Over the past decade, we witnessed the emergence and explosion in popularity of nomad entrepreneurship. This is the practice of starting a business fully remotely to enable frequent travel.
The age of nomad entrepreneurship is only beginning. Why is this the case?
The Origins of the Nomad Entrepreneur
If we’re going to accurately predict the future of the nomad entrepreneur, we need to understand its origin. So why did nomad entrepreneurs become a thing, and how did this phenomenon become so popular?
The digital age, generally: The biggest factor we can point to is the digital age. People work, communicate, socialize, and entertain themselves through the internet, more so than they do with in-person interactions. And since online interactions are accessible practically anywhere, people have much more freedom to work from remote locations.
If we assume that at least some portion of the population wants to be nomadic, it makes sense that we would see an emergence of nomad entrepreneurs.
Newly available services: The wave of nomad entrepreneurship popularity grew when businesses began to offer nomad entrepreneurs specific services designed for their lifestyles.
One of the best examples of this is a virtual mailbox service, which receives, sorts through, and forwards physical mail items from a designated location, regardless of where you are. According to Lucas Seyhun, founder of The Farm SoHo, “we’re seeing more and more virtual mailbox clients – and most of them are nomad entrepreneurs. Virtual mailboxes unshackle entrepreneurs, so it’s only natural that we’re seeing major growth in this area.”
The COVID-19 pandemic: The COVID-19 pandemic also influenced entrepreneurs to become more remote and more nomadic.
In the early stages of the pandemic, working in person was practically impossible, so business owners and entrepreneurs everywhere began to brainstorm the possibilities of more remote, decentralized organizational structures. These decentralized structures persist, enabling nomad entrepreneurs to continue.
Changing attitudes about work-life balance: It also helps that we’re experiencing changing attitudes about work-life balance and the importance of personal fulfillment, despite your career trajectory. People don’t want to spend their entire lives in the cubicle of an office; they’d often much rather travel the world. But if you’re an entrepreneur with a nomadic lifestyle, you might be able to accomplish the best of both worlds.
Proof of the benefits of remote work: Though there are some mixed results in studies seeking to demonstrate the productivity benefits of remote work, there are many indisputable benefits of working remotely. It saves on overhead costs, it broadens your potential hiring network, and it gives people more flexibility. You don’t have to be nomadic to work remotely, but nomad entrepreneur lifestyles necessarily include remote work – so this is still a push factor for people to pursue the lifestyle.
Why Nomad Entrepreneurship Is Here to Stay
From these factors, can we deduce that nomad entrepreneurship is here to stay?
The answer is yes, and for a few big reasons:
Technology
Technology has enabled us to support and sustain the nomad entrepreneurship lifestyle. This technology isn’t going away, and it’s probably going to become even more powerful and connective in the future.
Objective Benefits
The objective benefits of working remotely and living as a nomad aren’t likely to change in the near future. People who pursue this lifestyle for its advantages are going to continue pursuing it well into the future.
Cultural Attitudes
Though it’s impossible to accurately predict how cultural attitudes will change in the future, it does seem like we’re on a trajectory to more independence, more personal fulfillment, and more individual flexibility. These values are central to nomad entrepreneurship.
Counterarguments Against Nomad Entrepreneurship
There are some decent counterarguments to consider as well.
The end of the pandemic era.
The COVID-19 pandemic was formally declared to have ended May 11, 2023. COVID-19 was a major influence in the rise of remote work and nomad entrepreneurship. However, the effects of the pandemic merely awakened and enabled people to pursue this type of work; they didn’t pursue it only because of the pandemic.
Virtual meeting fatigue.
Some people, when working remotely for long stretches, begin to feel virtual meeting fatigue and crave more in-person interactions. But this isn’t a good justification for the argument that nomad entrepreneurship is going away. First, nomad entrepreneurs can still have in-person interactions to fulfill those needs. And second, not everyone experiences this type of fatigue.
New calculations.
Now that we have much more data on remote work, we’re seeing conflicting data about things like remote work productivity. But because there are so many advantages to working remotely and nomadically, it’s impossible for any single finding to disrupt perceptions here.
In conclusion, the era of nomad entrepreneurs is just beginning. As we see the rise of new technology, more forgiving cultural values, and awesome new services, even more people are going to be drawn to this lifestyle.
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Johan Wallman
