I Built a $30K/Month Business From a Remote Island (How I Work)

My number one KPI for my business is all in pursuit of being calm, being content with what I have. I love what I do. I adore what I get to do because I want this to exist in 10 years. I want it to be thriving for decades. The whole world thought that being a generalist it came with so much stigma. It was like not the sexy thing. I totally disagreed with that notion. I knew that generalists had huge value. So I set out [music] to change the world's narrative on how generalists see themselves and how the world sees generalists. For all intents of purposes and to save on word count, you can just say that I'm a hardcore generalist. Hey, I'm Millie Tamdi. I'm the founder of Generalist World and [music] I make $30,000 every month as a solo founder who has a very small team. The entire business has been built from an island [music] that has 191 people. And people

often ask me, "What is it [music] like building from a remote island in Scotland?" So today, I'm so excited to tell you how I work. So from the outside, my day probably looks pretty boring. Most days are literally the same. So the first thing I do when I wake up is I head straight outside. So my [music] morning I will start with a morning walk. And my only goal for that walk is to notice something that I didn't notice the day before. And when you start to [music] walk like this, you realize that there is so much out there in the world to notice. I will then come back and I've got a little cozy corner in my living room and that's where I will meditate.

After meditating, instead of just like jumping into Slack or emails, I like to tap into creativity. So, I will spend my morning creating content. I think having these slow mornings massively impacts my workday. It means that when I do actually go online and when I have team calls or partnership calls, I'm not coming at it from a place of anxious and frazzled and like desperate or anything. And I find that the more grounded and centered and calm I am, the better I can make decisions.

I'm the founder of Generalist World. And over the last 4 years of building generalist world, we have made nearly 600,000. So when people ask me, what is generalist world? I always wish that I had like a clean answer like it's a SAS or [music] it's an agency. But the honest answer is it is actually a world. It's a newsletter. It's a members community. We have a job board. We host a summer school. We literally invented our own holiday international generalist day. And what we really exist for is for people who have done lots and lots of different things who do not fit into a box at work. And we exist to help them change the way that they see themselves.

Hey, it's Gus, producer [music] on starter story. Real quick, I hope you're enjoying Milliey's story and how she built this crazy business from this island. I think it's just awesome. [music] But you might be sitting there and wondering, can I do that, too? Well, obviously I don't know about the whole island part, but that question is exactly why Starter Story exists. And inside starter story, we recently rolled out a bunch of new features designed to help you figure out what business you can start. You can really think of it like a research platform. Now, inside are thousands of real businesses, all with the actual data behind them. You can find stuff like revenue, how they're growing, cost to [music] start, tools, tech, everything you need to validate your business idea. And every month, we're dropping new free resources to help you figure out what business you're going to start. And the latest one is a database of over a 100 business ideas that you can start for less than 500 bucks. And that's just one of dozens of free resources inside Starry. So if you're ready to get started, head to the link in the description and grab all of that 100% for free. All right, let's get back to Millie.

So my mornings are full creations thing that requires my creative juices to be flowing. I reserve that for the mornings. And then I will always take a big chunk off over lunch. I have a walk that I have done every day, often twice a day. Takes about 40 minutes. It's the loop I call it, and it's my favorite walk in the entire world. I've done it hundreds, maybe thousands of times, and I don't get sick of it. And in the afternoon, I reserve more for like meetings, podcasts, partnerships, [music] and things that require less of the creative energy and more of just me being present.

Generalist World was built from my little Highland cottage. It is 200 years old. Imagine like the picturesque Highland cottage. Stone walls, no central heating. I got really good at creating [music] fires cuz our entire house is heated by wood stoves. When you step out the door, you won't see people, but you might see sea eagles or utters, lots and lots of birds. And it's almost like living a double life where I get to like come online and have this like full reach to, you know, hundreds of thousands of people see, read, and watch my stuff every month. And I then get to close my laptop and go play in the sea.

It's been an incredible 5 years. I've lived in the wild. That's the best way to describe it. And living in the wild comes with a sense of calm that I never knew existed. So I think people decide right okay I want to go start a business and then they say right what business should I do and they often follow the thing that they think they should do they're not really stopping to pause to ask the big questions like why am I doing this why does this need to exist I think a better way to go about it is to not fall in love with an idea but to fall in love with a really big juicy problem. So for example, generalists are understood and they're undervalued, which means my work is never done. I will never solve this problem. I will never be able to fix tens of millions of generalists feeling undervalued. And that is why I keep going.

So when I first started building businesses, the only narrative I could find was million dollars. And I kind of feel a bit like everyone's drunk the Kool-Aid. It's like an arbitrary number, right? I have a different [music] take. If you're someone that wants to go out and grind and hustle, kudos to you. But I think there needs to be so much more narrative around people who want [music] to have a business, who want to make an impact, and who don't want to like lose themselves and their health and their families along the way. And so that's where I've fallen into. a business that makes a couple of hundred grand a year that doesn't have any investors, a very small team that are also my friends. I don't feel the pressure or need to reach tens of millions of people and make millions of dollars a year because that would change my lifestyle and I love my lifestyle. I probably wouldn't be able to go walking in the forest for a few hours a day if I [music] have thousands and thousands of customers who are on support to me. So, I think you just have to be really honest about what kind of life do you want to have.

>> [laughter] >> So, typically I would end my days honestly around 3. I kind of have a rule that when I'm at work, I'm on, but when I'm off, I'm out. See you later. The world will keep spinning. Generalist world will keep operating and if it doesn't, I will fix it tomorrow. So, when I finish work, to be honest, I'll probably go for another walk. As you can tell, walking is my love language. After that, I will start cooking dinner. So where I live on the island, there is no restaurants. There is no Uber Eats. So every single thing I have cooked for the past 5 and 1/2 years, I have cooked from scratch. Almost all of our food comes from the island.

>> It is warm. >> After dinner, I will catch up with friends. I will play guitar. I will write poetry. And I'm typically always in bed with a cup of chamomile tea by about 9:00 p.m. And that's my reading time. So, every night I will read for at least an hour. So, I'm usually asleep by around 10:00 and then I just wake up in the morning, which is usually around 6:00. Do not wait for anybody's permission. It's not coming. The permission is not coming. You must sign your own permission [music] slip. When I look back at the most pivotal partnerships I've done, the most recent one being with Beehive, I did not wait for them to say, "Yes, let's partner." I said, "Hey, here's an entire body of work. Here's the results of what I have already done.

We need to work together." And that has turned into our largest partnership. We've just signed on for an entire year. And final advice would be be more weird. Everything has become so vanilla and bland on the internet and on socials and our websites. Everything's looking the same. Guys, [music] just turn up the weird. Just be a bit more weird. The more honest I got with myself, the more weird I became, the more success that started coming in my way.