In February 2019 I boarded a plane from Melbourne to Phuket. This marked the official beginning of my ‘digital nomad’ journey, but the process started a long time before that. In this post I will give a brief overview of who I am, what I’m doing, why I’m doing it, and how this all came to be.
My buddy Bobby
In early 2016 I began a new full-time job. It was advertised as a ‘customer service’ role, but myself and the rest of the new cohort of trainees would soon realise that we had signed up to be telemarketers.
Well, once we figured out what was going on, what were we to do? After all, the company was paying us a decent hourly wage, and made promises of crazy commissions if we could:
a) Survive until the ‘busy period’, and
b) Follow our training and make the sales which were bound to follow.
The busy period was in March, and we began in early January. Most of the people in my training cohort had no sales experience. Apparently the company we were working for, henceforth to be referred to as MeerKay, prefers to hire people with no sales experience, because sales n00bs are more likely to ‘stick to the script’, making them easier to train.
In my cohort there was about 20 trainees, and training was to run for two weeks, before we would be allowed on the phones. Behind us was to follow another two or three cohorts of trainees, and in front of us was a previous cohort who hit the phones on the day my cohort began our training. It was basically like a production line of new trainees, each cohort receiving two weeks of intensive training and then hitting the sales floor.
The company was doing what it does every year: ramping up its operations in preparation for the ‘busy season’. It was made clear to every new trainee that only some of us would still have employment beyond March. We were here for a good time, not necessarily a long one.
In the future I will go into detail about what I experienced and learned while working for that company. If you have ever seen The Wolf of Wall Street, the reality inside a telemarketing office is not so different from what is depicted in that film. Those who run a phone sales office intentionally craft an environment in which people want to sell, want to make money, want to ‘gong the gong’ (indicating a sale) and receive applause from their peers — and their tactics are very effective.
Prior to 2016 I would have considered myself above all of that. But it turned out that I wasn’t. I reveled in it. I worked outrageous hours during the March busy period, often one of the first people to arrive in the morning and usually one of the last to leave the office at night, clocking up overtime and banking sales commissions like nobody’s business. I was even staying back later than my team leader, and the intense part of the busy period went on for several weeks. I made more money in one month at that office than in any other job I have ever had, before or since.
So where does Bobby come into it?
After training, we were all separated into different teams, with each team given its own space within the office. In one of the teams not far from mine was a lanky-looking guy named Bobby. He always reminded me a little bit of Novak Djokovic, the Serbian tennis star. Not quite as handsome, but the same overall look: thick dark hair, pale skin, staunch eyes. Bobby stood out in the office because he was so slim, and in modern-day Australia, the slim people stand out — especially in sedentary offices full of large people.
Anyhow, Bobby was a bit of a zany dude. For one example, he had rigged up a battery-powered ringer for people to use instead of the standard gong. You see, every time somebody made a sale, they were supposed to write up the numbers on the whiteboard, and then ring the bell, or gong the gong, to gain the attention and accolades of the rest of their team. Bobby had somehow developed an electric buzzer which made funny sound effects whenever somebody pressed the red button. The same basic idea as the bell/gong, but a novel and attention-catching variation, which Bobby had somehow built himself at home and brought into work.
Because we were in different teams, Bobby and I didn’t really know much about each other. Everybody in the office tended to keep to their own teams, partly due to logistics (you naturally spend more time with people in your own part of of the office) and partly due to the friendly rivalries which exist between the different teams. This is another clever tactic on the part of the sales managers, and it works: create rivalries between teams and watch them compete with one another to be the best team in the office that week.
Sure, they’d give the winning team bonuses on top of our standard commissions, but it truly was more about team pride and competition than money. At least, it was for me.
Fast-forward a little while and after the busy season had ended, the office was dead. Most of the new trainees had either quit or been fired, and everybody who remained knew that the good times were over for another year. The busy season had come and gone. Teams were merged, half of the office sat empty. What was once a buzzing office full of energy was now a rather sad place to be. During the busy season, all you had to do was pick up a phone and you’d soon be gonging that gong. Outside of busy season, it was tough work, and even experienced salesmen would sometimes go home with ‘donuts’ — not even one sale for the day.
Donut days are soul-crushing days. Hours on the phone for nothing. I never scored a donut but I saw the look on the faces of people who did. Sad, sad stuff.
It was only April, and the good times had come and gone like a free-spirited lady in the night. Sales can be a truly fun job when things are going well, but a woeful job when things are not going so well. And in this industry, things were always good in March, and terrible in April. This is and was the natural cycle of the industry in which MeerKay operate, and none of it was a surprise. We’d been warned from the first day.
By the end of May I decided to high-tail it out of there. I’d made some money, seen a few things, had a lot fun, and learned some valuable lessons which will stay with me for the rest of my life. Five months in sales will teach you more about people and business than six years in an Australian high school. I will go into more detail about all of this another time. Suffice for now to say that I don’t regret any of it. But as much fun as I had had during the busy period, I wasn’t sticking around and waiting for the next busy period. Not in that place.
March madness. What a rush. I’ll always have the memories…
A coffee with Bobby
I never would have thought that of all the people I worked (and drank) with during my time at that company, the only guy I would meet again would be Bobby. We had exchanged phone numbers one day, I can’t even remember why. Probably on the piss on a Friday night at bar underneath the MeerKay offices. You have a few beers and celebrate a successful week on the phones, and suddenly you’re all best mates. Good times.
For some reason, after I had quit MeerKay, Bobby and I texted back and forth to arrange to meet up for a coffee and reminisce about the crazy days in that office. Bobby had also quit the job not long before me, although he apparently maintained a few personal relationships with ex-colleagues and had a fair bit of gossip to share about what happened after we quit.
But all of this is tangential to the important point, which is that Bobby had spent considerable time overseas prior to working for MeerKay. Around 2014 he was drifting through south-east Asia and stumbled upon a little-known subculture which I would later learn is very similar to the ‘digital nomad’ scene. In fact, the two overlap: Bobby had met a small group of Tim Ferriss wannabes, guys who were trying to make money online and stay in SEA for as long as possible, living off their online revenues.
I didn’t even know who Tim Ferriss was back then. Now I know exactly who he is and have read his breakthrough book ‘The Four Hour Work Week’. But in mid-2016, as I set across from Bobby at a cafe not far from the Brisbane River, I was still largely oblivious. Bobby explained that the guys he had met in Asia, young Western dudes in their twenties, spent their time trying to come up with new ideas to make money online. Anything that might make money, they were willing to give it a go. Apparently Bobby had gotten to know these guys quite well and almost became one of them himself.
It turned out that Bobby was something of an entrepreneur, and the reason he had found himself in SEA in the first place was to do with a tech startup he helped to found. It didn’t work out, but he was young enough at the time that his losses didn’t (or wouldn’t) really matter in the grand scheme of his life — although he did have to get a job upon his return to Australia, which is of course how he and I would cross paths at MeerKay. Importantly for me, Bobby had learned enough about the ‘digital nomad’ life while in SEA that he was able to explain it to me over coffee that day, in a conversation I’ll never forget.
The guys Bobby had met were basically online hustlers, or e-hustlers, and their strategy was simple: come up with ideas where they could write ebooks, or produce other revenue-generating material, and then build websites to sell this content, and try to get their websites to the top of google rankings, then watch the sales slowly come in. Find a topic, make it work, rinse and repeat. Some ideas would succeed and bring in lots of money, other ideas would bust and bring in nothing. The idea was to find the right topics, even if effectively by ‘trial and error’, and build a growing stable of revenue-generating websites and products.
And this is where Bobby met them: sitting around a bar in Bangkok one day, spit-balling new ideas for ebooks. I still remember two ideas which Bobby overheard these Tim Ferriss wannabes discussing, ideas which made Bobby laugh when he was explaining them to me several years later: Koi fish tending, and motorcycle jacket purchasing. The young e-hustlers Bobby had met were thinking up ideas like this.
Really? Koi fish tending? An e-book about how to raise Koi fish? Motorcycle jacket purchasing. Really? An e-book about how to buy motorcycle jackets? Who the hell would buy these books?
The e-hustle
It sounded silly at first, but Bobby explained the genius behind it: don’t choose a topic where the market is already saturated, instead choose a topic where there is little if any competition. You’ve got no chance of reaching the first page of google results with an e-book about, say, how to win at online poker. It has been done already, by lots of people. But you might have a chance at breaking the first page for results on ‘how to raise Koi fish’.
‘Don’t try to be a big fish in a big pond, try to be the big fish of a small pond, or better yet, be the big fish in lots of small ponds at the same time.’
Bobby was enthusiastic as he explained all of this to me, and as I began to understand what he was talking about, I became enthusiastic myself. I soon realised that a person I knew, a man I had interviewed for a podcast I used to produce, a man whose ebook I had purchased prior to that interview (!), had probably been doing something just like this, and I already knew for a fact that it was working for him. Let’s call this fellow Eddie. I had interviewed Eddie in 2015.
You see, Bobby was not in just any country when he met the young e-hustlers. He was in Thailand. And I happened to know that Eddie also lived in Thailand, and Eddie was making money from — among other things — selling ebooks. Not just any ebooks, either, but ebooks based on topics even more nicheĀ (and ‘crazy’) than raising Koi fish or purchasing motorcycle jackets.
If Eddie could make money selling ebooks on his niche topic — and I knew forĀ a fact that he was making money, because I myself has spent about $10 on one of his ebooks — then of course people could make money on books about Koi fish or motorcycle jackets or whatever. Somebody is making money from any topic you can think of, and if they aren’t, then that person could be you, if you just put in the effort, write the damned book, and promote it.
This is the brilliance of it: with millions of people around the world able to purchase things online, all a would-be e-hustler needs to do is to find an untapped (or undertapped) market, and give that market what it wants. If even 100 people around the world purchase a book about raising Koi fish in any given year, then all a person needs to do is be near the top of the search results, and they’ll make easy money, year after year. Do this a few times over with different topics and all of a sudden, a person could be making enough money to live a decent life in Bangkok, generating what amounts to passive income each and every time somebody presses ‘purchase’ on their website.
It all clicked in my mind that day. This was what Eddie had been doing all along: making small amounts of money on niche ebooks, releasing a new book every year. Bobby had never heard of Eddie, but it didn’t matter, because what he was talking about was the exact same thing. Bobby had met guys in Thailand trying to come up with niche ideas to sell ebooks; I had interviewed a guy selling niche ebooks and living in Thailand.
Bobby was the guy who explained the theory to me; Eddie was the guy who had already shown me that the theory works in practise.
The crazy ‘make money online selling books on niche topics, live overseas in cheap countries’ lifestyle was real, and it turned out that I already knew it, but I had simply never thought of it that way, I’d never realised what was actually going on.
Tim Ferriss and Geo Arbitrage
I would later learn that this ‘make money online and live overseas where it’s cheap’ idea had been popularised by a guy called Tim Ferriss, whose book ‘The Four Hour Work Week’ had taken off to become a best-seller shortly after its release in 2007. Ferriss’ book has received a lot of attention and criticism elsewhere and I don’t have time to go into great detail about Ferriss of TFHWW here, but suffice to say that the e-hustlers Bobby spent time with in Thailand had all been directly inspired by Ferriss’ ideas.
Who knows how many people out there today are trying to live a geo-arbitraged lifestyle? One way or another, whether directly or indirectly, many will have been influenced by Ferriss.
The idea behind ‘geo arbitrage’ is simple: the cost of living in some places, such as Bangkok, is significantly lower than most of the major cities which young Western people typically call home. London, Los Angeles, Toronto, Sydney, etc: in these places it costs a fortune to live even a modest life.
If a person can make their money online, they can live a better lifestyle, at a lower cost, in Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Ho Chi Minh City, and a thousand other places around the world. All that is required is a stable internet connection, and these days you can find good internet in any major city. In fact, a lot of cities in SEA enjoy significantly better internet speeds and download quotas than the major cities of my own homeland, Australia.
Bobby hadn’t been able to make his own business work in SEA, but he spoke highly of his time there. I asked him obvious questions like, ‘how much does it cost to live there?’, and his answers seemed too good to be true.
A thousand (Aussie) dollars per month?
‘Sure, if you’re frugal, you could do it on $1,000/m easy’.
Easy?
‘Easy’.
Where did this leave me?
So there I was, in the middle of 2016, having a second round of coffee with Bobby on a sunny Brisbane day, only a short stroll from the MeerKay office where we originally met. I had no job, maybe two or three grand in the bank, a small YouTube channel with a few thousand subscribers, and a guy across the table from me telling me in no uncertain terms that if I could somehow monetise my online work, I could live a good life in SEA, no problems.
I knew then what I would have to do.
This post has already gone well beyond 2,000 words, so I’m going to skip ahead a little bit for the sake of brevity. Through an awful lot of hard work and a little bit of good fortune, I was able to convert that small social media following into a modest but profitable online business. I produced articles, podcasts and videos, dedicated to a niche field of topics, some of which are not too dissimilar to what many people would describe as ‘conspiracy theories’.
By the end of 2018 my website was generating about AUD $2,000/m in subscription revenues.
2014 was when I began podcasting, purely as a hobby.
2015 was when I began YouTubing, as an addition to the podcasting.
2016 was when I earned some money, learned sales, and met Bobby.
2017 was when I worked day and night to build my website, and this continued into 2018 as well.
Throughout 2018 I became engrossed in the ‘digital nomad’ concept and subculture. I would browse r/digitalnomad daily, and watch new videos from various DN YouTubers as they were uploaded. Chris the Freelancer, Livin That Life, Daneger and Stacey, and many others, I’d watch everything these guys released. I knew it was only a matter of time until I would be flying to Thailand myself, and these guys were my inspiration to keep putting in the crazy hours it required to build up my online business to a sufficient level.
But something about the DN subculture seemed… off.
Having spent a lot of time studying the ‘conspiracy’ subculture, and learning that most of the personalities at the top of that scene are bullshit artists (and worse), it didn’t take me too long to realise that the Digital Nomad subculture seemed to bear a lot of similarities with the conspiracy subculture. How many people claiming to be making money online were really doing so? How many people claiming to travel the world with online revenues were really doing so?
How much of this Digital Nomad scene was centred upon a false representation of reality?
Well, if anybody was going to get to the bottom of all of this, it would probably be me. After all, this is exactly what my business was (and is) all about: skepticism.
I had managed to develop a small but significant social media following of individuals interested in the same basic philosophy/practise as myself: thorough questioning of the myriad stories which most people take for granted, from history to science to popular wisdom. Who better to investigate whether or not ‘digital nomadism’ is an elaborate farce, than the man promoting himself as the World’s Leading Skeptic?
If you are unfamiliar with my work, this will likely strike you as extreme. What kind of man promotes himself as the World’s Leading Skeptic?
In time, you’ll see.
And so here we are
I’ve typed this post up while sitting at a cafe in KL Sentral, which is on the south side of Kuala Lumpur, perhaps four or five miles from the Petronas Towers.
I’ve been in KL for about six weeks, having arrived here from Phuket, where I spent a month at the beginning of this sojourn. Soon I will be departing for Kuching, which is a Malaysian city on the island of Borneo. After four weeks there I will have to leave Malaysia because my three months will almost be up. Australians (and most nationalities of people who are likely to read this post) are given three months on arrival in Malaysia, no questions asked. It is a very welcoming country in this regard, especially compared to places like Thailand which seem to be clamping down on long-term travelers.
I expect to head to Vietnam next, and from there, who knows?
I’ll be using this blog to record and share my thoughts. Is the DN lifestyle all it’s cracked up to be? Is long-term travel healthy for mind, body, or spirit? Are foreign countries happy for laptop-carrying Westerners to stay and work online for months at a time? Are there many people really doing this ‘digital nomad’ thing and, if so, what kinds of people are they? Do they seem fulfilled and content with their lives, or are they the burnouts and misfits of their own countries, individuals just scraping by in exotic places to make their lives seem interesting to people back home?
And me: can I handle this? Am I cut out for an extended period away from ‘home’? After years of ridiculous hours spent building up an online business, can I remain committed to my own work, or will I slowly allow the website to atrophy, and eventually have to return home penniless? Will I be able to overcome my own personal demons and make the most of this opportunity I have created for myself, or will the tropical heat, cheap alcohol, and easy fun bring me unstuck?
That is what this blog will be about. I plan to record a few podcasts here and there, maybe one per fortnight, and will probably create a new YouTube channel for the purpose as well. This is my first blog post about my DN journey, and it took me over two months to finally sit down and write it. In my defense, I do a lot of writing for my online business, so what was once a pleasure is not quite enjoyable as perhaps it once was. But I’ll do my best to keep this website updated, for the benefit of people who might read and listen, and also for my own benefit as well.
This is my life, after all. My early thirties. A period of my life I will only get one shot at. Still young enough to do whatever I want, but already old enough to know that time waits for no man.
What the hell am I doing here? And why?
Here’s to hoping that I find some good answers to these kinds of questions before it comes to and end.
So far, so good.
You can contact me via johnlebon123 — at — gmail
There are people that do nothing with their lives and complain endlessly, there are triers (those that give a half baked thought or attempt) and there are doers. JLB fits in the last category like a glove. The theme, the dream and the pure professionalism is shining through this whole project. All the released podcasts so far have been outstanding. Every guest has a story that captures the listener’s attention from start to finish, the film section as an interlude sheer genius.
I am an avid reader and your blog is exemplary as is all your writing.
Why do I follow this site, when I am not a digital nomad?
I have a dream, a retirement dream projected 9 years into my future. I have started an on line business in tandem with setting up a private limited company. My vision follows that I will build up my company over the next 2-3 years allowing me to slowly move from full time employment to part time then ultimately to living off my business. But it does not end there, 9 years is when my youngest daughter comes of age. I intend to then travel, to finally see the rest of world, living off my on line business. That is my goal. The digital nomad concept encapsulates my dream.
Anyway thats enough about me, JLB you should be proud, I wish you every success with this site.
You really should consider doing radio work, your interview skills and presentation is second to none.