The New Nomad

Content Creation From Croatia, Georgia and Beyond with Steve Tsentserensky | TNN78

October 18, 2022 Andrew Jernigan and Allen Koski Episode 78
The New Nomad
Content Creation From Croatia, Georgia and Beyond with Steve Tsentserensky | TNN78
Show Notes Transcript

Copywriting is super overwhelming when you’re just getting started. Most remote jobs either require years of experience. But not copywriting. With copywriting, you don’t need to have ANY experience to get started. You don’t even need to have a college degree. All you need is a love of words and a desire to learn. And the best part? Once you get good at it, you can charge BIG bucks.

Steve Tsentserensky of SBT Productions joins Allen Koski, regaling the audience in this episode of The New Nomad. Steve shares his experience in transitioning from video to the wonderful world of words, all while traveling to 65+ countries. He also talked about his life in the Balkans and how it shaped him into what he is now. Becoming a freelance copywriter is a great career choice for a digital nomad, as it offers a location-independent lifestyle, where you can work from home, or travel full-time while working from the road. So tune in this week to know more about the lifestyle. Who knows? It might be for you.


[4:31] Writing is a skill, not a talent

[7:54] Life in the Balkans

[14:07] Time brings people together

[17:10] Getting to know new people while traveling

[21:53] Georgia, a hotpot of cultures

[26:07] People make places more interesting



GUEST BIO:

Steve Tsentserensky is a freelance copywriter, video producer, and photographer with a knack for making complex consumables. A passion for travel has led him to the digital nomad lifestyle and an ever-changing office from which he creates content for companies large and small through his production company, SBT Productions.

He’s been on the move for over a decade, traveling to 65+ countries and becoming a passionate advocate for the digital nomad lifestyle. 


LINKS:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-tsentserensky-a0009333/

Medium: https://medium.com/@SteveTsentserensky

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/finally.made.it/



Follow Insured Nomads at:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insurednomads/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@insurednomads

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0nVZ-b1GGWpR3BBdFPrnDA

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/insurednomads/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/insurednomads

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/InsuredNomadsOfficial/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/insurednomads

www.insurednomads.com

Allen

Hello, and welcome to The New Nomad Podcast, the podcast that supports the location independent community, the digital worker, the remote worker. So today I have a special guest, Ben Marks is with us today, work from anywhere.org workanywhere.org tremendous support to an advocacy to the remote worker and hybrid committee. So we're gonna get a lot of conversation about the future of work, loneliness, community, social connection, etc. And Brett joining me today, Brett Estep is joining me. But we've had a lot of conversations in that community, especially as we build the Insured Nomads brand, people land in a location and they want to have a quick chat with somebody. And if you don't have community, we find there's loneliness that follows. But people who find community tend to find a sort of bliss that everybody in this community is working for. Some of your thoughts on where we're heading in that area?


Brett

Well, it's such a disconnected environment these days coming off the heels of past 24 months, I think, to connect and find a way to ensure connections as an individual as a employer group, as a community is going to be now more important than ever. I just wanted to say because I've had the good opportunity to know Ben Marks that once I found this podcast was going active, I had to bull my way in here to be the co host. So congrats to you, Allen on the continued success of The New Nomad podcast. And I'm delighted to be here with you Ben Marks.


Allen

So we'll bring Ben into the conversation. You know, Ben, you know, you are somebody who is an advocate, but also looking at the future here. Let's let's get into starting, like, how do you even recognize how did you start your own personal journey before you now supported all of us in total?


Ben

Right, well, thanks so much for having me, guys. Brett, great to see you. Again. Lovely to meet you, Allen. My story is, you know, a pretty common one for entrepreneurs. school wasn't for me, I was raised in North London by very patient parents, I had a sort of hyperactive entrepreneurial energy that the British education system isn't amazing nurturing, I don't think many education systems are. To be brought in to be very, very hard problem to solve. I was actually expelled from school when I was 16. And I didn't really have any options. And I decided to do startups. And that's also I wasn't necessarily traveling around all the time. But that's also when I first tasted this sort of the location independent lifestyle. We were building apps. And we were doing those things from Portugal when I was 16, 17. And I sort of just failed upwards across a few different ventures, until my company was absorbed by CNN and I joined CNN as a global head of innovation. And that's really where I saw the power and the application for media and storytelling. And after about three years in that role, I decided that I wanted to move into social impact work. And that's what I did, but sort of bringing in the media storytelling elements, we worked with a few different sort of feature films on their impact campaigns, and we produce some content. And we did a number of campaigns. 


Ben

And when I was I didn't want to keep zigzagging from project to project and just getting really good at talking about specific issue, I actually wanted to go deep, sink my teeth into something and get a sense of mastery. That's a key part of meaningful work. And so when I was thinking about what's the issue I want to spend the next 5, 10, 20 years of my life working on this is during the pandemic when hundreds of millions of people were thrust into this work from home thing for the first time. And I looked around the space. And I think like many other people realized this was huge. But as I started digging, it was just crazy how big this was not just from a mobility point of view, but from a workforce mental health point of view, equity and inclusion, sustainability, all of these different pillars, which are just such a huge part of society and building a more sort of healthy and fast society. And so about 18 months later, we've consolidated an audience about 1.3 million people on social media, which shows you how resonant these issues are for so many people. We started doing advocacy, mostly in the European Union. We've been doing a lot of research, we have five different research project currently in development, and we're launching a bunch of initiatives over the next six months. So it's been incredible the momentum, I think, and the speed at which we've been able to do this is reflective of just how important this is for so many people right now.


Allen

It's so top of mind, I have a friend who I would not consider to be an adventurer, but he says to me, he goes, Why would people not stay with remote work from a corporate perspective, he says, you know, when I used to drive into the city, they had to have space that they paid for. It took me a long time to get there through traffic, I had to pay higher taxes. And now I have these technological tools that make it easier for me to work. Now we do tie bread. I mean, we'll come in every now and then or we have an event and get to know each other but it's like when I see the advocacy that you do, it's still amazing to me. There are still folks who are like, well, we want everybody here so I can walk around and see what they're doing. But if you're hiring the right people, do you, do you have to be in that type of mindset? So I'd love your thoughts on, you know, why would there be resistance to something that seems to many of us is very much an obvious step in the right direction, where you could, you know, do so many more things with your life. And by the way, try try to hire somebody today and say you have to come into this centralized location. I mean, unless it's a specific job. That's, that's a problem, too. So I'd love your thoughts on this. Because it sometimes it seems so obvious but I'm still don't understand why there would be so much resistance.


Ben

Yeah, it seems obvious, but I, you know, I think unfortunately, something that a lot of people in our community report to us is that they're looking for truly remote work from anywhere jobs. And what I mean by that is, it's not just a remote role, where they get to work from home in the same country, that the the, you know, the officers basically actually want to embrace that location independent lifestyle, and there really aren't that many options. So even though it's hopefully these sort of almost like competitive evolutionary levers will come into effect where the companies that are offering the right policies will drive the companies that aren't, we'll sort of have to adapt. At the moment, we still are in a place where companies who have pretty terrible policies on this issue are still, you know, have a pretty strong position in the market. In terms of why there's the resistance. I think it's just a lot of, you know, it's hundreds of years of entrenched mentalities, that work has to be a certain way. And I think that there's a psychological component to that. I do you know, there is it, there are vested interests as well. I think that particularly in the UK, that sort of the real estate industry, do have the ear of the government here. And that's why you've seen such a strong push to get people back to the office, and just a general lack of creativity and innovation. You know, one of the things that I think Jacob Rees-Mogg said he was leading passive aggressive notes on the desk of civil servant workers saying, We sorry to have missed you in today, you know, when they were working from home, whatever it is, because probably because they wanted to reduce their cost of living, or God forbid, spend more time with their kids, that one of his reasons was, well, if no one comes back into the civil service buildings, what are we going to do with the buildings? So that's not our problem, just figure it out. But so that they've really tried to make it the workers problem. But I think that obviously, you know, given the pandemic we are now seeing these things start to unravel a little bit.


Brett

You know, Ben, so much of what we see, these days, as we consider at the insured nomads level, our talent acquisition strategy is so many people desire to do exactly what I know you're doing, they're calling in from Valencia today, likely from someplace else next week, is embracing the location independent lifestyle, and then me from a personal level going through whatever your buddy went through over the past 24 months, I think people are going to strongly reevaluate their life work balance, and I put it in that order. Because I do think this is a fundamental shift from thinking, we continue to see the resistance come from legacy type employers that say it's always been done this way, it will always be done this way. My question to you is, how can organizations like yours and communities like ours, push through that level of thinking into a new way of what I think the future of work looks like?


Ben

Yeah, I think I think you need a multi-pronged approach, right? We come at it from the policy perspective, you're coming at it from what I would say as the solutions perspective, and I think you need both because policy alone, just to give you an example, isn't going to route out descript unfair discrimination against remote workers, right, this idea that, you know, someone because they're working remotely is not given career advancement opportunities, versus someone that is close to their boss, you can have the policy that officially says that's not allowed to happen, but it's just too unless the policy became a really blunt instrument that was just in no way practical for a business then which I wouldn't recommend, then ultimately, even unconscious biases are going to come into play with the person is overlooked. So I think that that's why you need solutions that help organizations implement a more conscious organizational design, which is what ultimately ignites that culture change. And I think that's where the solutions and the policy come together. I do think you need both. I think that, you know, to your point about the way that the pandemics sort of really changed people's attitudes. We live in a culture where the map, you know, psychologists like to talk about extrinsic and intrinsic motivations, right? Intrinsic things are things that we like to do because it's fun or intellectually challenging, or because we have deep meaningful relationships with someone else, really the stuff that makes life actually worth living. Extrinsic motivations are things that we do to gain something, it's money, fame, power, and we happen to live in a culture and I think that there's, you know, a lot of different trends converging here and the decline of religion, the fall of ritual, all of these different things, where we're given the map we are given to live a good life is one of extrinsic motivations. And I think that a huge part of that is our relationship to work and how much time we spend in a corporate environment, you know, our external situation, our external environment, really molds who we are. And it's no coincidence that during the lockdowns and people were thrust into this work from home, when they had that physical space between themselves and their work for the first time, that they all of a sudden, it's almost like it was like a circuit breaker, finally free from the hypnotic rhythms of the nine to five, they were able to have that space. And he said, What is it that I actually want from my life? Do I want to keep chasing these extrinsic goals? Or do I actually want to engage in a spend more time, my family, all these other intrinsic or compassionate motivations. And so I think that the really big philosophical component of remote work is that what remote work does is work no longer becomes the primary organising factor in your life, your primary source of relationships and community of where you live. And that will help our culture become fundamentally less work centric, which is I think, tied to all of the stuff around consumerism, and materialism and all of these things, I think it's a big piece of what we need to do to become a more healthy society.


Allen

You see people moving away from gifts that are like things to experiences. And I, one of the things that was interesting in the podcast, as we talked to people, is, like, for instance, I don't think I have to do somebody's taxes, and live in Chicago to do that. I could be in Mexico where I serve and then I can do the taxes there. But unfortunately, the big box and company says I need to be there. So I'm going to now resign and start my own practice. So I see this tying into entrepreneurship, I see this tying into individual kind of taking their life in the hands and Brett touched upon it. You know, even people for two years cooped up and saying, I this is an epiphany, I've got to do something different. So you know about your thoughts on some of the different things in the workplace. I mean, if you got satisfaction, good co workers, work life balance, but sometimes you got to just leave where you're working because you could make your own work life balance, you pick your own co workers, you can get your own work satisfied. So I would love your your conversation that cuz you touched upon something there that's more than just a small change. It's a big change.


Ben

Yeah, it's we're talking about life design. And it's interesting, you mentioned the entrepreneurship aspect. Because I think nomads have this. There's a stigma around nomads, that there in some way, these kind of free spirited, unproductive, you know, maybe even lazy people who are not interested in building things of value for themselves and for the world. But that's so not my experience, the people that I meet when I travel around, and I think that that's when you think about it, it's obvious, because they're the people that have taken the initiative to design the life that they want to live. And so which is completely from a sort of psychological orientation standpoint, very aligned with being an entrepreneur as well, you just go out and do something, you don't wait for anyone elses permission. To the point to your point about coworkers. I mean, this really feeds into a lot of the work, the advocacy work we're doing around alternative workspaces. I think that this is such a key part to a flourishing remote work economy. Because what we've had is the whole debate around remote work that's been raging over the last few years, it's been this sort of debate between office versus home, which is just a complete false dichotomy. It's actually completely dishonest. There is this other world a very diverse broad world of options, that actually sort of where a lot of the benefits supposedly unique benefits of both work location, home and office really converge in a co working space. And so we're very interested in increasing access to these spaces, designing them in the right way so that they're optimized for social connection, that maybe to take a step back and just talk about why this is so urgent. You know, we are in a loneliness epidemic, as a society, there's a lot of data suggests that loneliness and isolation are rising, loneliness and isolation are associated with a myriad of serious health problems. That's because we are fundamentally social creatures, right? You know, it's we existed in tight knit hunter gatherer groups for the majority, about 200,000 year history. And so when you take people away from that, you know, negative health outcomes happen. Now, there's a lot of evidence to suggest that this was happening trending a long time before the advent of social media, because a lot of people attribute our increasingly virtual living to this trend. And in particular, the lockdowns, which, of course puts things over the edge. Data from the General Social Survey showed that between 1980 to 2004, the amount of people that reported having someone to spend to talk talk about to discuss close personal matters with fell by 60%. So this is well before the open. So this sort of individualization and this atomization that's been trending in our culture, which I think is to do with the extrinsic value map to do with the consumers in the materialism is what's really causing this loneliness epidemic. And by shifting people away from that value system that's where the emphasis on community is now being renewed and people talking about community in a serious way for the first time in ages. And so, given the dangers of loneliness, isolation, we wanted to understand how remote work really intersects with this issue. And so we did a study with the University of Boston and Selena, with world's leading experts on workplace loneliness is actually the first ever study that on workplace loneliness and incorporate the data from non home remote work environments. So we really got to see how do co working spaces and third spaces compare against the office in home. And the results are staggering. They are much more socially compelling than office at home, it's not just a little bit I mean, they outperform every metric of social fulfilment. And so given the dangers, the health risks that's presented by this loneliness epidemic, any evidence based solutions, that that, to some extent, deal with loneliness, isolation should be taken seriously by policymakers and employers. So that's really the basis for us encouraging improved access to these spaces. And that's what community based solutions are very relevant as well.


Brett

So one of the things that I'm hearing a lot of these days, and I would venture to guess you might be as well as this idea, this notion of the future of work. And you actually opened my eyes some many months ago, when I first started talking to you about the work anywhere venture, and building this, you know, ecosystem out that really is kind of organized around blockchain and tokenomics. And when when we got through that discussion, you know, my mind was marginally blown, and I had to do some homework. And so I look at our business and our brand is, do we need to be positioned for the future of work? What is the definition of the future of work? Will broadly, employers be able to react and respond to new advancements in technology? I think that one of the benefits of the pandemic and the work from home was people that realized finally, I do have the technology at my disposal to successfully excel at my job. And while that was happening, and productivity was soaring, employee engagement and happiness was increasing as well. So we look at all of these avenues. What are you looking at, in terms of this notion of the future of work? And what should others be considering as we all move into this together?


Ben

Yeah, we are. And it feeds into what I was just saying, we're very interested in this idea of alternative workplace infrastructure. Where does work happen? How does it happen? You know, as remote work brings the city to the suburbs as people leave these urban centres, there is this huge opportunity to consolidate these reemerging neighborhood communities around specific spaces. And the question is, how do we find the spaces? And? Well, our answer to that is, we think that by making them co working spaces, or at least they have a key component to them, because that then serves a number of different stakeholders. It serves the employers, it serves the the sort of the local governance, and there's a wealth of evidence, looking at the positive mental health outcomes and local economic outcomes this can happen. We're working at the moment with the government of Ireland who have connected and rolled out 266 hubs across the western Ireland right now. And they're seeing local communities be reinvigorated, they're seeing local, it's giving people a reason to go and spend time in the local urban centres again, you know, one or two days a week. And so for us a vision that we would like to put forward in the future work is, what would the future of work look like, if within a 5-10 minute walk of where everyone lived, there was a state of the art co working facility within that area. There you worked alongside people because of your common geographical location, not because you work for the same company, mentoring schemes, peer support groups, yoga parties, built the sense of social connection and made the communities come alive again, an on site daycare center helped families with small children, what would that mean for local communities for mental health for families, for local economies? We think it's such a no brainer, and actually it's not this sort of theory utopian vision, either. We're working on a white paper of this and so we really wanted to demonstrate we're calling it coworking. 2.0. We really wanted to show that this is real. And there are so many projects around the world that are currently embodying the coworking 2.0 values. What Goncalo Hall has done with the digital nomad village in Madeira, for example. There's so community driven, everything they do is about community. I just mentioned, the government of Ireland, what Tulsa we're doing in the States right now, a healthy co working infrastructure is a massive part what they've done, and they've totally transformed the local economy. So there are enough examples now to show that this is not just this utopian thing, but actually the logical next step of a powerful movement. And now we just need that joint public and private sector cooperation to come together and make sure that these spaces are funded in the most in the best way that suits workers and local communities.


Allen

I think there's a knock on effect too, is when you work in a location with everybody of the same employer, you often have to like, kind of decide what battles you're going to fight In what you say about your particular employer, and it's not a lot of cross pollenization of ideas, then you're at this third space, this co working space where there's many different folks from different places. So you can see how other things are done. Or you can speak honestly about your employer to them, and vice versa, or you couldn't be self employed. And then there's people mutual interests, because you have a mixed group that might say, Hey, I'm going to do yoga today, anybody interested or I'm going to go play tennis today, where corporate environment you kind of all roll up, then I think from a loneliness perspective, and your studies indicate that these third spaces are going to make a real difference there too, because you can actually have more organic friendships. And I remember back in the day, Gallop did a study that if you had a best friend at work, or a really good friend at work, you are more likely to enjoy work. But I think you have a much better chance of finding a best friend in a co working space than a forced, here's all the employees of the same company in the same spot. So I'd love your thoughts on friendship, community, loneliness. I mean, there's, there's it's a multi level question. I hate to put it that way. But but your thoughts because I just see a win win here.


Ben

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And I think, you know, just to cover a few sort of fundamental facts about this. Loneliness itself is a subjective measure, right? It's the gap between the way that it's measured by academics, it's the gap between what a person's desired level of social contact and their actual level of social contact. And within that gap is where all of the negative health outcomes happen. So to be clear, someone can have one meaningful relationship and feel completely socially fulfilled, someone can have 20 relationships and feel really lonely and isolated and be prone to these negative health outcomes. And so it's important to note that co working spaces themselves aren't a silver bullet. Right. So an interesting one is, you know, a lot of there was a lot of talk recently, and actually, people are still talking about this for some reason that, oh, open office floor plans are the way to go. This is how you create community. 


Ben

But what it actually shows it makes people more lonely, because you see all of the people around you having these amazing interactions, and if you're not having any meaningful relationships, and it makes you feel even worse about yourself. And so the way that these spaces are designed, and the programs that happen in the spaces are so important, it's not just going to, to your point, there will be more organic relationships forming than in an office. I believe that that formed from organic reasons. But we need to really give those things, you know, revved the engine, as it were with thoughtful programming space design. And that's really where policy comes into play. Because I believe governments around Europe and around the world are starting to apply top down funding into these spaces, because they're seeing the local economic benefits. But these spaces can be designed in a number of different ways. It's the same amount of money, but I believe the outcomes could be completely different. If you use the old thinking that you're not really progressive and bold in your vision, you're going to have kind of okay outcomes. Or if you really embrace what Goncalo Hall is doing in Madeira, for example, by saying that we want to really, really supercharge this community, then you're going to have much more positive outcomes. I was just Selena in Lisbon a few weeks ago, and they practically forced us to go to this welcome drink at 5:30 and they gave everyone a free drink. And you really couldn't say no. And I met people there. You know, it's just spending the night there didn't really fancy going up, but I met people there had a wonderful night with them. So it's just the small things that can make a big difference. 


Allen

One quick question, Ben, the bigger picture is, so some of the countries have rolled out the digital nomad visas who make complete sense, and some seem to be dragging their heels on this. And you mentioned about some of the local third spaces. But I think even in the bigger picture, we need a lot of the big rules to change. And I we've already seen that happen in 29 plus, give or take a few countries there. Maybe is your thoughts on what you see government's doing on the broad base levels, regardless of smaller issues about those digital nomad visas? Are we getting a movement here a critical mass that more countries and not are going to ultimately do this?


Ben

We are but as you just alluded to the process, the progress sorry, hasn't exactly been linear. A lot of these products have been designed without properly consulting the local, the stakeholders and nomads themselves, which is very, very bizarre to me. And there are a number of different reasons for that. And one of them is just some of these government departments are not very efficiently run. Part of the reason why we like operating at the European level is there is this, you know, you get at your it's an access point with a number of different member states from one sort of focal point. And so we do think that we're going to really need to have a cohesive and coherent approach to these things, especially when mobility and crossing borders are involved. And that's really what the space is lacking right now. I do think we're heading in that direction. One thing I'd flag is that an equally in my view, an equally important area of policy and solutions is encouraging the right kind of nomadism and encouraging the right kind of travel because there's a lot of issues associated with nomadism whether it's to sort of the environmental footprint or whether it's people just going into these communities and not integrating and not assimilating at all. And I think that, I do think that if the solutions are offered to them, they would take it right, people want to learn the language, they want to engage with the local community, there just aren't enough opportunities to do so. So it's really a win win. I just think local governments need to be quite proactive in how to engage people. And quite frankly, you know, if they even were quite stringent about these things, and said, Look, you don't get to come unless you participate in these things. And people don't want to do that. Maybe you didn't want them anyway, I'm not going to name names, but there are some locations that have really become watered down and have lost the soul of what they are. Whereas Valencia is incredible. Like it's so I want to come here and feel like I'm insane. And that's totally what they've done. And so that, again, needs to be reflected in policy as well.


Brett

So one of the things that I think we're trying to do is fully appreciate the complexity of a digital nomad experience, because there's a lot to consider. And so some of that does fall back on to, you know, the government's, which I think are very apathetic and slow to respond and react. But this could be, you know, your co living the lodging, logistics, you know, getting in entry permits visas. And this is all the tactical things outside of the things that you're talking about, which I think is, you know, mental health and community aspects. What is needed to support this continued movement, from your vantage point? How best do we, as a business, working with people like you create something that solves that problem?


Ben

Yeah, I think, quite frankly, I think you guys have already made a fantastic start. And that I think that anything that reduces those pain points and makes the process smoother is going to win. You know, currently, it's still very difficult to travel in certain places from a or at least, it used to be, you know, from an insurance point of view, from an infrastructure point of view. It's no coincidence that the countries that you're seeing starting to really win, like Portugal economically, have completely transformed their brand. They were always a great tourism brand. But in terms of like, you know, tech ecosystem, they weren't really anything special and Portugal's economy was very bad. But they've been so progressive on the types of solutions that they've been offering people coming. They have this whole sort of, you know, tech, soft landing concierge networking thing that people go through. And I think that's an example of a really good solution. And any ways that the private sector, like yourselves can get involved in that process, I think would be advantageous.


Allen

You know, Portugal, not only is progressive in that, but a lot of the different laws, you know, it's a really great work environment, it's good and they get the Wi Fi, they get the connections, etc. And it's, it's going great guns, which leads us to a question that we ask all of our guests as we move along is, can you name maybe an overlooked person, place, experience that our listening audience in the digital nomad community, the remote worker community, you know, you might share with them that they look up as they're looking for new experiences around the world?


Ben

Yeah, absolutely. I'm gonna go for an experience. And I'm actually going to go with this won't be new to many digital nomads, certainly will be to remote workers and people who are really considering the lifestyle and experiences coding, I'm actually talking to you from a co living place in Valencia right now. It's given me it has this inbuilt community. Just last night, we had what they call the family dinner, where we got to share food with a number of people that we're living in with and the experience is so different to just being an apartment by myself, it's much more positive, and anyone that wants to experience co living or is thinking about it, I would highly recommend it. And that's one of the really exciting things about what the pandemic is unlocked, which we touched on before, our attitudes to these new experimental ways of doing things, new ways of living and working, are starting to open up and we're seeing these new models emerge. And it's just so personally exciting to me. So I would really recommend co living. I'm gonna give a shout out to the Varium. That's where I am now run by Pablo. He's a lovely guy. So if you're in Valencia, check it out.


Brett

We love the shout out to Ben, it was great to see you again. I applaud everything that work anywhere is doing. Could you tell our audiences how they can find you?


Ben

Yeah, I personally don't really have social media except LinkedIn. So if you want to connect with me, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. If you want to follow us on social media, I would go to our TikTok information about visas and that kind of thing and just lots of nice sexy travel content is there as well. So that's work anywhere.org on Tik Tok, and we would love to connect with you.


Allen

Fantastic, Ben, and thank you for joining us. So Brett, I learned a lot today. I'd love your your closing thoughts on today's conversation?


Brett

I did too. I mean, I think there's a tremendous amount to unpack but I think the efforts that you guys are doing and that's why we've always been a proud you know, at least arm was an arm's length partner of Work Anywhere but hope to you know, find a way to you know, integrate what we're doing because end of the day, I think we're trying to solve for the human, the human need, the human connection, that community and this reality that I don't think it's going anywhere. I mean, Allen, you've seen this time and time again, we talk about this reality that remote work is not going anywhere. And sadly, so is global uncertainty. And so I think partnering with and it's one of the many things that I love about being in this kind of startup environment, is to meet people like Ben that are solving real problems with a very creative means to get that done. I'm just, uh, you know, honored to be on the ride. And thanks for allowing me to co host this podcast with you. Ben, great to see you again.


Allen

You bet. And, and you know, and Ben said something that really resonated with me to the folks that are in the community know this. This is not a community of people that are just going in laying on the beach. Most of the people in this community are entrepreneurs. They're adventurers, they're people who want to know more about the world, the social connectors. And, you know, I think that governments and corporations and should should make it easier for them to bring that creativity back to the world. And I think I really applaud Ben Marks and Work Anywhere also on supporting that. So thanks again. So to our listening audience, we want you to continue to travel safely. We want you to continue to explore the world. We hope that others can find this podcast, the easiest way is your word of mouth to somebody, please tell them to join The New Nomad podcast. But once again, thank you and travel safe and we look forward to hearing from you again in the not so distant future. Cheers