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Sure! Lifestyle businesses are great, and so is the whole digital nomad thing (I spent all of 2016 and a good chunk of 2015 traveling around the world). There

Sure! Lifestyle businesses are great, and so is the whole digital nomad thing (I spent all of 2016 and a good chunk of 2015 traveling around the world). There are a ton of upsides but I wouldn't go back to it full time. For one, it's surprising how few of the digital nomad types are really that interesting, and while integrating with local populations is fun, you'll still find yourself missing the familiarity of people from your own culture (or similar, Western cultures, assuming you're a Euro or American) Once you get used to life on the road it's grand. Still, nomad nests like Chiang Mai are insipid and full of scores of people hustling their drop ship schemes. More power to them, but it's just not my vibe. I dunno. Go nuts, travel, see a bunch of shit, just don't assume the beach is going to be as stimulating as the (very likely) metro urban environment you're living in now.

thinkingkong 9y ago
To me traveling with a laptop and working is neither traveling nor working well. Im sure there are ways to eeke it out to make a ramen diet more pallatable overseas, but you arent really connecting with locals and local culture if youre online "hustling".
- modoc 9y ago
  I suppose it depends on how you do it. I worked from a beach town in Costa Rica for a month last year. I worked very well, being unusually productive (I think due to lack of stress and a change of scenery). I worked ~6-8 hours a day/5 days a week, and got more done than I had over many more hours back home. That left me plenty of time to meet and hang out with locals, so scuba diving, swim in the ocean twice a day, cook with local fish and ingredients, make new friends, etc... It was fantastic!
  - taternuts 9y ago
    I worked from a small beach town in Costa Rica for 6 months a while back, and I have to agree with the parent. The novelty kind of wore off and we had to work a _lot_, it became more of a nuisance with bad/spotty internet than a WFH paradise. We took off 3 days one time the week we left to be just like regular tourists for once; that was great.
  - bitL 9y ago
    I concur. I did the same in the Mediterraneans, working from a beach for a month; whenever I felt like I took a little swim in the sea, being refreshed, and it did wonders to my productivity. Not sure why wouldn't you do this if you could...
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - franrull 9y ago
    Full disclosure: I work for the author's company. I agree with you! Back in March I finished a 15 month trip around the world while working full time. I travelled to 40 different cities in 15 countries and while some places where difficult to adapt to and the conditions where I worked from were challenging, I can say that my productivity didn't diminish. Since I came back (I live in Barcelona) I've attended retreats in the Alps (Austria for skiing + Italy for hiking just last week) plus 2 weeks in a very nice countryside house 2 hours from Barcelona where we worked together with 10 people from the office and in the afternoons we did hikes, wine tastings or went to the beach.
    - edelans 9y ago
      Thanks for joining the discussion. I wonder how do you keep business running (bigender claims an outstanding support) while in retreat ? Does only a part of the company goes on retreat ?
- mentos 9y ago
  Yea you could probably argue there are better economies of scale doing all of your working in large chunks and then all of your traveling in large chunks. To me 1-2 week vacations per year though is not a large enough chunk of time off. I sometimes wonder if I'd rather forgo weekends, accumulate all of that time and then take 2-3 months off all at once.
  - weeksie 9y ago
    That's kinda what I did. I wasn't head down on trying to build something, but I did write a novel while we were traveling, along with some freelance. We'd travel, moving from place to place frequently, then settle in somewhere with decent internet. We travelled through Peru and Chile, but lived in Buenos Aires for a month. Travelled through much of SE Asia, but lived in Thailand for a couple months. India (travel) Spain (living) and so on.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    It depends on a lot of things. In a prior life, I took some month-long vacations with effectively no communication back home. (it was pre consumer Internet.) It's definitely qualitatively different from my more typical week or two intermittently online trip these days. That said, I get antsy if I'm "in the office" (physically or otherwise) for too long and, when traveling, there does come a point where I'm ready to get back to my house rather than living out of a travel backpack. These days I find it much more practical to take a couple of 1-2 week vacations and spend some time around business trips than to take a huge chunk of time off. But circumstances will vary.
- mjhoy 9y ago
  This is what I have found. When I travel, I want to travel deep, so to speak, and suck out all of the marrow. I have tried to do work while touring by bicycle and, while work could easily finance my trip indefinitely, I was seeing much, much less by bringing it along. Better to save up for shorter trips, free to wander as I will.
  - brookside 9y ago
    I love backpacking but it seems fundamentally incompatible to tour by bike and work simultaneously - as the pleasure of traveling slowly means there isn't time to fit both any significant distance and work time within the same day. Planning to work remotely laster this year and will definitely pick a spot and stay parked there for weeks.
- coldtea 9y ago
  >To me traveling with a laptop and working is neither traveling nor working well. Well, regular working is not traveling at all on the other hand.
  - jermaustin1 9y ago
    To GP's point, at my office, I have a desktop with 2 monitors, at my home office, I have a desktop with... 2 monitors. Traveling, I'm stuck with either a VERY heavy 17" laptop or a less heavy 15" laptop, or an incredibly light 12" laptop. Any way I go about it, I don't have my dual 27 inch laptops.
    - coldtea 9y ago
      So? Unless you are a graphic designer, why would that matter? It might be convenient, but hackers for decades had just had 14" (or less) monochromatic monitors and they've built masterpieces on them. If "dual 27 inch monitors" are so important to your work, then (a) I don't see how you'd be able to be a programmer in the 80s and 90s when those things either didn't exist or costed a fortune, (b) fine, don't travel. The "very heavy" part (for the 17" laptop) doesn't matter, as you're not supposed to backpack everywhere with it. Just keep it at your hotel/rent house/bangalow in the different cities you visit and work from there. You can still visit the city and explore all the other hours. Besides, if it's that important, then anywhere you go and stay for a month or more (and nomads can spend several months on each country or more), you could buy a $200 24" monitor -- and then just give it away to some friend you've made, charity or sell it.
      - jermaustin1 9y ago
        I wouldn't be able to program in the 80s and I don't want to go back to the 90s. I'm sorry but having my IDE on one half of one screen, debug console on the second half then browser on the other monitor is a big convenience that I have gotten used to. Its like saying, oh you like your power steering, and automatic transmissions? Well then you couldn't drive a Model-T. That viewpoint that progress makes you weak is a very bad way to view the world. Progress makes us all better at what we do by making us more efficient.
mjn 9y ago
One group of people it can work a bit better for, in terms of living somewhere you have a real connection rather than living an expat lifestyle, are people who are themselves from somewhere with a lower cost of living, but can't find good jobs there, so moved elsewhere. It lets you sort of halfway move back to your home country while retaining some of the income advantages of the wealthier country. I have a Greek friend who does something like that, running a small business that is mainly economically based in northern Europe, but because he has a flexible working environment, he's able to spend a significant portion of the year in Greece, which he left in the first place only because there were no jobs, not because he wanted to leave. In some formal sense the mechanics are very similar to an American running a lifestyle business from a beach in Crete, but culturally it's different from the "digital nomad" lifestyle.
- saimiam 9y ago
  This sounds fascinating to me. I'm looking at doing the same thing - launch a product for global audience while relocating back to India. Any idea how long your friend took to gain traction? What do they do to find a community of fellow techies/dropshippers/SEO mavens/whatever in Greece? Do they ever talk about moving back to north Europe?
  - mjn 9y ago
    I don't keep in that close contact, but as I understand it he hasn't precisely moved back to Greece. The business is incorporated in northern Europe and he has his legal residence there. It's just that since there's no office to go into there's no real need to be physically present most of the time, so nothing stopping him from doing much of the work remotely from Greece. It probably does help that Europe is fairly small and flying back and forth is not too difficult.
- narrator 9y ago
  I have a friend from the U.S who lives in Argentina and works online doing tech stuff. He lives with his Argentinian girlfriend and makes enough in two months to make TWO years living expenses! He does speak fluent Spanish though. He went to the doctor and spent 45 minutes with her and it cost him $12. This is not digital nomad, but really immigration with the intent of not returning home, but it does represent another option.
greggman 9y ago
Life on the road was not for me. Sure I loved seeing the world but .... 1. Always having to make plans for the next place to sleep was stressful for me. I'd arrive at some city and have to start planning the next city else I'd be homeless once my hotel/apartment term expired. I started booking longer (4 weeks, 6 weeks, more) but even then just the fact that I have a place I don't have to think about is less stressful for me. 2. No hangout buddy or really close friends. Some people are great at making new friends and I did make a few in certain cities but I'm at least a little introverted and felt pretty lonely quite often. 3. There only so much tourism I can take. At some point it just got boring seeing yet another old church, yet another museum, etc. Some recent book claimed you should take several shorter vacations than fewer but longer ones. They recommended no more than a week at a time. 4. Not being able to buy/own anything. That might appeal to some but not to others, it means no shopping, something that many people enjoy while traveling. It also means no PS4, no Vive/Oculus, no gaming rig, no tools, no food supplies. Sure if I rented an apartment I could go buy a few things to cook but when I have a permanent residence I have tons of utensils and spices and other things in my kitchen that I just don't have the time to gather in a temporary place. Similarly I had drawers or closets full of parts and tools, something I didn't have digital nomadding. Of course that's all just me. I've met others who really enjoy that lifestyle. Good for them!
- kbenson 9y ago
  > There only so much tourism I can take. At some point it just got boring seeing yet another old church, yet another museum, etc. Some recent book claimed you should take several shorter vacations than fewer but longer ones. They recommended no more than a week at a time. I just finished a two week honeymoon less than a month ago, and we did it as a traveling and sightseeing vacation. We started with a week in New Orleans and the surrounding area (and mostly did sightseeing instead of partying, it was a honeymoon), and were going to head up through Atlanta and see more of the South. We decided after that first week we were not looking forward to more sightseeing in the humidity, so we made a beeline for Florida and went to Disneyworld for a few days instead. Even though we were a little underwhelmed with Disneyworld after building up expectations for so long(we go to Disneyland often, and I would say they are comparable depending on the type of vacation you want), we didn't regret it. Like many things, the wonder becomes commonplace if you are subjected to it consistently for long enough. That seems to start happening for a lot of people around about a week. We did spend a day in Savannah after that though, and that was gorgeous. Mixing up the vacation probably let us appreciate it more.
kilroy123 9y ago
I'm also what you call a digital nomad. I find it tough to work while "on the road". It's stressful, you want to get out and see places, meet people, but you still need to work. This is why I prefer to move to a city for a few months at a time and slowly do all the touristy things. Also about what you said about others not being very interesting; I completely agree.
sperling75 9y ago
The human mind wants freedom and to have options. That's why the grass is always greener. Spend a month traveling and being back at home will sound ideal. Get stuck in an office and traveling sounds perfect. Finding the right balance is the key. In my case though I have had the freedom at times to be anywhere I still gravitate to keeping a home base.
JoshMnem 9y ago
> you'll still find yourself missing the familiarity of people from your own culture (or similar, Western cultures, assuming you're a Euro or American) I didn't find that to be true. I miss foreign people and cultures after settling back down. If you want to find people from your own culture while on the road, stay at a hostel or take a break from roaming at any backpacker/nomad/tourist trap.
- weeksie 9y ago
  Stay out for a year or so and you will likely want to mingle with some westerners. Or maybe not! Everybody's different.
  - kaybe 9y ago
    The expat pockets around the world have their own culture going on. Suddenly you're hanging out with the embassy staff, some UN people, some interns and backpackers and other random people. I'd say it's very interesting in itself to experience and not the same as meeting people back home.
    - weeksie 9y ago
      That's precisely my point. Except that SE Asian expats are boring af on average. There are exceptions to be sure (I made several good friends while traveling) but on average they're shockingly boring, but they're as good as you're gonna get for that Western fix. Maybe that's what I should have been more clear about. You'll end up hanging out with boring people because you miss home after a bit. Before I went traveling I would have expected that community to be a lot more interesting than they were.
      - JoshMnem 9y ago
        Get off the beaten track to find interesting travelers. The locals tend to be friendlier too.
        9y ago
e59d134d 9y ago
When I think about Lifestyle business, I don't really think it mean traveling. I personally want a lifestyle business but for my lifestyle. That is wake up late, enjoy the day, maybe go for a road trip or hike, work in the evenings, work till midnight or so. Or if I feel like it, take a day off. Go on vacations but not worry about return date. Bring the laptop and if needed, work. Otherwise just enjoy the vacation.
- taheca 9y ago
  This in so many ways, this. I have a bunch of ideas. If you can build stuff, we should talk. lol
alistairSH 9y ago
Question... Legally, how does the digital nomad thing work? Specifically WRT travel visas. Are you entering countries on a holiday visa and just working anyway? Establishing some sort of residency? Are you taking contracts in those countries, or working for US-based companies? Or, just blogging on your own and making a living through affiliate links, etc? Where do you pay income taxes?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
joeldg 9y ago
The DN life is great if you don't mind the issues that come along with it. And a lot of that is the other DN's, the idea is to harken back to the old days of longer term travel and working travel where you would go to a place a work there on a project. However, in those instances people would take their families DN's, as everyone knows them now, are mostly just tech-bro's with websites trying to get you to do some drop-shipping. Honestly, they should have just spent the money on a gap-year and enjoyed themselves instead of trying to bootstrap a business via their macbooks in coffee shops in Chiang-mai. (which they have mostly ruined CM now, I was there in 2010-2011 and it is a whole world of different now.) The DN's I would run across were typically just middling online marketers who were trying to extend their 'lifestyle' by a month here and a month there and they choose one location (usually Chiang Mai) and then never take advantage of this 'lifestyle' they are supposed to be living. The blogs are mostly BS. If you are outgoing and personable, can work remotely (I have found that most people can't, at least for long periods of time), have some autopilot sites that you can make money on to keep you going in cheaper places and are not afraid or unwilling to learn new languages quickly then it is a great fit for you. But the number of people that can do that is small and I think the DN blogs, the book four-hour workweek and sites like tropical MBA are talking a lot of people into doing this who are absolutely not cut out for it.
jliptzin 9y ago
Why do we need to equate a lifestyle business with traveling the world full time? I run a lifestyle business and I go abroad maybe once a year for about a week and I am very happy. I think the point is that the lifestyle business lets you do that if you want to, but at the end of the day you can still do whatever you want.

thinkingkong 9y ago

To me traveling with a laptop and working is neither traveling nor working well. Im sure there are ways to eeke it out to make a ramen diet more pallatable overseas, but you arent really connecting with locals and local culture if youre online "hustling".

modoc 9y ago
I suppose it depends on how you do it. I worked from a beach town in Costa Rica for a month last year. I worked very well, being unusually productive (I think due to lack of stress and a change of scenery). I worked ~6-8 hours a day/5 days a week, and got more done than I had over many more hours back home. That left me plenty of time to meet and hang out with locals, so scuba diving, swim in the ocean twice a day, cook with local fish and ingredients, make new friends, etc... It was fantastic!
- taternuts 9y ago
  I worked from a small beach town in Costa Rica for 6 months a while back, and I have to agree with the parent. The novelty kind of wore off and we had to work a _lot_, it became more of a nuisance with bad/spotty internet than a WFH paradise. We took off 3 days one time the week we left to be just like regular tourists for once; that was great.
- bitL 9y ago
  I concur. I did the same in the Mediterraneans, working from a beach for a month; whenever I felt like I took a little swim in the sea, being refreshed, and it did wonders to my productivity. Not sure why wouldn't you do this if you could...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- franrull 9y ago
  Full disclosure: I work for the author's company. I agree with you! Back in March I finished a 15 month trip around the world while working full time. I travelled to 40 different cities in 15 countries and while some places where difficult to adapt to and the conditions where I worked from were challenging, I can say that my productivity didn't diminish. Since I came back (I live in Barcelona) I've attended retreats in the Alps (Austria for skiing + Italy for hiking just last week) plus 2 weeks in a very nice countryside house 2 hours from Barcelona where we worked together with 10 people from the office and in the afternoons we did hikes, wine tastings or went to the beach.
  - edelans 9y ago
    Thanks for joining the discussion. I wonder how do you keep business running (bigender claims an outstanding support) while in retreat ? Does only a part of the company goes on retreat ?
mentos 9y ago
Yea you could probably argue there are better economies of scale doing all of your working in large chunks and then all of your traveling in large chunks. To me 1-2 week vacations per year though is not a large enough chunk of time off. I sometimes wonder if I'd rather forgo weekends, accumulate all of that time and then take 2-3 months off all at once.
- weeksie 9y ago
  That's kinda what I did. I wasn't head down on trying to build something, but I did write a novel while we were traveling, along with some freelance. We'd travel, moving from place to place frequently, then settle in somewhere with decent internet. We travelled through Peru and Chile, but lived in Buenos Aires for a month. Travelled through much of SE Asia, but lived in Thailand for a couple months. India (travel) Spain (living) and so on.
- ghaff 9y ago
  It depends on a lot of things. In a prior life, I took some month-long vacations with effectively no communication back home. (it was pre consumer Internet.) It's definitely qualitatively different from my more typical week or two intermittently online trip these days. That said, I get antsy if I'm "in the office" (physically or otherwise) for too long and, when traveling, there does come a point where I'm ready to get back to my house rather than living out of a travel backpack. These days I find it much more practical to take a couple of 1-2 week vacations and spend some time around business trips than to take a huge chunk of time off. But circumstances will vary.
mjhoy 9y ago
This is what I have found. When I travel, I want to travel deep, so to speak, and suck out all of the marrow. I have tried to do work while touring by bicycle and, while work could easily finance my trip indefinitely, I was seeing much, much less by bringing it along. Better to save up for shorter trips, free to wander as I will.
- brookside 9y ago
  I love backpacking but it seems fundamentally incompatible to tour by bike and work simultaneously - as the pleasure of traveling slowly means there isn't time to fit both any significant distance and work time within the same day. Planning to work remotely laster this year and will definitely pick a spot and stay parked there for weeks.
coldtea 9y ago
>To me traveling with a laptop and working is neither traveling nor working well. Well, regular working is not traveling at all on the other hand.
- jermaustin1 9y ago
  To GP's point, at my office, I have a desktop with 2 monitors, at my home office, I have a desktop with... 2 monitors. Traveling, I'm stuck with either a VERY heavy 17" laptop or a less heavy 15" laptop, or an incredibly light 12" laptop. Any way I go about it, I don't have my dual 27 inch laptops.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    So? Unless you are a graphic designer, why would that matter? It might be convenient, but hackers for decades had just had 14" (or less) monochromatic monitors and they've built masterpieces on them. If "dual 27 inch monitors" are so important to your work, then (a) I don't see how you'd be able to be a programmer in the 80s and 90s when those things either didn't exist or costed a fortune, (b) fine, don't travel. The "very heavy" part (for the 17" laptop) doesn't matter, as you're not supposed to backpack everywhere with it. Just keep it at your hotel/rent house/bangalow in the different cities you visit and work from there. You can still visit the city and explore all the other hours. Besides, if it's that important, then anywhere you go and stay for a month or more (and nomads can spend several months on each country or more), you could buy a $200 24" monitor -- and then just give it away to some friend you've made, charity or sell it.
    - jermaustin1 9y ago
      I wouldn't be able to program in the 80s and I don't want to go back to the 90s. I'm sorry but having my IDE on one half of one screen, debug console on the second half then browser on the other monitor is a big convenience that I have gotten used to. Its like saying, oh you like your power steering, and automatic transmissions? Well then you couldn't drive a Model-T. That viewpoint that progress makes you weak is a very bad way to view the world. Progress makes us all better at what we do by making us more efficient.

mjn 9y ago

One group of people it can work a bit better for, in terms of living somewhere you have a real connection rather than living an expat lifestyle, are people who are themselves from somewhere with a lower cost of living, but can't find good jobs there, so moved elsewhere. It lets you sort of halfway move back to your home country while retaining some of the income advantages of the wealthier country. I have a Greek friend who does something like that, running a small business that is mainly economically based in northern Europe, but because he has a flexible working environment, he's able to spend a significant portion of the year in Greece, which he left in the first place only because there were no jobs, not because he wanted to leave. In some formal sense the mechanics are very similar to an American running a lifestyle business from a beach in Crete, but culturally it's different from the "digital nomad" lifestyle.

saimiam 9y ago
This sounds fascinating to me. I'm looking at doing the same thing - launch a product for global audience while relocating back to India. Any idea how long your friend took to gain traction? What do they do to find a community of fellow techies/dropshippers/SEO mavens/whatever in Greece? Do they ever talk about moving back to north Europe?
- mjn 9y ago
  I don't keep in that close contact, but as I understand it he hasn't precisely moved back to Greece. The business is incorporated in northern Europe and he has his legal residence there. It's just that since there's no office to go into there's no real need to be physically present most of the time, so nothing stopping him from doing much of the work remotely from Greece. It probably does help that Europe is fairly small and flying back and forth is not too difficult.
narrator 9y ago
I have a friend from the U.S who lives in Argentina and works online doing tech stuff. He lives with his Argentinian girlfriend and makes enough in two months to make TWO years living expenses! He does speak fluent Spanish though. He went to the doctor and spent 45 minutes with her and it cost him $12. This is not digital nomad, but really immigration with the intent of not returning home, but it does represent another option.

greggman 9y ago

Life on the road was not for me. Sure I loved seeing the world but .... 1. Always having to make plans for the next place to sleep was stressful for me. I'd arrive at some city and have to start planning the next city else I'd be homeless once my hotel/apartment term expired. I started booking longer (4 weeks, 6 weeks, more) but even then just the fact that I have a place I don't have to think about is less stressful for me. 2. No hangout buddy or really close friends. Some people are great at making new friends and I did make a few in certain cities but I'm at least a little introverted and felt pretty lonely quite often. 3. There only so much tourism I can take. At some point it just got boring seeing yet another old church, yet another museum, etc. Some recent book claimed you should take several shorter vacations than fewer but longer ones. They recommended no more than a week at a time. 4. Not being able to buy/own anything. That might appeal to some but not to others, it means no shopping, something that many people enjoy while traveling. It also means no PS4, no Vive/Oculus, no gaming rig, no tools, no food supplies. Sure if I rented an apartment I could go buy a few things to cook but when I have a permanent residence I have tons of utensils and spices and other things in my kitchen that I just don't have the time to gather in a temporary place. Similarly I had drawers or closets full of parts and tools, something I didn't have digital nomadding. Of course that's all just me. I've met others who really enjoy that lifestyle. Good for them!

kbenson 9y ago
> There only so much tourism I can take. At some point it just got boring seeing yet another old church, yet another museum, etc. Some recent book claimed you should take several shorter vacations than fewer but longer ones. They recommended no more than a week at a time. I just finished a two week honeymoon less than a month ago, and we did it as a traveling and sightseeing vacation. We started with a week in New Orleans and the surrounding area (and mostly did sightseeing instead of partying, it was a honeymoon), and were going to head up through Atlanta and see more of the South. We decided after that first week we were not looking forward to more sightseeing in the humidity, so we made a beeline for Florida and went to Disneyworld for a few days instead. Even though we were a little underwhelmed with Disneyworld after building up expectations for so long(we go to Disneyland often, and I would say they are comparable depending on the type of vacation you want), we didn't regret it. Like many things, the wonder becomes commonplace if you are subjected to it consistently for long enough. That seems to start happening for a lot of people around about a week. We did spend a day in Savannah after that though, and that was gorgeous. Mixing up the vacation probably let us appreciate it more.

kilroy123 9y ago

I'm also what you call a digital nomad. I find it tough to work while "on the road". It's stressful, you want to get out and see places, meet people, but you still need to work. This is why I prefer to move to a city for a few months at a time and slowly do all the touristy things. Also about what you said about others not being very interesting; I completely agree.

sperling75 9y ago

The human mind wants freedom and to have options. That's why the grass is always greener. Spend a month traveling and being back at home will sound ideal. Get stuck in an office and traveling sounds perfect. Finding the right balance is the key. In my case though I have had the freedom at times to be anywhere I still gravitate to keeping a home base.

JoshMnem 9y ago

> you'll still find yourself missing the familiarity of people from your own culture (or similar, Western cultures, assuming you're a Euro or American) I didn't find that to be true. I miss foreign people and cultures after settling back down. If you want to find people from your own culture while on the road, stay at a hostel or take a break from roaming at any backpacker/nomad/tourist trap.

weeksie 9y ago
Stay out for a year or so and you will likely want to mingle with some westerners. Or maybe not! Everybody's different.
- kaybe 9y ago
  The expat pockets around the world have their own culture going on. Suddenly you're hanging out with the embassy staff, some UN people, some interns and backpackers and other random people. I'd say it's very interesting in itself to experience and not the same as meeting people back home.
  - weeksie 9y ago
    That's precisely my point. Except that SE Asian expats are boring af on average. There are exceptions to be sure (I made several good friends while traveling) but on average they're shockingly boring, but they're as good as you're gonna get for that Western fix. Maybe that's what I should have been more clear about. You'll end up hanging out with boring people because you miss home after a bit. Before I went traveling I would have expected that community to be a lot more interesting than they were.
    - JoshMnem 9y ago
      Get off the beaten track to find interesting travelers. The locals tend to be friendlier too.
      - 9y ago

e59d134d 9y ago

When I think about Lifestyle business, I don't really think it mean traveling. I personally want a lifestyle business but for my lifestyle. That is wake up late, enjoy the day, maybe go for a road trip or hike, work in the evenings, work till midnight or so. Or if I feel like it, take a day off. Go on vacations but not worry about return date. Bring the laptop and if needed, work. Otherwise just enjoy the vacation.

taheca 9y ago
This in so many ways, this. I have a bunch of ideas. If you can build stuff, we should talk. lol

alistairSH 9y ago

Question... Legally, how does the digital nomad thing work? Specifically WRT travel visas. Are you entering countries on a holiday visa and just working anyway? Establishing some sort of residency? Are you taking contracts in those countries, or working for US-based companies? Or, just blogging on your own and making a living through affiliate links, etc? Where do you pay income taxes?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

joeldg 9y ago

The DN life is great if you don't mind the issues that come along with it. And a lot of that is the other DN's, the idea is to harken back to the old days of longer term travel and working travel where you would go to a place a work there on a project. However, in those instances people would take their families DN's, as everyone knows them now, are mostly just tech-bro's with websites trying to get you to do some drop-shipping. Honestly, they should have just spent the money on a gap-year and enjoyed themselves instead of trying to bootstrap a business via their macbooks in coffee shops in Chiang-mai. (which they have mostly ruined CM now, I was there in 2010-2011 and it is a whole world of different now.) The DN's I would run across were typically just middling online marketers who were trying to extend their 'lifestyle' by a month here and a month there and they choose one location (usually Chiang Mai) and then never take advantage of this 'lifestyle' they are supposed to be living. The blogs are mostly BS. If you are outgoing and personable, can work remotely (I have found that most people can't, at least for long periods of time), have some autopilot sites that you can make money on to keep you going in cheaper places and are not afraid or unwilling to learn new languages quickly then it is a great fit for you. But the number of people that can do that is small and I think the DN blogs, the book four-hour workweek and sites like tropical MBA are talking a lot of people into doing this who are absolutely not cut out for it.

jliptzin 9y ago

Why do we need to equate a lifestyle business with traveling the world full time? I run a lifestyle business and I go abroad maybe once a year for about a week and I am very happy. I think the point is that the lifestyle business lets you do that if you want to, but at the end of the day you can still do whatever you want.