From a 95 job to 247 travel
[Music]
okay firstly i want to apologize
for my complete lack of experience but
welcome to my ted talk
i honestly never thought i would be
saying this and not cracking a joke
but well here we are hi i’m rindah
sharma an average indian woman
and an aspiring travel blogger coming to
you live from spiti
i honestly wish um i was giving this
talk in person so that i would be able
to interact with
all of you lovely people but this works
out fine as well because
this is where i actually started
my journey from and and i’m actually
giving my talk my ted talk here
every story has a beginning and my
beginning dates back to when i was a
child and i used to travel with my
parents to
these hill stations across india i grew
up in a school surrounded by kids who
were
able to travel the world with their
parents and i was great for them but
somehow
knowing my humble beginnings and where i
was coming from
i never felt like i was in a place to
even dream
of traveling the world so the mountains
in india were my safe place
i grew up as a very passionate kid i was
always very enamored by the outdoors i
loved being outdoors
i was always either into sports or i
really like to travel
even though it was with my parents so
when i graduated from school
i was lucky enough to get admission in a
college that also had a campus in shimla
and when i got to know that i knew that
was something i had to pursue and
honestly that was the perfect
opportunity for me to get out of my
comfort zone
and i chose that campus solely with a
mindset of
being able to stay in the mountains
utilize that time to
be independent uh be on my own and also
start traveling
without my parents first two years of my
college were
not that easy i was in an environment i
was not
very flexible and very open to seeing
women doing um unusual things
especially like travelling and trust me
back then traveling was not normal
hardly anyone from my college used to
travel
except these few guys who were already
from himachal
and it was also very difficult to
convince my parents to let me go with a
group of people they didn’t know
to a place they hadn’t been to so i
spent the first two years of my
engineering just waiting for that
perfect opportunity
cut to my fifth semester i started to
realize that time was running out
and i was closer to the mountains then
then i would have ever been
and i also had like this list of places
that i had to have to cover before
my college would end so i got together
eight people
to go on this trek called triune i’m
sure a lot of you have heard about it
so that i would be able to convince my
parents to let me go
and also have my college give me
permission to leave when i started the
trek
i instantly felt in connection with my
surroundings
and with the nature i was so happy i
felt so confident
and you know you miss a lot of things
when you’re traveling with your parents
when you’re just
kids and all these things were starting
to come to me as soon as i started this
trip
i reached the top and i instantly felt
so accomplished
i was also separated from the rest of my
group so it was only me with
two other friends of mine 15 minutes
into reaching the top
we were stuck in a hail storm that did
not end for 45 minutes
after which it started to snow by this
point i had no idea where the rest of my
group was i was
very worried for all of them a lot of
the camps that uh the people that were
already there had set up
were torn because of the hail storm we
had nowhere to stay
uh the little tea stall that we had
taken shelter in the guy decided to
close and head back down to dharamshala
so we had literally nowhere to stay
and mind you this was my first trek this
was my first trip
without the blanket of protection of my
parents
and the planning and everything that
goes behind planning a vacation
that i had no idea up until this point
but the responsibility that came with
this experience
was definitely i was getting a high off
of
i remember then in the morning when we
decided to leave
very urgently because i knew the weather
was going to get even worse
uh that particular day and we had just
begun to
climb down when uh the weather started
to clear out
and the clouds in front of the dholadars
started to move away
and i had never seen such mountains
before
i i still don’t have the words to
describe
the feeling i got when i saw those
mountains
and that is when i knew
i had to had to make traveling a very
very big part of my life
i loved this feeling of responsibility
this feeling of being independent solely
responsible for your own safety
and continue to chase these experiences
now it was time for me to graduate i was
desperately trying to figure out how to
travel full-time
if there was a job that would allow me
to travel
every month or every week for that
matter how i could convince my parents
that i was so passionate about traveling
i wanted to do it
full time but honestly i got no answers
i went nowhere with my research
this was year 2017 when we only had
a handful of influencers and people were
not very open about
their sources of income and how they
were able to travel
but nevertheless i did not stop trying i
did not stop contacting people
on instagram on and on multiple websites
and
this is when i got in touch with this
star photographer
uh anunnae who i began talking on
and somehow convinced him to take me on
on this trip to spiti that he was
planning that winter i was so desperate
to reach the mountains i basically
agreed to go with five complete
strangers
to a minus 25 degree no networks with me
and since this year i had graduated and
i was not working
i was still trying to figure out stuff
and i was generous enough to sponsor the
trip for me because i literally had no
money
as long as i was able to help him out
with his work since he was already an
influencer back then
he did have a couple of collaborations
that he wanted help with while i was on
this trip
while i was working with him i saw this
whole new world of careers
this whole new world of being
influencers and actually traveling full
time
uh and honestly i knew then this is
something i had to explore
i continued to work with anunna since
that trip to spiti
i began doing social media management
for a couple of clients that we had back
then
and with the money that we earned we
took a couple of trips across india
we then decided to move to dubai to
expand this list of clients that we had
and you’re probably wondering why dubai
no taxes
better work culture and closer to the
rest of the world i
moved to dubai in march 2018 and i know
you’re probably wondering
this was too soon right um that’s what
honestly i felt as well
but uh this this was a risk that i
decided to take for myself
because i was honestly not able to see
anything that was happening for myself
back in india for the next two to three
months
um i continued to work freelance on
social media management
and travel as well and if this sounds
perfect
it wasn’t i gradually learned that i was
not too comfortable traveling and
working because
i was not okay with the fact that
something was interrupting my trips
and i was somehow not about this kind of
life
about this um uncertainty of how much
money i’m going to be making the next
month or if a client would stay on
uh the next month or not and i wanted
some stability in my sources of income
so i decided to start looking for a job
two months
of countless interviews and a lot of
hard work
i finally landed a job with gsk and
started working
in august 2018 and i remember thinking
to myself back then
um oh you know it’s okay i have
responsibilities
i have bills to pay um it’s okay if you
know even if i’m able to travel
once a year it’s fine at least i’ll be
able to do something at least i’ll be
able to travel
once it’s fine and i remember thinking
all this with a very heavy heart
because this is obviously not something
i was
looking forward to do while on the job i
try to hack my way into
maximizing the amount of travel that i
was able to do with the amount of leaves
that i was
given in a year and as soon as my
probation period ended which is
for about six months uh we started
traveling
in feb uh in 2019 and ended up traveling
to 12 countries that year
we did not miss one long weekend every
public holiday we combined with our
annual leaves and honesty just left
we prioritized traveling that year to
the max
so much so that i gave up spending time
with my family
meeting my friends or anything else that
honestly that i like doing because
traveling was the only thing that was on
my mind that year we were working
full-time jobs traveling the world and
trying to grow our instagram accounts to
now
300 and 400k followers and this way we
also
were able to establish multiple sources
of income for ourselves
i’ve obviously missed out on a lot of
important information here
so let’s get into it why did i decide to
not travel full-time
i had responsibilities i also had bills
to pay
and uncertainty was something
i have never honestly looked forward to
back then
since being influencers was not that
popular um i had no
idea how to start and how
brand collaborations work or how you can
actually earn through instagram so i
decided
to work on this on the side till the
time i figure stuff out for myself
and my parents did not approve of
traveling full-time at all
how did we end up travelling so much
with full-time jobs
i’m asked this question all the time on
instagram on how i’m able to manage
a nine-to-five job with traveling this
much and honestly
where there is a will there is a way is
always my answer 2019
was a year where i prioritized myself
when my work started to get noticed on
instagram uh that’s when things started
to pick up
i started receiving um collaborations
from brands and that is when i fully
understood
how you could actually travel full-time
and how you don’t need to
be working freelance in order to travel
i now have
enough experience with traveling and
blogging that i no longer
require my nine-to-five job now let’s
talk about what you guys can learn from
my story
number one try to have or develop a
sellable skill
this will help you figure out how you
can earn on the side
and also not be location dependent
number two
be patient and be passionate we often
forget
the things that we really like to do or
the things that we’re passionate about
when we are so busy trying to build a
life for ourselves
it is very important to have something
that you’re truly passionate about
because this definitely helps you stay
motivated
no matter what you’re doing if you’re
not able to do what you love doing now
you will in the future so figure out
ways you can start
achieving it and work towards it keep
small goals for yourself
and timelines that you want to achieve
those goals by and start working towards
those goals
number three start prioritizing your
life 2019 for me
was self-care 101 because i cheated my
job as my job
and tried very very hard not to confuse
my personal
and my work life while i worked towards
building a career for myself
i did not forget what i was passionate
about let’s start normalizing not
killing ourselves for a job
let’s start normalizing and prioritizing
taking all our leaves
and let’s start prioritizing ourselves
and lastly
i know this one will be a little cheesy
but if you love something purely enough
things will definitely fall into place
all you need to do
is be passionate and be ready to take
the risks for yourself
because thank you everyone for listening
to my talk
hope i have been able to inspire you to
build your own path
be passionate take risks and not go
after having a normal life
[Music]
you