129: The Nomadic Entrepreneur Journey to Find True Alignment & Fulfillment Unpacked with Generation Nomads

But then also know that whatever you want to do, you can get there if you are taking the actions right, if you're planning towards it. So it's all about making it work. And rather than like, hoping that it will work, it's. No, it's an. It's an active thing. You can make it work.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to a new episode of the Digital Nomads Daily Podcast. I am super stoked to be here today, and I'm so excited for you to listen to this episode because I have not one person today coming with me, but I have two. So we're gonna have three people on this podcast today. It's so exciting. And my guests have already been on the Digital Nomads Daily podcast, so welcome, welcome, Generation Nomads.

Thank you for having us.

Yes. It's so exciting to be here again.

I love it, I love it, I love it. So one of the most exciting things about this podcast is that either people are coming back or I see people in real life. And we now we're hitting both. Right?

Because we did it.

All right. And you're back on the podcast.

Ding, ding, ding, ding.

But also last year, just exactly a year ago, I think it's May now that we're recording, we actually met in Amsterdam. So cool. Yeah.

And it was the most natural thing also.

Right?

I mean, that's how you see how those, you know, Internet friendships and connections can actually really become real life offline connections. And it's so amazing how we just got together and we're able to meet. And now we're meeting again.

Yeah, absolutely. No, I really, really love it. So I always ask my guests three quick questions, and this is amazing now because you guys have already answered those questions. So I really love it that we're going to answer these questions again because there's so many new listeners, new people, and, of course, life is changing as we go and flow. So my first question is, how long have you guys been nomading?

We've been nomading since 2018. That's when we both left our corporate careers. We. We went actually in the beginning, just traveling, you know, not a particular plan. We knew we want to do something while we travel, like start working and doing our own business. But we left with this kind of, like, idea of we're just going to travel for a while and see what happens. And yeah, yeah.

I think we. As to saying so much has actually happened during that trip because we didn't set out with a clear plan. We didn't say, like, okay, so this is what we do in our corporate life and we're going to now start working as freelancers or this is the business that we're going to start. We actually wanted to give ourselves for the first time the opportunity just to be creative and spend time on ourselves and really recover kind of from this corporate rat race because I personally was going through just a physical also burnout and I had to kind of heal that as well and just give myself the pace and time to, to just figure out what this new life chapter would look like. And I think one of the things that we've done very early is start our blog and you know, start looking into this business direction and seeing what is it that we can do. And yeah, fast forward, we're here today and life looks very different than from back then. Now we have our own coaching business. We're the founders of Freedom Business Mentorship. And yeah, we can look back on kind of not only this digital nomad physical journey, but a huge journey I think also personally and as well, business wise.

Love it, but I can totally see that. It's like whenever I ask this question specifically to people that have already been in the podcast, it's like, oh yeah, when I asked it last year, this is what I was doing and it's just like it's so amazing to see how, how much we grow in, I don't know, like half a year, 365 days, whatever that is. But we sometimes tend to forget that. And I think that a nomad lifestyle is absolutely amazing, but the lifestyle itself is not what's going to bring you that happiness. Right. You still have to make those choices and decisions. So that's why I love that. We will talk about that later in the episode. Okay. And where are you guys nomading from right now?

Right now we're in Portugal in a little village called Eliceira just north of Lisbon. And yeah, we just are basing ourselves here now as, yeah, we need to have a base these days because we also have a little mini us so and she, she needs to have a little bit more stability, have a daycare and so forth. So we are now like we base ourselves here in Portugal and from here we're moving around especially this summer when she'll be off daycare as well.

So we're been also a really cool experience to create this expat international community, digital nomad community and friendships also offline because I think something that we missed a little bit while traveling is yes, we met all those incredible entrepreneurs and digital nomads in the online space. And that was also how we connected first. Right. But it really made a difference when we met, let's say, in Amsterdam. And now we're experiencing this kind of here with building our own network, meeting other travel, you know, travelers meeting other. Meeting others that have done the digital nomad lifestyle and now are a little bit more slow matting other coaches and service providers. So it's been really cool to build that community offline, too.

Yeah, I feel you on that. And it's also interesting that when you do it, when you build online for a while and then when you meet people offline, it's like. Yeah, it's like you've. You've already met them now in this moment, you figure out what their real height is and funny stuff like that. Because when you're always in the screen, it's like, yeah, it's like, it's always a bit like, oh, you're much smaller, much taller.

Yeah. And just also, I think getting to know them as like, in quotation mark, real people. Right. Because still, like, when you're meeting in the. When you're. You're showing only bits of yourself in the online world. Right. I mean, you're kind of, you know, it's also a lot. Obviously, you cannot share everything about yourself and about your life, and you're keeping it to business, of course. And now you kind of really make those real personal connections as well. And you just see, okay, they are also, you know, human, and they watch Netflix once in a while and they, you know, also need to have breakfast. And that's like, also creating, I think, even more of a human aspect in it. And that's really cool.

Yeah, love it. All right. And the favorite question of everyone, and I think at the time, this also was a bit different. People always want to know how other people make their monies. And usually people here on this podcast, like our guests, have multiple income streams, like myself, because I feel like we're so, like, entrepreneurial and creative. So how is that for you guys today?

Maybe you can also touch a little.

Bit on how it was back then and then what. What's changed.

Totally.

Yeah, for sure. So I think when we. When we left originally, we. Yeah, we didn't have our business set up then. And our. Yeah. Since you mentioned multiple sources of income. So what we set ourselves up was, though, sort as a source of income was real estate investment mainly. And that really allowed us to kind of have this foundation for, you know, being able to take that time and travel and, you know, Take the time to really explore creative ideas and, you know, have basically a foundation, especially having real estate in Europe and going to Southeast Asia. That's also like making use of the, what do you call it? Geo. Geo. Something that you are basically basing yourself in a. Yeah. Lower cost place compared to where your income comes from. But yeah, as we mentioned over the years, we, we started our business, it started, we started exploring various ideas like affiliate and collaborations. And you know, we had like this real journey of like discovering what we're going to do online and how we're going to do it. And today how we make our money is through our mentorship program. So the Freedom Business membership.

Yeah, well, we still have the real estate assets that we do have. So basically we have two businesses. But I guess the one that we're focusing on mostly now talking here is our coaching. Is our coaching business.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I have a follow up question on this because you mentioned just now that you had this, this journey where you were trying different things. Is there one of these things that was on your list at the time that you were like, experimenting with that online? Seemed an amazing idea because the Internet hero said this is how it worked for me. But then in reality, like, because you need to have capacity, resources, time, you need to actually have sometimes income to make things happen. Like what was one of the most, maybe disappointing one or the ones that you're like, yeah, this was so much more difficult. And therefore we decided it was not aligned with how we want to make money online. So I think when we.

Oh, I have one for this. You go first, you go first.

I think when we, well, there were a lot of learnings and I guess that's why, you know, we're both kind of. Yes, yes, we want to, I want to share. So for me it was, I think when we started out, we really had this dream where I personally, I wanted to be a content creator. Creator. I wanted to be a blogger. I wanted to share about our blogging and our travel journey and our lifestyle while traveling online. And we started our blog, as I mentioned quite early on when we just set out, we started our Instagram account, we started documenting our travels and our life decisions. And we were talking about how now millennials become a generation of nomads. That's also where the term is coming from. You know, just not nomadic, only from location wise, but just looking for the next thing and looking to grow and looking to develop into other careers. Right. Not like being static in one space, but really growing and Developing. So we had this goal that we want to make money through our blog. And then one year into this journey, and I have to say, we were very at it. Like, we were posting two blogs a week. We were learning about SEO, we were trying to do everything we can to get our traffic up, and we were still making, let's say, €60amonth. Okay. So this is not going anywhere. We're investing so much time into this and we cannot, we have to see how we can replace our income through this. And it was actually an interesting time because we also said ourselves at some point, kind of a deadline of by when we want to start making this thing actually has a future. And we were approaching this deadline. We were back then in Buenos Aires and sitting, you know, on our rooftop pool. We had a very cool accommodation back then. And we're sitting, working on our blog and actually really feeling afraid that we'll end. I think was when we more and more saw all those successful bloggers that were teaching us how to grow their blog. They were selling their coaching, they were selling their course. You know, so they were creating a digital product or service that they would then actually sell to their audience. And then we started thinking, what is it that we're going to sell? How can we package up the skills that we have into something that people actually want? And I think that was really the starting point of thinking, okay, let's create something. Let's see what this could look like for us.

Love that. Is it like, for you, Tomer? Was there also one of the things that you guys tried, maybe that could have even been a shorter journey. We're like, yeah, okay, almost like this. I'm not touching this anymore. This is like too complicated.

Yeah, well, the one that jumped to my mind was, and we actually invested quite a bit of time into it, is that I read or I listened to some, I don't know, podcast or something that said, like the 10 ways to make money online. And one of them was like, to create a book. And it said, it's so easy to create a book because you know what, you don't even have to write it all yourself. You just interview people and use the input from the interviews to make a book. So just by, like, really that, like, little. Little snippet, that was the inspiration for us to start to pursue that idea of writing a book. And then we, yeah, we started, actually interviewed quite a few people for that book and we went through the process. But honestly, at some point, what drew us back from it is just the. Yeah, the Effort versus the. And the price that we could sell the book for with the amount of traffic that we were having. So, like Anastasia was mentioning, that amount of traffic we were having was not substantial enough to, you know, be able to sell a million copies of that book. And a book, yeah, you can sell for a premium price. But okay, it's still, you know, there is a limit of how much you can sell a book for because there's the limit of how much a book could help somebody. So in that sense, that's kind of like. That was for us at some point we were like, we're putting a lot of effort. Do we want to continue to pursue this and then put it online and. Yeah, have to still generate a lot of traffic.

Yeah.

Spoiler alert.

This book does not exist today. But it was one of those projects that we started. And you know what, we're actually really grateful for having started different projects because it also allowed us to kind of figure out what is really true to us, what feels good, figuring out the right business model for us and really making choices based on where we were back then. And where we were back then was, yes, we were building, you know, some sort of audience, but that audience was not huge. We had, you know, some connections online. So we knew to make actually really income that would allow us to replace our corporate salary, we would have to create a more premium offer. So. So that would mean, you know, we would offer a service. And I think that steered us in the right direction. But we're still really grateful for all the learnings that we had because who knows, maybe.

And we made a lot of great connections then that we. Yeah, some we're still having today.

I love that. Thanks so much for sharing. And also, also just sharing the real version of that and show up with. Showing up for vulnerability. Because I, I'm also asking this question because, you know, as I am doing marketing and one of the things that I see is that there's so much noise right now on like, do this and then you will achieve. Do this and then you achieve. But it's. For me, it's always been business marketing. And this is obviously very important is like, do what. What works for you. So if you have a certain income goal, what is easier to sell 10 services or to sell a million copies of your book? Like, you know, it's like. And this is what I think about online entrepreneurship, but it's like there's so much behind the scenes sort of stuff. And these are the journeys that matter, not where. Like, yes, it matters that you have an amazing business right now. But how did you get there? So quick note about book. I have book too. Yes.

I was just, when Tomer was telling the story, I was like, yes. But Nick and Nina did it and we were even inside that book. So essentially we made it to, you know, having a book through you. So thank you. You made it through my book?

Yeah, I, I, I think we quoted you guys as well. But actually, what? Oh yeah, here you. Okay, so I found a quote.

Yeah, right.

So the quote in the book says. So okay, so my book is called Digital no ones with Confidence. And I did similar to what you said. I, I used some of the insights of the podcast to write a book. But my most important thing of this book was it was a personal thing. I wanted to write a book because 10 years ago I did not speak a word English. I thought I was stupid, I was dumb, I could never do that. And now I'm speaking in English. It's just like, huh. So I wanted to do this for myself. It was never focused on money. I don't even know how much I made with this book. The last time I checked on Amazon was probably next year, so maybe I should do that. But it was never a money thing because I knew as well this is not gonna replace a corporate salary or like build my life or help me save money for my house or for my future kids like that. That's not what this single book is going to do. And it's a shit ton of work, I have to say. Okay, so going back to the quote back then. Oh my God. So you guys were actually episode six.

I see now.

Okay, so quote is start a dream lifestyle that you want to have is not just something that you do from one day to another. It doesn't fool thinking if you want to do it in a more sustainable way. But to know that it's all to do, planning, sure.

Yeah. There I feel like it's mix and match between, you know, okay, this is the right thing for me and this is the reason why I want to do it. But then also know that whatever you want to do, you can get there if you are taking the actions right, if you're planning towards it. So it's all about making it work. And rather than like hoping that it will work, it's no, it's an, it's an active thing. You can make it work.

Yes. And just to add to that, what you need for that is, is time. And you need to have resources to experiment with. So that helps if you have Some sort of income, whether it's real estate, whether that is savings, maybe you have a part time job, but just something because it is so stressful to try out with different things while paying your bills, while wanting to explore the world, while wanting to go on this amazing hike. But you really need to turn around every single buck. That's not freedom. Like that is sacrifice. And I don't think that. I think it's good to have this for a little while because it brings you to reality. But it's not a long sustainable. Like what you guys said last year in the past is not sustainable. Yeah. So I love this. So yeah, just like guys like take it easy on yourself also if you don't, if you haven't found your thing. Yeah. But be active in finding that now. One way to do that is amazing is by talking to other people, listening to this podcast, but also joining events or join like community events. Go to Edicera where there are a lot of digital nomads join co livings, co working spaces. But that's it. That's more in a physical, like in a location. Online events has been for me an amazing connector. Like I love it so. And I want to make a little bridge here because we are actually doing something amazing. You guys are organizing this. I am part of it, which I absolutely love, is to create a space for people to learn, to get inspired, to hear the behind the scenes, oh.

This didn't go so well.

Stories.

And to help people take off.

In their Travelpreneur lifestyle.

So what is the name of this event? Drumroll. And we are so, so, so excited to be hosting this second edition of Travelpreneur Takeoff. It's an event. We're so excited to have you and another set of amazing speakers. I think we're ten people in total. Nine. Ten people in total. And we'll be bringing different topics around the Travelpreneur lifestyle and online business growth. So this is the event for everyone who is considering and wanting this lifestyle. They want to start their path into travelpreneurship, into starting their online thing. Maybe they're still figuring out what is it that I could do. Or they're already on their way, experimenting, trying things out and they just want to learn from other experts, from other people who have done it and get the confidence and tools to advance or start their own journey and to take off, as you said. So we'll have topics from just in the beginning when you're starting out thinking about how can you turn the skill set that you have, whether it is your professional experience from your 9 to 5 life or maybe a personal transformation that you had and you are very passionate in sharing it with the world. So how can you turn that into a really great, irresistible offer that an audience wants and becomes your niche? And your offer to topics like selling, your offer to growing an audience online to get things, your ads in the.

Beginning selling, and I think also a very cool one, is also using human design, how you could use that also within your business. So it's really like all rounded, you know, everything kind of you're aspiring or you are now on a journey of becoming a travelpreneur or you are a travelpreneur as well. It's everything kind of like encompassed in there all around that topic. And we're super, super, super excited for it. We can't, it's just in a few weeks, but we, we want it to be tomorrow or at least I do.

Yeah. So just because you were mentioning the. When it is, it's on the 6th of June and we reserve kind of a whole day, almost a whole afternoon, or it will, depending where you are in the world. But quite a chunk of time, I think we're planned around six hours where you can just either, of course, join the whole thing, which would be amazing to get, you know, all of the wisdom in and all of the inspo, or you can pick and choose which speakers you want to see and, and what you want to learn about and then join for those time slots. So if you sign up for the event, you will get kind of a list of when the, when the different speakers will be speaking and then you can see how much you can join. And we're so excited to have you. So maybe you want to also share about what you're going to be talking about.

Amazing. Amazing. I absolutely love it. And also what I really love about this about the event is the variety of like, things that you can learn and things that you can get inspired by because you. It's like a lot of the times, a lot of events are very big on, like, here are five strategies for this or six steps for this. And, you know, it's very much focused on that. And I like those headlines because it's a very, I mean, in my marketing, it's very clear expectation of what you're getting. But sometimes it's also just sort of nice to like to be part of these things without like, I need to learn, I need to take my notebook, just like sit back, relax, listen, and just like, just soak it all up and Then or in. And then you're just like, you can, you know, deal with everything later. So, yeah, I really love that. And the human design part, I love that too. I was just like, oh, yeah, of course. I remember seeing it on the landing page because I'm a lot into human design. I use it in my work as well, actually. Things have been shifting tremendously this past, like, what is it, eight months since I'm like, tapping into human design and I even use it in, like, our marketing strategies. I help my clients finding their better, better marketing strategies for them. Also using this human design as a tool to sort of like, understand what works for them. So I love that. Okay, cool. Yeah, so let me just, just check. Okay. So the, the link of, of this. Just if you're listening right now, like, and you're feel like, oh, I want to join this. And it's a generation nomad, so plural nomads.com takeoff. So you can find everything there and it's going to be super exciting. And like, you guys said, like, I will be there as well. So I'm going to bring some behind the scenes, you know, of, of the digital nomad lifestyle of online entrepreneurship, and I'm going to use that. I am going to use that. Sorry, I'm going to share that through, like, strategies that I have seen from entrepreneurs. So things that we talk about today, it's like, it might be such a simple, small question, like, what didn't work for you? But these are really important questions, so I'm going to talk about that. And I actually really want to have the floor open for questions. You know, it's like if people have doubts or they're not sure, or their Internet hero just posted that and you're.

Like, oh, do I need to do that too?

Relax, take a breath and align it with yourself first before making a whole master plan.

Yeah, that's that. I, I love that. I love that you're talking about this. And it's again, as you were saying, it brings you a bit more of the raw and real side of what it means to start and grow such a business. And also just maybe the not so shiny, you know, headline things, you know, but actually, okay, so how can you work through, you know, when you fail or how can you pick yourself up and continue? Because these are real parts of, you know, entrepreneurship and travelpreneurship. So kind of knowing that you are not alone. If you feel stuck, you're not alone. If you're feeling overwhelmed, you're not alone. If you're feeling you're not good enough or ready enough or qualified enough or whatever it is. And it's just looking back at those journeys of all those amazing speakers that have their own businesses today to see, okay, what was really a game changer for them, and how can you learn and really get inspired and maybe incorporate those things into your own journey so that you can get to your goals faster?

Absolutely. And I think that, like I always said, like, we're showing here on this podcast and not so sexy stuff, and that is not because we don't like living this lifestyle. I mean, obviously we keep doing it, so we must love it.

Totally.

Right?

We got to keep it real, though, as well.

Exactly.

We got to keep it real. I was literally writing content this morning about this. Like, you wake up, you feel kind of icky. You see your Internet hero, like, doing something, but you don't notice it because you wake up, you're going on Instagram, you see, you feel things, and you, oh, you know, brush your teeth, take a shower, you start feeling icky because you're like, behind. I'm not enough. I'm doing enough. Why did I think about this? Oh, I wanted to do this last month. I didn't do it yet. And you go into the thing, and before you know it, you have, like, a whole, like, monologue to the self and be like. And you just feel icky. You don't know. And it's like, these things. I ask people, what is your routine? How do you do it? How do you start your Monday morning? Because I want to know how people.

How.

How people are nurturing themselves to get their best version. And that best version is not perfect, but that version is the most aligned version for that moment. And that's it. So I started writing about this, and this is why I'm so excited about this event, because it's gonna do that. It's gonna showcase different ways, different versions of what works for people. Just, you know, pick the best fruits of the. Of the basket that look most shiny to you in that moment that you're most attracted to in that, and then that's it. And then you can find alignment. Are all the sessions going to be recorded? Actually, yeah, it's going to be a recorded event.

So even if you cannot join on.

The day, but please do join live. So don't take that as an invitation to just watch the recording, because also, the recording will be available for a limited time because, well, we really want.

To get you to watch it.

We all know this feeling of signing up and then never Showing up, right? It's like this signing up and not.

Showing up and then thinking you'll watch the recording and then, you know, waiting for five months and you still haven't watched the recording. So that's why, you know, come live. Be sure, you know, it's. We got amazing speakers, amazing, valuable stuff that everybody will be sharing. So, you know, the best way to get it is to be there live. And if you really can't make it because of the time, we will have the recording, but for a limited time slot because we want to push you to actually watch it. So we'll have it for. Yeah, we don't. We haven't decided yet, but we'll have it for a little bit after that just to push you, you know, like, watch it within that time for. Take the action sooner rather than later and, you know, get all that inspiration and info.

I think also a great benefit of just being live is what Ninkino is saying. You have the opportunity to ask questions and really get your most pressing, you know, questions answered and get the tips and help in your situation. So then you have direct access to that speaker in that time. So I think that's awesome.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And it's like, for me, I 100% relate to this because I do this podcast, but the one that the events and the things that are live, where people just ask questions and. Or just share thoughts, it doesn't even have to be like a super, like, big question. Just like, hey, you said this. And it made me think this, or it gave me this sensation. Have you experienced that bump? That's a super easy question. Like, take that as a template. You know, it's like. Because sometimes it's hard to ask questions. I remember I was running remote, this amazing panel, and I was so nervous to ask the question.

Yeah.

So nervous. Like, my limiting belief bomb went up. It was just like I got attacked by my own limiting beliefs.

And.

And then I was just like, okay. And then I got the mic and then it's just like I told them. I don't know why I have a podcast. I talk easily. I'm so nervous to ask this question. I'm just going to close my eyes and sort of go for it. So I did that and I made it so big in my head and it was just such a small question. So it was really funny. So here's the sound minder to share. Doesn't have to be big question, small question, but asking questions is important. That's how you're going to get to know Stuff. Yeah, no, I'm super excited about it. I think it's, it's really amazing. There are some really cool speakers, such good vibes. I'm so excited to speak about like some new stuff that even hasn't been on the podcast yet. So that's going to be brand new for you guys because I haven't launched any of this yet or even talked about it. So yeah, I'm super stoked. So let's just do like I just want to make sure that people understand that you need to come like so dates are June 6, 2024. So it's this year guys, from 1 to 7pm in Europe. Cat. Right. And it's free. You just sign up name, email address bump. You get some welcome emails and you get access to these amazing 10 speakers. It's really, really cool. I just caught myself amazing. I'm just gonna hug myself for doing that.

But good self love is exactly virtual hug to ourselves. And you know what I think amazing is like you are amazing because you're doing something that you find amazing, right? And that makes you this. So everybody that shows up, that is it means that you're taking kind of a step closer to getting to where you want to be. And by that you're by default amazing. So come join us, be amazing together with us, have this amazing event and I think we're going to have a lot of fun together and just really I think vibe with like minded people that share the same goals around, you know, lifestyle and business and it's just your opportunity to surround yourself with those, you know, people because one of the things we hear a lot and it was also one of the reasons why we wanted to start this event because our clients in Freedom Business mentorship, they keep telling us this that you know, it's so easy to get discouraged when you're so surrounding is just not really in line with your own personal goals. Right. And then you have your uncle and aunt or whatever, you know, asking you tricky questions about what it is that you're doing. And your friends in the physical world are not maybe exactly on board with exactly the lifestyle that you want to live or they are not having the goal of starting their own business. So this is a great opportunity to just get in the room with people that share kind of the same outlook on life or similar outlook on life, have similar goals, are there to work on the same thing and maybe build connections that can help you even after the event.

Absolutely, it's exactly like that. Like you just, you know, it's all about environments. And if you put yourself in a situation where everyone is rooting for you, cheering for you, let's go together. You feel like you want to go and you can go. And it's just like when you're not in that environment, life is such a struggle. And you know, guess what? It doesn't need to be such a big struggle. We don't need to be punished to sacrifice or anything. It's not necessary. But you need to do the work yourself. Step one is going to the event bomb. Let's go.

Let's go. So we'll see you there. Can't wait. So again, go to generationnomads.com takeoff and then you will get all of the info that you need to really take off and join us on the 6th of June.

Super exciting. Thank you so much guys for coming. Thank you for listening as well to another episode of the Digital Nomads daily podcast. If you like this episode, heart it, share it with a friend. Maybe you want to comment or share somewhere else. Like that would be really amazing. I'm really, really, really grateful for all the amazing people also on my podcast and people that are coming here. It's like, it's, it's so much awesomeness. So yeah, thank you all for making.

It happen today again. Woohoo.

Thank you for having us.

Thank you for having. It was so awesome to chat and thank you for allowing us to share about this event and for having you and can't wait to make it happen.

Same. Yay. We recorded.

Okay.