As a new user to reddit and this sub, I thought it would be a good idea to give something back after lurking for a while. I am not identifying myself 100% as a digital nomad, but the term “digital nomad” is what sparked my interest, and started it all. My journey might be a bit different than the ones I read here before. Until recently, i never worked for a big company in a 9 to 5 job, so there was no escape needed.
This will be a collection of my “lessons learned”, in no particular order. I hope it might help some people who are thinking about starting the same journey. For me, it has been, first and foremost, a learning experience. Things which i thought would pose a major problem, were no problem at all. Other things, mostly concerning personal stuff, turned out to be a an issue where I never thought they would.
Myself: 35y, German, IT guy since age 15, owning small IT company the last 14 years, mostly small customers, on site support, the basics. Introvert with a few good friends, no affinity to social media. No coding skills besides some PowerShell commands and the odd PHP here and there.
With this background, I discovered the term “digital nomad” about 4 years ago. This sparked my interest: Traveling, working remote, no office, my own quiet place wherever I want it to be? I started to googling around, and found the 4-Hour Workweek pdf on some shady, russian server. I did not like it. Yes, the idea was valid, and no doubt, it worked for him. But the tone of “everybody who is not following their dreams and quit their job is doing it wrong” was not appealing to me. Having low income slaves helping me produce online stuff that nobody really needs was not my type of thing.
But the idea stuck, and I started to make a plan how to transition my work into something that can be “location independent”. Already working in IT, this seemed possible. After looking left and right about what others were suggesting (passive income, drop shipping, blogging, guides etc.), I quickly realized that this is not something I want to do. It might have worked, but it was just not my thing.
So I planned transitioning my current job, owner of a small IT shop, to allow location independence. As I was the owner, there was nothing stopping me, as I could basically do what I see fit, without asking someone. In the real world, it was a little bit more complicated. Even being the owner, I still was involved in a lot of hands on stuff. So while the typical german company owner seems to be busy counting money and deciding about which BMW to buy next, a was 100% involved in all the hands on stuff. Money was OK but not great, but starting to get better. Risking a customer base build over 15 years was nothing that I wanted to do.
I made a plan to have a “test run” for 2-3 month in Thailand. KohHub on Koh Lanta was what I selected. It worked out well, and I expanded it more and more, also switching to project work, away from my existing customers. I came to the realisation: Yes, it is possible, and No, it is not all positive.
The next and hardest step was to get a foothold in the corporate world. This was something completely new for me. And I was basically doing it the wrong way around: The “normal” career seems to be to start in a corporation, work up the corporate ladder, then after 20 years you can stand the bullshit anymore, and open your own little shop or freelance. For me it was the other way around.
I was completely surprised by what I experienced, expecting to meet a bunch of highly professional people, every one of them someone to look up to, to learn from. The opposite was true. I never knew that people could earn so much money for basically doing nothing productive all day. I could go on and on about that, but in the end, my fear that my skills where inadequate to play with the “big guys” was misguided. As my goal was still to get more and more location independent, it was a welcome surprise that nobody cared from where you work.
So right now, I would say that I am 85% digital nomad. :-) I still have a base in Germany, and I have to travel to customer sites once in a while. Besides that, location doesn’t matter.
Here are some lessons learned on the way. For most of them, I which someone had told me at the beginning. This is especially true if you doubt yourself a lot, and always think: “Can I do it?”. In most cases, the answer was YES, but it takes time to realize that.
Disclaimer: These are my thoughts, and you might disagree. That is fine. I am sharing my experiences, hoping that it might be of help to someone.
Some of your friendships will change
And this is a nice way to say it. Nobody is waiting for you at the airport to ask you about your trip. People go on with their lives. The first weeks, there might be some curiosity, but that will fade. The friends you stay in contact are the ones that you can count on.
You have to make an effort to see them once in a while. And with effort, I mean: I have to go to their place, not the other way around. Just because travelling is my thing, does not mean they feel the same. For most of me friends, the once in a year holiday is still the only travel they do. Asking them to “come over to $nice_sea_location for a week” won’t work.
The first reflex is to say: “OK, then these are the wrong friends.” But this is not true. There decision to have a 9-5 job, a family, a house, doesn’t change the friendship. And when shit will ever hit the fan, these are the ones I can trust. So i have to get my ass moving once in a while.
Networking works different than expected
As an introvert, thinking about being in a room full of unknown people to exchange business cards and “keep in touch” gives me the shivers. In the beginning, I thought this is something I have to endure. I attended some conferences, some business owner meetings, some networking events. I hated it. It is just not my thing. And I think if you don’t feel like home there, and sparkle of awesomeness, nothing good will come out of it.
Working on my own, with my own base of small customers, I never had much opportunity to network. This changed when I started freelancing for a bigger cooperation. Suddenly, you are surrounded by hundreds of people from different backgrounds, contractors, sub contractors, different branches, etc. All of them had a past company they worked for, and will have a future company they work for.
This opened up a multitude of opportunities. Just be doing good work, you will build your network. No awkward “networking events” required. This was, and still is, the major upside of working for a bigger corporation.
Technical issues are solvable
When I started the test run on Koh Lanta, I was worried about my setup. I need reliable phone connections, and must be able to use certain VPNs at the same time. Losing connection in a critical moment, or having bad voice quality, was unacceptable for me.
It turned out that my own perfectionism wasn’t shared by my customers. As long as they know that I am still reachable, nobody cared about a dropped call or a spotty TeamViewer session.
There has been much improvement in the last years, and remote audio, online conferencing, Skype 4 Business etc, they just work. While hip web teams have already transitioned away from normal phone calls, call in conferences are still the norm in “not so hip” companies. But this is now daily business, and someone joining a conference call from the other side of the world has become normal.
Sometimes this distance IS a problem
While I can access a server the same way from Tokyo and from Munich (by starting the VPN and Putty), there are situations where being not in the same room with the team will put you in a disadvantage.
In my small shop, this is mostly during stuff involving personal things. Not being there for the birthday sit in, not being there when someone had a car crash, not being there when they have a baby…
Yes, they know I will be reachable in seconds, we can have a video call. But in the end, it is not they same. I am not there, and I will not know what is spoken when the Skype call ended. There is some sense of disconnect, especially when you worked with your team for a long time, and have a very close relationship.
In the corporate environment, you need someone to relay all the gossip to you. Because a lot of informal talk will happen near the coffee machine, which you will miss. With everybody trying to improve their own, you might be left behind when a decision is due. Right now, doing good work seems to keep my boat floating, even without chit chat, so I don’t care so much.
Coworking spaces are overrated
While I am glad that I started my journey at KohHub (which I can highly recommend), I found that coworking spaces are not for me. My work does not improve having people in the same room doing stuff, or in most cases, talking about stuff they think they want to work on.
For me, for a coworking space to really shine above a glorified coffee shop, it would need:
- Excellent, redundant internet. And I don’t mean different SSIDs with “The workplace 1”, “The workplace backup”, etc. I mean an own AS, routed for load balancing, high quality low latency connections, with the possibility to get static IPv4/IPv6 addresses. UPS backup, redundant network, QoS for VoiP and so on. I can make a WiFi hotspot myself, and every Starbucks has some kind of internet. When a place is build for remote workers, I would expect the best.
- High quality office chairs. I do not want to sit on a shitty chair. I do not want to come early to get “the good chair”.
- Height adjustable standing desks. This is a must when working long hours at a laptop. SKARSTA from IKEA will do, no motor needed.
- Open 24h, with the same level of service. Sometimes it can’t be helped, time zone difference, and work needs to be done. It is that moment, at 3am, when I need that sandwich, because everything else is closed, and I can’t leave my desk.
- Quiet working environment when I need it.
- Rental keyboard, video, mouse, all power adapters on site.
When I look at KohHub and some other spaces, I can see that things are moving in that direction, so I am not the only one wishing for these kind of things.
Nice homes are underrated
Especially in south east asia, there seems to be a popular form of housing: The studio.
I did not know the meaning of the word, as in Germany, these places are called “one room place” or “Studentenbude (cheap place for students)”. Studio sounds more upscale. :-)
While I lived in a few nice Studios, I was clearly lying to myself about that being “the good life”. I like to work from my own room, as I really need to concentrate sometimes. I now save the money for coworking spaces. I get a nicer apartment from the beginning, and do daily trips to coffee shops if I feel like it.
For me, this made a huge difference. Having at least two rooms makes it possible to get some kind of routine, and separate work and private time. I know there are people who like to live in that 5$/day beach hut with a single light bulb on Koh Chang. That’s fine, but it is not for me.
Separation of work and private time gets harder
When I first read about the nomad lifestyle, I thought that some brief moments of work (on the beach, of course) will go hand in hand with party and cocktail drinking. Basically a holiday with checking eMails now and then. I already knew that this might not be the case, but 4 years ago, that was the image presented by dozens of articles and blogs.
While this might be the case for some, I suppose for the most people it will be: Work. Work, just at a different place. And while everybody at home thinks you are living the good live, I discovered that it is really easy to work more and more and more. There are no appointments, no closing of the office, no friends waiting outside to pick you up for the cinema.
I found myself working 16 hours without really noticing it, only leaving the apartment to get some dinner. This is not the way to go, and I am no forcing myself to separate work and private time, work out, go swimming, meet new people. After all, this is why I choose to be at a nice place to work.
There is no “community” in the way you might thought
You will not arrive in a coworking space, making new friends and find new business partners on the first day. If you, like me, need time to connect with people, it might take much longer. There are opportunities, and you will meet interesting people. But in the beginning, you are on your own.
I also met a number of totally clueless people who thought that just arriving at a nice island with some vague idea will kickstart the nomad life in no time. Well, it did not. What was most astounding to me: I still had facebook, and the image they were projecting home was totally different from what was actually happened. This might attract more people who think “everything will be easy once I arrive in $tropical_island.
Where the community can help you from the beginning, is navigating the local issues, like VISA requirements, help with your mobile SIM card, vehicle renting etc. But if you are prepared, and did some due diligence, you will already know a lot of these things.
Final thoughts
So, would i do it again? YES, absolutely. And if you are thinking about making the first steps, then do it. It might be for you, it might not be. But you have to try to know.
What would i have done different? Approach project work in a big corporation earlier. This opened a lot of doors really fast, and i should have done it earlier.
In the end, becoming a “85% nomad” was the right choice, and a great learning experience. Do not be fooled by the few people that claim to just kick start their passive income business from one day to the other. It takes time and effort to steer in the right direction. If someone happen to get lucky with trading or bitcoins, fine. But i think for most of us, who would like to transition to remote work, this involves hard work.
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