Matt Bowles: My guest today is Kaela Atleework. She is a former international model for Chanel who has now been a digital nomad public speaker and community builder for the last 10 years. Originally from California, she has now traveled to nearly 40 different countries. Her specialty is in the art of human connection and she has taught workshops all over the corporate business teams to transformational music festivals. Kaela is also the founder of Montaia, an international network of purpose driven digital nomads and conscious creatives. She spends about six months of the year at Montaia Base Camp, an intentional co living community in California when she’s not traveling the world.

Kaela, welcome to the show.

Kaela Atleework: Thank you so much, Matt. It’s such a joy to be here with you today.

Matt Bowles: I am so excited. We’re in person today. This is lovely.

Kaela Atleework: And on your last day in Buenos Aires.

Matt Bowles: My last day in Buenos Aires. We are knocking out this interview. Let’s talk a little bit about what we’re doing here. You were a keynote speaker at the Nomads BA conference, as was I.

Kaela Atleework: That’s right.

Matt Bowles: And I feel like you were not just a keynote speaker, but you did a whole number of different presentations over the course of the week.

Kaela Atleework: That’s right, yes. Whenever I go somewhere and I partake in an activity or an event that’s taking place, I like to weave myself into the design of the experience as well as just showing up and hopping on stage. So, we started doing workshops in the Nomads week on connection and intimacy before the conference even arrived.

Matt Bowles: Well, you and I had an amazing moment together on stage. I feel because you extemporaneously called me up on stage in the middle of

Kaela Atleework: your talk instead of asking for a volunteer, I was like you, I want you come onto the stage now.

Matt Bowles: And it was amazing because you were doing a workshop on instantaneous intimacy, how to make friends and connect much deeper, much faster. And that was the topic of your talk. And so, you said, I need a volunteer. And you pointed to me and you called me up there. And of course, we knew each other and all of that, which is why you picked me. And. But I had no idea that you were going to call me up there, right? So, I jump up on the stage and I don’t have a microphone. Now we got to set the scene for the audience, right? We are in a theater that seats how many people?

Kaela Atleework: Probably upwards of 800, 900, right?

Matt Bowles: So, it’s like 800, 900-person theater. We’re on the stage, so you have the headphone mic, okay? And I jump up on the stage and I don’t have a mic, right? So, the audience won’t be able to hear me if I talk. And so, you say, okay, I’m going to ask you some questions and you give me a response, right? Are you asking me some questions? And we’re going to have this dialogue now as an example of what you were presenting on the stage. Stage. But I didn’t have a mic. So, you’re like, oh, just use mine. So, yours is like this headphone mic, right? So, you’re like, okay, just come close.

Kaela Atleework: Just come on in here.

Matt Bowles: Just come really close.

Kaela Atleework: Just come right up in here. We can share, right?

Matt Bowles: So, I’m leaning right in.

Kaela Atleework: We’re about to sing a duet together, right?

Matt Bowles: And I’m like, ooh, this is a really good intimacy technique. And the audience just busts out laughing and came up to us afterwards, and it was an amazing. An amazing talk, but what a fun conference.

Kaela Atleework: Well, and I love that the topic I brought you up on stage for was to ask questions. And here I am thinking that you’re going to ask me some normal questions. Where am I from? How long have I been in Argentina? And you start rolling out these incredible, deep, fascinating questions. And I’m going, well, this is not proving the point that I wanted to prove about how most people struggle with what questions to ask to deepen their conversations. I think I use the metaphor trying to give a driving lesson to a race car driver. It’s like, okay, I chose a volunteer that is already an expert in this.

Matt Bowles: You invite the podcast host up there. You got to get some questions.

Kaela Atleework: Definitely invite the podcast host for the question challenge.

Matt Bowles: That’s amazing. Well, how has the time been here for you coming here to Buenos Aires and being surrounded by nomads and being back in the city, which is a place that you and I have both spent time in previously. How has it been for you in Buenos Aires?

Kaela Atleework: You know, during the pandemic, I was in Bali for about 14 months, which is the longest that I’ve been anywhere in the last 10 years. So, as I began to actually move and be nomadic, and I’m a migrational nomadic, so I don’t go one week here, one week there. I move between hubs that I’ve established a love for in the world seasonally. But something that was really new for me is even being an extrovert coming back into a city that’s as big as Buenos Aires. And even though me, myself, I feel really comfortable with connecting and being in public spaces again. I noticed that it was a lot harder to make friends and to infiltrate circles.

And this might be because of emerging from COVID Everyone’s a little scared and a little more worried. You know, if you’re fresh off of a plane, you’re no longer just an exciting new thing. You’re also a potential threat of what are you bringing with you off of that plane from where you’ve been. And so, I did find that a little bit here there was a little more hesitance towards closeness. And I’ve also talked to the locals and they’ve explained to me that Argentinos and Buenos Aires son muy grouperos, which means they’re extremely loyal and close with their bubble. So, there’s a particular format for the collectivism that we find here because Buenos Aires is such a European city and yet it has this Latin culture.

So, you have the collectivist Latin culture, which is very family oriented and closeness. But then you also have the European vibe, which it tends to be a little more. We stick to our language; we stick to our culture. Not across the board, but I don’t know if you’ve ever traveled in France and found that if you don’t speak French, there’s not as much leniency as, for example, if you’re in Mexico and you don’t speak Spanish. There’s more of an effort and or attempt to connect to what’s different. So, this time around, I would say being in Buenos Aires was one of the more challenging experiences for me as far as making friends and actually getting into local pockets of community goes. I think I need a few more months to really actually be able to weave myself into the local social network.

Matt Bowles: Well, I want to talk to you about the first time you came to South America and Argentina but let’s go even a little bit further back than that to sort of create a little backstory and give folks some context for your journey. So, can you talk a little bit about where you grew up? And as you were growing up, how did your initial interest in other cultures and world travel start to develop?

Kaela Atleework: I grew up about 45 minutes south of Yosemite national park on the east side in California. So, a lot of the time when I travel and I tell people that I’m from California, the first response I get is, oh, Los Angeles, San Francisco. And I’m like, yeah, I grew up in a town of 5,000 people, about a six-hour drive across a mountain range that in the winter it snows and becomes a nine-hour drive from those cities. So, it’s a very different experience than what we see on television regarding the California lifestyle. My father was a hot air balloon pilot and a map maker of trails, hiking trails. And my mom was the breadwinner for the family. Predominantly she had a full-time job and my dad raised us.

So instead of having growing up with Barbie dolls, I grew up with having a really great toolbox. When I turned 16, my sweet 16 present instead of being a car was I got my first chainsaw and I could then go wooding with my dad. So, where I grew up really had a strong influence on my relationship to land because I had more exposure to nature than I did to other people. And so, my relationship to being a human being in the way that I engaged with being Kaela on the planet, had a lot to do with my surroundings. So, I think because of that, I actually develop relationship with place when I’m traveling, because that was rooted in me from such a young age. I have a feeling that the landscape that I was in raised me as much as the people who were my parents did.

Matt Bowles: And then how did your interest in world travel and other cultures and things like that start to develop?

Kaela Atleework: My parents didn’t spend a lot of money on gifts and things like this growing up. Instead, they would save and they would take us on trips overseas. And every time we’d go on a trip overseas, they’d have the intention to have us travel in a way that wasn’t just white middle-class tourism. We would always do something that was volunteering or giving back. So, I remember being probably 11 years old, I must have been 10 years old. And the first international trip I’d done with my dad, he took me to Mexico and we volunteered at an orphanage for eight days, working on building a new aspect of the Orphanage together. And so, my exposure to travel always came in line with service. My grandparents from both sides were involved. My grandmother was the president of Church World Service, and my grandparents on my dad’s side were Quakers, and they were part of Friends International, which, again, are non-missionary service-oriented organizations.

Matt Bowles: Quakers are amazing.

Kaela Atleework: Quakers are amazing. So, I grew up with that lineage of giving back without condemning others for their own religious beliefs, which I think is really important. We definitely see a lot of that mixed in the church charity world of I’m going to give to you so that you can be saved by Christ, not I’m going to give to you because the morals of my spirituality are aligned with that. So, When I was 15 years old, my dad took me. My mother passed away when I was 14. And so, my dad got to raise three teenagers by himself in a little tiny mountain town. And I think one of the ways that he tried to balance being a single parent was he would take us on trips by ourselves.

So, When I was 15, he took me to Ulan Uday, Siberia, and we spent three weeks there with Habitat for Humanity, again working on building houses using the tools that I learned, like how to use a chainsaw from my youth. And it really was this experience for me where travel embedded itself in me as this is something that you do. A, to experience the land of a place, to expose yourself more in awareness of what is the planet like. And B, how to serve and give back to the people in the place that you’re traveling in. And then C, comes in the component of enjoying the culture and the people of a location which I’ve had to learn a little more on my own.

Matt Bowles: That is amazing. Well, you mentioned that you did not grow up in Los Angeles, but eventually you did get into modeling.

Kaela Atleework: Yes.

Matt Bowles: Can you talk a little bit about that journey and then how that was for you? Because it ultimately led you to your digital nomad lifestyle. But can you talk a little bit about that modeling journey?

Kaela Atleework: Absolutely. So, my horoscope sign. I’m a Gemini.

Matt Bowles: So am I, by the way.

Kaela Atleework: Two Geminis. Ooh. This interview is going to be exciting. So, we contain multitudes. I feel like in my lifetime, I’m 30 years old now, and I feel like I have lived fully distinct, separate personalities within this lifetime where I’ve fully dove into the experience of who is Kaela here and now? And Matt, I’m sure you’ve experienced this on your travels as well. There’s this opportunity for reinvention of self when we go somewhere and we arrive and all of A sudden there’s no one around us holding these preexisting beliefs about who we are and the way we need to show up, interact and engage. Because the thing is, when we’re interacting with our family members and our friends that have known us for a long time, even though they know and love us, they have ideas about who we are and who they would like us to be that are unconsciously being projected onto us all the time.

So, what happens when we’re exposed to the possibility of travel or moving or living somewhere completely new, where we get to actually choose, huh? What version of me am I going to be within this container? It allows us to have so much more richness in the quality of variety in our own personality and interests. So, I went from being an extremely nerdy mountain girl high schooler. I was picked on a lot in high school. I never had a boyfriend until my senior year, was never asked to a school dance, dealt a lot with being bullied for being tall and skinny and outspoken. I was never really one to hide from hide in the bushes. And I got scouted by an agency in Los Angeles when I was 15 and I went down with my dad. I did one photo shoot with Matthew Mitchell, still someone who’s incredibly important in my life. And I was like, no way, this is not for me. I’m not about to trade in my hiking boot boots for high heels. Are you kidding me? Why would anyone ever wear those? This is so nonfunctional. No, this is ridiculous.

And then three years later, at 18 years old, I’m going through my college application process and I’m seeing how much it actually costs to go to one of the quality universities in the States. And I’m realizing that I’m looking at my peers and the way that they’re designing their lives and I’m seeing every single one of them is going to be hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and go straight into a job that helps them pay that off and then live the lifestyle that when they finally retire at 60 or 70, then they travel the world. And I saw this and I go, this is not for me. This doesn’t serve any of the multitudes inside of me. And I reached out to Matthew and I said, hey, do you think I could put my way through university by modeling so I don’t have to go into debt? And he was like, yes, come down to la, we’ll get you set up.

So, I spent the next two and a half years building a career in Los Angeles. And I would model during the day and I would Take night classes every night. So, it was a very, very distinct difference than coming down from the mountains. And two and a half years in, I had a pop star boyfriend. I was spending three, four months once a year in London and the rest of the time in Los Angeles or shoots elsewhere in California. And it was a completely different version of me than I’d ever experienced before. So, I got to kind of see, wow, I’m not stuck in a place, and I’m not stuck in a way of being. There’s choice here in inventing who it is that I want to be in the world and the way that I want to show up.

Matt Bowles: And then how did you transition to your next self? What was that like for you after the modeling? How did you then ultimately become a nomad and kind of go on to your next phase of life?

Kaela Atleework: It’s interesting because when we think about loneliness and when we think about connection, often we think of someone lonely as being sitting alone in a space with no one around them. And we think of someone who has a lot of connection being around people that they already know. And there’s relationships established and there’s lots of movement there. But for me, living in Los Angeles was the loneliest part of my entire life. And you wouldn’t usually think, oh, you’re lonely. The solution to that is to uproot everything in your life and all your relationships and go somewhere in the world where no one knows you. But that was the solution for me because the lifestyle that I had in Los Angeles was feeding a system that promotes loneliness so that we try to find joy and fulfillment in the things that we buy instead of the people that we connect with.

Matt Bowles: Yes.

Kaela Atleework: So, In January of 2012, I had a dream. And so, we’re going to go into the little bit more Woo Woo realms right now. So, prepare, put on, put on your

Matt Bowles: Woo Woo scuba gear. Here comes the woo.

Kaela Atleework: I had a dream that I needed to go to Peru. I knew I was like; I need to be here. So, of course, my logical mind or my Virgo moon, for those of you that are astrology geeks, my Virgo moon kicks in and I go, okay, I’m going to plan. I’m going to go to this place. I’m going to do these things. Great. I’m going to go for three months. Wonderful. Well, that three months and the backpack that I had packed only with enough things for three months turned into 18 months. And that 18 months turned into 10 years. So, since I left the United States in February 2012, I have not been back for more than a five- or six-month period at a time in the last 10 years. So, I have become fully location-independent. And even though I’m not in one place consistently building one set of relationships, I would say that I am the most fulfilled and connected that I’ve ever been.

Matt Bowles: Let’s talk about that 2012 transition. You just explained your sort of state of mind in LA and where you were at personally, mentally, emotionally, and all that kind of stuff and what your motivation was when you got there. Can you talk a little bit about what your experience was like and how that first 18 months was for you?

Kaela Atleework: One, I ate an empanada that I shouldn’t have eaten. And so weeks two and three were spent with a very high fever. And then I spent the next three months volunteering with kids in the exploited labor trade and also working two or three hours a day at a children’s hospital for kids with disabilities. And I really got to be exposed to the culture of voluntourism in its pros and cons. So, I think that there’s definitely this hero mentality that a lot of the time we take as travelers of I’m going to go to this place and I’m going to give back and help. And I really got exposed to the aspects of voluntourism that are damaging and that are not helpful. It was interesting because I want to tell you the story that it was so beautiful and amazing and I was, you know, I was able to give back and help and. And little parts of that are true.

But it also really opened my eyes to how much negative impact some of the massive global volunteer organizations are having, and also the channeling of funds and how disproportionate that is of how much goes to administration in the European countries where these companies are based to actually the locations. So voluntourism is not actually something that I would recommend for everyone, even though we talk about traveling and wanting to give back. And it’s a very interesting thing where recently when I’ve been researching more and more with my partner, Dom Franks, about how to act and how to actively give back in a way that supports the ecology and the people in the country that you’re in. And it really comes down to this division of do you have more time to give or do you have more money to give in comparison with the people that you’re giving to?

And I know that it feels good to go somewhere and to physically give back and to be hands on. But what I found is that these volunteers that I was working with from all over the world were paying $400 processing fees and $25 of that was ending up in the programs they were working in. And they were coming down with hardly any Spanish experience, no experience working with kids. And it was actually more draining for the coordinators of these locations to train these people how to be with the kids when they were only receiving a 25 donation for each person. And I started to see, wow, okay, it’s important to have the feeling of being hands on. But if we’re not giving in a domain that’s our specific skill set, it doesn’t do that much good.

And I started to look at, okay, so if I’m a copywriter or a web designer, does it actually make sense for me to be coming down and volunteering with these places, just working with kids instead of building them a better website in which they can actually fundraise from or helping them script their outreach email so that they can actually get more resources to have a better place in general to be working with the kids. And so, this was a really big wake up call for me around the balance between giving back through time, giving back through skill set, and giving back through money. And it was a big shock for me because like I said growing up, my parents would expose me to, we’re going to go to a place, travel, we’re going to give back, we’re going to help.

And I started to see how that might not actually be helping these places where I thought that I was giving back. So, it’s really important to look into that. There is a thread of highly non altruistic voluntourism that we tend to fall into even as nomads being in another country and wanting to give back. And at the end of the day, there really is something to be said for donating financially in order to balance, especially when you have clientele in Europe and the United States and you’re living somewhere where that salary is, is triple, quadruple what the average person is making.

Matt Bowles: Well, I want to tell you that I was extremely impressed as I was sitting in the audience through your keynote presentation.

Kaela Atleework: Thank you.

Matt Bowles: At this particular conference. And I was not really aware of exactly what you were going to present on. And as it turned out, almost your entire presentation was about socially conscious and environmentally conscious travel.

Kaela Atleework: Yes.

Matt Bowles: And the importance of that. And you went some places with that presentation that I was like, okay. I was like, I’m impressed. I was like, oh, girl. Like, I was really not expecting what you presented. And I want to ask if you can talk about a couple themes from the presentation, one of your slides talked about, let us never again use expatriation as a means of conquering, but rather as a means of learning, connection and expansion of our world views. Can you talk a little bit about that premise?

Kaela Atleework: Yes, absolutely. Thank you. I think that the way that the digital nomad lifestyle is currently publicized to the mainstream world is very sexy. It’s very sparkly, it’s very sexy, it’s very, I’m working on my laptop by the poolside and rah, rah, rah, drinking my coconut. That really seems to be the theme. And it’s taking up, especially since COVID it’s taking up more and more media space where you’re seeing these keywords about being a digital nomad and remote work are off the handle. Flying off the handle. I mean, it’s really fascinating. It’s trending hard and fast towards the world becoming predominantly remote work. And so, when I spoke to this slide, it really touched on something that was really profound for me.

When I first arrived in Peru, about six months in, I was doing a workshop with the Quechua. And the Quechua are an indigenous tribe in the Andes, the High Andes of Peru, who didn’t have exposure to the Spanish colonists for 500 years longer than all of the other tribes that were in the coastal region. So, in the timeline of human development, 500 years of non-exposure to colonial influence is extreme. So, they were actually able to preserve much more of their culture and traditions than a lot of the tribes in the coastal areas in South America. And the Quechua are the direct descendants of the Incan. And the Incan empire was the largest empire in South America, which the, the center of which was in Cusco, Peru, which is where I was living.

So, in this workshop we went into working with the body that we were currently in and developing a relationship with the awareness of our own ethnic lineage. And it was such an eye-opening experience for me because I had to realize that even though my heart and my intention was positive, when I looked in the mirror and when the people around me looked at me, I looked like the people that came to that land to rape and pillage and colonize. I embody the DNA and the physical appearance of conquerors. And it was such a painful thing for me to own and to realize and to look at. And in that moment, I felt I want to redefine the way that I am not only occupying my own physical body and my own privilege, but redefine the way that I’m experiencing this world and this place.

And so for the next 18 months, I intentionally lived and traveled on the budget of someone who was a local because I wanted to have the experience of being in South America, not carrying the person who I was before the income that I had had before. I wanted to feel as close as I could to what it was like to move through and navigate this part of the world without carrying all my privileges. Now, mind you, I could not drop the privileges of being a white tall woman. Those were things that I carried with me. But it really brought into my consciousness, how am I engaging with the people in a space, even down to the degree of a waiter or waitress that is bringing me something? How am I engaging with the humans that are around me? Am I othering them? Am I thinking of people who are in the service industry as a means to an end? Or am I actually allowing my consciousness to tap into who they are and what their story is and what they like to do? An example of this is, is Matt and I right now are in Selena Hostel in Buenos Aires.

And every single person who works at the front desk, I know how far they live, how far they have to travel to get here. I know how many siblings or if they live with their family or live alone. I know what type of music they like and what they do on the weekends. And this takes no time. No time. It takes the 30 seconds as I’m waiting for the elevator to arrive. But it’s little tiny things like this that I believe are the actions that we need to take in order to be creating the cross-cultural relationships and connections that we need in order to have a peaceful world. Because as individuals that are nomadic, we have an influence and we have a possibility to represent our race, our culture, our nation.

And really just the niche of humanity that we’re choosing to represent and to come from. Like you and I represent remote workers, we represent nomads, we represent expats. Whether we like it or not, it’s something that we carry. And to be able to be that and to be in a new country where we are sharing and learning and listening instead of occupying space feels like one of the most important things that we can be doing as international travelers is instead of taking advantage of the opportunity that we have, also taking the time to listen and to lean in and to see the people that we engage with as individuals.

Matt Bowles: Well, one of the other things that you talked about was this concept of getting educated on what is happening in the country that you’re traveling in, getting a sense of the history and the context that you, as a traveler, are walking into. And I think that is such an important thing to do as well.

Kaela Atleework: Oh, my gosh. I was so humbled the other day. I was outside of a contact improv jam, and I started talking to this group of Argentinians. And what’s fascinating about growing up in the States is that we aren’t taught a lot of world history. I don’t know if you had this experience as well. We are taught American history how the Americans would like us to be taught. So, it was. It was pretty fascinating having this conversation where these Argentinians knew as much about U.S. History as I did, and I knew nothing about Argentinian history. Because in the States, we just don’t even bother. We don’t even bother. It’s fascinating in. In some higher private schools, you might have more opportunity to have a semester of world history. But it really blew my mind. And so, I’m sitting here and I’m actually learning about the economics, and I’m actually learning about the politics.

And upon arrival, most Americans are like, all right, what do I need to know about the economy? Okay, cool. Inflation is terrible, which means my dollar makes me king. Awesome. That’s all I need to know. I’ll exchange at this place. In this place. Great. But to sit down and actually be present with the conversation of what’s happening with the inflation here and how this affects the locals and how it’s affected them the last 10 years started to give me more insight into why people engage in the way they do, into why the people here are more grouperos, why there is this close attention to the family bond and the connectivity and the interdependence. Because when you have a government and an economic system that isn’t considered reliable by the majority of the populace, you have to find something to lean into.

And that something that you’re leaning into becomes so much more important, crucial for your survival. And here, that is the social network within the social small bubble. The 7, 6, 8, 9, 10 group. The intimate, close circle of the people in your barrio, in your neighborhood that look out for each other because you don’t actually know if you’re going to be looked out for by the government. And I know that this is something arising all over the world in which there’s a lot of governments that the folks living in their countries don’t feel like they’re looked out for. But it’s really interesting to see the way that it actually sculpts the social architecture of a country and getting to learn more about that gave me more insight.

Matt Bowles: I also want to ask you, going back to the 2012 experience, when you made that decision to live on the budget that you decided to live on, because I know that led to a hitchhiking trip and it led to for you to travel in particular ways and interact in particular social networks and circles. Can you share a little bit about that experience?

Kaela Atleework: So, after living in Peru for about a year, I decided to hitchhike alone across South America. So, I hitchhiked from Peru all the way through Bolivia and then twice across Paraguay. And it’s fascinating because this is something that I would never do in the United States. Never. I would never feel safe enough to hitchhike alone in the United States. So, there’s this counterintuitive experience that I had where being in a foreign country and traveling alone actually felt more secure and more safe than being in the States. And in that culture, I found connections with other people from South America that were doing the same thing. So, one of the strongest memories that I can share with you is Christmas Day, La Paz, Bolivia. We’re at about, I’m going to say, 12,400ft elevation in the lowest point in the city.

And I’m traveling with a group that I’ve met, like picked up here and there. And some are from Peru, some are from Argentina. A lot of travelers, a lot of backpackers from Argentina. A few are from Chile; one was from Spain. And I have this memory of us in the main central plaza of La Paz busking together. We have two rinky dink old guitars, a few girls with tambourines. We’re dancing around with our scarves. I mean, it was quintessential hippie busking backpacker moment. But we needed to make enough so that we could have a Christmas dinner. So, all day was full of Feliz Navidad, Police Navidad. That’s still the song that has made me more money than any other song. And so, it was this lifestyle of going into a restaurant and looking at the menu and saying, okay, how many songs does that menu option cost? How many songs am I going to need to play before I can buy this dinner that I want?

And it in the span of a year, going from the relationship of modeling and working in Los Angeles, where I would work a gig that would essentially give me what a 6-month salary for somebody in Bolivia would be, and putting myself in the situation, intentionally not having a safety nest, intentionally saying, I want to actually be in the experience of what this is like if I don’t have something to lean back into. And I have to admit that obviously, psychologically it’s going to be different knowing that I do have a family back in the States, that if I have an emergency, they can transfer me funds, they can help me. And that is, again, the privilege is always there.

But the intention to live outside of it and to expose myself to what it would be like to travel as a nomad within the similar economic status as others in my age group were doing at that moment in time was phenomenal because, like I said, because I didn’t have the money to be renting the cute co living room in the nice place in La Paz at that moment in time. The connections that were formed because we needed each other. None of us were going to make enough money for Christmas dinner playing in the street streets alone, but together we were able to.

Matt Bowles: That’s amazing. I want to talk a little bit more about connection because over the last 10 years, this has really become one of your core specialties and your areas of expertise. And I wanted to start off maybe with a broad question because one of the things that you talked about in your connection workshop is how becoming a nomad can actually help lead to a more connected life. And you gave that initial example for you in Los Angeles and then what happened with your nomad journey. So, can you talk a little bit about that? Because I think it’s so relevant now. I mean, particularly emerging from the pandemic, which was this intensely socially isolating experience, right. And now there’s so many people that can work remotely, they had the opportunity to start becoming nomads. But of course, I think some of the initial trepidation is, oh, will I be able to have social connection? Will I be able to make friends? Will I be able to find love and partnership? And like all of these important connections in my life if I am an itinerant nomad who’s traveling around the world. So, can you share some of your thoughts on that?

Kaela Atleework: When I think about quality of life and at the end of the day, what is really important when I think about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, our need to feel belonging and our need to feel acceptance and permission to be all of what we are and to be loved and accepted within, that is profound. It is an innate necessity as human beings. And I think we tend to make the other assumption that the people that know us the best are the people that have known us for the longest. And so, we tend to lean into these bubbles of comfort and familiarity of our blood relationships Our biological family, the friendships we’ve had since childhood because of the comfort of shared history. But what I have found ends up happening in some of these scenarios is that we have stay in friendships where a version of ourselves that we no longer are is what is being welcomed and accepted.

So, although we might on the superficial level appear to have more relationships, the version of ourselves that is relating is often diminished. So, when I think about having more connectivity through the lifestyle of being a nomad, that comes across as in several different domains. So, the first domain that it comes across in is personal connection, connection to self, connection to who I actually am. So, when I am arriving in a new country and I don’t know a single person there and I have this opportunity to reinvent myself, to literally say who is Kayla in Buenos Aires? Because she’s not going to be the same as Kaela in California. She’s not going to do the same activities; she’s not going to engage with the same people. And what starts to happen is this connection to myself and this self-reliance begins to form where this relationship to okay, no matter where I am in the world or who I’m around, I know that I’ve got me.

And sometimes when I’m having a hard time, when I’m in a new country, when I’m in a new situation that’s a little edgy and I haven’t quite found my niche and I’m feeling alone, I’ll look in the mirror and I’ll use a technique that my mentor Rick Smith brought to me. I’ll look in the mirror and I’ll look at myself and I’ll just repeat this sentence over and over again. I’ll say, I’m never fucking leaving you. I’m never fucking leaving you. Because at the end of the day, everyone in our lives. And I had to learn this really young with my mom dying in my arms at 14. Everyone in our lives leaves, whether it’s our parents and the people around us through death, whether it’s our partners. We leave the physical location of the country we’re in, but there is this commitment to this relationship to self that is at the root of connectivity. So, when we take that relationship to knowing and feeling that I’m never leaving myself, all of a sudden, we start to be more available for connection externally.

Now if I had stayed in the same town that I grew up in my whole life, I would very likely naturally, psychologically be seeking my safety in those around me. So, I feel safe because this friend that I’ve known since I was 5 is I see her every day and I know I’m going to see her every day. And that’s how that I know that I’m safe. So, we start to think about the group or the pod that we’re in as what keeps us safe life. So, as we begin to travel and we begin to be in this space of radical self-reliance, you would think that that would make us more isolated, but in fact it makes us more available for connection. Because we’re not coming into our relationships from a place of hunger or lack or need. We know that we have everything we need in our suitcase and in ourselves. And we can make the choice to be somewhere new. We can choose the freedom of creating a new social structure and a new social network because we have that inner knowing and solidarity.

Matt Bowles: And I think especially when we are interacting with and meeting other nomads, the ultra-advantage there is that they’re looking for the same thing.

Kaela Atleework: It’s amazing. It’s really incredible. I don’t know any other subculture in the world where pockets of international deep friendships form so quickly and so profoundly. It’s incredible to go to a meetup and you see people from 20 different countries that are showing up fully available for that connection because they are not in a particular pod where they have their routine and like, this is what we do every Tuesday, and we’ve done the same thing for 10 years. They’re showing up with this hunger and this curiosity.

Here’s an example, if you’ve ever done a weekend retreat or a conference or something where it brought a bunch of people together that didn’t know each other and it provided this concentrated period of time of connection. So, this peak experience of doing a particular activity having a common shared goal. And you find this in nomadic communities, communities around the world, because the common shared goal is to be living internationally and working internationally in the city that you’ve all chosen. So, there’s an implicit shared goal. And the challenges are often shared as well. Like how difficult was it to get a SIM card in this city?

And you have this incredible diversity of ethnicity and career and background and education that you really don’t find this variety in many other social niches in the world. And where this brings us back to this point of connectivity on a global level is when we think about the international relations being formed by our governments and by different nonprofits and how it’s good work and people are doing their best, but that it’s really difficult to change policies and to prioritize things. Things on that large of a scale. But I see remote work and the digital nomad life as a grassroots campaign for world peace.

Matt Bowles: That’s amazing. Well, I want to ask you. You did a presentation called Instantaneous Intimacy.

Kaela Atleework: That’s right.

Matt Bowles: Art of Making Friends.

Kaela Atleework: Yes. I coined a new term, intimacy, which I love. Instantaneous Intimacy. Yes.

Matt Bowles: Can you share some of the techniques for that? Because we mentioned that, obviously, if you’re going to start to become a nomad and you’re going to meet other nomads, you have this incredible opportunity to connect with people on that level. But with this presentation, you actually shared some specific techniques for how to connect deeper and faster and make those connections quicker and more substantive and more. More meaningful. Can you share some of those techniques?

Kaela Atleework: Absolutely. After spending 10 years of traveling internationally, I realized that I have a very low tolerance for superficial conversation. I have a really strong desire to actually know the people that I’m engaging with and be in shared fields and spaces. Now, what we find in and what I found in my anthropological studies is, is that in order for humans to be able to drop into that space where we let down our protective barrier, number one, our animal bodies need to relax. No matter what language you speak or what culture you come from, as humans, we have an animal body, and our animal body needs to know that the other animals around us are not predators. So as much as we’ve evolved intellectually and technologically as humans, there is an extreme amount of intelligence that we hold in our bodies that is really important for intimacy.

One of the things that I found when traveling internationally is that when we are struggling with understanding the dialect or the accent of someone who is speaking to us, either in our language or in the language that is a second language for us, the more we can pay attention to body language, the more that we can respond and listen and notice the way that the body shape of the other person is moving, the easier it is for us to connect. So, one of these things is mimicry, is actually copying the position of the person that you’re having a conversation with. This is a subconscious technique that immediately puts the other body at ease without the other person having any idea that your sneaky get closer strategy is being put into action.

So, another really great thing that we touched on, Matt, is the questions. So, I’m sure that you found this. The quality of the questions that we ask directly determines the quality of our life. How can I make that jump? That’s a big jump. But really, the quality of the questions we ask determines the quality of conversations we have. The quality of conversations we have determines the quality of relationships we have. And we all know that the quality of relationships we have directly impacts the quality of life that we have. So, one of the great things to do is play with questions. What are the questions that you’re asking? Now? You can be someone like Matt, who has in his back pocket a list full of gems to pull out at any moment that can take people deep into introspective spaces. But if you don’t have this automatic access, what I could recommend is doing this exercise where you ask the other person a series of questions, and instead of them responding, they tell you a number from 1 to 5 of how interested they are in answering the question you just asked. So why is this important?

At the end of the day, for conversations to be successful, both people want to actually be talking about what they’re talking about. Like, we actually need to have a desire to be in the same conversational thread, not just the desire to be in conversation. How many times have you been. Have you met someone new? And you’re like, wow, this person is really interesting and I want to talk to them. But then so quickly you get caught up in the conversation thread where you’re like, oh, how you are. We hear again, we’re talking about maybe how I got into remote work. And I’m now regurgitating my spiel that I share about what I do and what I am in the world. And it’s really easy to fall into those places.

Matt Bowles: Right. Absolutely. I want to also ask you about a theme that you mentioned, which is your connection to nature and your connection to the land in your ecologically conscious framework when you travel, can you talk a little bit about that? And also, how that led to the founding of Montaya.

Kaela Atleework: So, like I spoke about at the beginning, I’m a unique brand of nomad, a unique niche. There are many of us. But it is a definite niche where my travel is particularly land based. I’m a climber, I’m a backpacker, and so I almost always choose the place that I want to be in the world based on its geological aspects. What are the mountains? What is the natural landscape like? And in the past, when I first started traveling, I found that I wanted to be around certain community. And so, I would try to choose the place in the world that I wanted to be around that had that community. And Buenos Aires is actually an example of that for me. But what I found in my travels is that if I chose where I was going to based on the land, then I would find the community there naturally from other people that were choosing to be in that place because of their relationship with the outdoor world.

So to speak, to being a digital nomad and caring for the environment, this is, is such an important subject to me and also a really big challenge. Because when we look at lifestyle like a zero waste, lifestyle is something that’s doable for someone who’s living in a city, who has a co-op, who has a place that they can go to, that has all of their jars and their storage containers. It’s way harder for somebody who’s living out of a suitcase and who is eating out at restaurants more often and who is by nature of their work, traveling more most of the time. So, one of the number one thing we can do is our awareness about our carbon emissions. So as a digital nomad, I feel that it is not just a suggestion, but our responsibility to become fully aware of what our carbon footprint is.

So, for those of you that are tuning in, in if you just type into Google or if you type into whatever search engine you use, I personally use Ecosia because they plant a tree for every time I search. So here, name dropping that in right now, little tiny things that you can do to make an impact. Use search engines and applications that, you know, give back to the environment. So, let’s say I go to Ecosia and I just type in, calculate my carbon footprint. You’re going to see multiple different things pop up that will actually allow you to calculate if I’m traveling here and I’m staying for that long, and this is how much I’m going to use taxis or public transportation. It will actually bring that awareness to you of what is my carbon footprint within my travel. Now, personally, I don’t want to be a part of a society that’s just sustainable. Sustainability is that means maintaining the status quo. That means, means just maintaining.

And the truth is, with the way we’ve engaged with the world as a race, as humanity, over the last 150 years in particular, we need to do more than just sustain. We need to be regenerative. So, I personally donate on a monthly basis double what my carbon footprint is. And then comes in the topic where people think, well, what do I donate to? I don’t want to just be throwing money at something. And in the past, we found the tendency of human beings was to donate to local charities. So, this is very much baby boomer culture that there’s a lot of generosity and a lot of giving, but it stays within our community, I donate to our local school, I donate to our local foundation.

The problem with that is that a lot of the places in the world that have the money to donate are not the places in the world where we most need to be protecting the biodiversity and the ecological reserve that is still alive on the planet. So, what happens with being a digital nomad is our definition of local begins to change, and we start to break out of this mindset that as human beings we’ve gotten stuck in, where we only take care of mine and ours. So, I take care of my people and my community so that our life can be of good quality and our environment can be taken care of.

As a digital nomad, as you’ve experienced, Matt, we start to break down what it means to be mine, ours, and we start to break down what we see as other. So that rainforest on the other side of the world is no longer this distant idea, but it’s something that we are closer to where we’ve come in contact with the people that have the background, the roots of that land. Some of us have actually gone to those places and the world and seen and felt and experienced the degree of biodiversity and magic that these locations hold. So, it’s really about starting to become a part of a larger Earth community, so that as we grow, we grow in awareness of the entire ecological system that we’re growing within in. So, nomads are kind of like the mycelial network in that we’re like the magical mushrooms of the human world.

Matt Bowles: And can you talk about founding Montaia and Montaia Base camp and the different elements of that kind of give us the background and then what it is?

Kaela Atleework: Yes. So, for those of you who are hearing this and are feeling like I want this, I want a nomadic life where I time connected and close to nature and living in a regenerative way. But how do I do that? Because most of the examples or the tips and tricks on how to be a nomad is how to find the hostel with the best Wi-Fi and how to get more clients. And there’s not that much out there that talks about the fact that we are part of a revolution. We are defining a new way of being an existing individual in the world that’s very much in the limelight. The world is watching. And as remote work and nomadic culture grows, we have a responsibility to define what that means. And is being a digital nomad actually a socially and environmentally responsible thing to do?

So, in my travels around the world, very selfishly, the things that I most want is to have a like-minded community that want to be focusing on connection and communication and deepening the synergy so that when we do come together as an ethnically, internationally diverse group, we can be co living and cohabitating in ways that allows each individual to thrive while still listening into the collective intelligence of the group. And I want to be in parts of the world that are remote. I want to be in places in the world where there’s more trees than there are people. When I have access and exposure to the natural landscape in a way that I couldn’t if I was in a city. Now what’s tricky about these two things is that you can find them all over the world. There are networks and resources for eco villages and for sustainable living, but 99% of the time they don’t have the WI fi connection that we need, need not want. This is on the base level again is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a digital nomad. It’s like food, water, shelter, air, Wi-Fi.

Then we can start to level up. So, I founded along with James Redenbach, my partner in this operation, three and a half years ago we founded Montaya Basecamp. And Montaya Base Camp is a co living intentional community on the east side of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California. And it is a space that is 30 minutes’ drive from the closest town. We have hot springs closer than we have a grocery store. So, it’s about as remote as you’re going to get in the western states. So, we are in a co living space that can comfortably house up to 12 people. We’re on the base of an 11,000-foot cliff. We have our own well. We are run off of both our hot water heating and our electricity off of solar panels. In the summertime we cool the house with a swamp cooler which uses no air conditioning coolant chemicals. And in the wintertime, we heat the house with a wood stove which is also a workout for our co livers because they get to chop wood on weekends so that we can keep the house warm during the week.

Now at the same time we have high speed WI fi, we have a gigabyte of high-speed fiber optic cable Wi-Fi so we can have all 12 people on video calls at the same time. My hope is that spaces like this begin to pop up all over the world. But the thing is there having to be demand there. So, what I want to invite those of you that are already nomads who are listening to this podcast to do is to start voting with your dollar. As a digital nomad, start choosing the places that you’re living in the world based off of how regeneratively you can live there. Start seeking the communities, the co-living spaces, the companies to both work for and live with who are actively making an impact because the marketplace shifts in order to cater to demand.

So, if we, as this emergent global culture of digital nomads, begin to express more and more that we want regenerative living, that we want relationship with nature, that we want jobs and places of residence and co working and co living that are responding to the climate crisis, not ignoring it. And we are subject to see and witness that climate crisis more than anyone else in the world because we’re exposed to so many different environments. So really that’s the invitation here. Montaia Basecamp is just one of what I truly think could be a network of global hubs of alternative lifestyle that allow both for freedom and for care for the environment that we’re living in.

Matt Bowles: And can you talk a little bit as well about you mentioned earlier your sort of migrational nomad lifestyle and where else other than Montaya Basecamp you spend time and also how you travel with your team.

Kaela Atleework: So, a really important part of my pathway as being a digital nomad has been tracking and researching what the nomads of our past did. So, when we were hunter gatherers before the agricultural revolution, what did humans do? Well, we didn’t go to a new place for a week or a month to see the sights. We followed the seasons and we followed the seasons often in a rotation, the same way that animals still do who fly south for the winter. So, I am a migrational nomadic animal. I fly south for the winter. So, for the last six and seven years I have had a rotation where I’ll spend about four months every year in California in the States, usually in their summertime. I will spend four months out of the year in Bali, in Ubud, predominantly due to the community there and the access to sustainable lifestyle and healthy eating. And I am currently exploring to see what my other two long term hubs will be.

So essentially, I consider myself a monoga bond. So, I am a monogamous vagabond. I don’t do one-night stands with cities. I go to a place and I stay for a minimum of two months, usually three to four months also depending on the visa situation. And I stay in that place and I intend to stay in the same spot, I rent a room for that entire period of time. So, one of the biggest travel hacks that I would recommend to folks that are thinking about being a nomad is don’t try to hit all of the tourist highlight places. Don’t go to Paris and do all of the tourist things and then do a month here and do a month there. Go and live somewhere, be in another country, allow yourself to dip in, have local friendships, have a local coffee shop where they recognize you because you’ve been going there frequently enough. It changes the experience of traveling so much. And when it becomes seasonal, what does this do?

So, we talk about being a nomad and that sometimes it can be a challenge to maintain long term, deep relationships. Now when you are migrational, you have relationships with the people in the places that you are migrating through that you can deepen when you’re there in person. So that year by year you actually do have long term relationships that you’re building, even though you’re still nomadic. And for me, I have found that this is the most fulfilling way of being a digital nomad. So, I have this sweet spot between structure and freedom. I know that I am going to be in these places every year for a certain period of time. And then I have these chunks of time where I don’t know where I’m going to be and that are open. And what this does for my nervous system is, allows me to know, okay, I have some consistency. I have relationships that I’ve built that I can return to. And because I can rest into that, I’m now more available to go out into the world and be exploring and adventuring during these time periods where I’m going to new places.

Matt Bowles: Awesome. Let me ask you this, I know you spend a lot of time you mentioned in places like Ubud in Bali. You’re obviously very deeply rooted in the larger community in terms of connectivity and spirituality and wellness and personal growth and all of that. I’m curious about your observations that you have seen with respect to COVID 19 disinformation, conspiracy theories circulating in that community, anti-vaccine rhetoric in that community. Can you share what you’ve seen, what you’ve observed and what that sort of landscape looks like?

Kaela Atleework: So being in Bali during COVID was challenging for me because I very much have a foot in the world of spiritual development and manifestation and creating a new earth and financial anarchy and dissolving the systems and the paradigms that no longer function. Very much so, like all of those buzzwords relate to me and I am vaccinated and I did so predominantly out of wanting to live in a connected world. So being in Bali it was very challenging for me because 99% of the people around me were very anti vaccination. And then coming back to California where I’m in the group of folks who are really personal development focused, but they’re also extremely high functioning professionals and they’re all very pro vaccine. And it’s really fascinating being in this juxtaposition. And for me, as a digital nomad and as a traveler and as a speaker and a facilitator, it was really obvious, okay, if I’m going to be engaging with groups of people, then I on a personal level need to be vaccinated because I want the people that I am engaging with to feel as safe as possible. So, I’m going to choose the option that brings in safety and that brings in more connection.

Matt Bowles: And how do you see the impact of the anti vax or the Vax hesitant or the COVID disinformation, the impact of that in terms of opening up other doorways into right wing politics, into conspiracy theories? Because it strikes me right that if you look at the political landscape and then when people are starting to. Starting to share information.

Kaela Atleework: Yeah.

Matt Bowles: About a lot of these views, a lot of this information is coming from very far right-wing sources and then they identify with those right-wing sources and then there’s all of this other very far right-wing politics that it seems like there is a door opening there for people to slide into. And I’m wondering what your sense is just particularly with your social and political consciousness and the whole, whole framework for how you do what you do and how you see the world and all these experiences we’ve discussed so far in the podcast, when you see that, what is your observations and sort of your assessment of that and what tips are there for folks to navigate and make sure that they don’t go down that rabbit hole.

Kaela Atleework: Yeah. Oh, it’s such a challenging moment that we’re at in time. But I really think the fundamental basis of this comes back to this concept of othering. So, during COVID in particular, so many of us were so isolated. So, what I saw in Bali with the pseudo spiritual bypassing components and what I see in right wing politics is this desperation for belonging, the subconscious need to be a part of something. And so, whatever that that something is, believing, it’s safer for us as social creatures to believe that and to be a part of that and to have this passionate shared goal and idea that we’re all jumping on board with, that makes our bodies feel good, that makes us feel good. Ooh we have something that we’re fighting against together. Ooh, there’s a common antagonist.

Even if the facts and the data don’t line up, there’s a common antagonist, honest, that we can be against together. So, all of a sudden, I as an individual start to feel like I’m a part of something and start to feel like, ooh, there’s belonging and start to feel like there’s something that I could fight for and that I could get on board with. So, it comes back a lot to this relationship with self and relationship to purpose for those that have a relationship to their own individual purpose and how on a day-to-day basis they’re showing up in the world and impacting others and have a social network and feel connected and feel supported and belonging, there’s less of a need to go into the extremism.

And if you are more present, living where you are right now and engaging with the truth that is in front of you, you’re going to spend a lot less time in the what if ifs of the potential conspiracies that could be occurring and going down this rabbit hole of the what if and if this and if that. A lot of that comes from not being present and connected in our relationships right here and right now. And so why I think that there is similarity and why I think there’s bypassing all the way from the super spiritual wellness, new earth community to the right-wing politics has a lot to do with tribal culture and being afraid of not being a part of the subgroup that is our tribe. We are social animals biologically. And so, when we’re disconnected from that, especially in a time of COVID there’s so much more of this cortisol production of these fears that create heightened sensory experiences in which we are diving in with vehemence to topics that would not be triggering us physiologically or emotionally as much if we were not emerging from an epidemic of isolation.

Matt Bowles: All right, Kaela, let me ask you one more question and then we’ll wrap this up and move into The Lightning Round. When you think back about all of the travel that you’ve done and your choices that you’ve made and your experiences that you’ve had, can you talk about the impact that all of that travel has had on you up to this point in your life?

Kaela Atleework: It’s been so humbling. And I really think that one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in my travel is that I have to be able to welcome all of the parts of myself before I can welcome all of the parts of the world that are occurring around me. In my growth, in trying to become more aware and become more tapped in, really aware of the shadows of my own privilege and of my own ethnicity and of my own patternings. And in that place, the best thing we can do is bring our awareness back to what I can do, to how I can engage and communicate with the world every day to make the people around me feel seen and feel heard and feel listened to. How can I engage with the world every day in the small ways that create the world that I want to live in and I want to exist in? Because we can’t fix it all alone and we can’t fix it all at once. But it’s about paying attention. What is the impact that I am having on the world. And when I really sit down and look at that, if I don’t like what I see, I need to change something.

Matt Bowles: Awesome place to end this interview and move into the final part. Kaela, are you ready to move in to The Lightning Round?

Kaela Atleework: Yes. Let’s do the lightning round.

Matt Bowles: Let’s do it. Alright, what is one book that has significantly impacted you over the years you’d most recommend people check out.

Kaela Atleework: This is a tie but it’s the same author so I’m going to cheat. I would say The Untethered Soul or The Surrender Experiment. Both by Michael Singer.

Matt Bowles: Awesome. What is one travel hack did you use that you would recommend for people?

Kaela Atleework: Make friends with locals and in fact stay in a local’s home for at least a certain amount of time. When you’re in a place, you will spend a lot less time doing your own research on what to do in areas and you’ll be able to access that belonging and that experience of authenticity much faster.

Matt Bowles: Who is one person currently alive today that you’ve never met you’d most love to have dinner with?

Kaela Atleework: 100% Brene Brown 100%. You knew this.

Matt Bowles: That’s an awesome pick.

Kaela Atleework: Author of Dare to Lead. Author of The Power of Vulnerability. 100%.

Matt Bowles: Amazing. Knowing everything that you know now. If you could go back in time and give one piece of advice to your 18-year-old self, what would you say to 18-year-old Kaela?

Kaela Atleework: I would give her permission to not have it all together. I would give her permission to be in the question and still be figuring it out and realize that at the end of the day a world where we have all the answers is not a place that I want to live in. I want to live in a world where we’ve got each other’s back while we’re trying to figure it out together.

Matt Bowles: Awesome. Of all the places that you have traveled up to this point, what are your top three favorite destinations you would most recommend? People should definitely check out.

Kaela Atleework: Number one, I would definitely say Bali because of the ease and accessibility of being a digital nomad there. Having access to high-speed Wi-Fi community that are remote workers and also, it’s an island where they have almost predominantly banned single use plastics of straws, they’re working on plastic bags, they’re working on plastic bottles. So, it’s a place where you can choose to live in a regenerative way, choose to eat vegan or vegetarian with a lot of ease and affordability. So definitely having to do with where can I live in the world where sustainability is not really challenging?

Number two, just shameless self-promotion. Come to Montaia Base Camp, spend time in the Eastern Sierra and it’s a place to see is this something for you? Do you want to be living and traveling and in community and also in a more regenerative lifestyle pattern and see if it works and resonates for you instead of implementing it all by yourself. Getting to plug it into something that already exists is a really helpful way.

And then the third place. Oh, I’m going to take this totally to the woo. I would say the third destination where I most recommend that people spend time is in their own physical body is literally developing a relationship with the way that your body responds and do so make your body be your number one place of travel destination so that no matter where you take that body in the world, whether you engaging through dance or through climbing or through hugs that you know what it feels like to be in your body in this home that is your body no matter where you are in the world and so that you can bring that home and that relationship into your travels.

Matt Bowles: All right, last question. What are your top three bucket list destinations? These are places you’ve never been highest on your list you’d most like to see.

Kaela Atleework: Number one is New Zealand. I so badly want to do the camper van for three months working, traveling in New Zealand. Number two is Patagonia where I am going. I’m going to spend January, February and March in Coyhaique on the Chilean side of Patagonia. And number three would be Vilcabamba in Ecuador. So again, when I’m thinking about the places I want to be in the world, I think about the lifestyle and Vilcabamba is a blue zone where the quality of life and the degree of sustainability and regenerative lifestyle is very much supported by the local community and you can find places like this all over the world. For example, Costa Rica is a place where the entire country has made policy changes towards sustainable living. So, I highly recommend this for digital nomads. If you want a more regenerative lifestyle to look into the places of the world where you can find that.

Matt Bowles: Amazing. Kaela, this has been so fun. I want you to let folks know how they can find you, follow you on social media, learn more about Montaia. How do you want folks to come into your universe?

Kaela Atleework: With a hug first and foremost. And if you want to find me, it’s pretty easy. My Instagram handle is findkaela. My email is findkaela@gmail.com and my website is findkaela.com. So, if you want to find me, that is how and if you’re wanting to find out more about Montaia and the name Montaia means the intersection between unity and complexity. So, it is a place where we are doing social experimentation on connectivity and exploring our relationship to both our wild and our social identities. Our website is montaia.com and this talks about our team of creatives but how we travel the world as a group and as a collective as well as living in community at Basecamp and if you would like to find out more about Montaia Basecamp itself and how you can come spend a month or three months with us that is on facebook.com/montaiabasecamp.

Matt Bowles: Amazing. We are going to link all of that up in the show notes so you can just go to one place at themverickshow.com go to the show notes for this episode. There you are going to find all of the ways to contact Kaela. Follow her, learn more about Montaia, all the amazing stuff that she’s up to and everything else that we talked about in this episode. Kaela, this was amazing. Thank you so much for being on the show, Matt.

Kaela Atleework: It’s such a joy and I’m curious where in the world we’re going to meet up again next to be determined.

Matt Bowles: All right, good night, everybody.