Coworking and Coliving in Iceland with the Founder of the Blue Bank Startup Incubator

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Introduction: Welcome to Badass Digital Nomads, where we're pushing the boundaries of remote work and travel, all while staying grounded with a little bit of old school philosophy, self-development, and business advice from our guests.

Kristin:  You know, critics of remote work say that you need meetings and face-to-face interaction in order to get things done. But we all know that communication and community are two of the most important factors for success in a location independent lifestyle. So every time you listen to an episode of this or any podcast that you find value in, I challenge you to share the wealth. Take a moment to think of one person in your professional or personal network who might benefit from listening in. Then share it with them and tell them why. Doing this will help you absorb and apply the info that most resonated with you from the episode, putting it into practice in your own life while delivering value to someone you care about. And with that, let's get on with today's show. Welcome to a live episode of Badass Digital Nomads podcast. I am here with Arnar, and I can't pronounce your last name. <laugh>.  

Podcast Interview:

Arnar:    00:02:03    Arnar Sigurdsson. 

Kristin:    00:02:04    See what I mean? <laugh>. And I'm just gonna set the stage here for where we are because this is a video podcast that's live on YouTube, but it's also gonna be an audio podcast. And I have a few announcements that are very exciting. As I was setting up this live stream, I realized that this channel, youtube.com/digitalnomad reached 400 subscribers right now in a few minutes ago. So I just wanted to give a shout out to all of the subscribers and say hello. So whether you're from my other channel Traveling with Kristin, or you came across this channel through some other means, then welcome, welcome, welcome, and thank you for your support. So I'll just set the scene for the people who aren't watching live. I am with Arnar, who is the manager of The Blue Bank, which is an innovation center, retreat center, startup accelerator, and decelerators and coworking space with co-living facilities in the northwest fjords of Iceland. And I have been here for a week living and working in this tiny town, um, called Pingeyri, which only has a couple hundred people in it. And, um, we're just in here wearing our slippers because that's what you do in Iceland. You drink a lot of coffee, you wear slippers, you relax, and it's just very peaceful and quiet outside. We have a view of the water. What is this body of water?  

Arnar:    00:03:34    Uh, well this is the, the Fjord we're in called Pingeyri. Okay. Where I think it is. So if you haven't been to the west fjords it's like a lot of fjords together. So when we make a reference to some village, we say two fjords up or three fjords down, you know, not blocks. Yeah. So it's a lot about fjords the ocean, you know, the mountains. Uh, yeah.  

Kristin:    00:03:59    Yeah. We have a beautiful view of the fjords out of every window in this room. And if you wanna see a tour, check out my live stream tour that I did the other day on, uh, Traveling with Kristin on my other channel. So sadly I leave tomorrow, but I'm going back to Norway. But I couldn't leave without interviewing Arnar about how they came up with this really interesting space and concept. And so maybe you guys want to come here as well. Every single person who I've talked to has either been here before and come back, or they are planning on coming back like me. It's my first time here, but I know I already said I'm definitely coming back. I wish I were staying longer. It's a perfect place to come. If you are a remote worker or an entrepreneur or in a startup or anything.  

Kristin:    00:04:52    If you're just wanna come and meditate or practice yoga or be in nature, like if you wanna get away from it all and just be in a quiet place that has modern state-of-the-art facilities where you can live, work and chill out for a little while, this is the place for you. So I will stop talking and I will let Arnar talk <laugh> because he's the expert here. So anyone who's here on the live stream throughout the stream, let us know your questions and um, we'll answer them. So Arnar, let's start from the beginning. How did the idea for this space come up and what has kind of been the trajectory of it so far?  

Arnar:    00:05:31    Um, so first, thank you for the kind words. I'm really happy that you are enjoying your stay and looking forward to you coming. Again. This is called The Blue Bank, which is not a coincidence. There used to be a bank here. Oh, this village used to be a very thriving fishing village. It had a lot of institutions, it had a cooperative, they had a bank, they used to have its own kind of municipality, government, and then there's been like a decline in the, in the fishing industry. So there was a decline in population. So The Blue Bank has a kind of a twofold social mission actually. It's kind of asking itself what value can a place like this have for the world states and internationally, and how can we revitalize the, the village and kind of bring more young people here, bring entrepreneurs, bring creative people, you know, you have been describing in your podcasts and your articles, the shifts that happen in, in work and how work is becoming location independent.  

Arnar:    00:06:40    And you know, I've been following all these things that you are talking about. And so we're we're kind of inspired by this idea of, of digital nomads and, and saying to ourselves, well, if you can work from anywhere, then maybe a place like this can use that to bring people here. Whether they are here for a week or a month or a year, it's, it's, it's not so important. It's just kind of bringing people here and creating life. You know, in the, in the states you might have different towns that were dependent on like the auto industry or like just different industries that, uh, that things built around. So whereas this place was dependent on the fishing industry, and now that moves away and then the question becomes, okay, but what can, what can we do? And if we are experiencing a shift into like location independence, then there is an opportunity here for communities like these to say, come experience the nature, experience, the community.  

Arnar:    00:07:43    We're not the same as San Francisco or Berlin or Oslo. These places are are great, but we have something different. And you can come here for a while or, or for a long time and, and experience something different, but still, you know, work on a, on whatever you wanna do. You know, be a, be an entrepreneur, work remotely. So, you know, it used to be so that if you wanted to live in a rural remote area, you had very limited options about what you were to work in. I mean, in this place you could be a fisherman or, or farmer or work at the fish factory. And the young people had very little options. And so now the young people growing up in this village, they see that people like yourselves, they can live anywhere and they can go, you know, to bigger cities and get a college degree or join a company.  

Arnar:    00:08:40    And, you know, it's, it's possible they can come back, you know, if you can come here and work, they can come here to work. So it's, it's sort of creating a new narrative about what it means to work a little bit like you do yourself with your work, you know, your whatever it is that you do <laugh>. So it's, uh, it's sort of being inspired by that digital nomad, uh, shift. I was gonna say a revolution. It sounded a little bit much, but shift and saying, well, are there opportunities in it for, for even for a place like, like this one here?  

Kristin:    00:09:12    For, for me, I think that this digital nomad shift, or it is kind of a revolution, but it's more of a coming of age. It's coming full circle to combine our nomadic roots and our tribal tendencies as human beings to now combine that with technology and to be able to roam the world at a faster pace that's ever been humanly possible. So there's so many different elements to the fact that you and me and we are able to come to this place to work. I mean, just last night I saw on Twitter, some guy wrote that people are finding out about remote work. He was like, oh, the news is out. Like everybody knows now. And I tell there's room for everybody because some remote workers, it seems like they're like, oh, well I don't know if we want everybody to work remotely. No, everyone can work remotely, whether it's part-time or full-time.  

Kristin:    00:10:12    And I said, you know, there's room for all of us, but there's gonna be less people on the streets because everyone's just gonna be living their lives and not necessarily commuting to work or in these traditional jobs. And he said, yeah, and people will be able to spend more time with their families and spend more time on their hobbies and just have like a normal life when you take away this artificial infrastructure and commuting to like a central place of work. We used to always work from home. We used to always work in our communities. We just have more options now. And so he sent a photo on Twitter of him at the beach working, and I sent a photo from the office next door with the view, it was like sunset. So it was like the, the sunset over the fjord. And then he retweeted it.  

Kristin:    00:11:01    And I was just laughing at like this world that we live in, you know, where people are communicating from all over and connecting. And now he might wanna come here because why not? Even just a couple hours ago, the girl sitting next to me was from Iceland, but here working on her thesis. And I was like, wow. That's another thing. I mean, students who need to get away from distractions of college life and in college towns and they need to work on their projects or these, like they can come to a place like this. It's not restricted to your job title or your age or your nationality. It's such a melting pot now. I mean to, to kind of touch on what you were saying about fishing and farming, as I've spent the last month or so in the Arctic and seeing firsthand how difficult the, the lifestyle was for the fishermen in these fishing communities.  

Kristin:    00:11:57    I mean, it was just the conditions were atrocious. And now we have the technology of the fishing industry changing and people who were born into this industry no longer have to work at it. They can work from here doing anything they want online. And then in the morning at the local pool where some of the people from the community go to the pool in the sauna in the morning, we were talking with a local farmer who didn't even speak English, but somebody was translating for us. And it was me, Caitlin, who's working here, who's from Brooklyn, and this Icelandic farmer who I kid you not had a sheep in his car, <laugh>. He actually had one of his sheep in his car. And that is the perfect like quintessential combination of old and new, within just one or two generations. We've gone from herding sheep to driving them around in vehicles to working anywhere in the world, like from this tiny town in like, this town is a six or seven hour drive from Reykjavik, but it's also just a 45 minute flight and then a 45 minute commute from the next town. So it's like, even though we are super remote, we're still really connected.  

Arnar:    00:13:21    Well, yeah, this is what I enjoy the most actually, these stories of this interaction between the community that's been here for a long time and the new one. And I hope that you felt that kind of, um, The Blue Bank has become like an element of the community and, and everybody's used to outside people coming and working here for a while now. It was really funny in the beginning. So the first few months, I remember it was February, there was a blizzard outside, uh, snow everywhere and then a a a truck full of, uh, software developers arrived in town <laugh>. And people were like, why are you here? Like why are you coming here to code to this village? Is there something like wrong with the internet in in Revic or like, what's the reason for this? And that explained, you know, actually after having spent a week here, just kind of snowed in in front of the screen and just the calmness and the silence of winter.  

Arnar:    00:14:23    And they had been so productive and just doing these everyday things like going to the pool or taking a hike. They was, they were so productive and they just explaining just by becoming here we, we do a lot better work. And so now we reach the point in this town where you don't even have to have that conversation. It's just like people have accepted that after two years, a couple of weeks ago we had an innovation decelerators where, you know, some of the teams participated in sheep hearding and went out there with the farmers to like get the sheep from the mountains. And I think that this is something that we really want to offer, you know, the, the world, I think this is what we can offer the world in this village. It's a place that where life is a little bit closer to how it used to be, where you are sort of connected with nature the whole time where people know each other, you can go to the Harper and you know, somebody just throws a fish over the, over from the boat you consume. I mean, we consume a lot of like local food that's just grown here that our neighbors are making. So it's sort of a chance to live that lifestyle but at the same time work on your startup or do remote work or, you know, do have both things which you, which before you couldn't, you know,  

Kristin:    00:15:41    You hit the nail on the head. I mean, I haven't been able to place really what this experience has been like because I have never had an experience quite like this. And I've been to more than 60 countries. I've been in super remote areas, I've been on islands with no cars and places with no electricity. But there's something about the mix being here of having old and new and technology and small village. It kind of reminds me of the nostalgia of driving through tiny towns in Florida where I'm from. But those towns are ghost towns. So it's like having this town from 50 years ago or 75 years ago, but with this regenerative rejuvenating life force to it. And if anything, I think that people like me and the tech workers and anybody who's coming in here from different countries, I think we are the ones that need to learn the lessons and kind of adapt to the way of life because, you know, we kind of come straight off the jet from these cities, fast pace of life, and it really takes a few days to a week for us to even slow down.  

Kristin:    00:16:50    And tomorrow I think is my eighth day, and it's only been in the last couple days that I've been spending more time in the pool. Last night before I went into my house, I was literally staring at the forest because it was so calm and peaceful that I just had to stand there under the, the stars and just embrace and like experience that moment. And the other night I was meditating on this beach just looking at the fjord and then a seal swims by. I mean, it's just amazing. And people coming from Silicon Valley and big cities like Berlin, London and South Korea and all over the world, I think it's a, a really original experience that they can have and kind of to refocus and like reconnect with what's important not just in their business, but to give their nervous system just a chance to relax and slow down and remember, remember what it's like to just live when you didn't have so much noise around you and so many people rushing around in cars and yeah, it's just a really, it is a cool spot. But you've also had these experiences in other cities. So you were telling me that you went away from Iceland to go and work and live abroad for a few years. Can you tell us a little bit about that? What were some of your experiences like in, in other countries and why do you think it's important for everyone to spend a little bit of time abroad?  

Arnar:    00:18:26    Well, uh, firstly I'm really happy to hear about your experiences and just to comment a little bit on the harmony between the kind of old, the new, for lack of better words, um, I mentioned this used to be a bank and it still kind of is. So when we took this over, we made a deal with the bank that was moving out of here. So my partner was partner in this project. She opens up a real bank twice a week for an hour each time. So kind of predominantly old people who kind of aren't comfortable with doing transactions online. They come in here, they have coffee, they pay their bills, they check the status of their account. So we kind of, it was important for us that when we moved into the space that we weren't taking away that people wouldn't see that something went away.  

Arnar:    00:19:14    But actually we kind of increased the, the level of services. So we wanted the message to really be, we are here to add value to what there is here and respect what there is here. And then we come up with all these new things. So there wasn't that feeling of yeah, who are all these new people and, and what's in it for us in a way. And so we, you can also like order books from the library in a close by town and, and they can drive it over, you know, people come here and ask for it support or like, you know, old ladies with iPads and stuff. A couple of old ladies collected funds to buy a dishwasher for us. And so that was nice. I mean we, we did have money to buy dishwasher, it was okay, but we kind of, we really like the gesture.  

Arnar:    00:20:00    And now kind of because they bought the dishwasher, we kind of always have to give them coffee if they come here <laugh>. But that's the kind of pact we wanted to make kind of social pact, but going to, um, bigger cities. Yeah, I lived in, in mostly, you know, in my twenties, I, I grew up in Revic and I lived in kind of really big cities, Buenos Aires, London, Madrid, Mumbai, so mostly like mega cities. And back in, yeah, in my twenties, which wasn't that long ago, I was so sort of a digital nomad without knowing the word. So me and my partner Lily, who's my partner in this venture blue bank, um, we would travel around Latin America with a backpack and I'd have like a USB stick with code on it. And then every now and then I would log into a Cypher cafe, you know, remember these <laugh>.  

Arnar:    00:20:53    So we'd log into a Cypher cafe and like do a little bit of coding or managing websites and projects and then just take my kind of stick out with a code and, and move on. So, you know, it was before wifi was everywhere and before, um, you could just co-working spaces. Also, like I lived in Buenos Aires, I had to rent a real office with like a secretary. You couldn't just like pop into a, a co-working space. I'm sure it existed, but it wasn't readily available. So I was kind of working that lifestyle without there being words for it or infrastructure. So I think that's what you were referring to earlier that, you know, it's, it's, it's catching up sort of, um, now I suppose, and people have, you know, podcasts like these and stuff and like others to guide you through that process.  

Kristin:    00:21:43    Yeah, actually a few minutes before we sat down, I just published an article on Medium about Why WeWork is not news. The concept of an office leasing company is not innovative and the real future of work is working from anywhere, whether it's working from a coworking space or a bar that has a, a physical coworking space in it during the morning and the afternoon before it opens for, um, you know, people to go and drink and hang out or whether it's a hotel lobby that has been renovated and turned into a coworking friendly space or a global membership where you can go to thousands of coworking spaces in the world for one price. I mean, it's like the future of work is just people mixing together and just mingling around. And of course, yeah, sometimes we need, we need physical workspaces with desks and meeting rooms and offices, but I think companies and people are going to want that kind of flexibility.  

Kristin:    00:22:50    And I think it's making the world a better place because every time one of us goes out into a different country and experience is that, that I think there's research on this that it creates but more empathy for people. And there's so many benefits to that, but also to the local community. And what we're seeing now is instead of just self-serving travelers, I'm sure there's still a lot of those and maybe Instagrammers get a bad rap, but instead of just people going out to travel for individual gain, they can come to support communities and initiatives like this that are blending in with the community versus just tourism. So I think this is like a new kind of remote work tourism where you were saying in the summer here it's, it's big for like Airbnbs and regular tourists, and then in the off season there's more of these kind of slow mads and remote workers and entrepreneurs that are coming in to kind of fill the gaps. And that could be a huge driver for any economy, especially remote.  

Arnar:    00:23:54    I, I really believe in, in that, and it goes back to this project that you kind of heard about those through, which is this Arctic digital nomads. And that was realizing that there are so many communities in the Arctic region that have depended on traditional industries and the young people, they move kind of typically south to big cities. They get, uh, degrees, they, they get ambitions and they don't see a way to return home. So that project is all about exactly, exactly that. Creating a new type of community and new type of participant in the community, whether it's the northern part of Norway or in Greenland or the Far Islands or here in the Wests to say, okay, I really want people who come here and are working to feel like they are participating in a community rather than visiting or looking at things. And that I, I think that is successful, especially when people stay here for longer and they get engaged in with what's happening and the fact that The Blue Bank is a place where the long-term community comes into the building and also the kind of visitors. So  

Kristin:    00:25:11    Yeah. Yeah, and I think of the impact on the population growth even I make a lot of videos about, well, any country that I happen to be in, and that has included a lot of Eastern European and Balkan countries recently, and there's so many people commenting on my videos who are from those countries and they miss living there, but they had to leave because of work or for economic reasons. And I think that we'll continue to see kind of this reverse migration of people being able to go back to their home countries or maybe spending part of the year there and part of the year somewhere else just as digital nomads are traveling also. But that's actually a good opportunity to talk about some of the types of people who are here because I've met so far German architects, blockchain technologists, artists. Can you talk about a, a few of the different types of, uh, people who are here now or who are here this week? Yeah,  

Arnar:    00:26:15    Sure. Um, we are really fortunate with the kind of people who come here. I'm gonna say, I'm gonna admit that it, it's not easy to come here, you know, just going to Revic is like the easy part and then you have to either take a plane to ease a further earth, which is like a town nearby. And, uh, in winter they're kind of really, really sketchy or you can drive and it takes seven hours. So it is an effort to get here. And I sometimes see that as a, almost like a blessing because it takes a certain type to be like, okay, yeah, I wanna invest in getting there. Like, it's not the type that just takes the typical most obvious choice. It's the type that is looking for something a little bit different, otherwise you'd just be somewhere else. I also believe that by investing and coming here and by being remote, it puts you in a bit of a different mindset.  

Arnar:    00:27:12    You can't just jump on a, on a plane or a train and be somewhere completely different's a bit of an effort to come and a bit of an effort to go. And that creates a little bit of calmness in how you are. You just like can enjoy the moment a bit better. So that's answering that the types of people. But in terms of what they're doing, we have recently been, uh, hosting a lot of, uh, entrepreneurs. So we, we have been hosting, yeah, like I said, people working with blockchain or people working with creating more job opportunities for refugees. We've also been really happy that we've been having like local entrepreneurs we're working in tour tourism or kind of spinoff of fishing, and that's incredibly rich to like give them a chance to kind of interact with an international crowd of entrepreneurs and vice versa. So I, I really believe that this kind of a kind of a cross pollination of ideas and energies that, that we can bring. There is an art residency in town, which is kind of formally separate from us, but they hang out a lot in The Blue Bank. So we get artists as well. Academics generally, I'd say people who are here have an interest in community related things and nature. So not necessarily just be working on these things, but kind of appreciate that or, or, or maybe that's also what happens by being here, you know?  

Kristin:    00:28:46    Yeah. Uh, Aya, the girl who, um, I'm sharing a house with, so there's different houses around. You can book your accommodations through The Blue Bank. And so the house I am in has a girl from Brooklyn and a girl from Finland and Aya from Finland. She has lived here before working in different capacities, like at the coffee shop that's open in the summer and doing horseback riding tours. And now she's here as an IT specialist, <laugh> working remotely for her company, uh, a tech employer in Finland. And so now she's talking about maybe spending six months a year in Helsinki, six months a year here. And the cost of living is also quite low here. I mean, Iceland in general is very expensive, but once you get here, there's not much to spend your money on <laugh>. So the, I mean, the accommodations and everything is quite affordable. And then you don't just go out and spend money every day because you're alive. Like you have to drive 45 minutes to go to the store <laugh>. So yeah. What is the kind of cost for people if they're coming on a company retreat or if they just wanna come month to month or weekly?  

Arnar:    00:29:57    In, in winter, we don't have like hotels operating in the town, so we provide these co-living things and I think, you know, our rate is like 630 euros a month for both shared living and the coworking space. So because we have a lot of space in winter when tourists aren't coming here for Iceland, we can be relatively affordable. It's, it's right what you say, like the things that you do, like going to the pool, going hiking in <inaudible>, you'll have the Northern Lights tour here, we don't have the Northern Lights tours, just north light. You just look up. So I tell people also, uh, you know, I enjoy winter. I look at my critical statement and it has like four things on it because it's just, I don't, and I forget my wallet all the time because, you know, I don't need to spend, and that's also kind of like almost, um, for me and my partner to like run home. We have got two kids and I do it kind of eating local things, eating stuff that our neighbors grow. It's almost like a lifestyle that I hadn't realized. It's kind of an enjoyment of this, of simplifying life in a way. Yeah, sure. Like sometimes it would be nice if we're like, yeah, go to clubs and um, restaurants and things and, and then when I do go to reiki or a city, I'm like, wow, I can like choose restaurants, you know, I can go somewhere and order a meal for me.  

Kristin:    00:31:21    There's no Uber Eats here people.  

Arnar:    00:31:24    No, but there's a neighbor that can hook you up with whatever you need.  

Kristin:    00:31:27    Yeah. And like the night that I, or the day after I got here, we had a, uh, dinner party that these sustainable smart cities architects hosted from Germany and everyone brought their own stuff. It was like a potluck and it was really nice. Some people brought wine, some people brought beer. I brought fruit for dessert and it was like this community meal. And even though the grocery store is far away, like we had more than enough food, we had leftovers. And that was really fun too. And it just brings you back to this time when people helped each other and people hung out with each other and talked to each other. And because you can just walk around, you get extra hours back in the day that would otherwise be spent just doing stuff, getting from point A to point B, texting people and whatever. And here you'd wake up, you'd go for a walk, go for a hike, go to the beach, go to the pool, make your way to work, and then when you're done, just see what everyone else is doing or relax, read a book or go to bed. It's so, it's like a simple life, but it's really, really nice. And, um, if this sounds appealing to you and you know who you are, like it won't appeal to everybody, but  

Arnar:    00:32:44    It's, it's, uh, it's not for everyone and it's not for everyone the whole year. You know, that's not the point. It's not saying, oh, everybody should move outta the cities and just do this. I love big cities. I love the kind of how many people are, you know, everything's available and, and there's all these ideas coming and, and I, I even just enjoy the bus of these things. Extreme cities like Mumbai or Buenos Aires, they're fantastic, but I think that there's um, there's a case for at least taking a month to experience something like different.  

Kristin:    00:33:18    Ryan Holiday is just came out with this new book called Stillness and he's one of my favorite authors that I've talked about on the channel before. And it really fits. Stillness is something that has been important for millennia, right? And today it's more important than ever because we're just constantly bombarded by so much technology and stimulation, the sensory overload. So the ability to travel and people who are fortunate to be able to travel, to be able to choose your environment, depending on what project you're working on or what kind of life experience you wanna have, is something that is completely unprecedented. So it's really nice to think about if you want to do a work sprint and you need to go somewhere and you need to write a book, you need to strategize with your team. You need to get deep focused work done. You can come someplace like this and if you wanna take a break party, you can go to Croatia or Greece or Bueno Aires or wherever and have like a totally different experience and there is no good or bad, but there's just these opportunities to um, have these experiences and then have a different perspective like when you go to the next place.  

Kristin:    00:34:36    So, and then be able to come back and then places that you're familiar with and familiar with the people. It's creating this community that's connected both in real life and also through technology. So it's just an amazing time to be alive. Guys, <laugh>, let's see if there's any questions. And we have some people on the live stream. Somebody's watching us from Chicago. This is Walt. Oh yeah. How fast is the internet here? I haven't checked it, but it seems fast enough. I've been uploading videos to Google Drive, so that's good enough.  

Arnar:    00:35:11    It should be. We've got a fiber optic connection here in The Blue Bank. It might not be like the, the fastest thing you would experience in a big city. We also got a fairly okay 4G signal, so it's not worse than what you would expect someone else, I think. Yeah,  

Kristin:    00:35:27    It's definitely enough. So yeah, if you guys wanna see the actual tour of the space, you can check that out on my other channel on Traveling with Kristin. And if you want to book a stay or learn more about the opportunities to live and work here in the west yards of Iceland, you can go to blah Bonkin is, and I will link to it or just Google The Blue Bank Iceland and you can see exactly where you are. But thank you Arnar for creating this place first of all, because I can safely say that there's very, very small chance I would've ever found myself in this particular town in my lifetime, but had it not been for you and people like you who are creating really unique innovation centers and co-working and co-living opportunities in really cool places around the world, the same with Bansko, Bulgaria and the guys at Co-working Bansko, so many cool towns in, in different countries that we would've otherwise probably never known about so.  

Arnar:    00:36:28    Well thank you. It would be quite lonely without the people who come and visit us. And also thank you for all the kind of, um, yeah, whatever you do about, uh, digital nomads and, and just kind of opening people's eyes to these possibilities, that's really important too, that the people are aware of that the world is your oyster and you know, you can go anywhere and all that kind of inspirational stuff that you're doing, um, through these various mediums is, is really helping our, our work. So thank you as well, <laugh>. Thank you.

Kristin:    00:37:00   That's so good to hear. When we were doing the sound check, we were just saying random stuff, <laugh>, it was like, he's the manager of The Blue Bank and Kristin, I am the, um, I don't know, the digital nomad advocate, content creator <laugh>  

Arnar:    00:37:14    In, in inspire the digital nomad, inspire--  

Kristin:    00:37:17    Inspire, yes, yes. If I had a business card, that's what I would put on it. <laugh>, thank you guys for also tuning into the live stream. So if you have learned something and gotten value out of, uh, these stories, then feel free to leave a comment on the YouTube video or review the podcast and share it with your friends so that other people can find it. And equally be inspired in the digital nomad lifestyle so they can work remotely too. So we will see you guys soon. We're here every a few times a week on youtube.com/digitalnomad and Traveling with Kristin and bye from beautiful Iceland. And we will see you next time. I'm headed to Norway tomorrow, so I am sad to leave, but we can always come back.  

Arnar:    00:38:07    Absolutely.  

Kristin:    00:38:08    Thanks Arnar. Bye guys. Thanks for joining. Thanks for listening. Remember to leave a review and share this episode with someone in your network. And if you want more tips and advice on working remotely, make sure to sign up for my insider list at TravelingwithKristin.com/subscribe, where you can find links to download free resources like My Digital Nomad Starter guide. Of course, also subscribe to youtube.com/digitalnomad so you don't miss any of our weekly videos, Digital Nomad News or Live Streams. See you there.