Digital nomad, location setup and having multiple bases
I treat cities as tools. Each one is good at a few jobs and bad at the rest. The setup is four bases, not one home that is supposed to cover business, health, family, and fun.
I took this from Andrew Henderson at Nomad Capitalist: one place for the company, one for fun, one to switch off, one for family and friends. Winter sports can sit in fun. Write the goals down. Then pick the city that already matches them. I do not think there is a single location that is the most optimized place for every goal at once.
Georgia is the business base
I lived in Georgia, Eastern Europe, for four years because of the company. A foreigner can open a company there. A foreigner can open a bank account. Tax on foreign income is 0%. Labour is cheap. Living is cheap. I have an apartment there, cars, other assets. I like the country.
It is not the fun base. Restaurants are limited. Customer service is bad. If you want to date a lot of people it is the wrong country. If you want a girlfriend it is one of the better ones. I host the business there on purpose. I do not ask Tbilisi to also be nightlife, food, and dating.
If you are in the US or the UK, paying a large-city bill, and you can work online, a cheaper country is how a lot of people first get a surplus. That is where the digital nomad idea came from. It does not have to be Georgia.
Do not digital-nomad a company
I was a digital nomad for about two years when I started. Freelance is fine: designer, developer, copywriter, anyone working for someone else from a laptop. Building a company is a different job.
Travel is a stream of unknowns. That is why people like it. A company wants fewer unknowns. I was in Bali trying to close a $10,000 client when the power cut in a thunderstorm. It always hits at the worst time.
I later tried a slower version: a new location every three months. When I recorded this I was in Europe. Before that, three months in Colombia, three months in Dubai, three months in Georgia. Even that rotation still produces its own mess. I cut it to about four bases, and I use each one for what it is actually good at.
Use Dubai, Colombia, and Georgia for what they win
Dubai is the networking city. The people you can meet there are the point. Restaurants. Something always on. It is also the health city for me, which surprises people. Healthy restaurants, takeaway with calories and macros already counted, walking on the beach. I lose weight there. It is expensive.
Georgia was the opposite. I arrived in decent shape. I left about two stone heavier — about 20 kilograms.
Colombia is the dating city in this setup. I am British. They see a lot of Americans. A British accent, blond hair, blue eyes, and the odds move. Put yourself where the odds are already on your side. The goal can be anything. Fitness is a goal. Dating is a goal. Tax is a goal.
People will spend months optimizing where the company sits — tax, bank, payment processors — and never apply the same work to where they sit.
A bad city is a $500 flight home
Do not freeze on the town you grew up in. A lot of Americans still do not have a passport — 50 or 60 percent, last I heard. The US is large and varied. It is still not the whole map, and for tax it is often the wrong map.
The reverse of a city you hate is a plane ticket. I ask the same question on every decision: what is the worst case, and how hard is it to undo. Travel, unless you pick a genuinely dangerous country, is almost always undoable. In 99% of cases you fly, you do not like it, you spend about $500 to go home, and you burned a couple of days. You still had the week.
Be sensible about kidnap-risk places. Do not treat that as the typical case.
Match the city to the current goal
If the goal is mountaineering, you go where there are mountains, rental kit, and other climbers. Same rule for a company.
The OnlyFans operation has a short list before I even book: stable Wi-Fi, shops if we need a phone or a cable or a 4G router, and a postal system that actually delivers — Amazon in a few days, not a few weeks. A city that fails that list puts friction between you and the work.
The same rule applies to the rest of life. Colombia for dating. Bali if I need to de-stress. Denmark if the goal is to spend time around people who score high on happiness surveys. Taxes, business, spirituality — pick the place that already does the thing.
Moving is a habit reset
Most habits are cues. The cue lives in the apartment, the street, the coffee shop you walk past. Change the city and those cues go away. That is the chance to drop a bad loop and to decide which good ones you are going to carry.
In Ibiza I started publishing a lot, because I reset and told myself to record. In Colombia I did not have that habit. Colombia also had a proper gym. I used it most days. The gym here is a small room. I train less. I have not solved that. I notice it.
Cheap towns beat five-star tourist streets
You can cut the month a long way without living badly. About a year before this video I spent a month in Rize, in the north of Turkey. Odd town. Food was simple — chicken breast and salad almost everywhere — so eating clean was easy. Weather was good. We found a shisha bar and went every evening. People were friendly. Local salaries were about $200. The month was cheap enough that saving did not feel like a diet.
Tourist cores are expensive everywhere. Five-star hotels sit in a narrow band: about $300 to $700 a night in London, Tbilisi, Istanbul, Thailand. If the job is to save, skip those streets. Smaller towns in cheap countries get you to a couple of hundred dollars a month, still eating out. If income is low, or the current goal is a surplus, that is the move.
Four properties, three months each
I am setting up four properties. I already have one. I am looking at London, Dubai, and Colombia. Three months in each. When I am not there, they rent. That is four assets and a second income. Most people cannot buy four flats. I could not until recently. OnlyFans paid for that window.
Weather is not a personality flaw. I am from London. People there complain about the weather their whole lives. The country will not move. Portugal or the south of Spain is the family version of the same idea: a warmer place my parents can use for three or four months in summer, and I can go and sit with them.
I now only spend time in warm countries. I went back to London for four days, first time in a few years, and it was the first cold I had felt in about 18 months.
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Transcript
So okay today I wanted to talk about kind of utilizing different locations having like multiple different bases uh I'm a complete believer in this philosophy um I actually took took this from Andrew Henderson um who is kind of like an international tax accountant who helped helps high-level entrepreneurs reduce their taxes so anyway he has the idea of having multiple different bases around the world so for example you have um one location for your business you have one location for for having fun you maybe have one location for like relaxing and then you could have like another location maybe for like your family and for your friends and maybe like another place for like winter sports
Or maybe that falls into your like fun category as well um but the general idea is to understand like your goals and find locations that align really really well with them I don't believe it's actually one location all that kind of covers um that is the most optimized location for all of your goals for example Georgia uh in Eastern Europe I've lived down in for four years for business I think it's fantastic a foreigner can open up a company there a foreigner can have a bank account there it's zero percent taxes you have access to very very cheap labor um
However in terms of fun it's very very limited uh in terms of dating it's also like if if you're looking at pursuing multiple women it's not the best country but for finding a girlfriend it's actually probably one of the best um in terms of like going out to great restaurants and there being like a wide uh wide selection of like food and great restaurants to go to it's very very limited customer service is is appalling um so I'm sorry I don't mean to just sit there complaining about Georgia I'm just kind of weighing up the fact that there's there's pros and cons of each country so
As much as I choose Georgia for my business um to host my business there because of the reasons I just mentioned I also have an apartment there I also have cars there like I have assets there I I love it as a country but it definitely doesn't there's no one country in my opinion in the world that serves all purposes it's also very very cheap to live in by the way I should add which um for some of you is something that you should really consider not necessarily Georgia but just living in like a cheaper country if you're in the US or in in the UK or in like these major um
Major countries paying huge bills and you feel that you haven't got Financial Freedom you can very easily achieve that if you're able to work online and go and live in like these cheaper countries which is the whole idea of where like the digital Nomad um movement came from in terms of my thoughts on being a digital Nomad I have been a digital Nomad for about two years when I first started out if you're doing like a freelance job if you're doing it if you're like a designer or a developer or you know any like a copywriter whatever type of job you can do online and you're working for someone else or you're working as a
Freelancer that's fine you can do it however if you're trying to build a business um I do not suggest you to be a digital Nomad moving around all the time travel comes with its own set of problems um and you can try to minimize them as much as as possible but let's just unforeseen things which is kind of like the beauty of travel right you're going there for the the unknown experiences um however when you're trying to run a business you're going to want to minimize the number of unforeseeable events and kind of issues that happen like I remember when I was in Bali on a call with like trying to close a client of
Like ten thousand dollars and there's a power cut and like a thunderstorm going on and it always happens at the worst times as well right um and like even even like sometimes more recently like I try to travel around from one location to a new location every three months um so at the moment I'm in Europe prior to this I spent three months in Colombia and before this I was in Dubai for three months prior to that I was in Georgia for three months um but even doing like not moving around all the time just moving around every three months we still encounter uh our own like unique set of issues um
So I tried to minimize like moving of locations to like four different bases but make sure that you understand these different locations and really utilize it to its strengths for example Dubai is absolutely fantastic for networking the people that you can meet up there are great I love Dubai for like the fun aspect of things like great restaurants always something kind of going on same with Colombia like for pursuing women um Colombia is a perfect example actually I'm British and I think they're kind of used to a lot of Americans going on don't get me wrong they still love Americans but as soon as they would hear like my uh accent not that I think
I even have a strong British accent but as soon as I like they realized that I was British and not American like blonde hair blue eyes um let's just say it really puts dating in your favor um and it's easy enough there as it is um so kind of depending on your goals I really believe in trying to put yourself in a position where you're putting the odds in your favor of success and those goals can be anything um for example another big one for me is like Fitness I find whenever I'm in Dubai I kind of lose weight it's very easy to eat healthy out there and the negative is it's expensive to do
That but it's very easy to do so there's so many healthy restaurants you can order takeaway of like all your calories and macros calculated um walking on the beach like I absolutely love so Dubai uh maybe this is one that most people aren't expecting but it's actually a really good location for me in terms of losing weight and being more healthy whereas if I'm in Georgia for example uh when I first arrived in Georgia I was actually in pretty good shape and by the time I left I was about two stone heavier which is about 20 kilograms heavier anyway
Don't get stuck in a fixed mindset this is one thing I'll tell all of you don't get stuck in a fixed mindset of only living in one location all of your life and I think that is a fantastic piece of advice I can't understand I am it just doesn't make sense to me these people some people have never even left their like little village or town that they grew up in um I mean I was quite lucky in that aspect that like my parents did travel and so
They uh it was kind of like normal to us which definitely does come down to like a privileged background like I had a very normal upbringing but we definitely went on probably like one holiday one family holiday a year uh you know whatever to Egypt or like to Spain or whatever so I did grow up going and experiencing different countries but don't be one of these people who like or like for example in the US it's something crazy like 50 or 60% of people haven't even got a passport like the US is great and it's very varied because of all the different states I completely get that but there's there's a whole world out there
Um and depending on what your goals are there's much better places than being in in the US um particularly for from like a tax point of view and that's the other thing to mention a lot of people will think about oh from a tax point of view I should open in this country because I get these benefits and it has these negatives um you know I get these tax benefits it's got this bank it's got these payment processes whatever whatever but people don't think about that from their personal life which does seem quite funny to me and people go through a whole amount of effort to optimize where their business is located without ever thinking
About optimizing where they're they're located um so yeah anyway yeah just don't get stuck on a fixed mindset of being in one location just go and travel like the other thing about travel is the worst case scenario you don't like it and you buy yourself a 500 plane ticket back home and you're literally back back where you started um so there's not um it's often how I try to think about my decisions is what is the worst outcome and how easy is it for me to reverse from this decision if I find out I've this isn't just a travel this applies to every area of my life if I make this decision how easy is
It for it for me to change my mind what would I lose and um and what position would I be back in kind and like with travel there's really quite limited downside like unless you're picking extremely dangerous countries uh where of course there's possibility of kidnap if you're going out to do these very dangerous places so of course be sensible but in 99% of cases the downside is you've got to fly over there you realize you didn't like it and you get a 500 flight back home and you wasted like a couple of days but at least you had the experience so
Yeah um there's kind of a limited downside to what can really go wrong if you go to a country and you don't like it move locations based on your current goals for example if your goal is to become this is a silly example but if your goal is to become a mountain climber it makes sense to be in a location where there's a lot of mountains where there's the ability for you to rent equipment to be a mountain climber where there's other people who are mountain climbers that you can learn from and so
On uh so that's a very very basic example but it literally applies to to anything else like if you're trying to build a particular business it makes sense to go to a certain place to um be around like the to have access to the right type of equipment and so on like even now when I'm doing like the only fans business there are requirements that I have before going to a particular country such as we need very good and very stable Wi-Fi we need access to good infrastructure in terms of shopping if we need to buy a new phone if we need a new cable for something if we need like 4G routers or whatever
It is like we want a good uh access to shops or postal delivery systems so we can order from Amazon and it arrives very quickly um so they're kind of like the things to consider but um yeah like you can add a huge amount of friction between you and your goals by being in a location that doesn't complement uh what your goals are like this applies to pursuing women Colombia is like a perfect example of that taxes business happiness spirituality and literally everything else like for example spirituality I would look at if I thought I really needed to like uh relax and de-stress I would be looking at somewhere like Bali um
In terms of happiness you can look up like what is the happiness happiest country in the world I believe it's Denmark and so you could just choose if you're if you want to be more happy go and spend some time around some happy people and then the other key benefit of changing locations which I think most people really really overlook is it's a chance to reset your habits most of your habits like you'll notice since I've now been out in Ibiza I've been publishing content very very frequently and that's simply because I now have the Habit because I've reset myself whereas in Colombia I didn't really have the Habit I've now reset myself and I
Told myself I need to record more content now that I'm out here and so now I have the habit of to come out here sit down the end of the garden and talk to you guys I know how much you you will appreciate that um in all seriousness by moving locations it's really a chance to to reset your habits most of your habits are based off of cues, and cues are generally tied into your environment so it can be cues in your apartment that trigger you to perform a certain habit it can be the location that you're in when you walk past a particular coffee shop you have a habit to go in there whatever
It is most habits are based off of your location so by moving locations frequently it gives you a chance to completely reset all of the habits that you have tied to that particular location so be aware of any like positive habits that you want to make sure that you um continue to bring through if you know another perfect example is in Colombia uh I was staying in a place that had like a fantastic gym like I put a few videos on my uh story and so
I use the gym not quite every day but quite frequently and one issue of being out here is we've got a little gym over there but it's nothing nothing to write home about um and so I found that I've been working out much less so again I'm not saying that I've got this whole thing perfected but I'm just very very much aware of it and I suggest you to be too so yeah it's just by changing location it gives you a fantastic opportunity to kill any bad habits and routines you you've got yourself into and like the final point I have mentioned this already but you can drastically drastically reduce your expenses by moving locations
Uh there are some incredibly cheap countries out there where you can maintain a really really good quality of life um for example I was about a year ago I was in Rize in the north part of Turkey um I spent about a month out there and it was not to say that there's like some insane quality of life out there in fact it was a very weird little place but the food was great it was very easy to eat healthy they're pretty much all they served everywhere was chicken breast and salad and so
That's what we would always order weather was good like we found a nice shisha bar that we would go to every every evening and the cost of living out there is just ridiculously low the salaries out there about two hundred dollars people were very friendly super super nice um and yeah it's often in like these weird little places if you're going to the big tourist areas of course it's going to be expensive it's kind of the same everywhere no matter where you are in the world to achieve like a high quality level of life I've at least found that like there's not too much variation in the cost of a five-star hotel um
You can expect to be paying like 300 to up to like maybe 700 per night and that is kind of the same whether you're in London whether I'm in Tbilisi uh or wherever I'm in uh Turkey Istanbul like um we're kind of wherever you are Thailand like whatever it is it's kind of like an international level uh in terms of hotels the the place where if you're really trying to cut your expenses and save money go to some of these smaller little towns in these places you can get your expenses it's not quite a zero but pretty pretty close uh you can live for like literally a couple of hundred dollars per month and I
Don't mean living like a bad quality of life I mean going out to restaurants doing everything that you want so um if you haven't got a high level of income I would strongly suggest you to do that or if one of your goals at the moment is saving money uh you can just go to these places and it doesn't even feel like a chore to save money everything is just so so cheap that um you kind of naturally naturally save money just by being there yeah that is my advice on locations I do suggest to travel a lot like at the moment I am currently setting up four different bases around the world so
What I mean by that is acquiring four different properties I have one already I'm currently looking at getting one in London potentially looking at Dubai as well and also looking at Colombia and so then the other benefit of that is number one I would own four assets because whenever I'm not living there you can rent them out which is kind of what I would plan to do so I'm in each different location uh for like three months uh of the year and whilst I'm not there I'm there renting them out and I completely get most people aren't in a position to just buy four properties around the world I wasn't until very recently um
Thank you only fans um yeah it's uh but I'm kind of like making most of that and setting up these different locations so that it also turns into uh into rental income for me which will be another another form of income that I can can then go and add on to the list and another thing is weather like I get super affected by weather and there are people who just spend their whole lives like like for example I'm from London there are people who live in London and spend their whole lives complaining about the weather if you're looking to be in a place that has good weather you're in the wrong country and like you
You the country isn't going to move to you you have to you have to go there you have to go to uh the places that kind of align with with your goals and so Portugal as well Portugal or south of Spain um I'm also looking at acquiring property and and that kind of goes into my family base of like my family are now getting older my my parents and I would like to have a place in like a warmer country where maybe they can go out to for like three or four months you know in in the summer like they've got a place to be like and I can go out and spend some time
With them as well um yeah that's my kind of takeaway but uh also as well I am now as much as it doesn't look like at the moment the sun's just gone in I now only spend time in uh kind of like warm countries uh which has been like a big it's like a really big Plus in my life actually I was just back in London for four days for the first time in like a few years and it was literally the first time that I'd experienced the cold for about 18 months um
Which is quite a weird weird thing to say anyway thank you so much for watching I hope it was helpful I strongly encourage all of you to go and set up some bases