Zero To Travel Podcast

Chase Warrington 0:00
I love how imposter syndrome has been brought to the surface these days. And it's not something that's like hidden in the more you talk to hyper successful people or people who are just like social media stars, or have, you know, incredible podcasts or whatever it is, and you look to them from the outside, and then you have a deeper conversation, you're like, Oh, good, we're all imposters, we don't know what the hell we're doing. It's not as simple as just flipping a switch and saying, Okay, we just take all these things that we've been doing in the office, and we and we migrate them to a remote setting, give everybody a laptop and a Zoom account, and boom, we're good, right? It just unfortunately, it doesn't work well that way.

Jason Moore 0:39
That was a clip from my interview today with Chase Warrington, who is an American expat living in Spain with his wife, Alison, and their dog coda, who also has a passport. And his travels have been sustained by his remote work career. So two big topics really emerge from this interview. One is that idea of creating a life abroad, what that's like and how you can do it. And secondly, a focus on remote work. So some of the things we cover in this conversation, how to overcome perceived risk around long term travel or moving abroad. Why there's always a reason not to travel in a mindset that can help you conquer that bouncing that desire between continuing to travel or settling down and getting plugged into a community why Spain is such a great place to live, we talk about decision making using your intuition versus your practical mind. And as Chase is a self described, quote, remote work super nerd Of course, we get into all that how to trim the remote work fat and what that means advice for landing not just a remote job, but the right kind of remote job. He shares his favorite remote job boards, how to scale a remote team, we talked about what it means to humanize remote work, how to brainstorm across time zones with no set meetings so you can have more freedom, and how to intentionally use other systems to create a better lifestyle abroad and so much more happening in this show. Plus, I'm going to share the best definition I've heard of the moment when a city really comes to life for us as travelers. It's pretty cool. And I'm going to share a shout out to a listener here in this community who got me back to a practice that really sets a positive tone for me each day and what that practice is all of that and more happening in today's show. Yes right now so buckle up strap in. Thanks for being here and welcome to the zero to travel podcast, my friend.

ad 2:43
You're listening to the zero to travel Podcast where we explore exciting travel based work, lifestyle and business opportunities helping you to achieve your wildest travel dreams. Now your host World wonder and travel junkie, Jason Moore.

Jason Moore 3:01
Hey there, it's Jason with zero travel.com Welcome to the show. Thanks for hanging out letting me bring a little travel into your ears today. This is the show to help you travel the world on your terms to fill your life with as much travel as you desire no matter what your situation or experience. How are you doing today, my friend hope all as well. wherever in the world you are today. I wonder how many places have you called home that you've considered home? You know, sometimes I don't even think you have to quote unquote, live somewhere to have a place that you consider home. If you have an answer to that question, want to get in touch or just want to say hi, you can always drop me a line Jason at zero to travel.com or just click that link in the show notes to leave me a voicemail. Let's talk about today's guests Chase Warrington. He's called half a dozen countries home and is passionate about making location independence, the new standard and helping others build a life beyond their borders. And one of the ways he does that is through his podcast about abroad, which delivers inspiration, adventure and practical how to advice for those who want to explore life in various corners of the globe. We talk a bit about the podcast experience for him and all the stuff I mentioned before around creating a life abroad and remote work. And one of the things that comes up in this interview, he shares his word of the year which I am totally stealing from him. I used to do this. It's been a little while since I've done this where you pick a word for the year. And that's sort of like your theme for the year and it can change throughout the year. But when I heard his I thought, Man, this is the perfect word for me right now. So I'm stealing it from him. You'll hear that in this interview, as well as a personal thing that I did to force myself to take more risks, which is a topic that comes up in this show. Early on this idea of risk and perceived risk and how we can overcome what we may perceive as risky He behavior. But if we don't overcome it, we're not able to sort of live the lives that we want or do the things that we may want to do next. So that's a topic as well as a slew of other stuff. I love the chat, and I hope you enjoy it as well. And as I mentioned, Chase is a remote work expert. He's the head of remote at a company called duelist. They're a remote first company. And he's a regular contributor to several of the world's top remote work outlets. So lucky to have him here to pick his brain on that as well. Now, before we get into it, I do want to share a practice I got out and did today that was inspired by a listener of this show. And I thought, hey, this reminds me of this thing I used to do that I haven't really done in a while. I'm gonna get out and do it and maybe something you want to try and experiment with, as well to kickstart any of your days this week. First here at the zero travel podcast, we don't shy away from real life conversations, and today we're talking about one of the most taboo topics finances. US Bank offers a wide range of credit cards for a wide variety of financial needs. And one of its most useful cards is the US Bank visa platinum card with a low introductory APR for 24 billing cycles, this card is a tool for getting ahead. The US Bank visa platinum card is a savvy financial move for large purchases unexpected expenses and balance transfers and with the ability to customize your payment dates. This card gives you control over your financial future. Apply now at us bank.com/platinum. With the US Bank visa platinum card, you can be worryfree for the next two years to see if you qualify for the best introductory APR out there, visit us bank.com/platinum Limited time offer. The creditor and issuer of this card is US Bank National Association pursuant to a license from visa USA Inc. Some restrictions may apply. Okay, this Shout Out is a review I got titled inspiring podcast from say Geun kgs. I'm not sure what that username means. But it was a nice review, which said my favorite podcast fascinating new guests every week who are doing all kinds of inspiring things around the world. It's inspired me to travel more, thinking new outside the box ways and find more gratitude. Thank you for that. And the word gratitude was the thing that sprung up. So this morning, I have a lake nearby my house. And I did what my friend Emily calls a gratitude walk, which is a great way to start today. You just take a walk for me it was around the lake can be around the neighborhood can be around the block, whatever, down the beach, if you got one nearby and just think about the things you're grateful for while you're walking. Very nice, peaceful way to start the day really sets a positive tone, you start right away, getting into that mindset of just appreciating the things you already have. And just a great way to go into the workday and record some podcasts today for you. So I just wanted to share that that this review. And that word gratitude kind of sparked that. For me, I think I gotta get out there and do a good old fashioned gratitude walk. So if you haven't taken a good old fashioned gratitude walk in a while you can even take this podcast with you right now and go for a walk. Thank you so much for the review and for inspiring me and if you ever want to leave a review, those are always nice to get nice thing to wake up to and they help get the show out there. So feel free to do that anytime you want. Let's slip and slide into the interview portion. Now stick around on the back end. I do want to share that moment when a city really comes to life. For the first time for a traveler when a traveler really sees that city for the first time. This is a a paragraph that I read in a book recently in one of my favorite genres and this really jumped out to me as something I needed to share on the podcast thought it might resonate with you stick around for that. We'll also leave you with a quote as well to send you off until then, enjoy the interview and I'll see you on the other side my friend

excited to have you here Chase Warrington welcome officially to the zero to travel podcast, my friend. Great to be here. So I know you went to Appalachian State University in Boone North Carolina once got a bluegrass t shirt. They're so nice. But no when I went through there I was like this is a really cool town and it almost I lived in Boulder Colorado for a while and I kind of like in Boone as the boulder of North Carolina at least I don't know if that's fair to say because I mean you spent four years there, I'm guessing Yeah,

Chase Warrington 9:50
I did. I did a super senior semester as well. There was one more football season in me and football is big down in Carolinas and in Boone in particular, the Appalachian State football teams really good. And it was really good, especially when I was there. And so there was a lot of liveliness around there. So I said I'm gonna add this minor this international business minor and come back for a one final semester. So yeah, I did almost five years.

Jason Moore 10:13
See, I didn't want final semester because I wasn't smart enough. I didn't add anything on I just needed one final semester to finish.

Chase Warrington 10:23
Just give you the excuse I gave my parents come on. I wanted another football season. So I needed a minor to make it happen.

Jason Moore 10:30
Good on Yeah, yeah, I think my I never heard the call to super semester. Would you call it a super sting? I

Chase Warrington 10:34
think he called it a super senior year. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I

Jason Moore 10:37
know, one of my classes was volleyball. So that yeah, that took snowboarding.

Chase Warrington 10:40
And yeah, they're in Boone, North Carolina. People are always amazed that we had that we had skiing instead of like, there's there's mountains there. And so yeah, I took snowboarding. That was one of my favorite classes, obviously.

Jason Moore 10:53
Why should people travel to North Carolina? Let's start with a little travel destination.

Chase Warrington 10:57
Yeah, actually, it was interesting. I was listening to one of your podcasts recently, where you the the craft beer tour, people that lived in the RV, and they resonated with me on a lot of things, except that they listed Asheville as number 10 on their list, which clearly it's a top fiber. I mean, we have a conversation to have about this. But anyway, I lived in Nashville for a while as well. And, and so you know, just kind of start with that part of the state because you know, it's off the beaten path. I mean, North Carolina is not where I'm going to recommend somebody go if they're making their first trip to the US there's there's plenty to see. But one of the things that people don't realize is the beautiful mountains, I think, like eight of the top 10 peaks on the highest peaks on the East Coast are in North Carolina. So the mountain Appalachians that roll through there are beautiful. You have some 6000 7000 foot peaks, they're beautiful in the fall, lots of colorful changing leaves and mountain biking and hiking and rivers. And all that the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is there on in North Carolina and Tennessee. And it's the most visited national park in the US actually. And so that part of the country is just insanely beautiful. And you've got some cool cities there. And like Raleigh and Charlotte and in between Asheville I think is the is the highlight. It's craft beer capital of the US a couple times here and there in the last 10 years or so. Tons of breweries, awesome culture, a lot of good food and things like that. And then if you go all the way to the other end of the state, you got the Outer Banks that you know, people are always amazed that you could have these beautiful beaches and sand dunes. And then on the other end of the state these these big rolling green mountains. So there's a lot to see there, actually, I mean, again, not like the place I'm going to recommend, you know, go to California, go to New York, go to Texas or Florida or wherever. But you know, check out check out North Carolina if you're looking for that that next tier, I guess. Yeah,

Jason Moore 12:51
I don't know, man, I'd recommend it. You know, I just remember being on the Blue Ridge Parkway. And some missed sort of that Appalachian vibe. And it's just a really cool place. I guess Asheville would be more of the boulder of North Carolina, right. But maybe Boone being a mini version of that. But Boone at the time was many years ago, I visited it. It was a charming little college town. To me. Yeah,

Chase Warrington 13:14
it often gets listed in those, like arbitrary lists that you just get excited when a place you know, pops up on him is like one of the best outdoors towns in in, in the US. So it is it has, it's one of those places, it's got a little bit of a hippie vibe to it. It's a little college town, like I think the population is like 35,000 and the student bodies like 20,000 so it gives you an idea like everything is centered around the college and then as you expand out from that it's just like endless mountains and rivers and lakes and great outdoor activity. So for the outdoors people out there, it's awesome, hippie

Jason Moore 13:51
vibe. Hippie vibe. Wait, did you grow up in North Carolina? Where did you where we

Chase Warrington 13:58
that's where I call home. I was actually I was born in Miami and I have a lot of family roots in Florida and I've spent a lot of time there. I was actually just there a couple days ago visiting family my parents live there now. But yeah, North Carolina is where I grew up. But it's you know, it's been a lifetime ago since I really really lived there and called called one place home for all that long so

Jason Moore 14:20
right Yeah, and you live in Spain now and how long have you been there?

Chase Warrington 14:24
I've been in Spain so Spain is actually I've been here for a little over four years and this is the longest I've lived in one place since leaving North Carolina for for college so yeah it's it's kind of become home on on accident. I came here for one year and I've been here for and I'm kind of stay in for a little while at least.

Jason Moore 14:43
Which town is it? Valencia? Yeah, yeah. Because I read that you had lived in pick you said a half a dozen countries. Yeah. For give us the overview of your travel timeline. I guess you just take off right after college and start living abroad or how did that work for you?

Chase Warrington 15:02
Yeah, it's interesting. I, so I kind of did one of these like about phases in life where I graduated from college thinking that travels a young person's game. And so during college, like, I'd never left the US before going to college, but I had this like desire to, to travel. And I knew that I was going to and kind of prioritize that when I went to school, like, I'm going to make sure I find good study abroad programs and internships abroad, and things like that. And I thought, that's my time, these are my years to travel, because after that, you have to settle into suburbia, and, you know, get a real life. So I thought that at first and went on started a little career where I had my, you know, 10 days a year of vacation, which I would max out and travel over to Europe or down to Latin America, or whatever. And, and it just wasn't enough after, you know, a few years of that. My wife and I had followed similar paths in that way, but just had a desire to travel. And we said, Where did you guys meet? We met in college, she went, she went to Upstate as well. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And we both were just like, how do we do more of this vacation thing. And we had really no idea how to do it. I mean, this is, you know, what, 1010 years ago or so, there were only a handful of people like yourself, even you know, at that time that were really producing content about this. I mean, it wasn't that long ago, there's, you know, who knew what a podcast was, who knew what blogs were. So there just wasn't really great content out there about how to build a location independent lifestyle. So we just kind of like, sold everything, and, like sold our house, quit our jobs, there was a little more prep work involved in that. But long story short, did that whole thing and move to Ecuador? Which part we were in Cuenca, we set up a little base in Cuenca. Down in the south, which is another beautiful part of the of the

Jason Moore 16:58
world, you guys could have moved anywhere. If you sold everything and quit. Why did you go there. So we

Chase Warrington 17:03
had our eyes set on Latin America. And for some reason we had originally set our eyes on Santiago, Chile, I think it was always because I had a opportunity to teach business English there in Santiago. So that was going to take us there, my wife had created and still runs an Etsy shop that we were going to she could run from theoretically from anywhere, which turned out to not really be true. Happy to elaborate on that, but we're quick. Ecuador, Ecuador taught us that very quickly. There are little things called import taxes that can change very rapidly in certain places. So anyway, we decided like we're gonna go to Latin America. And for some reason, Ecuador, at the last minute, kept popping up on these, like, feeds that I was on these message boards I was looking at, and it was like, Ecuador is where it's at. That's the next place where people are going, you can live for 1000 bucks a month and stuff like that. And so we were just randomly like, Hey, want to do Ecuador instead of Chile. And we'll just wing it. And so we did that. And that's sort of where our like real travel life kicked off. And then so since then, we've we've traveled around, we've lived in a handful of different places from depending on how you define live, you know, from six months to four years and everything in between.

Jason Moore 18:16
So can you tick off a few of the other places that you've been? Yeah,

Chase Warrington 18:19
sure. So spent two stents now in in Spain, some time in Ireland, China, and Austria. And then we count and we count Ecuador, we were there for about seven or eight months? I think. So. Spent some significant time in there. And Quinta and traveling around the country?

Jason Moore 18:38
How many years then total outside of your home country? Kind of on the road?

Chase Warrington 18:43
All in all, probably, I think, I guess it's about nine

Jason Moore 18:47
now. Okay. Something like that. Yeah. So you just came back, and you're fresh from coming back to from the States. Right. So how did that feel? Being back? It was long for a return to your home country at all, or

Chase Warrington 19:02
no, you know, what, I just missed the close connections back there. I mean, as I get a little bit older, I find myself a little more nostalgia and a little bit more nostalgia towards like family and, and some of those tight friends from from home. Some of that fades as well. You know, like, your circle gets smaller, but that circle gets tighter, as well. And yeah, so I missed that. And I find myself becoming more intentional about making those trips when there's important, you know, important things happening. In this case, it was a couple birthdays and an engagement and just said, Yeah, you know, I'm gonna have to go back Kwik Trip and be there for those things, but to actually live, no, I'm very, very happy living abroad and I crave the international lifestyle way too much to give that up.

Jason Moore 19:48
Yeah. When you were talking about your trip to Ecuador, and you said it kept coming up in the feed and things like that I was kind of thinking about I guess a bit about your thought process. That's because that that feels a little more intuitive to me kind of like, Hey, I'm just gonna, we're gonna feel this out, hey, what do you think that let's make this last minute change and go to a totally different place that we hadn't even considering? How do you approach life in that way and decision making and kind of what when it comes to travel, deciding where to go or work or anything, I feel like there's a, it's not black and white, right? You can't be like, I'm strictly intuitive. I'm practical. And step by step, you know, usually it's a blend, but I'm just wondering on the spectrum, how you handle decisions in that way.

Chase Warrington 20:34
There's a little bit of a dichotomy and my personality, I'm very calculated, and I and I'm kind of afraid of risk, but I have a in a lot of ways, I'm very risk averse. And then at the same time, I have this burning desire to just go, my wife and I say that to each other all the time, like, just go. And an example of this is a couple of weeks ago, sort of through a series of events of events that came up that like our our lease was coming up on our apartment and a few weeks and we had a chance to get out if we wanted. And we did kind of want to go traveling for a couple months. And so we just sort of spontaneously said, like, hey, let's just let's just go Let's drop the lease. And we have a campervan here in Spain. And we're, we already had some, we had a month or two of travel planned out several months down the road. And we said, well, we'll piece the rest of it together, like let's just hit the road for four or five, six months and see where it goes. And so that was very spontaneous. But at the same time, it doesn't feel very, you know, that's that leans into intuition. But at the same time, it doesn't feel so risky. Because we sort of know the areas we're gonna go to, we've traveled a lot in Europe, we already had three or four or five spots picked out that we're like, we know where we'll go. And within a few days, we had the whole trip, you know, four or five months of travel planned out. And so there's a, there's a little bit of a dichotomy there, I guess.

Jason Moore 21:50
Yeah. Well, you do a bachelor's degree in risk management. And so when it makes sense that

Chase Warrington 21:57
I was indoctrinated in it, so I didn't have a choice.

Jason Moore 22:01
Well, what would be your advice for somebody who is looking to mitigate their risk, I mean, I think risk or that fear of uncertainty is one of the things that can prevent people from making the leap to travel or entrepreneurship, or whatever that is, you have to cross that bridge into the unknown. And this is for everybody. And even if you're an established entrepreneur, I'm using air quotes, you're going to be taking risks on maybe the next product you create, or the next business you create, or, you know, everybody's just trying to figure it out as they go. That's that's the that's the big secret that if you're younger, you're listening to this. FYI, nobody knows what the hell they're doing.

Chase Warrington 22:36
We're all imposters, like I love. I love how impostor syndrome has been brought to the surface these days. And it's not something that's like hidden. And the more you talk to hyper successful people, or people who are just like social media stars, or have, you know, incredible podcasts, or whatever it is, and you look to them from the outside, and then you have a deeper conversation. You're like, Oh, good, we're all imposters. We don't know what the hell we're doing.

Jason Moore 22:58
Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's, uh, yeah, but I mean, there's a certain element of, you know, you do have to take the chance to quit your job and sell everything and travel like you guys did, or, you know, take a remote job to get to we're going to talk about remote work, because it's obviously one of your specialties. And it would be foolish, not a big topic of this of this conversation. But yeah, I'm just curious how and maybe, of course, you can only speak from your own experience, but how do you? How do you overcome perceived risk when you when you feel like okay, well, you know, something is risky, you're taking a chance, like you can't possibly plan for all of the intangibles and the things that could happen to you take a risk, right? Yeah.

Chase Warrington 23:41
Here's, here's the thing, like, I don't know, if you found this, and you've talked to a million, you know, people like myself who have left everything and traveled the world or gone and gone ahead and pulled the trigger and moved abroad. And and as I meet the, you know, I insert myself in those circles and talk to people who have done the same thing in various countries from very various backgrounds. I very rarely meet anybody that says, like, oh, yeah, this is a total disaster. You know, my life was ruined by this decision. It's almost always the opposite. Or something closer to the opposite, where it's like, yeah, you know, I, I tried this out, it wasn't for me, so I returned home and got a job. And basically, I'm back where I started. And that's generally like the worst case scenario, what the risk that we're people are usually assessing is this like future vision of what life is going to bring them so I can illustrate this with with an example. I when I was quitting my job and I told my boss as I'm climbing the, you know, so on so called corporate ladder, that hey, I'm going to actually go teach, teach English in Chile for a year and figure this out and make 500 bucks a month. And he told me you're crazy. And my and people close to me use much harsher language than that. We actually had like people do an intervention with us, which was like, You guys can't do that. You can't sell the house. Yeah, listen, so this They just had on a circle. And they were, we had a group of friends come over to our house and say, We really need to talk to you guys, you're selling your home your gift, which is only so this is the future vision, right? You're selling your home, which is only increasing in value, think about if you hold on to it for a couple more years, you're getting rid of your stock options, which are going to have this value, you're getting rid of the company cars that you have, which are you know, such a such a luxury luxury to have. You're gonna you're climbing the ladder, if you wait two more years, you're gonna be making this or you're gonna be in this position. All those things were true. That's not I'm not taking away from the fact that those are true. But what we, what we thought was, those things will always be true, there are gonna be those little carrot at the end of the sticks always gonna be there. And I credit my wife for this because she she kind of talked me off the ledge because there was an opportunity to stay for one more year. And I said, Oh, well, I could stay for one more year, get this, get that. And that would be a great situation. But she said very wisely, those things will always be there, there will always be some reason, some promotion, some opportunity, some reason not to go. And if we don't go now we'll never go. So let's just go and and so I think that's, that's that perceived risk is is mostly in our heads. And like I said, when most people I talk to you, they say, Oh, I'm so happy I finally did it, you know, and that's, that's what I fall back on.

Jason Moore 26:24
Congrats to you guys for Yeah, I there was I never said this on the podcast. But there was a moment in my life where I felt like I wasn't taking enough risks. And I actually would write on my arm, the word risk. And I think I had it as like a not a permanent tattoo or temporary tattoo for a couple of weeks. You know, and I just maybe it was even a month. And I just kept kind of going to that when I was making decisions. And I do think that that comes back to awareness. Right? If you feel like you're not taking enough risks in life, or that the fear of uncertainty is preventing you from doing the things you want to do, then perhaps it's good to have an awareness cultivating an awareness around that and then take actions that I mean, you don't want to be foolish and say I did some foolish things. When I did that, by the way, too. I took some risks that did not pay off.

Chase Warrington 27:14
But collectively did they work out? Like would you say

Jason Moore 27:16
I would say so I guess that's more of like a positive outlook on life. Right? It's like if you Yeah, I think so. Yes. Cool. Let's talk about remote work. Because a lot of this is sustainable for you. Because you work remotely. It sounds like you've you've been doing that for a long time. Your head of remote? Is that correct? Head of remote at duelist, which is a productivity app. Is that? Yeah,

Chase Warrington 27:41
yeah. I could give you the quick spiel if you want.

Jason Moore 27:44
Yeah, well, sure. I mean, that's an interesting title. And I'm sure if you've had I don't know how long you've had that title. But I'm sure now that title is like, it was probably like the weirdest, most obscure job title for like three years ago. And now everybody's like, Oh, yeah, head of remote. That makes sense. Yeah, of

Chase Warrington 28:00
course, there's a head of remote. Yeah, it was not that long ago. It was like, what does that mean? And truth be told, where like I said, we're all imposters, we're all figuring it out as we go. It's still relatively new. So yeah, I've basically only worked remote my entire career for which is about I guess, 13 or so years now was a novelty at first, I'm sure it was it was like the only thing that I really sought out when I was looking for my first job. But you do that 13 years ago, not many people. And you and that's I think it's actually it's, it's a big, that's a big reason behind you know, my why, I guess you'd say like, my purpose is I really don't think remote work needs to be this novelty. And of course, now COVID has accelerated that. And it's not you know, a lot of people have access to remote which is awesome. And with that comes global mobility and the freedom to choose where you want to live and when you want to work and I think that all makes for, for an overall better life for everybody. But at first it was like, it was something you had to take major, you know, major sacrifices if you wanted a remote job 1015 years ago, you were you were passing on more prestigious careers, money, perks, things like that. And the perk was that you got to work from home and that may literally I've just meant working from home and that's what it was for me at first I got to travel and stuff but it was just you know, you don't have to come into the office and that was good enough for me. But that that evolved over time I needed eventually I really just needed full location independence and and just to choose when and where I worked from and so do us. We're a company of about 100 people that's in 35 different countries and we legitimately don't care where you work from everybody comes and goes as they please we just expect the work to get done. And and that's it so that was the atmosphere I was looking for and I've been there for a little over six years now and and remote work is core to who we are location independence and all that is very much baked into the company DNA but part of what I do is is advocating for that to be more than norm at at other companies and then helping those companies, you know, figure out how to do it because it's not easy to switch from the old mindset to the, to the new mindset. There's a lot that goes with that. So it's a it's a lot of fun.

Jason Moore 30:15
Well, you mentioned the word sacrifice, and everything comes with sacrifice. And I think that remote work does as well. So what would you say? Are the cons of remote work some of the sacrifices of working remotely? That? Yeah, I can only speak from your personal experience. But

Chase Warrington 30:30
yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think most of the cons can be overcome with a with a high set of intentionality. So if you approach those cons, and you say, how are we going to overcome them, then they can be they can be overcome. But the problem is, most companies, most organizations and even individuals will look at those downsides, which we'll use, for instance, like human connection, team camaraderie, as as one of those things that you sort of miss out on right when we don't see each other. When you work asynchronously as as we do, meaning, like, we don't expect immediate responses a lot. So we don't have a lot of face to face meetings even virtually, we only see each other once or twice a year in person, which is even kind of a novelty amongst remote teams. It's hard to build that that team camaraderie. So you have to really be intentional about okay, how do we create serendipitous conversations on a on a remote team? How do we create space for people to connect both virtually and in real life both synchronously like a video call and asynchronously over over chat. So you have to create those situations, whereas they just sort of happen in a co located office setting. Isolation and burnout are two things that happen a lot as well, a lot of a lot of new remote employers tend to think like their first inclination is like, yeah, Chase, but like, how do I know that people are working? Like, do I need to like track their mouse movements? Or can I can I set up some sort of like surveillance state to make sure that they're, that they're doing the work? And I'm like, no, no, you just you just check their work. That's generally the best way to know if they're working. But the like, that's something that a lot of remote leaders will go to. And if you if they go down that road, it can create a very, very tense situation for the employees, they tend to burn themselves out, then they work, they try to prove that they're always working, they're always on that can't disconnect. So you have to get and be very intentional about those things. As a as an employer.

Jason Moore 32:28
I talked to somebody recently, who said that their employer was had some kind of monitoring software that made sure they moved their mouse every at least once every 30 seconds, something ridiculous. It was like, Wow, is that a real thing? And crush the person who built that software, on

Chase Warrington 32:48
somebody sitting really happily on a beach that like, created some mouse tracking software that's sold a million things on a million units on Amazon during code,

Jason Moore 32:56
right? And they're like, Wow, just sit back and relax.

Chase Warrington 32:59
I can, I could say, like, actually, the first remote worker that I knew was my mom, which was crazy, because she got a remote job working from home like 20 Something like 20 years ago, or even longer than that, because I was, I was like, an early teenager. And but it was exactly like that, like she had to ask to go to the bathroom, her boss would just ping her and be like, Hey, are you there? And like she had to respond within 10 seconds and she had that they had her mouse tracked and stuff like that. So I think I just had like a natural aversion to like that is not the way to work. It's horrible. And it's not productive.

Jason Moore 33:31
Well, how do you cultivate that you mentioned all the things you need to do to create that environment you need to have the space for the conversations and the connection and things like that to things that are lacking inherently in remote work. How do you foster that vibe for that culture with a team

Chase Warrington 33:48
I think the the first thing to recognize and we try to be really take this really seriously is like we don't expect you you don't have to be best friends with with everybody you work with like maybe it's okay if we if we employ people who want to have a life outside of work I think there's a lot of inherent wisdom that tells us you know, company happy hours and weekend picnics and and things like that, you know, meetings like get togethers are the norm and that everybody loves them. But the truth is, there's a huge percentage of the population who are very introverted, who prefer to to keep their social life and their work life separate. And so they're perfectly okay working that way. And so I think that's one of the things that is okay to address first. We want to create those situations for the people that crave it, but we want to leave everything very optional. All the activities that we do at duelist whether they be virtual or in person or 100% optional, you don't have to attend there's no there's no underlying judgment. If you're not there, you know, that pressure to attend or the FOMO face yeah, you don't you don't get any extra credit for for being there for just showing up. And this is sort of baked into the to the way that most remote organizations operate is like, you just get credit for the work that you do. And all the peripheral stuff that exists in a more co located. Environment is basic is just showing up to work like often people just show up and they don't actually produce a lot, but you get a lot of credit for sitting there for eight hours. This kind of goes away in a remote environment as does showing up for the happy hour. And and you know, glad handing for a little bit. So we create those spaces. We offer events, like we did a cooking class, one of my co workers and from Pakistan did a cooking class teaching us how to make a traditional dish. And we spent an hour about 15 of us from nine or 10 Different countries learning how to make this traditional dish. We have a synchronous spaces in our communication tool for people to share travel stories, and travel photos and gardening tips and parents tips and things like that. So we're giving people places to connect naturally, when they when and where they choose to. And actually wrote a blog post on this that lists like literally every little detail that we that we do and how we do it. So it's quite lengthy, but it can go into much more detail than than I could here. Yeah.

Jason Moore 36:12
Okay, if you should give me that link, we can link to that in the show notes. Yeah. When you think about some of the things you just mentioned, we covered a large spectrum, right, because not every remote job will say, remote. As a remote employee is created equal. You've got on the one side, your mom having to move a mouse and ask for permission to go to the bathroom. And then on the other side, you guys talking about? Well, as long as you get your work done, do whatever you want, and sounds like that. That is the healthy approach, in my opinion, is the you're utilizing the engine of remote work in a way where you're like trimming the fat, right? You're just like, hey, this is all the things that suck about working for a company. So why don't we just like get rid of all that and then also be remote. And not every company thinks that way. Right? Not every individual may be going for a remote job. might just see the Oh location pendant work from anywhere and be like, That's just you're gonna see that marquee glowing lights and you just gonna be like, yeah, here we go. So I guess what I'm looking for here is some of your advice as a remote employee for getting remote work, and then getting the right kind of remote work for the lifestyle you want to lead.

Chase Warrington 37:32
Yeah, that last part is is so important because that all jobs at remote companies are created equal for for sure. And the the positive news is as as we were saying, or like I feel like we're like too old traveled, or like the old men on the travel train, like, you know, back in my day wasn't like this. But it does, it does feel a little bit true. Because like not that long ago, like I was saying before, you know, you had to make a lot of sacrifices to to find Remote Jobs and doesn't really feel the case anymore. There's, there's multiple job boards out there that I would recommend that, that offer awesome filtering options depending on which ones you like if he wants to. So yeah, so some of the ones that I really send people to one of them is called Remote IV remote iv.io is awesome, really great jobs like that, like the key with all of these is that they don't just plaster every single job out there. And they also offer filtering options, like, you know, are you looking for fully remote or remote within the US for instance, or remote within a certain timezone? Or you have to be in the office one day a week that remote really means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. And unfortunately, a lot of companies are using term they should be using a term like hybrid. You know, if you have you have to be in the office, even just one day a week that changes what remote means

Jason Moore 38:56
less. In Spain, then yeah, I can't commute

Chase Warrington 38:59
to back and forth to the to the US every every year. So that's you know, there's a big spectrum there. And it's important to be able to filter out to exactly what you want. So remote iv.io is and is an awesome website. There's another one flex jobs which which is probably pretty well known already and I think has done a really good job we work remotely is the third one they have a whole community built around the remote job search and they have a Slack community that's that's really active tons of information there. There's also some awesome remote job coaches that I've that I can refer people to one of my favorites is Jordan Carroll, aka the remote job coach who has tons of free content, but also just a lot of practical tips and programs and, and ways to go really deep on this. And so I think there's a lot of resources out there not to mention a big supply of opportunities as well.

Jason Moore 39:58
No, that's great. I really appreciate be sharing the resources because that's super helpful for people listening that may want to get a remote job because working for yourself is not for everybody at every stage of life or at all, depending on who you are. How has that been for you? By the way, starting your side hustle, let's call it I don't know if it's a side hustle. Or if you're what you would consider that your podcast and like some of the I don't know, if you're doing some consulting work around remote work. Talk about that. And I'm curious how you got support. It sounds like you have a very supportive organization. So you don't have to hide your side hustle or your about broad podcast, about a broad podcast from from your employer. I imagine they're like, Oh, that's cool. You know, you're out there being the change. Seems like they appreciate that. But everybody might not be in that situation. So yeah, I guess the first part is just I'm just wondering how it's been for you coming from, like the employee background and kind of starting your own projects and things? How that's been for you?

Chase Warrington 40:56
Yeah, that's a great question. I used to think I was very entrepreneurial. And I think I have a bit of that in me. But I also really benefit from having a structure of an organization and the kind of, we all rode together mentality. And I benefit from that. So I've dabbled in some entrepreneurship and in various ways throughout the years and investing and starting some side hustles. My podcast about abroad started actually as a blog that I tried to start when I moved to when we moved to Ecuador. And I realized very quickly, that although I was having some fun with it, that I wasn't really a writer, like writing really cost me a lot of energy. And podcasting wasn't as much on my radar at that time. But eventually, over the years, as I started listening to other podcasts, and you're just one of them, actually, I was really inspired to kind of continue to have this discussion, I always wanted to inspire people to you know, just go move, move abroad, establish a life elsewhere, and, and then also just have conversations with people that have done it to learn what it's like to live there, I just am personally interested in that. So that was the whole kind of why behind, you know, well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give this a shot. I'm also a podcast junkie, I'm almost always listening to a podcast. So this was all sort of going around in my head. And you're right, I didn't have to hide it from my company. In fact, they commend it. They're like, this is great, man. Again, there's a life outside of work, you know, it's not just, you clock in for your 30 to 45 hours a week, or whatever. And there's a lot of hours left to do stuff that you're really passionate about. So it goes hand in hand with my work in some ways. I mean, we talk about remote work on the podcast. But also it's you know, really diving into what people's lives are like living abroad, and which is what I would do in my free time anyway. So it's a, it's a lot of fun from an entrepreneurial aspect. It's been interesting to try to learn how to run my own side business, I do do some consulting. I do do the, you know, the half the podcast, which is monetized so I'm trying to balance all those things. And luckily, I work for a productivity company, we have a pretty good tool called Todoist, which is my second brain. So I manage it all in there.

Jason Moore 43:11
Yeah, right on. I mean, it's it is, in some ways, it can be two different mindsets, depending on how you approach it, the the sort of starting your own thing, keeping it going, and then having more of a structure like you said, what and while on one hand, you were working for an organization, yes, there's there's the structure, and then there's some freedom within that structure. On the other hand, on the entrepreneur side, you need to create the structure for yourself and the freedom and a lot of that and the things you're juggling, I'm just kind of putting myself in your shoes. It comes back to a big word that's always using when remote work comes up, I think, is balance. And I'm just wondering, What does balance mean to you?

Chase Warrington 43:51
Balance is so overused in a lot of cases, but so critical to me and like I don't mind it being a cliche and also being something that's that's like, extremely vital to me, and I have to check myself against balance. Because I will naturally work my work, work myself to death, I guess. I mean, I'm very, I'm much more committed and driven by the cause that I'm involved in, then, than I am naturally to focus on my own balance and what's more important in my personal life. So creating that intentionally throughout my life has been has been something that's, you know, especially as I get a little bit older, I find it very, very key to long term success. I mean, I lean on the little quote or motto that it's a marathon, not a sprint, quite a bit and it's funny you were talking about that word risk that you put on your forum. I kind of tried to hone in on a word every year, like what's my word gonna be? And for two years, I made it train kilo, which is like one of my favorite words in Spanish, because I was just not very tranquilo and then in Spain, they use train kilo for like, everything like it's not it's not just like, relaxed but It's just it's just it's always like No, no, just don't worry, no, it's might be a how we would use no worries. But um, epic and I kept it for two years because I was like, I really got to be more drink Elan and living in Spain has has helped me with that. I mean, life moves a little bit slower here and you get you get used to realizing you know, this, it's not that big deal if somebody's 15 minutes later, if you take an extra day of vacation or whatever. And this has been really good for me.

Jason Moore 45:26
Yeah, hold on. I'm reading Trent kilo on my arm, right. I like that. I need that one. I'm gonna steal that one from you. So can we be trained kilo? Brothers?

Chase Warrington 45:36
Yeah, let's be mastering kilo all together,

Jason Moore 45:39
writing it on my own. When you have to explain a joke. It's a bad one. Let's talk about scaling a remote team, because that is a tricky thing as well. We talked about the culture and you touched on some of the thing. And maybe what ties this together is you talked about implementing emerging technologies to support distributed teams. That's one of the things you do I got that from your LinkedIn, and humanizing remote work. So there's all of these things at play here. And it's one thing to have, maybe yourself or one other person that you're working with, it's another to have 100 people scattered across the world, and in different time zones, and from different cultures, and living different lives. So how do you bring all that together? And of course, there's no, there's no perfect situation? You know, but I'm just curious what you've learned, scaling the remote team as head of remote at your organization.

Chase Warrington 46:39
Yeah, I've totally become a remote work super nerd. Like, I study this stuff. Like we're, we're 100 people, which to some people sounds, you know, huge 100 people in 35 countries, you go, Oh, my God, how do you? How do you do that, but I'm in the circles with, you know, people who are leading teams with 1000s and 10s of 1000s of people that are fully remote or distributed across, you know, dozens of nations and, and so I'm, I'm just kind of immersed myself into this world of like, how do you do this, because it's not as simple as just flipping a switch and saying, Okay, we just take all these things that we've been doing in the office, and we and we migrate them to a remote setting, give everybody a laptop and a Zoom account, and boom, we're good, right? It just unfortunately, it doesn't work well that way. So a lot of a lot. But I see a lot of teams go in that direction, you know, they just, they just think we're going to basically take the best practices that we use in the office. And we'll apply those same processes to what we do remote. And so that's my first suggestion to anybody thinking about trying to scale a remote team or convert from a more co located environment to a remote team is to meticulously and I really mean that seriously, like meticulously pressure test, every process that your company does, to figure out does this work best in a remote environment or in an office environment? And you'll be amazed at how many things you can find from like, what tools do we use to communicate? What are our expectations around meetings? How often are we reporting? And where are we reporting? And when are we reporting? What we're doing every day, week, month? etc? What tools are the are we doing that via? There's so many questions you could ask yourself, and if you sit down and ask them and just kind of put them into categories? And then figure out how do we okay, everything that ends up in the in office environment category? What do we need to do to move that over to the remote environment and a lot of like, the very broad stroke to pain around that, a lot of that means that you end up pushing people towards asynchronous work, which means like not expecting immediate responses, not leaning on meetings, both virtual and in person. And, and this is a big change for people. So it's making those changes that are that are key to long term success.

Jason Moore 49:00
Yeah, I know on Twitter recently, you said maybe an unpopular opinion, but for distributed teams, I now prefer async brainstorming over synchronous brainstorming sessions. Both have their pros and cons, but the benefits of async inclusivity, transparency, deep work, etc. outweigh those of a synced meeting. Can you expand on that a bit? Yeah, sure.

Chase Warrington 49:19
So the natural tendency when when I say brainstorm, like, Hey, Jason, let's do a brainstorm together. What do you envision?

Jason Moore 49:28
Well, I mean, we get together and we get out a good old fashioned pad and pen and we start riffing,

Chase Warrington 49:36
right, right. Probably, we set an hour aside on our one of our calendars

Jason Moore 49:41
eat off of each other, you get the energy going, the ideas are flowing, it's fun for a brainstorm.

Chase Warrington 49:46
I know and I am too and I love that energy, that energy is real and it has value. But I think it's overvalued. And the reason for that is it's it's not that it's not important, but there's pros and cons with everything right and when it comes to brainstorming that is the conventional way to do it in an office setting, it would be, you know, it's 10 of us jump in the conference room at 12 o'clock on Tuesday, and we got an hour to brainstorm how we're going to solve X problem. And, and so there's, there's, that sounds great, but there's a lot of problems with that one, you only have an hour, maybe, maybe I'm tired during that hour, maybe I'm not really clicking, maybe I had a bad, you know, bad morning, or I've got other things on my mind. So that hour didn't really work for me. Now, how's everybody in that room feeling? You know, we just don't know.

Jason Moore 50:32
But could that be an advantage when you have a time constraint and you have to get something done, there's a deliverable after a certain time,

Chase Warrington 50:38
the time constraint is important. It's an important and there's a that's a function of the process, both in synchronous and asynchronous work. The problem there, the problems though, are that a that that problem, that discussion is confined basically, to those 10 people, unless somebody's taking very meticulous notes, and then sharing those and then other people are regurgitating those, which nobody ever does. So transparency is reduced, it's very that common, that conversation is really trapped in a silo. Also, generally speaking, there's some data that reflects this, those people in that meeting are generally going to be swayed very heavily by one or two individuals, maybe the CEOs in that meeting, or maybe there's a big alpha in the room who speaks up loudly and gives a gives an idea and then everybody just kind of latches on to that. So it leads to mediocre results. Introverts, creatives, they don't they don't thrive in that environment. So the idea behind asynchronous communication, brainstorming is to take that out of that very short, confined period, stretch it out over let's say a couple of days, and give people the chance to contribute when it makes the most sense for them. Introverts and creatives will thrive in this environment, they won't be put off by the the alpha or the person who's going to give the first idea or the loudest idea, transparencies there, because you're doing it in a written place. And usually in a tool like a Google jam board, or mirror or mural or something like that. So people are dropping ideas as they come to them. And they get to do it on their terms, when they're most excited, I saw somebody shared, like, yeah, the best ideas usually come to me when I'm in the shower, like, or when I'm walking my dog. And, and so if you have that idea at midnight on Tuesday, and you can drop it in the next morning, you're you're setting yourself up for more success.

Jason Moore 52:21
I love that, and especially the point around the different types of personalities, because I think a lot of these corporate policies sometimes neglect the that fact that we're all different, and everybody has different brains that work in different ways and thrive in different situations. So yeah, I mean, all those points are well taken, I, the next thing I build, I think is going to be 100%. A sink because for me, it's a lifestyle thing, like just being in Norway and having I don't want to be I'm so tired of being on Zoom calls at nine o'clock at night. 10 o'clock at night. So I love that you're on this side of the pond, we get to do this in the middle, the afternoon, the sun shining, I'm awake, I've had, you know, my three cups of coffee or whatever, you know, I want to do all my work like that. So I love that you can intentionally put systems in place like asynchronous communication that can cater to the lifestyle you want to live.

Chase Warrington 53:18
Yeah, I think it's really ideal for for people like you and I and that love to travel and want to be able to, you know, live in a different country, whether it be for a long term, like like you're doing or to a lesser degree like I'm doing, or for many of the people on my team who are digital nomads, and they just travel full time and doesn't matter. I had a guy traveling, he's from Montreal, and he had been he was, we were chatting one day, and he had been in Japan for like two months. And I had no idea like we'd been chatting for, you know, he's been traveling for three, four months at that time. So there's a lot of people like that. And then we have people who are like, Yeah, you know, I just wanted to relocate for the summer. Because the winters here, depress me. And so I spend the winter, I spend my winter somewhere else, or somebody who said, Hey, there's a better opportunity for my kids in this country, which I can go live in. And so it's better for their family. I mean, this is what remote work and asynchronous work in particular, can really, really open up for people there's that it gives you those, it reduces those constraints. And, and so yeah, I get very excited about it for what it can hold for the future.

Jason Moore 54:22
Yeah, man. I mean, I'm always shocked that companies would fight against it, because it's like, Hey, dudes. Dude, that's whoever, how how do you not see that you don't have to pay rent on this place every month. Like do you want to pay the $10,000 a month thing? Like why? Why would you want to do that from a business perspective? Well, we get everybody together. Okay. Well, you know, get into a conference room in a co working space once a week or something. Yeah, thought this through.

Chase Warrington 54:50
The thing is like, there's a there's a there's a downside to just about any decision like you can't, it's never like you know, zero sum just 100% Good or bad. There are Are you know, there are trade offs there. But but as you just mentioned, I mean, you mentioned a couple of them, they're like, there's so many benefits. And it's sometimes amazing to see people hold on to an old way of working and just did not try to think through the challenges. And I think there's a lot that can be said about that, like just just dipping their toe in the water and seeing where it goes, can can be really beneficial. I've seen organizations thrive in this way. I mean, just really turn things around and be able to attract talent is another one, like, pulling in people from anywhere in the world. When you when you remove the couple of zip codes around your office, from your talent pool and you go global or even to a whole country. I mean, the benefits there are massive. So yeah, there's a lot of benefits.

Jason Moore 55:45
Yeah, if you strip it all away, and one thing that came to my mind is, if you're running an organization, and you're building a remote team, or you're running a remote team, I think the one go to thing could just be Hey, well, what what can I do to make the majority of my employees happy most of the time? If you do that, doesn't that kind of solve all the other problems? Right? I mean, everybody's not going to be, you know, rainbows and unicorns all the time. But if your intention is to just have happy employees, or happy freelancers, or wherever you work with, isn't that kind of the go to question for the decision making?

Chase Warrington 56:23
It should be I mean, and I saw a pretty well done survey recently, I think it was by McKinsey. That listed the top reasons why why employees felt engaged or not engaged in their happiness levels within their companies. And at the very top of that list was freedom and flexibility to choose where they wanted to live. That that was, that was the number one thing that had an impact on their, on their engagement, and their happiness levels at the organization. On the bottom are moving down that list number eight was pay, just to put it in perspective. So like one verse, like you'd expect pay to be one, two, or three. And that's how much more people are valuing their flexibility and freedom. And millennials in particular, will really value this over, over climbing the ladder over pay over benefits they're looking for, for flexibility and freedom. So I've been, I almost feel like it's like a supply and demand thing, like the market has to adapt to provide this if they want to attract top talent.

Jason Moore 57:27
Well, this goes back to your decision to make, you know, $500 a week or whatever money to just so you can have the freedom, right? Yeah, you're gonna list off like three bullet points using the 8020 rule on running a remote teams successfully, like what are the three bullet point things that are absolute must haves for an organization, whether it's a tool, whether it's a process, or a cultural thing? Yeah, can be anything. So I

Chase Warrington 57:57
think the first these are mostly mindsets, or processes. The first one is to focus on asynchronous communication, remove the need to sync up, if you want to have a global team, even taking away global if you just want to have teammates in different time zones, and you really want to empower your remote team. Don't force them to be sitting there ready to hop on a meeting? Oh, no more meetings. Yeah, it doesn't want that. Yeah, just I mean, literally, who doesn't want that? Like, nobody really likes meetings? And if you really question your each one of them, you go into you go, how important was this meeting? Like, what did we do?

Jason Moore 58:36
How many times at the end of the day you like oh my gosh, I could have had another meeting to go to that would have been awesome.

Chase Warrington 58:42
I know, we all feel this way, obviously. And even like taking away the the sucking of the meeting, there is all this other there's these offshoots from that, like, if you have a remote team, and you have a lot of meetings, then people feel obligated to be sitting there waiting to go into a meeting. So they're, they're attached to their chat tool, whether it be slack, or whatever it is you're using, they're sitting there waiting to have that proverbial tap on the shoulder, like, Hey, we got to hop into a meeting. Now. This is the antithesis of asynchronous work, which which really helps people focus on deep work, getting into the zone, focusing on things that are creative and actually move the needle. So there's a lot of, you know, sub topics there. But moving to asynchronous communication is is absolutely critical. Also, I really recommend people don't limit based on don't limit there anything based on time zones. So a lot of companies will say okay, we'll start by just saying we're gonna hire people just in the US or just on the East Coast, or within one hour of East Coast time, and I think you're setting yourself up for failure. And not maybe failures a little bit too strong, but you're setting yourself up for a lot of challenges down the road because what happens when that person one of those teammates wants to move to a new country to a new timezone. What happens when you come across Somebody who is in an outline time zone that you really want to bring onto the team, you have to redo all your processes again. So set yourself up from day one. With, you know, we're going to be a fully remote team. And by that we mean fully remote. Embrace that from the beginning. And you'll build out all your best practices and tools and processes around that. I think that's super important. And then the third one is focus on transparency, all the tools, you use all the documentation, everything should promote a lot of transparency, giving people the ability to peek in on what work is happening, at what time not necessarily participate, but just be able to have visibility. Trapping information in silos is, is a is a big no no in the remote world. So focusing on you know, how do we keep things open and available to the whole team. A good example of that is, of course, a meeting, it's trapped between two people, but it could easily be emails as well emails or communication silos, where it's very hard to bring people in and give them visibility into what you're talking about in an email, something like one of our tools twist or slack or something like that gives you much more visibility into what teams are doing.

Jason Moore 1:01:12
Cool. Thanks for that. I know, there are some challenges with challenges within that as well. Right? Like, I mean, you have to have meetings, sometimes you have to have one on one calls, but certain people sometimes, you know, there are exceptions. I think it's very difficult to say we're 100% asynchronous, and we never have meetings and you guys must have meetings are absolutely

Chase Warrington 1:01:31
yeah, it's it's changing the the default, right? So the default mechanism should be a sync, and the exception to the rule should be meeting. And if you just change that mindset, and you question, Does this need to be a meeting? Or would we do it better a sync? This is the this is the process we want to create.

Jason Moore 1:01:50
Cool. Thanks for sharing some of your expertise around that. I wanted to hear what your daily life is like in Spain, like what is daily life like there? What do you most like about it? Why have you been there for four years as opposed to any other place in the world?

Chase Warrington 1:02:05
Yeah, I settled here in Valencia after I come here for a few months. And in Spain, and travelled around a few times and really liked it. But I'd never been to Valencia. And along the way, somebody said, Hey, if you ever come back, you should definitely go to Valencia. I think you'd like it. And so when we were filling out our visa applications, we got a one year visa to come live in Spain, which as an American, I thought was the end all be all. That's my that's the best thing I can ever get to live in Europe to spend any more than my 90 days and your visa was that it's called the non lucrative visa. Does it still exist, it does still exist. I will say they've made some changes to it just recently, which is good and bad for people in a similar situation. It was designed for pensioners, retirees who had a fixed income and could come here and live but not work. So you're not allowed to physically have a job in Spain. You can't take a Spanish job, but you can if you have an income coming from outside the country, then you can come come and use that visa. But because of the emergence of digital nomads and traveling and and remote work, they have created a dedicated digital nomad visa, which they are trying to push more of us into now I'm beyond it. I'm getting ready to transfer into permanent residency so I don't have to deal with the the implications there. But for new people applying for this visa for new remote workers, they would probably want to look at the new digital nomad visa, but non lucrative could still be an option.

Jason Moore 1:03:35
Cool. Back to daily life.

Chase Warrington 1:03:37
Oh, yeah. So anyway, just just given a I guess a bit of backstory on why we settled in Valencia, because the idea was to come here for three months and then move on and do three months and three or four different places around Spain. And we just picked Valencia first because we had to pick it in our visa meeting. They said you pick someplace right now we have to put it on your application. We said okay, we'll do valency up. And then we got here and we travel with a 50 pound 23 kilo Siberian Husky that has traveled criss cross the Atlantic and the equator multiple times. And he's not that easy to move around. It's not. It's not a very simple process. And so after we got here, after going through all that, for the millionth time, we were like falling in love with Valencia. And we're like, why are we gonna keep doing that? Keep moving around. Like let's just stay here. Let's have it. Let's have Valencia be our home base. And we'll just travel a lot from here. And so that's essentially what we've done and and one year turned into two and then two turned into four and now we're getting permanent residency and so

Jason Moore 1:04:39
buy a place there or do you rent we

Chase Warrington 1:04:41
we rent. We we've we've looked into buying we've made an offer actually on a place just recently that didn't didn't go through. But yeah, right. For now we're renting because we're still we have itchy feet. I mean, in fact, we're getting ready to set out on a five to six plus month. A trip around Europe and and sort of scouting out some some other places that could potentially be be the next stop but we're super happy here in Valencia to I mean I'm not running away from Valencia it's more just like oh, what's what's on the other side of that border? But yeah, I mean daily life I've settled into the Spanish lifestyle I, I wake up a good bit earlier than than most and I usually start my day around like seven or eight. But I take a long three to four hour break in the middle of the day have some lunch exercise, travel, you know, maybe travel to a little village close by or something if I want to check out something different and maybe check out the beach when the when the weather's good. And and then come back in the afternoon for a few hours if made made good friends here I go to a co working which has been great for social life. And yeah, just just enjoy the sunshine here in Valencia. Nice.

Jason Moore 1:05:53
Is your Siberian Husky enjoying the sunshine must be hot with all that for,

Chase Warrington 1:05:57
you know, he lived in. He's lived in Miami. He's lived in Ecuador. He's so he's he's kind of kind of used to it, I think. But no, we do have to be careful. And actually normally during the summers, it's our way escape to the to the Pyrenees or the Alps or something and get him out of here during July. I use him as an excuse. I mean, you know, I like go into.

Jason Moore 1:06:18
He's got to travel for what's his name? Cody, Cody. Yeah. Cody needs a break from Spain. Yes. rough life. A couple last quick questions. What do you find is the hardest thing for you to do?

Chase Warrington 1:06:36
The hardest thing, one of the most challenging things for me is to figure out what the long term plan is. This nomadic lifestyle is addicting. And at the same time, I have a desire to settle into a place I really value my routine, I really value having a close knit group of friends and the community. And so balancing those two things, you know, we talked earlier about you know, trying to be back there being you know, back home home for important events and parts have been continuing to be a part of people's lives that are close to you. But then also just having this undecided like this, this thing you can't deny, which is this desire to be in an international place and live in different countries and continue exploring. And so balancing those two things is is one of the hardest things like, if I could just let one of those two sides go, it would make life so much easier. Yeah. I don't know if that resonates for you at all. But that's that's a challenge for me.

Jason Moore 1:07:39
Yeah. During my Nomad days, when I was coming to the end of it, I was really trying to decide what to do. And it was a really hard. Yeah, there were there were times because I spent 10 years on the road, there were times when I felt the pull of like, oh, maybe I should just settle down somewhere. And those times were partially influenced by maybe external forces. Sometimes it was just the desire, just wanting to be in one place, because I was just tired of traveling around all the time. It was helpful for me to kind of realize that you can commit to like smaller amounts of time for things and then just let it go. That was really the only way I could let it go. You know? Because if you're like trying to figure it out for your whole life, it's just too overwhelming. For me personally, that was a way to kind of reframe it. But yeah, it's tough. I mean, hashtag first world problems,

Chase Warrington 1:08:32
right? Yeah. I mean, nobody's gonna feel bad for you.

Jason Moore 1:08:35
But I mean, you know, it's, it's part of the life and, yeah, I mean, making those decisions. It's, it's tough when a decision is weighing on you, or you feel like it is even though there's no immediate pressure for you guys to like, you know, nobody's looking over your shoulder being like, you guys have to decide something by next week. You know, it's all self enclosed. Right? Yeah. It's

Chase Warrington 1:08:56
all self imposed. And it's also like, you know, I've say this kind of half jokingly, but like society, you know, you have these like social pressures that you believe you have to live by. And even though you've bucked some of those and moved on and lived a little bit unconventionally, they still linger in there, you know, like, like, should you should you be owning a home instead of renting? Yeah. Should you be in your bones? Yeah, it's in your bones,

Jason Moore 1:09:21
whatever you were brought up with culturally, it gets in there.

Chase Warrington 1:09:24
Yeah. Another like real life challenges, like when you don't know where you're going to be long term. How do you plan for things like retirement? Like, this is not a fun topic to talk about, but like, right now, you know, like, Okay, do I do say, Do I pay into the pension system here in Spain? Am I going to be here forever? Or is that just money down the drain? If I'm not going to be here for forever, but then should I be paying back in the US were, it's kind of a rough situation with those regard. Like, you have to think about these things. And, and again, if you just had, if you knew what you were going to do it would be it would be so much easier, and I think the majority of people more or less, do know what their future looks like, you know, for the next 1020 30 years. And and I definitely can't say that. I mean, I don't know what the next six months to a year look like. So that because what's so great about it? Yeah, it is. It's what it's what drives me, it's what makes me smile today. So it's you just follow that and try to do all the smart things that you can you know, along the way, but recognize there's some risk involved. Tequila

Jason Moore 1:10:27
is this an intervention in reverse, I'm going to have an intervention here, Listen, stop worrying trend, kilo baby,

Chase Warrington 1:10:33
we gotta see, I gotta revert to that it's back on my forum. Again,

Jason Moore 1:10:38
you don't need to decide. And speaking of sharing, now would be a good time to just kind of let everybody know where to find you and all that good stuff.

Chase Warrington 1:10:46
Yeah. Um, so if the remote work stuff resonated with you, then I talk a lot about this on LinkedIn, and the community that I'm involved with there. So you can find me on LinkedIn by searching Chase Warrington. We also have an awesome blog at newest blog.dewas.com with an incredible remote work section. Whether you're looking for remote work, or you want to figure out how to scale your remote team, lots of tools, processes, best practices to share there and tons of user success stories and things of that nature. I'm also somewhat active now on Twitter. Thanks for reading a tweet earlier. I'm a recovering coming back to Twitter user as of recently and and so that's a place you can connect with me at DC Warrington there and at DC Warrington on Instagram. And finally my mother podcast is about abroad.com available wherever you get your podcasts

Jason Moore 1:11:39
about life abroad, what does the podcasting taught you?

Chase Warrington 1:11:44
Oh, man, I've learned so much. It's been incredible. I mean, just the actual process of creating a podcast and being a I'm not a naturally I'm not an artist, by in any way shape or form. My wife is actually an artist by by trade. So I can for sure say I am not an artist, but it has given me this creative outlet that I didn't even know I had, I've gotten all into, you know, the design of the I mean, the not just the show itself, but and the art of being a host and all that but like the tools to use and the design of the website and the marketing assets and, and all those things. So I've learned so much not to mention just talking to incredible people that have some really inspiring stories, practical tips about, oh, here's how you, you know, can live in Vietnam for a while if you want or, or whatever. So I just I've gained so much from it. And it's awesome that it's become a little a little business as well. But it's just pure fun for me as I as I imagined it is for you as well.

Jason Moore 1:12:45
Yes, absolutely love it. Well, cool. I mean, it's always great to see and meet somebody putting content out there that's helping other people live life abroad. And with all of your work around for remote work and helping people in that way. So really appreciate your time today and everything you shared. And I look forward to staying in touch of course, I'm going to be on your show. So if you want to hear the table's turned doing a little show swap situation here. You can tune in and check that out as well. If you're so inclined. So thanks so much for your time Chase.

Chase Warrington 1:13:18
Yeah, thank you, Jason. It was it was awesome. And and again, I want to thank you because you were you know, one of the original podcasters on these subjects that I started tuning into years ago. And so thanks for all you're doing and keep on inspiring, man. It's awesome.

Jason Moore 1:13:33
Sure. Thanks, man. That's just because I'm old.

Chase Warrington 1:13:36
That was that was that was the real point of that one.

Jason Moore 1:13:40
All right, well, we're gonna keep it tranquillo. Have a great day. And thanks for your time.

There you have it. Thank you so much for your time, Chase. Hope you enjoyed our chat. I'm feeling Trank kilo baby and feeling Trank kilo. What a great work. Did this inspire you to come up with a word for the rest of your year? Perhaps you're gonna steal chases word like I did. Anyway, thanks to him. And you can check out his podcast about abroad where you get podcasts. Now, a couple things here, I have to share this moment when a city really comes alive. Now this is from a book I recently read called time and again. And the book was pretty good. I know Stephen King recommended it as his favorite time travel book. And I love the time travel genre. I don't know why. Maybe because it has something to do with some kind of travel that I can't do. I just realized that sorry. I'm cracking myself up now. It's like, hey, there's a travel that I can't do. And I really want to do all the types of travel you can do so time travel. The only way to do it right now that I know of is well I guess you can do it a bit in your mind. Right? I do that quite often. Just ask my wife And I suppose through through these books. So anyway, this book time and again, let me read this paragraph from this book. The narrator says, I once talked with a friend who'd spent a vacation in Paris. Like most people, he loved the city, walking it every day till his legs trembled, pleased with nearly everything he saw. But it wasn't till he'd been there nearly two weeks that one morning, Paris and its people suddenly became something more than a background for his vacation. He was sitting in a cafe out on the walk, having a tiny cup of Paris tasting Paris smelling coffee, watching traffic stream by pleased as always, with the countless people on bikes, expertly threading their way between and around the cars and buses and trucks, then a traffic light change, this dream stopped and waited. And a man on a bike one foot on the pavement, lifted his arm and wiped his forehead with the back of his hands. And he turned real. In that instant, he was no longer a quaint part of the charming backgrounds, he turned into a real man tired from pumping the bike. And for the first time, it occurred to my friend that there was a reason so many people picturesquely, rode bikes through the heavy traffic. And the reason was to save bus fare. And because they couldn't afford cars, after that, for the few days that were left to him there, my friend continued to enjoy Paris. But now, it was no longer an immense travel poster, but a real city. Because now so were its people. And quote there and that to me, it really resonated because I do feel like that is a moment when essentially you take off the rose colored glasses, or the rose tinted glasses, right, and you start seeing things for what they really are. And it's so easy when you're traveling to get sort of caught up in the

just the romanticize everything in some ways in his city. And as you walk around, you see it, it's exciting, everything's new languages, smells, and all of this stuff. And what this author is describing is that moment where all of that sort of stripped away. And in this case, it was just stripped away from observing one person wiping sweat off of their forehead, and then realizing what that meant, and what that actually was, and seeing things as they actually are so not so much as a travel poster, as they said in that, but just the reality of the city in that moment, and the people in it. And I thought that was really powerful. And I wanted to share it with you just to give us all an opportunity to reflect on what some of those moments might have been in our own personal travels. And I think it ties in nicely with the subject today about living abroad. And when you live abroad, and you spend quality time in the city, that inevitably does happen, right, it's less likely to happen. I'd say if you're spending just a handful days in the city, you can just live on that romanticized version of the city. It's like you can't see things for what they are. But I think you know what I mean, but when you live somewhere, you really the city reveals itself after a period of time. And I don't know, just some things to think about, I don't really have a point other than sometimes the point is to just give us something to think about or reflect on, or consider or ponder, whatever the case may be for you. So hope you enjoyed that, I am going to send you off with a nice quote. First, just a quick reminder, we do have a private premium podcast feed over at zero to travel.com/premium. And if you sign up over there, you can try it for just a buck, you get access to exclusive content bonus episodes each month, add free episodes, and more. And you help support the show, of course. So if this show has made a positive impact in your life in any way, whether it's through the guest perspectives or stories, or ideas or whatever, and you want to support it. That's an easy way to do it. Of course the email list on zero travel.com is free and I send out newsletters at least bi weekly nowadays. So sign up over there as well. Thank you so much for being part of this community and for listening to the show. Now a quotes on risk from Neil Simon. Like this one. He said, if no one ever took risks, Michelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor are you go have a wonderful day, smile. Maybe take a risk. And I'll see you next time. Peace and love. Cheers.

ad 1:19:40
This podcast has been brought to you by zoom two travel.com ideas and advice to make your travel dreams a reality.