The Digital Nomad E-Myth

In a world full of digital nomads, Michael Gerber’s E-myth is still true.

The E-Myth – Business owners are Entrepreneurs who risk capital in order to create a financial return.

The Truth – Most business owners are technically-skilled employees who had an ‘entrepreneurial seizure’ where they wanted to get rid of their boss.

In his book, Gerber shares the example of a woman who opened her own pie shop because she liked making pies. Even with her own business, she was unhappy because she now had to advertise to customers, manage the store, purchase supplies and handle her accounting… in addition to making all the pies!

The Digital Nomad E-Myth Equivalents are the location-independent writers, graphic designers and software developers who freelance from Chiang Mai. They don’t work for an agency. They run their own company and manage their accounting with Quickbooks or Freshbooks. They got rid of the boss and they now they have clients.

But their businesses are still 1-man operations. They don’t own a ‘creative agency’. They don’t utilize capital. They just work for clients who they found on Upwork.

I was a freelance writer for about 2 years and I loved it. The truth is, if my businesses fold (Hopefully not going to happen…) I’d go back to freelancing from my laptop before returning to an office environment or a research laboratory.

• Have the freedom to work on your own time from anywhere.

• Get paid well in USD and spend like a king in Thai Baht or save up money fast. (Freelancing allowed me to save the $5k to start TravelSource!)

• Earn good money with very little experience. (I earned $600 my first week as a freelance writer.)

• Work in a hip co-working space instead of a dull cubicle farm.

• Learn new skills quickly.

• Increase your hourly rate weekly instead of annually.

… but as I was freelancing, I never tricked myself into thinking I was a business owner. I knew that I was just working for other people. I knew that writing blog posts for TeenLife (I was lucky author #68.) wasn’t growing my ‘freelance writing business’… but that I was growing theirs.

My freelance career could only grow as I increased my hourly rate and worked more. It wasn’t going to ‘scale’ even in the smallest sense of that word. I could improve my skills, but I wasn’t a business owner and I wasn’t building equity or value or any asset beyond my ability to do more work.

Having read through the forums on NomadList, it’s clear that Michael Gerber’s E-Myth is still alive and well. Nobody is opening pie shops, but they’re creating Upwork profiles, filling design portfolios and crafting ‘Why you should hire me’ websites.

They’re shouting “I’m a business owner!”… even though they’re completely alone and the only thing they ‘own’ is their time and skills, which they trade dollars-for-hours just like an employee.