How Anyone Can Get Started As A Digital Nomad
So you want to become a digital nomad, but you have no idea where to start?
Maybe you’ve been scrolling through Instagram, watching people work from cafés in Bali or sipping coffee with their laptops perched over turquoise oceans, thinking… how are they actually doing this?
You’ve probably seen so much advice out there that it feels confusing:
start a YouTube channel, build passive income, get a remote job, sell courses, learn coding, invest in crypto.
But what if you don’t have a ton of savings?
What if you’re not even sure what you’re good at yet?
And what if all you know is that you can’t keep living the same 9-5 life anymore?
If that’s you - you’re in exactly the right place.
I’m Christa Romano, a career coach who helps people create passion-led, location-independent remote businesses so they can live, work, and thrive anywhere in the world. I’ve been travelling full-time since 2013 (yep, before “digital nomad” was even a thing).
And here’s what I want you to know:
You can absolutely become a digital nomad even if you think you have no skills, no idea where to start, and no clue what your “thing” is yet.
👉 Let’s break this down step by step.
And if you want to go deeper after this, I walk you through my full process inside my free 90-minute masterclass on how to get started as a digital nomad → digitalnomadlifeacademy.com/masterclass
What Becoming a Digital Nomad Actually Means
Let’s clear something up first.
Being a digital nomad is not about endless vacations. It’s not about escaping real life or magically working 2 hours a day from a hammock.
It’s about building a career that gives you freedom of location, time, and choice.
That means:
You earn your income online.
You decide where you live.
You control your schedule.
You work with people and projects that light you up.
It’s not a fantasy. It’s a lifestyle you build.
And there’s more than one way to do it:
You can convince your boss to let you work remotely.
You can get a remote job.
You can build passive income streams.
Or - my personal favourite - you can start your own small service-based business.
All of those technically make you a digital nomad.
But if you want freedom, not just flexibility, keep reading.
Why a Small Service Business Is the Fastest Path to Freedom 👩💻
After a decade of living this lifestyle, here’s my truth:
The fastest and most sustainable way to become a digital nomad is by starting a small service-based business.
Let me explain why.
When you get a remote job, you might technically be free to travel, but your boss still decides your hours. If your company is in New York and you’re in Europe, you could find yourself working from 3 p.m. to midnight while your friends are out exploring castles and wine bars.
When you build passive income, like a YouTube channel or an online course, it can absolutely work… eventually. But it’s a long game. You’ll spend months creating content, editing videos, learning algorithms - often without making a cent. Burnout hits fast when your reward feels miles away.
But a service-based business?
That’s freedom on your timeline.
You choose one skill. You help real people. You get paid right away.
No algorithm. No waiting for an audience. Just you, your laptop, and a service that solves someone's problem.
And here’s the best part: you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. You just need one marketable skill.
🕵️ Step 1: Inventory Your Skills and Interests
Most people overcomplicate this step. They think, “I don’t have any skills anyone would pay for.”
Spoiler alert: you do.
Start here. Ask yourself:
What do I already know how to do?
What comes easily to me that feels hard for others?
What do I actually enjoy doing?
What am I curious to learn?
And equally important - what do I absolutely not want to do?
This step isn’t about being perfect or having it all figured out. It’s about clarity.
When I work with clients, we go through a deep “career inventory” together. We look at not only what they’re good at but what they want their lifestyle to feel like. Because that’s the point, right? You’re not trying to create another job that traps you. You’re building something that fits your life, not the other way around.
✨ Step 2: Choose One Marketable Skill
Once you’ve mapped out your strengths, it’s time to choose one skill to build your business around.
Just one.
Not ten. Not “all the things.” One.
Because when you go all in on one thing, you create focus, and focus creates results.
Here are a few ideas to get your wheels turning:
Pinterest Management
Copywriting
Podcast Editing
Social Media Management
Virtual Assistance
Branding or Design
Community Management
Video Editing
Email Marketing
The possibilities are endless.
And the best part? You can learn most of these skills online - for free or under $100.
Platforms like Skillshare, Udemy, and YouTube have full courses that will teach you everything you need to know. Give yourself one or two months to go deep. Take notes. Practice.
You’ll come out the other side with a skill that someone, somewhere, needs right now.
🧑💻 Step 3: Build a Simple Offer Around That Skill
Now that you know what you want to do, it’s time to package it.
Here’s where many people get stuck. They think they need a fancy website, a logo, a business plan, or a 20-step funnel before they can start.
Nope.
All you need right now is:
A clear description of what you do.
A clear description of who it’s for.
A price.
That’s it.
Say you chose Pinterest management. You could help e-commerce brands drive more traffic to their store. Or maybe you help coaches use Pinterest to grow their email list.
Those are two completely different offers.
The more specific you are, the easier it becomes to find and attract clients.
Your offer is your foundation. It tells people exactly how you can help and what results they can expect.
👋 Step 4: Start Marketing Yourself (Before You Feel Ready)
Here’s where the rubber meets the road.
You’ve learned the skill. You’ve created your offer. Now you have to tell people about it.
And yes, this part feels uncomfortable at first. You’ll doubt yourself. You’ll think, “Who am I to do this?” or “I’m not ready yet.”
But you are.
You get ready by doing it.
Start simple:
Post on LinkedIn or Instagram about what you’re offering.
Tell your friends and family, seriously. Most people find their first client through someone they already know.
Join Facebook groups or Slack communities for entrepreneurs.
Offer your first client a small discount in exchange for a testimonial.
Your first “yes” will change everything.
And the truth? You’re not trying to find 100 clients. You’re looking for four.
💸 Step 5: Replace Your Income (You’re Four Clients Away)
This is where it gets exciting.
You don’t need to be a millionaire to live like a digital nomad.
Let’s say you find four clients who each pay you $1,000 per month.
That’s $4,000/month - a full-time, location-independent income.
You’re officially free.
Let me put that into perspective.
When I lived in Bali, I paid $700/month for a massive villa with a private pool, state-of-the-art kitchen, lush garden, housekeeper, and gardener.
In Bangkok, I lived in a high-rise with a gym, rooftop pool, and concierge for $300/month.
Do you see what I’m saying?
$4,000/month can buy you not just a comfortable life, but an abundant one. One where you work with clients you like, live in places that inspire you, and wake up every day excited to open your laptop.
That’s what becoming a digital nomad is really about.
🌍 Step 6: Step Into the Community
Once you start earning income online, something magical happens.
You meet your people.
The other dreamers, doers, and freedom-seekers who get it. You’ll stop feeling like the “weird one” who wants more from life. You’ll start feeling like you belong.
And that’s when your growth skyrockets.
You’ll go from listening to beginner podcasts to tuning into business strategy ones. You’ll learn how to scale your income, outsource tasks, and maybe even build your own team.
But first, you just need to start.
That’s why I created the Digital Nomad Life Academy: to help you go from stuck to launched. From “no clue” to “remote income.” From dreamer to doer.
Because once you take that first leap, you’ll realize you were never behind. You were just preparing for takeoff.
🙏 The Truth: You Don’t Need to Be Special - You Just Need to Start
I’ve met hundreds of people who once thought, “I could never do that.”
Guess what? They’re doing it.
They learned a skill, got a few clients, and built freedom from scratch.
You can too.
Becoming a digital nomad isn’t about luck, timing, or connections. It’s about deciding that your dream life matters enough to take one small, imperfect step toward it today.
It’s about learning one skill, offering one service, and saying yes to one opportunity — again and again, until your reality looks completely different.
And honestly? That changes everything.
💫 Your Next Step
If this sparked something in you, don’t let the momentum fade.
You already know this life is possible. Now it’s time to make it yours.
Watch my free 90-minute masterclass on how to get started as a digital nomad at digitalnomadlifeacademy.com/masterclass.
I’ll walk you through the exact process I teach my clients, from finding your skill and defining your offer, to getting your first client and building your freedom-based remote business.
Because the truth is: you’re closer than you think.
The only thing standing between you and the life you want… is the first step.
Take it. 🌍
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(2) How Anyone Can Get Started As a Digital Nomad
[Christa] (0:00 - 15:12): So how do I get started as a digital nomad? I've been following your content for a while and your life looks amazing. I would love to do that too. I currently feel so stuck in my situation. I'm working a nine to five that I really just don't like and all I want to do is travel but I have no idea how to get started. Can you help me?
Hey guys, I'm Christa from Christabellatravels and this is a question that I have gotten on a weekly if not daily basis for the last three years since I really created my Instagrams and started sharing about my life as a digital nomad and I wanted to make this second episode of my podcast to address this most frequently asked question. So obviously if you're listening to this podcast, I don't know who you are, right?
You are an anonymous listener to me and here's the thing. Becoming a digital nomad is not the easiest thing to answer for someone that I have literally no information about but I'm going to do my best to give you an overall view of how you can change your life, become a digital nomad, have ultimate freedom, travel the world, make a full-time income, feel financially secure, be financially secure.
Whoever you are listening to this, I feel so confident, so confident that you can have this lifestyle but look, it's not going to be a walk in the park. You're going to have to do some freaking work about it. You're not going to be able to just slide into someone's DMs and get the answer handed to you on a silver platter because if someone is going to hand you the answer, it's going to be in a long form answer like this podcast.
Otherwise, they're freaking lying to you. Okay. So before I get into the content, just wanted to introduce myself. I kind of already did. Anyway, I'm Christa from Christabellatravels. If you guys want to find me on Instagrams or TikTok, I make a lot of content talking about my digital nomad life. I personally got started in 2013, way back when, way before there was Instagrams or anybody talking about digital nomadism. I figured this stuff out all on my own, which was a trip.
It was a journey and it took me a really long time. If you're curious about how I personally got started, how I managed to travel to 60 countries over the last eight years, see the world all while making a full-time income, you can listen to the first episode of this podcast because that is where I really reveal all of the emotions and all the things that came along with the start of my journey.
But I'm not here to talk about me. I'm here to talk about you. I want to help you. I want to empower you to become a digital nomad. In fact, that's actually what I do full-time for my digital nomad job now. I'm a business coach and I help people create online businesses. I specifically help people create small service provider businesses. So that is predominantly what I'm going to be talking about today in terms of answering this question, how to become a digital nomad. Because the truth is, there are so many ways that you can become a digital nomad.
If you already have a job and you create a really great campaign to ask your boss, if you can work remotely and they say yes, then you technically could be a digital nomad. As soon as they say, yes, all you need to do is book a plane ticket and go work from somewhere else. And then boom, there you are. You've got the lifestyle.
If you want to create passive income, let's say you want to create an online course and sell that. And so that it makes money for you in your sleep,
or maybe you want to create YouTube videos that are eight hours long because it's actually a sleep meditation. And then you get monetized and then YouTube pays you. That's another way that you can make money online.
And all you need to do again is book a plane ticket as long as you've got an income and boom, you're a digital nomad.
If you want to get a remote job, there are hundreds of remote job boards out there. I'm not just saying there are remote jobs. There are remote job boards, like boards where you can go look and find hundreds of thousands of remote jobs that are available right now. That's possible too.
But why do I help people create small service provider businesses?
It's because it's the fastest way to start making an income and it provides for you the most freedom. The kind of people that I want to work with are people that want to be digital nomads because they want freedom. They don't want to be digital nomads so that they can be a stay-at-home mom. They want freedom. They want full freedom.
And so with that in mind, when you're creating a passive income stream, the reason why I don't focus on that, one, because I don't know as much about it, but two, because it's really such a long game. You really have to put in a lot, a lot of work, thankless hours sitting behind your laptop.
You're probably going to be doing something that you're not passionate about and therefore burnout is something that's likely going to happen to you. And I'm here to get people results. I don't want people to get burned out. So also with a remote job, I did that for years.
It was fabulous. I loved my experience working remotely for a company that was based in the US, but there were times that I wasn't able to do really special things in the destinations that I was in because I had to clock into my office job when it was like three in the afternoon because I happened to be in Europe at the time. So yeah, I personally think that having your own business where you're just working with a few clients per month and you're exchanging just one skill to help them is going to be the fastest way.
So you're not going to have to do all this thankless work at the beginning. You're going to be able to do work that you feel passionate about. And yeah, the startup is not, the runway startup is not that long in order for you to start from exactly where you are at now. Like I acknowledged before, I have no idea who you are. I have no idea what skills you have in your toolbox. I have no idea if you even know how to turn on a laptop.
I assume that you found this podcast though, and that you have some basic digital skills. And therefore for me, that's all that I care about.
So here's the process that I walk my clients through.
Basically, I have my clients, I take them through this career assessment where I take a full inventory of all the skills that they currently have, asking them about skills they are curious about learning, skills that they know they definitely don't have and definitely don't want to learn, plus all these other questions.
And in the end, I'm able to... Actually, it's quite an intuitive process.
I am not sure how I'm able to have such great success with this experience, but I'm usually able to suggest a small service provider role for my clients within a matter of an hour.
And then they're like, oh my gosh, this is exactly what I should be learning.
Yes, I will do this. They don't need to have the skill already.
What I teach my clients is that if you have decided what skill it is that you want to leverage to become a digital nomad, to work online, to make money online, then there are so many resources out there. There are so many resources out there for you to learn skills online.
Let's say that you want to become a Pinterest manager. You can learn Pinterest for free, or you can learn Pinterest for a very small cost taking an online course on Udemy or Skillshare or something like that. So just learn the skill, learn the skill, and then boom, you have all the ability to become a Pinterest manager.
And you don't need to spend that long learning it. Give yourself one month, two months to go deep learning this platform, and you've got a highly marketable skill. Pinterest is just one example. There's literally hundreds of other things that you can do. The possibilities are truly endless.
Anyway, once you have this skill, then it's time to create your business around it. So you're going to get really clear on exactly who it is that you want to help, because that's going to be the foundations of all your marketing. And then you're going to come up with an offer for that person.
So, you know, someone who has a huge e-commerce business is going to have very, very different needs on Pinterest than someone who is a solopreneur. So you as a Pinterest manager, as a freelancer, as a small service provider, you need to get really clear on who that person is so that you can create an offer that is specifically tailored to them.
And then once you do that, once you have your offer created, now it's time to start marketing yourself. And there's so many ways that you can market yourself, but I personally think the best way to market yourself is through word of mouth. Just start telling the people in your circle what it is that you're doing. Ask them if they know anybody else who needs this service that you're offering. And I promise you, if you keep doing this for, I don't know, a couple of months or really just start telling everybody that you know, your first client will come in and the rest is going to all just fall into place.
For me, this is what I recommend how anybody should become a digital nomad. Because once you have an income, once you have a few clients who are paying you, let's say you have four clients. Okay. It's not crazy to think that there are four people in the world who might want to pay you for whatever your said skill is that you're going to learn.
Four clients, they're each paying you say a thousand dollars a month. A thousand dollars is not a crazy amount to expect anyone with a business to pay someone who's helping them grow their business. So this is extremely feasible, extremely manageable, extremely realistic.
So yeah, you have four clients who are paying you $4,000 a month. You are golden, my friend, you are golden. You've got a full-time income that is going to get you very, very far in specific places. I personally happen to be in Bali right now.
Can I just tell you that my gorgeous, huge villa with a pool and a state-of-the-art kitchen and a gorgeous lawn with a garden around it, I have a housekeeper come in three times a week and a gardener come in once a week?
Do you know how much... And all the electricity, do you know how much I'm paying for that? $700.
What is that? What is that? Or if you want to go to Thailand, I also used to live in Bangkok. I lived on the 27th floor of a high-rise apartment with a gym and a pool and a private concierge downstairs, $300, $300 a month.
So if you're making 4K with your four clients, you have so much freedom to go travel to some really exotic, amazing destinations and feel really financially secure while you're there. And as I was just about to say, it got a little sidetracked there, but once you get started, then all of a sudden, I promise you, if you are making a full-time income and you are traveling or you are working from a different destination, you will meet other digital nomads. And then you're not going to be listening to a podcast like this.
You're going to be listening to business podcasts. You're going to be listening to podcasts that are specifically for your industry.
You're going to be listening to podcasts that are going to help you scale whatever your unique business is. I'm here to just help you launch free, to take you out of the nest, to help open your eyes so that you can understand that this is possible for you.
Am I going to take you to a million dollars? No, that's someone else's job.
That's something that I'm doing on my own time for me. But what I'm really passionate about is helping people that are just at the very, very, very beginning that literally think that they have nothing to offer the world. Whoever you are, I promise you this couldn't be farther from the truth.
All you need to learn is just one, one skill, one marketable skill that you can learn for free or for extremely cheap prices. That's going to be great, high quality content. Learn that skill, decide who it is that you want to offer it to, create your offer, market your offer, listen to marketing content.
I'm not going to teach you all the ways about marketing here on this podcast. I would be talking for months.
Marketing is a beast. We can save that for another time. But that's generally how I would recommend you starting off as a digital nomad.
Now, if you're listening to this podcast being like, Oh, I was really curious about visas and how can I travel with my dog and like, whatever, I would love it if you could slide into my DMS at Christabellatravels on Instagrams. Let me know that you heard this podcast and that you actually have specific questions because I'm just out here creating content, hoping that I can help some stranger out there change their life. But if I don't know what you guys are looking for, what you really want to hear, then I'm just going to be making, you know, whatever content. So I really invite you to touch base, get in touch with love, love, love to hear from you. And if you are curious about my coaching, I also invite you to follow Christabellatravels coaching on Instagrams. This is not a profile that I put anywhere in public. Like I'm not writing it in the description, right? I don't want people to find it unless they're invested in hearing what I have to say. So if you've gotten this far in the podcast and you want to slide into my exclusive channel, Christabellatravels coaching, let's talk there.
And I can tell you all about my next group program where I take people from literally from scratch. I walk them through that whole career assessment experience that I talked to you about already at the beginning of this podcast, and then guide you through every single step that you need to take, not just to create the start of your business, but to also scale your business. Plus you're going to meet awesome people. You're going to have a whole community of like-minded people who also want to be digital nomads and it's going to be fabulous. It's going to be fabulous. Okay. I think that's all I have to say on this matter. Thank you so much for listening to the digital nomad life podcast, and I'll see you guys in the next episode.