But, I had a big problem. As much as I loved the city, it was very hard to make a living.
At first, I started to work in tourism and you know the deal.... the salary is very low and you have only 14 days vacation...I knew, in order to build my life in Cape Town, I needed two things: a higher salary to afford the life I wanted, and more free time, so I could continue to travel whenever I wanted while keeping in touch with my family and friends back home. Actually, I had never planned on being an entrepreneur but I knew there was no other option except to start my own business so I could make it in Cape Town. So I started to research business ideas and stumbled across the book "The 4-hour workweek". Tim Ferriss talks about the possibility of building an online business, that allows you to travel and live anywhere in the world. After reading the book, I knew: Working online would give me the freedom I needed to be able to live in Cape Town or travel whenever needed. It’s just... I didn’t have any skills to work online. During the next period of my life, I studied hard and after starting out as a virtual assistant where I got paid to learn more skills, I eventually became an online marketer and even teamed up with my mum, helping her start an online business selling cards for psychotherapy online. Finally...The business worked really well! And then another thing happened, my relationship fell apart! I was devastated. I didn’t know what to do. I had changed my career path and worked so hard to be able to live and work remotely from Cape Town but after the break up I didn’t see any point in staying. I also really didn’t want to go back to Germany…. They say: when in doubt, travel, and so I went. At this point, my clients were used to the fact that I worked remotely, so I flew to the Philippines. I worked from the beaches of Boracay, learned to kitesurf, travelled to Argentina, Chile, Bolivia and eventually to Brazil where I slowed down my travel to study Portuguese in Rio. If you’d met me during that time, you might have thought ‘he has it all’. The business was running smoothly, I had made travelling my lifestyle. But the reality was: I got lonely. I worked alone during the day. Many people came and went in and out of my life but there was no one constant. No one was doing any kind of slow travel around me, nor did those that I met understand why I was in front of my laptop the whole day. And just like in every story there is a turning point, and it was the same for mine. When just one small puzzle piece that was missing is found to create the full picture. For me, it was hearing the words: Digital Nomad. I knew right away, that these were the people I was looking for. I knew I was already one of these nomads, and I was eager to find out who and where the others were. I looked on Facebook but couldn’t find them, so I set up the first Facebook group for digital nomads. Little did I know that what I started was going to become something so much bigger than just a Facebook group. It grew and grew - people wanted to connect just as much as I did. They wanted to share their story, their successes, and ask questions of people who were in the same boat as they were. "Let’s go..." That’s all the Facebook post said. It was a great offer to cross the Atlantic on a Cruise ship, from Gran Canaria to Brazil. I really wanted to go, but hey..who wants to take a cruise ship alone? A few months later I found myself boarding a ship about to set off on a journey not just to Brazil, but onto my brand new project: the Nomad Cruise. I had 100 nomads joining me and it was an incredible journey, we connected, organized workshops and had an amazing time in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. It was the journey of a lifetime. Now, many cruises later, I can tell that we’ve come a long way. Now we know that it never was about the cruise ship, it’s about the people. About all these nomads, who were all over the world, working on their businesses, and trying to figure out how to live life to the fullest. It’s about those people who don’t just settle for good enough or those who choose a life not ‘meant’ for them. Even though, I’ve worked out many things: how to run a conference at sea, how to find nomads from all over the world, and also, how to create a community for them, one thing has never changed: my curiosity. - and if you are still here, reading this, I am pretty sure, you are the same kind of person as me, and as anyone in our Nomad Cruise Family, you are curious about how to step up your game too. A curiosity to know more about the world and about ourselves. To discover where are our physical and mental boundaries are, and crush them one by one, to enhance ourselves and our businesses. That curiosity binds us. So perhaps you want to know how to set up your location independent life too? It doesn’t matter where you are in your journey right at this moment. Maybe you are only in the planning phase of your escape to another life, or maybe you are thinking about how to exit your first company, either way, I am really happy you are here. Because if you read this, it means we are on the same journey…" If you want to go on Nomad Cruise with me, let's plan it and you can contact me here. Comments are closed.
|
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
July 2023
Categories |
RSS Feed