3 days ago, I landed back in the sunny ol’ UK after 9 months of full-time travelling.

I went to:

• Paraguay (became a resident)
• Argentina (Buenos Aires and Bariloche)
• Brazil (Florianópolis)
• Miami (to open banks)
• Toronto (to visit a friend)
• Vancouver (to give my first live talk)

On the tail-end of my trip, I met a lot of entrepreneurs. Understandably, I was asked a lot of questions when I explained I had spent the previous year officially homeless. There were two major responses:

1. It must be amazing to see the world
2. It must be impossible to take your business seriously

In this email, I’d like to address both statements.

Because yes, it is great to explore. But ask any longer-term, disheveled nomad, there is a dumpster of shit that comes with the lifestyle.

And yes, many nomads take a big hit in their business. I was told it is impossible to do good work and be mobile. I decided to test this hypothesis. I managed to write a book, launch a cohort and a high-ticket coaching program, run multiple offers, get in the best shape of my life, and give my first live talk, while learning Spanish to a conversational level, and seeing some incredible sights across 5 countries.

You can have your cake and eat it too.

But only if you approach the game right, so I’ll give you every tip I wish I knew when I started.

First, let me knock off the rose-tinted glasses.

What sucks about being a nomad

Ah, where do I begin?

Almost everything you think sounds fun quickly becomes a pain in the arse.

Deciding where to travel to sucks. Booking flights sucks. Applying for visas sucks. Airport security sucks. General airport anxiety sucks. Sitting in a lump of metal for 8 hours with a bunch of ill people sucks. Plane food sucks. Jet lag sucks. Endlessly looking for AirBnBs sucks. Poorly equipped AirBnBs suck, and there are so goddamn many. Bad beds, bad pillows, bad lighting, bad locations (busy roads are the worst), mould-filled air conditioners. All of that sucks. Not having a stable desk setup sucks. Packing sucks. Unpacking sucks. Living out of a suitcase sucks. Needing to find new gyms, barbers, and good food sources sucks. Having your phone robbed, bank accounts emptied, and identity stolen sucks. Not seeing your best friends and family sucks. Needing to make new friends sucks. Needing to say goodbye to new friends sucks. Moving places too quickly sucks. The feeling of FOMO when you are working too much sucks. Not understanding the language sucks (but it’s also super fun if you are willing to learn). Constantly skimming the surface of life sucks.

Phew. Take a breath.

You can tell I just wrote this after rushing through the London Underground to catch an earlier train to the north of England.

You’re probably now wondering, “well is this even worth it?”

I have wondered this many times, too. Especially after the phone-being-stolen fiasco.

Life was so comfortable back in England, and yet I’m already excited for my next trip, wherever this may be.

Why?

Because when I travel, I feel so goddamn alive. There is no feeling like landing in a new country, knowing there are cities to wander, mountains to climb, and cultures to explore. The air tastes different, the energy is electric, the opportunities feel endless and expansive.

Yes, there is a tonne of friction behind the process. And I hate friction. But I hate the drudgery of a mundane life more. Seeing the same places, buying the same food, thinking the same thoughts. We get one shot on this planet, and it has so much to offer. I’d hate to know I let it slip by in the blink of an eye—the months and years melted together by a lack of change.

When I was a dentist, I always thought the most badass way to live would be to travel the world and write. It was a good dream, and fairly accurate. I’m not quite living the Ian Fleming lifestyle, writing James Bond novels while spear fishing off the coast of Jamaica, but I’m working on it.

The most important part of the work has been operationalizing the process.

As always, I am surprised by how much discipline is required to enjoy true freedom.

So here’s everything I’ve learned about nomading the right way, split into 7 tips.

Hire an assistant

My virtual assistant, Vim, is the most important piece of the puzzle.

Aside from running all the admin of the business (I am useless at anything that isn’t writing, recording, or hopping on calls), she also handles most of my personal life. She books my flights, trains, and AirBnBs. Before I arrive at a location, she has found the best gyms, barbers and whatever else I need. We have systemised this process: she knows what times are best to fly, the right seats for the plane (I’m an aisle guy), the types of gym I like and how far I want to walk. She organises late check-outs and any other communication. Without her, I would probably be lost in a bin in Paraguay.

With her, I can fall into my routine with minimal disruption.

Systemise the travel process

The worst part about nomading is the travelling process.

But the negative side can be minimised if you are intentional.

I pack and unpack my suitcase the exact same way. When I fly, I do not drink or eat unhealthily (normally zero airplane food), and do not look at screens—a lot of jet lag is you treating your body like shit. I will save all admin work (emails, etc.) for airports so I can focus on needle-moving work in my Airbnb and reduce dead time.

On flights, I read, journal, meditate, or sleep. I have never used in-flight Wifi before, and hopefully never will. Flights have become some of my favourite times for reflection and have led to many of my best ideas. If the flight is overnight, then I will try my hardest to get 4-5 hours of sleep. This is my biggest challenge, as I feel like I need to race my inevitable neck ache, sciatic pain, and weird aching behind my left eye that only seems to arrive at midnight, just before I nod off. Eating well, exercise, and aspirin seem to work well.

When I land, I book the Uber from the airport as soon as I have my bag. Get to the Airbnb, unpack, buy my groceries, sort the gym, and do anything else so the next day I can get to work.

Balance deep work with deep rest

You can get more done with 2 hours of focused work than most people do with 8 hours of screwing around.

I take my deep work very seriously, and have become ruthless with my project selection (working on dumb shit is even more dumb when you have the world at your doorstep). Barring rare exceptions, I will always write for a minimum of 3 hours per day. Ideally, 4-5. I then explore as rest and reward. I rarely work in coffee shops; I go and enjoy the coffee. I don’t look at emails outside of my flat, I look at the sights. I have found exploring to be fantastic for recovery and creativity, so the combination is great. For example, I spent 3 days in Vancouver. I wrote for 3 hours, hiked for 6 hours, and ate at a great restaurant each day. I can live that day on repeat forever.

Organise sprints

Occasionally, I will hunker down for 2-6 weeks and work 10-12-hour days.

I pre-agree this with myself, so I feel less guilty about ‘missing out’. I use these sprints to build high-leverage assets that work for me, buying back my time. For example, I am running a writing cohort right now. But I prepared 95% of it in Brazil, so I could enjoy Miami, Canada, and time with my mum. I just hop on the live coaching calls and engage in the community.

But it’s not just work sprints I organise.

I realised that if I don't schedule the occasional day or days to fully immerse myself in a city/country, I feel like shit. My default is to work, work, and work, but I try to consciously arrange ‘tourist time’, which feels like such an amazing treat. Usually, this means hiking or visiting places like museums. One of my recent favourites was renting a bike to explore Miami.

Drop the perfectionism.

When I first started nomading, every point of friction would cause me serious anguish. I would bitch and complain to my best friends, even as I sat in the South American sun while they enjoyed the grey gloom of the UK.

These days, I try to enjoy the chaos of it. Especially in South America, where nothing works as expected, and everything is late. I remember one day in Paraguay, it took me 2 hours to buy a blue pen and print 2 documents. Sometimes, you just gotta laugh at these things. And some of my best emails have come from the random experiences that come with travelling (like accidentally doing a Heroic Dose of magic mushrooms).

Do not travel too fast.

I have moved every week for the past month, and it is horrible.

2-3 months per place is great. You can work most of the time and not miss much. I ended up spending close to 5 months in Buenos Aires—it is much nicer to go deeper in one place than skim the surface in many.

And I found myself a lovely girlfriend, Carolina, there too. The only challenge is the language barrier, as she does not speak English, and I do not speak Spanish. We are relying heavily on my original (incredibly smooth) pick-up line: the language of love is universal.

That story is TBC.

But even if you do travel fast, this rule is critical:

Keep consistent

The hardest part about nomading is being uprooted. You lose your routine, habits, and diet.

But a lot of that is cope, too.

During this trip, I exercise 5-6 days a week.

I kept my diet almost identical (eggs, cheese, milk, fruit, Greek yoghurt, steak, fish, pizza, the occasional ice cream, and a lot more steak—god bless South America). No fried food, and I rarely drank alcohol. You will be amazed at how much mood fluctuation is determined by your metabolic function.

I probably missed 3 days of writing in 9 months, too. You could argue the quality of the reps dropped on occasion: changing gym is annoying, being tired from flying, etc. But if you are serious about seeing the world and building your business, you can make it happen.

This leads me to the final tip:

Build leverage

Leverage is the intelligent person’s version of laziness.

It is a tool to get more done with less. You can be a nomad without a high-leverage business, but I sure as shit did not want to spend my days on calls when I could be exploring. I have one day of client calls per month; the rest of my coaching is asynchronous. I run cohorts so I can work in bursts. I have products so I can sell at scale.

Leverage is the key to freedom. Get very good at something so you can charge high prices. Build a series of scalable offers that disconnect your time from results. Build email automations to handle 80% of your business for you. Have processes laid out for every step in your business so that you have minimal friction and mental load. Automate your content process so you don’t need to go on social media.

Your time is too important to be bogged down in low-leverage work.

A final note on execution.

If I were to start again

I’m grateful that I spent a huge chunk of time locked in my flat in Leeds, building the foundations of my business.

But I also feel a pang of regret waiting until I was 33 to travel.

I’m too old for hostel parties and too young for wine farms. I went to two raves in Buenos Aires and felt like I aged 20 years.

I am always hesitant to give advice that I did not follow myself. But I was thinking that, if I had a son, and he wanted to travel, I would tell him to set up the start of a business where you are making 3-5k per month, then get the hell out of the UK and build elsewhere. Thailand, South Africa, and South America have all been awesome. The weather is warmer, the food is nicer, people are happier, everything is cheaper, and if you’re dating, it’s always good fun to be the foreigner.

Nomading is so good for building self-awareness and self-confidence. It is also a privilege to see more in a year than many do in a lifetime. Digital freedom is a gift we should not squander.

But the irony in this all?

The saddest time was saying goodbye to my mum.

The happiest time was saying hello to my mum.

Travelling the world will only make you realise, there is truly no place like home.

Hope this helps my freedom-focused amigo,

Kieran