What is a Digital Nomad?

Kristin:    00:00:10    Hi everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Badass Digital Nomads. So on this show, we interview and speak with digital nomads from all around the world about how they transitioned from a conventional lifestyle where they had a nine to five job, or they commuted to a physical workplace, to a life of location independence, where they can live and work and do anything they want on a daily basis. But there are a lot of stereotypes and misconceptions and confusion about what being a digital nomad is. So in this episode, we're just gonna clear that up so that you know what it is and how you can be one, and you can see how flexible this type of lifestyle is and how accessible it is to so many people. Almost everybody <laugh>. So the first thing, we'll, we can just address that there is a little bit of animosity around the term digital nomad, um, because it has had this kind of stereotypical image of a 20 something year old tech worker who is a male usually and backpacking around the world, working from his laptop on the beach.  

Kristin:    00:01:37    Some of the long-term digital nomads have not wanted to be associated with the word digital nomad, but the term digital nomad was actually invented in 1997, um, by two well, male tech workers, to be honest, who <laugh> wrote a book called Digital Nomad. So it's just a word that describes anybody who can use digital tools to support themselves and make a living. So that's the digital part. And then the nomadic part just means that they are location independent, they can work without regard to any physical location. So a lot of people assume that digital nomads have to be traveling full-time or have to be perpetual vagabonds, but that's not necessarily true either. So we're gonna talk about some of the myths of being a digital nomad and what are the different types of digital nomads to see if you could be one, and if so, which one would you like to be?  

Kristin:    00:02:47    So the beauty of the remote work, digital nomad movement is that you can make it whatever you want. We are in uncharted territory. This is an unprecedented time in history, a very valuable opportunity to live the life that you want. And no one can tell you what to do. No one can tell you what's possible. No one can tell you what's acceptable. If they do, you have the option to reject their opinion because most people just don't know what the potential is. And if anyone's saying that you can't do it or that it's unrealistic, it's simply because they aren't doing it or they don't understand it, because it is very accessible and it's very possible for many people to have more flexibility in their daily lives. So let's talk about that. First of all, there's a few different types of digital nomads. I think that they can be kind of split up into four different categories, but there's a lot of crossover in between the categories because being a digital nomad is just being who you want to be in the world without having to identify with your job title, your career, or what you're doing between the hours of 9:00 AM and 5:00 PM.  

Kristin:    00:04:13    So just for the purposes of defining digital nomads, we'll go through some of the, the definitions and categories, but just know that you can combine as many as you want. You can have as many careers and skills as you want, and you can have as many revenue streams as you want. So the world is your oyster. The the first category of digital nomads is a remote employee. So this is just a regular employee, but instead of commuting to work, they do their jobs from home. So you can be a part-time remote employee, a full-time employee. You can work from home one day a week. You can work from home a hundred percent of the time, you can work while traveling. You can work for a brick and mortar company that allows for flexible work, or you can work for an organization that is fully distributed, that doesn't have a headquarters, and that has a full staff of remote employees.  

Kristin:    00:05:14    So it's really anything in between. And there are no barriers or limits to how often you can work remotely. So you would still get your salary, you would still get your benefits, you would still get your perks of being an employee. The only difference is you don't have to go anywhere to do your job. And so this can be a job that is specifically remote, or you could be working in an office and just ask your boss or your superior if you can work remotely. So a lot of jobs, you just go to the office and you sit there at a computer. You don't necessarily have to travel somewhere to sit at a computer because you have one at home. So that's the only difference between a remote employee and a location dependent employee who's working in a physical workplace. Then we have freelancers. Freelancers are just self-employed.  

Kristin:    00:06:10    People who offer services or on a, on an hourly basis, on a project basis, on a day rate basis or any other method that they think up. They can have, uh, customers through their personal network. They can find customers online. They can find customers through freelancing platforms. Um, anyone can be a freelancer. You just have to decide, I would like to offer my skills of one-on-one to somebody or some company. And then you start doing it. So there's no degree or certification or anything that you need. You just have to know how to do a thing and charge people for it. Boom, you're a freelancer. And whether you are, let's say you're a plumber and you're going to somebody's house to fix their sink, you could be a freelancer or you could teach them how to fix their sink through a YouTube video or through a Skype video call.  

Kristin:    00:07:06    And then you could be a digital nomad freelancer. That's really the only difference. A little bit more complex is an online business owner. And I'm gonna just put everybody in one group because again, it really doesn't matter. I think we need to get away from labels when we're talking about digital nomads. People get way too hyper about labeling different types of entrepreneurs. Like, are you a real entrepreneur if you don't have this many employees or whatever? No, it, it really doesn't matter. Even freelancers or online business owners, if they're just working for themselves technically, I mean, you can have an online business that way. It doesn't matter if you have like a giant startup or something. So online business owners can be solopreneurs. Um, entrepreneurs with bigger companies, startup founders, and really anyone who runs a virtual business of any size. Um, you could even be an online business owner if you are an influencer or you have monetized a personal brand.  

Kristin:    00:08:09    Uh, yeah, it just, if you have a business that uses the internet, then boom, online business owner and beyond that, so a lot of freelancers, well, remote employees, freelancers, and some online business owners, specifically consultants, coaches, people like that are exchanging their time for money, which is the traditional way of earning a living. However, taking it to the next level, we have our passive income entrepreneurs and investors who are changing the game because they are making money based on what their output is, how creative there are, and how many diversified revenue streams they have. So they're making money no matter what. This is like a set it and forget it type of model where you, uh, create a business that is automated in some way so that you are making sales or you're making money or you're making a return on investment even when you're not working.  

Kristin:    00:09:13    So while you're asleep or while you're on vacation or something like that. Um, affiliate marketing is one way of doing this. Having any sort of a e-commerce, storefront drop shipping, Shopify, uh, Amazon, FBA, and then also investors who are investing in real estate, uh, venture capitalists, uh, who are buying equity in companies. Anyone who is creating something or doing something to get a return that is exponentially greater than the input that they did to get it. So this is the epitome of working smarter rather than harder. You can be a housekeeper at a hotel working for a minimum wage or lower, you can bust your ass working 80 hours a week and your income is capped. On the contrary, if you're a passive income online business owner, you can make, uh, a huge amount of money in one hour depending on how many different, uh, revenue streams you have going on and what your business model is.  

Kristin:    00:10:26    So you could spend a lot of time setting up a business, maybe a few months or even a year for a payoff that keeps going even after you stop working on it. So those are basically the different types of digital nomads. So what are, what are the myths and misconceptions about being a digital nomad? I think, I think the first one is that you have to travel to be a digital nomad. I have lived abroad and traveled for many years of my life, but sometimes I have a home base and during the months or years that I'm living in one place and I'm not traveling full time, am I still a digital nomad? Sure. I mean, again, it's just a label. You can identify as one or not. But if you are working online in some way, and you don't have to be anywhere specific to do your job, then you basically are a digital nomad, whether you're at home or whether you are in an airplane or anywhere.  

Kristin:    00:11:30    It's really the, the essence, the spirit of being a digital nomad. Another myth is that you have to quit your job to be able to be a digital nomad. This could not be farther from the truth. Truth. In fact, I recommend to all of my clients that they double down on what they currently do and what their area of expertise is. To be a digital nomad, you don't have to have sort of a technical set of skills. Whatever you're already good at doing, whatever people already pay you for, chances are very good that those skills are transferable in a location independent manner. So you don't have to quit your job necessarily. You don't have to abandon your career to date. You can transition that into a remote lifestyle. So that's good news. Another myth is that, as I was talking about earlier, but you have to be some kind of passive income entrepreneur to be a digital nomad.  

Kristin:    00:12:36    And that the point of being a digital nomad is that you can stop working altogether. Um, this is like the four hour work week concept that Tim Ferris put out in 2007. So it's obviously, there's a saying like, money doesn't solve all your problems, money doesn't buy happiness, but it solves your money problems, right? So of course, having passive income is great, but looking at the concept of being a digital nomad is something where you can just retire early and stop working is not necessarily the end goal. It's great to have financial independence and not have to work, but I think that the only way humans can find fulfillment in life is if they are working or creating something or using their skills, their talents, their brain in some kind of way. So becoming a digital nomad doesn't mean just retire and waste away <laugh> the rest of your life and live off interest or passive income.  

Kristin:    00:13:43    It, it means that you just have a choice on how you spend your day. Another myth that we talked about at the beginning is that you have to work in technology. Um, there are so many different types of digital nomad jobs that you can have, whether you are fully employed by a company or you're working for yourself that don't involve technology. Everybody <laugh>, everybody who knows me knows that I am not good at technology, admittedly, I mean, I know how to use the basics and that's all that I've ever needed. I even suck at WordPress. Like I can't program. I'm not an engineer. I'm really bad at math. I am, I'm not a computer programmer. Like I know nothing about technology. I'm really bad at graphic design. But these days, all of the smart programmers have created tools for us to use without knowing anything about technology.  

Kristin:    00:14:38    So you can literally drag and drop a website or create infographics with templates and everything has kind of been simplified for normal people like you and I. So you don't have to work in technology. There's plenty of non-tech jobs out there. Another myth is that digital nomads are like a new concept. I mean, the concept of being a digital nomad with the technology that we have today in reality does make it unprecedented. But people have been working from home for centuries thousands of years. I mean, we've only been working in offices since the Industrial Revolution, since factories, people either were small business owners working for themselves, maybe back in the medieval times they were like making, um, swords or whatever. They were welders. Everybody had, uh, different jobs. You had like Baker, like everybody had their, um, position in the village or in the tribe or what have you.  

Kristin:    00:15:47    But we've always been working from home and we've always been nobody around. I mean, humans are inherently nomadic. We've lived in tribes ever since the beginning of humanity. If you lived alone in the world, you would just die because you needed the community to survive. And so we've always loved travel. We've always moved around. It's only since the industrial era that we started settling down and commuting to a central place of work. And in my opinion, I've written about this a lot, I think that the industrial era is just going to be like a blip on the radar when it comes to humanity at large. It was just a temporary, almost a step backwards before we could go forwards again. So this nomadic lifestyle, it's wired in tiered DNA, it's totally normal, and we just now have affordable advanced technology and the ability to travel and the freedom to travel much, much more than we did when we were surfs working for a king.  

Kristin:    00:16:56    You know? So it's not a new thing, but it is. Another myth is that, uh, it's expensive to travel. So all digital nomads just have to live on a shoestring budget and backpack around, and that's not true at all either. So it's expensive to travel when you're consuming travel as a, like a limited commodity. But when you're living the lifestyle of a digital nomad who's traveling a lot, or who's an expat living in a foreign country, your cost of living averages out to be whatever the cost of living is for almost the locals who are living in those areas. So it depends on how long you're in one specific place for, but the only thing that drives up the cost of travel is consuming it in short-term term quantities. So when you don't have those restrictions and you don't have to travel on peak holidays or peak dates or high season, um, during those peak times of year, then travel's not that expensive.  

Kristin:    00:18:05    And there's plenty of digital nomads that are, that are living on less than a thousand dollars a month, and there's others that are making six and seven figures per month. So it's everything in between. The cool thing about this digital nomad cloud nation, as I call it, or cloud country, is that it's representative of the population because it's people from all industries, all backgrounds, all income levels and all skill sets. Another myth is that you have to like blog about being a digital nomad. And I think that's a little bit weird, but it's probably just because people like Tim Ferris made a name for themselves by virtue of being digital nomads or using the internet to work online and have, have freedom in their lives because it was kind of controversial and new, um, at the time. So the first public digital nomads were able to monetize their brand and their presence of being digital nomads because people were interested in it.  

Kristin:    00:19:17    And people still are, but there's just a lot more people doing it now. So if you have 20 or 50 or a hundred people online talking about being digital nomads, it's a lot different than if you have a hundred thousand people online talking about digital nomads. It's not a novel lifestyle when like a hundred million people are doing it and talking about it, like there's still gonna be some people who stand out. But you don't have to write about being a digital nomad or share about being a digital nomad in order to be one. You can just be one in your private life. And then another myth is that you have to go to certain tropical digital nomad destinations in order to be a digital nomad. Um, a lot of us didn't know what digital nomads were when we started. So there are these digital nomad hubs like, uh, in the Canary Islands or Lisbon or Bali or Thailand, where there's a lot of digital nomads, but you don't actually have to go to those places.  

Kristin:    00:20:24    Um, you can live anywhere and be a digital nomad. You can live at home, you can travel, you can never meet another digital nomad in real life <laugh>. It doesn't have any bearing on your personal ability to be a digital nomad. It's just if you wanna partake in that digital nomad community. And so speaking of community, another myth is that it's hard to meet people or it's hard to make friends, um, or that it's lonely being a digital nomad. And I found it to be quite the opposite. I think I have a lot more friends than if I would have remained in a traditional lifestyle living in central Florida where I went to college. Um, your friend, your friendships can go really deep, really fast. They could also be fleeting. Uh, it just depends. <laugh>, it depends on what your actual lifestyle is. But in general, you are much more likely to expand your personal and professional network as a digital nomad if you make that attempt to do so.  

Kristin:    00:21:32    Versus if you stay at home and you're in your daily routine, which includes the office, Starbucks, the gym, and your bed <laugh> with Netflix. So people are less likely to go out of their social circles and comfort zones when they're in their daily routines at home versus when they are out and about on the road or out trying to meet other, um, travelers. And then another myth is that, um, that you have to be a digital nomad forever. Like, it's like when you, when you make the, the decision that you wanna work remotely, that it's like you can't go back. So a lot of people don't want to go back. Like 90% of people say that they never wanna go back to an office once they experience working remotely and working from home. But you totally can if you want. And, um, so you can travel as much as you want, as long as you want, and then you can stop any time.  

Kristin:    00:22:31    You can settle down at any time. You basically are in control. So you don't have to do it forever, but you can sustain it forever if you, if you so choose, if you want to. I've been working remotely or for myself, um, for in some way, shape or form since like 2005. So, so far so good. But another myth is that being a digital nomad is always fun, and that is is like the solution to all of your problems in life, <laugh>. But I think that's impossible. Somehow becoming a digital nomad has, has been held to this astronomically high standard that it must solve the world's problems, or it must be the solution to life that's completely perfect and flawless. And that's not true at all. The only thing about being a digital nomad is that you're trading one set of problems for another, but the digital nomad set of problems is attractive compared to the alternatives.  

Kristin:    00:23:38    So it's really a set of first world problems. I mean, you get to travel, you have full autonomy over your life, you have much more control over your income. You have a very realistic chance at financial freedom and independence. You get to meet a lot of people. I mean, it's great, but of course, like anything, it has its downsides. Um, instead of commuting to work and being exhausted, you can work too much. You can work not enough. You can have a hard time feeling motivated and productive. Sometimes you can feel lonely, sometimes you can feel ungrounded. Sometimes you can feel confused sometimes. But these are all emotions that people experience no matter what, no matter what your life is, everybody can relate to the common set of emotions and, um, mental health challenges and all sorts of things that have affected people since there were human beings on the planet.  

Kristin:    00:24:42    It's just when you work from home, when you travel, when you have a different lifestyle, you can still experience similar problems as when you worked in a office. Like, it doesn't, it doesn't like preclude you from having issues in life, but it's, it's still beneficial. Like I would much rather have the stresses that I have as an online business owner versus the stress of waking up at four 30 in the morning so I can go to the gym and then sit in rush hour traffic or take the metro twice a day or whatever. So it's good, it's great. It's not perfect, but it is what you make it. And we're kind of giving ourselves permission to have this lifestyle. This isn't something that we were taught in school or that our parents told us we could do, or our teachers or the government. It's something that we're figuring out that we can do and we're making it what we want.  

Kristin:    00:25:43    So you have to just be an adult and when something's not working for you, try to figure out why not and make changes. And you know, the journey is the destination. It's all part of the process. So if you're listening, are you a digital nomad already? Are you thinking about becoming one? Is this the first time you've ever heard about it? Do you hate the term digital nomad <laugh>? And you only label yourself as something different? I mean, let me know in the comments. Let me know in the reviews if you, um, if you enjoyed this episode or any of our episodes of Badass Digital Nomads, then thank you for leaving a five star rating and a review on why this show helps you, why you like it, and how it makes you think. What kind of insights do you get from listening to this show? How are you inspired by the other people's stories who come on and, and, and tell what has happened for them and, and how their life has changed so quickly? So I hope to see you guys next week. We're here every Tuesday on Digital Nomad tv, youtube.com/digitalnomad or wherever you get your podcasts.