Building A Successful Creative Freelance Career With Suzanne
👇 Or listen in your fav podcast apps👇
Listen to our interview with digital nomad Suzanne:
🔥 How Suzanne started her freelance career as a creative
🔥 How Suzanne finds clients as a creative freelancer and how you can do it!
🔥 Here are some tips for finding a healthy balance between working online and traveling
🔥🔥🔥 And so much more must-know digital nomad lifestyle tips for (aspiring) digital nomads!
“There’s no bright time to pursue a nomadic lifestyle, so just do it but have a bit of a plan!”
Starting her freelance career as a creative
Suzanne didn’t start her journey as a digital nomad. In fact, she only found out while she was doing it that she was actually living the digital nomad lifestyle. During her first years of traveling, she worked in exchange for food and accommodations. It’s a popular way for low-budget traveling. Over time she offered her creative services through freelancing. While many people believe in finding a niche, Suzanne enjoys doing more than one thing like entrepreneurs and podcast guests Chels and Micaela. So Suzanne mostly does concept development for boutique hotels and restaurants and offers various creative services like photography, branding, and design. She loves both, so she decided to combine her passions, giving her creative and financial freedom.
How to find clients as a creative freelancer?
Just like any freelancer and business owner, you need to find clients. Suzanne has different marketing strategies but also shares that this isn’t always easy. One of the challenges she is facing is wearing many hats so she doesn’t always find the time to work on promoting her services. To tackle this Suzanne plans and creates content for a month and this is how she’s been able to market herself.
Another challenge he faces as a creative freelancer is coping with client feedback. Especially at the start of her journey, she would take feedback very personally, which would affect her well-being. Over time she started to understand that it’s never about her but feedback about the work. So Suzanne was able to distance herself emotionally from the feedback, treat her as clients’ needs, and adapt her designs according to their values without feeling offended or upset. This is an important lesson for anyone who is doing creative work.
‘‘Know what they want. Know which direction you want to go and it’s never the same.’’
Suzanne identifies herself as an introvert like Marcel, who also joined the Digital Nomads Daily Podcast. Both Suzanne and Marcel share on the podcast that this lifestyle taught her how to network better. Here are 3 things that helped her feel more confident: 🔎 Join co-working spaces because it’s easy to meet other people 🔎 Go to networking events and set small goals for yourself. For example, talk with 3 people about my work. 🔎 Schedule social/networking nights in your calendar and stick to it. It may feel uncomfortable but if you stick to it soon, it will feel more natural.
Combining work and travel
Talking about co-working spaces – Suzanne shares why she loves working in co-working spaces. The first to know about co-working spaces is that every space has its own unique vibe. When you arrive in a new spot, it’s helpful to find a couple of co-working spaces and check out the memberships they offer.
If you cannot choose the right co-working space, there is an easier and more affordable way to enjoy it but have flexibility. An app used by many digital nomads is called Croissant App. It offers different kinds of memberships according to how many hours you want to work and you can use those hours for various co-working spaces. So instead of having multiple memberships you have only 1 membership but access to all co-working spaces listed on the app.
At Digital Nomads Daily, we love this app and you should definitely check it out! Go to www.getcroissant.com
Another important part of Suzanne’s work-life balance is understanding her own needs and finding locations, accommodations and a community that meets those desires. And while it may not sound sexy – planning and self-discipline are part of every digital nomad’s life.
Final takeaways
🌟 There’s never a right timing. If you really want to go for it, then just do it with a plan and save up some money. 🌟 Everyone can save some money, but you must adjust your lifestyle for it if you want to. 🌟 When you’re looking into coworking space, always check out what kind of memberships they have. It doesn’t have to be full membership especially if you’re new to the city because you’re traveling and discovering. 🌟 Take those small steps and put your calendar one networking day. 🌟 Adjust yourself with the needs of clients.
🔥How Kathy aka digital nomad tax expert creates impact with Wanderers Wealth
🔥Learn more about the microfinancing project in Uganda: Wanderers Help
🔥How do micro-loans work?
🔥How can digital nomads contribute to local communities?
🔥🔥🔥 And so much more must-know digital nomad lifestyle tips for (aspiring) digital nomads!
“Wanderers Help project is neither mine nor my co-founder’s main business activity. We just really want to be able to give back to inject some money back into the community and to keep them a helping hand.”
Creating impact with Kathy aka digital nomad tax expert Wanderes Wealth
Kathleen is a location-independent international tax consultant and the founder of Wanderers Wealth. She’s been nomadding for four years, combining her love of travel with her entrepreneurial spirit.
She used to work in a corporate job as a tax lawyer. Yet, she realized that she wasn’t made for the corporate world. So, she booked a one-way ticket to Bali and started networking, and found out that people needed her help with regard to businesses, logistics, taxes, visas, residences, second citizenship, and bank accounts. She is solving a huge problem in our community and serving many digital nomads. She is also named in The 2022 Remote Influencer Report by Remote.com.
Kathy’s goal at Wanderers Wealth is to help independent entrepreneurs, digital nomads, freelancers, expats, and remote workers improve their tax situation and corporate structure. Consequently, she aims to empower them. Kathy also offers services of global diversification strategies for digital nomads.
The microfinancing project in Uganda: Wanderers Help
Recently, Kathy launched a microfinancing project, Wanderers Help, in Uganda. Her strong education and successful background are behind this project. She went to Uganda ten years ago for volunteering purposes for a social organization. Even though she studied financial system economics, Kathy ended up in financial/international business law. Moreover, she wrote her final thesis on “Micro-financing in Uganda.” Through this project, they will be able to give out more micro-loans to small business owners in Uganda.
She thought that maybe this project would happen later in her life, maybe in 50 years. But this year, she decided to launch and go entirely into it. Because she was obsessed with the topic and also surprised by the big distribution of wealth among countries. When she saw this inequality, it became inevitable for Kathy to support underprivileged people.
She is driven by the idea that while the western world has the privilege of citizenship, travel, and lifestyle, people born in less fortunate countries do not have that privilege. Thus, it is important to help these people by asking questions like, “How can we help? How can we have a lasting effect and help them in their world as well?”. Giving back comes naturally for Kathy because of her religious background, and we appreciate it!
How does this micro-loan work?
There are many ways to give back, and a popular method is via donations. However, Kathy explains why she’s not a big fan of donations: “you make people dependent on simply receiving more money. Receiving more money and not necessarily stepping up and being responsible for their own livelihood.”
“A lot of studies have shown that it has a great impact on the local communities that wouldn’t necessarily have other ways to get an extra income flow.”
Instead, they create a higher impact through microloans. In Kathy’s words,
‘‘micro-loans are basically handing out small loans to those individuals that are in a less fortunate situation. A lot of them already run their own businesses to survive. Those microloans are meant to help them out so that they can grow their businesses and make them think more about money so that they can implement a business plan and be stricter and have a bit of feeling around what to do with that money that they get.’’
The microloans can have a much bigger impact because the money is given directly to recipients with the condition that they will repay only a small amount over time. It also sounds better than taking loans from the bank due to the interest rates. While banks’ interest rate is up to 20%, Wanderers Help’s rate is 10%, which is minimal. So, it gives an opportunity to a community to enable them to build a business and sustain their life.
The 10% interest is reinvested in the project. For example to compensate petrol expenses to visit all the recipients and hand over the money. Apparently, it’s not about getting a profit from it, but it’s truly about giving back. It’s about making sure that people can go on with their dream business because they wouldn’t be able to do it otherwise. And this is exactly what makes Kathy’s story inspiring.
She also told us that it’s not just her running this project. She has a lot of support around her. Kathy surrounds herself with the right people who know how to help, like her co-founder, who’s been an international development consultant for 15 years, a local person from Uganda who can speak the language, and different consultants and lawyers.
How can digital nomads contribute?
The funds that enable them to give out microloans are collected in various ways. Organizations and individuals can donate, which will be used to fund the microloans. Keep in mind that you won’t get your interest back as a contributor. Instead, the money will be cycled and go towards another group of entrepreneurs or local staff in Uganda. That’s how the biggest impact will be achieved.
So what about you? It’s time to give back! If you would like to help Wanderers Help, you can make a contribution via this link: https://wandererswealth.mykajabi.com/wanderers-help
Quick takeaways
🌟 give at least 10% of your income back or put it into charity 🌟 you don’t have to be so old to achieve a lot of great things in your life 🌟 give a hand those who needs and unprivileged ones
How Digital Nomad Families Can Live A Boundless Life With Marcos
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Listen to our interview with digital nomad Marcos:
🔥Get to know serial entrepreneur Marcos Carvalho
🔥What is Boundless Life?
🔥What type of digital nomad families join Boundless Life?
🔥🔥🔥 And so much more must-know digital nomad lifestyle tips for (aspiring) digital nomads!
“Being able to adapt, being able to relate to others and feel comfortable with the unknown, with the discomfort, being comfortable in discomfort, it’s important, even if it’s not easy.”
The vision of world citizen and serial entrepreneur Marcos Carvalho
World citizen and entrepreneur Marcos Carvalho shares his story and the mission of one of the many companies he has co-founded, Boundless Life. It’s a purpose-driven initiative helping digital nomad families to overcome the practical obstacles of the digital nomad lifestyle. Boundless Life organizes cohorts across the globe and offers a combination of traveling, co-working and transformative education. If you are a digital nomad family and want to live a well-balanced lifestyle and connect with like-minded families, or think about your future family life, this is your episode!
Marcos Carvalho is one of the co-founders of Boundless Life and a world citizen. Growing up, he moved about five times and between Brazil, France, Canada and the United States. He is a successful serial entrepreneur who has founded several companies mostly in tech. Marcos is passionate about the future of humanity and you can clearly see this in the companies he has founded.
Marcos was introduced to different cultures and perspectives growing up and he shares this experience with the other co-founders of Boundless Life. Together they share the vision of transformative education and developing the entrepreneurial spirit in children. He has a purpose-driven personality and believes that combining traveling with future-ready education is the best way to raise the people who will develop the empathy, compassion, and kindness necessary to make the world a better place.
You can see his personality triads clearly back in his lifestyle and work and there is a lot to learn from Marcos’s journey.
What is Boundless Life
Boundless Life is an initiative helping families live fulfilling lives where travel, education, remote work, culture and meaningful connections are the stepping stones to a memorable experience.
Families from all walks of life bring their kids and work to one of the Boundless Life locations. The team takes care of all digital nomad families’ basic needs such as housing, a co-working space, cultural experiences and community events. Boundless Life is also known for its future-ready transformative education approach. It’s a unique education program developed to deepen a child’s core competencies based the world’s best educational practices. A couple of highlights of their education program: 🌟 Experiential learning 🌟 Personalized learning 🌟 Purposeful learning 🌟 Project-based learning 🌟 Future-ready 🌟 Holistic mindful well-being
‘‘It’s about building a structure to raise children so that these children will be well-prepared for the future and will be able to make a difference’’
Boundless Life develops an education system that enables the child to live the way they want and makes the nomadic life easier for families. One of the co-founders, Rekha Magon, creates a curriculum with her team, but not from scratch. As Marcos points out in this episode, “We are taking the best of the best and then putting together and then adapting it to that nomadic lifestyle.”
So we figured out that Boundless Life comprises a community of digital nomads who are living a life without bonds. A balanced life, healthy life, and freedom of choice are the keywords that characterize the lives of this group of people. But what type of families are typically part of Boundless Life?
Of course, it attracts open-minded families who love to travel and enjoy unique experiences. Remote work expert Rowena Hennigan joined The Digital Nomads Daily Podcast and talked from the Boundless Life co-working space in Sintra, Portugal.
Marcos shares that different profiles are joining the experience. Some are entrepreneurs like himself and others are consultants, investors or people that have been working remotely. It also attracts a group of people who already have their children in alternative education systems but are looking for a more culture-based experience. These digital nomad families are looking for something that offers them independence and doesn’t tie them down.
What everyone has in common are the kids. It also helps the parents even make stronger connections. Nevertheless, some parents wonder if they are doing the right thing for their kids and this is a common topic within the Boundless Life Community. However, Marcos shares that the kids often ask their parents if they can join the next cohort and he beautifully shares:
‘‘We don’t know what’s coming next. Being able to adapt, being able to relate to others and feel comfortable with the unknown, with the discomfort, being comfortable in discomfort, it’s important even if it’s not easy. It’s not always as charming as it seems. There are a lot of challenges… But change requires time.’’
How To Become A Travel Blogger And Make Money Online With Isabel
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Listen to our interview with digital nomad Isabel:
🔥 Meet Isabel and get to know how she started her travel blogging journey
🔥 Learn how she became a travel blogger and started making money online
🔥 How does a travel blogger’s day look like?
🔥 How collaborating with others help you achieve success
🔥🔥🔥 And so much more must-know digital nomad lifestyle tips for (aspiring) digital nomads!
“There are so many ideas, but the thing is to put them down on paper and to implement them rather than just absorbing all the ideas and not taking action.”
How Isabel started her travel blogging journey
She’s been on the road for two years and she’s tuned in from Bulgaria, where she joined the Bansko Nomad Fest! Her roots go back to Singapore. At the age of 21, Isabel made her first solo trip and wanted to document her journey; this is how she started her travel blogging journey. She currently lives the dream life of many people, traveling the world and documenting her experiences on her blog.
Isabel didn’t have the skills initially and shares that she had to learn everything from scratch. Like many self-made digital nomads, she learned everything she needed to know to build a successful travel blog. Once she started getting more traffic and feeling more confident, Isabel realized that it was not impossible with the traffic and success she gained over time.
Her ultimate transition of how to become a travel blogger and make money online
Nevertheless, she had no such skills and didn’t know things like how to grow sizable traffic, how to get enough page views to have passive income, and how to collaborate with brands through advertising. So through self-learning and watching many YouTube videos, Isabel gained the wisdom needed to make her travel blog successful. She also looked at what other successful bloggers were doing which is a great way to discover what is possible.
While she was building her blog, Isabel was working full-time in Singapore. Over time, as her blog became more successful, she thought about managing time freedom and travel simultaneously. So the idea of a full-time travel blog entered her mind. Once she got into an advertising network and saw that money rolling in passively, she decided to walk away from the full-time job and only focus on her travel blog. And it looks like one of her best decisions. This is how she fully transitioned and mastered becoming a travel blogger and making money online to support her lifestyle.
How does a travel blogger’s day look like?
‘‘Not one day is the same. Never gets dull.’’
Traveling and exploring the beautiful corners of the world sounds fun but of course, Isabel also needs to work. So how does her typical day looks like? Well, that totally depends on what’s on her plate that day.
Generally, she starts her day by having breakfast and heading off to a co-working space. She creates content for her blog and does a freelance service for her clients. This means that she is writing, editing pictures, researching keywords, and many more different tasks.
So believe it or not, Isabel is working full-time while traveling and this makes her lifestyle fun but exhausting too. She prefers to do her priority tasks in the morning because that’s when is has the best focus. She leaves the afternoons open for low-level tasks as they require less focus. So what makes her successful? Here is what she says:
‘‘Success depends on how disciplined you are, how much work you can get done while balancing work and play together.’’
Success brought by cooperation
Creating digital content takes a lot of time and a tremendous amount of work. Aside from her blog and travels she also does client work and creates digital products to share her knowledge and experience with others. She has an SEO course for example which you can view via this link.
So how does she do all this work and travel? The key to success is collaborating with others. Isabel shares that she’ll not be able to do so much on her own and enjoys working with others. For example, she has a VA (read here about what a VA is) for her admin tasks. Isabel also works with a digital content specialist like graphic designers and video editors. So the key is finding the right balance and being smart about how to get work done. Are you ready to become a travel blogger and make money online?
Key takeaways:
🌟 Find your best productive moment in the day and create a schedule around this 🌟 Organize your work and create a to-do list for yourself. This also helps release that overwhelming feeling 🌟 Want to start a travel blog? Learn everything you need to know about getting significant traffic so you can start working with brands 🌟 Hesitate less and do more. Don’t be afraid to fail because you’ll learn by doing and that means sometimes failing
Our guest Laura joined The Digital Nomads Daily Podcast and shared one of the books that changed her life. It shifted her mindset completely and enabled her to pursue her dream of becoming a digital nomad entrepreneur. This book made her understand better how to utilize and strengthen her existing skills and use that to create new paths to lead the way to a successful life.
A modern myth is that working relentlessly and hustling hard are the only paths to success. The budda and the badass show a different reality. The truth is that inside each one, there is a soul; once you nurture your soul and unleash it, everything falls into place.
Laura shares on the podcast that this book helped her awaken the Buddha and the Badass inside her. It shifted her belief in herself altogether and with this new mindset, she created a new set of thoughts and beliefs. This led her to entrepreneurship and transformed her mindset to follow the nomad lifestyle.
Digital nomads want to find their purpose
This book is about getting closer to your life goals and it will disrupt your deeply held beliefs about everything we have been taught in life like studies, careers, success, money, relationships and so much more.
The author Vishen differentiates two characters inside of us and describes them as:
Character 1 is the Buddha who is referred to as the spiritual master that recognizes, uses, and applies the power of the world within us. It’s the person who can live and move in this world with inner alignment and awareness.
Character 2 is the Badass and is known as the changemaker. The part of you is building, writing, leading, creating change, and transforming. The Badass in you represents the one who defies the rules, challenging the established norms so we can evolve into better species.
Once you understand and integrate the skills of both archetypes, you will experience life at a different level from most people around you. You will operate in a mindset of abundance, inspiration, and flowing with the best self. The Buddha and the Badass: The Secret Spiritual Art of Succeeding at Work will show you how to do it step by step.
Why do digital nomads love The Budda and The Badass?
We all know that every person has a unique fingerprint and in Vishen’s view, everyone also has a unique soul print.
Everything we go through in life, the good and the bad, leaves an impression. The result of this soul print is a set of foundational values that guide decisions and behavior, mainly on an unconscious level. Becoming aware of these foundational values is the first step to connecting to our inner selves and unlocking the Buddha. This is also related to how many people desire the digital nomad lifestyle. Many people want to focus on those inner values and define their own values instead of just following society-driven values.
The book’s key message is to discover your foundational values. Big changes and transformations, like becoming a digital nomad and landing a remote job can feel overwhelming. Many nomads experience the sensation of being lost multi times throughout their journey.
Not knowing the next steps and not being able to see the opportunities sucks. The Buddha and The Badass show you how to deal with this and the chapters include stories and practical examples you can model in your life. The majority of the author’s unusual business philosophies are supported by scientific research. We love the practical and exercises so you can practice starting your change now. Finally, what we love about this book is the many inspiring quotes to live by.
“In most cases, anyone can imitate your business. But nobody can imitate your business if it’s built based on your story. When your values infuse your business, you’ve given special life to your creation.” – Vishen Lakhiani
Don’t forget to add it to your reading list
If you identify yourself as a passionate entrepreneur and as someone that wants to make a passive impact, this book should be your next read! It’s your turn to embody The Buddha and The Badass to succeed in your goals and mindset. Click here to read.
