Digital Nomad: How To Start ASAP with Remote Work, Freelancing, or Online Entrepreneurship

Hey there, it’s Mike Swigunski here and I’m the founder of global career and best-selling author of Global Career: How to Work Anywhere and Travel Forever.

Now today’s video is going to be about how to get started as a digital nomad. Again a little bit of background about myself is I’ve been working and traveling overseas for the past decade, and I’ve been able to visit more than 85 different countries. Now I help people get started and become digital nomads through a variety of different ways. Whether that’s with freelancing entrepreneurship or finding a remote job now, I’m going to break down each one of these ways and exactly how you can go ahead and get started as a digital nomad.

What is a digital nomad? Essentially, it’s somebody who’s able to work online and make a living? There’s a lot of perceptions around the word digital nomad. Some people don’t like being called a digital nomad again. I think everyone who’s working and traveling online falls under the umbrella of a digital nomad, and underneath it is going to be online entrepreneurs who are location independent. It’s going to be people who are freelancing and working overseas and traveling, and then it’s going to be people who have remote jobs?

Those are the three types of people that I really break down under digital nomads again. If you’re not one of those categories, there’s going to be even more sub-categories underneath those. Still, those are the three main branches, so if you’re interested in becoming a digital nomad, following one of those paths will be the best thing for you to get started. I would say freelancing and remote work is probably the easiest way to get started in becoming a digital nomad, and that’s because you don’t need a lot of upfront capital you don’t need a lot of skills entrepreneurship you need some capital you do need some sort of skill set to really get started.

The great thing about remote working is you can get paid to learn some of those skill sets if you are taking if you are just starting off, you can get an entry-level job essentially get paid to learn some of those skill sets and then later down the road you can use that skill that you’ve learned for freelancing for entrepreneurship or whatever venture you want to begin if you’re just graduating you’re very new to the workforce it might be better to go ahead and get some of those skills before you go into entrepreneurship because it can be really difficult unless you do have a unique skill or you have some startup capital.

Let’s go ahead and just start off with remote working I think that’s one of the best options for people who are wanting to become digital nomads is to find a remote company that doesn’t require you to live in one location again. There’s a lot of remote jobs out there where they don’t really care about where you’re living. They’re more concerned about your productivity, they’re more concerned about your output VS your input, and they have flexible working. They allow you to live from life and work from anywhere, and they do pay well depending on what industry that company is in and based on your experience.

So remote working is probably one of the best ways to get started, and I highly recommend finding a remote job and working there for a few months. Make sure you’re starting off with a really good place. You don’t want to start a new job and then just book a trip because you won’t be able to perform at your best capacity while you’re starting off, so do make sure that you’re going to be having a few months of really solid work and good structure under your belt before you jet off somewhere around the world.

If you do jet off again that’s one of the great perks is when you are a digital nomad, you can live from anywhere. Still, most long-term digital nomads are going to have some sort of hub, so they’ll be based in a location for six to 12 months. Still, during that time, they’ll be taking trips on weekend trips, or some people will just be traveling and working at the same time again. I would say that the people who are mainly doing it for a long time do have a hub and the reason is that you can have more structure, you can have a better routine. Still, you can use that hub to travel to nearby destinations.

Moving in on to number two is freelancing, and again, this is another great way to get started becoming a digital nomad. One of the best platforms for this is Upwork, and that’s because it’s one of the biggest if you do have a certain skill set, you can kind of reverse engineer already established profiles on Upwork, see what type of gigs they’re offering, and just try to offer something similar again when you’re just starting off you’re going to have to really undercut their prices, and you’re going to have to take some jobs where it’s probably a lot lower than what you want to charge.

This is going to be essential to build up your Upwork profile build some trust, and again those first 5 to 10 customers, you have to over-deliver and make sure that they become fans of you. They could be some customers that continually buy from you moving down the road, so do make sure that they do over-deliver, you get good reviews, and that you’re building a really solid portfolio for freelancing.

Upwork is a great way to build your freelancing platform, but again it’s going to take a little bit of time, especially at the beginning, because you do have to build up your portfolio before people start giving you gigs and start giving you a lot more money for their projects moving in at number three.

The last way to get started with becoming a digital nomad is through entrepreneurship, and again, I see kind of two paths here. One is to start your business from scratch. That’s probably what most people think of when they talk about entrepreneurship. Still, there is a second way, and that is buying an already pre-established online business. There is a lot of marketplaces and brokerages where you can do this one of them is empireflippers.com, which is a great business a great marketplace to buy already pre-vetted and curated businesses that they’ve checked the financials they’ve checked the sellers they’ve made sure that everything’s legitimate and that you’re essentially not going to be buying a lemon you’re going to be buying a legitimate business that has at least you know a year of financial details.

So that one option is to buy a business, the other option is to start from scratch, either bootstrap your own business or try to get investment into your venture and that can be done in a lot of different ways again both paths are great options it really depends if you don’t have an extra 50 to 100,000 laying around to buy a business probably starting off you can still acquire some smaller businesses under that really need to make sure you have a unique skill set before you do acquire an asset like that and a digital asset like that.

And then the last thing about entrepreneurship is I do see it as progression. A lot of people fail because they don’t have the right idea, they don’t have the right skill set, or they’re just not able to pull everything together to get started with entrepreneurship. You don’t need to spend years and years developing some idea or program. You can do all this within a month or 30 day period. You can build an MVP, test it out, makes sure that the proof of concept is justified before you move forward and waste a lot of time and money.

If you are going to go down the entrepreneurship route, make sure to get in touch with me. I would love to chat with you about it and see if there’s any way I can help you out again. If you choose any of these routes, I guarantee you’ll have success as long as you stick with it, stay authentic and deliver a good product and service, whether that’s to a company or a customer. I guarantee you’ll find success no matter what route you choose as a digital nomad.

So again, if you made it this far, please consider subscribing to my channel. Make sure you hit the bell icon to get notified about future videos; I’ll be releasing at least one video every week, sometimes two or three, and again if you haven’t liked this video, it’s really great for increasing my exposure on youtube so make sure you go ahead and like the video and leave a comment below let me know which route you’re looking to choose are you wanting to go down entrepreneurship freelancing or finding a remote job I’m curious to see what’s going to be the most popular route for becoming a digital nomad take care and have a wonderful rest of your day you.

I appreciate you staying this far if you haven’t subscribed yet make sure to click here to subscribe and also consider liking this video.

You can apply for the remote life program and get a free resume audit here. 

Want to learn more about remote work? Check out our Free 115+ Page Ebook on the Top 100 Remote Companies by clicking right here.

Want to learn how to travel for FREE? Consider joining our travel hacking masterclass here!