There’s no worse feeling than the dreaded trek into the office after the freedom, adventure and exploration of your summer vacation. Well, one Irish lad has lucked out and completely avoided having to return from vacation ever again.
Not only has he avoided ever having to sit through a 9-5 Monday-Friday, but he’s made over $1 million while doing it. We’re not jealous at all …
So what’s his secret?
Johnny Ward is a 31-year business-man who decided quite quickly that an office job was just not for him. Having to ask for time off? Ridiculous! Not being allowed to do what you want, when you want? Not a hope!
“If you’re not happy, a good salary isn’t progress, it’s financial prison,” he writes.
“Life is meant to be lived, not sold to the highest bidder. Social conformity, the media, our education systems dictate that we should go to school, go to uni, go to a city, work in an office, save for a retirement that we’ll be too old to enjoy.
“Personally, I don’t want to do that. Not one bit. I wanna live now, today so I make sure I do exactly that. Every single day.”
None the less, he needed to find a way to support his jet-setting lifestyle and what better way than using his biggest passion - traveling - to bring in some cash.
Born in Galway and raised in Northern Ireland in a single-mother family, Ward graduated from university in England in 2006 and traveled to the US to work in summer camps, followed by a stint teaching English in Thailand. In an early demonstration of his entrepreneurial ability, Ward raised the money he needed to go on these trips by putting himself through medical research at an Irish hospital.
By 2009, he was working in sales in Australia and hating every minute of it despite the good salary.
He bought himself a one-way ticket to the World Cup in South Africa in 2010 and began to attract offers of money for advertising on his travel blog and never looked back.
Ward set up an online media company called Step4Ward Media, which basically provides web services like creating content and managing SEO.
“OneStep4Ward.com was born during those 12 months of lost hours spent in an office,” he writes.
“Never again. I headed to Africa with a one-way ticket, and now, more than 150 countries later, I don’t need to ‘work’ for anyone anymore. I’m as free as I could have ever dreamt and I love it.”
Ward calls himself a “lifestyle designer,” and he has certainly crafted a new lifestyle for himself, one that requires he work just 10-20 hours a week and travel the world all while still earning $1,000 a day.
Why didn’t we think of that?
“I founded a digital media company, but I have limited technical abilities at all (signing in and out of Facebook can prove too stressful for me),” he expalins on the company website.
“I outsource everything, I manage my amazing staff from my laptop and I travel the world indefinitely.
“When I get too tired of traveling, I go back to my ‘home’ in Bangkok, Thailand where I have an apartment. Each year, I spend around nine or ten months traveling and two or three months in Thailand.”
Just take a look at some the images he’s posted from his travels including – a trip to a private island in the Philippines, fashion shots with his Mom and some shots of him sporting some traditional clothes in Tibet..
H/T: The Lad Bible
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