Once Broke and Raised By a Single Mom, This Man Now Makes Millions Traveling the World
Johnny Ward is a regular guy from Ireland who met his stunning girlfriend while traveling the world and, despite his lack of a tech background, made himself into a millionaire using mostly only his laptop.
Ward, 31, was born to a single mother in Galway, Ireland. He always wanted to travel the world as a child but did not always have the funds to reach his desired destinations.
Although Ward was not afforded many travel opportunities as a child, he was never dissuaded by the cards he was dealt and chose to focus his attention on the future.
Ward graduated from high school in Galway and then went to England to attend university. During the summer months, however, Ward worked overseas in the United States at different summer camps for special-needs children.
Ward graduated from the university in 2006 with a degree in international economics. He said that was the first time he finally felt free.
“I loved my childhood, but I always dreamt of the open road, so as soon as I was free, I was gone. That was 2006.” Ward writes on his blog profile.
After his graduation, Ward booked a one-way ticket to Chiang Mai, Thailand for a job teaching English. He also began backpacking but was limited as to where he could go because of his tight budget at the time.
He went through multiple jobs in order to make ends meet, including signing up for medical experiments. Luckily he was able to land a high-paying sales job which allowed him to earn up to $20,000 a month. But after three months, he decided to quit.
“I realized that, with only one life, I don’t want to spend Monday to Friday locked in a place I don’t want to be,” Ward writes on Facebook.
During Ward’s time in Thailand, he happened to come across an article about a travel blogger who earned over $2,000 every month just from his website. Despite his lack of technological knowledge, Ward was inspired to create his own called OneStep4Ward.
Ward told NextShark about how he came to create his website:
“I was making making enough money from my blog to live and travel off of from early ’11, but it wasn’t until a year later that I got off my ass and saw the potenital. I spent that whole year getting to grips with making money online, learning to believe it was possible and sustainable, and of course partying a little too hard as I had just moved to Thailand and was only working a few hours a week and thought I had hit the jackpot.”
“After too much of that, I thought ‘What am I doing? This isn’t living the dream. If I can make five grand off one site, imagine if I had two or 10 or 100.’ From there I expanded aggressively, spending a lot of money on the company, hiring people etc. It was hunger, and striking while the iron was hot.”
Many of his travels are shared with his flight attendant girlfriend, who he met while in Thailand.
“I come from quite a poor family … I have anxiety about not being broke again,” he told Business Insider.
Over the next 12 months, Ward spent his time behind a desk in Australia trying to figure out the back-end of his new blog. He told Nextshark:
“OneStep4Ward.com was born during those 12 months of lost hours spent in an office. Never again. I headed to Africa with a one-way ticket, and now more than 150 countries later I don’t need to ‘work’ for anyone anymore. I’m as free as I could have ever dreamt and I love it.”
Things have gotten so busy for Ward that he had hired up to 12 employees at one time. Ward told NextShark:
“About 18 months ago when the money was crazy — $50,000+ every month, off-shore so not taxed — I had a lot of people. Now the staff varies between five to eight people depending on how biz is.”
“I’ve never met half of [my employees] though; it’s all Facebook chat and Skype. I don’t have working hours, I dont check up on people. If the work’s done, I’m happy. It would be hypocritical of me to make people work in an office when it’s the thing I hate most in the world.”
His 2012-founded company manages corporate blogs, SEO and social media for other companies. He has made over $1 million from his blog, company and real estate and stock portfolios.
“Over the last three years I’ve earned between $6,500 per month to $44,000 per month, averaging out at almost $700 a day every day,” he told the Daily Mail.
Instead of being tied down to a desk, Ward is able to take care of all his managerial duties on his laptop, which gives him the freedom to hike through the Himalayas, cage dive with great white sharks, and feed red meat to hyenas in Ethiopia.
So far, Ward has traveled to 151 out of the 193 countries on the planet.
He admits to NextShark that the language barrier while traveling sometimes causes awkward situations:
“I spent most of my life confused around the world! Spending two weeks giving the ‘thumbs up’ in Iran in all my pics only to discover it pretty much means ‘Fuck you’ in Persian was a good example.”
When asked whether he and his girlfriend “Ja” plan to get married, he told NextShark:
“One day, sure, but not until I slow down on the traveling. We’re very fiery so it’s a very up and down affair. She’s an Asian flight attendant, so she kinda understands my traveling but of course it still causes problems.”
“You have to be selfish if you wanna achieve your dreams, and it’s easier to do that when you’re young.”
Ward’s advice to those who want to become successful:
“Stop sharing too many inspirational memes on Facebook, stop reading every motivational book, don’t listen to every person selling you shit on the internet unless they haven’t done it themselves first. Choose a handful of people with a track record of real success in whatever field you love, draw from them, and then get going.”
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