How to work from roam
I christen the art of mixing business and leisure 'bleisure'. This might be a language atrocity, just as the term 'digital nomad' is.
Since I became a crazy dog lady, I don’t desire travel like I once did. I loathe the idea of leaving my fur baby (way more than I loathed leaving my real non-furry babies!).
For me, getting older means crafting a life where I don’t crave a holiday. I have no need to escape because I like my life, my home, my nearest and dearest … and especially my dog.
I realise this makes me different from most people. Most people love the idea of travelling.
There are whole Facebook groups dedicated to something called being a ‘digital nomad’. (This term makes me throw up a little bit in my mouth - it makes you sound like a wandering space bar or bedouin who carries a laptop on their back.)
Sophia Loren - who is now 90 - says travel is not just about the joy of discovering new people and places, it’s about “discovering yourself all over again”.
I like this idea. I just don’t want to do it. I am quite happy discovering myself in my local dog park, thanks very much. I do, however, aspire to be a Sophia-Loren-kind-of-90. She makes ageing appear fabulous.
Other people have more glamourous aspirations than simply wanting to be Sophia or enjoying their dog.
So scroll on to read how two couples designed their own career and travel plans to merge seamlessly.
Life after the age of 45 can become a career-by-design - one where you travel to your heart’s content.
I interviewed two couples who do exactly that: they travel for their living. If this appeals to you, then keep reading. Meanwhile, I’m more than happy to live it up at home (with my dog) and pretend I will grow older as gracefully as Sophia Loren.
Nicola and Orlando: travel the hemispheres
I used to live down the road from Nicola and Orlando. Their boys were a similar age to mine and they are very nice people (mostly because they have British heritage, so are always well-mannered).
They’ve embraced the art of bleisure: mixing business and leisure. Oh, and family. So maybe it’s fam-bleisure they’ve actually embraced.
They are ingeniously stylish lifestyle seekers who have spent more than a decade engineering their business so they can live as digital nomads.
Nicola and Orlando change location every three months, splitting their time between Sydney, France and the United Kingdom.
Christmas is always spent with family, though the location for December 25 celebrations changes each year. Last year they lived it up in Spain. Who knows where this year’s plans will take them.
The British-born couple are now aged in their 50s but moved to Australia 24 years ago and began their fashion and marketing business, The Standard Store and Flying Standard.
“We still work every day, just not face-to-face like we once did,” Nicola explains.
Their dream was always to live part of the year in Australia and part of the year in Europe, though raising 2 sons meant they had to wait until they had finished school and been ‘gently encouraged’ to leave the nest to make their overseas lifestyle a reality.
“When you become a parent, you think your kids are going to be with you forever but parenting is really only for such a short period of time,” Nicola says.
The couple’s sons - now aged in their 20s - moved from Sydney to London, which meant the large family home could be sold.
Nicola and Orlando now have 2 homes: one in the south of France and a lock-up-and-leave apartment above their Sydney store in Surry Hills that is rented out on Airbnb when they aren’t in town.
It took them 10 years of dedicated planning (and renovations) to put the right systems into their business and hire the right people to achieve their goal of living and working across the world.
They’d originally planned to start living overseas in 2020, but Covid-19 put a halt to that idea. Once the world opened up for travel again, the plan finally came to life.
“The upside was that Covid also made it more acceptable not to be physically in one place to do business. So in retail stores, you can’t work from home, but people are now much more accepting of Zoom meetings,” she says.
The family has the distinct advantage of having British and Australian passports, which makes travel and commuting between 2 countries easy.
“We never have to do an Australian winter.” They do spend January to March in Paris each year to do the buying for their fashion business.
“I was lucky because my own parents moved from Britain to France and were role models for international living,” she says.
Inga and Russ: travel all over the countryside
This couple met 5 years ago and have barely spent more than a few months in the same place.
The couple aged in their early 50s are inveterate travellers, soaking up different sights and cities as they camp in their roof top tent or housesit for Aussie House Sitters.
Both of them chucked in their full-time jobs after originally heading off to experience remote Western Australia and the Northern Territory on 6 months long service leave.
The couple rent out their permanent home in rural Victoria and have been on the road for more than 3 years, living a simple lifestyle supplemented by housesitting and creating content for their own business, Life Life Now Adventures.
“We don’t drink or smoke or go out for takeaway - we don’t do expensive tours, we love getting off the beaten track and doing the free things that nature provides,” Inga says.
“We’re going to do this until we’re too old and crippled to continue - we absolutely recommend it.”
Russ’s favourite spot is above Broome along the Dampier Peninsula while Inga recommends Purnululu National Park (the Bungle Bungles) and the Kununurra region.
“I’m a Victorian and I hated Sydney with a passion but now I just love it,” Russ says.
The couple have minded houses and pets in plush harbourside locations that they’d never have been able to afford if it weren’t for Aussie House Sitters.
Inga’s adult children live near the Snowy Mountains and Russ’s are in Victoria, so they make a pitstop to visit the kids but usually only stay in one place for a fortnight or so.
The only downside is they no longer have their own pets, but they get their fix by looking after other people’s.
“We’d love to have animals but you can’t go into national parks and housesitting is more limited when you have your own animals with you ,” Inga says.
“I have daydreamed about being a nomadic traveller my whole life - now I get to do it.”
A warning about finding your ideal work from roam job
If you’re serious about looking to work from home or roam, it’s vital to steer clear from the many work-from-home scams that use social media, job websites and messaging platforms to lure you in.
Many job ads promising big salaries to work-from-home are simply scams from criminal organisations trying to trick you into paying money upfront, pay you in cryptocurrency or even get you to transfer illegitimate money through your personal bank accounts.
If you’re looking to be employed so you can work from anywhere, stick to reputable companies who comply with local work health and safety laws and have valid business profiles on platforms like LinkedIn or Seek. Check everything! You never want to end up like Loveeta, who I interviewed here.