My name is Gareth Johnson and I am the founder of Young Pioneer Tours among many other companies. My background is that I left school without qualifications, or a degree and then found myself doing menial work with my life seemingly going nowhere.

It was then that on a whim I quit my job, sold everything that I owned and booked a ticket to the Cayman Islands. Alas despite what I had been told jobs there did not not grow on trees and I would only find one, as a bartender 2 days before being kicked off of the island. For anyone who has seen the movie cocktail, that was what my first day was like, but I persevered and after a few months was stable and being paid to live in paradise.

My next “paid to travel” move was me working on cruise ships, which pretty much took me around the world, before I ended up as a teacher in China. 

This would take up three years of my life with me working my way up headmaster of a school, before I decided that I wanted to start my own business, thus Young Pioneer Tours was born. In the last 17 years I have quite literally been paid to travel, while building the biggest adventure travel company in the world.

But even all this was not enough for my entrepreneurial spirit with me founding, or co-founding a number of other successful enterprises, many of which I have since sold. 

Successful ones I am still involved with include www.LetsBuyAnIsland.com, where we were the first group to successfully crowd fund buying a Caribbean island (yes I own my own), Pioneer Media (MediaPioneers.net), which has a number of successful projects under its belt, as well as my perusal monetized blog The Street Food Guy (TheStreetFoodGuy.com).

I also part own a football club and was recently named Director of International Development for the Nauru Soccer Federation (NauruSoccer.com). Yes there have been some failures along the way, but they have always been in the minority. In short if I want something I go for it.

And this brings us to Paid To Travel (PaidToTravel.net)! For years people have said “I’d love to do what you do”, “how do you have move abroad”,  or my least favorite “how do you get so lucky”.

The answer to all of these questions is actually really simple, you just have to go for it. Therefore I have created this site for a different reasons. One is to show people inspirational stories from people who live abroad and get paid to travel. Another is to show the different options that there are for working and traveling and abroad while inspiring people, and lastly to over my services in helping you achieve this.

I realize that not everyone has the get up and go to simply get up and go, so I offer my services as not just a life coach, but also someone who will help you with the logistics of moving abroad. Yes, there is a business angle to this site.

So, what are you waiting for? Check out the site, read what we have to offer and if you need help making that next move, then get in touch with me.