Weh'yee Barkon: The Millennial Digital Nomad, Africa Rising, and Building a Borderless Life

What happens when you trade a fast-rising San Francisco startup job for a one-way ticket to Casablanca and no plan past three nights in a hostel? Weh'yee Barkon found out. He joins Ryan Vet, a friend of more than two decades, to talk about the digital nomad life, rediscovering his roots, and building businesses across Africa.

Weh'yee was employee number seven at a fast-growing electronics-recycling startup, helping it climb from roughly one million to nearly seven million in annual revenue. He was traveling constantly and climbing the ladder, but he wasn't fulfilled, and the pace was wearing on his health. Single, no kids, and standing in front of an open window of time, he bought a one-way ticket from San Francisco to Casablanca and spent the next twelve months moving through eleven countries, much of it overland.

As a first-generation Liberian-American whose parents were born and raised in Liberia, the trip was about more than travel. It was about rediscovering where he comes from. Along the way he lived on a Workaway program, farmed in the Sahara, hosted a hostel in Seville, and eventually crossed into Senegal, where an accidental moment with a refugee family and a bag of charcoal became the spark for everything that came next. Today he runs Africa Rising, a recruitment firm that connects skilled African talent to global companies, alongside on-the-ground businesses including short-term rentals in Dakar, a poultry farm, and a butcher shop in Kigali, Rwanda.

This conversation is really about the future of work. Weh'yee and Ryan dig into why a lean team of two to five people plus AI can now do what once took fifty, why the return-to-office fight is the same push and pull that follows every period of change, and why, in the age of AI, the real edge is getting back on the ground and shaking hands.

In this episode:

• Why Weh'yee left a fast-rising San Francisco startup at the top of his climb
• The one-way ticket to Casablanca, eleven countries, and traveling overland with about ten thousand dollars
• Rediscovering his Liberian roots as a first-generation Liberian-American
• Workaway, a month farming in the Sahara, and hosting a hostel in Seville
• Why we become "country club visitors" of other countries, and how to actually experience a place
• The charcoal-bag moment in Senegal that became his entrepreneurial spark
• Africa Rising: connecting elite African talent to global companies, and why it is a win-win-win
• Hedging online income with real-world businesses: rentals in Dakar, a farm, a butcher shop in Kigali
• Why a team of two to five people plus AI can now do what once took fifty
• The return-to-office push and pull, and Ryan's advice to leaders afraid of distributed work
• Why the age of AI is sparking a renaissance of in-person, on-the-ground connection

Connect with Weh'yee Barkon:

• Africa Rising: africarising.work
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/wehyeeba

Connect with Ryan Vet:

• Website: ryanvet.com
• COLLIDE Newsletter: ryanvet.com/collide
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ryanvet
• Instagram: instagram.com/ryancvet
• Book Ryan as a Keynote Speaker: ryanvet.com/generational-speaker

Subscribe to The Ryan Vet Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and wherever you get your podcasts. The guest era continues every Monday at 6am ET. Next week: Nicki Petrosi on "Scrolling to Death," and what always-on screens are doing to all of us. The COLLIDE essay podcast continues every Thursday at 7am ET.

About Ryan Vet

Ryan Vet is a USA TODAY bestselling author, futurist, and international keynote speaker whose insights on generations, culture, and the future of work have been featured in Forbes, Financial Times, ABC, NBC, and CBS. His research helps leaders understand emerging generational patterns and anticipate societal shifts before they fully unfold.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

On this episode of the Ryan Vett Show. But I'll be honest with you, a lot of it was trying to rediscover my roots, understand like who I am as a young man, and you know, just trying to better understand what the world was about. And I knew that there was a world outside of America, but I hadn't really experienced it in a lived way. You know, if you go on vacation or you travel, that's one thing. But to actually say you're gonna uproot your life and kind of live or do extended travel somewhere, I think that's something quite different. Um, that that I kind of discovered during during that first year.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Welcome to another episode of the Ryan Vett Show. This is Ryan Vett, and I'm excited to have uh a friend with me uh that's goes back more than two decades, uh, Way E. Barkin, who really is embracing what I would say is a trend amongst many millennials. And he and I are both squarely in the millennial generation, and he's doing something that I haven't had the chance to embrace. But uh over 18.1 million millennials are embracing this uh lifestyle, and it's the idea of being a digital nomad and what does it mean to take life abroad and be on the road and explore different work opportunities. So, Wadey, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me, Ryan. Absolutely. Well, I would love to go back and talk about uh let's go back to maybe the late 2010s in California. You were in the San Francisco area and you had a great job and something changed inside of you. Could you kind of start with that journey as we unpack this uh journey of digital nomads?

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Yeah, for sure, totally. So I think you have it right. Um so I was living and working in San Francisco, also in Oakland. I was working with a startup called Reviven. So basically, Reviven is like a B2B um enterprise electronic recycler. They have a lot of like tech clients, Facebook, Palantir, Airbnb. And this is you know a little bit earlier than today. So these companies, a lot of them were on the rise and scaling really quickly. So I was a part of the growth for the team where I was based in San Francisco, managing clients basically on the west coast uh of the country, um, as well as Denver, um, Texas as well. And I was traveling a lot, uh, climbing the ladder, we were growing the business. Um, for context, when I joined, it was a team of seven. Um, and they had just crossed the $1 million mark. And by the time that I left, uh, a few years later, they were inching towards uh six, seven million dollars annual. So lots of growth in a short amount of time. And it was fun. I was getting the travel and you know, being an East Coast person, this is my first time, like let alone living on the West Coast, but like visiting, and then I got a chance to move there. So it was really fun, but I wasn't feeling fulfilled. Um, and and really uh there's two things. One is I wasn't feeling fulfilled, but then also my health was it was the travel was taking a toll on my health. Um, and so I wasn't doing well health-wise, and I realized that something needed to change. And I also was at a point where I was single, I didn't have any kids, very flexible, and I knew that if I wanted to see what else was in the world, this was kind of a window of where I could do it. And so I kind of took the lead and I bought a one-way ticket from San Francisco uh to Casablanca, Morocco, and I spent the next 12 months visiting 11 different countries.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

Wow. So you took uh you bought a one-way ticket and started in Casablanca. Why Casablanca?

SPEAKER_00 3:21

Yeah, so um I I knew I wanted to come to the continent. I wanted to come to Africa. So I'm Liberian American, first generation. Both my parents were born and raised in Liberia. My brother and I were born um in New York City, and so I knew I wanted to visit, you know, where I'm from, this part of the world. And so my plan was to start in in Caza and backpack from Casablanca to Lagos, Nigeria. And when I got to Nigeria, I was gonna try to start a company or something. So, you know, it was and it was all gonna be over land. I didn't want to do flights, I wanted to like truly travel through the region, and so Caza was the most northern point that made sense, and so I started there, and that's why I flew into Caza. Now, I did a lot of other countries in between. I did I actually didn't go straight there, but that was the original thinking behind Casablanca.

SPEAKER_01 4:09

That's amazing. Had you been to Africa before that one-way ticket?

SPEAKER_00 4:12

No, first time. Yeah, first time, and you know, a lot of diaspora, you know, like I have a lot of Nigerian friends or Ghanaian friends from and even Kenyans as well, that they used to go home every summer, but Liberia had uh multiple civil wars, and so there was kind of a disconnect for me where I wasn't able to like go back, so to speak. Um, whereas a lot of other, you know, African Americans who do know where they're from, they they do to get that chance. So this for me, it was part of it was the excitement of being a digital nomad. But I'll be honest with you, a lot of it was trying to rediscover my roots, understand like who I am as as a young man, and you know, just trying to better understand what the world was about. And I knew that there was a world outside of America, but I hadn't really experienced it in a lived way. You know, if you go on vacation or you travel, that's one thing. But to actually say you're gonna uproot your life and kind of live or do extended travel somewhere, I think that's something quite different that that I kind of discovered during during that first year.

SPEAKER_01 5:12

I want to come back to that in just a minute because I think that's so important. You wanted to basically go back to your roots and understand where history was for you and history you had not personally experienced. And you also said something really uh important about uh we we've become basically country club visitors of different countries. We we go in, we see the best parts that are curated for a certain uh a certain tourist, and then we leave and we don't actually experience the country, we just experience something that we're sort of familiar with in a different land. So I want to come back to that. But before we do, I I have to know what what did your employers think? You're in a high growth startup. I spent many years also in the high growth startup world. It it's intense, you're like a family, especially when you're growing and you're you have a number, right? You you knew your number seven. When when you have a number, you're you're a part of that story. How did they feel when when you were buying a one-way ticket?

SPEAKER_00 6:00

I mean, they obviously they tried to convince me to stay at first. So it's a funny story because um I I had a like a cross-country flight from New York, and you know how sometimes they overbook the flight, and if everyone shows up, then they they offer you money like to take the next flight. But this was a bigger deal because it was a Sunday night, and you know, people were trying to get back to the West Coast for work on Monday. So no one was taking the money and they just kept increasing it. Eventually got to like 1200, and that's when I was like, Yeah, I'll take it. And so uh I got the next flight and I had this this money. This is kind of what initiated me looking into like doing a longer-term vacation because exactly what you're saying. I originally was just looking for like a two-week vacation. I was gonna take like an extended vacation and then come back. So that's what I told them initially. But then the more I started to think about it, the more that the months kind of passed, I realized I don't know if I want to come back. And so we we were close. Um, it was like a commercial relationship, but they were really my mentors. And so I just explained what was on my heart in the sense that like I really want to take time to see what's out there and like revisit and rediscover my roots. And after the initial shock, they they really supported me. And you know, I think the best employer is what's best for you as a as an individual. And that's what I felt from them. They totally supported me in my journey, and we're even good friends to this day. That's really, really good.

SPEAKER_01 7:24

Now, one of the things that make up the millennial generation is this idea of experience. And so we saw pictures of people wanting to go to the Bahamas so they could take the picture swimming with pigs and have that experience be on the yacht and then go back and put that on Instagram. But as millennials age and and we move from, you know, the early 2000s to the uh, you know, to where we are today, we started seeing them want to shift that experience from the Instagram-worthy experience, if you will, to something more like what you're talking about, something that's more substantive and that's really purpose-driven. You use the word purpose, and I think that was profound. Do you have any insight onto why you think our generation might have this innate desire to experience other cultures and other societies?

SPEAKER_00 8:05

You know, I might push back on that a little bit. I I don't know that it's it's unique to our generation. Um, I think in in some ways we're kind of just discovering it because we're getting older. So, you know, it's like life is changing, and don't get me wrong, like I it definitely was Instagram worthy and that was cool. But I think as as you just grow and mature as an adult, you start to realize that there are deeper, more profound and important things in life. Um, combined with the fact that, you know, for our generation, technology is also changing and takes a toll, and you can find yourself kind of consumed with the digital uh online world. And that personally drove me to seek something a little bit more uh tangible, right? Some some real substance, which meant being on the ground, meeting people, shaking hands, kind of putting your hands in the dirt. So I do think it's a combination of both, probably maybe 60, 40, where we're just you know maturing and getting older. But then there's another 40% that is definitely like we've had the tools of technology from a very young age. But we also remember, I think we're probably the last generation that remembers before technology, right? Um and so like being young, seeing a little bit of both sides, um, I think gives us this balance to want to have curiosity to look into other things as well.

SPEAKER_01 9:22

I think you're spot on. We saw with uh baby boomers. So some of our parents and our friends' parents, they were all about building their career, earning money so that they could give us a better life that they didn't have growing up. And then for those of us, you know, we're right at the age where half of our friends had Gen X parents, half of our friends had boomer parents. The Gen X parents, they were the helicopter parents. They were the ones that swooped in because they felt they were uh neglected as children. They wanted to reverse the curve. And so you have us, and I think you you nailed it, we still had a foot solidly on the ground um in real life, and we had a foot, you know, trying to figure out what the internet was and what social media was. And we saw people like Justin Bieber and Susan Boyle go from rags to riches on uh YouTube at the dawn of YouTube. And I I think a lot of us thought that could be our dream and our reality. And now you you've taken that another level and said that's good digitally, but I want to experience it, I want to feel it. And you just said I want to shake hands. So so you landed um in in Morocco. Walk me through the next, you said 11 countries and tell me some of your highlights, and then uh I want to get to what you've built and why you think this is the future.

SPEAKER_00 10:27

Yeah, sure. Yeah, so it's a really long story. Um, I won't go into all the details, but uh maybe I'll give you like the highlight reel. So yeah, I I started in Morocco. Um by the way, I had I had about $10,000 saved up. Um, so that was I had the flight for free, basically, from the airline. I had 10 grand. And then I also had I booked uh three nights at a hostel in Casablanca, and that that was literally it. So beyond the first three nights, I had like no tangible plan. I didn't really know what I was gonna do. Um, and I just like I said, the next 12 months I ended up going to 11 different countries. Long story short, I discovered a program called Workaway. So, for anyone listening, if you're not familiar with Workaway, it's basically what it sounds like. It's a it's a program where you're able to volunteer with different hosts in multiple countries in exchange for your volunteer services. They give you room and board. As I started to travel, you know, I didn't have that much money, and I realized pretty quickly within the second week that if I was gonna make it all the way to Nigeria, I needed a way to like stretch this money. And work away was a way. I was in Marrakesh and I was talking with this, he was 18 from um Canada, from Toronto, and he was telling me about like how he's been traveling for six months, and I was like, How are you doing this financially? And he he introduced me to the program. And so uh, for example, in in Casablanca, I was at an English language school. Um, and I we it basically was English practice. So they would teach and then they want to practice with live native speakers. And in exchange, they gave me and a few other people like an apartment and they would feed us in in the city. So once you have food, once you have rent covered, there really is no other expense, you know, like what it's just toothpaste and like deodorant and the stuff you need to kind of sustain yourself, some personal items. But um, through that program, I was able to spend time with two brothers in the desert doing agriculture. This was in the Sahara Desert. I spent about a month with them. They were trying to grow crops and take care of animals. That was a really, really uh impactful experience because you know I lost like 35 pounds in the span of a month. I like was like very, it was really Zen, you know, like I've never felt that good and just cleansed. I didn't have Wi-Fi, I was just completely unplugged. And out of that experience, I was like, this is really cool. But now I want the complete opposite experience because I felt so kind of starved for a lot of things. And so the next volunteer experience I did, um I spent the summer in uh Sevilla, Spain, as a host at a hostel. And so anybody who's been to the south of Spain, like in the summer, it's like all the all of Europe is coming there, you know, because they they want the warm weather, it's really nice. And one of the first things I saw on the description of the volunteer opportunity was like, part of your job is going to be taking the guests out to the bars for drinks. And I was like, sign me up, like where can I do that, right? Um, and so it was a really crazy summer, uh, a lot of fun, a lot of partying. And so that was just like a just to show like some of the experiences that I had. It was like from extreme to extreme, right? So I did Morocco, I went through Spain, Italy, um, I went to Turkey for a while with uh one of my good friends that I met in Spain, who was also volunteering at the hostel. I spent time in the Netherlands, France, and then eventually I made my way back to Morocco, and I actually picked up my trip to go to continue moving further south into Africa. So I crossed over from Morocco um into Mauritania um and then moved through Mauritania into the north of Senegal across the river, and that's how I ended up um first visiting Senegal. This is way back in 2019, probably the time I got to Senegal was like October 2019.

SPEAKER_01 14:07

Okay. That's a wild adventure. What what did your family say? What what were they saying to you?

SPEAKER_00 14:14

Yeah, I mean, uh my mom, my mom is very supportive. You know, of course, moms are always gonna gonna be nervous about it. Um, but m my family has always supported the fact that like if you want to do something, you should go for it. Um and and just try it out. They know how I am, so I've kind of am curious about the world and sometimes do some crazy things, obviously. Um, but yeah, they're they were really supportive. So there was no pushback. You know, at first there's like questions, um, what is it like? Is it safe? But when people actually see you doing it, then even if they don't understand, it's real at that point. I know family holds a lot of people back, but I think taking that first step to do it, and then they start to see the pictures and the videos and like the content that can come from it, and then they're like, you know, at first they might be scared, but then they call you on the side and like, hey, can I do this too? Like, how does it work? Right. Uh I want to come visit you. Actually, in Spain, I had uh several of my friends come out and visit me and spend time. So all in all, it was really supportive and felt really good.

SPEAKER_01 15:15

That's that's wonderful. So you you started, you finally got back on track and and continued your trek down uh through Africa. And at some point you were inspired. You've always been entrepreneurial and you you knew at some point you wanted to do something entrepreneurial. But uh at what point did you have this light bulb moment?

SPEAKER_00 15:32

It actually was an accident, it wasn't necessarily a light bulb moment. So um I definitely think that the entrepreneurial itch started with working with a startup in California, New York and in California. So that kind of exposed me to the and you've been a part of a startup, you know, that it's great exposure to you can start from nothing and build something, or the fact that everything is built and created. Like a lot of what we see in society, you know, outside of the the public sector, is actually entrepreneurial activity. It just sometimes we're so far removed from the source that we don't realize that. And so being that close to an early stage team really opened my eyes to like, oh, like you can actually create and build anything. Like this is how the world actually works, and this is how people create value and make money. So that's where it really started for me. Now, on the ground on the continent, it actually happened by accident because when I got to Senegal, I was volunteering at a nonprofit. Um, they were helping vulnerable women and children, uh, kind of in in difficult, challenging situations. So there was this family from the Central African Republic who they were refugees and they they were at this uh nonprofit. And so um at that point, the community I was a part of, they were helping to support that family. But one of the sisters she got pregnant, um, and it was a very strict kind of Muslim uh program and culture. And so that that clearly was against the rules, right? And so they ended up getting kicked out of the program. And so I I understood that there's rules you kind of have to abide by, but also it felt to me kind of like this doesn't make sense, you know. I thought this program existed to help people in this situation, and you're basically kind of putting these people on the street, and so I kind of stepped in personally to to help this family, but I didn't want to just give money. I I think that kind of impact or um development world mentality of just pour money into the solution and it'll fix itself doesn't work. And so even at that time, I was like, hey, I can't just give you cash, but what are you actually doing to sustain yourself already? And they were basically uh buying and reselling charcoal. So in this part of the world, a lot of people use use charcoal to cook, they don't have gas or electric stoves, so they actually buy charcoal, light it on fire, and that's what they use to cook. So you can go to the store and just buy a few coals of charcoal, whatever you need, they can sell it to you piece by piece. And so they were buying small batches and then setting up shop in the neighborhood and reselling it for like basically like pennies on the dollar, just a little bit more, and that's how they were kind of having money to buy supplies for themselves, to buy whatever that they needed to kind of sustain themselves. So I saw that and I was like, okay, well, how much more could you make if we if you had the money to buy the entire bag, which was like, I don't know, at that point, maybe it was like 75 bucks. And we did the math, I put it into a spreadsheet, and I saw the the numbers on the other side. I was like, oh, this is interesting. So I bought it, then they sold the whole bag, and the money was there at the end. So that really, if you're asking for a light bulb, that was the moment where it kind of clicked for me, like, oh, you actually this is an interesting opportunity to use dollars in a market where they go much further and still have money on the other end. And that's where I started to go down the road of if this works, what else can work in this part of the world?

SPEAKER_01 18:51

That's wonderful. And I think you you said something really interesting that if you haven't had an opportunity to travel to a country or an area that is um developing or is not like the US or the Western world, uh, there is this mentality here that, you know, we'll we'll send money, we'll dig wells or whatever. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with that, or we'll send these clothes, but they're that can upset a local economy. And I've had the opportunity to spend some time in in West Africa and Ghana and Togo and some other developing parts in Eastern Europe and Asia. And I think what you just described is so important, empowering locals to be a part of their economy and do what they're already doing, but help them um give them the dignity that that they had in in their job and in their work. And I think that's so neat. So you you started with this this charcoal and uh it was your I guess your burning ember moment, right? Not maybe not your light bulb moment, and and you've now developed what you call Africa Rising. Could you you share a little bit about that and and your vision for that, where the a little bit more of the story and what it's doing today?

SPEAKER_00 19:52

Yeah, sure, absolutely. So uh there's a lot that happened in between, but but basically to kind of fast forward on it, we started with uh charcoal and we did a lot of micro experiences, uh experiments on the ground where basically we were trying to buy and resell things. This led me to a point where I realized that this model could work, but you needed a lot more money in order to make it work. You know, if you're gonna do anything that was like, unless I'm just trying to like cover rent and you know have a little bit of pocket money. If I really wanted to create wealth for myself, I needed more capital to put in on the front end. And so this led me into uh consulting and kind of leveraging my startup background to work with companies in the US, but then also on the continent. And so I gradually moved away from you know the philosophy of being like a full-time W-2 employee to being more of a contractor and eventually moving into consulting. And so a lot of the consulting I was doing was just business-related startups, sales, um, customer success. And eventually I moved into recruitment, which I think was a really great blessing because um, as you kind of mentioned, one of the big problems uh on the continent is job opportunity and people having uh dignified roles that they can work on. Lots of really educated, really smart people. They just don't have the opportunity to kind of put those skills to work and be able to basically love leverage their education experience. And so the question for me was how can I use all of this experience that I have um to help connect those people to jobs and opportunity? And so that's how I moved into consulting for recruitment and executive search in Africa and eventually creating my own uh recruitment firm called Africa Rising that helps talent on the continent find global opportunities. So, just like me and you, we're not in the same continent right now, but we're having this call. Uh, I realized that there's tons of really skilled, high value African talent that could be helping entrepreneurs and businesses in the US, Canada, the UK, and other places in the world. So that's what The business is about. Um, I one quick thing I'll say is that I think it's truly a line like a win-win-win because for clients that are based in other places, a lot of entrepreneurs are trying to figure out how do I extend runway. Um, you know, these are kind of difficult, unsure times. We don't know what their future is gonna look like. And if you can still work with top-class elite talent, but you don't have to do it at you know, San Francisco prices. I think that's that's really attractive for a lot of founders and entrepreneurs. And then similarly for the talent, a lot of times they either can't find a job at all, or if they can find one, it's not at the level that the work they're doing kind of warrants. And so they're able to find opportunity that pays them way more than what's available in their domestic market. And we as a business, we are kind of at the middle of that, and we're also able to generate revenue and kind of pay ourselves as well. So three three sides are winning. Clients are winning, we win, and the talent win as well. And so that's the model that we're really working on right now.

SPEAKER_01 23:00

I think that's wonderful, and I love that you're doing that, and that started with your your desire to just go and experience a part of the world that I think a lot of people wouldn't naturally go to uh for many reasons. It's not the it's not the place that everyone's posting on Instagram, it's not you know um Santorini, the the one picture that you know everyone goes and stands in line just to get their picture there all day, whatever those places are, and not there's anything wrong with with any of those experiences, but I think you're doing something unique and and wonderful. Now, one of the big changes that we're starting to see in in our world, and and this is a global uh matter, is the idea that because social media and AI and everything else, these are almost great uh leveling fields. They're they're making the world accessible and they're making the world in a way more unified, at the same time more polarized than than ever before, because people can have instant access. We can do this call before, even rewind 15 years ago, I'd be going to Walmart and picking up a Vonage calling card and dialing some long number, hoping to connect with you and would probably miss it and get the time zone wrong. And now it's it's free for us. It's whatever we're we're paying for our internet. So, what are you starting to see in some of these trends uh from your seat sitting in Africa today? What are some of these trends that you're kind of seeing globalization take place and in the world becoming is it becoming more unified, or is that a one-sided perspective, unified from the perspective of understanding the same things, maybe not agreeing on the same things?

SPEAKER_00 24:24

Specifically as it relates to technology or just just more broadly?

SPEAKER_01 24:27

Just more broadly, are we starting to see, are you starting to see cultural trends that might have been more isolated to uh the Western world starting to take form um real time in in Africa, for example?

SPEAKER_00 24:38

Oh yeah, yeah, definitely. I think so. I I I think I think the world in general, um, there's there's and this has been happening, but even more so from today where we are versus 20 years ago, there's a lot more movement in migration. And so, like, I'm I'm one example, we're having this conversation, but there are so many other Americans or Europeans, the Europeans have been traveling for a long time anyways, but uh like a lot more people who are moving or considering and thinking about moving than than ever before. Specifically from my perspective, um, you know, I'm African American, um, and so I get a lot of questions in kind of in my inbox on LinkedIn every week, asking about my story and asking like how can they do the same thing, specifically as it relates to to the African continent. But beyond that, there's just so many people that are moving to to other parts of the world and kind of starting to mix and blend and even marry into different cultures, and that in itself is like creating a lot more like um globalization, etc. I will also say with within the continent, Africans are also moving to different African countries, and then also Dubai is is a really interesting market, um, which I know has kind of been like a buzzword in the kind of digital nomad um global mobility community for a while. But I just went to Dubai in January for the first time. This is before the conflict uh with Iran broke out, but I I can't tell you how impressed I was. I didn't want to go originally because I was like, this is just gonna kind of gonna be like Las Vegas, like you know, like city in the desert, kind of fake and fabricated. And I I didn't feel that at all. I would it was like so clean, so safe, really like a true global city. Uh there was representation from so many different countries, a lot of Africans, a lot of people from South Asia, from the Far East, as well as um Western countries, felt like a really nice uh melting pot. And you know, it it just opened my eyes to a little bit more in terms of what's happening. The internet, I feel like, is a great equalizer, and you can kind of see equally what's happening um across country lines in a way that we couldn't before. Um, but now people are starting to move and really put those things into action. So yeah, it's it's interesting, you know, as I think about the future for myself, um, I'm I'm I have one fit on the continent, but I'm also even thinking about either Asia or before I was thinking about something in the Middle East as a as a potential like second location to further diversify myself because I think the concept of like, hey, I'm way, um, I was born here and I live in this one city is actually dying out. And I think in the future you don't you don't necessarily need to exclusively spend the whole year in any one place if you don't want to.

SPEAKER_01 27:26

So, what does that mean for business leaders? Especially, I would say US business leaders. You've got some companies that are really pushing uh return to the office, that are pushing you must be here. Uh, we're gonna re-implement the 40-hour work week, we're gonna do all these things that are um, you know, that really COVID kind of broke up if we were to pick a defining moment. Technology started it, COVID was a defining moment, and then we've seen kind of the um, you know, the aftermath of that. What would you say to leaders that are either afraid or worried? Uh it breaks down innovation, you can't collaborate as well. You you've heard all of it.

SPEAKER_00 27:57

So just to give context, this this historically always happens, right? It's kind of like the push and pull. Anytime there's societal change, there's progress, and then there's another side that tries to reel it back in. And you can go back and forth, but I think the general trend is clear that that is the direction we're moving in terms of globalization, distributed work. And with AI, um, I mean, this is the real game changer, right? Where now, whereas you needed 50 to 100 people to have leverage, the more people you had, the more leverage you have. You can have one, two, five people max, and you can really create a nice business for yourself. Um, so I I would just tell those leaders to keep an open mind because change is coming, right? Um, whether whether or not we we want to accept it, I don't think any of us truly understands uh what AI is going to do to the future of work. Um I think it's gonna completely radicalize a lot of white-collar jobs um and potentially even blue-collar in-person jobs once you marry the AI with with robotics and and that sort of stuff. So there's a lot of change that's on the horizon. And I think it's important for people to keep an open mind, and not just philosophically or like intellectually, but actually in practice, um, put yourself in a position where you aren't up you aren't caught off guard and you do understand what it means to hire somebody in a different part of the world, or what it means to work remotely for a month, right? In a different location. Because it can feel kind of scary when you're sitting in a comfortable office space and you never maybe have had that experience. You know, is the Wi-Fi gonna work? Is the lighting gonna be okay? But you know, go to Mexico City, right? Or like go to somewhere like the Bahamas, take your laptop and like work there, work, work remotely for a couple weeks and realize that okay, everything's still working, nothing's broken, and and I can continue. So that that would be my advice. Um, you don't have to buy a one-way ticket and and spend 12 months traveling, but I would put yourself in a position where you start to play with some trends that you think may happen in the future and get some experience in terms of what that what it's like and if it works for you. You might be surprised what you find.

SPEAKER_01 30:10

That's that's great advice. I I think you said something, well, you said quite a few things I want to come back to. But the first one is uh you can have a business uh based on AI and have two or three or four employees. And that goes back to kind of the main street business era of America or how most of the other world uh the rest of the world still works that doesn't have big corporations where they have a small bodega or a local shop. Uh I think you're right. I I think we're going to be able to have the output with AI that with just a few team members that you know the the coffee shop down the road uh on Main Street USA used to have. So I think there's a lot of validity there. And then the other piece you said, and I think it's so important, we hinted at it uh at the beginning of our conversation, is it's easy to go travel to places and go to the resort, get in the car from the airport, and you miss the country. Um and it's great stamping your passport and all of that. But early on in 2008, um I went to China by myself and I was in high school still. It was just absolutely incredible. And it was for a cultural exchange program uh over the summer, and they taught me something that I've taken anywhere I've gone. You've got to experience the food, which I love doing, so that was easy. You've got to experience the music, you've got to experience their art, you've got to experience their history, and then you've got to experience uh whatever their religious ceremonies are, whether that's uh, you know, worship uh center, if they'll allow you into it, some you some religions won't, um, or whether that's a funeral or a wedding or something. And so I've been able to go um and experience either funerals or weddings or celebrations or um, you know, food and culture and dance from all around the world. And I think there's just something about that. When you get to experience that, you realize that people are still people no matter where we are. And AI cannot replace that no matter how hard they try. Social media cannot expose you to it no matter how hard it tries. But there's something about, and it goes back to what you said, shaking hands with people. And that is a lost art form that I hope we don't let go extinct.

SPEAKER_00 32:08

Awesome. I I totally agree. Yeah. And I don't think that it is going, if anything, there's a renaissance of that happening. You know, as the more that AI is being pushed and technology, it's just like we said earlier, people are searching and seeking for something deeper and they're kind of reverting to more in-person things. I think with the rise of AI, how do you win in the age of AI? Part of it is actually being on the ground in some sense and actually meeting people and going to conferences or events or being, you know, face to face with people. And so part of our strategy is staying lean and leveraging AI where it works. But then we also have another side of the business as well where we do things physical on the ground. So here in Dakar, we have four apartments where we run short-term rentals. We have a farm. We didn't get into this earlier. We have a farm that's like two hours away, and then in Kigali, Rwanda, in East Africa, we also have uh a butcher shop where we resell beef, poultry, uh, and fish as well. So I'm I'm very aware of the fact that um like this change is happening, but it it's grounding me as well and making me realize that hey, what we're doing online, maybe it won't be sustainable long term. It could be disrupted by AI. So while things are working and doing well, let's like hedge by also being on the ground and and building businesses that we feel like will never go away. People are always gonna eat, people always need somewhere to sleep, um, people always need water. Uh so there's just some things that including, right? There's just some things that won't go away no matter what happens.

SPEAKER_01 33:43

That's so profound. And and people won't go away. We're we're always people interacting with other other people. So I I love that. And uh real quick, tell us briefly about the farm because that's super interesting. And then uh after that, give us any closing, any closing thoughts you have, advice for people on in our rapidly changing world, um, how to stay grounded, how to either pursue a nomadic lifestyle or just stay connected to to humans around the world.

SPEAKER_00 34:06

The quick thing I'll say on on uh the farm, farming is very hard. So it looks easy and you're like, yeah, I can do that. You just throw some seeds in the ground and pour water. It's not that simple. Um and it it's something we're still figuring out. Um, but I will say it's super rewarding um because you are dealing with like the local population. So to your point about you know your checklist of when you're traveling, wanting to get involved, I think whenever you're staying in a place longer term, um like I have been, it's very easy to do the same thing where even though you're living here, you're just going to like these expat style restaurants and you have your own like insular bubble uh within the city. And I think being on the ground and doing things like the farm um have really helped pop that bubble because then you have to deal with with local population in like in a good way, right? You're partnering with people, you're doing business, it's commerce. So that's been fun, but it's been really tough. You know, we've tried a lot of different experiments. We're really focused um on poultry uh right now. So chicken farming um yeah, is is the main thing, and then we slowly want to move into beef uh and and and dairy. Um the reason I say slowly, it's a little bit more expensive. Um you know, animals are bigger, they eat more. Um if they get sick, the the cost to take care of them is more, you need more space, which means more land. So we're we need to build up to that. Um whereas chickens, um it's a it's much more manageable, I would say. So that that's what we're doing on that front. And then just kind of parting words, I don't really have much. I would just say that you know, if you've been curious about travel um or like a digital nomad lifestyle, I would say just try it. Start small. You don't have to buy one way and go for 12 months. If if you're down to do that, definitely do it and you can do it. But but if you can't, I would say I can't tell you how many times I used to travel to LA from San Francisco for work, and I would have like a long weekend, maybe it's a holiday weekend, or I had something on a Thursday and I didn't have something until Tuesday. I could have just drove to Mexico. It's like right there. I could have like got in my car and went for a long weekend, but I never did it. And now that I'm living this lifestyle, I regret it. So I think if you have if you have a window, even if it's for a week or you have some sort of opportunity to to get outside of your bubble and to disrupt your your rhythm, I would encourage everyone listening to to definitely do that. And then is it cool if I shout out my LinkedIn? Absolutely, yep. Okay, yeah. Yeah, if anyone's interested in in what we do at Africa Rising, you can either go to our website, which is Africarising.org, or you can just search my name on LinkedIn. I'm pretty sure no one else has my name.

SPEAKER_01 36:47

Awesome. I appreciate you being here on the Ryan Bet Show today and just sharing your story, your journey from California to West Africa and everything in between, and really your desire to go back to the roots of not only your own history, but of of human nature and the importance of being involved in your local community, whether that's in the United States or in Africa with a farm, with a butcher shop, or uh with with a company and just really investing in people, because that's one thing that's not going to change. So I want to thank you so much for your time today.

SPEAKER_00 37:16

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