Traveling the World While Building An Empire
CURRENT LOCATION: Buenos Aires, Argentina
“Wait. What are you doing?”
That’s the most common question I received (and am still getting) when I announced to my friends and family — and really anyone who would listen — that I was giving up my amazing loft in downtown Kansas City, selling all my stuff, fostering my dog, and traveling the world for a year beginning September 2017.
And I’m doing it all while continuing to build my businesses, brand, and influence.
(I made a fun little explainer video about what I’m doing here.)
But let’s back up a bit. My name is Brooke Roberts and I have a problem. I love to travel and I love to start companies.
About four years ago, I left my cushy corporate job running one of the largest and leading online resources in the youth travel industry to launch my own company, Yoga Travel Tree.
Combining my passion for yoga and travel, Yoga Travel Tree quickly became one of the leading boutique yoga adventure retreat and digital marketing platforms in the industry.
Meanwhile, because I’m multi-passionate (and slightly crazy), I also grew my blog Inside Study Abroad to become one of the leading resources and professional development training platforms for the international education industry.
And if that wasn’t enough, I decided to take my addiction for launching companies to a new level by co-founding and creating The Study Abroad Journal, a physical journal and practical field-guide for savvy study abroad students. We debuted as a #1 new release on Amazon and the Journal continues to be used by college and university students around the world.
Whew! If you’re keeping score…that’s three companies, brands, websites, teams, operations, etc all founded (or co-founded) by me.
It’s a lot.
And I love it.
When I left my corporate career, I had two primary values and goals that inspired me with each of these ventures:
- I wanted to build companies, revenue, and income completely online and location independent.
- I wanted to build my personal brand and authority to fuel the growth of each venture.
So why were these my values? Travel has been an integral and unifying part of my story since I was in high school. At the age of 16, I had the unlikely and serendipitous opportunity to leave my sleepy farm town in rural Kansas and travel to Europe for two weeks with my Spanish teacher.
I was poor. My family wasn’t well-educated. No one traveled abroad. Ever. But somehow I made this trip happen. And it changed everything.
Those two weeks would be the single most important influences in the direction of my academic, professional, and personal life through college, grad school, post grad work, to today.
As my educational and professional life progressed, international experiences were increasingly important. From my study of international affairs and Middle East politics in college, to studying abroad three times, to a focus on international education and program development in grad school, to living in China for a year, an eleven year career in the international education and youth travel industry, to now having three companies centered around meaningful international experiences…all of this means that travel is critical to my life.
So I wanted to build businesses that would enable me to travel wherever I wanted, whenever I wanted.
They call this being location independent, or a digital nomad, or an online entrepreneur.
I just call this freedom.
So now I have Yoga Travel Tree, Inside Study Abroad, and The Study Abroad Journal which all operate exclusively online and which I can run and manage anywhere with a decent internet connection.
But that’s not the end of this story.
For the past 3 years, I’ve lived happily in Kansas City, MO, (after living all over the US and abroad for 15 years). But that core value of travel and adventure kept nagging at me. And while I loved having a beautiful loft downtown, a car, all my stuff, and the cutest little long haired chihuahua you’ve ever seen, I knew I wasn’t living out the life I truly wanted.
And that’s when I decided to put my digital nomad status to the test. I didn’t have to be in Kansas City. I could be anywhere. So that’s exactly what I’m doing.
In July 2017, I decided to do the thing that most people would be terrified to do. I sold all my stuff, my car, fostered my pup with my parents, gave up my loft, said goodbye to friends and family, packed one suitcase, a small duffle, and a backpack with my laptop…and headed out for a year of remote work and travel.
From September 2017 to August 2018, I’m traveling around the globe living and working in a new country each month. Of course, I’m continuing to build a business that serves people in meaningful ways and that feeds my soul + bank account. I’ll be focusing on my core businesses and launching a new project top secret project in the coming months.
Over the next several weeks and in partnership with Corkscrew, I’ll be chronicling the real-life trials, tribulations, and triumphs of the digital nomad/remote worker experience.
I’m so happy to have you along for the ride!
