I Quit Back to Back Jobs, Left Silicon Valley, and Moved to Bali

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Cam Woodsum

I’m writing this from my hotel next to the beach in Bali, Indonesia where I’m currently living on ~$25/day. After spending a year in San Francisco and being dissatisfied enough to quit back to back jobs within six months, I decided that it was time to do something totally different.

For me, this means joining the digital nomad movement by spending six months living cheaply in various parts of Asia while working on online business ideas, doing some freelance/consulting work and learning new skills. This isn’t a vacation for me; it’s an opportunity to gain financial freedom by starting a passive income business while simultaneously searching for something impact focused that I want to work on longer-term.

I’m grateful to have been exposed to both the extremely positive and negative aspects of hyper-growth startups during my time in the Bay Area. I made significant contributions, learned a tremendous amount, plus I befriended and worked with some incredible people. The pace, growth and ownership levels at startups are unmatched.

On the flip side, as someone who previously ran my own business, I struggled with the powerlessness of relying on someone else’s decision making to determine the company’s, and thus my, level of success. This realization, combined with a perfect storm of events, has led me to believe that I would currently much rather try to start a ramen profitable online business in a third world country than be an employee at a rocket ship startup.

I’m not quite sure where these next six months will take me, but I’m excited to dive in and see what happens! In the words of Joel Embiid, “Trust the process.”

I’ll be documenting my trip with some Instagram photos, videos and blog posts so there should be more to come. Goodbye (for now) to all of my friends in SF and the U.S. Please keep in touch and let me know if you want to visit!

P.S. My phone number still works or you can reach me via Twitter, LinkedIn or email at cam(dot)woodsum(at)gmail(dot)com.

I've been building digital businesses, wandering the world, and writing about optimizing life for freedom since early 2017. My mission is to lower the barrier for people who want to live with more freedom: whether that be as an entrepreneur, a digital nomad, an early retiree, or just as someone who wants to live a happiness-driven life.