A chance meeting at a festival led to a change in direction and an entirely new business
My first month as a digital nomad flew by, I was still working on a website for my first client and I fell in love with Chiang Mai. A city I end up returning to again and again.
February/March each year is burning season, farmers all around Thailand burn their fields so that they are ready for the next plantation.
Unfortunately, Chiang Mai gets smokey from the crop burning. The normal fresh mountain air gets so polluted during this time of year, it is often the most polluted city on the planet. A stark contrast from the rest of the year.
It was time to leave, I heard a lot of nomads head south to the islands during this time to get away from the smoke. I have also heard about a co-working space called Kohub on Koh Lanta.
Tropical co-working with accommodation including 2 meals a day bundled up in a package.
The pictures online were all bamboo huts, island hopping boating trips, beach parties and one of the best communities of location independent entrepreneurs in existence.
AirAsia delivered me to Krabi airport in 2 hours.
It was raining, the first time I had seen rain since I left the UK. It was also crazy humid, it was warm in Chaing Mai, low 30s but this was a new kind of heat to me. I was drenched with sweat and rain before I got to my taxi at the airport.
This turned out to be a common occurrence, I have since flown into Krabi maybe a dozen times, it feels like every time it is raining when I arrive.
The thing with Thailand rain is that it doesn’t last long, and is a welcome break from the heat. It’s still hot, the raindrops are warm but even in monsoon season, it normally only rains for an hour a day.
Koh Lanta is a two-hour drive from Krabi, or in high season, which it was, there is a ferry that takes around the same time. I opted for the ferry.
I got a tuk-tuk straight to Kohub from the docks to pick up my apartment keys, dragging my 20kg of worldly possessions down the side street, I arrived a sweaty mess.
The manager showed me around, introduced me to a few people then drove me to my home. I could have walked it in 5 mins. Before I left he insisted that I got a takeaway meal from the restaurant, it was part of my package and he wanted to make sure I had eaten.
I had arrived in Koh Lanta.
I didn’t know it at the time, but this little island that is shielded from the tourist industry by Phi Phi and Phuket will be my sanctuary, over the coming years it will be my home from home.
My stop off point when I need a break from travelling, where I can socialise but most importantly of all, its where my closest travel friends are.
Whether its fellow digital nomads, expats or the local community. I feel like I know every person on that island as well as I know anyone.
That was the only time I stayed for a month, each time I go back I stay much, much longer.
Kohub
I’ve never known anyone that has the exact same interests as me. I have never met a web developer before, never met anyone that knows their way around the Adobe suite.
That all changed the first day I walked into Kohub.
Being high season, the place was rammed. It was such a different experience to the other co-working places I have been, and I still have not found anywhere else like it.
Kohub is massive on community, each night there is an event, like games night, group meals, movie nights, sunset cocktails etc. Then at the weekend, there is normally an adventure to be had such as snorkelling trips and days out.
Everyone is super friendly. On my first day, I was invited out that evening by 3 different groups of people and after a few days, I knew everyone there.
Making friends while solo travelling sounds like a daunting venture until you experience it. Everyone is in the same boat, tight friendships happen fast and are long-lasting. I don’t remember setting out to make friends, as an only child I am quite content with my own company.
Honestly, my social life has never been so full as it is when I am travelling. On Lanta, that is magnified by 100.
It gets even more hectic once you return to a place a few times. When the locals start to recognise you from before, they know you will return again, so it’s worth their time to get to know you also.
Another observation I had when I first arrived at Kohub is that the people there generally tend to be successful. While Chiang Mai is full of new nomads trying to work out how to make a living online before they run out of savings, much like me at the time. Kohub seems to attract more established entrepreneurs.
Kohub can be found here: Kohub
The staff at Kohub told me about a beach party that evening about 20km south, there was a bus service (OK, it was a pickup truck) that helped us get to the party, it was Koh Lanta’s first festival called the barefoot festival. YopFest.
Now the thing with a barefoot festival is that they still have normal festival toilets, and we all know how bad they get by the end of the night. We didn’t have shoes, heck its Thailand, no one wears shoes. The soles of my feet will never forgive me after the things I stood in at the toilet tent.
I rocked up and sent out a message on the group WhatsApp chat to see where fellow Kohubbers were (yeah we have a name and everything). A couple of guys were at the bar buying buckets of Samson coke, I joined them and said hi. We very quickly became mates and hung out daily, we are still mates and still hang out every chance we get.
Ketan, a fellow Brit that somehow found Kohub by luck as he was a tourist passing through on his way to Australia, but converted into a digital nomad after discovering the lifestyle while being on Lanta. Three months later he was still there.
And Josh, an Australian with his own digital marketing company, he trained in Muay Thai and was staying on Koh Lanta for a whole year.
Now I am not a networking kinda guy, it’s not something I do. I make friends but not for business reasons. I have seen plenty of people in Chiang Mai network in the hope they will make money from the exchange. I have never seen that at Kohub.
Sometimes though, friends offer little bits of advice, and when they do, I listen hard. I have absolute respect for their skills and talents and enjoy listening to them talk business.
I went out for a meal a few nights later with Josh, he showed an interest in what I was trying to build for myself.
“So let me get this straight, you charge less then I do for a website, but my team is based in the Philipines. So how the hell are you going to make enough money for hotels and flights?”
An issue I have not yet thought about.
“What exactly have you been doing with your life until now?”
I told him that I was a mechanical engineer but can’t do that trade while on the road, so I am following my passion and building websites.
“Then teach it”
A thousand lightbulbs lit up at once, I realised that I have just been given some serious advice. Advice from someone that knows his stuff, in fact, people pay a lot of money for his advice as he is very well respected.
He went on “I have a friend arriving tomorrow I want you to meet, he makes online courses, you guys should talk”
That moment changed my life, my second business was being born.
With the passive income from courses, courses that could be made in between website clients, it might boost my income enough to survive and live this amazing lifestyle that I have tasted for much longer then I thought.
I named that baby GCodeTutor. G-Code is the language of CNC machines, a language I have been programming for nearly 30 years. Josh was right, damn was he right.
“Then Teach it!”
If you need pointing in the right direction, give Josh a shout. heres his website Paradox Group
I met his friend Tommy, the course guy. We also became good mates. We partied, drank Johnnie Walker blue, sang Karaoke and hung out when not working on our projects.
On the way back to Krabi when it was time for me to leave for Bali, Tommy also had to leave. We travelled together and chatted extensively about his experience making courses, the issues he faced, how he got over them, what software he used, what hosting platform for the courses was best. He is a huge fountain of knowledge and was excited to share his experiences with me.
As a parting gift as we left the boat, he called out, hey, whats ya email address? I’ve just signed you up to my new project. Its a course on how to make courses. That course kept me company for my 10 days of Bali belly that I will talk about in the next story.
I knew what I had to do and how to do it. What I didn’t know was the amount of hard work and long hours it would take to build 7 courses at professional quality. Like web development, it doesn’t feel like work, its fun.
That course Tommy gave me that tought me how to build courses can be found at Course Minded
Tommy is a fellow SEO guy, his main course platform is one of the ways I learnt how to do SEO and other digital marketing. You can find his marketing courses at Click Minded he has one hell of a CV. He was the SEO manager of Uber, Paypal and AirBnB.
