 back with another live session today for ITTT. Today we're going to talk about how to become a digital nomad with a TEFL or TESOL certificate. So yeah, don't forget as always to like and subscribe so you don't miss any of our other upcoming live sessions. We go live twice a week, one time meet on Friday around this time and then the other time my colleague Lisa um usually on Tuesday but this week has been different. We actually had a guest taking over on Tuesday this week so I hope you all saw that as well. We had Andre on from Progress Me which is an online teaching platform and also if you maybe saw yesterday on Instagram and on our Instagram account we were also live with Andre and we talked about ITTT and Progress Me and teaching online and a lot of other cool stuff and that video from that Instagram live session is also still on our Instagram account you can check that out. Great for anyone who's interested in online teaching or in becoming a digital nomad you can join the platform and get your nomadic lifestyle started with that as well. Yeah, so where are you guys right now? Let me know in the comments. I see there are some people watching already on YouTube and on Facebook. We are live on both platforms as always. Let me know where are you right now and what time is it there and yeah I appreciate you guys joining today. It's so exciting and yeah if you're listening to this as a podcast thank you very much for the download. As I always say we always turn our live sessions into podcast episodes as well and you can find us on all podcast platforms, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, all that. You type in the Teflon TESOL podcast by ITTT. You can find this there as well. Awesome, yeah so how to become a digital nomad with the Teflon TESOL certificate is today's topic. I'm so excited to talk about this but first let me know guys where are you right now? Where are you at? What country? What city? Where are you in? I am in South Korea. I've been here for six and a half years already. I live in a city called Cheongju. It's about an hour and a half south of Seoul and yeah that's where I am and Juliana is here. Hi Juliana how are you doing? Watching from Illinois it's 8 p.m. Awesome cool. We have Angela from Tennessee and USA. Cool how are you Angela? And we have Alua from London. Hi how are you? Oh isn't it like 2 a.m. in London? Is it London UK? Thanks so much for tuning in and we have Habiba from Tunisia. Hi there. Cool love this group already. Cool thank you so much for joining today and yeah I guess you're all interested in today's topic. That's why you're here so yeah without further ado oh I also want to mention that we do have a 30% off opportunity of all our Teflon TESOL courses. If you've seen the live sessions before you know that we only share this discount during our live sessions so it's very very special so how can you get this discount? One way you can scan this QR code in the upper right hand corner here with your phone and then the application page will pop up and you choose your course you fill in your details and then you get when you click apply on the next page you'll see the discounted amount. If you cannot scan no problem I am going to share the direct link to that in the comment section and if you're listening to this as a podcast it will be in the podcast description. It looks like this it ends with Facebook live minus Linda that's the code and this code if you apply through this code to one of our Teflon TESOL courses on our website it gets you 30% off and like I said we only share this during our live sessions this much of a discount so very very special if you're not yet certified you're thinking about it I highly recommend you do that and yeah that is enough of the business of the interspereal yeah cool okay as always if you've seen me before I like to show slides during my live sessions so I'm going to do that as well and I'm going to make myself a little bit smaller so we can all see the slides a little bit better like so as always feel free to ask your questions at any time throughout the live there will also be a Q&A at the end where you can ask other questions that are in your minds that's maybe not about today's topic anything that you are curious about regarding Teflon TESOL teaching abroad ITTT or me feel free to ask so yeah let's jump right in let's talk about how to become a digital nomad with a Tefl or TESOL certificate first I'd like to introduce myself for anyone who does not know me my name is Linda I am a travel writer and content creator under the name linda goes east you can find my own website at linda goes east calm and on instagram I'm very active on there at linda goes east and like I always say feel free to send me a direct message on there if you want to discuss something or if you just don't feel comfortable sharing your question in the chat here no problem you can just message me on there I'm originally from Germany and the US my mom is German my dad is American and I'm based in South Korea I've been here for six and a half years I also taught English in China before that and then I came to Korea I taught English here and then I transitioned over to Teflon TESOL marketing with ITTT you can find ITTT at Teflon course.net and that stands for international Teflon and TESOL training and I know that some of you are already ITTT Tefl certified so congratulations for that and yeah check us out on Instagram as well like I said yesterday we actually had a live session on Instagram it was kind of impromptu it was not planned actually to take place on our account it was actually supposed to take place on the progress me account but there were technical difficulties so we just moved it over to our account and it was quite a fun chat with Andrey from progress me a online teaching platform so if you're interested and it also fits in with today's topic of digital nomad so if you're interested in creating that lifestyle with online teaching I recommend checking out progress me so you can go ahead to our Instagram at international Teflon training and rewatch that from yesterday or also the live that we had on Facebook and YouTube on Tuesday where Andrey also from progress me shared some of his thoughts and ideas which was really cool ITTT is a leading Teflon TESOL course provider worldwide we offer a wide variety of different courses to enable people to become teachers around the world or online so yeah that's enough about me back to today's topic and Juliana just said I watched the interview this morning awesome on Instagram the interview yeah that was fun impromptu interview but it was fun we ended up chatting it's it's like 40 minutes long we ended up chatting for quite a while and it was very interesting we talked about ITTT he asked me some questions about ITTT and then I asked Andrey questions about progress me and I think progress me is really a very cool platform because it's really like this all in one place for online teachers and students so you can sign up as a teacher on there and you can choose they already that's the great thing I think they already give you teaching material to choose from different topics for different things so you don't even have to prep anything you can also create your own lessons and stuff on there but they also have already a huge library all made for interactive online teaching which I think is really really awesome and yeah you can also see what your student is working on you can send homework and all that it's it's very cool and I really encourage you to check it out so yeah good let's jump in first what we want to talk about is what is a digital nomad I'm sure most of you know this but just a little bit as a review or as an intro basically digital nomads are people who use telecommunication technologies to earn a living so anything that anything really that you could do working online or remotely so that can be not only teaching online but there can also be a lot of digital nomads do like creative kind of web design work or writing work or editing work or anything that you can do in a computer pretty much that's all you need a laptop if you can do it on a laptop you can do it as a digital nomad that's basically what they do and they also conduct their life in a nomadic manner so digital nomads they work on their laptop they can take the laptop anywhere they want and work from anywhere in the world so they can be here today they can be at another place tomorrow that's the beauty of the digital nomad lifestyle they work location independently right and that's why it's so appealing as well because they make traveling and exploring new places their lifestyle and I mean who doesn't who wouldn't love to have a lifestyle like that for sure absolutely beautiful we see all of those digital nomads hanging out in Bali and wherever they are and yeah I mean it's very appealing they're definitely ups and downs for sure but it looks great and why not try that for a little while while you know while you can and with a tefl or t-sol certificate you can do just that and you can also live the dream basically so yeah a little bit more statistics that I found that I just wanted to share with you because I thought it's very interesting so facts about who are digital nomads interesting fact the number of digital nomads in the us has more than doubled over the past couple of years so it was 4.8 million in 2018 and then it rose to 10.9 million in 2020 so that's a huge jump more and more people jumping on the train of becoming digital nomads so that's really cool the average age of a digital nomad in 2020 2021 this year is 32 years old 32 years old now talking about the ethnic ethnics for American digital nomads 70% of American digital nomads are white 14% are African-American 7% are Asian 7% are Hispanic and 2% are of other ethnicity this is only for American US American digital nomads I have to say but they're really from all over the world we see them from all over the world so just keep that in mind also good to know 49% of digital nomads they earn the same salary or more than their previous or prior office job so that's also great to know you don't have to make too much sacrifice and also considering that and that's actually the next point that usually digital nomads will live in places with a lower cost of living compared to where they where they're from so 38% of American digital nomads they earn over $75,000 per year while enjoying a lower cost of living so that's also very important that most digital nomads they choose places where the cost of living is significantly lower than in their home country also 34% plan to be digital nomads for a year or less so not very long term some people just want to do it for a year or less but many expect to return to the office after the pandemic so yeah definitely a lot more digital nomads since the pandemic i think but many don't want to do this long term 34% don't want to do it long term so they want to return back to the office some more stats here that i wanted to share so only 24% of location independent remote workers they actually mix work and travel simultaneously very interesting because we always see you know the the beautiful pictures of them sitting on the beach and working on their laptops but turns out it's actually more like it's harder to actually do that simultaneously only 24% manage it so yeah maybe it's it takes some practice to do that some determination most digital nomads also they travel slow with only 17% visiting more than five countries per year so that's also very interesting because we always think like oh tomorrow today they're in london the next day they're in madrid and so on but actually they stay a lot more longer in one place and that's also true for all the digital nomads that i know typically they would say i would say at least a couple of months in one place six months maybe even a year in one place and then they move on to the next so definitely not as moving so much as you might think because it's also harder to do that right you always need to set up a new home base somewhere and we're actually going to talk about how to do that later on after those stats but yeah 85% of business owners very interesting say their business is more productive when people work remotely that's an impressive number i think 85% so um that really shows that you know maybe the remote working lifestyle is the way to go um i can also speak from my personal experience i also work remotely i can make my own hours i can work whenever it's convenient for me basically i have my set amount of hours and my work that i need to do but i i can schedule my day the way i want to schedule it so sometimes if i have stuff to do if i want to meet a friend i can meet a friend if i have a doctor's appointment i can just go whenever i want or if i if the weather is good and i just want to hang out outside for a little bit i can do that and then i can do my work later and i really think that this way um you're just happier and more productive in when you're working so i i definitely agree with that also um over half of digital nomads so 52% a rated finding reliable wi-fi is one of the top challenges of the nomadic lifestyle so did you think about that did you expect that finding reliable wi-fi is one of the top challenges of a digital nomad definitely and while i've been doing my research i also found a plethora of different websites and apps for digital nomads that show exactly where to find the best wi-fi so there's a lot of tools for that and i'm actually going to mention one of the tools later on for um in the steps how to set everything up but yeah i think that's very interesting because that's usually not what you would think might be a challenge but finding reliable internet is one of the biggest challenges for digital nomads also only 30% of digital nomads they report working over 40 hours a week so 70% they work less than that which is great obviously um less working less is always great and then also interestingly van lifers they make up 17% of american digital nomads yeah i think especially in america north america van life van lifers has become a very appealing lifestyle for many so they live out of a van and camp a lot and just live out in nature in different national parks and stuff um yeah so 70% of american digital nomads fall into this category yeah so there's a lot of different types of digital nomads as well right it's not just one type like the backpacker type um or you know the van lifer type there's so many different types as well there's also digital nomad families not just single people or couples but whole families who do that um pursue that lifestyle so for sure um anyone can really do it no matter who good then also i wanted to uh mention this one uh women are leading the way with digital nomadism so uh very interesting stat that almost 30% of fully remote companies have either women CEOs founders or presidents 30% compare that to 5.2% of female CEOs in traditional workplaces isn't that crazy that's a huge difference huge difference so um that's really great that um you know this industry really um empowers women and we can finally um pursue the lifestyle that we want and need to combine you know work and family or work and whatever the all we want to do basically yeah just wanted to mention that because i think that was really that's really interesting when you compare it to um the traditional workplace 5.2% so okay cool so now oh yeah this one as well top reasons to become a digital nomad so why do so many people decide to become digital nomads definitely the increased flexibility so like i said you can schedule your own day however you you know however you want however you feel like you don't need to work from nine to five it's not written in stone you also have higher salary expectations so you can you know depending on what you work you can set your own prices you can and then if you want more money you can work more or you know you can adjust your pricing the way you want which is really great um certainly the ability to work from anywhere in the world and that's uh i'm sure why a lot of you are watching right now as well because that's also what you want you want to be able to work from anywhere in the world go wherever you want and just have the ultimate freedom definitely and i think that's what a lot of people um are craving and that's why a lot of people are choosing this lifestyle all right now i think yes so now we're going to really go into the nitty gritty um how you can do this with a teffel certificate there are five steps that i'm going to show you how to become a digital nomad by teaching english with a teffel certificate um and we're going to start with step one obviously which is you might have guessed it get teffel certified so first step is getting that teffel certificate and i also talked about this with andre yesterday from progress me in our interview he's like why should people take your teffel course so yes um one it is a requirement in many different companies and online teaching platforms as well to have a teffel certificate or if it's not a requirement if you have a teffel certificate you can actually get a higher salary a higherly hourly rate a higher hourly rate um so you want to aim for at least a 120 hour teffel qualification from an accredited course provider at least 120 hours that's what you want to do and it's also very beneficial to take a specialized teffel course especially if you're planning on teaching online you would take a teaching online course you could also teach business english or the young learners course those are also very good specialized options to choose from and down here i just have listed our um bundles as well so we have the 120 hour teffel course that's standard that's kind of where you start um the 220 hour master package is the 120 plus two of the specializations and then it just goes higher and higher including um the diploma course and also including the um teaching practicum add on so it depends on what you want to do always you know at least you should have this one but if you're like oh i want to teach business english or i want to teach children you should aim for this um if you want to do this more long term more uh yeah making a whole full time career out of it you would go higher and higher and higher so sky's the limit when it comes to this but um yeah you should definitely start here and have the certification as a minimum to get started and that's where our 30 discount comes in um so i just want to mention that again that if you are deciding to take one of the courses to just please take advantage of this 30 percent off we only share this during our live session so you can either scan this qr code in the upper right hand corner or i'm just going to share the discount link one more time for people who've joined late um we've just joined not seen the beginning um it looks like this in the podcast it is in the podcast description but it looks like this ends in facebook live minus linda and if you apply through this link you get 30 off just want to mention that again for people who just joined and also want to mention again don't forget to like and subscribe we also go live twice a week and we also share a lot of other awesome content on facebook and youtube and other social media platforms as well good so that was step one get tefl certified and those are all the steps um i'm going to say that um but i want to mention that after every step so this is before you are leaving before your um you know you leave you set off on your adventure step two is also before you leave you will apply for online teaching jobs and begin interviewing also for online teaching jobs online platforms you need to do an interview it depends on platform it depends from platform to platform it changes um what you know what the interview process looks like um i teach on a platform where i had like a 15 20 minute interview via skype we're just casually talking i didn't have to teach anything nothing like that it was just kind of a get to know a casual talk with this person and then i was you know my prof my profile was um public but i've also seen teaching platforms where you actually need to provide a background check so it really ranges it depends on platform on the platform okay angela hi angela has a question i'm just going to take the question real quick so angela asks i completed a 120 hour certification could i take the additional 50 hour difference to get the 220 hour master package only um that is a good question i do believe that you can we have a lot of top-up options i'm pretty sure you could do that but um please email us um email the sales team just to make sure i do think that it's possible um let me know uh let me see for the email address real quick it is courses at hold on courses at uh tson-teffel.com that's the right email so please email them and let them know um that you completed the 170 hour course and if it's possible to top up i i'm pretty sure it's possible um just make sure with the sales team so yeah good okay so yeah um different teaching platforms and um i just want to share that again i actually have a google sheet for you all listing um 20 of the best online teaching platforms and i'm just going to share the google docs link with you right now and i am just also going to share my screen and show you real quick what it looks like i've shared this before so you might already have this um but yeah this is what it looks like this is what it looks like here's the name of the company yes you can join um look at it right now and basically you know how much they pay some of the requirements if you need a teffel or not if you can also do this as a non-native speaker here's all the info here and different teaching platforms listed and the link where you can apply so what i recommend you do is go over here to file and make a copy and then you can save that and edit that on your end and keep it for yourself i've shared this a couple of times already but i just wanted to share it one more time for you guys for some of you who are watching for the first time um but yeah go here to file make a copy and then you have that for yourself you can make edits you know you can mark um some of the platforms that you like that you applied for anything like that so go ahead and do that um yeah good i see that a lot of you are clicking on it so that's great cool so that is that and then also once you are applying uh once you are joining a platform and also you can join more than one platform that's a really good idea um you know to join just more than one they all are different so you might have to join a couple different ones to find the one that works best for you or you can just simultaneously work on more than one platform to test the waters as well so basically yeah which one works for you so that when you set off on your digital nomad journey you know exactly um you know you are set you know how it works excuse excuse me you know how it works and you are set you don't want to set off on the journey and then start applying for jobs because you need to build a a reputation for yourself so also for me for example i started teaching online in march and it took a good four or five months to build a reputation on that platform and get a steady flow of regular students so it takes a couple of months to get everything set up and started so you want to do that before you leave and then you earn a little bit of money so that you start earning money pre-departure because you also need to think up think about startup costs so wherever you are going you're going to need a house like a place to stay you need like maybe a new phone plan a phone contract anything like that so you need to you need money to do that and starting to teach online first to earn money pre-departure is a good idea and especially to build that reputation so you have a steady flow of regular students and from my own experience like i said that takes a couple of months to have that okay that is step two also pre-departure step number three is also pre-departure you want to research your visa options okay and the kind of visa the visa process and what visa is available to you will vary based on your citizenship right there's different visas in different countries for different other citizens so you want to look at that so you want to pick the countries that you're interested in and i'm going to show you a list of suitable countries for digital nomads right after this and some basic conditions that i've seen in most of these visas are that you either own a location independent online business or you work remotely for a company based outside of the country that you want to go to so let's say you want to go to mexico so you either own your own independent business or you work for a company that is not based in mexico for example that's one of the requirements then you also most of the time need to earn a minimum amount of money per year so that they know that you can fund yourself that is a requirement and then also most of the time a requirement is to have health insurance some countries they include the visas the digital nomad visa includes the public health is included in the public health care system but sometimes it is not and then you need to have your own travel or health insurance plan and provide proof of that so those are like the basic requirements to qualify for a digital nomad visa again the requirements they vary from country to country so they're always different the amount is different and some of the requirements are different some have less requirements some have more requirements so you need to look into that when you've picked a place where you want to go but let's have a look at that and basically countries that have a digital nomad visa and as you can see there's so many and those aren't even the only ones so there's more than that so take a few moments and take this list in while i'm taking a sip of my coffee and let me know where you where you would want to go which are those countries which is your favorite where would you love to go there's a lot of countries in the caribbean which i would love to go to so yeah as you can see first one Antigua and Barbuda is that what's called Antigua and Barbuda or is that a typo anyway maybe it's a typo feel like is this right i hope so i apologize if it's a if there's a typo in it but they also have they have a it's called the nomad digital residence visa so if you feel like it you can take a screenshot of this list hey yeah mkdonil says oh you want to go everywhere portugal spain costarica iceland maybe norway cool so you have a lot of really warm places and a lot of really cold places that's interesting marcia says some place in europe i would like cool yeah awesome yeah so bali number two here um so they're listed alphabetically there's no like particular order just alphabetically um all of the above love that yeah just go everywhere and that's the beauty of being a digital nomad you can go anywhere you like you can go to all of these it's possible yeah so bali is i think really the poster destination right for digital nomads i mean this is what you see all over all over instagram particularly and youtube all the digital nomads sitting in bali and bali is amazing i have been to bali it's it's gorgeous um so yeah then we have Barbados bermuda caiman islands that's what i mean like all of these great places in the caribbean i would love to go costarica they have a one-year digital nomad visa and all of these i think pretty much all of these are also extendable i've read that multiple times um we have places in europe like Croatia gorgeous check republic beautiful also dubai which i did not know that that is a digital nomad place but they also have a one-year virtual working program which is really cool we have estonia georgia georgia in europe germany which has a visa that's called oftentimes allowedness for self-sufficiency so that i don't think there's an english title but that's what it's called um so yeah try to pronounce that island i didn't find the name of the visa but um if you just you know google this and say um island and then digital nomad visa it will show up and give you all the requirements also malta they have a digital nomad residence permit moritias one year and completely free you don't even have to pay for these so that's great um mexico norway portugal spain so all really really great options i think something for everyone to choose from a lot of great places definitely do check that out i also know that um i have a friend from germany and she um actually there's a working holiday visa for korea and she's a writer so she did online work on that visa so i think that's also possible to do online work on a working holiday visa apparently in south korea so maybe that's also an option for some of you you can check that out but yeah any place in europe yeah for sure i mean i would really love to go especially the the caribbean um that just sounds so nice um yeah so as you can see so many options take a screenshot of this um so you have it and then you can pick your favorite and start planning so again this was i think step three um the things to do before you leave and now we are getting into step four so once you've picked your country now it's time at choosing a home base so you need to check for available co-working spaces a lot of digital nomads do it this way because those co-working spaces they um have great internet they have a like a kind of like an office environment they're really great for working so a lot of digital nomads they look for co-working spaces um you can also look for using google satellite to figure out where you want to be based so google satellite is great to really check out what it really looks like there to find like kind of the neighborhood you want to be in you know is it close to the ocean close to a park close to the mountain whatever you're looking for you can do this way also google street view you can already check out your neighborhood and see you know if this is a good place to be as for teaching you need to really look for a quiet environment free from distraction so you need to make sure that the home base you're choosing is quiet um if it's too noisy and loud it's not going to be good for your students and probably um the online teaching platforms are not going to be happy with that and might might um you know not want to continue working with you if you are in a very uh loud place and then also a strong internet connection is a must when you work as digital nomads so what you can do here you can see the url speedtest.net so a lot of digital nomads when they pick a place they see a place they like maybe on airbnb or on you know other digital nomad sites they message let's just go with airbnb they message the airbnb owner and they say hey how about your internet connection can you do a speed test and you have them do a speed test at that property and send you the result so um i mean maybe we can have a look for a quick and so i can show you what that looks like the speed test speed test.net was that right speed test.net yes okay i'm going to share my screen with you so you can see that so you can just do that together real quick so you can see what you want to look for here and maybe now the speed is not so fast because we're doing live at the same time uh yeah so this is what it looks like it just ignore the ads but yeah so you just click on go and then it does its thing testing the speed i have to say though that south korea has the fastest internet in the world they really pride themselves with that um so yeah that's the download speed now and this is the upload speed okay so as you can see it's uh more than 100 so this is considered very very fast and very good and reliable um but i think for teaching at least anything in like the 50 and 75 areas where you want to go to i think what do you want to aim for so yeah and then so you want to have your airbnb person do this um test and then just send you a screenshot here of the results for example yeah so easy as that you can try on your own computer and see how the speed is on your end you know if you have um a good connection or not yeah so this is how you choose a home base and then i mean it really depends on you know what you're personally looking for do you want to live alone do you want to live with other people other digital nomads you know that can also be very fun like i said there are so many forums and websites and groups um for digital nomads um where you can find good home bases and get a lot of information from but those are just the basics how you would start choosing a home base and this is again pre-departure um or maybe you're already there and you're just staying in a hotel and checking things out definitely also possible and now the last part of your research of your of your um journey before you leave is research and secure health and travel insurance and that is so so important don't forget to do that and sometimes even for your visa for your digital nomad visa it is a requirement anyway so you have to do it if it's not a requirement just please still get insurance it's so important um some visas they include access to health public health to the public health system but you can also add additional insurance especially if you already know you have certain health issues you might want to get that insured um also put insurance on valuable items or gear um you know a lot of digital nomads they have very good laptops um so you want to maybe put insurance on that just in case or also other gear that you might need like good cameras or your phone or any other kind of equipment that you need um you know uh that's probably also a good idea to have that insured and also check if you need any vaccinations depending on you know where you go certain countries they have other diseases that you know your your country doesn't have so sometimes you need to refresh or check up on any vaccinations that you might need and I remember when I moved to um to China um I got a bunch of different vaccines um just in case you know you never know but um yeah just in case of you know schedule an appointment with your general doctor and just have a talk about the destination and they can check you know what kind of vaccinations are recommended there and then just give it you know give you a consultation and then you can decide whether or not you want to do that but I mean always be on the safe side so I would definitely recommend that yeah and so that is the last step so after this you are good to go to your first destination and start your career teaching online as digital nomad right so now a lot of you might be asking well what about in-person teaching I don't want to just teach online I also want some human contact right so yeah you can definitely teach in-person students to add to your income a lot of teachers do that not only online teachers or just teachers anywhere I also do that I have in-person students to um add to my income you can also find short-term teaching positions there are a lot of contracts you know where just a three month four month six month gig somewhere you can also find those or things like summer camps and winter camps you can find those all over the world any kind of seasonal teaching positions you can also find those and also there's always volunteer positions um so maybe you can do that obviously that would be unpaid most of the time so you can do your volunteering wherever you want to go and then maybe do some online work on the side or you do like you know different kind of periods so one time you would you would first work so you have a bit of a budget you have some money saved up and then you could do something like volunteering position um and you know enjoy that and do something good give back for a couple of weeks or months and then you return to your working lifestyle I mean it's so so flexible and I think that's really the beauty of this is that you can really you know turn this into something that works for you you can do what you want to do go where you want to go and that's just what I think the biggest takeaway I want you to take away from today that this can just open doors to anything that you like there's no one particular you know journey we're all different we all have different journeys just showing you what's possible and what you can do with a Teflor t-cell certificate and teach online wherever you want to go and what you can do out of that make out of that so yeah before we enter the Q&A part I just want to mention again how you can find ittt online on our website Teflor course dot net and also on facebook where many of you're watching from you're already there if you didn't like the page yet go ahead and do that twitter also and instagram at international Teflor training and then I think it's time for the Q&A session again you can scan this QR code right here or you can find the discounted link and save 30% on your Teflor t-cell course you can also email us what was the email address here courses at t-cell minus tefl.com if you have any questions not sure you know which course to take definitely check that out we also have so many previous live sessions about so many different topics also which course is best for you there was a live session about that so go ahead and check that out in our playlist on youtube there's a live video playlist and also on facebook on our page there's a playlist of live videos go ahead and check that out and then um yeah let me make myself bigger again and then yeah let's open up Q&A I'm I still have a little bit of time I still have a little bit of coffee left as well so that's good so any questions you might have I see there was a question from Abdul that I did not answer yet so Abdul was asking for non-degree holders so if you don't have a degree can you also do that yes absolutely there are a lot of teaching platforms and you can see that on the sheet that I shared with you whether or not a degree is required and there are a lot of teaching platforms here for example Cambly, Engoo, Jinseng English, Italki, Latin Higher, Learn Light so so many on there that do not require a degree so yes and also for visa purposes I didn't really see anything that requires a degree as you maybe I pulled it up again where was that the requirements basic requirements again they vary from country to country um where was that oh here yes here as you can see they don't really mention anything about a degree it's really about more about the work so if your work is really online if you really work for an independent location independent business or you know if the company is based outside of where you want to go and how much money you earn per year and if you have insurance those seem to be the four four five main requirements but again they vary from country to country and visa to visa but this seems to be what it's like so they don't really mention a degree here hope that helps okay sure Shell says thank you for sharing thank you so much for joining I appreciate that and I hope that um you were able to take something away from today and maybe learn something new definitely save that um google sheet that I shared with you guys with um the online platforms it's going to be very helpful um and yeah I'm still here for a couple more minutes so if you have any questions about tefal about tsal about teaching english abroad or online about itt about me personally about korea I live in korea I've been here for six and a half years anything like that feel free to ask I always say there are no stupid questions don't be shy I always like having some conversation in exchange with you guys so don't be shy ask away anything um I'm happy to answer it great that's a great question Angela so Angela says did you have any issues with overcoming being on camera while teaching online yeah so um I'm actually quite I'm more of a shy person um to be honest I'm rather introverted um so definitely it was kind of a challenge so actually I started teaching online in March of this year but I think what helped was doing these live sessions so I started doing these live sessions a year ago so in October and that's also where you need to be on camera like this and in the beginning I felt really awkward but um it just gets better over time you just need to kind of jump in and then every time it just kind of gets better and better and you're overcoming this kind of um yeah this uh this feeling of being uncomfortable it gets better and better and um I also only teach one-on-one students so it's not me and like five other people but it's always one-on-one so that also definitely helps and it's actually most of my students are adults um and it's very casual we talk like friends it's actually really fun um and I think it's it it's even better this way you know via the computer you still have like a barrier it's not really face-to-face it's you talking um you know through the computer which also kind of helps so I would just say you know the more often you do it the more comfortable you're gonna be with it just give it a go yeah the first time was definitely kind of scary and I prepared you know an hour in advance for like a 15 minute conversation lesson and I was super nervous um I still get nervous for certain you know if it's the first time I have a student definitely but um yeah it just gets better better over time Juliana says I agree with you yeah Juliana you've also been teaching online right so um it just gets better and you just need to step into this teacher role you know it's kind of like a different persona you have your teacher online teacher persona and then you have your like your your uh at home persona which is two different things I think great okay Abdul has a question what about if I want to have a bachelor I've been in Thailand for oh I've been in Thailand for over two years I hold a TESOL certificate 120 hours in class but over one year I haven't found a school to hire without a degree okay yeah then maybe you should look into getting a bachelor's degree is that a possibility for you maybe you can find a school in Thailand um or online as well there's so many options nowadays um so for sure we also have a the online courses they have you university credits with them the PCIE from ITTT so maybe that's something you could look into if you're interested in that you could email us again at courses at TESOL minus TEFL and you can ask the sales team about university credits that we offer I think that might be a really good option for you or if you don't you know have the time to get a degree or the budget right now you could just maybe go to a different country where there is no degree required or you could start teaching online at a platform that does not require um to have a degree it's all up to you I would say many options definitely many options don't despair okay great I'm just gonna stay on a couple more minutes two or three more minutes to see if anyone else has a question before I sign off but yeah what do you think about today's topic actually is this something that you could see yourself doing being a digital nomad while teaching online let me know is this something you could you you can see yourself doing after today's uh session do you feel like maybe you can pursue this in the future very curious let me know I'm definitely very interested in this and I've been thinking about going somewhere and staying somewhere for a month um been looking into that for a little bit so I'm definitely interested um probably somewhere in South Asia Southeast Asia I'm very interested in that so um we'll see but um yeah it's definitely an option for me as well Marcia says yeah maybe that would be nice um Abdul says most of teaching online they said my experience is not fit with them what does that mean why what experience do you have do you have teaching experience sorry to hear that maybe you just haven't found the right platform yet I would encourage you look at the list I gave you and look for all of those that do not require a degree and just apply apply to all of them and have interviews I'm sure you can find a platform that fits for you absolutely no don't be sorry for asking a lot that's great that's what I'm here for that's why that's what q and a is here for I'm sorry I can't give you like a better answer but I would recommend checking out the sheet I shared with you and all the platforms that have uh that don't require a degree and you get in contact with them I'm sure there is a platform out there that will be more than happy to hire you for sure okay all right don't be shy I love that I love having an exchange and a conversation with you don't be shy at all yes I can share that again for sure let me share that sheet again maybe you joined later um yeah Juliana I mean if you think you can help him reach out and that would be really great we can help each other so this is the link it's a docs.google.com spreadsheet link you can click on that and then you just make a copy of that and then you can refer to that that's what it looks like so yeah connect with each other Juliana and Abdul that would be great and maybe Juliana can help out here that'd be awesome as well because I know Juliana is teaching also for several platforms so why not help another teacher out here that'd be great all right well uh I'm glad I could bring you two together that seems like maybe something good can come out of that um I think yeah if this if there are no more questions I'm ready to sign off for today I hope you enjoy today's topic it was a little bit different like I always say every week I try you know to bring up a new topic it's not always easy so if you have any topic suggestions feel free to let me know and then I can um organize a life around that I'd be happy to do that so if you have anything you can just message me here at linda goes east or you just email me um message me email us at ittt anything um happy to accommodate you Juliano says hello linda hi Juliano it's been a while or maybe you're just quiet because I can't see who is watching I can only see how many people are watching and I can see who um you know when you make a comment but I can't see who's watching in the background but hi I'm very excited that you're here it's been always a pleasure listening to your presentation now thank you so much I appreciate that yeah I tried to make it fun obviously helpful useful that you can take something away that's my goal here and to answer some questions so I hope I did that today and I hope you learned something new and I hope you tune in again next week we always go live twice a week one time me Fridays usually at this time and then one time my colleague Lisa on Tuesdays around Tuesday and she is a non-native English teacher from Russia based in Russia but she also taught English in China she's a great online teacher as well so she has a lot of input feedback great tips and advice for online teachers and non-native English speakers who want to teach abroad or online so if that resonates with you I recommend checking her out as well we all have all of our live sessions listed in our playlists on Facebook and also on YouTube so go ahead and check that out as well and then I think I'm signing off um if there are no more questions you can also still leave your questions in the comments if you watch a replay if you watch this when it's already over feel free to just make a comment and yeah have a great weekend thank you Marcia Marcia says hope you have a great weekend dear Linda hugs huge hugs from Chile your topic was interesting as usual thank you so much Marcia I really hope I can come to Chile and visit you um that's really on my on my list of things to do so I hope I can do that um that'd be awesome and um yeah I hope to see you all again next week and then I'm signing off uh I'll leave you here um stay safe stay happy stay curious come back again next week and if you have any question anything it any questions anything at all here at Linda goes east on Instagram or at international Teflut training on Instagram here on Facebook messenger anything we are available we can reach out all right okay then thank you yeah great all right thank you all and see you next week hopefully bye