Before founding Generation Nomads, Anastasia worked as a new product development consultant and Tomer worked as an IT project manager in Fortune 500 companies. Combined, Anastasia and Tomer, have over 10 years of experience in mentoring startups and scale-ups in various industries and managing over USD 1 million digital innovation and IT implementation projects.
On GenerationNomads.com, they have garnered a monthly readership of 15,000 from over 170 countries. Their Freedom Framework is used to teach millennials how to design and reach a free lifestyle. In The 9-5 Escape Plan program, they help their clients create and acquire passive income assets.
They live in one of their favorite cities in the world – Amsterdam, The Netherlands. From Amsterdam, they work with aspiring entrepreneurs in The 9-5 Escape Plan coaching program.
- CEO Hack: Having multiple sources of income
- CEO Nugget: You can achieve anything you want in any amount of time
- CEO Defined: Having the freedom of choice and sharing your superpowers with the world
Website: https://generationnomads.com/
https://generationnomads.com/my-freedom-business-quiz/
https://generationnomads.com/book/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/generationnomads/
Full Interview:
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Transcription
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00:16 – Intro
Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.
00:43 – Gresham Harkless
Hello, Hello, Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have two very special guests on the show today. I have Anastasia and Tomare of Generation Nomads. Anastasia and Tomare, it's great to have you on the show.
00:55 – Tomer Arwas
Thank you for having us.
00:57 – Gresham Harkless
Yeah, super excited to have you both on. Before we jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Anastasia and Tomare so you can hear about all the awesome things that they're doing. Anastasia and Tomare are money mindset and startup coaches and the creators of the blog Generation Nomads.com. Having reached financial independence under 30 through real estate and stock investments, they left their cushy corporate careers to travel the world for 18 months without working or touching their savings. Before founding Generation Nomads, Anastasia worked as a new product development consultant and told Mayer worked as an IT project manager in Fortune 500 companies.
Combined, Anastasia and Tomayor have over 10 years of experience in mentoring startups and scale-ups in various industries and managing over USD $1 million in digital innovation and IT implementation products. On Generation OMAZ they have garnered a monthly readership of 15, 000 from over 170 countries and their freedom framework is used to teach millennials how to design and reach a freedom lifestyle. And then the 9 to 5 escape plan program, helps their clients create and acquire passive income assets. And they live in one of their favorite cities in the world, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. From Amsterdam, they work with aspiring entrepreneurs in the 9 to 5 escape plan coaching program. Anastasia and Tomare, great to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?
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02:12 – Anastasia Schmalz
Absolutely. We're super excited. Thanks for introducing us.
02:15 – Gresham Harkless
Yes, absolutely. Well, thank you for doing all the great work that makes it a lot easier. So I know I touched on it a little bit, but I wanted to hear a little bit more on what I call your CEO story. We'll let you get started with all the awesome work you're doing.
02:25 – Anastasia Schmalz
Thanks. Yeah, absolutely. I think our story is from our personal transformation, but also our story as new entrepreneurs started 3 years ago. It was approximately the day I actually quit my job when I got my biggest promotion yet. So it was something that started the doors to our well-following dreams that we have been postponing for quite a while. So at that moment in time, you mentioned it a little bit in your introduction. I was working in innovation at a Fortune 500 company. I was working with startups. Tomer was an IT project manager, also in innovation spaces. And we, at that moment in time, felt like we had been really working on the dreams of others, right?
So we have been putting our own dreams a little bit further down the bucket list and the to-do list. So we always wanted to travel. We wanted to be entrepreneurs, do our own thing, be our own bosses, and follow our passions and creative ideas. But there was always something that seemed to get in the way, whether it was a promotion, whether it was things going on in work or life that felt like it was never the right time. So at some point, we really sat down with ourselves and we thought about, well, if not now, when would be the right moment to do all those amazing things that we wanted to do, like travel. We always wanted to write, to start our own online business. And we just couldn't figure out when would be the next better moment to really pursue all those things.
So, back then, again, I take you back to the day that I quit my job, the day I got my biggest promotion yet. We left both of our corporate careers, so our 6 figure income, and we went traveling. So we went on a one-way ticket to Singapore. And for the next 18 months, we've been traveling to over 25 countries. At the same time, we've been building up our online business and yeah our blog which then evolved into our coaching program, etc. So this is a little bit of our story and I think it comes down to really finally going after our passions.
04:33 – Gresham Harkless
Yeah, that makes so much sense They always say there's never a perfect time to kind of do anything. So once you realize that you can kind of get those balls rolling and just kind of take the bull by the horns, so to speak.
04:42 – Anastasia Schmalz
Right.
04:44 – Tomer Arwas
Yeah, exactly. That's something we totally believe in. I mean, there is, yeah, if you, if you wait for the right timing, you might wait forever. Yeah.
04:52 – Gresham Harkless
Well, they say a lot of times people are waiting for the perfect time to kind of, you know, fire and it's ready. Aim, aim, aim, aim, aim, aim, and they never ever take action. So it's so important to kind of take that action and then kind of move forward from there.
05:04 – Anastasia Schmalz
Exactly, yeah.
05:05 – Gresham Harkless
Awesome, Awesome, Awesome. So I wanted to drill down a little bit more, hear a little bit more about your coaching program, all the awesome things you're doing at the blog, and everything. Could you take us through a little bit more on how you're working with the clients you serve?
05:14 – Tomer Arwas
Yes, so our mission, so when we set ourselves for our business it evolved over time. So from the moment Anastasia mentioned when we left, we did not yet have our mission in mind, but it took us some time during the travel and everything. So our mission now is to help aspiring digital nomad entrepreneurs turn their ideas, and dreams into reality. So how do we do that? We have our blog where we of course share a lot of information, a lot of our experiences, a lot of our tips, and things that we have learned both in our experience working in corporate and in our experience working with clients now working on our own business. So we share all that on our blog.
Also next to that, we have our book, the Freedom Project, which walks through how to look inside of yourself and find out what you have inside of you that you can use in order to create your business. And then come up with an idea and validate it to find your first customer. So that's like a journey that we walk through in the book with exercises and templates and so forth. And on top of that, we have our program, the 9 to 5 escape plan, and that's where we go with the group. So it's a group program. Similarly to the book, we walk from looking inside and creating your idea and launching your idea, but we look also into passive income opportunities, which is something that we are very passionate about to have multiple sources of income. Finally, we also have one-on-one coaching that we do and that's more custom for the situation of each person.
07:06 – Gresham Harkless
Yeah, I definitely appreciate that. And definitely the different levels and ways by which people can connect with you and work with you. Because I think so many times, you know, you can only read somebody's book. You can only do the group programs, or you can only do the one-to-one. There's only one option, but I think because people kind of learn and they kind of retain information in so many different ways, I love kind of like the full lay of the land that you have with everything that you can do to kind of serve the clients you work with.
07:32 – Tomer Arwas
Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's something that we've developed, of course, over time. So it's not something we did on day one. But it's something that we also noticed. Our mission, again, is to help aspiring digital nomads live their freedom lifestyle, as we call it. So to really be able to do the things that they want. And we want to be able to serve as many people as possible and to just provide that value. So therefore we also have different options in different ways. And I mean, of course, reading a book is different than having a one-on-one person looking at you and working together with you, but still, you can get started with it so that's indeed to be able to serve more people.
08:14 – Gresham Harkless
Yeah, absolutely and I love the alignment of everything to and how that gets to that, the word freedom which is such a powerful word. And I think especially when you have gifts, you have skills, you have talents, you kind of talked about at the beginning of being able to kind of use those talents to propel whatever your mission and vision is, it's absolutely huge and have the freedom and the tools by which to do that just takes everything to the next level it sounds like.
08:32 – Anastasia Schmalz
Yeah, right. So I think that's also what makes us and what we're offering unique because we're not only helping people to become entrepreneurs or aspiring entrepreneurs, but we actually put that word of freedom before that. So we help them to become freedom entrepreneurs. And what that means is we're looking at the different assets that you have within you and have available to your disposal, which are your time, your ideas, your superpowers that you have within you, but maybe also the salary that you currently have in your 9 to 5 income that you want to replace with your own passion business, but how to use that in order to create more freedom in your life. So how to accelerate your path to freedom, how to really set up your business in a way that feels aligned with your personal ambitions, with your creativity, with your passions?
And how you can get started with what you already have? So how can you do that in small consistent steps that you can take already from today and not only wait until you have XYZ figured out, until you can take the first step, but really use what you already have to take the next right step into the right direction? So it's really about working towards or walking in the right direction versus waiting for the best moment that you can suddenly have it all magically figured out. So we're saying, no, there are already ways to create freedom in your life right now. And you can leverage that to also embed freedom in the business that you're building up.
09:56 – Gresham Harkless
Yeah, that's huge. I love that word freedom for Newers and that secret sauce because I think So many times, as you said so well, that we're always looking outward to try to figure out what we need to add in so that we can get to that next level, but realizing that you already have gifts, opportunities, or things that you can leverage within is so huge and empowering and freeing as well too, because you get to say, okay, what can I do and how can I take one step towards where I ultimately want to be? And it starts to become more of a marathon than just a flip of the switch. And then you have everything in place, which rarely ever happens.
10:26 – Anastasia Schmalz
Exactly. Yeah.
10:28 – Gresham Harkless
Nice. And so I wanted to switch gears a little bit. And I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?
10:39 -Tomer Arwas
Yeah, so maybe to build upon the notion of freedom and something that we have realized for ourselves And then we also see with some of our clients is very often people pursue entrepreneurship or pursue starting their own business because they want to have this freedom. They want to be their own boss. They want to do what they want on their own schedule. But what very often happens is that you get so sucked up into your business and you end up working so hard and working every time towards the next goal that you kind of lose that initial thing.
You know that you actually were seeking more freedom and freedom to spend more time with your family or, you know, do have some hobbies and things like this so what we realize is that the focus is to have multiple sources of income. So it's great to start your own business, online business, but also know what to do with the income that you're getting there or even before then as Anastasia mentioned before. So the income that you're getting from there, how can you use that in order to create more sources of income?
11:48 – Gresham Harkless
I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client or if you happen to be a time machine, you might tell your younger business.
11:58 – Anastasia Schmalz
Yeah, so I think here we would love to pick up again, what you were calling and I love this. I love this phrase the marathon mindset. And you know just to remember as a nugget every entrepreneur every aspiring entrepreneur that might be listening to this episode that they can achieve anything they want in any given amount of time.
12:17 – Gresham Harkless
Yeah, absolutely And it might be just because it's around lunchtime for me too, so that's probably what it is too. So I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So what does being a CEO mean to you?
12:30 – Anastasia Schmalz
So, yeah, being a CEO for us is where we've been talking a lot about freedom, right? And for us, being a CEO is having the freedom of choice. And that comes in 2 different, you know, things that we like to distinguish. And one thing is the freedom to design your life and business in a way that feels aligned with you. So really do the things, work on things that you're passionate about. Define your schedule in a way that feels most aligned with what gives you energy or in a way that you can work in the most productive energized and motivated way.
But also the second part of freedom is choosing how you can share your unique superpowers with the world that will create the biggest impact. For us being a CEO or being CEO means really choosing how we want to contribute with our own talents, and unique strengths, with our knowledge, experience, skill, and interests, to create this value in the world. So for us, being CEO means creating freedom for us and creating value for others in a way that will also create freedom for them.
13:44 – Gresham Harkless
Truly appreciate that definition and perspective. And of course, all the awesome work that you do. What I wanted to do now is just pass the mic to you so to speak just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know and of course how best they can get a hold of you and find out about all the awesome things you're working on.
13:59 – Tomer Arwas
So we have on our blog actually a self-assessment which we call the freedom business quiz. So that's a short quiz that you go through and then we tell you, we assess based on your answer, the 3 steps that you need to take in order to build your freedom business. So really based on your answers, there are a couple of different ways or a couple of different answers that you can fall on. And then we explain step by step the things that you can do. So that's something that might be interesting. And we can share the link in the show notes, I guess. And besides that, we are active on our Instagram at the Generation Nomads. Yeah, in our blog, we mentioned generationnomads.com and we have also a Facebook group where people can join.
14:49 – Anastasia Schmalz
Yeah. So the Facebook group is called Freedom Lifestyle Entrepreneurs. And if you are interested and excited to find out, yeah, as someone was describing the 3 next steps to uplevel your freedom business if you're listening and wondering if you know how to get started or maybe how to get your passion project your side project to the next level, then you can find it in the link so generation nomads.com and then it's my freedom business quiz and between every word you have a minus sign. But yeah, as Summer mentioned, and Gretchen, you will probably include that in the show notes. And yeah, so we're excited to connect with any aspiring freedom entrepreneurs. And thank you so much for giving us the space to share about our mission and yeah, what we're working on.
15:33 – Gresham Harkless
Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate you for creating the space for so many people to expire and to achieve that freedom. We will definitely have the links and information in the show notes as well too, just like you mentioned, so that everybody can click through and take the quiz. I think knowledge of self is one of the most important bits of knowledge. So to be able to kind of take those quizzes, push you in that opportunity to kind of be successful, but appreciate you so much for the time and the work that you do. I think it's so freeing and empowering to know that you don't have to go outside of yourself or do this or do that to really take that freedom and lean into your gifts and talents and your skills. So appreciate you so much for the work you do and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.
16:10 – Outro
Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.
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