How to Become a Digital Nomad and Manage Business Remotely with Anna Rova | Ep 13

Would you like to become a digital nomad and explore the world?

Digital nomads are people who work from anywhere in the world with their laptop, live in different countries, and travel everywhere. It’s an unforgettable experience, but behind the bright side that you usually see on social media there are work and challenges too.

In this episode, Anna Rova shares how to become a digital nomad and manage business remotely.

Anna Rova is the writer, podcaster, yoga instructor and location independent entrepreneur and the founder of GirlSkill – an online media platform, publication, and podcast empowering women to live a life of freedom, joy, and creativity.

Together with her husband, Anna has traveled the world being on the road full-time writing her personal blog, recording podcast episodes with incredible women for the GirlSkill Podcast, practicing yoga and spreading love and positivity.

In this episode, we will cover:

• [00:21] About the episode and Anna Rova
• [02:01] Anna explains that she is a digital nomad, runs her own podcast show and is a specialist in online marketing
• [03:38] What a digital nomad is
• [04:22] How did your friends and family react to this major change in your life?
• [06:15] Anna explains her podcast show and how her main focus is on building her business
• [06:58] Where Anna gets her income from
• [07:54] The two main groups of digital nomads
• [08:01] People who call themselves digital nomads travel constantly, are more freelance beginners and are trying out the lifestyle to see if it fits
• [08:30] People who call themselves location independent entrepreneurs are more advanced digital nomads and understand that you cannot travel all the time and grow a business
• [09:39] How Anna manages her business practically
• [10:31] Some of the pros and cons of working as a digital nomad compared to an office
• [11:27] What services you can use to help you manage your business remotely
• [14:09] Anna explains how important Slack, Trello and Google Drive are for managing her business
• [16:36] What Anna’s past year has looked like
• [18:20] Anna describes her usual daily routine
• [21:09] The most common circumstances that you need to keep in mind when you become a digital nomad and how to deal with them
• [25:16] A few difficulties you could face when you switch from your current career to being a digital nomad and how to solve them
• [26:29] How to be prepared for unpredictability
• [27:43] How to deal with the lack of community
• [32:05] Three steps you can start with to become a digital nomad
• [32:21] Envision what type of lifestyle you want and make the transition as smooth as possible
• [35:46] Plan your first destination, budget, and insurance, but don’t over plan
• [37:14] Once you have all of that in mind, just go and do it
• [39:31] Where to find Anna’s podcast and her social media pages
• [40:43] For the show notes go to marinabarayeva.com and subscribe to the Marketing for Creatives show

3 Steps you can start with to become a digital nomad:

• Step 1: Envision what type of lifestyle you want and make the transition as smooth as possible
• Step 2: Plan your first destination, budget, and insurance, but don’t over plan
• Step 3: Once you have all of that in mind, just go and do it

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Download podcast transcript [PDF] here:

• How to Become a Digital Nomad and Manage Business Remotely

Resources from this interview:

• Learn more about Anna Rova on girlskill.com
• Listen to Anna’s podcast GirlSkill
• Try Slack – a tool that will help you to communicate with the team
• Use Trello for project management
• Organize your files and cooperate with team members with Google Drive and Google Docs
• Check Canva.com for creating your artworks
• Anna uses WordPress for her website
• Take a look at ConvertKit for your email marketing
• Check Jumpcut for faster copy/paste tasks
• Give a try to Speedify that combines two Internet connections and makes the most out of it
• Read Tim Ferriss’ book The 4-Hour Workweek
• Read Anna’s posts on medium.com
• Follow Anna Rova on Facebook, Instagram

Connect with Marina Barayeva:

• marinabarayeva.com
• Follow Marina on Instagram
• Follow Marina on Twitter

How to Become a Digital Nomad and Manage Business Remotely – Interview Transcription

Marina Barayeva:

Anna, tell us a little bit about yourself. What did you do before? How did you become a digital nomad?

Anna Rova:

Oh, gosh. Well, I’m Anna. Anna Rova is my screen name, so to speak. I have a Russian, Bulgarian last name that nobody can pronounce or write so I just go by Anna Rova.

I’m currently a digital nomad slash, I prefer to call myself, location independent entrepreneur. I run my own podcast called GirlSkill. I’ve been location independent for almost three years now.

In the past I’ve been a specialist, or I still am I suppose (laughter), in online marketing, primarily email marketing in the personal growth niche.

That’s how I would sum up in a sentence who I am, what I do and what I did before.

Marina Barayeva:

Fantastic. Anna, why did you choose to leave your stable life and how did your partner, parents, friends react to that?

Anna Rova:

That’s a loaded question. I chose this lifestyle because I was exposed to it about three years ago, maybe a bit more. All of my work that I did was online. I worked for a personal growth company, which was a big publishing company in Malaysia, and all the money, the revenue and the launches were done online.

I lived in Kuala Lumpur for about three years. My time was done in the company, was done in that city and I wanted to know what’s next. I was exploring and discovering, and this is when I got exposed to digital nomads.

Basically, digital nomads are people who work online and travel full time, pretty much. It might vary from a week, to two weeks, to three months, maybe to six months at a time but they don’t have a stable location. I said, “Why don’t I try that?” So, I did that.

Three years ago, it was in May, okay, two and a half maybe, I booked my one-way ticket to Bangkok. I had a friend and called some leads in island in Thailand so I went there. I found an apartment by the beach and I rented a scooter. I didn’t know how to ride a scooter, I taught myself. From then it was history.

To answer to your other question, how did my friends and parents react. I think nobody was really shocked because everybody knows that I’m very determined and also curious and strong willed. When I make up my mind up about something, I just go.

My friends and family were a bit worried I suppose, but everybody knew that if I had something in mind, I’m going to make it work. Yes, it was crazy. Two and a half years now, I’m happier than ever. I met my husband on the road so yes, it’s all good (laughter). It was a success.

Marina Barayeva:

Sounds like a fairytale. I travelled, lived on the beach, I met my husband (laughter).

Anna Rova:

Well, yes. On the surface obviously it’s like this, so probably your listeners and you yourself, when you hear digital nomad maybe you’ve seen these pictures on Instagram or things like that, that portray this kind of amazing lifestyle, dream lifestyle: travel the world and work online, work from anywhere, drop your laptop into the pool.

There are a lot of myths about this lifestyle, which I’m happy to de-myth or debunk for you. It’s amazing, yes, that part is great, and it’s really sometimes like a fairytale, but there’s a lot of stuff that a lot of people don’t talk about. They are really hard with this lifestyle.

Marina Barayeva:

If you’ll break our pink glasses, please give us some tips how to deal with that. You can live pretty much everywhere. What do you do now and what do you get your income from? What is your main business now?

Anna Rova:

Currently, as I said, my main thing is that I’m focusing full time on GirlSkill, which is a podcast on redefining female success. I release two episodes a week where I’m interviewing women from all over the world doing interesting things, living their own life on their own terms.

I’ve interviewed women from coaches, authors, a transgender woman, US navy pilots, relationship coaches and financial coaches, just women doing different things, a stay-at-home mom with five kids. That’s my main thing. I’m building that into a business.

How I’m getting my income right now at this point, I consult from time to time, online marketing. I don’t do it full-time, only when the pressure’s on and I need to earn some extra money.

But before, when I started this lifestyle, I had a full-time job, when I was working online for about a year and a half. For the last year, I was consulting online marketing, so as I said, I became a specialist and people are willing to pay good money for my knowledge but that’s not my focus really. It’s savings as well as consulting from time to time.

Marina Barayeva:

Now you focus on the podcast. How do you manage your business remotely? How do you manage all of these podcast things if this is your main work?

Anna Rova:

Building a business on the road, being location independent, is hard. This is one of the myths.

In the space of, let’s call all of them digital nomads, so people who work online. There are a couple of different groups. People who call themselves digital nomads are the ones who are more beginners or intermediates. These are people that are freelancers who work for themselves project to project or they work online for someone full-time. They’re just traveling here and there. They’re traveling constantly. This is the kind of lifestyle you see working by the pool, working by the beach. Everything is great, all of that.

Now, more seasoned digital nomads, they call themselves location independent entrepreneurs. These are the people who have travelled for a while now and I call myself that because after two years, it depends, every story is different but after two years in my case and what I see from most people, they’re people who really made this their lifestyle.

There are people who just want to try this like, “I don’t know if this is for me.” And this is not for everyone. They’re people who try this and, not give up but they decide, “Okay, I can’t do this. This is not for me.”

But for those who’ve done it for say a couple of years now, these are more seasonal digital nomads or location independent entrepreneurs who understand that you can’t build a stable business that grows, that is scalable, while you’re moving constantly. They are slowing down.

Right now, what I’m doing with my husband is three months at a time in one place, more or less. Sometimes it’s hard during the holidays but more or less we’re doing three months in one place and then we’re moving from place to place.

How do we manage the business? Yes, that was your question. It’s hard when traveling doing a podcast because from equipment, to scheduling, to time zones, it’s been really hard for me but I did it. I tried to batch things around.

But it’s just like any work, you know; you show up, there’s your laptop, and you record episodes. With podcasting, it’s a bit harder because you need equipment. You also need to be in a room that’s kind of soundproof and all of that.

But in terms of managing the business itself, there are so many tools available now, so many software tools and apps and things that make it really easy to manage a business online. Every day it’s becoming easier and easier. A lot of people do it, a lot of people transfer to doing it online.

Of course, there are plusses and minuses, just like in office work. For example, you don’t waste time in meetings although you could but because you aren’t in an office space, a lot of time is basically spent on the work. But at the same time, you don’t have the human interaction when you’re in a team in an office.

It depends what you want to ask me, more what your audience is interested in. I can talk about many things.

Marina Barayeva:

When you become a digital nomad, there are a lot of tasks that you need to delegate or use external services to help you to automate your work, otherwise you cannot do everything by yourself. Especially when you’re on the road, you need to think like, “What if I will not have the internet or the quiet room?” for recording your episode.

Do you have team members or what services do you use to help you manage your business remotely?

Anna Rova:

Oh, gosh, there are so many. Just to that point. I want to quickly make sure that those who don’t have this lifestyle and are interested.

If you’re traveling and you’re a digital nomad/location independent entrepreneur, it doesn’t mean that you need to necessarily outsource and automate your business right away. It’s like with any business. If you’re starting a business, you’re probably on a limited budget. It’s not always that you can afford to outsource.

Yes, you can automate but automation can be done on different levels. You can automate your processes. Let’s say if you’re starting a project and you don’t have a budget, like any entrepreneur pretty much, a lot of the entrepreneurs start like that, you just automate what you can and you manage your time and everything.

Once you start getting clients, then you grow bigger. You start hiring. You start paying for automation tools because these automation tools that make your business easier remotely also cost money.

I can share my experience. Currently my husband and I are partners in the business. He’s helping me with GirlSkill with all the text stuff and processes. I’m so grateful to have him and he also works in online marketing. In that sense, I’m quite fortunate to have a partner who understands what I do and how things work.

Then we have a team member. We have a virtual assistant who’s been helping me run my Instagram account, run my Facebook page, also do all the research for my guests and also do all the postproduction. As soon as I record the episode, she would be taking all the episodes, doing all the show notes, doing all the artwork. We’ve created a process around our podcast that really works for us.

Unfortunately, like in any other business, sometimes you have to let people go. Actually, this week is going to be her last week with me. It just didn’t work out for different reasons. I’m going to look at hiring someone else to help me with it.

Then we have another team member who works with us part time. He’s a real tech guy that helps us with different tech things, not only for my business but also for my husband’s business.

For the tools, there are so many. Some things that just pop into my mind is we use Slack. Are you familiar with Slack at all?

Marina Barayeva:

No. What is that?

Anna Rova:

Slack is a tool that basically is for communication between team members. All of the digital nomads are on Slack, and location independent entrepreneurs.

This is basically like a chat system. You download it and everybody has their own access. It’s communication for teams. We communicate there. We manage projects there in the sense that every day we check in with each other what’s going on. It has a lot of different integrations with different software programs. Definitely if you’re interested, check out Slack.

We use Trello for project management kind of, because our projects are not that extensive and advanced yet; I launched the podcast two months ago. Trello is very useful for managing guests, managing production. It makes it easy.

Of course, all the Google tools. Google Drive is the savior. Google Sheets, Google Docs, Google everything.

We just switched to Team. Team Google Drive. Basically, what Google did is it’s a team access. You can invite as many people as you want but all of the files and everything that you create are in that team drive. It makes it easy when team members come and go, you have access to all of the files.

What else? I use Canva for artwork, for all of my episodes. Of course, for the website I use WordPress and for my email marketing I use ConvertKit.

There are many different and cool integrations that I use in daily life to make my work easier like Jumpcut. It’s a shortcut that is a tool that I can copy, let’s say, one to 40 different things that I’m working with and it remembers them and pastes them as I need.

I use many different tools. There’s a tool called Speedify that combines two Internet connections and makes the most out of it.

These are my top tools that I use every day.

Marina Barayeva:

Your daily life seems quite busy anyway. How exactly does it look like? How does your day go as a digital nomad?

Anna Rova:

That’s a really tough question. My day depends on the location I’m in, what’s going on in my life. To be honest with you, again to what we talked about before, to build a business especially when you launch or when you start, it’s really important to have routines and to have a stable place where you can actually build it because as soon as you hit the road, which is exactly what happened about 10 days ago.

Let me give you a year perspective. This year has we started in Mexico, in Sayulita where we spent about two months. Then we moved to Brazil, to Rio de Janeiro where we spent about three months, went to Carnival. Then we went to Bali. We spent in Bali about two and a half months. Then we went to Eastern Europe for about two months to have a wedding.

I actually got married three months ago and it was a crazy digital nomad wedding, friends flying from all over the world and family to celebrate with us in my home country, which is Moldova.

Then we went back to Bali. The last three months in Bali were actually very productive for me because this is when I launched the podcast, I had my routine in place, and then we hit the road again 10 days ago. Currently I’m in Australia where we’re going to be for another one and a half months.

The periods when you hit the road again and you move to a new place, these are the hardest ones. It’s been so crazy with all the holidays and everything. I’m not going to tell you my days now because they’re all over the place, I’m getting back into my routine, but let me tell you my usual day when I’m on track, I have my routine, let’s say in Bali.

I usually was waking up, I’m not an early riser but I’m really working hard towards it because I’m very productive in the morning. I’d wake up around 7am. I have my morning routine for about an hour, an hour and a half where I do different things to make me productive and fulfilled.

After that I hit the road. I jump on my scooter and I go to a co-working space. I usually like to write in the morning. I write on Medium a lot. Medium is my favorite platform to write. I get into creative stuff as well. Recently I took up creative meditation, that’s how they call it, so I draw things and I also use watercolors but that’s not every day, depending on how I feel.

Then I get to the co-working space. I get my coffee, breakfast maybe, and I start working without distractions for a couple of hours. Then I have lunch. I may have some Skype calls or meetings with my partner and then I work again a little bit.

Then I go to yoga. I usually was doing three or four times a week, yoga. Then in the evening there’s dinner and wining down, and so it repeats.

On the weekend, we usually have different trips. I realize that working on the weekend is a bad habit and I try not to do it anymore because I need to creatively replenish myself and rest. That’s pretty much it.

Marina Barayeva:

Pretty busy days, pretty busy weeks. You mentioned before that you had an online marketing background before but some of our listeners may just have their regular job, whatever it is, maybe they’re photographers, painters, hairstylists. Whatever job they do, they do not have too much experience online but they would like to switch to a digital nomad experience.

If tomorrow someone decided to leave their 9 to 5 job and become a digital nomad, this person will get into many circumstances that you don’t meet in the regular stable life.

In one point, you get the freedom of traveling, as you said, and being your own boss, and again another side is you need to think about where you’re going to live, where will I get the Internet, what if you will not be able to get online in time. Those are just a few things that bothered me when I was traveling all over the world.

From your perspective, what are the most common circumstances do you need to keep in mind when you become a digital nomad and how do you deal with them?

Anna Rova:

This is a difficult and a big question. For anyone right now in a job, 9 to 5, that wants to escape and start a digital nomad lifestyle. First of all, there is a lot of information online currently. This is such a hot subject. If you Google, “How to become a digital nomad” or whatever, you can find plenty of information. People are starting to make money out of this, teaching other people how to do this.

What I want to say and from my own personal experience from meeting different people, traveling the world constantly. When I started it was really hard. I wasn’t prepared for it. I definitely wasn’t prepared for it although I was working a lot and traveling.

I’d say it’s very individual. It’s very subjective. Everybody has such a different experience. There are no two people that would have the same story. Exactly what you said, there’s so much unpredictability in this lifestyle.

One of the biggest things is, to be honest with you, if anybody’s thinking of it I’d say you need to do it. You need to do it just to try it out and know that it’s not for everyone just like anything else.

It’s glamorized. This lifestyle is very glamorous in the sense of how it looks on Instagram or Facebook. But the reality is not like that really. There’s a lot of time on the road when you’re by yourself. There are a lot of times on the road when shit happens, so to speak, bags stolen, this happens, as you said, the Internet not going right.

But that’s the beauty of it. I grew as a person, as an entrepreneur, so much since I started traveling. This has been one of the most transformational experiences, and this combined with entrepreneurship, is you’re ticket to becoming a completely different person.

I love the unpredictability of it. I love traveling the world and getting connected to people and cultures. I can only share my experience. I would say for anybody who wants to do it, just do some research and listen to a couple of interviews.

There are a lot of podcasts now coming out on digital nomad lifestyle. Just know that your story is going to be completely different. It depends on where you are today, what you want to do, where you want to go.

At this point in my life I’ve lived in South East Asia, Asia, Australia, Latin America, America, Europe, Eastern Europe. I’ve lived pretty much everywhere besides Africa and Antarctica.

It’s a hard question. There’s no right or wrong answer to it. Just be prepared to let go and for things to be unpredictable. I think this is the greatest lesson that we can all, I think that everybody, if you’re thinking about it, just do it and take your lessons from it. Because the people you meet on the road, the circumstances that happen will teach you so much, time with yourself.

I started traveling by myself. I was a woman. I met my husband only a year after I started traveling by myself but it taught me so much and it made me be aware of my fears and of myself and what I have to deal with to overcome it.

It’s the general answer that I can give you. If you have more specific questions, I could talk about them but as I said, this is such a huge subject.

Marina Barayeva:

Give us a few examples of what difficulties you faced when you just switched your career, and which you still have as a digital nomad, and how did you solve them?

Anna Rova:

I can tell you the first thing that happens when you start this lifestyle that you are not prepared for, at least in my case and I know so many people struggle with it, is “once you switch from your 9 to 5 (job,) that you hate or maybe you don’t hate but you’re tired and sick of it, you immediately get slapped in the face with the reality of being your own boss and being responsible for your own time.”

Now, as much as this sounds amazing and great and you get the freedom, it really hits you hard.

When I started traveling, I was 25, 26, I just wasn’t ready for it. This lifestyle, the 9 to 5 and how most of the people live in the world, you know everyday that you need to be in the office at 9am. You need to get there at 9am. You wake up. There is a routine. You know you need to get to the office at 9am and then you’re going to finish at 5.

Your days are kind of set in place. As much as right now maybe for some people it sounds like, “Oh, my God. It’s mundane. Every day is the same.” But we as humans, we need that.

When I started traveling, everything was so unpredictable. There’s no stability in your life whatsoever. Every day will look different. I was hit with this reality of, “Oh, my God.” You wake up and then you realize every single decision, every single thought, every single step that you’re going to take or think next is going to influence your whole day or your next step.

It was really hard to grasp that and really organize yourself. To be honest with you, I’m still struggling with this from time to time. It creates this awareness of, “Oh, gosh. I need to organize myself. How do I do this?”

It’s self-discipline and self-assessment that is really hard to do. When you’re doing your 9 to 5, your days are set for you. And when you don’t have that, it’s like you can do whatever the hell you want. You can waste three days and don’t do anything.

That’s the major trouble with entrepreneurship in general. When you’re online it’s especially hard because you don’t have your normal environment. You’re in Thailand. It’s very easy to go to the beach. There’s a lot of unpredictability, so be prepared for that.

There’s a lack of community, which is a really hard thing to deal with. For me personally, I love people, well not all the time but I’m an extrovert, so I get my energy from a team. I thrive in a team environment where I joke around with people and we send each other things. I love a team. I love working with people.

Imagine, as much as you might hate your office environment, you’re switching from that to just staring at the computer all day. For me personally, I still hate that. I would much rather work on the laptop four hours and the rest of the four hours work with people, be outdoors, all of that.

That’s one aspect in terms of work, working with people. If you’re someone who loves the office environment– Just working side by side with people is great and especially if you’re team members.

That’s why co-working spaces are a savior for me. I can’t work anywhere else besides a co-working space. Occasionally I go to a café but cafés are not for me because people are eating and drinking there, having fun. I need a working environment.

Be prepared for that: staring into your screen. Working online in general when you’re working remotely, it’s a completely different beast. You need to know how to manage yourself. There are so many people who don’t know how to do this properly and it’s easy to misrepresent it or mistake it for, “They don’t see me behind the screens.”

It’s very important, one of the biggest lessons I learned in remote work is “you need to over communicate. Over communicate constantly. People on the other side of the screen, they don’t know what you’re doing all day. They don’t know what’s happening”, especially with clients.

There are a lot of tips and tricks that you need to learn and understand. And when you’re starting up, it’s really hard, so you’re going to learn this with experience.

The last thing, as I mentioned, is the community aspect off work. I have about five or six girlfriends that I constantly communicate with on WhatsApp and we send each other voice messages sometimes with Skype. I really miss having a girlfriend that’s physically present with me in one space and that I can meet more than two times.

When I left Bali 10 days ago, in my last week in Bali I met a girl who I instantly connected with and we became great friends but I was leaving the next day. I was meeting someone and then you get to see them once only or maybe two or three times but in the period of two months and then you go again.

There’s beauty in it but at the same time I really sometimes crave calling a girlfriend and saying, “Let’s go for a coffee, this happened.”

These are the main things that I think can really drag you down if you’re not prepared for them. That’s why, because of these things, a lot of people just decide this is not for them and that’s completely fine. That’s okay.

To be honest with you, I really miss traveling without work because currently everything is work and travel, which is kind of amazing but then at the same time, I’m tired of it. I feel guilty for not working when I’m traveling and I feel guilty for not traveling when I’m working.

My husband and I are like, “Oh, God. Let’s go somewhere for a week like Japan or Morocco, leave our laptops and just explore, just travel, just do nothing.” We did that in Australia. We were in Bondi Beach for a couple of days and it was incredible because you don’t think about, “I need to reply to this guy and this guy,” constantly on your phone.

Marina Barayeva:

You’re reminding me of my life. Exactly as you said, there are difficulties but there is always also a lot of fun and a lot of experience. It’s worth trying that. If you want to do it, just do it.

Let’s give some tips to our listeners. If you would put that into a strategy, what are the three steps our listeners could begin with to become a digital nomad?

Anna Rova:

The first step I think, and a lot of people ask me this question, “What do I need to do to become a digital nomad or where do you start?” If you’re thinking about it, just do it but go into this with a vision in mind. Sit down and envision yourself, your lifestyle, how do you want it to look like?

• What are the places you want to be surrounded with?
• What are the things you want to be surrounded with?
• What are the people you want to be surrounded with?
• Where do you want to live?
• Where do you want to travel?
• How does it look like for you?

When I started this lifestyle, I promised myself, and to this day it has been true, that I will never stay in hostels and I would not be a backpacker.

I had another interview and the guy was like, “Here’s Anna Rova and she’s a digital nomad, and she’s been backpacking the world.” I’m like, “Excuse me, no backpacking for me.” (Laughter) because people just assume that if you travel the world, you backpack.

For me, it wasn’t the case. I said, “No. I’m not backpacking here. I’m taking my suitcase, I’m going to put my stuff into my suitcase, I’m going to be living by myself.” That was a big thing for me even before I finished college; I was so tired of sharing. It’s my personality. I wanted to live by myself and have my own space and room so I said wherever I go I’m going to be renting apartments, wherever I go, I have my suitcase.

I don’t want to live on a shoestring and live cheap. When you’re starting out, it’s probably best that you go on a budget and not be crazy but I already had my online marketing job so for me the switch was actually very easy; I just continued with my current company.

Here’s a tip. First of all, read Tim Ferriss’ book the The 4-Hour Workweek. This is the digital nomad book if you want to travel and work online.

What you can do is make the transition as smooth as possible. For me what was really great is that I kept my company. I negotiated with them that I will do this and I was able to do that because I was in a very good standing. My reputation and I grew with the company and everything, so I said, “I want to travel but I can do the same work online.” They said, “Okay.”

I ended up working for them for six months after I left and it was online with the same company. That was the best thing that I did because it gave me stability. This was the only thing that was stable in my life. I didn’t know where I was going to wake up tomorrow, I didn’t know where I was going to be next week, it’s so crazy, but I knew that at 10am I’m going to open my laptop and my team is going to be there, my work is going to be there.

Make the transition as smooth as possible for you. Have an income goal in mind, have a revenue goal in mind that you want to get every single month and make sure that you’re comfortable, because, at least for me personally, the last thing that I wanted to happen is to be in a place where I’m struggling.

Whether it’s you make sure you have a little bit of money coming in, it’s all planned and you also have savings and some insurance going on. So, you’re not sitting there worried going, “Oh, my God. What’s going to happen tomorrow?” If you really need to focus on work or travel, or both.

Some digital nomads start with $1,000 a month. I know that some people, like the backpacker, if you’re willing to go for the backpacker lifestyle, which is fine, you could start with $800 a month. It depends where you go and what kind of a lifestyle you want when you get there.

That’s the first step, but the others are really simple and easy.

The second step. I think that planning is really important but the most important thing that I want to say, as I mentioned my first job. Plan your first destination and maybe the second one, but the second one, leave it hanging because there are so many things that can go wrong or so many plans change. This is very unpredictable: the lifestyle is unpredictable.

In terms of planning, it’s important to plan:

• your first destination
• your budget
• your insurance

But don’t go planning your whole year because I guarantee your plans will change. My plans changed constantly depending on the people I met, the boyfriend I had, how much money I had. You’re going to be exposed to so many different things, you’re going to want to do different things.

Also plan on things getting unpredictable and plan to let go. There are so many people that are so attached to their plans and their lifestyle, this is going to be the biggest lesson, to let things go and let your control go because you can’t control so many things. You can control your own thoughts and actions but the planning part of it has to be really loose and you have to be okay with that.

If you’re someone who can’t handle letting go of control, you first need to work at that at home and then go traveling because things can go crazy.

The third step, once you have all of that in mind, just do it. Just go. Book your ticket and go. It’s going to be scary, it’s going to be crazy, but you just need to do it.

I know so many people delay, like everything else. We have podcasters with you so we know how people are like, “I’m going to launch my podcast in the next six months,” and then a year goes by.

Just go. Just book your ticket and go. Always keep in mind, the last thing I want to say for this part, always think about the worst-case scenario. What is the worst thing that can happen? Yes, your bag can get stolen and your passport. The worst thing that you can happen is you can get killed, right? But that never happens, to be honest with you.

Marina Barayeva:

That’s too dramatic.

Anna Rova:

Yes, that’s too dramatic. It’s not impossible, yes, but I’ve never heard of this.

For me personally, the last almost three years that I travelled, the worst thing that happened to me was I got dengue fever in Thailand and I had insurance so thanks God. My bag was stolen with almost nothing in it in Barcelona. What else? That’s pretty much it, honestly.

For the first year I was traveling by myself and as a woman and a single girl, I was amazed and surprised by how I thought the world was so big and dangerous and scary and everybody was there to get me. Well, this was my limiting belief that I worked on before I started traveling, and I was just amazed at how people are so welcoming, the world is so small, and there are so many things to discover.

I’m a big believer in the law of attraction. I worked in personal growth for a super long time. The universe will give you what you want if you’re willing to work with it. The world and the situations and your travel stories will really reflect how you think about this and what things you attract.

If you start traveling with a thought in mind that, “They’re going to steal everything from me. They’re going to kill me, kidnap me.” Trust me, the probability of that is going to be very high because you’re going to be sitting there and waiting for it to happen.

Marina Barayeva:

Thank you, Anna. That was fantastic. Share where people can connect with you. How can we find more about you?

Anna Rova:

I encourage everyone to listen to my podcast if you’re a woman and you’re looking for inspiration from all different women around the world who are making their dreams happen, they also share their favorite tools and resources. My conversations and very open, raw and vulnerable. This is not for the lighthearted, but check it out. It’s GirlSkill.com. You can find it on iTunes. I just released on the 1^st of January my episode where somebody else interviewed me, about my story and lifestyle.

I’m also on Instagram. @girlskillofficial is the tag on Instagram, that’s for GirlSkill. But for me personally you can find me @wanderova W-A-N-D-E-R-O-V-A. I post my travels and my thoughts.

I also write on Medium. Medium is a writing platform. It’s for bloggers, publications and all of that. You can find me there at Anna Rova. If you type in Anna Rova, you’ll find it there.

I’m on Facebook as Anna Rova as well. That’s pretty much it.

Marina Barayeva:

Thank you so much Anna. It was a pleasure to have you on the show today.

Anna Rova:

Thank you, Marina, for having me. It was a great discussion.

Marina Barayeva

Marina Barayeva is an international speaker and coach who helps women entrepreneurs become recognized experts and confidently sell their services. She is also a TEDx speaker, has presented to audiences in Asia and North America, and has been featured in such media as ArtPeople, CCTV, China Radio International, and others.