Roam Generation founder Erin Carey’s family and friends thought she was nuts when she announced plans to ditch her office job to become a digital nomad at sea, but she didn’t let that stop her.
A few years ago, Carey and her husband decided to move their family onto a sailboat after seeing a Netflix documentary about Laura Dekker, a New Zealand sailor who circumnavigated the globe alone as a teenager.
“The biggest challenge for us was changing our mindset of believing that we could do it because the pushback that we received from our family and friends and strangers was that it was just a crazy idea,” Carey told Forbes.
Choosing to ignore naysayers, the couple took unpaid leaves from their jobs with the Australian government, started homeschooling their kids and flew to the Caribbean to pick up a boat they had purchased sight unseen.
After a year sailing around the Caribbean islands, Carey started looking for creative ways to make money on the boat and landed on freelance writing. She was soon making decent money writing sailing-themed articles for travel publications.
That experience inspired her to launch Roam Generation, a public relations firm for travel, leisure and luxury brands. After that, she and her husband sold their home in Australia and fully committed to living and working at sea.
Carey cautions that running a business on a boat isn’t for everyone, but she offers the following advice to those who want to follow a similar path:
- Get guidance from a mentor who has done what you plan to do
- Keep an open mind and consider various ways to accomplish your goal
- Focus on creating a viable business plan before focusing on smaller details like logo design
Most of all, you have to be resilient, Carey said.
“I’ve become a much better problem solver,” she explained.