Into the mind of a nomadic entrepreneur with Maria de la Paz Barbirotto
We’re starting this series with a special guest. Someone who built her lifestyle around her entire career and today is considered one of the most diverse and interesting nomadic entrepreneurs in the world. Maria de la Paz Barbirotto stays behind the scene, she won’t reveal her personal social media even if she worked so far with over 250 online businesses and projects. She’s smart, prepared, and educated over the average, but she didn’t pick a stable career in a big company, she chose for herself a nomadic lifestyle and she built business after business on top of that. She’s a business planner and strategist, a brand and identity developer and she holds a specialization in art management and marketing, becoming one of the first crypto art consultants in the world. After ten
years of nomadic career Maria Barbirotto declares to be where she wanted to be. Let’s get into her mind to understand her vision.
What is your lifestyle? How do you work?
“My lifestyle is based on freedom. My appreciation for life and the experiences we can do it’s too high to be trapped in a regular lifestyle. I truly believe that working a 9-5 job, stressing out about bills, accumulating credit card debt, and buying material things that we don’t need have never been the primary purpose of the life we’ve been given. I can’t picture myself doing the same in loop every month of my life until I retire. I believe we are the result of what we think and what we get in the result of what we do. I always gave more importance to making my experience on earth precious and I always traveled a lot. I keep my business online, I travel a lot, I manage my free time, which at the beginning of my career wasn’t much, but right now is about 85% of my days, I don’t stress about the future because I started to plan it ten years ago, so that future is now the present.”
Did you receive any help to get you started?
“The only help I received to get started is education, which in Italy is pretty much free. I come from a modest family, I often had to help my family with bills, so definitely didn’t have any favor in that sense. But my parents raised me nomadic, we moved to another continent when I was 4, then we traveled every year, mostly long road trips by car, in high school and college they sent me to study abroad, and I was very curious, I loved to study and get to know about everything, literally everything. When I was 8 I was already subscribed to over 50 forums from history, to mountain bike, art, photography, science, literature, politics, geography, civil rights, etc. I was probably the only 8 year-old kid discussing topics with adults and academics. That definitely influenced me, I believe. When I started my career I started with $0, from there I just started to plan for the long term towards an early retirement and the financial freedom by the time I become a mother”
What is your relationship with literature? What is a book that changed your life?
“I love literature and I can’t pick one single book that changed my life. I’m very passionate of English Romanticism and in particular poetry. I love the work of Wordsworth, Lawrence, Coleridge, Blake,
Keats. I have several books that I love but “Millionaire Expat” is probably the only one that contributed to some of my financial choices ”
Your entire career has been surrounded by art. What is your favorite piece of art?
“I love Romanticism in art too, I love the concept of sublime which since I studied it in high school it became a continuous research in my life. I love “Wanderer above a sea of fog” by Friedrich, “The Raft of the Medusa” by Gericault,
‘Liberty leading the people” by Delacroix. I’m very susceptible in front of “The Fourth Estate” by Pellizza da Volpedo. But I’m devoted to art starting from Phidias to Dot Pigeon.”
Did you have a mentor or some sort of inspirational figure that inspired your career and success?
“My father in primis, he came from nowhere and he’s always been very ambitious, he always had a new idea to start a business. My brother, he’s an encyclopedia, he taught me that education makes the difference and how to use my brain. My mother because she dedicated her entire life to raising us and put her own life in a corner, she gave me the input to reach my financial freedom before becoming a mother.”
What are the sacrifices you had to make to be where you are today?
“I made sacrifices in my life but to be here where I am today I only used my preparation and my brain, taking a risk is not a sacrifice to me, and I truly believe that making sacrifices is not always indicative of a healthy result. Coming from a family that made only sacrifices I’ve seen my parents not always enjoying their life, which is the opposite of what I want for my family”
How do you keep yourself up to date in terms of education and formation?
“I’m constantly doing research. I spend at least 3-4 hours a week in research and studying new dynamics, disciplines, and competitors. I like to take certificates and courses of topics in my working area or others”
What is the business field or discipline that keeps you more interested at the moment?
“At the moment I’m working and investing a lot in crypto art. I provide consulting services and solutions to art galleries, dealers, collectors, and institutions. Crypto Art to me has been the finish line of my career. I’ve been working in art for over 10 years. Conciliating art and online business has not always been easy, with crypto art and NFTs things have radically changed and I’m glad to be here early.”
Give me the first advice that comes to your mind.
“Always be gentle, you don’t know what other people are going through”
What is allowing you to have so much free time and keep working?
“Organization, skills, good investments, self-sufficient business projects”
How much did your past influence your present and your future?
“I don’t know if my past influences my present and my future. I made a very clear decision for my own life and career many many years ago and I started working towards that since then. The life I’m living now and the career I have right now is the result of what I’ve worked towards since day one”
What is the main reason why you became a nomadic entrepreneur?
“I wanted to live life. I wanted to give my wife and my future kids a life full of experiences and adventures, the presence of each other, I wanted to be able to take advantage of my presence on this planet for me and for the ones around me. This is basically the only reason.”
What is your biggest fear concerning your work?
“Luckily I already surpassed the big fear period many years ago. My career has been pretty stable for the past 6-7 years and I’ve always been very positive to the point that problems are not an option for me, I don’t even contemplate something negative that can cause me fear because I know that when that moment start, my biggest fear will appear and destroy everything I’ve created. But I do have a big fear in general and it’s stupidity and ignorance. I’ve always tried to stay away from the two of them”
What are your professional goals for the future?
“Keep doing what makes me passionate and I enjoy doing, keep living my nomadic life and don’t need to stress about work”
If you could dedicate your entire life for a global cause, what would that be?
“Probably global warming”
Something is really hard for you to believe?
“That there’s still people that smokes cigarettes”
What’s happiness for a nomadic entrepreneur?
“Being a nomadic entrepreneur it’s happiness”
