Nomadism Over The Years and What’s Changed with Andrew Jernigan and Allen Koski | TNE 083

Have you ever met someone for the first time and immediately go on to have a ton of amazing experiences together? In this week’s episode, I sit down once again with Andrew Jernigan and this time he is not alone. Joining us this week is Andrew’s good friend, podcast co-host, and business partner, Allen Koski. Andrew and Allen describe their bond as one that is kismet. They have explored the world together, launched businesses, and share their valuable insights through their podcast, The New Nomads. 

In this episode, Andrew and Allen take us back to Insured Nomad’s humble beginnings and reveal the roles they play in order to ensure its enduring success. Allen also makes a case on behalf of any company’s resident skeptic. More importantly, we talk about why availing a policy is crucial for nomads (you could even say that it’s as important as your passport now!). This week’s episode offers plenty of feel good vibes and a ton of value for you to take away and use in your own nomadic journey. 

Andrew & Allen's Links:  

https://www.linkedin.com/in/allenkoski/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewjernigan/

Timestamps:

[2:27]The definition of “kismet”

[7:05]This is why you need to listen to your resident skeptic

[9:47]Andrew and Allen’s dynamic that keeps their friendship and business thriving

[17:16]Here’s why nomad insurance is as essential as your passport and plane ticket

[23:26]How does Insured Nomads work?

[31:08]Andrew and Allen talk on what and who the new nomads are

Omar's (Host) Social Media:

Instagram - @nomadables

TikTok - @nomadables

Facebook Group - NOMADABLES - Accountability & Growth Community for Remote Workers- Perfect to meet fellow online entrepreneurs, remote workers, and digital nomads.

YouTube - Omar Mo

LinkedIn - Omar Mo Nomads Cast

Twitter - @nomadables

Pintrest - @nomadables

Clubhouse - @pods

WEBSITE: https://www.nomadables.com

Transcript

The Nomadic Executive Episode 83: Nomadism Over The Years and What’s Changed With Andrew Jernigan and Allen Koski  

Omar  

Did you know the average age of a digital nomad falls right at 40 years old? Oh, and another fun fact here: the ages 29, 33, and 39 are the most common ages of any digital nomad in the world. It goes to show though you can be nomadic, whatever the age. 

Today, we're joined by two special guests who've been nomads longer than most of you guys listening to this. We're joined by Alan Coskun and Andrew Jernigan, founders of Insured Nomads, and the host of The New Nomad podcast. Join us while we dive into their nomadic journeys and advice over their years as digital nomads.

Intro

You're listening to The Nomadic Executive hosted by Omar from nomadables.com. Join Omar as he sits down and speaks with leading online entrepreneurs, remote workers and digital nomads about everything from business strategy to travel and lifestyle design. Together, we're here to help you achieve a life of happiness, health and freedom. And now here's your host, Omar Mo.

Omar

All right, Andrew and Alan from The New Nomad podcast. Welcome to The Nomadic Executive. How are you guys this morning?

Allen  

Doing wonderful, fantastic.

Andrew  

Very well. It's a pleasure to be with you, Omar.

Omar  

Absolute pleasure to having you both on. And Andrew here for round two. So something that I want to start off with right away here is this special word that Alan and Andrew have spoken about just a few minutes prior to me actually pressing the record button here. And that word is "kismet". 

So before I dive into here from my audience what the word "kismet" is, I'll have Andrew and Alan explain to you what it is. I want you guys to understand that Andrew and Alan own a business called Insured Nomads and are both co-hosts of a podcast called The New Nomad. 

They've been friends for many years, and have launched businesses together, travel together and done all sorts of different things. And “kismet” is what they use to describe their relationship. So Alan, take it away.

Allen  

Yeah, I think if you went to the dictionary, it would be its destiny or fate. And sometimes you just meet somebody that you're like, you know what I think we're going to... destiny has is working together on a project. Very different people. But you kind of feel that both of you fulfill a certain role that the other one does not. 

And I think that when I met Andrew and we talked about building Insured Nomads, there was some Kismet there, it was almost fate that we would end up working together. What do you think, Andrew, are you on the same boat?

Andrew  

Definitely, you know, it was originally for me, you know, so think of, okay, I just admired where you've been, the expertise that you carry. You're an industry thought leader. And you know, when in our first phone call, it was that thing of okay, there's more to this, and now it's those mountain bike rides and other things as we explore the world together. And I hear the stories, we share the stories and go deeper, it's fun.

Allen  

And one other thing Omar about kismet. Kismet is almost always a positive development. So you don't often hear of negative kismet. So when I use that, it's a very nice term. And I you know, in this day and age where we want to be as positive as possible, when you have that moment of kismet. It's... you just feel it. And sometimes you just have to go with your gut. And follow that dream. 

Omar  

So it's a very gut feeling, it seems it seems like you just kind of know when it happens. And that's something that I I'm sure many people that are listening to this podcast itself can relate to, to some degree having that feeling of Kismet, whether it was with a loved one or a friend, or a parent or someone in the past, or someone that you just met that you just kind of automatically clicked with, right? Or knew something was going to happen.

Allen  

So exactly, yeah. And you know what's interesting, too, that Omar is, so my mom used to say you ever, ever run into somebody right away instantly like them, you know, and you see this is just not rational. But I immediately like this person. I feel like there's a deeper relationship to be had there. You know, I use the word Kismet, she used to say that she actually felt this was her own dream. 

Was that you know, souls kind of travel in packs, and that you might be somebody from a previous existence or life that you traveled with. And that it's a comforting feeling to me, whether that's true or not. That there there's opportunities for people to get together again and again and again. And then share a great experience.

Omar  

That definitely it's comforting to a certain degree. When you think about it. I've thought about something like that similar to that reincarnation type thing before. It definitely is always nice to know that it's romanticized a little bit, I think in movies and stuff, but you're gonna run into the same kind of people that were in past lives, you know, but it also makes...

Andrew  

My first encounter with that, Omar, I must interject. My first encounter is a flashback right now. My cousin, I was helping them move. Hurricane had just hit Florida. And all this furniture was soaked and I think I was about nine years old and some ants from the flooding were crawling up my ankle and biting me. And I was slapping them and my cousin was like “Don't do that. That could be your great grandfather!”

Omar  

On the flip side, like you ever meet those kind of people that you just see it, you just want to punch them in their face like you've never met them before. And you just have that feeling of just like I don't like this person. I wonder what that relates to as well on the other flip side of it. I don't want to dwell there too long, but it just brought my curiosity up. What do you what do you mentioned one end of it what the opposite end of it would be?

Allen  

Well, it's funny Omar, you bring that up because I've had the exact same feeling. And even worse is you meet somebody immediately, and you dislike them. And then you get to know them. And then you like them and realize -

Omar

Right, right.

Allen

Yeah, sometimes first impressions. Now, I'll be honest with you, I always feel that first impressions are extremely important and most of the time correct. But there are those times you probably had the same thing. Omar and Andrew right, that your initial impression, and then you realize later on, that was a little hasty.

Omar  

Judging a book by its cover can sometimes be what I would say about 20 to 25% of the time wrong, right? Because there's something that I realized as I get older, I guess I'm sure you guys understand this, too. It's just I mean, we're all and especially as digital nomads, like we're all just human, right? 

Like, everyone has their own faults and weird eccentricities and quirks and all sorts of things. And some of them might not resonate with you in the first five to 10 seconds of meeting them. But that doesn't make them different than you. They're just different upbringing, different environment, different outsides. That's, that's all it really is.

Allen  

You know, it's funny in a business environment. I used to always in my organizations wanting to have somebody who I called a skeptic, or somebody who would challenge, you know, before we went down that primrose path to a big decision, would be the person that might even irritate us the most by saying, “Hold it a second here. Are we on groupthink? What if this goes south?” 

And I know a lot of people would get really uptight and dislike the skeptic, and feel like oh, my God, this person was slowing us down. And then I realized, as I got a little bit older, I gotta let that go. Because what that person is actually doing is giving a great gift to us that they feel confident enough to slow us down and play the other side of the coin, and it actually saved us from lots of mistakes. 

And so many of the people I've worked with, they're like, no, at first, I didn't like that person, because they were always skeptical. And then you realize later on, they saved us from some colossal errors. And you begin to realize, we really like that we need that type of diversity in a group.

Omar  

Everyone has a role to play. What would you Andrew, what would you say? And I'm assuming like, You both have this dynamic as well, right? Like you both have your own roles. And going back to kismet here, you both have different things that play into each other personality-wise. 

In building Insured Nomads. What kind? What piece of the puzzle? Are you both in that company? Like, what roles do you play? And what do you do if you could, you know, someone's like the fixer. Someone's like, the leader, someone's like, the consultant like everyone has a different kind of role to play in the company. What would you guys kind of narrow yourselves down to?

Andrew  

Well, we started in 20019, team, pre-pandemic, no remote company, I was actually spending most of my time that you're in and out of Delaware, where Allen is, and in Rio de Janeiro, I think that's where we originally met Omar is when I was living in Rio. 

Omar

Right, right.

Andrew

And I, as one of the founders, we have a team of founders and senior leadership. I generally am one heavily involved in sourcing, the leadership, and working with Investor Relations, because we have institutional investors. Working with the reinsurance companies is one of the big vision aspects. I see. 

And that is an intricate part of my world. And let's say, hopefully, right after this call, I'll be talking with Allen about a new senior leadership person or team member that could be joining our team. And so a lot of these are collaborative. We sat face to face yesterday with one of our board members. And yeah, Allen, I'll pass it over to you. 

Allen  

So Omar, when Andrew gives elliptical answers, my role is to actually just speak it a little bit more straight. Andrew raises the money. And I go out and I work with brokers, consultants, business partners, and try to raise the premium. And in an insurance organization, where you're supporting people, both of us work together on getting feedback from all parties on what would make the product better. So we overlap there. 

But Andrew is really more on the institutional side. I'm more as we kind of say it as you build something. There's a front office that is out in the market. I'm more of the front office. Andrew is middle and back office in the sense that he's got the folks that are actually running the company, as far as you know, taking the calls, claims, and then he's setting the course on there. So it's a good partnership on that. So specifically answer your question. We front office, back office and we overlap in the middle office.

Omar  

Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. I get that. It’s a unique dynamic as well, because I think everyone needs... And this is just from being a founder of my own company. I think everyone needs that kind of back end front end relationship, right? Someone who's people-facing, someone who's logistics-facing, someone who's, or even technical co-founder, executive co-founder, right? 

Like different things like that, that partnership, that dynamic, I think, is what makes a company flourish. But if we were to bring back to when you guys actually first met, right? How was that? Like, where did you guys meet? How did you guys get in touch with each other? Where did this whole budding idea of Insured Noamds start in the first place?

Allen  

Well, I'll take this and then hand it over to Andrew. Andrew is a great networker, maybe the best networker I've ever run into. And he reached out to me, and just, we just had a conversation about a vision for a company that would serve people better. 

And I'd come out of a more of a corporate background where we group by group plans. And as we spoke, we started to realize, you know, when somebody leaves a company, becomes a remote worker, they lose a lot of what they used to have in the corporate environment.

They lose their health plan, they lose the evacuation coverage, they lose a lot of the perks, like lounge access. And also I mentioned to Andrew, you know, for instance, my daughter lives in in California, and for a period of time, she was living by herself. I wanted to make sure she had a panic button for some security when she was out on the phone. 

And we just, we just ripped back and forth on what's missing to help the remote or location independent person once they're out on their own, and we said let's build a product. So there let me hand the baton to Andrew, because he really took it from there and said, “Yeah, let's do this.”

And frankly, he's the energy to build out a new company. And I think, you know, it's a really good partnership that way cuz we both compare notes. But it was a shared vision. I think from the get go.

Omar  

Was this both of your first companies or had you guys built some? I know you came from a corporate environment, Allen. But Andrew, did you build something before this?

Andrew  

Yes, I had built a multinational brokerage and services crisis response EAP consulting firm.

Omar

So similar field?

Andrew

And other companies throughout time, you know, 20, some odd over 20 years ago, I started out with being a digital nomad, with my laptop working in Brazil and Europe. 

Omar

Sure. 

Andrew 

So that was back in the 90s, and early 2000, and in 2000. And so that was my first venture. But I had been watching Allen, throughout the years. We've been connected on LinkedIn and seeing him as he had led at Sigma Global, United Healthcare, Global Solutions and different places. And, you know, speaking at conferences, and it was right around the time of one of those that we took, took this deeper and said, “Okay, look, we were moving, moving ahead with building something better.” 

And and it was that thing of, okay, that this is, this has got to happen, the world needs it. The global workforce is shifting, but yet our industry wasn't really shifting as quickly as it could have. There were there were some co-brands, there were some new things happening, but really innovation and change that is vitally important to keep the consumer at where they feel like it needs to be sure to deliver and just reengineer what the world really feels that they need, but yet the industry wasn't delivering. 

And with that, you know, we're looking at the future, the things that we're rolling out, it is exhilarating, really this process, as Alan and our team just pours into new developments. This is it, it's fun.

Omar

It’s so natural, the way that you -

Allen  

So just to interject, this is another we left out the personal aspects of it. As you may see, and people listening to this podcast you can hear that Andrew is extremely earnest. My job is to needle him constantly. 

One thing is he's got a very good sense of humor. And sometimes I think it'd be part of a good relationship is if you could laugh together. And I'd love to needle people in a nice way. And Andrew is actually a really easy target for me because he wears his heart on his sleeve. And frankly, I'm a little bit more hard bitten than he is. So it's an enjoyable thing. 

So I also realized that he was somebody I could enjoy and have some fun with. And you can see he's got a great smile, which I can make fun of also at certain times, so yeah, don't leave out the personal aspects of, of that there's there's differences there.

Omar  

Right. I get it, I get it. I think you help Andrew, keep a bit more grounded in this isn't my outside things, right? Well, Andrew, it but you also help keep him a little bit more guarded, too, right? Because in the corporate world, and in a cutthroat environment, as business can be sometimes, even if we lead from empathy, like I like to do and you guys like to do. 

There can be moments where things can run slipshod over situations where you don't want it to happen, right. And I think, like I relate to Andrew a lot more than this, right? Because I wear my heart on my sleeve a lot. And if it wasn't sometimes for some of my business partners, saying, “Hey, if you're putting too much empathy into this,” like, this is still a business transaction or something like that then, and helped me reel it back. It wouldn't be possible. Right? I'd probably have gone out of business a long time ago.

Allen  

It’s a great point. 

Andrew 

Yeah. Yeah. 

Allen

I mean, we assume positive intent. 

Omar

Right.

Allen

I think he assumes that a little bit more than I do. And that's...

Andrew  

Right, Allen knows that I would insure the world for free if I could give the world access to everything, right? Cuz that's, that's my nature, I cringe when I hear that something bad is assumed. And it's just, it's just part of who I am. But it's nice. I grew up in the south in the US until my 20s, when I hit the world, for the past 25 years. 

Omar

Right. 

Andrew

And Alan, you know, from Connecticut, it's in Alabama, to the northeast, Alan has hit more countries than ever will, probably, in his global travels. But

Omar  

Allen, were you a nomad as well?

Allen  

I've been, I was kind of a different type of Nomad. So I did study overseas in the UK and travel about, but during the course of my business career, I've been to 70 countries and two trips around the world, etc. 

Omar  

All part of being in a corporate environment?

Allen  

All in part of being a corporate environment. And when I took my vacations, I would take them globally, to places that no one else wanted to really go. So I usually would find a friend who, you know, would, “Hey, let's go to…” How many people go to Jordan? Well, I love Jordan, and there's the Dead Sea, and there's Petra. So places that most Americans would not want to go for we went to. 

You know, Ukraine was tremendous. And I highly recommend it. But, you know, a lot of Americans want to just go to Paris and London, I would try to go to Thailand or Cambodia, or unique or unique places, but I'm business, I would go to a lot of these locations. And yeah, and maybe the the thing that that that I took away from that, too, is even why you serve... you assume positive intent. There are different ways of saying no, yes, or maybe. 

And, you know, there's things that you really need to protect yourself from an environment. And we see a lot of the remote workers. I mean, for instance, to me, somebody goes overseas and doesn't have evacuation coverage. You know, if they have to move to an appropriate medical facility when they are where they are, they are missing a huge protection. And I almost feel like one of the things that Andrew and I did share in this pursuit is a missionary zeal. Right, protect people. But a lot of folks when they go somewhere, they don't protect themselves. 

And then you read these stories of later on that I wish I had had a travel medical policy because I didn't have the $13,000 to get out of the hospital. Oh, I didn't want to have to buy a policy for $50 that would have protected me from my one week vacation and now they're crowds funding $14,000 to pay for an ambulance, you know? Right Andrew, we've been down that road two years of traveling and meeting…

Omar  

You’ve seen that so many times. I can remember my own stupidity here to be honest, I remember the first year I went on this three year trip back in 2016. And the first year I just refused to get - I saved like $10,000 that time, right? I had my first big boy job after college, it was for a few months and I decided to go out to travel and I went to Australia and I said you know what, I don't need health insurance or any sort of insurance when I'm going out there. Everything that you thought could have happened happened. 

And within the first three weeks, I almost drowned. Had to get CPR to get rescued. I broke both of my fingers here. 

Allen

Oh my!

Omar

I was at a club and I fell down without realizing and I kind of broke my fingers. I don't remember exactly what happened. But a lot of them were drunk accidents to be honest.

Allen

Yes, yes. 

Omar

I broke my foot. So that was another thing. I was in crutches for about six weeks. And that was just or no, not six weeks is more like three weeks, but it took about six weeks to fully heal. And I couldn't make it to the doctor because I didn't have health insurance. So I had to borrow my friend's crutches from the hospital room. 

I broke my nose, which I just got surgery earlier this week, or earlier this year, my bad, and they finally straightened it out. But…

Allen

You look marvelous, by the way, just thought I’d let you know. 

Omar

But it was legitimately curved, like to the side because of something that happened in Australia. So a lot of stuff went down. And I could have made my life so much easier if I had actually got insurance, because then I could have gone to the doctors and figured out what to do or what not to walk on it or all these other things that just delayed my healing process, you know?

Allen  

you know, and you would have gotten direct payment, or we would have said, “Hey, this is not a good facility to go to.” I mean, the stories that I had, and this is, you know, when you're in a long career in insurance, you hear this, I mean, there was a gentleman who went to India, got an eye infection, but didn't have a travel medical program who said, I'm just gonna wait till I get home to my home country insurance. 

And then, you know, by the time this happened, he stayed for another week, the infection was so bad, there was major long term and ramifications to the vision in that eye. You know, and these are the types of things as we said, in the industry, you know, cheap is expensive. You know, if you don't spend the money to protect yourself on the front end. It's a bigness. 

And the surprise for Andrew and myself is, frankly, these policies are almost ridiculously inexpensive. I mean, it's, you know, to get $100,000 in medical and evacuation and a lot of services, it could be like $100 a week, depending on your age. 

Allen

And you say this, “What a great protection at the same time”? You know, you spend money on a lot of other things. But listen, we all feel bulletproof don’t we, until we aren’t?

Omar 

We are not. 

Allen

Yeah, and I'm happy you shared this story.

Omar  

Yeah, I mean.

Andrew

Yeah, we do feel bulletproof sometimes don’t we?

Omar 

We all do. We all feel like Superman on our best days and until you're in bed sick or something, right? I remember that. 

I got like, I was in Mexico like last month and I got really really bad food poisoning like really bad. I'm sure it would have helped if I got to the doctor or something. But I had to come back to the stateside before I even saw one. 

Andrew  

Yeah. And speaking of superpowers, you know, I just think about names, you know, that we carry so much strength with our name because our name is our honor, etc. And, and I'm, I'm on a call this afternoon with someone named Thor. I'm thinking I want to do business with this guy just because he has. His name is Thor. Fun. 

The superpower... feeling bulletproof does take a proactive, proactive stance, though. Sure. I remember when one time years back, my wife is, you know, one of our co-founders. She's a travel med doc. And her goal, since she graduated med school, she wanted to go off and practice medicine in Africa. And we ended up you know, a few years later, finding a place that we set our sights on and moved there. 

And it was a wild season. Pre-departure, though, even trying to find life insurance to cover us there. Because we realized, you know, I was, I don't know, 29, 30 years old…

Omar

Right.

Andrew

And realized I'm not invincible, I wanted to have more life insurance that my group plan would cover, provide to me, since it was really minimal, what came with a group plan, and that wasn't available. So providing things like that is of highest importance, because we aren't invincible. Even though this morning I feel like I am.

Omar  

You know, I'm curious when it comes to Nomad insurance, right? Like, I know how health insurance works. What I never got was the undercurrent or what's behind the doors of what Nomad insurance is, how are you able to insure an individual in multiple countries? 

How does that process work? Or do you have relationships built with hospitals all around the world? Or is there something more, something less complicated than that? Like, how does that work?

Allen  

Well, first off, there is a little bit of artistry to global insurance because your point, you multiply it by the languages and the currencies and the health systems. And think about this way most hospital systems there's two pieces, there's the hardware, which is the machinery and there's the software, how good the doctors, the nurses, the surgeons. And even in some locations, and Andrew can speak to this because he ran a hospital, in a clinic in Ghana is that sometimes you have great doctors but not great machinery, sometimes you have to make do. 

So one of the things about what we provide is, you know, not only are we going to direct you and help you get to the level of care and comfort you, but we're also going to make sure that the claim is paid efficiently. And to your point, you know, you go, you know, somebody is going to put off care, because they're not sure they could pay the claim. That deferred, you know, it could make the infection get worse, you could find that there's a lot more ramifications. 

And I'll turn it over to Andrew for a second, in one second. But one of the things I'll mention when I've traveled, and the countries I go to, I go visit the hospitals and clinics, and even in one location in one city, you could have a clinic that is exceptional to one that culturally you would never want to go to. So you've got to match the culture. 

And I think to the remote workers that we have out there, those location independent people, they're very active, they're going to go to a lot of places, so that they're not just going to stay in Costa Rica to work and surf. They may go up to Mexico. So we're gonna have to help them wherever they are. But it's about proactively keeping people out of harm's way. What do you think, Andrew?

Andrew  

You're spot on, but providing this type of protection for cross border individuals goes beyond so much further than if someone is admitted or, you know, if they have a broken arm or get a chronic illness diagnosis, it's preventative. It's providing virtual health, telemedicine as we do, whether it's going to come in Hebrew or Hindi, or Portuguese or French, English or Italian. 

That I think is one of the foundational things that we do, and is essential in providing good care around the world is the preventative, not just for telemedicine, but for the emotional health to provide the multilingual cross culturally relevant, well-being and, and mental health therapy sessions, whether by phone, video chat, things like that. That's the protection that this type, that our type of person like us, like you, Allen, myself, crave more than just the whether or not you get sick or injured.

Omar  

This is such a big scope of work. There's so much that goes into something like this, like much more and you've worked that national health coverage companies Island like, how what does it take to pull something this big off?

Allen  

Yeah, I mean, sometimes it seems daunting. But here's the great thing. This is another thing about partnership. And I recommend this to people. That if you're going to start a new business, starting a business that you know something about. So both Andrew and I have known about global healthcare and we've been in it, we've experienced it. 

So there's also great people out there that are willing to partner with you, that also share the same vision. But I mentioned this intent to tie into kind of a thought if people are out there, and they're saying to themselves, they want to go overseas, and they want to get good health care.

More and more companies are saying that people become remote workers, or we'll hire you as a consultant. But more and more countries are saying we want to make sure before you come here, you have healthcare, you might have evacuation. There's... because we don't necessarily want you to come here and use our national health system and cost us money. 

Omar

Right. 

Allen

We're there's a lot of these. There's  digital nomad visas that are coming out. But we actually are going to see a trend in the next few years that people when they go work somewhere are going to probably have to show while they get their work visa, that they have a certain level of healthcare coverage, because people don't want the uninsured in their country. 

And then they also want, if they get really sick, the opportunity for them to get back home. We're already seeing this trend in the Middle East and other places. So a big part of also about being in this space, is we can kind of see where the trends are going. I mean, Andrew touched upon it.

One of the big issues in the past that people didn't spend a lot of time on was mental health. We've built in a lot of mental health support for this nomadic population because of stress, sleep and you know, and there's a lot of changes that are going on in the environment or protecting your family when they’re bringing them with them. A lot of them are split families.

You know mom and dad might go and that nomadic experience to be in Costa Rica yet your children are at college or they're hitchhiking through Europe. So we have a lot of split families. So it's really difficult to put a finger on it. But what do you think of Andrew, to Omar's question? 

It could be daunting, but I think what we try to do is methodically move forward and add a piece at a time you build. And you, as he used to say you're surviving advance, survive in advance, right? Just keep moving. 

Andrew  

Yes. Yes, as a people company, but also as a technology company, as a care provider, but yet being willing to build the API's. Provide it so that enrollment is easy. Whether it's, you know, it's that balance of being caring, but yet advancing with the age. 

It's... there are great folks out there. And working from that premise of realizing that and seeing seeing the good and building the good, that needs to happen.

Allen  

Paul even mentioned this, Omar, you know, Andrew, and I had a dream of helping people in this space. And we said, what would be a great mechanism is a podcast. And we found a person named Omar Mo, who helped us not ride off in the sunset with a second rate podcast, but a first rate podcast. And we, we salute you, you're a perfect example of somebody in that ecosystem, that we all try to help people and bring messages in support. 

And I think the last thing that I think people should do is really talk to others and learn from our mistakes. And everything that Andrew and I bring today, in Insured Nomads, in this conversation. We probably have messed up once before. 

And now we learned our lesson or we've dealt with somebody who messed up. And now we want to prevent others from making the same mistakes. And, and seriously, be able to want to make it easy. This is probably the other thing that we hear from people. It's complex to move around. You got to do your taxes and you got to do the paperwork. Well, let's make the health care program as easy as possible for the people to use and as understandable as possible. Yeah, it's so yeah, easy. It's so important.

Omar  

I like that. 

Allen

Easy is so important.

Omar

I like that. A lot. I mean in a complex life, like the way a digital nomad lives something that’s easy is a breath of fresh air for sure. Speaking about your podcast though, right, The New Nomad. 

Now you said you started this company pre-coronavirus. So and obviously Coronavirus has, I would assume, helped speed up the direction where things were going anyways, in the sense that probably more people are going to start getting Nomad insurance overall around the world. So what is the new Nomad to you guys? Right? So it's this new age of nomads? What does it mean to you, Allen? And what does it mean to you, Andrew?

Allen  

Well, to me what the biggest change and COVID accelerated this is that companies can understand that people who work it are location independent, you know, for instance, I worked at home for five years, my last five years in a corporate environment, I worked in Delaware, and our corporate headquarters was in Minnesota. 

And I know there was a bit of resistance to that, which meant that I had to travel out a lot for internal meetings, etc. And, and I even think about this, our WebEx is until COVID, were... you wouldn't even see people. And then I'll send zoom calls and teams and now we all see each other. 

And I have friends who used to have to commute in from Delaware to Philadelphia, and they'd be like, you know, what, I'm going into Philadelphia it costs me 45 minutes every day in and out when the traffic is good. I have to pay for parking. I'm at a higher tax rate. And I don't it cuts into my day and we walk around and talk a lot. 

And now they work at home and they're like, well guess what I work at I work a lot actually a longer day. But I enjoy it a lot more because my dog is here. I can take it for a walk at lunch. I don't have to pay wage tax. I don't have to drive. 

And companies are seeing this ball accelerate this all to a global area. A lot of companies post COVID said, we'll hire people back as consultants, we don’t need to bring them on as employees. Now that means if you're a consultant, though, you have to find your own healthcare and your own security and your own support. 

This is what we want to do to support but to me with the new Nomad is, is the understanding that you don't have to be all sitting in a building of 500 people to get something done. And corporations that also understand that I think are gonna have a leg up and already corporations have understood this too, because you know how expensive renting space in a city like Philadelphia or New York or San Francisco is.

Omar

Right. Hundred percent.

Allen

Oh, that's my definition. I'll turn it over to Andrew. But to me, it's more of a corporate change, then the end affects the individuals. I know Andrew is going to bring in a lot of the countries that are supporting this initiative now for the first time.

Omar

Sure. 

Andrew  

Yeah. And when I think about the new Nomad, I think about those who left Lebanon to go start a mattress factory and in West Africa, who say, you know, they're leaving everything behind and opening a grocery store, opening a mattress factory doing, you know, doing what they do best. A lot of times, the focus is on the developer that says, Oh, I can travel with my laptop. 

But a lot of times this nomadic person, this formerly referred to as immigrant, or expat or worldschooling family, doesn't take on a lot of these labels. They've been around for decades, they've been around for centuries. And now it's in the spotlight of “Oh, you can work hybrid.” 

So you'll need extra care, you'll need extra extra provisions for duty of care for the ability to check in with Geo IP. Tracking for security sake, you know, response? Because they're able to say, okay, yes, they are, we know where they are, when that Cyclone hit, things like that. 

So the aspect of this, the new Nomad doesn't actually mean new to it, right? It's just, okay, the awareness of the various flavors, the various places on the spectrum, that this type of person hits from much more study abroad student who decides to stay there after the master's degree is complete. 

They're still rather transient, they're new to the area, they're still grasping the new culture, and they're open to going to a country next. It's, you know, it comes in so many different wrappings.

Omar  

Right? It seems so much more digital, the way it's becoming more technical, more digital, it's, it's, it's easier than ever to be able to do something like this. Right. So I really, I'm really excited to see the way the world is headed. I think there's a lot of assumptions being made right now and which direction what's going and I remember sitting on a podcast with Mitko, just two weeks ago, and we both had an in depth conversation. 

By the way, if my audience is listening to this, if you want to go check it out, that would be Episode 79, I believe, or 78. But we had an in depth conversation about directions that we think the world could be headed just in a few years from now, with remote work and all this picking up so but either way, very, very interesting topics here. 

Now, what I want to do is I want to ask a sort of finalized question over here, right? It's more about the future of Insured Nomads. I know you guys just launched your product, and it's going in a certain direction. Andrew, you seem like the architect of this entire thing. And you've got this grand vision planned out? I'm sure a few years ahead. what direction do you both want to take this? And what is the grand vision that you have for Insured Nomads? What is it going to be?

Andrew  

Good question. Because the world is changing faster than we can predict. Our phones are different than we anticipated they will be and they will shift even more. So apps will be changing. They won't we won't be focused on apps. In five years from now, things are probably radically shifting with the way countries view people entering. So regulatory changes will be made on the products that can be developed and sold. 

And the FinTech, insurtech environment will be merging more and more so that we'll be able to develop products that never existed. Allen, as you know, leads a lot of the distribution and innovation aspects and so I know what the global workforce, the ASO…

 I'll, I'll pass that off to you, Alan, because I know you're dealing with a lot of the multinational corporations and what they're looking for. And as they're actually looking at their workforce differently now. That's where I see us going in providing this group from disability, life, health benefits beyond insurance. Go for it.

Allen  

Yeah, you know in the next three to five years. I'll take you two ways. First off from a perspective of groups, so corporations that have large groups of nomadic workers, at the same time that they want more control and support, like geo positioning tools to know where people are to get them out of the way of the cyclone. There's also a balancer privacy there. 

They also want the ability to have more insurance techie, more funding arrangements, basically, they'd like to have more flexibility on how they pay for the plans, and how the plans reimburse people. For instance, in the past, people used to have to claim and then mail the claim in and then get it sent to the bank. Well, obviously, now we have tools on our phone, that you want to have claim paid immediately at the source. And you want it back to what we talked about earlier, easy. 

So the corporate environment, they're looking for more support on an easy base for their people, they don't want their benefit staff spending a lot of time in the middle like they have in the past. They just want to hire, and evaluate their employees, they want to disintermediate from health care. 

So what Andrew and I need to bring to the market is programs that totally empower the individual to the level that they're comfortable with, to do what they need to do to stay healthy, or get the claims paid, no matter what language or currency. Now on an individual side of things, they're looking for more control of their own destiny, at the same time without giving away all their privacy. 

So you need people to pick different levels, like do I want to be geo positioned all the time where you know, I am? Or do I want, you know, unique times? Can I just go to any clinic? Can you direct me to the right clinic, they also want a wider level of care. 

We talked a lot about health care here. But people want to make sure their dental issues are taken care of. I mentioned about the eyes. You know, there's a lot of vision issues that come with remote work with people getting eye injuries all the time, you want to make sure you go to a clinic that's clean, effective, you don't get secondary infections. 

So there's a lot of different levels here. And I'll even give you one even world type thing. And that's 10, I think in the next few years, and it may take a little bit longer. Why do we even have time zones? So why do you know, why do when I have a remote worker call I have to say to somebody, I'm gonna call you at 8am Eastern, and you're gonna have to figure out what it is in Australia as the world gets smaller. 

Why would we all just be out of timezone and say, I'm going to have a call with you at eight o'clock. And the nine to five existence, which we think of is an old thing. But it could be a different time. But it's still wake up in the morning, you go to work, and you finish at dinnertime, it doesn't mean there's things like that that need to come. 

And I think we're going to see a quantum leap, as people start saying, why do we just do this, like we used to do this, this is just a waste of effort, and energy. And things can be much more efficient.

Omar  

I get it, it'd be really, really curious to see how, what these quantum leaps are going to be like, right? I mean, something as simple as not even using apps anymore in five years is unfathomable to be right now at this point, right. But it's crazy how exponentially the world is moving in a different direction. And a pandemic even sped that up more. 

I mean, we're at a point right now, right that I didn't think we're going to be for another 10 years at the very least. So I'm really curious to see it's exciting times. I mean, that's what I can definitely say about it. Exciting times for sure.

Allen  

And Omar, one other thing, right? When we focus on technology, I just want to mention, there's also going to be a reaction against it. In the sense that I'm already seeing with the remote workers is it's so much technology. Instead of when you're done with work going and playing more games, we're starting to see more people saying, I'd like to go surfing, or I'd like to go mountain biking or like to go read or hiking or walking. 

I think in the next few years, we're also going to see as technology increases, and we don't want technology to stop. It gives us so much, so many gifts. I also think people are starting to say one of the reasons I went to this place is I wanted to be able to walk to a tree and grab a fruit and enjoy it in a wonderful environment. So I'm not always -

Omar 

Plugged in.

Allen

In that hurry up rate. So I'll turn it over to you, Andrew, I see you're ready to add to something along those lines perhaps.

Andrew  

Yeah, and as we never expected for people to have a voice that they do today. Where people in the middle of nowhere can talk to people in the urban jungle, through things such as Spotify Green House or clubhouse or other voice only technologies that are providing the Community Learning spontaneously, where groups can gather and discuss things that was even fathom very long ago. 

And where are we going to see tomorrow? How are we going to see banking and insurance and education and all these sectors shift? We've got to be willing to release a lot of the controls. And I think governments are going to be the ones to, to, to drive some of that change to say, “Sure, we won't make it so hard for people to get into our countries. And we won't make taxation as heavy because we want them to come.” 

And global movements, global mobility will be empowered. And so yes, the shift that we're riding, we're really on the shore looking at the waves. We're not really riding the waves yet. But I think the water is right. And we're beginning to learn to surf so that when we can stand on that board, we're going to, we're going to see some some great events,

Omar  

it's interesting to think that the economics of a country aren't going to so much rely on their locals anymore, as much as it will their global citizens. You know, I mean, with the rise of digital nomad visas alone, it's gonna be interesting to see where that goes. These are topics… 

Andrew  

We’ll have new countries birthed from this.

Omar

Definitely. I mean, they already have that initiative going on in Madeira right now with the digital nomad village, right? That's a very small scale thing of what we're expecting to see. But just even having locations of global citizens like that. I mean, what happens in that case, though, right? 

It feels like you just become settlers of a different country, and then you just end up staying there. So there might be this global movement of people moving from one country to another, and they're just the whole infrastructure of who's in what country doesn't even matter anymore, because now you have quote, unquote, Americans and Belgians, and this in Norway. And then you have Norwegians in Eastern Europeans and Australians and America, like what countries even what anymore? is a country defined by its locals or its geographical region, right? 

So it's going to be very curious to see what direction that goes. But what I want to do now is I want to close the podcast off with one final question here. And Andrew, I know you know, this question all too. Allen, I'm sure you know, you've heard this question, or me ask this question, some degree or another. So I think you guys know where this is headed. 

But if you had a billboard in space, and on that billboard, you could write anything not related to your business, but rather more about life that everyone on the planet could see, every single day. What would you write? We can start with you, Andrew?

Andrew  

Oh, I'm still thinking, give me a moment. So why don't we start with this? I'm not going to use what I wrote last time on my Billboard.

Omar  

Right? Right. Cool.

Allen  

I'll hop in. I think I would write, you know, be kind to others. In, I'll just give you one little aside on being kind. And because you just don't know the situation others are in. The other day, my wife was at a stoplight in the car in front really took off from the light very slowly. And people were tooting the horn. And then he got to the next leg, the road split. So there was two lanes, and she was at the light next to this car. 

And the gentleman next to her, had both the windows down and he said thank you. Because she didn't. He goes, thank you for not tooting me, the reason why it's so hard for me to off the line is my transmission is in trouble. And I can only start in second gear. 

Omar

Oh.

Allen

And I'm trying to get to the dealer, because I am not going. And then of course, the light changes, she takes off. And she says it's taken off, she's thinking to herself, but there are people out there gonna start tooting again. And the poor guy is going to just try to get going. But she felt really happy that she was assuming that was something else because it was an older car that was going on. But I said when I said you know what I said to you I'm proud of you. Because this is about assuming the person's trying and being kind. 

And by the way tooting is not going to make or hammering the horn is not going to make anything better. And you see all these things that happen now with people not being kind or being you know, hopping on each other. It's kind of just disconcerting. And I think if we could just have another level of kindness there, so on that billboard would be “Be kind to others.” 

Or I would put the insured nomads web address so maybe we could have all the people who need individual Sure it's fine as easier because that would actually help our advertising budget quite a bit like that.

Omar  

And that is www dot insured nomads.com. Right?

Allen  

Yes, that would probably save us like a billion dollars in advertising costs. So, you know, there's no going back. What's good for humanity? What's the good for a moment, you might have to bounce this one about.

Omar  

Maybe a slideshow in the air? 

Allen  

So you might have to do something like that. Exactly.

Omar  

Sure. What's your answer, Andrew?

Andrew  

Be a hope builder. And I believe that because so many people are, are hopeless, or they need an encounter with someone that will fertilize their level of hope. And you can't do that if you don't have hope. Because you can't give something you don't have. 

So that's, that's a new episode with you go back and listen to that. But yeah, that's mine via builder via hope builder.

Omar  

I like it. Be kind and be a home builder, moving the world forward. Thanks so much for coming on today. Andrew and Allenn. It was an absolute pleasure.

Allen  

We appreciate it. And we appreciate you.

Andrew  

Thank you. Thank you.