I just read an interesting post over at Untemplater by John from Jetset Citizen that got the cogs in my head turning for a post here on my site. John was questioning whether achieving the whole four hour work week, nomadic lifestyle is as easy as some people make it seem.
This is a topic that has been done to death online but he had a different angle to it. What really caught my attention was this part:
There are many successful long term travelers and lifestyle designers out there, so it definitely is not all hype. However, some of those success stories leave out details about how they got where they are.
And this part:
Most people hide those stories of essential assistance. It is important to acknowledge that we seldom do it alone.
His post got me thinking about my own path to where I am today and how many advantages I have had along the way that might not seem hugely obvious.
My parents aren’t rich and I don’t have a trust fund, but they are very supportive of my travels which, to me, is worth far more. Knowing that my parents will have my back if I ever get into financial or some other trouble abroad is huge. This became apparent to me years ago after a conversation with a friend of mine who has no family left except her sister. She loved the idea of world travel but she felt that, because she had no family to back her up, she had to create her own backup plan by becoming successful and putting money in the bank now and travelling later when she could better afford it. Knowing that I have a supportive family is something that makes taking risks and doing what I do a lot easier.
I didn’t have a computer at a young age, but I did do most of the early development of my very first website as a hobby while I was in university. This meant that spending hours learning HTML and tinkering with images and code were fun for me, rather than a chore. At this early stage I didn’t think that making money online was possible. My motivations were to learn HTML and to create a site that would help people travel around Europe and I wasn’t hung up on how many Adsense clicks I had gotten that day or how many followers I had on my RSS feed. I think establishing a website early on has been ridiculously important to my success, at least in the early stages.
Once my longer-term travels began, I arrived in the UK in 2002 with about $300 Australian dollars to my name. But I was able to go there knowing that I could stay with my aunt and uncle in Scotland for as long as I wanted. Having family or friends in a country you are hoping to move to is huge for helping you save money on rent, find a job, and to establish a group of friends. Six weeks later I went down to London where I had no family or friends but spending that time in Scotland allowed me to save a bit more money and even land a job in London before I moved down there which were both essential for starting out in such an expensive city.
My supportive parents, the early start I had building websites and my family connections in the UK are three things that have really helped me get to this point of being able to work online from anywhere. It has been a lot of work and a long road to get to this point, but I have had help along the way that has probably had more of an impact than I might have previously thought.
How about you? Are you a lone ranger in your quest to earn online and live from anywhere or can you look back to some key things that have helped or hindered you?
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