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1) How I Got Started as a Digital Nomad · Digital Nomad Life Podcast

• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Hey there, and welcome to the Digital Nomad Life Podcast.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: In today's episode, I'm so excited to dive into actually my story on how I personally became a digital nomad.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I want this episode to be as valuable and as interesting and as entertaining for you as possible.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: So, along my journey, as I start from telling you all about the background, how I was working in a corporate nine to five, which I really didn't like, felt super suppressed by, and every single step of the way that took me to where I am now, which is living in Bali, Indonesia, my dream destination, having already traveled to over 60 countries and making multiple six figures with my own completely remote business.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: This episode, I really want to get into the nitty-gritty of the step-by-step process that I took.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Because, first of all, I think as I carry on making more episodes of this podcast, I want to, I want you to know who it is that you're learning from.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm not some trust fund baby.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: I am not someone who had, you know, all of my quote good luck handed to me.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: I am someone who started off with not a lot, actually, not a lot of money, not a lot of support, not a lot of professional experience, not many ideas, not a lot of confidence.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: And somehow through the years, I have been able to create my absolute dream life.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: And my intention of this episode is to empower you to see a bit of yourself in my story.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: And if you do, I just want to say I would love to hear from you.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: So always feel free to slide into my DMs on Instagram at Christabella Travels again.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: And let me know if we have any kind of similar background or if you are in a similar situation to what I was in, because I know that if you relate to any part of my story, I can guarantee help you become a digital nomad yourself.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm assuming that's why you're listening to this podcast.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna keep that in mind as I do tell you my story.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: I am gonna tell my story assuming that you are someone who is just like I was.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: So who was I back in the day?
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm someone who comes from, well, I'm American.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: I am from Boston, and my family was a pretty traditional, like middle class American family.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: I've just assumed that college was the thing that I was, quote, supposed to do when I graduated high school.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that just, it was just literally never even a question that that's what I would do.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: This is how indoctrinated I was at the time to the societal rules.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm very much on the other side and I do life my way, but I want you to know I wasn't always like that.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I went to college, got my degree in journalism, and um, something you should know about me is that from a really young age, I have always been obsessed with the idea of traveling.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: I went on a cross-country school trip when I was 14 and basically just fell in love with the freedom that I felt from being in a different place and I loved learning about other places, other cultures, other people.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: And uh yeah, anyway, so I've always been obsessed.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, first of all, I'm giving you a lot of background context because the story doesn't actually begin once I booked my first one-way plane ticket.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: The story actually begins way, way, way back when the idea started incubating for me.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: So, like I said, I've always been obsessed with the idea of traveling.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: And but at the time when I was really blindly following the rules of society and the timeline of society, I actually thought that if I wanted to travel the world, I would need to wait until retirement.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: But there was one caveat, there was one exception, study abroad.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I saved all of my money to go be able to study abroad in Rome, Italy.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, this is 2009, we're talking about, and you can do the math on how old I am.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so 2009, I'm a junior in college and I am about to go study abroad in Rome, Italy.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: Long story short, but two weeks before I was meant to board my flight, I got super drunk at a party.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: And bear with me, this is a little intense moment.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: I drunk dove into the shallow end of a swimming pool, and I broke my neck that day.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: This is a whole story for another day to go into the details of what happened when I broke my neck.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: But if you can imagine, I didn't get to study abroad.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: I ended up having to stay home and go to all these different doctors' appointments.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: I ended up having to have a surgery, which was so painful and just horrible, honestly.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like, really, I have some pretty tough memories from that chapter of my life.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: But the reason why this part of my story is so important is because that experience, even though I didn't technically have a near-death experience, I came pretty close to completely messing up my life forever.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like I could have been brain damaged, I could have been paralyzed, I could have become a quadriplegic after that experience.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I, after I started healing and the shame started subsiding, I started feeling more grateful that I was alive.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, wow, you know what?
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: It is actually so easy to potentially lose my life.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't obviously think that that's what was going to happen when I just innocently dove into a pool.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: So that experience was what motivated me to make a bucket list.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: I spent a whole day still bedridden, still in my neck brace, but just imagining all the things that I would do someday once I was healthy and well again.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: And because I had been so obsessed with traveling, most of the things on that bucket list involved travel, including seeing the pyramids of Egypt, playing with the elephants in Thailand, riding the gondolas in Venice, partying in Rio de Janeiro at Carnival, and just so, so, so many more things.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: I there were like 92 things on the list that I wrote that day.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: And basically that bucket list has been a guiding force in my life ever since.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna fast forward a few years to when I graduated from college.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, so I graduated on time and then it became time to actually get a job.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: So, like I told you, I was convinced that the only way that a person could travel the world was if they studied abroad or retirement.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I was just completely surrendered to the idea that I wasn't gonna do some real traveling until I was in my 60s.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought, okay, well, how do I make the most out of this situation?
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: How do I still feel like I'm traveling while not being able to travel?
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: And also, how do I have a great career?
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because that was also something that was really important to me.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: Have a career that I love was something that was written on the bucket list.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Also, become a city girl was written on the bucket list.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: I was really inspired by Sex in the City, and um I just wanted to be that girl.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: I just wanted to be the girl that wore pencil skirts and heels to work.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I came up with a brilliant idea to do travel public relations in New York City.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I am someone who, once I get my sights set on a goal, I just go all in on it.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: I go super tunnel vision.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: And um, yeah, long story short, I figured out a way to get my quote dream job of travel public relations in New York City.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: I ended up working in this industry for about three years, but the final job that I had in New York was something that really, really traumatized me, you could say.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so basically, this job that I had, I had this boss that would, you know, make us wear a blazer and heels to her office every single day, even though I just told you that I wanted to wear heels to work.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: Once you live in New York City, you quickly realize that that is a super impractical shoe choice.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, our boss like demanded that we all wear heels to any one of her offices.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: We also were not allowed to have headphones at our desk because at the time they had wires and they looked messy.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: We weren't allowed to have any trash anywhere.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like you had your trash had to go in the hallway.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: You couldn't have more than one bag under your desk because, again, it looked messy.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like this woman just had insane OCD, and everyone in the company suffered for it.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: We also needed to sign in when we got to work.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: I am someone who now I know I have ADHD.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know at the time, but time has always been a really big challenge for me.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: Being on time, I have something that people call time blindness.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I was always late for work, like not super late, but a few minutes.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: And when I had to sign in, it just became very obvious that I was late every single day.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, also, I am someone who now I get paid for my ideas.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: But at the time, I was at this company, and you would think public relations, like you can be rewarded for having a lot of big ideas.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no, no.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: I was entry level and my ideas were not welcome there.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: And essentially, my boss at the time, after only six months of being at that particular company, deemed me, I think, inappropriate for that company culture.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: It also happened to be that three of the clients that I was on, like on the team for, all did not re-sign at the same time, which totally wasn't my fault.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, I got let go.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember when I was getting fired from this job.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, having my whole world shatter because I was so embarrassed.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, oh my gosh, I am getting fired.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: This is literally the most embarrassing, shameful thing I could ever imagine.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: And also feeling the presence of some kind of higher power, a guardian angel, whatever you want to call it, but something telling me that this was the best thing that was ever gonna happen to me.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't know how it was gonna be good, but I knew.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I lose my job, I freak the F out because when I am living in New York City, I'm paycheck to paycheck at my$40,000 a year salary.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that is not enough.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: That is not enough to live in New York.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how I did it.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Thank God I was there when I was in my young 20s because I just didn't know anything other than being super broke.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess I was just okay with it.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, even though I actually hated that job and hated that company and hated how I felt there, I also needed the money.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: I was in major money scarcity.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: You'll hear me talk about um abundance and scarcity in future episodes for sure.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I was thrown into scarcity and I was like, shoot, I need to make money right now.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: What am I gonna do?
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I essentially, that was the first time I started freelancing.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: I looked at my skill set and I was like, hmm, what can I do to make money now?
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, I actually understand social media pretty well.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: I have my journalism degree, so I know how to write.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: I also just have natural sales ability.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: So essentially I started freelancing myself as a sales associate, as a social media manager, and as a freelance writer.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I was just getting all these random jobs.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like any work that somebody would pay me for, I would do.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: I also was like a promo girl for a while.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, I was just picking up these random jobs.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: I also was getting unemployment at the time.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: So if you add all of that up, suddenly I was actually making more money per month than I, or I was like collecting more money per month than I had been making when I had my salary job.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I had way more free time.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember it was a Tuesday afternoon.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: I was walking through Central Park.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: It was like 3 p.m.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I saw all these people in the park that were wearing nice clothes and but not like office clothes.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember thinking, huh, this is weird.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: They don't look homeless because I really, really thought that anybody that didn't have a nine to five job would be homeless or something.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: But then now I was in that situation and it just the point is my world started shifting during that time period when I had no freaking idea what I was gonna do.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because I, by the way, I did not want to go back into travel PR or any or PR in general at that point.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: I just felt so burned by the industry.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: So um now my mind is starting to open and I'm at lunch with one of my friends, and I'm telling her that I don't really know what to do, that like the freelancing thing is starting to get kind of exhausting, and I just wish that I could travel.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: And she was like, Well, why don't we just do that?
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I want to quit my job.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Let's just go travel.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Yeah, girl, but with what money?
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: She's like, I don't know, like, can we make money while traveling?
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when I was like, Oh, what an interesting idea.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I should consider making money while traveling.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'd never even considered it at that point.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I now get tunnel vision and I go ham like so hard into researching all the different ways I could possibly make money while traveling without having any real experience.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like three years of corporate in New York, it's just not really, I didn't think anybody was gonna hire me.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: And also getting fired, my confidence at this point was so low.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: I literally thought I had nothing to offer any real employer.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: So through my research, I was like, well, what can I do when I am nothing, when I am a nobody?
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: And uh essentially I discovered the concept of teaching English in Thailand.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I landed on.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, you know what?
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: This sounds like a good idea.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: Let me see if I can figure this out.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay, in Thailand, you can make$2,000 a month.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that might be enough for me to survive in Thailand.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's what the blogs say.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, hmm, but you need to have an English teaching certification.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: How am I gonna get that?
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay, it costs$1,500.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: Shoot.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, also a flight.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: Ooh, a flight is also$1,500 for one way.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: Ooh, like, okay, I'm probably not gonna be able to get a job for the first two months because I'm gonna be getting my English teaching certification.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, to be completely honest, I didn't have the money for literally any of that.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: I had like zero savings to my name.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: So what I did was I decided to hustle as hard as I freaking could for the next three months, scrounging up as much money as possible.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: Also, I sold all of my furniture from my apartment.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: I got my security deposit back, and in the end, I booked my flight to Thailand, I paid for my TEFL, and I think I had left over somewhere like three or four thousand dollars to my name.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that is what I used to fly to Thailand.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: I have some crazy memories of when I was announcing to people that this is what I was gonna do.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: The shock and horror of the Americans' faces, people asking me, Are you moving to Thailand and you're gonna speak Taiwanese?
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, no, I might speak Thai, but not Thai.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even know.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: Just the honestly, the ignorance was really kind of next level.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: And people asking me if I was gonna get sold into sex slavery, was I going to ride an elephant to work?
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what was it gonna be like?
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: And it just people were asking me all kinds of crazy questions.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, I started freaking out too.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: I started being like, oh my gosh, I don't know the answers to these questions.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: And will I be safe there?
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't actually know.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I started doing all this research, saw the Boxing Day tsunami, and just oh my gosh, can I tell you the number?
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: I have like four panic attacks before getting on that flight.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: I remember I was moving to the other side of the world where I knew not a soul.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: And Instagram wasn't even really a thing at the time.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't even really have examples.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: I had just had some blogs that I had read that inspired me and told me that this was an option, and that was it.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I flew to Thailand, and um, yeah, long story short, I get my TEFL teaching English as a foreign language certification.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: It was one month long, and I got it at a little school on the island of Koesamui.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I also have this amazing memory of I'm flying over the island of Koamui again, like my new life is about to begin.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm flying over the island and I see all this bright green, like this lush jungle, the palm trees, the forest, and there is this huge white Buddha statue sticking up over the jungle.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: I have never to this day in my life ever had such an overwhelming feeling that I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: And from that moment on, literally everything, everything was different.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: That was October 22nd, 2013.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that is really what I consider the birthday of my new life.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: It was like my old life and my new life, and my new life began on that exact day when I landed in Kousa Mui to get my English teaching certification.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: So, um, as an English teacher, I was not a digital nomad.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna kind of breeze through this part of the story.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: But essentially, I ended up living in Thailand for two years.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't end up becoming an English teacher.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: I actually got a job at an office doing marketing for a tech startup when I was there.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: When I was in Thailand, I was looking for jobs once I graduated from my TEFL, like after the month-long program.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I found this job listing.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: I met the guys at Starbucks to have my interview, and they were like, wait a minute, you have three years of marketing experience in New York.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: To me, I was like, oh my gosh, it's nothing.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like, remember, nobody, nobody's gonna hire me.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: I have nothing to work with.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: They were like, You have three years of marketing experience and you're here right now and you're available in Bangkok.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Yeah.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: And they were like, amazing, you're hired.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: I I was literally hired on the spot from the Starbucks from Starbucks for this tech startup that was gonna pay me three times as much as I would have been able to get as an English teacher.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I obviously took that job, which ended up being so cool.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: When when I was there, I launched um a print magazine, like a real estate magazine, because it was a real estate tech startup.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: So suddenly, after going from being so ashamed of getting fired in New York to being in Bangkok, having no idea what was going on, I was the editor in chief of a luxury glossy real estate magazine.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what the heck is going on?
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I definitely had some people that I met in Thailand being like, Oh, you're so lucky that you got that job.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, yo, I did some brave shit to get here.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, do you know all the things that I had to do to get here, all the money that I had to save, um, pennies that I had to pinch, flights I had to book, conversations I had to have with people, trying to convince them that I wasn't absolutely batshit crazy when side note I like low-key thought that I was, though.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so anyway, maybe I was in the right place at the right time to get that particular job.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: At the same time, I really feel like I made my own luck, right?
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like I was the one that sold all my furniture and got my security deposit back.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: I was the one that did the research to get myself to Thailand.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: I was one that had all of those really intense conversations of people thinking that I was freaking insane and handling that and still going through with it.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that I made my own luck.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I think you can make your own luck too by saying yes to things and doing things that you are scared of and making investments in yourself.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like that TEFL certification, even though I didn't end up teaching English, to me, it was the best investment that I ever made because it gave me the feeling of safety and direction doing something that was of my highest good.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: So um, yeah.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, I don't regret getting spending that money on that English teaching certification, even though money was super tight at the time.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: It got me to where I needed to be.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes we don't know that we are on a stepping stone.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: Other times we do.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: I definitely had never felt like I wanted to be an English teacher.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: I was open-minded that maybe I would end up really liking it, but um, it's okay to take stepping stones to your dreams.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: I today I call it a business bridge where you might start your very first business.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: And it might not be the thing that's like your be-all end all dream business, but if it gets you started, if it gets you pointed in the right direction, it's still super worth it to go all in on.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: My chapter in Thailand, even though I wasn't a digital nomad quite yet, it was the stepping stone that I needed in order to become one.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why I include it as a really important part of the story.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: The thing that or the reason why Thailand was so important to the story is because when I got there, I realized that there were so many other people from all around the world who were living there too that weren't Thai.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: People, yes, some people from the United States, but a lot of people from England, a lot of Germans that I met.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: People from Norway, from Sweden, from Russia, from Malaysia, like just people from all around the world were in Thailand to live a different kind of life.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, immigrants, who knew?
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: But I was an immigrant.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then I was like, oh my God, other immigrants.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: This is so crazy.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: We all have the same mindset.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: All these other people felt like the lifestyle that they had been offered in their home country was not quite aligned with their dream lifestyle.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: So they all decided to come here.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: Thailand is or Bangkok is such an international city and it was so cool.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: I had friends from all over the world.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: We were all travel lovers.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: So that was also something that was super cool.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like back when I lived in New York City, if I ever wanted to take a vacation, nobody would ever be available to travel with me.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe if you listen, you you're listening, if you resonate with that, it was just really hard to find travel buddies.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: So, but now in Thailand, like everybody that I knew loved traveling.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I was just having the most fun.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like I was literally those first few months that I was there, I was living my best life.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: After a few months, um, then the challenges started coming in.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, namely a bunch of big, dramatic disasters that were happening back home.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: To name a few.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: There was a huge fire at my house in January of that year, where essentially the house didn't burn down, but it was like completely totaled.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: Like you could not live in it anymore.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: And everything, everything, everything that I had left behind was incinerated.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I did not have a single piece of clothing that was left at home.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: I did not have a single memory, like it was all gone.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that fire, my parents could no longer live in the house.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: They had to move out.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: That was the beginning of their separation, which ultimately uh resulted in divorce.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: So now I'm on the other side of the planet.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: My parents are getting divorced.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: Also, two of my aunts were super sick and eventually died while I was there as well.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: One really, really tragically from ALS.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: So, oh my God, my dad also got into like a crazy accident while I was away.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, if you can imagine, there was just heartbreak after heartbreak after heartbreak that was happening when I was on the other side of the planet, 12-hour time difference away.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: So even calling home was pretty challenging because I also couldn't call them at any hour.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: I had to call them outside of my work hours.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: So there was like one hour.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like I had to basically wake up at 7 a.m.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: to talk to my mom for an hour in her evening before I went to work, and then that was that was it.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and if I wanted to go home to visit, well, I would need to use up every single vacation day that my company gave me for the entire year in order to make traveling to the other side of the world back home worth it.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I was in Thailand because I wanted a new adventurous life.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: So it just like didn't make sense to go home.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: And basically I didn't, I didn't travel home for two years.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't see my family for two years, despite all of these insane, heartbreaking disasters.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: And it was after two years that I was like, you know what, I just can't do this anymore.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't sustainable for me.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: As much as I love my job, as much as I am obsessed with the expat lifestyle, as much as I am in love with Southeast Asia as a region of the world.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: I love the weather, I love the food, I just I love the people, I love everything.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: Still, I have this strong value of family, and I I can't make this work anymore.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't know what I'm gonna do when I go back home, but I guess I gotta go back home.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I got rid of my apartment, said goodbye to all my friends, quit my job, and I got in a one-way plane ticket back to Boston.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that was where I was trying to sort out my life.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I tried to go back.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: I I tried to be normal again, you could say.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: I I put a blazer back on, I dusted off, oh no, I didn't dust off my own heels.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: I had to buy new heels.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I basically tried to re-enter the what I like to call the corporate rat race.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: And at that point, now I actually have I actually have some really cool experience on my resume.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like the interviews this time around were really, really different because employers were super impressed that I had had experience on the other side of the planet.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: And also like I got really cool experience at that startup.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I actually got a few job offers, but something in me was like, I cannot accept this job offer.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like I was miserable in this situation before.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: I was underpaid.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: I felt so suppressed.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: I had to, I had to wake up and be on time at a certain minute every single day.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, I would get reprimanded.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: And like, I just don't think that I can do that anymore.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like my my coworkers didn't like me in the past.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: Who's to say that my coworkers don't like me again?
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's actually just a total random crapshoot who you end up working with.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I just couldn't bring myself to say yes to any of those job offers.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, damn, I really don't know what I'm gonna do with my life right now.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: I feel so lost, I feel so confused.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: I guess I should go back to freelancing just to hold myself over financially for a little while because in Thailand, I was living it like an extravagant life in Thailand.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: This is just a side note.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: My apartment was$300 a month and I was on the 27th floor of a luxury high-rise building.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, flights around Thailand and Southeast Asia were like$30 each.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: It was you couldn't get a hotel room for like$20 a night.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I was living large in Thailand and now going back to Massachusetts slash New York, it just was a different ballgame.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: The money that I had, quote, saved in Thailand was just gone in like a month.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: So now I'm back to being so broke and so confused yet again about my career.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I started freelancing and um basically I was just applying to random ass jobs.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I was doing freelance writing work for this startup that was based in New York City.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: So my friend Emma, shout out to Emma.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh one day she was like, Hey, Krista, I have some vacation time that I need to use up before the end of the year.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to go somewhere for New Year's?
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: You're my travel friend.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, Yeah, hell yeah, let's go somewhere for New Year's.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't have any reason to specifically stay here.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: So um Emma and I both went to Costa Rica for New Year's.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: And it was when I was in Costa Rica that this startup that I had been freelance writing for offered me a full-time, completely remote position.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now this was the moment that the digital nomad lifestyle really entered my life.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: But I need you to know that at this time I had never even heard of the term digital nomad.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like it wasn't a thing in 2016.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: Some people were using the term, but it was not as popular as it is now.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I got this job offer and I was like, wait a minute, I can just stay here?
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: What?
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have to go home.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: Cancel my one-way plane ticket or cancel my plane ticket back home.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I called my mom and I was like, mom, I think I'm gonna see you like maybe in a couple months instead of next week because I it's cold back home and I want to stay in Costa Rica.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I ended up staying in Costa Rica and then I checked into a hostel because again, I had no money still at that time.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: I had not yet saved anything.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I was in a hostel and then I met all these people that were going to Nicaragua.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, sure, I'll go to Nicaragua.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I went there and then I met more people, and then more people were like, we're gonna go to Colombia.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Oh, I'll go to Colombia.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: I've always wanted to go there.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's on my bucket list.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I went to Colombia.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then after when I was in Colombia, I was like, this place is awesome.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: I stayed there for two and a half months because I could, because I really liked it.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, in hindsight, I probably could have stayed in Colombia for like six months, but anytime you're new in the digital nomad journey, you're probably gonna end up traveling really fast because you're just gonna be so excited that you have the whole world at your fingertips, which I did.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: So after two and a half months of Colombia, I went to Ecuador.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: I ended up spending, I think, a month and a half in Ecuador.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: Then I went to Brazil.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: And meanwhile, I'm meeting more and more digital nomads.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: I was like joining digital nomad community events and um starting to meet other people who could travel at the same pace as me.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: And when you have people to travel with, it just makes it so much better and more sustainable to live this lifestyle.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like, like, yeah, you want to live your dream life, but you don't want to do it alone, you know?
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, side note, I think I'll make a whole episode on the concept of loneliness as a digital nomad.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: Look out for that if that is something that you're worried about, because it actually doesn't really have to be much of a problem.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I have a whole perspective around managing loneliness, but anyway, that's for another conversation.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, long story short, I had this job that I just had to open my laptop at 9 a.m.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: Eastern Time, no matter where in the world I was.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: So sometimes in Europe, that meant 2 or 3 p.m., and close it at 5 p.m.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: Eastern time, which maybe if I was in Europe, that would mean like 9 or 10 p.m.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: But I made it work and I was living my best life traveling all around the world as a digital nomad with a full-time job.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, it was sick.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: It was so cool.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, yo, this is amazing.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: Why isn't everybody doing this?
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm like, okay, cool.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: Instagram, I have this beautiful life.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: I should start documenting it.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: I start sharing about my digital nomad lifestyle on Instagram.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: And everybody's asking me all these questions, like, how are you affording this?
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: What is going on?
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, guys, I have a remote job, remote jobs, remote jobs.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: Something that I now understand, which I did not understand at the time, is that that job that I had was a literal unicorn situation.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: It is not a thing for an employer to be super cool with you like fucking off being anywhere in the world.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: It is just honestly a very rare situation.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: I was just so lucky.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I was so lucky because I had had really, really cool experience from Thailand, which made me a shoe-in for this job, the remote job that I ended up getting.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm not gonna say that it's impossible to get a job like the one that I had, but I think you really need to have a very unique skill set or unique background or something to offer a company like that in order for them to want you enough to give you all of that freedom.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: And you also really need to show the F up with your work ethic, by the way, which um I was just so grateful that I had that job and that opportunity that like I never ever ever missed a day.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like I was really, really diligent about actually working Monday through Friday, nine to five.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so like I said, I'm starting to post about my digital nomad lifestyle on Instagram.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I'm also combating a lot of questions of people being like, oh, do you have a trust fund?
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: Is someone else funding this for you?
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: How are you doing this?
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm like, whoa, people really don't know that the digital nomad lifestyle is possible.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I start growing an account.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: I start growing my account on Instagram pretty rapidly, you could say.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: At the I don't know.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: At the time, I ended up growing my audience to 14,000 people by by 2018.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: And um, yeah, and at this point now I've been at this company for two years, and my ADHD is starting to kick in, and I am getting bored.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm getting really, really bored with this job.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: But I knew that there was no way I was ever gonna get a better situation than this job.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: So, what is a girl to do when she's bored as hell and life just ain't going to get better than this job?
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that girl starts thinking, maybe I should start my own business.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought, oh, I have this Instagram audience.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: I should just monetize my Instagram audience.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: Had no idea how to do that.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_00: I like honestly, I was looking it up, I was researching it, I was trying things.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: I was getting some brand collabs, but I wasn't getting paid.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: I was just getting a bunch of free shit, which was hard to send to me because I didn't live anywhere, you know?
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: So that ended up being really hard and like not really working out very well.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: Then I thought, well, I am getting really good at photography with this whole Instagram thing.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I could be a traveling photographer.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I made a whole portfolio.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: I put it up on my Instagram, I started like sharing it with my audience, but my audience was all over the world and I was all over the world, slash, did not have a stable location.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: And this portrait photography business that I really wanted to do ended up just feeling like it just didn't make any sense for my lifestyle.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_00: Then I thought, oh, what if I make an e-commerce business?
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's something that I can run from anywhere, especially with drop shipping.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, oh, you know what would be really cool is if I made a digital nomad concept store.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I did all this research, like months and months and months of research, trying to figure out how I could get these specific products and make them competitive in the online space.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: And how could I compete with Amazon?
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: And okay, oh, now I realize that I need to run ads.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: And basically, just the idea of an e-commerce store, I thought was really simple and straightforward.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_00: It was not, and I didn't have the skills to do that.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: Plus, I didn't realize that you needed to have a bit more of an analytical mind, you needed to be a bit more left-brained, and the work itself was quite like systematic and numbers focused.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I am just not that girl.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'm a right-brained person, I'm a people person, I didn't want to be behind the screen.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: So the e-commerce business idea ended up not really panning out, even though I spent months doing that.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, then I had another business idea.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: This one, I was like, okay, this one is gonna be fire.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_00: I had a business idea called Instagram or weekend, and basically it was gonna be a personal brand boot camp where I would take pictures of the participants for their personal brand, walk them through all their content pillars, teach them about growing on social media.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I actually even ran a pilot version of that program.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: I did it in Lisbon.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_00: I had eight people doing it.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: I got raving reviews, and I was like, oh my gosh, I think I figured it out.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: This is the business, this is how I'm gonna make money.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god, I'm so excited.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was like, all right, you know what?
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: I think I can charge each person$700 for just the retreat.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's like a good starting point.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_00: I start advertising it on the Lisbon expat digital nomad groups for like weeks, and no one purchased, not a single person even expressed interest.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, what gives?
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: I don't understand.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: This doesn't make sense.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: Am I never gonna be an entrepreneur?
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: Am I not cut out for this?
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I'm not.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: I thought I understood marketing, but this shit is hard and it doesn't make any sense.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: And like, I don't get it.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: And is this impossible?
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: I think that it is.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I start to get really, really, really discouraged.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, yo, I think I'm gonna die at this job.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_00: I think this job is my last job.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's just not gonna get better than this.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I obviously don't have what it takes to be an entrepreneur.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_00: And um, that was kind of where my story in my head landed until I'm scrolling on Instagram and I see someone named Susie Travel who's talking about if you have an Instagram audience, I can teach you how to monetize it.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, okay, I'll hear what you have to say.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_00: I get on a call with her, turns out she's a business coach.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: I had never heard of business coaching, honestly.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_00: I never considered that I should hire a business coach because I didn't have a business idea.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't make any sense to me.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but after talking with Susie, she was like, no, part of the work that you and I will do together is to figure out what business you should create, and then I'll teach you how to launch that business.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, all right, how much is it?
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh,$10,000?
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_00: What?
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_00: I've never spent more than$2,000 on anything.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_00: I think I paid$2,000 for my fancy camera, and I had spent maybe close to that on an airplane ticket, but$10,000, that was like most of my savings at that point.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so gulp, am I really gonna do this?
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_00: Or am I really not gonna do this and stay in this situation where it's good, but I know that I'm not living up to my potential.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: I know that there is more to life than being bored at work.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that because I've experienced it firsthand.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like at this point now, I'm six years into my journey of being an international person.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_00: Four years of traveling and um, and yeah, two years of living in Thailand.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_00: So at this point, I have pretty high standards for my life.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I also have had a lot of experience taking big, audacious, scary risks and having it really, really, really work out.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: And at this point, I had quite a bit of trust in myself.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_00: Trust knowing that what if I set my mind to something, I will do it.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: So literally, I remember my hands shaking as I'm typing in my credit card information to pay Susie, this stranger on the internet, frankly, uh, for this six-month coaching program.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I did.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I did.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: I hired Susie as my business coach.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, that is really December 4th, 2019.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_00: That was when I hired Susie.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_00: That is the birthday of my now business, the Digital Nomad Life Academy.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I ended up learning from Susie how to do something called market research.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_00: So, market research is a key part of creating any business.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_00: Essentially, what it is is you are thinking about who is the specific kind of person that I think that I can help.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_00: I knew that I could help people that wanted to be digital nomads because at that point I had helped so many of my friends become digital nomads.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_00: I had helped so many of my friends figure out how they could pursue a location-independent lifestyle.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I had met thousands of other digital nomads at this point.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, I know for sure that I can help someone become a digital nomad.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_00: So um, they're probably someone who's in a similar situation to me, someone who is in corporate and is not happy with their situation.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_00: So, market research is when you find that specific kind of person and then you talk to them in depth about what their problems are and what dream they have and why they have not yet been able to solve the problem on their own.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: So, what Susie advised me to do, she was like, why don't you become a coach for, you know, at least six months.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, I don't know how to coach, like, I don't know anything about that.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_00: She's like, just do it for six months.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_00: Call your you're you don't have to say that you're a business coach or anything like that, but just call yourself a lifestyle coach, a digital nomad coach, talk to people and um find out what their problems are, and you'll get paid for it in the meantime.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, okay.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_00: And she's like, and then once you know what their problems are, we can work together to come up with a solution and then we'll build build your business off of that solution.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_00: So that was a plan.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that is exactly what I did.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_00: I went onto my Instagram, and even though I still had a full-time job, so I couldn't say, Hey, I have a business, I just had to say, hey guys, like if um, if you're interested in becoming a digital nomad, I'm happy to chat with you about it.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that was literally all I said.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I got some people in my DMs that were like, I want to talk about it.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then I'd be like, cool, let's get on the phone call.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and ultimately that was how I secured my first digital nomad coaching client.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_00: I got on the phone with someone who had been following me.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I told her that I would be, I would love to work with her for three months.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_00: We could have a call every single week, and I would share as much information as I possibly could and help her figure out a path for her to become a digital nomad too.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: And she was like, Okay, let's do it.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, What?
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_00: You want to work with me?
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_00: You wanna, you want to pay me to do this?
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it was a$2,000 package at the time.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, oh my gosh, I just remember like muting the microphone and jumping up and down, screaming, being so excited that someone was willing to work with me and hire me.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_00: And um, that$2,000 client that I got, by the way, was half of my monthly salary at that point because I was making$4,000 take home at that job, at my remote job.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that was when things really clicked for me because I was like, if I just got two clients per month, I would literally replace my income.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_00: What?
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_00: So then I got really excited.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_00: I the tunnel vision really turned on.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: And um, yeah, that is basically when I started going.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_00: Hard, like subtly marketing myself.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_00: I did everything Susie told me to do to a T.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_00: I actually even booked a one-way plane ticket to Sri Lanka so that I could only do my nine to five job at night and I could have the whole morning and early afternoon to surf.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_00: That would be my thing to take care of myself, my heart and my soul and my body in the morning, and then get to work building my own business, doing marketing for my business, my digital nomad coaching business.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then I would work my nine to five at night.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I went to Sri Lanka because I didn't know anybody there.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because I was like, I'm locking the F in.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like, nobody talked to me.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to meet anybody.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I did.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_00: I stayed there for two and a half months.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, it was um March 2020 now.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'd been there for a few months at that point.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, I'm ready to see people.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_00: I was about to go to Portugal for the rest of the year.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_00: Long story short, the pandemic was announced.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_00: My friends were in Bali.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_00: They were like, come here.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_00: I rerouted my trip to Bali.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_00: I like told my employer, I was like, oh my God, I'm scared.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_00: I like really can't stay here by myself anymore.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm scared to go to Europe.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_00: They were like, just go where you feel safe.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, yes.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_00: I got permission to go to Bali because I still needed permission at that time because I still have my job.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_00: But once I got to Bali, I was surrounded by so many other digital nomads.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_00: Bali is like the Mecca, basically, of digital nomads.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_00: And um, yeah, you are the sum of the people that you spend the most time with.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_00: So that was really when my business started to thrive.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_00: And essentially it was April of that year that I was able to have my first$20,000 month with my business.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_00: And you can bet your bottom dollar, I quit my job.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_00: I quit my job in April 2020.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_00: My safe, secure, completely remote job, the thing that everybody at the time wanted.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_00: But I was like, there's no way that I'm going to live and die at this job working for someone else, still asking for vacation time, doing work that I feel bored by, uninspired by for the rest of my life.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_00: This is a new path.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_00: And now I can see a future for myself.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_00: And this is what I'm doing.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that is how I became a completely remote, full-time entrepreneur.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_00: And the rest is history.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there's actually a lot more to that story.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, at this point, now I'm I'm so proud of my business.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_00: As I said at the beginning of this episode, my business makes multiple six figures per year.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I have, I am so honored to say that I have supported over 400 people becoming location-independent themselves.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, at the time, I started off calling myself a digital nomad coach.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_00: Today, I am very confident that I am a business coach and also a career coach.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I take people through a pretty similar process, but much upgraded to what my coach, my original coach, Susie, um, taught me to do.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_00: I help analyze people's personalities and um suggest to them different remote businesses that they can create.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because most people that work with me don't have any audience.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_00: Most people that work with me don't have any social media following.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, most people are frankly terrified of social media, but it can still work.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that it can still work because I've been in the digital nomad space for so long, like a decade at this point.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I just I've met so many people that have so many different businesses.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_00: I have an incredible number of data points in my head about what's possible and what really works.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, with all of my experience just being a digital nomad and meeting others, plus my own experience of scaling my business from a very simple, simple, simple service provider model, um I really know how to help people.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I get paid now to do.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_00: And today I get to say that I am a remote career and business coach for people who want to escape the nine to five and start a remote business of their dreams.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that is what I'm gonna be sharing all about in the future episodes of this podcast.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think the next episode, I will walk you through what my step-by-step process is that I that I take people through.
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_00: I also want to go into the details about how I scaled my current business so that you can see that, you know what, like even if you are starting from absolute scratch, like I had at some point, the sky is truly the limit when you have your own business.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like when you work for yourself, and especially when you are doing work that you really enjoy, that really lights you up, that you feel excited to open your laptop to on a Monday morning, that is when you are going to fly.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I can promise you, I know promises are are hard to make when I don't know who I'm speaking to, but like unless you are some doctor who's making$500,000 in a year, like I don't know if I personally can help you replace that kind of salary.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're making anything under, let's say$150K per year, I am very, very, very confident that with a year in the program that I have, you can be scaling your business.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_00: You might not be making$150 in your first year, but I can absolutely set you on a path to get to that point.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to quit your job right away.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_00: Just like me.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_00: I like I said, I hired Susie in December.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't quit my job until April.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_00: So um, yeah, I was just raking it in in uh March of that year because I had my full-time job and the income that I was making from my business.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_00: I wish that for you.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_00: I wish that for you.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_00: I wish that for you, that you can just be rolling in the dough, feeling so safe financially, and knowing that when you quit your job, finally, it's because you have a career, you have a whole new career in front of you.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_00: And not only just a career that feels really exciting and aligned, but a career that allows you to be wherever you want.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to take surfing lessons in the morning, every single morning, you can put yourself into that situation.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_00: If you just want to actually live out of your suitcase and travel for years on end to wherever the wind blows you, you can.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to actually just spend more time with your kids or with your dog, or if you want to move your family to a small cabin in the woods, you can when you have your own location-independent business, when you don't have to ask anybody for permission to take time off.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_00: When you get to, you know, quote, like snap your fingers and be at home in 24 hours, no matter where in the world you live, because that's how you set up your life and your business, you can.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_00: And me as a business coach, yes, I definitely care about you making a lot of money for sure.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_00: But I also really care about you just living a life that you feel inspired by.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_00: I care a lot, a lot, a lot about you living a life that when you get to the end of that life, you're like, yeah, I lived it so fully, so wholeheartedly.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_00: I took advantage of every moment I made my bucket list and I crossed everything off.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to be like that too, because I'm like that.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that if I can be like that, having started where I did without any resources, like no, no role models to look up to, no, no money in the bank, no confidence.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like my confidence is so shot.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_00: If you remember how I felt when I lost my job, like just so ashamed, tail between my legs, no direction.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_00: I was there.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_00: So no matter who you are, if you're just graduating from school or if you're 20 years into your career, there is so much potential for you.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_00: There is so much waiting for you.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's just on the other side of your fear.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it is scary.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_00: I don't, I don't want to take that away from anybody.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_00: You remember I had multiple panic attacks when I was about to board my first one-way plane ticket because that was the biggest risk I'd ever taken in my life at that point.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_00: I also was literally shaking when I hired my first business coach, which by the way, I've gone on to hire so many other business coaches since then.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_00: But um, yeah, the point is do it scared.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_00: Do it scared.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_00: You can change your life.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for listening to this episode.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for allowing me to just be so self-indulgent in my story.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_00: It was so fun to share.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_00: I hope that you enjoyed it.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_00: I hope that I see you in the next episodes.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_00: And if you have any questions at all about how you can become a digital nomad, seriously, my DMs are open.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_00: I would love to hear from you.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'd be so honored to hear from you.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_00: You can message me at Christabella Travels at any time.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll see you in the next episode.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_00: Bye.