The Power of Planning with Digital Nomad Entrepreneurs Anastasia & Tomer

“Sometimes you need to go through a short period of discomfort to create a lifetime of comfort”

The shift to an online entrepreneur journey 

While working their regular 9 to 5 corporate job, they knew that they wanted to become entrepreneurs doing something creative. Even though they planned, what business they exactly wanted to build wasn’t clear yet. With savings and a passive income in the pocket, they started their online business journey. At first, Anastasia and Tomer spoke about the remote lifestyle and traveling via Instagram @Generationnomads and a blog. After a while, they found out that this wasn’t moving the needle. One they that stood out was that making money online as a content creator can be overwhelming. It requires the right mindset, some tech know-how, and of course, the right content. This is where they shifted their business into helping content creators like bloggers make money online by monetizing their content. They developed an online coaching program that walks you through the steps of making money online with your content. 

Know the mindset that you are in that moment

You might not think of this when you dream about becoming a digital nomad but planning does come in handy. You need to have some sort of plan to make this sustainable so you can enjoy the journey longer.

It might sound boring but all you want to do is to make sure you enjoy your time as you have planned. Things Anastasia and Tomer typically plan or think about where to go next are for example where to work from and if there is community. It comes down to your intentions and what you want to get out of the trip or location. What is important is that you know what you are looking for and find a location that provides all you need. Funny enough is that also Digital Nomad Kristina and Taryn talk about this on the podcast. If you are just starting out and you have no clue what you want, visit your dream places and learn as you travel. Check in with yourself regularly and ask yourself:

• How do I feel here?
• What positive impact has this place had on my daily routine?
• If this place had ______, then it would be the perfect place.
• If this place had less of ______, then it would be the perfect place.
• What do I want to feel in my next location?
• Is it that I want to get out of this situation? How do I want to travel? What is it that I want?

While you are nomadding, don’t forget that all of this is a learning experience. There is no right or wrong as long as you are willing to learn from every single situation.

Keep an open mind

Planning is something that can help you make things go smooth but this isn’t always the case. Sometimes plans don’t go the way we expected and you need to adjust. In these situations, you must keep an open mind and check in with yourself. What do you need right now and what decision will help me get there? While you’re traveling anything can go wrong from small things to missing flights to larger things like safety issues.

This also happened for Anastasia and Tomer and found themselves in a situation where they thought it was perfectly planned but had to adjust to the situation. During their last days in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, they decided to go to the north of Brazil before heading back to Europe. Doing some last-minute research, they discovered how unsafe that area was, being the 7th most dangerous place in the world. Many questions started popping up and it was a stressful decision to go or not. After checking in with themselves they decided not to take the trip. Why? Because all they wanted was a relaxing trip to enjoy the tropical weather before going to Europe. A trip that could be very unsafe simply wasn’t what they truly desired. Canceling was the best option.

Tips if you’re thinking about becoming a digital nomad

• Sometimes you need to go through a short period of discomfort to create a lifetime of comfort
• Any kind of freedom that you want to create requires discipline first
• You appreciate it so much more when it takes something to get it
• Whatever you may need to make this happen, you already have it within you
• You can start becoming who you want to be right now, you just need to make decisions
• You already have everything that you need
• There is no better timing than today

Connect with our Nienke Nina and our guests

Your host Nienke Nina

More digital nomad tips and life advice via instagram @digitalnomadsdaily

Connect with Nienke Nina on LinkedIn @Nienke Nina Keizer

Find Nienke Nina on Instagram @nienkeninatravels

Meet the digital nomad couple Anastasia & Tomer

Follow their journey via Instagram @generationnomads

Other episodes you might like:

🎧 Episode #07: Overcoming Fears and Building Community with Digital Nomad Magali

🎧 Episode #48 How To Set Boundaries and Why You Want to Go Slomad with Kristin

🎧 Episode #51: How To Live A Balanced And Joyful Remote Life With Ali

Dealing with high anxiety while building a successful online business with The Remote Yogi

“A big thing for me was learning how to release shame and the shoulds around being an entrepreneur.”

Starting her journey as a digital nomad

It might not seem this way but not everyone has a smooth ride when shifting lifestyles to become a digital nomad. In this episode, Taryn shares her story about how her path was everything but glamorous. After a rocky divorce, working as an event planner and yoga teacher, she felt desperate to travel the world. While she was anxiously looking for any job that could be done remotely, she saw and Ad of Remote Year and signed up. She also found a remote position and started doing sales for an event company. During her first 1.5 years of traveling and working at low wage income, she built her business and slowly paid off her huge debt on her credit card.

How Taryn became a full-time digital nomad and built her business

After Taryn decided to embark on her new lifestyle, she created her blog called The Remote Yogi. At first, she just wanted to keep her family and friends up to date about her adventures and share travel stories. While she was traveling with Remote Year she was surrounded by entrepreneurs and marketing experts. This is where she decided to put more work into her blog and transform it into a business opportunity. After the first year she started offering her first online product that would help her to gain more consistent income. Then she added more products like yoga memberships and more recently coaching women around building confidence and anxiety issues. Tyran has been dealing with high anxiety and built routines and ways to coop with them.
Today she is sharing her experience and approach to help other women who experience anxiety. While building her business she gained marketing expertise and her next entrepreneurial step was co-founding a marketing agency. After 5 years of hard work, she can now confidentially say that she is finally financially comfortable

Defining what makes a place worth of returning

A struggle for many starting nomads is to find a destination. Of course we read and hear stories about magical nomad places. Rather than just picking a random place Taryn and Nienke Nina speak about how to pick a destination that works for you. Of course, you can also go anywhere but if you are looking for a specific experience you might want to follow the tips below:

Be aware of what matters most to you.

You must have your core values set. Because when you do, in your next destination that you travel to, you will know exactly what you need from that place. A tip from Taryn is when you get to a new city, ask yourself, how many of my values am I able to reach here.

Digital nomads have the freedom to explore.

If nature is something that means a lot to you, you have to be somewhere where you have easy access to it. In your near surroundings, or with available transportation to reach it.

Find your digital nomad community.

Even if digital nomads are travelers in heart, we still need to form a connection. Building a community far from home ends up being a necessity for almost everyone.

Digital nomads actively network.

Being able to meet a diversity of people, people who have the same mindset but different backgrounds can change your experience for the better. It’s having the capacity to network and grow professionally as well as personally.

Make sure that wherever you are traveling, you can incorporate those things that mean so much to you.

We hope these tips are helpful and you can read more tips about how to find a accommodation for digital nomads on our website.

How to handle entrepreneurship and anxiety

Two things that stood out to her in her process of becoming an entrepreneur were: releasing shame and facing the truths of entrepreneurship. Finding herself in these two situations helped her to build a healthier relationship with herself as an entrepreneur and succeed in her business.

Releasing shame:

One of her biggest challenges through this path of entrepreneurship was to learn how to get rid of a nagging feeling of shame and the shoulds. What you should be earning, what your business should have reached, how many hours you should be working. It’s ok to struggle and to make mistakes, it’s all a learning experience.

Wrong idea of entrepreneurship:

Taryn shares with us this idea that exists of building your business, which consists of dropping everything and hoping for the best. That method only works for a small percentage of the population, which does not include her. Being a person that suffers from anxiety, what worked best for her was having a variety of freelance jobs while building her company. Every person’s path is different, there is no right or wrong.

Boundaries and balancing with ourselves

With entrepreneurship comes learning how to hold boundaries with your clients and set the times that you are available. This also applies to setting them for yourself too. Taryn shares one of the methods that she has to not break these boundaries, which consists of blocking her email after certain hours, and she is only allowed to check her emails after 25 mins windows.

Connect with our Nienke Nina and our guests

Your host Nienke Nina

More digital nomad tips and life advice via instagram @digitalnomadsdaily

Connect with Nienke Nina on LinkedIn @Nienke Nina Keizer

Find Nienke Nina on Instagram @nienkeninatravels

Meet the Remote Yogi aka Taryn

Follow their journey via Instagram @theremoteyogi

More links and handy tips > click here

Other episodes you might like:

🎧 Episode #07: Overcoming Fears and Building Community with Digital Nomad Magali

🎧 Episode #48 How To Set Boundaries and Why You Want to Go Slomad with Kristin

🎧 Episode #51: How To Live A Balanced And Joyful Remote Life With Ali

How to Combine Entrepreneurship and Travel with Kristina

“It took 2 years of overworking. It took 2 years to get out there traveling again. So, it’s not like I’m sitting at the beach, drinking coconuts and money is raining over me.”

How digital nomad Kirstina started her digital nomad journey

Not all Digital Nomads start this lifestyle straight from an Instagram ad. Kristina and her boyfriend left Austria in 2015 to do an internship in China. She studied Business and her boyfriend studies German literature. After just a couple of years working abroad, they discovered that there was a huge market for German writers. In 2017 they started a ghostwriting agency, 100% remote.

Creating a business while traveling works for some people. However, their travel speed changed while they were in nomad capital Bali. Being surrounded by nomadic entrepreneurs, and joining talks and events they decided to stop traveling for some time and work on their businesses. Like Kristina shared on our podcast, it was time to professionalize their company. This included 60+ hours of long weeks and hard work! Since then they have managed to grow their company 10 times and continued traveling the world.

Difference slow travel and fast travel

As a Digital Nomad, there are periods where you travel non-stop hopping from one country to another. This is also known as ‘fast travel’ while others prefer to stay a couple of weeks or months before switching destinations which we call ‘slow travel’. Kristina finds herself now in what she interprets as ‘medium travel’, changing place every 1-3 months.

Interestingly is that this is very different from other periods of her life. As her Digital Nomad life began so did her fast traveling. This was a lot of fun but she also mentioned that it could cost money, time to organize the trip and significantly less focus on her business. So when she started her business, to make it work, the fast traveling wasn’t gonna grow her company. Listen to the podcast episode to find out more about the stages in which she found herself during the years of becoming an entrepreneur.

Finding the right balance and prioritizing

Every location and travel situation has its own special experience. Kristina’s advice to starting nomadic entrepreneurs is the importance of accepting the moment that you are in. In other words, you can’t have everything all the time and this is where that state of acceptance is so important.

She shares that you have to learn how to prioritize and find the balance between your travels and your professional goals. Another great tip is to keep looking at the bigger picture when making decisions or changes. Ask yourself, is this way sustainable?

Stay close to your own values

Kristina is a successful entrepreneur and Digital Nomad and her best advice is to stay true to your personal values. As she mentioned, she studied Business and she loves traveling. That doesn’t mean though that she wants to open a hostel in Thailand. That is simply not something close to her values. Exploring new areas of business is important for her as well. Khristina shares how she tried the path of coaching others into becoming digital nomad. It wasn’t for her and she accepted that situation. Finally, she emphasizes working on finding your strengths, keeping working on them and staying true to your values.

Connect with our Nienke Nina and our guests

Your host Nienke Nina

More digital nomad tips and life advice via instagram @digitalnomadsdaily

Connect with Nienke Nina on LinkedIn @Nienke Nina Keizer

Find Nienke Nina on Instagram @nienkeninatravels

Meet Digital Nomad Entrepreneur Kristina

Follow their journey via @office__travel

Other episodes you might like:

🎧 Episode 13: How To Pivot Your Passion Into An Online Business With Andrae

🎧 Episode 22: Facing The Realities Of Online Entrepreneurship with Anne

🎧 Episode 28: How Digital Nomads Can Become Successful Entrepreneurs With John

🎧 Episode 35: Building A Successful Creative Freelance Career With Suzanne

How to Date as a Digital Nomad with Jordan

“When you are going to be dating and traveling around, just be as clear as you possibly can about your intentions. Sometimes, those things change over time, and that’s OK as long as you communicate it.”

Meet digital nomad Jordan Carroll

Jordan started working remotely in 2013, but it wasn’t until 2018 that he decided to start traveling. In the last couple of years, he has dated internationally, and he is sharing some of his experiences on this week’s podcast episode.

Going through ups and downs has taught him as he mentions to accept it, laugh at it, take the lessons and move on.

Jordan has found a better way to learn a new language rather than using Duolingo. While traveling in Columbia, he went on Tinder to find women to date while learning Spanish. For Jordan, this was a great way to improve his Spanish skills but getting to know someone like this can be challenging too. This is how Google Translate became essential in all his dates.

Starting a serious relationship

Jordan had many dates and his Spanish definitely improved. During one of his travels, he met someone and ended up spending 9 out of 10 days with her. His next trip was to Europe followed by a cruise ship with Nomad Cruise from Europe to Brazil. Jordan shares that they stayed in touch but it came with some real challenges like being in different time zones and bad internet connections during his cruise. He really liked her and decided to fly her to his home so they could spend some time together. This included meeting the parents right away.

Trying local cuisine gone wrong

Traveling to rural Mexico can be fun as we all know, but you got to be careful with the local cuisine! Jordan shares his experience where he tried some local foods. He got sick but the real consequences only came up one year later! From what he thought was just stomach pain, into thinking he had an “STD”, to finally realizing he ended up with a bacteria from that food he tried a year before.

Connect with our Nienke Nina and our guests

Your host Nienke Nina

More digital nomad tips and life advice via instagram @digitalnomadsdaily

Connect with Nienke Nina on LinkedIn @Nienke Nina Keizer

Find Nienke Nina on Instagram @nienkeninatravels

Meet nomad Jordan

Follow his journey on Instagram @theremotejobcoach

Other episodes you might like:

🎧 Episode 02: From a Stolen Passport to Almost Being Deported. Horror Nomad Stories with Saurav

🎧 Episode 12: The Secret Of Finding A Remote Job With Jordan Carroll

🎧 Episode 36: How To Become A Digital Nomad Couple Sailing The World With Ryan & Sophie

From a Stolen Passport to Almost Being Deported – Horror Nomad Stories with Saurav

“No matter how much you plan, traveling is so unpredictable. 6 out of the 7 days, it will go as planned, but the 7th day will be a nightmare. Things just go off the tracks.”

An episode about common digital nomad nightmares

Meet Saurav “ The Indian Digital Nomad” started his Digital Nomad lifestyle 11 years ago. During his trips, he has mostly traveled alone but sometimes his wife, father or brother tag along. As we go in life, we live and learn, and that’s exactly what Saurav shares with us in this episode. He has experienced many travelers’ nightmares and he says that it’s just the reality of being a Digital Nomad. There are incredible advantages of being a nomad, but there are also some truths that are not commonly shared under the hashtag “Digital Nomad lifestyle”.

He has been nomadding for more than 11 years and plans to continue for many more years. He started his nomad journey by working remotely while doing trips. Now Saurav is a digital nomad entrepreneur and he has several internet businesses. He also runs a digital nomad community called “workstays”, he and his team helps people to shift from their 9 to 5 life to a Digital Nomad Lifestyle. His mission is to visit every country in the world, so far 91 and 106 more to go!

Passport & belongings were stolen at his first destination

Being robbed by itself it’s a torment, but being robbed on the first destination of your Digital Nomad lifestyle (or any trip) is a whole other ball game. Saurav tells us his experience with his belongings and passport being stolen, some useful ideas on what you can do when this happens to you, and how to get a new passport the next day.

Being deported and spending 24 hours of the radar

Each country has its laws laid out for foreigners and travelers. If you don’t follow these rules, you can end up being deported. Asian countries can be very strict, especially places like Singapore. Saurav’s brother lives in Singapore and while he was staying with him, he would go on trips to the Philippines or Bali. One day he found himself in a triangle of travel where he was not playing by the rules, and he wasn’t even aware of it!! When he tried to re-enter Singapore he got flagged and was detained for 24 hours at the airport.

Visa problems for digital nomads

Everyone knows, getting the right visa can be a true nightmare, especially when you want to stay longer than the tourist visas allow. This can vary a lot depending on your nationality, the country that you are traveling from and heading to. Saurav learned the hard way that you always need to double-check how you need to apply and what the rules are before you plan your entire itinerary. Saurav had to learn the hard way.

Booking wrong flights

Nienke Nina asked for one more quick last digital nomad nightmare and tips for digital nomads between the laughs he said “never book a flight sleepy”. Going to the airport at 5 am and for the flight and having someone tell you that your flight is not for another year… must be surreal. Something similar happened to Nienke Nina too, she booked the flight the other way around and as digital nomads you learn the hard way. Now it’s just a funny story!

Connect with our Nienke Nina and our guests

Your host Nienke Nina

More digital nomad tips and life advice via instagram @digitalnomadsdaily

Connect with Nienke Nina on LinkedIn @Nienke Nina Keizer

Find Nienke Nina on Instagram @nienkeninatravels

Meet digital nomad Saurav

Follow his journey via @indiandigitalnomad

Other episodes you might like:

🎧  Episode 03: How to Date as a Digital Nomad with Jordan

🎧 Episode 08: Leaving the corporate world behind and reinventing yourself with nomad Tarek

🎧  Episode 21: 10 Years Of Traveling The World With Daisy

How to thrive in your digital nomad relationship with Anat & Orr

“You need to put yourself in social situations that will allow you to find connections.”

An episode about Digital Nomads Couples

Anat and Orr are high school sweethearts and started their digital nomad journey in April 2021. Before they took the leap together, they had put a lot of thought into how they wanted to live their digital nomad lifestyle. Even though they have been together for a long time, knowing each other really well and understanding all their personal and professional needs, it wasn’t always a smooth ride.

24/7 together, me-time and quality time

It’s common for digital nomad couples to spend many hours in the same space. You can easily avoid this by working from a coworking space or cafe but since the restrictions, this isn’t always an option. Of course, it depends where you are in the world. When you’re 24/7 together it’s important to get a moment for yourself, also known as me-time. For Anat, me-time could be as simple as hopping on her yoga mat. Orr on the other hand likes to play the guitar. They also share that if they really need a moment for themselves, a walk in nature or running errands works.

Relationship changes after the nomadic change

Before Anat & Orr left Israel they have put a lot of effort into what a good nomadic lifestyle entails for them. One of these efforts was listing down their personal desires, dreams, and what they both need to feel happy and satisfied. This created a strong foundation for their new lifestyle. Of course, Anat & Orr experienced struggles but by communicating and being transparent it hasn’t impacted their relationship in a negative way.

Creating community and making meaningful connections

As a single traveler it’s probably easier to find community. Not only Anat & Orr agree with this but also Podcast host Nienke Nina experienced this. A piece of advice Anat & Orr give is to take initiative and put yourself out there. You can find Facebook Groups for expats, digital nomads or find community in a co-working space. Another great place to find fellow nomads is hostels. Anat shares that even though they can afford a hotel room, they sometimes choose to stay at a hostel because it’s easier to find community.

Quick take aways from the digital nomad couple

Ask yourself what makes you happy as an individual and as a couple. Collect this in a list and use this as a checklist to see if you’re still living up to your expectations.

Be conscious of how you spend time together. There are different ways of being togehter, you can have individual time but still be in the same space. You can be mentally and physically together, or just be in the same space but focus on your own thing.

Take initiative! As a couple, you are a unit and this makes meeting other people harder than if you are a single digital nomad. Use Facebook groups, co-working spaces, or stay at hostels even when you’re a couple. You can take turns so the burden isn’t always on you.

Find common hobbies and skills you want to learn. That’s a great way of quality time instead of just watching Netflix.

Connect with our Nienke Nina and our guests

Your host Nienke Nina

More digital nomad tips and life advice via instagram @digitalnomadsdaily

Connect with Nienke Nina on LinkedIn @Nienke Nina Keizer

Find Nienke Nina on Instagram @nienkeninatravels

Meet Anat & Orr

Follow their journey via Instagram @spice.and.toast

More of Anat & Orr’s life on YouTube

Other episodes you might like:

🎧 Episode #07: Overcoming Fears and Building Community with Digital Nomad Magali

🎧 Episode #46 The 5 Best Ways To Find Friends For Digital Nomads With Marina

🎧 Episode #31 Behind The Scenes Of A Content Creator Couple With Julia & Gidi