What Digital Nomads Need to Look for in Clients

Photo by Johnson Wang on Unsplash

Being a digital nomad is not just about building a business, it is about a spontaneous lifestyle that cannot be had back home. With an unstable existence, your personal life can get chaotic, stressful, and lonely. Having clients that you do not enjoy working with will clash with your unstable lifestyle, and you will quickly get burned out. The clients you pick have to be your rock, your source of stability in an unstable lifestyle. Here is what I looked for in clients when I was a digital nomad:

1. Small One-Off Jobs Over Long Term Deals — If you are good at what you do, your existing clients will keep feeding you more work until it becomes impossible to meet deadlines reliably. This happened to me several times. You build a relationship with a client, and they keep sending you more work as they grow. Before you know it, you have multiple full time jobs. You chose to be a digital nomad partly to enjoy the lifestyle. but if you’re working 60 hours, you may as well be back home. I personally like to choose jobs that I can knock out in a day, verses long term deals, so I can preserve my flexibility.
2. Similar Time Zone or Minimal Video Chat Requirement — I quite enjoyed being in Europe and having my clients in the US. I am most productive at night, and I enjoyed having all my video chats later in the evening. For some jobs like being a virtual assistant, it is paramount that you are working concurrent hours as your client. Some clients are quite chatty and need weekly video updates, even though an email would suffice. Always gauge the client’s personality and communication requirements before you accept work or further work.
3. Similar Personality / Values — Digital Nomads tend to be less corporate, less formal, and less traditional. If your client is using corporate jargon and giving long winded explanations for simple matters, perhaps it is not a good personality fit. Now you might think, “who cares if I am getting paid.” At a real job, you take the bad with the good, because everything else about your life is stable. But your digital nomad life is relatively unstable, so a solid relationship with your clients can offset that personal instability.
4. Clients That Are Experienced with Employing People — A client where this is their first ever gig is likely to be more high maintenance than a serial businessperson. I work as an architectural draftsperson, and first time homeowners can be a nightmare to work with. You do not want to shut your laptop at the end of the day only to get nonstop emails throughout the night. My builder developer clients are much lower maintenance. A company has a lot of resources to hold hands with their clients. But a sole proprietor digital nomad needs to start out with low maintenance clients.
5. Clients That Offer Portfolio Work — Some jobs pay well, but you may not be able to use the work for your portfolio due to confidentiality or the work falls outside your specialty. If you want to specialize in something and get paid for your expertise, you need to start building a portfolio. If you just accept all the work under the sun, the market will see you as a generalist, and you will be paid subpar for it. On Upwork and Fiverr, generic renderings and draftspersons market themselves from $5 an hour. It’s only when they specialize in something specific that their rates go up.
6. Clients That Require You to Learn a New Skillset — Someone is always fighting to take your job, and if you do not skill up, you will be quickly unemployed. While you do not want every client to be a steep learning curve, challenging yourself is helpful to grow your digital nomad business.
7. Clients That Allow You to Set Deadlines — There is a huge difference between a client that says “I need this by tomorrow” and a client that says “How long do you think this will take you?” If a client does not allow you reasonable autonomy to set your own deadlines, walk away. I know that as a draftsperson, a set of house plans will typically take me three days. I could probably do it in one day, but I say three days to give me some margin of flexibility.
8. Clients That Are Abroad or Relate to Being Abroad — The most elusive aspect of being a digital nomad is relating the work to being abroad. For most budding digital nomads, the destination is just a backdrop to their work. Being abroad without any meaning or purpose can get hollow, especially if all your clients are from other countries. Finding a local client or finding a client that relates to the digital nomad lifestyle will result in more long term satisfaction.