I hate those stories about people who ‘quit their day job and now travel full-time’. It’s not actually that hard to become an instant hobo, a bit scary, yes – but not really that tough pull off.
These people usually decide to ‘work their way around the world’ by helping out in hostels (read: cleaning toilets, collecting glasses and pulling night shifts on the front desk).
Every now and then they will pull off some sort of ‘incredibly rewarding experience’ for a few hours, which will make it onto their blog and perhaps get shared by a major news network – and this is the picture that is painted for anyone keen to follow their path.
I’m not one of those people. I didn’t throw my hands up in the air one day and say “I’m outta here” – my girlfriend and I planned our escape years in advance, saved hard and worked harder to earn enough to be comfortable while travelling (that means no dorms).
Even with all of this in mind, our budget wouldn’t last as long as I would’ve liked it to. Simple calculations proved that we’d last about 6-8 months.
If we wanted to travel longer then we would’ve had to sacrifice our comfort by staying in dorms, taking night buses and forcing ourselves to eat the basic free breakfasts that hostels offer.
That wasn’t an option.
So I scrolled through pages and pages of blogs trying to figure out how I could be one of these fabled globetrotters that earn a salary while they travel. Round and round I went, until I had an epiphany.
“Why couldn’t I just become a Mobile Travel Agent?”
I’d already considered become a home based agent, it made sense – I had a large list of repeat clients and referrals and been in the game for almost ten years. My company and most other major travel retailers offer home-based options to their employees, the only difference was that my ‘home’ would be changing every few days. So, I approached the General Manager of my company and proposed my plan.
I think the look on my face says the smoothie is good. San Pedro, Lake Atitlan – #Guatemala
A photo posted by Matt Castell (@matt_knows_travel) on
I was knocked back at first, mainly – I think – because it was a new idea, that hadn’t been done before.
But I overcame his objections and presented a well thought out plan of how it would work and more importantly, how it would be great for the company – and my customers.
Fast forward a few weeks and I was in Tokyo, in a tiny hotel room, with food poisoning and an excruciatingly slow Wi-Fi connection. I cursed my decision to commit to this. But I powered through it, one keystroke at a time and finished my very first full booking as a Mobile Travel Agent.
It felt good, scary and rewarding at the same time. I did some quick calculations and worked out that the commission earned from that booking would cover about a week of travel in Japan, for two of us – and that was an awesome feeling.
I did it; I was officially a remote worker or ‘Digital Nomad’.
Stay tuned next week to hear about how much money I earned, a few major obstacles that I learned to deal with and how I marketed myself while on the road.