Léon Kopijn works and lives as a Digital Nomad. He travels the world with his lovely family, and writes about inspiring cultures and practical travel tips.
My Work Story
I studied Leisure Management at the Business School in Rotterdam between 2006 and 2010. During this time, I also worked as an event & project manager at several cultural and music events. After I successfully finished my Bachelor’s Degree, I started working in the Health & Sports branch between 2010 – 2017.
Quickly I learned that corporate life isn’t something that suits me. I’m more interested in the person and their culture — the things that drive them and what they love to do. I found out that while I was working in the events and sports industry, I was able to help people experience the best time of their lives. However, there was always something missing for me, and I didn’t figure out at that time what that something was.
In between jobs during these years, I started traveling around the world. Learning more about different cultures, Buddhism, and meditating. I followed various courses about meditation and attended several meditation retreats in Thailand and The Netherlands, which helped me discover what I wanted to do in life.
It’s essential for me to decide about my working hours so that I can work everywhere in the world and that I don’t need to work for over 50 or more hours a week to make a living. I have always been interested in internet marketing and online businesses. However, until recently, I didn’t expect that I could make a living out of it.
When Kirsten and I started our first year of full-time traveling, we also tried to figure out how we could make this work in the long term. We knew then that we wanted to do something travel-related online. This way, we could work everywhere in the world. It took us over a year to figure out how the blogging business works. We followed many (wrong) pieces of advice from ‘Internet Gurus’ telling us what to do. Looking back at this time, it was a great learning process that we needed to go through to understand the business. And we’re still learning every day!
Thanks to Jim and Ricky from IncomeSchool, we learned how to create an online business and successfully created several niche websites.
Made For Travellers is our website, where we share the best travel-related content and how to escape the corporate rat race. I write and research almost all of the content on Made For Travellers.
We also started another website, retirementtipsandtricks.com, where we help others enjoy and celebrate retirement in the best way possible. Kirsten is working most of the time on this website.
I love working on Made For Travellers. The website is best known for its in-depth cultural articles, practical travel tips, and extensive information about destinations worldwide. The funny thing is that I work on the website, researching new stories almost every day. Often I put in even more hours than when I was still working a paid, corporate job!
I also wrote many articles about our home country, The Netherlands. It is one of my favorite categories to write articles for. Of course, I know a lot about the country just by being Dutch, but by writing in-depth cultural guides, I love learning new things about my country!
Since we live in our touring caravan most of the time, I also love to share stories of how comfortable life actually is when living in a caravan.
My Personal Story
We used to live in The Hague in The Netherlands. Close to the historic city center and Scheveningen Beach. Both were only a 10-minute bicycle ride away. It was an awesome location to live, but it kept us away from what we love doing most, traveling around the world, being closer to nature, and experiencing other cultures.
So we decided to sell our house in 2017, quit our jobs, and turn our lives around. No more corporate, no mortgage. Live as free and independent as possible. We’re so blessed that we can live our life this way. However, it was not always happy times for us.
Before we met each other, we experienced many periods of personal growth, often with mental and physical setbacks. It sounds like a story like many others, and I think it’s completely natural. We were just lucky to be challenged with setbacks in life at a relatively young age, which helped us figure out what we wanted to do with our lives sooner than many others.
I met Kirsten while working at one of my last corporate jobs. We both didn’t like working at that company, but somehow it brought us together. I can still remember the moment I first saw her, thinking, ‘what a beautiful woman!’. She noticed me looking a bit too long, and it didn’t take long for us to get together. She’s the love of my life, and I can’t imagine living this life without her.
Our son was born in July 2020, and we can’t imagine life without him anymore. It feels like he always has been around before. It’s such a blessing that we can be together every day, and we don’t have to stress about paying our mortgage or getting to our office job. We can just enjoy the beautiful moments together. Of course, sometimes we want to have some time for ourselves, but we give each other enough space to do so.
I love learning new things in life and getting to know more about the different cultures in the world. By researching and writing for Made For Travellers, I can fulfill one of the things I love to do most. But I also love learning and doing new things that are non-related to our websites. One of my favorite things to do is cooking. I love cooking and learning about a healthy, mostly plant-based diet. Trying out different things that are food related so that we can create most of our food ourselves. I also love to meditate and do mindful exercises, and you can call me a fitness fanatic if you want. I always bring my kettlebell while traveling so I can work out wherever we go!
That’s me!
Grtz, Léon!