How I Became a Digital Nomad at The Age of 19

in #life6 years ago (edited)

Hey guys!

My last post on Steemit about my life in North Korea vs. South Korea did really well with 700+ upvotes and 250+ comments and so I decided to publish another post straight away.

Hope you'll enjoy it too!


When I was a kid, I hated not being able to control my own life – I couldn’t travel alone, I couldn’t drive a car, I couldn’t (legally) work, heck, I couldn’t even stay at my friend’s place if my parents didn’t agree!

That’s why I always dreamed of starting my own business so that I could make my own money and be able to do whatever I wanted to do with my life.

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Making My Own Money at 15

Long story short, I established my first business at the age of 15, which I sold 10 months later for €7,800 to my business partner who was 38 years-old at that time.

For the next three years I continued running various online businesses ranging from a recipes website to a vintage fashion products’s marketplace to everything in between. In those years I couldn’t think about anything else other than my business – it was my work, my passion and, essentially, my life.


The day I established my very first corporation at the age of 15.

Life-Changing Trip to Malaysia

However, when I graduated from high school at the age of 19, I had a completely random opportunity to spend 2 weeks exploring Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. That experience made me realize how big and interesting the world was and I suddenly became interested in traveling.

Even though at that point I had been financially independent for quite a few years, I wasn’t really location independent as I would have to attend some conferences, meet my team members and customers face-to-face.

At that point I didn’t even know what a “Digital Nomad” was, but I realized that I could create and run an online business remotely, which would allow me to travel absolutely anywhere and stay for as long as I wished (as long as I had a Wi-Fi connection, of course).

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Becoming Location Independent

After thinking about all the different businesses I could start, I decided to establish a social media marketing agency that would provide Facebook marketing services to small businesses.

The idea was this: every small business had a Facebook fan page, but they were so busy with all the operational tasks that they didn’t have time to manage it. Even if someone did have a little bit of time, it would usually be a person who’s doing 7 different jobs at the same time and obviously wouldn’t know much about social media marketing.

That’s where we would come in.

We would create a marketing strategy for them and once they would approve it, we would start managing their Facebook fan page. We would post 3-6 times a week (write all the captions, put their logos on the photos, reply to people’s comments, etc.), depending on which payment plan they chose.

Now the best part of the whole business was that I didn’t hire anyone.

Every client worked with one project manager and one content manager, whom I would pay a monthly fee per client. Let’s say I was getting paid $250 a month for one client. I would then pay $75 a month to the project manager and $75 a month to the content manager, in which case I would be making $100 profit.

Not only that, the company would be profitable even if we only had a single client, which would, of course, be impossible had I been paying my employees full-time or part-time salaries.

The only thing I had to focus on was acquiring customers and making sure they were happy with the services we were providing.

Full-Time Traveling While Working Only 6 Hours/Week

I remember in those days I was only working 6-8 hours a week and making from $1,600 to $2,400 a month. That is not a lot of money in Western Europe, but it’s definitely enough to travel to most places around the world and that’s exactly what you need to be a digital nomad.

You don’t need a million dollars, you just need enough money and time to do anything you want to do.

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Thank you very much for reading the post, I really hope you enjoyed it!

Let me know what you would like me to post about in the comments below and follow me for more updates in the future.

Also, if you want to get real-time updates from my travels, check me out on Instagram.

And always remember...

Life's short, why waste a second?

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Keep living that dream! You are a hero to a lot us who are desk jockeys. :)

Wow, you have achieved what most of us have been just dreaming about! You did it quite early which is very good. Most of us have been trapped in daily sedentary job, which howmuch every we try becomes more and more hard to come out of! Though, hopefully someday we all live the dream!

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Excellent life story, a further demonstration that age is never a limiting factor.

Yesss! Age is definitely just a number :)

You got a 55.49% upvote from @th3voter thanks to: @steemium!



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when i read content like this one, i get super inpired. You are the proof that if you really want something and you focus on that, you can get it. Since i've started travelling i've realised that my home is the whole world. I like to have a base and be settle somewhere but i also want to be free to move anywhere i want and be able to work at the same time. I'm definitely not a person that find fullfilment by working 8 hrs a day for 5 days a week. I've been working hard since i was 14 for different company and now at the age of 30 i've realised that all i did was building the business of someone else but very soon i will start to build my own one. I think that we don't need money to start a business but a good strategy. Dream BIG, start small, act NOW. Do you agree buddy? Congratulation for your post, i've really enjoyed it.

nice photos

Lovely images and very inspiring story. Impressive!

awesome post man once you come to India then you met me. I live in Jammu, Jammu and Kashmir.
fb id: rahul.mahajan.1088

looks awesome, enjoy your adventures