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If you could take off tomorrow and work from anywhere in the world, would you do it? Most of us would probably hesitate over that question, even the 20-something-year-olds like me who are relatively unencumbered, but it’s pretty safe to say that globetrotting with your laptop under your arm is the future of work and has been for a very long time.
I’ve been dabbling with the idea of becoming a digital nomad since I first read The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss in 2017, but the question remains how do you actually become a digital nomad in 2022? In this episode I sit down for a chat with digital nomad and author of Global Natives, Lauren Razavi. We talk about a bunch of practical and actionable tips for how to become a digital nomad, some of the history behind the movement, ethical implications of nomadism and Lauren’s mission to try and build a country on the internet.
Dr Ali Abdaal is the world’s most followed productivity expert and author of Feel-Good Productivity, the brand new book that reveals why the secret to productivity isn’t discipline, it’s joy. In his podcast, Deep Dive, Ali sits down with inspiring creators, thinkers, entrepreneurs and high performers to help listeners build lives that they love.
Ali’s cheerful style, positive approach, and well-researched content have made him a trusted voice when it comes to productivity. The internet means that we have access to more knowledge and information than ever before - but it can also be overwhelming. So, Ali and his expert guests focus on simple, scientifically proven, and actionable steps you can take to make real changes in your life.
Ali’s a firm believer that happiness isn’t the result of success - in fact, happiness is the key to success in the first place. Ali made this discovery while working as a doctor in a chaotic hospital ward. In the past, hard work had been the answer to every obstacle in his life. But no amount of hard work was going to combat panic and burnout.
So, Ali dedicated himself to figuring out a new approach to productivity - one that focuses on enjoying the journey and working towards truly meaningful goals. Deep Dive, with its authentic and engaging conversations, will give you all the insights you need to do just that.
Lauren Razavi 0:00
In the creative industries, people have been able to work from anywhere. Like long before the internet like long before we kind of had these digital tools to make it all so seamless and easy and remote work just completely accelerates it. I've been a digital nomad since 2013. A digital nomad is essentially a person who remote works and travels at the same time, the more kinds of international experiences you have, the more you begin to question the fundamentals in the society that you come from. There are so many people now who are able to kind of make the same living that they would make in a sort of traditional in person job through the internet, instead, realising that you don't kind of have to play by the same rules as people did in the past is to kind of think about what you can do with these newfound powers.
Ali Abdaal 0:41
Hey, friends, welcome back to deep dive. If you're new here, my name is Ali. And each week it is my job to sit down with entrepreneurs, authors, creators and other inspiring people. And we talk about the journeys of how they got there, and the strategies and tools that we can apply to help us live our best lives. In this episode, I sit down with my friend Lauren Razavi, who is the author of a really, really, really good new book called a global natives, which is all about digital nomads. When we put out our survey for listeners at the end of the last season of the episode of the podcast loads of you asked for an episode about how to become a digital nomad. And Lauren is like the world expert on the topic having done it since like 2013. And having written a book about it, having interviewed everyone who's like big in the digital nomad scene, and we talk a lot about practical actionable tips on how you can also become a digital nomad, we talk about a little bit of the history behind the movement, how Tim Ferriss The Four Hour Workweek changed the game in terms of making the movement more accessible, some of the like the ethical implications around being a digital nomad and what it's like to go to a kind of country where the cost of living is really low, and potentially kind of exploit that country by working from there. And we'll talk a little bit about Lauren's mission to try and build a country on the internet, and how that is hopefully trying to solve loads of issues associated with visas and immigration and kind of the idea of the nation state and a bunch of really cool topics around this idea of the future of work, and how it sort of interacts with technology and this digital nomad type stuff, I will put links to Lauren's book down in the video description. So you can check that out if you'd like. But I hope you enjoy this conversation between me and Lauren RAZAVI. We've known each other for a while now. And we met on the internet, which has been like super cool and interesting. And we're just going to go on and just now that you're probably the person who's like the internet friend who's most impacted my life, because thanks to the connection that we made on Twitter, you introduced me to Kate, who is both of our book agents. He introduced me to Rachel who is now both of our book editors. And the book has become so much better with the addition of Kate and Rachel's influence across all fronts than it would have been and yours as well. So firstly, massive thank you for that. No worries. I wanted to talk to you about like this idea of being a digital nomad. Because you're a digital nomad ish. If you maybe identify with that term, I kind of first discovered the term in 2017 when I read The Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss, 2017, not 2017, more like 2011 At the age of 17, when I read The Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss, and I've often talked about on the channel about how that's the book that's most impacted my life because it put me on this trajectory of like, Oh, crap, you can build a business, you can have streams of passive income, you could potentially live anywhere in the world, all that kind of stuff. And you've just written a book, which explores like the history of digital nomadism, and some of the issues with it. Where Where do we begin with a discussion about like, what's the deal with digital nomads? And why are people so interested in becoming one? And then I guess, how do people become one? I think those are the three kind of areas we won't talk about. I was very like rambling initial question, go for it,
Lauren Razavi 3:27
no worries. So I guess probably the best place to begin is just a straightforward definition of digital nomads. And a digital nomad is essentially a person who remote works and travels at the same time. And that can play out really differently depending on who you are, and where you want to spend time and kind of what life stage you're at, I guess. I've been a digital nomad since 2013. But I only learnt the term in 2015, we can get a little bit more into that and the kind of story there if you'd like. But for me, it kind of means that I spend three to six months per year here in the UK. And then I spend six to nine months per year elsewhere, travelling around. And I try and get back to the same places. So Amsterdam and Malaysia, places that I really like to go kind of go and spend time and keep going back to. And I've become really kind of local in those places. So in the same way that I could walk around my hometown here in the UK and kind of know where everything is and know where to go get something printed or buy stationery or buy clothes or whatever. I know how to do that in a bunch of different places. And so I guess the thing that I find most interesting about digital nomads is the way they kind of represent how the Internet has changed our relationship with place. So the fact that you can remote work, the fact that you and I can become friends on the internet just completely changes like what's possible for an individual life. And I think that's one of the most interesting kind of things to keep an eye on now that we're in a world of remote work and Now that that's completely normalised, yeah.
Ali Abdaal 5:02
So I guess when you started doing it, this was I guess, pandemic is really accelerated the whole remote remote work stuff. What was like? How did people do the digital nomad thing back in the day? Did it have to be that you were sort of some sort of Internet entrepreneur selling supplements online? Or were there other kind of routes that people took to do this sort of travelling around the world while working from a laptop kind of lifestyle?
Lauren Razavi 5:22
Yeah, definitely. There are a few different ways. So I guess number one, is teaching English abroad. Before the digital was quite so prominent in digital nomad, when it was kind of more about kind of travelling and working at the same time, but not necessarily remotely. English teaching was like a really big kind of source of employment for people. So I know, folks, I'm almost 30, I think I'll be 30 by the time the service comes out. But I know folks are about 10 years, my senior who started travelling long before the internet was kind of enabling remote work on on a large scale. So that's definitely one of the entry points. For me personally, I worked as a journalist, so I worked as a foreign reporter, I kind of just travelled from place to place for a few years, just picking up stories along the way. And then I did a lot of work for The Guardian over a number of years. And I remember a very senior editor that like a dude who'd been there for like 20 or 30 years telling me about how, back in the day when he started as a journalist, filing your copy, so like submitting your article involved, like picking up the phone, and literally like talking your article to a person in the office on the other end. So if you're a foreign reporter, and you're like Indonesia, in Indonesia, or somewhere, you are literally like phoning up on a crackly phone line and reciting 1000 words, and that's how you kind of created your story. So I guess one of the things that I go into in the book that I find really fascinating are the ways in which, in the creative industries, people have been able to work from anywhere, like long before the internet, like long before we kind of had these digital tools to make it all so seamless and easy. And remote work just completely accelerates it. So there are so many people now who are able to kind of make the same living that they would make in a sort of traditional in person job through the internet instead. And I think like the kind of natural I guess the kind of natural reaction to realising that you don't kind of have to play by the same rules, as people did in the past, is to kind of think about what you can do with these newfound powers. And so a lot of people now as remote workers are going okay, so I could live in London, and this is what my rent would be. Or I could go live in Malaysia, or I could go live somewhere in Africa. And this is what my rent would be. And so it's just kind of a shuffling, reshuffling of kind of like what's possible for people.
Ali Abdaal 7:49
Yeah, like, so that was one of the things that I must kind of that blew my mind when I first read The Four Hour Workweek, that kind of his his argument is broadly, you know, everyone wants to be rich. But the reason they want to be rich is not because of the money, but it's because of the lifestyle that being rich allegedly affords. And did you know you can have that same lifestyle for like a 10th of the price in Thailand versus in the UK, or in the US or in New York or in London, places like that. And therefore, you need a 10th of the amount of money to live. Therefore, if you build a business that does and is automated and passive income and outsourcing and all of the things that we're gonna, that we're going to touch upon, it will then you'll be able to live like a proverbial king for a fraction of the cost of living in a normal house in London. is the kind of economic factor like the main thing that you find people move people become digital nomads for? Or is it more like the lifestyle aspect, like it seems cool, like travelling the world and like working from a laptop and stuff, there's something about it, that seems quite romantic in a way. But I guess it's, you know, pros and cons to every lifestyle.
Lauren Razavi 8:50
So I think affordability is a really big deal. Like in the world, the kind of major cities where previously you could access work opportunities have become really, really unaffordable for the vast majority of people, you know, you can be working at a big tech company earning a really good salary. And it's still really hard to buy a property in London. And I think that that has definitely been a factor in people deciding to become digital nomads, you know, we kind of listen to our parents and their kind of perception that generations perception of like, what success looks like and what a good a good life looks like in terms of being responsible in terms of kind of earning the right amount and kind of buying a house and having kids or whatever it might be. But I think the kind of economic situation that a lot of digital nomads have found themselves in is like, but I could not work for 40 years in an office to then kind of go and enjoy my life at the end of my life when I'm retired. Instead, I could actually kind of make things work now and be able to kind of go to places where my money stretches further where I'm able to kind of have a better lifestyle and there aren't these kinds of, I guess quite traditional pressures of like you should buy a house you should settle down So I think that's definitely a big one. Like I talk about that quite a bit in the book, this kind of like lack of affordability being a really big reason why people explore the nomad lifestyle and kind of go for it. But for me, personally, it goes a bit beyond that. Because I come from a very sort of international family. My dad is a refugee from Iran to the UK in the 1980s. He's the youngest of eight children. And all eight of those children went to different places in the world. So like Dubai, Australia, the US, Germany. And so when I was growing up, I travelled to lots of different places, and kind of visited family and got kind of a bit local in these different places, kind of going back there every year or every couple of years to visit family. And with my cousins, we were really bad at keeping in touch in between kind of seeing one another. So we were just kind of pick up our relationships again, a year later, or two years later. Like we were best friends. And so I think these were really formative experiences for me, because it kind of made me look at the world from a really young age as a very global place. And maybe it's relevant to note as well, but coming from an Iranian family, like a kind of diaspora family. It wasn't just kind of going to Germany and experiencing German culture, it was kind of going to Germany, but actually being in an apartment and experiencing Iranian culture, Persian culture, this kind of little bubble of it within Germany. But these kind of different cultural experiences just meant that when I kind of like left school, I was like, ah, like, I am not just going to live in one place like hasn't I'm going to spend time in different places, I have relationships that are completely cross border. And so for me, like as I said before, like I didn't know like what a digital nomad was until 2015. But I started living as a digital nomad in 2013, and sort of travelling around like this. So for me, it was just kind of instinct of feeling like quite a global citizen. So why wouldn't I kind of live my life in this way? Right. So
Ali Abdaal 11:58
in this conversation, we talked a lot about the Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss, which was the the seminal book that really kind of brought the whole Nomad movement onto the scene. If you would like to get an accelerated summary of the insights from The Four Hour Workweek, then you can check out the summary we've got over at shortform, who are very kindly sponsoring this episode. shortform is by far and away the single best service I have ever found for summarising nonfiction books, it's absolutely sick. It's way more than just a book summary. They do have one page summaries of all the key points in the book. But then they also have chapter by chapter summaries. And they even have like interactive exercise the bits in between those chapter by chapter summary, so you can really engage with the ideas in the book short form is also great, because what they do is that they bring in ideas from other books as well. So if, for example, Tim Ferriss had said something particularly controversial in the book, and there is evidence that that is actually not true, or that there's more sides to the story, or there's a bit of nuance, they will include a little short form note within the summary itself and say, Hey, if you look at the book drive by Daniel Pink, you'll find that Daniel Pink argues for the exact opposite viewpoints. So you might want to do that, you know, with reading nonfiction, it's very easy to get into that mindset, where you just take everything the author says as gospel truth, but the nice thing about short form is that they will flag up when controversial issues are being discussed. And then you can kind of get a little bit more of a balanced viewpoint as well. It's genuinely a really, really, really good service. I've been using it for like two years now. And anytime I get a book recommendation, I tend to look it up on short form first, if it's available as a book summary, and every year, they're adding more and more and more. But if it's available as a book summary, I'll usually read that first. And then if I enjoy the summary, and I think oh, it would be worthwhile reading the book, then I read the book itself. It's also really good for books I've read, like I've read this multiple times since like the age of 17, up until the age of 28. Now it's useful to revisit the main points. So kind of the two ways I revisit points from books I've read number one is rereading my Kindle highlights, because I usually read these on Kindle. But the second way is to look at the short form summary and see Hello, is there something interesting I've missed over here anyway, if any of that sounds up your street and you also want to get the best book summaries more than just book summaries in the world, then head over to short form.com forward slash Deep Dive. And with that link, you will get 20% off the annual premium subscription. So thank you so much short form for being a sponsor of this episode. For let's say someone my age, I you know, 27 have a job read that, uh, you know, currently is kind of based in London, but I've kind of always thought, oh, this digital nomad stuff would be cool. I imagine there's lots of people watching or listening to this who are like, Oh, that seems cool. Like, yeah, hell yeah. I'd love to travel the world and work from a laptop. Yeah, would you would you recommend it?
Lauren Razavi 14:19
I definitely would recommend it. I'd recommend it to you in particular, I'm always going on it up my alley go travelling. I think the reason that I'd recommend it is that as a digital nomad, you kind of go through this accelerated personal growth kind of experience, because I guess you can think of it as like, we're kind of born into these little boxes that we call countries, right? And from a really young age, we kind of have propaganda thrown at us like the UK is the best country in the world. This is so great, like look at all these things we did in history and look at all the wonderful kind of like buildings we have. And actually when you start to travel and you start to spend time in different places, kind of understand the politics kind of understand Unlike how a place works, a lot of that kind of propaganda, I guess, does get broken down. So you start to go, oh, okay, so like Britain kind of prides itself on that. But the Netherlands is so much better at this. And you go to all of these different places, and even if they are places that aren't very developed yet, you know, very much in the emerging economies kind of bracket, actually, they have things that they really excel at, and they have things that are really unique about that place. So I think for me, it's been really, really sort of inspiring and exciting to step outside of that kind of national understanding, and instead begin to kind of look at the world as a place of like incredible diversity and incredible kind of brilliance in different ways. And I think that that has really fed my own personal growth, like I've had so much more time to think and reflect and think about things that I think a lot of other people take for granted, I like the kind of status quo of like know that success is getting a job going through, like some corporate ranks, is buying a house is finding somebody to marry is finding is having children with that person. I think the Yeah, the more kind of international experiences you have, the more you begin to question the fundamentals in the society that you come from.
Ali Abdaal 16:16
So people often say that travelling broadens your horizons. But you know, I've been on holiday to various places for up to a week at a time, and I feel like my horizons have not broadened at all. Is there something special about going for an extended period of time? And I guess, how do you because I can imagine myself, like even if I were living in Amsterdam for three months, living in a nice apartment slash hotel or going to the same coffee shop every day going to the gym, I basically transplant the life I have in London and just put it in a different country and not necessarily like interact with the locals. Is that like a concern? Sometimes? Or what's it,
Lauren Razavi 16:49
I think it's definitely a concern in general, like, I think there's a real risk that digital nomads kind of create, like parallel social circles. So a good example of this is Bali, which is the place where I learned what a digital nomad was back in like 2015. But in Bali, it's really a place that has exploded and kind of become known as like the Nomad capital of the world. But it can be really problematic if you have like a lot of nomads in one location. And actually, they are just essentially living their own kind of bubble life without actually interacting with local people or the local culture beyond maybe having like a waitress, or whatever, in that kind of respect. And I do think that that is problematic. But I also think there's a lot of really great work going on to kind of break down those barriers and kind of integrate people more. One of the really key kind of challenges with being a nomad over the past 10 years has been that you're sort of operating and living in this grey area. So what you are doing, generally is moving from place to place on tourist visas. And that is, essentially it's like, when you when you move around the world on tourist visas, you're sometimes allowed to conduct business as well. So if you're a freelancer, like you might be like, Okay, I'm gonna go conduct business in Singapore. And that's kind of what's brought me here. But in general, you're not allowed to work on these visas. But remote works a weird one, yes, a lot of those kinds of policies that are designed to kind of protect local populations, from people essentially coming to take jobs are not really taking into account what remote workers because when you're a remote worker, you are in an economy and you are spending their like you're spending money on accommodation and gym and coffee or whatever. And actually, that creates a lot of kind of local opportunities. And that can be really good in the same way that tourists coming to a place can be good because there's more money kind of circulating in that local economy, people can start a coffee shop, because they know there are a bunch of like nomads there who they can kind of have as the target market. So yeah, I think that it's there are a lot of benefits to kind of having digital nomads or remote workers in a place. And a lot of the policy at the moment, the legislation just doesn't really have any way of distinguishing between like, I'm going to come here and I'm going to get a job as a cleaner. And that means a local person can't have that job as a cleaner. Or I'm going to come here and work on my laptop and just spend my money and your economy. Yeah. So that's, I think, a really kind of big issue. Coming back to like your point there about like, you know, if you'd kind of transplant your life to a different place. I kind of think this is the key difference between tourism if you if you're a tourist, you kind of go somewhere for a week, right? And you probably like bring your own shampoo, and it probably last you for that week. I know that's a really small thing, but
Ali Abdaal 19:44
it's kind of my travel cleanser or shampoo conditioner a lot that the whole shebang. It's all it's all in the wash bag.
Lauren Razavi 19:49
Right? So you take that you go for a week you come back you probably haven't had to buy anything unless you forgot your toothpaste and then you go to the corner shop and you buy some toothpaste and you're set. When you go somewhere else. like one to three months, you're kind of forced to localise a bit more, because you're gonna have needs in that period of time, which are not going to be covered by what's in your suitcase. And also, because you're there for a longer period of time. So like, when we travel, we automatically go, it's like, oh, you know, I want to print this thing. But it's like 50 pages. So maybe I'll just wait until next week, when I'm like back at my home base with my own printer. If you're a digital nomad, and you're kind of localised to a place, it's like, okay, well, I'm not going to wait three months to print the 50 page document I want to print. So I'm gonna go seek out a local print shop. And so you just kind of interact with the place in a very different way. Another example is like, you know, if you're going somewhere for a week, and you're staying in a hotel, you're probably going to have the hotel cleaners come in every day. And so out your room. If you're staying in an Airbnb for three months, you need to figure out where the trash goes, how to divide up the trash, like, kind of like how to be local in this place. And so yeah, I think it's quite a different dynamic, like tourists. And so tourists kind of go to a place and they kind of use it for a week or a weekend. I think nomads really go to a place and they kind of integrate for a period of time, and maybe they stay for one to three months at first, and then maybe the following year, they come back for another one to three months if they like that destination.
Ali Abdaal 21:20
Okay, so a few things that we've touched on so far. So you mentioned Bali 2015 was when you heard the term digital nomad, what was the what was the story behind that?
Lauren Razavi 21:29
Okay, so spoiler alert, because I think this opens the whole book. But essentially, I was working as a journalist for The Guardian newspaper covering business and tech. And a guy called KC reached out to me, and he was like, so I've got this startup, and we are organising trips for remote workers. He was like, Would you like to come out to Bali and see what we're doing? And I was like, sick. Yeah, I'll come to Bali. Why not? My, my partner also had like, spent a lot of time in Bali. And he was like, yeah, like, you should definitely go like it's a it's a really cool place. There's kind of a lot going on there. So I flew out to Bali did the story for The Guardian that was about this startup, my friend, Casey startup hacker paradise, which is still going and like a little plug, you can book, these kind of group trips, if you want to kind of test out the digital nomad lifestyle. So hacker paradise is still one of those companies that's organising those trips. So it basically means instead of going like, Okay, I'm gonna book an Airbnb for 30 nights and go and see what sort of what this is like. You can instead kind of book an experience for 30 days. And you're there with a bunch of other nomads, like a bunch of other people who have a lifestyle. Yeah, there's a whole bunch of companies that do it now. But hacker paradise was, I think the first like, I was certainly the first person to kind of report on this trend for The Guardian back in 2015. But yeah, I went out there. And I met these guys. And Casey told me about the startup told me about what they were doing and said, you know, this is, this is kind of a, we think this is going to be a big trend. We think that like more people are going to do this. And so I was like, wow, like, I've been living like this as in like, I've been living kind of working from a laptop from one suitcase for a couple of yours. Like, what is the name for this? And I asked Casey, that question directly said, digital nomad, that's what people call us. And so that's when I kind of learned this language of like digital nomads, I don't think actually features in that original Guardian story. Like the language. It wasn't particularly like important for the business story that was kind of covering at the time. But yeah, I realised I'd been living that way for a couple of years that kind of described me. Um, from there, I guess that was many years ago, not like six, seven years ago. From there, I kept in touch with all of those guys who I met in Bali. I continue to kind of travel as a nomad and made a bit more effort to try and like socialise with other people and kind of understand how other people were living the lifestyle. And now I work full time on kind of digital nomad infrastructure, which I'm sure we'll get into in a bit. Yes,
Ali Abdaal 24:09
definitely. We'll get into that in a bit, just to put a little peg in that you are working for a company that's trying to build a country on the internet. That is correct, which is interesting, but we'll talk about that in in a little in a little while. Oh, is being a digital nomad, lonely.
Lauren Razavi 24:28
I think being a digital nomad can be lonely. It's not for me personally, because I'm married to a digital nomad. So my my partner, my husband, Jesse and I have been travelling together since 2014. So we met in 2013. I was already kind of doing a lot of travelling, and we just kind of met and have built a relationship on the road. So I'm very rarely lonely because he's a really awesome dad. So I just get to hang out with like my best friend all the time. And I also think that when Some things that I've done in my time as a digital nomad that I see other people having not done and these tend to complain about loneliness more than I do is, I try and arrange my trips around going to see people in different places. So a good example of this is I'm going to spend a couple of months in the US this summer. And I'm going to go, and I'm going to see Rachel, our book editor. And I'm also going to visit some safety when colleagues and people that I work with, and safetywing also has like a house in San Francisco. So I'm going to kind of go stay there and hang out with with the team who are based there. So I try to just organise trips, so that actually I am going to visit someone on the ground. And if you're, if you do it like that, you kind of can connect with their social network on the ground. So that makes for a much sort of softer landing. Maybe another good example, actually, is I spent some time in El Salvador at the beginning of this year. And my friend John had moved from New York to El Salvador maybe six or eight months before, and he had a really, really kind of wide social circle there. So as soon as we arrived, like first night, it's like, Let's go out for dinner and drinks table full of eight people. And suddenly, you're kind of making new friends wherever you go. In that respect. I do think that the digital nomads kind of lifestyle can be lonely, though, if you are single, new to the lifestyle, and you're not going to visit people essentially. So then it becomes kind of like you are transplant transplanting your life from wherever you were before, and kind of moving from place to place, and we'd be having amazing experiences, but just at the end of the day, not really having anyone to kind of share that with. So yeah, I think that communities like hacker Paradise, and I mentioned before, I think they're a really good way to kind of overcome some of that loneliness. And I also think that a lot of people feel like they have to either be a digital nomad or not a digital nomad, like a nomad or a settler. Like, they have to either choose the path of being only in one place and building a life there, or they have to choose a life on the road. Whereas I think it's much more mixed than that, you kind of find the right balance for you. So like, Do you want a home base at all, I have colleagues who have no home base, so they don't have a home anywhere. They don't actually stay anywhere long enough to kind of like, establish a home base. And that's like one way to do it. But then there are also ways to do it, where you're just kind of like genuinely building like a borderless life. So maybe an example of this is my husband and I like we'd like to get properties in the Netherlands and Malaysia. And so it's not so much that we want to travel like 365 days per year. But it's more like we want to move between a few different locations and actually kind of have home bases there. Which you can kind of monetize on Airbnb or kind of waste like that when you're not using them.
Ali Abdaal 27:47
Okay, so this, I feel like this is the problem that I have right now where I'm thinking, in my mind, it's like all or nothing. I have to be travelling, or I have to be in London. And in my, in my mind, I'm also kind of thinking, you know, like, right now I'm renting a place in central London is pretty expensive. And so like the the sunk cost of that, you know, plays in my mind where I think, Oh, I mean, I could go travelling and go to a cool place for a month. But then I'm kind of quick throwing money down the drain on rent in this in this place. I've been thinking about like, potentially looking to try and buy a flight in central London was also some more somewhere in London to use as this home base. But I didn't quite plug that you could kind of Airbnb it out for like short, small, small periods of time. Yeah, what what sort of setup would you recommend for me, given the context?
Lauren Razavi 28:35
Ah, okay. So, I mean, it depends where you want to spend time, right? So like all that particular places in the world that you visited, and you were like, this place is sick. I want to spend more time here. Yeah, a few.
Ali Abdaal 28:47
I think Tokyo has been pretty sick. I think hoian In Vietnam was pretty sick. I've got family in Karachi. So I'd like to kind of spend some time there in Pakistan every now and then. But I'm still very much thinking that I don't really know. The idea of travelling and living someplace for one to three months seems cool. But I've never done it to know what it would actually be like.
Lauren Razavi 29:10
So I guess my recommendation to get kind of practical on it is I try not to remote work anywhere but I haven't spent a week that's more of a holiday first. And the reason for that is because if you are trying to maintain like a regular working pattern, whilst travelling from place to place, and you find that you are moving like every month and every time you arrive, there's a problem that you didn't expect eg you can't get a SIM card the Wi Fi at your Airbnb is rubbish, like these kinds of practical issues that can become like really, really draining. And so it can be good to kind of do Iraqi like do a test run so you go somewhere for a week and one you see if you like it and to you see what kind of practical problems you come up against. You know, bad Wi Fi is like a really big one in the in the minds of nomads but there's also like a lack of was good co working space accommodation that doesn't look like the picture. So you ended up moving as soon as you arrive, there's kind of a lot of friction points there. And so I find it really good to go and visit for a week kind of low pressure, you don't have a lot of work to do or anything, you're just there to kind of experience the place as a kind of test run to then go back for one to three months later. And so I guess my my Ali Abdaal kind of recommendation here would be for you to kind of explore some places for a week on that basis of like, Could I work here, what kind of obstacles do I think I would encounter, and then plan a trip that's a bit longer term, it can be good as well to kind of plan one to three months in a place when there's something going on. So if there's like, halfway through your three month trip, there's like a big conference going on. And you know that five friends are going to be in that place for that conference, it can be a nice way to kind of like organise your time.
Ali Abdaal 30:49
Nice. Okay, that sounds good. One thing that you mentioned is that it's way easier to make friends if you're going to see pre existing friends. But we have a bit of a sort of chicken and egg situation is that if you don't know anyone in the place that you're visiting, then you it's hard to get to kind of get that social network off the ground. I've got a few friends who we've spoken spoken to about this, like digital nomads type life, who are like kind of working in a traditional law slash consulting slash banking job here in London, the only people they know other people from university slash people working in that job. And to them the thought of like, making friends on the internet just seems a bit bizarre. And to them, like Twitter is this thing that gets that gives them the news and like incendiary things that Donald Trump has tweeted in the past. What does the I guess what I'm asking you is what does the process of making friends around the world look like these days? Yeah.
Lauren Razavi 31:41
Okay, so maybe a good place to start with this is is like, where do you actually start? If you literally are someone who has the flexibility to try out the nomad lifestyle? What what does it look like to kind of like meet? Like, where do you go in order to kind of like meet people on the ground. And I think number one is co working spaces. So co working spaces can be a really, really good source of social connections. So as well as physically like working in the same space as others, maybe going to get a coffee and ending up chatting to someone, that kind of thing. There are also a lot of like networking events, or just general events, like whether it's like morning yoga, or kind of like salsa classes or things like that. Like they tend to be like community hubs. So I guess in the same way that if you were to move to a new city as a remote worker as to relocate, let's say, from London to Paris, you'd be like, Okay, how am I going to make new friends here? Maybe work, I still think is a really big source of like new friends. So yeah, that would be number one is like co working spaces are super, super useful, really great resources. Some folks kind of say like, oh, I don't want to pay for co working space, I'd rather just get accommodation with a table. But it's like, okay, but then you will be lonely, because we have to optimise for a whole bunch of different things as a nomad, not just like affordability or whatever. So I think there are sort of different benefits at different times. Another thing I'd say is that like being part of a remote team, is a really good way to have international connections. So at safetywing, we have I think it's 120 employees across 70 countries. So if I had just joined our team, and I wanted to kind of travel around the world and not get too lonely, I feel like it's really easy to just be like, Okay, so who do I speak to a lot of work, shall I see if I can go and kind of visit them. And not necessarily like staying in their house, although some people very kindly do offer that. And that can be kind of a nice, intimate way to get to know a place and to kind of be close with a colleague, but literally just going to the same city. And so it's like, okay, great. So I'm going to stay for three months. And once a week, I'm going to have in fact, London's a good example, is that okay, I'm going to spend three months in London and once a week, I'm going to have lunch with Ali. And that's kind of your starting point to, to then kind of build out more of a social network. Okay.
Ali Abdaal 33:54
Yeah. So I guess it doesn't, it doesn't seem as hard as I've got kind of thinking in my head because like, yeah, if I were to move to a new city and didn't know anyone, I would do those things and be like, Alright, I need to actively take charge of my own social life, you know, set up the hinge profile or whatever, look on meetup.com to see what's going on, look at anything, anything local, join a local gym, join local badminton club, all of the all of the usual things that a normal person would do to get to know people, I guess also applies to the digital nomad.
Lauren Razavi 34:22
Totally, and maybe actually to give some other examples from my partner and I's life like Jesse likes to play football. So he will, there's an app I can't remember what it's called. But there's a football app where you can basically like sign up and be like, I'm in this city and I want to do like fibre sides. And then a bunch of other people kind of sign up to and then you go and you play football together so and so he's made like a bunch of friends around the world through that and it's always kind of fun because I remember like, what's he did it in Malaysia and like he was wearing like a Norwich City that's like our hometown he's wearing like a Norwich City show. And he went, and it was like people from literally like four or five different countries. And so again, it's kind of like I guess, tapping into kind of a global network like people in different places. I think in Malaysia, he met quite a few expats who are new. And so it's the same kind of principle. It's like you're in a place. You want to meet people. What do you like to do? And I guess the answer is kind of different for everyone. Like, I'm really bad at football, so I don't participate in the football part. I kind of have other ways of like, right, like writing groups, like writing Cylons is another way that I really like to meet people. Although a lot of the world is very lacking on that front. The UK has a really good writing culture. That's one thing I've learned from my travels,
Ali Abdaal 35:38
I should try and look up some writing songs. I'll be fine. What does the company do? Like what's what's the vision, like, what's what's going on here,
Lauren Razavi 35:45
I work for a company called safety Wang. And our kind of core mission is to build a global social safety net. And basically what that means is making things like health insurance, income protection, insurance, and pensions available not based on like your national citizenship, but instead as like an opt in kind of membership or subscription. So in a really practical sense, we sell borderless health insurance, that's our main product at the moment for both individual digital nomads and for remote teams. And it basically means like, if you ally have travel insurance, right, if you break your leg while you're overseas, you then get sent back to the UK as well, like do emergency stuff on you, but then they're gonna sort of like airlift you back to the UK, your citizenship home kind of country, and they're gonna sort you out there. With our product, you can seek health care on the ground, wherever you are. So if you think conceptually that digital nomads are potentially people who don't have a home country or a home base, this means that essentially the product is is designed around like there needs to be able to, if you're in Mexico, and you have a health care problem, you need to go and see a GP, essentially, you can go and do that there. And so that's like the first kind of product that we have. And then we're also working on these other things that I mentioned. So like borderless pensions right now, if you have a pension in the UK, and then you move to the Netherlands for two years, you then end up with two pensions that kind of don't interact with one another. And so again, trying to make as much of this as possible, borderless. And my role at the company is as director of special projects. And my main project is called Lumia. And it's essentially working on the vision for the Internet country that we want to build from the services.
Ali Abdaal 37:40
So what do you what do you mean by Internet country?
Lauren Razavi 37:43
So the vision is to essentially like recreate nation state infrastructure, on the internet, on a global level. So in a really practical sense, there's the kind of safety weighing products, those being worked on. My part of the company is very focused on global mobility. So essentially visas and passports and such. So our 10 year roadmap is aiming to create a fully functional global passport that is issued based on a person's kind of income and profession, as opposed to the sort of coincidence of where they were born. That's like what the kind of mission that I'm working on. And before we get to the passport part, we're planning to essentially create new mobility tools that sort of pave the way to a passport, visas and things or Yeah, so one of the things that we're working on is called the Nomad border pass. And it's essentially an instrument that allows you to apply for a nomad visa in one country, but then get access to like 20 countries. And so the idea being that this kind of visa in the future will be issued for let's say, 10 years, and we'll allow you to go and spend three months, one month, three months, kind of whatever the specifics kind of ended up being, but to go and very legitimately kind of like work as a nomad in that country, and have kind of a dialogue and shared understanding with the government. Because at the moment, there are a lot of issues, I think, with the first kind of like, round of nomad visas that have has come out in response to the pandemic. Okay.
Ali Abdaal 39:23
All right, so I'm just gonna try and sort of get my head around what's what's going on here. And you can tell me where I'm missing things or wherever where we want to add stuff. So I recently read the sovereign individual, which I'm sure you're familiar with, as part of like, this tech bro book club thing that I was part of. And it was it was interesting. He talked, he talked about how, you know, the idea of nation states is a bit of like an a sort of a relic from a bygone era. And really, before reading this book, I just like never heard the term nation state before. Because and then after reading it, I know I'll see popping up a lot. And it's just sort of, we take for granted the fact that countries are a thing. And that I was born in Pakistan. That gives me a Pakistani passport. My mum then moved us to listen to in southern Africa, work there for some some amount of time there were like, right educational opportunities are better in the UK, let's move over to the UK, she had to sort out herself out with a visa as a medic, take the exams, all that crap. Coming to the UK, we lived here for 10 years, therefore, we got a passport. And now I have a UK passport. Which means it's so easy to travel anywhere in the world, except the US because of various visa restrictions I have going to the US in particular. But it's just sort of a given that this is the thing. And I've got friends, you know, friend, friends from University, who were international students from Pakistan, from other places, for whom it's like, Hey, should we take a trip to Paris this weekend? Oh, sauce is going to take me eight weeks to get a visa, and who are kind of tied into jobs that they don't necessarily enjoy for five years at a time because well, I need to get my indefinitely remain my residency permit and all that. All this kind of stuff, which is just I had assumed was oh, yeah, that's just that's just the way things have to work because like countries and stuff. But it sounds like what you're saying is that the function of a country is you if we think of a nation state or a country as a product, you are paying a subscription fee to use the product, ie tax and stuff, but you're basically tax and in return you are allowed to you then have the privilege of being in the country. Firstly, you have privilege of working in the country. And you will get access to amenities like health care, like in the UK, or I don't know Jobseeker's Allowance, or these other sort of social safety net II type things. And there's no reason why that has to be confined to the country that you were born in. What if we had a global safety of like, I pay my monthly subscription to the to the overlords at safety wing or whatever the process ends up looking like? And then in return, this private corporation supplies me with health care and pensions, and a social safety net if I lose my job, stuff. Does that sound about right? What am I missing?
Lauren Razavi 42:12
That's a pretty good summary. I think there's a bunch of different things to unpack there, though. The first thing I'll talk about is just nation states. Right? So I've been very familiar with this term for a long time, because I studied politics at university. I guess they don't tell you about the nation states that medical school
Ali Abdaal 42:29
was not a thing that came up countries. So
Lauren Razavi 42:33
TLDR just on nation state country kind of concept. It originates in 1648 in Westphalia, which believers in Germany, and it was basically a bunch of dudes getting together, like how will we govern the people? And they came up with this idea of the nation state
Ali Abdaal 42:48
what I mean, how will we govern the UN like because before this, it was like empires and stuff?
Lauren Razavi 42:53
Yeah, so are like, sort of regional powers and things. But basically, like, I guess my point here is just to say that, like, the idea of a nation state, is actually so much newer than we think. Okay, so if we think about it as like, oh, like, since the beginning of humanity, surely.
Ali Abdaal 43:10
Surely, like the thing 16 for like 1066 Battle Hasting or whatever, from Normandy invades England, like normal, like, normally, we're the place England for the country, like, yeah, how can we say that nation states didn't exist before 1648.
Lauren Razavi 43:25
Because literally, the unit of nation state didn't exist. So
Ali Abdaal 43:29
what happens when a nation state in a country?
Lauren Razavi 43:33
Well, this is kind of fundamental question with regard to our internet country. But essentially, in the world today, there's not a lot of difference between a country and a nation state. But the kind of premium product, the entire idea is to try and redefine what a country can be i, it doesn't have to be this kind of thing with a government and borders and particular rules and kind of all of this infrastructure, actually, it can be something more akin to like citizenship as a service. Right. So exactly, as you were saying, kind of paying in for a membership, whether that's like a flat fee thing, or as a percentage of income. We don't have the details on that stuff yet looking sort of at the 10 year horizon to be thinking about some of that. But fundamentally, that's like the idea that we're pursuing at safetywing. And at Premier is like, how do you how do you redesign a country for the 21st century? And we tend to think that countries are these things that are completely fixed. And you know, we can't really question them. But actually, like, within our lifetimes, countries have appeared and disappeared and failed. There are people today who were born in a country that no longer exists, because that country has kind of changed its name. So all of this is so much more fluid than we tend to think for like a kind of traditional reading of the situation, I guess. So I think that's really interesting. There's one final thing that I do want to touch on from what you were talking About though, and that is this idea of passport power, right? So you mentioned that your, your friends from uni, some of them really kind of struggled and would have to wait weeks and weeks for visas. This is fundamentally one of the things that we are trying to solve at safetywing. So our fundamental belief is that your passport and your ability to kind of move around the world should be based on who you are not the kind of coincidence of where you were born. And at the moment, we're in a situation in the world where a person's birthplace and or heritage because there are different ways you can kind of get a passport completely defines their opportunities. You know, if you are, if you are born in Eritrea, you do not have the same opportunities as somebody born in the UK or France, because you will be restricted and exactly this way you're talking about with a Pakistani passports from moving around the world, based literally only on your birthplace or heritage. And at the moment, we're in this kind of zone, where there's a bit of a re kind of shuffling, re reimagining of some of that through Nomad visas, which is something I talk about quite a bit in the book. And essentially, Nomad visas are something that came up in response to the pandemic and the rise of remote work. When countries kind of tourism was devastated by the pandemic and border closures and such, they started to invite digital nomads instead and said, Hey, come for three months, come for six months, come for a year, and see how you like this place. And the kind of thing that changed that I find really interesting there is that they are much more interested in your income and profession in meeting certain requirements in that respect than necessarily your country of origin, the passport that you hold. And I think that's a really like positive signal. But it needs to be taken further. There are like a lot of kind of issues with like Nomad visas and how they've been constructed, some of them have not been very successful, because they were sort of created without any input from end users and just kind of like thrown out there into the world. Some governments announced visa programmes without actually giving a date that somebody might apply for that visa. So it's been a fairly messy kind of landscape. But the general, the general move from an emphasis on birthplace to income and profession, I think, is a really good intermediary step to getting towards a more kind of equality of opportunity globally. So wherever you are, in the future, we want it to be like wherever you were born, you could access another possible and be allowed to move around the world, the kind of interim step we find ourselves in now is where it's more based on kind of income and profession, which is not perfect, but I think is an improvement on birthplace. Because if you, you have more control over your income and profession and can kind of work at that, whereas where you were born is completely, you know, you can't do anything about that. Yeah, you don't have any choice about that.
Ali Abdaal 47:54
Okay, so we're trying to build an internet country, where you can sign up to the country, that will give you a passport that will allow you to travel to other countries and work in other countries and to all the things that you can pay a subscription fee, ie tax of some description, which will give you health care and the other things that like traditionally a country or a country's government would in theory be providing for you. One thing that like last time, last time, we had dinner, you were kind of explaining this to me, and I just I didn't quite I just had didn't have a way to understand it at the time was your it's it seems like you're keen on like, open borders for all kinds of vibe, correct me if I'm wrong, that front? Does that not mean that like the, quote, more desirable places to live would then become a quote, overrun with everyone in the world wanting to flock to that place? And then the place becomes less good?
Lauren Razavi 48:46
really valid question. But I guess my counter is like, there's there's a perception that if all borders were kind of, like gotten rid of not closed, if all borders were kind of like, destroyed tomorrow, you can go anywhere you want. The general perception is, well, everybody from the global south would want to come to like the UK or to Europe or to the United States. And that's kind of like our assumption. But interestingly, like digital nomads are doing the reverse of that, in general, they're coming from like, the most powerful countries and the sort of most expensive cities and the global north, and they are travelling to places in the Global South. And I think that there's not really I mean, for one thing, I suppose I should say, like really frankly, it's like, I'm not advocating for borders to be like, completely abolished, completely abolished, you know, anytime soon. I think that that is the kind of utopian vision we should be going toward as an as everything becomes more borderless, like work finance, knowledge, like all of these different things is that becomes more borderless, borders become less relevant and more restrictive for pointless reasons, right as an EU cannot go places because of borders. But I'm also very, very, I acknowledge and appreciate that you can't just kind of like move from where we are at the moment to that. So that's kind of the utopian like vision to aim for at the end of the day. But in the interim, I think it's much more, I think there are a lot of benefits to not necessarily getting rid of borders, but just making borders much more fluid for people to move, move through and kind of move between, I don't, I don't worry that more kind of borderless infrastructure or norms would lead to most of the world moving to somewhere else. In a like, unbalanced way. I think there are still a vast majority of people in the world today that do want like a home base, and do want to settle down and don't necessarily want to move countries at all, because they like the culture and the weather where they are. And so that's like, important to kind of realise, but it's also about people moving all the time anyway, you know, people like your family, my family has moved to places for economic opportunity to sort of escape like problematic kind of situations, whether they are like political, or whatever. And that is, you know, that's something that that can't, can't be stopped. That's happened throughout history, like way back, like, when humanity was like doing agriculture and kind of moving around the world, everybody is always kind of moving for some kind of new opportunity, whether that's economic or love, or whatever, all the reasons that people kind of moved to different countries. And I guess my vision, like what I want to happen is for that to just become easier, I don't think people should make decisions about their lives based on the restrictions that they face from the government they best stuck with, right, like, I think they should be able to go, I really like this person that I've been dating for three months. And so I'm going to go and spend the next six months in their country and in their city to explore that. And for it to not be like, and therefore I have to move my tax residency, get the correct visa potentially start a company in that jurisdiction, if I'm a freelancer to employ myself, there's like all this kind of friction and tension for you to literally just be able to have the freedom to be like, I just gotta go see if it works out with this girl. Yeah, right. And that's kind of my, that's why I'm interested in open borders or kind of getting rid of borders, it's much less in that sense of like them not existing, and much more in that sense of like, individual people should not be restricted by essentially like a powerful kind of government hands, sort of saying how people should live their lives.
Ali Abdaal 52:44
Interesting. Okay, coming back a little bit to some of the digital nomadic bits. One thing that Tim Ferriss highly advocated for in the four hour workweek was this idea of outsourcing to the global south broadly, where salaries are a lot lower. The daily wage for someone in the Philippines might be $5 a day. And so if you can pay that someone $5 an hour, then suddenly, they're doing super well by Filipino standards, but you're also saving a lot of money compared to hiring someone in the Bay Area, who might charge $500 an hour for basically the same thing. What's What's the deal with that, like Tim Ferriss, like? Some, some people seem to seem to be like very pro this, some people seem to be very anti this, what's, what's going on there?
Lauren Razavi 53:29
Okay, so I think in principle, there is nothing wrong, it can even be net positive to hire across borders, right? Particularly if you're able to connect with people for whom the money is very meaningful. So the example that you kind of give if somebody is in the Philippines, and even if they're not kind of earning like a global wage for what they're doing, they may be earning double, triple or quadruple even more than the local waves, they could get through a non kind of tech job, if you like, as an a non remote job. And so I think broadly, that is positive. However, you also kind of have to acknowledge that by doing that, you are kind of like taking advantage of global system. Yes, that's built on unfairness and inequality, because kind of going back to what I was saying before, about passports and such, it's like, nobody can help where they're born, which passport they hold. And thus, if that person in the Philippines is able to do the same job as like a Silicon Valley developer, you then have some really big kind of like ethical questions about, well, just because it saves my business money, should I be paying this person, half a quarter of what I would pay for somebody in the San Francisco Bay Area? And so I think it's very much like I think it's something that we kind of all have to operate, kind of as we're, as we're doing things we will have to kind of have the is in mind right? Well, we have to have it in mind that there is we're all kind of operating in the system, this global system, which really is quite unfair and unjust. And it encourages inequality between equally skilled and talented people in different jurisdictions. And I think that having an awareness of that with any decision you make in a business is just kind of the definition of kind of the culture that you're pursuing and what you build, right. But it's also bigger than that, right? It's like, if you if you want to hire someone from the Philippines or somewhere else, you don't have control over whether that person is actually allowed to come to London and live here in order to do the job. Sometimes that can be really challenging, and really, really expensive. Like for a company, if somebody wants to move, like, maybe the maybe like kind of moving is going to increase the cost of that person as in like their their salary, but it's also going to cost a lot and take a long time to actually sort out the paperwork to make that possible, right. And so part of the the kind of mission that we're working on at plein air and safety wing, is to try and create global mobility instruments and kind of campaign for more kind of equality in this respect of being able to actually move to places easily and quite cheaply to be able to do your work from anywhere. So to bring that a little bit more down to reality. Right now, there's a really big fundamental issue with like the US in particular, even though we're in a world of remote work now, and somebody from anywhere in the world could do the job that a US company wants done remotely, right now, you generally already have to have a US green card in order to even apply for those positions. And so the reason for that is because companies don't want the hassle of having to sort out visas visas for people actually like enabling them to kind of come and work there, if they don't already have that entitlement. But obviously, that means that any one company is missing out on most of the world's talent, they can't kind of hire in the same way, ends up for the people on the kind of receiving end of that situation that they may be doing exactly the same job, but being paid a fraction of the price, and they're not able to kind of move around the world because the immigration system is essentially like very against them. And so yeah, I think that it's all very connected. It's kinda like businesses, and entrepreneurs can only really make decisions on the basis of that company, the company that they're running, and the kind of culture that they want to champion in what they do. I think there's this kind of other bit that's really important, that is about policy. And it's about like what an individual can do in the world, not what they have to rely upon, like a company or government to kind of give them the right to do. So yeah, it's all kind of reducing friction to try and create equality of opportunity. You know, I don't believe that everybody should be like communist level equal in terms of like, we should redistribute wealth and kind of like, make everyone super equal. But I do fundamentally believe that, like, you should have an equality of opportunity, wherever you're born in the world, that you can do, what you want to do in terms of you can move to a different country, you can try out different types of work, you can fall in love across borders, and it's not going to be atrociously expensive and a lot of heartbreak. There's nothing to do with a relationship.
Ali Abdaal 58:24
Damn, yeah, yeah, I guess it's a lot. So
I've not really thought of it in those terms. Before that, you know, this micro decision of? Do I hire someone in a different country? In a way, actually, I guess, I guess we're all making those market decisions. Like when I buy anything from any company that's made in any country in the world, other than the UK. And even if it's made in the UK, if it's made up north, it's gonna be cheaper than if it's made down south. It's like, there's all of these like, inequalities and like unfairnesses in the system. You know, I think it's that quote, you know, the there is no ethical consumption under capitalism or something like that, where there is always going to be someone who's getting screwed over in the process for for my Starbucks coffee that I had this morning to get into my, into my hands. And in a way, as individuals, there's, I guess, there's not much we can do about it, given that it's a global system, with so much like, it's so deeply entrenched that as an individual, there's not much you can do. But I guess as individuals there is at the same time, stuff we can do in terms of shifting consumption. And maybe, for example, companies run by individuals choosing to actively pay people location independent salaries, even though they don't have to, just because it's like, well, we're this is the sort of culture that we'd like to create. That's fair to say.
Lauren Razavi 59:44
Yeah, I think so. I do think that individual choices matter in the sense of like, if you're in a position of being able to make like hiring decisions, it is a good thing to kind of have this in the back of your mind and be able to be like, okay, so what does it look like? Like what does the kind of structure look like for this person who's maybe doing some freelance work for me from the Philippines, to actually, within a period of time, do more work for the company do more work for me, and then actually to maybe come on as a full time team member. Sort of location independent like rate of pay. That's, that's kind of fair on that global scale, not on that kind of local scale. On a personal level, like when I'm working with freelancers, if I'm working with someone via a platform like Upwork, for, you know, like really little bits and pieces, like ghosts, sort of like ghosty and icmf, type, editing and stuff that takes me forever. If I'm just doing like, a few hours of work with someone, and it's very much that kind of like, almost gig task based thing. It's not a case of me stopping to think for a very long time about whether I should be paying a Silicon Valley wait for that, like three hours of work, because fundamentally, like it just needs to be frictionless. And I need the thing done, right. But if that person begins doing like, 10, or 20 hours per month of work for me, and I'm like, okay, so this person is really great, I think they'd be a good cultural fit, then I will try and kind of like, bring them off of a platform and more kind of into like our general pool, I think it's really tough. Because if you're testing out new people, a lot of the time, that's, you know, like, people aren't always up to the job. So it's hard to kind of like from a total starting point be like, I'm gonna pay everybody the same, I'm gonna make sure that like, I'm paying like Linden rates, not Filipino rates or whatever. However, I think that when you are a decision maker, and you're kind of going through that process, and you're kind of getting to know talented people, you have to have that awareness that it's like, well, I could just put them on what's good annual salary for them and their location. Or I could go this person is clearly talented and dedicated. Thus, I am gonna like put them on the same as my person who's sitting in London with me who's doing a similar job.
Ali Abdaal 1:02:04
I was talking about this with the with one of my friends, when we were just discussing this idea of like the ethics of outsourcing. And came this whole thing of like, oh, this is one of the critiques of globalisation. I was like, oh, yeah, I last heard that word in, like GDS GCSE geography, but I have not thought about it ever since then. And then I picked up this but you know, the very short guide to very short introduction to globalisation, the globalisation paradox, like oh, people have been thinking about these issues like these are not it's not just an isolated thing. And apparently, there's this thing in in philosophy, like the the paradox of exploitation, which is this idea that, essentially, how you feel ethically about situations like should I hire someone from the Philippines, etc, etc? Depends on one fundamental question. And the fundamental question is, if a transaction is mutually consensual, but unfair, should the transaction take place? And if you think that, well, both parties are consenting, even if one party is being shortchanged in this, as long as they're consenting at all good, we believe in individual consent, then the answer is, of course, yes, it should, like the person in the Philippines is happy to be paid the wage, the company in the US who's hiring them is more than happy to give them the wage, both parties are consenting. Therefore, this is ethical, even if it's unfair. And the other side of the coin is like, well, if you think a transaction between two mutually consenting parties, that is unfair, should not happen. At that point, you're like, well, even though they're consenting, there's still something ethically wrong with this. And I guess some of those people would say, therefore, the kind of the invisible hand of the government or whatever should stop that transaction from taking place. And there's plenty there's a bit of paradox in philosophy for absolutely ages. But there's this paper by some philosophy professor at like UCL or something, where it's like, actually, there's a fairly fairly easy solution to the problem. And that solution is that when you hire someone, as a company, you then have a duty of care to that person. And that duty of care means you should treat them in a nice way, which I guess is a very, it's sort of, I don't know, to me, that made a lot of sense, because it was like, okay, cool. That, like, allows me allows one plus one equals equal to without having to hold these two fundamentally opposing things. Like, I think this is unfair, but also they're agreeing to it. But I think it's unfair. And like, if I didn't hire them, then they'd be worse off or worse off, and I'd be worse off, but it's fundamentally unfair. And all these all these other issues like, well, if I do hire someone, I have a duty of care to them. And as a good person, as wanting to create a certain culture within my team and my company, it is only fair that I pay them a certain, you know, certain ways, probably location independent. But then, you know, I was talking about searching through a bunch of tweets about this kind of stuff, obviously, the bad place to find nuanced information. But, you know, just this idea that when I go visit, you know, I'm going I'm going to Turkey next week, for example, and if I buy food, I'm not going to pay double the price because that's, you know, the purchasing price disparity between the currency of Turkey versus the currency of the UK. So like, you know, what's what about, like purchasing decisions with someone? Would it be ethical for someone to voluntarily pay? Like, you know, when I buy a seven up in Pakistan, I'm actually going to pay 20 times the price, because this is what I would have paid for it when I was in London. Any thoughts on that? But I think,
Lauren Razavi 1:05:20
yeah, I don't think that people should go around the world paying more than the actual price for things like, I mean, I make a point of tipping, just wherever I go, particularly in places where there's a tipping culture, because obviously, it's very rude not to, not to tip in those, but um, even in places where there aren't like, I'll try and tip if it's good service, if it's a good thing. But no, I didn't really feel any pressure around that at all, I think I relate a lot to what you said about kind of having that duty of care over somebody who's working for your company, or who you're collaborating with on things. And actually, I think that, you know, so much in life, and I think you and I probably share this philosophy, but like comes down to human relationships, and like how you build those relationships, right. And like, I think you and I are probably both the kind of people who see people as humans, not as numbers. So it is kind of about that, I think on an individual level, making those decisions in ways that kind of resonate with your own, like personal human values. I do think that a fundamental problem for a lot of a lot of folks is that they're working with companies, or they're working with people who actually aren't open to dialogue on things. And actually, like, this is a problem even like within the UK context, like I have friends who just don't feel like they can ask for like a pay raise like that. That's that's not a conversation that that is there that he feel comfortable, kind of like having with a manager or a boss. And so yeah, I think that if you can focus on individual humans, that's probably the best way to navigate without it becoming unmanageable to actually kind of make those decisions on a day to day basis. Yeah,
Ali Abdaal 1:06:59
so I guess like, bringing this this thing around ethics back to the digital nomadic type stuff. One thing I've heard is that digital nomadism is the new colonialism. What's the what's going on there? Like why do some people hate to hate on the digital nomad thing for that? on those grounds?
Lauren Razavi 1:07:16
Yeah, so I mean, I suppose a good example of this would probably be Mexico, right? I'm just back for a couple of from a couple of months in Mexico. And I was very surprised to learn that there's a huge backlash going on against digital nomads there. And there are a few different reasons for that. One is just that the Mexican government has had incredibly lacks border controls through the whole pandemic. So whenever else pretty much was closed, Mexico Oh, yeah.
Ali Abdaal 1:07:45
All my friends are going on holiday to Mexico. Yeah. So obviously, digital nomads
Lauren Razavi 1:07:49
went. And there's relatively like simple routes to residency in Mexico. And then there are like a bunch of like, kind of added benefits to, to how that all works as then you can quite easily as a foreigner come and end up living in Mexico. If you have enough money. That's kind of the bottom line, right? But there's this huge backlash because there's a lot of gentrification happening particularly in Mexico City. And over in Tulum, Playa Del Carmen these kind of like more beachy destinations. And these have become like real Nomad hotspots, at the same time as the same kind of gentrification that people talk about in like London or New York is also happening in those places. And so the the kind of backlash comes not necessarily from people being nomads, but more of a kind of like inequality of the situation. If you think specifically about American nomads going and base themselves in Mexico, and living the life of a king compared to the New York or San Francisco because their money stretches further, you then think about how Mexicans are treated at the US border, I was literally in line behind somebody with a Mexican passport, when I passed into, into the US on my way back from from Mexico. And like they were questioned, like so much more heavily. They were really kind of like given a grilling, even though they were just there for like a week's holiday. And I think that that is something that's really kind of reflected in this backlash against digital nomads is like, how can you like how can you come here and make life worse for people here at the same time as treating like people from this place extremely badly when they try and kind of enter and come to the US? And so again, this is kind of this global mobility kind of inequality thing that I've talked about a couple of times in this conversation. And you know, I I've written about kind of like digital nomads and colonialism and the comparisons kind of between them. I don't find it. I don't think it's the it's the same in any sense, like nomads are not necessarily like going to places to kind of exploit them and take the kind of natural resources and kind of ship them back home and kind of make all the all the profits in a different country. But then there is also a valid kind of like criticism, which is like, if there's a digital nomad living in country X, and they're not actually paying income taxes in country, then they kind of are sending their profits back to the homeland if you like, which I guess is kind of a valid comparison. But that really comes down to the fact that the global tax system can't cope with remote work. So like, there's not a way to essentially pay taxes on the ground where you are, most digital nomads would be quite happy to pay into a system that was specific for them, like, okay, so you're coming in your remote working here for three months and fast, we'd like you to pay this amount of taxes. And you kind of see some precedents with that, like with tourist taxes. Yeah, that's
Ali Abdaal 1:10:55
the thing in Paris, and that was something for the night or something, something to that effect.
Lauren Razavi 1:11:00
Yeah. And but I mean, most of those things are kind of collected for accommodation providers. So it's like that kind of infrastructure exists. Something we're interested in kind of working on as we develop this Nomad border pass at safetywing employ Mia is actually tax functionality, so that nomads would be able to kind of like pay into that local economy that they are spending time in a way that is as seamless as like an Oyster card on the tube. We're really looking to remove as much friction as possible from all these kinds of different areas. And sort of just, I guess, give new options for people like to actually kind of pay in and create kind of more, more of a relationship for Okay,
Ali Abdaal 1:11:40
yeah, and I guess kind of individual governments who maybe have like a four or five year tenure, are maybe more concerned with short term, short term cash of like, oh, cool, these rich people are coming into the country, let's build housing that is like super expensive, so that we make more money on tax or whatever. And sort of oh, that that means when next election round comes around, we'll we'll we'll be able to say we've increased GDP by x, rather than thinking of like the 20 year downstream consequences of set housing project.
Lauren Razavi 1:12:12
Totally. I think a lack of vision and a lack of long term thinking and policy is like one of the fundamental problems with our current like political systems, like the, if you think of everything in life and in the world is like incentives, right? Like, what are the incentives in the game, like the incentives in the system? Right now, if you in traditional politics, your incentives are to make five year decisions, or whatever the you know, the number of years are for a particular context, but to make five year decisions. And then to win the next election, and actually, two and a half years into your five year term, you have to start thinking about the next election. So like, really, you're you're not very concerned with what's happening during that five years, compared to making sure that you get another five years. But it's kind of a lack of space for long term thinking. I think a place like Singapore is a really interesting example of a country that is really, really committed to long term thing you see is you see quite a lot of good stuff happening and a lot of European governments as well, where it's just like, I didn't, and one of the things that I noticed is the stronger kind of regional or city authorities are, the more stable the kind of long term strategy, the long term thinking of place is. And I think that's just because there's, you know, there's a really great TED Talk, maybe we can, like link it on the video or something called why males should rule the world. And it just kind of talks about, like, you know, the power of politicians who are in close physical proximity to you, I, if you're a mare, you can walk, you have to be able to walk around your city, and people have to be happy enough with you, but they're not going to throw like rotten vegetables at you. Whereas like national politicians can be incredibly, incredibly detached to the extent that like, you will never see them in person. And I think that kind of creates, like, not great incentives for actually doing stuff that is going to please voters. Yeah, as opposed to be good. And the media will be good on social media when you kind of promote it. Yeah. I think if we could, if we could get more long term thinking happening with policy all over the world, that would be a real victory. But maybe just to kind of add, actually, I mean, something interesting. So safetywing, committed to funding premia that kind of internet country development, the development of that vision for the next 10 years. So I'm in this privileged position in the role that I'm in where I can think at least double the length of any traditional politician. And I find that really kind of exciting to be able to think about infrastructure, kind of in that same way that politicians or governments are meant to, but actually, without any of the of past politics and the kind of electoral or, or aspects of it, which I think can be quite like draining for everybody involved aren't really creating much value.
Ali Abdaal 1:15:09
Yeah, it almost feels like being a being tenured at a university gives you the privilege and permission to have long term to think long term because you're like, cool, I've got this, I don't need to worry for a while. So now what are the cool thing cool, interesting projects I can do. But coming back to this point about long term planning, I mean, I suppose someone, if we think of places that have good long term planning, Singapore had a long term plan, Dubai famously had a very good long term plan. And the people of Dubai apparently loved the people in charge to like, bloody hell, this plan really worked out nicely. But if you think of Singapore and Dubai as being like, you know, they're not really models for democracy. So how in your mind, I mean, I'm sure there's not an easy answer to this. But how does democracy so the idea of democracy square with the idea of like, it would be cool to have long term planning rather than incentivization happening as a result of democratic elections?
Lauren Razavi 1:15:57
Yeah, I think, on the kind of long term horizon, I see the kind of, I guess, representation or more democratic aspect, falling a lot more to local and regional authorities. I like, if you think about the moment, we have, like the local layer, the National layer, and the global layer, right? I think the national layer is on its way out. If you're thinking about 1020 years down the line, it's becoming less and less relevant to the way that we live our lives. So that kind of leaves you leaves you with the the global layer and the local layer,
Ali Abdaal 1:16:29
meaning cities states,
Lauren Razavi 1:16:31
so meaning regions or cities. So just as an example, like, if you're talking about like the UK, you might talk about like Norwich as the city, but Norfolk has kind of the region. In the US, you might talk about, like the kind of federal state system, ie the state of Acts, as opposed to just one city. But these things kind of play out differently in different parts of the world, in terms of how everything is structured. But yeah, I think that I think that that kind of the the kind of voting and elections and democracy is definitely super, super important at that local level, I think at the Global layer, and the way that we're kind of envisioning things like citizenship as a service, like an opt in membership, in which you have very plainly stated, this is what we're providing, this is how it works. It's really unclear to me at the moment, like how and when, and under what circumstances, we would introduce kind of a democratic structure to govern that. Because it's kind of like when it's opt in, it's like, if you want to, if you want to be part of this great, like, be be a citizen of our country. But if you don't want to be part of it, like nobody is forcing you to, I think I see the challenge thinking long term on it, like as more like company like companies and kind of like unions or whatever. So like, as in the relationship between, it's not even necessarily unions, that might be a bad example, I see it as kind of the relationship between the internet country and its users will need a lot of attention paid to it. And we're really committed a kind of safety when philosophy is to be very user focused. So to focus on what people like and don't like about what you're doing and keep optimising. So we want to kind of take that approach. So it's definitely not a case of like, we're building a thing, yes. And we're not going to listen to any user of it, or anybody. And that's just what it is. But it's also not that we are going to introduce kind of like a liquid democracy and direct voting system as a first step. I think in my mind, it's really, really important to actually build a thing worth being part of before kind of getting too stuck into these really, really age old tough questions over how to make decisions, how technology can enable that. And I'm really resistant to the idea of like, essentially uploading, like the whole, like party political system and elections and voting up to the like up to the cloud, and kind of have that be like front and centre of an internet country, because I don't I don't think it's a productive good system. But I think it's effective. I think that you end up paying a lot of PR companies and getting a lot of media coverage and kind of doing all these things like to kind of show face instead of actually creating value. And so yeah, I don't know, like how it will work out long term. And we're certainly very open minded. So there's a lot of discussions go on kind of our community and our team about I guess, like the the outcomes and the equity in a situation of like, okay, you know, how can we how can we kind of receive feedback, but actually make sure that that feedback is actions and actually, if you're doing everybody votes directly on every single time, it becomes really difficult to actually like, do anything about that other than be like, and this is what the people said yes. I'm sick. Yeah, when I,
Ali Abdaal 1:20:01
when I did my kind of crappy explanation of nation states and stuff kind of this idea of sort of safety wing or plumy, or whatever the internet country is, in a way, being a global Overlord, were in a, in a way, you know, read on charitably, there's a bit of a dystopian vibe to it of like, oh, there was this private corporation that is now in charge of your passport, and that's in charge of your healthcare, and you have to pay a subscription to it. And they can opt to subscribe subscription wherever they want, et cetera, et cetera. Oh, how are you guys thinking about kind of that that narrative?
Lauren Razavi 1:20:30
Yeah, I mean, we're definitely like, as a group of people having come together to try and create something, we're definitely more utopian and dystopian. But I also totally take like the kind of criticism of how that can seem, I think that probably one of the parallels to draw to kind of understand the context in which we're working is that tech companies already hold a huge amount of power over all of us and a huge amount of information. I think there's some really interesting kind of like user versus company kind of dynamics that right, so like, I mean, you have it within workforces, as well, to use Google as an example. Like, there were a bunch of people walked out, because they didn't want the company doing military tech, like for the US government. And you also have users who will like mass exodus from a platform based on kind of its ethics or performance or whatever. And so yeah, I think that you can't ignore that actually, some of the biggest competitors to traditional nation states are, in fact, tech companies, not countries, like not, not kind of traditional countries. And so that's kind of the space that that we're operating in. At the moment, I do think that a lot can be a lot can be achieved by designing the system well, and designing the kind of feedback loops well, to make sure that the thing is developing in the direction that its users want it to develop. There's some really interesting work going on at the moment that I kind of want to look more into as well around exit to community have you come across this. So it's kind of this movement, among particularly like open source software, or like the kind of open source ecosystem a bit more broadly than that, but it's this idea that rather than kind of exiting to IPO or exiting to investors in the future, there could be structures for companies, tech companies to actually kind of exit to their community, ie to hand ownership of a thing over to the people using it. I'm very interested in that. There is a lot of really kind of accomplished people kind of exploring in that area right now. But it's very, very early stage, as in like, there aren't loose structures. There's not like a kind of roadmap of how we get from here to there. But I'm interested in the potential of a lot of these kinds of ideas that are going around the ecosystem of kind of tech to kind of reimagine, like what things could be. I also think that there's a huge kind of thing here to flag and I don't want to make this a crypto conversation because I try to avoid them in general. But I do think cryptocurrency is having a really big impact not just on economics, but actually on how people organise and how people work and how people work in the future. So at the same time, sorry, how so? So do you know about bowels?
Ali Abdaal 1:23:24
Yes, ish. Really.
Lauren Razavi 1:23:27
So I guess TLDR is people are getting together. So Tao stands for decentralised autonomous organisation. Coders can build these things, these sort of algorithmic companies, if you like, or organisations, and then they tend to have like a cryptocurrency underpinning them, like either one of the big cryptocurrencies or a very localised kind of currency to that kind of ecosystem. And then people can work for that dowel, instead of engaging with the traditional economy. And they tend to be flat hierarchies. So they, like people are working together as a network on equal footing rather than, than that, like boss manager, like a traditional employee kind of sense. And I think it's just really relevant to kind of note that that's also going on because you can kind of incorporate you can kind of interpret a lot of that as almost a backlash or a different kind of direction than big tech and the Silicon Valley mould. And so there are all these kind of different ideas developing all the time, and I think it's really difficult to kind of see any one thing without considering all the different stuff that people are working on within the ecosystem and the new opportunities that that kind of creates as you go on. We see a lot like I think this is a quote from Brian Eno. But we say a lot of premia like get cooking recipe to follow. So as in like get going start building something, even if you don't know like what you're cooking yet and again, It lays onions and that garlic into the pan, that's probably going to be good to tasty and useful whatever happens next.
Ali Abdaal 1:25:05
I guess one other thing that I was I was thinking is this idea of an internet country which you pay a subscription fee for and return for amenities like health care and stuff. And XYZ in a way it like, if people don't like it, a they don't have to opt into it because it's entirely optional. But be I'm sure there will, there will be other competitors that spring up. So like with any kind of product, if I don't like notion I can move to as one of a zillion note taking apps. And nowadays, one of the big selling points in note taking apps like things like obsidian is the fact that you own your own data that you can always migrate to another another app and you're not like locked in. So maybe there's a thing of like, you know, this is my bro science speaking but like, in the future, an internet country project, maybe it's plumbing, maybe it's not would be like, Hey, you can actually leave us at any point. And you can transfer out like your pension or your ISO or your investment account or whatever, to whatever other provider you want. And we're not gonna stop you. We're hoping that by the by virtue of the fact that we are good, and we serve the users, and we're amazing, you'll continue to pay us. Similarly, Spotify, you can always move out to Apple Music, but you wouldn't want to because Spotify is just better. Is that kind of what you guys are thinking or am I am I off base?
Lauren Razavi 1:26:13
No, you're totally I think, I think people call that portability, don't they? Yeah, kind of data portability. I think that's really important. And I think that will be a kind of natural part of what we do. So I kind of philosophy at safety wing is we want to make products that are so good. You tell your friends about them. We like have a company policy of not paying for direct advertising. Because we don't believe that that's like the the way necessarily to kind of like build a product and kind of like a relationship with users that is meaningful. And so yeah, I think that I think that, like, portability is just a kind of, to me, it's like a natural thing. Like, particularly if we're in a competitive landscape of internet countries. I would personally as a user want reassurances that I could kind of like move that on, or even potentially for a while, like move it back to a traditional nation state. If you imagine a situation where you have a premier passport, right? And you give up your British passport, let's say because the premium passport is all good. But then what happens if after 10 years, you don't approve of the premium policies anymore, you want to kind of move on or even move back. So as in like you want to reclaim your British passport, or you want to move on to another internet country. Or maybe now you're going to take a Dutch passport or something like that. And then what's really interesting about all of this, by the way is just that like it's kind of all very competitive, right, like as in like country should be competing for talented people. And I think that's the kind of landscape that we're entering into now is a situation where it's not just internet countries challenging people's current citizenships. It's actually all countries realising that in a world of remote work, they can pinch all those people who don't want to live in San Francisco now, their roles are remote, and they can get them to kind of come and establish kind of a hub where they are. And so you see that a little bit. You know, I mentioned Bali before. Bali is a place that is a real kind of like Nomad hotspot, a lot of companies have been built out of Bali now. So like a trend over the last 10 years was like people would go to Y Combinator like entrepreneur first, raise money, and then be like, Okay, so I've got a runway left me like two years in San Francisco. I went to Bali, they probably last me more like 10 years. Yeah. And sort of making these decisions. But smart governments are really kind of like trying to leverage this. Now. They're going like, Okay, who are we going to target? How are we going to get them? And what is it that we can offer to them that's going to attract this. So in the US in particular, this has really taken off already. So you have a whole bunch of like, to be honest, like towns and regions you've probably never heard of, that are offering literal literal, like cash grants for people to relocate. You already have to be an American citizen for those programmes, but you can get like 10 or $15,000. To to move to a place as a remote worker now. And I think this is fascinating. And I think we will see so much competition for people, and that this hopefully will also raise standards. So not only for plein air and kind of internet countries, but actually for existing countries. If you're in a situation where like let's say the premier citizenship offers pretty much all the same benefits as British citizenship, maybe without the ability to vote. Yeah, right. Like as in like you don't there's not democratic infrastructure because it's citizenship as a service. Yeah. Would being able to vote and traditional elections as they exist in the UK right now, actually be a meaningful feature. You know, if you think about this as a tech products, like, would this be a meaningful feature for people to choose that are more expensive, less efficient option? Yes. Versus an extremely streamlined, tech driven citizenship. With premia, that maybe you don't get the same in a traditional sense of like electoral politics, but you do get a say in in the sense that like, if you email feedback, we are like gonna listen to you and kind of take into account
Ali Abdaal 1:30:15
your feedback and gov't at UK. Yeah, I guess this is why people are chill about moving to places like Singapore and Dubai and stuff because it's like, I'll happily take the hit of like, no democracy in return for lower taxes, better lifestyle, safety, all of all of the other features that a city or a country could have. And I guess just thinking in those terms, like, oh, that actually is an option. And countries do now have to compete for talent. Just is, I don't know, it's just like a cool way of thinking that. I guess we're not used to thinking of because the idea of countries is so entrenched in the way that we view the world. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like this is a good a good place to end this. So practically speaking takeaways for me are this nomadic stuff seems cool. I guess I was kind of like, oh, I need to have a whole year where I'm just travelling to be able to take advantage of it. But actually spending a month at hackers paradise or equivalent. You know, we had that deal with with with zuku. You know, this idea of travelling to different different places and co working from there before COVID completely screwed that up. But it's something like that, that, you know, actually we've got a few team members who I've been trying to talk into moving into moving to London, her a bit like oh, you know, I live in I live in Northampton and like live in Northampton is a bit boring. It's like well moved to London. Oh, but it's, it's expensive. And I'm not sure if I like it. I just tried it for a month just get an Airbnb. It's always do to give that advice to other people. Whereas for myself, I'm like, Oh, I couldn't possibly travel unless I've got a whole year. Unless I really thought this out. Like it's probably not that hard to try out the nomad lifestyle and see what it's like. And I remember there was this, this blog post from Tim Ferriss that I read reread recently, where he talks about this lawyer guy who friggin hated his job in law, decided on a whim that he was going to move to, I think maybe it was Mexico or something and realised he had actually great life there became like a surf instructor. And it kind of ends with him speaking to another lawyer who's like, Oh, my God, I wish I could have this kind of lifestyle, and the guy is just like, well, you kind of can't, it's just that your, the way you're thinking about your life is so kind of entrenched in the traditional idea of what success means, in like a job in like a big city with a high salary with high cost of rent, etc, etc, etc. That it's just it just takes a little bit of a push to start thinking beyond those terms.
Lauren Razavi 1:32:36
Yeah, I think, um, a lot of people have this kind of inbuilt fear of really going after what makes them happy. And I think that my experiences with digital nomads around the world is like the polar opposite of that, like you speak to a nomad. And they're like, What makes me happy, is like, having an Ikea desk in a place and a computer, I do my work. And then I like to go to the gym. And then I like to go and do this, I'm gonna do that. They're incredibly sure, as am I like, about what it is that they're looking for, from life. And also from travels as in like, you know, give the example of like an, you know, an Ikea desk and, and a monitor or whatever. Because I know a lot of people who literally like buy the same IKEA desk wherever they go. So if they're in four or five different countries for like two or three months at a time, they will literally just order the same thing. They know how to put it together, because they've had it before and just kind of set that up in their AirBNB apartment. And then they have what they need for work. And they're very sure about that they've optimised that they travel with the bit that they need, they know what they need to buy on the ground. And, you know, some people are really into surfing, some people are really into beaches, some people are really into cities. But I think just in general, that kind of I think I referred to it before, like the personal growth that you kind of go through by travelling, and also just the kind of like self reflection that you have to do to make a nomadic lifestyle work when you go like, okay, will it make me happy to kind of like, go to this place and experience all of this? And like, what is it that I need to feel grounded? If I'm not at home in that traditional sense, like, you just kind of get to know yourself so much better, and you're able to, yeah, really kind of go after what makes you happy? There's so many folks I know who are like, Yeah, I'm a digital nomad, but like, I'm like, regimented in my routine. And I'm kind of boring, you know, and like, it's for a very, very individual, I think like, how you perceive things and exactly what you pursue. Yeah.
Ali Abdaal 1:34:34
And I guess one of the cool things about being a digital nomad and doing this travelling thing is that your feedback loops are quite short in terms of trying out different lifestyles and seeing what you like. Whereas following like, if I think of all my friends who are still in medicine, you know, left school at 18 Having decided to do medicine at the age of 14 optimised or optimise the hell out of the CV, et cetera, et cetera, stayed in medical school for six years gone straight into a job. It's like one life path and And, you know, the friends I have who, you know, after two years of working as a foundation doctor, there's a natural career gap. And then people do all sorts of things and the relevant crap, like, there are other ways of living. But usually that's just for a year. And it's like, oh, but I still need to have good stuff on my CV, and it's just sort of entrenches you into a particular life path. And actually, one of the students on my youtube or Academy I was speaking to yesterday, you know, trained as a trained as a doctor in Oxford, and then did like a surgeon surgery thing at Harvard, and then worked at McKinsey for a bit and then started on startup for a bit and is now a digital nomad, with a wife and three kids currently living in Cape Town, you know, from from the UK. And that's the seems, seems pretty cool around how having actually these different life experiences because hashtag YOLO, you only live once, you might as well kind of figure out based on feedback loops, what is the thing you actually enjoy? And then you can start optimising for that thing.
Lauren Razavi 1:35:49
You say, do you think in this conversation, I've convinced you to give nomadic a try? Like it's going to be a follow up conversation while we're in like Malaysia with some lights that fit in your suitcase later this year?
Ali Abdaal 1:35:59
Yeah, yeah, I think so. We kind of have been figuring out what does the Nomad travel setup look like? For me? Like, right now we've got this studio for the next like, 656 months, were seriously thinking, okay, you know, when I want to mock runs out at the studio, it's like, super expensive, is super nice, the vibes are great. But is there a way that we can kind of pare things down, potentially get like a house that has maybe three bedrooms, and one of them, we turned into a podcast studio, one of them, we turned into into a YouTube kind of thing. But even that feels a bit like, restrictive in the sense that, like, I really like working in, in working with people in person, I think that's the thing that makes me really happy. One of the things that I realised that what I don't really like working from home, having done it through the through the pandemic, and when I started going to the local we work, I was like, oh my god, this is living a dream. It's all about co working spaces. And so I just, I'm just trying to figure out what does our company look like? Very much I do like working with people. But I also like the idea of having freedom and stuff to travel. And I also like the idea of not necessarily having an expensive office space that we're paying large amounts of rent for any ideas on that front.
Lauren Razavi 1:37:11
Yeah, definitely. So I think actually, it's an important point to make, right that I love working with people in person like I, I think that it's not, in fact, maybe it's not so much like always working with people in person. But it's like spending time with people in person, it's like vastly superior to video calls, etc. And that's partially why I arranged my travels. So I can go see people and actually kind of like spend time with them in person, I find the balance that we have at safetywing Really good. So a couple of times a year, we get together for a week or so like a whole whole company retreat and different place in the world every time. So we were in Mexico and kind of had like a get together, there was another one kind of on the cards for Bali at some point. But just kind of having that, I guess quite concentrated in person time. And then having periods of kind of like deeper work and where you are Kind of just keeping in touch more. Using digital tools, I find that balance works really well. And I actually have incredibly strong friendships and professional relationships with people, because I'm able to be extremely present with them when I'm physically there. But I'm not always in the same place around the same group of people. So I think there's like a natural, it can be quite positive to kind of have a natural break from people and miss them, and then kind of go and really be very invested in being there. I don't know how much of that it's all quite personal. But I don't know how much of that can kind of be applied to the mindset of thinking about how to do the company, I have to say that it's if you actually do the numbers, it's generally like a lot cheaper and a lot more fun to bring a whole team together several times a year in faraway kind of paradise location than it is to maintain an office in like one expensive city. So my recommendation for you would definitely be to kind of like, just really think outside the box for 2023. Like how can you like rather than being like, what do other companies do? It's more like, what does Ali's company do? Like? What am I feeling like? What's the vibe check?
Ali Abdaal 1:39:10
Yeah. Great. Well, thank you very much, Lauren. Final question. I guess if anyone's listened to or watched this far in the conversation, they became too keen to hear more of your thoughts around this stuff. So what's what's the deal with your book?
Lauren Razavi 1:39:22
So my book is called Global natives. And it's essentially about how digital nomads are taking over the world. So it's not a how to might won't teach you how to be a digital nomad. But it kind of tackles this question of what if loads more people become digital nomads, like what does the world look like them? What are the kind of some of the exciting kind of like, like lifestyle services, business models that might be out there and how does like policy need to change so that we can kind of like move around the world without all of this friction that I've been talking about? And I guess in a way if people are interested in the internet country thing like liberal natives, my book is very much like the precursor to what we're doing at premiere. So a lot of the ideas in there a lot of the problems that I identify and the solutions that I kind of suggest, I'm now actually kind of able to put those into practice through premiere and safetywing. And there will be another book in the future. That's a bit more on the internet country side of things. So yeah, I also love to tweet, so say hi on Twitter.
Ali Abdaal 1:40:27
Fantastic. So links to the book, links to the newsletter, links to the Twitter account, links to all of your stuff will be in the show notes in the video description as usual. Thanks very much for coming on. It's been great. Thanks for having me. All right. So that's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive. Thank you so much for watching or listening. All the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast are gonna be linked down in the video description or in the show notes depending on where you're watching or listening to this. If you're listening to this on a podcast platform and do please leave us a review on the iTunes store. It really helps other people discover the podcast or if you're watching this in full HD or 4k on YouTube, then you can leave a comment down below and ask any questions or any insights or any thoughts about the episode. That'd be awesome. So yeah, thank you very much for listening. I'll catch you hopefully in the next episode.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai