Who is Jef van de Graaf?

Canadian Freelancer Living the “Remote Dream” since 2014.

Get weekly tips on freelancing, building businesses, and living in Southeast Asia. Warning: this newsletter may contain dark humor, sarcasm, and swearing.

WHERE TO FIRST?

Choose Your Adventure

Jef van de Graaf's Business Building & Freelancing Tips

BUSINESS & FREELANCING

How Money-Making Businesses Are Built

10+ years of lessons on turning skills into services, services into products, and freelancing into a career that not only survives but thrives.

Coming Soon
Living the Remote Life Dream

DIGITAL NOMAD & REMOTE LIFE

Chasing Your Own Remote Lifestyle

Honest stories from living in Asia since 2014. The freedom, the visa runs, the questionable decisions, and all the chaos in between.

Coming Soon
Jef van de Graaf's Journey to Ironman

IRONMAN & THE LONG GAME

Training for My First Ironman by 2029

My journey to becoming an Ironman before I turn 40. Race results, training updates, and how endurance training is the cure to my depression.

Endurance Sports

Hi, I’m Jef van de Graaf

At 26, I sold everything I owned, bought a one-way ticket to Tokyo, and left Canada with nothing but a bicycle.

I cycled across Asia for four years. Built a private English teaching business in Japan from zero to 65 students in eight months. Now I’m training for an Ironman while freelancing for B2B companies from a fourth-floor condo in Chiang Mai.

Here you’ll find my honest stories, business experiments, and hard-won lessons from over a decade navigating the great unknown.

I write about what most people won’t say out loud. The depression, the loneliness, the moments where chasing your dreams feels like another big mistake.

Take this, all of you, and learn from it. For this is my knowledge, which can be passed onto you by reading my Articles.