Reflecting on the past and worrying about the future are exercises in futility.
Let’s learn a little about you and really get to experience what makes us tick – starting at our beginnings. Where did your story begin?
Nora Dunn: My story was born of a lifelong dream to travel the world in a culturally immersive way; breaking bread around dinner tables around the world, learning and understanding the daily lives and dreams and worries and aspirations of people from different cultures. Through early adulthood, I learned that limited-time vacations didn’t allow me to make the cultural inroads and connections I longed for; that in order for me to realize my dream, I had to make travel a lifestyle.
By then I was 30 years old, and a busy financial planner, having achieved many of the milestones of success as society would define it. But I couldn’t wait for a far-off retirement to live my travel dreams when I might be unwilling or unable to do the kind of travel I knew I wanted to. So, I sold everything and took the road on little more than a wing and a prayer.
Initially, I didn’t know where I would go, what I’d do, nor how I would financially sustain my travels (beyond the profits of selling my financial planning practice, which would last two years). But the lightbulb went off for me when I realized an internet connection plus my laptop plus my penchant for writing could equate to an income that could keep me going. (Remember: terms like “location independent”, “remote work”, and “digital nomad” had yet to be coined).
Much to my own surprise as much as anybody else’s, after developing a nice stream of income as a freelance writer on the topics of personal finance and travel, I also ended up as one of the original Travel Bloggers and content creators. People call me a “pioneer” in the industry; I prefer to think I was in the right place at the right time.
Can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey? Did you ever consider giving up?
Nora Dunn: When I started traveling full-time, I thought I was the only person in the world to ever undertake such a crazy adventure. While of course, I wasn’t the only person, there wasn’t an online infrastructure for such things as exists now. What this meant was that I made just about every mistake in the book one can make regarding figuring out how to travel as a full-time lifestyle and to earn money remotely!
Also, I suffered a few incidental hard knocks along the way, like surviving 3 natural disasters, 3 tropical diseases, 2 robberies, 1 near-fatal accident, and a few more breakups than I’d care to admit to! But in my opinion travel misadventures make for the best stories with a good dose of retrospect, so now I can look back on these experiences with some (perverse) degree of nostalgia!
Regarding building a business as a travel blogger before travel blogging as an industry existed, my blog (like many travel blogs at the time) started simply a passion project. As an industry built up around me I found myself unwittingly on the leading edge of the wave. It served me very well….until it didn’t, and I felt overwhelmed and out of my depth with sophisticated things like SEO and other website management idiosyncrasies that weren’t in my wheelhouse. I thought about giving up a number of times, and for a few years, I actually kept my blog on the back burner while I pursued other things (I was apprenticing with a shaman in Peru for two years). When I returned to my blog after a 3-year semi-hiatus, I had a rude awakening and really had to work hard to catch up with the times.
What are the most common mistakes you see entrepreneurs make and what would you suggest they do?
Nora Dunn: I’m going to answer this question specifically to the matter of people who are interested in lifestyle travel and working remotely because I see many mistakes made in this realm (and in fact, I am dedicated to helping people avoid these – and other – mistakes).
First of all many if not most remote workers who start traveling long-term make the most classic mistake (and yes, I did it too); they try to travel too fast.
When you work full-time, traveling at the same (or even a remotely similar) pace to what you’re accustomed to while on vacation is a recipe for disaster. In fact, I’d even wager that changing locations every month is too fast a pace of travel if you want to sustain it as a lifestyle. Travel involves a lot of work, and each time you change the location you need to select the destination, research where to go and stay, book transportation, and make various arrangements like applying for visas. Then when you arrive, you need to orient yourself and figure out how to “live” there. All of this takes a huge amount of time and energy! That says nothing of actually going out and discovering your destination; and if you’re working full-time concurrently, you’ll soon realize you just signed up for two jobs: travel and work. And one is generally done at the expense of the other.
Has the pandemic and transitioning into mostly online shopping affected your company positively or negatively?
Nora Dunn: The pandemic very much affected my business, but less so because of the transition to online shopping, and more so because the entire travel industry came to a complete and utter halt. In March 2020, I immediately lost 50% of the traffic to my website, which directly affected most of my income streams. Many of the affiliate programs I work with also shut down which further drove my income down. Then in May 2020, a Google algorithm update slashed another 50% of my traffic. 2020 started off as a banner year for me, and six months later, I was earning a fraction of what I’d previously earned.
I’m big on silver linings, so I’ll throw out there the silver lining that it was an opportunity for me to take a critical look at the structure of my online business, which I realized was way too dependent on getting traffic to my website, which in turn was at the mercy of factors out of my control like algorithm updates.
So I made various efforts to diversify income streams, as well as to double down on an emerging market that I was already serving, and realized I could serve exponentially more in the future. That market is the millions of newly-minted remote workers; people whose jobs were made remote because of the pandemic, and who will have the possibility to continue to work remotely in a post-pandemic world. With location independence, some of these people will want to take their jobs on the road and travel long-term while working from abroad – and that is 100% something I have been helping people do for 15 years!
So my latest entrepreneurial efforts have been focused on serving this market in a variety of ways, including a video interview series, personal consulting, and the development of an online curriculum. I’m really enjoying the personal consulting in particular, which is a throwback to my financial planning days, where I can get deep into helping people in very specific and personalized ways – from personal finance to arranging logistics to ensuring there are no blind spots in their travel lifestyle plans.
In your opinion, what makes your company stand out from the competition?
Nora Dunn: I am considered one of the original travel bloggers, but my website is not full of pretty pictures of destinations and listicles of “10 things to do in X” (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Instead, as a former Certified Financial Planner, my expertise lies in the finance of lifestyle travel, parlaying my full-time travel experience and my financial expertise to help people travel full-time in a financially sustainable way.
For my first 10 years on the road, I even published my annual expenses and income to prove that full-time travel doesn’t have to be prohibitively expensive. I also have a Financial Case Studies series profiling the lifestyles and careers (and incomes!) of other people who travel full-time and work remotely. Lastly, I have a collection of free and extensive Travel Lifestyle Guides on my website that tackle the pesky logistics of lifestyle travel that few others in my industry tend to write about.
What do you consider are your strengths when dealing with staff workers, colleagues, senior management, and customers?
Nora Dunn: A few careers ago, I was working in property management in an office environment. I was low on the corporate totem pole, and had identified a mistake that a woman many levels of management above me had made, The task had fallen to me to point out this mistake, and I was petrified of approaching this woman who was more than a little intimidating to me.
To my surprise and delight, as soon as I pointed out the error, her face softened and she immediately admitted her omission and apologized for it! This was a huge learning for me; to be willing to admit shortcomings and to work through challenges together with employees/colleagues/management. When everybody feels like they are in it together as a team, the level of personal investment (and quality of output) can be excellent.
What have you learned about personal branding that you wish you had known earlier in your career?
Nora Dunn: When I started my travel blog it was solely a passion project, since travel blogs didn’t exist as monetizable entities. Thus, my tag line was “the adventures of a girl with no fixed address”. As the years went by and I gained a worldwide following, I realized it was time to treat it more as a business. One of my favorite business books that I read in my financial planning days was E-Myth – and one of the takeaways I had from that book was to create and run a business so it could be replicated and/or sold.
So around 2012 I ended up rebranding to make my online business less about me and more about what I could provide readers/customers. So my tagline evolved into “how to travel full-time in a financially sustainable way”. This rebrand (almost 10 years ago now) served me well because I have been approached a few times by some very large and successful companies who have been interested in buying my website. I’ve hung on to it for various reasons, but it’s a sign that creating a personal brand that is about the customer rather than the creator is the way to go.
What’s your favorite leadership style and why?
Nora Dunn: Somebody once told me that if I wanted to be a leader, I would do well to lead by example. If I need my team members to clean toilets, I can inspire them to do a great job if I also get in there and clean them to the best of my abilities. For me, it’s about the team approach, which involves open communication, inclusivity, and equality.
What advice would you give to our younger readers that want to become entrepreneurs?
Nora Dunn: In my last office job before becoming an entrepreneur, I was ridiculously productive. So much so that I often completed my work for the day around noon. In previous positions when that happened, I’d been allowed to spend the rest of the day reading a book, studying, or otherwise quietly engaging myself while remaining present to tend to any new business that might arise. Not so in this job; instead, I was forced to pretend to be busy – which was even harder than actually being busy!
“I should work for myself!” I said in a huff one day. “Because then when my work is done for the day, I can do whatever I want!”
What I didn’t realize at the time, was that when you work for yourself, your work is never done for the day! This didn’t complement my work-first-play-later mentality very well, and after an episode (or three) of burnout, I realized that to be a successful entrepreneur, it is necessary to be very intentional about work-life balance.
What’s your favorite “life lesson” quote and how has it affected your life?
Nora Dunn: “Don’t count the days. Make the days count.”
This quote by Muhammad Ali is a reminder to be present in everything I do, all the time. Reflecting on the past and worrying about the future are exercises in futility. Be Here Now. This is something that I feel my travel lifestyle embodies.
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This interview was originally published on ValiantCEO.
