BenP (00:04.994)
Hi everyone and welcome to the Tech World Human Skills Podcast. It is brilliant to have you all with us. So thank you so much for tuning in. Now, in this episode, we're talking about something a bit different. We're talking about what it's really like to be a digital nomad. We've all heard about it, but I don't know many people that have actually done it. But our guest today has taken that leap to living as a digital nomad.
whilst leading a business as a product coach and hosting a podcast. So please welcome to the show, Evie Brockwell.
Evie (00:45.811)
Okay, Ben, thank you for having me here. It's a pleasure and it's also a pleasure to be able to speak about this subject in a bit more detail.
BenP (00:54.974)
Well, it is lovely to have you with us. So thank you so much for joining us. And, you know, I'm here in the UK, just west of London. You've got a UK accent, but tell me, you know, you're a bit pixelated on my screen. Whereabouts in the world are you at the moment, Evie?
Evie (01:12.767)
I am currently in Chile, about three, five hours south of Santiago.
BenP (01:21.546)
Right, so the wonders of technology mean that we are able to have this chat today. And so I wonder for all those people that don't know you, could you introduce yourself to us? Could you tell us a little bit about your background and what you're up to now?
Evie (01:36.435)
Yep, yep, yep. So I've been working in product for almost 10 years, which is quite a long time. I'm quite a veteran in that space. And I've always worked in the travel space. So it was quite clear from a young age that that's what I've been into. So I started my career at TUI, then I moved to booking.com, learned how to do product really, really well. And I found that I was constantly trying to drive change and do all of these things in the organization whilst being a full-time product person at the same time.
And then, yeah, about three years ago, I was like, do you know what, I don't think this is for me anymore. I think there's more that I want to do in life. I think there's more I want to experience. And don't get me wrong, it was a great job. I loved working there. But the thought of doing the same thing every day, over and over for the next however many years, when I knew there was more potential out there, I was like, hmm, maybe this is a good time for a change. Like everyone had gone remote. Everyone was working from home and I was like.
there's never going to be a better opportunity with the change in the landscape and the market to go and try this lifestyle. So yeah, three years ago I made the leaf and I can say it's been pretty successful.
BenP (02:48.354)
Brilliant, now so you say that you worked in product for a while before, what does that mean? That sounds like a pretty broad kind of brush. So what does that mean that you worked in product for almost 10 years?
Evie (03:01.595)
Yeah, so I've done a variety of product roles, but I was a product manager all the way through to a product leader. And product in essence, for anyone that's listening that comes from a non-product background, is all about trying to take what it is you want to achieve as a business and making sure you're creating the right products, the right features, and delivering the right outcomes for something that will grow the business and will be great for what your customer wants. So the day-to-dayness of the role means that you do a lot of work with
developers, it means you do a lot of work with customers, it means you do a lot of work with stakeholders, you work with UX designers to make sure you're thinking about what the right problem and opportunities are to work on and the right way to solve those, which in essence means that you're trying to create as much value as possible.
BenP (03:53.186)
Right, right, right. And so you sort of left the, I guess, the corporate world now behind, but you're still working in the product space. So what is it you're actually doing on a day-to-day basis now?
Evie (04:06.115)
Yeah, and it's interesting because sometimes I am like, oh, I have left corporate behind and I have, but I do a lot of consultancy work still. So there's still a lot of my work that is working with corporates, but I get to do it in a more flexible way. So basically I do loads of things, but the main source of my work is consultancy work. And what that involves for me is going into these organizations and understanding where they have gaps in their product practices.
So I work with like CEOs, product leaders that sit and say, do you know what, like we're really struggling with making sure we're using outcomes or we don't have a clear strategy and direction. So our teams are all working on different things and we're not delivering the value that we want. Or we know we could do product really well, but our stakeholders still want us to do these things. How can we bring them on the journey with us? So people have these more high level problems that they need help to solve at an organizational level.
So I'll come in, I'll work with the teams, I'll work with the leaders, we'll come up with a plan, we'll understand what's going on, do the diagnosis, and then work out what steps we can implement to improve the way they do product to reach what those goals are. So that's still a lot of corporate work, but I'm less involved in some of the day-to-day and more involved in the bigger picture thinking.
BenP (05:30.142)
So sounds really interesting sounds really interesting and I guess you know where my brain's going is so You're there one day Obviously there was a massive pandemic which sounds about that sort of time as well Well that we're talking and suddenly you're there in corporate life and then you think do you know what?
I want to be a digital nomad. You know, talk me through that. How did that actually happen that you go from somebody with a regular income to I want to be a digital nomad and I want to end up in a cabin in Chile or whatever it is. How did that happen?
Evie (06:03.491)
Honestly, the cabin in Chile was not my intention. Like, I blame my boyfriend for this. I'm like, this is not where I wanted to spend six months, but I'm not complaining. So, I've always wanted to travel, and I remember saying to myself when I was like 21 years old, I was like on holiday in Belgium, and I was like, do you know what? At some point in my life, I need to take a career break.
BenP (06:10.654)
Right.
Evie (06:26.915)
And I've always been super ambitious. I've always pushed to get the best grades at school, at uni. I've always pushed to climb the corporate career ladder. And I was flying through my career. One of the most common questions I get asked is, but your career was going so well, why did you change? And it's such an interesting thing because I was like, yeah, when I was 21, I said to myself, before you turn 30, you need to take a year out to travel because in my head.
after 30 it was like no you'll be settled down you'll have a family you'll have children you'll be like flying in the career ladder you'll never take a break which now I know isn't true like I can now say in my 30s that you can take a break whenever you want but that was the whole plan so no matter what I was like okay I'm going to take a year out to travel and that time was coming up and basically in 2020 was when I'd roughly planned to take this year out
BenP (07:04.366)
Hehehehe
Evie (07:16.551)
Obviously the pandemic hit, no one could travel anywhere, like everything completely changed. But because I still had that mindset I wanna take a year out to travel, I was like, do you know what, actually, we're all working remotely now. Why don't I give this a go? And what actually happened was in 2020, on the 30th of October, I flew to Madeira for a week long holiday, and then the next day, Boris Johnson out of kind of nowhere announced another lockdown. And I was like, what?
But I had my personal laptop with me and I could access all of the work systems and I was like, flights are getting cancelled, I'm not going to cut my holiday short, let me see if I can stay here and work. So the next flight I could take home was a month later. So I ended up working coincidentally from Madeira and working as a digital nomad in my full-time job. And I was like, I quite like this lifestyle. There's something about it. There's something about finishing work at six o'clock and still having day hours and going to the beach and watching the sunset. Like, not a bad way of life.
BenP (08:09.771)
Hahaha!
BenP (08:16.468)
Yeah.
Evie (08:16.508)
So then yeah, after that I spent the next year trying to work out what I could do to make an income whilst working remotely. And here we are.
BenP (08:28.558)
And so how did you do that? So what did you, so you're doing a bit of coaching, well not a bit of coaching, you're running a business where you do coaching and consultancy. So what is it you're actually doing then to make money? How do you make money as a nomad?
Evie (08:44.515)
Honestly, there are so many ways to make money and I've tried a variety of things and I've still got a variety of things in my toolkit. So my first income came from actually doing conversion optimization reports, so telling different people how they can increase the conversion on their hotel websites, because that's something that we did quite a lot at booking.com. And I remember speaking to some people and they said, well, why don't you just do what you're really good at? So I sat and went through a list of questions like what skills do I have? What do I really enjoy doing?
who might pay me for that kind of thing, and created more of a roadmap for the things that I actually wanted to be doing. So a lot of that was around strategy, was around working with stakeholders, was around process improvement. And in my time as a manager, I'd coached a lot of people to grow their careers. And I wasn't 100% sure if I could make money from all of these avenues, but it was a case of starting to have those conversations with prospective clients, whether that's product people that need.
coaching and support to grow their product careers in a way that works for them, or if it's working with these large organizations that have these problems. So from a bunch of networking calls, perspective client calls, trying out different projects, I was able to refine more and more and more what I wanted to do and how I could get paid. And I've also been paid to run workshops, I've also been paid to write articles for different companies. So there are a lot of different things out there that you can actually do to...
make more of a remote income now.
BenP (10:17.286)
And is it easy from a tax perspective? Because I'm just trying to think, you know, when we were in lockdown, I remember working at a corporate and there were people that were saying, well, as we're in lockdown and it doesn't matter where I am, I want to go and work from country X or country Y. And actually, you then started to dig into it.
And depending on the amount of days you started to get all these tax implications that may or may not come in depending on the country and all of that kind of stuff. So how did you navigate all of that? And how do you have a company in the UK or have you got one in America? You know, how do you make all of that work?
Evie (10:51.995)
I should open one in Switzerland to be fair. No my company is based in the UK and this was one of my biggest fears I think when I first started but my dad used to be an accountant so he's my accountant slash advisor which has been super helpful and the thing the international legal rules haven't really caught up with this way of living yet I would say. So there's different things you can do there are a bunch of countries that have digital nomad visas
BenP (10:56.618)
Hahaha
BenP (11:07.073)
Right.
Evie (11:21.279)
So you can go and work from there and a lot of them incentivise you to go and live in their country and work tax free if you want to. So places like Spain, I think Indonesia Open One, I think there's one in Portugal. So there's all of these options but I tend to move around a lot more. And what that means is basically if you spend typically more than 180 days in a country, it's likely that you could be liable for tax there.
It's also likely if you have a client in the same country that you're working in, so if you're fulfilling your work in that country, you're also quite highly liable for tax there. For the rest of it, I would say it's more of a gray space where because my company is based in the UK and my clients are typically based in the UK or in Europe or in America, like a country that I'm not in, then my tax liability still lies within the UK.
but it all depends on how much time you spend in each place and where your clients are for the most part.
BenP (12:21.602)
Right, okay. So you had to sort of spend a bit of time thinking about how that, and I guess understanding a bit of legislation depending on the countries you're gonna be in. Now, I mean, what about the reality of the equipment? I mean, we're talking together now. I can see you got a decent mic. I can see you on the camera. I don't know what your bandwidth is like or what device, you know, what is your work pack that allows you from a tech stack perspective to, you know, just work?
Evie (12:49.867)
Yeah, so I spent the first three and a half months with just a laptop and I can't say it did anything great for my posture. So since then obviously I'm recording podcasts now so I've got a microphone that I take everywhere with me even when I travel with hand luggage. I have, I've not got the camera on at the moment but I've also got a plug-in camera, I've got a MacBook, I've got a like portable second monitor, I also have like a laptop stand and
It's basically a case of trying to buy the lightest weight, most portable equipment that you can. And that's what I end up spending most of my money on is just anything that can be lightweight and can be smaller. But actually like you find out you don't need so much of the other stuff. Like you find out you can live in three sets of clothes and just wash them and rotate them. So you can basically travel and prioritize your work equipment.
BenP (13:45.034)
Really? So a few bits of expensive, high tech, lightweight stuff and a few changes of clothes. And that's what you... And what about from a bandwidth perspective? Like, do you have to buy a... Like, do you pop a little SIM card in every country that you go in? Or are you surfing around on hotel wifi? Or how does that work?
Evie (14:04.851)
So there is, especially in Latin America, which is where I spent most of my time, there are some incredible like co-working hostel chains. So the one that I use the most, I've kind of fallen out with them recently, but their Wi-Fi is incredible if anyone ever wants to go and try it. If you go to a Selena in any part of the world, even if you're in the most remote town, their Wi-Fi will be better than the Wi-Fi that I had in Manchester.
and they have little co-working spaces so you go and meet other remote workers and other digital nomads. Yeah, it's incredible. So that worked for the most part. They don't have many in Chile. So here I've got like a wifi box which you can plug a SIM card into and it boosts all of the signal for your wifi. So that typically works. And in this cabin that I'm now living in, it's all quite new, but we've also bought a wifi box that has an antenna. So...
BenP (14:32.619)
Really?
Evie (14:58.815)
Sometimes it can go a bit flaky. So I would say my first year when I was staying in these hostel chains was a lot easier than the last six months have been, but there's still ways to make it work. And definitely I've had worse Wi-Fi in countries like Switzerland.
BenP (15:17.556)
And you start to mention that a little bit, I think about community. Is there much of a digital nomad community of people helping each other out and tips and tricks being shared and all that kind of stuff?
Evie (15:29.583)
Yeah and it's huge. Like when I'm living in the digital nomad community this lifestyle feels so normal and then I go back to the UK and speak to all of my friends and I have to remember that I'm living a very different kind of way of life. But yeah there's like loads of hints and tips, people tell you where to go, there's a lot of websites now that have been created that are for like remote workers where you can find different more kind of Airbnb style places to stay but you can see how good the wi-fi is, you can see what activities there are to do.
And it's really nice, like it's kind of like going to an office but you're speaking to people that have got such a variety of careers and you can learn so much from all of these different perspectives.
BenP (16:13.942)
And so where do you go? Where are the top communities? Where did you find all these other digital nomads?
Evie (16:20.915)
Mostly, there's a few people that write about this stuff on LinkedIn, I can send some links through afterwards, but mostly through people that I've met. So I met a lot of people in the Selena chains, and then they might introduce me to another Slack community or another space on Instagram.
BenP (16:38.562)
Okay, okay. Now, um, you know, I look at this, uh, I was gonna say sadly there, it's not sadly. Wonderfully, I have two children, um, that are, uh, 12, and how old are they? 12 and 9. That's a test for myself there. So I'm a little bit locked in the school systems at the moment, so it would be a bit harder for me, uh, to go and do that. I've decided it's not quite for me at the moment. But, um...
For people that might have the circumstances where they think, do you know what, I could embrace this, this could be, this could be a really good way. What's the reality like? You know, what, I mean, it sounds awesome, but there must be some downsides as well. You know, what's the reality like, the hard bits of being a digital nomad?
Evie (17:26.595)
Yeah, so I think the first part is it depends if you are going freelance and starting your own business or if you're doing it where you're fully employed. Both have pros and cons. If you're doing it where you're fully employed, obviously you're not worried about sorting your next client or how to grow a business. You're basically doing your job but you can do it from anywhere.
The disadvantage of that is obviously you don't have as much time flexibility. So you typically will want to stay in a place for longer so you can just get settled there, create more of a lifestyle and still have time to explore on the weekends when you want to. So that's the first bit. The second bit that I think applies to everyone is there are things that you miss. Like you do miss your home comforts, you do miss being able to just light a candle and sit on the sofa and watch a film.
Airbnb you can find these ways to create that home comfort but it's not quite the same. And you obviously also end up missing out on so many things so I've missed like people's birthdays, I've missed different events, I've missed different family celebrations. Like it was my first Christmas away this year and these things are all still hard. There are still a lot of times where you miss home, you feel lonely, you're constantly meeting new people and they're leaving so it can take it's emotional toll
Evie (18:46.037)
I think the key to it is really being clear on your why. Like for me, all of these things, they're not important, but I know that I'm so much happier living this kind of lifestyle. And like one of the things that I didn't mention was that I used to suffer from winter depression every year, and I no longer suffer from that. So all of these things mean that my life is so much better now than it used to be, that the trade-offs are worth it for me.
For other people it's not. For other people you might try it and decide you don't like it or you might say do you know what I only want to do this for a couple of months a year because I want some of this lifestyle but not all of it. So it's really about understanding what's important to you and then having the flexibility to create the lifestyle based on what will work in your scenario.
BenP (19:36.802)
And so going back to one of the first bits you said, which was whether you've got an employer that will keep paying you whilst you're working wherever it is you're working and then doing the business yourself. Now going back to that first option where you've got an employer.
from your experience of the community, are there many employers out there that are happy? Because I imagine it must be a headache from a tax implication, you know, where do I, you know, where are they living? What tax do they need to pay? All of that kind of stuff as well. So are there many companies that are willing to take on digital nomads and pay them like a regular salaried employee even though they're changing countries?
Evie (20:19.343)
So there are some great websites. If you go to Otter, otter.com, I think, you can find a bunch of jobs and you can filter for remote, fully remote jobs. And that will tell you whether it's just remote within a country, whether it's remote within the EU, whether it's remote worldwide. So you can find these different options. And typically, it's the smaller companies that are more from a startup point of view that can handle the legislation for each individual person that allow you to work fully remote.
So it might be that you end up ending up in a smaller team, a smaller kind of work environment, or for some of the bigger companies, you might not be able to work remote for the whole year, but you might have the flexibility to work remote for 30 days at a time, for example. So it's worth checking with any employer what their flexible working policy is.
BenP (21:15.738)
Right, okay. Well, you started to go through it really is so top tips So I guess top tips if people are thinking, you know, this sounds awesome What would be your top bits of advice and your top best practices and top tips as to how to get into digital? Nomadding successfully
Evie (21:36.027)
Yeah, so obviously if you're currently employed, you might want to see what your company offers. And what I would recommend to everyone is doing a bit like what I accidentally did in Madeira, but doing a trial run. So.
go somewhere for a month, see how you like it, see how you get on, see what the pros are, see what the cons are, see what equipment you need, see how you're making it all work. And then you can really set yourself up based on that kind of strategy of understanding whether you want to travel more frequently or whether you want to just live abroad somewhere for a few months at a time, whether that means that you want the flexibility to maybe start freelancing and start your own career path or if you want to do it from a fully remote company.
can you do that in your current company or do you need to start applying for new jobs and negotiate something that is fully remote. So they would be the main bits and I would obviously say if you do get started make sure you are setting yourself up to go and find places that have good Wi-Fi and check the always check the Wi-Fi the day before you're meant to have calls and make sure it's working because that's thrown me a couple of times where it's meant to work and then it doesn't. Make sure you get the right equipment and make sure that
BenP (22:43.926)
Yeah.
Evie (22:48.697)
routine and a good lifestyle still so you don't just act like you're on holiday all the time it's not that it's that you still work out if you need to you still eat the right kind of foods you still don't start going out every night because all of the other travelers are you make sure you prioritize your work and then you do things that fulfill you around that
BenP (23:12.146)
Okay, so it's still being a, I guess, mature professional. But you're doing it from a lovely part of the world and often those lovely parts of the world have a few parties going on. Well, have a few draws that maybe don't want you to leave, lead the most healthy of lifestyle. So that's hard to resist, is it? Ha ha ha.
Evie (23:31.691)
Do you know what? I think for the first maybe like two or three months, people get really caught up in the hype of like, oh my God, look, I'm traveling. I can do all of these things. I can go to the beach whenever I want to do this. And then after a while, like I remember during COVID when we were working from home for the first time, every time the sunshine was out, I was working from my balcony. I was like, give me that sunshine. And then now like the sun shining all day every day. And I'm like, I don't wanna be in the sun. So it's like over time that novelty kind of wears off a little bit and you end up finding a more stable
But if you need to in that first couple of months, if you want to make the most of it, use your holiday days or if you start your own business, don't take on too much work, like have a bit of a break, allow yourself to embrace that lifestyle and then take it really seriously because you won't make it sustainable over time if you don't.
BenP (24:20.998)
Yeah. And so then you've now moved into the second option where you do run your own business. And so how does that work on a daily basis? So it sounds like you do, you know, you're doing your consultancy work and your coaching work. Practically, how do you manage your diary? Like, have you got time zones to think about and your remote working for one time zone? How do you practically do that work and manage it?
Evie (24:44.723)
Yeah.
I mean the worst one I had, I was in Argentina, I had a client in the USA, I had a client in Spain, I had clients in the UK and then the clocks changed in America one week, then the clocks changed in the UK two weeks later and the clocks don't change in Argentina and it was like my meetings were all over the place. And do you know what, this is a tech product that someone needs to make, it's something that can really easily manage those time zones because nothing's capable. So that's still tricky. I still end up doing a bunch of calculations.
writing them down and planning my meetings for the right times but I have got like a bunch of software and a bunch of equipment now and all of my diaries and calendars are integrated so that nothing should overlap. I also I'm willing to take meetings from 6 a.m. if I need to. I don't mind going to bed early and waking up and doing the calls so it's all about figuring those things out and what boundaries you need to set for yourself but the biggest thing that I did was that I always had Wednesdays off and I always had Fridays off.
from client work. So I could have three days if I wanted to go and travel and do things, but it also meant that I had time to catch up on the different bits of admin and get everything organized. So the way that I structured it was that I would do client work on a Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, and I would have like a day dedicated to each client or like one day for one client, one day for another, and one day for coaching. So I found that worked really well. I would say in the last six months, I've been a bit more flexible.
across every day because now I'm doing podcast recordings and I'm writing articles and I'm doing more coaching and I've got a product membership platform so it's still about setting those clear goals for the month and then breaking them down by each week and saying okay what do I need to achieve and how do I dedicate different time slots to different things.
BenP (26:36.114)
Yeah, god, fascinating. What do you know, I've just glanced down the clock and time is just escaping us as we're having this chat. So I was just thinking, so what would be, I guess, your key takeaways for people that might be considering this kind of thing? What would be your key takeaways you'd like people to remember?
Evie (26:59.579)
Remember that it is the most amazing way of life. I think you can still find so much happiness and fulfillment in the UK, especially when you're growing and raising a family. But if anyone's considering the fact that they might want to try something different, especially if you don't have anything else to tie you down, 100%, just go experiment, try it. I think we spend so much of our 20s, 30s, maybe our whole life in fear that we might be taking the wrong step
our career because we've taken a different option. Whereas when you flip that on its head and if you think about how can I learn from this, what experiments can I run to see what really brings me a happy lifestyle, that's when you'll create the most fulfillment. So if you are thinking about it, like drop me a message, I write some things about it on LinkedIn, I also have an Instagram page now where I talk about these things called Evolve by Evie. So if you are interested, do some more research, speak to people that have done it and see if
and just go and give it a go, go give it a try.
BenP (28:07.326)
Yeah, brilliant. Now it sounds awesome. And I love that fact, you know, just that idea you've got there of just try stuff, you know, and it might go wrong and bits will go a bit wrong, but have a go because at least you've tried. At least you tried something different. Now you, you.
Evie (28:18.8)
Yeah, you can only learn.
Evie (28:25.732)
You can only learn from an experience.
BenP (28:27.102)
You can only learn. You can only learn. Now, you started to mention where people could get hold of you, but you're so you're doing so you're available for consultants, product consultancy work available for coaching work. So let me give you a couple of minutes to plug yourself. You know, what is it you're available for and looking for to help you sustain this life in a Chilean cabin at the moment?
Evie (28:53.759)
I don't know if anyone will then want to pay me. It's like, you know, it sounds like I'm doing like a GoFundMe page for me living this fun lifestyle. They'll be like, no, I'm not doing that.
BenP (29:00.718)
Hahaha!
Evie (29:04.747)
But yeah, the main work that I do is helping any product teams that want to grow their product practices and create more value from their product teams. So if there's any product leaders out there, if there are any CEOs that want to improve in that space, I'm here for it. I also do so much work with product people and this is probably my favourite work. If any product person that wants to grow their career, that wants to create a healthy balance, but still progress their career in a way that works for them, that's what I focus a lot of my coaching on.
BenP (29:05.954)
Ha ha
Evie (29:33.921)
gone so again if anyone's listening they're into that kind of thing I'm here for it and then all of the other stuff that I'm doing is basically giving advice on this kind of lifestyle because I know how scary it can be and how there's so many things that you need to learn that you don't know so all of that advice that I'm giving out is free so yeah you can find me on LinkedIn and you can find me on Instagram if you search for Evolved by Evie I'll send the links in the show notes
BenP (30:01.854)
Yeah, brilliant. Yeah, I'll pop those all in the show notes so that people can find you. Do you know what? It has been fascinating. Thank you so much for coming and demystifying a little bit of what it's like as a digital nomad, sharing with us the things that are great, the things that are a bit harder, and also the practicalities of how you do it. So I've found it really interesting. So thank you so much, Evie, for spending the time to come and talk to us.
Evie (30:28.879)
It's been a pleasure and thanks for being a great host.
BenP (30:33.878)
You're welcome. Speak to you soon. Bye bye.
Evie (30:35.967)
Bye.
