The Traveling Life Startup
Well… where to begin?
We made it out for our test run in Mexico and, while we have not exactly established a sustainable system, we have learned many things.
The living part is easy, of course. To eat, enjoy, move around… that stuff becomes second nature fast, even in a place where the native tongue differs from your own. The biggest challenge - at least for myself - is earning a living. Though this can be said of my life even back home in Canada. In fact, this is part of the reason we decided to start a life abroad; if financial stability and business are a challenge even at home, then why not try to tackle the problem somewhere we’d much rather be (especially in the cold months)? I thought, “Who knows?! Maybe I’ll actually find my stride better while abroad.” And in part, I actually believe this to be the case.
Being at home, I get comfortable and complacent. I’m easily distracted and life seems to come to a screeching halt. My surroundings become fixed and I feel like I have no momentum. The passion for living slowly fades and so do my activity and productivity. I was made to chase curiosities, be excited by novelty and diversity, push limits, and interact with the world at large. And I feel - especially in Calgary, where I’ve lived for the past 15 years - that this kind of fulfillment is hard to achieve by staying in one place.
Since the turn of the year, I’ve worked hard to imagine and actualize a way of earning while abroad. One thing I know for sure is that I will need multiple streams of income. Fortunately, I am very skilled and versatile, meaning I have the means of earning in many different ways. If worse comes to worst, I could pick up some random online job for another company. But unless I hit that breaking point, I am fully invested in building my own business. The trick will be in how to make it all work together harmoniously.
I began by taking the obvious and immediate approach: offering photo services. And this has worked to a degree. It is tricky though because, traveling as a tourist, one cannot legally work in most countries. So I had to rethink how I do business. Instead of doing the photoshoots for pay, I decided to offer photoshoots for free and do the photo editing as an optional gift upon donation. It’s still a work in progress, but I see it growing into a reasonably sustainable system, and at the very least, it gets me out and working, honing my craft, and networking.
Through this networking, I came upon the opportunity to work with an online magazine. They offered me a percentage of their online sales, and I was delighted to accept. This meant I could earn remotely through my business in Canada. And it offered me greater access to other professionals with their own unique resources. Then, I got the idea to start my own online magazine. I had wanted to a few years back, but I didn’t know how to go about it at the time. Now I had the resources and connections to realize it.
And so here we are, ready to take on the project of a magazine and formalizing a few other means of making a living while traveling. It’s an exciting time, really. And I’m looking forward to seeing what’s next.