It is hard to exactly describe my job circa 2023. To summarize I own Young Pioneer Tours, which means travel, I own an island, which means travel, I am a journalist, which means travel and I am quite literally a travel blogger. Therefore whilst the jobs differ, you can summarize that I get paid to travel.
How long though have I done this and how does one go about doing so?
The Street Food Guy Story
I was not particularly scholarly and left school relatively early. At this point I did dead end jobs in the United Kingdom before deciding that I wanted to work abroad”. At this point abroad could have been anywhere, but I set my sites on moving to the Cayman Islands.
This was achieved in 2001, when I was 21, when on October 27th I booked a flight, packed my bags and quite literally flew to the Cayman Islands. I will cover this in more detail later about the “how”, but is quite simply the following;
- Set date
- Book flights
- Sell things
- Leave
With the only real additional skill required here being the one no one really knows about –being fearless.
I then got a job as bartender and spent the next almost 3 years bartending in the Caribbean.
Does this count as being Paid to Travel? In this context it partly does as I was living in paradise. For me there are degrees of being Paid to Travel and working abroad definitely fits into this genre.
From ships to teaching
After the Cayman Islands I worked on Cruise Ships as a bartender. This was bloody hard work, but again truly does fir the definition of being Paid to Travel.
A friend once asked how I git all these “cushy jobs”. In fact it was the initial fearlessness that got me the Cayman Islands job, which in turn got me the Jon on cruise ships. In essence the harder I worked the luckier I got.
Step 1 got me to step 2
I then moved into teaching English in China, which I enjoyed greatly and was also where I had the idea to form Young Pioneer Tours.
Young Pioneer Tours
I founded Young Pioneer Tours whilst still working for EF English First as a teacher. I did this through investing my own money and working 80 hours per week. Hard work + cash + the bravery to go it alone. Initially I had tried to get people to help, but no one did.
You cannot rely on other people to fulfill your dreams of being Paid to Travel.
And how did I grow Young Pioneer Tours? Quite simply I took the risk of leaving teaching and went full time at Young Pioneer Tours. This was financially hard, but I have met so many other people, such as when I did Khmer Nights, who were so scared of failing that they never went full throttle on the new business idea/.
Over time and hard work I grew Young Pioneer Tours to a place where I was full time and getting Paid to Travel, a lot.
Full time getting Paid to Travel
Driving myself with one business made people feel that they could trust investing in me, which led to other projects, such as Lets Buy An Island, Pioneer Media and even the DMZ Bar.
My interest has always been travel, and I wanted to get Paul to Travel, so these were the kind of businesses that I decided to get involved with. Everything you do is your choice and the business you do should represent what you want to get from it.
Recovering the. Disaster strikes
During Covid-19 almost all travel companies had to shut down and it became very hard to survive, and indeed get Paid to Travel, but this is where you have the chance to fall back on skills you have learnt.
For me I had trained myself to write and write well, particularly through blogging, but also through other business ventures I had had related to journalism.
This easily led me into a journalism career. Essentially instead of giving up, you stand up. This has since turned into not just another way to get Paid To Travel, but also a secure career backup.
Setting up Paid to Travel
And it is these lessons that have pushed me to set up Paid to Travel, a place where I can not just share great stories from great people who are all getting paid to travel, but also give something back.
Here I was lay down more of the secrets to a better life that I can give through sharing my story and where needed even coaching people to do the same.