Brendy Batenburg (31) has been working as a LinkedIn trainer and online marketing consultant for almost 10 years. Since 2021, she has been doing it completely remote with Bali as her home base, together with her boyfriend. But her adventure began in the tropical Maldives. How has she been working remotely for clients in the Netherlands ever since?
From dream to digital nomad
Good to know: all my life I have dreamed of going abroad. Maybe it’s because of my roots in Liberia and the fact that my parents took me around Europe in the camper at an early age. It’s baked into it!
I have been working as a LinkedIn trainer since 2016, something I started purely out of a drive to help others. What started with training for students, slowly grew into corporate LinkedIn training and online marketing consulting. In fact, I also work on an interim basis as a marketing consultant. This ensures that I continue to learn within marketing. Training alone was not challenging enough for me.
My “steady job” time has actually been very short. After completing my master’s degree in Sustainable Development, I worked as a junior project consultant in sustainable area development for municipalities and housing associations in 2018. Nice work, great colleagues, but I noticed that something was missing. The freedom. The space to follow my own path. It was gnawing and I wanted to see more of the world.
I always watched with great admiration the episodes of Floortje Dessing ‘To the End of the World’ and still do. Especially because everyone did it in their own way: one was self-sufficient, another bought a boat and lived on it. That made me realize that there are so many possibilities. But the inspiration to really work as a digital nomad came from blogs and YouTube. Back then I watched a lot of Jacob Laukaitis, a guy from Lithuania who traveled all over the world and worked remotely. He showed me: it really can be done.
That’s why I started expanding my side hustle as a LinkedIn trainer to do this remote. First part-time alongside my studies, from 2020 full-time. But I was not immediately location-independent. From 2016 to 2020, I was still working at locations in the Netherlands.
From location-based to remote working from the Maldives
It’s 2021, in the middle of the covid period. And yet I took the step: I decided to go abroad. My first long-term experience with remote work began in the Maldives. “How do you end up there?”, I hear you thinking. Yes, I didn’t actually know it myself until I started looking up blogs in covid time. “Where can you go safely during corona?”, and among them was the Maldives because there were few cases of illness. “Okay, sounds good!”, I thought. So I checked YouTube videos and found out you could go there just fine without having to book an expensive resort. With a tear, I said goodbye to friends and family. Azure ocean here I come!
I took my work as a freelance online specialist to Maafushi Island, a local island and worked there three to four days a week for 1 client. That went, through Teams. Every morning I stepped into the water and realized that I had suddenly started a new life….
So since then I have been working completely online! That gave me the confidence to really choose a location-independent life.
And fortunately, I have had support from my clients. I am grateful for that. That with a “job” that I put together myself. And what remains special: sometimes I write a letter from Asia that falls on the mat of someone in the Netherlands a few days later. That realization remains crazy.
Remote working in Bali
I like to start my day quietly. Having breakfast with a book, going to the gym or swimming. Then I don’t start working until around three in the afternoon, basically when Holland “wakes up. In terms of intensity, I work part-time, about three days a week. The other days I use for relaxation or for developing new projects, such as courses, e-books and online collaborations. Working án, instead of ín my company.
Since I am definitely not a morning person, this rhythm works perfectly for me! I’d rather work until ten in the evening (or midnight) than sit at my laptop at seven in the morning. I am convinced that I am better at my job as a result. Especially compared to the zombie I would otherwise be when I have to get up at 6 a.m. in the morning!
Location-independent working
Since 2021, I have been living mostly abroad. Eight months in the Maldives, three months in Sri Lanka and since 2022 mostly in Bali. In between I travel back to the Maldives regularly, for in-laws and of course to enjoy the underwater world. By the way, the food there is also fantastic for fish lovers: everything is made from fish. Even the snacks!
On my list right now is the Philippines. My boyfriend and I are crazy about scuba diving, and going there seems fantastic. Other than that, I still dream of Vietnam, Taiwan, Japan (for the third time!), Costa Rica and more. I have never been to South America and I would love to go there, but working from that time zone bothers me. So I keep putting that off and then again that’s the downside of time zones. More convenient if I am there when I really have vacation, so I don’t have to get up at night for a meeting… That’s a no-go.
Lots of freedom, but missing home
Remote working has greatly enriched my life. I think the biggest advantage is the freedom. Traveling, working in a different time zone, having mornings off. Regular long weekends away. From Indonesia, I can easily go to other Asian countries. You see so much more of the world than when you are stuck to one office. Although my home office is really nice, I’m not stuck to it.
By going away I became more myself: discovered new hobbies like diving and wakeboarding and found my balance. I have always been an active person but lost that in the Netherlands. That was mainly due to having to travel for work and being tired after a full day. Maybe working full-time isn’t for me at all….
But there are drawbacks, too. The most troublesome remains the lack of family and friends. You miss birthdays, weddings, births. You can’t fly back for everything. Furthermore, you can get a serious tropical disease and it is not always easy to find a lasting click with expats. So you have to give up something.
Practical tips on working remotely
For anyone dreaming of remote working, I have a few practical tips in closing:
- Start with something you really like
Start a sidehustle that energizes you. Choose something you can enjoy doing even remotely, because you really don’t want to get depressed abroad.
- Test first with a workation
Don’t start canceling everything right away. Test whether a place suits you first. For example, I once thought Canggu would be perfect for me in terms of nomad scene, but once there I didn’t like it at all (and now avoid it like the plague). Only later did I discover quieter places in Bali that did suit me, near the south coast.
- Check your internet and rent your house longer
Seems like a no-brainer, but test to see if your destination has good wifi. It’s really not everywhere as good as it seems online. And if you’re staying longer, rent for several months. That’s often cheaper and more stable. I myself pay about €375 a month in rent because I pay annually and only spend €20 for fast wifi (100+ mbps). That gives more money for fun things and peace of mind.
- Invest in good tools
A good insta360 camera, mouse and keyboard really make a difference if you work online a lot. Especially if you do slow travel, stable equipment is worth its weight in gold. It looks professional and so do your customers.
Would you like to follow me further? Check out my LinkedIn and Instagram.
Read more about remote working
Remote werken en reisbloggen in Griekenland: zo doet Wesley dat
Anna-Marijn ging van kantoor naar locatie-onafhankelijk leven in Spanje
