Travel all over the world and work as a freelance virtual assistant

I am Leanne, 30 years old and I have been working full-time as a freelance virtual assistant since March 2023. Right now I am based in Granada, Spain, but I travel a lot. I am married to a Mexican. He does not work remotely, so sometimes I travel alone. Sometimes we travel together when he has vacation and then I do a workation. My story is not a classic remote work or digital nomad story. What I want to show with my story is that there are an awful lot of different ways to work remotely and you don’t need much to do it.

From backpacking to future dream

I was born in the Netherlands. When I was 13 years old, my parents, my little brother and I moved to Austria. I lived there until after my bachelor’s degree. I studied tourism and business and then was abroad twice: half a year in Rovaniemi, Finland for my Erasmus semester and half a year in Nepal to do an internship with a trekking agency. To me, the idea of a classic house-hugging life felt like I was slowly suffocating.

Two weeks after my exams, I flew a one-way ticket to Colombia, where I stayed for three months. I then traveled on to Mexico and ended up staying there for six months. I was mostly traveling as a backpacker with my savings and occasionally volunteering in hostels in exchange for a place to sleep and eat. It was during that period that things started to itch: I wanted to find a way to travel and work at the same time, but I wasn’t quite sure how yet.

Starting to work remotely

During my backpacking trip, a hostel in Puerto Escondido, Mexico offered me a permanent job as a manager. With a work visa in my pocket, I moved to Mexico at 21 years old. I ended up working there for three years and met my current husband. I had a full-time job that I loved, but I kept looking for a way to work more location-independent. In addition to my job, I started looking for clients as a Virtual Assistant. I still had few concrete skills and found it difficult to get started. Nevertheless, I decided to persevere: for a month, I approached five people every day. Eventually, I found a client for Instagram engagement. She gave me more and more different tasks, so I became more handy as I went along.

By the way, my client didn’t mind that sometimes I didn’t know exactly how to do a task yet. She trusted me to teach myself and deliver a good result. She in turn recommended me to others, so I kept getting new clients and tasks. Meanwhile, I learned more and more new skills and knew better and better what I really liked to do.

Travel in conjunction with remote work

Over time, we felt the time had come to quit our jobs in Mexico and travel more. We bought a car and converted it into an RV. I worked about twenty hours a week as a freelancer and earned around 800 euros a month at the time. In Mexico you can make a good living from that. We traveled around Mexico with the car for a few months, then sold it and then went to Albania, northern Macedonia and Kosovo for three months. Then we stayed in Austria with my parents for two more months and went back to Mexico for a while.

Since my husband does not work remotely, we always have to find a middle ground. In addition, we have two different passports, which often prevents him from staying as long as I do and, of course, from working abroad. Three years ago we decided to get married, move to Spain and apply for residency for him. For me, this also felt like the right time to start working full time for myself.

That did mean that I suddenly had to start taking my business much more seriously. 800 euros a month and an so-so mentality won’t get you very far in Spain, especially if you have to pay for your life, taxes and insurance. We moved to Granada. During that time, I taught myself audio and video editing, started specializing in entrepreneurs with a podcast and got better and better at social media management. I have no website and no professional Instagram; my clients find me through word of mouth.

A work week as a virtual assistant

I now work around 30 hours a week on average, sometimes more and sometimes less. As you can read, in my time as a freelancer I have had many different forms of how, how much and where I work. In Spain, I can now make a good living from my work. When I feel like it, I sometimes take a day off to go hiking or to the beach. I schedule my own time. In December I was in Sweden for a week and worked a maximum of two hours a day, because I had prepared my work well. In the summer months, I spent two months in Austria with my parents and a month in Mexico in February. The year before, I spent time in Morocco, Portugal and Mexico. Precisely this freedom of travel was an important reason for me to become a freelancer.

Challenges of remote working

It’s not all roses. Becoming a freelancer is hard. You have to be consistent and constantly work on your skills. There is no one to monitor or correct you; you are one hundred percent responsible for your own work. Without self-discipline, you won’t get very far. Especially when you travel and others are enjoying themselves to the fullest, you often have to be strict with yourself and work first. In addition, you must regularly plan your workday around good wifi, which is not easy to find in every place.

And our future plans? My husband now has a European passport. In April we are going to Mexico for two years. After that, we want to go house-sitting in Europe and Asia and discover new countries together again.

My tips for remote working

For me, it worked well to start quietly, without pressure, alongside my job. But in the end, I think you have to do mostly what feels right for you.

I find that beginning freelancers often get stuck in thoughts like:
“I need to finish my website or branding first,”
“I need to take a course first,”
“I need to do this or that first.”

My tip? Just get started. Stop procrastinating, start looking for clients and go for it. Gradually you’ll discover which tasks you like, which you don’t, and what type of clients suit you.

Would you like to experience my journey with me? Follow me on my socials: Leanne Koenen & @leannsii