Transcript
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Hey nomads.
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Welcome to Digital Nomad Stories, the podcast.
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My name is Anne Klaassen and, together with my co-host, kendra Hasse, we interview digital nomads.
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Why?
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Because we want to share stories of how they did it.
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We talk about remote work, online business, location independency, freelancing, travel and, of course, the digital nomad lifestyle.
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Freelancing travel and, of course, the digital nomad lifestyle.
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Do you want to know more about us and access all previous episodes?
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Visit digitalnomadstoriesco.
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Alright, let's go into today's episode.
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Hey, hey, nomads.
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Welcome to a new episode.
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Today I'm here with Michonne Thomas.
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She is a freelance expert, entrepreneur, digital nomad, currently in Bali.
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I'm in Valencia, so we have a huge time difference, and I'm still always so excited to be, you know, on video with someone and on the other end of the world, I think it's you know, don't take it for granted, it's so cool.
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So, michonne, welcome to the show.
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I'm super excited to have you here today.
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Thank you.
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I am very, very excited to be here.
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I know the time zone contributed to us having some scheduling back and forth, but I'm here, made it.
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Yes, made it, yeah, and I'm so excited that we now get to share your story with our listeners.
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So, zakeka, can you tell us a little bit more about what you do, because I know that you have a bunch of different projects that you work on right?
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You're truly a multi-passionate, I think, looking at what you do.
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So can you share a little bit more about what work and life looks like for you at the moment?
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Yes, definitely.
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Multi-passion is a really nice way of putting it.
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I haven't heard that one before, but I'm going to start to use it.
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But yes, my two main passions at the moment are my client work that I do.
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I run a business called Kitchen Table Founders and I've been doing this for the last six years, ever since I transitioned into freelancing and sort of accidentally stumbled my way into working with entrepreneurs Basically people who had started a business from home and as it started to grow they realized they need more people, they need help.
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Everything seems to be on fire all the time.
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They're doing all the jobs in their business.
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They just they need help.
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And there's a book called Rocket Fuel by Gina Wickman and Mark C Winters that talks about entrepreneurs in the sense of a visionary usually the person who founds the company, and they need their person number two, their integrator, and just kind of accidentally found myself falling into that with working with a couple of entrepreneurs and they would say you know, I'm just so sick of putting out fires, I'm exhausted all the time, I just need someone who could help.
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And I jumped in and helped and found that I really have a passion for that, that early stage startup, absolute chaos, and so that was how I found long-term ongoing clients and just really settled into freelancing.
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But the other passion of mine is liveworktravelcom, which I also run, and that is aimed at freelancers, because I used to be a middle school teacher and I found my way into freelancing at age 34, I think I was at the time and so I just have this incredible desire to share with others that this lifestyle is not impossible, that it's never too late, that freelancing can give you freedom, great income, the ability to, can give you, you know, freedom, great income, the ability to travel the world.
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I know there were some people who thought I was crazy when I walked away from my career at 30 and then took a couple of years to find my way finally into freelancing, but it has paid off in spades, and so I find myself really blessed to be able to work in that middle ground between, like, supporting my clients, the entrepreneurs, and then also supporting other people who want to do what I do, and really showing them how to freelance, how to find clients, how to if they want to, you know, up and move abroad like I do.
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Yeah, exactly, that's awesome and yeah, I absolutely hear you.
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I think for the first two years of my nomad life, my dad kept asking when will you come home and find a quote, unquote real job.
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Yes, yes, Love the term real job, various people, because, as I'm sure you found, as you go about and you meet people, you start to find these.
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You know we all have these different stories, but yet these similarities of just getting to those moments where you're just like I don't know, I don't want this life anymore, I want to try something different.
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And it doesn't usually like you don't have any a lot of other people in your life that share that, so you look like this crazy outlier, I think, for a while, until you make it.
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And for me I had.
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I was a middle school teacher for seven years and then it was 30 that I hit and kind of had that Groundhog Day moment of.
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Am I just going to do this forever until I come 60, 65, and then I'll retire and travel the world?
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Like, wait a minute.
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I had studied abroad in Spain when I was in college and I had all these travel dreams that I'd sort of just put on hold to.
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You know, do what you're supposed to do like settle down, get a relationship.
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I had a house and a partner at the time, a career, all those things, and so to walk away from that was really wild.
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In hindsight, I still can't believe.
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I did it sometimes, but I understood the people around me looking going what are you doing?
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You know you're like you're leaving, everything is fine, but you're searching for something ridiculous.
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I don't understand this, you know, but it's just the more people I've talked to that have been through that as well.
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We're not crazy.
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There's something in us that makes us want to go after an alternative lifestyle.
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And yeah, I hear you on the.
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You know the people who are wondering about the real jobs, the people who so what is it that you actually do again?
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And also the people who they kind of associate it with a gap year and like backpacking and like a temporary thing.
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And I'm like no, I I run several businesses.
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I've been doing this for a long time now.
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I make a lot more than I made when I was teaching.
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This is not a temporary thing.
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This is my new life?
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Yeah, exactly, Absolutely.
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And I think you have a great point with what you said.
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You know, back home you had the house, the job, the partner and it was fine.
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And I love it when people say that it was fine, because the question that then comes up is like is that enough, right?
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like it's fine enough.
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I think for everyone who comes here on the podcast, fine is not enough, because we want more and by sharing these stories, by sharing our stories, hopefully we can also then share that.
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You know there is a different option, like fine doesn't have to be enough, because this is real right, this lifestyle, like you said, it's not just a gap year.
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You don't have to quote, unquote, go home yeah, for sure you can.
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You can keep going.
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You can keep doing this because it can be sustainable if you, if you make sure to put in the effort to make it sustainable and grow a business or, you know, freelance, find clients, but you can make it sustainable for yourself.
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How did you go about finding your first freelance clients when you figured out, okay, freelancing is going to be it for me, how was that first stage of making that happen?
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It?
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It was awful.
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It was terrible.
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And again, that's one of the reasons I started my community now, because I have.
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I want people to have support as they go through this.
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I want them to realize that it's not just like oh, piece of cake and then like everything falls into place, like there are some rough moments.
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I went back and looked later and it took me 35 days from the day I got laid off till the day I got my first client.
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Because I had bounced around in those years since leaving teaching trying to find remote work and I finally found a remote company, thought that was the dream.
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I'm like cool, I'm on somebody's payroll and I get to work remotely.
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And then I got laid off from that job.
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So it was like, oh wow, this is a real kick in the pants to do my own thing.
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And after that layoff, I mean it was brutal.
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You have the shock of a layoff.
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You have the just panic and anxiety and the gut-wrenching oh my god, what am I going to do now?
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I panicked almost every day with like, do I just go get a job or do I keep trying to do this?
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Do I go get a job?
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You know a lot of that back and forth.
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But so there's two things that I did.
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The first one I went on Upwork, the freelance platform that many, many more people have heard of now than back in 2017.
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And I started looking for clients and pitching clients and I did not have a lot of success at first, which is not the answer that anyone wants to hear, but there's so many people on the platform I checked the other day and it's like something like 18 million Like you've got to be good with your pitches, and so I organized a system where I would just pitch and then refine and each time try to be tweaking it, trying to customize it.
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And now that I'm a client myself and I hire tons of freelancers, I see all this generic stuff that people just throw out, you know, hoping, and it just doesn't work.
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So over time I got really good at customizing my pitches, really speaking to the person on the other end of that as a person, not just this generic copy and paste thing that a lot of people do.
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But still it was daunting and I felt like I was very much back in the job hunting world, where you go to a job board and you submit your resume and just hope for the best, and I decided, wait a minute, let me go find business owners where they are and just like, show up and be like I can help you.
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So forums, social media, anywhere that I could identify that business owners were hanging out like business owners have groups and memberships and they get together and they hang out in places.
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So I would join things like that and find people that needed my services and really all it took was that click to go directly to clients who need you.
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Show them how you're going to be able to help them.
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In my case, it's magic, right, it's like I'm your right-hand person.
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You can throw anything at me and I'll figure out how to get it done.
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Like who doesn't want someone like that?
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Right, it's a pretty easy, easy pitch.
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So it took that me figuring out to go directly to them.
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I think I sent nine pitches at first and I got six replies and I was like whoa, something is happening here.
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I think I just found this little, this little magic, this little magic spot where you know I can really really just go with this.
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And that's the thing that I really try and work on with my students right now.
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I try to give them the confidence because I remember those early days, like the biggest hurdle that I had to climb was myself.
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I knew that I could figure anything out.
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I knew that I was tough and brave and that I kept going and I'd walked away from you know my whole life and I was gonna make something happen, but it was.
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It was just that the imposter syndrome it's.
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That's the thing, and so I want people to feel supported as they go through this.
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Yeah, yeah, exactly.
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Well, thank you for sharing that.
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It was tough Because you know, we always hear the success stories and we hear where you are now and you know that business is going well and you're in Bali and life looks great.
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But it is also tough and I think it's always so interesting.
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You know, it took you 35 days to find your first client and 35 days when you're in it it feels like eternity, right, like it feels like the longest 35 days.
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When you're in it it feels like eternity, right, like it feels like the longest 35 days of your life.
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But then now, looking back, you know, years later, 35 days not that much time, right?
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actually it's not that much time, and that's why I was glad I went back and checked it because, yeah, you're right, while I was in it felt like hell and it felt like years.
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It was absolutely so miserable.
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But is it and this is the kind of thing that you know, like you said, when people go after a life that's more than just fine, it's like is it worth it to put in the misery for those that month or two months in order to reap what's on the other side?
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And it's so funny the way we look at it too.
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Like technically it wasn't that bad and I you know air quotes no one was like beating me, no one was harassing me.
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No, like it was just me versus my brain, every single day sitting down at a computer trying to win against my brain.
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It wasn't like I was fighting a war or some people have so many physical and real threats in their life.
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This was just the misery of the unknown and it was really hard to get comfortable with the uncomfortable.
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And that's the thing, too, that I want your audience to know and, as so many people know, and this is why I'm passionate about you know what we do and sharing stories.
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For me at least, it's still not gone away.
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It's still not gone away.
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Like there's still imposter syndrome.
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The reason I'm in Bali is one of my operations manager for Live Work Travel.
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Actually, she lives in Jakarta, so she flew over.
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Last week we had our first company retreat and it was so nice to meet face to face and she is 24.
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And she's been working with me for almost a year now and we just haven't seen these conversations and I'm like I'm scared, I'm nervous about like some of these new things that we're doing in our business.
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And she's looking at me like what are you talking about?
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If I were you, I wouldn't be scared, like if I were you and I'd done all the things.
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And I'm like it doesn't go away though.
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Like change is uncomfortable, new things are uncomfortable and for me, if I'm sitting down next to someone having a conversation talking about their business and what I can do for them, I feel like a million bucks.
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I'm just in my zone, but still getting ready to pitch someone new, even though I know I'm good at what I do.
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Oh, it's terrible.
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So I think that that is good for people to hear too.
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You know I've had it up to here with you know, perfection on Instagram and stuff and socials and stuff.
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They can be a wonderful tool for sharing.
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But like we've got to talk about and show the messy parts too and be able to admit like I can be really damn good at what I do and also scared on the inside at the same time, you know.
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Yeah, yeah, exactly it's what you said getting uncomfortable and being okay with being uncomfortable, because it is only for a little while.
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And then I mean, yes, it comes and goes.
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I absolutely have the same still years into my business.
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It is freaking uncomfortable sometimes.
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I think what really helped me was just telling myself like I will make this work.
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You know, I don't know when and exactly how, but I'll make it work one way or another.
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And I think that was also what made for me, at least that first stage.
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You know, finding that first client so uncomfortable because I didn't know if it was going to work, you know.
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So sometimes I was like, oh, I'll find someone, I'll find one person who wants to pay me for what I do, right, and then, or maybe I won't, you know.
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So I think that's it, yeah, yeah.
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I'm guessing, though, deep, deep down, looking back, you still kind of knew you were going to make it, maybe Because I had the same thing I remember being.
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When I look back, I'm like why was I so stressed out and anxious?
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Like I had already said to myself, I was going to do this and it was a thing that didn't go away for years, like in sense of like finding a way to work remotely and travel the world.
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So it is funny, like we set our mind to do something and then we doubt ourselves all along the way back and forth, in this little up and down, up and down, up and down.
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But yeah, it's so difficult yet simple.
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I think it's something we all struggle with, that up and down part.
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Yet that is a part of life, of everything.
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Like I know when I'm getting ready to do something big, because it's scary.
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I know when I'm getting ready to, you know, make some kind of leap to the next level, because it's scary, and I find myself always wishing for oh my gosh, why can't it just be easy?
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But like I don't know, it's just that, that's that's the little hurdle that we have to get over to to get to growth.
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It's simple but not easy.
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Right, right, there's this book called Mastery that I read and reread every now and then.
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I think it's by George, someone I can't remember the last name, I'm really bad at that with books and stuff but he talks about just like, the journey to master something and how long it takes, and every time I can feel myself getting impatient about kind of anything in life.
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I sit down and I read that again Because it's just really focusing on the steps and the journey and just getting you Like we all just walk in and it's like we take one lesson at something, like I want to be good at this and it's just like.
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No, it takes years, you know, you think of athletes and all of the days that you don't see in the gym, the training, the food that they eat, everything they put into that.
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And I kind, when I talk to my students, want them to apply that to trying to go out and find freelance clients, because it doesn't happen on day one, typically, unless you know somebody, you've got a great hookup, but like or day two or day three, like it sucks.
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But I can't help people unless they have that mentality that you mentioned, that you had and the one that I had at the beginning too, like I don't know how, but I'm going to figure this out, just just that is that is all I know and that's all I need to know.
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And all these years later, it's led me to where I am now and the reason that I I really want to talk to people, want to share, want to want people, this is because, for me at least, it goes against everything I was taught growing up.
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And you know, I grew up in Columbus, ohio.
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Very just, you know, you got to work hard, you got to get a good job, you got to get a college degree, you know, and then you just settle down and you work and my you know my parents' generation.
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You didn't jump around jobs like we do now.
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You kind of go to a company, you stay there for years and that's never appealed to me.
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Like you said, I'm a multi-passionate person and so that was supposed to be the path to stability, to a good retirement, to all the things, and it was walking away, you know, hard left from everything that was told to me that led me to a life that I enjoy, work that I enjoy, working with amazing people that I enjoy and really good money, like I know that different cultures have different views when we're talking about money.
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I'm from the States where we talk about money, but people tend to associate freelancing with instability and a lack of money and clients and all those things.
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And in my first year I almost earned it was just under six figures which blew my mind as a teacher for seven years and growing up in an environment where I thought you had to be a doctor or a lawyer or you know some kind of really fancy job, and so that blew my mind and I wanted to shout it from the rooftops.
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And I still just want to share with people like, even if that is not their goal, if they would be happy with a third of that, like on the side or something or half of that, or just want to freelance a little bit here and there and an extra two grand a month one grand a month would help them out.
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I feel like people need to know about this because unfortunately there's still so much in that old school you know you can have fun when you're 65 and retire kind of attitude that I think is so sad, because none of us are guaranteed to make it right 100%.
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I mean it would be such a shame that you wait until retirement to travel and then maybe you can't you know physically travel anymore.
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You know, you don't know what's going to happen.
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So while you were looking for clients, were you already traveling while you had that remote job and then got laid off, or were you still kind of at home and trying to figure that out first before you started traveling?
00:20:20.443 --> 00:20:21.711
Can you share a little bit more about that?
00:20:21.932 --> 00:20:27.090
Yes, I was at home and I think for a lot of people worse than at home, I was at my parents' home.
00:20:27.612 --> 00:20:31.945
Life, you know, again sharing these stories, it doesn't always look like we thought it was going to.
00:20:31.945 --> 00:20:42.748
I ended up back at my parents at what like 33 for almost a year and I had kind of moved there and chucked a bunch of my stuff.
00:20:42.748 --> 00:20:49.076
And then I was out traveling while I had that remote job, but just domestically in the US at that time, so taking a lot of US trips.
00:20:49.076 --> 00:20:54.909
And as soon as that layoff hit I came back home and was like OK, I've got to get serious.
00:20:54.909 --> 00:21:06.276
So I was at my parents' house and I was so broke I was broker than broke Between credit card, student loans and my car payment being like upside down because I owed more on it.
00:21:06.276 --> 00:21:08.359
I was like $30,000 in debt.
00:21:08.359 --> 00:21:11.553
So I was just like this is really bad.
00:21:11.553 --> 00:21:12.435
This is really bad.
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So thankfully I was.
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You know my parents have a spare bedroom.
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I would like work all day and then like make them dinner when they came home and work all day, make them dinner and be so freaked out of like I can't believe this is my life, like this is not how 33 was supposed to look.
00:21:28.073 --> 00:21:43.271
So once I got my first clients and they started getting really excited for me because, like the third or fourth client I landed was more of like an hourly wage than I ever thought I would be earning.
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So it was just like you know, being able to tell my dad and he's like wait, what, how much?
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Like that's fantastic.
00:21:48.377 --> 00:22:00.912
So I stayed with them for October-ish that I really started getting like some solid clients and I left that November and moved to, or December and moved to Vegas.
00:22:01.480 --> 00:22:06.279
So I'd always wanted to live out west and I knew it would be temporary because I really wanted to move abroad.
00:22:06.279 --> 00:22:13.904
But I was just like I'm feeling stable, I just paid down a bunch of debt, like money's coming in, this is feeling really good.
00:22:13.904 --> 00:22:17.026
This is going to be my like trial run.
00:22:17.026 --> 00:22:19.770
You know, let me move, move to Vegas.
00:22:19.770 --> 00:22:22.301
And you know I'd lived far away before.
00:22:22.301 --> 00:22:29.282
I'm from Ohio but I'd spent most of my adult life in Florida, so I had no stranger to cross country moves.
00:22:29.323 --> 00:22:32.681
But yeah, I moved to Vegas and that was actually really good for my career.
00:22:32.681 --> 00:22:42.474
Because, again, you talk about sacrifice, like people don't necessarily understand, like the discomfort, the sacrifice, the hard work that goes into building something.
00:22:42.474 --> 00:23:02.248
And by moving to Vegas where I knew no one, I was able to be a little bit of a hermit, like I did meet people and I had like three friends while I was there, but it was easy to say no because they were like new friends, right, it was like no, I'm just gonna put my head down and I would do 10, 12, sometimes 15 hour days sometimes and it's just like I can sleep all weekend.
00:23:02.248 --> 00:23:07.146
But that allowed me to really focus on the building, my business part.
00:23:07.146 --> 00:23:14.830
And after a year in Vegas to the day, literally I didn't plan it that way, but a year later I moved to Columbia.
00:23:21.779 --> 00:23:22.521
And that started all of my travels.
00:23:22.521 --> 00:23:26.752
Awesome, that's really interesting that you kind of found a way to just put your head down, get everything done for your business, really build it.
00:23:26.752 --> 00:23:28.101
And then how was that?
00:23:28.101 --> 00:23:40.221
When you moved abroad, were you like, was your business more stable and could you work less and be a little bit more social and enjoy your travels, or were you still working those really really long days?
00:23:41.522 --> 00:23:42.124
Good question.
00:23:42.124 --> 00:23:47.553
No, my, I was able to flex way back because I wanted to enjoy my life.
00:23:47.553 --> 00:23:50.626
I think that the first year yeah, it was, it was, it was really important.
00:23:50.626 --> 00:23:54.130
And people ask me, they're like, do you think I should quit my job and just go into this?
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And I'm like I can't tell you that.
00:23:55.414 --> 00:24:00.528
But I will say that getting laid off of my job made me figure things out very quickly.
00:24:00.528 --> 00:24:03.480
Right, you're just like under this pressure cooker.
00:24:03.480 --> 00:24:06.005
I wouldn't, you know, wish that on anybody.
00:24:06.005 --> 00:24:10.150
But if it happens, like I say, take it and use it and grow as fast as you can.
00:24:10.711 --> 00:24:29.210
But yeah, by the time I moved to Columbia, it was weird, right, because my whole life I'd had this attitude or this mindset of just like scarcity and like there's just never enough money from moving out and getting my you know, getting my first job at 15 and moving out and going to college and then working all through college and all the.
00:24:29.210 --> 00:24:31.144
You always needed money.
00:24:31.144 --> 00:24:37.442
And so it was weird to, after one year of freelancing, I've paid off all my debt.
00:24:37.442 --> 00:24:42.047
New checks come in and it's just like, oh, I guess retirement like a grownup, like I don't know how to, I don't know how to be a grownup.
00:24:42.047 --> 00:24:42.509
This is weird.
00:24:42.509 --> 00:24:46.530
So I was able to just back off the freelancing work quite a bit.
00:24:46.530 --> 00:24:47.981
I scaled down to 20 hours a week.
00:24:47.981 --> 00:24:51.667
I enrolled in Spanish classes, I went out with friends.
00:24:51.667 --> 00:24:55.394
I just kind of reduced my workload.
00:25:00.579 --> 00:25:07.614
And that's one of my favorite things about freelancing running my own business, I can go up and down as needed and I do modify my work based on where I'm living and what's going on.
00:25:08.280 --> 00:25:17.666
So if I move to somewhere where it's cold and I don't really want to go out much because I hate the cold and it's like boom, all right, this is work time.
00:25:17.666 --> 00:25:21.871
Like I'll work a lot of hours, I'll just stay in, I'll be cozy at home, I'll get a lot of work done.
