For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been hanging out with lots of entrepreneurs and digital nomads here in Chiang Mai, Thailand. There’s no shortage of them here—put on a blindfold, get out of your apartment and there’s a good chance you’ll stumble into a couple of hipster-looking guys sporting flip flops and shorts in the first five minutes. There’s a good reason why this city is called “The Digital Nomad Capital of the World.”
While some of them are just starting out their nomadic journey, many of them quit their jobs recently and are busy learning the ways of making money online—a painful process I had to go through many years ago—there are also plenty of veterans who’re making a very sizable income online.
For instance, the 30-something American guy I met yesterday at a trendy coffee shop is making close to $5,000/mo (that amount has been steadily rising) selling various physical products that he’s importing from China and Vietnam. Many other guys are also making much more than creating interesting information and software products.
But not all of the guys I’ve met are making that much money; I’ve also met plenty of guys who’ve either failed in all of their online ventures (I don’t consider making $100/mo as income) or are barely clearing even $500 per month. While the latter affords them to live the “digital nomad lifestyle,” their options are quite limited. Very limited. Even in a low cost country like Thailand, the apartment they’re renting is much smaller, less comfortable and isn’t located in a desirable part of the city. Many of them can’t even afford to rent a motorbike, more or less a necessity in Chiang Mai.
So, what’s the difference between the guys who’re killing it and the guys who’re barely making enough to cover a typical New York City cable bill? Why do some people are enjoying their nomadic life to the fullest, while others are struggling just to live in some “3rd world” country where basic dinners are only $1.50 and apartment rents are only $150/mo? What are the factors that explain such a difference in income?
I can begin by telling which factors aren’t responsible. It’s not the work ethic. Both types of people are hard working. Both types of people are spending long hours in front of their computer. Another guy I’ve gotten to know, a 20-something English guy, whom I met at my favorite co-working spot has been duly putting in 16 hour days, while working on his new blog and some other projects (he barely has the time to hit on sexy Thai women). Unfortunately, he is only making several hundred dollars a month and will probably continue to do so in the near future.
After spending lots of time pondering why there’s such a discrepancy in incomes for the same hours of work, I came up with a couple of theories. One of the main reasons is passion—or the lack of it. The guys who’re truly successful are working on things that they’re passionate about; they guys who’re struggling paying their $150/mo apartment rent are working on things they have zero interest in.
Wannabe marketers first, travelers last
Take something as ubiquitous as travel blogging. About ten or fifteen years ago, travel writing was something that people did in addition to traveling to remote and exotic destinations. When I lived in Bogota, Colombia in 2007, not many people knew about about this dynamic and friendly country. So, it was natural to live there and then share experiences with others. The focus was on living in this great and exciting country and not sitting up in your cheap hostel room, spending 16 hours a day designing a logo and picking out a theme for your blog. These guys were road junkies first and bloggers second.
Nowadays, things are done in reverse: people are starting travel blogs primarily for the making-money aspect and not as a way to share their journeys. Many of these people aren’t very passionate about going off the beaten path as they are in driving lots of traffic to their websites. They’re more interested in increasing their twitter followers than exploring rural Nepal. They’re marketer-wannabees first and travelers last. It’s truly sad. And their marketing sucks, too.
The result is some half-baked websites with articles that appear like travel encyclopedias, copied straight from Wikipedia instead of opinionated first-hand accounts of interesting, off-the-beaten path travel destinations. Thus, there should no surprise whatsoever that such projects don’t last too long because people who start them eventually lose interest and give up. I certainly wouldn’t last long working on something that I have very low or zero interest in.
Another popular technique taught by “passive-income gurus” (no idea what the hell that even means, maybe someone can elucidate me) is to build “niche sites.” These are mostly low quality sites focused on a particular area that has potential to be profitable. An example would be to create a site about training your pet turtle to sing to you. You register a domain, write a couple of articles (usually, outsourced to some third world country) and sell some cheap ebook riddled with spelling errors that took you few days to stitch together.
Congratulations: you traded your time and work for a low quality website site on which you’re selling a low quality product.
Thus, it’s not too surprising that your $15 “teach your turtle to sing and dance” ebook that you outsourced to some guy in Bangladesh who barely spoke good English with $5 Fiverr-made cover isn’t selling very well. Can you really expect such a product to support your lifestyle? Can you expect this product to pay for your rent, your motorbike, and that swanky rooftop bar in Seminyak, Bali? And this is why you quit your comfortable six figure job?
Location-dependent slavery
I call the process of quitting your five- or six-figure job in a rich Western country in order to do some low quality online work in a poorer third world country the location-dependent slavery trap. Instead of quitting your job because you want to grow and evolve as a person and build something great, you quit your job and waste your time on low quality shit. Instead of finding your freedom and becoming location-independent, you become a location-dependent slave.
And while you can gloat and brag that you don’t have a boss looking over your shoulder or that you no longer need to set an alarm or you don’t answer to anyone but yourself all you want, you can’t deny the fact that your personal standard of living was just cut by half if not much more. A guy who’s working for the “man” can easily afford to have an “expensive” $25 dinner, but you can’t. The only dinners you can afford are the cheap $1.50 dinners in SE Asian countries (just don’t bother going to Singapore, you wouldn’t even last a day there).
The road to true financial independence this is not.
Random coffee shop in Chiang Mai
Building your own brand
One proven way to get ahead is by focusing on something that’s both unique and individual: your own self. A brand is the purest form of the new capital that is available to nomadic entrepreneurs. Since no two people are alike, a brand surrounding yourself is unique. It’s not a product or service that can be easily “copied” by someone else. My story, my experience and my thoughts will be different than yours.
There’s the right way of building a brand and the wrong way. Having done plenty of “brand-building,” I can immediately spot a fantastic brand and a brand that sucks. Earlier this year, I spent two months living in Bali, Indonesia. The reason I only spent two months was because that’s how long my visa was for. I also couldn’t extend the visa further, which meant I only had two options: leave the country and return (get a new visa) or leave the country and just go live somewhere else. The first option is called a “visa-run,” a process where you temporarily leave the country and then return (often in a single day), thus obtaining a new visa.
I figured this was a good idea, so I began researching about doing a visa-run to Singapore and back. Few minutes later, I stumbled on an article written by a travel blogger. The article perfectly described the process of doing a visa run and obtaining a new visa. I read the article and immediately understood the process. (In the end, ended up leaving Indonesia and going to Thailand, and not doing a visa run).
I was impressed with the article so much, that I began browsing other articles on his site. Each of these article was just like the original; well-written and informative. There was information about renting apartments in a bunch of major cities in Southeast Asia as well as other important tips and information.
After browsing the site for several minutes, I was now sold. I wanted to know more about the author and what services and products he might be selling. I clicked on the “about” section, fully expecting to see the guy’s picture and learn more about him, perhaps his background and how he started traveling. I was excited to meet a fellow nomad.
I clicked… and I went from being happy and excited to feeling disappointed. Why? Because I saw nothing. No picture. No description. No story. Just some generic paragraph about how this guy likes traveling and drinks organic tea. It was a complete let down. Moreover, I felt mislead because the name of his blog included his name, but when it was time to introduce himself to a potential reader, he utterly failed. I never visited his site again.
Now, compare this to another travel blog I frequent all the time. Let’s call him blogger B. This travel blog has personality. It’s opinionated. It’s interesting. The articles are well written and informative. The guy’s picture is also everywhere, giving me the impression—as a long time reader—that I know him on a personal level.
Which one of these travel blogs has a great brand and which one doesn’t? Which one of these guys successfully created something valuable that won’t be copied and commoditized tomorrow? The guy who wrote an encyclopedia type article about doing visa runs but is really some anonymous persona without a face or the guy who writes opinionated and interested articles that you can’t help to admire? Which one of these sites do you think gets more traffic? (In fact, the second blogger’s site is one of the top travel blogs in the world).
But let’s forget about branding for a second and think about human connections, which is pretty much the point of building a great personal brand. Which one of these guys would you likely to follow? Which one of these guys would you want to meet in real life? Which one of these guys would you form a stronger connection to? Which one of these guys are you more likely trust?
Go big or go back to your first world desk job
One thing I’ve learned after being nomadic for over ten years, a life-changing journey that took me to over 80 countries, is that you must maintain a certain minimum income level for this life to be enjoyable. Even here in Southeast Asia, where you can certainly get by with just $500/mo (or even less if you’re sharing an apartment with someone else), your quality of life would plummet as compared to if you commanded a slightly higher budget of $800/mo. (For $1,000/mo you can have a truly excellent lifestyle).
And I’m talking about Chiang Mai, Thailand here, one of the lower-cost destinations in the region and even the world, and not some place like Tokyo or New York.
Money matters. Income matters. The tenacity of your hustling matters. This took me a long time to realize because I figured that making decent amount isn’t all that important: if my income is low, I can always move to some lower income country.
But the reality is that $300/mo is still $300/mo, and while it buys next to nothing in America, it doesn’t really buy very much in SE Asia either. That’s why I can’t recommend someone to adopt a nomadic lifestyle if all they can make is $300/mo (and have no savings). That amount is just too low to survive on unless you’re ready to drastically downgrade your lifestyle (or have sizable savings to dig into).
What I’m trying to say is that if you’re interested in becoming nomadic and enjoying your new lifestyle, you need to put in your dues. This lifestyle ain’t “free.” And in order to make more money, to cross over that all-important $1,000/mo hurdle (or the $1,500/mo – $2,000/mo hurdle that you need in slightly more expensive locales), you must aim high and wide and actually build something real. Learn how to hustle. Don’t be lazy. Don’t aim low. Don’t cut corners. All of that will hold you back.
While it’s fun to bash a soul-sucking 9-5 job, one thing it does really well is that it lets you maintain a sane lifestyle with certain comforts in the overpriced first world. It allows you to enjoy such things as a decent car, 500 cable channels and time to work on your hobbies without dying of starvation. If you want to replace this lifestyle, you better think long and hard on how exactly you’d do that.
In other words, how would you provide real value to real people? How can you get people not only to notice that you exist but also being able to convince them that what you’re selling really matters? Hint: it’s a lot harder than you realize, as you’re competing with other people who’re trying to do the same.
I recommend doing something that you can put your name on, something that you would be excited to call your own.Something that can ultimately fuel the next phase of your life. Start a real company. Build a real brand that can potentially be bigger than you are. Go where others are afraid to venture. Build a real castle not some wooden hut. An empire. Build something that will outlive you. Most often that not, it begins with yourself.
Otherwise what’s the fucking point? Why quit your stable and secure job? Why voluntarily give up a stable five- or six-figure income if you don’t have better ideas to replace it with (and aren’t willing to work for)?
Because it’s “cool” and “trendy” to be on your own? Because it’s fun to tell people you’re digital nomad who’s living in Chiang Mai? Because it’s fun to check-in on Facebook so that your “friends” can see that you’re living in a new place every month?
I find that very amusing. Because I can bet those friends would never know that you can no longer afford a $15 dinner at a “fancy” restaurant in Bangkok or Saigon. Which is exactly what will happen if you decide to structure your new lifestyle on some “throwaway business model” such as writing some crappy ebook or building some low quality site that nobody, even your closest friends and family—including yourself—wouldn’t really give two shits about.
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