Anna S. E. Lundberg

Coach, Speaker, Writer

Fearless Fridays: From toxic commutes to intuitive business

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Fearless Fridays with Kristyn CaetanoThis month’s Fearless Fridays interview is with Kristyn Caetano, who abandoned her horrendous commute to the office for a more flexible and purposeful career as an intuitive business coach and lifestyle strategist.

From facing her own challenges to navigating the desire to do it all, Kristyn shares how she worked with a business coach who helped her clarify and focus on what she really wanted to do. Now, she helps her clients overcome blocks, find clarity, and create success using a range of practical business-building strategies on the one hand and more spiritual tools as well as a big dose of love on the other!

Watch the full interview or read on for the highlights of Kristyn’s story!

Fearless Fridays: From public health to intuitive business

Kristyn CaetanoKristyn Caetano spent more than 20 years in public health, specifically in women’s health, managing non-profit health clinics and doing a lot of health-related community work. Having found herself fed up with an awful commute and seeing no further advancement within that career, she decided to start building her own business. There have been a few twists and turns but, through the help of a business coach, Kristyn found a way to combine her healing work with practical business-building strategies. Today, she helps spiritual entrepreneurs build a thriving business that allows them more freedom and prosperity in their life, while also making a positive impact in the world.

1. At what moment did you decide it was time for a change?

Kristyn Caetano Group
Kristyn’s favourite part about her work now is knowing that she’s helping people express themselves creatively and make an impact in the world

I always had jobs on the side and was always doing some kind of healing work. My whole adult life, I was on this quest to find my ‘aligned work’ in the world and knew that I wasn’t quite in it yet, even though there were pieces of what I was doing that felt right.

A bunch of certifications later, I finally arrived in my early 40s and I was in a very damaging, toxic, miserable job. I was a bit stuck because there was nowhere really to go within my public health career. I was driving to this horrible job every day in a treacherous commute, and every day I would either be crying in my car or feeling sick to my stomach, or angry. I felt like, “I don’t even recognise myself; this is not me.” I was just done.

Finally, I said, “You know what? I’ve got to do this thing for real.” So I set up a brick-and-mortar side business combining my hypnotherapy and life coaching. I knew I wanted to do online work, but I was just throwing everything at it. I thought, “I want to do online and in-person and maintain a full-time job!” And that wasn’t very practical.

After a while, I realised that this business model was never going to liberate me from my day job, so I needed to figure something else out. The other thing I realised was that I really liked to work with people in this deeper, longer-term way. Then the third thing I realised was how I loved doing this inner work – but something was still missing.

I finally hired a business coach who changed my life pretty much immediately and helped me get a giant breakthrough, which was realising that I actually loved the business coaching itself – the practical side and the teaching – and so I pivoted and combined those. My coach also helped me remove some blinders, and I built my path slowly and steadily on the side as I gradually reduced my time at work. I went from five days to four days to three days, and I finally quit at the age of 44. I’ve never looked back! And I’m never going back. Ever.

2. What was the biggest challenge you faced in making the change?

I believe that business can be our medicine. What I mean by that is that you’re going to be faced with all your stuff, all your limiting beliefs, all your childhood wounds; so I think of building a business as a healing modality in itself.

I would say for my challenges that I was incredibly fearful and terrified about the stability piece, that “Am I going to be able to eat?” kind of thing. That’s such a basic human lizard-brain fear – I think we all have it.

Another challenge was in the form of my money blocks, one of which was a deeply subconscious scarcity belief, which came from my parents and their parents before them.

Those are just a couple of examples of the things that I’ve had to really work through and overcome.

3. Where did you get the support you needed to make it happen?

I’ve always had support from different coaches, therapists and spiritual healers to help me move through my blocks. To be honest, I think my path was slower than some other people, and it took me several years to work through that incredible fear that I was feeling. On a practical level, I set myself up well because I saved a certain amount of money to have a ‘cushion’ and I built my business up to a certain place before I took the leap. But that inner journey is ongoing: once you get to one level, there’s always the next level of limiting beliefs or fears that you need to unravel.

To be able to form relationships, friendships, and supportive collaborations with fellow entrepreneurs and people in my mastermind community has been an absolute game changer; that’s actually something that I’m looking to build more of this year. I’ve suffered from what I call the ‘independent woman’ syndrome: I haven’t been good at receiving help, and always think I can do everything myself. I don’t want do that anymore! It’s still not easy for me to actually ask for and receive help, from peers or even people who are a little ahead of me. We absolutely can’t do it alone, so I encourage everyone to find mastermind buddies and so on: people who believe in you.

4. What’s the best part of your lifestyle today?

Kristyn Caetano
Kristyn’s favourite part about her work now is knowing that she’s helping people express themselves creatively and make an impact in the world.

I think the best part of my work is that I know that I’m genuinely helping people move the needle on their dreams and create their fullest expression in the world. There are so many people who are unhappy in their desk jobs and so many people who are trying to find their ‘purpose’. That’s kind of a buzzword, but there is a reason for that. I believe that we do have a purpose and there is a massive feeling of dissatisfaction when you’re not in your right, aligned and joyful work.

So my joy is to actually help all the coaches, healers, guides and mentors be able to create a structure that supports them financially, consistently, and actually also allows them to creatively express themselves and do good in the world. What’s better than that? Who doesn’t want that?

I also get a lot of joy out of the fact that I get to sleep in! I’m just being totally honest: I am not a morning person. Gone are the days where I had to wake up at the crack of dawn and drive forever in treacherous traffic to get to a horrible, soul-sucking desk job. Now I don’t schedule any clients before 10am and I love it. I also feel healthier. I carve out time for my yoga and myself and it’s really a joy.

It’s not perfect – there are good days and bad days, of course – but I feel so blessed and fortunate that I had the courage to design a different kind of life. That’s where a lot of people get stuck, and never make it.

5. What one piece of advice would you give to someone who is considering making a big career or lifestyle change?

When you’re faced with that indecision or uncertainty, if you remain stuck in limbo land, it’s not only painful but you never get anywhere; you spin your wheels. And we know that action begets clarity.

I advise people to really ‘go inside’ to help them make important decisions.  If you’re asking yourself, “Should I do A or B?”, then close your eyes and imagine yourself doing A. Does it feel heavy? Does it feel buoyant? Get out of your head and into your body and just ask the question; be curious. Then try choice B. Does that feel good?

Nothing’s ever a sure thing. You might just feel, “Okay, this feels more buoyant to me, so I’m going to move in this direction.” I used to want to know for sure that it was going to work out before I took the step, but it doesn’t work that way. Know that this is an ever-unfolding journey and you’re not going to know for sure. You’re only going to know the next step that’s right in front of you; and you’re going to discover what happens after that when you get there.

Find out more about Kristyn and her work won her website, Elixify Your Life, or follow her on Facebook and on Twitter.

Fearless Fridays: From marketing to health coaching

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fearless-fridays-sabine-vant-hart (1)This month’s Fearless Fridays interview is with Sabine van ‘t Hart – Orbello, who I met while working in the fragrance marketing department at Procter & Gamble in Geneva. We’ve unexpectedly ended up on similar journeys, having never planned to run our own businesses, and I’ve loved reconnecting with her in these past months as we’ve shared our experiences and insights.

In the interview, Sabine shares the important changes she has made in her own life, both in terms of career and business on the one hand and in terms of her health and wellbeing on the other. These two changes are related, as she has founded Puricious Health Coaching and is now on a mission to help people boost their energy through nutrition and holistic healing so that they can fully enjoy life.

Watch the full interview or read on for the highlights of Sabine’s story!

Leaving a corporate job behind to follow your passion: From marketing to health coaching

 

Sabine van’t Hart – Orbello was working in marketing at Procter & Gamble when her father was diagnosed with cancer and given only weeks to live. She chose to focus on what was most important to her, quitting her job to spend what ended up being the final months with her dad. Today, she is the founder of Puricious Health Coaching. As a nutritionist and yoga teacher, she is passionate about guiding people step by step to a healthy lifestyle!

1. At what moment did you decide it was time for a change?

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Sabine used to be known as ‘cookie monster’ in her old days as an employee. How things have changed!

I started studying nutrition when I was still working at P&G. In the beginning of 2013, actually both my parents got a life-threatening disease. Then, I was just scrolling through Facebook and there was an ad for a nutrition course, and it talked about how you can prevent so many diseases. To be honest, up until that time – well, looking back at my cookie consumption – I really wasn’t aware of how food impacts our wellbeing. So when I saw that ad, I went with the intuition that I needed that, and I needed it for my parents.

It really made such a big difference in their quality of life. It was incredible: the more healthily they started to eat, the better they started to feel, and the more energy they had. For my dad it was too late, because he had both brain cancer and lung cancer, stage IV, so it was really throughout his body. That was also the moment when the doctors estimated that he would live for only another two to four weeks.

That’s when I asked myself, “What am I doing with my life? I really want to spend time with him.” So that’s when I quit my job at P&G, which was pretty extreme at that moment, because I was really enjoying it. It wasn’t a very easy decision, but it was also an obvious decision between going after my corporate career and taking time for my family. Eventually my dad lived for another eight months, so we really had the best time; so much quality time. I would never, ever, regret that decision.

In the meantime, I was so excited about everything that I was learning, because it was so new to me. I started to eat less cookies, and I started to realise how everything had such a big impact. My Italian husband was eating pizza, pasta, gelato – starting his breakfast with cookies – and I started to share more and more not only with my parents but also with my husband. He was the first one to say to me, “Sabine, you changed my life!” He started to do sports, he quit smoking, he started yoga, he gave up his pasta, pizza, and gelato, and he started doing triathlons. So he told me, “I think you’ve found your calling, because without even pushing me, without even wanting me to change anything, you’ve inspired and motivated me to change my entire lifestyle.”

So when my husband told me that I should be doing this for a living, I started Puricious, my own company, and I started working with clients around the world. It was mostly online in the beginning but then after a while people in Switzerland were asking if they could work with me too, and I started to work more locally as well. Since then, I’ve done so many more studies about nutrition, and hormones, and I became a yoga teacher – I realised that there was so much more to learn!

2. What was the biggest challenge you faced in making the change?

My family is super entrepreneurial, my brother in particular – he would already be negotiating in the schoolyard or selling the game, rather than actually playing the game. I always had in mind that one day I would be setting up my own business, but I never really knew what or how. The biggest challenge was underestimating the change involved in going from having a corporate career where you have all these structures – you have the team in place, you have a whole supply chain, you have all of your suppliers – to setting up a business from scratch, where you have none of that.

On top of that, I didn’t go from being a marketing manager to being a marketing consultant, I completely changed industry and I completely changed my role. That really hit me in the face and I became very insecure. In the first year and a half or so, when I met people, I kept saying, “Hi, I’m Sabine. I’m a marketing manager.” Then I had to say, “No, no, no, hang on, I’m a nutritionist!” That killed my credibility…!

That’s also why I kept studying, sometimes doing two courses online at the same time, because I felt like I had to know everything about everything! I had to know everything about our bodies to really be able to help my clients.

So the biggest challenge for sure was changing not only from my corporate career to being an entrepreneur but also completely changing my role and industry.

3. Where did you get the support you needed to make it happen?

My family was very supportive. They’re the ones who really believed in me even when I was at home crying, “Who would ever work with me?” and I didn’t believe in myself. That was something that I had never seen coming either. The moment I decided to start my own business, I was doing happy dances all the time, “Freedom! Flexibility!” Then it hit me a few months later when I was trapped doing all this studying.

My cat was always right on top of my hands, on the keyboard. She would never go to bed until I was done. After a while, I’d be worried about her – “She really needs to sleep!” – so it was a good reminder for me.

Last, but not least, my husband has really been the biggest pillar in my life, helping me believe in myself; he has been very sweet. He helped me see, “And now you stop studying. You can’t even share this knowledge, because no one will get it; it’s so complicated. Your strength is that it’s practical and it’s about getting into action. Now go and actually put yourself out there.” We started doing workshops about sugar and toxins in your life, and other topics like hormones, and he would always come along. He was basically my biggest fan and my biggest believer and supporter.

4. What’s the best part of your lifestyle today?

sabine-vanthart-tv
Sabine loves working closely with her clients and hearing how she has changed their lives, and has appeared on Swiss TV with her campaign for sugar awareness.

The best part is the feedback from my clients. We come from such a mindset and a set of rules around what we believe success to look like. I started with, “Okay, so I want to have this many clients, and these are my financial targets,” because that’s what we’re used to in the corporate world. It was actually my husband who started to point out to me, that, “Damn, I’m so jealous of you. No one has ever said to me, ‘Thank you for giving me my life back,’ or ‘Thanks to you, I’m a different person.’” Or they talk about how there was a life before Sabine and then a life after Sabine!

It’s sometimes still very hard to even receive that kind of feedback, because it’s so overwhelming. I find it almost difficult to accept it, but obviously that’s really what keeps me going; it’s what gives me the greatest energy. That’s why even when I have days where I’m only doing the accounting or stuff that I don’t really enjoy, that really keeps me going as I know that I’m doing this for a greater reason. Having that purpose and having that direct feedback from happy clients, seeing their transformation – sometimes it’s incredible not only in terms of how they feel or their energy or weight loss but also in terms of their health – how much you can do with the right nutrition, the right balance, and movement; that’s really the most fulfilling thing, out of everything.

5. What one piece of advice would you give to someone who is considering making a big career or lifestyle change?

Sabine loves her work so much that she often does her ‘happy dance’ when she’s running a workshop.

You want to see what gives you the greatest joy in life. That was really a wake-up call for me when my father passed away and I realised that it could all be over in such a short time. He was 59, so he was young still. Now, I want to make sure that, every single day, I do what I love. When I go out and do a presentation or a workshop, I always do these silly happy dances… For me, it’s a metaphor for how I wish people would feel, that they have the energy to really do what they love in life, and a way for me to convey the joy that I wish for every single person, every single day of their life.

So follow your intuition, follow your heart – but also have some alternatives like plan B, C, D, and so on – and you will find that the number of opportunities are unlimited. If you are well prepared, I’m sure everyone can really create the life and lifestyle that they wish for.

You can find out about Sabine’s business, Puricious, on the website or follow her on Facebook and Instagram.

Fearless Fridays: From HR to mentoring introverts

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FearlessFridays-with-Janice-ChakaI’m pleased to share this month’s Fearless Fridays interview: here, I’m speaking to Janice Chaka and, yes, she is yet another gorgeous digital nomad I met in Barcelona back in October. Here, we discuss how and why she started her business, as well as where she finds support and inspiration as a nomadic business owner and introvert.

 

Watch the full interview or read on for the highlights of Janice’s story!

Fearless Fridays: From HR to mentoring introverts

janice-chaka-profileWorking in HR and recruitment, Janice Chaka initially left to go freelance but then decided to take her work with introverts and make that full time, founding The Career Introvert. She now mentors introverts who are looking to reach the next level in their careers, whether that be via changing career, getting a promotion, or starting their own business. Janice is location independent and currently based in Mexico, which brings its own set of rewards and challenges.

 

1. At what moment did you decide it was time for a change?

janice-chaka-street
Janice has found a way to leverage her own introversion, while helping others do the same.

The change came in two stages. First, I was working for a conglomerate, and they let me work from home. This meant that I was more productive and got more done – but it also meant that they didn’t have enough work for me: I’d ask for more work, and they’d answer, “No. Just get paid.” I became bored, and I started looking for other things. I started doing a side thing on my own, and then I left to work for myself.

As for working with introverts, that came from working with another company while freelancing. They were taking up so much of my time that I didn’t have time for myself. I was a freelancer, but they didn’t really understand that, and made me feel like an employee. There came a point where I was in Hong Kong and it was midnight and, of course, this was the one time that the internet went down. I was scrambling out of my hostel to go to the airport because I knew the airport had Wi-Fi, just to make this one 30-minute meeting where all they did was complain that the connection wasn’t good. That was the cut-off point for me. I asked myself, “Why am I doing this? Is it worth this stress?”

So, I stopped. Even during that time, I’d been doing workshops on introversion and networking for introverts, holding meet-ups in different countries, for example. This was a sign for me to concentrate on that, and not let other things control my life.

2. What was the biggest challenge you faced in making the change?

That’s a really good question. One challenge is that a lot of my friends, especially in the past, definitely don’t do anything of this nature. They work for a lot of big companies: they go to an office, they work overtime, they get paid, and then they come home. I also have a lot of friends who are in the medical community. I can’t talk to them about what I do, because it just doesn’t make sense to them.

Other barriers have been geographical. I live in Mexico and, even though I’m English and I have a British passport, I don’t have a British bank account, a British address, or any of the things that can be helpful when you want to, for example, set up a Stripe account, or Shopify, if I were to set up an eCommerce site. To get the back-end working, there are so many little things you need that are easier if you have a British, American or Canadian bank account; having a Mexican bank account doesn’t help at all.

The other thing is the misconceptions that people have about introversion and what it is; why introverts may or may not need help.

I think those have been the main things; but new stuff comes up all the time.

3. Where did you get the support you needed to make it happen?

I’ve done it the wrong way, and done it all by myself. I do have one friend who is a tech-y guy. He’s my go-to website person, or my “this-thing-has-broken-or-exploded-please-help” contact. Apart from that, I’ve had mentors along the way, occasionally, but mainly it has been just me. This is not the way to do it!

I’ve always been a person who does stuff by themselves and I am a bit of a loner. I don’t usually ask for help, but I’ve become better at it. Now, I have accountability buddies, and that has been useful. I don’t have just one – I have one for my book writing, one for business, one for various other things. Everyone’s different, and everyone has a different viewpoint.

4. What’s the best part of your lifestyle today?

janica-chaka-destinations
Where to next?! Janice became location independent more by accident than by intentionally deciding to become a digital nomad.

It’s fulfilling and it’s rewarding; it’s helping people. You go through the self-doubt thing, then you have that one conversation with someone and you help them through something and you think, “Yeah! I helped them do that!” and you feel good about it.

As far as the lifestyle, it was an accident, I didn’t plan it. I didn’t set out saying, “I want to be a digital nomad.” I get to work online, which is great. A lot of my background is in HR and recruiting, and all of that I can do online. I like to travel, and I have friends around the world, so I get to stay for free – I’m lucky in that way.

You have to balance your time between, “I want to go out and drink sangria!” and “Oh, I actually have client meetings for three hours.” It takes time and it takes experimentation to find out what works for you and what doesn’t work for you. Finding the right way of working, finding your best hours of work – it’s about knowing yourself, and that’s an ongoing journey. It’s getting better, but it’s always going to be a ‘work in progress’ – and I’m okay with that.

5. What one piece of advice would you give to someone who is considering making a big career or lifestyle change?

Be open to change. A lot of people get stuck on smaller details like the website, and the logo, and the colours. Just do it! You don’t know if people want these things unless you go out there and ask. Don’t fall in love with one idea and then get so narrow and focused on it that you’re not open to anything else.

I think that happens a lot. People think, “Oh, I want to do this,” and then they realise they hate it, or they get bad clients; or they get so stuck in the minutia that they don’t realise that there are other things that they can do, or other areas where people need help. They get stuck, married to a particular idea.

Just think of it as a way of supporting yourself. Yes, you want to enjoy it, but don’t necessarily turn your hobby into your job, because then you might hate your hobby. It doesn’t work that way.

Get help; ask for help. Don’t expect everything to be free. You have to give value; but there’s a fine line between giving value and then just giving everything away for free. If you’re giving it away, people don’t respect the value that you are bringing.

Find out more about Janice on her website or follow her on Facebook and Twitter.

Fearless Fridays: From in-house programming to independent app development

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Fearless Fridays with Lewis SmithThis month’s Fearless Fridays interview is with Lewis Smith, another digital nomad whose path crossed with mine in Barcelona in October 2017, at the 7in7 digital nomad conference. Here, he explains why he chose to take smalls steps, instead of big leaps, quitting his job to travel the world with his wife.

 

Watch the full interview or read on for the highlights of Lewis’ story!

Leaving a corporate job behind to follow your passion: From in-house programming to independent app development

Lewis SmithLewis Smith was happy in his programming role but chose to leave, with his wife, to explore more of the world – starting with Thailand. Initially managing the stress of a variable freelancing income, Lewis now runs his own app development business. Today, he’s a developer and digital nomad who helps people lose weight with Progress Body Measurements app and stay connected with World Time Widget app.

 

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Lewis travels with his wife, Jen, who quit her job on the same day as him

1. At what moment did you decide it was time for a change?

I actually really liked my job. It was a big corporate and the potential for advancement with the company I was at was really nice; they treated me very well. It came in a couple of stages, but really the seed of it all was planted on my honeymoon in Chiang Mai. At the time, it wasn’t known as a digital nomad spot. We were just walking around the town and thought, “We could live here.” Six months after that, we did!

At that point, I didn’t have my app business, but we were going to just take some time off as we had some savings. I wanted to do the apps, but it took five years to get them to a point where they were my main thing.

Before that, we’d never been outside of Europe. Being in Thailand was a culture shock but in such a good way: life was so different, and we really enjoyed Chiang Mai. There was a lot of the world that we hadn’t seen, and we wanted to do more, and see more – that was a big driver.
My wife, my friend and I all gave our notice on the same day.

2. What was the biggest challenge you faced in making the change?

The ‘feast-or-famine’ aspect of freelancing was hard. It was four or five years before the apps worked out, and income was a constant thing on my mind: “What should I focus on? Will the apps ever be something that I can do full-time? Should I really focus a lot on that? Or should I just embrace freelancing?” Part of the reason it was feast and famine was that I was never spending any time, or as much time as I should have been, looking for freelance work; all my free time was spent on my other business.

Finding the right balance was a big challenge, and I think the main advice I would give is to try not to worry about it. (I know, that is super easy to say!) I spent so much time being stressed, thinking, “In three months, am I going to have this business?” Really, I was never hungry, and it was never shit. My life was always pretty good, and if I’d spent less time with negative emotions about that, I probably would have moved forward quicker.

Lewis Smith
Lewis ran a session at the 7in7 conference in Barcelona on IT security on the road, and it was both terrifying and reassuring in the solutions that he provided!

3. Where did you get the support you needed to make it happen?

I didn’t have as much support as I would have liked! My wife Jen was a huge support, but outside of that… I feel like I’ve been a lot better at finding support as I’ve become more successful.
Conferences like 7in7 are a really great way to meet people and to get support. I also ran a mastermind group in Thailand for a little bit and that was really good. I listen to podcasts, and it’s always useful if you can find one that is in your niche or in the thing that you want to do. I don’t necessarily like the business-type podcasts, but just find something in your sector that gives you a good feeling.

Lewis Smith
This was one of my favourite places to visit too, back in 2014. And, while Lewis was drinking his ale at The Green Dragon, money was still flowing into his bank account.

4. What’s the best part of your lifestyle today?

It sounds mega-corny, but I think it is the freedom. I feel like I have control over all aspects of my life, like how to spend my time wherever we go. Everything is within my influence, so it’s great to be able to travel and to work, and then to have a few days off – I really appreciate that every day.
Then, the day I wake up after I haven’t done any work, money is still coming in. That is a pretty great feeling!

5. What one piece of advice would you give to someone who is considering making a big career or lifestyle change?

I think the best advice is to resist the urge to just throw it all – your corporate 9 to 5 – away. That’s the thing I see often, and disagree with the most. Obviously, the urge to jump completely is strong, and I totally get that. I think if you can find how not to do that, and just think, “How could I not jump?” – take one step – I think that is probably my best advice. And you can apply that at any time, to anything: take one step, instead of jumping.

You can find Lewis online at LewisMakesApps.com, on YouTube and on Twitter. If you’re looking for extra support and accountability to lose weight, then be sure to also check out his Progress app.

Fearless Fridays: From ad agency to digital nomad pioneer

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Fearless Fridays with Kit WhelanFor this month’s Fearless Fridays interview, I’ve been talking to another digital nomad extraordinaire, Kit Whelan. I met Kit in Barcelona in October at the second year of the 7in7 digital nomad conference, which she co-founded with her partner Nick as well as Kyrie, whose story I shared last month.

In addition to being a co-founder of the 7in7 conference, Kit is a freelance social media strategist, as well as the creator and host of Nomad and Spice, a podcast dedicated to supporting location-independent women. An early adopter of the digital nomad lifestyle, Kit has been travelling for almost a decade, and discusses the importance of community when you’re living on the road, as well as balancing a love for travel and the desire to make an impact with your work.

Watch the full interview or read on for the highlights of Kit’s story!

Leaving a corporate job behind to follow your passion: From ad agency to digital nomad pioneer

kit whelanKit Whelan has been a digital nomad for nine years, having started her career in an ad agency and then working on the Obama campaign. She runs a social media consultancy, mostly working with small luxury hotels, and co-founded the 7in7 conference for digital nomads. She also co-hosts the Nomad + Spice podcast for location independent women… and is obsessed with cats and space travel.

 

1. At what moment did you decide it was time for a change?

After finishing university, my goal was to get a job at an ad agency. Thankfully, it was before the Great Recession in the States, so it was not that hard to get a job then. I remember hanging up the phone after getting the job offer and thinking, “Is that it?”

I’d worked really hard in school and university, and done all these things so I could have a good resumé. Then I got the ‘good job’, the last societal finish line.

I enjoyed my job, I really did, but after a few years, it was just so repetitive; I didn’t feel like I wanted it. I desperately wanted to travel more than the paltry two weeks a year that they give you in American companies and I just wanted more out of life – more adventure, more excitement. So that’s why I originally quit my full-time job to work on the Obama campaign, because I felt like I was doing something that was bigger than myself. I wanted that to continue. For me, going back to a full-time job would have been going backwards.

2. What was the biggest challenge you faced in making the change?

Kit Whelan
Kit and Nick have been travelling together as a “24/7 couple” – and, as you can see from their faces, they make it work!

At the beginning, I was so focused on the travel that taking time for work still seemed like an inconvenience. Now, I have three businesses that I take a lot of pride in and I spend a lot of time working on them – my perspective has definitely shifted. But when I began, remote work was still very new. It was a lot harder, with potential clients asking, “Where are you located? What are you doing?” They were often a little nervous and I would have to negotiate with, “Just give me three months and we’ll see how it goes.”

I travel and work with my partner so there are also challenges of a more personal nature. Honestly, for me, being the 24/7 couple is great – but I know that’s really challenging for a lot of people. For us, as long as we’ve got a good pair of headphones and can have our separate time and space, we’ve done pretty well as far as the whole “work-together-all-the-time” thing goes!

3. Where did you get the support you needed to make it happen?

For me, the biggest thing that you could possibly need for a nomad lifestyle isn’t just making money from your laptop, it’s the community and support: that is the most important thing. And in the early days, when I was more focused on my travels than on work, it was mostly just Nick and I. We would meet people wherever we went and that was fun, but we didn’t have a long-term support network.

Obviously we had our families, but that wasn’t the same as having a really solid support network. We stumbled into one when we were in Berlin the summer of 2013 to 2014 and there happened to be a lot of other nomads there at the time. This was still during the time when if you met another nomad, it was like finding a unicorn!

It was like, “Oh my gosh! You’re a nomad too? We’re best friends now.” We started hanging out with these people, having movie nights, then hanging out every weekend, co-working together every day during the week. It was like having this little nomad family for the first time, and that’s when I realised what we’d been missing. I’ve now worked to build that for myself.

I started a conference to make more friends and to show other nomads that this is what you need, this is what you’re missing. Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of people drop out of the lifestyle and usually that’s because they’re lacking community. They’d say that they felt lonely, they said that they missed having that community, and often they’d end up going back home.

That’s a perfectly valid choice, but you don’t have to do that. You can absolutely gather your own network and your own nomadic family and have that support system no matter where you are.

4. What’s the best part of your lifestyle today?

Looks like Kit has found her community: these are the smiling faces of the year 2 conference attendees in Barcelona

The best part for me is the community; but I think still the best part of the nomad lifestyle in general is just the freedom and the ownership of my time. When I had a full-time job, a great apartment, great friends etc., what shaped me a lot was that fact that I was living on someone else’s schedule – I was working for someone else’s goal and I had no time for myself. You end up just living for the weekend because by the time you’ve arrived home from your job, you’re just exhausted.

There’s no time to do anything for yourself and even now, if I’m stressed because I’ve taken on too many projects, I end up feeling like I have to remind myself that I chose this: I’m the one who gave myself this work, I’m the one who chose to do these projects. I’m the one who decides when I wake up, I decide when I work. I decide where I live and what I eat. Everything is my decision so if, at any point, I’m miserable, it’s my own fault… there’s no boss to blame.

So my favourite part of the lifestyle is definitely the freedom.

5. What one piece of advice would you give to someone who is considering making a big career or lifestyle change?

Stress less. Things will work out – you don’t need to have everything planned, and failure is good, you learn from it. And I think the most important thing is to find yourself a community.

To non-nomads (we like to call them Muggles!), you will always be an oddity. They’ll say, What? You don’t have a house? You’re just travelling? You work from your computer? How do I do that?!” and you might feel like you’re coaching people sometimes.

You need to have people in your life who completely get you. People who can support you through what you’re doing and have been through those situations. That’s the most important thing.

Read more about Kit’s social media consultancy on her website Kit + Co, discover her podcast at Nomad and Spice, and read more about the 7in7 Digital Nomad Conference on the 7in7 website. You can also find her on Twitter and Instagram @KitWhelan.