Lyd: Hello and welcome to the Business and Pleasure Podcast, the show that discusses what it's really like to be a digital nomad. We talk about the arts and downs of the lessons learned and the big discussion about whether you can really have it all Today, it's a bit of a different episode. I don't actually have a guest with me.

I thought it was time to share my digital nomad story and why I decided to start my own podcast. I've always loved to travel. We moved to a few countries when I was younger. My parents have always celebrated and pushed me and my brother to see the world, which I'm extremely grateful for seeing the world.

I was always been my priority when I first started my career and I wasn't making any money. I would always make sure that I put money aside or whatever money I had. I'd always try and save some money. To book myself on a little trip, have a little weekend away somewhere in Europe. I was obsessed. It's all I wanted to do.

I loved exploring and I've always loved exploring, discovering, learning, finding out about different cultures, understanding how people tick. I'm just a super curious person and working. Abroad in a different country outside of the UK had always been my dream. But where I was, I just didn't understand how you could make it work.

I was an accountant. And project manager, for around about five years, and I decided it was no longer what I wanted to do. I needed a challenge.

and I needed a drastic change. I needed to flip my life up a bit, give myself a challenge, so I decided to leave my job with nothing lined up. but I was extremely lucky My boyfriend at the time, was extremely supportive in my decision.

We decided to throw everything that we had in our London apartment into storage, get rid of the fly, and had to Lisbon for a few months because, you know, that's what you did. So we both ended up leaving our jobs and going to Libo. Just to give ourself as some actual time to figure out what we both wanted to do.

I then decided I wanted to start my own business, in the virtual assistant space. I had heard the term virtual assistant many times before and I always thought it was something that I wanted to, like, delve into at some point. it sounded like the perfect role for me. Full of organization planning, creativity, and the amazing fact that is that you could do anywhere.

So I was like, sign me up. So I decided to start my own business. and then five months later I flew to Bangkok solo, no plan, and just basically my fingers crossed that I'd figure it out. So when it came to navigating the digital nomad lifestyle, at the beginning it was challenging because I basically had no planning.

I said, okay, great. My brother lives in Bangkok. I'm just gonna fly out there and see what happened. I didn't do my research. I was going in blind, but I had some, had some faith that I would figure out. but I was lucky enough that I was already five months into my business, so I had built a bit of a routine around for her.

but it did take me a good few months to get my head around the change in lifestyle because it is very different. I would say my biggest learning's definitely. At the beginning of me starting my digital nomad journey, do you have a bit more research?

It's, it's strange because up until that point, I had always been a planner over planning something didn't went outside of my plan. I'd lose my mind. It would really stress me out. I love to over plan and know. Exactly what was happening. So this was like the first time in my life where I was like, ha ha ha, we'll just see what happens.

which I think was very good for me and it was what I needed. Cause I was going from one extreme to another. And now I think I'm in a sort of happy place with that. But I think with, when it comes to being a digital nomad, you you need to help yourself out of it and do some basic research.

another big learning for me is that I can do it before working for myself. I had a lot of issues with confidence, especially in my career space, and I felt like I was good enough. I never felt like I knew what I was doing. I just plodding along making it up. Faking it to remake it as they say. And yes, I feel like I fake it to, I make it still, but I feel a lot more secure in my decisions.

I have a lot more confidence in myself and I have a lot more faith in myself, which is amazing. And I think I would never have had that if I didn't decide to just go, screw it. Just gonna do this and figure it out. So that's the probably my biggest learning. When it comes to my best travel experience, I've been very lucky.

I've, been to lots of different countries, so last year I did, I spent nine months in Asia, which I absolutely loved. and now I'm currently South America, which obsessed with, but I'd say probably my best travelers experience is. Meeting the best people. I've met some amazing people. I've learned a lot of things about myself that I didn't know.

I definitely think I've improved a lot. a lot of self growth I think has happened from travel and definitely solo travel as well. I would, I think everyone should. Solo travel at least once in their life cuz you get so much out of it just from the self growth point of you've also seeing in the world and seeing all these amazing places.

When it comes to my worst travel experience, touch wood, I don't have that many. I would probably say sometimes it can be quite lonely and more with that weird person where. in the right situation, I can be very, outgoing and extrovert, but then also like 70% of the time I love just being by myself, doing my own thing.

And when you are constantly traveling or on the go, or you are staying in one place for a month or two, but you are staying in a hospital for. Example, you meet people who are there and then they're gone. So you can only sometimes get to a certain level with them, which is quite hard. so I'd say sometimes it is quite lonely, there's a lot of pros and cons to being a digital nomad.

For me, the pros outweigh the cons at the moment. it'll be interesting to see what happens in the future. yeah, so I'd say. It can be quite lonely especially when you go to a country and you don't know the language. when I first arrived in Argentina, I didn't know any Spanish, didn't speak it. I didn't learn at school, so I was clueless and I quickly realized, I was like, oh shit, I need to. Like pulled my finger out and sort myself out and actually learn some Spanish.

I'd done a bit of du lingo, did like two months of du lingo running up to going, I was going to Argentina. What? Asia Just come from? Asia. a lot of places in Asia, they speak English or some level of English, so you can get by. But when I first arrived in Argentina, I was like, oh, okay. I need to reassess, like I need to change my.

Travel slightly. What I've been doing in the past isn't gonna work this time. So I decided to sign myself up to a language school and it was the best thing I did, the best investment I've done. I really, really enjoyed it. Had a great teacher, Julio. It got on like a house on fire and it just straight away, it made me feel a lot more comfortable.

Obviously, again, still extremely basic Spanish, I felt a lot more comfortable and that made my time in Argentina. Amazing. if I had to give some advice for admitting digital,

enjoy it. and don't, don't overthink it because if you do, you are not gonna do it. It's like the opposite of everything you've been told in the past. You go to school, you go to college, you go to uni, your work, and then you do this, and you do that, and this sort of says no to that way of life within now, which you're lucky in the world.

Now you, as long as you have a laptop or even just internet, you could. Create a business, and you can do that from anywhere, but I think a lot of people will just stop there because they overthink. It's like, well, this is outta the ordinary. This isn't normal. People might think weirdly of me, but you've just gotta bite the bullet and go for it.

And I think if this is something you really want, you've just got to push yourself. That's what I told myself at the beginning as well, I was just like, you'll figure it out. Everything's fine. You'll figure it out. And I think you've got to also just have a bit of faith in yourself. If you have something that you can really do from anywhere, just go for it.

Have the faith and you'll smash it! So when it comes to work and travel, for me, my routine, my approach to work and travel is constantly changing depending on where I am, what country I'm in. Time zone. When I first started, I was like, God, I need to fill up all my free time with client work. I need to do this, I need to do that.

I was always scared of not being in a capacity. cause I was like, oh God, it's, it's all kind of crumble and I'm gonna, and that took me months to get over. I think Again, just so he's always being at work and all of that. It's really hard to change your mindset, once I finally did, it's been such a benefit.

Now, I really love when I have more time because then I can invest my time into upskilling, creating a podcast. Lots of other things that I wanna do, things I wanna make things, so I wanna try things, I wanna figure that. I've learned to not put as much pressure on myself.

I still work hard. I still wanna be successful. I still want to succeed and I am doing well. I try and spend at least a month in a country. Um, which is really easy to do in South America because the majority of countries you can stay for up to three months.

So for example, I was in Argentina for three months, which was amazing and it really allowed me to build a routine where I staying, allowed me to become familiar with the place it allowed me to start building my community that. and again, this is something I learned written relatively quickly last year.

At the end of last year, I was jumping around a lot trying to see people in all these different places, and I was absolutely knackered. And I felt like I'm not doing this the right way. Um, so since then I've decided, you know, To not jump around as much and just chill out a bit more.

And that seems to work really well. I think, again, it depends on how you work and every digital nomad is different, but what really works is finding what works for you and where you work best and what you need personally. finding that sweet spot.

the final question, can you really have it or can you have a balance of business and pleasure? I think you can, and I think I'm on my way there. There's lots of things I'm currently working on. There's lots of things I want to. Achieve I'm still, I'm nearly two years in, still early days. but I think overall you really, you can have it all. I think I'm on my way there because, well, like I said, I'm living my dream. I'm doing, what I've always wanted to do is travel the world and what I'm doing for work is is allowing that to happen, which is the dream.

at the moment I'm in Brazil. And then I head to Columbia, which I'm very excited about.

and then I'll be in Columbia for a month and a half, and then we'll go from there. We'll see what happens. But I'm working with some great clients at the moment. Who I really enjoy working with. They're all extremely passionate. they love what they do, which is, they're the perfect people I love to work with.

and then I'm really trying to expand and. Work on my podcast and make it better. And there's lots of other things that I wanna dip my, I wanted this year to be sort of my experiment unit and start experimenting with passive income and just being more creative. I really like creating things myself.

this is my year to sort of Throw it all at the wall and see what sticks basically, in a good way. I absolutely love being a digital nomad and I feel extremely lucky and grateful that I'm in the position I am. it's a completely different way of life. But I absolutely love it and I'll be coming up to my two-ish year of being a digital nomad soon, which is just crazy. I wouldn't want it to be any different, and I'll always do everything I can to, to make it work and as long as I want it to. The reason I started the podcast was, like I said, I wanted, this was the year of experimenting. I wanted to create something. I've, helped edit some of my clients podcasts in the past. I've absolutely loved it. I just love being a bit more hands on. so decided. I like to chat. I like to edit podcasts. I wanted to learn more about that process anyways, and I love talking to people and finding out their stories and understanding why they're doing things and why the digital nomad lifestyle really caught pay attention as well.

So I, to me it just made sense. and so far I absolutely love it. I love doing the whole editing of it. I love reaching out to people. Love having the actual conversations with them. And I've learned so much as well so far. It's been absolutely brilliant. so I hope it's something that I can do for a long time, but I'm really excited just in general to see what happens.

I think that's another thing why the digital nomad life is so exciting, because you sort of just don't know what's gonna happen to a point like, um, in a business sense, you can be very planned on with that, but then you don't know where you are going or. You know, plants change and everything like that.

And that is what excites me. Anything is possible. we'll just have to see what happens. so far, it's been a brilliant experience. so a quick bit of a quick file out my favorite place I've visited so far, Argentina. Can I say it's amazing and the people there are just so passionate. Oh, I'd say Bali because I actually ended up spending four months there last year. Fell in love with the place. It was just so easy. Food was amazing.

It was beautiful. So much happening. Lots of people think ballet and just think it's like a party island. But actually it's just so much more than that. It's got so much happening and it's so diverse. So I'd say either one of those, my favorite dish that I eat, oh, na, it's basically just fried rice, but it's like a Malaysian Indonesian dish.

The best thing I've, from my favorite thing, and I eat that every, every meal, every day. Biggest sacrifice? I think it's just like, like I said, maybe missing out on what's happening at home. a lot of my friends, it's like getting to that stage where a lot of my friends are buying houses. They're getting engaged, they're having babies, which is amazing. one of my best friends had a baby boy and he's the best and it's just missing out on things like that.

But I think again, we are very lucky now in this time because we have WhatsApp, we have FaceTime, so you don't feel as disconnected anymore, which is really nice. But anyway, thank you so much for listening. I hope this episode's given me a bit more insight on why I started the podcast, how my digital Noma journey began, and sort of where I'm hoping to go with it all. I really appreciate your listening. Thank you so much, and we'll see you again very soon.