For those who’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 homeowners.
We have been simply two, 24-year-old finances backpackers with 65L packs, a dream of journey and freedom, and no concept the place it might all lead.
For those who 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 car, and principally every part 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 whole freedom on the highway.
After that first style of journey, we have 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 international locations visited, and residents of Bulgaria. Alongside the best way, we’ve constructed 4 companies, and created 4 on-line programs.
We’ve taught over 1,000 individuals 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 private model coaches, and the way Goats On The Highway 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 best way again to 2008.
Like I stated, we had stop our jobs and we have 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 really helpful!), and doc our journey on a free weblog platform and Fb for our household and associates again residence.
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 residence. We have been terrified that sooner or later 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 seashore within the Philippines.
Being on the highway had turn out to be our way of life and I couldn’t envision myself working again in Canada in an workplace, below florescent lighting all day.
We would have liked to determine one thing out. And quick.
So, we regrouped and dove head-first into determining a strategy to become profitable 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 life-style round freedom – to turn out to be digital nomads … take into account… 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 accommodations and hostels even had wifi, and we didn’t have a smartphone).
It price round $1 per hour of (very gradual) web.
I searched “ become profitable for journey” and up popped a weblog submit by, Johnny Ward of OneStep4Ward. He stated he was making $1,500 a month from his weblog!
I turned to Nick: “Can you determine construct an internet site?!”
And so it started!
We ended up educating ourselves WordPress and fundamental coding so we may construct our web site and model “Goats On The Highway” – which we began in February, 2012 from a seashore hut on the island of Koh Phangan in Thailand.
We shared our journey tales, how-to’s, pictures, and movies on our weblog, YouTube channel, and Fb web page.
We didn’t understand it then, however this was the start of our private model.
Whereas we have been build up Goats On The Highway, we taught English in China for a 12 months to complement our revenue. And whereas we loved that period of our lives, educating 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 may be our strategy to become profitable 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 abilities. So, we expanded our skillset and spent a lot of time researching and investing in programs & elearning.
We discovered search engine marketing (SEO) and have been even requested to discuss it on podcasts, and at digital occasions…and finally, we created a course round it.
We additionally discovered electronic mail advertising and the facility of social media, and naturally, we continued with storytelling – one thing we’d been doing since 2008.
We saved displaying 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 internet online affiliate marketing.
And, since Goats On The Highway 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 companies.
It was surreal!
Our imaginative and prescient for creating a life-style 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 seashore hut had changed into our full-time revenue.
The Training Period (2018 – 2019)
With the enterprise rising, we felt the subsequent pull: educate others do what we do. That is what we’ve all the time completed – we do, we grasp (or attempt to), then we educate it.
So, we advanced once more.
We turned so keen about running a blog, search engine marketing 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 begin blogs, develop with search engine marketing, and construct private manufacturers. We shared about educate English overseas, get freelance jobs, and construct on-line revenue streams.
If we’d discovered it and lived it…we shared it and taught it.
Our search engine marketing course was our first actual paid course and the objective 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 marketing course on the finish of 2023. We really feel that search engine marketing has been taken over by AI and doesn’t have a future, so we don’t 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 have been incomes sufficient cash to stop jobs they didn’t love.
They have been making a side-income so that they had more money whereas at residence, and/or, they have 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 may really assist another person’s life in a significant method.
It shifted every part. It wasn’t about us anymore, and that realization genuinely humbled us.
Seeing numbers on a display screen 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 have been a whirlwind. Our web site was rising, our programs have been doing properly, and our little nook of the web was serving to individuals construct new lives.
It felt larger than something we anticipated after we first began out with backpacks and a dream.
However then, the world shifted…
The Trade Shift (2020 – 2022)
These couple of years have been a problem for everybody. However, I’m specializing in our journey trade specifically.
A world pandemic paused all journey…and companies associated to journey actually suffered throughout this time. With that, a lot of our affiliate partnerships dropped off – which means our revenue took a nosedive.
On prime of that, Google rolled out devastating updates which meant that our web site wasn’t displaying up on-line like earlier than.
New short-form video platforms turned in style (TikTok), which meant that spotlight was transferring from blogs to fast movies. Then got here ChatGPT and a flood of AI instruments.
The whole lot modified in a single day!
We shortly realized that this wasn’t simply one other development… issues have 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 abilities through the years and will pivot. We simply didn’t know the way at first – then it hit us.
Diversifying our Revenue
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 have been two of Nick’s passions: fly fishing and guitars.
We have been nervous to start out one thing new, however let’s be sincere, we had numerous time on our arms!
We constructed up an internet site, Instagram, YouTube channel and electronic mail listing for the fly fishing web site, and for the guitar/string instrument web site, that was principally only a evaluate 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 undoubtedly thrilling and gave us the push to maintain going.
Throughout this time, we additionally pivoted Goats On The Highway to focus extra on the distant work and methods to become profitable on-line facet of issues, quite than specializing in the journey side of our model.
And it began rising once more.
We additionally began spending extra on social media, electronic mail, and YouTube. Successfully diversifying our enterprise throughout extra platforms than simply the weblog.
Throughout this era, we discovered the arduous method that platforms can collapse. Algorithms can change. Associates can come and go. World occasions can impact every part. Complete enterprise fashions can disappear.
However there was an upside and optimistic takeaway to our expertise: we remembered that our private model, our story, our abilities, 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 alternative.
Mockingly, 2023 was our greatest 12 months ever financially. However we nonetheless felt like there was a shift coming.
So as a substitute of clinging to what used to work (running a blog & search engine marketing), we leaned into what we have been good at and what we’ve all the time 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 arms on steerage.
That’s when our subsequent period started.
We took every part we all know from over a decade of earning money from what you recognize, constructing private manufacturers, rising social media, electronic mail advertising, and creating digital services and products…
…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 stay calls with us, pre-recorded course materials, and a personal group.
At first, we have been tremendous nervous and not sure if anybody would even have an interest. What if we launched this program, however then no one joined?! We have been actually so fearful.
We had an utility type, after which would hop on Discovery Calls if we felt just like the particular person 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 have been we to show this?!
To not point out, doing stay calls was one thing completely new for us and it was undoubtedly out of our consolation zone.
It’s loopy how the thoughts can trick you into believing you’re not adequate – irrespective of what number of abilities, or years of expertise you might have.
We’ve been operating the Creator Kickstarter Program and Group for nearly 2 years now… and we’ve had 50 wonderful individuals enter into our group!
We educate individuals what we’ve lived through the years: that freedom comes from constructing a enterprise based mostly on who you might be.
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 up to now.
The Future
If we’ve discovered one factor over our many years on this trade, 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 subsequent 5 – 10 years…making this a large 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 undoubtedly coming into the most important 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 in the present day 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.
This is the reason we’re so keen about displaying individuals launch their manufacturers, step-by-step.
As you possibly can 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 instances, and introduced you alongside each step of the best way.
Thanks for being right here as we proceed to evolve and share with you! Who is aware of what the subsequent period will carry…
