From shovelling sh*t to travelling the world

My name is Jack Marriott. I'm 38 years old and currently travelling my 24th country after permanently leaving the UK in 2020. I'm a bachelor of medical science, a master of neuroscience, with multiple remote income streams, and ultimate freedom. But it wasn't always like this.

I left school at 16 straight after GCSEs to work on a building site. That was my freedom then. Cash in hand, my own rented room, and out of school. It was where I learned the most and grew the most, and drilled the desire to graft into my nervous system. I became successful in my own right in the trades but after more than 10 years of working every waking hour of the day I realised I wanted more out of life.

In 2014 I started a college course on the side, studying maths, chemistry, and biology. I absolutely loved it, and flourished. Of the three subjects, I took a strong interest in biology, and after passing the course I went on to study applied medical science at University College London (UCL). This was a massive step up for me. A prestigious London university, among the best. Here, I learned a whole other side to life. How to read and write academically, how to work in a lab. Anatomy, physiology nanotechnology. After studying for three years, I got my degree and realised it wasn't really worth much on the job market, so I went back to work in construction.

The next year, Covid started. I saw through it straight away, and a feeling started brewing that I needed to get out. I made the most of the circumstances and started a master's in Neuroscience at King's College London, because the entire course, including exams was to be taken online at home. I knuckled down with the construction work, let the lectures play in the background on my phone, and picked up a very easy master's degree, before buying a one-way ticket to Mexico (the only country other than Tanzania allowing in untested, unvaccinated visitors), and never looking back.

It was my first time in Latin America and I had the time of my life. At that time, there were loads of unvaccinated Americans and Europeans in Mexico. Asia went particularly mental during Covid, so with Thailand et al. off limits, Mexico, with its 6-month free visa and no entry requirements, was buzzing. It was here I really saw the potential of the remote life, meeting people doing western-salary jobs online and living a very good life.

I moved on to Colombia, where I got serious with the job search and landed an online position editing medical science research papers. This was a golden ticket, and allowed me to travel the whole of South America over the following few years.

I have since continued travelling, revisiting Asia, and plan to work my way through the whole world. In the last couple of years I have started documenting my life on social media, and grown an audience of over 150,000 people, posting about what it actually looks like to build a free, independent, financially stable life outside the system.

Here on my site, I share free, first-hand guides on how to actually go and do it, plus the thinking behind why I believe it matters more now than ever. The world isn't getting any more predictable. Freedom, independence, safety, and financial stability aren't guaranteed, they're things you have to build yourself.

I'm trying to create a community of like-minded people at all stages in their journey, so feel free to get in touch, check out my social media links below, and browse my website for everything related to my travel journey and the fully-remote life.