Hey guys!
My last post on Steemit about my life in North Korea vs. South Korea did really well with 700+ upvotes and 250+ comments and so I decided to publish another post straight away.
Hope you'll enjoy it too!
When I was a kid, I hated not being able to control my own life – I couldn’t travel alone, I couldn’t drive a car, I couldn’t (legally) work, heck, I couldn’t even stay at my friend’s place if my parents didn’t agree!
That’s why I always dreamed of starting my own business so that I could make my own money and be able to do whatever I wanted to do with my life.
Making My Own Money at 15
Long story short, I established my first business at the age of 15, which I sold 10 months later for €7,800 to my business partner who was 38 years-old at that time.
For the next three years I continued running various online businesses ranging from a recipes website to a vintage fashion products’s marketplace to everything in between. In those years I couldn’t think about anything else other than my business – it was my work, my passion and, essentially, my life.
The day I established my very first corporation at the age of 15.
Life-Changing Trip to Malaysia
However, when I graduated from high school at the age of 19, I had a completely random opportunity to spend 2 weeks exploring Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. That experience made me realize how big and interesting the world was and I suddenly became interested in traveling.
Even though at that point I had been financially independent for quite a few years, I wasn’t really location independent as I would have to attend some conferences, meet my team members and customers face-to-face.
At that point I didn’t even know what a “Digital Nomad” was, but I realized that I could create and run an online business remotely, which would allow me to travel absolutely anywhere and stay for as long as I wished (as long as I had a Wi-Fi connection, of course).
Becoming Location Independent
After thinking about all the different businesses I could start, I decided to establish a social media marketing agency that would provide Facebook marketing services to small businesses.
The idea was this: every small business had a Facebook fan page, but they were so busy with all the operational tasks that they didn’t have time to manage it. Even if someone did have a little bit of time, it would usually be a person who’s doing 7 different jobs at the same time and obviously wouldn’t know much about social media marketing.
That’s where we would come in.
We would create a marketing strategy for them and once they would approve it, we would start managing their Facebook fan page. We would post 3-6 times a week (write all the captions, put their logos on the photos, reply to people’s comments, etc.), depending on which payment plan they chose.
Now the best part of the whole business was that I didn’t hire anyone.
Every client worked with one project manager and one content manager, whom I would pay a monthly fee per client. Let’s say I was getting paid $250 a month for one client. I would then pay $75 a month to the project manager and $75 a month to the content manager, in which case I would be making $100 profit.
Not only that, the company would be profitable even if we only had a single client, which would, of course, be impossible had I been paying my employees full-time or part-time salaries.
The only thing I had to focus on was acquiring customers and making sure they were happy with the services we were providing.
Full-Time Traveling While Working Only 6 Hours/Week
I remember in those days I was only working 6-8 hours a week and making from $1,600 to $2,400 a month. That is not a lot of money in Western Europe, but it’s definitely enough to travel to most places around the world and that’s exactly what you need to be a digital nomad.
You don’t need a million dollars, you just need enough money and time to do anything you want to do.
Thank you very much for reading the post, I really hope you enjoyed it!
Let me know what you would like me to post about in the comments below and follow me for more updates in the future.
Also, if you want to get real-time updates from my travels, check me out on Instagram.
And always remember...