Interview: How to Have a Positive Impact as a Digital Nomad

So far, this Digital Nomad Interview Series has really focused on the individual experience of becoming a digital nomad and building a life you love, but now I want us to take a step back. As digital nomads, we are constantly moving from one community to the next, but are we stopping to consider our social, economic and environmental impact on the world around us? Digital nomads have gained a bit of a bad rep over recent years in the media and with locals. They've been blamed for fuelling gentrification and pricing out locals. While popular nomad destinations such as Bali have seen surges of travellers keen to live the Instagram-worth digital nomad lifestyle but without ever connecting with the locals.

At the time of writing this article, there were 66 digital nomad visas available worldwide, many of which have sprung up in the last few years. But while it is exciting to see this cultural and political shift towards acceptance of the digital nomad movement – have the countries got work to do to keep up with the needs of this new category of traveller? Is the infrastructure that is in place designed to cope with the needs of the remote worker or is the lack of provision actually contributing towards these tensions between locals and digital nomads?

The changes are happening – but digital nomadism is still such a new concept and one that is constantly evolving. We too, as travellers have to evolve and it's important for us to question the way we move about this planet and whether we could be changing the impact we have on the communities we inhabit, on the places we visit. From buying a morning coffee, to how often we move to a new destination – everything we do is laden with potential to shape the way the world views digital nomads – are you doing your bit?

I'm Lucy, a solo travel expert from the UK who has spent a decade travelling and working as a digital nomad. I've explored over 50 countries and I'm passionate about combining adventures with slower, more intentional travel that allows us to connect on a deeper level with the communities we visit. In this series, I'll introduce you to digital nomads who have turned to a remote lifestyle for many reasons and from a range of backgrounds to explore an alternative way of living and working online. They'll share insight into what they have gained from this remote lifestyle and the lessons they've learned along the way.

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What was it that first interested you in the digital nomad lifestyle?

From a very young age, I always felt like I had this identity crisis. So, I grew up in Toronto, a very multicultural city. But my ethnic background is actually quite hard to describe. I was born in Canada, my parents were born in the Democratic Republic of Congo. My grandparents come from Kenya and Tanzania, but originally my ancestry is Indian. So, I am an Indo-African Canadian.

You know, in my class in school, you'd have a lot of people say, “Hey, you know, I'm Italian, I'm Korean, I'm Iranian, I'm Mexican,” I was just confused. And so, I think from a very early age, just being surrounded by the multiculturalism and the diversity that a city of Toronto had, it was really great to open me up to different diverse perspectives. But it also made me realise that I didn't really know where I belonged, and I was having a hard time identifying myself.

So, through that, I looked to travel as a way to go and “find myself”. So, my whole life, I've been very, very fortunate to have traveled to over 75 countries. I speak five languages fluently and I've built this international perspective over my entire life. That's really shaped what I've done personally and professionally.

What inspired you to take the leap and become a digital nomad?

At the height of the pandemic in 2020, my wife and I, we were both working and living in Silicon Valley in San Francisco and we were asked ourselves, why are we in San Francisco paying rent when we're both working remotely? We always were big travellers, so that's when we put everything into storage. We officially became full time nomads and we're about five years into this digital nomad journey.

We've gone through the fast travel waves and a different city every two weeks, or even a different country every month, to now having a much more manageable pace of our nomad lifestyle where we have bases. We have a base in Mexico city, we have a base in Miami, and we spend about half the year in those bases. Then, the other half the year we are still getting that adventure and traveling and having these different experiences. 

I think that it brings so much more freedom and economy and just these incredible experiences, meeting amazing people that I would have never otherwise met. But, you've got to find your rhythm to make it more manageable for you.

Tell us about your journey from employment to business owner, to selling your company while travelling the world

When I first started the nomad lifestyle, I was full-time employed for a company that normally I was going into the office in Silicon Valley every single day. As soon as the pandemic hit, we were all starting to work remotely. That's where I said, well, I don't need to be in California. My wife said the same thing, she was working for a big tech company but was working remotely. So, we didn't tell our employers that we were traveling, actually. We continued to do our jobs from all corners of the world. I remember we were in Thailand and we were taking meetings at 3am, because that was what the right time was for California.

As a lot more companies started bringing people back into the office on this hybrid model of two days or three days a week. We had tasted freedom and we didn't want to go back to being forced to go into an office anymore. So, that was actually the driver for us to say, if we want to keep this life going, we were no longer at a point where we could keep working for companies, because it's actually increasingly hard to find a job at a company that would be fully okay with you being an international remote worker. So, it naturally prompted us into self-employment. I started a company, not Global, where I built, ran and actually sold that company entirely over a period where I was fully remote. So it is possible for sure.

What was it like to co-found a company with an international remote working team?

With that last venture, our entire team was located remotely. So we would meet up in person for dedicated periods where we felt like we needed to, where we'd bring the team together for certain retreats or brainstorming sessions or quarterly strategy meetings. But, the expectation was people get their work done and it doesn't really matter where they're based – we manage time zones just independently as adults would, right? That's the culture we set for the rest of our team members. For me, its about outputs. It's not about inputs, right? So whether you show up to work in an office or from your home, the output of your work doesn't change. It shouldn't.

We were able to be very productive. I think it was such an enabler for everyone to do their best work. You've seen statistics come out over the last several years just showing the benefits of working from home. I really felt like once we had experienced that firsthand it was so much so that we actually quit our high paying Silicon Valley corporate jobs just to continue to live life on our terms and go down this entrepreneurial path. Because the freedom that comes from living remotely actually was worth it for us.

How does loneliness impact you as a digital nomad couple?

There's a lot of literature that says one of the biggest reasons why people stop being digital nomads is loneliness, right? The community aspect is extremely important. I mean, we need community just as biological social beings. In our experience, because we've started living this lifestyle together, both my wife and I in some ways, we've kind of cheated right where we don't feel the loneliness that I think somebody who's a solo traveler might feel.

On the plus side, we know that we always have each other to be able to do any activities or anything with we're never eating meals alone, we have to company each other, which is great. On the flip side, we also like to build a social circle around more than just each other and we certainly want that community. We've been very fortunate to have that, but I also think that sometimes in a lot of these  digital nomad communities, when they see a couple, it almost have the opposite effect where sometimes people say, oh, like, you know, they already have each other. Like I'm not going to necessarily spend my time on building relationships with somebody like that, I’d rather go after someone else who I think might be more willing to go out for a meal with me. In general, we've met fantastic people.

What does digital nomad life look like for you?

We don't go to living or group accommodation, mainly because we prefer Airbnb. We like to cook, so we like to have our own kitchen, we like our own space. So pretty much everywhere we go, we always stay in Airbnb's and it's just the two of us in our apartment. But you're not meeting anyone organically through your living situation, which means that you have to meet them through your social activity. So, we actively go to a lot of events and meet-ups.

I join all the WhatsApp groups for any of the cities that we happen to be traveling to. So I can see what events are going on so we can actually go there. But you've got to make that effort, right? It's not like you're just going to naturally happen upon the community because you're staying in a place with 15 other remote workers, all of you are kind of at the same stage, you don't really have to. You're putting an effort, but you're putting an effort a little bit differently, but by design, your accommodation kind of facilitates that interaction for you. So we have to go out there.

I have met people who love co-working spaces and they say I can never get work done at home, so I really need that co-working space. For me, it's actually a mix. I love the ability to get work done at home, but I also really like being able to work in an environment where there's a lot of other people working and I'm able to talk to them and have these organic conversations. The vibe of productivity of the co-working spaces is great, but I go to a co-working space because I want to be more productive, not because I want to be more social.

What inspired Global Nomad Pass?

When I've traveled abroad, I've always taken it upon myself to really immerse with locals. I really love talking to local business owners. I'm an entrepreneur and I come from a family of business owners. So, you know, it's a relatable topic for me, and in doing that, it just naturally shaped my consumption behaviour. I would always gravitate towards going to local businesses instead of going to chains.

I've been living this digital lifestyle since the pandemic, but I found it really difficult to support local businesses when I was abroad. I thought, it shouldn't be this difficult because I want to be doing what I think is the right thing by actually supporting local businesses. But why are there multinational chains in your face everywhere? It just makes it so much more convenient for me to go to a KFC instead of going and finding a local restaurant where I don't know if I'm going to get sick from this food? It became a little bit more challenging than it should be.

That's really what kind of inspired me to look at this problem space and say, I feel like at the end of the day, for me, this is a problem that I want to solve. If I'm having this problem, I can only imagine that others were having it too. So, that was the impetus that led me to start Global Nomad Pass.

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How does Global Nomad Pass positively impact the relationship & challenges between digital nomads and locals?

I think it's so important when you want to enrich your travel experience and get a true travel experience, you can't stay in the foreigner bubble. It's very easy to stay in the foreigner bubble, but you're not really travelling, I mean, that bubble could have been transported anywhere in the world. So the local interaction, I think it is critical. Sometimes it's not easy to just happen upon. So you do have to kind of make a little bit of an effort. This is, again, kind of going back to why I started Global Nomad Pass, is I think that it's a really important factor in your travels to figure out what are you contributing to the destination that you're traveling to and collectively, whenever we're going anywhere and we're spending money and time, we have an opportunity to contribute economically.

I want as many travellers all around the world to support local businesses, because there's research that suggests that if you were to buy a coffee from Starbucks, the profits that that Starbucks generate from your purchase don't stay in the local community, right? They go to Seattle where Starbucks headquarters is. If you bought that same cup of coffee from a local cafe, that profit that coffee generates is three times more likely to stay within the local community. The cafe owner is going to take those profits and buy groceries for their family at the local grocery store, they're going to take their family to dinner at a neighbourhood restaurant. That's where you can see as a traveler, you can actually have an economic impact by supporting local businesses.

That's the reason why Global Nomad Pass exists – to make it more effortless to support local businesses and to therefore strengthen the local economy. Now, when you're doing that, of course, we want you to also interact with the local business owners, which is a big part of Global Nomad Pass actually, we profile these owners and we tell their stories. I run a podcast called the Hidden Gems Show and we feature a lot of our business owners on our podcast and ask them, hey, how did you start this business? Talk to us about some of the cultural challenges that our readers and our members might not be aware of. We want to bring some of that authenticity through storytelling, and so what we're trying to do is to create that cultural bridge between the foreigners and the locals. 

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How do you feel about the negative press digital nomads receive?

As a digital nomad as a traveler myself, I always had a hard time understanding a lot of that media narrative because they suggest digital nomads are a negative force on the economy. I mean, I just spent two months here doing nothing but supporting the local economy and I talk to these local business owners every day. I talk to local business owners and I they’re like, oh, I'm so grateful for your business because if it wasn't for this, we wouldn't be able to pay our wages for our staff and I wouldn't be able to afford the rent in this area. I'm hearing a bit of a disconnect, because I genuinely felt like as travellers, we have this opportunity and we do provide a positive impact economically speaking.

However, let's not ignore where it's making prices more expensive for locals and more difficult to find housing, you know, gentrification has been brought up. I can understand why there is some resentment from locals, but I think it's mis-targeted. At the end of the day, I think it’s the fault of government or like a lack of government policy to protect locals from some of these forces. Destinations have to learn how to manage different stakeholders who have different interests. As destinations, as policymakers, it's their job to manage this effectively. But that's not necessarily the fault of nomads and so I don't think that this is appropriately targeted in the media. I also think it's easy to scapegoat, right? Look at the math, there's a massive housing shortage in a particular destination. If you look at the number of nomads that have come in, there is no way that the nomads created this incredible spike in housing prices to make it out of affordable for locals, right?

It's easy to point a finger, it's easy to scapegoat and there's also no one defending the voice of nomads actually. No one's providing counter data to journalists, so it's easy for journalists to write these headlines that support an existing narrative. No one's challenging it because we don't have a unified voice, we don't have a reliable source of data to be able to prove this.

I can only speak from my experience and my experience is that digital nomads are actively looking to make authentic connections when they travel. They spend a lot more time there than you know a tourist who's doing like a 10 day trip through Europe and like 10 countries in 10 days and this is someone who's spending more money. They're maybe learning the local language, they're actively trying to learn more about the local culture. This is actually the type of travel that you want to attract, right? They are a responsible traveler, they are really trying to contribute to the social fabric of society. I just think that there isn't enough conversation about that, there isn't enough education about that. A lot of people think the word digital nomad conjures up images of these privileged people working on the beach. Working on the beach sucks, nobody works on the beach!

I think there's a lack of education, there's a lot of stereotyping that is built on just incorrect assumptions about what this lifestyle is, who these people are, who are living this way, and what value they bring. And so, you know, I love these discussions because it creates a forum for conversations to be had and education to be had that I think is just really lacking them.

What do you think about the travel industry’s relationship with digital nomads?

The fact that 60 or 70 federal governments around the world have introduced a new offering for digital nomad visas in the span of a couple of years is remarkable. That is super impressive. That's a signal that the world has woken up to this incredible opportunity to attract digital nomads. And let's be clear, like that's what this is. Countries are competing for talent, right? And I think that in a global marketplace where more and more people do work remotely, talent is no longer bound by borders. The first way of signalling to the world that you're in the competition for talent is to launch a digital nomad visa. But, how many digital nomads today are actually using digital nomad visas?

What I would love to see more is actually involving digital nomads and remote workers in the conversation and ask them, what is it that you need to feel supported in this destination? Do we need to maybe make accommodations that are purpose-built or at least purposely designated for you so that it works for your needs? Why is it that digital nomads are coming in? Another one is communities. Well, who's building communities in all these destinations? Individuals and a lot of it is grassroots-led, but is there an opportunity for some partnerships and collaborations to be there so that the communities can actually evolve in a more structured way? There's a quote that I really like. People don't travel between places. They travel between communities. And I think that we're going to start to see more and more of that.

I think it's fantastic that we are finally seen as a unique consumer segment, I would hope that that continues to make its way into tourism boards and destination marketers travel plans, but we're not there yet. I'm eager to contribute and to shape more of this and see what role I individually, and Global Nomad Pass as a company, can play to facilitate this. But I think ultimately I see a world where this is not a fad. Digital nomads are not going anywhere. They're here to stay.

What's your best advice for aspiring digital nomads?

My advice is if you’re starting out, really what you should be looking for is the Four C’s:

• Community – go somewhere where there’s an established nomad community, it’s going to be easier for you to meet people who are living the same lifestyle as you, to integrate and to find events to meet more people. One of the biggest challenges is loneliness and “community” is one way to solve that.
• Connectivity – go somewhere where the wi-fi is great so you don’t have to worry about it.
• Climate – if you’re someone who likes the heat or the cold, choose a destination where climate is not a problem and you’re optimising for that.
• Cost – go somewhere where you can stretch your money as far as possible because the last thing you want when you’re living this lifestyle is to worry about how to make ends meet. Go somewhere you’re confident that you can live with your usual expenses.

Give us 3 places you recommend for aspiring digital nomads

1. Chiang Mai in Thailand – its a fantastic community, a well established nomad community. A lot of people really enjoy it when they go there, I’ve had some really great experiences when I’ve spent time there and met some fantastic people.
2. Mexico City – it’s actually a home base for my wife and I, I think there’s just so much to offer and Mexican food is amazing but it also has a really great international scene.
3. Buenos Aires in Argentina – I’m starting to hear a lot about it from people who have had fantastic experiences and I’m actually heading there in a few weeks myself. I think its definitely one of the more intriguing destinations and one of the fastest growing for nomads.

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