Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin Pizza, the Future of Work, and the Longest Flight in the World with Tech Founder, Sam Rad

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.  

Kristin:    00:01:19    Hi everybody. We are live. It's Tuesday. And so we're here on YouTube for another episode of Badass Digital Nomads where we help all of you guys become badass digital nomads who can work online, work from anywhere in the world and travel. I'm listening to myself in my headphones, <laugh>. So my guest today is Sam Radocchia, also known as Sam Rad. And that is a great name for her because in short she is rad in my opinion and the opinion of many other people. As you guys are about to find out, part author, part speaker, part engineer and part futurist. She is also a serial entrepreneur who has founded three companies, has been starting her own company since she was a teenager. She was named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list in 2017. And she's currently the co-founder of Chronicled, which is an internet of things startup that's building blockchain technology. And in some, Sam is a self-made badass. And we're gonna find out how she did it and what her thoughts and tips are for other people who want to succeed in the entrepreneurship space, in technology, in startups, or just generally in the new economy with the future of work. We are also gonna talk about her new book, Bitcoin Pizza, the No Bullshit Guide to Blockchain and how she snagged a seat on the longest flight in the world. And so Sam, welcome to the show. Welcome to Badass Digital Nomads.  

Podcast Interview:

Sam:    00:03:00    Great, thank you Kristin. Thank you for having me.  

Kristin:    00:03:02    And just to give everyone some context, I am sitting in my Airbnb in Paris and Sam is over in Connecticut in the northeast. So we're keeping with the theme of working from wherever we are <laugh> and um,  

Sam:    00:03:17    Yeah, no, if the weather was nicer, I was hoping to be like out on a beach or by a pool or something and make it seem very nice and summery. But it's <laugh>. Yeah, it's exotic under the palm trees but it's raining today.  

Kristin:    00:03:30    I know. And I'm in Paris, the city of light and love and all of those cliches. And I feel like I should have some sort of Eiffel Tower behind me, but instead I'm just in my Airbnb <laugh>. So, but at least it's quiet.  

Sam:    00:03:44    I know. Uh, it's always tough. I did a meeting the other day and I was like so self-conscious about the angle of where I put my computer. 'cause I didn't want it like, just like facing weird things or my suitcase or like the bed. So I can relate to finding the proper positioning for video calls.  

Kristin:    00:04:02    These are the problems we have today. And I am guilty of this as well. It's like webcam judgment if that's a thing. I actually have not worked with people and companies because of what I saw in the background during video calls. Wow. So like I don't think that <laugh>, these are my people. So you never know. We  

Sam:    00:04:21    Need like green screen filters. <laugh>.  

Kristin:    00:04:24    I know. I should just add that to my list. I have so much equipment at this point. Mm-Hmm. So let's just start with a little bit of your background before we jump into, we'll go back to the future so to speak <laugh>. So we'll start at the beginning. I read online that you learned to code and read at the same time code and read code and write. And I'm very jealous of that because to this day I don't know how to code. So can you give us a little bit on your background growing up in Connecticut and how that occurred and what sort of led you down this path to becoming a tech entrepreneur?  

Sam:    00:05:00    Certainly, I mean that's actually a huge part of my inspiration growing up. So my family had a family business that was in retail and so I grew up doing a lot of things like running around in warehouses and playing with new computers when they came out. And it was exposed to a lot of stuff. So it was father's day I was able to come back and spend some time to visit the family and my dad, which is why I'm here. But you know, I guess, yeah just from a young age was fiddling around mainly from the gaming perspective and so kind of building very simple websites or building message boards or getting into like game mods and things like that. So I have two brothers. We're all very close in age. They were super into gaming. I don't know if I was as much into it and I was just kind of sucked into it 'cause we all did the same things.  

Sam:    00:05:52    But I think both the combination of feeling one like inspired to start a business 'cause it was the only thing that I was really exposed to was kind of creating your own work or your own reality on one hand. And then on the other hand spending a lot of time, probably more so than other kids our age in the gaming world. And you know, it's funny 'cause I remember a time I was, I'm the oldest and my youngest brother, we all played this game called tribes two. You could call it like early eSports. We were on a clan, we would compete on Saturdays. Like we were very good and very into it. And there was one time my brother wrote like F you like a like bad word. And my parents came in and saw it on the chat line and was like, you guys need to get off the computer now. Like bad things are happening. So you know, we all started playing outside a little bit more. But I joke about what would've happened if we all stayed in, in the eSports world.  

Kristin:    00:06:50    You could have been like living in South Korea being a professional gamer.  

Sam:    00:06:54    <laugh> totally. I mean my youngest brother is still very good. He is more in the League of Legends world. But you know, I'm glad I, I moved on. I don't know, it's always been a thread for me. So I kind of, I study it from like the anthropological perspective. So when I studied in school and again there was always this combination of like I gravitate much more to people and community and and understanding like tech trends through that lens. So certainly it's cool that I felt comfortable with technology or can code did some of that for a part in my career where I actually built a lot of products for people was A CTO and a chief product officer. And I kind of realized that like while I like building things, I much prefer, yeah I guess studying them and understanding how they impact people or how people interact with things or each other or their communities a lot more. So you know, I started moving in that direction.  

Kristin:    00:07:53    And so what were your first businesses? Did you just, were you making them at home like in your family home <laugh> or did you go to school for entrepreneurship or how did that start at like 19 years old?  

Sam:    00:08:05    Oh, I mean you could say, I don't know, it's really like runs deep in my family from like my grandfather and my dad and my cousins. They tell a story of one of my cousins who my grandfather would give us all $2 bills from the mint and he would go door to door like this little cousin, like an 8-year-old you know, selling 'em for $5. And so I feel like I wish that was my story. I mean I'd do the normal things of like set up shops and stuff on the street. But the first, I guess real business, I don't know it was, I actually, so as I mentioned was studying anthropology and then I did like from a young age a lot of theater both on the acting side and the directing side. And so I realized like I really liked, again like managing people and helping them come out of their shells from the directing perspective.  

Sam:    00:08:55    And I thought for some reason that management or creating a company was similar. And I just always felt this drive that like I'd start a company. It also was like a very odd time kind of post 2008 financial crisis recession where as a liberal arts major, even though I was a tech enabled liberal arts major, it wasn't really an environment where you're like here's a linear path. Here's a job you're going to take out of school. So I think a combination of those things mixed with, you know, I would be sitting in the back of a class in college if I had one of the few lecture classes that I took and I saw that there was this trend, people started bringing computers to classes and I'd watch people from behind like either play games but most of them were online shopping, like just browsing clothing through the whole class.  

Sam:    00:09:43    And I was like Huh, you know, I feel like there's something here. So ended up getting a bunch of people together. We rented a loft in New York City for a summer and built this product that was like an online personal shopper. And I had no real kind of understanding that I was starting a company at that time. It was really just like, let's do this kind of crazy thing and build something. You know, we all chipped in to get the space. We traded space for work. So like had a bunch of people coding. I also traded space for filmmakers 'cause like I had gone to film school and I wanted to make a documentary about crazy stuff and making a company. And then we just went down a rabbit hole of a friend of a friend worked at NBC and pitched it and it got picked up for a TV series with one of their network channels. I ended up saying, wait  

Kristin:    00:10:31    What? What was this?  

Sam:    00:10:33    I had a TV show, fortunately it didn't air and I retained the rights but we had, we like, because we had filmed ourselves and then that footage got in the hands of some of the network executives. They were like, this is cool. There are these people creating a fashion company in some loft in Brooklyn and they're filming the whole thing. So at that point I was like, this is a real company. I've gotta like make a real company. We've gotta make money from this product. It's not just a novelty thing. And that was that journey. So I ended up going down the path of building sort of like inventory software for fashion brands. But you know, it wasn't really a, a planned journey.  

Kristin:    00:11:10    Did you sell that company? 'cause you're now on company number three.  

Sam:    00:11:13    Three. Yeah. So with that company parts of the ip, yes. The other parts are still running. It was a much smaller bootstrapped company so we didn't take on any investors or outside capital for it. Okay. Which is an interesting experience.  

Kristin:    00:11:29    And so can you tell us for, for people who aren't familiar with blockchain, what does Chronicle do? Which is your current company? Like how can you explain that? Yeah. Um, to people who might be outside the crypto industry.  

Sam:    00:11:43    Absolutely and so for Chronicled, I co-founded that in 2014 and now I've moved into an advisory role as I've found kind of more need to educate people in the market around blockchain and cryptocurrencies. But you know, in short the mission of the company was to use the technology to track physical objects on a blockchain. And so it started with actually anti-counterfeiting. So we were in the sneaker market or the luxury goods market and if you wanted to prove that your Yeezys or this handbag was actually real, then there was a record on this ledger or a blockchain that said, you know, it was in fact authentic. So it was a super simple first iteration of the company. The goal of it and where it is now is very kind of complex supply chain systems. So we've done work in our, our biggest market verticals are like the pharmaceutical industry, oil and gas, precious metals like gold. And most of this is tracking say the pharmaceutical drug from the source to when it ends up at the hospital or even to the patient. So you know, there are a lot of benefits to the technology for that, either just making things more efficient. But what excites me the most, um, and where I've done a lot of kind of independent work and education is, is on the social impact side. So you know, if you're talking about countries where people don't trust the,  

Kristin:    00:13:08    The source of what they're getting,  

Sam:    00:13:10    Yeah the source, the quality of what they're getting, it's often counterfeit. It's often can, you know, seriously harm you or kill you or at the very least not do what it says that it's going to do. I think that, you know, those people are entitled to be able to validate that stuff.  

Kristin:    00:13:25    Yeah I can see definitely a lot of uses for that and a lot of applications for that just trace the origins of products and especially when it's something sensitive like medicine. So That's cool. Yeah. So you're talking a lot about the future of different things of, of medicine, of technology, of cities, of work and your company currently is fully distributed. Correct?  

Sam:    00:13:50    Yeah, so that's again, I'm moving on and currently building my next company and so this is actually a tension that I felt my first two companies and anything I've ever done we're always completely distributed. And so that's just from my first I guess step into my career. Like that's the only thing that I know and I guess there's this part of you that kind of romanticizes having an office and so when we started Chronicled it was a very traditional company which was different for me. I was currently living in Park City, Utah Consulting and I was actually working on ski patrol because that was something that I had always wanted to do. So I went there, I was doing tech and skiing and I moved to San Francisco for the company because my co-founders were wanting the San Francisco office wanting to build the San Francisco, you know, technology company.  

Sam:    00:14:39    And so, you know, it was definitely very exciting to have an office and watch that office grow and expand and take over the floor or take over another floor. But what we noticed, one it's incredibly competitive in in San Francisco, but number two and more importantly a lot of our team members were coming from countries and dealing with H one B visa challenges that we were supporting and green card stuff. And it got over the past couple of years a lot more stringent of course. And so my approach was like why don't we just embrace this? It's kind of like the universe is, is saying half of our team is already distributed. Why don't we just change our processes to like embrace that? And meanwhile I was traveling like every day giving talks on blockchain. I wasn't even living in San Francisco. I was like I can't keep an apartment here. But you know, the company ended up being very focused on wanting to have that office and that presence and ultimately opened an office in Vancouver and one in the Ukraine. It's kind of, I wouldn't call it distributed and that was definitely you know, a learning experience for me to experience both sides of this. Mm-hmm because my gut inclination always is going to be from the start and for my next company I think I'll be more passionately advocating for doing that from day one. And  

Kristin:    00:16:00    What do you think the, having done it both ways, what do you think the main benefits are for companies that aren't necessarily on board with this? Because something that I write a lot about is how the concept of telecommuting and like the ability to work remotely has been around for almost half a century, but yet we're still having this conversation of like this uphill battle of trying to explain to companies why they should consider letting at least some of their employees work from home and why they might not need such a big brick and mortar presence. So what would your advice be to entrepreneurs and companies that are still like on the fence about it And of course it doesn't have to be an a fully 100% distributed company but there's definitely a wide range in between 100% location dependent and 100% fully distributed. So yeah, what would you advise to people who are listening but still on the fence about it?  

Sam:    00:16:59    I mean you've gotta give it a shot and get over yourself. What I've seen most of this with people, it's coming from a place of fear and probably mismanagement. So a lot of the feedback is, well if my team isn't here on one hand it's if my team's not together, they can't effectively innovate or collaborate and you don't have those sidebar conversations and you can quickly discount that saying, you know, look at these massive projects that have come together in a fully not just distributed way but decentralized way like in the crypto space to cred or again any of the newer companies where you collaborate on Slack or you join a discord community and next thing you know you're contributing. But I'd say you know, it's trusting yourself, it's trusting your team, it's trusting that the people will get things done that need to be done and are, I guess your bar for hiring and your bar for trust needs to be a lot higher. Yeah. And you can't rely on poor management and just micromanagement to get things done which you shouldn't be doing anyway  

Kristin:    00:18:01    In the first place. Right. But people are just shooting in themselves in the foot because a lot of times meetings and things like this are faux productivity and it's just the appearance of accomplishing something but it's not really contributing to the long term strategic goals of the company or the short term objectives and profits and just what you were talking about with the visas and having a company in San Francisco, it's like the appearance sometimes, especially in the tech world, the appearance of having this big company near Silicon Valley and having a big team that is visible and kind of checking all the boxes, you could do that but then it's a huge investment, it's a huge cost like high operating costs and then you're limiting yourself to who can work physically there in the building with you and maybe discounting valuable team members that are in other countries. So I that's what one of the things I think there's such a gap right now and especially tech companies being able to find qualified employees and remote work really can help fill the gap because there's gotta be somebody somewhere around the world who can fill the position that you're looking to hire as a company. So I think that it's probably an important lesson that maybe some of the people in your company learn the hard way.  

Sam:    00:19:20    I would even say for retention as well. You know, if you build a team where you have that level of trust and that commitment and you are giving a true benefit to someone which is freedom and flexibility to create their own days or lives or spaces or spend more time with their children or whatever it is that they value. 'cause we all value different things. That's a very inclusive environment and I think you're going to have a team of people that will stay with you a lot longer, you know as a team member or business owner than being in a place where everyone's just poaching each other's talent all day long and then needing to compete with incentives that are like free, free lunch or gym membership. And it's all very presumptuous. Like I don't necessarily know, you know you're making a lot of assumptions about what people want or need or what makes them happy and I think it's  

Kristin:    00:20:11    They want a beer in the office, right? They want  

Sam:    00:20:14    Exactly. It's  

Kristin:    00:20:16    A pool table.  

Sam:    00:20:17    I like to be able, you know, to maybe midday go enjoy yoga or go to a cycling class or go for a hike for a half day. So like when I was working on the second company with a group of people fully remote but two of us were living in Park City who was the original founder and I kind of joined him, you know we skied half day, we'd come in, we would collaborate on some things and then go walk our dogs. You know, it was a great lifestyle. That's what I wanted to be doing. And I think think when you have a culture that you know, it could either be a distributed culture or a culture in an office, this can happen either way where you're putting pressure on people to you know how to manage their time and their time should be spent from these hours to these like nine to five doing something. One it's incredibly inefficient 'cause you don't know if that's their most productive time. But I also think that most people don't work that way and it's good to have these breaks or it's good to have other experiences in between projects or tasks or ideas.  

Kristin:    00:21:16    Yeah, I can definitely attest to that because I lived in Bulgaria this winter so that I could go snowboarding every morning, right. And because I was seven or eight or nine hours ahead of the other time zones, I could get up early, go snowboarding, come back, eat lunch and get my work done before people even woke up and <laugh>. It was just a really nice, a nice way to live. So what would be some tips that you would give people who are in a traditional office environment right now but they want to participate in this new economy and like the future of work. How can people get involved? Do you think they should have to start their own companies or just stay true to what they know and look for remote jobs? Um, what are you recommending to people in your keynote talks and in your consulting work?  

Sam:    00:22:08    Absolutely. I mean that's a great question and I would say the first step, I wouldn't do anything rash. I mean if you're with a company, the easiest first step is to propose, you know, experimenting with remote work with your existing company. And even if they're opposed to it you could say like look I'm going to work from home once a week and we'll see how that goes. You know, with my company and even though I was a co-founder of it, I still had to help kind of the social and political engineering within the company to ultimately I became fully remote 'cause I just drew the line and said you know, I'm on an airplane speaking about this company every day anyway. But yeah, I would say just start small and try it out and see if it works for you because there's the other side of this where the lifestyle doesn't necessarily work for everyone.  

Sam:    00:22:55    You know, there are people that I've met that feel very comfortable in the security of a physical location or a routine or just, you know, they don't want to think about you know, all of those. So I think you'd wanna first see if it works for you and that you're able to provide your own structure and that you enjoy that and that you can still build community. And then yeah ultimately, I mean if your company, the current company is not you know, willing to work with you on experiment in these new models for yourself or even your team, then there are plenty of resources, job postings and job boards and companies that are very outspoken about supporting distributed teams and remote work. So there's that you could actually join a company as a full-time employee. And then on the other side there's also the gig economy or you know, platforms where you can contribute to projects And then ultimately yeah, I mean there's the whole angle of starting your own company and it doesn't have to be some massive tech startup or a software product. There are a lot of services and value that can be exchanged as well that affords you a remote lifestyle.  

Kristin:    00:24:04    Yeah and I think this is just gonna be continue becoming more and more commonplace but one of the things that is holding a lot of companies back and even freelancers and solopreneurs, programmers, online consultants is security. So having a background in technology and blockchain and security, what are some ways that individuals who might be working remotely but might not but just all of us, like how can we make technology work for us and not the other way around? Like you talk a lot on Twitter about like kind of like 1984 type society that could come about because you're so ingrained in the technology. So what are some practical ways that people can protect themselves and their networks at home to avoid just becoming like some sort of beta test for dystopian society? And also, I mean as far as if you're actually working remotely online, one of the biggest problems that both freelancers and tech workers and companies have is protecting their own information because everyone's logging in from all different places around the world. So kind of what are your tips for regular people moving forward and like protecting their data and also employers and employees who are like logging into shared systems that typically used to be accessed from one building?  

Sam:    00:25:35    That's an excellent point. I should do more thinking around that actually. I mean I think it, the first step would be using tools and networks that value privacy and security. So simple answer. But when we're using the kind of traditional expected either social networks or email clients or all of these things that we're accustomed to using like our communications tools, maybe a simple change could be okay we're going to start collaborating on encrypted messaging platform. So moving from Slack to discord or something like that. And that's a lot of the trends that you see in particularly in the blockchain, crypto and and gaming communities in terms of running their own servers and things like that. I mean identity, that is a huge thing. Also just money in general and that's, you know, I haven't really started to unpack just how big the propositions for having digital or cryptocurrencies that you can kind of take with you without necessarily relying on fiat currencies and dealing with exchange or kind of moving your identity everywhere.  

Sam:    00:26:43    But maybe having one kind of secure representation of that identity, you know is very important. And then, I mean I suppose if you're talking something very simply about just logging into wifi networks and and being careful about that or even working, you know, there's a company I just saw Bota, you have a basically a device and you can create or tap into a mesh network that's peer to peer. And so there are things like that where again a lot of members of the community or maybe more so again this is on the crypto side, are pushing the boundaries a little bit farther in terms of privacy and security. And if you're not like ready to make transitions that feel that drastic, at least thinking about the fact that there are tools available that are showing us there is a different way but it's not going to be an immediate transition.  

Sam:    00:27:31    Like I wouldn't say well you should get off Twitter and Facebook. Like that is just unrealistic today. But maybe again as we see new tools, new types of communities form, that'll be a big deal. And it's something I'm very passionate about is the community aspect because you know, when I think about the things that like I personally experience the most and have challenges with, it's like building global communities of people in a way where I am feeling connected to other human beings and to myself and to the environment. Like feeling real connection, not just kind of like social media likes and dopamine hits but kind of like as we spend more and more time alone or in a distributed fashion and mediated by a lot of technology, what are the things that we're going to do to build that kind of security which is a little di not like tech security but just security and trust in yourself.  

Kristin:    00:28:24    Yeah, actually that is a good lead into my next question because, so it sounds, just to sum up what you said, for anyone listening, just even having simple, using encrypted messaging services, logging onto A VPN before going online, things like that and then I guess for companies it's gonna be more complicated depending on how big the company is. But that there's tools out there to protect yourself and you don't have to freak out about it. And it also shouldn't be a reason for companies not to let employees work from home or work remotely because they definitely have the budget and the resources to, and the tech team and the tech support to implement tools like that. So no excuses for any founders and managers out there listening. But you did touch on something that I wanted to ask about which is financial. So I do a lot of consulting for people who are moving to different countries and the banking landscape has obviously changed drastically over the last 10 years and it's kind of made my job both harder and easier because harder in the sense that things are changing so fast and people rely on my advice to help them decide where they should be moving to and how they're going to get paid or do work in those countries.  

Kristin:    00:29:48    And so when I started my company in 2011, we were just starting to find out about Bitcoin and obviously that's exploded and the different crypto options now, but what do you think for just a regular person, maybe a freelancer or a consultant like me or a remote employee or even anyone like even if they're not working remotely, what type of FinTech product should people be using because uh, for example, I have bank accounts all over the place so I'm always trying it out to see how difficult it is to open bank accounts in different countries. I have online bank accounts from different places and I'm always seeing like what works, what doesn't and I know like what do you use and what do you recommend to like your friends and family and coworkers to be able to take advantage of like lower transfer costs and fees and maybe like a certain type of crypto that you take payments in or what kind of eWallets do you use, what is your view? Because otherwise people can end up even with like 10 online bank accounts and not knowing which one to use. So like do you use TransferWise? Like what kind of setup do you have?  

Sam:    00:31:01    I'm a mess, you know, I'll be honest about that. And it's a constant learning experience. So I don't have, I would say I have lists of tools that I would like for people to continue creating and do better of like having kind of a, a single kind of place of understanding or maybe AI that could do a lot of this work or help me to make these decisions of beyond even where to accept payments or set up bank accounts. For me, a lot of what I think about are tax implications. Like I go down crazy rabbit holes for days of like should I spend X amount of days out of the United States and then try to set up in like this place for whatever amount of time and just navigating that landscape. And then if you add crypto onto that, I mean I guess in the early days when I have for the few things like got chosen to be paid and crypto, it was kind of the primary ones like Bitcoin.  

Sam:    00:31:53    But if you're working with some of the other ecosystems, of course they're going to wanna pay you in their own token. And so I've been in those scenarios and honestly I it the challenge of do you move it into Bitcoin and then are you just paying people with Bitcoin so you don't have to liquidate and then incur kind of a taxable event or is it a taxable event in the country that you're in at the time where you're exchanging that Bitcoin for you know, maybe additional marketing services or what have you. And honestly it's moving so quickly and even today with the Facebook Libra announcement which will bring their cryptocurrency Libra to 2 billion or more people globally, it's like a big deal. But the thing no one's talking about is like what are the tax implications for all of this? And I think  

Kristin:    00:32:44    No one knows, basically even the accountants don't know. Yeah,  

Sam:    00:32:48    Oh my god I like teach my accountant it's the worst. It's like oh for the first time it flipped and I'm sitting there I'm like oh so you don't know. Oh no. Even three years ago it was like people were still not really reporting these things even though they were supposed to. And so I came across many, you know, digital nomads that were just living off the grid. I put in quotes on crypto traveling and it's so complex now in terms of like, oh if I'm in Paris and I buy a coffee and I use this crypto and this particular token and is that a taxable event and am I reporting that back to the United States? Like there needs to be more of those integrations or tooling into the wallets. I mean even dealing with that with traditional fiat is confusing. So  

Kristin:    00:33:33    Yeah, well  

Sam:    00:33:34    There's no answers. I lot of very traditional spreadsheets and try to keep myself organized Well  

Kristin:    00:33:40    The tips that I have for people since I, this has been a shit show for me for my like half my life ever since I graduated from college. Living in different countries and having to keep track of expenses and everything and business and personal expenses is just splitting it up like having a business card and a personal card and depending on what line of work you're in today, just trying to avoid traditional banks as much as possible because they're still operating on such old, old technology. I don't even know if you can call a wire transfer technology anymore. It's like saying a coal mine is technology. Like just get an online bank account that you can open in your country, whether it's a global one or a local one. So whether you're from the US or Canada or the UK or anywhere in the world, like there's some online banks that are only available to citizens of the ea, like the European economic area or the EU and then others that are only for US citizens only for UK citizens.  

Kristin:    00:34:41    So you just have to check with each one. And also if you're a US citizen and you have more questions on this, after going through like four CPAs in 10 years, I have an interview with Grace Taylor on my channel where we dive into this topic because I too was teaching my accountants what to do and then paying them for it and I was like, I know it was pissing me off so I had to learn how to do it on my own. But yeah and just I love using like TransferWise and N26 I can send, I just paid a contractor in Argentina and it cost me like $2 to pay him and I did it from my phone in one second That used to require contacting a traditional bank or going even into online banking or walking into the branch to send a wire transfer with the fee that could be higher than the amount that you're paying somebody. So you can save like five to 20%. It just depends on what the amount of the transfer is. So if you don't have a online bank account yet, I'll link to you guys in the comments in the description if you wanna open some because I should write a blog on that 'cause I feel very passionately about that topic. Personal trauma.  

Sam:    00:35:55    I agree.

Kristin:    00:35:55     Let's get to the good, the fun stuff. You said that you're on a plane a lot 'cause you're going around talking about your crypto company and the future of of work and the world and all that great stuff. Tell us about this longest flight in the world. Where did it start? Where did it end? Which airline was it? How was it? Yeah,  

Sam:    00:36:15    Yeah so I actually have my pilot's license. I'm kind of an airplane geek, although I don't love flying, which is the irony. And so I had the opportunity recently I was going to Thailand to speak on decentralization for manufacturing. So in the same way we talk about distributed or decentralized work and how will we organize as people, you know the talk was mainly around like instead of having factories with production lines, what will it look like when we're producing our food or our products hyper localized closer to where they're being consumed. So that was the context. I do a lot of speaking and educating through Singularity University, which is a Silicon Valley based, I wouldn't call them a think tank but just a group, a network of people and, and very into future of work as well. And so the flight I took had the opportunity to take the flight from Newark or New York City area to Singapore, which is 19 and a half hours and technically as of today the longest flight in the world, although it kind of changes depending on the day. And I was fortunate enough to be in business class so I got to experience all of the amenities of of  

Kristin:    00:37:29    That on Singapore Air, which is one of the best airlines too.  

Sam:    00:37:32    It was cool, I felt very fortunate to have been supported by, you know, this event to come out and share my story but also the geek in me. I was like, the second that I found out I was going to be on that flight, I was like ah, I wanted to try it. It was very long. I think I slept like twice like full nights of sleep and I rarely sleep and I got very out of it. But they did a great job of keeping kind of the routine and rhythm of things like doing a food service and then everyone slept and then there was another food service when everyone slept and it just kind of like kept going on and on.  

Kristin:    00:38:09    I could totally live in Singapore Airlines business class. So Singapore Airlines, if you're listening like I wouldn't wanna get off that plane, I would just be hanging out in there.  

Sam:    00:38:18    That sounds awesome. I would super spoiled. I know like lounging in my pajamas and just like enjoying the experience. I mean the food was great. The only thing about it actually I'd say is, and I had read this on other forums is that the wifi, well notoriously you're going over the North Pole so of course you're not going to have wireless. It was definitely finicky and kind of expensive but it was fine 'cause I didn't intend to be doing anything. Like I kind of enjoy when I get into like the airplane mode to just like read a bunch of books on my Kindle, you know, tap into that or you know, watch movies 'cause why not?  

Kristin:    00:38:53    Yeah, it's such a guilty pleasure. I've actually been working on planes lately because it's just so quiet like everyone's sleeping and I just can like sit there for six hours or eight hours and it's obviously way better in business class compared to economy. 'cause otherwise I'm like this like, yeah Tyra source, Rex trying to type on my computer. But I was a bit bummed coming out into Paris a couple days ago because, well I feel great, I'm not jet lagged at all, but I was following the prompts from this app. So it's a startup, I think they're in California, it's called the time shifter app. I've been hyping them up all week. I just did an Instagram story about it yesterday because I was so excited. But they give you a plan. So for like three days before your flight you follow like a sleeping plan, when to get natural light exposure, when to get blue light exposure, when to wear sunglasses, when to go to sleep, went to have caffeine, like this whole plan.  

Kristin:    00:39:51    And I followed it like 75% and they told me to sleep the whole way. And so normally on the plane it was like a nine hour flight. Like normally I would work 'cause it was like an afternoon flight so I wouldn't even be tired. So I would like work or watch movies or like eat dinner and whatever on the plane. And then I would try to stay awake the whole next day when I landed in Europe and go to bed early at like 5:00 PM or 6:00 PM and then sleep for like 12 hours. But they told me to sleep on the plane. So I literally like took two or three melatonin and slept for like almost the whole flight. And then I stayed awake the whole next day and just like have been totally normal as if I didn't cross the Atlantic Ocean. And in my whole life of traveling, that's never happened.  

Kristin:    00:40:39    So if anyone listening is if you suffer from jet lag 'cause that can happen whether you're in business or economy, then I, I highly recommend that. And yeah, keeping a rhythm and like following that plan when you're on the plane. But I was sad 'cause I basically fasted on the plane so Oh wow. It was like intermittent fasting. I had no food, no wine, just drank a bunch of water, fell asleep and then when I woke up and landed in Amsterdam I was starving. But then I went and got real food in the airport. So, but yeah that worked out pretty well. Yeah, I think  

Sam:    00:41:10    That was my, I read some of those tactics and wanted to try to do that and then just ended up like I've gotta enjoy this experience and so I indulged. But you know, miraculously I was not jet lagged at all. Maybe because I'd slept so much and enjoyed my first day when I got over there. Yeah,  

Kristin:    00:41:30    And you basically skip a day going, going that way. I  

Sam:    00:41:33    Know I also was there like three days before I had to start doing any of the events or speaking, which I usually, you know, if I can work that out with conference organizers, I'd really love when they're accommodating to get me on site sooner just in case jet lag happens. 'cause it's a reality and like it does hit me no matter what I do. Just sometimes it happens. So coming back, I had another speaking engagement in San Francisco and I was like, not okay. Really tired <laugh> really jet lag. And I don't like to have coffee or any like caffeine before I speak because I get like nervous sounding and kind of hopped up. So that was definitely a challenge. I just powered through it.  

Kristin:    00:42:17    Oh man, I would not wanna speak after being on a plane for that long. I, I feel a little weird sometimes.  

Sam:    00:42:23    Yeah, the return trip was weird. We stopped in Hong Kong and like had to deplane and go through customs, or not customs, but back through security and it was like 1:00 AM it was not as luxurious of an experience as the way over there.  

Kristin:    00:42:41    Well we are running out of time so I wanna take some questions from the live chat if anyone has any. And then also while I'm reading the live chat, tell us a little bit about your book Bitcoin Pizza. What is that about?  

Sam:    00:42:54    Yeah, so I mean the inspiration for it really came from being in the space from very early on. Again from the gaming community and studying virtual exchange in those worlds. Like back in 2009. And again from my background in anthropology and just liking culture and myth and studying people and technology, I really wanted to just like understand the community from that perspective. So less, it's not a a technical guide, it's more about the why, why it's important, what is possible, what our world might look like with these broader shifts that are taking place. And of course crypto and blockchain is an example of one of the manifestations of technology. But also things like decentralization of people and future of work or future of manufacturing. We're all kind of going through these shifts. And so Bitcoin pizza, the title is a nod to kind of the famous supposed first transaction programmer named Laslo, supposedly bought two pizzas to Papa John's pizzas for quite a bit of Bitcoin, which would now be worth millions of dollars. So the story goes and so, you know, it's a nod to to that kind of cultural origin story if you will. Cool.  

Kristin:    00:44:09    And okay, let's look in the chat here. We had Larry commenting on a show on BBC, on BBC news on the series about food. They did a show about how blockchain technology was being used to follow food from the field to the table. So that's really cool because they were using it to detect any bacterial outbreaks. Mm-Hmm. So thank you for sharing that Larry. And he was saying that he agrees that blockchain's going to be big with supply chain management tracking inventory. I agree as well. I mean  

Sam:    00:44:44    I agree. I'm kind of, so that's like a very 1.0 way of, you know, we've seen the first iteration and everyone's tracking things. I think we haven't seen anything yet and really what it'll do will change how we produce things in the first place. So I kind of suggested that with the manufacturing, but even food, it'll contribute to the compression of supply chains back to people exchanging things in a peer-to-peer way. Mm-Hmm  

Kristin:    00:45:10    Yeah, it'll be nice when that's has mainstream applications. Mm-Hmm. Tech lords is assuming that you take a Bitcoin as payment for services, but I guess it depends on what, who's paying you If they use Bitcoin or other crypto  

Sam:    00:45:26    Yeah, they have to want to give it to me <laugh>.  

Kristin:    00:45:29    So you do accept, like if you do a speaking engagement or consulting, do people pay you in crypto?  

Sam:    00:45:34    Yeah, I prefer that. The question is getting people to part with their crypto. It depends on how the market is doing as well, right? I mean, you wanna accept that bitcoin when it's lower and not when it's higher. So it's still kind of risky and volatile to do that. But if you're in in a position to do so, then by all means,  

Kristin:    00:45:53    I mean I'm uh, guilty of that too. I've like sometimes told people like, ah, today I don't want any <laugh>. I won't say like, I don't want any, but I'm like, yeah, I just do regular payment today. But then it, you can't time it, it's just like it all evens out. So I feel like it should just accept it always and just go with it because I do believe in the technology long term too. And then we also have a, yeah,  

Sam:    00:46:16    I think earning is a good way to accumulate. It's always good to earn it instead of buy it. Yeah.  

Kristin:    00:46:22    We also have a prediction that the Facebook coin Libra is going to be a quote, monumental flop. And I just, I agree with that. <laugh>, I only heard about it and I was like, so yeah, I guess we saw that coming. Of course Facebook has their own coin, but I think Facebook is gonna flop anyway eventually. And so that will go with it if it doesn't go first.  

Sam:    00:46:45    Oh, I mean, yeah, crypto Twitter today is going crazy and it's very polarizing. I, I think I tweeted a few days ago about my qualms of permission networks in general, but like, basically the consortium of companies like MasterCard, visa, Uber, they all paid a million dollars to operate a node, which gives them access to the data on the network. And that's just kind of, it's a little scary, but you know, the counter argument is, wow, the words cryptocurrency and the words blockchain are now being advertised and communicated to billions of people around the world. And at the very least, it's a good thing for Bitcoin and that it's raising awareness. It's a bad thing for the people who might be exploited by it. Yeah. But we're already being exploited for our data, so, you  

Kristin:    00:47:32    Know. Yeah. What else is Yeah, that's a good point. It's good brand awareness for Bitcoin and blockchain in general, even though it's not a brand, you know what I mean? <laugh>. Yeah, that's a good key word awareness. And we also have people agreeing with, uh, the tax headaches, the tax code of the us so I think everyone can agree on that. Yeah. So thank you guys for tuning in. Let's see if there's, oh, how can people connect with you on Twitter? Because a lot of people are Twitter people over here, so where do they find you if they want to follow your tweets and buy your book?  

Sam:    00:48:08    Awesome. Yeah, I'm at Sam Rad official, so just Sam Rad, RAD and then official and that's where I spend most of my time as well. So happy to connect and continue conversations on Twitter.  

Kristin:    00:48:21    I wanted to show people I wanted to share, um, my screen, but I can't, I actually, because I'm in Paris, I don't have my monitor, so all my windows are crowded together. So everybody go Google, Sam right now, <laugh> and talk with her on Twitter about Bitcoin and pizza and travel and uh, do you have any in-person talks coming up, maybe stateside in the near future?  

Sam:    00:48:47    A few. One in Las Vegas, one in Chicago, one in Savannah, Georgia. So I have on my website a list of places and talks that'll be given, but I usually share that also on Twitter and try to connect with people while I'm in town when I can. Cool.  

Kristin:    00:49:04    All right. Well thank you for coming on the show, Sam, and sharing your views on the future of work and technology today. And for everybody listening, thanks for listening, watching, and come back every week for another episode of Badass Digital Nomads, where we just teach you how to do the best you can in the new freelance gig economy and dominate in the future of work before everybody else. So see you guys next week and check out Apple, Google Play and Spotify podcast for today's audio podcast that comes out at the same time that we start this live stream. So the podcast is out today as well. And please leave a five star rating and review if you listen and like it. So bye everybody in live chat. See you guys next Tuesday from Villus with Lithuania and Ciao from Paris. Bye, Sam.  

Sam:    00:50:02    Goodbye. Thanks for having me.  

Kristin:    00:50:15    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.