#135: Global Natives, Nomad Passport, Subscription Living and Plumia Country with Lauren Razavi
48:22 Share

Kia ora, ni hao and hello. Welcome to the Chewy Journal podcast. I'm your host, Camille Liang. My guest today is Lauren Razavi. Lauren is a writer, speaker and strategist working at the intersection of technology, business, policy and human behavior. She is the author of the book Global Natives and writes a counter-flows newsletter about borderless living.

Lauren was an early adopter of remote work and has lived as a digital nomad since 2013. Currently, Lauren is the executive director of Plumiere on the mission to build an internet country for digital nomads. In today's episode, we covered some key concepts from Lauren's new book and her proud project Plumiere. I hope you enjoy the show.

Welcome to the show, Lauren. Thank you so much for having me. It's awesome to be here. And congratulations for your new book, Global Natives. I've read through and I've got so many questions. First of all, I'd like to start with your digital nomad experience, because I know you were being a very early adopter for the digital nomad. So would you mind sharing how did it start and

and what's your learnings from this whole journey? Of course. So I became a nomad in 2013, and it was just when I'd finished my undergrad degree. So I'd finished my BA. I was working at the time as a travel writer, and I started grad school. I was doing a master's in creative writing. And I kind of realized the university course only required me to be in the UK where I was studying for like,

eight or nine week. So I began to travel around during during kind of the university breaks and also sometimes at the weekend and just kind of gradually started to adopt this sort of digital nomad lifestyle.

But actually, back in 2013, I had no idea that's what you call it. Like, I'd never heard of Digital Nomad before. So it was a couple of years later in 2015 when I went out to Bali, to Ubud, to report a story for The Guardian.

that I learned this word, or these words, digital nomad, and sort of realized that that's what I was doing. I think it's interesting to look a little further back, actually, than when I started as a nomad, because I come from a very international family. So my father is a refugee from Iran to the UK.

He's also the youngest of eight children, and they all also left Iran. So when I was growing up, I was kind of part of this diaspora from Iran, these kind of little pockets of Iranian culture in these different cities around the world. And so when I was growing up, it was very natural to be traveling to different places and also to have really strong relationships with people who you don't see so often. So I have a lot of cousins.

and it would go maybe one year or two years before we would meet up. But then when we did, we still had this amazing history to our relationships and we were able to pick back up where we left off. And so when I think about the decisions that I made when I was in my early 20s, when I just finished university, I think it was super natural. It was very natural for me to think about the world, the whole world as my home, not just one place.

And to kind of follow this trend of my early life, if you like, of kind of moving around the world and having these cross-border relationships. So by the time I learned what it was to be a digital nomad, I felt very much like that was my identity already. It was just discovering the language to kind of understand that there were other people doing this and seeing the world in this way. I quite resonate with your experience because I...

grow up in a family also had so many relatives from all over the world. So I kind of learned the different cultures since a very young age and then move around myself. So who coined the term of digital nomad? How does this term become so popular now? So the term digital nomad first came about in an academic textbook

textbook in 1997. So it was a Japanese electronics pioneer, somebody very, very involved with microprocessors.

Tsugio Makimoto is his name. And he released this book called Digital Nomad that sort of set out the arguments that technology was taking us to a place where people would be able to remote work and therefore they'd be able to live in different places around the world. That's kind of where the term came

came from originally, but I find it very interesting to look at, and I look at it in the book, to sort of look at the development from there. Because when Makamoto was writing in 1997, he anticipated that nomads would become a reality within 10 years. And he was off on the timing, even though he was off on, he was correct on the trend. About another 10 years later,

for the culture to kind of get going and for more people to start doing this. One of the most influential books that kind of came next after Digital Nomads was The Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. Yeah, I've met so many nomads around the world who have read this book and it played a role in their kind of decision making and imagining a different life for themselves.

But I think it was really Tim Ferriss who moved digital nomads from quite an academic idea or a kind of fringe idea among futurists and technologists, and then kind of moved it into the mainstream where everyday people, particularly, I think, after the last financial crisis, young people looking at the job prospects in a lot of major cities, sort of followed the Tim Ferriss philosophy of just kind of taking off and trying out life somewhere else.

And then after that, we have this kind of period that I guess you and me are part of, which is the kind of early nomad movement of the 2010s when things were really getting going. But I think a lot of us kind of...

I guess 10 years after the release of the four-hour work week, I think a lot of us sort of took some lessons from that, but also kind of built on the ideas ourselves. So I mentioned Peter Levels in the book, who I believe has been on this podcast. He was an early pioneer in kind of shaping the nomad movement that we have today because he kind of injected maker values.

into the kind of nomad scene. And he was very heavily covered in about 2015 to 2017 in a lot of media publications, including a profile in Wired. And so this kind of more maker approach to being a digital nomad, I think is the first bit that took off a bit more in the mainstream.

And now we're at a place where post-COVID remote work is mainstream and so many more people are able to think about whether they want to pursue the nomad lifestyle. Yeah, I see Peter Levels predicted there will be a billion of digital nomads by 2035.

Before I was like, oh, really? That number sounds insane. But after COVID, I can see this trend definitely become the mainstream. So what would that mean for individuals who want to adapt to this new trend? Because, you know, still a lot of people, they are still

stay in their comfort zone, not sure about how can they adapt mentally or physically for the remote working or digital nomad lifestyle. What's your advice? I think the

think the way that I see it is remote work is kind of the gateway drug for digital nomadism. I think that now that more people have that freedom and flexibility to work remotely, they begin to kind of think through the different options that they have and be able to kind of design the life that is most meaningful to them. I think

The process and the kind of speed of that is very different for different people. So some people were a remote worker on day one and one week later, they were like, okay, I'm ready to become a digital nomad now. Like I want to do this. Other people, I think there's a level of kind of settling and getting used to being a remote worker before you feel like you have the confidence and kind of understand how to work in that way enough.

to then add travel into the mix.

So I think we're going to see more people become nomads. And if there are people listening who are thinking about it, I guess my personal advice would be to get on a plane, to sort of try a trip. A lot of people I know began their kind of nomad journey by going and spending one month with some friends or family overseas. And I think this is nice because it's kind of a soft landing. You know, you already have a bit of a social network. You have somebody to kind of show you around and,

And I think for most people, if you go and do that, you spend a month somewhere remote working and sort of living as a nomad. It gives you your answer about whether this is something you want to explore more or whether this is something that maybe you only want to do once a year as like a special occasion away from your home base.

But I do think we are going to see more nomads. And we're also going to see, I think, more of a movement around the ideas of nomadism. And I'm sure our conversation will kind of touch on this a little bit. But one of the things that really shocked me in researching my book

was to discover that a person's right to mobility, to be able to move around the world freely, is completely within national boundaries still. So if you are in a part of the world and there is a climate disaster kind of happening in your area,

you would only be allowed to kind of move within the borders of the country that you're already in, which I think in the age of the internet and remote work makes no sense whatsoever. We need to be thinking about global mobility and free movement on a global level.

instead of kind of restricting based on this very old fashioned idea, in my view, of the nation state, because everything has become very globalized. You know, we have knowledge, trade, communications, all of this has become globalized. You know, I can do everything on my smartphone for my banking, shopping. But somehow the really important systems that are designed to protect us as humans to kind of protect our human

Just haven't been upgraded in a really long time. Yeah, exactly. I was born and raised in China and with a Chinese passport, there's a lot of limitations for me to move anywhere I want. So when I moved to New Zealand, it took me at least five years to be able to get the New Zealand citizenship, which empowered me to move to the UK and now travel around Europe.

So yeah, it is a long journey and I always question about that. And I know you have been involved with a lot of policy making decision on global mobility. Would you mind walk me through the journey, like how you got involved and why?

What's your work look like? Sure. So I guess on the policymaking side in particular, over a 10 year freelance career, I did lots of different things, including some work for governments. And when the pandemic hit, I had just left a tech job to spend a year writing a book.

I didn't quite expect to be doing it under lockdown during a pandemic, but there we are. But essentially, I was already writing a book about remote work and digital nomads, Global Natives, which is out now. During that time, I kind of got in touch with the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change and was asked to become a tech policy fellow there.

And I launched this policy project kind of advising governments on how they should think about remote work and digital nomads in terms of what it means for the future of citizenship. This sort of idea that

If you take the ideas of nomadism to their conclusion, you realize that people are looking at countries and kind of looking at the world in a very competing way. So, you know, you and I are looking at countries and we're going, OK, UK or New Zealand or Portugal or Netherlands, like where is good for me? And so I launched this policy project that was very related to the ideas of the book.

But I guess more geared towards what governments should actually be doing to try and handle this new change, this new kind of area of remote work and digital nomads.

And somewhere in the process of being a tech policy fellow there and writing the book, I also started working on a project called Plumia. This is a project to build an internet country for digital nomads. And I started to host a speaker series where I was interviewing guests.

And this was lots of fun. The community was amazing, kind of being part of a really strong kind of nomad community at a time of such great change for that sort of community, for the movement, I think was really, really influential to me and kind of what I wanted to do next.

But this project, Plumia, is run by Safety Wing, the Nomad Health Insurance Company. And they essentially invited me to come and run this project, to run the Plumia project. And so I've been doing that for about six months at this point, working for Safety Wing and kind of leading Plumia. The bulk of my work so far has been trying to, I guess, move the ideas from the book and from my previous policy project into

into a sort of 10-year plan. Like, how do we actually solve some of these problems? How do we actually push forward and create, I guess, a utopian version of the future for nomads instead of a dystopian version? So the 10-year kind of roadmap that we've set out at Plumia is around the idea of a nomad passport. So in 10 years' time, we want a fully functional passport that is accepted by

at borders worldwide, and which is not based on the kind of coincidence of where you were born, but is instead based on who you are, on your kind of common humanity. And the way we're going to get there is by developing something called the Nomad Border Pass as kind of an interim step towards the passport.

And essentially what this is, is a mobility tool that nomads can apply for in one country, but it will give them access to at least 10 countries. And they'll be able to travel around for 60 to 90 days and remote work on a sort of appropriate visa. And our plan is for this to be something that only needs to be renewed every five years. A lot of the nomad visa programs that have come out so far have really emphasized residency.

But the idea with our project is much more to emphasize the kind of mobility and flexibility that nomads want.

So to get a little bit less kind of high level with that. In a literal sense, I don't think most nomads want to go to one country and make it their home. This is kind of the difference between expats and nomads. Yet that's what a lot of the nomad visa programs are trying to achieve because it's the way that governments understand people's relationships with place.

And so instead, nomads are more interested in kind of spending somewhere between 60 and 90 days in different jurisdictions. And if they like the place, they will come back next year or the year after again for a few months.

And so that's really the tool that we are designing at the moment and hoping to launch by 2025 to just really kind of ease this transition from, I think, a very 20th century way of thinking about how the world works and borders into the 21st century. So we can kind of have the rights that we should already have protected.

well defined yeah because the concept of nation is only like 200 years old if you compare with the whole human history so even the passport yeah it's a newly established concept so yeah it totally makes sense

But I wonder this new initiative will involve heavily with the government. I assume there must be a lot of challenge negotiating with government. How do you do that? Do you have the team and will you like do presentation how it works in practice? Yeah, so I'm building out a team at Safety Wing at the moment. And we have sort of a few different aspects of the project, but specifically on the kind of policy side,

I think it's all about lining up the different incentives. So, I mean, there are all these different kind of stakeholders, I think, in the space of digital nomads and kind of remote work. So you have the nomads themselves, so these kind of visitors to places. You have the host communities, the kind of local people. And then you have the government as an entity kind of needing to,

prove that it's doing a good job with taxpayers' money and sort of balance different social, economic and political concerns. And so a lot of the work that we're doing at the moment is trying to define those different kind of interests and see kind of what the future can look like.

There are a number of projects kind of coming up at the moment that are a lot more on, I would say, the crypto end of the spectrum, pushing in the same direction that we are. But for Plumia, we're really looking to be the bridge between what exists today and the world we think should exist.

And that's really hard work. I know. Because I think it's actually very easy to, I mean, I shouldn't say it like this. My like Coda colleagues would kill me for what I'm about to say. But I think it's very easy or it's a lot easier to build technology to kind of, for example, build a system that would manage borders better or build a new passport in terms of making sure it has the right information attached to the microchip, etc.,

I think these are challenges that are quite easy. If you put a team together and you kind of tell them what's required and you give them some time, that can be built. But in reality, it's not much use. It's not really changing anybody's life unless it can actually be used. So unless you can actually sort of move around the world, if that's indeed what the kind of internet country concept is trying to achieve for you.

And so what we're trying to do is bridge what exists today to kind of create a better future. People move a lot slower than technology. I think that's especially true. And there are so many different kind of layers of planning and approval and strategy and budget and such that you have to go through.

And there can be a real resistance to kind of radical policies. I think being part of a Y Combinator company, I kind of have to remind myself that not everybody is kind of thinking in the kind of radical, bold way that we think about problems. And we think about kind of building the future and the institutions that the world needs.

And so I think for myself personally, it's been a really interesting journey to not only kind of share ideas on the internet or share ideas through books, but also to kind of share ideas in a room with a government, understand where they're coming from and kind of understand the different obstacles involved in a very literal sense.

At the moment, we take a very like personal approach. So we do that both with governments and with our community. So these are the two kind of main areas of the Plumia project at the moment. And in both cases, with governments, we like to have face to face conversations. We like to really kind of understand what's going on for them, what they're kind of facing in the policy environment, and then work in a very kind of personal and customized way at the moment.

to be able to design our kind of larger product, the Nomad Border Pass and then the passport to

And we take a similar approach with community. We're one of the only, I think, communities working in this kind of area that does a one-on-one interview with everybody who applies to our community, because we really care about trying to connect people in meaningful ways and make sure that they can kind of do what they want and get what they want out of the Plumia project. Whereas I think a lot of other folks are much more like, click this link and get an invite.

Yeah, I applied for the community last week and I got my interview. Yeah, it's quite good conversation because I've always preferred the one-to-one conversation to know each other better. You don't want just a simple click. You do want to know the people's motive.

behind joining the community and what contribution they can add value to this community. So do you have any example for the countries already on board of the Plumiere initiative? So we are having conversations with about 10 governments at the moment, but I am not allowed. We have in policy circles, this is very common, they have like Chatham House rules, which is like

don't you can't repeat the specifics you can't repeat who said what and kind of different rooms so I am not allowed to say too much at the moment but what I can say is that it's a real diversity of governments that we're speaking to so I think coming into this project I imagine that there would be a lot of governments in emerging economies interested in this area I didn't anticipate how many sort of

of European and advanced economies are also interested in this concept. So we've been able to have a real breadth of conversation so far, which makes me really hopeful that the countries, the minimum of 10 countries, we're looking to kind of onboard into our system for the Nomad Border Pass.

I'm feeling really confident that that's going to be a diverse set of countries, that it's not going to kind of just be a small cluster in Southeast Asia, because I'm not used to going or Latin America. That's really exciting. And one thing that I can mention is, I gave a talk earlier this year to around somewhere between 40 and 60 governments, I can't remember the number, but for the UN. So it's

UN member state. They are very, very interested, I think, at the UN and a lot of international institutions right now, understanding more about nomads. So it's been fantastic to be able to

I guess, understand where a lot of countries are coming from and then also kind of give my expertise and input to help them think through nomad visas and kind of create these win-wins. I'm all about win-wins. So I really want us to be able to create systems in which nomads, locals and governments can

have something to celebrate about the world that we're living in. I think there's so much negativity right now, but it's really important to actually try and focus on the incredible journey of human progress that we are all part of. And this feels like an area that's really, really good for that. I remember you mentioned the League Nations in your book.

because before there's also like the concept to bring people like borderless travel so but they failed what what lessons will you take from these previous case studies so I have to dispute with you I don't know if the League of Nations failed as such I think there are two things here one is that

The League of Nations was an organization that came up with the concept of like a cross-border passport for the first time. And that was only 100 years ago. So the whole kind of concept of the passports that we have today is not as old, I think, as most people would assume that it is. I think they succeeded in the sense that they did actually create a passport and they did actually kind of get countries to agree to a thing that

However, there were a lot of kind of issues in that because it was very much like powerful, wealthy nations kind of setting the parameters of how the global border system should work for all countries. Like they got a lot of other countries to kind of sign up. So I think there was some kind of issues there. But the League of Nations kind of mobilized

morphed into the United Nations at some point. I don't actually know the specific dates or anything to kind of talk about. You know, I think in everything that we're doing at Plumia, there's a real sense of like standing on the shoulders of giants. You know, people have done incredible work to kind of bring us to the point we're at today. I think specifically on kind of the League of Nations and the passport,

some of the institutions and tools that we have in the world just have not been updated. And so I suppose that's the role that we're trying to take on through the Plumia project is to start to actually contribute to creating these new institutions for the 21st century and for the internet era so that we can kind of keep progressing that human journey, that kind of bigger journey.

of kind of the human story. I think that's really, really important because a lot of the time right now, if you look at kind of fake news, if you look at the kind of tribal mentalities and this kind of polarised politics, we kind of forget that we're all just humans. We're all on the earth for a very short amount of time. And actually every generation has a responsibility to kind of be a steward of the world that

that they live in and to try and do things to make the world better while they are here. That's really important. Yeah, I feel like we just need to be patient and have a faith like you are working in tech and are always like, yeah, do it, do it. Let's do it. Let's make it happen quickly. Yeah. But now I kind of understanding, yeah, we need to be patient and see the progress.

I feel like maybe we are like the most impatient generation ever. It's what like push notifications and social media has done for us. Make it happen now. Yeah, exactly. I know there are a couple of countries, they start to do the Nomad, Beza, and even Madeira, the small islands in Portugal.

they built up their slogan as the first digital nomad islands. What's your opinion on what makes a good nomad hub? I think it's really positive that countries are working on nomad visas at all. Like I think just having that kind of that door open where policymakers are really beginning to engage with nomads is really, really good because they're

One of the biggest challenges of the past 10 years, I think, is that we have been living in a grey area, most of the time not doing anything wrong on like a legal level. But at the same time, the way that we're living is not normal. It's sort of existing outside the boundaries of what systems and people actually expect you to do in the world. And so I think it's a really positive thing that governments are engaging and they want to learn more about.

this area. I think that's a really, really good thing. But as I said before, I do think there are some faults with the early nomad visa programs that kind of need to be overcome for everybody's benefit.

And I suppose the high level thing that I would say about this is that so many of the programs are kind of lacking a focus on the end user. And I think probably as two women in tech here, we kind of understand the importance of actually focusing on the people who use the stuff that you're building. It's very understandable how we find ourselves here, because actually when the pandemic hit, Nomad Visas became...

A bit of a sort of panic solution. Governments really needed to do something to try and save their tourism economies when the pandemic hit. But we need to move it on now. You know, we're fingers crossed we're past the worst of COVID and things are kind of moving on now. So that's a really big opportunity, I think, to shape more positive kind of directions and to make sure that that end user focus is

is actually in there in policy design. I think in terms of the digital nomad village in Madeira, there are sort of all these amazing projects popping up all over the world now. And I personally get really excited because a lot of the folks who are involved are people who've been part of the global nomad community for a while now and are kind of stepping out to share what they know and to share their kind of experiences. So it's Gonzalo Hall here,

who you should definitely get on your podcast. He is the guy behind the Madeira Digital Nomad Village project. And I think he's done a really amazing job at investigating and trying to overcome some of those sort of integration problems that you get when you have nomadic visitors and a local population. The more work that

anyone kind of involved in this space can do, whether it's like full-time work or it's kind of side projects or whatever, but to really kind of engage and start discussions about nomads and about what's going on in the world. I think that will really, really help

And maybe just as a kind of last point on this, one of the biggest issues that nomads face, I think, is a lack of community and loneliness. Because right now it's still super hard when you arrive in a completely new city to always know where to go to kind of find your people, if you like, to kind of...

connect with other people, whether they be locals or nomads. And I just think there's so much work to do at like every level to kind of solve this. So, you know, we need people building kind of actual physical offline nomad communities and all of the infrastructure that's needed for that. We also need people building the more kind of global layer like we're doing with Plumia so that there is the kind of infrastructure to support at

that level as well so the kind of policy and legislation and the actual actions on the ground there are so many different problems to solve and right now I'm super super excited to kind of see nomads all over the world rallying around and starting to solve these problems I think it's really important that we realize that governments are not necessarily going to solve these problems like we can't

wait around for governments to kind of figure it out. We need to use what we know to kind of help them push in the right direction and kind of prepare for this new world. Yeah, so true. Because for me, every time I go to a new city, I normally use a nomad list built by Peter Lavelle to organize some meetups

That's the way how I meet new friends. But I do feel like I want to involve myself more in the local community. But with the nomad list, I probably can only meet up the nomads like me, but not the locals. What's your advice on this? How digital nomads like me can...

meet more new local friends? So I think number one, and I'm obviously very biased, so apologies, but you should join the Plumia community. We have a really nice mix of people in the Plumia community who are, you know, they have a home base somewhere in the world. And they also go back to the same places quite a lot. And it's

been really lovely to kind of see people in our discord server um just kind of posting where they are and then the next photo you see like two days later is like so five of us met up in lisbon so five of us met up in in kuala lumpur and uh that's like a really great way i think communities are a really great way to connect with other people we are sort of working on different ways that we can provide more of a technical solution there to try and help people meet up uh

more easily because at the moment it is quite literally a Discord channel in which people are like, I'm going here. Is anyone around? And then it's kind of self-organizing. But imagine arriving in a new place and there being a Plumia app that allows you to just

not only connect with anybody who's on the ground now, but perhaps see resources and recommendations from nomads who've kind of gone through that location before. And even a network of local people on the ground who are like-minded and kind of consider themselves to be global citizens.

This is the kind of thing that we're super interested in kind of building for our community. And I think this is what I kind of mean when I talk about a global layer, because I think it's necessary to kind of have these global ways to interact on the ground. The second thing that I would say is that, um,

before there were such big nomad communities online, one of the main ways that I met other people was through co-working spaces, whether that's literally working from a co-working space for a month or two while you're in a place, or it's just going along to events at a co-working space. Because essentially, I think one of the things that

brings a lot of nomads together is this kind of interest in entrepreneurship and making and so you kind of go where can I go to meet people in this place who are also interested in that nine times out of ten co-working spaces are the best kind of first point of contact and then you're able to kind of like build out your social network from there I would say one last thing on this and that's that I'm very lucky because I have been traveling since

not since 2013, but since 2014, with my now husband, my partner.

my partner for the first part of our travels together. But because of that, I think that I do not struggle as much with the kind of loneliness of travel simply because I literally have somebody next to me the whole time. But at the same time, I guess there's a drawback there, right? Because you do put different pressures on your own relationship as a nomadic couple in the sense that you may not get lonely like somebody being on their own.

but you are with your partner all the time and you don't necessarily have the same space away from each other that maybe a more traditional couple who both worked at different offices and just kind of came home every evening would have. So yeah, I think my first advice is...

travel with a partner if you can, but failing that. I think going to co-working spaces and also engaging with global online communities and being really, really fearless about just posting and telling people where you are or asking them if they have recommendations for a place. The dating part would be a huge issue. We move around, won't be able to have a stable relationship.

I'm not sure if Plume will add some dating features in the future. I feel like I have to mention this. It's weird that it's come up. So one of our community members, Spencer, who used to run Hacker Paradise, which is like a...

You mentioned in the book, yeah. But yeah, Spencer used to run that. And I can't remember if it's like his side hustle or whether it's what he did kind of after Hacker Paradise, but he was working on dating solutions for nomads. I can't remember whether it was an app or something. I'll have to maybe look it up and send it to you. But we may have a guy who can build out the dating competency in your project. We'll see. That would be great. We'll solve my problem. Yeah.

Yeah, because for me, I love to host the offline events. I still feel like offline would be the best solution for people to gather together. Like online, you have a chat, but you still not feel the deep connection. But bring it in real life will add more togetherness. So yeah, looking forward to that. I was just gonna ask, are you based in Portugal right now, Lisbon? Yeah, I'm based in Lisbon. Last year, I went to

Madeira and live there for one month and I fell in love with Portuguese culture and I decided to move here this year so I got my visa end of April so I moved to Lisbon since then so amazing I have

I haven't been to Lisbon since before the pandemic, but I love it. So maybe I'm going to come visit you sometime. That would be great. I'm also asking because actually at Plumia, we are interested in giving resources for people to create in-person local events. And obviously Lisbon being a nomad hub, I will follow you up and see if maybe you're interested in helping out.

Yeah, love to. I got my background in marketing and event management. So always passionate to do that. That would be cool. Super cool. You've been traveling a lot. How do you cultivate a solution to solve the mental health problem? So you know, a lot of nomads, they're probably facing always move around, they don't have a solid identity and away from their family and friends. So what's your opinion on that?

I think one of the biggest hacks I have for this is to go back to the same places. So I think it's really tough if you're going to a new country every one, two or three months because it gets so tiring and you're doing the same work in your personal life every time. So you're like, where do I buy my toothpaste? Where do I get my coffee? Which co-working space do I hang out at?

how am I going to make friends? It's kind of this process whenever you go to a new place. And so what I like to do is split my time between different places every year. And some of them will be new, but maybe only one or two locations every year will be new in any way. And the rest of them will be places that I love and go back to. And by going back to places, I'm able to not have to do that work that I just described every time, because I already know

I already met people there last time and I'm able to just kind of go and hook back into that. And I find this a really good way to travel to overcome some of that loneliness because it just kind of means it's a bit more like you go traveling from each place then return. So in that same way that maybe if you're in your hometown and a friend went traveling for three months and has come back, I guess...

I guess I'm that friend to a lot of people in different cities around the world. And so I feel a little bit like I have different lives in particular. Like I love Amsterdam. That's a place I've spent a lot of time. So I have like my Amsterdam life and routine. I also have my school.

Kuala Lumpur life and routine, my Melbourne life and routine. And also here in Norwich, my hometown in the UK, where I am at the moment. I think a lot of new nomads think that the lifestyle is literally you just travel full time and you try and cover the whole world in one year. So you're spending one weekend at each place for just a few days. But my experience is much more, I guess, in what I call borderless living. So my life is...

sort of distributed affair across the world. But I still have, I guess, those symbols of home that we think about. I just have them in different places, not just in one place. And so, yeah, I think that that's one of the most sort of practical things people can do. If they've been traveling like very fast for a while and they're feeling like they're burning out on that, they're feeling lonely, they're suffering with mental health. My advice is to just kind of

settle down somewhere for a little while and then keep kind of going back to places where you already have that strong connection you already know the place you already have friends um and try and design yourself a global life I think it's it's not about um it's not about writing a list of all the cities you've been to and like sharing it on social media to people it's literally your life

and what you want it to look like. Yeah, you mentioned that slow travel in your book. So this is kind of the way for the nomads to overcome these issues. I think so. I mean, Peter Levels has some great data on...

I think it's called like the Nomad List Stats or Open Page. I can't remember what it's called, but it has some great stats about how long nomads spend in different places. And so it's somewhere between 60 and 70 days. I think the data updates live, so it's never actually a consistent answer. I think that this is really one of the misunderstandings that a lot of people have about the nomad lifestyle.

They assume that people really are kind of going on vacation to different places every week for a long period of time. The actual kind of experience being a nomad is you still have your kind of routines because you're working at the same time. You still have to make sure that you have good internet and a good kind of working environment and everything.

So with slow travel, I think it kind of goes hand in hand with the nomad lifestyle. If you're the kind of person who wants to travel for the long term.

And I think that we will see people kind of adopt that slow travel of a couple of months in a different place more and more. I guess the nomad movement, the nomad community matures and kind of grows. One of the kind of signals I think we can look at to kind of see how things can move in that direction is what I call subscription living.

So it's this kind of idea of different forms of accommodation kind of popping up to serve the nomad market. And in very simple terms, like on an individual level, the idea is that instead of paying one landlord in one city for like a fixed address for a long term contract,

In the future, nomads are much more likely to pay a global brand that same amount they may have spent on rent previously, but actually get access to flexible accommodation across many different cities worldwide. There are a few brands kind of pushing in this direction already. One of them that I talk about quite a bit in the book is Zoku, which has locations in Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Vienna and Paris now, I believe.

And essentially, this is like a nomad hotel, the tiny kind of space saving micro apartments that have a four person table inside, as well as kind of a bed and a bathroom and all of that, and a kitchenette. And so you have this kind of small private space.

And then you also have on site co-working space and meeting and event spaces. And so it's very much like purpose built for the remote worker or the digital nomad who wants to be able to kind of have a high quality of accommodation, but maybe doesn't have that much private space, but also really, really benefits from having co-working facilities and things on site, particularly when they're working across different time zones and things.

I actually did this for about a year and a half during the pandemic. I lived at Zoku's Amsterdam location for that time, which was a lot of fun, slightly weird because it was like living at a hotel, but also during lockdown. So it wasn't like living at a hotel, like people coming and going all the time. It was sort of being at some points the only guests at the hotel on the occasional night and

And yeah, it was a really interesting experience that really, I think, gave me an opportunity to live the future that I sort of suspected was ahead, which has now kind of given me a lot more insight to kind of take forward about what kind of nomads are looking for from their lifestyle and how these kind of new models of accommodation can work. So what would you like to say after people finish reading your new book?

What's the takeaways do you want them to imply in their life?

I think the biggest takeaway that I want people to take away from the book is around kind of realizing that being a digital nomad is a global identity. It's being part of a global culture and it's much wider than just individuals being the kind of the crazy aunt who travels all the time, this kind of identity, you know, maybe in a family relationship or a social group.

I think we really have an opportunity to turn what has been a kind of internet subculture. I kind of think of nomads as that, you know, I was part of the digital nomad subreddit like back when it first started and everything. You just see this kind of grow and grow and grow.

But yeah, I think we need to move it from being this kind of fun subculture on the internet into being actually a real world culture that's standing up for our lifestyle and standing up for these ideas of global mobility and kind of human progress and equality of opportunity.

Again, I think I mentioned it earlier, but I think one of the most fundamental inequalities in the world today that we really have to solve is this passport situation where the place that you are born pretty much determines your opportunities for your entire life unless you are very lucky or very wealthy and kind of have access to a different passport.

So I hope that I guess I hope it inspires people to just think a bit more deeply and to feel reassured that they are like part of something and something really important that's going on in the world. Because for me, I think.

that it was a game changer to start thinking that way, to start realizing that, you know, we can't wait around for somebody else to build the future that we want. Actually, we're the weird trailblazer early adopters who should be kind of leading this new movement and leading the charge for a better world. Yeah, exactly. So where can people buy your book and know more about your work?

So the book is published by Holloway. And so you can download it from the Holloway platform. The URL for that is holloway.com slash GN. I think you can also just Google like Global Natives book and you'll probably get there. And I have a weekly newsletter that's all about borderless living. People can find out about that by Googling Lauren Rosavi newsletter or by going to lraz.io slash newsletter. And

And that is totally free when it's a curation of kind of what's going on in the world of nomad visas and kind of global culture and things every week. And finally, I'm on Twitter. So please come and say hello. And if you read the book, tell me what you think of it. That's great. Thank you so much, Lauren, for your time. All the best with the sale of your book. Thank you so much. This has been really fun. And I hope to see you in Lisbon. Yeah, let's do it in real life.