Living Abroad in Lisbon, Portugal with the Founder of NomadX Digital Nomad Community

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:    00:01:20    Hey everybody. We are doing a live episode recording of Badass Digital Nomads with Dave Williams, who is the founder of Nomad X in Lisbon, Portugal. And he's coming to us live from Web Summit in Lisbon. He's actually at the conference. He's just stepped out into a different room to do this live interview with us. And Dave is actually part of, we met through my Facebook group, which is long-term Digital Nomad Success a few months ago. And I've been really impressed with the work that he's doing. He is a multi-passionate entrepreneur with 20 years of experience building different businesses. And he's currently running Nomad X, which is on a mission to revolutionize the way that location independent professionals, we're digital nomads, of course, live, work and travel the world. And they do that by making it easy and affordable to live the digital nomad lifestyle, explore new cultures, and meet people from around the world while having a healthy work life balance. Um, they have the Nomad X slow travel community. They have housing in Lisbon and soon in Bali, and they're just doing a lot of really cool stuff over there. I can't wait to go and visit one day. So without further ado, let's bring on Dave. Hi Dave.  

Podcast Interview:

Dave:    00:02:44    Hey Kristin. How are you? Doing great to be on the show. Great.  

Kristin:    00:02:47    We try to coordinate this a couple times, but we're finally doing it. So tell us what's going on right now. You're in Lisbon at Web Summit. What's going on over there?  

Dave:    00:02:57    Yeah, I'm here in uh, Lisbon. I moved to Portugal about two years ago and this is actually my fourth Web Summit. So I went to the first one here back in 2016. Uh, initially as an investor for the first couple years, and now I'm a beta company here at the Summit, but it's, it's crazy. There's like 70,000 people here. Just, it's a, it's like a digital zoo, is the best way to describe it. <laugh>.  

Kristin:    00:03:18    Wow. So, uh, yeah, what is it like when Web Summit descends upon Lisbon? Kind of what is your day in the life like for these couple of days that the conference is in town for people who have never experienced it before? Because I just learned when I was in Lisbon last year that it is the biggest tech conference on the planet, if I'm not mistaken.  

Dave:    00:03:39    Yeah, it's, it's positioned as the largest tech tech conference in the world. It's great 'cause it's based here in Lisbon, which is kind of like the Florida of Europe is the way some people describe it, or the Silicon Valley of Europe or the, the new Silicon Valley, although they don't wanna be called Silicon Valley. But yeah, it's, it's really a crazy time. 'cause over like a week long period, you have people coming in from all over the world, uh, to Lisbon. And the conference starts today. It actually, well it just started yesterday in the evening, and then it runs all the way through the end of day on Thursday. I mean, there's, it's a massive conference center, so tons of exhibitors, everything from startup companies, which are alpha companies, beta companies to the largest companies in the world. Uh, they have a big pitch off going on where a startup can win a hundred thousand euros if they win the pitch off.  

Dave:    00:04:23    Um, there's a lot of really great content going on throughout the show. Like we saw someone from Uber presenting today and there's just like, you know, some really top-notch people presenting to the conference. But it's a huge conference. It's like, it's almost like going to see a U2 show or something. You're sitting in the, the stadium and you know, every, all the techie people there with their, with their cell phones and wandering around trying to meet up with each other on the app. It's just, it's a little crazy. And then they have these amazing events in the evening. So the conference is really all about not just the content, but it's all about the, the social life, great dinner events, great after, after parties. And so a lot of the conference happens, I'd say after the, the actual conference ends <laugh>. So it's, so it's, yeah, it's a wild time to be here. And just all types of digital people, some digital nomads, maybe not as many digital nomads, mostly just people coming from agencies, from technology companies, all types of people.  

Kristin:    00:05:16    And I know that they just started having Web Summit there a couple years ago, but for people who have never been to Lisbon before, I mean Lisbon is kind of trending right now. It's my most popular video on YouTube is about Lisbon. So why does everybody want to go there? What are the things that make Lisbon a great place to work and live and also hold events and conferences?  

Dave:    00:05:41    Uh, well Lisbon, I'd say Portugal in general is just an amazing place. I think one thing is it's super safe. So I think, you know, for a lot of people that are traveling this day and age, people want to go to a place that's safe. They don't have to worry about getting robbed or, you know, anything that, that could be dangerous as it relates to travel these days. Um, the people here are just super nice. They're very accommodating. So tourism is somewhat of a new thing here in Portugal and especially in Lisbon. So the locals, they really appreciate that we're bringing in all this business to Lisbon and it's been great for their economy. So I say generally like the locals, they really love the tourists. The food is amazing. So the Portugal is the largest consumer of seafood of anywhere all throughout Europe. So this, the fish, the octopus, just all the seafood is just amazing.  

Dave:    00:06:26    The people are super friendly, very low key, very relaxed style environment. And then you get the feel of San Francisco. So, you know, if you've lived in San Francisco before or spent time there, it has a lot of the same characteristics. We have the beautiful trolleys running through the hills of the city. You know, you have like the, the history of Portugal, which is significant. It was the first modern civilization of the world where a lot of different cultures collided back in the 14 and 15 hundreds and it was almost like the Silicon Valley of the time. So they have this tradition around entrepreneurship and exploration and it's just an awesome place to be. And I'd say Lisbon's really like the, the main place where everyone's going to these days from a technology perspective. But with that said, I mean, Porto and a lot of the other cities are also becoming more and more popular as well. So yeah, it's just an awesome place to be. They've got great tech visas. It's, it's a place where they're accommodating to foreigners and uh, it's just a hotspot right now.  

Kristin:    00:07:19    Yeah, I definitely got that vibe when I was there. I mean, it's one of the oldest is, is Lisbon one of the oldest cities in western Europe I believe. And so you kind of get this, um, it's also the most western, most country in Europe, of course Portugal. So you kind of have this history mixed with tech, mixed with, it's like a first world country, but it's also growing and developing so quickly. And I know there have been like a little bit of growing pains with the, uh, tourism, kind of similar to what we saw in Iceland where it just kind of exploded in popularity. Of course Portugal is much bigger country, but I've seen a lot of changes just in the past few years where people were like, oh, come to, you know, Lisbon, it's super affordable. And then all of a sudden it became a little bit more expensive and yeah, demand just increased so quickly.  

Kristin:    00:08:10    It almost seems like overnight, but you definitely get the vibe where it's like laid back, but also there's a high energy and it does seem like people almost never sleep in a way because it seems like they're always either working or outside, you know, enjoying the weather, enjoying life, connecting with people on in business levels and also friends and family and just out, yeah, just enjoying the beaches and all of the things that there are to do there. So I can definitely see why people wanna stay there full-time and use that as a, you know, use that as an excuse to go use Web Summit or use some kind of event as, as a reason to go to Portugal. And I've also heard people say that Portugal, or maybe it's Lisbon in particular is where digital nomads go to die or something like that because they might be nomadic traveling around the world and then they get to Portugal and they stop and they end up becoming expats or just local residents. Is that true? Yes,  

Dave:    00:09:11    Those a, those a really thriving digital nomad community here. And I give a lot of that credit to the Lisbon Digital Nomad group, super active, all volunteer based run by some real leaders in the digital nomad community. And they have events going on almost every single day. So that compliments a lot of what we're offering, especially on the housing side of things. Uh, but yeah, one of the big issues with Portugal over the last like three, four years is the prices of the housing has increased pretty significantly. And so that's one of the problems that we're trying to solve for digital nomads is, you know, instead of paying the high rates for an Airbnb where you can actually rent through our platform for more midterm rentals for a fraction of the cost of an Airbnb. So that seems to be like very attractive to the nomads. Um, and we'll talk more about it I guess as we get into the show. But yeah, it's an awesome place to be. Yeah, the Surf is amazing, just has so many nice things about it. So you can be in the city one day and you can be on the beach, you know, over the weekend, just the nomads really love it. I  

Kristin:    00:10:05    Wanna learn a lot about what you're doing with Nomad X because one of the biggest pain points for people is just finding a place to live and then meeting people. So by combining co you know, housing with community, you're kind of solving both of those and that's why as everyone knows, I'm such a big fan of co-living. But before we get into kind of the details on that and the pricing and everything, how did you end up in Lisbon to begin with? Kind of what was the, what was your background in business and how did you end up being so involved in the digital nomad community and starting your own business in Portugal? Yeah,  

Dave:    00:10:44    That's a great question. Well, I've been in the digital space really now for over 20 years. So I got my start really back in 96, 97. And my first real company that I started on my own was back in 1998. I started a search engine marketing, a technology company, even before Google was around. So it was a company called 360 I. And we grew that company, we launched a technology division that was focused on optimization of ads across the major search engines. So back then it was like Google and Yahoo and Microsoft and, and some other engines as well, but for large scale campaigns. So clients that have 20,000 plus keywords and they wanted to optimize 'em across all the different engines, determine the right bidding position and then also try to optimize 'em against an ROI. That business turned out to be very successful and we sold it in 2005 as part of the sale.  

Dave:    00:11:31    I stayed on for a couple years. Um, the company today has been named like the top search engine marketing company in the whole US for the last five years. They just won Performance Marketing Agency of the Year award by, and this has all been by Forrester who's like a leading resource in the us. The company was eventually acquired by Dentsu, which is a leading global agency holding company based outta Japan. And 360 I became their US based brand. And so the company's grown significantly and now has over a thousand people. The technology division, which was called Search Ignite, which is now called Ignition One, was bought out and that remains an independent company, over 500 people. And they process a couple billion dollars in advertising across not only Google but also across all sorts of display media and everything else. I took some time off back in 2007 for about a year just to take some time to decompress.  

Dave:    00:12:19    My wife and I did some traveling and this was all before smartphones. Um, and then in 2008 I started another company instead of focused on search, we were focused on social media advertising and technology. So very similar to what we did with Search, but more focused around engagement than around the acquisition side of of search. We grew the company, we eventually moved the headquarters from Atlanta, Georgia, which is where I started the previous company. We moved the headquarters up to New York City and we grew like super fast. This was like when Facebook was smaller than MySpace when we first got started, but we're one of the first five companies globally to get access to the Facebook ad API. And we're basically just helping ad agencies place and optimize their ad campaigns across Facebook and other social sites. And we also were licensing our technology to the big agency holding companies.  

Dave:    00:13:02    We had opened offices in Boston and London, Chicago, and we eventually sold the company in 2012 to a, a US based publicly held company called Gnet. I stayed on, it's about 2013 and the, the blank media business actually no longer exists. So the Gnet ended up shutting it down, which is too bad. So my first company, I think I did the best in terms of the transaction on the last one, but the first business has been the most successful. So I don't, I'm not sure if I'm getting worse or better, but anyway, that's just part of the process, I guess <laugh>. But yeah, so the, so then my wife and I traveled for about a year, just be living the lifestyle and we just like fell in love with travel and we realized like after a year of doing it that we just getting started and we just continued traveling for another four years coming back and forth between the US and along that journey we ran across Portugal.  

Dave:    00:13:51    We were hiking the community to Santiago and northern Spain and we had some extra time. So we hiked south, south down through Portugal and at that time we just super fell in love with Portugal. Just amazing. We just fell in love with the people. Uh, we really discovered it on foot. So it wasn't really Lisbon or Porto that attracted us to Portugal. It was really everything else about Portugal. And then we ended up coming back, we went to a yoga and surfing camp here. We, we did some hiking down the southern coast and we ended up buying a house down in uh, the Northwestern Algarve, a small town called Algarve. We did a, essentially a fisherman's town but with a lot of really great surfing. So we moved there and this was around the time of 2016 when Web Summit was first getting started that we decided to do this.  

Dave:    00:14:31    So yeah, like Web Summit was getting started. I had been this entrepreneur before, I love early stage startups and early stage industries and just got like super excited about the whole digital nomad movement. And having been in the digital industry myself for so long, I thought it was like the next step step for me having, you know, been in the industry but wanting to kind of take that next step with whatever it is that I thought was best, you know, for, for my wife and I really fit into our lifestyle really well. So we started this company here in Portugal and that was like in 2007 wasn't until about 2008 when we really focused on the platform and the technology. So that's been going on now for a little bit over a year with the platform focused. And that's where we've really made a big shift where we think the platform is like super scalable. We've got properties all throughout Portugal, we've got about 650 listings, we're expecting to get that up to about a thousand and uh, you know, it's just kind of off to the races from there. <laugh>.  

Kristin:    00:15:23    Wow, that is a really interesting that you were, well all of that. But I mean, to be involved in, in tech and search before Google and to be there when Facebook was still for college students, I mean that's a crazy run and congrats on your business still being in business. Did you have a background from college or you know, going into tech? Like how did you start doing that when you didn't have any experience and when nobody really had any experience with the, you know, with Google ads and Facebook ads didn't even exist yet. How did you have the confidence and the know-how to get involved in that? Or did you and did you just learn as you as you went?  

Dave:    00:16:07    Yeah, I think for me it's more about doing, just getting out there and and practicing by by doing it. I think initially I started off undergrad, I studied business and accounting and so I worked at Pricewaterhouse for a few years based outta Philadelphia and I got my CPA as part of that. And I realized when I did that, it was just like that was something I didn't want to do <laugh> for the rest of my life, but it was great experience and I ended up going down to Atlanta, Georgia where I spent most of, most of my career until moving here to Portugal, mostly between Atlanta and New York City. But yeah, Atlanta was a great city for me. I went down there, did a one year MBA and one of the guys I met in college, we were both very entrepreneurial. We were thinking about internet businesses to get started and I was just helping companies with their online marketing initiatives, even just for free.  

Dave:    00:16:49    'cause I wanted to get the experience and after working with some clients, I just realized like there's a big need for this. So we start, ended up starting 360. I not really knowing anything about having ever worked in an ad agency before or never really having bought much media before. We had one guy who came in from one of the media companies and said, okay, let me get this right. You guys are starting an ad agency and you're doing media buying yet you've never done this before <laugh>. And I was like, yeah, I guess that's right. And his company, which was this huge funded VC company, ended up going outta business and then our company ended up being very successful. So I think a lot of times having the experience in an industry actually can work against you 'cause you have all these preconceived notions of how things are supposed to be done. Whereas we were just approaching it as just whatever worked best for our clients, <laugh> that's what we did. You know?  

Kristin:    00:17:32    Yeah, approaching it with like a curiosity mindset and not being able to fail and you know, just kind of being humble but unapologetic about not knowing what you're doing but being very intentional about figuring out the best way to move forward. I've heard a lot of success stories that way. And even on the plane yesterday when I was flying back from California to Florida, I was watching these LinkedIn interviews with people who I've never heard of, just people in business and they were highlighting people who started out really young, interning working for free just to get experience and then who ended up being VPs and executives of these massive companies, but also all of kind of the naysayers and all of the, the looks and all of the office politics and things that they had to deal with on their way up because they were young and because they were inexperienced and because they didn't fit the mold of a tech CEO or a public relations executive.  

Kristin:    00:18:30    And you know, I think that we're really continuing to break the mold as a global humanity right now because you don't necessarily have to like look the part, you can be judged now on what you do and not necessarily what your background is, what your education is. It, it's just basically like a litmus test for success. Like is what you're doing working like, it doesn't matter where your degree is from or if you even have a degree, it just matters that you're hustling and you're getting out there and you're making things happen. So that is really inspiring story. And then, so let's back up to the Camino de Santiago. I actually did the Northern route just a couple days of it, and it was already a life-changing experience. So for people who are aren't familiar with that, the Camino de Santiago is basically a pilgrimage that goes through, there's different routes in Spain and and throughout Europe, and people take it for multiple different reasons, but you can choose to basically walk this route either alone or in groups and people kind of go on it as like a, like a personal journey, so to speak.  

Kristin:    00:19:43    So I just envision you and your wife having sold your business and now you're out traveling the world exploring. This is kind of like a typical pattern that people seem to do to decompress from a stressful period in life. It's like they just wanna get away, they just wanna travel, kind of get away from work, get away from the office and like go kind of find themselves in the world and have fun and live and have an adventure. So you're out there walking through Spain. Did you think that you were just going to do this community Santiago and then go back to normal life? Or were you traveling without an end date? What was your thought process like when you decided to undertake that trip? And was it just like a temporary thing or were you like, we're looking for the next phase of life and we don't know what it is?  

Dave:    00:20:33    Yeah, well we had sold our company, um, when I was in New York. It was a very intense period and obviously New York is intense anyway, but it was super, super intense where it was just all work and like everyone that was at the company, we were like almost like family. And then all of our customers were like, we were just basically, it was all work, you know, everyone we hung out with from our friends to work friends. And once, once I exited the company, the the parent company, we had a falling out. Uh, so I ended up being in a situation where I couldn't necessarily stay connected with those people anymore. So it just made sense for Jen and I, my wife and she's like really the adventurer. I'm more, like I say like her Sherpa, I just kind of get her there and back. She's the, the most adventurous one of the two.  

Dave:    00:21:14    So I'm, I'm on this journey with her and we always joke like, if, if she doesn't get injured, we're not having fun kind of thing, <laugh>, but we like to do adventurous stuff. So it was like we'd, we'd gone on this journey and we started off actually in Ibiza for a couple months and we ended up rafting down the Zambezi. We ended up down in Cape Town, we went through Africa, we were in the Himalayans, you know, like doing a bunch of hiking and it was just, it just, we watched this movie called The Way You Haven't Watched It, I really Encourage you to watch it. And uh, just an amazing movie about the Camino de Santiago. And after we watched it, we were just so inspired. We said like, we have to do this. This is like an incredible experience and we just love long distance hiking so much.  

Dave:    00:21:53    Just 'cause it's an opportunity to really get away and decompress and it's very like therapeutic. It just, you know, it's like, uh, it's almost like a mental detox. It really gives you a chance to really think and be very like meditative almost. 'cause you're just hiking all day, every day, day after day. And it was just like a, an incredible experience. I think it was like one of the best experiences of our lives, you know, it's not like going to the beach and having margaritas and hanging out on the beach, but you're just having a really real experience with people that are on the journey who have maybe gone through like a divorce or they, someone in their family has died or something tragic has happened, or they're just there to have the experience. And so it's just, it's a, you really feel this connection.  

Dave:    00:22:31    It's like almost like a, a shortened journey of your life journey where along the way you meet all these different people and you might run into people again and then, and at the end you'll meet at the, at the end to have like a ceremony and you look around the room and you've seen all these people before. It's like, it's really crazy. So it's like, it was just an incredible experience and we loved it and we actually went back and did it twice. We liked it so much. I definitely wanna go back and even do it again. So anyone on the show, you don't have to wait until you're like retired to do this. I highly encourage you to take the time and you get basically a Pilgrim passport and you can stay overnight in the All Bears for like eight euros a night. Amazing meals for like 10 euros to have like the soup and a salad and entree all you can drink wine or beer with desserts. It's just, you gotta be careful. You don't put on weight on the Camino though. <laugh>,  

Kristin:    00:23:17    Even walking like 20 kilometers a day, you could still put on weight with all that good food.  

Dave:    00:23:22    Exactly. <laugh>.  

Kristin:    00:23:24    Yeah, I would definitely encourage people to do it. I actually ended up in San Sebastian maybe for a week, so I didn't have time to do the whole Camino, but I just did like two or three days of walking and you can just download the app and you can actually took public transportation to get to certain points on the trail. And then I just went and walked by myself, which I mean, I guess technically it's not very safe to, to just walk out, you know, in nature by yourself. But I ha had a great experience and I think that there's something just inherently human in our DNA about the, the need to roam and wander and travel and also walk like walking is, it's something that we've been doing ever since the beginning of of history. It's how we used to get around, you know, before we had animals, you know, like horses and cars and planes, like we just walked to get places.  

Kristin:    00:24:21    And so I think that there's just something very deeply embedded in like the human spirit, which is like this desire to connect with yourself in nature, give yourself like a quiet place to think. And for some reason the act of walking helps you process things. And then when you combine that with either doing it with a partner or spouse or a loved one or with other strangers, it isano like another layer of connection with people and community and you just kind of realize that everybody is going through their own personal struggles and we're all trying to think things through and figure them out. And for some people, you know, that might mean riding their bike or exercising or running and, and for others it might be walking and hiking or for others it might be a creative outlet. But I, I really think that that Camino de Santiago, it kind of just combines so many things that people are seeking in life.  

Kristin:    00:25:25    And even when I was walking before I finished, I already knew that I wanted to go back and do it. And everyone who I've seen on Facebook who has posting their photos from doing it, they all say the same thing. So yeah, Dave and I both give that a big thumbs up. I felt euphoric and I didn't know why <laugh>, I was like, why do I feel so happy walking on this trail in the middle of nowhere? I mean, yeah, maybe it's the vineyards and the animals and the sunset and and whatever, but it's really important, especially with modern day life and how crazy the world is like to have that kind of balance. So yeah, if anyone has an opportunity to do it, I highly endorse it as well.  

Dave:    00:26:06    Definitely like any sort of pilgrimage I think is a great experience where you just have this sort of, you know, it's a spiritual moment and I think it's something that a lot of people are just missing out on these days. So it's, it's, it kind of takes you back in time. Like you said, the, the act of walking every day, it makes you really mentally and physically strong because you spend a lot of time thinking too, and you just, in your day-to-day life, you just typically don't get the chance to think about things that deeply. So it's like, it's a great, it's a great experience to have.  

Kristin:    00:26:31    Yeah, and you think of all the people that have walked on the same path too for hundreds and hundreds of years and it's just like some things never change. <laugh> people were still struggling even though they didn't have the technology we have today.  

Dave:    00:26:44    Totally. Yeah, it's an awesome experience. Yeah, I mean you can stay in like, in really nice places along the way you can, people can transport your luggage for you. So if you're concerned about carrying the backpack, I mean the more traditional route is to carry your stuff and do it like the, you know, the pilgrims did back in the day. Although my wife said they, they used to have donkeys back then <laugh> to do that. That's true.  

Kristin:    00:27:05    All right, well if I need a Sherpa, I know where to go <laugh>.  

Dave:    00:27:08    Exactly.  

Kristin:    00:27:09    You're the Sherpa Dave.  

Dave:    00:27:10    That's right.  

Kristin:    00:27:12    So now let's, uh, let's change gears a little bit to what Nomad X is doing because ever since I knew what digital nomads were, I have been reading even on nomad lists, Peter Levels forum. I remember back in like 2012 or 2013, there were some threads trending on there. How do we solve housing for digital nomads? Because the traditional housing market and since the industrial revolution and like people own their own houses or they rent long term and they need to be in one place so that they can commute to a job. So the difference now is that people don't necessarily want to buy a house or they can't afford to buy a house or they don't wanna be locked into a long term lease. There's a lot of different like elements at play. They could be getting out like priced out of their neighborhoods or in their communities, like in California or in major urban areas.  

Kristin:    00:28:10    And then with digital nomads, we want to be able to travel long, long-term sustainably without having to commit to a one year lease somewhere and without having to pay like really steep nightly or weekly short-term prices. Because before this type of travel was possible, people only traveled for business or they only traveled for vacation, or they traveled as their own sort of, you know, backpacking or nomadic journey. They weren't necessarily working, maybe they were just taking a sabbatical or something like that. So it's like, where can digital nomads stay if we don't want to stay in a hostel and we don't wanna pay, you know, a hundred dollars a night or more for, for short term housing, but we also don't wanna stay somewhere for a year. And so how does Nomad X solve that problem?  

Dave:    00:29:04    Yeah, so that's the main problem that we're, we're trying to solve. So I think especially like if we look at Portugal for example, just Airbnbs are taking over the, the cities, uh, especially the main touristic areas. So if you're looking to rent like a one bedroom Airbnb here in Lisbon through air, you know, if you rent it through Airbnb for example, or any of the other short term rental companies like Vrbo or even booking.com, I mean it's easily gonna cost you a couple thousand, maybe a few thousand dollars for the month, which obviously is like out of the budget for many digital nomads. So if you look at that price, and even if you go to the Nomad list, I think it'll tell you the average price here in Portugal or in Lisbon's 2,500. But for a local that that, for that same apartment, it might, they might only be paying 700.  

Dave:    00:29:45    So there's a huge difference between what a short-term rental cost, an Airbnb, and what a long-term rental cost. So we're basically just trying to solve that issue and so people don't have to stay at the Airbnbs. Um, which I think the Airbnbs are great and obviously there's some benefits to staying there, but for, mostly for people that are looking to stay month to month. So for example, there's a company here in Portugal called Uni Places that's more month to month, but it's for students. So essentially we're trying to do is offer something similar to them, but for professionals. And really there's three types of inventory that we offer. There's tends to be either a private apartments if someone wants to stay at a private listing. We also have bed, uh, bedrooms in, uh, homes with locals. So we have a whole community of hosts that are hosting digital nomads who wanna stay very affordably. So I'd say the least expensive option is to rent a bedroom with a local, almost like a couch surfing, but for professionals where you don't have like the kind of the hookup scene that you might have on the, on a, on a, uh, you know, couch surfing on  

Kristin:    00:30:43    The couch surfing website.  

Dave:    00:30:45    Yeah. So people put together their profiles, you match up with people, but more matching based on interest. You like running or you into surfing or you into yoga or you, you, are you a content person and you're meeting up with another content person. But we, we wanna make those connections for the nomads with the locals. And then we also have co-living spaces. And these could be smaller co-living spaces of, you know, four or five people in a space all the way up to the branded co-living spaces here. There's like some cool spaces. Same, same the Entrepreneur House, they're all on our platform and we plan to add a lot more as we go forward too. So just really offering every single option for the digital nomads. Um, and the main thing is, you know, if you're renting Airbnb, typically people are staying for a few days or maybe a week.  

Dave:    00:31:24    And so if you're renting an Airbnb, you're paying that premium even though they do offer the discounts if you're staying month over month. But typically it's still like very, very expensive. So, you know, typically we'll see on the platform for like a single bedroom might be around 400 euros a month for like a studio might be around 800 euros a month. A a a one bedroom, two bedroom might be around 1200, a thousand to 1200 for the month. So significantly less than Airbnb. And then part of it we're wrapping community around the housing too. So although you're not staying in the exact same place with everyone all the time, you still have the community to be able, uh, we put on, we put on monthly events. We put on doing like an ecstatic dance party, for example, on Sunday, which is really cool for the community.  

Dave:    00:32:05    We're doing like mastermind style events or master classes and just really try to engage with the community. So although it's more of a self-guided experience, as you mentioned on the Camino, you know, you can go out, you can do it yourself or you can hire someone and do it as part of a tour or you could do it just through like a self-guided kind of experience. And that's where we see ourselves fitting in. It's like a, a self-guided experience. You can find your own place or you can use help you find the place. And we have a community manager that runs the local communities and you can connect with the community manager. You can even put on events of your own. So if you want to do an event on content production or whatever it might be, you can also participate and get back to the community too.  

Dave:    00:32:42    And so that's, that's really what we're trying to create. We started here in Portugal, I'd say of the listings we have half of 'em are in Lisbon. So we've got about 350 listings in Lisbon, about a hundred up in Porto. We have listings all throughout the country in places like ER and Panish, which are amazing, amazing surfing towns all the way down to Lagos and Madeira and the Zos Islands, which are somewhat undiscovered by nomads. I'd almost equate to the Zos to like an Iceland a while back or like a mini Hawaii. So I think what you're gonna see is a lot more nomads wanting to venture out of the city. We're seeing a lot of the nomads congregating in the cities at the moment, but it's our vision that when nomads come in and they visit Portugal and they get comfortable with Lisbon that they, they have, they could only have to, they have to stay minimum one month with us, but they could, they could stay in Lisbon, they could stay in Porto, they could stay in the islands, they could go out surfing, you know, there's so many options for them. So we're just trying to really open up the travel experience for the nomads and make it very affordable for them as well.  

Kristin:    00:33:37    I've, I've noticed that just, um, in my company, so I, I've been running a relocation company for eight years and it's for poker players, it's called poker refugees. And of course now I'm helping non poker players move to different countries. But one of the things that I noticed was that at the beginning everybody wanted to go to the same places because they wanted to have friends, they didn't wanna be lonely, but then people who were getting passports for the first time and going places like Playa Del Carmen has been one of our top destinations since 2012. So now that's like kind of blowing up as a digital nomad destination, but it's always had kind of the elements that people are looking for to live and work there. So we would have like a hundred people living in Playa Del Carmen in 2012, 2013, who had never lived abroad before.  

Kristin:    00:34:28    But then those same people would end up getting quite adventurous. Of course some of them would stay 'cause they really liked it there, but then others would end up in Korea. And uh, going, you know, backpacking kind of through Central America, south America. And I'm kind of seeing that same pattern with the nomads where you can kind of like have a home base, have a community in Lisbon and then go off and explore. I know, uh, Krista Romano, who's one of my friends, he is a, a digital nomad, digital marketer and Instagram influencer, she likes to use Lisbon as her home base. And then she was just up in the northern part of Norway and the futon islands, we were hanging out together and now she's in Africa, I believe. So we kind of see people coming back to a home base and then going out again to explore and then coming back.  

Kristin:    00:35:17    And it's, it's definitely an interesting pattern, but I think it makes sense because if you stay in one place for too long, then maybe you need to mix up the routine a little bit. But it's still nice to keep coming back to a place that you can call home but then go out and have these other like new experiences and new adventures. But how are you getting all of these listings? Because as somebody with a background in real estate and relocation and housing, it's a lot of work to find housing to vet the different listings and make sure that you know that they are what they say they are, that the photos are accurate. So do you have like a big team doing this or are people now aware of Nomad X and they are coming to you with a property or how are you finding all these different rooms and houses for digital nomads?  

Dave:    00:36:08    Yeah, well that's like part of the, uh, the secret sauce <laugh>, can't tell you exactly, but  

Kristin:    00:36:14    Yeah, you have a software,  

Dave:    00:36:16    Uh, well we have our, our Nomad X platform, which is the where, where all of the, all the inventories aggregated and the nomads go in there to find the, the listings. But mostly we use almost all digital marketing. So digital is my background over the last 20 years. And so we really try and practice what we preach in terms of really taking advantage of Facebook and Instagram. And then we've also been building a really great brand here in Portugal. So I think through our events and through our parties, we get a lot of promotion around it. You get excited about the idea, especially the locals of meeting people that are digital nomads who are traveling the world and they get a chance to interact with these people or even live with, live with the nomads. Um, and just meet people that are like really interesting, futuristic, <laugh> global citizens or however you want to describe them.  

Dave:    00:37:02    Um, and generally, you know, the nomads we find is like, it's a great, it's a great customer for the, the host because, you know, they are working most of the day. They're not huge partiers. They, they live a pretty consistent life like day after day, you know, it's not like the tourists that are coming in and causing a lot of problems in the rental properties. And the other thing going on too is the air. The, the government's been really cracking down in Airbnb. They've been setting up a lot more regulations on, um, how many properties you're actually allowed to have. And, and then there's also increased taxes they're charging for the Airbnbs. And so the, the Portuguese are looking for ways to actually save on that and not having to reclassify their properties as short term rentals or almost like a hotel style property. So that's been very attractive.  

Dave:    00:37:44    So yeah, we've, we've, we've been lucky in terms of being able to track some really good listings. And then we do like, you know, we, we do online reviews. We also will check to make sure if they're, if they're on Airbnb, they've got really great reviews. So we have some properties that are, most of the properties are verified. We also have some that are unverified properties, um, that we're all trying to, we're trying to get all of them verified. But yeah, it's just been like very successful. We've been adding about 150 new listings every month. Um, and then the plan is to take this model into other places with the next one, with our first next one being Bali. We can see that as like a huge opportunity. And then we want to go to other markets like Thailand and Budapest and Prague and do some of these really great places to go visit and ultimately have a network across like the top 20 locations throughout the world. And ideally places too that are very safe. We don't have to worry about too much of the safety issues as well. So it's, yeah, it's been successful. I, and I can't give you away exactly how we do it. We're still figuring that out too. We're kind of constantly improving and optimizing the process.  

Kristin:    00:38:39    So when can people expect to be able to stay in your places in Bali?  

Dave:    00:38:43    Um, we're hoping to get that started towards the beginning of the year. We gotta obviously get some regulations in place first just to make sure we're legit. And then we're hoping to get started very early started this year. We're in the process of finalizing the platform. So we're a little hesitant to expand until we have the platform completely done. But we're expecting that to be done by the end of this year, early next year at the latest. And so once that's done, then we plan to kind of take it on the road and go open up markets in these other really cool spots. But we don't want to grow too fast 'cause we are the company, we're considered a public benefit corporation. So although a part of our motivation is profit, a big part of our initiative is to get back to the communities and where we operate.  

Dave:    00:39:20    Um, we're an employee owned company, so everyone in the company has equity in the company and we're getting ready to launch a Seedrs campaign. So really anyone in the community will be able to invest in the company if they're interested, known equity in the business. So we're kind of anti VCs and anti angels at this point. It's just been, I've been funding the company on my own, but we really see that as the best pathway forward for us. And we see that like of interest too to the nomads being able to like not only stay with Nomad X and participate but even have an interest in the business too.  

Kristin:    00:39:48    That is really interesting. I actually just heard that actually Delta, so I was on a Delta flight yesterday and I was watching one of the interviews with the CEOO and he was saying that Delta is basically partially owned, I wanna say 15% by the employees. And I actually didn't know that, but I think when they did their restructuring, maybe they were going through a bankruptcy or something, you know, the airline industry is really volatile. And then, yeah, so now the employees own a portion of the company and they're paying out like over a billion dollars a year, I think in dividends to their shareholders. They must be one of the most profitable airlines in the US if not the world. And I wonder if there's any correlation with that business model, because I'm not aware of any other airlines that have such a significant percent owned by the employees. So do you think that this is kind of the way that the economic model is going as we're like more in the gig economy and freelance economy and sharing economy? Do you think it's gonna be like more collaborative businesses?  

Dave:    00:40:54    Yeah, definitely. I think like if you look at some of these companies, whether it's like the Ubers or even the Amazon, not, not maybe Amazon, but more so, uh, even the companies like the Googles and the Facebooks, like all the issues that these companies are going through at the moment. And a lot of these companies, although they do have employee ownership, they're kind of driven by the VCs and driven by the, the public markets. I think the idea of having like a privately held company that's owned by the employees and where you allow the actual community to invest in the company, it's kind of a, it's a very new thing. So there's a company called Seedrs based outta London. They also have an office here in Portugal because it was founded by a Portuguese guy as well. But really it opens up the opportunity to actually raise money through the crowd.  

Dave:    00:41:35    And then once you do the fundraising, they have a secondary market where you can then buy and sell shares. So the shares actually have value. One of the challenges in the past has been as, as employees get ownership in a company, there's no liquidity until the company goes public. So this creates like an interesting opportunity. I think as the businesses evolve and go forward, it's, it's more like, I'd say social capitalism, shall we call it. But yeah, just being really fair and generous with the people that are doing all the work, instead of giving all the interest to just the money. People that have already made their money, you know, give a chance to the employees to really prove themselves. And, you know, if they do well and the company does well, then everyone participates, you know, not just the founder or the two founders or whoever's involved.  

Dave:    00:42:15    Like for me, my, my employees are my business partners, so it's like whoever's involved in the business, these are the people that I'm looking to to like help me make the company successful. And I want their full alignment to where they know exactly what we're trying to achieve with the company. And it just becomes like a, you know, a unique opportunity for them to have. Not everyone has the chance to be like an owner in an early stage company with a lot of growth and potential appreciation in the company. So yeah, I think they just treat it differently, you know, it's a, it's a really nice way to run a business. Uh, my prior company, we did the same thing and when we did exit, you know, everyone participated and it was a great opportunity for everyone. So it's like, I just feel like this is the right way to run a company.  

Kristin:    00:42:53    <laugh>. I agree. You know, we've, we've seen things happen the other way and we know, we know how that works out. Like we know capitalism and its current form isn't perfect. We know what happens when there's a financial crisis and we can't ignore what just happened with WeWork. And then all of the companies that give golden parachutes to their CEOs on the way out, they just suck billions of dollars in value out of the company for their own personal gain and then leave the employees kind of like, like holding an empty bag. And is that really the best way to structure corporations and multinational companies? Like, I don't think so. <laugh>, you know, maybe, maybe you guys are onto something and it does make a lot more common sense to have the employees have a vested interest in the outcome of the company because we know from data that people aren't just motivated by money and just a paycheck alone is not going to kind of bring things together to that next level. So I love what you're doing and we're, this is actually a really crazy moment for me right now 'cause I'm like hearing what you're saying. We're doing a live podcast on YouTube and there's actually people in the live chat right now who are interested in investing in your company, <laugh>. So I think that this is maybe unprecedented <laugh>.  

Dave:    00:44:13    Alright, well we're also, we're a remote company. We're run by digital nomads. So our company's really spread all throughout the world. So we have the people in Bali, we have people in Mexico City, we have people in the States really spread all throughout the world. So it's like, we want to practice what we preach, you know, it's like, that's kind of the ideal scenario for us. That's like the holy grail, the o The only issue is I think everyone, everyone's always concerned if I'm working hard enough. <laugh>  

Kristin:    00:44:38    <laugh>. Yeah. Story, story of my life. It doesn't look like you're working 'cause you're having so much fun, but yeah. Well, I wanna get to some of the livestream questions, but before we get into that, I have one more question for you. What would you say to people who have never heard of digital nomads, who don't have any point of reference for remote work? You know, in a way for us, we live this day in and day out, but we're kind of living in a parallel universe where there's people who have just no idea that this lifestyle exists. There's VCs in Silicon Valley who are requiring that, uh, the companies that they invest in have a physical headquarters there so they can like, oversee everything. And of course, you know, there's pros and cons to that, but what would you say to people who are completely new to the concept of working remotely, entrepreneurship, traveling while working, being location independent, just kind of being in this area. What would you tell them as far as to why this is the future and why they should pay attention to what's going on and start participating now? Whether than waiting like five or 10 years?  

Dave:    00:45:54    Well, I mean obviously I'm a little biased, but I definitely think it's the future. So it's almost like going back in the day and say, I'm just gonna stay on the farm <laugh>. You know, nothing wrong with that, that's great, you know, but it's like as people are migrating into the cities, we've just seen huge migrations of people into these major cities, like the New York's and San Francisco's and the cost of living has just gone up so significantly when the reality is everything can be done remotely on your phone. If you are a knowledge worker, you know, it's not physically required to be there. I think a lot of times people actually work better remotely, you know, especially for people that already have the experience and they're experts at what they do. Um, the idea of getting in a car and commuting half an hour each way, you know, and then going out to lunch with your coworkers and then driving home at the end of the day, it's sort of like an exhausting way to live your life.  

Dave:    00:46:40    And it's just, I mean, in the past it was just, there's no way around it. You pretty much had to do it. But now with all of the technology that's available, you're starting to see people experiment. So instead of working remotely just from your home one day a week, and we start working more remotely from your home, which is nice, but then also the opportunity you're seeing WeWork really take off, like you mentioned. And so people are going to these, you know, coworking spaces instead of gonna the office 'cause it's more convenient. But the idea is like, okay, if you're joined to a WeWork and you're working outta your home every day, why not take your job on the road and instead of going on vacation for a week or two, go on vacation for a month, but work while you're there, you're gonna have a much better experience.  

Dave:    00:47:16    'cause culturally you're gonna immerse yourself in the culture. You're not gonna be so rushed around and it's like, it's, it is really fun to like actually live and work in another country and you're not married to it either, so you can really leave at any time that you want to. But I think generally what my wife and and I found is staying in a place for minimum one to two months. After about two months, we really feel like we've gotten a really good connection and we're kind of ready to move on. But you know, someone who hasn't done it and they're working at remote or they're working at home or they're working at a WeWork every day in their little jail cell <laugh> of a cube. You know, like just, just instead like book a plane ticket to Lisbon, come stay at a nomad property. You can work out of a co-working space here, work out at coffee shops, work out of your home, however you want to do it, and just have an amazing experience.  

Dave:    00:47:56    And then you go home and you're gonna be so much more motivated for your job. You're gonna meet really cool people, um, different professionals. You're probably not gonna get a chance to meet people from all around the world and it's just gonna be an incredible experience in your life. It's like, you know, there's no real risk of doing it. I mean, the challenge I think is, you know, if you're not working remotely to try and get your com, your company comfortable with the idea of working remotely. But yeah, I think it's, it's, it's really the future for every business, the major companies out there. It's almost gonna be a requirement because the top companies are hiring people remotely. If your company's not doing it, they're gonna be at a strategic disadvantage to hire the best people. So, you know, the best people want the flexibility, they want the freedom. And if you're not offering that, you're gonna get the second tier people <laugh>.  

Kristin:    00:48:37    Yeah, exactly. There's gonna be a tipping point to where it is basically required, like people are going to want this kind of flexibility, they're gonna wanna be able to work from anywhere. And if your company doesn't offer it, then we will find one that does. Or those same people will go out and start their own companies in whatever it is that they have expertise in. So any, any managers out there listening <laugh>. But if you are listening and you don't work remotely yet and you're thinking about it, but maybe you don't have the confidence to do it because the people around you in your current social circle and personal friend circle or or out of your colleagues think that it's crazy or they don't understand it or they don't have any experience with it, then just know that, you know, kind of behind the scenes here, there's this parallel universe of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people now who are, have the capacity to do this. And many of us are doing it. So you don't necessarily have to know somebody from your hometown who's doing it, but just that knowledge that you can fly to Lisbon and for 400 Euro a month you can rent a room and a house around other like-minded people and just do what you wanna do in your life. I think that's a really powerful thing. So definitely consider it. And you can go to it's nomadx.com right, Dave?  

Dave:    00:50:00    That's right. N-O-M-A-D. The letter X we're like, we're like SpaceX, but for nomads, <laugh>, <laugh>,  

Kristin:    00:50:07    SpaceX, but for Nomad,  

Dave:    00:50:08    We're, we're not interplanetary yet. We're just, uh, <laugh> just on earth.  

Kristin:    00:50:13    Not yet, but watch out Elon Musk because we're coming for you <laugh>. Once we're tired of traveling around the planet, we're gonna have to move on to space travel.  

Dave:    00:50:21    Yeah. The name of the company is actually nomadic explorations. So we, that's the idea is we want to want to be nomadic. We don't need to be nomads all the time, but we think everyone is nomadic and that's our, that's our in our DNA. So I think ultimately people are gonna, you know, just to go out and have this experience is sort of a, you know, it's, it's a, it's a human experience.  

Kristin:    00:50:43    I agree. You don't have to be a hundred percent traveling all the time to be a digital nomad. In my opinion, being a digital nomad is a state of mind and we already are nomadic, we just now have the digital tools to be able to realize that in real time. And it's the first time in history that we have it. And that's why this lifestyle resonates with so many people. So if that resonates with you, you're not alone. It's just part of our DNA and we are just born at a time where, where this is all possible and it's, it's crazy. It's unprecedented. So, okay, let's get to some of the live chat. We have a technical question here from JB Hahn. He wants to know what it's like to open a bank account or a business account in the country that you're in. How hard is it to set up a bank account and but do digital nomads need to set up a bank account in Portugal? I mean now you can set up a bank account online and use it anywhere. You don't necessarily have to have like a, a brick and mortar bank account there. But are the people who are staying at in Nomad X housing, do they have a physical presence in Portugal? Like do they have a business structure set up in a bank account there or do they have it in their home country and they're just temporarily traveling through?  

Dave:    00:52:02    Yeah, I would say generally people have it in their home country and they're just traveling through it. Unless they're actually gonna set up residency here. I think if you set up residency, there might be a requirement to have a bank account. Unfortunately that's not like an area of expertise for me. Although when people do sign up with Nomad X, we have a law firm that helps us out and they do offer like two to three hours of free consultations. So if you're a customer of nomads, you can find out everything you need to know about Visa and residency and and bank accounts or whatever questions you have <laugh>. But yeah, companies like Revolut, you know, like Revolut and there's a lot of these newer banking concepts which is very inexpensive to um, you know, have a, have a debit card where you can transfer money very inexpensively. So I think that's more the trend than anything else.  

Kristin:    00:52:44    Yeah. And if you are thinking about that, don't, don't hold back. You know, don't let the technical aspect of being a digital nomad hold you back because you can pretty much go without changing anything that you're doing. Most likely at least you can go and travel short term and if you do decide that you need to set up a company in another country or kind of change your business structure, you can always do that later. But I've met people who spent months trying to figure out the legalities of it before they ever bought a plane ticket because they were too afraid to go before dealing with that. So sometimes you can just go enjoy yourself, you know, have fun and then see if it makes sense to even set up in that country because it might not.  

Dave:    00:53:28    Yeah, I would say it's probably best not to until you've got like really feel like that's the right move for you. 'cause setting up the bank accounts isn't so easy, <laugh>, it's like, no, it's quite a process.  

Kristin:    00:53:39    Yeah. And then you might not even use it. So at least that's my experience, <laugh>.  

Dave:    00:53:43    Yeah, totally. Um,  

Kristin:    00:53:44    And and do you speak Portuguese or has that been a hurdle? And this is another question from the live chat. Do you have difficulty with business communications or do you speak the local language or how does that work?  

Dave:    00:53:55    Uh, I mean here in Portugal everyone speaks English, especially the younger generation. So I say generally anyone under the age of 40, very good English skills. As you get further north, you know, it, it becomes a little bit more difficult when you get up to Porto or even north of Porto. I'd say the only issue we had is like, like we were renting some properties. It was just like the legal documents, which I couldn't really understand. I need to learn Portuguese. So I feel like terrible 'cause I haven't been as focused on that. But my wife and I, we've still been traveling a lot. We spent some time in France this last winter and we're going to Austria this winter. So it's like we've been kind of bouncing around. I've been so focused on the company that I can speak some basic Portuguese, but you know, nothing to write home about at this moment. But if I wanna get citizenship here, I do need to learn to speak Portuguese. So that's like becoming more and more important for me. But yeah, I can get around pretty well without it. So I'd say anyone that's concerned about that, you, you shouldn't be concerned about it. Here in Portugal it's like super easy to to get around and everyone pretty much speaks English except for some of the older folks. And even then you can get around and get, get away with it.  

Kristin:    00:54:54    Yeah. If you speak English and you know if you're a native English 

speaker or if it's your second language or third language, you know, we're really spoiled because it does make it easier to get around in pretty much any country. Uh, you, you can usually find someone who speaks English but don't let that language barrier hold you back because even if you don't speak the same language as people, you can still find a way to somehow communicate and you wanna be able to focus on sustaining your lifestyle and your business and do the language as a hobby. I think it's great to be able to communicate in the local language. You don't need to be fluent in it, but even if you know a few words and key phrases, that can go a long way as a gesture to the locals. And I agree with Dave, I had the opportunity to learn Spanish in college through a scholarship and I'm so relieved that I did because as I got older and graduated, I never felt like I had time to really immerse myself in learning a language.  

Kristin:    00:55:50    It's something that I still dream of doing, like learning other languages maybe when I'm less busy in business and like have some time off. Because I think it is something that it helps if you focus on it and you're like studying it, but if you're just studying a language and you're not working on your business or you don't have passive income, then it can be unsustainable. So kind of be careful with that and just pace yourself. We have Walt asking when your company plans on making an offering and then we have JF from London who's interested in investing. So if people want to be a part of this community of um, you know, investors in Nomad X, where can they go to get more info on that?  

Dave:    00:56:37    Yeah, so we're just getting started with uh, the Seedrs campaign, but we're expecting to go live kind of mid-December, early January is when things are really gonna get geared up and then closing out at the end of January. So it's about a 40 day window when the campaign will be live and it'll be on Seedrs.com S-E-E-D-R-S.com.  

Kristin:    00:56:56    Okay. And uh, JF also asks if there's a way to be involved in the community without using Facebook. I know a lot of people, um, don't have Facebook these days.  

Dave:    00:57:06    Yeah. So I mean once people join our community then um, well yeah, so the whole Facebook thing's a top one because so many people are on it. We've been very Facebook centric at this point. Mostly Facebook, Instagram, and then also on WhatsApp, just 'cause that's like what most people have been using. But yeah, I mean we're also gonna be on, you know, LinkedIn and YouTube and you know, the other, the other major channels as well. But at the moment, unfortunately <laugh> everything is very Facebook centric at the moment 'cause we just don't want to be on so many different platforms.  

Kristin:    00:57:37    <laugh>. Yeah, I can attest to that as somebody who like notoriously spreads myself too thin across so many platforms. Like it took me six hours the other day to respond to Facebook messages and that was just one platform. So I've really been wanting to kind of have my own platform that's private. But yeah, I think from experience, just start with one and then, and then keep growing. But doing too many things at once just doesn't work out. Uh, let's see, we have, oh we have multiple self-employed traders in the chat. That's really cool. Good work guys. Lots of people in finance. See JF is in Miami right now, but too crowded, too much traffic. He's thinking of taking two months and doing like an around the world trip. Do you have any tips on, on where to go if somebody has one or two months they wanna travel around the world?  

Dave:    00:58:34    I think it just depends what they're really into. You know, like for me, like when my wife and I were doing our travels, we'd always have like one, you know, it might be like a big adventure that we want to do. Whether it's we were going to Africa, we wanted to, we wanted to raft the Zambezi or we were in Shamini, we wanna hike the tour to Mount Blanc or you know, in Spain we wanna hike the Camino. So it's like we always try to build our adventures around something fairly epic on the trip. So I think it just depends what you really love to do. And then I think also it's important part of this experience to get out of your comfort zone. Not just go and fall back to the things that you, you've always done. Maybe you've never scuba dive before. So you go to Australia, you want to, you take a course and learn how to scuba dive and head out to the barrier reef and go on an epic trip. You know, it's like do things that are like outta your comfort zone, you're gonna come home with this new repertoire, uh, skills and then also experiences. And I think at the end of the day just makes you an overall better person and also better entrepreneur because I think the more your practice being sort of uncomfortable and doing things outta your comfort zone, the stronger you're gonna be as an entrepreneur in general anyway.  

Kristin:    00:59:35    I agree. I think that's great advice. And in my relocation talk for Nomad Summit, I talked about that as far as picking a destination, people always wanna know what is the best place to go, which is relevant and a valid question, but sometimes the answer is what is the best place to go for you? And it's like, what are you interested in? What are some of the things that you've always wanted to do because it's gonna be different for everybody. And then chances are wherever you go you're gonna wanna keep traveling a little bit. You know, maybe like Dave and his wife Jen, you start with one destination and before you know it, it's 10 years later <laugh> and you're still out there traveling, myself included, guilty as charged because you, you know, there's always something new to see and you'll start to learn where you thrive, what kind of environments are the best for you and what is appealing to you at any given moment and kind of what is resonating with you.  

Kristin:    01:00:37    So I think the only way to figure that out is to just start traveling and if you don't like a place, then give it a little bit of time and then move on, you know, and keep going and see where you end up without also keeping an open mind that there might be a place that you didn't think you would like or that you didn't even know about that you might end up loving or there might be a place that you're not sure about when you first arrive in the first few days or the first week or even two weeks. You're not really feeling in your comfort zone and then all of a sudden you wake up one morning and you're just like immersed in the vibe of that new city or that new town and you're kind of getting into your comfort zone. I know that's happened with me as well. So  

Dave:    01:01:18    Yeah, my wife and I always say that the plan is no plan <laugh>. I think that's the best plan sometimes, but like Morocco's an amazing place if you wanna go to someplace, we really kind of takes you back in time. Spend some time in Marrakesh and if you like hiking, hit the high Atlas Mountains, head into the desert and they've got surfing right there. It's just, you know, it's really kind of an epic place to go visit and just feel like you've really, you're on another planet somewhere.  

Kristin:    01:01:40    <laugh>, I kind of feel like a migrating bird sometimes because just every season I'm going to a new place for a new reason and I, I now I understand, you know, the animals are just kind of basically going around in circles around the planet and now the people are too just at a faster rate than what we used to be doing.  

Dave:    01:01:58    That's right. Yeah, it's like these migratory patterns, that's what we see here in Lisbon's. A lot of people come to Lisbon and then they're gonna Bali or they're going to Chiang Mai so it's like, you know, and they might go to other places too, but those are two like hotspots for them.  

Kristin:    01:02:10    Yeah. And then you get to meet up with people that you met somewhere, then you connect with them online or through this community and then you get to see them somewhere else. Some of them you might not see for a few years and others you might see them like four or five times in one year. And so that's fun too. Uh, JF just got back from Porto and Lisbon, but he didn't know about you, but now he does.  

Dave:    01:02:30    All right.  

Kristin:    01:02:31    So he is gonna check out your service. So yeah, let us know again where can people connect with you on Instagram and Facebook and your website and they can get more info.  

Dave:    01:02:44    Yes, definitely. And we've got a, a really active Facebook group. It's a Nomad X a lifestyle community for digital nomads, super active community. We do a lot of interviews as well. So definitely if you get in there, you'll get a chance to connect directly with us in a more personable kind of fashion for those people that are still on Facebook <laugh>.  

Kristin:    01:03:01    Well, great Dave, thank you so much for coming on. We will let you get back to the conference at Web Summit. Do you have any fun plans for tonight?  

Dave:    01:03:10    Uh, we have like a, we have a bunch of people on our team that are here. So we're actually like taking out to dinner tonight to a, uh, a fado and dinner experience. 'cause I think most of the group hasn't been to a fado uh, musical performance yet. So that's gonna be the plan starting at eight o'clock, so in an hour.  

Kristin:    01:03:26    Okay. Oh, I haven't been to one either. What is a fado?  

Dave:    01:03:29    Uh, it's, it's like a music that was originated here in Portugal in the Fama area, but it's a very traditional style music. It's a song of like poverty and hardship and I was kind of outta style for a while. Now it's becoming like much more popular again and it's just a, it's a popular touristic and even local thing to do. And like when you're in the, in the, when you're in the restaurants listening to the fado, they'll even have the, you know, the dishwasher come out from the, the kitchen and sing or the cook come out and sing and even people in the crowd will start singing Def Fado. So it's, it's really kind of a really cool cultural experience. <laugh>.  

Kristin:    01:04:04    That's really cool. Yeah, don't be afraid guys to do the touristy stuff when you go to places because hey, we are tourists a lot of the time. I went to Tango dinner show when I was in Bueno Aires and it was one of the coolest things I have seen. So yeah, don't be afraid to, uh, to do that and get a little taste of the local culture.  

Dave:    01:04:23    Yeah, highly recommend it. It's awesome. Okay,  

Kristin:    01:04:26    Cool. So thank you and, um, thank you to everybody in the live chat for participating. K Bar just hopped on. He's asking if there's co-living spaces in Lisbon through Nomad X. The answer is yes. So if you're coming into the live stream now, then feel free to hit the replay button because we talked all about that and there's a lot of exciting stuff happening and I look forward to Nomad X having a system of different, a network of housing around the world in, uh, in different nomad hotspots so people can have a home base for their adventures. So thanks Dave for coming on and if you are listening, then thanks for tuning in to Badass Digital Nomads. Please leave us a review on iTunes or Apple Podcasts or anywhere that you get your podcasts and share this with your friends. If you have other people who might be interested in learning how to live life on their own terms, work online, travel, and just have a more fulfilling life experience, then share this podcast with them. And if you have any requests for future guests, let us know. You can drop a comment below the YouTube video. You can send messages to Traveling with Kristin on Facebook and Instagram. And of course we have the two YouTube channels Traveling with Kristin and youtube.com/digitalnomad. So we will see you guys again next week. And Ciao for now, I'm in Florida. And Dave,  

Dave:    01:05:58    Thanks Kristin. We love binge watching your show by the way. So it's, uh, I highly recommend Kristin's show. It's an amazing show, especially for new nomads, looking for cool places to go. So thanks so much for everything you do. It's amazing.  

Kristin:    01:06:10    Thank you. Love to hear that. And I can't wait to test out the housing in Lisbon. I will see you soon. You're gonna have to kick me off the couch. Alright.  

Dave:    01:06:17    No couches, only beds. <laugh>.  

Kristin:    01:06:20    Okay,  

Dave:    01:06:20    <laugh>.  

Kristin:    01:06:21    Bye guys.  

Dave:    01:06:22    Alright, take care. Bye-Bye.  

Kristin:    01:06:28    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 Nomads 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.