There’s a moment in every big life change when you realise you can’t keep living the way you always have.
For Yash Sharma, that moment came on 10 March 2025 – his last day as a lawyer in India – and again the very next morning when he woke up, boarded a plane to Vietnam, and felt, in his own words, like he was “breathing a different air.”
In this episode of the Nomad Summit Podcast, hosts Christoph Huebner and Palle Bo talk with Yash about how he walked away from a secure second‑generation legal career to become the founder of Bolzard, an AI automation platform designed to help businesses handle conversations better, faster, and more consistently. What follows is a raw and honest story about rock bottom, risk‑taking, and why following your instincts can matter more than following the path that’s laid out for you.
From second‑generation lawyer to rock bottom
In India, becoming a lawyer was the obvious choice for Yash. Both his parents are legal counsels, and as a second‑generation lawyer, the path is almost pre‑paved: your parents’ clients naturally become your clients, and you inherit not just a profession but an entire practice.
Nobody was surprised when he chose law; everyone assumed he would eventually take over the family firm.
But the life that looked so good on paper didn’t feel good from the inside.
Yash describes his legal years as a constant chase for happiness: “If I do this, I’ll be happier. If I earn that much money, I’ll be happier.”
Long nights at the office until 2:00 a.m., intimidating court appearances, and complex cases left him with little personal life and even less inner peace.
Eventually, he hit what he calls the rock bottom of his life – struggling to sleep, binge‑watching podcasts just to escape his own thoughts, and realising he couldn’t continue on the same track.
Instincts over logic – and a scholarship application
One of Yash’s core beliefs is simple: “instincts over logic.”
He argues that especially when you’re young, you’re often asked to make lifelong decisions you’re not equipped for, and the only honest compass you have is your gut.
That instinctual compass is what eventually nudged him toward a very different path.
The turning point was almost deceptively small: a scholarship application for Nomad Summit he spotted on the website.
As an aspiring nomad who had never really put himself in spaces where he might fail, he initially assumed he had no chance.
But prompted by his sister – a seasoned digital nomad and past attendee of Nomad Summit in Chiang Mai – and supported by family members who truly believed in him, he decided to apply anyway.
On the podcast, Christoph gives listeners a peek behind the curtain of the scholarship jury: the goal is to support people at the very beginning of their journey, those who couldn’t otherwise afford the trip but have strong aspirations and solid inner groundwork.
That combination of ambition and vulnerability – often paired with a lack of confidence – is exactly what the jury wants to encourage with the
Nomad Summit Scholarship.
“Breathing a different air” – quitting law and leaving home
Yash didn’t just drift out of law; he chose a clear end date.
After handing in his resignation and serving his notice, 10 March 2025 became his final day at the law firm.
On 11 March, he got on a plane to attend Vietnam Nomad Fest – with no clear plan for what would come next, only the certainty that he couldn’t keep living his old life.
The morning after his last day in the office is a memory he comes back to often.
“When it’s your last working day at the office,” he says, “the next morning when you wake up, you are breathing a different air.
When you breathe in, you know that you’re free and the whole world is yours to explore. You can do anything.”
Christoph and Palle both immediately recognise that feeling.
Christoph recalls de‑registering from his home country in 2017, selling everything that didn’t fit in a suitcase and eventually boarding a plane with all his belongings on his back. Palle shares his own story of stripping his apartment down to an echo and almost panicking on the couch before finally stepping onto the bus to the airport and realising: he, too, was breathing a different air.
Facing a 10‑meter jump – and fear itself
Interestingly, the moment that most transformed Yash’s mindset wasn’t in a courtroom or at a co‑working space.
It happened on a hike at Vietnam Nomad Fest, standing on top of a rock about 10 meters above the water with a group of other nomads casually jumping in.
He remembers that scene vividly: the people around him were carefree, jumping without hesitation, while he was paralysed by fear.
“It wasn’t my relationship that bothered me. It wasn’t my career that bothered me,” he says. “It was the fact that I have to jump.”
That singular, visceral fear outweighed every other worry he had in life.
In that moment he realised that much of what we worry about is abstract, but fear is concrete.
If he could train himself to move toward fear instead of away from it, he might unlock a very different life.
That shift led him to stop procrastinating, make a five‑year vision for himself, and start taking deliberate action toward a new identity.
Productizing himself: from law to AI automation
At the bottom of that transformation was an idea borrowed from entrepreneur Naval Ravikant: “The way to success is to figure out what it is that you can do that other people might want, and then scale that thing up and sell it to other people. Do things that you can do naturally. Productize yourself.”
For Yash, the answer was clear – once he allowed himself to admit it.
He loved automation and AI, and could happily disappear into building systems that made things run more efficiently.
So he decided to treat his own skills as a product and build a business around them.
Instead of signing up for a barrage of online courses, Yash did something that might sound counter‑intuitive in the age of “YouTube University.”
He gave himself three months of focused self‑study: no tutors, no coaches, no hopping from guru to guru.
He leveraged freely available resources – YouTube, Reddit, online communities – and committed to building his own foundations in AI and automation.
That period didn’t immediately turn him into a success story, but it gave him enough confidence and capability to start offering real help.
He began by working for free, using savings from his law career as a small runway and focusing on creating actual results for people instead of chasing quick revenue.
How a WhatsApp message became his first client
Yash’s first real break in automation came in a very un‑glamorous way: through a WhatsApp group for Vietnam Nomads.
One day, a simple message popped up: someone was looking for help with marketing and AI automation.
He recognised it as a “signal from the universe” and decided to jump again – this time metaphorically – by reaching out.
The person didn’t respond for three days.
On the fourth day, they finally replied, asked about his services, and eventually got on a call.
Thanks to the practice Yash had already put in with friends and relatives, he wasn’t just able to build automations – he could explain the vision, help people visualise the impact, and, crucially, close the deal.
That first client relationship, even though it was born from free work, became proof that what he was doing had real value.
On the podcast, he stresses that all the hard work and struggle is pointless unless you actually believe in your dream:
if you don’t truly believe you can make a difference in someone’s life, it’s very hard to convince clients that you can.
Blessed, not lucky: rock‑paper‑scissors and scholarships
Yash’s journey since then has had a surprisingly playful side.
At Vietnam Nomad Fest, there was a sushi‑making night that included a huge rock‑paper‑scissors tournament with around 150–200 people.
The winner would get a ticket to a nomad event in Fukuoka, Japan.
Yash won.
That one silly game opened the doors to speaking opportunities and competitions at Colive Fukuoka (listen to an episode with its founder Ryo Osera here), where he eventually won yet another competition that came with a free ticket to Australia.
Add to that his selection as one of the Nomad Summit Scholars for 2026, and from the outside it’s easy to label him “lucky.”
Yash gently rejects that word.
He prefers “blessed,” especially because one of his biggest motivations now is the memory of his grandmother, who passed away in December and believed in his vision even more than he did.
She never wanted him to stay in law just because it was safe; she wanted him to do work that made him genuinely happy.
Building Bolzard and a location‑independent life has become, in many ways, a way of honouring her wish.
Bolzard, the nomad path, and an open‑ended future
Today, Yash introduces himself as “an ex‑lawyer turned founder building Bolzard, an AI automation platform designed to help businesses handle conversations better, faster, and more consistently.”
You can find more about his work and connect with him on LinkedIn.
His business is still growing, and he’s honest about the fact that he doesn’t have everything figured out.
When Christoph asks where he’ll be in five years – or in 2031, if they invite him back on the podcast – Yash doesn’t pretend to have a neat answer.
Ideally, he says, Bolzard will be a much bigger brand, with a team of people working toward a shared vision and the shared belief that “the size of your team shouldn’t define the size of your ambition.”
Until then, he’s committed to keeping his head down, learning, building, and continuing to jump whenever fear shows up – whether that’s a 10‑meter cliff, a scholarship application, or a new AI automation challenge for a client.
If you’re standing on your own metaphorical rock right now, wondering whether to jump, this episode is for you.
Listen to the full conversation with Yash Sharma on the Nomad Summit Podcast and subscribe on your favourite platform so you don’t miss future stories like this.
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