4 Steps to Create a Digital Nomad Income as a Remote Employee
Part I of Income for GenX Digital Nomads
By choice, Michael Erasmus gets up at 6:25 AM every weekday.
“If the waves are looking good,” he said, “I usually ask my wife to take the kids to school…. When she leaves to take them, I go surfing.”
He usually gets back and gets to work by 9 AM.
Then, he’ll typically work until lunchtime, and then make lunch. For a change, some days he’ll go for a walk and a coffee. In fact, some days he might even work for a few hours in the coffee shop.
When I read his post, Michael was a remote employee for a social media management company. In fact, every employee at his company is a remote employee. Working remote is built into the company culture.
Michael manages his own time and sets his own hours. He finds that one of the biggest benefits of this flexibility is the ability to design the structure of your days and weeks.
This is also one of the most challenging things, since it’s easy to develop bad habits if you don’t have a boss checking up on you.
He says that the trick is to find the balance, stick to a stable routine each day, and yet to have the flexibility to deal with the unexpected curve balls that life throws at you.
Michael said this:
Over the last century, we as a society have become conditioned to think that our work should always come first at the expense of the rest of our lives. We can’t choose one over the other. I think ideas like remote working and distributed teams are opening our eyes to a whole new world of possibilities, where we can fit work into our lives in a way that makes sense to us and be happy and productive at the same time.
As a GenX digital nomad (or wannabe), making the move as a remote employee can be one of the fastest, easiest ways to take your family onto the digital nomad lifestyle.
So, how do you go about getting a remote job?
It may be simple or complicated, depending on your own situation.
Fully Distributed vs. Partially Distributed
First, it’s important to understand that the composition of your team or company makes a difference.
A fully distributed team or company is one where everyone is remote. There may be a small office space so as to maintain a legitimate corporate presence. But everyone else works remotely.
This is most often the case in newer startups that have been founded in the last half-decade or so. Many newer startups are being created from the ground-up with the idea built into the corporate culture that everyone works remotely.
This can be one of the best situations for you as a remote employee. Remote work requires different types of tools and software for communication and data access than when everyone is located in the same office.
These fully distributed companies and teams have these tools built in from the ground up.
A partially distributed team or company is one where some people work remotely and some are physically working together in an office.
This type of situation is a little more difficult for you as the remote employee. It’s definitely do-able, but there’s often a bigger burden on you.
When people work together in one office, a lot of communication and decision-making happens informally in hallway conversations. Much of this isn’t documented well.
It’s up to you as the remote employee to proactively go find out what’s been happening in these hallway conversations.
You may also have to take a lead role in getting the types of tools and processes in place that support remote team members.
Build a Remote-Friendly Skillset
It goes without saying, that to be a digital nomad, you need a digital skillset. If you are a welder or a hair stylist, for example, you’ll typically need to get yourself some training in a new digital skillset.
Getting this kind of training often isn’t cheap. But self-education is one of the BEST investments you’ll ever make.
Here is a list of some of the types of digital skillsets that are in demand.
- Web Development
- App Development
- Graphic Design
- Illustration
- Customer Support
- Sales
- Digital Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
Start With Your Current Employer
Once you’ve developed a digital skillset, and are working at a job using that skillset, then you can start taking steps to turn that job into a remote job.
Check with your company’s Human Resources department and ask a few questions.
- Do they have an existing remote work policy?
- Find out if true remote is possible. Some companies require remote employees to be in the office periodically — even weekly.
- Try working remotely one day a week to start.
It may be, that by simply asking, you can piggy-back onto existing remote work policies.
Make Your Resume Remote-Friendly
You may find yourself in a situation, though, where your current employer will not embrace remote work, no matter what.
In this case, you can start looking for a different position with a more remote-friendly employer.
The first step to take is to review your resume.
When employers hire remote employees, they are looking primarily for two things: that you are a great communicator and that you are a motivated self-starter.
Your resume needs to emphasize how you have been a communicator and self-starter for every position that you list.
It then needs to emphasize your digital skillset, and how you can provide that skillset as a remote member of a team.
Use the Right Job Sites
Unfortunately, the biggest and most popular job search web sites have historically been the worst for finding remote work.
The biggest challenge is that they haven’t had a data flag for jobs that clearly identifies them as fully remote, partially remote, or non-remote. And so, they haven’t had a search filter that allows you to quickly zero in on the types of remote jobs that are well suited for digital nomads.
Several new job search web sites have emerged that were designed specifically with digital nomads in mind.
In the first place, they specialize in jobs that require the types of digital skillsets that you’ll need for a digital nomad-friendly job. In the second place, they very clearly indicate the level of location-independence that each job listing will support.
And, with these starting points, you can create a location-independent income that you can work at while you embark with your family on a new laptop lifestyle.
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