You want a week around people who already run the thing you are trying to run. You also want it in the calendar before the year fills up.

Only 7 of these events have confirmed dates for 2027. Here is what each one does with your week. Each entry gives the dates, the location, the ticket price where the organizers published one, what the program includes and who it suits.

Seven digital nomad events have confirmed 2027 dates

The dates below come from each event’s own website, checked in October 2026. Where an organizer has not published a 2027 price, the table says so instead of guessing.

Full disclosure: This Uncommon Life runs its own in-person gatherings under Uncommon Events. None of them is on sale yet.

1. Nomad Summit pairs 2 days of talks with a 48-hour build

Nomad Summit runs January 15 to 17 in Chiang Mai, at the Shangri-La, with side events running on to January 24. Tickets start at €299.

The conference core is 2 days of talks across 6 tracks. The standout for a business owner is the Buildathon. That is 48 hours in a mixed team of international and Thai builders.

A matchmaking lunch and curated introductions sit alongside it.

The 2026 edition drew about 250 people, which is small enough that you see the same faces twice.

It suits founders who want to come home having built something with people they met on arrival.

2. Nomad Week Cape Town runs a hackathon and 4 coworking days

Nomad Week Cape Town runs February 17 to 26. The organizers have not published a 2027 price, and they list a Standard and a Premium pass.

It has the most hands-on sessions of the seven. The standard pass covers a full conference day, an AI hackathon and a pitch competition. It also covers 5 days of attendee-led unconference sessions and 4 coworking days, where you sit and work beside the same people.

The organizers put past attendance above 200.

South African and African nationals can apply for close to 90% off the standard pass.

It suits founders who want to spend the week working next to other founders.

3. Italia Nomad Fest is 9 days of talks and shared desks

Italia Nomad Fest runs March 6 to 14 in Palermo, at Villa Niscemi. The standard ticket is €350, or €175 on the current early bird. The full ticket is €495, or €248 early, and it adds a gala dinner and the premium activities.

This has the clearest pricing of the seven. What the organizers publish is talks, coworking and daily local activities, with no hackathon and no attendee-led sessions.

It suits founders who want a long stay in Sicily and are happy to make their own introductions.

Here is where the published prices stand. Three of the 7 organizers have posted a 2027 figure.

4. Da Nang Nomad Fest splits into business and wellbeing tracks

Da Nang Nomad Fest runs March 19 to 28 in Vietnam. The early bird is $197 and the regular ticket is $297. That is the cheapest on this list by a wide margin.

The program runs across 2 cities. Da Nang carries the business growth sessions and Hoi An carries the wellbeing ones. Single-stage passes let you buy one side on its own.

The city’s own tourism office describes the format as panels, workshops, networking sessions and coworking, including coworking on the beach.

No hackathon and no unconference appear in what the organizers publish. The coworking days are the working sessions.

It suits founders on a tighter budget who want the business track on its own.

5. Alicante Nomad Summit runs 4 tracks over a full week

Alicante Nomad Summit runs April 19 to 25 in Alicante, on the southeast coast of Spain, at the city’s Chamber of Commerce. The organizers had not published a 2027 ticket price when we checked.

The week is split into 4 tracks: Work, Tech, Self and Life. A welcome day opens it, 5 days of keynotes, panels, workshops, skill-sharing circles and coworking follow, and a closing day ends it. Some trips and smaller sessions have limited places.

The organizers list more than 250 attendees and more than 30 speakers, from over 30 countries.

It suits remote workers and founders who want a full week of practical sessions on the Mediterranean.

6. Nomadbase Live Tarifa keeps your working hours free

Nomadbase Live Tarifa runs May 17 to 23 in Tarifa, on the southern coast of Spain. No 2027 price published yet.

This is the only one of the seven that says outright what it does with your day. Most activities run in the mornings, in the evenings and on the weekend, so the working hours stay yours. That suits anyone still holding a full-time job.

It is also the smallest, at around 150 people, with keynotes, expert-led workshops and an unconference.

It suits founders who cannot take a week off work and still want to meet people.

7. Bansko Nomad Fest hands the program to the attendees

Bansko Nomad Fest runs June 20 to 27 in Bansko, a ski town in the Bulgarian mountains. No 2027 ticket price published yet. The add-ons are listed: €40 for the pool party, €15 for the bonfire night and €60 for the spa day.

The unconference is the point here. Attendees run their own talks, workshops and sessions.

An Industry Day for the companies that sell into this market runs just before the festival. The organizers do not publish an attendance figure.

It suits founders who want to host a session of their own.

Running Remote is built for people who manage teams

The one remote work conference every roundup recommends is Running Remote, in Austin. It belongs on a different list.

Read who the organizers say it is for: founders, CEOs and COOs, People Ops and HR leaders, and heads of internal communications. The common thread is being responsible for how a team works across time zones.

The program is about managing people, so it suits founders who already have a team or are about to hire.

Key Takeaways

1. There are 7 digital nomad conferences with confirmed 2027 dates, running from Chiang Mai in January to Bansko in June.
2. Every one of them runs 7 to 10 days, so the flights and the nights cost more than the ticket.
3. Three of the 7 organizers have published a 2027 price, from $197 in Da Nang to €495 in Palermo.
4. Nomadbase Live Tarifa keeps the working hours free. It is the one program here built around people who still have a job.
5. Running Remote is built for people who manage remote teams, so it suits founders who already have staff.

Arrive with a business already running, and we help you build it

These events give the most to founders who arrive with a business already running. You can say in one sentence what you sell, and the people you meet can buy it, refer it or work with you on it. Getting that business built before the trip is the work we do with you.

Plan A gets the business chosen, set up and earning in 8 weeks

If you have real expertise and no business running on it yet, Plan A is our 8-week, application-based program. We work with you one on one for 16 hours, starting with the direction. From there we set the business up, get the offer right and find the first customers.

Most founders in it are still in a 9 to 5, and it works the same way if you were laid off or you freelance. It includes all 6 Uncommon Toolkits and the first month of Uncommon Mentorship.

The Shortlist is how you work out what you should build

If you are carrying several directions and cannot rank them, The Shortlist is our free live workshop on Zoom. You leave with one direction and the reasons it beat the others. If you have no direction at all, you leave with the method for generating them properly.

It is where this starts, and the hands-on work of making the chosen direction earn is Plan A.

The post Digital nomad conferences in 2027 (a calendar for business owners) appeared first on This Uncommon Life.

Hating your job counts for something. It tells you the job is over. It can’t tell you whether a customer will pay you once you leave.

Timing matters more than courage. In a study in the Academy of Management Journal, founders who started on the side before going full time had a 33 percent lower risk of leaving self-employment. The comparison group went straight from a paycheck into working for themselves.

Run 6 numbers before you quit your job to start a business

Work them out in order, because each one feeds the next.

1. Work out what you actually spend each month

You have a number in your head for this, and it is usually too low. The problem is, spending rises with income without you ever deciding it should.

Here is the United States version. The average US household spent $78,535 in 2024, about $6,500 a month, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Survey.

Your test: add up 3 months of bank and card statements, including annual charges divided by 12. Every other number on this page is built on this one.

2. Add up what your employer pays for you every month

Your paycheck shows what your employer pays you. It leaves out what your employer pays for you - and that figure is bigger than you think.

In the United States, employers spent $49.46 an hour per worker in June 2026, and $15.61 of it went to benefits, per the BLS employer costs release. The biggest piece is health insurance. A single employer plan averaged $9,325 a year in 2025, and the worker paid $1,440 of it, per the KFF Employer Health Benefits Survey.

So your employer’s share, about $650 a month, stops on your last day. Keep the same plan through COBRA and you can pay up to 102 percent of its cost, per the US Department of Labor.

Stella Guan, the founder of This Uncommon Life, worried about health insurance more than anything when she prepared to quit her full-time job.

Outside the United States, find what your employer pays on your behalf (usually health insurance, a pension and social contributions). Price each one as a self-employed person where you live and add it to your monthly number.

3. Check how long your savings can last you

The usual advice is to save 6 months of living expenses. The only thing is, what your employer used to pay and the business’s bills come out of the same savings. So 6 months of expenses buys you fewer than 6 months.

Most of your peers do not have 6 months saved anyway. Fewer than half of US adults aged 30 to 44 have even 3 months set aside, according to the Federal Reserve.

What your savings buy is time to find out whether customers will pay you. About half of new US business establishments are still open after 5 years, per BLS Business Employment Dynamics data.

Your test: divide your savings by your monthly spending plus what your employer covers plus the business’s monthly running costs. Take 3 months off, because your first invoices get paid later than you expect.

4. Work out what the business has to get paid each month

The business has to bring in more than your salary did. The reason is a tax line you have never had to look at.

As an employee, you pay half of your Social Security and Medicare tax and your employer pays the other half. Working for yourself, you pay both halves.

Self-employment tax applies to 92.35 percent of your net earnings once they reach $400, and income tax sits on top. Elsewhere, look up the self-employed social contribution rate in your own country. The half your employer used to pay becomes yours there too.

Your test: (your monthly take-home pay + what your employer covers each month) divided by 0.75 = what the business has to get paid each month before tax. The 0.75 is a rough stand-in, because your real tax rate depends on where you live.

5. Check the highest price a customer ever paid you

Write down the largest amount a client outside your job has ever paid you. For most readers that line is empty, and that is useful to know.

A paycheck every month tells you nothing about whether a customer will pay. Plans made before leaving often turn a salary into a day rate that no client has ever paid.

If the line is empty, look for 2 early signs. People outside your company keep asking you for help without you pitching them, and you can describe exactly who would pay.

Your test: multiply the figure on your line by the days you could sell in a month. Compare it with your monthly target. If the line is empty, filling it is your first job.

6. Price what the business costs to run for a year

The business spends money before a customer pays you: registration, an accountant and liability insurance if your work needs it. The software is the line that catches you out, because every tool your employer pays for has a single-user price you have never seen.

Our toolkit How to Maximize Your Runway as a First-Time Solo Founder shows you how to keep a solo business lean while it grows.

Your test: price every tool you opened for work this week and add the yearly total to your savings math.

Get your first sales while your salary is still coming in

What the business needs each month and what a customer has paid you so far rarely match. Here is what a first year on your own can look like.

You can close that gap before you hand in your notice. Give it 2 hours before work, 4 mornings a week, and you put in roughly 400 hours a year.

Spend 2 weeks having 4 real conversations with potential customers. Ask each one what they pay to get this problem solved today. That answer is the rate your spreadsheet has been missing.

There is a longer version of this in how to start a business while working full time.

Plan A is our 8-week program for professionals with years of experience and no business built from it yet. We help you choose the direction and plan how to reach the first customers who might pay for it, alongside your job.

Wait if your stock vests or your bonus pays within the year

The 6 numbers can all come out right - and the timing can still be wrong.

Say stock options vest in 8 months or an annual bonus pays in 4. Leaving before then hands your employer money you already earned. That money usually buys you more months than extra saving would.

Choose the business that makes these numbers work

The numbers tell you what has to be true. Choosing the business that makes them true is the step most founders get wrong on their own. Getting it wrong is how a year or two goes by.

Plan A builds your business alongside your job in 8 weeks

Plan A is our 8-week, application-based launch program for professionals with real expertise and no business built on it yet. Most founders in it are still in a 9 to 5, and it works the same way if you were laid off or you freelance. Over 16 hours of live 1:1 coaching, we work with you to choose the direction, set the business up correctly, get the offer right and plan how you reach your first customers.

The Shortlist is how you work out what you should build

The Shortlist is our free 60-minute live workshop for professionals who have several business directions they can’t rank, or no clear direction yet. You leave with one direction and a list of what has to prove true before you quit. Plan A is where we build that direction with you.

The post Leaving a job to start a business (run these 6 numbers first) appeared first on This Uncommon Life.

The data says otherwise. Across 2.7 million US founders, the average age at founding was 41.9. For the fastest-growing 1 in 1,000 companies, it was 45.0.

So there is no single best age. Each decade gives you a different advantage and makes a different thing harder.

Check the founder data on the best age to start a business

Pierre Azoulay, Benjamin Jones, J. Daniel Kim and Javier Miranda matched US Census records for 2.7 million founders of companies that hired staff.

Their study in American Economic Review: Insights found an average founding age of 41.9. A 50-year-old founder was 1.8 times more likely to reach top-tier growth than a 30-year-old founder.

One thing to note is that the study only counts companies with staff. Most expertise businesses (consulting, coaching, specialist freelance work) have none, so read the ages as a guide.

The finding that carries over best is about experience. Founders with 3 or more years in their company’s industry reached the top 1 in 1,000 at a rate of 0.22%. Founders with none reached it at 0.11%, according to the NBER working paper.

You clear that mark long before 40.

Compare what each decade gives you and what it makes harder

Start in your 30s while your spending is still easy to cover

By your 30s you have 8 to 15 years of work behind you, and you know which parts of it you are good at.

The only thing is, the founder stories you grew up on star 22-year-olds - so at 34 you feel late. Next to a 45-year-old, you feel green.

Neither feeling matches the data. In the same Census study, the founding rate per worker peaked at age 38. A bigger share of 38-year-olds started companies than workers of any other age.

This decade also gives you 2 practical advantages. Former colleagues are moving into their first management jobs, which is where budgets for outside help sit.

And your spending has not yet climbed through another decade of raises. The number the business has to replace is as small as it will get.

The harder part is first-year pay. Gusto tracked nearly 24,000 solopreneurs and found that Millennial solopreneurs earn about 60% less than their employee peers in year 1. Millennials are now in their 30s and early 40s.

So work out the smallest monthly figure that covers your life, and build the business toward that number first.

Start in your 40s by selling to buyers you used to sit beside

By 40 you have almost certainly been the customer. You hired the agency, approved the contractor or signed off the invoice (possibly all 3).

So you know who signs, what made your own boss say no, and what your employer pays an outside specialist for work close to yours. That day rate is your best reference point for pricing.

Your contacts have grown up too. Former colleagues run teams and hold budgets now, and they already know your work.

The harder part is that your spending grew with every raise. The number you have to replace is your real monthly spending, which is usually well below your salary once you work it out.

Your employer also pays for things that never show up on your payslip. Stella Guan, the founder of This Uncommon Life, quit her job and found that health insurance was the expense she had not planned for.

In the United States, the big items are health insurance, the retirement match and the employer’s share of payroll taxes. Wherever you live, list the 2 or 3 things your employer pays for you. Price each one for a self-employed person in your country, and add the total to your monthly number.

Start in your 50s with the problems you always get pulled into

By 50 you have about 25 years of the same few problems coming back to you - that is your raw material.

Curt Roese is a CPA and former CFO who writes for professionals going solo after 50. He tells readers to write down the 5 problems they were the go-to person for.

Staying put carries its own risk.

ProPublica and the Urban Institute followed US workers from age 50. They found that 56% were laid off or pushed out of a longtime job at least once. Only 1 in 10 of them ever earned as much again.

The harder part is money set aside for later. In the United States, taking money out of an IRA before age 59½ generally adds a 10% additional tax on top of income tax. Elsewhere, look up the early-access rules for your own retirement savings.

If your plan needs a withdrawal from retirement savings, the business is too big for a first version. Start with the smallest piece of your expertise a client could buy.

Wait if your stock options or bonus pay out within 12 months

Stock options, a retirement match or an annual bonus might pay out within the next 12 months. If so, that date has a dollar figure on it. Wait for it, and build in the meantime, the way starting a business while working full time lays out.

Run these 4 checks while you still have your salary

You do not need a sabbatical, a career break or a gap in your income to start. Spend 2 hours on it before work, 4 mornings a week, and that adds up to about 400 hours a year.

Write down the problem colleagues keep bringing you

Use one sentence, in the words the colleague asking uses. That sentence is where your offer starts.

Check how long your savings would last you

Divide the savings you can reach without a penalty by your real monthly spending. Our free Solo Founder Roadmap works this out from 6 answers, and shows what the business has to earn each month.

Price what your employer pays on your behalf

Start with health cover, retirement contributions and payroll taxes, priced for a self-employed person where you live.

Talk to 4 potential clients who live with that problem

Skip the pitch. Ask how they handle it today, what they have tried and what they paid for it.

You can run all 4 checks on your own. The step that decides whether any of it pays off is choosing which direction to commit to.

Plan A is our 8-week program for professionals with years of expertise and no business built on it yet. Most founders in it are still in a 9 to 5.

It works the same way if you were laid off or you freelance, and we settle the direction in the first weeks.

Get help with the choice that decides whether the rest works

Whatever your age, you have the experience and nothing earning from it yet. The step this article keeps coming back to is the choosing. It is also the step founders most often get wrong on their own.

Plan A gets your business chosen and set up in 8 weeks

Plan A is our 8-week, application-based program for professionals with real expertise and no business running on it yet. It runs alongside a full-time job, with 16 hours of live 1:1 coaching.

We work in the order that decides the outcome: the direction first, then the business set up correctly underneath it. After that come the positioning and the offer, and a plan for reaching your first customers that you can run yourself.

Working this out alone is possible, and it is also how founders spend 2 years and a lot of money reaching an answer 8 weeks would have given them.

The Shortlist is how you work out what you should build

The Shortlist is our free 60-minute live training for the choosing step on its own. Come with too many ideas and you leave with one, plus the reasons it beat the others. Come with none and you leave with a method for finding them.

It is the first step into Plan A, where we build the business with you.

The post Best age to start a business (what your 30s, 40s and 50s give you) appeared first on This Uncommon Life.

So you stay, and the gap feels a little wider every year.

You can close that gap on a normal working week. Build in a set order, and leave when the business reaches a number you chose in advance.

Build while you are still paid, because that route lasts longer

Joseph Raffiee and Jie Feng followed people who started a business while keeping their day job. In their Academy of Management Journal study, the ones who later went full time had much higher survival rates than people who quit first.

That matters, because most new businesses close within a decade. Of the US businesses that opened in March 2013, Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows 79.6% were still open a year later, 50.6% after five years and 34.7% after ten.

Test your idea while a salary still covers your rent. If it fails, you keep the lesson and the income.

Price what your job pays for that you will cover yourself

Your employer pays for things that never show up on your payslip. The day you leave, they become yours.

Stella Guan, the founder of This Uncommon Life, quit her job before the pandemic and found that health insurance was the cost she had not planned for.

Here is the United States version, because it is the most expensive one and the easiest to underestimate.

If you live somewhere else, the mechanism is the same and the amounts differ. List what your employer pays on your behalf, such as health cover, a pension and social contributions. Then look up what each costs a self-employed person in your country.

The number the business has to beat is your real monthly spending, plus tax, plus those costs. That figure usually sits well below your gross salary.

Check whether a new job would fix what you hate about this one

Some of what makes a job hard to bear belongs to one company. A manager who times your lunch or a new strategy every quarter can end with a new employer.

Other problems come with being an employee anywhere. You stay reachable after hours, and you answer for decisions you were overruled on.

Those come from someone else having the final say over your work, so they follow you into the next job. If most of what you hate looks like that, a business of your own removes that.

Follow these steps to start a business while working full time

Each step fits around a full-time job, and each one depends on the one before.

1. Read your contract for IP, side-work and non-compete clauses

Open the agreement you signed on your first day before you build anything, and look for these clauses.

In the United States, a federal court stopped the Federal Trade Commission’s 2024 non-compete ban. The FTC’s page on the rule (last updated April 20, 2026) says it is not in effect, so state law still decides. Other countries have their own rules.

This is general information, so take unclear wording to an employment lawyer. And keep every business file and account on devices you own.

2. Choose one direction before you spend an hour building

Holding three ideas feels like keeping your options open. In practice, every hour becomes an argument with yourself about which one to work on.

Choose the direction where you already have the skill and a problem you have solved for others more than once.

This is the step we built The Shortlist for. It is a free 60-minute live workshop where you find the solo business ideas worth building, whether you arrive with several ideas or none.

3. Write down who you help in one sentence

Finish this sentence before anything gets built:

If the first blank says “small businesses”, keep narrowing. “Heads of operations at logistics companies with 50 to 200 staff” is specific enough to name four of them from memory.

4. Protect 2 hours before work, 4 mornings a week

Evenings look free on paper, but after a full day of meetings most of that time goes to recovering.

Working 2 hours on 4 mornings gives you 8 hours a week of your best attention. That adds up to roughly 400 hours a year without a single day off. Put each block in your calendar with the task named, such as “Client outreach, 6am”.

Meanwhile, keep hitting your deadlines at work, so your manager has no reason to start watching you closely.

5. Ask 4 people to pay you before you build a website

The website, the logo and the registered company all feel productive. None of them tells you whether a customer will pay.

Go to 4 people who match your sentence and offer to do the work at a price, with a date. Charge from the first one, even a small amount. Kind words and a payment tell you very different things.

If all 4 say no, you have spent two weeks and learned what to change.

6. Set the monthly income that tells you it is time to leave

A savings goal that lives only in your head grows every time you get nervous. So write two numbers on one line.

The first is the monthly income the business has to reach: your spending, plus tax, plus what your employer covers today. The second is how many months in a row it has to hold. Once both are written down, you leave when the business hits them.

Plan A follows this exact order. It is our 8-week program for professionals with years of experience and no business built from it yet, coached 1:1 around a full-time job.

Wait if your stock vests soon or the job is harming you

If stock options, a retirement match or a bonus vests within 12 months, work out what leaving early would cost. Pick your date with that figure in front of you.

If the job involves harassment or unpaid wages, talk to an employment lawyer before you resign. If it is affecting your health, see a doctor first.

This plan suits a business built on your expertise, such as consulting or coaching. A business that needs investors or a warehouse of stock needs a different plan.

Get help choosing the direction, the step that decides the rest

You have the whole method now. Choosing the direction decides whether the other steps are worth doing, and it is the step people most often get wrong on their own.

Plan A gets your business chosen, set up and running in 8 weeks

Plan A is our 8-week, application-based program for professionals with real expertise and no business built on it yet. Most founders in it are still in a 9 to 5, and it works the same way if you were laid off or you freelance.

We work with you one on one on the direction you commit to, the business set up correctly underneath it, the positioning and the offer, and a plan for reaching your first customers. By week 8 you are running it yourself.

Working it out alone is possible, and it is also how people spend 2 years and a lot of money reaching an answer 8 weeks would have given them. You can apply for Plan A here.

The Shortlist is how you work out what you should build

The Shortlist is our free 60-minute live workshop for the choosing step, whether you have several ideas or none yet. You leave knowing which solo business ideas are worth building and why, and Plan A is where we help you build the one you choose.

The post How to start a business while working full time (if you feel trapped) appeared first on This Uncommon Life.