Digital Nomad Stories

Nomad with a Cause: Tarek's 5-Year Legacy of Empowering Local Communities

• Anne Claessen • Season 2 • Episode 160

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In this captivating chat, Tarek shares his transformational journey from the corporate world to the nomadic lifestyle, and how it inspired him to create platforms that empower nomads and expats to give back to local communities. 

Fascinating insights emerge about the humbling power of connecting with locals, and how leveraging our skills and gifts can create a positive global impact.

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Connect with Kendra:

Speaker 1:

Hey Nomads, welcome to Digital Nomad Stories, the podcast. My name is Anne-Klaassen and, together with my co-host, kendra Hasse, we interview digital nomads. Why? Because we want to share stories of how they did it. We talk about remote work, online business, location and dependency, freelancing, travel and, of course, the digital nomad lifestyle. Do you want to know more about us and access all previous episodes? Visit digitalnomadsdoriesco. Alright, let's go into today's episode.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to Digital Nomads Stories, the podcast. My name is Kendra and I'm your host today. Today I'm joined by Tarek and he's the founder of the community Nomads Giving Back and also Nomads Guild Share. And Nomads Giving Back is a community that helps us as nomads, contributing to the places we call home, and also we can give back to local communities, and I'm also excited about Nomads Guild Share because it's a community of like-minded nomads, remote workers and global citizens to learn new skills. So I think we have a lot of exciting stuff to talk about. Welcome, tarek, nice that you are here.

Speaker 3:

Hey, kendra, so grateful to be with you today. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 2:

Thanks. Maybe we directly jump into the topic, so like, how did it all start? Or maybe do you want to add something to the introduction about the communities you are creating?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I think you nailed it. You got a good summary of what we're all about. But yeah, sure I can tell you about myself and the origin story of Nomads Giving Back. So I grew up in the US and I ended up following the whole corporate path doing the New York City Student Tide thing for a dozen years after college and at some point I recognized that I was craving more connection, more meaning in my life, more adventure and more impact. And then a few serendipitous things happened all around the same time a decade ago that gave me the inspiration to buy one-way ticket and take a leap into the unknown, and I just started exploring.

Speaker 3:

I went all over the world and I felt like I had a lot of catching up to do on my personal growth, because for the first dozen years of my career I really prioritized my professional growth above anything else and I didn't really care for myself as much as I should have with terms of wellness and didn't even think about spirituality much. And so during this adventure around the world, I created that opportunity, that space to explore not just the world but explore within, and I got into more wellness and personal development. I met very inspiring people and explored beautiful places and I got really into volunteering and places like Kenya and Sri Lanka and China and other places like Zambia and Bali, and I really just fell in love with impact. And then eventually I stumbled upon Nomad Hubs like where we are now Medellin, colombia and Bali and Chiang Mai and I fell in love with the Nomads too, because they were often leaving the conventional life behind, creating something, chasing down their dreams. And that's what I was all about and I knew at that point I really wanted to get into impact.

Speaker 3:

So I'd often ask these fellow Nomads, like, how are you connecting with locals and how are you giving back to the communities? And most of the time they say the same thing. I don't know, but if you figure it out, let me know because I want to do the same thing. So when I heard this enough times, I recognized this gap, this opportunity to mobilize the collective power of the Nomad movement.

Speaker 3:

You know, nomads and expats were a collection of individuals, but when I used to work at large companies like Goldman Sachs, they had a corporate social responsibility division, csr team that would help employees who are looking to volunteer, fundraise, donate. They had all these partnerships. But if we're a collective of individuals with no leadership, no organization who is doing that. So that's the problem we had to solve. To solve the question, I want to get back and I don't know how to become more efficient as a movement of Nomads and expats, and especially where we congregate in these hubs, and be that connector between foreigners and locals, because everyone benefits if we burst these bubbles of separation and foster more integration.

Speaker 2:

Wow, that sounds amazing and also like super inspiring. So you say like on your journey of just becoming a Nomad, you more and more discovered like this vision you have with these communities right, and you gained like the idea of what you want to do while you were on your journey of being a Nomad.

Speaker 3:

Exactly exactly Like.

Speaker 3:

Our tagline I know my team is back is inspire yourselves, inspire the world, and our logo is a spiral with a heart in the center, and I know you're all about the heart and I think we need to all be able to inspire ourselves and put on our own action mask and then fill our own cup before we can fill other people's cups.

Speaker 3:

And once we do that, we create this virtuous cycle like a spiral where we could, once we help others and inspire others, it comes back to us and then we can do more. And it's expansive and it's beautiful and it's powerful. And that's what I felt when I started getting more into social impact and volunteering in local communities, how it made me feel like more alive than ever, felt and realizing that those first dozen years of my career, I was on the hedonic treadmill, meaning that, like every time I got the promotion or raise, I felt happy for a quick second and then it evaporated and I thought to myself, like how can I go after more sustainable happiness? How can I live a life that's more aligned, where I feel like I'm swimming downstream rather than an upstream? And for me, I'm realizing that we all create connection, we all crave meaning and you know connecting with local communities and sharing our gifts and skills is a beautiful way to do that.

Speaker 2:

And now I have a question, because exactly what you just what you said before this question that people are asking but how can I interact with local communities, how can I contribute, how can I help, how can I support? So now, like, how can we do it, like, what are your recommendations for us as listeners, for our listeners, for our ultimate nomads?

Speaker 3:

and maybe have the same question that's a really good question and that's essentially what we were trying to help aim to solve. So when we think about how we approach things that nomads giving back we think of it in three pillars and four inspire and power. So before we can know how to give back and how to be more socially conscious in these local communities, we need to know why. We need to feel inspired and before that, we even need to know what. We need to be informed, what are the local social challenges? And, for example, I lived in Bali for years and there's many.

Speaker 3:

You know it's almost a joke how much of an expat nomad bubble there is where you can live in, like in the center of Changu, for example, and not feel like you're in Indonesia or Bali, because it's so tailored towards foreigners and to the point where the cafes and the restaurants and the gyms and the bars might feel like you're in, I don't know, australia or somewhere in the West and it's very easy to forget that you were. Actually you know where you are. So a quick example and illustration of this is one of the trips we did with our team is we took people outside of that bubble into a local village 20 minutes away from Changu and we met people in this village who showed us the factory where they're making tiles for the roche. These women that are working 12-hour days, six days a week are making only $40 a month and it's so hard to sometimes comprehend that when someone just went for a massage for $40, 20 minutes away and that's how much someone makes in a month. And some of these women never even met a foreigner living so close.

Speaker 3:

Because, yes, you have certain locals in foreign countries that are integrated in the hospitality and tourism industry, but many aren't. Many are just living their daily lives. So when you're not aware of the disparity of income to that extreme, it's very easy to not be socially conscious because you're not aware. You might be thinking, oh, I'm not gonna tip this person because tipping isn't part of what I do. And if you realize, if you tip that driver who delivered your food, you might have increased their income 50% by a full meal Like your tip could be their meal for their family. So when you start to be informed, you could feel more inspired about how much you can do and empowered to know how to actually make a difference. I think most people who aren't giving back or aren't very socially conscious, it's unintentional, it's a lack of awareness, and I think that's a big part of what nomads giving back is about is their advocacy to help raise that awareness.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I love it and it's like exactly as you say, because I feel once I was in Guatemala, in the Lake Atitana, in San Marcos, it's exactly the same. You're like in your foreign bubble, you know, in this international bubble, and you don't really interact with locals. So what is your community then doing so that we can interact more with locals as nomads?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so one major way we decided to tackle this because when we first started this exactly five years ago, as you know, in six days from this recording will be our fifth birthday nomads giving back and we're having a massive global celebration with parties and Medellin, bali, Buenos Aires online we're having an auction. So we're really excited about that and I'm so excited to see you, kendra, and for your support of our impact commission and means a lot to me and the team. And yeah, to answer your question, we bring people together right Because we want to be careful not to have that so-called white savior complex where foreigners go to a less developed financially, economically, country and say, oh well, that looks wrong. Let me, this is how you fix it. No, no, no, no. We want to listen. First, we have two ears and one mouth. For a reason, we should listen twice as much as we speak and come into it with an open mind and try to understand their challenges.

Speaker 3:

And so the first few years in nomads giving back, we really focused on the concept of advocacy, raising awareness of local causes that are already doing good work and just trying to amplify their impact through connecting the foreigners and locals, especially the nomad movement in particular, we have a strong presence in Many people in the movement refer to us as like the CSR Corporate Social Responsibility for the movement and we're trying our best to serve that purpose. We are operating on a grassroots budget, so there's only so much we can do, but thankfully we have such an amazing volunteer-based organization all around the world. So together, collectively, we're having a beautiful impact and I'm so grateful for the team. So we have had many events where we had like impact panel discussions where we brought together local leaders and asked them what are the local challenges? How can we help you? We've had impact trips, we've had masterminds, we've had many skill shares and our flagship program through Nomad's Giving Back is our free volunteer matching program. So, for example, if any one of your listeners is feeling inspired to share their skills or to develop their skills and have a positive impact, they can come to us and we'll match them with a cause that they're passionate about, and we've matched nearly a couple of hundred volunteers over the years. Our team, ourselves, are also volunteers. So many people like to join our team and that's how we survive and thrive with our mission.

Speaker 3:

And then along the way, especially when the pandemic hit, we were like, oh shit, what do we do now? There's no nomadding, there's not much giving back, we're all about the events. So we decided to take this challenge and turn it into an opportunity, and we saw how so much education was going online. Even traditional universities and schools had to figure it out. So we thought, okay, well, what do most nomads and expats, remote workers, have that could benefit local communities? And they came down to like digital skills. So we decided to launch Nomad Skillshare on our second birthday so now it's turning three next week and Nomad Skillshare is all about empowering you to learn the skills to live the life you imagine.

Speaker 3:

We do this through master classes and master minds and connections events.

Speaker 3:

Just yesterday, we had a master class by someone in our community who was teaching us about leadership with love, and 25, 30 people from around the world joined us.

Speaker 3:

We have courses about, like, how to get your dream all on job, how to become a social media manager, and our flagship impact aspect of Nomad Skillshare is our scholarship program. We have a buy one give one program, so every time someone buys a course, we give a scholarship. But, to be honest, we haven't been selling too many courses, so we just give out a lot of scholarships to people who can't afford it otherwise, and some of those people eventually joined our team. And that's where I think we probably had the deepest impact is a select group of people who joined our team, who we had the opportunity to mentor and train and build the, not just the hard skills and the technical skills but the soft skills, communication skills, especially for some people that are living in the global South countries. They don't have the exposure to some of these more global, often Western based organizations, so they don't know the culture or the expectations and we're able to, kind of like, help the blossom into that integration of the global economy.

Speaker 2:

Wow, yeah, that sounds super impactful and now I'm like super keen to listen. Maybe you have in mind like one success story, so maybe like one story from a local person that changed maybe some not the entire life, but something in their daily life. Thanks, yeah, to the program.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, absolutely. Sometimes it's hard to choose because there's a few of my favorites, but the one that first came to mind is this Indonesian woman who was introduced to us about. She wanted to learn some new skills and she saw that we offered courses in social media and virtual assistance and she was curious about both. So she joined on a scholarship and we really connected really well, so she was interested in joining our team. We brought her on, first as a volunteer and then as a paid position, part-time.

Speaker 3:

All this while she was working in a salon and a beauty salon many long hours, so you know six days a week, you know 10, 12 hour days, and I was really.

Speaker 3:

I really admired her commitment to do all this extra work and learning on the side and eventually, as we started giving her some paid work and then we helped her get some like two recommendations, helped her get some other side gigs. She got the second one, a third one, a fourth one and eventually felt confident enough to become a full-time freelancer and quit her job at the salon and now she works remotely for a handful of clients as a social media manager, as a virtual assistant, including us, and I think honestly what I found most beneficial was what I mentioned earlier. It wasn't just the technical skills of social media or being a virtual assistant, it was. It's the soft skills. It's building the confidence. It's building the faith, the confidence that I can do this and to have that mentorship and support, that people believe in you and honestly, I think she helped me. I think she inspired me and the team more than we could have possibly inspired her.

Speaker 2:

Wow, that's a beautiful example. Thanks for sharing and this is exciting also. Like sometimes I also feel like we are traveling so much around but then if we are not conscious about what's happening, right Like we are like still in our tunnel of being no-merged with our computer. So I always really appreciate when I have the possibility to really meet, like this, local people. Would you say that thanks to this work you know you are doing, also, your perspective when you are traveling as a normal to new countries, when you're staying in new countries, is changing, like would you say there's a difference from five years before. So how, or like how your normal lifestyle changed?

Speaker 3:

Oh yeah, yeah, that's a really good observation that people don't talk about as much as they should. It's all about perspective, right, Like we don't know what we don't know. And it's through these experiences that we're not familiar with that we actually gain perspective. A fish doesn't know it's in a fish tank, right. It's not until it's in the ocean that it can look back and be like oh wow, I was in a tank. I didn't realize that.

Speaker 3:

And I'll tell you what, approaching five years now, I have learned more in this role, working with these amazing, diverse group of people around the world from different backgrounds, not just culturally, but not just geographically, but socioeconomically, education-wise. I have learned more in the last five years than I learned in my dozen years in the corporate world, working for some of the top employers in the world and I'm not being sarcastic, because that's a very specific club of people that go to like top schools and like work in New York and top banks and things like that, where they're all working under a certain code. But I feel like I actually got connected to real people like the average people, the normal people. I don't know what the right word is without getting a probably good judge for whatever word I use but just the everyday heroes that exist right, the 95% of the world that are living life the way it traditionally has been lived, not in this kind of like weird era that we're in now with all this excess in capitalism and I don't know.

Speaker 3:

Let me start it, but my point was I learned a lot of actually learning about, say, for example, leadership without authority. You know, when I was working in the corporate world, all you had to do is say do this. You didn't even have to say nice and it was just done. I had to learn to like, try to inspire, lead through inspiration, and it taught me a lot and it humbled me a lot and I realized that life is a lot more than just money and respect and all that kind of stuff. So I mean, no matter what's giving back, the community has given me so much more than I possibly could have given back to it.

Speaker 2:

Beautiful. And also, just listening to you, I also realized what I learned from like being a nomad. That also meets local and I feel it's part of greatitude for life. You know, like I feel because when we are just in our corporate world, everything is also like given in a developed country and, like me, in Germany, some in the state. So everything feels like there's always also this competition.

Speaker 2:

It's all about making money, it's all about saving money and then meeting local people who are just opening your heart and also your pocket, your house, to you and they just earn, as you said, $40 per month, but they want to cook you a proper meal to welcome you, and that these are the moments where I realized, wow, it's way more out in life there, and like this laugh, this greatfulness of just living this life, then you know like running behind some success and I feel this is a beautiful experience I'm grateful for, for being a nomad, Because this is a, I feel, something that I could really experience being a nomad, because when I'm a tourist for two weeks in a country, yeah, maybe I can do a tour, you know, to a poor area, but it's not the real experience you're doing when you're living and interacting with people or when, like someone, you really see they don't have so much money but they are smiling to you on the streets and you really see they are happy.

Speaker 2:

They are happy in life. So I feel we can also learn something from those people. Learn for, like, on an emotional basis.

Speaker 3:

That's so true. That's so true. I mean, you know that's what we talk about. No med skill share. It's like there's an exchange.

Speaker 3:

I've learned a lot from things that you can never learn in a course or a book. It's just life experience. And like, for example, you know I'd be curious to hear your answer because we haven't a chance to talk about this but why are you in Colombia? Like, why am I in Colombia? You know, and people ask me that often and I never know exactly how to answer it. It's more of a feeling, but one part of my answer is usually about my background. Being from New York area. It's New York is the America is way more in the mind. It's more about productivity and individualism, and here in Colombia it's much more in the heart. It's more about community and family, and I always aspire to embrace that more, even though I'm more deeply conditioned in the mind. I want to connect with my heart, just like you know, that's what you're passionate about yourself, kendra, and so I don't think it's a coincidence that someone who's all about helping people connect with their hearts is in a place that's very heart centered.

Speaker 2:

No, it's exactly like. My first answer is always like the people, because I feel like this open heart, the smiling people, like from an honest way you know, like they're really like connected to their hearts, from their heart with others, and then also this happiness on the street. I feel this vibration in the air.

Speaker 2:

So not so many people like, who are like complaining, who are stressed. I love also this going with the flow, living their everyday life, enjoying their everyday life, and I feel here in Colombia, I just can be authentically me, thanks to the people because, they are open and happy.

Speaker 3:

I totally hear you. It's definitely a special energy that just radiates from the people, the land, the culture, the smiles.

Speaker 2:

Great. But now I want to come back to this fifth birthday, because now you named it a little bit and let's celebrate it. First of all, congrats that you have your fifth birthday and then also the third birthday, for normal skillshare and I don't think this episode will be live by then, but maybe because I know it's also an online birthday. We were in Medellin, but I also it's also it's online, so maybe how can our listeners still get involved, maybe or how can they join us in celebrating you.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, so we were having an online birthday party on Tuesday, the 21st. So again, I don't know, I'm pretty sure no one will hear this in time, but we have events all the time. So we have a monthly mastermind, a monthly masterclass, a monthly connections event. We sometimes have special events on top of that online, but we also have hubs. You know, in Medellin we have events in person, and Bali and Buenos Aires and Lisbon and Madeira can play Aldo Carmen, and we're looking to open another one in Portugal soon. So we're growing and if anyone is feeling inspired to get involved, hey, you can just join our events, but B you can consider joining our team or joining our volunteer matching program. We have a community where we do all these things that are included in our membership. And we have courses, of course, and if you are struggling to cover costs for courses, we can help you out and give you a scholarship.

Speaker 2:

Amazing, and I also want to use this opportunity, then, like to say thank you, because I feel, with this organization now me being involved in the birthday, it helps me also to get back, you know. So maybe I just said quickly because I love that you're doing it, you're doing this. Help me to pronounce it in English this auction, yes you nailed it.

Speaker 2:

Like offering services, I will offer my journaling sessions. Like learning, make really to have a dialogue with your heart and then people can vote for it. And with this money, as I understood it right, you invested in your scholarships for also local people. So we use this also and for your organization, for the community, giving back.

Speaker 3:

Exactly exactly what we try to do is we try to get creative by creating this mutually beneficial win-win-win right. Like you benefit because, like many people, you want to get back, and this makes it easy for you to get back to local community. At the same time, you're giving back in a way that's leveraging your highest level skill and your passion. You know, rather than volunteering and painting a wall and an orphanage, you're using a skill that very few people have, so that's more valuable, and how they can pay for it faster or bigger. And finally, no math, even back, and no math skills. Here we're struggling grassroots social enterprise, volunteer based, with a very unlimited budget. So when you're supporting us to support locals, you're also supporting us in the process too, so that we can have a bigger impact and hopefully grow to continue to not just stick around another five years, but maybe 50.

Speaker 2:

And I think it's like a beautiful, creative idea You're having that. I hope that some of you are listening to us. That's inspiring because I feel a lot of us of nomads and that's why I'm so glad for this interview want to have an impact, but don't know really how. So I feel in the last minutes you gave amazing ideas on how we can do it. And I want to also catch up on another topic, because in the beginning you said that when you started your nomad life, you also started your personal growth journey and I mean I know a little bit of your work by now. So I feel like this plans you're seated on your personal growth journey are like now going into flowers, where you can inspire other people. I know now you're also going into offering work sessions, coachings, and I feel that's also like super interesting for a lot of nomads who are in that area, like this conscious nomad. So maybe we can use a little bit also to talk about this Like maybe just to share a little bit about it, like how is?

Speaker 2:

your experience.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I feel like, at the end of the day, that's all there is. We're on a personal journey, call it what you will, but it's about, you know, self-actualization, like finding out who we are. Who do we want to become? What do we believe in? What are our values? What experiences we want to have before it's all over? Do we want to change in? How, like? These are all the kind of things that I love to think about, love to talk about. And you know, when I came to a realization that I wanted to make that big change in my life 10 years ago and to eventually start nomads giving back five years ago, I knew I wanted to make an impact and nomads giving back has been that way for me until recently.

Speaker 3:

Concurrently, I was going on a personal growth journey and at some point I felt compelled to start to share some of the knowledge and the wisdom that I've gained through my struggles, through my experiences, through connecting with inspiring people and especially having lived in Bali you know, I kind of joke I feel like Bali is a college campus of personal growth and spirituality where you can just choose, like different workshops, like you can different courses with different professors. You know you can go and be like, okay, I'll go to the yoga bar and for this meditation retreat and I'll go to this thing for that thing. So I went to Bali University for personal development. Yeah, long story short. I feel like some people like trying to make change from top down, macro, and that's what I'm sort of trying to do with NoMet's giving back and like more strategically, more globally. But more and more I'm getting passionate about making a difference on the individual level, on a human one, to one level or small groups. So I got into leading circles, a men's and women's circle with their mutual friend, amber. I'm also leading men's circles here in Medellin had one just last night that was very, very inspiring and doing retreats.

Speaker 3:

And a few months ago I got trained to be a breathwork facilitator and have led a dozen or so breathworks since then, usually combined with sound healing, which I'm also gradually learning the tricks of the trade there, and it's a beautiful combination to have a deep, powerful breathwork at, followed immediately by a sound healing. It can really take you on a journey inwards and help you sort of process and shield and get inspired and connect with your higher self. So, and I'm also getting more into, like mentoring and coaching, and some of this is integrated with NoMet Skillshare, like, for example, in January we're launching a mentoring program through NoMet Skillshare that I will help to spearhead, but in a way that's peer to peer and groups. So it's been fun. It's been fun exploring different passions of mine and you know, I feel like we only get one life and it's important that we try to stay true to our most authentic selves, and to do that it requires some experimentation and some open mindedness and trusting your intuition to West Hills, right. So I'm excited for this next chapter.

Speaker 2:

And congrats for doing the steps. You just said one thing. You said our authentic selves, and that makes me think we, as NoMets, we really have the possibility to live the life as our authentic selves because we have the freedom to create it somehow, right? So I'm like curious for you, like if you think about all your like years of being a NoMet and now, like on the journey, also helping people to be their authentic selves, what is your secret about digital NoMet Like? What is your secret you could share with other NoMets to embrace your authentic self?

Speaker 3:

I love that. It doesn't make sense.

Speaker 2:

The question yeah.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, no, I think it's a fantastic question. So, number one, I feel like we need to lose ourselves in order to create ourselves. You know, people often use the word, the phrase finding yourself right. I really do think that, like A, we have to like go back to the race board and question our assumptions or what we think life is about, and think about who I am. So I'm really grateful that I took some time between my old life and my new life to kind of just like be a plastic bag in the wind and watch it where I'm being pulled, where the universe is gravitating, my energy, so I can embrace the synchronicities and serendipities of what life has for me and store for me. And so, number one, I think it's like important to just let go of your assumptions and expectations and just be and keeping an open mind.

Speaker 3:

Number two I would say is energies are contagious, so it's so important that we surround ourselves with the people who would fire us, who we admire, because whether whether you're stuck in some office job that you don't like and there's a lot of negativity and judgment, you're going to end up thinking like that, whether you like it or not, or if you end up surrounding yourself with people like Kendra, who's super connected in her, her heart and her happiness and her well being. Yeah, I'm serious that you're going to more. You're going to start talking and thinking and feeling like Kendra. So it's so important that we remember that energies. Energies are contagious and we want to be around the people who we want to be like. So usually it goes in threes, so I gave one, two, number, three. I would say there's so many beautiful practices that seem weird or uncomfortable, like breath work, meditation, journaling, like I still struggle with journaling. So maybe, kendra, you can, you can teach me some tricks of the trade.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. I like yoga you should write in the often.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Oh, I'm going to definitely get a bit on yours, yeah, and so like, sometimes it's like people say, oh, that's not for me or oh, I'm an introvert so I won't go to that nomads giving back party because it sounds like there's a lot of people there. It's like, well, maybe it's about letting go of those things that we think we don't like and actually seeing if we could try it. It's like surfing If you go once you won't like it because you probably won't get on the board. But if you go five, 10, 13 times, you get on the board. Then you start liking it. So challenging ourselves to overcome that initial resistance towards change can do wonders for you, because once you get past that inflection point, then the sky is limitless.

Speaker 2:

Amazing. I love it, Thank you. So anything else I should have asked? I didn't ask anything else on your mind you would like to share Wow? I've never been asked that question.

Speaker 3:

Ask yourself a question question. I would like to know why. I don't. Okay, I was about to flip it on you, but you're asking me to ask me the question.

Speaker 2:

If you feel like in this episode there needs to be any other information than we just talked about, or do you feel anything else? It's not not. You can also ask me a question. No worries, oh I can't.

Speaker 3:

I can't because that's where I was going to go with this. Okay, because we're still like new friends, we're still getting to know each other. I do know that you are into a lot of the same things that I've been to Like you lead a woman's circle and you leave retreats, and you're all about wellness and personal growth. But you also mentioned that you used to work at Unilever right and the managerial role. So I'm guessing that we have somewhat of a similar story where we were more like corporate people and now we're doing this and I'd be curious to know what was your inspiration, your trigger from changing your life upside down?

Speaker 2:

Great question, thank you. So for me it was like really, that I came more and more to the realization, acceptation, that I was not so fulfilled in my corporate job as I thought I would be. In university, you know, like I was dreaming to work in high heels as a brand manager in Unilever, and then so then I was working for this brand I don't know if you've heard about it so like wow, super cool dream. And I didn't like it. So then I changed to the business consultancy world because I thought then I can be more creative and strategic. Still not.

Speaker 2:

And then, but for me, like, besides working in corporate, I had my own practice of journaling, of meditating. So in some point I asked myself but what really forsoils me in life, what is my vision in life? And I took it in my journaling practice and in my meditation. So every morning or like a lot of times, I just asked myself what is my vision in life? I want to do an impact, I don't just want to have companies to become richer, you know. And then I traveled to Columbia and I was like here just for holidays, I studied in Columbia and I just came back because I love the country, and then I was in the unless you're in another, santa Martha I don't know if you've heard about, if you've already been there like here at the coast laying in an hammock, what, watching at the ocean, practicing to be mindful in the moment.

Speaker 2:

And then I ask again my heart but what is really my vision? And my heart told me you should do retreats here. And I was like what? Me doing retreats? And then I took this answer with me and then my whole life changed, because then I started meeting people who were coaches. So I said, oh, maybe I can do a coaching training.

Speaker 2:

So I did my coaching training and you know like I started visualizing my retreat, my first retreat receiving participants. And I mean, you know, everything we can realize becomes reality and we can visualize because reality at some point. So after my coaching training I felt so sure, so confident, so I quit my job and started my nomad life as an entrepreneur. I do retreats all over the world and now I'm mainly stuck in Colombia because I love it, but let's see in which other countries the retreats will come. And it's like more and more and more on that journey that came this okay, it's really about making an impact, to guide people and inspire people to connect to their heart. Yeah, that's a little bit in a quick and soon my story. Thank you for asking about it, so it's always nice that I also thought that you were a champion.

Speaker 2:

I love it.

Speaker 3:

I absolutely love your story. It really resonated with me and I feel like those are the moments, you know. I feel like we might live 40, 60, 80 years in our lives, but there's certain moments that are so transformational that change the entire course. It's like changing a channel on a TV, you know, and I sometimes surprise myself on how different my life looks and how different I feel than I did a decade ago. And then it makes me curious what's next? What's this Targ's life look like in a decade from now? You know?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, like what? Will we talk about? Doing an interview here in 10 years, who knows?

Speaker 3:

I know, in 10 years it might not be us, it might be our AI clones doing it for us.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's true. We are just laughing about while we were sitting at the computer during a podcast interview. So I would say, if there's not anything else to add, yeah, I just wanna thank you for the opportunity.

Speaker 3:

You know I think your podcast is called Digital Nomad Stories and I feel like that's what life's about. We are our own story and what ending are we aspiring to have, what journey do we wanna have, which character do we wanna play? And I just love that you are making the time and investing the energy to share people's stories. That might inspire others to go after their dreams too. So keep shining, keep inspiring. Thank you for doing what you're doing, and I really appreciate the opportunity and especially your support of Nomad's Giving Back.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, tarek, amazing, and you just inspired me to tell to our listeners, you, the next three moments and really feel into like what is your story, the story you want to tell, and if you're already walking on that story or if you maybe need a story set so greatly changed like the program at the TV you know, like put another channel on your TV. So, tarek, it was amazing, yeah, it was amazing talking to you. We will share all the information, the links to access more information about Nomad's Giving Back, nomad's Skillshare and the show notes for the people who want to reach out to you, want to learn more, want to connect and see you soon around. Thank you so much.

Speaker 3:

Amazing. Thank you.

Speaker 1:

Hey Nomads, welcome to Digital Nomad Stories, the podcast. My name is Anna Claessen and, together with my co-host, kendra Hasse, we interview digital nomads. Why? Because we want to share stories of how they did it. We talk about remote work, online business, location and dependency, freelancing, travel and, of course, the Digital Nomad lifestyle. Do you want to know more about us and access all previous episodes? Visit digitalnomadsdoriesco. All right, let's go into today's episode.