Digital Nomad with 18 years of experience.
We are a family of 4 and have been a location independent entrepreneur or a digital nomad for almost 18 years now.
It all began in the year 1999 - when my wife & I decided to move back to India from the Middle East and start some businesses in India.
I closed down my corporate gifts business and we came back to India.
We bought a nice house with half of our savings and invested the other half in a business we had no experience in and within few years everything ran into ground and we were bankrupt.
Luckily, we had our computerized embroidery machines and we learnt how to digitize artwork for computerized embroidery machines and I being an avid reader I had pretty much built my own website and also promoted it to the first page of Google.
We emailed other businesses to get their designs digitized and this is what kept us afloat after being evacuated by the bank from our 4 bedroom home after being bankrupt.
We also moved from place to place to keep our expenses to the minimum and all this while working with overseas customers - we were 'Digital Nomads' in the true sense - we lived in rented homes with minimum belongings and worked from our computers.
Today after so many years - we have a team of other 'nomads' working with us and we still cater to overseas customers.
We are now taking our first international trip to Chiang Mai, Thailand to explore the possibility of settling there for a year before moving to either Korea or Taiwan.
But it's a difficult journey - we have substantial savings and a business that supports us - even then it is difficult to meet the expenditure of air travel and AirBNB stays.
I will be writing more from my perspective and guide others about how we setup our business and also start new ones - because the future is a global community of Digital Nomads.
I'll using this blog to write about the challenges we faced and how we tackled them - so keep tuned in.
18 years! This is amazing! You remind Leonardo da Vinci, a person that was born before his actual time. I mean you started to be a digital nomad when no one even thought this can be a thing. Thanks for sharing your story, it inspires a lot.
LOL - thanx :)