Remote working has been popular among freelancers for years. Yet far from all digital nomads are self-employed. It is becoming increasingly popular to travel the world from employment as well. I am an example of this myself. On our Instagram page, you will constantly see me in a different part of the world, and my laptop is always with me. This freedom makes me very happy. I grant it to everyone. Perhaps you have been following Working Remotely for a while now and you only know me as an entrepreneur, but I also worked remotely a lot when I still worked for a boss. You can read about it in this blog.
How I got my remote job
My love for travel goes back about 20 years. I have always been a huge sun worshipper, and let’s face it: then you are living in the wrong country in the Netherlands. Since about 10 years I always escape in winter to a place where the sun shines. Usually this is far away, so I’ve been to South Africa, Cape Verde, Thailand, Curacao and Morocco.
To start at the beginning of this remote lifestyle, let’s go back 8 years. Back then I worked as a campaign manager at DPG (then known as de Persgroep). Although I had a great time there and was allowed to organize cool events, something was itching. Travel itch. I considered taking a sabbatical for a few months to travel. Completely unexpectedly, that was no longer necessary, when just before Christmas I was kicked out overnight for no valid reason. I will spare you that unpleasant story.
It was the push to start traveling. You have to work your whole life, I wanted to see more of the world first. So I was going to travel solo for 2 months through Southeast Asia in 2018. Long story short: that spontaneously turned into 8 months haha. I so enjoyed traveling, the cultures, no commitments, the beautiful weather, the nice people and so on.
I gave myself the deadline to start looking online for a new job in November, when I suddenly saw a great job at Frankwatching on LinkedIn at the end of October. So I responded anyway, and yep: I got to go on an online job interview. No problem at all that it was online and from Asia, because working remotely was quite normal there anyway. I got the job and immediately thought: this progressive thinking and freedom is awesome!
Remote working in salaried employment
With a salaried job you might not immediately expect the freedom to be able to work remotely a lot, but nowadays you see this more and more. Which I think is a very positive development. You can read the whole story about remote working when I worked for a boss in this blog: this is how I scored my remote job. This employer was very flexible and was fine with you working from a different location. As long as you did your job and took your responsibilities. Needless to say.
My first workation
I had only been working at Frankwatching for 4 weeks when my very nice colleagues from my event team asked if I would join them on a workation to Croatia in April. Hell yes! Well we all know how much fun I had because nowadays remote working is my full time job. I have already flipped open my laptop in the most insane destinations, from Spain to Bonaire and from Berlin to Bali. By now I am 42 workations down and it has become my lifestyle.
No more restrictions on vacation days, no more exploded inbox after your vacation. I think that’s another big advantage to remote working. You just take your work with you. It doesn’t lie idle. You’re just reachable. Only you work from an inspiring place for a while and after your working day you jump into the pool or discover a cool destination. That’s what you want!
From employment to entrepreneur
In the beginning, when I started workingremotely.com, I did this next to my salaried job. You have to, because you don’t earn a good income from day one. I started organizing workations for companies and a blog to share my experiences. I invested a lot of time in building my network from the beginning of my career, which came in handy now. From my own network I got requests from companies to organize a workation.
The Working Remotely blog and our Instagram channel gained momentum after my story appeared in various newspapers and magazines, such as the AD, Lonely Planet, NRC. Not entirely coincidentally, because I also had my contacts at various media outlets for a while. So they also knew how to find me quickly when this trend became booming after covid. So I quickly built up the status of workation expert.
Running a profitable business
A few clients and a nice blog still don’t produce a full-time profitable business in the beginning, but you get to a point where you have to make a choice. Do I keep doing this on the side or do I quit my regular job and go for it? That leap of faith was terrifying. But I saw the potential on all sides and wanted to go for it. Sometimes it is still exciting to run a business, I can tell you.
As an entrepreneur, I can give you 3 wise lessons from this:
- Start before you’re ready. Cliché but true! I am fairly perfectionist, which is not really helpful for an entrepreneur. You shouldn’t wait until you have something worked out or prepared to perfection. Learning by doing is my new motto. Just start and you’ll see. You can always make adjustments.
- ‘What if…’ is deadly. You only find out one way and that is by doing it. Doubting for too long or not doing things because they are scary is of no use. I’d rather fall flat on my face and learn from that than have to wonder what might have happened.
- Fear is your worst counselor. My father said the other day that the “Ingermen” (my last name) know little fear. After 2 years in business and the 20 years of traveling the world, I can be-agree with that. My grandfather and father have also traveled the world all their lives, largely for work. Funny to realize now that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Dare to go for it!
The results are impressive. Meanwhile, our team continues to grow and we can offer more and more services related to remote working. We still provide memorable company workstations for our clients and nowadays we also offer more and more courses to get people started with remote working. We create daily content for the blog and social media, and we also do content campaigns for super cool clients, worldwide. Sometimes I have to pinch myself that this all happens.
Vacancies of (partially) remote jobs
Finding a job where you have the freedom to work remotely is still a challenge. It is still often not mentioned on a company’s website, not in the job posting, and there are few really good large platforms for it. You do see something happening in the market. Some companies do mention it clearly in their terms and conditions or use it to attract people. Also, some job boards have added the “remote work” search feature. But it’s still not easy.
While nearly 20% of job seekers today consider remote working a requirement.
Are you looking for a job that gives you the freedom and flexibility to work location-dependently? Then check out our jobs page on the Working Remotely website. There you will find vacancies from Dutch companies that embrace remote working. These involve working remotely on a temporary basis, or occasionally going on workation. These are not jobs that are completely remote.
Popular remote occupations
Perhaps you do not currently have a profession that you can do online, which means that remote working is not yet possible for you. We regularly get messages from people who want this lifestyle with remote working so badly that they are thinking of retraining. Which I can well imagine. To give you some inspiration for online occupations, here are some popular ones:
- Online marketer
- Administrative assistant
- Social media manager
- ICT / Developer
- Graphic designer
- Virtual Assistant
Also score the ideal remote job
If this is something you want, you need to take action on it. I know from my own experience how wonderful this freedom is. It makes me immensely happy to be able to work from all kinds of places around the world. This allows me to travel a lot. Especially to get you started, we have developed an online course: Remote Ready. In this course I take you step by step towards your remote working adventure.
Combining travel and making money
There are many ways to combine traveling and making money these days. Fortunately, one no longer has to exclude the other. You can travel the world while making money. In fact, there are more and more ways to do this. You can do so in paid employment, as a zpp’er or entrepreneur, or you can build a passive income. Certainly the latter is rising in popularity, sidehustles are springing up like mushrooms. Read here 10 ways to combine traveling and making money.
On to a remote (work) life
I too once went traveling alone for the first time. Yes, I found it terrifying. I too once had my first workation. Yes, that took some getting used to. I too once went to the other side of the world. Yes, that was exciting. But pardon my french: I fucking did it! Every experience you learn from, good or bad. As I said above, fear is your worst advisor. Getting out of your comfort zone is what makes you grow as a person. Discovering the world gives you a wealth of valuable life lessons.
Also read the E-book: find your remote job.
