Becoming a Digital Nomad

Closing down my business in December 2014 was a very tough decision to make. The situation came about because we had taken on the full time care of my wife's (Wendy) parents and after Wendy's father died, we moved Wendy's mum in with us so that we could properly look after her.

We both worked full time before this, Wendy in a Pharmacy and me in my own digital marketing business. Wendy cut her hours down over time and eventually worked only on Sunday. This left time and flexibility for us to share the care load.

Eventually this became too much for one person and we made the decision to close the business and allow me to take up more of a share in the caring.

Close to retirement age at 58 years old we both accepted that the next few years would be financially challenging with very little income and living off hard earned savings.

Just over one year later on 3rd January 2016, Wendy's mum passed away and left us wondering what to do. We had been discussing and planning ways that we could "get away" on small breaks from the caring side which was so very challenging and tiring for both of us. Caring had put a massive strain on us personally and in our relationship.

Campervan or Caravan weekend breaks had been on our radar for a while and so we set about finding a way to do that and go for longer breaks. To cut a long story short, we decided to buy a motorhome and to live full time in it. Selling up everything we owned to finance it and to continue to live on saving and an inheritance until our pension age came around.

Four years into our journey in the nomadic lifestyle, I still find difficulty in being "retired" and four years away from pension age I find that my mind requires the challenge of business or work. This is one reason I am choosing to write accounts of my life like this one.

I have always loved that feeling of helping people achieve their goal and have more recently seen myself as more of a teacher or giver of knowledge. In our home town of Hove, East Sussex, it was pretty easy to gather a group of business people in a room and offer my expertise and advice via the MeetUp.com platform. Advertise a coffee morning meetup at a cafe (usually Raise Bakery, on Western Road Hove) and offer to answer any techie questions local business people had issues with.

The meet up group had about 12 people every week, some regulars and a mix of new and old faces would come with their questions.

How to replicate that online and while travelling

Since June 2016 we have been making a daily video blog or Vlog on youtube at "The Happy Travellers". The youtube channel was born out of my need to "do something" and to be creative in some way. With almost 6,000 subscribers and growing we see the potential of creating an income through providing information products online. Our Happy Travellers channel is all about living in a motorhome in the UK and Europe which four or five years ago was not so popular as it seems to have become.

Our living and working space is extremely small with access to the sort of space we would have had in a house of flat and the fact that we can no longer have a "set place" to meet up for coffee and a group chat, limits our ability to replicate the meetup.com environment.

This leads us to going online as the only logical way to provide a similar service and an income for ourselves. Our current youtube channel with the pre-roll adverts does provide a very small income which to be frank does not cover the cost of equipment involved in producing the daily videos let alone any payment for time and effort. No doubt in time and when the channel has tens of thousands of subscribers and views it may well provide an ongoing and reasonable payment but for now it's just not there.

Becoming a Digital Nomad

In many ways I guess we are already digital nomads because we don't have a brick and sticks home or base but live entirely in our Autotrail Comanche motorhome. What people really mean by the term though is more about earning a living and creating a self sustaining lifestyle that provides value to others who buy the products and services on offer. That is what we want to do, create a self sustaining lifestyle that will make us independent of savings and possibly pensions.

Creating products and providing services that people will gain great value from is our aim over the coming year of 2020.

Our Planned Products and Services

Of course we will continue with the happy travellers channel as that already provides value to so many people. We know it does because of all the comments and emails we get asking us to expand on a subject or just to let us know we've helped them. These messages are of great value to us and are so encouraging to use.

We intend to produce a set of Knowledge Sharing or Informational videos and video courses that will lead people through what we know in various subjects. These subject areas cover:

• Digital Marketing
• How to create Video Blogs / Vlogs
• Creating a Podcast
• Overcoming the Fear of Public Speaking
• Creative Photography
• Website creation with Wordpress

Of course all of these will take time to produce and market and we've set ourselves a two year plan to create the type of income we believe we need to start to live a fully independent life while not depleting our savings further.

We'll also be writing regularly on Vocal.Media and adding to our income streams that way too. My firm belief is that having multiple small income streams that add up to the full amount we need is by far a more secure way to live an indepenent life while being a digital nomad.