Most people who want to move abroad are waiting for enough money. Elvis went with about $1,500. He was 23, a former ice hockey player turned personal trainer from Latvia, and the gyms had been closed for three months, so he'd been eating into his savings the whole time.
Six years later he runs Explode, a personal brand agency in Dubai. Here's how the first weeks worked, and what he'd tell anyone between 18 and 30 who is thinking about it.
Build something portable before you go
When the gyms shut, Elvis started posting nutrition and training videos on his own TikTok. It worked from the start. He was averaging a couple of million views a month in Latvia and getting recognized. By the time he left, he had online fitness clients he could keep coaching from anywhere.
Years of selling personal training helped too. At 20 he had to convince people aged 30 or 35 to pay what was a big monthly sum in the Latvian market. That's where he learned sales and communication, and how to deal with people who wanted to be led and people who tried to manipulate him.
Split the cost with people who think like you
Elvis knew he couldn't afford Dubai on his own. What he could do was find people with the same mindset who didn't mind sharing one apartment for a while. Five of them went: Elvis, his partner Chris, a photographer friend, the photographer's girlfriend, and one of Elvis's gym clients. They pooled their money and rented a place in Dubai Marina. Chris had roughly the same savings as Elvis, around 2,000.
His advice at the end of the episode came straight from this: go live with your friends in Dubai in one apartment, five people, one on the couch, two in the bed. Shared rent is what makes an expensive city possible in the first months.
Trade what you have for what you need
The gym client was an IT worker who could work remotely. When Elvis told him he was moving and their outdoor sessions would have to stop, the client decided to come along. They made a barter deal: Elvis would train him every time he trained himself, four or five times a week, and the client would pay his rent. Elvis lived his first month in Dubai Marina without paying any.
He had the money for that month's rent. He chose to save it and stay flexible. His point is that 'I don't have money' is usually an answer people give before they've looked at what else they could offer.
Find the first client fast
A month in, Mike Thurston, the fitness creator who had inspired the move, posted that he needed help with YouTube and social media. Elvis and Chris sent DMs. Then they asked close friends to message Mike too, and 30 to 40 people did, telling him these two were in Dubai and could help. He answered within 24 hours.
In the meeting, Elvis spotted that Mike had no TikTok and pushed the idea. When Mike said he wasn't going to shoot or edit it himself, Elvis offered to do it for him. That client, and the results that followed, became the testimonial he used in ads and content to bring in the next ones.
Start in your own language
For people nervous about their English on camera, Elvis's advice is to start in your native language. Help your own people and your own community first, and get comfortable talking to a camera. Then add English. He still splits it: Instagram and YouTube in English, TikTok mostly in Latvian.
He also doesn't accept being from a small country as an excuse. His thinking, he said, is how it's possible, not why it's not. He calls himself a citizen of the world, and says the world isn't that big.
Why 18 to 30 is the window
Elvis's father was an entrepreneur who owned a go-kart arena and later worked in real estate. The family had a lot of money, then lost the business in the 2008 crash and moved into a small studio apartment, four people. Elvis says seeing both sides gave him respect for money, and the belief that it's possible.
His closing advice follows from that. Between 18 and 30 you don't have a family to feed, so it's the time to take the most risk: leave your hometown, start two things, fail at them, start a third. Travel and meet people, and when you network, ask questions instead of talking about yourself. And post the whole thing. Nobody cares as much as you think, he said, and a public brand gets you invited into more rooms.
Get lessons like this from the room itself.
Join Free Community