How To Become A Digital Nomad | Work-Travel Life | Avi Arya

So my name is Jon Sal, I'm Portuguese, my father is German. But most important of it, I have a mission. And I am a digital nomad with the mission of helping other people become remote workers. Because as you mentioned, the advantages are insane. We can change the role of Kench society. And for that reason I work right now 24,7 to make that dream become a reality. We have the technology and the knowledge to work from anywhere and Internet is pretty much everywhere. With 5G it will be pretty, it will be really anywhere. And right now there was kind of a line between people who went to school and people who didn't have the chance to go to school. For example, it was different. People went to school, they can have good careers. People who didn't, they have to work in the fields, work in industry, very low salary and try to survive the rest of their lives. Right now that's not true anymore because you can learn anything online.

My name is Avi Arya, father of two girls, six dogs, husband to a superwoman, streetcar racer, turn hotelier, now social media marketer and founder of Internet moguls. May I request you to share your story with me as well in this format?

I will try. So my name is Gonzalo Hall, I am Portuguese, my father is German. But most important of it, I have a mission. And I am a digital nomad with the mission of helping other people become remote workers. Because as you mentioned, the advantages are insane. We can change the world Kench society. And for that reason I work right now 247 to make that dream become a reality. Not as good as yours. I need to practice that one. You are really good on that one.

I've done it for so many years.

But I wrote here in my todoist list. I wrote on my todoist write short story because of you, because yours is so good, awesome.

I'm so happy that I was able to inspire you there. Because stories in a video, in micro video formats are like small pieces of energy that go around the world. Somebody watches our video, is attracted to our world and I can change his world, he can change my world. We are living in a magical world. You know, we just maybe sometimes we just ah. I don't realize it. I'm not unhappy. It's magic. I don't. I was telling my wife what happens in heaven that does not happen today on earth. Everything.

Yeah, I mean you have the freedom right now like nobody beforehand, like you can actually choose which life you have. There is no limit right now.

So tell us about your remote working passion. And tell us how our audiences, who are kids, we have lots of kids, parents, grandparents. And today people are going through different times and all of that. It's the best time to bring somebody like Gonzalez to tell people, like you said, the best time to be free. I loved what you said. People anywhere can do anything.

I don't know, it was very inspiring. But it came on the, it came on the, on the moment. You'll have to quote, I will go.

Back and I'm going to put it there, put a footnote on that. So, yeah, tell us about that. How do you. Why. What makes you so confident about the future and that people can do anything from anywhere?

That's a good question. And the reason is very simple. For the first time in history, we have the technology and the knowledge to work from anywhere. And Internet is pretty much everywhere. With 5G, it will be pretty. It will be really anywhere. And right now there was kind of a line between people who went to school and, and people who didn't have the chance to go to school, for example, there is a huge difference. People went to school, they can have good careers. People who didn't, they have to work in the fields, work in industry, very low salary, and try to survive the rest of their lives. Right now, that's not true anymore because you can learn anything online. And that's the first step. You need education. When education is online, when you can learn anything in the world online, you can learn data, science, you can build rockets, you can learn anything. And this, this is insane. For the first time, I, at 33 years old, I can learn how to build rockets if I want to. I don't want to, but I can. Or I can learn digital marketing with the best gurus like yourself, or I can learn sales with the best salesman in the world. So for the first time in history, we have access to unlimited information and unlimited education. And this is the first step for growing. This is the first step for reaching the second level, which is now that you have the knowledge, you can work in anything, you can work in having a positive impact in the world. And most important, you don't have to stay in one place to do it. You can travel the world like I'm traveling. I'm right now in Las Palmas, an island in Spain. But I was in Portugal last month. I was in Bali last year I was in Thailand, I was in Kuala Lumpur. And I was building my businesses. I have now eight businesses. I built all my businesses while I was in the world, in the road. And the crazy thing is when you are traveling, you grow so much more than you are in one place. It's very interesting. So when you are traveling, you meet the most interesting people in the world. And you know, right, because in a hotel you met travelers. And these guys are outside of the system. They are outliers. They don't go through the norms. They create their own world. And this is what people like myself are doing. Because we can create our businesses from anywhere. Because we know that even if we are in the Internet, we can reach millions and we can actually create something that will have a positive impact to the world while having ourselves the freedom to travel anywhere. This is game changer and that's what's inspiring me. So I don't mean that all the people actually travel like myself. I think digital nomads will still be outliers. But if people don't have, for example, to go to the big cities to work in the industry, if they don't have to go to the big cities to have access, imagine the quality of life. Imagine if the Indians don't have to immigrate to Europe, to the US to get better jobs and best salaries. Imagine you in Bangalore could have access to a 100k job in the US. How many jobs would you create back home with that money? How much more would you consume in your country? How better would be the whole social infrastructure around you if people don't have to leave to get better jobs? If they can stay in their lands, if they can stay with their families. One big issue in Europe right now is that elderly people are getting abandoned by youth because they have to move to cities and they stay in the villages. So youth will not go back to take care of them because they need to work in the cities. Right now with remote work, most of the people are now thinking twice about living in big cities. They can go back, live with their families, not inside the same home. That's not normal in Europe. But they can live around. They can be.

If they live in the same home, they don't have to pay rent or that.

But usually you want your freedom. You want to have a little bit, but still you can live around. You can live in the same village where you grew up with your old friends. Imagine having this kind of community again. I miss that. That's the only thing I miss in my life is the sense of community that I see when I travel in these little villages. I don't have that. Imagine you could have that again. You don't have to stay there the whole life. You can go out for 10 years, you can see the world. See the world. You should learn and then go apply in your own village and grow the village, help people their dream as well. So the unlimited positive impact of remote work, if well managed, can change the world. And this is what inspires me to dedicate pretty much my whole life by now to build companies around remote work. My goal was never to profit. I do make profit or else I would die and I would starve. I do like to eat. And the goal is always helping people. So I have remote Europe, which is providing. Is helping people to find jobs in Europe. One big thing, if you want to try to find a job in Europe, it's very, very hard because most of remote jobs are actually in the us. So I built remote Europe. Now everyone has access to remote jobs in Europe. I help companies with consultancy to implement remote work. I built remote Portugal because in Portugal a lot of people really want to work remotely, but there is no centralized knowledge. I build the future for conferences where I teach people and companies how to start to work remotely. So everything I do is with this mission of turning remote work on a new normal, helping people like people that I met that are stuck with kids in a house and they want freedom, but they have to work 10 hours a day, go to traffic, spend three years of their life, like you mentioned, very well, just commuting. It's insane. So right now that is over and we just need more people to spread the word and help this change to happen faster than sooner. Faster and sooner.

That's amazing. I love what you said, that when you travel, your business grows faster than when you're in one place. I really like that. So let us. So, you know, like, I don't like to use the word hacks, but lack of a better word right now, when people get inspired by our interview and they take on the backpack and say, I'm leaving. I love what Gonzalez said. What are the few things they should keep in mind?

I think in my opinion, the most important and the place I would start is start with communities where other people are doing the same that you want to do. For example, for myself, that communities are. I can find in Lisbon, Portugal. I can find here in Las Palmas, I can find in Bali, in Canggu, there's a huge community of digital nomads, Chiang Mai in Thailand. So I think people should start with the communities because traveling can be very lonely and can be very challenging. So when you start with these communities that are already built, you kind of hit the ground already running because you go to Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand and you will know that there is a lot of people, digital nomads, doing the same as you do. So you can gather information from them. And the best way to do it is actually if you are working, go to a co working space, go to meetups, go out and meet people. And when you do this, you grow. The first 20 persons that you meet in a new place will change and will adapt the whole vision that you will have about that place. So actually going out, going to these places first, getting used to this life and knowing the right people will help you a lot in the rest of your travelings.

First 20 people you meet in a new place will change your life in that new place. Wow. You are all on fire. I love that. Excellent. So what about tech? Like, do I have to be a big techie to be able to work from anywhere?

Hell no, I'm not. I understand very little about tech. My friends call me techno jerk because I don't know, I don't know many stuff. I work, my gift is connection, my gift is finding business solutions. So I don't know tech, I know tech, I know zoom, I know how to move around some notion and these new softwares. But I strongly believe that you don't know, you don't need to know tech, you need to know a skill. A skill that you can sell online can be anything. It can be writing, it can be drawing, it can be marketing, it can be anything. Nowadays I have an accountant friend that travels the world and she does accounting only for Portuguese digital nomads. She travels the world and it's very niche, but she can do it, she's a specialist. So as long as you know how to do.

She is a digital nomad and she is doing accounting for digital nomads because these people will not have any inhibition of giving business to somebody who's not in one office location. Love that.

Exactly, exactly. So she found a very niche, but she's full of work, she works, she has more clients than she can handle. And because she's the best in her niche, everyone I have a Portuguese group with remote workers and people who want to start work remotely. Every time someone mention I need an accountant, the first name is hers all the time. Because people know she's the best and everybody points to she doesn't need to do marketing, she doesn't need to do anything else. Right now everyone will say Ludmila is the best and that's how she's now growing her business. She is very useful, she creates Content. She comes to all the meetings. If I have a live, she will be there, there. And she's amazing. And she's just an accountant for Portuguese which is a country with 10 million people only. It's not India, it's not the US it's 10 million people only.

So imagine that's fantastic. So you spoke about you don't need to be a techie. The first few people you meet can change your perception and life. About that you gave us an example of your accountant friend. What about tell us a little bit, give us at least three examples of businesses that you have seen or tell us about any three, four of your eight businesses. I want people in this interview to go back saying because mostly people are like what a great interview. This is not for me, you know I'm into real estate, you know I'm into this. People always say it doesn't fit into my lifestyle. So if you can give a couple of examples that inspire people to say they too can do it.

Well, I knew nothing, I just knew about marketing and now look at me, I have eight businesses, very different businesses. So I'll tell you, I'll give you an advice first and then I can give you some examples. And the advice is look for problems, the first advice. And Tim Ferriss is always saying this, scratch your own itch. For example, I found that companies have a lot of trouble finding people for customer support. Good people with education. And the main reason is there is no customer support school. There is also no sales school by the way. And there is a lot of professions of today that there is no schools for them. So what if you start a school? What if you get some of the best in the world, put them together and start selling courses for people that want to become customer support managers as customer support agents. That's a business. You can do that for any new profession. We can just new school for new profession, something like that. That's an idea. You can, if you love India, you can start and do travel groups around India for digital nomads, for example, like we love India, we struggle in India because we don't know where is the good Internet, where are the nice places. We don't like super crowded cities. But India is not only super crowded cities. What if you start a travel group that will go through these amazing beautiful places with good connection. This will help a lot of people. You build a solution for a problem people have. What if you love marketing but you only know how to do social media marketing, why don't you start a social marketing agency how easy? Subhire everyone else. You are the best at social media. Hire someone to do SEO. Hire someone to do design. Every time you have a client get freelancers, you get more clients. Hire people part time, you get even more clients. Hire that people full time. You now have an agency. It can be marketing, it can be design, it can be pretty much anything. The same for ux. If you learn a little bit of project management, you can actually do an agency for anything. For professors that want to give classes online, there is just so many possibilities that it's really hard for me to tell you one or twice. Imagine for example now everyone is working from home. But it's surprisingly hard without being in Amazon to find cool stuff for people who work from home. Like stand up desks and cool mouses. Which mouse should I use? And those how to make it look nice, how to have a cool backdrop, all those things. People now are insanely hot looking for them, but it's very hard to find them. Why don't you create E commerce? Build something, get together the best products and say this is your home office. E commerce. If you want to go for home office, this is the place where you should buy everything. So yeah, as you can see, none of these options are techy. You can build a website so easily nowadays with WIX and with Squarespace like everything became so easy. There's just the will of doing it. There is information, there is everything you need. You just need to start.

That is fantastic. And you're just giving so much information. I'm taking so many notes because I like to put notes in the the footer for the editor to know what is happening so that when my students and my audience listens to this, they know what are the keywords and we put the timestamps, you know, so that everybody is able to learn all of this amazing information that you learned after so much trial and error. And thank you so much for so openly and sharing it with us.

I need to share one more thing because you mentioned trial and error. And until two years ago, I failed in every single business. I built every single one of them. And just one year and a half I understood why. And there was two big things that you can do. The first one is learn about yourself. I miss that. So I did just some simple Meyer Briggs test. If you go to16personalities.com it takes 10 minutes, it's totally free. I learned about myself. I'm an ENTP. So I'm a super extroverted intuitive person. Have too many business ideas. But I struggle with operations, okay, I did the test, I saw the results, I bought two books, I read about my personality and it's like, damn, this is me. This is it, this is me. I struggle with this. And they have the solutions. Okay, if you are an etp, you should find someone to do the work for you, do the operation side. And that's one thing I learned and that really changed my perspective about business. I don't start businesses alone no longer because I, I will fail in the follow up. So it's better not even start. So the first thing I do is actually I found partners. And that takes me to the second lesson I learned in the last two years, which is partner with people. You don't need to hire people. You can actually partner with the best people. You know right from the beginning. And I learned this from the amazing project called rloop. And Rloop is what you know now today as Hyperloop from Elon Musk. That project is actually built by engineers part time post job. So they work for the best companies in the world. And after their job they do work for this passion project that was doing on Reddit, it just went to Reddit, right? Who wants to build this? And it ended up to win the program from Elon Musk and actually become rloop, a super high end engineer project that was built by just global knowledge in the fully remote set of engineers globally working, totally asynchronous and it was amazing piece of engineer. So what this guy told me is Gonzalo, you don't need to work alone. There is knowledge out there, people want to do something different. So if your mission is right, if your mission is right, you can get the best people to work for you for free. In the beginning, you split everything with them and then you have a team. You don't have to do things alone. So I am now doing in all my businesses the thing I'm best at. Connecting with people, business parts. That's what I'm good at. That I am. I have people doing all the marketing for me because I find it very boring. I have people doing all the operations for me because I find it very boring. And by partnerships and learning about myself, I could actually now be very successful in just two years.

That's fantastic. That is fantastic. This reminds me that after this conversation is over, I quickly send you an email about what we do at our company because if you're so connected and know so many people, maybe we, I, we can be partner somewhere.

Hope so. Just send me and I'll let You know.

Excellent, excellent. So I've got two more questions. Yeah. My next question is when it comes to. Do you get into. When it comes to remote businesses? Okay, I've got a remote business. Maybe I don't have an office, I'm traveling, all of that. Or maybe I'm not traveling and working from home. Maybe just I'm remotely in my own city. I go to the coffee shop, I go here and there. And then an idea comes up to me to set up a unit, a factory or something. How hands off investment free should these businesses, remote businesses be? Because a lot of people say I'm going a remote business, then they invest in a factory or set up an office, buy some equipment and then they're stuck for life again. So is there a do's or don'ts here?

So I think one very key thing is actually outsourcing, to be honest. So if you have to actually build something instead of building industry, just hire a local industry to build it for you. It's much easier and much cheaper as well. I personally, you can do anything. So every business that you see in the traditional world you can do online. There is no barriers, to be honest. You can outsource pretty much everything, become the manager, have the whole from the industry side to the sales side. You can have everything and be remote nevertheless, because you can now outsource pretty much everything that you should do. So in terms of investment, I decided myself to do always bootstrapping, meaning I don't have investors, I don't want to. Also because my businesses are not high scalable businesses. I think we will now change the focus in the world. I think we are being too much focus in the business. You measure the business by how much money you get, by how much growth you get. I think that will end. I think if you have a cool business with 10 people, you get your cool money and you get a good amount of money for everyone. It's going well. You don't need to grow exponentially to sell it, you know.

Sorry to interrupt, but you have hit the nail on the head. I say this all the time. I don't want to become a billionaire. I mean, everybody's salaries are paid, they get growth. I'm happy, I have enough time, I can take the weekend off. I'm richer than somebody who's chasing something which they may or may not get. And even if they get it, I mean, I. It's a trade off, right?

Yes. And you are trading your health for money, which is insane. Like you are trading the years of Your life the best years to make a lot of money, but then when you get older you can, you can't do pretty much anything with it without paying medical bills. So that's, that's insane. I don't understand that. But I think we are now changing the paradigm. I think we will see more lifestyle businesses if we take digital nomads as the early adopters. Lifestyle business is what most digital nomads are doing. They don't have super high growth businesses. They usually have business that does. If they do like meet five figures, we are good to go.

Of course. Okay, I come to my last question right now. The people who are listening to this interview are scared, are anxious, are worried they may not be able to make the rent for next month after watching this video 30 days from now. What would be your message to them?

If you have any connection with online world and I hope you do learn a skill, sell the skill. You can do it in one day. If you are really good, if you are don't have anything else to do and if you are probably unemployed. I would just go all in for three days, learn everything I knew about anything that you feel that I would, I would go the other way around. I would do the 16 personalities test. I would see the top 10 professions there and then I will go learn. I would see from that ones what can I learn in three days. And I would learn everything about it. I would go to do all the online courses, I would go to YouTube videos, I would do everything. Then I would contact 5, 10 people, 100 people to offer that services as a freelancer. And I would say, hey, I can do social media. Oh, I can design your posts in the next 10 days for $100. Let's test it out. Let's see if it works. Just for 10 days. $100. This is nothing for you, but for me it can save the end of my month. But just test it out. I don't want you to hire me. I see that your posts are. You can actually see the profile if the posts are good, if they are not good, if you see a business, imagine a hotel that don't have really good posts. Oh, I can help you out. I can design your posts for 10 days only. Let's test it out. I don't know if this will work, but I would like to test for €100 because I cannot work for free. It's my time for €100. I'll do the 10 days. I will work for you building your design. And you know how to do design you have free software, like Canva, for example, and I'll use that for. For 10 days. If you are good, if you can deliver something, the company will hire you right away.

Excellent, Excellent, Gonzalez. Thank you very much for your time. And this was amazing. I hope you're going to remember. My name is ABHI Arya, father of two girls, six dogs, husband to a superwoman, a streetcar racer turned hotelier, now social media marketer and founder of Entertainment Sam.