and anything else, so that's actually gained quite well as well.

Awesome, very cool. And do you work your product management job? Is that a full-time job or is it part-time, like what is the kind of time that you spend on product management versus on blogging?

It's full-time, the product management, especially within product management, there's some jobs which I'm probably better suited, I would say, for remote, because it requires they have more flexibility in meetings. So, working as a product manager, I own on this kind of spaces, va although you have to lock your thing remotely, there's a lot of meetings you have to attend, so I'm a bit restricted in terms of my meetings and I kind of work, try to work around that on my day-to-day work. I do that in my own time. Actually getting work done is kind of is very flexible and then I really just make time for my blogging when I have fun in my own kind of calendar or planner, missing activities I need to do each week and I make sure I schedule them, not blogging and maintaining on the extra job of things I need to do.

Okay, so do you usually just work product management probably then Monday to Friday, like regular business hours for you right now, because you're in the same time zone as clients and then do you work on the weekend at all or Monday to Friday more.

I said, the idea of Monday to Friday on 9 to 5 goes out the window. I think most of the channels would say that it should work when you feel productive and finding a little routine wherever you are. So sometimes example when I was in the weekends I would start maybe I become an early riser recently, so I would start maybe 5, 6, be on my laptop, work till 11, 10, 11, go out, have breakfast, lunch, maybe, do some exercise early in the morning and then I would kind of go back to my laptop or two and do some more work and then if I wanted to do an activity or an excursion in any day of the week, I would then make sure I had the morning off, do my activity and then go back to work in the afternoon. So it's really just you know, you know what you need to do, you know what you need to get done, and then just trying to plan in advance and then just do whatever works for me. Just again, why I like to stay in places for a long time because it just takes a few days just to find that little routine, find out the good cafes. Where can I work, where can I have quiet zones where I can actually do meetings, etc.

Yeah, absolutely so. Do you usually work from cafes, like you mentioned, or also a lot from your accommodation?

It depends on what work I'm doing. So if it's meetings, I usually either will do cafe and one of my testing, you know, key like always noise-tensoring headphones, really good noise-tensoring headphones, so you can work on cafes and you have a little bit of flexibility. Yeah, if it's one or two meetings, I'll be from a cafe. If I have a day back-to-back meeting for two or three, two or three hours, I will turn to either do it in the call-working space or just in my accommodation, and as soon as I'm kind of finished with that, I'll then close the laptop, go out for a little bit off the screen. So it depends on the work I'm doing. And if it's just no meetings, I'll probably go to like a beach location and somewhere nice where there's a breeze and I'm just sitting there and have a beer and do some work.

More relaxed. Yeah, that sounds like cool.

Yeah, I love more relaxed.

It's so funny that you're taking meetings from cafes, because I always avoid cafes from meetings. So we have exactly the opposite strategy there, which is so funny Outcome. Yeah, so I always feel, like many of the especially client meetings that I have we're going quite deep into, like there are strategies and stuff. I do podcast strategy so, and then I feel like everyone can hear me, you know, just blabbing on about podcast strategy. That makes sense. So I always feel like people are not listening to me, just like I don't know chatting with clients. So like sometimes I do shorter meetings or internal meetings in a cafe where I know that I will not be talking that much, but especially like one-on-one client meetings that are usually also 45 minutes, I always I don't know I always feel a little bit yeah.

It's interesting because I look at it from the perspective of if I have one hour or half an hour meeting and I kind of want to do some work before and after, I don't really like to work in my room or my house where I'm staying. Unless I have to, I like to get out.

I'm all okay okay, it's.

Yeah, it's not maybe the ideal place to have a meeting in a cafe, but it's just one half an hour meeting, I can bear it. Yeah, I never thought about it. I don't even listen to anything. I'm so focused. That's what I'm doing. I'm just. Yeah, that's good, though. Yeah.

No, that's good that you're so focused and I think, like you mentioned, noise-canceling headphones, they work really well for that, because you're literally in the zone and you won't hear all the cafe noises, which is done, definitely very good. I always tend to do more creative work at cafes. So if I have to write something, or if there's something just incredibly boring that I need to get done, then I go to a cafe and then I give myself like, okay, I'm going to sit here now for 30 minutes, I'm going to drink this coffee, I'm going to do this work and then I leave. So at a really short time, just literally one coffee at a cafe, so that I have that, you know, literally time block.

That's interesting. So you would you say you use that as a technique or when you need to get things done that might be tedious or just you know, time consuming change the CD-rate?

Yeah, exactly yeah.

I used to exactly ask the same motivation throughout my day, because the concentration and things like start off in the morning in one location and it could just be like the local cafe where I just work from, do some work, and then you could just be in my room, and then in the afternoon I'll always go somewhere else.

Yeah.

When it's a bit later, maybe back home because of the time difference is like okay, now I don't have me to just do my own thing and it goes a bit nicer, a bit more louder place. Interesting, interesting. Yeah, pretty cool.

Well, interesting that we also have so different work styles and different approaches to work. I'm also I'm a big fan of routine. So what you said that flexibility, I sometimes take that, but I very much like Monday to Friday, even though I don't have to. But I still like to stick to Monday to Friday because otherwise I tend to not take breaks at all. So you know I tend to keep going, so I always stick to that and also some work hours that work well for me, so I'm not too flexible, also in the hour that I work. So that's pretty interesting, I think you know, for when you're listening, this is a great example of you can really choose what works for you and it can be very different.

Yeah. Yeah, it's one of the noxious things. I'm being a. No matter. We have to freedom to choose what works for us without we see some restrictions. The key thing is we have the choice of working for what we want to do. You think that's the best way to work over the next long, definitely.

So has anything changed in the past few years of nomadding, like maybe in your work style or pace of travel? Probably, I think you know most people slow down after a while. But what has changed for you in the past few years?

What's changed to me in the past two years? I think the way I travel has where look at Savali has changed a lot Over the last couple of years. I've started to slow down more and more and more over, you know, over time, especially valuing I think I mentioned earlier the importance of staying in places for longer time periods.

Yeah.

Because it's getting into the routine and getting things done. And now I'm actually going to step further of having a base for the first time in four or five years and establishing myself somewhere so I can for a couple of years I'm still going to do my traveling well, limited to kind of one month, three months or the odd holiday here and there. But it's really important, yeah, I think, not getting caught up in the nomad experience of continuously traveling, working from a different location every week, because from my personal experience I felt it's getting my productivity in many ways and just keep finding kind of those new social groups, social entities, so more, it's just a bit longer and then just go away for the weekends or the week or three or three months and then come back and continue working.

Yeah, yeah, no, I definitely agree with you and I've. It's very interesting also to see across all these interviews that I'm doing with digital nomads I would say most people. I have never had anyone on the podcast who said oh yeah, I am traveling faster now than at the start. Now everyone is like I'm slowing down, it was too fast. It was too fast, I need to stay more in one place. So that's yeah, that's very funny to see, and same experience here, and I'm even slowing down to two or three months in one location now because I feel like one month is still quite short, because one month, yeah, yeah, when you work five days a week, then one month means that you have four weekends, which is not a lot, you know. Yeah, four weekends is something, yeah, yeah, it's, it's.

It's really isn't a lot. And yeah, when you break it down like that, like four weekends, oh, then you want to travel to the other places the side of the country, and then you've got to leave like on a Friday afternoon and come back maybe on a Sunday, and it's like I don't have a lot of time at all. Yeah, and it really isn't a lot of time. So I I'm fully ready and I think, first of all, I taste of it when I was in Bali and I was there for five weeks and I was like, oh, I much rather pick this, and it's also easy to build connections with people. You know, building an, building a network of people around you that you can kind of also socialize, because I think that's, that's another big thing for, you know, first of all, to myself and I think probably not a lot of other nomads, is the social side of having to continuously build and invest energy into meeting new people and creating new connections. It's amazing as it is, you know, if you're traveling to a new place every two weeks, it really drains your social batteries very quickly and makes you kind of more isolate yourself, which I can create, loneliness and things. And you know another thing Staying in non-veteran, building those connections and those really tight bonds and networking as well. So it has a lot of benefits If you are traveling and you don't have any time limits. That's really. I think everyone will come. Hopefully, most of you come to the same conclusion.

Yeah, absolutely. So. Where do you usually meet people that also connect with? Really well, where are the like-minded people for you?

It depends. So, like I really trying to seek out over the last year to start to seeking out a lot more people in digital nomad groups. So, for example, in Mideen, when I was in Columbia, they have a massive, massive, expand digital nomad community. There's like hundreds of WhatsApp. There's a WhatsApp for just AI, you know entrepreneurs, everything you want, and it's really good because they always do meet lots. And he went more from you know me kind of going out to meet your hostels. That's just kind of mutual style where you're like you know your backpacker, your traveler, you're like, oh, let me go to a hostel and meet people. I've switched a lot more my attention to looking at those WhatsApp groups and meetup groups and stuff like that so I can meet locals. It's, you know, it's amazing as it is to meet people in hostels. You usually get the I'm leaving tomorrow, I'm leaving in a few days, and you know they're gonna be so busy. So it's, you're just, you're not compatible in the sense of the way you're traveling on your lifestyle. So meeting locals is a lot more of a better experience. I'm loving it so much more over the last year. They are, you know, they're there, you guys can do things together. You have similar schedules, luckily, and similar budgets also, so you can afford to do a little bit nicer things as well. So it's yeah, it's kind of how I try to meet people now. It's really really trying to find communities online and there's so many of them, so many.

Yeah, yeah, I think meetups are a great strategy to meet people with similar interests, because everyone is there for the same reason, right? If it's AI, entrepreneurs and they're all, they all have that in common, so it's so easy to connect because you have that topic in common. Yeah, so yeah, definitely. And do you also pick places specifically for the community, for example Medellin? I mean, it's very famous now also as a visual normal hotspot. Was that one of the reasons why you wanted to go.

No, I went Medellin a few years ago and I just absolutely can love it. But and I still, you know, I absolutely love it and, yeah, I was looking to move there as well. So, like I love Medellin, and then the digital normal community was a massive bonus, one of the you know, one of the two kind of selling points for me. Oh, absolutely, I really see myself staying here. So I would highly recommend going to Medellin. But I think before I go to a location, I look it up if it is a digital, not if I'm going on my own, if it is got a digital normal community, where the digital normal communities are. For example, when I was coming here to San Juan, dominican, I had the first two weeks and I kind of looked up where is the digital normal communities. And sometimes you may not find it's easiest in Medellin, where you just find what's at rooms at Y, x, y, z and everything is right there in front of you. It's a little bit more difficult, but you know you put the FA in, you'll definitely look on the expats, but yeah, you just go. Before you go, look at the areas and then trying to stay in some of those areas so you can be closer to them.

Yeah, doing some research.

Yeah, definitely a little bit of research of where it was specifically aimed at, where digital nomads are, rather than saying where to stay in general, where for digital nomads communities or expat communities.

Yeah, can you take us back to when you decided you know what I want to travel, I want to be a digital nomad, let's go. When was it exactly, and can you kind of walk us through that situation, like what was going on?

I think it was a combination of a couple of things. I started my first holiday and I went traveling and I, you know, I said everyone else you have to travel by and I love this. I went on a trip three year old and my friend. And then a second trip, I went on a solo trip. I went to Malaysia and I, you know, I was just loving it so much and I was just meeting so many people that was like, oh, you know, we're traveling with an unknown end date and I was like I would love to do that. I'm only here 10 years, 10 years, 10 years. I would love to be here for 3 months or 2 years, or at least not have an end date. And then I started working towards that you know kind of it, relaxed in the you know big kind of show no really passion. And then was during lockdown, I think, when my mind said just completely switched and I think that probably a lot of people the same I was in a room and I was working on my room. We didn't have an other shared house or we didn't have a living room in, and so you're working from living, working from your room or sleeping in your room and chilling in your room and it's literally, you know, like one must be interesting, like, yeah, it's just insanity. So I was like no, this can't be. Yeah. And then I see other people just chilling on a beach and I was like I have to find a way to see how I can do that. So I really, you know, went for it and I, yeah, was very specific in the jobs I was picking because I knew what I wanted. So I was willing to sacrifice salary and other things to have this lifestyle because I appreciated this more. And you know, once you get into it and you start meeting people and you start building up your career, you can definitely get those perks back. But you just really have to look out what you actually want location, freedom, or you prefer, you know, higher pay salary yeah you know another product. So that's, that's kind of what it came down to me, and after after a while you will get both, but at some point you have to probably sacrifice one of them in your future to get started.

I absolutely agree with you, and that's not something that I knew when I started Nomadding. It was also a few years before the big Nomad Wave, you know. So I think now there's probably also a lot more content and a lot of more people sharing about this, but I initially thought a remote career, this is not gonna be possible for me, you know. So I just I have to choose. It's either a career or travel and digital Nomadding, and I agree with you, it's both absolutely possible. But there are steps that you need to take to get there, and it's for many people difficult to take that huge leap from not being location-independent at all to then having a high-paying remote career. Like usually, there are some steps in between that many people don't talk about, to be honest.

It's still and it's not easy to get to that level. It's not easy. There's a lot of creep you have to jump through and those jumps are really wanted by a lot of people. Yeah, the hard to come is you really have to work hard on yourself and standing out. But I think what you mentioned earlier there is really important to as a starting from the mental thing is understanding you don't have to choose between travel and a career. You can truly have both. And once you understand that and you accept that and you really work hard towards you know that's a good starting point for people to start come to terms with.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So what did you do before you started traveling? Were you also in product management or anything related to it?

Yeah, I was in consultancy. It was the same thing I'm doing now, but it was just for a company-based and it was a company, and it was a company that I really liked and I'm certainly absolutely an amazing company I worked for. It was just they could not help me to remote and you know, and winter was coming and I guess I was based in Amsterdam then and it was a little bit like you, based in the city, and I was like I like the city, but Covid started coming back again. I think during that time three years ago, most of the Covid started coming back and it was like lockdown and things like that. And I told myself, I promise myself I would never be in a cold country again doing lockdown. And it was just coming towards November. I was like, okay, this is it. No.

Yeah.

And, yeah, I just really looked for new jobs and I was really lucky to find the current role I'm in While I was still also pursuing my other things, other sources of income, and I think that's really important as well. I thought they did so. Normally I was diversifying these sources of income and because, yeah, you don't want to be abroad, you just have a not-so-job, et cetera, and that's the thing to be. But yeah, that's when I started to change roles and I was lucky to have this job, and I think my first travel being a digital nomad was to Colombia. I mean, yeah, I was on three, actually two, two, maybe a year and I was in the sun and then kind of just kept going since then.

Very cool. Would you want to share a little bit more about how you made that transition, Because I definitely hear you on. You know, having a few different income streams as a digital nomad is important. You want to make sure that you have the finances to also sustain yourself and to keep going. You don't want to be somewhere who knows where and then run out of money. That would be unfortunate. Can you share a little bit more about kind of the income sources that you had and kind of how you transitioned that?

Yeah, I think if in general, maybe it's not as much as you do with digital nomadting, because in general there's some things called having multiple sources of income, the. You know we never guaranteed our jobs. At the end of the day, we cannot be let go. It's important as we may think we are, and many people have in the company to go under you can do such a big client and stuff has to happen. So, yeah, I think I've always had the mindset of the importance of having multiple different sources of income, passive incomes here with the SenseYL. So, you know, I run my travel blog site. I also have my own personal professional site as well and I do a bit of content creation as well. So it's trying to stay busy with as many different things as possible while also doing my career, which I looked, you know, luckily for someone like me, I actually really enjoy my career. I wouldn't want to give it up. I actually enjoy what I do. So here's the transition. My transition was, yeah, when I just wanted to start traveling, it was like, okay, it's the two things are going to happen. I'm going to start on a path of, I'm going to learn how to. I'm going to earn these kinds of incomes because I want to do these and I want to travel and I have you know X amount of time before I can become I can have enough money I can sustain myself and keep going. Otherwise, the plan B is to find a job and plan B seems to come first. So, found a job, I'll fully remote and then I kind of also continue the passive income. So you know, now you have both and then you've kind of trying to push both alone at the same time.

Yeah, awesome, that's really cool to hear that worked out for you that way. Do you have any tips for people who are applying for their first remote job coming from a more corporate background?

Don't budge into remote part. That's what we got. First advice. I've seen another people that's like, oh, no, like they want me to come into the office once a month and stuff like that. No, it's like you need to make sure that's almost in the contract, like there is no it's. I've seen it. They changed their mind next week, whether like from January or you will have to come in once a week. So I think, first things first, really truly ensure that the companies of remote first-led culture and they appreciate what people are from the time zones. And then I would say, more importantly and I you know this is the end of people that you know younger, you know mental and I coach I always say really welcome building up your online profiles. So these remote jobs are very difficult. You might get lucky, but don't count them luck. You really have to build up yourself online. You know, create a creative block, start up like those regularly. And they didn't engage in meeting with other people. You have an online presence on. People do search you up Like, yeah, they can find some examples of work, etc. A graphic designer's coders is much easier because you obviously have GitHub and your graphic work. You have all your visual examples of someone in my product managers or maybe digital marketing and stuff like that. It's another bit more difficult to actually show the works. It's really important. Yeah, from the early days you get into the culture, you get into the habit. Rather, I'd start posting online and showcasing what you've done previously.

Yeah.

You see things like online press and you stand out more, teaching a lot more by fighting chants.

Absolutely. I mean, I've also now been a few times on the other end, where I've been hiring remotely, and it's wild to see what people send in as resumes or just their whole application. Like some people are amazing. But then there's also a lot of people who don't spend the time at all on like that. You get a resume and they're like, wow, this is so bad. Like, how can you send this? You know that's also. But then the next step is so like, my first point is just like making sure that all your stuff looks nice and it's easy to reach for the people who actually receive it. It's so important as a first step. But then I think that your online presence it adds so much from for the person hiring because they can really see okay, well, I have the resume. They have recorded a one minute loom video introducing themselves. Okay, that's cool. But then what? Right, like, you're just providing so much more information and especially in a remote hiring setting, that extra information is so valuable. So and I've also I also always do just like a quick hack also, like I always have some questions in the hiring form that are optional, so you can record a video. You can also choose not to record a video but I have never hired anyone who does not record an extra video, like those optional things. They're like optional but it's to see if they're next for a mile.

You know I actually thought about those. Yeah, I remember one of the applications is like oh, I think it's interesting because I look at it from the applicants perspective, right, I feel. Then 10 different companies, the additional questions just like I can't, I've just done the compulsory one for 10 different companies. I think they all will look like it's actually interesting the way you put that. I'm going to give that a pull next time. I actually final five rolls and look the roll.

Yeah.

Yeah, it is, it is. It is literally going that extra mile. And yeah, well, you know what I usually like to say is, with my CV, I'm telling you what I can do. But you know, with my online presence, I'm showing you what I can do. Yeah, you can see for yourself exactly what I can do and I don't have to tell you, I can just show you that that is powerful. You need to tell.

Yeah, absolutely A hundred percent. Yeah, it's so true, and I think it's a great advice for anyone. Well, actually for anyone like if you're looking for a job, if you're starting a business, it doesn't even matter, I think, just anyone who is career oriented you just need an online presence. I absolutely think so.

That's a really, really good book I highly recommend for anyone. Is called Show your Work by Austin Cleon, and he really just goes in and he talks about the importance of this, like this exact topic of showing work online and just Not showing work and showcasing work in general, and he goes as far as to say, you know, just post anything. Don't think you need to post one thing, need to be an expert to post or something, because even if some earner there's someone who knows less than you and they you know, they keep the lens from from you best. So in other ways an Expert has a much more hard problems, much more trouble teaching a you know Some cases because they are next, but then it comes so much easier for them, while someone who's a learner, someone who's that you know, just kind of a entry level, probably easier teaching someone who's a little bit more than because they just learning and they just know it's fresh in their mind. So if you start to look at whether you're posting is valuable for someone out there and help someone out, or and it doesn't have to be structured If you just get it on there you can structure it and later they just Just start somewhere.

Yeah, don't overthink it.

It's a bit over thinking and then not a bit son.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think you have a great point. I mean also just looking at online business. You know there are so many people with online business tips and you know experts and this and that, but I've been in online but I started my online business almost five years ago. So I can, you know, I know things, I know what worked for me, I know what did it work for me, but when I started my business it was five years ago Like that's quite a long time in internet years so I what I did probably doesn't work anymore now, you know. So I think actually the advice of someone doing it one year ago it's probably way more valuable, because I also I forgot all, most of the issues that I had or challenges that I had to overcome. Probably.

Yeah, and how did you do you start your business with the attention of becoming remote or where you already remote, and then you know Let me start a business. What's first? The year.

So for me it was I started traveling and I didn't want to go home, so I started traveling for a year and that's years ago, so still going strong. So it was basically how can I make money Online so I can just take the job with me? And I looked into some remote companies and and things. But yeah, like I said, it was a few years ago, there were less remote positions available and I didn't really have a ton of experience. Luckily, to start an online business, no one asks you about your experience. You just figure it out, you make it work. So that's that's what I did, and it was very stressful. It's not necessarily what I would recommend, but yeah, it worked out in the end.

But you don't think. That is why maybe some cases work that because you didn't have safety now comfort zone, and you just you had to, you had to make it work. That's sometimes what I also tell you this life if you really really want it and you have the luxury you know luxury is one word but if you have, you know the savings or whatever and you can go, okay, I can just tell myself into the six months and I have to get it to worth it and then Motivate you a little bit more to push yourself.

I think you definitely need some sort of urgency, but I also do think that I had a little bit too much urgency where I couldn't Really make objective decisions anymore because I was in fire flight mode instead of Okay, how can we make this a good long-term decision? So I think there needs to be a balance. I think some urgency is good, but too much panic is also not good. That's how. I see it, yeah, I mean panic is the word. Yeah, panic mode is not where you that that's not the more you want to enter when you're building a business. I think no, yeah.

Yeah, I can definitely understand. Yeah, I've seen desperation mode. Yeah, when you start making this, when you start making the wrong decisions because, yeah, you're desperate Exactly when you get the wrong clients- because again, it's for the whole desperation. It's a change. How did you stop yourself? How did you? How did I switch for you? I don't know. Stop me, for in plan of All right, we miss acknowledged those signs. Oh, I might be making the wrong decisions. I was just a. You'd made them and then learn.

To me I would say made them and learn from it and at some point I just gained more and more experience so I could get better. Clients Tried out a bunch of stuff, some stuff that it works, some things did, and I kind of figured it out that way. It was a long and painful process but, like I said, I mean, eventually it worked and some some things work better than others and for some reasons it was, I think, just time. I just needed time to figure, figure out what would work. So I just I think the the main thing for me was time and just to keep going, not giving up. I think that was that's literally it. Yeah, yeah, and not really the sexy answers were like oh, I'm so smart, you know I can figure anything out, but I like no, it's just, it's just the cute going, that's that's right. Yeah.

I think I don't think any successful entrepreneur, anyone who started their own business, will say that I said. I've never met someone who says that I said no, we have to figure out as we run along and that's the truth. You know, you can't, you can't possibly know everything. And then you get to the next stage of your business, where you, like, can now need to hire people who are really expert to the. I need to now start delegating, because I can't be an expert and everything. I need to focus on what I'm good at and then and to different stages of building the organization.

Exactly, and I think the same goes with digital nomad life. You mentioned that you you travel a lot faster when you started and then at some point you're like, oh my God, I need to slow down, like I need a month in a place at least, and then now you're entering the next chapter of settling down in Spain and getting a home base and traveling from there, which is also a next evolution, if you will, and I think you know the same goes with online business. I think digital nomad life, online business, has a lot of overlap, because the thing is, you have all this freedom and then the question is what do you actually want like? What do you actually want to work on? Where do you actually want to live? What do you want your life to look like? So that's the fun challenge that we have with digital nomads, I think.

Yeah, it's. I think as you get up in the ages that comes into a lot of it as well as the next phase of you want a family. What do you want to make? The actual mistake is, as amazing as it is, being a digital nomad. It does have a. Yeah, that's it's you get. You can't really do it with kitchen family. Haven't made anyone that do it yet. Are we really interested to see how that works out? And by some point you're going to have to settle a little bit more and traveling and slower. Just come for the minute.

I've had a few people on a podcast who travel with their families, so it is possible, but there are pros and cons for everything, of course, and the same thing goes for digital nomad life, and nomadding with the family will probably be more complicated than nomadding alone or with a partner.

I'm going to have a look at those. I'm going to have a look at those. I'm going to listen to those, because I'll be reading to you to see how they managed to pull up. Yeah he just in my head. It just seems like it sounds like a lot of not of yet not complex.

There is definitely planning involved, as you know what, what they've told me, but it's apparently possible because they're doing it. So is that also a reason why you're settling down in Spain a little bit more?

Not as much as necessary to settle down to have a family right now. I think it's career wise. So I have a lot of career aspects and kind of getting into the kind of the early 30s is where I have a lot of experience and I can really really push now. So that's one of the reasons why I'm kind of slowing down a little bit, to the extent I'm looking to stay there Six months, seven months of the year and then go traveling to the rest, to a couple of countries. But yeah, it's mainly driven by career choices and having a having a base for the next year, next phase of my life and until next years, and then I'll see you and I'll see my mom on that.

Yeah, that's super exciting. That's a new chapter of nomadding.

Yes, precisely yeah. It's really coming along and you know I'm really looking forward to. I was there four months for the summer, so I'm already kind of knowing what you expect and everything else. So yeah, yeah it's walking into some media. Media circumstances Should be a lot of fun.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I totally understand your choice. Spain is amazing. Out of Spain. I keep going back here as well. I was already shared. Yeah, cannot get it, cannot stay away. So can you share where people can follow the journey and where they can find you?

Yeah, so I post regularly on my Instagram, so I'm sure I'll be linked to it somewhere and I know so on my travel blog. You can follow my travel blog, my channel, my stories and just just in general, just tips on traveling and being a nomad, and then where to, where you know, where I find it needs to work from and how to feel community across different places I go, and so I do give them a little few tips and hints on how to do that as well. So really just follow the number.

Cool, awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here today and sharing your story with us. It was really fun to chat with you, and also thank you for asking me those questions. That's, that's also fun. I feel like we have some things in common and some things we are totally different with our working styles, which is also super fun to see. So, yeah, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate. You had a great time.

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.