Our Crazy 17-Year Journey from Budget Backpackers to Digital Nomads

If you’ve been following us from the beginning of our journey into this freedom-filled lifestyle (since 2008!), you’ll know that we didn’t start off as coaches, bloggers, creators, or business owners. We were just two, 24-year-old budget backpackers with 65L packs, a dream of travel and freedom, and no idea where it would all lead. … Read more

The post Our Crazy 17-Year Journey from Budget Backpackers to Digital Nomads appeared first on Goats On The Road.

If you’ve been following us from the beginning of our journey into this freedom-filled lifestyle (since 2008!), you’ll know that we didn’t start off as coaches, bloggers, creators, or business owners.

We were just two, 24-year-old budget backpackers with 65L packs, a dream of travel and freedom, and no idea where it would all lead.

If you don’t know our story… here it is from 2008 to now:

Back in 2008, we quit our jobs in Canada, sold our condominium, our vehicle, and basically everything we owned. We swapped a 9-5 at a corporate office and graveyard shifts at a packaging plant, for one-way tickets to Southeast Asia and a life of total freedom on the road.

After that first taste of travel, we were hooked. We knew we wanted to build a life around travel…we just had to figure out how.

Now, here we are 17 years later…more than 80 countries visited, and residents of Bulgaria. Along the way, we’ve built 4 businesses, and created 4 online courses.

We’ve taught over 1,000 people how to launch their own personal brands…and 50 people have personally been coached by us.

This is the story of how we went from budget backpackers to personal brand coaches, and how Goats On The Road grew, shifted, and reinvented itself over more than a decade online.

The Backpacker Era (2008 – 2012)

Let’s rewind a bit here. All the way back to 2008.

Like I said, we had quit our jobs and we were backpacking around the world – living on $30 a day at one point.

We’d sleep in bamboo huts, ride on the roofs of buses (not recommended!), and document our journey on a free blog platform and Facebook for our family and friends back home.

During those years, we backpacked all around Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and couple of places in Europe. The longer we stayed on the road, the more we fell in love with the lifestyle.

But, we had one slight problem…our money was running out!

We didn’t want to return home. We were terrified that one day we’d have to go back to our normal jobs.

And so when the money did start running out… I actually ended up having a meltdown on the beach in the Philippines.

Being on the road had become our lifestyle and I couldn’t envision myself working back in Canada in an office, under florescent lighting all day.

We needed to figure something out. And fast.

So, we regrouped and dove head-first into figuring out a way to make money on the road doing something we loved.

The Remote Era (2012 – 2015)

During that time on the road, we realized we didn’t want to just travel. We wanted to earn an income abroad and build a lifestyle around freedom – to become digital nomads … keep in mind… this was before the term “Digital Nomad” was even a thing!

I remember it like it was yesterday, we stopped in at dark internet cafe in Delhi, India. The kind of place we’d go to get a wired internet connection (this was back before hotels and hostels even had wifi, and we didn’t have a smartphone).

It cost around $1 per hour of (very slow) internet.

I searched “how to make money for travel” and up popped a blog post by, Johnny Ward of OneStep4Ward. He said he was making $1,500 a month from his blog!

I turned to Nick: “Can you figure out how to build a website?!”

And so it began!

We ended up teaching ourselves WordPress and basic coding so we could build our website and brand “Goats On The Road” – which we started in February, 2012 from a beach hut on the island of Koh Phangan in Thailand.

We shared our travel stories, how-to’s, photos, and videos on our blog, YouTube channel, and Facebook page.

We didn’t know it then, but this was the beginning of our personal brand.

While we were building up Goats On The Road, we taught English in China for a year to supplement our income. And while we enjoyed that era of our lives, teaching English was only a stepping stone for us – we knew we weren’t going to work for someone else after that.

Once we started creating our website, writing content and networking with other bloggers (there were only a handful of us!), we realized we really enjoyed it. We had a feeling this could have potential and we knew this would be our way to make money on the road.

We’d be our own boss, make our own schedule, and continue our dream of travel and the unconventional lifestyle we’d been leading.

The Growth Era (2016 – 2018)

Sharing online is one thing, but to turn our personal stories into an actual business, we needed real skills. So, we expanded our skillset and spent a lot of time researching and investing in courses & elearning.

We learned SEO (search engine optimization) and were even asked to speak about it on podcasts, and at virtual events…and eventually, we created a course around it.

We also learned email marketing and the power of social media, and of course, we continued with storytelling – something we’d been doing since 2008.

We kept showing up online, networking, learning and sharing. And slowly…momentum happened and it was like a snowball rolling down a hill, gathering speed and growing as it went!

Our brand started earning real money through advertising and affiliate marketing.

And, since Goats On The Road was well-known, with a loyal audience, and lots of visitors coming to our website each month (500,000 people/month )…tourism boards and companies flew us around the world to tell stories about their destinations and services.

It was surreal!

Our vision for creating a lifestyle of freedom through our own business, while sharing with others and doing something we loved was coming true.

The little blog we built from a rickety beach hut had turned into our full-time income.

The Education Era (2018 – 2019)

With the business growing, we felt the next pull: teach others how to do what we do. This is what we’ve always done – we do, we master (or try to), then we teach it.

So, we evolved again.

We became so passionate about blogging, SEO and building a personal brand, that we wanted to share it with the world. We couldn’t believe more people weren’t doing it!