Spent 12 years abroad running my company remotely. AMA
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I lived outside Japan from 2011 to 2023. The first few years were basically digital nomad life, running my company remotely from wherever I was.
Eventually I figured out that all that traveling mostly just added to my own experience. The world didn't change because I moved around lol. What I really wanted was to make things that change something for other people, so I stopped moving and now I mostly stay home and build.
Ask me anything, I'll be in the comments. And if you've done the nomad thing, what made you stop, or what keeps you going?
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this resonates. I did a shorter version of this - a year bouncing between a few cities telling myself the change of scenery would spark something. it didn't, the ideas came from sitting still and actually shipping, same as you found. the thing I notice now is I miss the travel itself more than I thought I would, just not as a substitute for building. do you still take trips, just without the "this is also supposed to grow the business" pressure attached, or did you go fully stationary?
@galdayan Funny thing is, I don't really feel the urge to travel right now. I think it's because I have this strong feeling that I want to leave some kind of value in the world before I die. When I dug back into why I quit the nomad life, what hit me back then was simple: my worth is the difference between a world with me in it and a world without me.
The service I started in Japan back in 2004 helped some people, but it didn't change how society works at its core. So I want to dig deeper into that. I've never thought about selling the business either. It's basically who I am, and I guess the day it ends will be the day I die.
VR might be part of it too. I have headsets from Meta and Apple, and they really make you feel like you've jumped anywhere in the world in a second. If you haven't traveled much it might not hit the same, but if you've been around the world, you can relive that nostalgia in VR. I'm actually more interested in working inside places that can't exist in real life, like beautiful nature scenes that aren't real.
So I think tech will let us create something really close to the real thing right where we are, without having to go anywhere. Of course, just traveling freely without thinking about anything hard is great too. If I ever get bored of business, maybe I'll be back in that mode someday.
Interesting, Hisashi. My experience is actually kind of the opposite. I’ve been running my company for more than 18 years, and now I want to try more remote experiences.
I’ve always loved motorcycles, hiking, and going to remote places. I also really like being alone sometimes. When I’m alone, I have more time to think, away from all the noise.
You said that after 12 years abroad, you realized that traveling mostly added to your own experience, and that you wanted to build things that change something for other people. I’m curious - what made you realize that? Was it something that happened over time, or was there a specific moment?
@rafik_mkhitaryan Yes, at first it was just a really fun trip.
Mostly Asia since it's close to Japan: China, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. Beyond that I went to India, Sri Lanka, Germany, Turkey and Kosovo, and through Oslo up to Longyearbyen in the Arctic, the northernmost town in the world (that's my MacBook Air on the shore there in 2012, photo below). And Armenia too, which I think is your home country!
This was 2011, and in some places there was no fiber at all, so I got online over satellite. I didn't have a pile of money. I was a solopreneur and the business ran entirely online, so all I needed was one laptop. But no internet meant no work, so the connection felt like oxygen lol
Back then I kept my base in Japan and traveled from there, posting about it on Facebook, and a lot of people found it unusual or were surprised by it.
After about four years of that, I came home from one trip in 2015 and it just hit me. I could keep visiting new countries and getting inspired, but no matter how much travel experience I piled up, my business wasn't growing. I never wanted to be a traveler or an adventurer. I'm an entrepreneur through and through, and what makes me happiest is growing my business and doing something for people.
From 2018 to 2023 my family actually moved to Melbourne, Australia. I was used to traveling, but really living abroad was new in every way, and there was no shortage of language barriers, confusion and trouble. We came back to Japan because my daughters wanted to.
That's when I realized something big. I'd always wanted to do business in the English-speaking world someday, and I'd assumed that meant going somewhere like Silicon Valley. But with the internet, I could have gone out into the world from Japan at any time. Living in Australia is what made me see I already could. And that's the new challenge I'm on now.
Everyone here comes from so many different countries, and that's what makes it so inspiring.
Hope that answers it!