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guys welcome back to budgeteers Bitesize got an interesting video for you today we're gonna be meeting up with a subscriber of the show and he lives a really interesting life he gets to travel and do little budget to their adventures around the world he's one of you guys who's a fan of the show and he makes his money from basically his laptop he's fully nomadic he's a digital nomad he's a really interesting guy and I just think it would be really interesting in this byte science to deep dive into what he gets up to because normally we do big travel adventures and we show you how to have loads of fun on a cheap budget but today we're gonna deep dive into something a little bit
more different and something I think you might find super interesting so just driven over to his apartment which is actually two minute walk from my place which is a bit lazy and we'll go see him we'll have a look at his apartment because it's so cheap and then we'll just have a little bit of a chat about what he does and how he makes his money and he's had a lot of success on YouTube as well which I think you guys are gonna be really interested in basically he's a really cool guy let's go meet him in his apartment and get to know a little bit more about Chris and yeah let's roll the intro and I'll see you at Chris's apartment which is just upstairs let's go
this episode is brought to you by skills share to find out how to get two months free access to their wealth of online classes make sure to stay tuned to the end of this video from the budgeteers thanks for agreeing to let us look under the covers a little bit yeah that's alright I think the first thing is gonna know you're hungry I'm hungry as well we'll go out and get some food but when you told me like and you drop to the location like oh I live here I'm like two minutes away from my house yeah and I just thought it would be interesting if you don't mind let's just talk a little bit about where you're staying because I know this building I know the street it's not the happening area that most did you're nomads are
going to yeah like why did you choose this particular like you know basically I've always stayed in the Neumann area yeah and like you said this is not right on them on Heyman Road but it's just off yeah but in terms of why I got this place specifically I was looking in this area on Airbnb and my budget was around a thousand AUD a month but I found this one and I was like oh it intrigues me because I don't think I've ever stayed at a place this cheap in Shanghai before you know and I usually don't book for Airbnb I rock up and like you know search on the ground so I'm shouldn't be paying that I wouldn't be paying that um a B&B premium right but this one I was surprised to find it was I paid two hundred and
eighty eight Australian dollars which is about six thousand but we did the math it was like a hundred and ninety US dollars per month for 29 days and honestly I'm pretty like simple guy like I don't need too much obviously if I was gonna stay here longer than 29 days yes yeah I'd want something a little bit but also the idea about getting a place so cheap is it gave me a lot of freedom to say if I came here didn't like it you could leave it was cheap enough to just throw it away and move on to another place but I think if you think about this right yeah he's paying six thousand bar just like twenty bar over so basically just about two hundred US dollars for a month for an air-conditioned fully furnished
apartment with a private bathroom in a two minute walk or five minute walk from the center of where everything is and like I'm kind of thinking now I could save so much money because I have an eye okay just to full disclosure I live five-minute walk from your players and I pay more than double then what you do but I live here full-time all year round you need a bit more space I've got loads more rubbish you know you're living out of a backpack at the moment you're fully nomadic right now so you don't have loads of clutter I have a wardrobe of stars loads of memorabilia and like all this other stuff that you normal people have when they lived somewhere I've been living here for three years
which this all sounds like an excuse but basically this is why I need a bigger more expensive place yeah but like when you come here you can see like I can see what you're doing you're just trying to reduce your costs because you here to basically work and enjoy chang-myung and not have a big comfortable pad where you're gonna be on Instagram every minute like oh my God look at my infinity pool yeah look at me in the gym in the building you're just here for a different reason yeah and honestly I spend most of my time outside the room so I'm not much of a homebody anyway yeah yesterday I was hanging out at a really nice co-working space it has a pool and they like all those amenities and seems like you don't I'd rather spend more
money on that exactly you know Yeah right are you hungry should we go average yes good lunchtime chris has had some amazing success not just in his professional digital life and his nomadic lifestyle but also on YouTube so I'm really excited for me to talk to you about that and let you guys know a little bit about sort of yeah how he makes his money and how he's doing this lifestyle which is really interested so what do you fancy for lunch because I'm starving probably we're in Thailand so I should probably eat Thai food right yeah khao SOI sound good yeah absolutely one of the other great things about Chiang Mai apart from the incredibly cheap cost of living is the amount of delicious food available on almost every single
street so he jumped on our scooters and we headed down a few side streets of the old town and we found a local spot that serves up really cheap food these curries are only 40 baht each and a big beers only fifty so a couple of dishes a beer and a water only cost five dollars and so we will have those down and then we delved into some of Chris's YouTube successes but yeah let's talk about YouTube now because this is something that I'm really interested in yeah obviously in particular let's deep dive into your channel and the video that you made called living on 600 yeah right I checked this morning it's on 1.5 million views right which is crazy yeah so basically like what is the video
about and then and like why did you make it literally like it starts in the video people were asking me a lot of questions about cost of living in Chiang Mai yeah and you know a lot of people have spoken on this topic before but it's always been like sitting on the edge of their bed and be like yeah like I spend this around this much on this and I just thought to myself like how could I make mine much more engaging and different and just doing anything stand out in the rest of the videos yeah so I tried to it's like pot like TV show yeah like pot story and so instead of just like waiting to the month to end and then like reporting on what I spent I like filmed the whole month and like
the video starts with will I make the bun yeah challenge yeah and I think what's really great about the video is as I go through life you can see the lifestyle and then you see the prices pop up on the screen yeah so it gives you a greater sense of like oh this is the lifestyle he's living and these are the things he's spending money on and how much that car and I've watched the video like you don't scrimp buy you're not staying in some cardboard box he's eaten boiled rice you know a $600 you had a really good place to stay he ate out pretty much all the time yeah right every meal you ate did you know when you were making it I had the potential like to go big or did it kind of just surprise you or did you think I want this I knew this
was gonna happen yeah well I can see on YouTube it was a popular topic yeah you know I guess probably I was expecting like to do as well as the other videos which may be around 30,000 views I think it kind of cracked into the whole living in Thailand neish and just outside of that as well people had to disclose and did it get like shared on a Facebook group or I know I think did it jump to a million views in a week or what did it was it just has it been steady growth or well there was this one day where it hit like it just blew up it was 70,000 views in a day right and it just came skyrocketing down again 70,000 in one day yeah okay as also oh my god it's good here's banana like boom and then it's just been steady ever since which is not
a bad thing okay so people are still finding a channel every day yeah and seeing like a professional ish you know it's not like gonna win an Oscar but it's very well-made like you've got you know camera angles story lines intro you've got pop ups it's yeah it's like a documentary of an entire month your channels on about the 70,000 now yeah seventeen thousands of anybody you don't do it full time at all right no it's certainly a part-time thing and I think yeah even coming back to Chennai this time not much has changed some changes so like the video is still relevant still a good indication of because I put the prices up in but yeah the exchange rate to me has changed but the pricing
bar is the same right what were your main three or more I don't know how many revenue streams you have like what are they like yeah you've got your freelance work yeah what else do you yeah so the main thing I do is client work yeah web developments and that's completely can what we can do those from anywhere yeah and then the rest is all related to content creation so YouTube I'm also a top teacher on Skillshare com yeah and those are basically the main ones so two or three that's it right you just got your freelance work and content creation and my go yeah courses yeah so there's some a small bit of money that comes through from like maybe products I recommend on my bro oh yeah fili at marketing I created some my own digital products I created some
Kindle books as well I've experimented with a lot of things yeah but yeah now it's a lot simpler it's mainly my client work my royalty share from skill show com yeah and the YouTube ad revenue there's some limitations like I do try and work on the Australian time zone yeah but for me being Australian and like being in Southeast Asia that's not too high yeah so what you must have to wake up here like five o'clock in the morning for me yeah so right now I like wake up at 5 a.m. in the morning and go to the office which is the co-working space yeah which is open 24/7 and yeah some people don't realize that you know you can there's offices around the world they get co-working spaces and can just
sign up to them and do the same thing you would do regular on the ones on Chiangmai so good on ya I've got bulls they've got good or Wi-Fi you've got really like good facilities and they're everywhere and they're walking distance yeah from most places in the old city or in the naman area yeah it's a very well set up sort of City for Internet is there a better peace out from it really I don't think so like that something that met people may not realize is that Chiang Mai is largely considered the best city in the world for working remotely why don't we just finish up here and I'll take it to this there's a really nice Park just a Monroe because it's like late afternoon on a Sunday
yeah and then we can tell you guys a little bit about sort of some information on and some advice from Chris you don't have to deep dive into everything don't worry but just let us and our subscribers in there like what do they have to do if they sign a home watching this guy all right Chris did it what do I have to do to be able to have a nomadic lifestyle because there's only a few simple steps isn't it yeah absolutely so we'll go to the park and talk about that yeah awesome so Cheers here we go Cheers you know drinking yeah if we can drink at the park turns out the beers would have to wait until later so we just took a lovely little stroll around this gorgeous little park we grab some fresh coconuts and picked a spot to
talk about what Chris's recommendations are if you're thinking about getting into the digital Nomad lifestyle cheers Chris Cheers paddy nothing like a fresh coconut to settle for a cold and a cold coconut because there's a thing about Thailand which is they don't sell any beer between is it eleven and two and five no what is it 11 and two and five onwards is like when you can buy so oh that's right so from like about 2:00 to 5:00 p.m. you can't buy alcohol which is sad yeah we're still trying to figure out why that is these guys watching this they're probably thinking like oh that looks really cool Chris what an interesting guy makes money just travels around and all he needs is his laptop like what do they need to do what
do people need to do in order to change what they're doing right now working where they're working doing what they're doing and just become nomadic like what are the things that you recommend people do yeah it's um it's gonna be different for everyone right because the say for instance some of you watching might already be running an online business or doing some sort of digital profession so the transition for those people is going to be a lot easier than say somebody who's working in something that's very location dependent like they're a nurse or a laborer something like that like you can't really build a house remotely okay yeah so a skill sets don't transfer to digital yeah so unfortunately or
fortunately the skill has to be something you can do like your profession has to be something you can do on a computer yeah for me personally I was studying accounting and you can possibly do accounting yeah I'm remotely but you've got to go through this lengthy process for university work in the industry for a while become certified here and then maybe you'll find a firm that allows you to work remotely yeah whereas something like web development which I moved into is probably the best career to work remotely yeah I mean I before I you know did YouTube and I've turned you know I YouTube channel into something that makes a small amount of money it's like I built the skills in video making like I am teacher I don't
teach online I know you can teach online but I don't I choose not to yeah so if you are a nurse if you are a builder or you've got something that doesn't seem like you can go online like you were an accountant but you know here you are doing something completely out something completely different so here how did you get to the point of like changing your career basically and becoming an expert at something that you didn't learn anything about yeah so I have this four step process and this is basically something that I followed loosely when I went about changing careers and living the sort of lifestyle is number one you gotta have the skills right yeah and then number two you've got to get paid
for those skills and then maybe it's not even like freelancing or running a service based business maybe it's you learn the skills to sell a physical product online even and then of course if you're gonna make an income you need to get paid so that's a skill in itself like learning how to market monetize it yeah so if you are freelancing then you need to learn how to get clients right yeah if you are selling a product online through an online store you need to know how to market that there are customers to your store was that hard for you when you had the skill when you developed you knew how to make a website for example and then trying to find your first client oh absolutely because I don't know I'm not sales he's not a Salesman yeah I'm not a Salesman right
so for me I like I did you do stuff for free for a while or yeah hi there yeah so I think I do think that working for free or cheap or working on unpaid stuff at the beginning yeah in order to get a portfolio is it's almost a necessity obviously you need to choose a point where you're not you have the skills and you have the portfolio and you're not gonna want to do free work after that you like you have to know your value but in the beginning and trying to prove yourself to potential clients they're gonna want to see that you've done it before by other people so you've built your skills you've got a few clients are getting paid what's nice so the next two steps for me were pretty easy so I
include a third step in there which is basically to free yourself right some people have family commitments they have financial commitment they she serves relationships fear holds back a lot of people absolutely it can be mental it can be something they're in their environment luckily for me I had no dependents my girlfriend was on board yeah issue she was also nomadic right well she was the same as me she was in sales and transitioned into digital marketing right so we transitioned into the right career build skills in that area what you're saying is you have to sacrifice things in order to yeah like get out of your lease so your contract quit your job yeah like so we waited until our lease ended or an apartment because it's gonna be harder
if you have financial commitments back home yeah you know and then the fourth step is choose the destination and just do it going and like if you're scared of something it's probably a good indication that if you pursued it that that would be outside your comfort zone and therefore you would grow as a person and who knows what you're gonna learn when you put yourself in a new environment try new things and push yourself I agree with you 1,000% and I think that's kind of a bit like what the budget is about you know we try to break down what I think of the two main barriers to entry when it comes to traveling which is I don't have enough money and we try to say hey you don't need loads of money a little bit is gonna be okay
there's adventures to be had you just need to go look for them and the second barrier is fear and anxiety like I'm scared to go to this country I'm scared to leave home and what if I don't like it what's the food going to be like so much fear and doubt goes into the unknown when it comes to travel hmm and but don't you think that's what makes it interesting patty like going into if it was like oh I'm just gonna travel like an hour outside of my hometown yeah I'm gonna be as adventurous as going somewhere where the culture is different and you're a little bit anxious about being there but yeah it'll say thanks for agreeing to let us take a little look into your life here and what you're
up to and stuff and anything for the budget tears because it's channel like well how did you find the channel but I found your channel back when I started my channel so like four years ago series one yeah Wow I remember watching you guys come out and camp on the beach in thanks to Barre lay next to bother yep and I was like wow these guys are doing it differently yeah and this is interesting yeah and here we are now like four years later romantic oh shoot series five we just took me I'm figured out where we're going you know but we're looking at maybe Europe the bike trip the new series is coming out next week it's been out for a while with our members and even I sent it to Chris you've seen it what did you think of the
bike trip it's it's very different it's something special for YouTube so I'm excited to be out there right no spoilers we've made that we made this new series and it documents eleven strangers driving around the mountains of northern Thailand and I'm really excited for everyone to see anything sweet but yeah if you want to become a nomad if you want to go digital and get out there and see the world whilst you can make money I hope today we've shown you that Chris has been able to do that on a budget and continues to make passive and active in whilst he's traveling and seeing the world and drinking cold coconuts and talking rubbish on a beautiful park so yeah there are so many reasons to get out there and see the world and try any
things out like if you're feeling frustrated at home and you don't know what to do and you're just looking for inspiration here on YouTube when you've watched this video you know leave a comment we'll respond by response ashore and try and guide you so Chris it's been a pleasure so much yeah it's an honor the bike trip new series coming soon watch it thanks again for watching this episode of budgeteers bite sized I will link Chris to freelances youtube channel below so you can check out his journey in more depth as well as some of his classes on today's sponsor Skillshare you guys know we work with Skillshare a lot we love them you can level up your skills which is very important if you
want to be a digital nomad as you've seen today you can level up your skills in video making and camera sayings like that's what I'm interested in but maybe you're interested in doing what Chris does he's got classes on web development and there are thousands of other classes on all types of subjects that you can start leveling up today so hit that link below and start your trial right now yes that's right your two month free trial is just one click away but please note that this is just for the first 500 of our subscribers you click the link in the description so scroll down right now and get a two month free trial of premium membership so you can explore your creativity thanks again for
watching and thanks for Skillshare for sponsoring this episode of bite-size and we will see you very soon for the general release of the bike trip
