How I started my Digital Nomad journey
With my background of living in 4 different countries, I had honestly always wanted to live and work abroad. However, I had never had much of a chance as I was working for small companies/startups that couldn’t sponsor me. While Singapore was great, I never quite fit in and there were limited job opportunities for me there.
So I finally took control and decided to sponsor my own nomading lifestyle. I took a Neurolinguistics Programming (NLP) course in 2017, which helped change my mindset and life for good! It gave me the courage to finally leave my full-time job.
After 8 years’ of retail marketing for other companies, I decided to go ahead and offer freelance marketing services. I found clients through word-of-mouth and online listings, and managed their social media, copy writing/content writing and sales funnels.
When the digital nomad life became trendy, I went out to Canggu in 2018 and worked out of DOJO Bali to see what the lifestyle was like. I was hooked!
I went out to Koh Samui for 3 months after Bali to do a writing bootcamp. However, towards the end of that stint, I lost my clients! Suddenly, almost all of them had dropped me.
Although I had another backup stream of rental income, it wasn’t enough and I didn’t like the instability of freelancing. I had a huge reality check about freelancing and the fact that I couldn’t control my income and also the possibility of being stranded overseas with not enough money.
I also noticed that most of the nomads were often broke and struggling. So I went back home to Singapore to rethink my strategy, save up some money and put my head down to work.
I actually took up another digital marketing course and worked with a mentor to do content marketing and ecommerce.
At the same time, I also got really interested in financial literacy and the FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) movement. I became a financial advisor, while getting certified as an Associate Wealth Planner. I also tutored primary and secondary students in English, which I really enjoyed and had a relatively stable schedule and cash flow.
Finally, the time came where I could rent out my whole apartment in Singapore. I also had some mental health challenges that I was dealing with. The last straw was finding out that an ex-school mate had abruptly passed away at the age of 40+. I knew then it was time to go.
So now I’ve been travelling and working on my own business – Women Who Invest Asia, a financial literacy programme to teach women how to invest, as well as travel content creation.
Meanwhile, I’m also exploring other avenues of income, such as more property investments. While freelancing was fun, I would much rather run my own business and be creative.
It has been a LONG JOURNEY to get where I am. It involved a lot of skill learning especially in the digital marketing area, mindset shifting and action taking to go down this path of digital nomad life. It’s not for the faint-hearted and the nomads that I’ve seen who have made it, have built THRIVING businesses or work lucrative REMOTE JOBS.
Everyone’s journey is going to be different, but it mainly involves a lot of HARD WORK, diversification into different INCOME STREAMS, and being super RESILIENT to succeed in this lifestyle.
Currently, I have about 3 different income streams (rental income, dividends and business) and I am always on the lookout to build more. But at this point of time, I’m very lucky to be able to say that it is currently quite stable and I’m looking forward to expanding on this in the future!
I hope this is some sort of REAL LIFE STORY that helps you to understand the journey of becoming a digital nomad! It is really a work in progress that involves lots of trial and error to see what sort of career/business suits you while you are travelling and balancing it!