If I Had to Start A New Business Today to Be a Digital Nomad; Here’s What I Would Do

So knowing what I know now from all of my personal experience, if I had to start all over again securing the income source for my family to be full time digital nomads, what would I do? I’d rob a bank. I’m just kidding. I wouldn’t do that at all. That’s actually, though, the question I am going to answer in this episode of the Digital Nomad Entrepreneur podcast. Welcome to the podcast. My name is Eric Dingler. My wife and our four children and I have been traveling full time now for over three years. And during that time our business has gone through some ups and downs as I’ve had to learn what works and what doesn’t, and scaling a business while living in new cultures, new Airbnbs, new time zones, and how all of this moving and changing impacts lead generation and leading a remote team and client relationship and retention and all of the things that go along with owning a business that already exists. Fluctuations in the marketplace, changes in the economy, business, changing landscapes, new technologies, emerging opportunities and all of the normal business stuff on top of the digital nomad lifestyle On on all of that, I’ve learned quite a bit about running and scaling a successful business. And so I’ve got six thoughts I want to share with you about what I would do now if I had to go back and we were ramping up and getting ready to start this lifestyle and we weren’t business owners yet. What would I do? And after I share these six things, make sure you stick around. I’ve got a listener question I’m going to answer at the end of the podcast, as well as this week’s Little Leadership Lesson. I love to talk leadership because your leadership capacity is the capacity of your business. Your business will never go beyond your personal leadership skills. And so I wrap every podcast episode up with a little leadership nugget, if you will, a little leadership lesson. All right. So now the six things I’ve thought of when I was putting together this idea of of what would I do if I had to start all over And to be honest, I would still go down the route of building my own business versus getting a remote job. And a couple reasons. One. Remote companies don’t want don’t always stay remote. You know, remote people that that have remote jobs. I have seen horror stories upon horror story upon horror story of people getting a remote job leaving the country. And then suddenly, nope, everybody’s got to report back to the office. We’re going to start a hybrid schedule. We’re going to start, you know, whatever it is. Or businesses can impose limits suddenly on where you can work from, you know, and there’s suddenly the company may put in regulations that data can’t cross international borders. And so what do you what are you going to do in that case if you’re living abroad? And finally, I just like owning a business that is a growing asset that is becoming something that is going to provide for our retirement in in an exciting and thrilling and great, powerful way. That is an asset that is going to be here after I’m gone. I just like this building. And I’ll be honest, it’s not as hard as it is. You might be thinking if you’re thinking, Oh, I can’t start a business. That’s not my thing. It’s actually not as is is hard as you make it out to be. It’s it’s not though simple there’s a lot to it, but you can do I believe anybody really pretty much anybody can do it. So, number one, if I had to start all over, I would still go after building my business. Now I might start with a remote job. I might start with a remote job to learn the to learn what the the industry I’ve chosen to be in. You know, I might get a job as a even a virtual assistant working for somebody that’s running the type of business I want to run one day. You know, I might I might do that so I can start traveling, be learning, be getting mentored, and then eventually start my own thing. So that’s that’s kind of where I see working a remote job into the mix. But for the most part, I’m going to want to build my own company. Number two, I would. Define my work differently with my new the mindset that I have now, the expectations that I have now. I would define my work differently. First, I would understand that it’s going to take longer than I think. I would give myself at least a year to ramp up from nothing. I would give myself at least 12 months to ramp up from nothing. Before I was ready to pull the ripcord. I thought it could be done a lot faster than that. I just normally that’s not the case. And the second part of this, the other the way I would define my work differently besides it’s going to take longer is I don’t have to be the one that builds it. I just have to sell it to many people that want to start a business, think that they have to do the work that their business is selling. And the way I look at this, you know, real estate agents don’t build the houses they sell. And but and I get it. I’ve got people well, you know, I’ve got to learn. ESCO If I’m if I’m going to sell it, I got it. I got to learn it. Really? You do? Why? Why do you have to learn it? How much do you really need to know? Not as much as you think. You’re thinking of this wrong. You’re. You’re thinking about how you’re going to trade your time for money. And that’s not ever the way you want to look at this. Time is a finite resource. You only have so much time. You know what all the mega wealthy people have that you don’t have? It’s not more time. It’s better management of their time. It’s wiser use of their time. It’s multiplying by their time, by delegating it. The crazy thing is successful people don’t have people that they can delegate to because they’re successful. Successful people have people they can delegate to. That’s what made them successful. And so you have to think about it that you just it’s really important. It’s something I wish I would have learned a lot earlier on, but I would definitely be like, I don’t have to know how to build websites. You know, I that’s how I got started. Web design. I thought I had to learn all of it and all that kind stuff and I was wrong. And, and the, the third part of how I would define my work differently and what I would look for differently in my work is that project based work I would go after, what I would go after now, which is the monthly recurring revenue. What could I do that people would go on to a subscription model and pay me for regularly, consistently? That would give me the resource of that. I need to bring people alongside me and deliver on what the services are selling even. It could be a product, you know, it doesn’t have to be a digital thing. You could have a physical product that you ship once a month, a box kit idea, something like that. And you have other people that are assembling that and shipping it for you. You’re just you. You may be for a while. You may be the one creating ideas, breaking it into new markets and stuff like that. But you don’t have to be the one packaging it and shipping it that could be done from your your home country by others while you are out traveling and exploring. So I would definitely define my work differently. I would define it as with the understanding it’s going to take longer than I think it’s going to. I don’t have to be the one to build it. I just have to sell it. And I would look for recurring revenue, not project revenue. All right. Now, before I go on to number three, I have a huge favor to ask. I it would mean the world to me if you would leave a review, do the nice things, leave a review, subscribe, share wherever you’re listening to this, whatever it let you do do that. That’s all I’m asking for you. It’s. It’s the only thing I’m. I’m asking you to do in this episode. And almost any episode, just leave a review. It’s so helpful to me. It’s it’s motivating. It helps other people find the podcast. It helps the podcast grow, and it would really mean the world to me. All right. Number three. Number three, I would find people to learn from much earlier than I did before. I would find people to learn from. I would get online courses earlier. I would get a via a virtual assistant earlier or an intern. I would I would subscribe to this podcast, wink, wink, nudge, nudge, chuckle, chuckle. And I would, I would find other places I, I wish I would. Got started with Josh Hall’s courses earlier. I wish I would have started training with Mike and AJ at agency coach sooner. You know, I wish I would have done those things sooner. It would have move me along much further, faster. So I would definitely be very intentional about learning from people that were already a little further down the road than I am. All right. Number four, I would from day one document and build my systems document and build my systems. We are having to work right now in my agency documenting systems, building out systems that that really should have been done by now a couple years ago. But I just I didn’t do it. I didn’t leave well there. And so we’re making up for Lost Ground. The team is doing a great job. We’re having fun doing it. They’re coming together. They’re making things. Things better. I wish I would have started from day one. I wish I would have started from day one, creating videos of me doing things that were recurring tasks and just storing them for later. Not necessarily worrying about typing them up or things like that. Or now, you know, you could you could leverage A.I. We do a lot of our process documentation using A.I. and so there’s lots of ways to do it that makes it so much easier today. And I would definitely start from day one documenting and building the systems. Okay. Number five, I wish I would have before I started, before I went and opened my first business bank account, before I did anything for the business, I wish I would have read the book Profit First by Mike Michaelides and implemented Profit First from day one. That would have been amazing. Game changer. Really wish I would have done that. If you’re interested in that book, if a link to it in the show notes and you can also find that on my book list of the top nine books I recommend on my resource page Deeney podcast dot com. Just click on resources and you’ll see those right there. But I wish I would have read the book Profit first and had a really solid understanding of profit and using, you know, some very simple systems starting out because it just it we I would have I would have avoided a lot of mistakes. I would have avoided a lot mistakes. And now as I’m recording this, I think the other book I would recommend reading I had read this one and I’m glad I did is Entry Leadership by Dave Ramsey. I definitely think I would have read Andre. I had already read it. I’m glad I read that. And I if I was starting over, I would add to it profit first. All right. Those are the first five things so far. Number six. Number six. So here’s here’s the thing you might be wondering. Okay, this is great. You know, you gave a book, you would read, you document and build your systems. Okay? Learn from people, blah, blah, blah. You’re this isn’t rocket science, Eric. You know, work, you know, you don’t have to build it is to sell it. Maybe you’re still wrestling with that. Maybe be like, oh, my gosh, I wish I would have learned this earlier. This is I can see myself falling into this trap so that when you maybe really liking and, you know, working, you know, for yourself versus just getting a job. Those are the first things we’ve talked about leading up to this. You may be asking what kind of business would I start? What kind of business would I start to be a digital nomad? Well, the answer to that, the first question I would have to answer is what’s my superpower? But as I said, I think we all have a superpower, something we’re gifted at, something that we love doing. When people see us doing that, they can tell that we’re enjoying it. You know, we it just it comes naturally to us. It doesn’t seem to necessarily come naturally to others. And I would do everything around that. I would do everything around that, whether it’s doing that thing, teaching and creating courses and teaching others to do that thing, that that’s what it would be. So for me, I have the ability I had the superpower to turn failing struggling organizations around. I’ve done it multiple times in my career, you know, from, you know, a summer camp, a church, a business, working with clients, you know, like a restaurant there. There have been several times that I have helped failing struggling organizations turn themselves around. So I like doing digital marketing because of that. I like helping businesses improve themselves and turn themselves around. And marketing is a great way to do that. So I might do marketing if I. Starting all over. I might also do consulting. I might, you know, I might have started if I was starting all over. In fact, if I was starting all over, I don’t I don’t regret web design, digital marketing. I really having the agency is great, my team is great. But if I was going to start all over, I would probably try to figure out how I could work and do consulting with with struggling organizations, nonprofits, churches, ministries, businesses, you know, help them turn around because there’s a there’s a framework I’ve used every single time that that every single time I’ve used it, it is the business or the organization is always turned and turned around and prospered. But when I was was starting out, it was pre-COVID and there would have been, you know, this, that kind of stuff didn’t get done via video that much or things like that. And it would be a little harder to have that type of consulting business as moving around round the world. You know, that would be harder. So maybe I would stick with digital marketing because of that, you know, I don’t know. I honestly, I don’t know. I would do one of those things. How I approach it would be the exact same. I’d build my five business systems leadership, lead generation, lead conversion, managing money and project management. Like no matter what I was going to do, those are the things I would do if I was going to start a freelance copywriting business, you know, great leadership, lead generation, lead conversion, collecting, manage money, project management. Doesn’t matter if I was going to start a subscription box service, you know, and people would sign up and get a box in the mail every month of, you know, some type of kid date, night thing, coffee, food, exotic food. And I was I’m traveled around the world. I’m getting to taste things and try things and go, Ooh, we should make a food kit for this, you know, for for one month and, you know, and teach people how to make, you know, pupusas from El Salvador and Quesada from Costa Rica and, you know, Savage from Peru. And, you know, these dishes that these these places are made for, the butter pizza from Istanbul smacked me upside the head. That’s good. These but these sushi burritos we had in Poland of all places, did not expect that at to be honest, Poland, you were great. I didn’t expect to find my favorite sushi in Poland. I’m I know nobody. You’re shocked right now. You’re listening to this right now. Going Poland sushi. I don’t get it. I understand, but. Oh, my gosh. Amazing. So I could totally turn that into to a business. Okay, this is what I’m doing. Well, you know, what’s the leadership look like of that? You know, I’m going to have to have a team. I have to have some writers. I don’t have somebody. And, you know, my market that I would sell to would be the states, you know, starting out. So I’m going to have to have somebody there that is going to be able to source ingredients and things like that like lady I’m one of the have that build that that team and some of those systems lead generation start promoting this you know pod being a guest on podcast starting blogs about food and international foods and things like that. Then, you know, lead conversion, you know, what’s the first thing that I needed to do? Maybe, maybe it’s just we send them a free sample or we, we have a free cooking course. They go through, you know, something like that to begin that conversion process. And then we’ve got a, you know, a sample, you know, a three month sample trial period and then it’s a one year subscription. And, you know, I have a ladder that I walk them up, you know, that would be my lead conversion. And then, you know, collecting and managing money, the same exact thing, you know, doing all the budgeting thing, cost analysis, setting up the systems, taking, you know, getting people on recurring payment, making that nice and simple for them, and then having a budget and regularly working that budget and sticking to it and stewarding that resource of of money. It is I mean, like it or not, that’s the lifeblood of your business. You don’t have money, you don’t have a business. So it’s got to be a super priority. It can’t be just a thing. And, you know, that is there and you know, you don’t understand it. You got to understand it. You got to work it. You got to learn it all the time. And then finally, project management, you know, well, if we’re going to ship a box in in January, when do we have to have it planned? When do we have to start shopping for resources and supplies and printing the materials and and getting it packaged and it hitting the mailboxes like all of that, that project management. So, see, it doesn’t matter what type of business I would do, I might I might decide to do that, you know, or I could stick with web design, digital marketing. You know, I could be, you know, a freelance writer. You know, I can have a copywriting business now. I could have an eye agency. You know, it it really doesn’t matter. I know people that I know. A digital nomad that is a furniture maker. That’s right. He gets into an area, he builds some pieces of furniture from there, and he’s got a following that will pay the cost to have it shipped globally from where he is. Hundreds and hundreds of sometimes thousands of dollars just in shipping to get to get these pieces of furniture. But he’s he’s skilled and he’s got a following. I mean, you know, I, I know people that are digital nomads, that are doctors and nurses. And I mean, it’s you can do this with whatever kind of job you have or whatever kind of business you want to do. You just have to approach it from a what’s your superpower? What are you going to love doing? And then you’ve got to build the five business processes around it leadership, lead gen, lead conversion, and manage money and project management. And it’s going to take give yourself like give yourself a year, find some mentors, find for few to learn from, maybe start working remote for somebody that’s doing the thing and learn from them, you know but you’re going to as as I heard Stu McLaren say when I was taking one of his membership classes from membership programs and websites, you don’t you know, you don’t go into it. You grow into it. Give yourself plenty of runway. Give yourself time. And, you know, you you can do this. So what’s your superpower? Are you are you a master organizer? Are you a fantastic communicator? Are you a designer? Is design easy to you? What about a storyteller? Are you a phenomenal storyteller? You know, it’s food. Your thing. Is that the thing you relate to? Do you get people get excited about food when you talk about it, like what’s what’s your superpower? What do you what do you get excited about? And you can build a business around that and go out and explore the world. All right. Now, those are the things I would do different and how I would approach this differently if I had to start all over from scratch to prep my family with financial resources, to to live this amazing lifestyle that we love and we’re blessed. And, you know, it’s it’s not without its challenges. In fact, that was the listener question I had. And I want to say thanks, Derek, for asking this. He emailed me and he and he said, you know, here’s a listen to some other podcasts. And and here’s, you know, people like me talking and doing this. But he was curious, what what’s the impact like on the kids, you know, from the family, because we’re family. There are a lot of podcasts out there that they’re not family focused. In fact, very few digital nomad podcasts are families. And a lot of them give advice that, you know, there are some podcasts I listen to out there that are all about the digital nomad lifestyle. And, you know, whether it’s, you know, a couple of friends that are doing the podcast episode or or a person. Almost every single one I have found and that I listen to and I’ve I’ve checked them all out. I Googled and I’ve searched I’ve tried to find almost all of them are single and that is great, except their advice sucks for families. They don’t understand the dynamics of a family and having to take into consideration your kids and your kids becoming third culture kids. Our kids are now tech case, their third culture kids. When our kids are around other traveling kids, they can they can have conversations and be like, oh yeah. Oh, that, that reminds me one time when we were in Paris, this happened in. Oh yeah. And then their friend shares a story about something that, you know, when they were in the Philippines. And, you know, then one of our kids is, oh my gosh, yeah, in Istanbul. And they share these stories. But our, our our daughter, 30 year old daughter, she’s the one that brought up to us. She’s like, when when we go back to the States, she feels like she can’t tell those stories because she’s not. But she feels like based upon things that people have said, like, oh, must be nice to be able to go all the all these places like our 13 year old has had a choice. But anyway, she says, I the people react as if I’m as I’m coming across bragging and she’s not. It’s just her lifestyle. It’s what they’re use. It’s what they know, you know, to them, it’s just it’s just it’s their lifestyle. And so they are they’re definitely third culture kids. They’re not in the culture that that Marissa and I, my wife and I, you know, we’re we’re from the United States, and we are now living outside of that culture. And so our kids don’t have that culture to connect to because they’re not in it, even though our our home life inside our four walls is very American. I’m using an air quote, you know, meaning the United States of America, you know, but it’s very, you know, inside our four walls, it’s it’s that. But as soon as you step outside of our four walls, it’s very different. You know, it’s very, very different. We’re wearing different and it changes. You know, it’s now it’s been like this for ten months for them. But in September, it’s changing and it’s going to change a lot. We’re going to do some fast traveling this fall through South America, and we’re going to be moving a lot. And things are going to be changing up and it’s going to be absolutely crazy, insane and a lot of fun. And we’re going to have amazing experiences. And that’s what Derek was asking. Derek was like, I’d love to hear more about the kids and how this impacts kids and what you do and and stuff like that. And so Derek, I emailed him back and I said, I’m going to share this in the podcast. My wife actually has a podcast called the Digital Nomad Family Podcast. So this is Digital Nomad Entrepreneur podcast, and we have the Digital Nomad Van by me, we my wife, Digital Nomad Family Podcast. In fact, one of her episodes, I’ll link to it in the show notes. I can’t remember which number it is, but it’s a POV point of view. It’s a POV of a nomad kid for ways to tackle homesickness was in this episode, and I think my wife has done an episode with all of our kids, I think. But where they’ve talked about a specific part of, of the digital nomads experience for, for them. And so you can check that out. I link to it in the show notes we have a website for that family of dishes dot com family of dishes dot com is where my wife has her podcast and our kids have some blog posts and stuff. So that’s that’s over there. All right. We’re wrapping it up here with the leadership tip of the week. I love leadership because it what it’s what makes a business run. It just it’s just it’s just good this good stuff. You got to get this because this leadership stuff, this is the capacity of your business. If you’re going to own a business. Well, it doesn’t matter whether you own a business or not. Leadership happens everywhere and you need to fulfill your part. Even if you see yourself as a follower, you have the ability to lead up, you have the ability to lead laterally. Leadership is not always a top down expression. The leadership is so many things and it is the capacity of your business. So for this week, this week’s leadership axiom leadership is fire prevention, not fire fighting. Oh, that’s good. When I came up with that a couple of weeks ago, I took myself out for lunch. I was so okay. I didn’t really I should have though. But leadership is fire prevention, not firefighting. If all you are doing every single day is putting out fires, you’re not leading. You’re not leading. If you’re just if you’re just constantly putting out solving this problem for somebody. So, I mean, this issue and oh, it’s this and now we get a problem over here. Well, we got this challenge in this process, if that’s what you’re doing. You’re not leading. You’re not leading, you’re working. You’re managing. But that’s not leadership. There are times and seasons and places where you have to have management in place and you have to have people managing. But you also have to have leadership. Leadership looks at and goes, How do we prevent this from happening again? How do we reduce this from happening so frequently? How how do we how do we create a system so that when this does happen, it’s just easy to respond? It’s no big deal. It’s it’s you know, we can’t we can’t stop them all from coming up. We can’t stop every single fire, you know, from popping up. But we can be prepared. We can work for it. This is what this is. This is a perfect picture of what leadership looks like. Leadership is fire prevention, not fire fighting. Now, my friend, you’ve done it. You’ve made it through episode 25. Thank you very much. I’m proud of you. I would send you a cookie, but I can’t. So I have one myself. My wife made some yummy cookies yesterday for a 4th of July event. We went over to some friend’s house for 4th of July here in Costa Rica. We were some of the only ones celebrating 4th of July in Costa Rica because, well, it’s not Costa Rica’s Independence Day, but it was for the United States of America. And my wife made some cookies. And I’m going to wrap this up. I’m going to go have me one of those cookies to celebrate you making it to the end of Episode 25. So thank you very much for listening. I look forward to reading your review or email real soon. Until next time, chase the big dream lead with courage and safe travels.