Nomad City and Remote Work Europe: Embracing the Freedom of the Future

Welcome to the Future is Freelance podcast for solopreneurs, digital nomads, slowmads, consultants, remote workers, e-residents and people living a life without traditional boundaries. We're here for everyone who defies categorisation and makes a living in a life their own way. Every other Freelance Friday, we're serving up an audio cocktail of expert tips, inspired insights and stories from the frontiers of freelancing To help you achieve success with your borderless business, whatever success means to you as you live life on your own terms. Thanks for listening to the Future is Freelance and for being part of the Future of Work revolution. Good morning, good afternoon or good evening, in fact, good the middle of the night. Future is Freelance listeners, depending on when you are tuning in to these words in your flexible work lifestyle. I've just got back from Nomad City in Gran Canaria. I travelled back yesterday and I wanted to share a little bit more I know some of you have seen on social media about what's been going on there, and also to share some things that are going on in the remote work Spain, remote work Europe communities and my thoughts for the next few months about what that's all going to look like and involve. So, first of all, nomad City. Then what was it? Well, it was built as a festival and, in fact, to be honest, I'm recording this on the 26th of July and the festival is still going on because there is a closing event ceremony taking place this weekend. I'm not going to be there for that massive fomo, obviously, but I had to fit things in around availability of flights and so on, which meant that we couldn't stay for the entire period, because it actually took place over more than two weeks. So what happened? Well, in terms of the events itself, the festival started with an unconference session, which took place about a week and a half ago. It was a really inspiring day actually. We spent it. It was actually at a coffee plantation up in the hills of Gran Canaria. I didn't know this, but it's the only place that coffee is grown commercially within Europe, because obviously it can only take place at certain latitudes. I'd never seen coffee beans on a plant before. Coffee is something I'm very fond of and it's a very important part of my freelance productivity lifestyle. Let's just say so. I'd never seen the green beans before, but anyway, that's not what I came to tell you about. The unconference then was all about issues facing digital nomads and things that people wanted to talk about the idea of an unconference is that the agenda was curated in the moment and it wasn't preset. What we had in the first session was people proposing things that they wanted to hold a discussion about and then the audience voted. It was very ably chaired by Nacho and Annemarie to make sure that everybody got a chance to propose subjects and then to join in and vote for the talks that they were most interested in. In my case, I went to a really interesting discussion about issues facing digital nomads over 40 because, well, I don't describe myself as a digital nomad, but I'm definitely over 40. I think it's really important that this movement that we're all part of whether we consider ourselves location independent, freelancers, remote workers, digital nomads it has to be inclusive and that includes taking into account the needs of people who are more likely to have little experience of living in a co-living situation, because it was certainly a new one for us and I wasn't completely sure what to expect, even though the materials produced by El Cabo and Aguete were really detailed and helpful. I was trying to explain to a friend, actually, what we were going into, what our accommodation was going to be like, and my friend said it sounds a bit like a student house or student halls and I thought, okay, that's a fair comment. But I was relieved to find when I got there that, compared with my student days anyway, there was a very different vibe. It was much more professional, respectful and diverse. Of course, we were sharing an awful lot of the facilities, but they had been specifically designed for that, like the existence of three huge fridges where you could claim a shelf for your stuff, a work area that supported lots of different styles of sitting and desking and so on Nothing quite like my padded ergonomic home setup, but it was certainly enough to get some stuff done during the day, and that was also a shared eating area for the evenings and so on. There were private meeting spaces. All in all, it worked pretty well. I was surprised by how much work I was able to get done, and I think my other half had a similar outcome. It wasn't perfect, because you were sharing the broadband with a lot of people trying to find space for a webinar which I was running, and trying to find somewhere that was quiet enough and had a consistent environment was a little bit challenging and, to be fair to El Cabo, our stay at the co-living also included use of a proper co-working space just down the road. To be honest, I should have decamped there for my calls, but I didn't. I was trying to do it in the place that we were actually living as well, and it was fine. It was workable. I was hopping on enough my phone broadband, occasionally when things maybe got a little bit overloaded, but by and large it worked really well. The accommodation was comfortable, nice ensuite rooms. Theoretically you could have worked from the room, but with two of us in there and all our stuff already, there wasn't a lot of room for that. So I was glad that we were able to use the shared areas. The shared areas also included a beautiful roof terrace where we had the most amazing views over the whole of the port of Agaete in Gran Canaria. It really well. You could see the whole of the village from up there. You could see the sea, attempting you to close your laptop and go and plunge into the Atlantic, which I did on nearly every day. That was an important part of what I promised myself in terms of how I was going to live and work while I was there with. The roof terrace was also used as a social space. It was used as a workspace. It was a great place to watch the sunset and enjoy a local beverage in the evening. A number of workshops were held up there. It was designed for both working and chilling out, so it worked extremely well. The reason that we were both there as a couple this time normally it's only me packing my bags and Richard drives me to the airport and then goes home again Is we pass an important milestone this year in terms of our location, independent lifestyle, in that both of our daughters are now theoretically adults and, given that I have been a remote worker initially, very much a home based worker, from just before the first one was born, this was quite a significant moment. In fact, it actually informed the subject of the talk that I delivered at the full nomad city conference, which was a week after the on conference. Now, as you can probably glean from the names, the conference was slightly more formal. It definitely wasn't like my old corporate Event days back when I worked in market research. There wasn't a suit or a boot in sight. It was more flip flops and shorts kind of vibe. But it was much more curated. It was much more planned, with panels and keynotes designed to cover a range of themes and you know that showed that an awful lot of thought had gone into putting together this program. So huge thanks to Nacho and Joe and the rest of the team who worked on this, because they really did bring together some amazing thought leaders. Now I'm not sure exactly when the recordings will be released and, if I can, I will link to the recordings of the program itself in the show notes For this podcast episode, because I think I really want to give people who couldn't be there a taste of it and I also want to share and reflect with those people who were there, because actually it was the most incredible gathering and we had talks on a very wide range of subjects. Some of the themes which came up and carried over from the on conference session were particularly about integration and about the way that digital nomads and travelling workers can have a positive and lasting impact on the places they visit, not just as tourists who spend their money, but as people who understand local projects, who give back, who exchange skills and languages and culture and really make an effort to put down at least some temporary roots in the places they're passing through. And, of course, this movement, just as it has, to embrace people of all ages, it has to embrace working location, independent people of all spectrums. So say, for my other half, it was the first time I Drag Tim off his huge monitor and onto a tiny laptop to experience working away from home for the first time, and I think you quite enjoyed it. So I don't know what's going to happen next, but you know that spectrum starts with working from home at your desk and never leaving the house, and that it moves through people who travel from that base, as we were talking about in previous episodes. It then embraces people who have maybe moved permanently to somewhere else, just as we've moved permanently to Spain many years ago. We certainly haven't stayed in one place here, but we do have a home base and we always will. Some digital nomads clearly want to optimize for continually moving and often that has tax motivations of just simply not wanting to have any kind of fiscal base anywhere, and that can work for a number of years for many people if you have the robust enough insurances, and we talked about that as well as that kind of lifestyle option. But definitely there are people whose lifestyle involves travel in a slightly slower way, people who are and we met one lovely family who are homeschooling two boys and they move about every four months or they bring a cat as well To a different location. Shout out to Aaron and John. So that's another way of doing this lifestyle, whereas for other people it's moving on much more frequently and all the people that I met either passing in the kitchen or in the office area it's funny because obviously you do names and where are you from tends to be the next question Clear that up. Obviously we're all born somewhere. But then the next question it's and where do you live? And obviously for most people you meet, that's a fairly straightforward question and I do meet an awful lot of people who don't live in the place they were born. It's like, okay, you're, you are from the UK, you live in Spain, and then you move on to what you do and so on. But talking to people really in the nomad space, when you say where do you live, that's when it immediately gets complicated and leads to some fascinating discussions, when you went into just make a cup of tea or something and you find yourself 20 minutes later having met a new soulmate who has a lifestyle that fascinates and intrigues you even though it's nothing like your own, and that was what was so interesting about living in that way. I think it was the chance to meet so many interesting people who weren't, who weren't like me, like us in so many ways. They were from different countries, they spoke different languages, they did different things, and yet everybody shared A kind of a common value system of wanting to tread lightly on the earth, be respectful of other places and people, whether that was keeping the shared kitchen clean or wanted to integrate With the communities that they traveled through and to leave a positive impact on the places that they visited. And it was also a very interesting entrepreneurial community. I certainly met some future guest episodes for you for season four, but I'll talk a little bit more about that in a moment. But everybody I met had a story. They were interesting and they were doing creative and entrepreneurial things with their life and business, and I found myself, as a podcaster and a storyteller, really wanting to get to the heart of that and pin them down and talk to them about their plans and things. Even when we weren't, we were socializing and it's it's lovely when people share my view that business is life and it's because we're doing work that we love. It pervades everything we do in our conversation and our values, and we're happy to talk about it. And I think that's one of the most overlooked things about freelancing and entrepreneurialism is that when you get it right and you manage to find a way to make a living doing what you love, then you embody it and it just becomes part of your personality and your conversation and everything else and and the values by which you live. So that was really fascinating lovely, lovely people I've. I've consolidated some friendships. I've certainly made some new friendships and I'm looking forward to staying in touch with a number of people that I met last week, including some who may be future podcast guests. They just don't know it yet. And, of course, I met some previous podcast guests, including Gonzalo Hall and Dean Cushill, and, yeah, I can't wait to share with you some of the thoughts and ideas of other people that I met. So I also use the time I tend to when I'm, when I'm going away to work, I tend to be Really productive just before I go. It's a great kind of reset Okay, planning for a trip, what do I need to do? What do I want to do while I'm away? What do I not want to do, which included podcast episodes and editing, so I got all that done before I left. That was great. I obviously did some writing, and I'm happy to do that in a slightly noisier domain of a shared environment. That worked okay, but I also wanted to use the time to have a little bit of a retreat with myself and think about my own work and my creativity, my work with clients, which obviously is very important and keeps the lights on, but projects like this and like the remote workspace community, and I decided I hadn't decided before I went, but after a little bit of reflection I decided that I am going to take a break from the podcast this summer. There will not be any new episodes of the Future is Freelance released through August. I promise you we will be back in September. This is just a break so I can consolidate on some other stuff. I'm certainly not taking August off, as a lot of people in Spain still seem to do. I envy them, but that's not my style. It is definitely a time, though, to just change pace a little bit, to take things a bit easier. I certainly am finding it coming back after nearly two weeks in the canaries. I'm finding the temperature quite a struggle. Especially and I don't know if you appreciate the depth of the sacrifice I have closed the window, turned off the fan and haven't even touched the air conditioner in order to optimize your audio experience. That window is going open as soon as we hang up this recording, by the way, because it really, when the air isn't moving, it's absolutely stifling in here, so that's one reason I won't be recording during August. I promise I will come back in September, so please don't go away. I've also got some exciting changes planned for season four, but don't worry, they are good changes and they will simply be a way to help me bring you more of what you love. So stick around, don't worry. If you don't hear from me for a couple of weeks, I'm definitely coming back. One of the things I will be working on this summer that a number of you know about already is the Remote Work Spain community and its growth and expansion to become Remote Work Europe. This was one of the things that I wanted to get my head down around last week, especially being around all these inspiring entrepreneurs and remote workers, because I feel that there is a huge amount of content and community out there for digital nomads now I mean, just the people I was hanging out with last week are actually creating an awful lot of that and it's so mature and evolved and for people who want to travel all the time there are, they can literally go from one community to another. They can go from one hotspot to another. They have all this highly evolved support and infrastructure and businesses there for them. Also, in that funnel of remote and slow mad workers, are the people who don't travel around so much, but people who have made themselves a permanent base to work remotely in one country. It might be the country they were born in, it's often not, but their people have settled and they have a home. They don't see themselves as a nomad or a slow mad and they need information that's more locally specific. For example, in the remote work Spain community, we have experts to come in and talk about tax and digital signatures and things like that which are particularly relevant to one local area. Legal changes, business regulations these are the glamorous, exciting things, but they are the day to day of doing business in a place in a new way, as well as the broader picture of remote work, change and policy and technology and all the other things that affect us all. So over the last couple of years I have been growing the remote work Spain community and I'm so excited by how that's going and growing. We have about nineteen thousand members. I'd love to think that by the time you listen to this it will be twenty thousand, but it won't hopefully hit that target over the summer and I will be celebrating that with you. And obviously we have a number of people who joined that community, which is based on Facebook, who are not in Spain and I've been looking at some of the insights behind it. And, of course, some people are nowhere near and you're not quite sure what their motives are. And it is moderated very tightly to stop people posting stuff that would be spammy or even scammy. I mean, there's the stuff that people never see, you would not believe. But anyway, we have this great community. We also have people who've joined us from other countries because this does not exist for them where they live. They are remote workers, they're English speakers, they're job seekers in many cases all their freelancers but they don't have a remote work their country. So this is what I've been thinking about and this is what I've been testing and piloting in recent months. Last month I think it was just at the end of June, we launched Remote Work UK, and that was with the assistance of a really experienced social media manager who's actually based in Spain, but she's British and she has extensive connections there, and so she is now the admin of Remote Work UK and is starting to grow it, applying the same principles that we're using in Remote Work Spain. And next up, which country will it be? Well, that depends on who, I find who has the savvy to do this and wants to do this work. So if you're listening to this and you are an English speaking remote worker anywhere in Europe except Spain or the UK, obviously, if you're in those areas, come and join the Facebook groups which I'll put in the links. But if you're thinking, why isn't there a remote work Italy or France or Austria or anywhere in the Balkans? I mean, we're going to take a fairly liberal view of Europe here. We've already got non-EU Britain on board, so let's be inclusive. I want to set up more sister communities. Now, with Diana's help, I'm really refining the process to the point that somebody will have an operating manual in order to do this. And, just to be clear, I'm not hiring anybody to do this as an hourly paid job. I'm looking for people who are entrepreneurial enough to make this work in their own community. With my support, you will be able to make local deals. You will be able to advertise your own services and offers that support remote workers. Perhaps you own a co-working, perhaps you have a retreat, perhaps you offer consultancy services. That might make you the ideal person to do this, but you don't have to. You can simply find other people, for example, our wonderful accountancy partners, entregtrameters. I regularly refer business to them. They regularly support the community and they come and do amazing webinars with us and they offer so much value to the group. But it's really synergistic and those are the deals I will help you set up in your local community, at the same time as helping you run the Facebook group and providing content and support and guidance. I do need people who understand how to admin a Facebook group, but beyond that, there's a great deal of support available from Diana and myself. So if you're listening to this and thinking I could do that, then I would love, love, love to hear from you. We can get all of this set up and rolling for you and it could actually be making you money as well as giving you a whole new world of community and connection within just a few short months, depending on how you want to grow it. So please get in touch with me. The other thing I have been advertising on the Facebook group in Spain and elsewhere is I need a little bit of help with the newsletter, because the newsletter is what's going to tie all of this together. We will rebrand the website as Remote Work Europe and find a way of structuring that in the site. That's a slightly bigger project and that's partly why I want to pause the podcast through August to give me the headspace to do that. But I also have an admin vacancy to help with getting out the newsletter, because what people really want to see in the newsletter? I know they love the podcast and my words of wisdom, but let's face it, people want jobs. So we do spend time researching and curating a great range of fully remote job opportunities and freelance gig opportunities so to do that takes a little bit of time and also to make certain that they're really remote as opposed to fake remote jobs, which we all know about. We're talking about things that you can really do from anywhere and making sure that they don't have barriers to hiring somebody in the EU or wherever our listeners happen to be. So we're already doing that for Spain, now we're starting to do it for the UK and obviously it is a slightly bigger job than for somebody to take on. So I'm looking for an administrator to join me on the newsletter to help sort that out. It's just a few hours a week initially and I really do need somebody who's got newsletter experience and is used to that kind of segmentation and dynamic content and so on. If you don't know what I'm talking about, it's probably not you, but if you do, then I would also love to hear from you. So so this is a movement we are growing. I never intended, and I still don't intend, to build a big business empire here. What I want to do is collaborate with the right, similarly minded. Future is freelance people, the kind of solopreneurs who can see yes, this is something I can add to my portfolio of what I do. This will enhance my offer, either because I'm a v? A and I can help with the newsletter, or because I'm some kind of remote work entrepreneur and I can help with hosting of the facebook groups. So I'm not really gonna be taking much of a break at all through august can clearly see that. But you know what, when you live a life Doing what that you love, you don't really need a break. You just need to continue to be in foods and engaged and carry on With that work and everything that it's offers you. Because I do feel incredibly lucky that I get to do this for a living, that I have clients I can write for who help pay the bills, but at the same time, I can be building something new and that actually supports the environment, those clients operating because the people I write for all about the future of work and the future money and things like that. So it really does feel like everything's coming together. The inspiration from nomad city and other events is helping to really power this forward for me. I would love you to be a part of it. So please, just because the podcast is taking a break, you don't need to do the same. You can contact me about the facebook communities and the admin work. You can stay subscribed or following this podcast so that as soon as we come back again in september, you'll be the first to know and you will not miss any of our opening episodes. You can make sure you're subscribed to the current mailing list, which is hosted at remote work spain dot info. Just get yourself along there and it's there, or pop up and invite you to join the mailing list. So please make sure you do that, because we would love to have you with. Us will use social media, but obviously email is one of the ways that we send out key information and ideas, so please follow us there. You can keep in touch with me. Linkedin is probably your best bet there. If you search for my middle miss on LinkedIn, you'll get me. There isn't anybody else. I don't think there's anybody else anywhere actually, so it's definitely me. I would have said Twitter in the past, but to be perfectly honest, or whatever it's called this week, I'm really spending less and less time there. Sadly, I haven't managed to establish any lasting kind of audience or relationship with any of its so called successors and I haven't got threads yet. That's a little bit of EU phone mode that we're not allowed it. So at last in the UK you can say you got a Brexit benefit, that you're on your own ducks new Twitter replacement before we are so anyway, yes, you're welcome to follow me on Twitter, but LinkedIn is where I tend to hang out On a professional basis outside of the remote works Spain, remote work UK communities on Facebook, so I would love to see you there. Please give me a shout. Will be taking a breath, taking a pause in August, but it's a pause to reflect, to grow, to reorient and really plan a fantastic future and plan out the rest of the year. So, all of you, fabulous future is freelance, solopreneur, success stories, remote works, low mads, nomads whoever you are, I'm going to miss you, but please don't miss me too much. I'm still here and I will see you all in September. Thank you so much for being part of this movement and for helping us create something truly amazing that we can only create together. Thank you for listening to the future is freelance podcast. We appreciate your time and attention in a busy world and your busy life. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a fellow freelancer, help us grow this movement of independent entrepreneurs. If you rate and review the future is freelance in whatever app you're listening to this right now or over at future is freelance dot xyz, then that will help spread the word and help us reach more people who need to hear this message and join the conversation. Together, we can change the world and make sure the future is freelance. This is my middle miss, wishing you success and happiness in your enterprise until our next episode.