Should you’ve been following us from the start of our journey into this freedom-filled way of life (since 2008!), you’ll know that we didn’t begin off as coaches, bloggers, creators, or enterprise house owners.
We had been simply two, 24-year-old finances backpackers with 65L packs, a dream of journey and freedom, and no thought the place it might all lead.
Should you don’t know our story… right here it’s from 2008 to now:
Again in 2008, we stop our jobs in Canada, offered our condominium, our automobile, and mainly all the things we owned. We swapped a 9-5 at a company workplace and graveyard shifts at a packaging plant, for one-way tickets to Southeast Asia and a lifetime of complete freedom on the highway.
After that first style of journey, we had been hooked. We knew we needed to construct a life round journey…we simply had to determine how.
Now, right here we’re 17 years later…greater than 80 nations visited, and residents of Bulgaria. Alongside the way in which, we’ve constructed 4 companies, and created 4 on-line programs.
We’ve taught over 1,000 individuals tips on how to launch their very own private manufacturers…and 50 individuals have personally been coached by us.
That is the story of how we went from finances backpackers to non-public model coaches, and the way Goats On The Street grew, shifted, and reinvented itself over greater than a decade on-line.
The Backpacker Period (2008 – 2012)
Let’s rewind a bit right here. All the way in which again to 2008.
Like I mentioned, we had stop our jobs and we had been backpacking all over the world – residing on $30 a day at one level.
We’d sleep in bamboo huts, trip on the roofs of buses (not advisable!), and doc our journey on a free weblog platform and Fb for our household and associates again house.
Throughout these years, we backpacked throughout Asia, the Center East, Africa, and couple of locations in Europe. The longer we stayed on the highway, the extra we fell in love with the approach to life.
However, we had one slight drawback…our cash was operating out!
We didn’t need to return house. We had been terrified that at some point we’d have to return to our regular jobs.
And so when the cash did begin operating out… I really ended up having a meltdown on the seaside within the Philippines.
Being on the highway had change into our way of life and I couldn’t envision myself working again in Canada in an workplace, beneath florescent lighting all day.
We wanted to determine one thing out. And quick.
So, we regrouped and dove head-first into determining a technique to earn cash on the highway doing one thing we beloved.
The Distant Period (2012 – 2015)
Throughout that point on the highway, we realized we didn’t need to simply journey. We needed to earn an revenue overseas and construct a way of life round freedom – to change into digital nomads … remember… this was earlier than the time period “Digital Nomad” was even a factor!
I bear in mind it prefer it was yesterday, we stopped in at darkish web cafe in Delhi, India. The form of place we’d go to get a wired web connection (this was again earlier than inns and hostels even had wifi, and we didn’t have a smartphone).
It price round $1 per hour of (very sluggish) web.
I searched “tips on how to earn cash for journey” and up popped a weblog publish by, Johnny Ward of OneStep4Ward. He mentioned he was making $1,500 a month from his weblog!
I turned to Nick: “Can you determine tips on how to construct a web site?!”
And so it started!
We ended up instructing ourselves WordPress and primary coding so we might construct our web site and model “Goats On The Street” – which we began in February, 2012 from a seaside hut on the island of Koh Phangan in Thailand.
We shared our journey tales, how-to’s, images, and movies on our weblog, YouTube channel, and Fb web page.
We didn’t comprehend it then, however this was the start of our private model.
Whereas we had been build up Goats On The Street, we taught English in China for a 12 months to complement our revenue. And whereas we loved that period of our lives, instructing English was solely a stepping stone for us – we knew we weren’t going to work for another person after that.
As soon as we began creating our web site, writing content material and networking with different bloggers (there have been solely a handful of us!), we realized we actually loved it. We had a sense this might have potential and we knew this might be our technique to earn cash on the highway.
We’d be our personal boss, make our personal schedule, and proceed our dream of journey and the unconventional way of life we’d been main.
The Development Period (2016 – 2018)
Sharing on-line is one factor, however to show our private tales into an precise enterprise, we wanted actual expertise. So, we expanded our skillset and spent a lot of time researching and investing in programs & elearning.
We realized search engine optimization (SEO) and had been even requested to talk about it on podcasts, and at digital occasions…and ultimately, we created a course round it.
We additionally realized e mail advertising and marketing and the facility of social media, and naturally, we continued with storytelling – one thing we’d been doing since 2008.
We stored exhibiting up on-line, networking, studying and sharing. And slowly…momentum occurred and it was like a snowball rolling down a hill, gathering velocity and rising because it went!
Our model began incomes actual cash by means of promoting and online marketing.
And, since Goats On The Street was well-known, with a loyal viewers, and many guests coming to our web site every month (500,000 individuals/month 🤯)…tourism boards and corporations flew us all over the world to inform tales about their locations and providers.
It was surreal!
Our imaginative and prescient for creating a way of life of freedom by means of our personal enterprise, whereas sharing with others and doing one thing we beloved was coming true.
The little weblog we constructed from a rickety seaside hut had changed into our full-time revenue.
The Training Period (2018 – 2019)
With the enterprise rising, we felt the following pull: educate others tips on how to do what we do. That is what we’ve at all times accomplished – we do, we grasp (or attempt to), then we educate it.
So, we developed once more.
We grew to become so enthusiastic about running a blog, search engine optimization and constructing a private model, that we needed to share it with the world. We couldn’t imagine extra individuals weren’t doing it!
So we began to share about tips on how to begin blogs, develop with search engine optimization, and construct private manufacturers. We shared about tips on how to educate English overseas, get freelance jobs, and construct on-line revenue streams.
If we’d realized it and lived it…we shared it and taught it.
Our search engine optimization course was our first actual paid course and the aim was to assist others begin and develop on-line manufacturers of their very own. Greater than 1,000 individuals joined our programs, and the suggestions was unbelievable.
(In case you’re curious, Sadly, we stopped promoting the search engine optimization course on the finish of 2023. We really feel that search engine optimization has been taken over by AI and doesn’t have a future, so we need to educate it if it’s not a viable enterprise anymore.)
Little by little, our college students began emailing us and telling us they had been incomes sufficient cash to stop jobs they didn’t love.
They had been making a side-income so that they had more money whereas at house, and/or, they had been travelling full-time from the earnings of their manufacturers!
Receiving these messages was the second it actually sank in for us… that one thing we created might really assist another person’s life in a significant means.
It shifted all the things. It wasn’t about us anymore, and that realization genuinely humbled us.
Seeing numbers on a display is one factor…like pageviews, followers, and analytics.
However then, when individuals begin emailing and saying they’d taken our programs and made sufficient cash to stop jobs they’d been wanting to go away for years….
… that meant the world to us.
These years had been a whirlwind. Our web site was rising, our programs had been doing nicely, and our little nook of the web was serving to individuals construct new lives.
It felt greater than something we anticipated once we first began out with backpacks and a dream.
However then, the world shifted…
The Trade Shift (2020 – 2022)
These couple of years had been a problem for everybody. However, I’m specializing in our journey business specifically.
A worldwide pandemic paused all journey…and companies associated to journey actually suffered throughout this time. With that, a lot of our affiliate partnerships dropped off – that means our revenue took a nosedive.
On prime of that, Google rolled out devastating updates which meant that our web site wasn’t exhibiting up on-line like earlier than.
New short-form video platforms grew to become fashionable (TikTok), which meant that focus was transferring from blogs to fast movies. Then got here ChatGPT and a flood of AI instruments.
Every little thing modified in a single day!
We shortly realized that this wasn’t simply one other pattern… issues had been altering and we needed to pivot if we needed to maintain doing this job we love.
We needed to evolve once more.
Most individuals panicked, and so did we for a bit, however our panic didn’t final lengthy. We had constructed quite a few expertise through the years and will pivot. We simply didn’t understand how at first – then it hit us.
Diversifying our Earnings
With journey at a standstill, and nobody looking for journey associated issues, we determined to create two new manufacturers round two matters that weren’t associated to journey.
The matters had been two of Nick’s passions: fly fishing and guitars.
We had been nervous to start out one thing new, however let’s be sincere, we had a number of time on our palms!
We constructed up a web site, Instagram, YouTube channel and e mail record for the fly fishing web site, and for the guitar/string instrument web site, that was largely only a evaluation web site and didn’t have a social media presence.
Inside simply a few months, we noticed progress with the fly fishing model. This was positively thrilling and gave us the push to maintain going.
Throughout this time, we additionally pivoted Goats On The Street to focus extra on the distant work and methods to earn cash on-line facet of issues, reasonably than specializing in the journey facet of our model.
And it began rising once more.
We additionally began spending extra on social media, e mail, and YouTube. Successfully diversifying our enterprise throughout extra platforms than simply the weblog.
Throughout this era, we realized the laborious means that platforms can collapse. Algorithms can change. Associates can come and go. World occasions can impact all the things. Complete enterprise fashions can disappear.
However there was an upside and constructive takeaway to our expertise: we remembered that our private model, our story, our expertise, and our information are issues that no platform or pandemic can contact.
The Teaching Period (2023 – Current)
In direction of the top of 2023 and begin of 2024, we felt the net world as we knew it was about to fully change. For higher or worse, AI was right here to remain, and video was (is) the medium of selection.
Satirically, 2023 was our greatest 12 months ever financially. However we nonetheless felt like there was a shift coming.
So as an alternative of clinging to what used to work (running a blog & search engine optimization), we leaned into what we had been good at and what we’ve at all times been about: Serving to individuals lead a freedom-filled way of life, whereas incomes cash doing one thing they love.
However this time, we needed to have extra of a reference to our viewers and followers, and actually present extra palms on steering.
That’s when our subsequent period started.
We took all the things we all know from over a decade of being profitable from what , constructing private manufacturers, rising social media, e mail advertising and marketing, and creating digital services…
…and turned it into a brand new enterprise: Creator Kickstarter Teaching Program. It’s a blended mannequin with the “3 Cs”: Coaching, Course & Community. We provide dwell calls with us, pre-recorded course materials, and a personal neighborhood.
At first, we had been tremendous nervous and uncertain if anybody would even have an interest. What if we launched this program, however then no person joined?! We had been actually so frightened.
We had an utility kind, after which would hop on Discovery Calls if we felt just like the individual can be an excellent match for this system.
Like most individuals really feel when beginning one thing new, we felt that imposter syndrome creep in, adopted by self doubt. Who had been we to show this?!
To not point out, doing dwell calls was one thing completely new for us and it was positively out of our consolation zone.
It’s loopy how the thoughts can trick you into believing you’re not ok – irrespective of what number of expertise, or years of expertise you’ve got.
We’ve been operating the Creator Kickstarter Program and Group for nearly 2 years now… and we’ve had 50 superb individuals enter into our neighborhood!
We educate individuals what we’ve lived through the years: that freedom comes from constructing a enterprise primarily based on who you’re.
We love serving to individuals develop impactful manufacturers that in flip, assist others. Serving to individuals assist individuals – that’s the ripple impact. And it’s probably the most significant chapter of our journey thus far.
The Future
If we’ve realized one factor over our many years on this business, it’s that you just want to have the ability to evolve and pivot within the on-line area, and most significantly: private manufacturers aren’t going wherever.
And truly, the net teaching and e-learning markets are projected to develop considerably over the following 5 – 10 years…making this an enormous alternative for anybody constructing a private model and providing programs or teaching.
We’ve been feeling it for the previous few years now. We’re positively getting into the largest shift the web has ever seen – and the individuals who begin sharing their story now would be the ones main the area later.
Those that construct a private model right now would be the ones with the liberty to journey, work from wherever, and run a enterprise that doesn’t depend on a single platform, or doesn’t get taken over by robots.
That is why we’re so enthusiastic about exhibiting individuals tips on how to launch their manufacturers, step-by-step.
As you may inform from studying this text, these previous seventeen years have been a wild trip for us. We’ve tailored and reinvented our enterprise(es) a number of occasions, and introduced you alongside each step of the way in which.
Thanks for being right here as we proceed to evolve and share with you! Who is aware of what the following period will carry…
