Digital Nomads for Dummies and Traveling with Kristin

0:03

Chase Warrington    

Hey, what’s going on everyone welcome to another episode of about abroad where it’s my job to introduce you to people who have built amazing lives for themselves in various foreign corners of the globe. We’re talking with expats and thought leaders about moving abroad, remote work, visas, and all the fun and practical knowledge that you need to know to follow in their footsteps. If you’ve ever dreamed of making a life for yourself overseas, maybe working remotely or embracing long-term travel, retiring or studying abroad, or even just taking a peek inside life beyond your borders, you’ve landed in the right place.

This episode is brought to you by my good friends over at Sanebox remote knowledge workers are inundated with distractions these days emails, voicemails, Slack messages, and a million other pings that keep you from traveling the world getting that first remote job or moving to a new country these days to get ahead, we have to be great at prioritizing what matters. In my case, that meant cutting down on the world’s number one productivity killer email clutter, so I turned to Sanebox you can think of Sanebox as AI as your email box assistant, it gets to know your preferences and tendencies then automatically filters out the distractions and sorts your emails for you into folders and priorities that fit your workflow. I love sane block hole, where you can drag messages from annoying senders you never want to hear from again. They also offer Sane Reminders to ping you if someone hasn’t replied to you yet, alongside other automated files for anything from your receipts to your news feeds all in one place. Sanebox works within any email client you’re currently using and can be set up in a matter of minutes. Even better about abroad, listeners can access a 14-day free trial and $25 in credit when they sign up at sanebox.com/abroad. Check out the link in the show notes for more details. My guest today is Kristin Wilson better known as traveling with Kristin or the host of badass digital nomads, one of the OGS of the digital nomad world and someone that I have been listening to and following along for a while now. So it was great to get her on the podcast and talk about her origin story as one of the original digital nomads and her experience living in different countries helping over 1000 Different people relocate to various places around the world. And having just written her first book digital nomads for dummies and an awesome new resource for digital nomad visas. We dove into all of it. It was an awesome hour with her and appreciated the time that she spent and all the knowledge that she dropped here so I hope you enjoy this one. I certainly did. Please help me in welcoming Kristen to about abroad. Yeah, so where are you now? I don’t gather you’re traveling so much at the exact moment. But you’re Are you stagnant for a little while

2:51 

Kristin Wilson   

I am I have been hunkered down in Miami, Florida since March 2020. So over two years now, which is pretty hard to believe. 

3:02  

Chase Warrington  

How does that sit with someone called traveling with Kristen like you that has to be hurting the soul a little bit?

3:09  

Kristin Wilson 

Yeah, I think people were very confused. They’re like, so are you traveling again, or what’s going on? And I originally came here because I’m from Florida. And I had been traveling for years and years and living abroad pretty much full-time since 2002. So I hadn’t lived in the US full-time since I was in college. And I felt like I just need to slow down for a little bit and have a home base for a few months. And I’m interested in music. And I decided to come to Miami for Miami Music Week and to learn how to DJ and two weeks after I got here, the pandemic started or the lockdown started. And so I ended up staying. So I achieved my goal of learning how to DJ and it’s been really fun. I’ve been DJing around in Miami. So ironically, I didn’t go to Music Week because it got canceled. And then this year, I was writing my book and I’ve been DJing a lot anyway, so I didn’t feel like I wanted to go to Music Week. So it’s kind of weird how that happened. But it’s been such a great experience living in Miami because it’s such an international city and I spent many years in Costa Rica so I’ve been able to speak Spanish to everybody here and meet people from all over the world and it’s been so open during the pandemic and so many people have been moving here. So I don’t feel like I’m so cloistered in Miami I feel quite free and of course, we have the airport only 15 minutes away. So I’ve been able to take some short trips within the US and visit friends and family and also get more work done and also get healthy like just slow down. I don’t think I realized how much I was kind of running myself down With all the traveling before, but it’s business travelers have a lot higher risk factors with their health markers. And I was starting to experience that myself. So like gaining weight and not sleeping enough, and like the jetlag, and eating too much at restaurants and things like that were starting to catch up with me. So I’m glad I had this opportunity to reset and travel more intentionally in the next couple of months. 

5:28  

Chase Warrington 

Yeah, I think that’s something that goes a little under the radar for people watching from the outside looking in, they see someone like yourself, you know, traveling the world and experiencing all these different places producing content. And you know, just like it on the surface, it looks like you are just living the dream. And what goes overlooked sometimes I think is like all the work that goes into that. And sometimes the physical toll that, you know, crossing borders and changing time zones and just constantly searching for a new place to live or figuring out how to overcome some obstacle in a foreign place. Like, nobody’s going to feel bad for you necessarily. But those are some realities that maybe don’t show up on the gram all the time, right?

6:07  

Kristin Wilson  

Oh. I talk a lot about digital nomads switching costs. I’ve written about this as well. So it’s the same as if you were to, you know, anything that you do, whether you’re starting a project at work, or you’re cooking a meal, or you’re doing laundry, there’s a setup cost to each activity that you do. And the setup costs for travel are not as glamorous as the actual traveling part. And so I got into a conversation with Peter levels, the founder of nomad bliss. This was years ago, we’ve been Twitter friends for a long time. And I was so surprised to see him tweeting about booking his travel. I was like, how do you book your travel? Like, shouldn’t you be outsourcing that when he’s like, No, I like to book it? And I have been a huge remote work nerd like you. I’ve been tracking my time for probably the last eight years of my work time, and then also how much money I spend on travel or how much time I spend on travel. And I calculated three or 400 hours per year spent planning to travel or traveling. And you can imagine what you could do with that time like there are better ways to spend your time. And so that doesn’t mean don’t travel at all, it just means that people should be mindful about how long they spend booking a trip and how frequently they travel because that logistical time and planning their packing getting there from point A to point B on packing and then all of the other 10% or 20% of things that go wrong in the process, like oh, the Airbnb was double booked, or you have to change hotels, or the internet’s not working. All that stuff also has an overhead cost attached to it as well.

7:58  

Chase Warrington  

Yeah, and it gets it’s an overhead cost that can get super expensive. Sometimes, like I don’t know about you, I don’t know if this is an age thing, or it may be a post, or I don’t know if post is the right word. But you know, like, after having experienced the pandemic, I don’t, I don’t know what it is. But I have much less patience for those overhead costs now and much less of a desire to infer them. When I’m traveling, I want to more or less know what’s going to happen and have sort of a more firm plan in place. Whereas in the past, I was much more like just kind of winging it. And I’ll be fine with, you know, whatever the world throws me, but I don’t know if you can relate to that at all. But I find myself much less interested in those overhead costs these days.

8:38  

Kristin Wilson  

Yeah, especially once you get on your path, or what you want to be doing in life, like what you want to do in your career, or how you want to contribute to the world, your time becomes more valuable. But the thing is, that time is always valuable and is always equally valuable. But we just grew up in a society where we were expected to take a job that wasn’t necessarily in our zone of genius, or part of our passion. And so this was never a factor before it was just understood that you will wake up at this time you will spend this many hours per year commuting to a place of work, you will sit there for eight or nine hours you will go home, you get two days on the weekends to run errands and your family and whatever. And so now that we have this ultimate freedom over our lives, it’s up to us to decide what to do with it and it is totally fine to spend however much time you want traveling really fast and even making all of the mistakes that can happen when you travel because that’s the learning experience too. And as I’ve been writing this book, digital nomads for Dummies I talk about slow travel a lot, and my technical editor Eric prince who has he’s called the minority nomad on social media and has a YouTube channel. He’s so smart. And he’s been to 80 countries. And he lives in Thailand now. And he had to point out to me, Kristin, like, just because people might come to this conclusion, after a certain number of years of traveling, you know, it doesn’t mean that that traveling was in vain. And so he’s very right. And that sense that maybe people don’t care about those costs at that time of the life of their lives. And then also, maybe they don’t end up traveling as long. So maybe they only travel for one year or three years or five years. And they kind of want to see everything that they can and then settle back down again somewhere else. So I think everyone’s on a different path. But I do see a pattern in new digital nomads and remote workers overdoing it, and underestimating the amount of time and energy, and money that it takes to travel at a very fast clip, get your work done and have a personal life and do self care and sleep enough at the same time. Yeah, it’s

11:05  

Chase Warrington  

hard to do it all. It’s hard to be all things to all entities and that includes yourself, then your health, and the place where you’re you’re visiting. I mean, to do it justice, I feel like you require some time and investment and being in the place. I think that’s why I’ve always been more attracted to the slow-man lifestyle a month was always like my kind of bare minimum of where I wanted to stay in a place. And, and that’s migrated into more like three months. Like sometimes I even find myself thinking, one month, it’s like, it’s not even enough time to get to know the place like is it even worth it? And not that, you know, little trips don’t happen here and there. But I just that that period continues to lengthen for me and I get a lot more value out of settling into a place than I did before. And maybe that is just like a learning process. And maybe you don’t end up at the same place that I’m in or the same place you’re in everybody’s on their path. But there is an evolution there, I guess. Yeah, it’s

12:03 

Kristin Wilson   

interesting, because we are living this out for the first time because humans have never had this ability before. And so we’re kind of our experiment. But yeah, as you just mentioned, that’s before factoring into taking into consideration learning the language, learning the culture, and meeting people, that’s pretty ambitious for one month or three months. And so I think that’s why people tend to start staying in places longer, and you can still experience a country, if you go for a week vacation, and you’re on a tour where you’re going to like a different city every day, you’re just gonna get a different perspective that way, and you’re going to understand a country much better, the longer you stay there. And then eventually, you might come to a place where you feel like it’s time to move on. Or you might want to, you know, do what you did and leave come back, get residency status or a long-term visa and, and start to like, little by little peel back the layers of that society.

13:06

Chase Warrington    

Yeah, absolutely. Where I know, I know, some of the places you’ve spent significant time in but one of those places is Costa Rica. That’s what comes to my mind. Nicaragua is another one, just from following some of your content in the past. I know you’ve, you’ve traveled a lot, I won’t ask you to regurgitate like, you know, how many borders you’ve crossed. But what it is, is it correct to say that Costa Rica is one of those places where you feel like you lived?

13:30 

Kristin Wilson   

Yes, it was the first place that I ever lived abroad when I studied abroad in 2002. And when I got there, I didn’t speak any Spanish, but I was a Rotary International scholar. So I took a semester off of college to go there to learn Spanish get to know the local community do a lot of community service and also give speeches at the local Rotary meetings. So it was this ambassadorial cultural exchange. And so I was very lucky that the first time I lived abroad, I was forced to do a lot of work. I was forced to like go to language classes and live with a family and get involved in the community. And I mean, at the time, it was a bit overwhelming. And it was scary. Sometimes it was uncomfortable. But that set the foundation for me for long-term travel. And so anywhere that I ever went in the future, I had that to compare it to. So I would know if I was just passing through Croatia on a sailboat I’m going to have a lot different experience than if I live in Croatia for three months and live with the host family and get to know the people in the culture. But when you’re studying or if you’re retired, or if you take time off it you can do that. But if you’re working full-time, then it’s just too much. And so I’ve never learned another language since Spanish because I’ve never taken the time to do it for a few months. 

15:01 

Chase Warrington   

It’s a decision, it’s such an investment and it’s it doesn’t get easier. Like, I feel like it’s something where I’m like, okay, yeah, I should, I should be able to pick up other languages. Like, I’ll spend a couple of months there. And I’ll pick it up, at least for me, it doesn’t happen that way. But some people are more language inclined than others.

15:15 

Kristin Wilson   

And you know, a lot of people speak English. So it’s a blessing and a curse. But some of the other places that I do feel are kind of my adopted home. I’ve spent a lot of time in Mexico and all the different corners of the country. And it’s really interesting to go back to places throughout the year. So the first time I went to Mexico, I was 16 years old, and I walked across the border in Tijuana, with my parents and my little brother and sister. And I can see, we were in California, it was my first time on a plane and we flew from Florida to California, and I even have a journal. I did my travel journal, and I wrote about the airport experience. I found it a few years ago, I wrote about how airports are like cities they’re like independent, autonomous regions where you could live in an airport. This was way before Edward Snowden was living in Russia. But I was just fascinated with travel. But anyway, we went across the border into Tijuana for the day and talk about culture shock, I can remember the heat, the wind, the sun, the noises, the smells, the people the food, and seeing the tequila bottles with the worms in them. And it was just, it was crazy. So that was my first experience in Mexico. And then over the years, going back, I had so many different experiences from going there on surf trips with my friends to living in Playa Del Carmen, back in 2013, spending time in Mexico City, and so that’s a place that I feel comfortable with because I’ve been traveling there since I was 16. But each time you see a different side of the country. I’ve also spent a lot of time in Canada, I love the Pacific Northwest and living in Vancouver, and being able to go to Whistler in the mountains. So spent a lot of time there. I’ve spent a lot of time in Europe, I’ve been to almost every country in Europe, but I love Amsterdam, and I love the Netherlands and the Dutch lifestyle. So I think that hints at what happens in this evolution of a traveler is you start to find places that you enjoy the lifestyle and you feel comfortable living there for a while. So Vancouver, Amsterdam, and Sydney, Australia, are cities that have water around them or that are on the water, I love also Oslo, Norway. Those are the places that I gravitate to. But it will be different for me as a single us email who was in her 20s and 30s Traveling alone, versus somebody who’s of a different background, a different age, different gender, a different place in their life, they’re going to be looking for different things. And they might be attracted to different places.

18:00  

Chase Warrington  

Yeah, we all have the things that call to us, I can relate to you on just about all those places. The ones that I’ve I’ve been to and Amsterdam in particular, I’ve said multiple times on this show, that is one of those cities that I feel the urge to go live in, I just want to go experience a long term, you know, longer term there than just going for a week or weekend or something. I mean, I want to dive into that city and get to know it. And it’s known around the world for all the wrong reasons, all the reasons that aren’t really why it so spectacular, but it’s just, it’s just an awesome place that I would love to spend more time, I highly recommend it.

18:36  

Kristin Wilson  

And there’s so much more to the Netherlands that I haven’t explored because I love Amsterdam so much that I never want to leave whenever I’m there. But there are so many cities and towns throughout the country that are nice. But yeah, there’s nothing like just riding your bike along the canals. And even when the weather is bad. It’s just it’s such a pleasant place to live.

18:59 

Chase Warrington   

Yeah, though, that’s one of the things I mean, it’s set up for the bad weather. Like when you’re here, like in a place like Valencia, where I’m living now it’s not set up for bad weather. So when it’s like when it snows a little bit in, in the southeast us you know, like everybody just like freaks out and schools closed down. It’s kind of like that here when it rains a little bit. It’s like what do we do? Because the whole city is based around being outside and you know, like restaurants will close just because it’s raining because they’re just like we’re not going to see anybody inside and when you’re in a place like the Netherlands, you know, it’s there. They’re open to that like there everything’s built for that weather. So it’s not nearly as bad as one might think. Even though it’s not, you know, picture-perfect sunshine every day. 

19:38  

Kristin Wilson  

Yeah, people don’t even flinch. Like they’ll be riding their bikes with freezing rain and sleet hitting them in the face and they just act like it’s sunny outside.

19:48  

Chase Warrington  

Is there anywhere you haven’t been that’s like just way up there on the bucket list? Somehow it’s escaped you.

19:55  

Kristin Wilson  

Yeah, I haven’t been to Africa. I’ve only been to Cape Verde. And I think it’s because there are so many different countries there. And it’s such a huge continent, I think I’ve just maybe been a little overwhelmed with where to go first and how to get around. So I’d love to explore there. I have friends that live in Kenya and South Africa, I also really want to go to Ghana, and my brother was just in, I think he was on the Ivory Coast. And he said that was incredible. Like, he spends a lot of time in West Africa, because he’s a surf photographer, and used to be the photo editor at a surfing magazine. And now he works for a van. So he’s been to some cool, really remote places that aren’t good for remote working, but they’re good for just adventure. And so I want to go to more places that are off the map or remote working but are just good to explore. Also the Middle East. I’ve my ex-boyfriend is from Lebanon. And so I got to know a lot of his friends and family members that were from different areas in that region, and Jordan. So I’d like to go check out Turkey as well as super high on the list, though. I think that later this summer, I will go back to Eastern Europe because that’s an area that I like as well and maybe do some side trips into more of the Middle East than into Africa,

21:21 

Chase Warrington   

anywhere in particular in Eastern Europe that falls to you like that, because we haven’t explored a ton of Eastern Europe abroad. We’ve touched on Bulgaria, and we’ve done it. We’ve done a little bit but I feel like we could do a better job in Eastern Europe. Is there anywhere that calls you?

21:36  

Kristin Wilson 

I love Bulgaria. I’ve spent about six months there, but I like Serbia. I don’t know why I like it so much. But I just think that the people are cool. The food is good. It’s super affordable. Belgrade has really good internet, and it’s quite walkable. There’s good public transportation. And Novi Sad is a really pretty town. It’s so family oriented and laid back and quiet. And I don’t know I just really like it there. They have a good music scene as well. And I’ve done some road-tripping through the Balkans I can’t say that I would ever see myself living in Montenegro or Bosnia and Herzegovina like they’re cool to visit. But I didn’t feel like oh, this is my home base. Even Croatia like I think Croatia is nice and a lot of digital nomads like it there. But for me, it was too hot. So I like the weather. And in Eastern Europe as well. I like having the four seasons, they have a lot of local food. And they’re also not on the euro, a lot of those countries so it’s more affordable. And because they’re not in the Schengen they have more diverse food because they have different seeds. Like they have some of the same ones. But they’re on a bit of a different I guess the farmland like they’re growing different crops, they have different cheeses. And it’s quite gourmet. Like it’s kind of like going into the supermarkets in France, but you just have more of the local food. So that’s pretty interesting. And I’ve been to Albania, I would like to go back there. Because I think there’s a lot to explore. And most people can stay for up to one year with just their passport. So that’s good.

23:20 

Chase Warrington   

That’s interesting about the seeds. And we are we have a mutual friend Midco, the host of that remote life

23:26  

Kristin Wilson  

I thought he was on your show. 

23:27  

Chase Warrington  

Yeah, I think he called Bulgaria like Greece without the Greek prices or something like that. 

23:34 

Kristin Wilson  

Yeah, in Greece is pretty cheap, too Bulgaria’s even cheaper.

23:38 

Chase Warrington   

Exactly, exactly. So he’s like, Yeah, you know, good cost of living, you get all the food, you get lots of you to know, lots of diversity in terms of like different cultures and the gastronomy and all that, but just you know, Greece without Greece prices, and I was like, oh, that’s pretty. That sounds pretty attractive. I was also thinking when you were telling the story about your brother, I’m like, a man sitting around the dinner table with you too. Must be interesting. Hearing the different perspectives on the different corners of the world. You guys have seen

24:07  

Kristin Wilson  

he came on my podcast, I should replay that interview because I think it was underrated. He was there when Mick Fanning got attacked by the shark. Do you remember that video going viral? So he was surfing in a world championship event? It was Mick Fanning from Australia and I forget who the other guy was. Maybe Julian Wilson. And a great white shark tries to eat MC while he’s sitting on his surfboard waiting for a wave. And this is on a live stream of broadcasts around the world. So everybody saw it. He bites the shark like he wrestles the shark, and he punches that it gets the shark to go away. He gets rescued by a jetski My brother was swimming out there. When that happened. He had just come in from the water. He was still soaking wet, and he turns around on the beach and watches that go down. So he’s seen a lot of crazy stuff like that and my parents were mortified that two of their three children just decided to leave the country and go travel to all these crazy places. But eventually, they came around. And now I think they’re proud of us. And my dad probably talked his friend’s ears off about what we were doing. But that’s just a good example for people to act first and ask forgiveness later. Like if you try to go and get permission or validation from your friends and family members for whatever it is you’re going to do, they’re probably going to play devil’s advocate and come up with all the reasons why you shouldn’t do it. But if you just go and do it and survive to tell the tale, they’ll be like, Oh, wow, that’s cool that you’re doing that.

25:38  

Chase Warrington

Yeah, I can’t actually, it’s really funny. I can’t relate to it. I can relate to that in so many different ways. When I was making the hardcore break from real-world work and setting out on a nomad adventure, I had been like, tiptoeing my way towards that for some time, like via remote work and stretching the boundaries and that way, but this was like, Okay, I need full location independence, I’m not getting that I’m making a break and leaving my all the cushy career stuff behind and going to, you know, not make any money and not have any future by society standards. I’m just gonna do that. And I remember, like, we had friends that had an intervention with us, like, legitimately, like, came over to our house. And we’re like, Guys, you can’t do this. The future’s so bright. We had my dad, Dad, if you’re listening, you won’t mind me saying, like, he was like, you’re an effing idiot, man, like, Don’t do this. And it was just, it was just like, so many, so many people saying, don’t go down this path, you’re throwing it all away like you don’t know what’s on the other side. And so the plenty of devil advocates and I get that that was the logical thing to say. But being illogical isn’t always bad.

26:45  

Kristin Wilson  

Yeah. And you know, so many isolated people around the world, like the tribes in the Amazon that never had contact with people. And this is in other islands in the South Pacific, where they were isolated for a long time, and their societies develop differently. Like, if you don’t go beyond the ridge or the mountains, or out in the ocean and explore, then you’re living within a limited worldview, you can still have a fulfilling, rich life that way. But humans, I think we weren’t designed to explore originally, we were nomadic, but at some point, society and cultural expectations and pressures from family and friends kind of brought us back to Earth and kind of restricted our movement. And you know, your little kids, you go out and explore and everything and climb trees, and whatever. And eventually, people tell you like, Oh, you’re gonna break your arm, or you’re gonna get hurt. And we just kind of all started to get into the same line. And so it’s very uncomfortable for other people to see you doing things that are out of the ordinary because it is the unknown, and people like to say that they want to live outside of their comfort zone, but when they actually can go there, or start going there, like it’s very scary, and you just have to err on the side of action. Because usually, 99% of the things that we worry about don’t happen. And if things do go wrong, it’s typically something that we didn’t expect anyway. And we’re pretty equipped to handle anything as we come into this world the same way that we leave it, like all the resources that we need are here, and that includes people as well. So if there’s ever a problem or something happens, like by the nature of a problem being created, it has some inherent solution and we just all need to trust ourselves a little bit more to know that we can find it and I think the more that that becomes societally accepted, the more comfortable people will be pushing their boundaries but hopefully, they won’t have to wait as long as you and I did to actually take that first step and then once you take one step and then another one you’re on your way and then there’s really no looking back

29:04  

Chase Warrington  

Yeah, once you’ve taken that first step you’re there is no looking back and I hear that you know, over and over again I rarely hear someone that that’s made the break and taking that step towards following their heart and the calling that they have to go travel see the world and create this lifestyle that’s more suited to their needs rather than society’s needs. I don’t see a lot of people you know, do an about-face and come running back. And if they do, like the worst-case scenario, they end up back where they were. That’s like the absolute worst-case scenario. We’ll be right back to the show after a quick break for a note from our sponsor. This season is brought to you by my good friends over at insured nomads. They’re the absolute best in the business when it comes to providing health travel and medical insurance for nomads, ex-pats, and just all forms of world travelers. I know insurance is often something that’s overlooked when we’re fantasizing about traveling the world but it’s an absolute necessity that we address this because often the policy you have in your home country isn’t gonna cover you while you’re abroad. And it’s also a requirement as a lot of people may not realize to buy private travel or ex-pat insurance, as it’s called sometimes to obtain a visa or even enter certain countries. So, fortunately, there are companies like insured nomads to help us with this. Not only do they have excellent coverage and great prices, but they’re also providing a first-class experience with additional perks and best-in-class technology via their app. It’s an amazing experience, I can’t recommend it enough. Now, this is a company that was built by world travelers for world travelers, so they know what it’s like to find yourself in a difficult medical situation abroad, and they want to keep you from having that same bad experience. So the next time you’re planning a trip abroad, whether it’s for a week or a lifetime, check out insured nomads via the link in the show notes. Hey, guys, if you’re still around and enjoy this episode, then I think you might like our once-a-month newsletter as well. If you’d like to sign up, just open up the show notes of the episode you’re currently listening to scroll down, and look for about abroad.com/newsletter It takes about 30 seconds to sign up. It’s a fantastic way to support the show. And I think you’ll be pleased with the information that we provide every month as well. Thanks a lot for listening. Hope you enjoy the rest of the episode. I’m curious about your origin story, like what was your first step because I don’t know how you got into this world, you’re very well-known, to anybody that’s listening to the podcast and hasn’t come across your content yet. We’ll link to it all in the show notes and give Kristen a chance to introduce it here more in a second. But like you’re very well known in this digital nomad world and one of those original podcasters and content creators all around the world travel. And the thing is, is that like nowadays, you know, people can make that transition a little bit easier than they were you’re talking about back in like 2002 going to Costa Rica and like so you’ve seen this evolution quite a bit. And I’m really curious to hear about the origin story of where it all began.

31:53  

Kristin Wilson  

Sure. So I started with I think I mentioned, you know, going to Tijuana when I was 16 and, and loving the experience of traveling and being on airplanes and everything. And I think that that comes just genetically my grandparents both worked for the airlines in Miami, they worked for Pan Am, and my great or my grandfather and his family and my grandmother emigrated from Europe after World War One, my dad’s side of the family as well. So I think this is something that everyone shares, like in their DNA, like they had ancestors that were moving around in the past. And so I just got an opportunity to experience that as a teenager because my parents took us on family vacations in the summer. And then my grandmother, or my high school graduation, paid for me to go to Italy for my senior trip, which is where her family’s from. And so that just really opened my eyes to like what was out there in the world. It was no longer just in books, it was like real life. And I can remember the plane ride when I was 17. Going to Italy, I can remember what I ate on the plane, on the first day landing there. The jetlag was like standing at the hotel to check in at the first coffee shop, I went to the first taste of espresso, the first taste of red wine like it was like coming alive for the first time. So that was how my love of travel started, I had this hunch of what it was going to be like, and then reality exceeded my expectations. And I was just hooked. So from there on out throughout college, my goal was to find a job that would let me travel, I know that you can relate to that as well. But there, there wasn’t a major or any direction that I could take to travel. And so the closest thing that I could find was either majoring in Hospitality Management or international business. And so I ended up doing international business and got the opportunity to study abroad. So I applied for this scholarship with the Rotary Foundation and did a semester there did a semester in Australia, through my business department, I lobbied them to let me go I created my study abroad program. And then I went to Australia because I was a surfer as well. So I wanted to go surf there and yeah, did a semester there. And it was basically like my life was never going to be the same. I came back to the University of Central Florida and finished my senior year. And then my next goal was to find a job that would let me work in another country. But as you can probably imagine, that was pretty difficult back then those jobs were only reserved for the executives of multinational corporations. And so I didn’t know what else to do. So I went to business school, got an MBA, and experienced severe burnout at 21 years old. And then when I was searching for jobs after that, a friend of a friend figured out that I had lived in Costa Rica and spoke Spanish and he asked if I would come work at his real estate office and Nosara Costa Rica and so I was still drinking the Kool-Aid At that point, I was like, Okay, I’m gonna go to Costa Rica for a year. And then I’ll come back and continue my real life in corporate America. Because, if I get an MBA and go to Costa Rica and work for $1,000 a month, I’m going to be throwing my life away, I’m going to ruin my resume, blah, blah, blah. But I ended up making six figures that first year working in real estate in 2005. And then I just never came back. So I kind of went there thinking that, okay, I had a burnout at 21. So what’s going to happen at 41, I need to find a better work-life balance. So I’ll take this job for a gap year, and then I’ll rest a little bit and then I’ll come back to the US, but I just never came back. And then I started working for myself after that. So I did seven or eight years in real estate. And then in 2011, I opened a relocation company, and then I realized I was doing my job remotely, and I might as well travel instead of taking off work to travel. So in January 2013, I went nomadic, and then it wasn’t until 2017, that I started filming what I was doing. So going back to the fear, I had the idea, I started a travel blog in 2007, and the idea to start a YouTube channel in 2008. And I was scared, I didn’t do it for 10 years like I started, and then quit.

36:22  

Chase Warrington  

What do you think you were scared of? Like, was it internal? Or were you afraid of the response?

36:27 

Kristin Wilson   

It was all internal limits, it was just me thinking that I wasn’t creative, because I didn’t go to film school. Because, you know, my parents wanted me to get a different kind of job and not be an artist. And I thought you know, how am I going to do that if I work in real estate, or I just didn’t think I could do both. And I just didn’t? Yeah, I just guess they didn’t believe in me, or I don’t know, though. It was all internal. I wasn’t really afraid of internet trolls or anything like that. And so if I have any regrets, like, that’s probably one. But at the same time, during the years that I wasn’t documenting what I was doing, I was learning a lot. And I was traveling a lot. And so I guess everything happens for a reason because, by the time I finally started making content, I was in a place where travel was secondary to me. Like my goal was to share what I was doing with the world. It wasn’t necessarily traveling for the sake of travel, because I wanted to travel. So it was more about giving back and growing as a person versus I guess, like selfishly just wanting to have fun jet-setting around the world.

37:33  

Chase Warrington  

Wow, that’s, that’s kind of fascinating that you were able to transition from burnout to MBA to real estate in Costa Rica, maybe I’ll get 1000 bucks a month to await its six-figure income. And now I’m starting a relocation business. And eventually, like seeing travel and the way you can share your travels as a way to give back like what an awesome chain of events that took place throughout that, how many years are we talking about there?

38:01  

Kristin Wilson  

So this was about, I guess, 10 years because in 2002, I started my company in 2011. So it was probably 15 years before I started the YouTube channel. But you know, I had no idea that that was what I was going to end up doing, and I still don’t know what I’m doing after this. So I didn’t start my podcast till 2019 Which was still two more years after the YouTube channel. But I thought, okay, now I have enough interviews, well, I can start a podcast to see how other people are doing it too. So even though it seems like I was one of the first people to talk about it like I really should have been talking about it 10 years before that, but you know, you don’t know when you start traveling, who you’re going to meet or what opportunities are going to come along or what you’re going to learn about yourself and I think I found myself through travel and so I’m so grateful for those experiences that I had that led me to what I’m doing today and you still don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow or what you’re going to do next. So that’s why everyone needs to start their journeys because like they don’t know what’s going to happen 10 years from now, but you can kind of predict it if you’re going to stay in the same job and like the same hometown like things are going to be pretty similar unless you change it up.

39:21

Chase Warrington    

Yeah, yeah, that’s I mean, that’s exactly you actually can predict it pretty easily if you if you’re okay with predicting it and if you’re okay with taking on a little bit of risk and trusting in yourself most of the people that trust in themselves and take that leap of faith end up finding their path. And I think that’s your story. There is a perfect example of that. And now you’re involved in so many different things. You’re you’ve got the podcast, and you’ve got the YouTube channel, do you still do the relocation? Is that still like its own entity?

39:51  

Kristin Wilson 

Yeah, I still do relocations, but I’m doing them more in a group setting now. So I still take a couple one of one calls. clients throughout the year, but very limited where, you know, when I first started creating content, I would just help people with whatever they asked me for help with. So that’s how I started doing career coaching and other things on the side. It was like anything related to remote work, but now I’m pretty specialized in relocation. So one of the limitations that I realized before I started creating content was that I can only help so many people per month per year with their relocations I max out 100 clients per year, and that’s working overtime with a team, I have contractors and all these different countries because relocation is not a very scalable business, you either have to invest in a brick and mortar relocation company and go the traditional route or what I decided to do, which was to stay a remote, sole proprietor. So what I’ve done now is created a relocation coaching program. So it’s a group, it’s a course with live training. So instead of me doing it for you, my relocation services are a done-for-you service where I help people go from one country to another and I help them decide where they’re gonna move, I plan all the logistics for them, I find their housing paperwork like dogs, pets, everything, you know, kids, schools, anything that they need, it’s customized to them. And this process can take three months or six months to move one person somewhere. But of course, I’m managing multiple relocations at the same time. So with the relocation coaching program, I realized that there was a big group of people who didn’t want to do things completely on their own, but they didn’t necessarily want everything to be done for them and or they didn’t have the budget for that. And so this is a way for me to help people one on one but in a group setting. And then they can also follow along step by step in the relocation process, how to do each thing. And so I’ve put this in a four-month program where they can go at their own pace, like one, one module per week, or they can go faster. And then we do live weekly group calls. And so that sold out in the last quarter of 2021. And I’m about to reopen it, I’ve had it closed because I’ve been writing my first book. But that’s been fun to teach people my process of doing it because it’s not doing anyone any good if it’s always locked up in my head with internal knowledge. So I’ve been sharing that. And then interestingly, I took International Human Resources classes when I lived in Australia in 2003. So it’s kind of funny how it’s all come full circle that what I was learning how to do. As a teenager in college, I am now actually selling as a service or a program to people all of these years later, but it’s built on much more than what I learned in 2003. It’s like this whole lifetime of travel and relocation wrapped together. So I did more than 1000, relocations with people one on one before teaching it to people in a group. And then there’s this community where they get to like, hang out and talk with each other and share where they’re going to move to and share properties that they found and stuff like that. So it’s been cool

43:19  

Chase Warrington  

That has to be so rewarding to see especially to see the community come together. I mean, helping 1000 People relocate. First of all, you’re a saint for doing that, because I’ve done it a couple of times for myself. And it can be brutal. And I say it all the time like I’m a huge fan of just outsourcing whatever it is that you’re not good at or not excited to do. And if this isn’t a strength of yours, which it’s not for me, I’m all for, like, please hire somebody that knows what they’re doing and is good at it and can streamline the process for you. So that’s an incredible number 1000. But then to see that community come together around this like has to be so rewarding.

43:54  

Kristin Wilson  

Yeah. And people share their journeys. And they also get validation that they’re not the only ones going through it like when you’re traveling or planning your travel to another country, it can feel very lonely, because it’s just you and your laptop like maybe your husband or wife trying to figure things out. But there are hundreds of 1000s or millions of people that are thinking about doing it at the same time or doing it themselves. But it’s also you know, it’s a lot of work. And it’s confusing. And so people end up spending three years or 10 years researching how to do it, and then they start doing it, and then they find out through the process all the other stuff that they didn’t know. And so my goal is just to shorten that timeline from when people have the desire to travel or live abroad and then when they do it,

44:45  

Chase Warrington  

yeah, that timeline needs shortening because you’ll sit there and waffle on it for months and years and never pull the trigger. So many people do that and I’ve done it myself and it’s it can help streamline the process to outsource something like that. could also just be super motivating to have some, like a coach alongside us telling you, you know that it’s going to happen, you’re gonna get there, and not having that fear of the unknown can be very motivating in and of itself. 

45:11 

 Kristin Wilson  

Yeah, just ask people stuff without having to Google it. 

45:15  

Chase Warrington  

Yeah, exactly. And I think there’s, there’s just so much value in that. And so I have to imagine that some of this led you to say, Okay, how do I even do this on a grander scale? And now you’re, you’re writing your first book, right?

45:29  

Kristin Wilson  

Yeah. So that’s another thing that I wanted to do. For a long time, I had all of these different manuscripts of books when I was younger in Ghana in 2000, or 2001, I wrote a cookbook called the surfer girl diet, and I never published it. Like I kept trying to write books. But back then there was no Amazon, self-publishing, or anything. So I always wanted to be a writer, but I never actually wrote a book. And then I had the idea to write a book about how to become a digital nomad because that was what I knew how to do you know how to move to another country and how to become a digital nomad. And I thought that it would be a good fit for the dummies style of a book because those were books that, you know, if you want to learn anything about a topic, you can just pick up a for dummies book. And you can get a crash course in that, but a practical guide to doing it. And so I talked with Wiley Publishing, to publish the Dummies books. And it was a process that probably took, I don’t know, four or five years, like it’s been a long time coming, I probably could have just self-published the book on my own, but I just felt like it was a good fit for this style. So yeah, now the book is happening, and it will be out on August 9. So this is another way of just breaking down this sometimes very overwhelming process of becoming a digital nomad. And it’s very difficult to even write a book about it because there are so many different ways to do it. And as you know, at Fuest, and with remote companies like you function based on systems and processes, and so finding a system or creating a process for becoming a digital nomad that people can follow, despite, you know, regardless of what their job is, or where they live or where they want to go like that is no small task. And so it’s been a journey, even writing the book and like standardizing if you could even say the process of becoming a digital nomad, or providing a framework that people can follow, but I’m, I’m excited about it and can’t wait to share it with the world.

47:44 

Chase Warrington   

That’s so awesome. I can’t I cannot imagine writing a book because like you, I tried to start a blog early on some sort of like travel blog it’s very similar to the structure of about abroad. And it was really bad. The blog was like I realized very quickly, I’m not a writer, I just like traveling. And I like talking to people who have an interest in building lives abroad and becoming digital nomads and all this but I didn’t have a really solid pen like I just writing cost me a lot of energy and brainpower and time. And so the blog, the blog did not last very long. I’m really happy that podcast came to exist because I’m better at talking than I haven’t written I guess. And the thought of writing a book is so overwhelming for me because it would be so so challenging. Did you find the process to be did it come naturally to you? Or is it something that you know, is in Spanish they say like make quests like does it cost you a lot? Yeah,

48:41  

Kristin Wilson  

it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I mean, I haven’t had a child or anything like that. That would be harder. But I’ve written I write a lot like I just naturally I used to teach my English class in high school, and the teacher would ask me to explain stuff to the other students if they weren’t understanding commas or something because I could speak in the 16-year-old language. So I’ve always been a writer. But this was so hard. I’ve written like, I could write 10,000 words a day, no problem. I’ve written hundreds and hundreds of blog posts on media and things. But for some reason, this book was so difficult. And I can give people advice if they want to write a book, have a good outline, which I did like you need to even if you don’t work with a publisher, you need to write a book proposal to yourself of what is the book that you’re writing? Who are you writing it for? What is the problem that you’re solving,? What is the reason that people will read it? It’s almost like starting a business in a way you need to have a business plan for a business need to have a plan for your book as well. But really, it came down to getting over the fear of the outcome of the book because a book is something that you don’t get direct feedback on. So it could take a year or more before you even know if the book that you wrote is good Good. So this is different from publishing a blog post where you can kind of like, see how it does or if people share it, or how much they read or whatever. So what I had to do was just create a writing schedule that was very consistent where I didn’t set several words per day. But I just went to the library here in Coconut Grove, and I was surrounded by books. So it’s like a good work environment. If Wyatt and I just said, Okay, every day the library opens at 930, I’m going to write from 930 until 11, you know, sometimes longer if I was in the flow state, but I recommend just starting with like 20 or 30 minutes a day. And that has a good plan, have a good outline, you know, know who you’re talking to, and then just set a consistent time to write where you’re going to do it until the book is done. And I also followed Tucker Max for a long time. And he created this method called to book in a box that was eventually turned into scribe book school, but they have a lot of really good resources online with how to even outline your book, and how to write a book for people who aren’t writers. And they use dictation and interviewing people as a way to get their words on the page. So if you’re not good at writing, you can just tuck your book out, and then have someone edit it later. And so that’s another thing that helped me was to do what they call a vomit draft, where you just word vomit onto the page, and don’t worry about how good it is, and then let the editors fix it later. So now I’m in the review process, which is possibly worse than the first draft, because now I have to face the fear of like, this is the final draft of the book, like when I’m done editing it, this will be the actual book that’s printed, so I can’t change it. So I’m starting again, with like, okay, just do like, you know, an hour or two a day. And yeah, this is the scariest part that I’m starting tomorrow. I just got all the chapters back.

52:04  

Chase Warrington  

Well, I’m really curious about that feedback loop aspect. And I would I could probably dive into that with you. Because you make a really good point about how when you publish a blog post, you know, exactly, I mean, pretty quickly, you can tell by the metrics, how well it’s doing, and if people like it or don’t like it, but I never thought about that with a book. And I’m also really interested in that bit that you mentioned about how it’s kind of like a business plan like you need to have a proposal and who are you selling to, you know, who is the audience. And so what I would love to do is another thing that I’m interested in that you’re doing it and I think it relates to the book and then it this all serves digital nomads is you’ve done an awesome job. Like I think the best job of anybody that I’ve seen out there compiling information on digital nomad visas, you and I both talk a lot about this, or we’re big fans of the concept behind digital nomad visas, and we believe this will become you know, more and more of a, almost a commodity, almost every country may have some form of this or another. But until recently, they were scarce and difficult to find, and there’s still not a lot of consistency between them. Some countries are doing this a lot better than others. So I’ll let you tell the audience more about what it is that you’ve created and how it serves digital nomads in terms of those that are interested in the digital nomad thesis. But what I want to get to eventually with this is what are some of the tips and some of the learnings that maybe we can pick out from both the digital nomad visas and also the book the digital nomads for dummies that you know someone kind of new to this game that’s just getting into how to be a digital nomad? What digital nomad visa should I look for? I think just like broadly speaking, it would be cool for them to hear from you what your advice is, and where you would point them.

53:49  

Kristin Wilson  

So my advice for becoming a digital nomad and traveling is to always start simple and add complexity when necessary. So a lot of times, it’s easy to overcomplicate things in our heads when like technically, if you just had a passport and a credit card and a plane ticket, you could go do it and maybe a phone or a laptop. And so I like that approach like what you were talking about on my podcast with us how it starts as a remote company. So it starts very attentively and how the work gets done and then you add tools on top so approach it from that perspective of like what is the bare minimum that you need to become a digital nomad you need to know an income stream, you need some tech technology, some hardware, you need a passport, you know so it’s like starting with the basics and then going from there and with and also knowing why you want to do it, you know what you hope to get out of it. And we can go into that process a bit more. That’s what I wrote about in the book you know that step-by-step process from like, not even knowing what a digital nomad is to becoming one but then also if you are an experienced digital nomad and you just want to jump in and like section four or section three and learn more about the traveling part or the long term implications of being a digital nomad, you can do that too. So it’s like the first half of the book is about where to get started as a digital nomad, and how to make money as a digital nomad. And once you have that, sort of, then it’s into the travel and relocation aspect, and like more of the long-term travel, community cultural adaptation, all of those other things that you don’t have to worry about at the very beginning. And so when these digital nomad Visa started getting announced in 2020, and Barbados was the first one followed by Estonia, I was so excited because this was validation of the digital nomad lifestyle by multiple foreign governments. And so I started making videos about every visa that came out analyzing them. And then what I realized quickly is that well, there are too many countries to make long drawn out videos about every single one of them. But then also a lot of the V says, weren’t even worth applying for. And so I think there are about 40 countries now that have digital nomad visas or remote work permits of some kind. And everyone was asking me, like, should I apply for this visa? Or what do you think about that visa, and it was such a headache to figure out what the requirements were, how long it would take to apply what the cost was, how to do it. And I just started researching them one by one for my own sake. So I could even answer people’s questions about them. And then I thought, why don’t I just give this information to everyone? So I created a digital nomad visa database, where you can just buy access to the database, you can find out the info on every visa, who it’s for, who it’s not for, so you can know within a minute or two, if it’s even worth applying for that visa, or if you can just travel there on a passport and not worry about it. So that’s been helpful for people. And then every time a new visa is announced, I add it to the database and you know, analyze it and everything. So it’s kind of a living document where we’ll see maybe at some point, every country in the world will have a digital nomad visa, we’ll see. But some of the countries have done a better job than others with actually providing something of value that people would want to apply for. Yeah, that’s

57:25  

Chase Warrington  

then that’s a really interesting thing that on the surface, these all seem kind of the same. And if you just dig like right below the surface, you’re like, oh, wait, these are very different. And then if you go deep, you see that there’s like some mechanisms that are quite drastically different. Is it a visa, what I would love is like, we don’t have time to go through all 40. And we also want to point people to that resource. So they can come to get it from you if they want more detail. But are there one or two visas out there that kind of jumped out to you that are, you know, a country? Maybe we can even separate these into two different categories? One category is a government that’s doing this well kind of like exemplifying the way maybe it should be done. And then if the same answer if the answer isn’t the same to the second category, one that’s attractive to you where you’re like, yeah, that’s what I want to I would go use that one, or I would recommend people go use that one.

58:16 

Kristin Wilson   

So I don’t know if there’s one government or country in particular that has hit the nail on the head. When I think of what I would look for in a digital nomad visa, its ease of application, its low-cost barrier, and its providing value on the back end once you get there. So can you apply for it online? Is it affordable, and then what is the benefit of me just traveling there on a passport and so I want to look for a long length of stay and maybe some access to government services or support maybe a digital nomad or remote work task force of some kind that’s going to help you with integrating into that destination. Maybe they’re going to help you with housing, maybe they approach it from the way that universities do with their study abroad programs where they offer you housing for the first week or the first month or something like that. I haven’t seen anyone do that. I’ve seen a lot of Caribbean countries that put very expensive price tags on the visa or they make it difficult to apply for where you have to get documents notarized certified APO styled which you know about from moving to Spain, which is where you get a notarized document then you have to get that document translated and certified another stamp it’s like this old way of doing things anyway

59:44  

Chase Warrington  

It’s so old school the first time we had to do that with our marriage certificate I didn’t know I just the words were synonymous in my head APA styled and notarized. And so we went through it an entire fiasco like almost like over like going over or visa and such because we couldn’t get the APA style done. And just all the things you learned along the way. Sorry, I digress. But that was interesting. For me.

1:00:09  

Kristin Wilson  

It’s annoying. And some of these countries are requiring that I think Iceland is requiring it. Romania is requiring it. But then some of the countries that it’s really easy to apply for, they might have an expensive application fee like with Barbados, you can apply online, but then I don’t know, it’s like $1,000, or $1,200, or $2,500 for a family. And then you get there and you realize, like, I could have just come here for a few months on my passport, like there was no need to have to apply for that. So I’m trying to clarify that with people. So they know, you know, if they need to go through all these hoops or not, I think Estonia did a pretty good job with theirs because the application fee is only like 100 euros or so and you can stay for up to a year. And so it gives you the option to have a home base within the EU Schengen zone and still travel throughout the Schengen zone. So before a digital nomad Visa existed, you could just stay in the Schengen zone for up to 90 days with a passport, and then you had to leave for 90 days before coming back in. So the first time I went to Europe, I thought I could go to every European country for 90 days and just live there forever. And that’s not the case. So I think that’s a good one. Budapest or not Budapest, Hungary has a pretty good visa. I mean, with both Hungary and Romania, you still have to present yourself in person at an embassy or consulate, which I think like maybe we can do a zoom interview, instead of going in person, like when you think of how many Hungarian embassies are there in your country, probably not many. So that means then you know traveling to that country or traveling to the embassy to apply in person as you can apply online, but then you have to go in person anyway. But I do like Hungary’s visa, it’s called the wildcard because you can stay for I think it’s going to be up to five years, like one or two years, and then you can renew it for another two years. So that provides a lot of value because you can still travel throughout Europe and have that home base there in Hungary. Hungary is a very centrally located country, so it has a low cost of living. So even though you know, they’re not providing a lot of bells and whistles, once you go through the process, at least you don’t have to worry about anything for the next few years. And then I think that the Dubai remote work permit in the UAE is quite valuable just based on the fact that if you go with your passport, you can only say for 30 days. And if you apply for the remote work program, you can stay for up to a year. And I think that you have to show proof of income of like around $5,000 per month, which a lot of remote workers can do it might be harder for some freelancers, but um you know with the lifestyle and the cost of living there. I think they’re trying to attract more of a higher-end market. It’s weird for digital nomads to be now classified into like target markets for countries. But that’s the world that we’re living in today.

1:03:25  

Chase Warrington  

We’ve become like a customer base like the like I had somebody on the show earlier who worked behind the scenes creating some of these digital nomad visas. And he talked about US digital nomads, in the same way as a duelist. We talk about like up the funnel of obtaining users and converting them into paying customers. And it was just hilarious. Like, wow, we’ve become like a business demographic.

1:03:48  

Kristin Wilson  

Yeah, I just think that everyone should make you know, they should remove the friction. It’s like they need someone to come from user experience at a remote company and come help them with their program or all volunteer to help them you know, make it make the application online, make it fast and easy to apply for don’t put these hefty upfront fees like sure make people show proof of income that they can support themselves while they’re there. But everything should be able to be done online, and then you know, provide some support or some services and a generous visa duration so that people are attracted to go there without just going on their passport. 

1:04:28  

Chase Warrington 

Yeah, I mean, the long-term gain for them is like if you end up setting up shop there. You know, I’ve seen people go on these digital the equivalent of a digital nomad Visa or the visa that I’m on here and they end up integrating into society starting businesses having families investing in properties. I know one guy in particular that’s like renovating entire villages, like just totally helping revitalize these places. And you know, he’s a foreigner that came for one year initially and so there’s so much benefit to be added just economically before we even get to Like culturally, and from a societal standpoint, and all those, there’s so much that can be added. There’s a richness there that I think some of the countries are overlooking. They’re very focused on the short term like, Oh, let me get this $1,000 fee or this 25 or 30% tax, and that’s it’s very short-sighted and the ones that aren’t doing that are skyrocketing up these Nomad lists, and, and you know, becoming these top places in the world for knowledge workers who bring so much from all different corners of the world. So I just, I hope that they’ll think about it from a more of the long-term standpoint,

1:05:34  

Kristin Wilson  

Me too. I mean, they’re just making the mistakes that, you know, history repeats itself, but we all have access to information now. And these countries can hire external consultants so that it’s not just, you know, the cabinet ministers making this decision that they don’t have a background on. Millions of people could provide feedback on a better way to do it. So we’ll see what happens. 

1:06:01  

Chase Warrington 

Yeah, many governments are listening right now Kristen and I are here for you. We are for hire, you can just let us know. We’ll tell you exactly what the people want. Well, Chris, this has been awesome. I’m gonna let you run and get back to publishing books and creating podcasts and all  sorts of content. But thank you so much for sharing your story and a little bit about the book the digital nomad pieces. Where can people follow along and learn more? 

1:06:27  

Kristin Wilson  

Sure, well, you can subscribe to my YouTube channel, youtube lash traveling with Kristen Kristen with a K and two eyes. A lot of people do e n So Kristen with an eye I create videos I used to do it weekly, and I’m going to bi-weekly bi I have hundreds of videos there about living abroad the cost of living like living abroad guides, having a digital nomad, all sorts of fun stuff like that. I also have a weekly podcast called badass digital nomads, our website is badass Digital nomads.com. And then if people want help with their relocation, they can go to traveling with kristin.com/apply and apply for the ready to relocate program and also send us a message through the site and then for the digital nomad visa database that is a digital nomad. bootcamp.com.

Nice. Thank you so much. tons to learn at all those places. We’ll link to all of that in the show notes as well. But um, yeah, please go follow along. Christian’s work is awesome. And there are just tons to be learned over there. So thank you again, Kristen. Great to great to finally connect here and I look forward to meeting up in real life here soon, I hope 

Yes, look forward to seeing you running remotely. And then I also just forgot the book. The book is available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. It will be in all the bookstores but it just searched digital nomads for Dummies on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and people can pre-order it there. 

1:07:56  

Chase Warrington  

Oh, perfect. Yeah, I was gonna ask it. So order already available? Yeah,

1:07:59  

Kristin Wilson 

it’ll there be a Kindle version as well. And an audiobook, but the audiobook won’t be out until the fourth quarter of 2021. Or 2022.

1:08:09  

Chase Warrington

Are you narrating it yourself? Or did you? Yeah.

1:08:12  

Kristin Wilson 

Yeah, I think so. I have the option to do it. So very cool.

1:08:17  

Chase Warrington  

Yeah. I would love to hear how that goes. I always find that I’m an audiobook person. Always consuming audiobooks or podcasts pretty much. So.

1:08:26  

Kristin Wilson  

Very low audio files here.

1:08:28  

Chase Warrington 

Yes. All right. Well, thank you so much. We will catch up again soon.

1:08:33  

Kristin Wilson  

Thanks, Chase.

1:08:34  

Chase Warrington  

Wait a second. Don’t go just yet. If you all enjoyed that interview with Kristen then I bet you will enjoy the episode that we did on her podcast where we turn the mic around and she interviewed me for a change. So had a lot of fun talking with her about my experience as a digital nomad and remote worker. And so if you’re interested in learning a little bit more about me and you want to check out one of the most popular podcasts about travel and digital nomadism check out the link in the show notes to go over to badass digital nomads. Thanks for tuning in today from wherever you are in the world. Once again, I’m Chase and this has been another episode of about abroad. For those of you wondering how you can best support the show, I have made it super simple for you. Just go over to the show notes of the episode that you’ve just finished listening to and click on one of the two following links about abroad.com/newsletter to get our monthly newsletter, no spam guaranteed, or rate this podcast.com/about abroad where you can quickly and easily leave a review for the show. It’s not just important to me it also helps more wonders just like you find us. Finally don’t forget to subscribe on your podcast platform of choice. And we will see you again next week. Thanks again are still away. Go, amigos