Meet The Speakers
May 22nd - 25th, 2020. Tbilisi, Georigia.
Jonathan Kiekbusch
Sleeping Giant Strategy for SEO
Jonathan began by sharing his own journey as an entrepreneur. How it took him a long time to realize that the key to successfully scaling a business isn’t to carry all the responsibilities and burdens on your shoulders alone.
Instead, a founder’s duty is to awaken the giant that a business can become.
As Jonathan puts it, “Every new business is a Sleeping Giant—it’s up to you to wake it up.”
He then outlined the six steps entrepreneurs can take in the next 12 months to help their business reach its full potential:
- Set achievable goals
- Recruit the right team
- Build your Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)
- Motivate your team and keep them productive and happy
- Work on your business, not in it
Jonathan provided actionable tactics and examples for each step.
He then challenged the founders in the room to implement the Sleeping Giant Strategy in their own businesses over the next 12 months and measure the result
Johnny FD
Long Term Nomading
Johnny has been traveling full time since 2008 and has built multiple six-figure businesses, the conference, a popular blog, podcast, and a balanced lifestyle while doing so.
In this year's talk Johnny will be sharing the tips, tricks, and techniques that have allowed him to be productive, happy, healthy, and maintain solid relationships while being a full time digital nomad.
Our Past Speakers
Stephanie Smith
How Anyone Can Learn to Code and Build a Product Less Than 1 Year.
Steph has been working remotely for over three years, as a growth marketer, writer, and indie maker. "She spent three years at Toptal, most recently leading their Publications team, and now runs Integral Labs, supporting top tech and media companies."
She’s a big advocate for remote work and actively writes about it over at her blog, which has been read by over 400k people since launch a year ago. She is also a self-taught developer and has built multiple projects, some of which have gone to #1 on Product Hunt, won awards for inclusion, and led her to being nominated for Maker of the Year in 2018.
Julia Jerg
Social Media Marketing: Online Presence & Traffic
Julia Jerg is a social media marketing and public relations consultant, copywriter and blogger from Germany. In 2011 she left her corporate job, sold all her stuff, bought a one-way ticket and turned into a successful digital nomad. Since then, she has travelled, lived and worked remotely in over 80 countries.
Nate Ginsburg
Starting and Selling a Million Dollar Online Business
Nate has scaled three Amazon FBA businesses to 7 figures in sales and exited one for $950,000 along with his partner.
Best of all, he did it all while traveling the world with the help of his team of virtual assistants, project managers, and remote staff that he's built up along the way.
Nate first started his online journey in Chiang Mai before moving to Saigon and traveling all around Europe and the world.
Nate now invests in and helps other businesses scale and exit with his agency SellerPlex.
Johnny FD
Financial Independence - Retire Early as a Digital Nomad
In this year's talk, Johnny will be showing step-by-step how to budget, save, and invest to become financially independent and have the option of retiring early while working remotely and traveling as a digital nomad. This is FIRE for expats and location independent entrepreneurs.
Johnny FD quit his job in 2007 and moved to Thailand to start living the 4-hour workweek and has been doing so successfully for over 10 years. He is the host of the Travel Like a Boss Podcast, and has managed to retire and become financially free at age 35.
He now spends his days scuba diving, traveling the world, and working on passion projects that he loves
Johannes Voelkner
How to Build a Fully Location Independent Business While Travelling the World and Building a Community at Sea
How Johannes built a successful online business first which allows him to support his mother and have money to build a tribe called the Nomad Cruise, how he builds and uses homebases to change the way he travels and how he built a team and multiple profitable businesses.
Josh Summers
Why You Should Always Build for an Exit...Even if You Aren't Selling
Josh is a professional travel writer and business owner who has bought and sold multiple five- and six-figure businesses.
His media company, Go West Ventures, manages a portfolio of more than fifteen different media properties including websites, YouTube channels, podcasts and best-selling books that reach over a million people each month. Josh first moved to Asia in 2006 where he spent almost a decade in China.
He now lives with his wife and two sons in Chiang Mai where he runs a remote team of talented digital nomads that span the globe.
Matt Diggity
The $700,000 Website Flip, Step by Step Process
Matt is a full time traveler, digital nomad and earns multiple six figures a year through affiliate marketing, client ranking, lead generation, as well as SEO services. He's the founder of the Chiang Mai SEO Conference, Authority Builders, The Affiliate Lab, and The Search Initiative.
Ben Hughes
Building and Managing a Successful Remote Team
Ben Hughes the Director of Content at Blinkist, one of the top apps in the Apple app store.
With now over 2,500 books summarized into 15 minute key takeaways, Blinkist has helped millions of people keep learning.
For the past 5 years, Ben has lead a Berlin-based team of content experts remotely from Helsinki, Finland.
Chrys Tan
More Leads with Messenger Bots and Facebook Marketing
Chrys Tan is the founder of Chrys Media, a messenger marketing agency and host of the Hack Your Online Business podcast. She is also the founder of Women Digital Nomads and the creator of the first digital nomad guide messenger bot.
Chrys has spent the last 10+ years in digital marketing and entrepreneurship, including many years at the largest ad agency in Singapore, and now runs her businesses online while living in different countries around the world.
Gillian Perkins
Business Growth: How to Generate 100 Leads Everyday for Free
Gillian Perkins is the founder of Startup Society, an Amazon bestselling author, and has received over 10 million views on YouTube.
She teaches ready-to-act people how to build online businesses that generate passive income and give them flexibility, fulfillment, and control over their own success.
Sergio Sala
Solopreneur: From $0-$70k a Year with just 10k Subscribers on Youtube
Sergio Sala, a Mexican digital nomad, known as one of the first digital nomads in the Spanish-speaking community, has been able obtain sponsors that pay him to travel, sell more courses to new audiences and coach more people. He now makes over $70,000 a year online and has travelled to more than 40 countries, while getting paid to travel the world with just one bag, all while he shares his vision of independent work & living anywhere on a weekly basis with his subscribers.
Sondre Rasch
Travel and Health Insurance: for Digital Nomads and Expats
Sondre Rasch is the co-founder of SafetyWing, the company that is building a global social safety net, including health and travel medical for digital nomads and remote workers worldwide. He is formerly co-founder of the freelancer platform Konsus.com, and policy advisor for the parliament of Norway.
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Jeffrey Marr
From Learning a Skill to Creating a Six Figure Location Independent Business
Jeffrey Marr is a video marketing expert and entrepreneur. Initially starting a Youtube channel creating animated book summaries, he transformed this hobby into a six-figure video agency that has worked with companies ranging from blockchain startups all the way to fortune 50 companies.
In 2018, he was the recipient of the Top 40 under 40 award in his home city in Canada and spends most of the year living in Mexico.
Tom Rogers
Turning Passion Into Profit: 6 Changes to Help You Scale a Business You Love
Tom Rogers is half of the duo behind one of the biggest adventure travel blogs in the world, AdventureInYou.com. Focusing on building a tribe of Adventure Seekers, they share destination advice, travel tips and help those that want to monetize their passions, through an Adventure University.
In 3 years, they grew to over half a million monthly readers and $200,000 in yearly revenue. They have been featured on Forbes, Business Insider, Yahoo Travel and more.
Joanne Bhaloo
Ethical Six Figure Business - Turning Good Business into Feeling GREAT
Joanne is a lifestyle entrepreneur, running several online e-commerce stores, a business coach, a speaker, but most importantly a family woman.
After the birth of her son, she decided not return to the IT corporate world, and moved to Playa del Carmen Mexico. With no job, no savings but a strong desire to build and run successful online businesses, she took a course by David Vu on drop shipping and within 18 months, she reached 1M in sales and a 6-figure income.
She strives to inspire online entrepreneurs to be true leaders and have a purpose behind their journey, and helps others construct new attitudes to run their businesses in an ethical manner.
Lewis Smith
Dropshipping to Location Independence
Lewis decided to trade in his corporate 9 am - 5 pm working life in London to build his own business in 2017.
Within 15 months of quitting his well-paid job and going it alone, his e-commerce dropshipping stores have sold over $1m.
He’ll take you through how to research and launch your own site, build out a reliable team and begin your own e-com empire.
Lýdia Machová
Expert Business From a Small Market to Making Six Figures: Why Starting Locally (And Offline) May Pay Off
Lýdia Machová is the founder of Language Mentoring, an online business in which she helps people learn any language by themselves. She speaks 9 languages herself, worked as a professional conference interpreter (with speakers such as Tony Robbins and Brian Tracy), and is a TED and TEDx speaker.
She started her online business in 2016 on the small 5-million-people market of Slovakia and today she knows it was the best decision she had made. She'll tell you why it may pay off to build a location-independent business while still living at home, and only then go international.
Sean Dalton
Freelancer to Passive Income: How to Stop Trading Time for Money
Originally making $500 a month working for an NGO in Chiang Mai, Sean discovered the digital nomad scene and quickly made a name for himself as a local photographer. Taking the skills he learned as a professional photographer, he turned to online teaching and built a $100,000 per year business that operates almost completely passively. Utilizing Skillshare’s online teaching platform, Sean has amassed over 30,000 students in the 18 months he’s been on the platform, and continues to receive hundreds of students per day. Sean is continuously expanding his business with new ways of monetization, all-the-while maintaining his creative passion for photography.
Sean now earns over $10,000 a month from online income and no longer has to trade time for money
Grace Taylor
Tax Breaks and Legal Loopholes to Pay Zero Tax while Traveling or Living Abroad
Grace Taylor is a US tax expert specialising in tax issues for US expats and digital nomads. Following an 8 year career in the Big Four, focusing on US tax for global mobility programs, she started Gracefully Expat LLC to offer US tax consulting and compliance to individuals.
Grace is originally from Vancouver, Canada, but has lived in the US, South Africa, and Ireland, and is now location independent. She loves travelling, and helping people on their own location independent/digital nomad journey.
Kristin Wilson
Creating your Digital Nomad Relocation Plan
Kristin Wilson is an online entrepreneur who has lived in over 50 countries. After failing many middle school career inventory tests, she decided to chart her own course in life by designing a career of her own. By age 21, she had completed her MBA, lived abroad as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar in Costa Rica and studied international business in Australia.
After honing her skills in real estate and development for 7 years throughout Central America, she founded the first and only global relocation company for professional online poker players and sports bettors, Poker Refugees. Kristin has since helped over 1,000 people move, retire or work abroad. Today, she dedicates her time to helping people become digital nomads, managing the Facebook Group “Long-Term Digital Nomad Success” and documenting the digital nomad lifestyle on her travel blog and YouTube channel, Traveling with Kristin. Kristin has been featured in Bloomberg Businessweek, ESPN, The New York Times, Huffpost, Yahoo Sports, HGTV’s House Hunters International and more.
Claim to fame: Former Spelling Bee and US surfing champ.
Canaan J. Johnson
Side Hustle to Main Hustle: Making $8,000 a Month from an iPhone while Traveling by selling T-Shirts on Amazon
Canaan was raised in, the capital of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, Wewoka, OK. Canaan is very proud of his Seminole-Creek-Chickasaw heritage and his parents are Lewis and Geri Johnson. He is the oldest of nine children and came from a very humble beginning. Out of a way to save money, his family always went garage selling, thrifting, and to flea markets growing up. This is what sparked his entrepreneurial endeavors. Canaan began selling video games, consoles, and Pokémon cards on eBay. Furthermore, he went into selling clothing, then got into Amazon FBA, and finally Print on Demand Through Merch By Amazon. Since February 2016, Canaan has sold over 12,000 shirts and has over $205,000 in sales working part-time. Canaan attended the 2018 Digital Nomad Summit in Chiang Mai, Thailand, is currently building his brand and his podcast the Stack Your Dough Podcast.
Raghav Haran
Building a 1 Person business to $35,000 / month revenue in a year and a half (while still having free time)
Raghav first got into copywriting after publishing an article in 2016 which unexpectedly went viral — generating millions of views and thousands of email subscribers within weeks.
After launching an online training program to that email list, earning $6k profit from scratch in a 4-5 week span from dozens of happy students, he become obsessed with studying sales funnels, copywriting, persuasion, and direct response marketing.
Over the past year and half, Raghav has sold hundreds of thousands of dollars of digital products online through the funnels he built. He’s worked with experts and coaches on building + scaling their high ticket online education products via Facebook ad funnels. He’s written copy for companies like Shopify. He also has his own online training programs helping people learn how to write good copy, and become well paid freelance copywriters.
And through all that, he built a one-man $30k - $40k / month business — all by the age of 24.
Raghav has been featured in sites like Huffington Post, Forbes, Fast Company, The New York Observer, and more.
Christine McDannell
#LifestyleDesign - Fulfill Your Potential by Optimizing Your Life!
Christine McDannell is the passionate Founder of Kindred Quarters, Coliving housing for successful entrepreneurs with locations in San Diego and Los Angeles, CA. She is a serial entrepreneur who has already owned, ran, and sold eight different companies in the past 15 years... Way before the word "Entrepreneur" was cool.
The most recent (and largest) exit was Eco Chateau Wellness Spa which she successfully sold in November 2017.
Coliving is a global movement that’s totally shaping the future of how we live. It’s a way for a group of people to join together to live in a beautiful place and share common resources that they might not be as able to access otherwise. By paring together large homes and lonely millennials, coliving has become the newest disruption in the $400 trillion dollar real estate industry. It also gives a ton of flexibility for those who want the freedom of not having to sign a lease or buy furniture.
Christine is on a personal mission to redefine the term ‘roommate’ with something meaningful, sustainable, flexible, creative, and healthy.
Christine has been honored with numerous awards through the years for her passion, including the Small Business Administration 2009 Business Person of the Year. Also, one of her companies, Cleanology, made the list for Entrepreneur Magazine's 100 Most Brilliant Companies in 2010.
She is currently building out a SaaS solution for the global co-living movement.
Camille Attell
Goodbye Cubicle, Hello Open Road - The Mental, Emotional, and Financial Journey of Reinventing Yourself
Camille's grandparents taught her to "go to school, get a job, and buy a house" which is exactly what she did until she walked away from a twenty year career in corporate America.
In the past two years, she and her husband, Bryce, have been full-time RV nomads, traveled 24,000 miles, and visited 30 states—all while learning how to create income streams, re-invent themselves, and stay married in 240 square feet.
They launched their travel blog, More Than A Wheelin' which opened doors to partnerships and opportunities. Camille also leveraged her background in career development and counseling to create Remote Work School to teach nomad hopefuls how to work remotely, and Blogging Camp (in partnership with 3 other RV nomads), a coaching program for rapid blog success. In addition to earning income through their courses and coaching, they've experimented with options trading, freelance writing, contract and consulting work, and recently, Camille partnered with a staffing agency to help place nomads into remote jobs.
Camille and Bryce will be featured in the upcoming RV Nomads documentary film due out in October 2018.
Virginia Campo
From Startup Intrapreneur to Online Entrepreneur
Virginia Campo started her year by taking a leap and going from an executive position in the Latin America startup, Selina, to the life of an entrepreneur. Virginia is the founder of Gignomads, a platform that will connect travelers to remote gigs.
J Keitsu
Making $2 Million a Month in Sales with Dropshipping!
J Keitsu went from working for GoDaddy to making $2 Million in sales in a single month through eCommerce with his dropshipping store. You can read more about him at All the Way Up. He's now sold over $8M!
Derek Pankaew
From Bootstrapping to Millionaire Mindset
Derek Pankaew went from bootstrapping small businesses to making $10,000 a month, to thinking big with the millionaire mindset. You can see his Flexr: Travel Pull Up Bar product here.
Watch Talk For Free On YouTube
Viola Eva Schenkel
Building a Six Figure Service Based Business from Scratch
Viola Schenkel built a service based business making over six figures in revenue and hiring 15 employees in just 4 months! You can see her digital marketing agency here.
Matt Bowles
Selling Turnkey Physical Real Estate while Location Independent
Matt Bowles has been running a physical real estate business Maverick Investor Group while living in 45 countries in the past 4 Years, proving that you can design your life and business anywhere.
Nick Nimmin
Youtube for Brand Building, Authority, and Business
Nick Nimmin went from 0 to 5 Million views on YouTube, and has gained over 100,000 subscribers in just a year. He now teaches others how to do the same with his channel.
Mike LaRosa
Finding Accelerated Serendipity, Motivation, and Community
Mike LaRosa found solutions to overcome entrepreneurial challenges, loneliness, and long term digital nomad burn out and shares his passions through Coworkaholic Media the source for the future of work.
David Dang Vu
Earning Over $100,000 Creating the #1 Business Course on Udemy
David Dang Vu is the creator of the #1 top business course on Udemy - about starting an eBay dropshipping business with no inventory. He spoke at the January 2017 Nomad Summit event.
Leanne Beesley
No Skills? No Problem! Hacks, Tips & Tools for Creating a Shit-ton of Stuff
Leanne Beesley is cofounder of Coworker.com, and the queen of product launches, startups, and wild adventures! Talk from 2017.
March Brenwall
Building a Boutique Fitness Brand with Instagram
March Brenwall is Boss Lady-CEO at MarchFifth, a CrossFitter, and dream pursuer whose ideal customers are people who live life to the fullest and are not afraid to celebrate it.
Emma McLaren
Nomading Long Term: Happily, without Burnout!
Emma McLaren is a sustainable seafood consultant, who is focused on self-care, meaningful connections and looking inward, while her fast-paced life takes her to places all over the world.
Watch Talk For Free On YouTube
Riley Bennett
From Selling Door-to-Door to Selling Online
Riley Bennett went from listening to podcasts about entrepreneurship while working a door to door sales job just two years ago to being able to earn enough money with his Amazon FBA business to travel full time and grow his YouTube travel channel.
Quinn Zeda
Designing Experiences: How good UX increases revenue, sales, and signups
Quinn Zeda is the founder of Zeda Labs and has helped companies like 16Personalities.com skyrocket their income with branding and user experience design.
Hanne Vervaeck
Why Nobody Will buy Your MVP and How To Become a Market Leader
Thrive Themes Marketing Manager Hanne Vervaeck is a marketing funnel-obsessed intra- and entrepreneur who spends her time between Paris and the rest of the world
Thinking Outside the Box to Crush Big Goals
Jubril Agoro has helped huge name market leaders make millions with Facebook and YouTube ad campaigns. He's currently focusing on building his video production company and was even solicited by the Travel Channel to be a host on TV!
Sam Marks
Building a $100 Million Dollar Company the Nomadic Way
Sam spoke about building SKYCIG into Europe’s biggest e-cigarette brand that was acquired for $100m in 2013, and his eventual exit, while maintaining a nomadic lifestyle. Key lessons and strategic insight on scaling and principles that can be applied to your business. Visit Sam’s personal site at imsammarks.com. Sam spoke in 2016.
Alice Bush
Success Through Personal Development
Alice is the founder of Coacherr, a marketplace for e-coaching. She shared why it’s impossible to reach a sustainable success without personal development, how to face the challenges without losing the focus, and her practical strategies to do that.
Joe Lannen and Dylan Basile
Tree Tribe Social Enterprise: Giving Back Is Awesome
Joe and Dylan met at Punspace last year and bonded over their common life goal of creating a business that contributes to positive impact projects and that makes the world a better place.
Their business, Tree Tribe, is a natural fashion brand with a mission to create cool, sustainable products, and do awesome things for the planet. They plant 10 trees on every sale made!
Taylor West
Personal Branding
As a die-hard entrepreneur, Taylor has been building his own brands or assisting others with theirs since before he graduated from high school in the 90s. Today, he applies that accumulated knowledge to helping individuals build an authentic personal brand they can be proud of: A brilliant persona.
Brendan Tully
Commerce Marketing & Optimization
Brendan has been in the online space for over 15 years. Through in-person workshops and training, the services his company provides and one-on-one consulting, Brendan and his team have worked with over 2000 businesses in the last 5 years. Brendan will be speaking about eCommerce marketing and optimisation, sharing highly actionable strategies and tactics for growing an eCommerce business or really any business that sells online.
Cody McKibben
Lessons Learned from 8 Years of Bootstrapping Abroad
See Cody's Full Bio here: http://www.thrillingheroics.com/about
And get the presentation slides and bonus resources/links at https://herofoundry.org/keynote/
Marcus Lucas
There are no excuses not to be successful
Marcus Lucas is the founder of several online businesses and the ambassador of the ‘The Millionaire Fastlane‘ in Brazil. Marcus took his Master’s in global information and telecommunication systems at Waseda University, Japan, and during his stay in Tokyo, he worked at Become Japan Inc., a price comparison site founded by Michael Yang – the pioneer in this industry who sold his first venture, MySimon.com, for $700 million to CNET. He has also licenced MJ DeMarco’s book The Millionaire Fastlane into Brazil.
Stephanie Simon
Lessons Learned from 8 Years of Bootstrapping Abroad
Stephanie is a freelance copywriter based in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Being curious and fascinated by the power that words have to evoke emotions and bank account numbers, she’s currently helping her clients achieve massive conversions in their email marketing. You could say, her autoresponder game is on fleek.
She presented how copywriting can get you sexier dates, swankier accommodations, and a souped up bank account.
