Starting From Scratch (Again): Our Next Remote Business Experiment

We’re building a brand-new remote business from nothing, sharing every step (and screw-up) here at Midlife Nomads. Plus, our recommended reads on second passports, remote jobs & midlife reinvention.

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Miranda & Trevor falling off a cliff (not really, but aren’t we convincing?) in Matagalpa, Nicaragua (2024).

Ladies and gentlemen, in case you haven’t met him yet… that’s the other half of Midlife Nomads — my husband, Trevor Schwandt. Chef, golfer, stepfather extraordinaire, and intentional ruiner of family photos for over a decade now. Trevor and I are getting ready to take another big leap together soon, and I’m excited to share it with you.

We talk often about building income streams and converting your knowledge and experience into a sustainable business. But I understand the skepticism of those who are struggling to see the vision, and can’t imagine themselves taking the leap from the stability of employment — as unfulfilling as it may be — to the uncertainty and unknowns of entrepreneurialism.

There’s also a massive, almost universal fear of going out on your own. I’ve been building businesses for over 20 years and am still not at all confident in my ability to do so.

And listen… I’ve failed a lot. Trevor and I have failed massively and publicly together, like that time we got roped into a restaurant franchise that turned out to be a type of Ponzi-like fraud. At that time, we lost our house and our life savings. It’s how we ended up in a tiny beach town in Nicaragua, licking our wounds and vowing never to be that vulnerable again.

Nothing is for-sure, and you may try and fail, too. But you’ll learn, and if you can fail fast (that’s not just a buzzword), you can bounce right into a much better situation.

Don’t take my word for it, though.

I’m super excited to share that Trevor has agreed to embark on a new venture with me… a passion project that draws on both of our experiences, and we firmly believe there’s a need for it, too.

You’ve probably seen something like this before… I certainly didn’t come up with the concept, and there are a lot of variations. But business ideas are a dime a dozen. This is the minimum level of validation we need before investing our time and energy into developing a Minimum Viable Product.

Without this level of alignment, you may end up toiling away at something you’re really great at, but no one actually wants or needs. People may want what you have to offer, but you’re in for an uphill battle if the market is already saturated — which isn’t to say you can’t do it, but you’ll need supersized helpings of exceptionality, luck, and most likely financial backing to break in and get noticed.

And of course, there’s no point in chasing that sweet spot of what people want and what the market is missing if you can’t actually deliver, or will have to learn an entirely new skill or area of knowledge to do it.

Trevor and I have a whole other set of criteria, in order to ensure a business idea meets our goals for the future.

• It has to be portable and remote-friendly. Something we can do from anywhere.

• It can't take more from us than it gives back. We each have health limitations that are making our life-long careers more and more difficult. We can’t afford to get into another hustle or grind… we just won’t.

• It must be fun and fulfilling. At this point, it just has to. Life’s too short to toil away at draining tasks.

So anyway… we think we’ve found that next thing, and we’re going to share our business-building journey with you, right here at Midlife Nomads!

We’re completely starting from scratch with this one. The magic ingredients here, if we go back to that diagram above, are:

1. People really want — and dare I say, need — this knowledge.

2. The market as a whole is crowded, but there’s a definite niche here that we don’t believe is… yet.

3. We can deliver, thanks to our shared culinary experience (he’s a chef; I trained and worked as a sous chef many moons ago) and my digital marketing background.

I’d like to get the site set up before the big reveal, but it’ll be right here on Substack. Our initial setup includes:

• Substack for the website and newsletter

• Custom domain purchased through GoDaddy

• YouTube for video hosting and discoverability

• A Facebook Group

• Gmail for email

(You’ll notice I didn’t mention anything about setting up a new business entity… and I’ll explain why next week.)

That’s it! And that’s the point of an MVP… what’s the bare minimum we can do to get this off the ground and see if it resonates?

I hope that if you’ve been teetering on the edge of giving your own idea wings, this might give you a push. And I’m excited to share what we learn here, f*ck-ups and all, as we build a new income stream from scratch — live, and in real-time.

Full Subscribers, read on… today, we’re digging into interesting reads on the quickest places to get a second passport, the best remote jobs for nomad newbies, one woman’s perspective on midlife reinvention, and a tool to help you quickly find your most compatible destination options.