The world is their offce
Hot-desking takes on a whole new meaning for the digital nomads who ply their trade across the globe wherever there is Wi-Fi.
They need to earn only £600 a month. They have managed this by moving into a camper van and living simply
William Thomson’s day starts at about seven, with his partner, Naomi Tipping, in bed beside him, their baby daughter on one side of them and their water spaniel, Alfe, on the other. Their wake-up call tends to be either the dog whining or the baby cooing, he says with a laugh. They all head of to the beach for a long walk before breakfast, after which his working day begins.
The view from Thomson’s ofce is often breathtaking but he tries not to focus on it too much. He runs a design business, and will put in two intense three-hour sessions Monday to Friday before heading into a picturesque British coastal town to explore, or back to the beach for swimming, paddle-boarding and surfng. This autumn, when the sea starts to get chilly in the UK, he and his family plan to head of to Spain and Portugal, where they will continue with a similar mix of work and play throughout the winter. If this lifestyle sounds idyllic, you may be surprised to know that Thomson and Tipping need to earn only just over £600 a month to get by. They have managed this by moving into a camper van, living simply and working from a laptop with a mobile Wi-Fi connection while touring the British coast.
With fast internet connections spreading across the world and increasing numbers of people able to conduct their business online, this kind of location-independent lifestyle is becoming more common, and Thomson and Tipping have become part of a growing demographic known as digital nomads – people who can live and work anywhere in the world.
They met in the coastal town of Deal, in Kent, soon after fnishing university (she studied fne art; he read architecture). Tipping had an old Land Rover; Thomson had spotted a large piece of driftwood in a nearby bay that he wanted to make into a piece of furniture. They were clearly well matched, and soon moved into a rented house together, making bespoke furniture and working various odd jobs to get by, while running a pop-up gallery showing work by local artists in their living room at weekends.
Thomson also volunteered at the lifeboat station on the beach, which is where he learnt about tidal flow. Most of us assume that the current flows in the same direction as the tide as it goes in and out – but that isn’t so. In Deal, for instance, the tidal flow goes northwards for six hours – two hours before high tide, four after – before changing direction. This is important information for sailors, windsurfers, scuba divers and pretty much anyone who enjoys being on or in the sea. But working it out requires tide tables and local knowledge, or poring over hydrographic charts or a tidal-stream atlas.
Thomson designed a tidal compass for the lifeboat station, an attractive chart showing which way the flow was heading, and for how long. Later he realised that others might use it, so he began selling prints. The demand surprised him, and soon he was getting requests to make them for other places: local spots at frst, but then further afeld, even outside the UK. He saw this could be a business, but to get new stockists he found he needed to go in with a chart to explain it properly – letters or emails just didn’t work. But he was too busy working to take time out to do this. ‘We got so tied down,’ he says. ‘Every month
you’ve got to earn a certain amount to pay the rent and the bills, and there wasn’t time to grow the business. And that got quite frustrating.’
Thomson dreamt about taking a yacht on a slow voyage around the UK, stopping of to show the chart to shops and galleries, but they couldn’t aford a boat – and they were about to become parents. Then he had his eureka moment: they would make their voyage by road instead. ‘I was about six months pregnant at the time,’ Tipping says, ‘but I thought it was a great idea. I’m always up for an adventure.’
After their daughter, Ottilie, was born last August, they bought a second-hand Vauxhall Movano van and converted it themselves. They spent £7,000 in total: to buy it, ft it out and insulate it. In March they set of along the Kent and Sussex coastline, round the Isle of Wight, through Dorset, Devon and Cornwall, recording their experiences on a blog at tidalcompass.com. When I caught up with them last month, they were back in Devon and planning to drive across to Aldeburgh in Sufolk, then follow the east coast to Edinburgh.
There have been challenges. On the Isle of Wight one night they had parked right next to the sea but had to move the van in the middle of the night because the wind was so strong they were scared they might get blown in. It rained throughout their tour of Devon, then they both got terrible food poisoning – ‘Not fun in a van!’ – learning the hard way that their cool box doesn’t keep food fresh for as long as a fridge does. But they are full of enthusiasm and aim to keep going as long as they can.
Next May they plan to paddle-board the 400 miles from Deal to Falmouth, using the tidal fow to push them along. They will take turns foating in the sea for six hours at a time, using their charts to work out when the current will carry them westwards, while the other drives the van to their next meeting point. They hope to spend the summer in Scandinavia, with perhaps an extended trip to America after that, as they are starting to get orders from there. Thomson designs the charts on his laptop as orders come in, then sends them to his printer in Kent, who mails them out to customers.
Meanwhile, their blog is gathering followers and they have found stockists for the tidal compass in almost every town they have visited. Thomson says going into galleries with his daughter in a sling has proved an icebreaker. They are also making new products such as witty water-related T-shirts.
‘I’ve got a lot more time to be creative and think about things that will beneft the business longterm, without having to earn cash straight away to pay that month’s bills,’ Thomson says. He acknowledges that at some point they will have to stop moving, to give their daughter playmates and put her into school. They are thinking about buying some land to build a compact cabin somewhere, or trying a houseboat. ‘I don’t think we would ever want to go back to living in a normal house.’
Last year the veteran nomads Erin McNeaney and her partner, Simon Fairbairn, both 34, spent a few months running their online businesses from Guatemala, in an apartment overlook- ing Lake Atitlán and its three volcanoes. Their day usually began early, joining a yoga class beside the lake. Then they would work, taking a break every now and then for a swim. ‘It was very simple,’ McNeaney says. ‘We didn’t go out much, we didn’t even eat out much, but it was a really nice way of living. That can be just as rewarding, if not more, as doing Machu Picchu and all of the big sights.’
They tend to travel slowly, staying for a few months in one beautiful place. So far this year they have explored Mexico and Finland, with short spells back in the UK visiting family and friends. When I spoke to them they were in Rome for a few days before sailing along the Amalf coast – they did their beginners’ crew qualification in 2014, in Malaysia – and they were planning to spend the winter in Thailand and Bali.
The apartment in Guatemala cost only £400 a month, and in Bali they are confdent that for about £500 they will be able to rent a two-bedroom villa with a private pool (they will need the second bedroom because Fairbairn’s mother is planning a visit;
‘We’ve never missed any of the stuff we got rid of. We travel with a carry-on-size backpack each. It gives an enormous sense of freedom’
they still see family regularly, either overseas or on stopovers in the UK between fights).
Their adventure began in 2008, after they had saved up to take a year out as backpackers. When they returned home to Manchester, McNeaney went back to her job at a community-arts charity and Fairbairn started training as a web designer. But they weren’t happy. ‘It was dark, rainy and miserable, and we really struggled to adapt to life back in the UK, especially the 9-5 routine when we were used to doing new and exciting things every day.’ So they decided to sell up and travel indefnitely. For the next nine months they saved while Fairbairn worked on his web-design skills and McNeaney – who didn’t even have a Facebook page at that point – learnt about blogging. They also sold or gave away everything they owned, raising some £20,000 to support them while they found their feet.
‘We’ve never missed any of the stuf we got rid of,’ she says. ‘ We travel with just a carry-on-size backpack each so we can pack all of our belongings in 10 minutes and move anywhere we want easily. It gives us an enormous sense of freedom.’ It helps, she adds, that you can carry so much around in digital form – books, flms, music.
Her main income comes from her travel blog, Never Ending Voyage. Fairbairn gradually moved away from web design and taught himself to create iPhone apps, using online courses. He designs and refnes apps such as Trail Wallet, which helps track expenses so that travellers can stay within their budget more easily. ‘We created it because it is something that we needed,’ McNeaney explains. They can live well on a budget of about £1,000 a month, she says. In places such as Thailand you can eat out for very little and hire a motorbike for £65 a month. This enables them to spend three to four months a year on more expensive trips to Europe and America.
Five years on, they still have savings left. ‘It’s good to have a cushion. We have lots of diferent sources of income, and that’s important too, because in the digital world things are always changing. You can’t just rely on one thing,’ McNeaney says.
Looking on the many forums and chat rooms now catering to the lifestyle, it seems digital nomads have a huge variety of jobs. There are designers, computer coders, online marketers, but also novelists, translators, stock traders and therapists (who work with clients by Skype or phone), yoga teachers – even lawyers and doctors. There are hubs where they tend to congregate – relaxed, beautiful places where the cost of living is cheap and the Wi-Fi is good – such as Ubud in Bali, Chiang Mai in Thailand and Medellín in Colombia, and McNeaney says that she defnitely feels part of a global community. ‘We have friends that we’ve met up with on four continents.’
With new lifestyle choices come new business opportunities, as Felicia Hargarten, 33, and Marcus Meurer, 37, realised when they gave up their corporate jobs in Germany three years ago to travel and start businesses of their own. Drawing on their experience in online marketing, they set up as freelance consultants, but now have multiple income streams: building websites, consulting, investing in business start-ups in Berlin, and running a popular German-language travel blog that has about 50,000 visitors a month. They are easily earning as much as they did in the corporate world, Meurer says, but also work harder than many nomads they meet, often working into the night while others are out partying. ‘But it doesn’t feel like work because you’re doing something that you’re passionate about.’
For them the big challenge has been isolation. No matter how close you are as a couple, sometimes you long for the input of colleagues, or just some office banter. So in 2012 they organised DNX, a conference in Berlin aimed at digital nomads and people thinking of becoming one. They have held two a year since, attracting up to 500 to Berlin for a weekend of talks, workshops and networking.
When I caught up with them via Skype they were in Tarifa, Spain, and about to visit SunDesk, a coworking space near Agadir in Morocco. SunDesk has the all-important fast Wi-Fi and communal workspaces. You can rent a desk for the day or book accommodation within the house for longer stays. Hargarten and Meurer were hosting their frst DNX Camp, a more temporary co-working break in a rented villa, which had attracted a designer, a travel blogger, a photographer setting up an online course, a life coach beginning a blog about yoga, and the head of an app company. It was so successful they are already planning two more this year – one in Lisbon, the other in Brazil. ‘It’s inspiring to talk to people with diferent businesses, because we travel mostly alone,’ Meurer says.
Hans Meyer, the founder of the CitizenM hip hotel chain, was also struck by this need for community. Backpackers, he points out, fnd this easily. ‘The nice thing about a low-budget hostel is that you jump out of your bunk and plan to have a coffee before going out – then two hours later you’re still sitting round this big table with a lot of people you didn’t know before. This never happens in a more upmarket hotel.’
It is something he hopes to change with his new venture, Zoku, a hybrid of serviced apartment, co-working space and hotel. The frst will open in Amsterdam this autumn, with loft spaces that are twice the size of a normal hotel room, and made for living and working as well as sleeping. Each room has a large bed that is hidden behind screens during the day, when the focus becomes a big table where guests can eat, meet, work and entertain. Zoku’s communal spaces ofer places to work with other people or to hang out, and staf are trained to encourage networking. There is also a cafe and regular events drawing in locals too.
Although you will be able to stay at Zoku overnight for about the cost of a four-star hotel, the long-term guests it wants to encourage will pay considerably less. Its main clients, Meyer hopes, will be digital nomads and people working overseas on short-term contracts.
Before launching Zoku, Meyer felt it was important to try out the lifestyle himself, taking a year out to run his hotel business remotely while renting an apartment in Buenos Aires, then moving to Washington, DC, and on to Bali. There were frustrations. He ended up having to carry a portable printer, and he often lacked a big table to work on. ‘And I hate it when the internet is expensive or unstable.’ But on the whole the experiment was a success. ‘It gave me the opportunity to get to know a new country, to live there like a local, while still running my company.’ He once spent a morning sitting by the pool in Bali while participating in a brainstorming session with a Dutch university via Skype. ‘At lunchtime you’d just dive in the pool and swim for half an hour, then start work again,’ he says. ‘Or what could be better than being able to close your laptop for a while and have a cofee break in a square in the middle of Marrakesh?’
The Tidal Compass costs £60, including postage, from tidalcompass.com. Erin McNeaney’s travel blog is at neverendingvoyage.com. The frst DNX Global conference will be in Berlin, July 31-August 1; tickets are €197 (dnxglobal.com). Zoku will be opening in Amsterdam this autumn (livezoku.com)
They are thinking about … trying a houseboat. ‘I don’t think we would ever want to go back to living in a normal house’