How To Become a Digital Nomad for Dummies

Sneak Peek: 

Kristin:    00:00:00    This book will have everything that I've learned in 20 years of traveling the world and working from anywhere all brought together into one handy book that you can flip to a page and find the information that you need without having to go stuff for hours. 

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 Wilson, Host:     00:00:37    Hey there, Kristin, from Traveling with Kristin here, and welcome to episode 146 of Badass Digital Nomads on How to Become a Digital Nomad for Dummies. I have very, very exciting news for you today that has been long awaited by anyone who's ever signed up to my book waiting list, and that is that the pre-order link is officially available on Amazon and on Barnes and Noble for my very first book titled Digital Nomads For Dummies. So this is a for dummies style book on exactly how to become a digital nomad. Now, if you're like me, you probably already have a whole library of for Dummies books. They have one on almost any topic, and how to become a digital nomad definitely belongs on that list. I can remember buying these books in Barnes and Noble back in high school and college to try to brush up on any skills or any subjects that I wanted to develop more expertise on.  

Kristin:    00:01:51    You can probably relate if you were ever studying for a paper or writing a paper or researching, and perhaps you too browsed some of these books or maybe for any other reason as well. I mean, they have them on investing on etiquette, on music theory, on literally any topic under the sun. And so I am so pleased and so excited to be writing the digital nomad version of a dummyies book. So what I'll do is drop the pre-order links for you here in the show notes of the podcast, and you can also go to my website travelingwithKristin.com/for F O R -  dummies, D U M M I E S, travelingwithKristin.com/for-dummies and the links will be there for you. This book has been a really long time in the making. This is a book that I've wanted to write for at least 10 years, and I've wanted to announce it since before I even had a podcast, so I'm so excited to finally share it with you.  

Kristin:    00:03:03    This book is going to be a digital nomad encyclopedia with everything that you need to know about how to become a digital nomad, step-by-step, breaking it down and making it really easy for you, plus full of references that you can go back to throughout your journey. I love dummies' books because you don't even have to read them from beginning to end. You can skim the table of contents, select a chapter and jump right in about the topic that you want to learn about. There are five parts to this book. The first part is all about getting started as a digital nomad, which is one of the biggest questions I get. So it's getting a taste of the digital nomad lifestyle, how to figure out if it's for you, exploring the different paths to becoming a digital nomad. Part two is all about making money as a digital nomad, diving deep into the most popular digital nomad jobs, how to find remote jobs, and even creating your own digital nomad job, or how to figure out if you should keep or quit your day job before becoming a digital nomad.  

Kristin:    00:04:18    And you're going to love part three because it's all about traveling and living abroad as a digital nomad. You'll get a step-by-step guide for where to start with planning your travel, how to create your own digital nomad relocation plan, and a breakdown of the best destinations for digital nomads. In part three, I'm covering every aspect of long-term travel, including how to find housing, how to manage all of those travel logistics, everything from Wi-Fi to visas, permits documents, booking flights, budgeting for travel, how to handle your finances, what the heck to do with your cell phone and everything in between. Then part four is about what happens after you become a digital nomad, living a full and healthy life, your mental health, your physical health, making sense of insurance plans, finding doctors in other countries, navigating the healthcare systems in foreign lands, and also how to remain productive while working remotely and traveling.  

Kristin:    00:05:30    You'll learn all of my tips even how to create your own digital nomad daily routine. Lots of work-life balance tips. We're gonna talk about how to make friends and meet people, communities, online and offline dating, of course, networking. And also how to actually integrate with the local communities where you're living, whether you're staying in your home countries or going abroad. How to meet locals, how to learn foreign languages and much more. And in part five, we have the part of tens, which is things like 10 tips for success as a digital nomad. 10 mistakes to avoid as a digital nomad, the 10 most popular destinations for work and play. And we have a value packed appendix with tons of digital nomad tools and resources, everything from travel resources to credit cards, housing, digital nomad, bank accounts, visas, retreat groups, communities coworking, booking platforms, safety insurance, remote work resources from jobs to productivity, software, packing lists, itineraries, career resources, job searching platforms, apps that you need to have on your phone.  

Kristin:    00:06:54    This book will have everything that I've learned in 20 years of traveling the world and working from anywhere all brought together into one handy book that you can flip to a page and find the information that you need without having to Google stuff for hours or watch a ton of YouTube videos. With so many people working remotely now, and so many people working from home, there are millions of people who want to know this information and don't wanna spend the next 10 years searching around for it. And that person might be you. But even if you already are in the digital nomad lifestyle, chances are you still have questions about things or things come up during your travels and you wanna have someone to go to or a resource to go to, to get the answers you need. The funny thing is, is that even the people who work for the publishing company publishing this book, they want to become digital nomads too, including many of their family members. 

Kristin:    00:07:55    So this lifestyle of location independence is becoming mainstream. It's reaching so many people, and it's about time that there is a roadmap for how to do it. So I'm so pleased to be writing this book, so happy that it's available for you to pre-order now. And I'm also so happy and grateful to announce that our friend Eric Prince, the Minority Nomad, has come on board as the technical editor of this book. I'm so happy to have his 20 years of expertise as a location, independent, expat entrepreneur, remote worker, digital nomad, what have you. He has so much experience in uh, bringing all of these different aspects of an alternative independent lifestyle together. And he's so talented in so many areas with so much expertise. And if you aren't familiar with Eric Prince, then you are in for a treat because we did two podcast episodes with him.  

Kristin:    00:09:02    So we have a two part interview that you can either listen to here on the podcast or you can watch the videos on YouTube. And so I'll link to those as well in the show notes on being a digital nomad long term on living in Thailand, on how to fit in like a local, anywhere that you go. And it was a really raw and really real interview that resonated with a lot of people and has just tens of thousands of views each, each video on YouTube. So I hope that you enjoy those if you haven't listened to them yet, or maybe you wanna watch or listen again, I've received a lot of messages from you that that was one of your favorite episodes ever, or both of those, those interviews with Eric, where some of your favorite episodes in the history of the podcast, and even a few of you have asked me to have Eric on again for a follow-up interview.  

Kristin:    00:10:00    So I already let him know about that and he's on board. So maybe when the book is done, he'll come back on for another interview and the publishing date for the book is in August, so it's right around the corner. Can't wait to have those yellow and black digital nomads for dummies books out on the shelves and help make this lifestyle accessible to anyone, anywhere. I also wanna thank all of you for your support and patience as this book has kind of gone between being either a self-published book or going with a publisher, but I do think that the For Dummies format is the best way to deliver this in information. So I'm really glad that that is the route that we're taking. And I talked about this book in my 100th episode interview of the podcast, so I'll drop the link to that in the show notes as well.  

Kristin:    00:10:55    Almost 50 episodes back now. But good things take time, you know, patience, persistence, hard work, all that jazz. So it's definitely been a lesson in all of that. Writing a book is really hard, but it's also very rewarding and fulfilling, and I'm hoping that this first book is the first of many books to come on all sorts of different topics, so stay tuned for more. Again, you can pre-order the book now at the links in the show notes or at travelingwithkristin.com/for-dummies, f o r dash D U M M I E S. So excited to share this book with you that I wanted to dedicate an entire podcast episode to it. I'm gonna go get back to writing now and see you again next week.