How I Travel the World Full-Time

I currently travel the world full-time, and although I've been suspected of being a Persian Prince (true story), I've managed to reach this goal through a lot of effort and opportunity. In this week's newsletter, I'd like to share 3 key choices that have made my current lifestyle possible.

Saving and Investing

Having a financial cushion makes a big difference in feeling a sense of comfort and confidence in taking risks. Back in 2016, as a part-time minimum-wage college graduate, I recognized that financial freedom was key to obtaining my personal freedom. I took a few gambles in the stock market, before realizing I was in dire need of some education. A Tony Robbins book, "Unshakable", familiarized me with Warren Buffett's philosophy of investment and his favorite investment reading "The Intelligent Investor." Essentially, my best route to success was to gradually invest what I could in companies I understood and hold those shares for as long as I could. This was the start of my gradual investment fund. Although I was living with my parents, part-time minimum wage in California limited what I could contribute. Still, over time the portfolio grew and slowly compounded. But the key to my growth would come in better pay and, more importantly, better savings.

Teaching Abroad

In fall of 2018, as I searched for new employment that could afford me the hope of living independently, I came across an opportunity to teach English in China. What really caught my eye was that the housing would be provided as part of the package. And so, much sooner than I expected, I boarded a plane and was headed to Yiwu, China. There's a lot to say about that experience. A lack of knowledge of the field meant that at first, even though I was saving quite well, I was making far less than my earning potential. Realizing this, I pursued coaching from a veteran teacher and was able to boost my resume and my negotiations to make choices that would land me in a position with much higher pay and savings. This savings allowed me to pay off debt and continue building my long-term investment portfolio. I continued working as a teacher in China from fall of 2018 until January of 2020. Like many, I got locked out of China during Covid, but continued still online for the remainder of the school year. After Covid, things got a bit tricky, including needing to now use the teaching credential I had acquired to boost my resume in China, to now teach at a public school in the US. But, still I had a valuable skill in teaching that now became a comfortable (bearable) plan B if all else failed. Yet on the side, I was developing my talents in video creation as well.

Video Editing and Content Creation

I began making videos in 2016. It was a hard start, but early on I pushed myself for consistency, going from weekly videos to daily videos. There was flux in my consistency for sure, but regardless of circumstances, I continued to refine my skill, reaching out to a local wedding videographer to help in shoots, offering low-cost or no-cost shoots to small businesses, yoga studios, and a fitness trainer. After a year of teaching in the US, in the summer of 2022, I gained an opportunity as part of a paid video creator fellowship to create educational content around the Crypto/NFT boom. I decided to use this unique opportunity to fund my travels and video creation. The Crypto and NFT boom ended, but by the end of that year, I had traveled around Europe, Turkey, and Dubai, I had made new connections and developed my skill. I did also lose a significant portion of my investment portfolio to some poorly thought-out NFT gambles, but I managed to retain enough to slowly rebuild. Still, I did feel quite lost and defeated and actually went back to teaching for a few months. Luckily, a friend I had been in contact with throughout my creator journey was finally gaining traction on his YouTube channel and offered me the opportunity to edit for him. At the time, from the connections I had built, I also gained a part-time opportunity as a community moderator for an NFT project. Both of these positions would allow me to work flexibly from anywhere in the world and could enable my dream of traveling and creating videos of my own. The NFT role ended, but the Shervin Shares YouTube channel continued to grow, and so here I am almost two years later, working and traveling full-time.

Conclusion

I am on a non-traditional path, and that comes with a lot of risks and costs, but I'm grateful for the choices and opportunities I was afforded to get me here, and I have grand ambitions for where it may lead. Each step - from investing early on, to teaching abroad, to developing my content creation skills - has played a crucial role in enabling my current lifestyle. While it hasn't always been easy, the freedom and experiences I've gained have been invaluable.

Feel free to reply if you have any questions about my journey or if you're considering a similar path. I'm always happy to share more thoughts and insights. I think I'll make a video on this soon too, so keep an eye out for that.

Best wishes,

Naser