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How to Become a Digital Nomad

2022-11-17 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 16:46 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Business and entrepreneurship (also: Work and career) · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: His medical past, Family, Sponsor segment present

Ali lays out a playbook for the digital nomad lifestyle: earn money location-independently; of the creator, entrepreneur and freelancer paths he recommends freelancing, a remote skill sold to clients such as creators and boring local businesses, built on the side before quitting a job.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — The digital nomad dream and what the video offers

  • ★★ Ali says the freedom and flexibility to work on your own terms, the digital nomad dream, is something many people aspire to even if they do not want to travel constantly. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Ali says his method for reaching the digital nomad lifestyle does not require becoming a YouTuber or creator. — 00:00:34
  • ★★★ Ali calls money the key ingredient of the digital nomad lifestyle: without a trust fund you need a way to make money while living it. — 00:00:34

00:00:49 — The key ingredient for the digital nomad lifestyle: money

  • ★ How much money the lifestyle needs depends on where you live: Ali's life in central London is very expensive, while travelling around Southeast Asia would be cheaper. (hedged) — 00:01:03 · London

00:01:33 — How to actually make money: location-bound or location-independent, employee or entrepreneur; remote jobs

  • ★★★ Ali sorts work in a two-by-two matrix, location-bound or location-independent and employee or entrepreneur: a doctor, a remote software engineer, a plumber, a freelance web designer or video editor. — 00:01:33
  • ★★ Ali was a location-bound employee for two years as a doctor in the UK's National Health Service: he had to show up at a specific place and could not work remotely. — 00:01:33 · NHS
  • ★★ Working remotely is very hard as a doctor or a plumber; finding a way to make money location-independently is, Ali says, the first step to the digital nomad lifestyle. — 00:02:31
  • ★★ For most people, Ali says, there is nothing at all wrong with getting a remote job. — 00:02:31
  • ★★ Besides coding, design and video editing, Ali says almost any office-based job, such as accountant, bookkeeper, recruiter or HR, has now gone remote. — 00:03:00
  • ★ Someone with ten years of accountancy skills need not throw them away and become a web designer to work remotely, Ali says: you can be an accountant remotely. — 00:03:29
  • ★★ Ali says the usual digital nomad aspiration is to be a location-independent entrepreneur who controls their own time and hours with no boss, rather than a remote employee. — 00:03:29

00:03:59 — The three paths into quadrant four: creator, entrepreneur, freelancer, and their leverage

  • ★★ Ali names three paths to becoming a location-independent entrepreneur: the creator path, the entrepreneur path and the freelancer path. — 00:03:59
  • ★★ The creator path is the one Ali followed: making free content for a long time builds an audience who know, like and trust you, then money comes from AdSense, sponsorships, affiliates and your own products. — 00:03:59
  • ★★ The creator path's payoff comes far down the line and few of its many aspirants succeed, so Ali does not necessarily recommend it for the digital nomad lifestyle, at least in the short term. — 00:04:28
  • ★★ Ali's brother Taimur follows the entrepreneur path with his remote tech startup Causal, which raised a $20 million Series A and is valued at $100 million. — 00:05:08 · Taimur Abdaal
  • ★★ Ali does not recommend the startup path for the digital nomad lifestyle: being a founder and building a business to profitability is really hard. — 00:05:37
  • ★ If viewers are interested in learning more about startups, Ali offers to do an interview with his brother Taimur. — 00:05:37 · Taimur Abdaal
  • ★★★ For the digital nomad lifestyle Ali recommends the freelancer path, which needs two things: a skill you can do remotely and people who pay you for it. — 00:06:06
  • ★★ Although he does not recommend them for the lifestyle, Ali says the creator and entrepreneur paths have more leverage; a creator has the leverage of media. — 00:06:06
  • ★★ Media leverage: a YouTube video takes Ali a one-time effort but could get views for five to ten years, so he can make money while he sleeps. (hedged) — 00:06:54
  • ★★ Code leverage, in Naval Ravikant's analogy: code is like little robots doing your bidding; customers sign up from anywhere, and serving 1,000 customers takes little more effort than serving ten. — 00:07:22 · Naval Ravikant
  • ★★ The freelancer path gives little leverage, Ali says: you are ultimately trading your time for money, though you can later build an agency or an audience. — 00:07:22
  • ★★ The trade-off is worth it, Ali says, because the freelancer path gets you profitable fairly quickly compared with the creator and entrepreneur paths. — 00:07:57

00:08:10 — The remote freelancer path: a skill and clients, creators and boring businesses, making yourself findable

  • ★★ Ali repeats that money is just an exchange of value: to make money you must provide value to people who see it and will pay for it. — 00:08:27 · first law of making money
  • ★★ Freelance websites list hundreds of skills people pay for; if you have no skill, Ali says, learn one or two that interest you enough to warrant learning them. — 00:08:56
  • ★★ To find the skill you already have, Ali suggests asking what service you would offer if you had to knock on doors to make money now; having a job means you have skills. — 00:09:25
  • ★★ Ali generally does not recommend finding clients through freelance websites such as Fiverr, Upwork and People Per Hour, where zillions of people compete; be proactive instead. — 00:09:25
  • ★★★ Ali likes targeting creators as clients: find ones making money whom your skill would help, send a well-crafted email that makes yes easy, and perhaps offer a free week of work. — 00:09:54
  • ★★★ Ali also recommends targeting boring businesses as clients, such as orthodontists, dentists, plumbers, electricians and builders. — 00:10:34 · business on easy mode
  • ★★ Ali knows many students who made money selling social media marketing to local businesses, which need a presence on Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn. — 00:11:03 · Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn
  • ★★ Businesses have money to spend and value money differently from individuals, Ali says: if a business sees a return on investment it will happily throw money at a problem. — 00:11:33
  • ★★ To win clients, Ali says, make yourself findable and present yourself well: a decent Twitter account and LinkedIn profile and, depending on the niche, a reasonable personal website. — 00:11:33 · Twitter, LinkedIn

00:12:17 — Shopify sponsor read

  • ★★ Of the many people who email Ali offering services after his earlier advice to target creators, about one in a hundred writes competent English, and even fewer have a website or portfolio. — 00:13:45

00:13:47 — Presenting yourself well and landing a single paying client

  • ★★★ Ali says a single paying client is all you need to make freelancing work, citing Charlie Munger: the best source of legal work is the work already on your desk. — 00:14:26
  • ★★ After doing a really good job for a first client, Ali says, ask for word-of-mouth recommendations and testimonials; later clients become much easier to land. — 00:14:26

00:14:52 — How to do all this with a full-time job

  • ★ Building a skill and finding clients takes a lot of time, Ali says, and it can be hard to find the time or energy for it with a full-time job or as a full-time student. — 00:14:55
  • ★★★ Ali, being fairly risk averse, prefers to overlap: keep your job and side hustle in the evenings and at weekends to land your first two or three clients, since quitting first and then finding money is really hard. — 00:15:24
  • ★ Ali recently met a doctor who has worked in medicine for 14 years and has become a coach while continuing to work in medicine. — 00:15:24
  • ★★★ Ali advises against quitting your day job until you know you can fund yourself through the side hustle. — 00:15:54
  • ★★ Ali, who has no kids, built up his YouTube channel in the evenings and at weekends while he had a full-time job, for about three years. — 00:15:54
  • ★★ Building freelance work beside a job, harder still with kids, is not an easy path, Ali says: it requires managing your time and energy appropriately. — 00:16:21 · time management

In the description and comments

  • ★ Ali Abdaal (channel): After viewers could not find it in the description, the channel posted the link to the PDF list of remote jobs and skills mentioned in the video. — creator comment

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: digital nomad · leverage

Also: People: Charlie Munger · Naval Ravikant · Taimur Abdaal

Projects: Part-Time YouTuber Academy

Organizations: Causal · Fiverr · Instagram · LinkedIn · NHS · People Per Hour · Twitter · Upwork

Concepts: business on easy mode · first law of making money · time management

Places: London · Southeast Asia

Products: YouTube AdSense

Also centred on digital nomad: My Productivity Desk Setup (Portable) · I'll definitely be bringing this travelling @WHOOP #ad · Everything's Changing - Life Update

Also centred on leverage: How I Started My YouTube Channel in My Spare Time

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