I am always inspired by my friends and their successes but none more so than my great friend Tatiana Kukanova. I first met Tat when we were studying history together at university and our friendship has blossomed ever since. Just after finishing college we went on a trip around Europe together and she loved it so much that she stayed and began to work from her laptop. Fast forward 5 years and Tatiana is now a fully-fledged digital nomad, making a good living from her laptop and traveling the world as she goes. These 5 years have not been without their challenges however, yet Tatiana has managed to overcome them time and time again to get to where she is. I know many of you would like to live this lifestyle, so here are some of the challenges which must be overcome, and how Tatiana has done so.
Work Colleagues
Something which Tatiana never thought about until she began working online was that there was nobody else to work with. The majority of us make friends, find partners and enjoy the company of our work colleagues, something which Tatiana just couldn’t do. Instead of feeling down about this she took action and she began to organize meet ups with like-minded people who were also working from their laptops, trying to create an online business. Before she knew it there would be between 10-20 people at these meet ups, working together and enjoying each other’s company.
No Guarantee
Something which didn’t surprise Tatiana but something which was very challenging was the fact that she never has a guaranteed income. For you and I we know that at the end of the month we will get our paycheck and we know how much we will get paid. For people like Tatiana however that is not the case and they only make money when there is work available. In order to overcome this problem Tatiana took the attitude of making hay whilst the sun was shining. And so she decided to downgrade her lifestyle for 6 months, she shared accommodation with large groups of people, she lived a very humble lifestyle and she was able to save up $4,000 which would be her fall back if anything should go wrong and guess what, she still has that $4,000. Despite the fact that she still has it, I’m pretty sure that if she hadn’t saved it, things may not have worked out so well.
Enjoyment
The idea of traveling the world and working from your laptop is an exciting one but Tatiana quickly realized that she didn’t want to work when she was in these amazing places and that on some occasions she actually hated having to work, because the location was so special. To overcome this she decided to up her organizational skills and make sure that wherever she was in the world, she would set hard limits on a short term work pattern which would also allow her plenty of time to see all of the good stuff.
