How to Become a Digital Nomad - Lauren Razavi
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Oh, by the way, before we get into this episode, I would love to tell you a little bit about Life Notes. Now, Life Notes is a weekly-ish email that I send completely for free to my subscribers, and it contains my notes from life. So notes from books that I've read, podcasts I'm listening to, conversations I'm having, and experiences I'm having in work and in life. And around once a week, I write these up and share them in an email with my subscribers. So if you would like to get an email from me that contains the stuff that I'm learning, almost in real time as I'm learning it, you might like to subscribe. There is a link down in the show notes or in the video description.

In the creative industries, people have been able to work from anywhere, like long before the internet, like long before we kind of had these digital tools to make it all so seamless and easy. And remote work just completely accelerates it. I've been a digital nomad since 2013. A digital nomad is essentially a person who remote works and travels at the same time.

The more kind of international experiences you have, the more you begin to question the fundamentals and the society that you come from. There are so many people now who are able to kind of make the same living that they would make in a sort of traditional in-person job through the internet instead. Realizing that you don't kind of have to play by the same rules as people did in the past is to kind of think about what you can do with these newfound powers.

Hey friends, welcome back to Deep Dive. If you're new here, my name is Ali and each week it is my job to sit down with entrepreneurs, authors, creators, and other inspiring people. And we talk about the journeys of how they got there and the strategies and tools that we can apply to help live our best lives. In this episode, I sit down with my friend Lauren Rosavi, who is the author of a really, really, really good new book called Global Natives, which is all about digital nomads. When we put out our survey for listeners at the end of the last season of the episode of

the podcast. Loads of you asked for an episode about how to become a digital nomad. And Lauren is like the world expert on the topic, having done it since like 2013, having written a book about it, having interviewed everyone who is like big in the digital nomad scene. And we talk a lot about practical, actionable tips on how you can also become a digital nomad

We talk about a little bit of the history behind the movement, how Tim Ferriss' The 4-Hour Workweek changed the game in terms of making the movement more accessible. Some of the ethical implications around being a digital nomad and what it's like to go to a country where the cost of living is really low and potentially kind of "exploit"

that country by working from there. And we talk a little bit about Lauren's mission to try and build a country on the internet and how that is hopefully trying to solve loads of issues associated with visas and immigration and kind of the idea of the nation state. And a bunch of really cool topics around this idea of the future of work and how it sort of interacts with technology and this digital nomad-y type stuff. I will put links to Lauren's book down in the video description so you can check that out if you like. But I hope you enjoy this conversation between me and Lauren Razavi.

We've known each other for a while now and we met on the internet, which has been like super cool and interesting. And I was just saying to Gordon just now that you're probably the person who's like the internet friend who's most impacted my life because...

Thanks to the connection that we made on Twitter, you introduced me to Kate, who is both of our book agents. You introduced me to Rachel, who is now both of our book editors. And the book has become so much better with the addition of Kate and Rachel's influence across all fronts than it would have been. And yours as well. So firstly, massive thank you for that. No worries. I wanted to talk to you about this idea of being a digital nomad. Because you're a digital nomad.

If you maybe identify with that term, I kind of first discovered the term in 2017 when I read The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. 2017? No, not 2017. More like 2011.

at the age of 17 when I read The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. And I've often talked about on the channel about how that's the book that's most impacted my life because it put me on this trajectory of like, oh crap, you can build a business, you can have streams of passive income, you could potentially live anywhere in the world, all that kind of stuff. And you've just written a book which explores like the history of digital nomadism and some of the issues with it.

Where do we begin with the discussion about like what's the deal with digital nomads and why are people so interested in becoming one? And then I guess how do people become one? I think those are the three kind of areas we want to talk about. That was a very like rambling initial question. Go for it. No worries. So I guess probably the best place to begin is just a straightforward definition of digital nomads. And a digital nomad is essentially a person who remote works and travels at the same time.

And that can play out really differently depending on who you are and where you want to spend time and kind of what life stage you're at, I guess. I've been a digital nomad since 2013, but I only learnt the term in 2015. We can get a little bit more into that and the kind of story there if you'd like. But for me, it kind of means that I spend three to six months per year here in the UK and then I spend six to nine months per year elsewhere, traveling around.

And I try and go back to the same places. So Amsterdam and Malaysia are places that I really like to go and spend time and keep going back to. And I've become really kind of local in those places. So in the same way that I could walk around my hometown here in the UK and kind of know where everything is and know where to go get something printed or buy stationery or buy clothes or whatever, I know how to do that in a bunch of different places.

And so I guess the thing that I find most interesting about digital nomads is the way they kind of represent how the internet has changed our relationship with place. So the fact that you can remote work, the fact that you and I can become friends on the internet just completely changes like what's possible for an individual life. And I think that's one of the most interesting kind of things to keep an eye on now that we're in a world of remote work, now that that's completely normalized. Yeah.

So I guess when you started doing it, this was, I guess pandemic has really accelerated the whole remote work stuff. What was like, how did people do the digital nomad thing back in the day? Did it have to be that you were sort of some sort of internet entrepreneur selling supplements online or were there other kind of routes that people took to do this sort of traveling around the world while working from a laptop kind of lifestyle?

Yeah, definitely. There are a few different ways. So I guess number one is teaching English abroad. Before the digital was quite so prominent in Digital Nomad when it was kind of more about kind of traveling and working at the same time, but not necessarily remotely. English teaching was like a really big kind of source of employment for people. So I know folks, I'm almost 30. I think I'll be 30 by the time this comes out.

But I know folks who are about 10 years my senior who started traveling long before the Internet was kind of enabling remote work on a large scale. So that's definitely one of the entry points. For me personally, I worked as a journalist. So I worked as a foreign reporter. I kind of just traveled from place to place for a few years, just picking up stories along the way.

And I don't know, I did a lot of work for The Guardian over a number of years. And I remember a very senior editor there, like a dude who'd been there for like 20 or 30 years telling me about how back in the day when he started as a journalist, filing your copy, so like submitting your article involved like picking up the phone and literally like

talking your article to a person in the office on the other end. So if you're a foreign reporter and you're like in Indonesia or somewhere, you are literally like phoning up on a crackly phone line and reciting a thousand words. And that's how you kind of created your story. So I guess one of the things that I go into in the book that I find really fascinating are the ways in which

In the creative industries, people have been able to work from anywhere like long before the internet, like long before we kind of had these digital tools to make it all so seamless and easy. And remote work just completely accelerates it. So there are so many people now who are able to kind of make the same living that they would make in a sort of traditional in-person job through the internet instead. And I think like the kind of natural, I guess the kind of natural reaction to...

And realizing that you don't kind of have to play by the same rules as people did in the past is to kind of think about what you can do with these newfound powers. And so a lot of people now as remote workers are going, okay, so I could live in London and this is what my rent would be.

Or I could go live in Malaysia or I could go live somewhere in Africa and this is what my rent would be. And so it's just kind of a shuffling, reshuffling of kind of like what's possible for people. Yeah. Like so that was one of the things that I most kind of that blew my mind when I first read The 4-Hour Workweek that kind of his argument is broadly true.

you know everyone wants to be rich but the reason they want to be rich is not because of the money but it's because of the lifestyle that being rich allegedly affords and did you know you can have that same lifestyle for like a tenth of the price in thailand versus in the uk or in the us or in new york or in london places like that and therefore you need a tenth of the amount of money to live therefore if you build a business that does and is automated and passive income and outsourcing and all of those things that we're gonna that we're gonna touch upon

it will then, you know, you'll be able to live like a proverbial king for a fraction of the cost of living in a normal house in London. Is the kind of economic factor like the main thing that you find people become digital nomads for? Or is it more like the lifestyle-y aspect? Like, it seems cool, like traveling the world and like working from your laptop and stuff. There's something about it that seems...

quite romantic in a way but I guess you know pros and cons to every lifestyle. So I think affordability is a really big deal like in the world the kind of major cities where previously you could access work opportunities have become really really unaffordable for the vast majority of people you know you can be working at a big tech company earning a really good salary

And it's still really hard to buy a property in London. And I think that that has definitely been a factor in people deciding to become digital nomads. You know, we kind of listen to our parents and their kind of perception, that generation's perception of like what success looks like and what a good life looks like in terms of being responsible, in terms of kind of

earning the right amount and kind of buying a house and having kids or whatever it might be. But I think the kind of economic situation that a lot of digital nomads have found themselves in is like, but I could not work for 40 years in an office to then kind of go and enjoy my life at the end of my life when I'm retired.

Instead, I could actually kind of make things work now and be able to kind of go to places where my money stretches further, where I'm able to kind of have a better lifestyle. And there aren't these kind of, I guess, quite traditional pressures of like, you should buy a house, you should settle down. And so I think that's definitely a big one. Like I talk about that quite a bit in the book, this kind of like lack of affordability being a really big reason why people explore the nomad lifestyle and kind of go for it.

But for me personally, it goes a bit beyond that because I come from a very sort of international family. My dad is a refugee from Iran to the UK in the 1980s. He's the youngest of eight children and all eight of those children went to different places in the world. So like Dubai, Australia, the US, Germany.

And so when I was growing up, I traveled to lots of different places and kind of visited family and got kind of a bit local in these different places, kind of going back there every year or every couple of years to visit family. And with my cousins, we were really bad at keeping in touch in between kind of seeing one another. So we would just kind of pick up our relationships again a year later or two years later, like we were best friends.

And so I think these were really formative experiences for me because it kind of made me look at the world from a really young age as a very global place.

And maybe it's relevant to note as well that coming from an Iranian family, like a kind of diaspora family, it wasn't just kind of going to Germany and experiencing German culture. It was kind of going to Germany, but actually being in an apartment and experiencing Iranian culture, Persian culture, this kind of little bubble of it within Germany. But these kind of different cultural experiences just meant that when I kind of like left school, I was like, oh, like,

I am not just going to live in one place, like I'm going to spend time in different places. I have relationships that are completely cross border. And so for me, like, as I said before, like I didn't know like what a digital nomad was until 2015, but I started living as a digital nomad in 2013 and sort of traveling around like

this. So for me, it was just kind of instinct of feeling like quite a global citizen. So why wouldn't I kind of live my life in this way? Right. So in this conversation, we talked a lot about the four hour workweek by Tim Ferriss, which was the seminal book that really kind of brought the whole nomad movement onto the scene. If you would like to get an accelerated summary of the insights from the four hour workweek,

you can check out the summary they've got over at short form who are very kindly sponsoring this episode short form is by far and away the single best service i have ever found for summarizing non-fiction books it's absolutely sick it's way more than just a book summary they do have one page summaries of all the key points in the book but then they also have chapter by chapter summaries and they even have like interactive exercisey bits in between those chapter by chapter summaries so you can really engage with the ideas in the book

Short form is also great because what they do is that they bring in ideas from other books as well. So if, for example, Tim Ferriss had said something particularly controversial in the book and there is evidence that that is actually not true or that more size to the story or there's a bit of nuance, they will include a little short form note within the summary itself and say, hey,

If you look at the book "Drive" by Daniel Pink, you'll find that Daniel Pink argues for the exact opposite viewpoint. So you might wanna do that. You know, with reading nonfiction, it's very easy to get into that mindset where you just take everything the author says as gospel truth. But the nice thing about short form is that they will flag up when controversial issues are being discussed

And then you can kind of get a little bit more of a balanced viewpoint as well. It's genuinely a really, really, really good service. I've been using it for like two years now. And anytime I get a book recommendation, I tend to look it up on short form first, if it's available as a book summary and every year they're adding more and more and more, but if it's available as a book summary, I'll usually read that first. And then if I enjoy the summary and I think, oh, it would be worthwhile reading the book.

then I read the book itself. It's also really good for books I've read. Like I've read this multiple times since like the age of 17 up until the age of 28 now. It's useful to revisit the main points. So kind of there's two ways I revisit points from books I've read. Number one is rereading my Kindle highlights because I usually read these on Kindle. But the second way is to look at the short form summary and see, ooh,

Hello, is there something interesting I've missed over here? Anyway, if any of that sounds up your street and you also wanna get the best book summaries, more than just book summaries in the world, then head over to shortform.com forward slash deep dive. And with that link, you will get 20% off the annual premium subscription. So thank you so much Shortform for being a sponsor of this episode. For let's say someone my age, I, you know, 27, have a job where that, you know, currently is kind of based in London, but I've kind of always,

thought, oh, this digital nomad stuff would be cool. I imagine there's lots of people watching or listening to this who are like, oh, that seems cool. Like, yeah, hell yeah, I'd love to travel the world and work from my laptop. Yeah. Would you recommend it? I definitely would recommend it. I'd recommend it to you in particular. I'm always going on at you about this. I'm like, Ali, go traveling. And I think the reason that I'd recommend it is that as a digital nomad, you kind of go through this accelerated personal growth kind of experience because

I guess you can think of it as like, we're all kind of born into these little boxes that we call countries, right? And from a really young age, we kind of have propaganda thrown at us. Like the UK is the best country in the world. This is so great. Like look at all these things we did in history and look at all the wonderful kind of like buildings we have. And actually when you start to travel and you start to spend time in different places, kind of understand the politics, kind of understand like how a place works.

A lot of that kind of propaganda, I guess, does get broken down. So you start to go, oh, OK, so like Britain kind of prides itself on that. But the Netherlands is so much better at this. And you go to all of these different places. And even if they are places that aren't very developed yet, you know, very much in the emerging economies kind of bracket. Actually, they have things that they really excel at and they have things that are really unique about that place.

So I think for me, it's been really, really sort of inspiring and exciting to step outside of that kind of national understanding and instead begin to kind of look at the world as a place of like incredible diversity and incredible kind of brilliance in different ways.

And I think that that has really fed my own personal growth. Like I've had so much more time to think and reflect and think about things that I think a lot of other people take for granted. I like the kind of status quo of like, no, that success is getting a job, going through like some corporate ranks,

is buying a house, is finding somebody to marry, is having children with that person. I think that, yeah, the more kind of international experiences you have, the more you begin to question the fundamentals and the society that you come from. So people often say that traveling broadens your horizons, but you know, I've been on holiday to various places for up to a week at a time and I feel like my horizons have not broadened at all. Is there something special about going for an extended period of time? And I guess, how do you

Because I can imagine myself, like, even if I were living in Amsterdam for three months, living in a nice apartment slash hotel, going to the same coffee shop every day, going to the gym, I'd basically transplant the life I have in London and just put it in a different country and not necessarily, like, interact with the locals.

Is that like a concern sometimes or what? So I think it's definitely a concern in general. Like I think there's a real risk that digital nomads kind of create like parallel social circles. So a good example of this is Bali, which is the place where I learnt what a digital nomad was back in like 2015. But in Bali,

It's really a place that has exploded and kind of become known as like the nomad capital of the world. But it can be really problematic if you have like a lot of nomads in one location and actually they are just essentially living their own kind of bubble life without actually interacting with local people or the local culture beyond maybe having like a waitress or whatever in that kind of respect.

And I do think that that is problematic, but I also think there's a lot of really great work going on to kind of break down those barriers and kind of integrate people more. One of the really key kind of challenges with being a nomad over the past 10 years has been that you're sort of operating and living in this gray area. So what you are doing generally is moving from place to place on tourist visas and that

is essentially it's like when you when you move around the world on tourist visas you're sometimes allowed to conduct business as well so if you were a freelancer like you might be like okay I'm gonna go conduct business in Singapore and that's kind of what's brought me here um but in general you're not allowed to work on those visas but remote work's a weird one there's a lot of those kind of um

policies that are designed to kind of protect local populations from people essentially coming to take jobs are not really taking into account what remote work is. Because when you're a remote worker, you are in an economy and you are spending there. Like you're spending money on accommodation and gym and coffee or whatever.

And actually that creates a lot of kind of local opportunities and that can be really good in the same way that tourists coming to a place can be good because there's more money kind of circulating that local economy. People can start a coffee shop because they know there are a bunch of like nomads there who they can kind of have as the target market. So, yeah, I think that.

There are a lot of benefits to kind of having digital nomads or remote workers in a place. And a lot of the policy at the moment, the legislation, just doesn't really have any way of distinguishing between like, I'm going to come here and I'm going to get a job as a cleaner. And that means a local person can't have that job as a cleaner. Or I'm going to come here and work on my laptop and just spend my money in your economy. So that's, I think, a really kind of big issue.

Coming back to like your point there about like, you know, if you kind of transplant your life to a different place,

I kind of think this is the key difference between tourism. If you're a tourist, you kind of go somewhere for a week, right? And you probably like bring your own shampoo and it probably lasts you for that week. And I know that's a really small thing, but it's kind of a good analogy. Yeah, I've got my little travel cleanser, shampoo, conditioner, the whole shebang. It's all in the wash bag. Right. So you take that, you go for a week, you come back. You probably haven't had to buy anything unless you forgot your toothpaste. And then you go to the corner shop and you buy some toothpaste and you're set.

when you go somewhere for like one to three months, you're kind of forced to localize a bit more because you're gonna have needs in that period of time, which are not gonna be covered by what's in your suitcase. And also because you're there for a longer period of time. So like when we travel, we automatically go, it's like, oh, you know, I wanna print this thing, but it's like 50 pages. So maybe I'll just wait until next week when I'm like back at my home base with my own printer.

if you're a digital nomad and you're kind of localized to a place it's like okay well i'm not going to wait three months to print the 50-page document i want to print so i'm going to go seek out a local print shop um and so you just kind of

interact with the place in a very different way. Another example is like, you know, if you're going somewhere for a week and you're staying in a hotel, you're probably going to have the hotel cleaners come in every day and sort out your room. If you're staying in an Airbnb for three months, you need to figure out where the trash goes, how to divide up the trash, like kind of like how to be local in this place. And so, yeah, I think it's quite a different dynamic. Like tourists are

So tourists kind of go to a place and they kind of use it for a week or a weekend. I think nomads really go to a place and they kind of integrate for a period of time and maybe they stay for one to three months at first and then maybe the following year they come back for another one to three months if they like that destination. Okay. So a few things that we've touched on so far. So you mentioned Bali 2015 was when you heard the term digital nomad. What was the story behind that?

Okay, so spoiler alert, because I think this opens the whole book. But essentially, I was working as a journalist for the Guardian newspaper covering business and tech. And a guy called Casey reached out to me. And he was like, so I've got this startup, and we are organizing trips for remote workers. He was like, would you like to come out to Bali and see what we're doing? And I was like, sick. Yeah, I'll come to Bali. Why not?

My partner also had spent a lot of time in Bali and he was like, "Yeah, you should definitely go. It's a really cool place. There's kind of a lot going on there." So I flew out to Bali.

did this story for the Guardian that was about this startup, my friend Casey's startup, Hacker Paradise, which is still going. And like a little plug, you can book these kind of group trips if you want to kind of test out the digital nomad lifestyle. So Hacker Paradise is still one of those companies that's organizing those trips. So it basically means instead of going like, okay, I'm going to book an Airbnb for 30 nights and go and see what

sort of what this is like, you can instead kind of book an experience for 30 days and you're there with a bunch of other nomads, like a bunch of other people who are kind of experimenting with the lifestyle. There's a whole bunch of companies that do it now, but Hacker Paradise was, I think the first, like I was certainly the first person to kind of report on this trend for The Guardian back in 2015.

But yeah, I went out there and I met these guys and Casey told me about the startup, told me about what they were doing and said, you know, this is kind of a, we think this is going to be a big trend. We think that like more people are going to do this. And so I was like, wow, like,

I've been living like this, as in like I've been living kind of working from a laptop from one suitcase for a couple of years. Like what is the name for this? And I asked Casey that question directly and said, digital nomad. That's what people call us. And so that's when I kind of learned this language of like digital nomads. And I don't think it actually features in that original Guardian story, like the language. It wasn't particularly like important for the business story that I was kind of covering at the time.

But yeah, I realized I'd been living that way for a couple of years. That kind of described me. And from there, I guess that was how many years ago now, like six, seven years ago. From there, I kept in touch with all of those guys who I met in Bali. I continued to kind of travel as a nomad and made a bit more effort to try and like socialize with other people and kind of understand how other people were living the lifestyle.

And now I work full time on kind of digital nomad infrastructure, which I'm sure we'll get into in a bit. Yes, definitely. We'll get into that in a bit. Just to put a little peg in that, you are working for a company that's trying to build a country on the Internet. That is correct. Which is interesting. But we'll definitely talk about that in a little while. Is being a digital nomad lonely? Yeah.

- I think being a digital nomad can be lonely. It's not for me personally because I'm married to a digital nomad. So my partner, my husband Jesse and I have been traveling together since 2014. So we met in 2013. I was already kind of doing a lot of traveling and we just kind of met and have built a relationship on the road. So I'm very rarely lonely because he's a really awesome dude. So I just get to hang out with like my best friend all the time.

And I also think that one of the things that I've done in my time as a digital nomad that I see other people having not done and they tend to complain about loneliness more than I do is I try and arrange my trips around going to see people in different places. So a good example of this is I'm going to spend a couple of months in the US this summer.

And I'm going to go and I'm going to see Rachel, our book editor. And I'm also going to visit some Safety Wing colleagues, people that I work with. And Safety Wing also has like a house in San Francisco. So I'm going to kind of go stay there and hang out with with a team who are based there. So

I try and just organize trips so that actually I am going to visit someone on the ground. And if you do it like that, you kind of can connect with their social network on the ground. So that makes for a much sort of softer landing. Maybe another good example actually is I spent some time in El Salvador at the beginning of this year. And my friend John had moved from New York to El Salvador maybe six or eight months before. And he had...

a really, really kind of wide social circle there. So as soon as we arrived, like first night, it's like, let's go out for dinner and drinks, table full of eight people. And suddenly you're kind of making new friends wherever you go in that respect. I do think that the digital nomad kind of lifestyle can be lonely though, if you are single, new to the lifestyle and you're not going to visit people essentially. So then it becomes kind of like you are transplanting your life from wherever you were before and

and kind of moving from place to place and maybe having amazing experiences, but just at the end of the day, not really having anyone to, to kind of share that with. Um, so yeah, I think the communities like Hacker Paradise, who I mentioned before, I think they're a really good way to kind of overcome some of that loneliness. Um,

I also think that a lot of people feel like they have to either be a digital nomad or not a digital nomad, like a nomad or a settler. Like they have to either choose the path of being only in one place and building a life there, or they have to choose a life on the road. Whereas I...

I think it's much more mixed than that. You kind of find the right balance for you. So like, do you want a home base at all? I have colleagues who have no home base, so they don't have a home anywhere. They don't actually stay anywhere long enough to kind of like establish a home base.

And that's like one way to do it, but then there are also ways to do it where you're just kind of like genuinely building like a borderless life. So maybe an example of this is my husband and I like would like to get properties in the Netherlands and Malaysia.

And so it's not so much that we want to travel like 365 days per year, but it's more like we want to move between a few different locations and actually kind of have home bases there, which you can kind of monetize on Airbnb or kind of ways like that when you're not using them. Okay. So this, I feel like this is the problem that I have right now where I'm thinking in my, in my mind, it's like all or nothing. I have to be traveling or I have to be in London. And...

In my mind, I'm also kind of thinking, you know, like right now I'm renting a place in central London. It's pretty expensive. And so like the sunk cost of that, you know, plays in my mind where I think, oh, I mean, I could go traveling and go to a cool place for a month.

But then I'm kind of quote throwing money down the drain on rent in this place. I've been thinking about like potentially looking to try and buy a flat in central London or somewhere in London to use as this home base. But I didn't quite clock that you could kind of Airbnb it out for like short, small periods of time. Yeah. What sort of setup would you recommend for me given the context?

Okay, so I mean, it depends where you want to spend time, right? So like, are there particular places in the world that you visited and you were like, this place is sick. I want to spend more time here. Yeah, a few. I think Tokyo has been pretty sick. I think Hoi An in Vietnam was pretty sick. I've got family in Karachi, so I'd like to kind of spend some time there in Pakistan every now and then. But I'm still very much thinking that I don't really know. The idea of traveling and living someplace for one to three months seems cool.

but I've never done it to know what it would actually be like. So I guess my recommendation to get kind of practical on it is I try not to remote work anywhere that I haven't spent a week that's more of a holiday first. And the reason for that is because

If you are trying to maintain like a regular working pattern whilst traveling from place to place and you find that you are moving like every month and every time you arrive, there's a problem that you didn't expect, e.g. you can't get a SIM card, the Wi-Fi at your Airbnb is rubbish, like these kind of practical issues.

that can become like really, really draining. And so it can be good to kind of do a recce, like do a test run. So you go somewhere for a week and one, you see if you like it. And two, you see what kind of practical problems you come up against. You know, bad Wi-Fi is like a really big one in the minds of nomads. But there's also like a lack of good co-working space, accommodation that doesn't look like the pictures. So you end up moving as soon as you arrive. There's kind of a lot of friction points there.

And so I find it really good to go and visit for a week kind of low pressure. You don't have a lot of work to do or anything. You're just there to kind of experience the place as a kind of test run to then go back for one to three months later. And so I guess my Ali Abdaal kind of recommendation here would be for you to kind of explore some places for a week on that basis of like, could I work here? What kind of obstacles do I think I would encounter here?

and then plan a trip that's a bit a longer term. It can be good as well to kind of plan one to three months in a place when there's something going on. So if there's like

halfway through your three-month trip there's like a big conference going on and you know that five friends are going to be in that place for that conference it can be a nice way to kind of like organize your time nice okay that sounds good um one thing that you mentioned is that it's way easier to make friends if you're going to see pre-existing friends but we have a bit of a sort of chicken and egg situation is that if you don't know anyone in the place that you're visiting then you it's hard to get to kind of get that social network off the ground

I've got a few friends who we've spoken to about this digital nomad-y type life who are working in a traditional law/consulting/banking job here in London. The only people they know are the people from university/people working in that job. And to them, the thought of making friends on the internet just seems a bit bizarre. And to them, Twitter is this thing that gives them the news and incendiary things that Donald Trump has tweeted in the past.

What does the, I guess what I'm asking is what does the process of making friends around the world look like these days? Yeah.

Okay, so maybe a good place to start with this is like where do you actually start if you literally are someone who has the flexibility to try out the nomad lifestyle? What does it look like to kind of like meet? Where do you go in order to kind of like meet people on the ground? And I think number one is co-working spaces. So co-working spaces can be a really, really good source of social connections. So

as well as physically like working in the same space as others, maybe going to get a coffee and ending up chatting to someone, that kind of thing. There are also a lot of like networking events or just general events, like whether it's like morning yoga or it's kind of like- - Salsa classes or things like that. - Yeah, they tend to be like community hubs. So I guess in the same way that if you were to move to a new city as a remote worker, as in to relocate, let's say from London to Paris, you would be like, okay, how am I gonna make new friends here?

Maybe. And work, I still think, is a really big source of like new friends. So, yeah, that would be number one is like co-working spaces. Super, super useful. Really great resources. Some folks kind of say like, oh, I don't want to pay for a co-working space. I'd rather just get accommodation with a table. But it's like, OK, but then you will be lonely because you have to optimize for a whole bunch of different things as a nomad, not just like affordability or whatever. So I think there are sort of different benefits at different times.

Another thing I'd say is that like being part of a remote team is a really good way to have international connections. So at Safety Wang, we have, I think it's 120 employees across 70 countries.

So if I had just joined our team and I wanted to kind of travel around the world and not get too lonely, I feel like it's really easy to just be like, okay, so who do I speak to a lot at work? Shall I see if I can go and kind of visit them? And not necessarily like staying in their house, although some people very kindly do offer that. And that can be kind of a nice intimate way to get to know a place and to kind of be closer with a colleague, but literally just going to the same city. And so it's like, okay, great. So

I'm going to stay for three months and once a week I'm going to have, in fact, London's a good example. It's like, okay, I'm going to spend three months in London and once a week I'm going to have lunch with Ali. And that's kind of your starting point to then kind of build out more of a social network. Okay. Yeah. So I guess it doesn't seem as hard as I've got. I'm kind of thinking in my head because like, yeah, if I were to move to

I don't know, a new city. I didn't know anyone. I would do those things. I'd be like, all right, I need to actively take charge of my own social life, you know, set up the hinge profile or whatever, look on meetup.com to see what's going on, look at anything, anything local, join a local gym, join local badminton club, all of the usual things that a normal person would do to get to know people, I guess also applies to the, the,

the digital nomad. - Totally. And maybe actually to give some other examples from my partner and I's life, like Jesse likes to play football. So he will, there's an app, I can't remember what it's called, but there is a football app where you can basically like sign up and be like, I'm in this city and I wanna do like five a side. And then a bunch of other people kind of sign up too. And then you go and you play football together.

And so he's made like a bunch of friends around the world through that. And it's always kind of fun because I remember like once he did it in Malaysia and like he was wearing like a Norwich City. That's like our hometown. He's wearing like a Norwich City shirt. And he went and it was like people from literally like four or five different countries. And so, again, it's kind of like, I guess...

tapping into kind of a global network, like people in different places. I think in Malaysia, he met quite a few expats who were new. And so it's the same kind of principle. It's like you're in a place, you want to meet people, what do you like to do? And I guess the answer is kind of different for everyone. Like, I'm really bad at football, so I don't participate in the football part, but...

Kind of have other ways of like writing groups, like writing salons is another way that I really like to meet people. Although a lot of the world is very lacking on that front. The UK has a really good writing culture. It's something I've learned from my travels. Oh, I should try and look up some writer's salons. That'll be fun. What does the company do? Like what's the vision? Like what's going on here?

I work for a company called Safety Wing and our kind of core mission is to build a global social safety net. And basically what that means is making things like health insurance, income protection insurance and pensions available, not based on like your national citizenship, but instead as like an opt-in kind of membership or subscription. So in a really practical sense.

We sell borderless health insurance. That's our main product at the moment for both individual digital nomads and for remote teams. And it basically means like if you, Ali, have travel insurance, right? If you break your leg while you're overseas, you then get sent back to the UK as in they'll like do emergency stuff on you, but then they're going to sort of like airlift you back to the UK, your citizenship home kind of country, and they're going to sort you out there.

With our product, you can seek healthcare on the ground wherever you are. So if you think conceptually that digital nomads are potentially people who don't have a home country or a home base, this means that essentially the product is designed around like their needs to be able to, if you're in Mexico and you have a healthcare problem, you need to go and see a GP essentially. You can go and do that there.

And so that's like the first kind of product that we have. And then we're also working on these other things that I mentioned. So like borderless pensions right now, if you have a pension in the UK and then you move to the Netherlands for two years, you then end up with two pensions that kind of don't interact with one another. And so, again, trying to make as much of this as possible borderless.

My role at the company is as director of special projects and my main project is called Plumia and it's essentially working on the vision for the internet country that we want to build from these services. - And so what do you mean by internet country?

So the vision is to essentially like recreate nation state infrastructure on the internet on a global level. So in a really practical sense, there's a kind of safety wing products. Those are being worked on. Okay.

My part of the company is very focused on global mobility. So essentially visas and passports and such. So our 10 year roadmap is aiming to create a fully functional global passport that is issued based on a person's kind of income and profession, as opposed to the sort of coincidence of where they were born.

That's like what the kind of mission that I'm working on. And before we get to the passport part, we're planning to essentially create new mobility tools that sort of pave the way to a passport. Like visas and things? Yeah. So one of the things that we're working on is called the Nomad Border Pass. And it's essentially an instrument that allows you to apply for a nomad visa in

in one country, but then get access to like 20 countries. And so the idea being that this kind of visa in the future will be issued for let's say 10 years and will allow you to go and spend three months, one month, three months, kind of whatever the specifics kind of end up being, but to go and very legitimately kind of like work as a nomad in that country and have kind of a dialogue and shared understanding with the government. Because at the moment,

There are a lot of issues, I think, with the first kind of like round of nomad visas that have has come out in response to the pandemic. Okay. All right. So I'm just gonna try and sort of get my head around what's going on here. And you can tell me where I'm missing things or where we're gonna add stuff. So I recently read The Sovereign Individual, which I'm sure you're familiar with. And as part of like this tech bro book club thing that I was part of. And it was interesting. It talked about how

you know, the idea of nation states is a bit of like an, a sort of a relic from a bygone era. And really before reading this book, I just like never heard the term nation state before. Cause, and then after reading it, I now see it propping up a lot and it's just sort of, we take for granted the fact that countries are a thing.

And that I was born in Pakistan. That gives me a Pakistani passport. My mom then moved us to Lesotho in Southern Africa, worked there for some amount of time. Then we're like, right, educational opportunities are better in the UK. Let's move over to the UK. She had to sort herself out with a visa as a medic, take the exams, all that crap. Come into the UK. We lived here for 10 years. Therefore, we got a passport. And now I have a UK passport, which means it's so easy to travel anywhere in the world, except the US because of various visa restrictions I have going to the US in particular. But it's just...

sort of a given that this is a thing. And I've got friends, you know, friends from university who were international students from Pakistan and from other places for whom it's like, hey, should we take a trip to Paris this weekend? Oh, so it's going to take me eight weeks to get a visa. And who are kind of tied into jobs that they don't necessarily enjoy for five years at a time because, well, I need to get my indefinite leave to remain, my residency permit and all this kind of stuff, which is just, I had assumed was, oh yeah, that's just

That's just the way things have to work because like countries and stuff. But it sounds like what you're saying is that the function of a country is you, if we think of a nation state or a country as a product, you are paying a subscription fee to use the product.

i.e. tax and stuff, well, basically tax. And in return, you are allowed to, you then have the privilege of being in the country. Firstly, you have the privilege of working in the country and you get access to amenities like healthcare, like in the UK, or I don't know, job seekers allowance or these other sort of social safety netty type things. And there's no reason why that has to be confined to the country that you were born in.

What if we had a global safety wing of like, I pay my monthly subscription to the overlords at safety wing or whatever the process ends up looking like. And then in return, this private corporation supplies me with healthcare and pensions and

a social safety net if I lose my job and stuff. Does that sound about right? What am I missing? No, that's a pretty good summary. I think there's a bunch of different things to unpack there though.

The first thing I'll talk about is just nation states, right? So I've been very familiar with this term for a long time because I studied politics at university. I guess they don't tell you about the nation states at medical schools. No, it's just not a thing that came up. We just call them countries. So TLDR, just on nation state country kind of concept, it originates in 1648 in Westphalia, which I believe is in Germany. And it was basically a bunch of dudes getting together and like, how will we govern the people?

And they came up with this idea of the nation state. What do you mean how will we govern the people? As in like, because before this it was like empires and stuff.

yeah so or like uh sort of regional powers and things but basically like i guess my point here is just to say that like the idea of a nation state is actually so much newer than we think okay so it we think about it as like oh it's like since the beginning of humanity surely yeah surely the uk was a thing and like surely like france was a thing um but hang on wait but 16 like 1066 battle of hasting whatever from normandy invades england like norman like

Normandy was a place and England was a country. Like, how can we say that nation states didn't exist before 1648? Because literally the unit of nation state didn't exist. So... What's the difference between a nation state and a country? Well, this is a kind of fundamental question with regard to our internet country. But, okay. It

Essentially in the world today, there's not a lot of difference between a country and a nation state, but the kind of plumier project, the entire idea is to try and redefine what a country can be, i.e. it doesn't have to be this kind of thing with a government and borders and particular rules and kind of all of this infrastructure. Actually, it can be something more akin to like citizenship as a service.

Right. So exactly as you were saying, kind of paying in for a membership, whether that's like a flat fee thing or it's a percentage of income. We don't have the details on that stuff yet. Looking sort of at the 10 year horizon to be thinking about some of that.

But fundamentally, that's like the idea that we are pursuing at Safety Wing and at Plumia is like, how do you redesign a country for the 21st century? And we tend to think that countries are these things that are completely fit.

fixed and, you know, we can't really question them. But actually, like within our lifetimes, countries have appeared and disappeared and failed. There are people today who were born in a country that no longer exists because that country has kind of changed its name. So all of this is so much more fluid than we tend to think from like a kind of traditional reading of the situation, I guess.

So I think that's all really interesting. There's one final thing that I do want to touch on from what you were talking about though, and that is this idea of passport power, right? So you mentioned that your friends from uni, some of them really kind of struggled and would have to wait weeks and weeks for visas. This is fundamentally one of the things that we are trying to solve at Safety Wing. So our fundamental belief is that

your passport and your ability to kind of move around the world should be based on who you are, not the kind of coincidence of where you were born. - Okay. - And at the moment, we're in a situation in the world where

a person's birthplace and or heritage because there are different ways you can kind of get a passport completely defines their opportunities you know if you are if you were born in Eritrea you do not have the same opportunities as somebody born in the UK or France um because you will be restricted and exactly this way you're talking about with like Pakistani passports from moving around the world based literally only on your birthplace or heritage and and

At the moment, we're in this kind of zone where there's a bit of a re-shuffling, a reimagining of some of that through nomad visas, which is something I talk about quite a bit in the book. And essentially, nomad visas are something that came up in response to the pandemic and the rise of remote work.

When countries kind of tourism was devastated by the pandemic and border closures and such, they started to invite digital nomads instead and said, hey, come for three months, come for six months, come for a year and see how you like this place.

And the kind of thing that changed that I find really interesting there is that they are much more interested in your income and profession, you meeting certain requirements in that respect than necessarily your country of origin, the passport that you hold. And I think that's a really like positive signal.

But it needs to be taken further. There are a lot of issues with Nomad visas and how they've been constructed. Some of them have not been very successful because they were created without any input from end users and just thrown out there into the world. Some governments announced visa programs without actually giving a date that somebody might apply for that visa. So it's been a fairly messy landscape.

But the general move from an emphasis on birthplace to income and profession, I think is a really good intermediary step to getting towards a more kind of equality of opportunity globally. So wherever you are,

In the future, we want it to be like wherever you were born, you could access another passport and be allowed to move around the world. The kind of interim step we find ourselves in now is where it's more based on kind of income and profession, which is not perfect, but I think is an improvement on birthplace. Because if you have more control over your income and profession and can kind of work at that, whereas where you were born is completely, you know, you can't do anything about that. You don't have any choice about that.

Okay, so we're trying to build an internet country where you can sign up to the country that will give you a passport that will allow you to travel to other countries and work in other countries and do all those things. You can pay a subscription fee, i.e. tax of some description, which will give you healthcare and the other things that like traditionally a country or a country's government would in theory be providing for you. One thing that like last time we had dinner, you were kind of explaining this to me and I just, I didn't quite understand.

I didn't have a way to understand it at the time, was it seems like you're keen on open borders for all kind of vibe. Correct me if I'm wrong on that front. Does that not mean that the, quote, more desirable places to live would then become, quote, overrun with everyone in the world wanting to flock to that place and then the place becomes less good? I think it's a really valid question. But I guess my counter is like there's...

There's a perception that if all borders were kind of closed, like gotten rid of, not closed. If all borders were kind of like destroyed tomorrow, you can go anywhere you want. The general perception is that

well, everybody from the global south would want to come to like the UK or to Europe or to the United States. And that's kind of like our assumption. But interestingly, like digital nomads are doing the reverse of that in general. They're coming from like the most powerful countries and the sort of most expensive cities in the global north. And they are traveling to places in the global south.

And I think that there's not really, I mean, for one thing, I suppose I should say, like really frankly, it's like, I'm not advocating for borders to be like. Completely abolished. Completely abolished. Okay.

you know, anytime soon. I think that that is the kind of utopian vision we should be going toward as in as everything becomes more borderless, like work, finance, knowledge, like all of these different things, as that becomes more borderless, borders become less relevant and more restrictive for pointless reasons, right? As in you cannot go places because of borders.

But I'm also very, very, I acknowledge and appreciate that you can't just kind of like move from where we are at the moment to that. So that's kind of the utopian like vision to aim for at the end of the day. But in the interim, I think it's much more important

I think there are a lot of benefits to not necessarily getting rid of borders, but just making borders much more fluid for people to move through and kind of move between. I don't worry that more kind of borderless infrastructure or norms would lead to most of the world moving to somewhere else in an unbalanced way. Okay.

I think there are still a vast majority of people in the world today that do want like a home base and do want to settle down and don't necessarily want to move countries at all because they like the culture and the weather where they are. And so I think that's like important to kind of realize. But yeah,

It's also that people are moving all the time anyway. People like your family, my family have moved to places for economic opportunity to sort of escape problematic kind of situations, whether they are political or whatever. And

That is you know, that's something that that can't can't be stopped that's happened throughout history like way back like When humanity was like doing agriculture and kind of moving around the world Everybody is always kind of moving for some kind of new opportunity Whether that's economic or love or whatever all the reasons that people kind of move to different countries And I guess my vision like what I want to happen is for that to just become easier I don't think people should

make decisions about their lives based on the restrictions that they face from the government they're stuck with, right? Like I think they should be able to go

I really like this person that I've been dating for three months and so I'm gonna go and spend the next six months in their country and in their city to explore that and for it to not be like and therefore I have to move my tax residency get the correct Visa potentially start a company in that jurisdiction if I'm a freelancer to employ myself there's like all this kind of friction and tension for you to literally just be able to have the freedom to be like

I'm just going to go see if it works out with this girl. Yeah. Right. And that's kind of my, that's why I'm interested in open borders or kind of getting rid of borders. It's much less in that sense of like them not existing and much more in that sense of like individual people should not be restricted by essentially like a powerful kind of government hand sort of saying how people should live their lives. Interesting. Okay. Yeah.

Coming back a little bit to some of the digital nomadic bits. One thing that Tim Ferriss highly advocated for in the four-hour workweek was this idea of outsourcing to the global south broadly, where salaries are a lot lower,

daily wage for someone in the Philippines might be $5 a day. And so if you can pay that someone $5 an hour, then suddenly they're doing super well by Filipino standards, but you're also saving a lot of money compared to hiring someone in the Bay Area who might charge $500 an hour for basically the same thing. What's the deal with that? Like Tim Ferriss, like some people seem to be like very pro this. Some people seem to be very anti this. What's going on there?

- Okay, so I think in principle, there is nothing wrong, it can even be net positive to hire across borders, right? Particularly if you're able to connect with people for whom the money is very meaningful. So the example that you kind of give, if somebody is in the Philippines

And even if they're not kind of earning like a global wage for what they're doing, they may be earning double, triple, quadruple, even more than the local wage they could get through a non kind of tech job, if you like, as in a non remote job. And so I think broadly that is positive. However,

You also kind of have to acknowledge that by doing that, you are kind of like taking advantage of a global system that's built on unfairness and inequality. Because kind of going back to what I was saying before about passports and such, it's like nobody can help where they're born, which passport they hold.

And thus, if that person in the Philippines is able to do the same job as like a Silicon Valley developer, you then have some really big kind of like ethical questions about, well, just because it saves my business money, should I be paying this person half a quarter of what I would pay for somebody in the San Francisco Bay Area? And so I think it's very much like...

I think it's something that we kind of all have to operate kind of as we're doing things, we all have to kind of have this in mind, right? We have to have it in mind that there is, we're all kind of operating in the system, this global system, which really is quite unfair and unjust. And it encourages inequality between equally skilled and talented people in different jurisdictions. And I think that having an awareness of that with any decision you make in a business is just kind of that balance

the definition of kind of the culture that you're pursuing and what you build, right? But it's also bigger than that, right? It's like if you wanna hire someone from the Philippines or somewhere else,

you don't have control over whether that person is actually allowed to come to London and live here in order to do the job. Sometimes that can be really challenging and really, really expensive for a company. If somebody wants to move, maybe moving is going to increase the cost of that person as in their salary, but it's also going to cost a lot and take a long time to actually sort out the paperwork to make that possible.

And so part of the kind of mission that we're working on at Plumia and Safety Wing is to try and create global mobility instruments and kind of campaign for more kind of equality in this respect of being able to actually move to places easily and quite cheaply to be able to do your work from anywhere. So to bring that a little bit more down to reality,

Right now, there's a really big fundamental issue with like the US in particular, right? Even though we're in a world of remote work now, and somebody from anywhere in the world could do the job that a US company wants done remotely. Right now, you generally already have to have a US green card in order to even apply for those positions.

And so the reason for that is because companies don't want the hassle of having to sort out visas for people, of actually like enabling them to kind of come and work there if they don't already have that entitlement. But obviously that means that any one company is missing out on most of the world's talent. They can't kind of hire in the same way.

It ends up for the people on the kind of receiving end of that situation that they may be doing exactly the same job, but being paid a fraction of the price and they're not able to kind of move around the world because the immigration system is essentially like very against them. And so, yeah, I think that.

It's all very connected. It's kind of like businesses and entrepreneurs can only really make decisions on the basis of that company, the company that they're running and the kind of culture that they want to champion in what they do. I think there's this kind of other bit that's really important that is about policy and is about like what an individual can do in the world.

not what they have to rely upon like a company or government to kind of give them the right to do. So yeah, it's all kind of reducing friction to try and create equality of opportunity. You know, I don't believe that everybody should be like communist level equal in terms of like we should redistribute wealth and kind of like make everyone super equal. But I do fundamentally believe that like you should have an equality of opportunity wherever you're born in the world that you can do

what you want to do in terms of you can move to a different country, you can try out different types of work, you can fall in love across borders and it's not going to be atrociously expensive and a load of heartbreak that's nothing to do with a relationship. Damn, yeah. Yeah, I guess it's a lot. So, yeah, I've not really thought of it in those terms before that, you know, this micro decision of do I hire someone in a different country?

In a way, actually, I guess we're all making those market decisions. Like when I buy anything from any company that's made in any country in the world other than the UK, and even if it's made in the UK, if it's made up north, it's going to be cheaper than if it's made down south. It's like there's all of these like inequalities and like unfairnesses in the system. Yeah.

you know, I think it's that quote, you know, there is no ethical consumption under capitalism or something like that, where there is always going to be someone who's getting screwed over in the process for my Starbucks coffee that I had this morning to get into my hands. And in a way, as individuals, there's

I guess there's not much we can do about it, given that it's a global system with so much that's so deeply entrenched that as an individual, there's not much you can do. But I guess as individuals, there is at the same time stuff we can do in terms of shifting our consumption. And maybe, for example, companies run by individuals choosing to actively pay people location independent salaries, even though they don't have to, just because it's like, well, this is the sort of culture that we'd like to create. Is that fair to say?

Yeah, I think so. I do think that individual choices matter in the sense of like,

if you're in a position of being able to make like hiring decisions, it is a good thing to kind of have this in the back of your mind and be able to be like, okay, so what does it look like? Like what does the kind of structure look like for this person who's maybe doing some freelance work for me from the Philippines to actually within a period of time do more work for the company, do more work for me, and then actually to maybe come on as a full-time team member.

at a sort of location independent like rate of pay that's uh that's kind of fair on that global scale not on that kind of local scale on a personal level like when i'm working with freelancers uh if i'm working with someone via a platform like upwork uh for you know like really little bits and pieces like ghosts um like ghost you know cms type uh editing and stuff that takes me

ever um if i'm just doing like a few hours of work with someone and it's very much that kind of like almost gig task based thing um you know it's not a case of me stopping to think for a very long time about whether i should be paying a silicon valley wage for that like three hours of work because fundamentally like uh it just needs to be frictionless and i need the thing done right

But if that person begins doing like 10 or 20 hours per month of work for me and I'm like, okay, so this person's really great. I think they'd be a good cultural fit. Then I will try and kind of like bring them off of a platform and more kind of into like our general pool.

I think it's really tough because if you're testing out new people, a lot of the time that's, you know, like people aren't always up to the job. So it's hard to kind of like from a total starting point be like,

I'm going to pay everybody the same. I'm going to make sure that like I'm paying like London rates, not Filipino rates or whatever. However, I think that when you are a decision maker and you're kind of going through that process and you're kind of getting to know talented people, you have to have that awareness that it's like, well, I could just put them on what's a good annual salary for them and their location.

Or I could go, this person's clearly talented and dedicated. Thus, I am gonna like put them on the same as my person who's sitting in London with me who's doing a similar job.

Yeah, I was talking about this with one of my friends when we were discussing this idea of the ethics of outsourcing and came this whole thing of like, oh, this is one of the critiques of globalization. I was like, oh, yeah, I last heard that word in like GCC geography, but have not thought about it ever since then. And then I picked up this book, you know, the very short guide to very short introduction to globalization and the globalization paradox. Oh, people have been thinking about these issues like these are not it's not just an isolated thing.

And apparently there's this thing in philosophy, like the paradox of exploitation, which is this idea that essentially how you feel ethically about situations like, should I hire someone from the Philippines, et cetera, et cetera, depends on one fundamental question. And the fundamental question is if a transaction is mutually consensual, but unfair, should the transaction take place?

And if you think that, well, both parties are consenting, even if one party is being shortchanged in this, as long as they're consenting, it's all good. We believe in individual consent. Then the answer is, of course, yes, it should. Like the person in the Philippines is happy to be paid the wage.

the company in the US who's hiring them is more than happy to give them the wage. Both parties are consenting. Therefore, this is ethical, even if it's unfair. And the other side of the coin is like, well, if you think a transaction between two mutually consenting parties that is unfair should not happen, at that point, you're like, well, even though they're consenting,

there's still something ethically wrong with this. And I guess some of those people would say, therefore the kind of the invisible hand of the government or whatever should stop that transaction from taking place. And there's a, you know, apparently this has been a paradox in philosophy for absolutely ages, but there's this paper by some philosophy professor at like UCL or something where it's like, actually there's a fairly easy solution to the problem. And that solution is that when you hire someone,

as a company, you then have a duty of care to that person. And that duty of care means you should treat them in a nice way, which I guess is a very sort of, I don't know. To me, that made a lot of sense because it was like, oh, okay, cool. That allows one plus one to equal two without having to hold these two fundamentally opposing things of like, I think this is unfair, but also they're agreeing to it.

But I think it's unfair. And like, if I didn't hire them, then they'd be worse off, worse off. And I'd be worse off, but it's fundamentally unfair. And all these other issues like, well, if I do hire someone, I have a duty of care to them. And as a good person, as wanting to create a certain culture within my team and my company, it is only fair that I pay them a certain, you know, a certain wage, probably location independent. But then, you know,

you know, I was talking about searching through a bunch of tweets about this kind of stuff, obviously the bad place to find nuanced information, but you know, just this idea that when I go visit, you know, I'm going, I'm going to Turkey next week, for example. And if I buy food, I'm not going to pay double the price because that's, you know, the purchasing price disparity between the currency of Turkey versus the currency of the UK. So like,

you know, what about like purchasing decisions? Would it be ethical for someone to voluntarily pay like, you know, when I buy a 7up in Pakistan, I'm actually going to pay 20 times the price because this is what I would have paid for it when I was in London. Any thoughts on that thing?

Yeah, I don't think that people should go around the world paying more than the actual price for things. Like, I mean, I make a point of tipping just wherever I go, particularly in places where there's a tipping culture, because obviously it's very rude not to not to tip in those. But even in places where there aren't like.

I'll try and tip if it's good service, if it's a good thing. But no, I don't really feel any pressure around that at all. I think I relate a lot to what you said about kind of having that duty of care over somebody who's working for your company or who you're collaborating with on things. And actually, I think that

you know, so much in life, and I think you and I probably share this philosophy, but like comes down to human relationships and like how you build those relationships, right? And like, I think you and I are probably both the kind of people who see people as humans, not as numbers. So, you know, it is kind of about that, I think on an individual level, making those decisions in ways that kind of resonate with your own like personal human values.

I do think that a fundamental problem for a lot of folks is that they're working with companies or they're working with people who actually aren't open to dialogue on things. And actually, this is a problem even within the UK context. I have friends who just don't feel like they can ask for a pay rise, that that's not a conversation that is there, that they feel comfortable having with a manager or a boss. And so, yeah, I think that

If you can focus on individual humans, that's probably the best way to navigate without it becoming unmanageable to actually kind of make those decisions on a day-to-day basis. Yeah. So I guess like bringing this thing around ethics back to the digital nomad type stuff. One thing I've heard is that digital nomadism is the new colonialism. What's going on there? Like why do some people hate on the digital nomad thing for that on those grounds?

Yeah, so I mean, I suppose a good example of this would probably be Mexico, right? I am just back from a couple of months in Mexico and I was very surprised to learn that there's a huge backlash going on against digital nomads there. And there are a few different reasons for that. One is just that the Mexican government has had incredibly lax border controls through the whole pandemic. So when everywhere else pretty much was closed,

Mexico was still open. Oh yeah, all my friends were going on holiday to Mexico. Yeah. And so obviously digital nomads went there and there's relatively like simple routes to residency in Mexico. And then there are like a bunch of like kind of added benefits to how that all works. As in you can quite easily as a foreigner come and end up living in Mexico if you have enough money. That's kind of the bottom line, right? Yeah.

But there's this huge backlash because there's a lot of gentrification happening, particularly in Mexico City and over in Tulum and Playa del Carmen, these kind of like more beachy destinations. And these have become like real nomad hotspots at the same time as the same kind of gentrification that people talk about in London or New York is also happening in those places.

And so the kind of backlash comes not necessarily from people being nomads, but more of a kind of like inequality of the situation. If you think specifically about American nomads going and basing themselves in Mexico, living the life of a king compared to New York or San Francisco, because their money stretches further.

You then think about how Mexicans are treated at the US border. I was literally in line behind somebody with a Mexican passport when I passed into the US on my way back from Mexico. And like they were questioned like so much more heavily. They were really kind of like given a grilling, even though they were just there for like a week's holiday. And I think that that is something that's really kind of reflected in this backlash against digital nomads is like,

how can you come here and make life worse for people here at the same time as treating people from this place extremely badly when they try and kind of enter and come to the US?

And so, again, this is kind of this global mobility kind of inequality thing that I've talked about a couple of times in this conversation. And, you know, I've written about kind of like digital nomads and colonialism and the comparisons kind of between them. I don't find it...

I don't think it's the same in any sense. Nomads are not necessarily going to places to kind of exploit them and take the kind of natural resources and kind of ship them back home and kind of make all the profits in a different country. But then there is also a valid kind of criticism, which is like if there's a digital nomad living in country X and they're not actually paying income taxes in country X,

then they kind of are sending their profits back to the homeland, if you like, which I guess is kind of a valid comparison. But that really comes down to the fact that the global tax system can't cope with remote work. So like there's not a way to essentially pay taxes

on the ground where you are. Most digital nomads would be quite happy to pay into a system that was specific for them. Like, okay, so you're coming in your remote working here for three months and thus we'd like you to pay this amount of taxes. And you kind of see some precedence with that, like with...

- Tourist taxes. - Yeah, that's a thing in Paris. - And Amsterdam as well. - Like two pounds something for the night or something to that effect. - Yeah, but I mean most of those things are kind of collected through accommodation providers. So it's like that kind of infrastructure exists. Something we're interested in kind of working on as we develop this Nomad Border Pass at Safety Wing in Plumia is actually tax functionality. So the nomads would be able to kind of like pay into that local economy that they are spending time.

in a way that is as seamless as like an oyster card on the tube. We're really looking to remove as much friction as possible from all these kind of different areas and sort of just, I guess, give new options for people like to actually kind of pay in and create kind of more of a relationship there. Yeah. And I guess kind of individual governments who maybe have like a four or five year tenure are maybe more concerned with short term benefits

short-term cash of like oh cool these rich people are coming into the country let's build housing that is like super expensive so that we make more money on tax or whatever and sort of oh that that means when next election round comes around we'll we'll be able to say we've increased gdp by x

rather than thinking of like the 20 year downstream consequences of said housing project. Totally. I think a lack of vision and a lack of long term thinking and policy is like one of the fundamental problems with our current political systems. Like if you think of everything in life and in the world as like incentives, right? Like what are the incentives in the game, like the incentives in the system?

Right now, if you are in traditional politics, your incentives are to make five-year decisions or whatever the number of years are for a particular context, but to make five-year decisions and then to win the next election. And actually, two and a half years into your five-year term, you have to start thinking about the next election. So like really, you're not very concerned with what's happening during that five years compared to making sure that you get another five years.

but it's kind of a lack of space for long-term thinking. I think a place like Singapore is a really interesting example of a country that is really, really committed to long-term thinking. You see quite a lot of good stuff happening in a lot of European governments as well, where it's just like,

I don't know, one of the things that I notice is the stronger kind of regional or city authorities are, the more stable the kind of long-term strategy, the long-term thinking of place is. And I think that's just because there's,

You know, there's a really great TED talk. Maybe we can like link it on the video or something called Why Mayors Should Rule the World. And it just kind of talks about like, you know, the power of politicians who are in close physical proximity to you. If you're a mayor, you can walk. You have to be able to walk around your city and people have to be happy enough with you that they're not going to throw like rotten vegetables at you.

Whereas like national politicians can be incredibly, incredibly detached to the extent that like you will never see them in person. And I think that kind of creates like not great incentives for

actually doing stuff that is gonna please voters as opposed to be good in the media or be good on social media when you kind of promote it. I think if we could get more long-term thinking happening with policy all over the world, that would be a real victory. But maybe just to kind of add actually, I mean, something interesting. So Safety Wing are committed to funding Plumia, the kind of internet country development, the development of that vision.

for the next 10 years. So I'm in this privileged position in the role that I'm in where I can think at least double the length of any traditional politician. And I find that really kind of exciting to be able to think about infrastructure kind of in that same way that politicians or governments are meant to.

but actually without any of the kind of party politics and the kind of electoral aspects of it, which I think can be quite like draining for everybody involved. Yeah. Aren't really creating much value. Yeah. It almost feels like being tenured at a university gives you the privilege and permission to have long-term, to think long-term. So you're like, cool, I've got this. I don't need to worry for a while. So now what are the cool thing, cool, interesting projects I can do? But coming back to this point about long-term planning, I mean, I suppose someone...

If we think of places that have good long-term planning, Singapore had a long-term plan. Dubai famously had a very good long-term plan and the people of Dubai apparently love the people in charge. They're like,

Bloody hell, this plan really worked out nicely. But if you think of Singapore and Dubai as being like, you know, they're not really models for democracy. So how in your mind, I mean, I'm sure there's not an easy answer to this, but how does democracy, the idea of democracy square with the idea of like, it would be cool to have long term planning rather than incentivization happening as a result of democratic elections? Hmm.

Yeah, so I think on the kind of long-term horizon, I see the kind of, I guess, representation or more democratic aspect falling a lot more to local and regional authorities, i.e. like, if you think about at the moment, we have like the local layer, the national layer, and the global layer, right?

I think the national layer is on its way out. If you're thinking about 10, 20 years down the line, it's becoming less and less relevant to the way that we live our lives. So that kind of leaves you with the global layer and the local layer. Local meaning city states.

So meaning regions or cities. So just as an example, like if you're talking about like the UK, you might talk about like Norwich as the city, but Norfolk as kind of the region. In the US, you might talk about like the kind of federal state system, i.e. the state of X as opposed to just one city. But these things kind of play out differently and in different parts of the world in terms of how everything is structured.

But yeah, I think that I think that that kind of the kind of voting and elections and democracy is definitely super, super important at that local level. I think at the global layer and the way that we're kind of envisioning things like citizenship as a service, like an opt in membership in which you have very plainly stated, this is what we're providing. This is how it works.

It's really unclear to me at the moment, like how and when and under what circumstances we would introduce kind of a democratic structure to govern that. Because it's kind of like when it's opt in, it's like,

If you want to be part of this, great. Like, be a citizen of our country. But if you don't want to be part of it, like, nobody is forcing you to. I think I see the challenge, thinking long-term on it, like, as more like companies and kind of like unions or whatever. So, like, as in the relationship between... It's not even necessarily unions. That might be a bad example. I see it as kind of...

the relationship between the internet country and its users will need a lot of attention paid to it. We're really committed, the kind of safety wing philosophy is to be very user focused. So to focus on what people like and don't like about what you're doing and keep optimizing. So we want to kind of take that approach. So it's definitely not a case of like,

we're building a thing. Yes. And we're not going to listen to any user of it or anybody. And that's just what it is. But it's also not that we are going to introduce kind of like a liquid democracy, like direct voting system as a first step. Yes.

I think in my mind, it's really, really important to actually build a thing worth being part of before kind of getting too stuck into these really, really age old tough questions over how to make decisions, how technology can enable that.

And I'm really resistant to the idea of like essentially uploading like the whole like party political system and elections and voting up to the like up to the cloud and kind of have that be like front and center of an Internet country, because I don't I don't think it's a productive good system. I don't think it's effective. I think that you end up paying a lot of PR companies and getting a lot of media coverage and kind of doing all these things.

like to kind of show face instead of actually creating value. And so, yeah, I don't know like how it will work out long term. And we're certainly very open minded. There's a lot of discussions go on kind of our community and in our team about

I guess like the outcomes and the equity in a situation of like, okay, you know, how can we kind of receive feedback, but actually make sure that that feedback is actioned. And actually if you're doing everybody votes directly on everything all the time, it becomes really difficult to actually like do anything about that other than be like, and this is what the people said. So, yeah. When I did my kind of crappy explanation of nation states and stuff, kind of this idea of,

sort of safety wing or plumie or whatever the internet country is in a way being a global overlord where in a in a way you know read uncharitably

there's a bit of a dystopian vibe to it of like oh there is this private corporation that is now in charge of your passport and that's in charge of your health care and you have to pay a subscription to it and they can up the subscription whenever they want etc etc oh how are you guys thinking about kind of that that narrative yeah i mean we're definitely like as a as a group of people having come together to try and create something we're definitely more utopian than dystopian but i also totally take like the kind of um criticism of how that can seem

I think though that probably one of the parallels to draw to kind of understand the context in which we're working is that tech companies already hold a huge amount of power over all of us and a huge amount of information. I think there's some really interesting kind of like user versus company kind of dynamics there, right? So like,

I mean, you have it within workforces as well. To use Google as an example, like there were a bunch of people walked out because they didn't want the company doing military tech, like for the US government. And you also have users who will like mass exodus from a platform based on kind of its ethics or performance or whatever. And so, yeah, I think that, you know, you can't ignore that actually some of the biggest competitors to traditional nation states

are in fact tech companies, not countries, not kind of traditional countries. And so that's kind of the space that we're operating in at the moment. I do think that a lot can be

A lot can be achieved by designing the system well and designing the kind of feedback loops well to make sure that the thing is developing in the direction that its users want it to develop. There's some really interesting work going on at the moment that I kind of want to look more into as well around exit to community. Have you come across this? No, what's that?

So it's kind of this movement among particularly like open source software or like the kind of open source ecosystem a bit more broadly than that. But it's this idea that rather than kind of exiting to IPO or exiting to investors in the future, there could be structures for

companies, tech companies to actually kind of exit to their community, i.e. to hand ownership of a thing over to the people using it. I'm very interested in that. There is a lot of really kind of accomplished people kind of exploring in that area right now. But it's very, very early stage as in like there aren't those structures. There's not like a kind of roadmap of how we get from here to there. But I'm interested in the potential of a lot of these kind of ideas that are going around the ecosystem.

uh of kind of tech to kind of reimagine like what things could be i also think that um there's a huge kind of thing here uh to to flag and i don't want to make this a crypto conversation because i try to avoid them in general but uh i do think cryptocurrency is having a really big impact not just on economics but actually on um how people organize and how people work and how people work in the future so at the same time sorry how so

So do you know about DAOs? Yes, ish, but not really. So I guess TLDR is People Are Getting Together. So DAO stands for Decentralized Autonomous Organization.

Coders can build these things, these sort of algorithmic companies, if you like, or organizations. And then they tend to have like a cryptocurrency underpinning them, like either one of the big cryptocurrencies or a very localized kind of currency.

to that kind of ecosystem. And then people can work for that DAO instead of engaging with the traditional economy. And they tend to be flat hierarchies. So they are like people are working together as a network on equal footing rather than in that like bus manager, like a traditional employee kind of sense. And I think it's just really relevant to kind of note that that's also going on because you can kind of incorporate, you can kind of interpret

a lot of that as almost a backlash or a different kind of direction than big tech and the Silicon Valley mold. And so there are all these kind of different ideas developing all the time. And I think it's really difficult to kind of...

say any one thing without considering all the different stuff that people are working on within the ecosystem and the new opportunities that that kind of creates as you go on. We say a lot, like, I think this is a quote from Brian Eno, but we say a lot at Plumia, like, get cooking a recipe to follow. So as in like, get going, start building something, even if you don't know like what you're cooking yet, you know, get those onions and that garlic into the pan. They're probably going to be good and tasty and useful, whatever happens next. Right.

I guess one other thing that I was thinking is this idea of an internet country which you pay a subscription fee for and return for amenities like healthcare and stuff and XYZ. In a way, if people don't like it, A, they don't have to opt into it because it's entirely optional. But B, I'm sure there will be other competitors that spring up. So like with any kind of product, if I don't like Notion, I can move to one of a zillion note-taking apps and...

Nowadays, one of the big selling points in note-taking apps like things like Obsidian is the fact that you own your own data, that you can always migrate to another app and you're not like locked in. So maybe there's a thing of like,

you know, this is just my bro science speaking, but like in the future, an internet country project, maybe it's Plumia, maybe it's not, would be like, hey, you can actually leave us at any point and you can transfer out like your pension or your ISO or your investment account or whatever to whatever other provider you want. And we're not going to stop you. We're hoping that by virtue of the fact that we are good and we serve the users and we're amazing, you'll continue to pay us. Similar to Spotify, you can always move out to Apple Music, but you wouldn't want to because Spotify is just better.

Is that kind of what you guys are thinking or am I off base? No, totally. I think people call that portability, don't they? Yeah. Kind of data portability. I think that's really important and I think that will be a kind of natural part of what we do. So our kind of philosophy at Safety Wing is we want to make products that are so good you tell your friends about them. We like have a company policy of not paying for direct advertising because we don't believe that that's like

the way necessarily to kind of like build a product and kind of like a relationship with users that is meaningful. And so, yeah, I think that...

I think that portability is just kind of, to me, it's like a natural thing. Particularly if we're in a competitive landscape of internet countries. I would personally, as a user, want reassurances that I could kind of move that on. Or even potentially for a while, move it back to a traditional nation state. If you imagine a situation where you have a Plumia passport, right?

and you give up your British passport, let's say, because the Plumia passport is all good. But then what happens if after 10 years you don't approve of the Plumia policies anymore? You want to kind of move on or even move back. So as in like you want to reclaim your British passport or you want to move on to another internet country or maybe now you're going to take a Dutch passport or something like that. I think what's really interesting about all of this, by the way, is just that like

it's kind of all very competitive, right? Like as in like countries should be competing for talented people. And I think that's like the kind of landscape that we're entering into now is a situation where it's not just internet countries challenging people's current citizenships. It's actually all countries realizing that in a world of remote work,

they can pinch all those people who don't wanna live in San Francisco now that their roles are remote and they can get them to kind of come and establish kind of a hub where they are. And so you see that a little bit, I mentioned Bali before

Bali is a place that is a real kind of like nomad hotspot. A lot of companies have been built out of Bali now. So like a trend over the last 10 years was like people would go to Y Combinator or like Entrepreneur First, raise money and then be like, okay, so I've got a runway. It'll last me like two years in San Francisco. If I went to Bali,

to Bali though. It probably lasts me more like 10 years and sort of making these decisions. But smart governments are really kind of like trying to leverage this now. They're going like, okay, who are we going to target? How are we going to get them? And what is it that we can offer to them that's going to attract them? So in the US in particular, this has really taken off already. So you have a whole bunch of like

to be honest like towns and regions you've probably never heard of um that are offering literal like cash grants for people to relocate you already have to be an American citizen for those programs but you can get like ten or fifteen thousand dollars uh

to move to a place as a remote worker now. And I think this is fascinating. And I think we will see so much competition for people and that this hopefully will also raise standards. So not only for Plumia and kind of internet countries, but actually for existing countries. If you're in a situation where like, let's say the Plumia citizenship offers pretty much all the same benefits as British citizenship,

maybe without the ability to vote, right? Like as in like you don't, there's not democratic infrastructure because it's citizenship as a service. Would being able to vote in traditional elections as they exist in the UK right now actually be a meaningful feature? You know, if you think about this as a tech product, like would this be a meaningful feature for people to choose that a more expensive, less efficient option? Yes.

an extremely streamlined tech driven citizenship with Plumia that maybe you don't get the say in in a traditional sense of like electoral politics but you do get a say in in the sense that like if you email feedback at Plumia.org we are like going to listen to you and kind of take into account what we're doing. Email feedback at gov.uk Yeah I guess this is why people are chill about moving to places like Singapore and Dubai and stuff because it's like our

I'll happily take the hit of like no democracy in return for lower taxes, better lifestyle, safety, all of the other features that a city or a country could have. And I guess just thinking in those terms and like, oh, that actually is an option. And countries do now have to compete for talent. Just is, I don't know, it's just like a cool way of thinking that

I guess we're not used to thinking of because the idea of countries is so entrenched in the way that we view the world. Um, yeah, yeah. I feel like this is a good, a good place to end this. Um, so practically speaking takeaways for me are, um, this nomadic stuff seems cool. Uh,

I guess I was kind of like, oh, I need to have a whole year where I'm just traveling to be able to take advantage of it. But actually spending a month at Hacker's Paradise or equivalent, you know, we had that deal with Zoku, you know, this idea of traveling to different cool places and co-working from there before COVID completely screwed that up. But it's something like that that

You know, actually we've got a few team members who I've been trying to talk into moving into moving to London who are a bit like, Oh, you know, I live in, I live in Northampton and like life in Northampton is a bit boring. It's like, we'll move to London. Oh, but it's, it's expensive. And I'm not sure if I like it. I just try it out for a month, just get an Airbnb. It's so easy to, to, to give that advice to other people. Whereas for myself, I'm like, Ooh, I can't, I couldn't possibly travel unless I've got a whole year. Unless I really thought this out. Like it's probably not that hard to try out the nomad lifestyle and see what it's like. Um,

And I remember there was this blog post from Tim Ferriss that I read, reread recently, where he talks about this lawyer guy who freaking hated his job in law, decided on a whim that he was going to move to, I think maybe it was Mexico or something, and realized he had actually a great life there, became like a surf instructor. And it kind of ends with him speaking to another lawyer who's like, oh my God, I wish I could have this kind of lifestyle. And the guy's just like, well, you kind of can. It's just that the way you're thinking about your life is so kind of entrenched in

the traditional idea of what success means in like a job in like a big city with a high salary, with high cost of rent, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That it just takes a little bit of a push to start thinking beyond those terms. Yeah, I think a lot of people have this kind of inbuilt fear of really going after what makes them happy. And I think that my experiences with digital nomads around the world is like the polar opposite of that. Like you speak to a nomad and they're like,

What makes me happy is like having an IKEA desk in a place and a computer and I do my work and then I like to go to the gym and then I like to go and do this and go and do that. They're incredibly sure, as am I, like about what it is that they're looking for from life and also from travels. As in like, you know, I give that example of like, you know, an IKEA desk and a monitor or whatever, because I'm

I know a lot of people who literally like buy the same Ikea desk wherever they go. So if they're in four or five different countries for like two or three months at a time, they will literally just order the same thing. They know how to put it together because they've had it before and just kind of set that up in their Airbnb apartment. And then they have what they need for work. And they're very sure about that. They've optimized that. They travel with the bit that they need. They know what they need to buy on the ground. I

I know some people are really into surfing, some people are really into beaches, some people are really into cities. But I think just in general, that kind of, I think I referred to it before, like the personal growth that you kind of go through by traveling and also just the kind of like self-reflection that you have to do to make a nomadic lifestyle work when you go like, okay,

will it make me happy to kind of like go to this place and experience all of this? And like, what is it that I need to feel grounded if I'm not at home in that traditional sense? Like you just kind of get to know yourself so much better and you're able to, yeah, really kind of go after what makes you happy. Like so many folks I know who are like,

yeah, I'm a digital nomad, but like I'm like regimented in my routine and I'm kind of boring, you know? And like it's very, very individual, I think, like how you pursue things and exactly what you pursue. Yeah. And I guess one of the cool things about being a digital nomad and doing this traveling thing is that your feedback loops are quite short in terms of trying out different lifestyles and seeing what you like. Whereas following, like if I think of all my friends who are still in medicine, you know,

left school at 18, having decided to do medicine at the age of 14, optimized the hell out of the CV, et cetera, et cetera, stayed in medical school for six years, gone straight into a job. It's like one life path. And the friends I have who, after two years of working as a foundation doctor, there's a natural career gap and then people do all sorts of things and they realize, oh crap, there are other ways of living. But usually that's just for a year and it's like, oh, but I still need to have good stuff on my CV. And it's just sort of entrenches you into a particular life path.

um but actually one of the students on my youtuber academy i was speaking to yesterday um you know trained as a trained as a doctor in oxford and then did like a surgeon surgery thing at harvard and then worked at mckinsey for a bit and then started his own startup for a bit and is now a digital nomad with a wife and three kids currently living in cape town uh you know from from the uk originally and that just seemed seemed pretty cool um around how having actually these different life experiences because hashtag yolo you only live once you might as well kind of

figure out based on feedback loops, what is the thing you actually enjoy? And then you can start optimizing for that thing. So do you think in this conversation, I've convinced you to give nomading a try? Like, is there going to be a follow up conversation where we're in like Malaysia with some lights that fit in your suitcase later this year? Yeah, yeah, I think so. I think that's the plan. We kind of have been figuring out what does the nomad travel setup look like for me? Like right now, we've got this studio for the next like six, five, six months. And

We're seriously thinking, okay, you know, when our one-year mark runs out at the studio, it's like super expensive. It's super nice. The vibes are great. But is there a way that we can kind of pare things down, potentially get like a house that has maybe three bedrooms and one of them we turn into a podcast studio, one of them we turn into a YouTube kind of thing. But even that feels a bit like,

restrictive in us in the sense that like I really like working in working with people in person I think that's a thing that makes me really happy one of the things that I realized that what I don't really like working from home having done it through throughout the pandemic and when I started going to the local WeWork I was like oh my god this is living the dream it's all about co-working spaces um and so just I'm just trying to figure out what does our company look like

bearing in mind I do like working with people but I also like the idea of having freedom and stuff to travel and I also like the idea of not necessarily having an expensive office space that we're paying large amounts of rent for. Any ideas on that front? Yeah definitely so I think actually it's an important point to make right that I love working with people in person like I

I think that, in fact, maybe it's not so much like always working with people in person, but it's like spending time with people in person. It's like vastly superior to video calls, et cetera. And that's partially why I arrange my travels so I can go see people and actually kind of like spend time with them in person.

I find the balance that we have at Safety Wing really good. So a couple of times a year, we get together for a week or so, like a whole company retreat, different place in the world every time. So we were in Mexico and kind of had like a get together there. I think there's another one kind of on the cards for Bali at some point. But just kind of having that balance

I guess quite concentrated in person time and then having periods of kind of like deeper work and where you are kind of just keeping in touch more using digital tools. I find that balance works really well and I actually have incredibly strong friendships and professional relationships with people because I'm able to be extremely present with them when I'm physically there but I'm not always in the same place around the same group of people. So I think there's like a natural

it can be quite positive to kind of have a natural break from people and miss them and then kind of go and really be very invested in being there. I don't know how much of that, that's all quite personal, but I don't know how much of that can kind of be applied to the mindset of thinking about how to do the company. I have to say that it's, if you actually do the numbers, it's generally like a lot cheaper and a lot more fun

to bring a whole team together several times a year in far away kind of paradise locations than it is to maintain an office in like one expensive city. So my recommendation for you would definitely be to kind of like just really think outside the box for 2023. Like how can you, like rather than being like what do other companies do? It's more like what does Ali's company do? Like what am I feeling? Like what's the vibe check here? Yeah. Yeah.

Great. Well, thank you very much, Lauren. Um, final question. Uh, I guess if anyone's listened or watched this far in the conversation, they'd be keen to hear more of your thoughts around this stuff. So what's, what's the deal with your book? Uh, so my book is called Global Natives and, uh,

And it's essentially about how digital nomads are taking over the world. So it's not a how to, it won't teach you how to be a digital nomad, but it kind of tackles this question of what if loads more people become digital nomads? Like what does the world look like then? What are the kind of some of the exciting kind of like lifestyle services and business models that might be out there and how does like policy need to change?

so that we can kind of like move around the world without all of this friction that I've been talking about. And I guess in a way, if people are interested in the internet country thing, like Global Natives, my book is very much like the precursor to what we're doing at Plumia. So a lot of the ideas in there, a lot of the problems that I identify and the solutions that I kind of suggest

I'm now actually kind of able to put those into practice through Plumia and Safety Wing. And there will be another book in the future that's a bit more on the internet country side of things. So yeah, I also love to tweet. So come say hi on Twitter. Fantastic. So links to the book, links to the newsletter, links to the Twitter account, links to all of your stuff will be in the show notes in the video description as usual. Thanks very much for coming on. This has been great. Thanks for having me.

All right, so that's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive. Thank you so much for watching or listening. All the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast are going to be linked down in the video description or in the show notes, depending on where you're watching or listening to this. If you're listening to this on a podcast platform, then do please leave us a review on the iTunes store. It really helps other people discover the podcast. Or if you're watching this in full HD or 4K on YouTube, then you can leave a comment down below and ask any questions or any insights or any thoughts about the episode. That would be awesome. So yeah, thank you very much for listening. I'll catch you hopefully in the next episode.