That's by far the most frequent question we've been asked so far. Quite simply, I also have a really successful Only Fans account and have won the lottery. Joking aside, of course not. But admittedly it would be quite convenient. ;-)
First of all, to all readers, this is definitely not a guide on how to make easy money and afford an upscale lifestyle with a bit of remote work on the beach under palm trees or any other dubious coaching or mentoring offers.
Here it comes: It doesn't work like that! But it is still suggested and promised by countless self-proclaimed experts. How then? Hard work and, once again, hard work. I always compare this to when people want to lose weight, there is no miracle pill or secret recipe for that either. The only thing that really helps is exercise and a balanced diet, and it's similar with this topic.
So with this article we just want to clear up a few prejudices and describe our personal view of this lifestyle, and believe us, we speak from experience.
"Basically, travelling and earning a living don't have much to do with each other, except for one essential point, that with our equipment we can do 80% of our work from anywhere in the world."
The remaining 20% of our time we are also location-bound and have to, or rather want to, be on location with our clients to get a better look & feel of the brand/service, to get to know each other personally and to be able to start and focus more complex projects better, to hold hands-on workshops or for simple content creation for clients in the form of social media photography and videography.
For us, it was an important factor that we found and build a sustainable and economically stable company in addition to our travels, so that we would also have the opportunity to make agile decisions about our own lifestyle in the long term.
"Of course, we could have relaxed and spent a year in the sun with our savings, but afterwards we would have had to return to the same hamster wheel, and that is exactly what we want to avoid!"
But what are we actually doing professionally now?
Many of you may have heard by now that we founded a small agency specialising in Social Media Marketing at the beginning of 2021: LET'S GET SOCIAL BY FRAEBITUDE. That's right, at times I'm also active as an "Influencer" (@fraebitude 27.5 K) but we don't earn our bread and butter with that. But I will dedicate a separate blog post to this topic soon. :)
Why a social media marketing agency?
Through our professional careers, we have always had to deal with different marketing agencies and it was always incomprehensible to our side that the marketing agencies never really focused on the end customer, but were only interested in selling cool concepts but never in strategically and validating reaching the end customer and ensuring implementation. Sure, theoretically great concepts, which they also let themselves cost quite a bit, but practically often completely missing the reality and no guideline for the implementation.
Also, it always seems to be the goal to make the client dependent on the agency. We take the opposite approach and offer sustainable solutions through knowledge transfer, guidelines, workshops, etc. so that social media can be handled professionally in-house.
"For me, social media marketing is much more than a pretty picture with a quote underneath. It is about a strategy I vision that inspires the end customer or follower and thereby turns them into fans. For a successful communication strategy, social media is simply indispensable for companies."
That's why social media and I think it's simply brilliant when our ideas and concepts become reality and bring the desired success and we can grow together sustainably.
The fact that we can now live from this business model and also employ the first freelancers with it, actually has mainly to do with a lot of really hard work and discipline. Of course, we also have the necessary experience, after I have been intensively involved with the topic for years and have built up a proud community of over 27 K followers with my own creator account.
To give you an example, our average working time per week/person is around 50 hours to sometimes 70 hours. But we don't find that too bad because we enjoy our work, we do it for ourselves and for our self-determined lifestyle. It also brings us a certain fulfillment because every project and every move/click makes sense to us.
So my conclusion is that if you want to travel full time and build up a business at the same time, you actually need even more discipline, structure and stamina.
The fact is that the risk of distractions from the beach, mountains, sights, shopping, fancy restaurants etc. on the road is very high and travel complicates a lot of things. Bad wifi, time differences, no quiet workspace etc. are just a few but you can definitely balance it well with the right business model and good planning.
PS: One more piece of advice, if you really want to build your own business, please don't hire dodgy Instagram coaches or mentors and throw money at them for some pointless ebooks that promise you the moon. Instead, please turn to official and reputable authorities. There are official funding authorities in every region that will support you professionally and free of charge in your start-up or self-employment.
Cheers
Fabian & Alexandra
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