digital nomad careers
Lifestyle,  Travel

The ultimate guide to digital nomad career changes (5 first steps)

So, you’re thinking about starting a digital nomad career. You’ve heard about it, read about it online, scrolled through the reddit community /r/DigitalNomad, admired the glamorous images of laptops on beaches, and now you’re thinking about taking the plunge.

That was exactly me several years ago. I had been working in social services for over 10 years, and I was burnt out. I really wanted to change, and I think the dream of working and living internationally is something that the majority of people can relate to. I mean, what’s the downside? Who wouldn’t want to live in an exotic country, learn a new language, meet new friends, and really just live life? Were we born to sit behind a desk for 50 years and then die?

My journey to finding a “digital nomad career”

I decided to take this desire to become a remote worker seriously and start earnestly pursuing a digital nomad career. I knew for sure that social work and social services did not lend themselves to digital life. There just aren’t a lot of opportunities to serve the community that isn’t directly face-to-face, and my background, education, and licenses were in counseling. With Covid, telehealth and medicine are starting to become more common, but there’s still a massive amount of red tape around HIPAA, client privacy, and data security. Even if you could find a remote job, the odds of you being allowed to leave your city much less your country are very low. And trust me, I looked.

So, I enrolled in a second bachelor’s program, this time in computer science. I started a bachelor of science in information technology, with the eventual goal of completing a master’s in the program. That… did not end well. It’s embarrassing to admit, but I struggled. A lot. It didn’t help that my advisor basically expected me to fail, but that’s a story for another day.

It turns out, my love for computers did not extend to hardware, coding, and understanding a massive amount of technical information about what makes computers work. I do not have the natural skill that lends itself to a computer science degree. I ended up leaving the program, and I was both embarrassed and disappointed in myself, but also recognizing that it wasn’t for me and that is okay.

So how did I end up finding a full-time DN career?

I currently work for amazing people that let me do my job internationally with the flexibility to travel and live outside of the United States while still doing the things that I love and I’m decently good at. I was able to find this without completely changing career paths, but it did take some flexibility and a lot of learning.

There are an increasing amount of jobs available online, and more and more employers are adapting to this way of life. I think the digital nomad lifestyle is only going to increase in the future, not decrease. I also think that the lifestyle is opening up to non-technical people like it never has before, meaning many people won’t need to undergo a massive career change in order to successfully achieve the lifestyle.

That being said, I did have to actually switch career paths, but I ended up switching to something that I had always been doing on the side: writing. Even when I was working full-time in social services, I still enjoyed writing and freelancing on the side. I was able to take an innate love for writing and eventually transition that to a full-time career, which is what I’m doing now.

My suggestions for picking or developing a digital nomad career without wasting years and tons of money:

1. Do NOT pick a digital nomad career just because it can be done remotely

Seeing that a large amount of successful digital nomads are computer programmers, software engineers, information technology pros does not necessarily mean you should do it. It makes sense, and that’s why I tried to go for that, but if you do not have the attitude and personality for it, you’re going to have a miserable time.

If you are already passionate about computers and technology, sure! But trying to manufacture that love out of a desire for a remote career is a recipe for disaster. Not saying that it can’t be done, but it’s definitely not as easy as it looks. Having a love for computers and even technology does not mean you’ll be good at coding. There’s a reason that those jobs pay a lot and have an insane amount of flexibility, and that’s because they are incredibly difficult and take many years to master.

2. Leverage your skills

What is your career field, and how can you contribute to it remotely? If you’re in social services, maybe you can learn grant writing. If you’re in customer service, you can find a customer support position that can be done remotely. If you enjoy teaching, you can teach online. Many, many jobs can be done as a consultant, freelancer, contract worker.

You may not be able to do your exact job online, but you can find a clever way to transition your skills and market yourself digitally. You may need to supplement your experience and education with additional training, which leads me to my next point.

3. Develop new skills

A lot of information that was formerly paywalled to institutions of higher education has now been largely democratized and is available online. I love this, it’s one of my absolute favorite things about the Internet, and you can use this information to leverage a new career without paying tens of thousands of dollars for another degree. While having a degree can be useful in many ways, as a lot of jobs require at least a bachelor’s in a field, I do not believe you necessarily need an entirely new degree in order to change your career to be a digital nomad. Many people won’t need a degree at all.

One great thing about working online is that if you can prove you know how to do the thing, you don’t necessarily need a degree in the thing. I believe, now more than ever, you can show your skills instead of telling them. If you know how to solve a problem for a client, I don’t believe you need a degree in order to verify this fact.

Which means you can create your own education. Want to go into web development? There are thousands and thousands of classes, YouTube videos, articles, podcasts, communities around this very thing. Want to become a translator, social media marketer, writer, entrepreneur? The internet is your teacher.

4. Get creative, and do a bunch of unpaid work

Your work history may not directly translate to a digital career, but how can you make it fit? Don’t make your potential employer fill in the gaps, do that for them.

For example, if you want to be a writer but you’ve never published a word in your life:

  1. Talk about any techincal/academic writing you’ve done professionally.
  2. Research whatever kind of writing you want to do, to the point where you can communicate it well (grant writing, research, SEO content writing, reviews, etc).
  3. Try to get some guest blogs and bylines.
  4. If you can’t (and even if you can), make your own website and throw some writing on there. I have my little site, and while it won’t be winning any design awards, it is a place to showcase the fact that I can string multiple sentences together

Tada! You’ve now demonstrated that you can write, even without 10 years of experience. Working online is a lot of “show, not tell”. Saying you know how to do something is useless, show them.

5. Start now

My only regret about my digital nomad career (which is going well right now) is not starting sooner. Starting while I still worked full-time at my desk job, before I took the plunge and moved overseas. It ended up working out well for me, but I think they were plenty of years while I was saving to move that I could’ve been spending that time learning skills, freelancing, understanding the terminology, and preparing myself for digital life.

One thing that I did prior to actually moving overseas that I didn’t expect to benefit me as much as it did, was doing some freelance writing just because I loved it. I wrote a few articles for the local alternative paper and wrote a couple of pieces for my favorite website. Having that tiny portfolio under my belt gave me a lot of credibility when I pitched to freelancing clients.

If you are desiring a digital nomad career, start now. Decide what path you want to take, and then just do a ton of research around that goal. Find communities, take classes, learn what part of the job pays and what part is massively saturated. Do the work while you still have the security so you won’t need to start from scratch when you’re ready to go internationally.

Share what worked best for you when you started your digital nomad career in the comments, or let me know if you have any questions!

6 Comments

  • Adventure Awaits Us At Home

    I never heard of a digital nomad was until reading this. Of course I know of remote working but never heard it called that. I am fortunate in that I’ve worked from home since 2015. But, my new venture is a blog and YouTube channel. So, I’m currently in #4 and doing a bunch of unpaid work 😉. Thanks for the tips!

  • Angelina

    This is such a wonderful reminder that there are so many wonderful opportunities out there. Thank you for inspiring people to keep going for what they want in their careers. It’s so easy to fall into a rut and feel stuck to what is available but this is a great example of taking leaps of faith and having confidence in your goals to make positive changes in life. Thank you for this great post!

  • Carolyn M

    I’m a CPA and would never have thought that my chosen career would lend itself to being a digital nomad, but here I am – 100% location independent!

    I love this post, its honest and up front. Digital Nomad life IS not for everyone, but for those of us who embrace it, it is a gamechanger.

  • Anna

    I can relate to your computer science experience 🙂 I also started studying programming and never really finished it 😀 But still learnt a lot and understood that it’s not that hard if you really want to learn it. I guess I just didn’t want enough. Thanks for sharing your story and giving good advises! 🙂

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