Life as a Digital Nomad: An Interview with Dave Parrish in Mexico City

Digital nomads are people who are location-independent and use technology to perform their job, living a nomadic lifestyle. Digital nomads work remotely, telecommuting rather than being physically present at a company's headquarters or office.
Transcript: I know you're a digital nomad. So I'd love to kind of start with that and then tell us where you are right now.
I'm in Mexico City, sitting at the terrace of a co working space in the city, I've got a stereo space. Now as as digital nomads go, I'm a lightweight. I just take work retreats. There's lots of folks that just keep on going one place to the other. I like to go maybe every six months or a month or two someplace that was in Ecuador for actually three months earlier this year but I was I was planning on to, but the day my flight return flight home was to occur, a volcano went off and ash fell on the airport and closed it and the airport airline couldn't get me back for a month and I was just fine with it. I went to the beach. So as you mentioned, I used to own a construction company for a long time which really you know, there was some good times there but you know if you'd give 20 employees and high maintenance type of thing like construction related stuff you are wed to it. Getting away is not a possibility. That was sort of one of the requirements when I finally got out of that that I wanted to do something on the internet where I had more freedom and and eventually I found that we can probably get into it. Some of the keys to digital nomad whoever is interested in there's a lot of places all around the world that are hot hotspots for I've been going to Latin America. One reason because I I've known it from before I speak a little Spanish but it's not a similar time zone. Even though we have clients all over the world, just setting up meetings. When you're in a whacked out time zone you could be having that in the middle of the night. But the key to going someplace for a digital nomad is there has to be coworking spaces coworking spaces are great. You can't be in your Airbnb. Place all day long as you go crazy. And you have to have good internet, low cost elevens even better. Mexican cities really. I mean, it's a really cosmopolitan, cultured city, but it's pretty inexpensive here. And then I always myself like to have a bicycle so you're ready to get a bike. My Airbnb host got me one that helps a lot and then trying to favorite coffee shop to finish out the day. That's what I'll do. After this meeting. I'll have another couple hours. And then every time I take one of these trips, I mean it's convenient excuse to get a ride away. I call it a work retreat. Some of my friends just think I'm crazy. But I always have some overriding business goal. Earlier this year when I went to Ecuador, I was really focusing on learning the new builder it was coming out because everyone was procrastinating on that. And also working on aka working on my business instead of just some administrative marketing business type stuff to make my practice run smoother. Back home, we always have a list of things you want to get to and the year goes by and you don't get to. Well this is one of my ways to getting those. This particular trip my focus is learning Integra mat, which I'm a little bit behind the curve on that. So that's my digital nomad story. So you guys should try it if you can.
3:53: So kind of create some margin and some space to say, I want to do something different when it's hard to get up and go to your home office that you go to every day and try to do something different.
4:03: Yeah, exactly. And it's a mini adventure. Right and I actually work more when I go on these because I don't know anyone. I don't know anyone in the city. And in the part of the city I am it's not the hipster part of the city. It wasn't that part. I probably find a lot of Americans in fact to speak at conversations. I have intermediate Spanish but I someone who speaks no English at all has no appreciation that someone's trying to learn to speak with you with ancestors pick their words to speak slower. Where I am there isn't any I mean, there's no English hardly any English speaking here.
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