The Sisterhood of the Traveling Digital Nomads

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

Welcome, welcome. Hey, what's up? As we begin today and also a new week, here's a reminder for you. If the path you're on isn't the right one, it's okay to make a change. It doesn't matter if you feel like you should have made that change earlier.

It doesn't matter if you've already invested in something else, you can't change the past. No matter how much you think about it, I know that all too well, but it's okay because you have the opportunity and also perhaps the responsibility to make active decisions about your future. You might not be able to make the change right away. That's a big part of the Cytosol School of Philosophy. I'm not saying that everybody can make a complete 180 today, tomorrow, et cetera, but that also doesn't mean you have to remain completely stuck because there is something you can do right here, right now.

And you can take steps today that will allow for more options tomorrow, or at least in the near future. So by the way, this is Cytosol School. My name is Chris Guillebeau, and in this story, an organic chemist from Germany makes that kind of shift for herself, leaving her former career behind and learning to make a living through remote work. And then along the way, she finds an all new purpose of uniting women across the world with similar values, which is what we'll look at today. We're calling the story, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Digital Nomads.

It's coming right up after this message from our sponsor. [Music]

Jenny Lack started her career in Germany by earning a PhD in organic chemistry. But before long, she realized that academia wasn't the path she wanted to follow. At the time, all of her friends were PhD students as well. They thought she had lost her mind when she decided to completely change course.

Although it wasn't easy to go against the grain, Jenny believed another life was possible. Three years earlier, she had taken a solo trip to Israel, where she met people who were traveling for months and years on end. After finishing her PhD, and saving all the money she could, Jenny embarked on an around the world trip with her boyfriend. When funds got low seven months in, she spent a year working in Australia on a working holiday visa, which involved all sorts of random day jobs. It was during this time that she came across people working online.

Eager to keep seeing the world, Jenny challenged herself to try out any online work she could find, to see whether she liked it, was good at it, and could make money from it. She discovered a passion for writing, and eventually became a full-time friend and eventually became a full-time freelance writer and social media manager. People were willing to pay her for skills she never considered before, like translation. And having a PhD after her name seemed to inspire trust, even if it was in a completely unrelated field. Writing and social media management are location independent jobs.

In other words, there's no need to be physically present in an office. As long as she has her laptop and wifi connection, Jenny can continue working from anywhere in the world. In her first few months of becoming a digital nomad, Jenny found herself living and working from a beautiful island in Thailand. It was the Instagram cliched dream, but something was missing. She was lonely.

Jenny knew that for this new lifestyle to be sustainable, she had to surround herself with others who shared the same dreams and values. This was a lesson she had learned during her PhD, when she also felt really alone. Although she traveled with her boyfriend, she missed having close female friends. She tried joining online business communities, but didn't find them to be as supportive as she hoped. Most of the loudest voices on the scene tended to be male, earning themselves the term bromads.

People pursue location independence for different reasons. And shockingly, many didn't identify with that bromad culture that had developed. There was a real need for a community where women could exchange stories, learn from each other and support each other. So as a passion project, at least at first, Jenny started Digital Nomad Girls. She launched a Facebook group and invited the women she'd met on the road to join.

They added their friends and the community took off. The group grew steadily and 100% organically. Soon, members were asking Jenny for in-person meetups. She organized her first retreat from scratch at a co-living space in Spain, expecting maybe five or six people to sign up. Instead, a group of 14 women from 10 countries joined in for that first week-long retreat.

Jenny remembers thinking, "Wow, this could be a thing. This could actually be my business." In the first 13 months of that passion project turned business, Jenny ran three retreats earning 12,000 euros for about $13,600 in net income, all while juggling her freelance client work. Two years in, with the Facebook community still going strong, Jenny launched a membership site for Digital Nomad Girls called The Inner Circle. She remembers dancing around her apartment like a maniac when the first person joined that Inner Circle. She had a custom button sent to the woman and then went out to a celebratory dinner with her boyfriend.

The membership site was a game changer. It brought in steady, recurring income and almost doubled annual profits to $22,000. Through this Inner Circle, Jenny offers weekly virtual co-working sessions, monthly masterclasses on work, travel, and lifestyle topics, accountability pairings, and discounts on retreats. Both monthly and annual memberships are available. Startup costs were roughly $500.

Jenny added a WordPress plugin called MemberPress to collect membership payments. To host community discussions, she uses the Mighty Networks app, which acts as the community's own private social network. For group video calls, she uses Zoom. Monthly expenses are just around $200. Running a membership site isn't like a course or one-off program.

It is ever-evolving. Jenny experiments with different offerings to see what works best for her members. She has found that the live components, like virtual co-working and online socials, are especially valuable. She's noticed that her members crave that personal connection while traveling. She currently works about 10 to 20 hours a week on the membership site and also continues to plan retreats for Digital Nomad Girls each year.

With nearly 20,000 members of the free Facebook community and roughly 130 inner circle members, income from Digital Nomad Girls is expected to more than triple this year. As Jenny reflects on the leap she made to turn her passion project into a business, she is deeply grateful. She says that creating something from scratch that helps people, supporting her and her lifestyle, and allowing her to learn new skills is incredible. That PhD in organic chemistry feels like a lifetime ago. [Music]

Well, talk about a gap in the marketplace.

I mean, this is huge. It's totally true that most of the voices in that space, at least traditionally, have been male. And not just male, but also hyper-mastiline. So, I mean, it's actually a term or a space I haven't really resonated with much myself, even though I am effectively the quintessential Digital Nomad. I've just never used that phrase because I've always kind of been doing my own thing for many years before this whole phrase and concept was popular.

So to the point here, I'm not surprised that she has 20,000 people in her Facebook group who were looking for a different form of identification, or at least a different kind of camaraderie support, community, et cetera. So good for her. And for all of our listeners out there who are looking for a different perspective in that kind of world, perhaps you wanna check it out. We will, of course, link it up. Now, my question for you as well is, is there something else out there that's dominated by one viewpoint or perspective, but yet a lot of people are interested in it?

It's a concept that has value. Yet for whatever reason, the online conversation or the offline conversation, whatever it is, is dominated by one viewpoint or perspective. And perhaps a lot of people would resonate with something different. Let me think about that because I think there's a lot of ideas there. There are a lot of possibilities and opportunities there, just as there are so many opportunities and possibilities in our world today.

And last but not least, don't be afraid to make a change. All right, today's show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/800, 800, it's episode 800. Oh my gosh, I can't believe we have come so far. So much more is on the way, just like Jenny said, to be able to create something that people out there are caring about and learning from and hopefully adapting in different ways on their own, it really is incredible. So I am grateful to you today, just as I challenge you to continue working on your story.

I wanna hear about it sometime. Thanks so much, my name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." Onwards. [Music]

From The Onward Project.