Entrepreneur:  Nora Dunn

Tilt: The Professional Hobo

Scene: Blog, Twitter (18.2K), Facebook (17K), YouTube (6.71K)

Snack Bites: 

• Twelve years ago, Nora sold her possessions and started chronicling her globe-trotting travels in her blog – The Professional Hobo.
• She found her niche – financially sustainable travel – after learning how to cut down her cost of living abroad.
• Recently, Nora launched The Remote Work and Travel Show, where she features everyday people living and talking about nomadic business life. 
• Nora will be speaking at CEX: Creator Economy Expo on May 4.

Why We’re a Stan: Nora is following her dreams with her feet firmly planted on the ground – and that’s her differentiator. Her background as a financial planner informs her content to help others follow her successful blueprint.

The Story

At age 8, Nora Dunn saw a documentary on Europe that prompted her lifelong passion for traveling. In 2006, she followed that dream, leaving her position as a certified financial planner in Toronto to travel the globe.

For the next 12 years, she’s moved from continent to continent, writing her blog, The Professional Hobo. She has stepped foot in breathtaking destinations – Hawaii, New Zealand, France, Nepal, Australia, and Asia. More recently, she travels whenever she can, sometimes globe-trotting weeks or months at a time. 

@HoboNora left her finance job over a decade ago to travel the world and launched her blog #TheProfessionalHobo. Her content tilt? Financially sustainable travel. #CreatorExpo #CreatorEconomy Click To Tweet

The content entrepreneur gives readers an honest look at the behind details that go into planning her long excursions and handling lifestyle logistics, especially when it comes to financing.

The Professional Hobo isn’t a vacation

Nora created the phrase “financially sustainable travel.” 

As she explains on The Professional Hobo site: “It’s not about budget travel (though I’ve done a bunch of that), nor is it about being environmentally sustainable (though I’m a big advocate of that too). It’s about earning money remotely, spending money smartly, and managing it wisely – all in the arena of lifestyle travel. These three pillars form the foundation of this website.” 

#TheProfessionalHobo #ContentBusiness is built on three pillars: earning money remotely, spending it smartly, and managing it wisely, says @HoboNora. #CreatorEconomy Click To Tweet

Ideally, she works hard to show people that it is possible to make money remotely, spend those earnings smartly, and budget wisely. Nora uses her background as a financial planning practice owner to teach others the right way to live off the grid. 

While many aspire to live the life she’s lived, Nora doesn’t view her career as an endless vacation. She explained to Insider in 2016: “In addition to whatever you might be doing to generate the income to financially sustain your travels, there’s also the work of every time you move, every time you change location, you’re finding a new place to stay, you’re figuring out how to get around, you’re figuring how to get the basic necessities of life, and that takes a lot of work.”

Nora does make time to savor every moment she enters and leaves a plane, using each excursion to fully immerse herself in the intricacies of that culture. The food, language, customs, and traditions she witnesses are all part of the lifestyle she details on her website, shown under the destinations map tab. 

Other sections, Travel Stuff and Travel Gear, inform potential traveling nomads of the necessities needed for a successful excursion around the world. From men’s protective climate conducive clothes to durable backpacks to a guide to clean drinking water, helpful tips and tricks are laid out throughout this part of her site.

Nora is transparent with her community – explaining she receive the products she reviews for free and sometimes receives a small commission when affiliate links are used.

The Professional Hobo expands to books and courses

She’s grown her content products and tackled diverse travel topics. How to Get Free Accommodation Around the World is in its third edition, explaining to readers how to bypass expensive housing. Tales of Trains: Where the Journey is the Destination beautifully describes her expensive epic long-distance rides. 

Her free two-week email course compacts a wealth of knowledge of long-term, full-time travel into easily digestible pieces. 

But Nora doesn’t limit her writing to her platforms. She writes recurring and one-off pieces for brands, including Lonely Planet, Budget Travel, GOBankingRates, CreditWalk, Wise Bread, Transitions Abroad, and Amex OPEN Forum. 

She also has been featured in print, television, radio, podcast, and online media, such as Forbes, Condé Nast Traveler, Business Insider, and Oprah. 

More recently, Nora created The Remote Work and Travel Show on her YouTube channel. She speaks with “ordinary people with extraordinary travel lifestyles and remote careers to get the real dirt on what it’s like to travel long term while working remotely.” 

@HoboNora expanded her content to air The Remote Work and Travel Show on her #YouTube channel. She interviews ordinary people with extraordinary lifestyles and remote careers. #ContentEntrepreneur #CreatorEconomy Click To Tweet

She’s interviewed various travelers on how they made the pivot to live the nomadic life. Black Women Travel founder Wanda Duncan, CEO of PeopleG2 Chris Dyer, and The Nomadic Experiment’s Jason Robinson have all sat down with Nora to share their individual journeys to finding nomadic bliss. 

When she talked to Insider, Nora explained what’s behind her globe-trotting passion: “Lifestyle travel for me has been a way of living in technicolor.”

Connect with Nora at CEX: Creator Economy Expo as she helps her fellow creators learn how to run their businesses as virtual nomads. Register today for the best rate available!