How I Quit My Job and Moved to Thailand With My Family

A quick note before you read. This one’s from the archives, my very first blog called Lifestyle Flipper, which I ran back in 2015-16, years before Tyre Swing or Escape Velocity existed. I’ve left it exactly as the younger me wrote it, spelling mistakes and all. - Matt

Just a few weeks ago I celebrated my first successful eCommerce stores 1-year anniversary. Over the past 12 months that store has generated over $560,000 in revenue and almost $60,000 in profit. I cannot believe that just a few short years ago I was only dreaming of being where I am today!

What’s crazy is that I meet so many people who tell me that they’d love to do what I do… work from home, travel whenever we like and even choose to live overseas.

But most of those people think that they can’t. That somehow I’m different to them or that they don’t have what it takes.

I always tell them that I’m nothing special. All I did was follow my heart and never ever give up.

Usually I end up sharing my whole back story with people who ask how I got started so I thought it’d be a great idea to post it here to share with even more people who ask.

I found an email that I sent to a guy I bumped into on my flight home from last years Drop Ship Lifestyle retreat in Hawaii explaining how I got to where I am today. Here it is!

Hey Callum,

You haven’t read the 4 Hour Work Week? Man, that’s like the bible for online entrepreneurs. That book started it all for me. Tim Ferriss, the author, is soon to release a 10-year anniversary version of the book next year. Be warned though it may change your life once you read it!

You asked how I got started?

Well, I’m half way across the pacific at the moment on an 11-hour flight back from Hawaii where I attended the 2016 Drop Ship Lifestyle Retreat so I’m going to give you the long version!

Perhaps you should grab yourself a cuppa (or beer)!

Here’s how I quit my job and built a location independent business

My online business journey began in late 2014 after I had a mid-20’s crisis some 12-months earlier when my daughter was born.

At the time I was working in a job that I neither loved nor hated and was just ‘coasting’ through life. The thought that this was ‘it’ for me suddenly dawned on me and it honestly scared the shit outa’ me!

The fear of living an unfulfilling life motivated me to start looking for something else which led me to the vast and confusing world of online business. I dove right in and started reading blogs, listening to podcasts then eventually stumbles across Tim Ferriss’ book ‘The 4 Hours Work Week’.

My mind was blown.

Immediately I was obsessed. I had found the answer. I knew from that point on there was something else for me. I had the power to change the path my life was heading.

The question was how?

I began following the action tasks in The 4 Hour Work Week. First, I wrote down my dream-line and really thought for a long time about the things I wanted to have and the life I wanted to experience which was actually quite hard to do. I realised that I’d never given myself the opportunity to dream and had never imagined anything other that mediocre. There was a whole big world out there that was now within my reach to discover.

At this point I’d started to share my new ‘out there’ ideas around with my family, friends and work colleagues. No one could relate. Most reactions I got from people was something along the lines of ‘wow, that sounds great’, but with the look and body language of ‘are you kidding yourself?’.

Secondly, after I’d given my mind the freedom to dream, I had to find a way to make those dreams a reality; I needed what Tim Ferriss refers to as a ‘muse’.

One of my early ventures was to start an eBay business. I bought one of the ‘For Dummies’ books on eBay business and began implementing the steps. My business idea was called “Matt’s Shed”, and wound consist of selling things I’d collected from around my house and things I’d found at garage sales to generate an income.

This didn’t get me very far.

Another Idea I had was to create my own product for the construction industry. Tim Ferriss described in The 4 Hour Work Week how to reverse engineer a product by speaking to industry magazine editors and asking for reader numbers and advertising budgets. From there I could find out what products are selling and what gap in the market I could fill.

But, after finally summoning the courage to call and speak with a few editors, I realised that I was way out of my league. There was just too much to learn before I could create my own product.

My third attempt was to create a blog website. The problem I faced was that I was boring as hell; my weekends consisted of going to the local hardware store, fixing things around the house and working in the veggie garden.

What could I possibly write about?

I found the answer a little while later down my street. A neighbour of mine had a strip along the side of his fence that was just grass and rather unsightly. At the time I had access to native plants through my job. I knew nature strip gardens we’re becoming a trend in some inner-city suburbs so I decided to take on the project of turning my neighbor’s grass nature strip into a native garden.

I documented the whole process from start to finish and, through research, found out how to create a blog website.

Looking back I think my nature strip garden blog was really more of a passion project as I had no idea how I’d ever make money from it.

In October 2014 my family and I embarked on our first overseas trip to Phuket, Thailand for a good friend’s wedding where I experienced another pivotal moment in my thoughts of what was achievable. I loved Thailand and wanted more!

Soon after I got back I began researching living in Thailand and came across a book by Johnny FD called ‘Life Changes Quick’ which brought my two dreams of online business and travelling to Thailand together. In his book, Johnny talked about discovering Dropship Lifestyle and building an ecommerce business from scratch with no previous experience. As I read about Johnny’s success with drop shipping I knew this was something I had to try!

I remember being so excited to start DSL for myself that I didn’t even finish the book before purchasing the DSL course. In fact, I didn’t even tell my wife Amy that I wanted to buy it!

I bought the Dropship lifestyle course.

Whenever I had the chance I was watching the instructional videos and beginning to build what I felt was my first real online business.

It took me a few months to watch the video’s, choose a niche, build my store, get suppliers and upload all of the products to my website. All the while I was running into problem after problem as I was one of the only people within the DSL community building a drop shipping business within Australia. But, I powered through and eventually got everything working as it should.

A few weeks later… Cha-ching! I made my first ever sale. I had a real business of my own! To this day I still remember the feeling of absolute joy (and shock) when that notification came through that someone had bought a product from a business I had created from nothing.

Since that first sale, much has changed. I ended up selling my first store and going on to build several other online businesses in a number of online business methods; many of which are still making me money today.

Discovering the world of online business has enabled me to follow my dreams and build a life that I once thought was impossible.

In September 2016 I handed in my resignation at my day job, we sold our family home and moved to Chiang Mai, Thailand the following January where I achieved what I thought was impossible just a few short years beforehand.

So there you have it. That’s how I got started with my business.

Cheers, Matt.