How the World Will Look with One Billion Digital Nomads

Kristin:    00:00:00    BP is working to bring more lower carbon energy to the UK like developing offshore wind. And we are keeping oil and gas flowing from the North Sea. It's, and not all, that's how BP is backing Britain. While today we're mostly an oil and gas, we increase the proportion of our global annual investment that went into our lower carbon and other transition businesses from around 3% in 2019 to around 23% in 2023. bp.com/andnotall  

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:   Today's episode is sponsored by me. Did you know you can now shop my favorite remote work tools, video production equipment, and travel accessories directly from your Amazon account? It's true. Just go to TravelingwithKristin.com/amazon to check out all the products I use and love.  

Kristin:    00:01:20    Hey everyone, Kristin here and welcome back to another episode of Badass Digital Nomads where we're just, you know, hanging out over on the cutting edge of technology, remote work and travel. And today I'm hanging out in Vancouver, Canada and it is New Year's Eve. Happy New Year. What better way to celebrate than to talk about the future of work, the future of your life, our lives and everybody who's in the know what's gonna go down in the next year, in the next 10 years, in the next 20 years. Um, something that has been bothering me lately is that remote work has been possible since the 1970s. Guys, teleworking has been a thing since the 1970s and it's 2020 <laugh> and people are finally starting to come on board. But the weird thing is, is that like the mainstream media and traditional companies are trying to understand remote work backwards.  

Kristin:    00:02:31    They have like this outsider perspective because they were there before remote work. So really the only people who understand what's going on these days are the people who are in it themselves. Like you. Like you're learning about it, you listening to podcasts, you're watching videos, you're like traveling, you're out, you're doing stuff. Trying to figure out what is going to enrich your life and what is going to help you gain not only just work-life balance, but work-life fluidity. And how are you gonna manage everything in the, in the new economy? How are you gonna have a life that you love? And traditional companies aren't gonna get you there. The old mainstream media are not gonna get you there. They're just kind of observing what's happening now and then reporting on it. But people who work at remote companies, people who have friends that are working online and traveling, people who own their own online businesses, people who founded, um, distributed companies, people who are freelancing online, like all of the people who are in the different little niches and facets of the gig economy and of this new industrial revolution that we're going through right now.  

Kristin:    00:03:41    We all get it and we're kind of just acting and asking permission later if we ask at all, which we probably don't need to. And so I wanted to go over a few of the things that I see happening that are gonna affect everybody's lives or not, not everybody, but I mean I just know <laugh> after being in this lifestyle for 10 or 15 years, I think about these kinds of things. And I wanna just spread the words so that you guys can be prepared and you can make decisions about what you're gonna do moving forward. Not just where you're going to work and uh, where you're going to live, but also you might wanna make decisions about whether you're buying a house. You might wanna make a decision about what to invest in, like what types of industries are on the up and up and which ones are a dying breed.  

Kristin:    00:04:25    So I wanna cover a few things of what is gonna happen when a billion people are working remotely, not just to those billion people, which hopefully you are one of them, but to everyone else in the world because it's not necessarily causation or correlation. But when the reality comes of a billion people working remotely, that's going to mean that a lot of different things happened in corporate culture and in technology. So since it's the beginning of the year, let's jump into it. Um, if you wanna get more information on what I'm talking about here, then check out my medium page on medium.com/@KristinmWilson, where I've written a few articles about this lately. So yeah, I hope everybody had a great new year. Whatever you did to celebrate and you know, when you're working online, every day is the same <laugh>. So of course I'm reflecting on my goals for the year as well.  

Kristin:    00:05:24    Like everybody else, it's a great time to do that. But yeah, it's also just a regular day. But today is a really cool day because I'm in one of my favorite cities in the world, Vancouver, Canada as I mentioned, and I just had dinner at my favorite sushi restaurant in the world. It has the best sushi roll that I've ever had. It's called the Salmon Oshi Roll. It's basically this restaurant that invented a technique called a brewery where they sear the sushi or the sashimi, the fish <laugh> on top of the sushi with a blow torch in this, um, carbon. It looks like charcoal or something. I don't know, I was watching them make it today. But this role is so good. If you ever have the chance to pass through Vancouver, I've given this recommendation out to people and my Facebook group and on Instagram and um, and on YouTube whenever they say they're traveling here, I'm like, go to Miku.  

Kristin:    00:06:21    That's the restaurant. I'm like, go to Miku, go to Miku because it's just that good. So I had a lovely dinner there and now I'm back at my hotel preparing to go meditate for 10 days, but not before we talk about what's gonna happen this year with technology and remote work and digital nomads. So let's jump into it and also thank you to everybody who's been leaving reviews. I need more reviews guys, so please, if you listen to the podcast, uh, leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts that would've really helped me out. Uh, thanks to J Balls <laugh>, nice name J Balls. He says, lots you can learn here. Kristin is a wealth of insight on how to transition to a location, independent lifestyle and career. Thanks for weighing in there J Balls. Appreciate that. Yeah, and PK says, gives you the confidence to become a digital nomad.  

Kristin:    00:07:17    Kristin's podcast entices me to drop whatever I'm doing and become a digital nomad. She has a knack for telling stories relating to her guests and making connections you wouldn't normally think about. She's different but relatable with a unique point of view. And most importantly, she takes away your uncertainty and makes you feel confident that you can do this. You can jump in and become a digital nomad. Thanks pk. Okay, well let's jump in, shall we? So where's this 1 billion number come from? First of all, um, if you've ever seen like 1 billion digital nomads by 2035, that came from a guy named Peter Levels who is the founder of Nomad List. And he calculated this number just using some widely available statistics and he talked about it in a DNX conference, which is like a digital nomad conference in Lisbon, I think it was in 2014 or something like that.  

Kristin:    00:08:11    And this thing has completely taken on a life of his own. Like I actually tweeted to Levels the other day because I saw somebody cite him but they didn't cite him. They basically credited the Economist, the magazine. They said The economist predicts that there will be 1 billion digital nomads by 2035. And you know what that came from? The economist lifting his research and putting it in some generic video on Twitter. So yeah, anyway, it's getting crazy. I I told him about it and um, they did not contact him. They just basically plagiarized his his information, but this is what he calculated that on. So a billion people basically he based it on data that by 2035 there will be 9 billion people in the world. Half of them will be freelancers and one in three of those people will be a remote worker or a digital nomad.  

Kristin:    00:09:08    And so it's kind of crazy to think that like in the next few years there's already millions and millions of people who say that they're, that they're digital nomads. But like what's happening is that we're gonna reach a critical mass because 99% of the people who work remotely want to always work remotely forever. And then 95% would recommend it to somebody else. So if 99% of people try working remotely and then want to keep doing it and then they recommend it, like 95% of them recommend it to other people, then everyone's gonna be working remotely. Or like a lot of people, you know, a billion people. So soon in the next few years we're gonna have a billion digital nomads with a hundred megabyte or megabit per second internet speed to a hundred gigabits we'll have 6G, forget 5G, we'll have 6G. And the cost of travel is just gonna plummet and flight times are going to possibly double.  

Kristin:    00:10:06    I mean they're gonna be cut in half so they're gonna be twice as fast. So that's where that number comes from. So what does that mean for you? So if you're one of those people, then cool, that's gonna be great. But what does that mean for just the general lifestyle of people on the planet? Because that's what no one's really talking about. Everyone's too busy with Trump and other stuff. We really need to talk about this. But something that I think will happen is that we're gonna see people move away from cities last night or this morning rather at 5:00 AM I flew out of Jacksonville, Jacksonville, Florida. And that's a city that people say is a city of nothing. <laugh> it seems like not have anybody living in the downtown court. It's just a place that people commute to work, they don't really have much housing or condos there.  

Kristin:    00:10:53    And we need to think what's going to happen when no one has to commute to work. There's gonna be this brain drain away from metropolitan areas because research shows that 80% of Americans live in cities but only 12% want to. People wanna live in places that have a lower cost of living and a higher quality of life. And even though cities are cool and they have amenities, that's not where everybody would want to live. So we're seeing like all of these kinds of remote work incentives where people and companies and entrepreneurs and city governments are offering $10,000 remote work incentives to try to attract people to move to their areas. So we used to live in cities and urban areas because that's where the jobs were, but when the jobs are everywhere then you know, who knows Cities might become ghost towns and then what's gonna happen there?  

Kristin:    00:11:49    There's not gonna be as much traffic, which is cool, but the traffic patterns are gonna normalize. Something that I've noticed around the holidays is that there's more people out and about during the day. There's not that rush hour to work and rush hour home. So this is awesome for you, this is amazing for your quality of life. When you think about you would only have to drive places when you wanted to not because you had to commute to work. And so that means you can go to yoga class at 10:00 AM or you can go to your favorite restaurant during off peak hour and not have to wait in line. And there should just be like a regular flow of traffic with less of these crazy rush hour peaks and gridlock because no one's gonna be driving to offices or much fewer people will be driving there.  

Kristin:    00:12:37    So, um, maybe also we won't have as much travel gridlock um, during the holidays because people will be able to go visit their family members whenever they want. I'm just trying to think of when there's a billion people doing this. It's gonna be weird because for so many years there were like maybe thousands of people doing it and now there's probably millions of people doing it. And then a billion people you might not even need a car at all. Another factor of this is what happens to housing when this happens if you don't have to commute to work. And I think that Silicon Valley and San Francisco and New York and all of these super expensive metropolitan areas, I think that the housing prices are going to decrease if not crash at some point because the only reason that they're so high is because of jobs and because of tech hubs.  

Kristin:    00:13:28    So you know, if you didn't have to live near your job, where would you live? Probably not in the most expensive city in the world <laugh>. So look out, you know, Sydney and San Francisco, I don't know, I, I think that long term the markets real estate markets should equalize because there's not going to be these really premium prices on housing to be near these jobs 'cause those jobs are gonna be anywhere. And then on the other, on the flip side of that, uh, one of my friends who was on on the podcast, uh, Samantha Red Oak Gia, she was tweeting What's going to happen to office buildings <laugh> when nobody needs to go in there anymore. And I had just posted something a few days earlier, uh, because I was talking with Sam Marks who's the owner of Coworker and they're launching that Global Pass in January where you can pay like 50 bucks a month and you can work at a thousand different coworking spaces around the world or I think it's 3000 actually something like that.  

Kristin:    00:14:30    And so we were discussing what's gonna happen to all of these office buildings, not just housing prices will crash but maybe the commercial real estate prices will crash. Look at what's happening with malls because of Amazon. We're like before our eyes big box stores are going out of business. Can anybody even comprehend a time that Walmart is gonna go out of business? Like it's actually possible Toys R Us went out of business and lots of clothing brands have closed up and entire commercial centers and malls. Not to say that all of them will, but a lot of them are. A lot of them already have. And even who knows, movie theaters and stuff like that 'cause people can watch Netflix and watch stuff at home. They don't necessarily need to go out to go shopping or to go to the movies. And so maybe these giant, it's already happening actually in middle of America.  

Kristin:    00:15:21    Old malls and big box stores are being turned into mixed use like residential stuff with housing and coworking spaces and kind of this mix of the two. And so instead of even having just WeWork buildings, WeWork's concept I think is outdated because companies aren't going to need to lease as many offices. So what happens when companies own high rises and skyscrapers full of offices that don't have people in them <laugh>. So you know, this is extreme example but it could definitely happen and it's already happening. So this could also affect financial markets as well. But flexible offices are the future and it's growing really quickly in Canada. Flexible workspace increased over 300% um, in the past couple years and we saw what happened with WeWork, obviously their value got cut in half or more. And so yeah, I don't know, I don't, I don't see traditional office leasing being a big thing because when companies grow there's no longer going to be a correlation with butts in seats as it were.  

Kristin:    00:16:30    And there's plenty of companies that are proving you can be like a multi-billion dollar dollar company without having an office. So how are these other companies gonna compete with them when they're paying overhead? There's gonna be this tipping point where all of a sudden everybody's doing it. So I want you guys to be the first ones to know about this stuff and the first ones to be able to make life decisions based around these possibilities. Of course use your judgment and it will depend on like what area you live in and it's not gonna happen overnight. Like it's not gonna be some kind of apocalypse where all of a sudden nobody goes outside and no one you know does this stuff. But we're gonna see this big shift of um, more nomadic people, more traveling, um, emerging countries, India, China, billions, more people traveling around the world.  

Kristin:    00:17:20    We're not even gonna talk about what that's gonna do to carbon emissions, which right now air travel's like two and a half or 3% of all the carbon emissions. So hopefully we're going to have more green travel solutions. But just imagine billions more people going on vacation going to see the Taj Mahal going to see the Eiffel Tower. Like that's gonna be crazy too but everything's just gonna be more transient. Another um, thing to think about of course is what's happening with AI and automation. So it's really important for everyone to think about if their job is going to be affected, how, how they're going to confront that because if you're thinking about it now, then you're gonna have an edge and you're going to expect it if your job ends up getting affected. And so maybe that means having more revenue streams. You know, like I was actually counting how many different revenue streams I have 'cause it's the end of the year I was doing accounting and stuff like that and people are always asking me how do I make money online?  

Kristin:    00:18:19    And I've actually never had a regular job. So I worked in real estate first and then I opened my online business that I've had for eight and a half years and now I am starting to experiment with other types of revenue streams and online businesses and we're kind of shifting from being identified with what our job title is and what our job role is to just being able to make money and not having to have some particular label. So yeah, you could say you're a real estate agent for example, but then it's like what do you call yourself when you make money off of consulting and affiliate marketing and selling T-shirts and selling on Etsy And you know, you're maybe doing Amazon FBA and you have a membership site or like you could have revenue streams from everywhere And some of mine are really small like a few cents <laugh>, some of them are a few dollars, some of them are hundreds of dollars, some of them are thousands of dollars per month.  

Kristin:    00:19:22    So it just depends. And if you're thinking about what can you do as a profit center or a revenue center, how many different types of revenue streams can you create versus just saying I'm gonna have one career and then say in that career, then you'll be surprised at what can happen in a short amount of time. Just to give an example of passive income for example, if you put up the work upfront and then you're getting paid later, like I started writing on Medium before you could make money on medium <laugh> and then all of a sudden you could write articles there and submit them behind the paywall as part of the medium partner program. So all of the articles I wrote, like 50 articles or something I wrote before, I didn't make any money from it but I was learning a new skill. But once they put that program into place, which could be happening on a lot of different websites, people are creating new businesses, new services, new platforms for remote workers to use their skills on.  

Kristin:    00:20:20    One of my articles made 2 cents this month and another one made $800 or something in the last two months. So I want you guys to think about if you don't have a full-time job, think about what skills you can monetize and how you can just make money doing different things without being beholden to one career path and one career identity. So when people ask what do you do for work, you won't be able to answer them. But that will be a good thing <laugh> because that will mean that you're financially independent And there's nothing wrong with having a salary job by the way. I'm perfectly jealous of a lot of my friends sometimes 'cause they just work less hours and they don't have to wonder where their money is coming from. Like my income fluctuates a lot. So there's pros and cons, but if, if you can build up passive income streams to the point to where um, you can cover your living expenses, then that gives you more freedom to experiment with other stuff.  

Kristin:    00:21:20    And in 2020 I'm gonna get more into the details of how you can do this, how you can create online income in these different job roles or how you can monetize your skills in different ways. But let's get back to some of them uh, predictions. So after all of this stuff is happening with traffic and housing and all of these patterns are changing in lifestyle, lifestyles are changing, consumption patterns are also changing. 'cause all of a sudden you don't need to spend money on a car, you don't need to spend money on gas, you don't need to spend money on happy hour, you don't need to spend money going out to lunch. Well maybe you get free lunch at work but you're gonna be able to save your money and use it for other things and for experiences over material stuff. So that is also more fulfilling as well.  

Kristin:    00:22:05    According to research, I think that the power will shift from companies. You know, let's say employers are more powerful than employees and less employees are are organized and unionized. But when we're in this remote economy over the next few years and few decades, I think that the employees and the workforce will have more bargaining power for the first time ever on an individual level as well as a collective level. As a group, we're basically going to be our own remote lobby remote work lobby because we all have some things in common. But then as individuals, if you are a skilled worker and the companies that want to hire you or contract your services require you to be in the office, you can just say no <laugh>. So if enough people are like holding out for remote opportunities, then the companies are going to have to get on board.  

Kristin:    00:23:08    And when people can work for companies in any city, in any country around the world or when companies can hire talent from anywhere in the world, it's a win-win for both. But also the employees are going to have more negotiating power when it comes to salary because they're theoretically going to have more job opportunities because they aren't limited to their geographical area of how far they can commute to work. And then on top of that, you guys have probably seen the crazy incentives and basically payoffs that local governments give to big companies like Amazon for example, these bidding wars where every, I think hundreds, I wanna say like 800, I don't know the exact number, I don't have the data in front of me, but it was some crazy amount of municipal governments in the US bid to be the home of Amazon's headquarters, the new HQ two that they were doing or HQ three.  

Kristin:    00:24:10    And even though those numbers don't make economic sense and it might not even be good for the local economy, it's just politicians paying off corporations so that they can have a good talking point and get reelected because it looks like they created jobs on paper even if it has adverse effects to the economy. But what I think is going to happen is that instead of paying like these huge sums of money to Amazon, little by little that money is going to get redistributed to attracting remote talent to different geographical regions. And so this is a good thing for us, um, because it gives the power back to the employees. So it should organically, individuals should start to like regain more power than just big corporations, at least logically <laugh>, we'll see what happens. But I think that that that should happen because that just doesn't make any economic sense to give billions of dollars in tax incentives to corporations that can no longer hire local jobs or they're no longer hiring local jobs or even opening offices because the jobs are remote or they're contracting them out.  

Kristin:    00:25:24    But more good news is that this is good for the middle class because people who were limited in their earning capabilities because of where they were born or where they lived, like whether you were born in middle America or in Latin America or in Southeast Asia or someplace where the minimum wage is really low with remote work, you can just increase your income. So I came up with some examples in the Philippines for example, when I went there and talked to the local workers that were working for a tech company. So I was there with one of my friends and we were talking to her coworkers and these people commuted four hours one way to get to work and then four hours back and they were probably making $200 a month maybe and they would just never see their kids. And their quality of life was horrible because they had to commute from the far outskirts to the city of Manila and the traffic and the gridlock was horrible.  

Kristin:    00:26:29    Now those people can make 500 or a thousand dollars a month as virtual assistants or more depending on what they're working in and how much they hustle. And if they're offering freelancing services or starting starting their own online businesses and they don't have to commute at all. So they're getting eight hours back. <laugh> an eight hour commute. Imagine that, imagine if your commute was the same length as your workday. That's crazy. But that's what a lot of people do. So this could happen anywhere in any country around the world. And you know, women, when I lived in Nicaragua, I lived in this area where people had never been more than half a mile radius away from their house. And so they were limited in their education and their work opportunities and now they, you know, they're all gonna have 5G on their phones and they all have access to the internet and people have online banks now there's a new online bank called Newbank in Brazil for example, and there's online banks all over the world.  

Kristin:    00:27:28    So people have access to money, they have Bitcoin, they have, they have skills that can be monetized online. So you, you know, you could sell jewelry online or sell your services online, create a business model, whatever it is. And so I think that that should lift up a lot of people out of poverty and uh, help the middle class grow unless we start to cannibalize ourselves where the individual remote workers and online business owners start to become the mega corporations or at least act in a predatory way where they are where we're kind of like cannibalizing ourselves. So hopefully that doesn't happen and we can have a better wealth distribution but time will tell. And then another thing that I've been writing about lately is college. Like what could the value of college be? And it's funny because I published three articles about should you go to college or become a digital nomad or how to choose a major and just talking about how traditional universities are gonna be losing value.  

Kristin:    00:28:34    And then today on Instagram I saw a clip from Gary V and he was telling some kid the same thing where this guy was saying he wanted to go to film school because he wanted to network and make connections so that he could get a good job in film but he wanted to make music videos and Gary V is like, why don't you just DM 500 musicians, <laugh> and artists on on Instagram and see what happens? And there you go. That's how you create your network. And he is totally right because I now make videos and I follow a filmer, a meme account on Instagram and they're all joking about what a waste of time going to film school was because they didn't make any good connections and they have like these funny memes about it. Now I didn't go to film school so I don't know.  

Kristin:    00:29:23    And I do have friends who went to film school who got really good jobs with like vice news and stuff like that. So there is definitely a time and place for university. But I think the cost of university should go down because they're gonna have to just compete with online education and just pure human initiative to learn on their own accord and to go out and to create their own networks as teenagers. I mean I know film, I've collabed with filmmakers that are teenagers and they are so incredibly talented and they have no higher education and no special training they just learned by doing. And so that's really leveling the playing field for everybody. What else is gonna happen? This is gonna result in some weird stuff financially because you know, where does everybody live? Where is their tax base? Where is their bank account?  

Kristin:    00:30:17    People are just gonna be scattered around the world like we already are and there's questions over like where you can work legally and work visas and where you should pay taxes and yeah it's just very confusing but there's no specific, there are laws for it and there are regulations but there's also a lot of gray areas and undefined, I guess there's like a lack of resolution over how to handle remote workers. There's hasn't been enough public debate and discussion around it. And so a lot of countries don't have any specific laws to deal with it. And so there's establishing precedent in some cases depending on if it's like civil law or common law. But what I think is going to happen at some point is that we're going to have some type of global citizenship. I think that's the only thing that, well, not the only thing that makes sense, but I think having like a digital nation makes sense and if there's a billion people or more who are working remotely and they might be in one spot but their bank account is somewhere else and they're paying taxes somewhere else or they're not paying taxes at all.  

Kristin:    00:31:37    And in some cases once enough people are doing that, then I think that different countries will react and they will want to kind of capture that lost tax revenue. So we'll see how that all works out. But that's something to keep in mind. I just came into Canada today, like I got a new passport in April and I've been traveling, I've been to like 10 countries since then. I have one passport stamp because everyone's using e passports now. Like we basically don't even really need a passport 'cause everything's electronic. So I think that the technology's there and at some point we're gonna have some kind of global passport. And then finally something else that levels was talking about is that the marriage rate could drop to 40% home ownership rates could drop. And we're also seeing population decline in a lot of developed countries like Japan for example, Scandinavia I think in Germany.  

Kristin:    00:32:46    And so with this remote situation and technology and all of the other factors that are causing birth rates and marriage rates to go down in the developed world, I think we'll just see more of that. But I don't know if anybody has figured out what to do about that or what the, what the solution is besides, you know, immigration is something that is supplementing the, you know, population growth and, and job growth in certain areas. But everybody who's followed any of my content knows that working from home can cause loneliness. And none of us have figured out dating yet, at least in my social circle. And people like Peter levels of Nomad List has now created a dating app on his website, but I think it's gonna be harder to date. We've already got marriage rates and birth rates on the decline and if people are more isolated working from home or if they're traveling without a home base or if they're living in rural areas because they're trying to save money and good on them for doing that.  

Kristin:    00:33:54    I had a guy comment that he was living in a remote part of Columbia and he had cut his income by 70 or cut his living expenses by like 75% or something like that. But when everybody's, um, distributed and doing, doing stuff like that, it can make it harder to meet people. So you have to make sure to balance that remote isolation with human contact and connection. But we'll see how that pans out too. So basically how do you, what do you do <laugh>? What do you do when you know all of these things? And these are just hunches, but you know, it's based in, in some of the data that's coming out, um, there's like 60 million people considering becoming digital nomads in the US according to a study by, um, a company called MBO Partners. So 60 million and then Zapier did a study that says that 66% of workers think that the office will become obsolete in the next decade.  

Kristin:    00:34:53    So with these, with these numbers, flex jobs says 75% of businesses are going to offer flexible work in the next eight years and then 99% of people who try remote working want to keep working remotely. And so all of these indicators are pointing towards what the heck is going to happen <laugh> to life as we know it when so many more people are working remotely. So what I think you can do is own your power and know that kind of the writing is on the wall. So if you are not happy in your life, if your work situation isn't good, if you don't like where you're living, if you're not making enough money, if you're in debt, if your cost of living is too high, like whatever it is that is a a problem for you going into 2020 is to start looking at things through this lens of it can happen for you, you can change your situation because this is going to be a big cultural shift as well as just a technological shift.  

Kristin:    00:35:57    And you don't wanna be the person who's, wait a second, I knew about this, I wanted to do this and I didn't. And a few years go by and then like a billion other people are doing it, you know? So if you're already, if you've already had this seed planted and you, you wanna have this lifestyle but you don't yet, then start planning on doing it and shift your mindset to know that it's realistic, it's already realistic for millions of people and it's gonna be a reality for many, millions more. And so start working on your skills, whatever it is that you wanna do. Like me, you wanna, you wanna make videos without going to film school, like just start making videos. Um, you wanna learn how to code, do that. Whatever it is that you wanna do, just start doing it because you'll learn, you'll get there.  

Kristin:    00:36:46    Everything around us, whether it's a skyscraper that's being constructed or a forest growing back after a fire or a person growing up, like everything in life just takes a long time, but things are moving faster than ever. And we have this ability to kind of shortcut nature at the moment because we have access to more information than we've ever had. So go for what you want in 2020, improve your skills, start testing things out, start doing things that you've never done before, and know that the opportunity is better than it's ever been to do that. And in your job set your terms and if you can't get the terms that you want, then find another option because there's plenty of remote job sites. Justin Mitchell, the founder of Yak, I just saw his tweet the other day. Yak is yelling across cubicles. We had them on the podcast and he was tweeting like a list of all the places to find remote jobs.  

Kristin:    00:37:47    I now have a free remote work guide that you can download on my website on Traveling with Kristin to get a remote job in 2020. There's jobs out there and there are skills gaps. So if you're not qualified for the job that you want, then try to close that gap because chances are there's a free or very low cost option online to learn the skills that you need or just trying it out in real time. Like me offer to work for free to learn something the way we used to do it, back in the good old days, people used to apprentice when they wanted to learn a skill and, and just tonight when I was eating dinner, I realized how specialized each of the people at the sushi restaurant were and their skillset. And I remember hearing from somebody who was friends with the owner that each person would work for years at their specific skill.  

Kristin:    00:38:47    So they had, you know, the guy who's searing the salmon or the, the tuna or whatever on the sushi, he does that all day <laugh> and he's amazing at it and he is the only one there in the kitchen who's doing that specific task. So it takes time to become good at something, but we're at a time now where we can speed up that process. So that's what I have for you guys. I know that I talk about remote work as if it's the best thing since sliced bread, <laugh> a lot and it does have its pros and cons, but I just know how long that I kind of stayed quiet about it and was unsure if other people were gonna be doing it because at the time that we didn't have ways to define what was happening, I didn't know what a digital nomad was, nobody was talking about it.  

Kristin:    00:39:37    And so now that like we have the context for it and we have a community, it's like full speed ahead. So I just want you guys to know that you can do it and to be patient with yourselves, you know, don't put a lot of pressure, but make 2020 your year. Like we're in 2020 guys, this is the future. This is like the Jetsons. So looking back at my New Year's resolutions for the last few years, I've seen some stuff that's been on there for a really long time and it's okay if you're making slow progress, but pick one thing and go for it this year and see what happens. And this time next year your life could look totally different. And if you are already in, in the remote world, 'cause I know a lot of people who listen to the podcast are already digital nomads or they're, they already own remote companies or they're working in remote companies and like keep doing you guys because you're inspiring a lot of people and you're hiring a lot of people and we're all helping to create our own reality together.  

Kristin:    00:40:47    And that is a really cool thing. You know, instead of having to commute to a factory and like get getting paid minimum wage, we're able to create our own jobs and our own industry and our own services and, and our own lifestyle, our own community around the world. So it's really cool and the more the merrier, as long as we don't kill the earth with uh, climate change <laugh>. So let me know if you guys will be offsetting your travel this year. It's something I've never done, but after doing all of this research on remote work and the environment and the future of travel, I've realized how important it really is. So on the one hand we don't commute, so we don't pollute as much from that respect, but when we travel we do. So we gotta be, gotta be fair and gotta own up to that as well.  

Kristin:    00:41:39    So those are the main ways that I think the world is going to change and life is gonna change when we work remotely. What do you guys think? I'm sure this is not a comprehensive list, this is just the stuff that I observe on a day-to-day basis. So let me know, do you think there's gonna be more digital nomad visa programs? Do you think salaries will go up, go down, there's just gonna be like a few billionaires. Um, is it gonna be, is the world gonna be overcrowded with digital nomads? What do you think is gonna happen? Alright guys, well thanks for tuning in and we will see you next time on another episode of Badass Digital Nomads. Make sure to leave a review.  

Kristin:    00:42:23    Thanks so much for listening to help support this podcast and help it grow. Please leave a review in the Apple podcast store and send this or your favorite episode to a friend for weekly travel videos, live streams, and even more interviews. Make sure to subscribe to my YouTube channels at youtube.com/digitalnomad and Traveling with Kristin. See you soon.  

Kristin:    00:43:13    BP is working to bring more lower carbon energy to the UK, like designing two hydrogen plants and we are keeping oil and gas flowing from the North Sea. It's, and not all, that's how BP is backing Britain. While today we're mostly in oil and gas, we increased the proportion of our global annual investment that went into our lower carbon and other transition businesses from around 3% in 2019 to around 23% in 2023. bp.com/andnotall.