29-year-old American left NYC and moved to Istanbul where he started a tourism company that brought in $100,000 last year
"Going to India was an eye-opening experience for me. It was the first time I'd been to some place so foreign, so stimulating and for me it was this epiphany that I needed to experience more," Barnard tells CNBC Make It.
"The most exciting part was talking to the people and seeing how things work. The immersion was what really got me."
Barnard graduated in 2018 and moved to New York City to work for Walmart. At the time, he earned about $60,000 a year working in the e-commerce sector, and though he didn't dislike his job, it certainly wasn't his passion.
"I think a part of me was looking for more meaning in my work," he says.
While working at Walmart, Barnard started a YouTube channel dedicated to his travels. The first trip he featured on his channel was a visit to Saudi Arabia in 2020.
"At the time, Saudi Arabia was kind of this mysterious country from an American perspective, at least. It was closed off for decades and they had just opened for tourism," he says. "Back then, people thought I was crazy. My parents asked me not to go. My grandfather offered to reimburse me. But I went for it and it was awesome."
Later that year, Barnard was laid off from job because of the pandemic. While others might have been nervous about being unemployed, Barnard saw it as an opportunity to bet on himself.
"My dream was to go travel full time, live abroad, immerse myself in these foreign places and make a living from YouTube."
About three months after being laid off, Barnard booked a one-way ticket out of the United States. In January 2021, he arrived in Serbia and then traveled for two years before deciding to make Istanbul, Turkey, his home base in 2023.
"Growing up in Connecticut, I never would have imagined that I'd ever end up living in a place like Istanbul or traveling to all the places that I've been lucky enough to travel to," Barnard says. "I found myself coming back to Istanbul again and again. It really is the perfect place for what I'm doing. It is pretty much the center of the world. I love the language, I love the culture, I love the history."
His time abroad inspired Barnard to start a boutique tourism company called Doug Barnard Travel. They take small groups of 8 to 10 people on cultural immersion tours of places like Iraq, Syria, and Pakistan. Barnard offers private tours as well.
The group tours start at $2,700 per person and what's included in that all-inclusive package can vary country to country. Flights are not included.
"It is truly authentic travel. I mean it is as real as it gets. Places like Egypt and India are amazing but they have mass tourism industries and a place like Iraq is so new to tourism that you get a really authentic experience," Barnard says. "The people are excited to have you. The hospitality is out of this world and everything you're seeing is unparalleled."
Barnard's YouTube channel helped bring in his tourism company's first clients. Many of the destinations featured in his early videos are where he offers his immersive tours.
"A lot of the time, people will assume we're there on business and then once we tell them that we're there as tourists usually people are thrilled," Barnard says. "They're really proud to show off their country. They're really happy to see that foreigners are interested in visiting their country and learning about them."
In 2024, Doug Barnard Travel ran a total of five group tours and brought in $100,100 in revenue. Barnard's YouTube channel business brought in an additional $64,029 in revenue, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. That same year, Barnard was able to pay himself a salary of $83,808.
In Istanbul, Barnard lives in a two-bedroom, two-and-a-half bathroom duplex apartment where he and his girlfriend, İlkay, pay 55,000 Turkish Lira or $1,368.91 USD a month.
The couple's additional monthly expenses average about 2,000 Turkish Lira, or approximately $50 USD. That includes bills like water, electricity, internet and gas. Barnard says Istanbul is the perfect location for him because so much of his business is in the Middle East. It's one of the main reasons why he doesn't see himself moving back to the U.S.
"The more time I spend living in Istanbul and the more people I meet and the better I get at the language the more it feels like home," he says.
It's been over four years since Barnard left the U.S. He says that traveling the world has taught him there is so much more to life than being in America.
"I think Americans can tend to have this impression in their heads that the whole world hates us that hasn't been my experience," he says. "We're isolated geographically in the western hemisphere over there, and there's so much world to see."
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